The Christmas Report

The tree is up and decorated with my mom's crocheted snowflakes.

Some quartz crystals  and a homemade elf have "winterized" the mantel.

Carolers are singing on the kitchen island.

I splurged on poinsettias for the first time in years.

Even the red car next door looks like a Christmas decoration.

I'm not expecting Santa, but I am full of joy, knowing that I will soon have a houseful of people I love.

Monday Beach Report

Yes. It's Tuesday, I know. But this is the way the beach looked yesterday around 9 in the morning. I find the other worldly beauty of a gray day full of magic.

And there was beach glass. Lots of it.

In other news, life just keeps happening. (This is a good thing, mostly, if you leave the current political nightmare out of it.) But I'm going to Chicago for a funeral tomorrow. The holidays are barely registering with me, though I still hope to put up a Christmas tree with my mom's crocheted snowflakes when I return. A dear friend will be staying at my house while I'm away, and will continue to stay on for a bit after my return. Who knows maybe some festive fury will overtake me.

last year's tree

But...so far I'm not really feeling it. Did you know that the Christmas holidays are actually a risk factor for death? According to CNN, "There's a spike in deaths for all age groups on those days with one exception -- children." So maybe we should avoid it like smoking and cholesterol and too much sitting. I'd like to see those studies about Christmas and dying to look more closely into how shopping figures in. I'll bet non-shoppers have a better outcome. That's my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

Christmas long ago. I think I was maybe 12.

One thing's for sure, I'm really glad to be among the living.

Margaritaville: The Christmas Report

The tree, complete with my mom's crocheted snowflakes

Front hallway lights and unintentional selfie

The Christmas lights went up late this year due to the sore throat and cold. It was a joy to be feeling well enough to snare a tree and pull down the boxes of lights and get to work. I was feeling the satisfaction of the season as I stepped down the ladder, admiring the last string of lights atop the armoire in the dining room, when what to my wondering eyes should appear...well, pretty much nothing. When I opened my eyes, I was on the floor next to an overturned dining room chair with the ladder on top of me.

My friend Pete was here, a few feet away in the kitchen, baking cookies. I explained as quickly as I could that I hadn't hit my head, that I hadn't fallen from the top of the ladder, but simply missed the last step and probably would have managed to keep my balance if I hadn't collided with the chair. In those first moments I felt worse for him than for myself, having tended to a few emergencies with my mom during the years she lived here and knowing all too well those initial moments of pure panic and  the awful scenario of spending the holiday in the ER. 

I was lucky enough to forgo the sleigh ride to the hospital, but I've got some bruised ribs and a sore tailbone. And I'm sort of thankful for the reminder of how life can change in an instant. I know that. We all do. And I suppose it's good to forget it now and then and just be caught up in those times of joyful ease, but we also need to know that it can all come crashing down.

And so here I am this Christmas Day, thinking of my mom and hoping she's having a good Christmas in Iowa, thinking of Dan as I struggle for a good deep breath since the site of my injured ribs is exactly where his incision was from his lung cancer surgery, and last night I told the story of my dad and our family rituals protecting us from  Christmas tree danger. We love the distant, the dead, the living, and the light, and the darkness.

And speaking of light and darkness, I happened to catch this from my bedroom window as it streaked past.  

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,

Guide us to thy perfect Light.

Of course, I didn't think of that at all at first. I thought the worst--plane on fire, alien attack, end of the world. That's the way I am. And I wish you a very Merry Christmas. 

Birds, Bullshit, Sunshine, and Santa

It's a beautiful day full of birds and sunshine here in Pillville. The buffleheads are buffle-ing. the hummingbirds are hummering. My mother's bruises are transforming from purple to green. She's busily pinning out her snowflakes and starching them.

Bufflehead ducks wintering here from the far north

Hummingbird at our kitchen window

The one-armed snowflake maker at work

I see the same look of concentration here in Vermeer's famous painting The Lacemaker

And me? In just a bit the nurse who does the intake for the caregiving agency will arrive. Better than Santa and his eight tiny reindeer, if you ask me. I spent all morning trying to log into my mom's credit union accounts--let's just shorten that story and let me say that experience made big banks look really, really good. It took weeks for one of credit unions to really fess up that the problem was on their end. They had to add my i.p. address so I could log on. Whaaaat? And the other lost the Power of Attorney paperwork and would not speak to me since my mom could not understand the person on the phone who was hell-bent on verifying her identity. Oops. I didn't make the story short, did I? But I feel better now. Thanks.

And I'd like to feel even better, so let me just remind the great Interwebs and everyone out there that here under the GREATEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD (cough, cough)  Medicare does not cover dental work, eye glasses, hearing aids, or custodial care. I feel fabulous now. Thanks.

My antidote to that bullshit is going to be Christmas lights. Everywhere.

Every Which Way

The Christmas tree is down.

The moon is up.
My brain is sideways.

The daylight grows longer.
My temper is short.

The thermostat is high.
The winds are low.

My wine glass is too close to empty.
My heart is full.

Crocheting is Good for the Brain

My mother crochets. Over the last few years she's crocheted dozens of doilies and dresser scarves. She's crocheted tablecloths that would make your Thanksgiving dinner look like you'd been transported to Downton Abbey. Before I went to France for my study abroad semester 30 years ago, she crocheted me a purse that I wish I still had. It was circular and had rings of color like a target. I thought the 70s orange and brown color scheme looked smashing with my orange raincoat. In some over-enthusiastic closet purge, I must have gotten rid of it. Maybe there's a retro hippie chick toting it somewhere in L.A., thrilled with her vintage find. Maybe not.

In the past few years, it's been snowflakes that my mother has taken a liking to. This past Christmas I told her my tree could use a few more. Whoa. 

The picture at the bottom of the post is what she's done since then--and that does not include the ziplock bag of a dozen or so more still waiting to be starched. She's making them for other people too. This trip to the east coast that we're on is not just a birthday trip, it's a snowflake distributing mission.

We carefully packed her book "101 Snowflakes" in her carry-on. After our flight was delayed, cancelled, and then subsequently re-scheduled due to the lightning strike at the BWI control tower, my brain was in a rather fried state itself. I think I put the book in her seatback pocket....and I think that is where it remained after we deplaned. Maybe not. 

But we can't find it. Also lost is her toothbrush, some underwear, and a gorgeous pair of earrings. Traveling at 89 is a challenge. We spent the first night at my brother's house, then my cousin's place for three nights, and now we're back at my brother's. In addition to our carry-on bags we brought four empty suitcases and stuffed them with all kinds of treasures that she left in Maryland when she moved to California a year ago. Among them a crocheted bedspread that I can't wait to unfurl across my bed. Anything could be anywhere. Or maybe not.

This is not the first time the book has been lost. A couple of years ago I figured I would simply snap one up for her on Amazon. But it's out of print and was being sold for over a hundred bucks. I considered buying it anyhow and not telling her what I'd paid for it, but she found her copy. Yesterday I filled out a lost and found report with Southwest Airlines. But this morning I went to Amazon and found the book for twenty dollars. I bought it. It should arrive at my house before we do. I think my cousin is right when he says that it's the crocheting that's keeping my mom's brain healthy. 

Christmastime in Margaritaville

When the lights and decorations started going up in my neighborhood Thanksgiving weekend, my mom gave me nearly hourly updates:
Now there's a Santa.
He's been working all day on those lights.
That star in the window across the street is magnificent.
That guy still isn't done with those lights!
The balcony across the water has lights and a lighted wreath!

So my mother and I wrapped the dead tree in my yard with lights. Hung a wreath on the front door. I set out the very few things that I brought with me from Divorceville.

Perhaps a little half-heartedly, at first.

The plastic pots are kinda half-assed, too. But the trees are real, and my mom loves the figurines.

Especially the girl in the red hat. She's really singing her heart out, my mom says.

I made the snow people some years back.

And the deer, which my mom comments on nearly every night, I found in a second-hand store eons ago. "They're so much bigger than the deer in Iowa!"
        "They're reindeer, Mom."

Margaritaville even has a real tree. Just the right size for showing off my mom's hand-crocheted snowflakes.