Our Christmas tree
Let’s take a break on Dawn and Penn's Panamanian Adventure so I may send you all my best Holiday Wishes. We’ll finish up our adventure in January. There are three stories left to tell.
If you’ve been enjoying this series, please drop me a line. Click on the “Contact Penn” button on the top of the page. I’ve been thinking about incorporating these stories into a congruent whole and publishing a chap book about our time in Panama. Would you read such a book (if you hadn’t already read my blog)?
As you must suspect by now, living on a boat is a little different from living on land. We hate “stuff.” There is limited storage space on a boat, so if it doesn’t have at least two uses, it has no place on our boat. It’s a Spartan life, but it fits us.
Christmas is also a little different. The last thing I want is a bottle of Scotch in a commemorative Chicago Cubs World Series bottle or a brass door knocker shaped like a lion’s head. When I get stuff like that, it is quickly donated to Willy Willy. (My grandfather, Teodoro,
used to call Goodwill, Willy Willy.)
(If you would like to know what Santa’s visit to a cruising sailboat is like, click here.)
It’s Christmas Day on board the Victory. We’ve had our Christmas breakfast, opened packages from Santa, had a neighbor drop by to say “hi” and are settling in to a quiet afternoon.
This evening we’re going over to Larry’s Vagabond 47 for cocktails before our Christmas dinner.
Larry’s sailing south for Mexico on the 29th. We’d love to help him sail his boat down, but have commitments on New Year’s Eve and early January.
Dawn has done her usual spectacular job decorating the boat. I contributed the outside lighting, running strings of lights all around the life lines. Dawn decorated a three-foot Christmas tree on the chart table. She put a string of LED lights around the perimeter of the aft cabin. They can be either soft white lights, or red and green Christmas colors.
When I got up this morning, the elves had visited the galley. The tabled was done up with a white table cloth, Christmas napkins and set for breakfast in bright Christmas colors. Soft white lights lined the shelf around the galley table. The shelf was decorated with Christmas cards, presents and a couple of bottles of wine.
It would have been a merrier Christmas season except for the unusual weather. After a two of weeks of rain, the San Diego sunshine returned and the world is drying out. We’re expecting good weather on Tuesday when we march with the San Diego Zoo float in the Holiday Bowl Parade. After the parade, the Zoo kindly provided us with tickets to the Holiday Bowl where Dawn’s Washington State Cougars are playing the Minnesota Gophers. (Gophers?? Really???)
It has been a wonderful, low pressure Christmas season for us. This morning I got up and saw the decorations in the cabin and rushed back to the aft cabin shouting. “Dawn, Dawn, Santa came last night.”
That reminded me of my favorite Christmas memory. (At this point, your screen goes waving and out of focus, taking us back to Christmas Day, 1991.)
Christmas morning on board the Victory
It was the tradition in our house, when the kids were little, not to put any Christmas presents under the tree until Santa came on Christmas Eve. We’d get the girls tucked into bed and Connie and I would watch an hour or so of television, then turn in. After Connie fell asleep, Santa would magically appear. All of the presents were hauled up from the basement, the stockings stuffed and any last minute decorating completed.
After Santa left, I’d climb back into bed with a smile on my face and wait for Christmas morning.
Libby’s first Christmas was nothing out of the ordinary. While Katie was all excited (as a five-year old should be) but Libby didn’t know what was going on. She had no prior Christmas experiences to think back on.
For her second Christmas, Libby didn’t remember last year and what happened on Christmas Day. We got up, went into the living room and opened our stockings while Mom got an extra hour of sleep.
When Connie got up, we opened presents. Libby figured it out fast and ripped the wrapping from her boxes.
Now Libby is three. She remembers last year and is excited about the coming Christmas. It is almost impossible to get her to sleep on Christmas Eve.
I read The Night Before Christmas to the girls and trundle them off to bed. When I return to the living room, I can hear Libby shuffling around in her bedroom.
I go back in to try to get her to sleep. She wants me to read “The Night Before Christmas” again. I read it two more times and she is no more ready to go to bed.
When she was nought but a wee bairn, I sat with her in my lap in the rocking chair and sang to her to get her to sleep. I don’t know how she endured my singing and sometimes thought she went to sleep to get me to stop.
This night, I went back in to try to cuddle and sing her to sleep. I sat in the rocker and she climbed into my lap. I held her close and started with “Silent Night.”
This went on for over an hour. I sang every Christmas song I knew, then went back to my playlist and started again. Sometime in the wee hours, she finally gave it up.
we
I put her in her bed, tucked her in and returned to adult world.
About five o’clock the next morning (Christmas morning) I felt a tug on my blanket.
“Dad! Dad! Santa came!” Then she was gone like a shot from a cannon.
By the time I got my robe and slippers on, she had made it to the living room, grabbed the first package she could see and tore into it. It wasn’t for her.
It took me some time to calm her down, then Katie got up to see what all the racket was about and we opened our stockings. Libby showed no regard for the pretty wrapping, tearing off ribbons and ripping wrapping paper. (I am so cheap that I save the wrapping paper for next year.)
The rest of the day went as planned. We had a wonderful breakfast (I cooked, of course), and we started a family tradition of going to a movie on Christmas afternoon to give the girls a chance to come down from their Christmas morning high before our big family dinner.
We’ve had many wonderful family Christmases since then, but nothing compares in my memory to that three year old girl, eyes all aglee, charging into my bedroom shouting, “Dad, dad, Santa came.”
Now your screen goes wavy again and comes back into focus.
I hope you and your family had a tremendous ______________(fill in the blank with whatever you celebrate this time of year) and are headed for a prosperous New Year.
I’m looking for nothing but good in the New Year. Catrina will make another appearance in her first full-length novel, The China Town Murders, Ted and crew will be back fighting ISIS hackers out to destroy our country, then Catrina will have a twisted time hunting down a serial killer in Panama and who knows what other adventures await us.
I hope that you’ll keep in touch and follow this blog all year as these and other events unfold around us.
The best New Year to all of you all and to all a good night.
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