O’ Christmas Tree

Christmas is three days away and I have yet to put up my tree.  I’m weary this year so I am foregoing it.  I have placed the wreath on the door of my humble abode and have filled bowls and vessels with the ornaments that would normally adorn the tree, so there is a somewhat festive atmosphere abound.  I know my fat cat is enjoying himself!  Swatting glass ornaments, attempting to catch the prisms of color that dance across the table or walls when the sun hits these shiny objects of his attention.

I’ve decided that this holiday that I would volunteer as I did on Thanksgiving Day.  Even though it made me incredibly sad while doing so, I believe in my heart that this is the right thing to do.  So many folks are in such dire straits that the numbers “generated” by the powers that be don’t do justice to these families, individuals, elderly that aren’t making it.  So instead of cooking a holiday meal and inviting my orphan friends over , I will be my witty clown-self and try to spread a little cheer for those people who don’t have anything and assist in serving them their Christmas dinner and handing out gifts.

I do miss my Christmas tree, but the thought of dragging it out of the box and putting each branch into its slot, spreading, shaping each of these individual branches, laying on all the lights (and boy do I lay on the lights), then dressing it with all the pretty ornaments that I’ve collected over the years,  is exhausting just thinking about it!  But  I am having this internal battle and trying to convince myself that it’s okay not to put it up.

I love my Christmas tree, I could sit for hours in the dark just watching the lights twinkle.  Watch my kitty dive under the tree skirt when he thinks I’m not looking!  Fearing that he will knock the whole thing down (which miraculously since he has owned me, he never has) and then scolding him from scooting under the branches and knocking off the lower ornaments, which logically are paper mache so no damage done.  It makes me think of my father and my mother’s Christmas tree.

My mother’s tree and it was her tree done her way, was always beautiful, even when she too made the switch to artificial.  My motto which I think is pretty much like hers, is the more dressing, the less artificial it looks!  I know you think that sounds so garish, so over the top,  but my tree is far from garish and so was hers.  I am also not one of those folks who has a themed tree, color coordinated tree.  You know either all red, or silver, or all blue or white, Victorian, folksy, or deco.  I have a wonderful variety of traditional and modern hand-blown glass ornaments, most of which are one of a kind and it is so lovely when the tree is done.   You can ask anyone who has seen it.  But you say, where is that Christmas tree scent…candles my friend, lovely scented candles or a wonderful simmer pot on the stove filled with clove, cinnamon, allspice.  Besides it’s expensive to buy a live tree.

But anyway…my father use to sit in the dark and listen to Christmas music, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, some wonderful choirs;  all on LPs or some classical radio station and watch the lights of the tree twinkle and reflect from my mother’s breakfront.  He would never say anything  just sit quietly and enjoy the moment, I believe it was very Zen for him.    I like to do the same thing, but not this year, I’m just too weary.

Yes, Christmas is just three days away…and no tree.  Does this make me a bah humbug?

Rainy Friday Morning

It’s a rainy Friday morning here in the lower Hudson Valley and I’ve been up since 3:00a (the old mind chatter keeping me going) listening to the night music and tunes on my little iPod.  So why don’t you join me in a cup of tea at the old kitchen table and listen to this ditty.  Enjoy.

After All These Years, Still?

Do you ever wonder why you get deliberately snubbed by someone?  Odd isn’t that someone who wouldn’t give you the time of day thirty plus years ago still won’t acknowledge your presence.  I’m hard to miss.

After another futile job interview, I stopped to treat myself to a cup of over-priced trendy coffee.  As I waited for my grande mocha latte, (which is definitely not in my budget and would have Suze Orman yelling at me) I stood next to a woman I went to high school with.  I said hello to her by name, saw the flicker of recognition in her eyes and chuckled loudly as she turned her back on me.

Funny how some folks never change.

Sorry Oprah, Fifty Is NOT The New Forty!

Every weekend I have a marathon phone conversation with a dear friend on the West Coast.  I consider her part of my family and we often confide, gripe, seek out solace and advice from one another.  These conversations usually entail topics on art, jewelry design, creativity, family, our dire need for money, health and often times digress into locker room humor.

During our recent conversation we both agreed that fifty is not the new forty no matter what Oprah says.  We also decided, since we are both fifty-something, that whenever we hear someone make that ridiculous statement, that we would be entitled to take a rolled up newspaper and unceremoniously whack the individual spouting this propaganda on the back of the head!  Of course this would be done without any remorse and we would run like hell after we committed this deed.  If caught, which would be likely, we would plead insanity or in my case…menopausal rage.

Our fifty-something bodies are doing things now that our forty-year old bodies never did and it’s not pretty!  We both agreed that age is just a number and that mentally we are still somewhere in our late thirties and our humor which has always been wicked is still intact.  But we also agreed vehemently that our bodies have betrayed us.

Neither of us have the finances that would allow us the luxury to join gyms, yoga classes, palates, have a personal trainer, seek out dermatologists, plastic surgeons, a masseuse that would knead our bodies like precious Kobi beef.  We are ladies who have to live the daily grind on a crappy income even before the economy fell into its current dark abyss.  I’m not saying that we don’t pursue a healthy lifestyle.  We both walk daily, in my case shuffle since a back injury and try to eat a healthy diet (she of course is better at this than I…damn my sweet tooth) and imbibe in all kinds of supplements.  But even following this kind of regime the march of time has still reared its ugly head.

We embarked on this topic of our bodies encroaching decrepitude because of a previous conversation regarding wrinkles.  Specifically the ones that are showing on our faces.  She had mentioned that she is noticing wrinkles above her upper lip, I of course am thinned-lip so no wrinkles there just this oddly unsymmetrical smile which has become more crooked with age.  Now I am not one to spend an inordinate amount of time gazing upon my visage in the mirror, but after this conversation it caused me to take stock and was I shocked at what I saw.

I use products, mostly those purchased in the drugstore.  I stay out of the sun (cursed with Celtic fair skin) and of course have been best friends with Lady Clairol since my early twenties (I have been going gray since I was a teenager).  I put on the war paint when leaving the house and going to the office and wear sunglasses even when it’s overcast outside.  But there they were…those cursed wrinkles.  They are at the corner of my eyes, under my eyes, on the sides of my nose and mouth and horror of horror when did my neck become like crepe paper!

Of course now I’m having a bit of an emotional moment and strip down to my birthday suit.  That in itself was worse than the night terrors I had the other night after reading a Stephen King collection of short stories!  When did this happen.

I discussed these horrific finds with my BFF on our recent call and as we went through the list of carnage that has occurred to our bodies with age, this of course turns into hysterical laughter and eventually twisted potty-humor which leaves us both gasping for air and trying not to wet our pants, but in the end we both concurred… Oprah is wrong, fifty is not the new forty.

Daddy

Thirty years ago this month he died.  He was fifty years old, I was twenty-one.  I remember the details of his dying as if it happened yesterday, yet I can’t remember the sound of his voice.  How that makes my heart ache.

He was handed his death sentence a year prior, but he kept it to himself; protecting us.  That burden he carried for a year before his heart failed him for the last time.  We didn’t know this until after he was gone.  Some would say that was a selfish act on his part, that if he had told us we could have made that year incredible, but you see we were and still are a family of secrets, a fractured family of secrets.

Was I angry when I found this out?  No, I was profoundly saddened by this fact.  I thought how frightened he must have been, how brave he had to be, how alone he was in this final journey, waking each morning wondering if this was to be his last.

In the end he fought a valiant fight to stay with us, but even he knew it was not to be.  I spoke with him privately the afternoon before he died and he told me he would not be coming home.  I didn’t want to believe him.  I told him I loved him and he said he loved me.  This was our good-bye.

He died the next morning just as the sun was starting to rise.  We were all with him, each of us telling him in our own way he could rest, that it was all right for him to go.  His going was devastating.  The sorrow is still with me as I’m sure it is with my siblings, my mother.

I can remember his face, although I have no pictures of him; his laugh which was a giggle, not a hearty belly laugh, but a giggle.  But the actual sound of his voice, the tone, pitch, timber…I can’t recall at all.

I think of him often.