… how life can change…
It’s hard to imagine how things could be any more different than they were just six months ago.
It was almost exactly six months ago that The Legal Genealogist finally pulled the trigger.
And started writing a totally new chapter in the book of my own life.
Six months ago, I signed that contract, to build a house in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.
Where, a week from today, I will spend my first holiday season in Virginia since I was a child.
And that has me thinking about those winter holidays we did spend in Virginia when I was a child, spent in that farmhouse in Fluvanna County that was owned by my mother’s oldest brother, my Uncle Bill, but that was then and forever will be simply The Farm — the place where my grandparents lived.1
Clay and Opal Cottrell, Christmas at The Farm
There weren’t all that many of them, yet they are standouts in my memory — for a whole lot of reasons.
The first thing I remember about them is the daily health check. If any of the kids got sick, we couldn’t go. And there were a lot of us kids. My mother — who always desperately wanted to visit with her family — listened for every sneeze and cough starting about December 1 each year. She was perfectly ready to make the call that whatever the ailment was shouldn’t be spread among the aunts, uncles and roughly kazillion cousins… but she was also perfectly ready to treat the kid with the ailment as if the kid had deliberately gotten sick to avoid the trip.
She may have had reason for that view of things. We — my siblings and I — didn’t really like going to Virginia for Christmas. Remember, I said there were a lot of us kids. Which meant we were jammed into whatever vehicle we had at the time for a long trip on what always seemed to be snowy roads. Kids on every spare seat. Kids among the luggage. The baby kid (and there was always a baby kid) on my mother’s lap.
Which — sigh — left no room for our presents. If we were going to Virginia, our presents stayed home. We got to open them after we got back from The Farm. Only the presents for my grandparents made the trip with us.
And that whole “over the river and through the woods” bit? Yeah, we had that… except it included an icy, snow-covered, deeply rutted unpaved road up from the final turnoff into the farm up to the farmhouse. During which we were not allowed to make a sound. Not a single solitary noise. Even the baby of the day knew better than to cry while my father made the attempt to get the car up the hill to The Farm.
As an adult, I realize it was a nerve-wracking tough bit of driving for my father, already tired from the drive, and not accustomed to those conditions. As a kid, I lived in terror that I might breathe wrong and send the car deeply into one of those ruts. Which then meant we got to walk up the rest of the way to the farmhouse, and the car would make the trip the next morning at the end of a tractor chain.
Once we got to the farmhouse, each family got a bedroom to share. Two parents, three kids? This bedroom. Two parents, seven kids? That slightly bigger bedroom. The heat in each bedroom, indeed the only source of heat in any bedroom at The Farm? A potbellied wood-burning stove, on which each kid managed to get burned at least once during the holiday.
Oh, I said heat? Not if you were one of the older cousins. Three to a bed in the back room or the room above the breezeway, neither of which had any stove at all.
I was in the “above the breezeway” trio with my cousin Kay and my sister Diana. As the youngest I got stuck in the middle. It was the warmest place in the bed, yes. But that raised the other problem. Um… no indoor plumbing. Outhouse and chamber pots. You had to decide whether you really really had to go — badly enough that you were willing to get out of the warmth of the bed. Then you had to climb over a cousin or a sister, then lift that lid and… well, you definitely were not the most popular person in the world at that point…
And then there was the inequity of watching the one set of cousins who lived at The Farm surrounded by all their presents under the tree… knowing all of your presents were 350 miles to the north.
Sigh…
Yep, a child’s nightmare.
And of course something I’d give my eye teeth for today.
The wonder of being allowed in The Living Room — off-limits at any other time of the year — where the tree was set up and there would be a fire in the fireplace. The one gift each of us non-resident cousins received, without fail, from my grandmother, every single year, in as equal a treatment as can be imagined: a book of Lifesavers.2
The gentle smiles from my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles, most of whom are now long gone.
The simple warmth of being with family.
A warmth I am so so so ready for.
It’s hard to believe that my life has changed so much in just six months.
Hard to imagine that, just six months ago, I really didn’t expect to be where I am today.
In Virginia.
Surrounded now by four of my siblings, and their families, and cousins and…
Home.
For the holidays.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “In just six months…,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 17 Dec 2022).
SOURCES
- See Judy G. Russell, “End of an era,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 31 Mar 2012 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 17 Dec 2022). ↩
- See ibid., “Among equals,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 27 Dec 2014. ↩
If your interested, when you get settled and feel like visiting Warrenton, VA, my wife and I would love to have you to dinner or take you out to dinner. I’ve appreciated your blog for years and enjoyed the two in-person lectures I’ve attended and now that you “may” be in my neck of the woods I’d love to visit.
Thanks, David! I will be quite a while settling in before I’m even going to think about visiting anywhere except close kin — but hopefully I’ll see a LOT of other Virginia genealogists at NGS Richmond in 2023!
Sounds a lot like visiting my grandparents in Walnut Springs TX. Big ol place, all grey on the outside, do not think it ever had a lick of paint on it, front porch bout 20 ft long & 8 ft wide, but too cold to set out there during winter. 2 stoves in the house, kitchen and living area. You could be warm on front or back, but never in both places at once. Lots of blankets on the beds so me an all the cousins slept warm. Wake up in the morning to the cows bawling out by the barn, they wanted to be fed and milked. None of us kids would get out of bed until we smell those biscuits cooking. The children always got fed first which was fine with me because I had a uncle that could eat a whole pan of those biscuits. Could hear grandma, aunts and my mother all laughing and talking while cooking breakfast. It was Christmas, warm bed, at grandma and grandpa’s, life was good.
Kids got fed first at my grandparents’ as well — but we got oatmeal and (if we were lucky) cinnamon toast. The grownups got the biscuits and gravy and sausage and… You really really reallllllly aspired to be allowed at the grownup table.
Always touching. Thank you for sharing your sweet memories.
Thanks for the kind words.
For years I have been trying to explain the difference between home and back home. You just nailed it. Congratulations on getting back home!!
Wishing you all the best in your new home, surrounded by family.
Thanks so much!
Merry Christmas! Wishing you many more holidays in your new home!
And a very merry Christmas to you and yours, cousin! Still grateful to you for your help in getting that YDNA test done…
Judy, you are a wonderful storyteller – thank you for sharing the memories!
Thanks for the kind words!
Judy, you described, at the end of your story, what I have been longing for this year. Being the oldest of six and all of us still here, I remember those car rides and how stressed my dad was driving 12 hours to see his side of the family. I long for my parents who died in 2018 and 2020. I have missed my long-gone grandparents since they died and some of the not-so-fun visits to upstate New York. It is the memories of them just being here, not the things we did, that makes me miss them
most. Thanks for your story from Linda in Courtland, VA.
Thank you for this wonderful trip down memory lane. It brought back a lot of memories of my family going “home” for Christmas. Family is what we all are missing. Big families provided a village that many don’t have now.
Judy, I’m so happy for you that you have returned home.
For some of us, who for one reason or another don’t have living family connections, the work you do and help us to do is so meaningful as we try to touch our roots and reclaim kinship. There is a reason why many people choose to live in the past.
Thanks again and happy holidays to you and your family.
Don
And happy holidays to you and yours!
Such a wonderful story Judy, and so totally different from my own experience. Have the best Christmas in your new home.
I really enjoyed reading about your childhood Christmas experience. I can just picture it all! Such wonderful memories – both the pluses and the minuses. Happy Holidays and Best Wishes to you and your family!
Your wonderful story reminded me of the book, The Relatives Came, by Cynthia Rylant.
Yep, pretty much the same story! 🙂 Only our station wagons were blue-and-white, grey, and green-and-white.