Posted tagged ‘Christmas’
The Marvelous Toy: The Chad Mitchell Trio
December 18, 2010Santa Claus Express: Jay Wilbur
December 18, 2010This is from an album called Christmas Jump and Jive.
Christmas Comes But Once a Year: B.B. King
December 16, 2010Right now gentle flakes are falling, and I’m glued to the window
“Christmas is the day that holds all time together.”
December 16, 2010I wish I could tell you I had been whisked away to foreign lands on a magic carpet and had no access to the internet as we flew over exotic places, but, instead, I have been prone on the couch mostly sleeping. This week was one of those couple of steps forward and a million steps backward weeks, but last night changed everything. I slept through the whole night. Today I can almost click my heels into the air. Okay, that is an exaggeration, but I do feel really good, and I was able to move off the couch almost as if my body didn’t ache at all. I’m sitting here typing with a big grin on my face. I guess it’s an early Christmas present.
Everyone who drops by to visit talks about the cold. I’m missing all that, and I’m not at all regretful. My house is warm and cozy. From my window here, I can see the birds at the feeders, and I can see the oak trees beside the deck. They are winter with their dead leaves hanging off the ends of the branches. The sun is out but has that icy cold look, that mocking look it gets in winter. The weatherman says maybe snow on Sunday or Monday. I don’t doubt him.
My Christmas cards arrived so I can address them this afternoon. That calls for a syrupy Hallmark movie. I didn’t any yesterday, and I’m having a sugar withdrawal.
Around this time of year, my mother would start to tease us with her, “I know what you’re getting for Christmas,” comments. When I was little, I said she didn’t know, but she told me Santa had left a note so she knew. I believed her. When I was older, she was relentless, and I’d always ask for hints. Her favorite answer was to say it was something I really wanted and didn’t have, as if that were a hint at all. I seldom gave her lists so most years I was always surprised.
My mother used to find the perfect gits for us all. They were the ones we’d have asked for if we had given the lists any thought at all. She found a Mouskeeteer lunch box for me one year, and they were my Mouskeeteers. Another year she found the first Trixie Belden and put it in my stocking. I was ten again when I saw it.
My mother always knew that Christmas was old and it was new. She gave that gift to us, and it was her best gift of all.
Christmas Is Coming At Last: The Rhythm Kings
December 11, 2010“Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance – each beautiful, unique and too soon gone.”
December 11, 2010The sun is shining, and Miss Gracie is spending time outside so I’m guessing it’s a warmer day. As for me, it’s a better day. My moans and groans are quieter, and I made a pot of coffee, carried it in a thermos to the table and read the papers. I even did the crossword puzzles.
The science fiction channel is having a countdown to Christmas. Their current offering is about an ice monster who uses icicles to impale and freeze people. I figure at least the monster ought to be sporting a bit of mistletoe.
When I was a kid, our tree fell a few times. The crash I remember most was one night when my parents were out grocery shopping. My brother and I were watching television when we heard behind us the whoosh of branches and the sounds of glass ornaments breaking as the tree fell. It was too late to catch it so we lifted the tree and then took turns holding it up at the trunk until my parents came home. We weren’t very old so the thought of tying the tree never occurred to us. When my dad came home, he hammered a couple of nails into the top parts of the windows and then tied both sides of the tree. Every year after that, he tied the tree as a precaution. In my mind’s eye, every tree at that house from then on had a string on each side from the trunk to the window.
My mother was the decorator. My father believed in expediency. His two jobs were to put the tree in the stand and then put on the lights. His lights were always a tangled mess from the year before, and in the old days, he cursed a bit trying to find the one bulb preventing all the others from lighting. The bulbs were huge in those days, and the trees were always bright. Most nights, just after we’d turn on the tree lights, I ‘d sit a while and just stare at the tree loving the color and how all the ornaments shined in the light. I still like to do that.
I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
December 8, 2010The visiting nurse tells me I can be sitting here at the computer for a half hour at a time. For me, that’s about a paragraph. I, of course, tend to ignore all advice and then pay dearly and wonder why. Yesterday was payback for writing Coffee but here I am again today.
The last side of the house is being shingled. It is part of this room so I can add banging to the list of annoyances. Yesterday, though, I fell asleep in the afternoon anyway.
I’m watching all the Christmas shows at night to get me in the mood for the season. There is no time I love more than Christmas. The world seems colorful despite the bare trees and the empty branches. The nights are bright with stars which shine sharper in the chill of the night. I await the first snowflake and love how the colored lights shine through the snow. The music of Christmas plays all day in my house. I remember most the songs I learned in school like Up on the Housetop and Rudolph. Gene Autry was my favorite. The cartoons on TV were primitive by today’s standards, but the first showing of Suzy Snowflake meant Christmas was getting closer. Frosty usually arrived next, and I always sang along with great glee and completely off-key. It never mattered. Christmas is forgiving, the time when we all share a spirit and an enthusiasm. My house is not decorated except for some greenery my dear friends gave me, but I’m okay. I have the spirit.
“It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.”
December 6, 2010I am much like the tide, ebbing and flowing. Today I made it to the kitchen with barely a moan. I believe I am experiencing a foreshadowing of my old age. When I wake up, I am stiff and my foot and leg hurt so getting up is a chore, but once I grit my teeth and bear it, I am far more mobile and capable. I made it to the kitchen today to clean up and change my clothes. I feel like a new woman. The guys are still working on the house on the last side, which happens to be a wall in this room, but I was so tired I slept through the pounding until 11:30; however, I don’t see a nap on the horizon. I guess I’ll have to let all those Hallmark Christmas movies lull me to sleep.
It’s cold. My friends brought me a bit of Christmas greenery, and I could feel the cold coming off it. Right now it is all the Christmas my house has. Usually by now the halls are decked and I’m tra la laing, but this is a different Christmas. Downstairs are boxes of gifts I never got to catalog so my family will celebrate Little Christmas when my boxes arrive, and my friends will be here for dinner and presents and music and cheer.
My town used to put strings of lights across Main Street. They were wrapped in colored tinsel which in daylight had seen far too many Christmas times but were still magical at night. They made the street glow in red and green and yellow. The fire station was outlined in colored lights, those big bulbs we all used to have. Santa with his bag of toys was climbing the fire tower. The churches all had creches outside waiting for the babe’s arrival. Some of the stores were decorated while others had scenes made from that white stuff you could buy to decorate windows. Our house had orange bulbs most years. The bushes in front were bright with colored lights.
Yesterday my neighbors lit up their bushes. They use all white lights. As for me, I’m still partial to the colored lights. They always bring me back to my childhood.
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