A Certain Gina Sais Quoi

I don't really know what is the right explanation but this blog really was born from a tradition of writing a Christmas story for my sister. I bought her a journal so she could write in it, including a story I wrote as inspiration for her own writing. Somehow, the next year the book showed up in my possession and I was meant to fill it again. So year after year I would stay up late on Christmas Eve and write her a story. There were 7 or 8 at least. All fantastic stories, of course, so I am sure they will be published posthumously and I will win a Pulitzer like John Kennedy Toole.

One year I got a new software called Comic Book Life and I animated her a story on my computer. I don't think the book was filled, but writing on paper seemed so nineteen eighty two. And the next year, sadly, I did not have time to write because it was Hunter's first real Christmas, where he was mobile, and I made a movie of his life and screened it for the family and later appeared it as part of the first blog. Last year I made a book of the first blogs about Hunter, so the tradition has been passed.

Sadly, or rightly, that is what happens to tradition. As a child Shawn would wake us up at 5 on Christmas morning and though we were told to wait until the sun came up, he would wait long enough to recon all the presents and then convince my parents it was time to get up. And then when Gina was born we lived down the hill and she started having new traditions with my mom, girl traditions. But some things stay constant. Up until my first year of marriage I always spent the night on Christmas Eve with my parents, for example.

There were others, you know, from when we were littler like going with my dad to Gino and Carlo's and then "getting to go" look at the lights around San Francisco, or shopping at Union Square. Or little things really that stuck, like chocolate for my mom, Shawn and Damon making and then cleaning breakfast while Gina recounted her loot, or sat on her butt or got another blanket or whatever. Basically she sat like a princess expecting her minions to do her bidding. And we did. (Although now it is because I fear the wrath of Drunk Gina, but that is a story for Facebook.)

Hunter will have to work with his cousins to recount his traditions, at least from his very early life. He loves his cousins. One of the great traditions we have now is grandma Sharon Dinner on Christmas Eve for all of us, making me my own mushroom lasagna that my dad likes to eat half of, and the kids get matching pajamas to wear. These things seem small but they will know. Just like my mom gives us new ornaments for the tree every year and Shawn and I try to hide them around the house like Easter eggs. Hoping to find them again, on Easter.

My favorite tradition will always be the Epic Of The Lights. (I laughingly contrast it to the orderly, organized, almost miltary precision with which Heather and her family get their house decorated.) I have written about "The Epic" before but basically this is that rich time of year when my dad disentangles a braid of ropes, ne Christmas lights, so wrapped up that it looked like Rapunzel's hair gave birth to Jack's beanstalk. What ensued was the most colorful, wonderful time of year when my dad would invent new swear words and insults. Gleefully I would listen and make a list to check twice before I used them at school. I marked new ways to curse Christianity, my mother, his mother, the dude who invented the lights, the house the lights were being attached to, our neighbors, my grandmother's fruit cake and whatever else was in his way as he began "The Epic". And that was just getting them untangled.

Then they would have to be strewn across the floor, end to end to make sure they were working. I always wished for the strand that did not work because then the fun really began as he tried to find the one fizzled out light causing all the others to malfunction. He would be on his knees, cursing the floor so loud no jingle bell or holly jolly elf could drown him out, fiddling gingerly with each light until eventually so many were broken he would have to run out and buy more because the whole thing had become a string of shards and splintered glass.

And then he would have to get them on the roof. I have never seen a ladder more unstable, than on those glorious nights. It would sway and contort and my dad's humor would rise. Remember this is a man who once spent an afternoon stuck on the roof of the house becuase the ladder had fallen he could not figure a way down off the fifteen foot roof to the ground. It begs the question as to why he was up there to begin, but never mind.

But my sister is the caretaker of these traditions as she remembers them and every family needs one, the same way they need a cat lady who later in life becomes mom's caretaker. She holds us to those roles and regulations. But seriously, she has been the great moderator of Christmas lore and I love her for it. That and the perfectly cooked oatmeal cookies, which for some reason only she can bake.

I feel bad that the stories have passed and she has to share the tradition with my son now. But then, that is a cool bond they will share. Hunter already has a place at our dinner table he calls "auntie Gina's seat" so he is getting there. As a child it seemed she abhorred sports often uttering my mom's favorite refrain of disdain: Is there a game on? And then she went off to college and it seems somehow she was raised right, because now we both suffer the curse that used be the damn Giants, until they became the World Champion San Francisco Giants.

She bleeds orange almost as much as I do and gets equally angry at the bandwagon fans, and for that she should be commended. Besides our annual pilgrimage to Fan Fest, this year we went to a couple play-off games together, where she even sprang her own money (did not even call mom for a reimbursement) paying top dollar for the right to sit behind the man now known as Dirty.

We were enjoying the LCS, Matt Cain was throwing his usual gem and about the time Bochy came to take him out, a man with a Sanchez jersey came and sat in front of us. I had an eerie feeling about the game, even telling my sister it felt eerily like the game Bonds hit his record breaking homers seventy and seventy one against the Dodgers where the crowd was in such a frenzy and such a tizzy by the third inning that they felt the game was over, and like that day when Shawn Estes gave up a seven run lead to lose the game, the Giants would give this game away too.

But the entertainment from the man in the Sanchez jersey was almost worth it. Because this is a family blog I cannot recount the incident, but it will sit here for she and I to remember, for all time, as one lasting memory.

She took Heather to a play-off game as well. I told you she was a good fan. It is a little bandwagonish to be a young-er female and eschew the Lincecum jersey for the Posey jersey but the rookie of the year is such a darn good player, she can be forgiven. Too bad Posey's wife is a piece of work. And though they did not get to see Steve Perry sing "Don't Stop Believing" like I did, anyone who was there sharing in that feeling does not want it to stop, I can promise you. Electric.

And it was Gina who scoped out a great spot along the railing to watch the victory parade for the World Champion San Francisco Giants. She took a day off of work to get up earlier than a work day to get that great vantage spot. A perfect snapshot in time. A sea of orange has never been a more awesome sight.

So I lend a tribute to my fellow comrade in orange and give a nod to her because someday when he is older her nephew will be reading this and see that even though having traditions and sticking to too them are very important, they are nothing without a family bond. Developing new traditions inherently assumes they are passed down and shared, and that is what makes them so special. Hopefully Hunter will not be writing about how his dad had invented some swear words but a new baseball season is starting soon, so I can't promise anything.