A Christmas Memory

First you need some background. From 12/2002 - 6/2004 John and I lived in a little apartment in Kaysville. Formerly known as the "Joshua Apartments", they are now known as the "North Street Apartments." When I was growing up this apartment complex was the Mexican/Drug House where nothing but trash lived, however a few years ago they were renovated and are now lived in by young couples and little families. However these apartment have a problem that not many people know about unless you happened to live in an end apartment on the north side, namely apartments 7 & 14.

Mold.

Black mold that was growing on everything that may have touched the north wall, the east wall, and the west wall of the apartment. This was disgusting. For the most part when it first started to appear the mold was only growing near the floor and maybe about 2 feet up the wall and for a while it was only showing up in the bedroom that was on the north side, but soon it spread to the living room and our second bedroom as well. We would notify our apartment owners ever couple of weeks that it was there and they'd just tell us to wash the spot with bleach, or some sort of mold remover that we could buy at the store (and we were never reimbursed for anything we tried on the walls). The worst part of it all was that the mold invaded my closet and basically ruined an Indian Dress (from India) that I had received on my mission that is irreplaceable and is very important to me.

We put up with the for about 9 months before the mold exploded and started to cover the entirety of the walls it was infecting. It started to warp the back of my book shelves, it was growing on the back of my couch and on my clothes in the closet. There was no hiding it anymore and we finally just told out landlord to come and look at it if she didn't believe us. The boxes stored in the other room were getting soggy and mildewy. When we pulled the bed out of the corner in the second bed room we discovered fuzzy mold and water bubbles on the wall behind it. And my allergies got worse, a lot worse then they ever were even when I lived in Virginia where there was always something making me sneeze. (And even though I can't prove it, and there is no medical record of it I think the mold made me horribly sick and I also think it contributed to my mental heath dilemma because once we moved out I felt a million times better, and surprise! I wasn't as depressed anymore, I have also decided that my little sister should blame her brain tumor on the mold.)

Finally after all this time the landlord did come and look and she decided that they would fix the problem. Guess HOW they decided to fix it? They added some studs and put up a new wall of drywall. They didn't really fix the problem, they just covered it up. I don't think they even added insulation. I think I should note that this apartment had no insulation to start with. The outside walls were just the cinder block the building was built out of. So now the apartment was 4" smaller and the mold I'm sure is STILL growing behind the walls. Ick!

So what does this have to do with Christmas Memories? You may be asking… Well here is the Christmas story of 2003:

It was Three weeks before Christmas when we were forced to move out of our apartment and take up residence in apartment #5 while the landlord had someone come in and "fix" the mold problem. We took with us what we had to and everything else was piled in corners away from the outside walls so they could get to the mold problems. So here we were, not really knowing how long this was going to take or when we were going to see our apartment again so we took our Christmas with us.

So in this apartment all we had were our orange couches, our bed, our dresser, and our TV. In the mostly empty living room we put up our tree. Not wanting to pull out decorations to be broken being transported back to apartment 7 when we got the chance to go home I decided to make paper decorations. One night for our "family home evening" I pulled out the craft container some scissors and the colored paper and we made ornaments. We had angels and wise men and camels and a Santa who for some silly reason looked very Rabi-ish. We even made a baby Jesus and a paper chain. But of all these, my favorite is the star. It's a big yellow star cut from yellow construction paper but every year since then it has been the topper of our tree.

Most of these ornaments still exist, they live in the ornament box among the other Christmas decorations. And each year I pull them out just to look at them, but they all go back in the box, all except the star. I don't remember a single thing I got for Christmas that year or if we were even back in our own apartment, but each year I remember the paper ornaments and how much fun we had making them together. I think that is one of the reasons I cherish them so much, is because WE made them together.

Even though at times during 2003 our lives seemed quite bleak where there were countless days of me crying on the couch and fruitless months of job searching for John. It was just a month before Christmas that year that John had finally gotten a new job and I had started one I enjoyed (at the time) about 6 months earlier, Christmas with nothing that year was nice just because we were together.