Today is a pretty day, a pretty winter’s day. The sun shares the deepest blue sky with white clouds. A breeze blows every now and then. I can see the hanging dead leaves sway a bit giving them a bit of life. It is warmish at 43˚. The dogs love being outside. They chase each other around the yard. Their ears are always cold when they come back inside the house. Right now they are upstairs having their morning nap on my bed. I’m going to have another cup of coffee.

I have such wonderful Christmas memories. My mother baked sugar cookies. She used the same cookie cutters year after year. I can still see the Santa Claus with a pack on his back, the angel with wings, a reindeer with antlers and a bell with a gong. She’d put racks on the counter and cover them with hot cookies right from the oven. We watched them cool. My mother would make frosting, put some in bowls and then color the frosting in each bowl. I remember green, red and white. When the cookies were cooled, we’d all sit around the kitchen table and frost them. I remember my sister Moe, the youngest, was quite generous with her frosting. Each of her cookies was thick with all the different colors. When we got to eat one, she always picked hers. She loved the frosting.

Some years we made ornaments. My mother put all the decorations on the table including the Styrofoam balls we’d decorate. Ribbon, pinecones, beads and whatnots filled the table. The glue was the old Elmer’s School Glue. My hands stayed sticky with glue which oozed from the top of the plastic bottle. My fingers stuck together. One year my ornament was chosen as the ugliest. I never did get a trophy.

Every year my father hung the outside lights. They were the big bulbs which got hot and melted any snow. He’d cover the bushes below the picture window and the tall bushes at each end of the front garden. We didn’t have timers back then so the lights had to be plugged in and out every night. I’d come home at night from somewhere like drill and just stand in front and look. I always thought our house was beautiful at Christmas.

The morning is warm, 51˚. The air is damp. The sun is muted by a cloudy sky, but every now and then its light shines through. The day has potential. A wind blows now and again, a wind strong enough to sway even the biggest branches. The dogs have been out most of the morning. Nala sits on the top step of the deck stairs and just watches. Henry comes inside. He never just randomly watches. Henry is the barker.

Yesterday I did my laundry. It only sat one day in the hall. That is so not usual, and I felt accomplished. At ten I had my uke lesson then got my hair cut, an unplanned stop. It was a good day.

This year I will have no big Christmas tree, only a tiny one with no ornaments and no tinsel garlands, just lights. I can envision Nala grabbing the tinsel and running with it trailing behind her into the back yard. I can see her playing dodge ball, or in this case tinsel ball, as I chase after her in the yard.

When I was a kid, I never noticed if the Christmas tree had bare spots where branches should be. With lights and ornaments, it was a wonder. Silver icicles hung down and swayed a bit when we walked by. The biggest ornaments my mother always placed were at the top of the tree. We put the rest of the ornaments wherever we could reach. The icicles were always last, and by then we were tired of decorating. Tossing bunches of icicles seemed to be the best way to finish, but my mother always stopped us. She told us the icicles should hang down one at a time like they do from the roof, from the gutters of the house. We didn’t care so my mother always finished. She was right about the icicles. They looked lovely hanging from the branches.

I dreaded my first Christmas in Ghana, my first Christmas away from home. My mother knew even though I wrote nothing about it. She sent me a package airmail which must have been really expensive. My Aunt Mary helped to pay for it, her gift to me. My mother told me she went to Woolworth’s in September for ornaments and such. They had to go down to the basement where Christmas was stored. I was thrilled when the package came before Christmas. In it was a small plastic tree, ornaments, a Christmas stocking, Christmas cookie cutters and brick looking crepe paper for a fireplace. Some of the ornaments came from our home tree. I remember a gingerbread house. I was so excited pulling each piece of Christmas out of the box. It brought joy for the season.