Yites and Apple Juice

Approaching this holiday season, I went rummaging through boxes in the storage room in search of my family’s old Christmas letters.  When I was in college, my mom had sent them to me one-by-one, and I knew I had kept them somewhere.  I finally found the box containing all the cards and letters I had received during my four-year stay at college, and while the box was thrown together in a rather hap-hazard fashion, I slowly began to discover all of the Christmas letters.

I put them in chronological order, snuggled up on the couch, and began to read.

We are especially enjoying this holiday season through the eyes of a 1 ½ year old child.  Allison is absolutely enthralled with the Christmas lights – “yites, yites, yites!”  And they must go on first thing in the morning – she pulls me in the living room, saying “Mommy, yites!”

I had not realized my fascination with Christmas started so long ago.  Still to this day, it is my favorite time of year.  I begin listening to Christmas music by mid-September, but I will not decorate until the day after Thanksgiving, much to my husband’s relief.  The nativity set is now put up, the stockings hung, and the tree decorated with hand-crafted ornaments.  But I refuse to let my husband unplug the Christmas tree at night until I have left the room; I am unable to watch the lights go out, if only for a few hours.  I do not believe my love of the “yites, yites, yites!” will ever change: somehow, they embody part of the magic and joy of this season.

I continued to read on in the letter my mom had written all those years ago: “Her vocabulary is expanding daily; her first words were (in order) juice, cow, and daddy – you can tell where her priorities lie!”

I laughed to myself and turned to read these lines aloud to my husband.

“Do you know what kind of juice I was talking about?”

He shook his head.

“Apple juice.”

A smile crept across his face.  “You never change, do you?”

I love apple juice, and my family knows it.  If I could, I would drink apple juice with every meal, and sometimes, I do.  Apple juice with pancakes, apple juice with pizza, apple juice with mashed potatoes and gravy.  Almost anything tastes better with apple juice.

When I visit my grandma’s house in South Dakota, she always has apple juice ready and waiting for me, as she too knows it is my favorite.  She then proceeds to reminisce about how when I was little, I would constantly be begging my mom for “more juice.”  Never being a milk drinker, it was apple juice that won my heart from the start.  Now, if I tell my husband, “I love you more than I love apple juice,” he knows that is quite the honor.

It is interesting to look back at the little quirks we have carried from childhood into adulthood – the little pieces of our hearts we have not given up over the years.  So dig out those old Christmas letters or photographs.  Remember what it was like to be a child; remember the little things that bring joy to your heart still today.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go pour myself a glass of apple juice and stare at the Christmas tree for a while…