Christmas Countdown: Round Three

The thing about Christmas that I'll blog about today is not something I came to really appreciate until I was a Junior in high school or so (I've come to realize that I have more than just Americans reading my blog, so this is when you're sixteen or seventeen years old).  Up until that point it was mostly presents (look a few posts back).  We got up, we opened the toys I'd play with that year, my parents usually didn't buy us stuff outside of our birthday and Christmas, so December was my big haul month, and then we'd play with those toys.  All other activities were merely formalities that got in the way of playing with toys.  Once I was a Junior though, and most of my presents consisted of movies and music, I began smelling something coming from the kitchen that I hadn't noticed before.

My friends, I love Christmas breakfast.  At my house, it usually consists of my favorite breakfasts, either biscuits and gravy, or bacon, hash browns, and toast (occasionally we have both choices because we're spoiled).  And my mom will buy orange juice with no pulp (I have issues with chewy orange juice).  I find that it is especially nice because we seldom have time to make either of these, so it's a real treat.  And, now that I'm older, I know the work that goes into it, and appreciate that my parents do that for us.

The bacon, hash browns, and toast thing just tastes really good to me, but the biscuits and gravy are special.  My Grandpa Paul (the one I'm named after), always made biscuits and gravy for the family.  He made the best biscuits.  It was only biscuik, but he had just the right mixture to make the biscuits tasty, and heavy, and perfect for sausage gravy.  Grandpa Paul was an amazing man.  He was one of the last true cowboys.  He owned cows that he drove across the Grand Canyon when he was young.  His family caught and raised deer.  He was tough, worked hard, gardened, and made great biscuits and gravy.

It's more than just great biscuits and gravy though.  Grandpa had a way about him.  He was my Great Grandpa actually.  His eyes were always bright.  They were a sky blue, and when they saw you, they lit up.  You knew he was happy to see you because his eyes told all.  My mom says that he was the most accepting person she ever knew.  He fell in love with my mom as soon as my dad brought her home, and that was true of every person that came into our family.  He loved all of us, saw the good in us, and showed that love in the best way he could.

For me, it goes even deeper than that though.  My Grandpa and I had a special relationship.  He taught me how to drive, and two years later he lost his wings, so I drove him around.  He listened to me, even though his hearing was failing and he probably didn't understand much of what I was saying.  We sat at the garden together.  He took me to breakfast when we drove Grandma in to town to get her hair done.  I ordered biscuits and gravy (because that's what you order when you're with him), and he paid with a twenty that he always had in his shirt pocket, because a twenty gives you a little freedom, and a shirt with two pockets on the chest gives you a place to put a notebook, a pen, and a twenty.  To be honest, I think everyone in the family would probably say they had a special relationship with Grandpa.  That's why, when we eat biscuits and gravy, we think of Grandpa, and can't help but smile.

Biscuits and sausage gravy on Christmas is special, because Christmas isn't the same without Grandpa, but biscuits and gravy make us feel a little like he's still here, or at least a piece of him, and that makes the change easier to deal with.  He's been gone for seven years, and we still miss him, so it's nice to have biscuits and gravy, and family, and early morning laughter, because those are things he loved and gave to us.  And every now and then, I can see him looking over us, smiling.