As soon as I hopped off the school bus, I could see my mom in the distance inside our home. She was trimming a large picture window with glitzy, gold tinsel garland, popular Christmas decor in the early 1980s. I was maybe 7 years old and I remember feeling overcome with happiness at that moment — running home and knowing of the festivities to come in the days ahead.
Dry, overgrown brush and scraggly kiawe trees served as a backdrop to my childhood home, a yellow house with red trim in a little-known neighborhood — Nanakai Gardens — just a few miles east from what today is Ko Olina Resort. It was a simple setting, but each Christmas my parents managed to transform our home into a wonderfully merry haven for me and my older brother and sister. In my eyes, it was far more beautiful than the snow-kissed cottages depicted in my Christmas storybooks.
In a column I wrote last year, I talked about preparing for Christmas with my three daughters: “The thing with young children is the holiday is only as special as you make it special for them.”
This column is a sort of prequel to that one: My parents made Christmas special for me and my siblings. It’s thanks to them I do the same for my girls.
My mom loved decorating our home, taping Christmas cards to our wood-paneled walls and displaying our beautiful nativity set by the Christmas tree. Together we trimmed the tree, draping branches with angel-hair silver tinsel, another festive fad of the ’80s. We’d find strands of it in our shag carpeting months later.
My dad did his share, providing the soundtrack to our Christmas with his cassette tapes. Anne Murray’s “Silver Bells,” Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” and anything from “Christmas with the Chipmunks” were family favorites. He hung colorful lights along our carport roof and sneakily signed our presents, “From Santa.” That they wanted us to believe makes me, as a mother today, truly appreciate what they did for us back then.
Our family moved from that sweet home decades ago. My mom, 69, still loves to decorate for the holidays, often using whatever “treasures” she digs up at Ross Dress for Less on senior-discount Tuesdays. My dad, 73, still manages to somehow string lights along the trim of their house.
Every year they open their home to host Christmas Eve dinner for our extended family and friends. That’s where we’ll all be celebrating tonight. As my parents get older, I find myself cherishing even more each and every holiday we have with them.
Merry Christmas, Daddy and Mommy. Thanks to your time and effort — and love — you continue to make the holidays a special time for our family.
“She Speaks” is a weekly column by women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
