Christmas… It is my 71st Christmas and the first one of my life without my Mother who passed on a few weeks ago. I told my brothers in September that she was rapidly deteriorating. Unfortunately I was right.

   I watched her worsen every day, week and month since she moved in with me so I could help take care of her after her stroke six years ago. Much of my waking hours were in her company for if I wasn’t in the same room she would send one of her caretakers to bring me to her. I wi-fied the house so I could work (write) just a few feet away from her recliner chair…She felt good about my being there.

   I spent her last five years with her, cooking for her, feeding her, taking her to medical appointments, clinics, hospitals and to holiday visits with family.

   Considering that she spent the first five years of my life with and taking care of me it was only fitting that I spent her last five years with her.

   Christmas was special for her. It was a really big deal with her. That was a legacy she passed on to us that we have passed on to her 13 grand-children and five great grand-children. Only education was higher on her list than Christmas.

   She made sure that her four sons went to college.

   To this day I remember my mother crying as we waved at family from the back of the train inMexico Citythat would bring us first toEl Paso,Texas, then another toLos Angeles, then another toSan Diego. She cried until we walked across the bridge over the Rio Grande River into theUnited States of Americawhere she was born but did not know. She had been raised inMexico Cityafter her mother, my grandmother, died.

   After we crossed the border we squeezed into a train full of sailors, soldiers and Marines on their way to fight the Japanese in the Pacific. I loved them. I would wander the train stop, make funny faces and these boy soldiers, sailors and Marines of the Greatest Generation would give three-year-old me chocolate candy. The first lesson I learned in my new home ofAmericawas that people reward you if you entertained them. With that in mind I eventually became a writer, a “successful” paid writer with books and articles everywhere.

   One of the most popular pieces I ever published was about the first Christmas I remember in the United States. It started when my great-grandmother, my “nana” awoke me at dawn of Christmas Eve Day of 1946.

   Before my corn flake breakfast, I shared a cup of “café con mucha leche” coffee with lots of milk, a slice of cheddar cheese and half an orange, with my “nana.”

   Then the women of the family, my mom’s cousins and Nana’s sister and their in-laws showed up to start cooking the Christmas Eve “feast” highlighted by tamales, papayas from Mexico, and, of course, Mexico’s great gift to the world, avocados transformed into the most delicious guacamole ever.

   My task was grinding dry corn into flour, what they called “masa” to make tamales. Using an Indian grinding stone – “metate,” I wore my young arms off grinding all morning. The women mixed the flour with lard and formed the masa in which they stuffed beef in some, pork in others, chicken in others, pineapple, sugar and raisins in the rest. They wrapped the raw tamales in corn shucks into individual tamales about two inches wide and three or four inches long. Into a huge pot for steaming they went. Two hours later the women filled the kitchen with exclamations of delight. They were done. I tasted the first one. It still tastes good.

   Tables were set. The women disappeared into bedrooms to prepare for the festivities with Christmas arriving at midnight. Funny thing, all day I noticed these women casting glances at me and whispering among themselves. It was like they were keeping secrets from me, the five year old man of this WWII house.

   Munching cookie after cookie I joined in singing and other Christmas songs with the women in my new language — English, and impatiently waited for permission to eat real food. I needed permission despite being the only “man” in the house.

   Unexpectedly, up the stairs came my grandfather, home from Guam and Iwo Jima islands where he built air fields; then, came my great-uncle Frank from Alaska where he built Army bases. Then my Mother’s Cousin Luis came up the stairs home from Europe where he had parachuted intoNormandywith the Screaming Eagles; then, came the real man of the house, my seventeen-year-old Uncle who had lied about his age and joined the Army to fight Germans when he was 15. The army, of course, sent him toKorea. That was the happiest day of my life that Christmas.

   At five I wasn’t the man of the house any longer. The war was over.

   They’re all gone now this 71st Christmas of my life.

   It was a great 1946 Christmas, the first I remember in the United States. It was a big deal for my mother and me. So was last year’s even though we didn’t know it was our last together.

   If she had lived just a few more weeks she would have been given a great Christmas present this year, one that would have pleased her immensely – her 17-year-old grand-daughter Gianna was just admitted to Harvard. Somewhere my mother is smiling.

   Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad!— enjoy every minute of it you can, especially with family.

Contreras’ eight books are available at amazon.com