Want One of Your Christmas Presents Now?
My sister Karen and Me. The last Christmas that my father was living. 11:00 PM December 24, 1970 whatever... In Lake Ronkonkoma, NY, several Sekulski kids gathered in the living room, surrounded by shredded Christmas wrapping and bows, cardboard boxes, plastic, twist ties from things like stretch Armstrong and Barbie Whatever. It was a joke and a custom in our family that my mom would start asking us in October, "Do you want one of your Christmas presents?" What normal American kid would say no? So, it's understandable how on virtually every Christmas morning, we had already opened all of our gifts. Not the type of household where gifts sit nicely under the tree on Christmas morning until everyone had eaten their special Christmas breakfast. No, it wasn't like that in the Sekulskis of Arlington house. (There were also 5 Sekulskis on Webster Ave...our cousins, not to be confused with the Sekulskis on Arlington.) So, when many other families in the neighborhood we