For three Christmases in a row, my children “forgot” to invite me. “It’s just easier without you there, Mom,” my daughter said, and her brother laughed. I held the phone, frozen. This year I booked the same resort they always use… and they weren’t ready… for what happened next.
My name is Roberta Chalmer’s and I am 70 years old. For three Christmases in a row, my children forgot to invite me. In 2023, my daughter said the cassita only sleeps 8. In 2024, nobody called at all. In 2025, the call lasted 47 seconds.
I asked whether I should bring the peon pie. Denise said, “It’s just easier without you there, Mom.” My son laughed behind her on the speaker. I stood in my kitchen in Oro Valley and held the phone until the screen went dark. Here is the part I did not know yet.
They were not only leaving me home. They were telling people a story about me and it took me most of a year to find that story in writing. This year I booked the same resort they always use under my own number. What was waiting at the front desk on December 23rd is why I am telling you this. Welcome back to Alpha Mom Stories, where quiet women finally say the things they filed away for years. Drop a comment and be sure to subscribe.
I should tell you what I did for a living because it explains everything that comes later. I spent 31 years at Loero State University in Tucson. I started in February of 1980 as a grade entry clerk. I was 23. My job was to take handwritten grade sheets from faculty mailboxes and type them into a mainframe that had to be fed on Thursdays.
I left for four years when the children were small and I spent those four years in night classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays until I had a bachelor’s degree in 1989. I came back to the university in September of 1990. I finished a master’s in education in 1997. In June of 2001, they made me registar. I retired in June of 2015 with 31 years of service and a sheetcake with my name spelled right.
Warren and I bought the house on Cay Loma Linda in 1991. Three bedrooms, a carport, a mosquite that dropped pods on everything. He was a land surveyor with a twoman firm and hands like sandpaper. He died on February 14th, 2018, Valentine’s Day. He would have found that funny and he did near the end.
People think a registar is a person who says no. That isn’t it. A registar is the person who holds the record when everyone else is holding an opinion. Students cried in my office. Deans leaned on me.
Parents called senators. In 31 years, I never once changed a record because someone cried. I am not proud of that the way you might think. It cost me things. But that habit is the only reason I am able to tell you this story instead of wondering about it.
I don’t argue, I file. That temperament saved me. It only took until I was 70. In April of 1994, Warren came home with a brochure and a bad haircut. The brochure was for a place outside Sedona called the Juniper Mesa Club.
Not a hotel, a member-owned club, which means the members own the corporation and the corporation owns the cassitas. You buy a certificate. The certificate is your right to use the place and it comes with a number. Founding certificates cost $8,000. That was real money to us.
In 1994, we sold Warren’s work truck and drove his father’s Buick for 2 years. We did not take a vacation anywhere else until 1998. We got founding equity certificate number 00071. The founding tier closed in 1997 at 180 certificates. After that, you could only get in if somebody left and the board had to approve you and there was a list.
That first summer, the founding members drew for permanent holiday priority weeks. Everybody stood around a folding table in the parking lot with paper slips in a coffee can. Warren pulled ours. He unfolded it, looked at me, and didn’t say anything for a second. December 19th through the 26th, Christmas week, permanent.
Attached to the certificate, not to us. Whoever holds RO71 holds that week for as long as the club exists. They gave us a brass fob with the number stamped into it. Not fancy. An oval about the size of a guitar pick on a leather tab that has been replaced twice.
Warren kept his on his truck keys. Mine lived on a hook inside the kitchen cabinet. For 29 years, that week was ours. Cassita 12, the one with the bad chimney draft and the best view of the red rock. 29 years is long enough that people stop asking how it started.
The first Christmas they left me out was 2023. And the reason was arithmetic. Denise called in early November. She was warm about it. She is always warm about it.
Mom, the cassita sleeps eight. I said I knew. I said I had signed the purchase agreement myself in 1994, and I could still tell her which drawer held the extra blankets. She laughed. Then she did the math out loud for me the way you would for a child.
Her family is four. Curt’s family is four. That makes eight. Add me and it’s nine. And somebody is already on the pull out.
I offered to rent a second cassita for the week. Members can do that when there is inventory, and there is almost always inventory the week before Christmas because half the founding families go to their own kids. Now, I said I would pay for it. I said I would take the small one by the laundry building and nobody would have to change a thing. There was a pause.