I need to tell you that I have an obsession for colored doors and windows. Today I am choosing the red door for Christmas! As a little girl living in the west side suburbs of Detroit, every Christmas Eve we would take “the drive” to the city. This was to the home of my Aunt Winnie and Uncle Bill and my four cousins.
I knew that Santa was going to visit this night. He did every year! And after Santa gave us our presents, we would all pile into cars and go to midnight mass tradition. Uncle Bill was a chiropractor who had his office in his home and treated all the elderly in the area. Aunt Winnie was a mother of four who spent all of her time in the kitchen and making her home beautiful and welcoming. We are a Polish-Catholic family. Their home was on the corner of two very busy boulevards and directly across the street from the library.
This was not just any library. This was a library that you imagine the law students of Yale studying at. My uncle’s home was a three-story mansion with a basement. Every room had two separate ways that you could enter. There was so much anticipation on this drive to the city; after all, it was going to be the most exciting night of the year!
As we left our modest home and headed for the expressway, sitting on the edge of the backseat, dressed in my Sunday best with hands tucked in my white rabbit-fur muff and nose pressed against the side window of the car (no seatbelts in those days), we would pass through many interesting areas. There were neighborhoods of different economic situations, factories with huge smoke stacks billowing smoke in the cold winter air, department stores decked out with gigantic wreaths, white twinkling lights, deserted areas with abandoned buildings, broken windows, and massive one-hundred-year-old Catholic churches with beautiful stained glass art. But I was looking for only one thing that night, and there was something in particular that let me know when I arrived. I was looking for the biggest house on the corner of the boulevards with two towering white columns and a big red door!
