Category: Arts

By Maddie Sokoloski

A few weeks ago, my sister Lily and I put up our Christmas decorations. This year, due to the fact that we live in a new house, we had to do things a bit differently. Our old tree was too tall to fit under our shorter ceilings so we bought a new, smaller Christmas tree. We hung over a hundred matching gold and silver ornaments, newly bought. My mom climbed a ladder to place a brand new silver star tree topper with rotating disco lights. The ceiling was splashed with red, blue and green lights, spinning and whirling in some pattern I couldn’t follow. The tree is organized, beautiful, uniform, everything I always wanted a tree to be and I’m still not sure about it. It’s all as new as the house we live in. This isn’t the tree I’m used to.

A few days after the tree was put up, we broke out the rest of the decorations, including the box of sentimental, kiddy ornaments that didn’t match the gold and silver theme of the tree. To accommodate for this and use the extra decorations, a second tree, the scraggly one we put on the porch of our old house, was set up in a different room. On it, we hung all the ornaments that didn’t match the gold ones. Aside from the silly, homemade crafts that were slowly falling apart and the few bits and pieces that belonged to my dad, we hung up every one until the artificial branches drooped with the weight. All five of my mom’s nativity scenes were scattered throughout the house. We strung garland along the rail by the steps and accented it with some big red bows. We hung five of our six stockings on a shelf across from the gold tree because they looked better there than on the mantle.

Five stockings. Just like our house and our Christmas tree, this was different too. Even though my parents split up some time last year, we still had Christmas together in our old house. This year though, my mother bought a new house. The garlands and bows are on a new railing; our fake tree is color coordinated in a way my dad would never have appreciated in the old house. All the decorations are beautiful and I still can’t help but feel something is missing.

“I don’t believe in Christmas,” my dad told me when I asked him what he wanted. I still harbored every intention to buy him a gift anyway. As opposed to my mom’s house, my dad’s apartment still looks exactly the same in December as it did in August. Even though he took us shopping to buy gifts for our mom, we have no tree or garland or big red bows. To my dad, Christmas was always about family. It was about going to tree farms to purchase the perfect tree then taking it home and coating it in a thick layer of ornaments, each laden with memory. Now that it’s just the two of us in our two-bedroom apartment (with the occasional weekend visit from my siblings), there’s no need to hang stockings or string lights. There’s no point in rushing out to buy a tree when no one’s going to appreciate it. Without family, there’s no reason for Christmas in the apartment.

Christmas is more different than I ever imagined it could be. At the new house, there is no balcony overlooking the bottom floor for my sisters, brother, and I to look over and stare at our tree on Christmas morning. There’s much less space to decorate at my mom’s and nothing to decorate with at my dad’s. As much as I don’t want to admit it, our new Christmas makes me sad. I knew Christmas would be different when my parents split up but it’ll be a challenge forming new traditions, trying to uphold the old ones with one less person, holding onto old memories with nothing to reinforce them every year, getting to spend time with both parents during Christmas break. I assumed I’d have two trees this year. I didn’t know they’d both be in the same house. But it just means I’ll be forging new holiday memories by both the light of our two Christmas trees and the glow of the regular old lights in my dad’s apartment.

Maddie Sokoloski is a Sophomore at Barbara Ingram 

By Maddie Sokoloski

Every year, it starts by saying grace.
Hands folded, we give thanks
for the food on our table,
the family by our sides,
the clothes on our back,
the luck we’ve had this year.

Every year, we’re reminded how lucky we are
and how thankful it makes us feel.
But every year, our words of thanks mean less
and less until saying thank you
becomes an obligation,
a chore.

This year, we need to be thankful for more —
for everything big to small.
Because we will always be grateful
for our family and friends,
for our homes and our food;
we always have been.

Each of us needs to find something new
to be thankful for.

 Maddie Sokoloski is a Sophomore at Barbara Ingram 

 

By Maddie Sokoloski

As the bitter cold of the October air nipped at my bare legs protruding from my scratchy skirt, I walked from the last house offering trick-or-treat candy.  Quickly, I scurried, alongside my three siblings and three of our friends to my mom’s car.  The seven of us jumped into it, hoping for some refuge from the chill. We shut the doors with a snap, leaving the cold breeze to tap at the doors and leave its frosty breath on the windows.

“Let’s go to trunk-or-treat,” my mom said as she drove us from the house.  We cheered with excitement.  

In my hometown, we have an event on Halloween called trunk-or-treat.  After we go trick-or-treating, we go to the parking lot of a building in town.  There, we always find a dozen or so cars with trunks wide open, handing out goodies to the kids. Year after year we discover the same people; stingy folk who always give us nuts or apples instead of candy, people with full blown haunted houses in the trunks of their cars, even some firemen with their truck who hand out chocolate and fire safety coloring pages.

After making our way through the rows of vehicles, the trick-or-treat‘s and thank you‘s ringing from our chorus of mouths, we went inside to warm ourselves up and bring our numb fingers back to life.  My mother got herself a cup of coffee, causing us to turn up our noses with disgust.  We searched through the buffet of drinks and desserts set up on the table (as if we needed more sugar.) After tearing through an impossible amount of sugar cookies and orange soda, we went outside to wait for the return of the hayride.

When it arrived, a cluster of people climbed down from the trailer so the next group of people could get on.  Within that group was the seven of us, some kids we recognized from school, and an assortment of bored parents accompanying kids who were too little to ride by themselves. Once everyone was in the trailer and sitting patiently on hay bales that tickled my legs, we set off.  A few kids waved at their parents, some people cheered, and the adults still looked incredibly bored.  

Until that day, I had never been on a hayride.  So I didn’t have prior experience to know that hayrides are incredibly boring. Usually, people go on hayrides to go sightseeing, look at parts of a town they never bothered to explore.  We, on the other hand, grew up in our tiny town and everyone had already seen it. It was too dark out to see anyway, so we decided to have some fun.

That’s when the screaming started.  

My siblings, our friends, and I started yelling our hearts out singing songs from various TV shows and infomercials. We sang the theme song from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, even though we only knew one line of the song. We repeated those same four words over and over again, much to the annoyance of all the unfortunate parents.  

‘Shut up!” screamed a boy who went to school with my sister.  She stuck her tongue out at him and sang louder.  He stuck his fingers in his ears and tried to yell louder than us, beginning his endless loop of “lalalalalala.”

Ten minutes later we got off of the hayride, everyone practically ran away from us, shooting dirty looks as they did.  The seven of us hopped off peacefully and walked over to find my mom.  We told her about the hayride, each of us interrupting the others.  When we got to the end of the story my mom looked appalled with our behavior.  Gathering up our candy, we left pretty soon after that.

We were never allowed on that hayride again.

Maddie Sokoloski is a Sophomore at Barbara Ingram School for the Arts