Family Holidays Made Me Who I Am by Martha Reed

I grew up bouncing around the country as a child. I love the holidays because one of the few fixed points in my early existence was grabbing my big green sleeping bag, piling into the back of our orange Country Squire station wagon, and heading to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to visit our Aylesboro Avenue relatives and celebrate the season.

I’m sure nostalgia colors my remembrance but I still smile when I recall the anticipation and the excitement of reconnecting with my many young cousins and overhearing (i.e. spying) on gossipy adult conversations.

This was back in the ‘seventies when children were still seen but not heard. It’s no surprise to me now that I developed into a mystery writer since once the elders spotted me eavesdropping, they started sharing significant looks and exchanging enigmatic verbal clues that I needed to somehow piece together and solve just so I could figure out who they were talking about (suspects, persons of interest) and what the forbidden topic (motive) was.

Looking back, I can see that my deductive and detective seeds were already very firmly planted.

I had two favorite parts to these holiday visits. Firstly, all of us kids were sent upstairs to the unheated third floor where we camped out in our sleeping bags and made rough beds from salvaged chair and sofa cushions. We would stay up so late, so past our bedtime giggling and catching up that my adorable Uncle Bill would eventually repeatedly flick the light switch from the base of the staircase, shrilly whistle and then thunder: “You kids upstairs go to bed!”

He wasn’t really mad at us. It was all part of the tradition.

My second favorite part of each visit was dangerous because getting caught spying on grown-ups was a punishable offense. But I couldn’t help myself. Adults shared the best stories. They discussed genetically inherited bad behavior and treasonous multi-generational sibling betrayals. Passionately overheated PG-13 rated sex scandals and dark Poe-like tales of plotted revenge. Of course, I had to listen in. It was intoxicating. Whenever I did get spotted my mother would warn everyone: “Martha's listening. Little pitchers have big ears.”

Eventually, I was clever enough to weasel my way into the conversational circle and into their good graces by learning how to serve a sausage and cheese board, mix cocktails, and become their step-and-fetch-it cupbearer. I was so efficient my grandfather nicknamed me Ganymede.

Sidebar: That older generation also matured during the Great Depression when no one had any money and they had nothing but board games, vocabulary, and wit for entertainment. To this day, I remember overhearing this exchange between my grandfather and his younger brother Jim fifty-five years ago:

Uncle Jim: “I’m going to become a lounge lizard singer when I retire.”
“You might get there,” my grandfather said, not missing a beat. “Keep practicing your scales.”

Do you have any fond family holiday memories? Did your family members help you become the writer you are today?