Bells on Cocktail Rings: A Broadmoor Christmas in 1977

I adore Halloween season. Dead leaves, pumpkins, horror films, and free candy are my jam. After that, it's all downhill. I don't care about turkey, and I stopped getting misty-eyed about Christmas when everyone expected me to actually purchase presents for them (as opposed to merely receiving them). These photos hearken back to a more innocent time—when family wasn't a dirty word, and when I was constantly drinking from a bottle that wasn't Jack Daniels.

Note: I'm not actually a drunk. I admit it would've been cool
to be an alcoholic. Maybe I would've been a better writer.

These Christmas snapshots were taken in 1977 at 1776 Sweetwood Drive in Broadmoor, California. They were also—according to the stamp on the back—developed fewer than six days later. That's some serious initiative. I call the stretch between Christmas and New Years "The Week of the Dead," and I'm lucky if I can even find the energy to do laundry, let alone develop prints.

This is a one-and-a-half year-old me, sitting in a chair, wearing some sort of starched, late-1970's toddler sailor suit. That thing must've been scratchy. I have only a few, vague memories of anything pre-Kindergarten—and most of them involve me wearing something that made me look like a Slavic ventriloquist's dummy. But I'm not bitter.

Ahh, the bottle. I continued to "nurse the bottle" throughout my 20's and 30's, make no mistake about it. But I uncharacteristically cut back in my 40's to about 10-15% of my previous boozing ability. Nowadays, a Friday afternoon Happy Hour is what I call a good time. There was no moral or ethical motivation—I just got sick of hangovers, and realized that if I stopped buying full-priced alcohol five days a week, I'd have more money for thrift-store shopping. Is that normal? Who cares.

Here I am, perched on my Aunt Lana's lap. Lana was one of the original Seoul Sisters. What's that draped across the arm of her chair? Lana was always invariably flanked by a herd of desperately loyal Lhasapoo/Pekapoo/Dixiepoo dogs. The key word here is poo. This brood was clearly some sort of Poodle crossbreed. 

Here I am, on the floor, playing with my Uncle David "Scotty" Thomson. He was a mean old Scotsman, and my Aunt Lana's ex-husband. They were long-divorced, but "Scotty" hung out throughout my entire childhood. Eventually he got re-married, settled in the East Bay, and disappeared from sight. Personally, I never really liked the guy. 

Here I am, getting drunk on the floor while my cousin and grandmother get cozy in the background. The girl on the left is my cousin, Rhea. I never knew if she wanted to kiss me or punch me. My grandmother, Natalie F. Vasilev, was more predictable—I could tell whether she wanted to kiss me or punch me based on how much pirozhki dough she'd kneaded that evening.

Svetlana, Tatiana, and Elena Vasilev
Circa 1957

To you and yours, may your Christmas season be bright and unforgiving. And may your memories be plagued by equal parts glorious nostalgia, and ill-advised fantasies of recrimination.