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Mark Freeman Commentary Holiday treasures gain value with time By MARK FREEMAN The presents had all been opened, and some of them already broken. The old relatives had all re-boarded their old cars and motored back toward their old homes. Yet not until the last Christmas dish sparkled clean on the counter did Helen Sitter peel off her apron, peer down at her three grandsons and declare, "It's time." Time to rekindle their holiday tradition made each Christmas Day from the Pennsylvania snows and an old, wooden toboggan. With the last of the Christmas chores done for the year, Sitter and her daughter's three boys took to a nearby hill for a night-time toboggan run that over time became the one present each generation relished from Christmases past. The freedom born from fresh, sloping snow and a slick sled beneath their seats. The harmony three young brothers can hum only when stacked, legs wrapped around torsos, for the singular joy of putting their lives in the hands of gravity. And the understanding there is no child too young, and no grandparent too old, to melt together on the unpadded boards of a toboggan. Christmas in the Sitter house always had been a free-for-all. The day began with unwrapping of gifts, followed by a trip to church. About noon, the cookies and fudge and other foods cloaked every available table to serve as a running buffet for a steady stream of relatives who came from all over Erie, an industrial town of northwestern Pennsylvania. Helen Sitter's grandsons, all young boys, came from Michigan with their parents, both of whom were born and raised in Erie. The day always dragged incessantly for the boys, chatting up ancient relatives and drinking enough cider to wash down double-batches of Christmas cookies. Dinner came like a penance; the boys squirmed through the meal and the table-cleaning until the call to action came. When Sitter turned to the boys and proclaimed "It's time," the declaration sent them scrambling over the dog, down the basement stairs and into their warmest of clothes. Boots on, they headed for the garage to an old toboggan the boys' grandfather had picked up years earlier at a neighbor's garage sale. It was a four-seater, with light chains holding the curved front to the base, and a short tow-rope. The oldest, Jim, would tow the toboggan up the driveway to meet their grandmother and father for the trip. In single-file, they trudged up the dimly lit streets, the children taking exaggerated paces to take advantage of the adult's footprints in the snow. Up the streets and past the last houses lay an underground reservoir -- really, just a large water tank covered with earth and grass to form a small hill with a flat plateau on top. The fivesome trudged up the hill into position at the top. The boys would board the toboggan by age -- the youngest in front, with toes tucked beneath the toboggan's curve; the middle boy, the eldest, then their grandmother. "I wonder how many kids," Sitter would say, "are tobogganing tonight with their grandmas." The boys' father, with his thick fingers, gave the tangled mass of generations a push and sent them sailing down the darkness. Fresh flakes flew as the toboggan sliced into virgin drifts that would reach up and drag their sleigh to a halt. Snowballs flew. Mittens pushed handfuls of flakes down bare backs, boots filled with ice, toes lost feeling. They cackled and cooed like little boys and old ladies do, then trudged up the hill for Round 2. Only the trees and the stars were there to see how the young boys could feel so free and so grounded during one simple moment. Eventually, the grandma would wipe the snow sparkles from her glasses and declare to the grandchildren that this would be the last of such moments for the year. The four would rebuild their twisted mass atop the toboggan, and the thick fingers would send them down the hill for the final time, riding the night's momentum as far as gravity would allow. When the toboggan stopped, the group would shuffle in silence toward home, the young ones stepping in their elders' snow-prints. Down the streets, past the lights and up the driveway they went. With the toboggan returned to its spot, the boys headed into the basement. They peeled off their warmest of clothes, bounded up the basement stairs, over the dog and to the Christmas table for warm cocoa and the last of the fudge. And every year Sitter would say, "I think your grandmother is getting too old to do this next year." Yet when next year came and the last Christmas dish sparkled clean, she would peel off her apron and declare, "It's time." But time and circumstance eventually locked that Christmas Day present into the past. The toboggan is long gone, sold in a garage sale to a neighbor with young boys in search of their own traditions. The Sitters have also long since left the snows of Pennsylvania for the sands of Arizona. And the boys have fanned out, too. The youngest one drifted to Southern California, where he lives and manages an industrial crew; the oldest settled in Indiana, finding new medicines to cure old illnesses; and the middle boy wandered into Oregon, to write a newspaper column. All have their own families, and are building new traditions. Yet each Christmas night, after the last dinner dishes sit sparkling on the counter, the middle boy will pick up the telephone, dial Arizona and drift into those nights of old. "I was just thinking," Grandma Sitter will say during Friday night's telephone call, "about that old toboggan and how much fun we had..." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470.) Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � interRogue & The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA