hol­i­day meanderings



One thing about my moth­er in law: she can SHOP. Food, clothes, books, Christ­mas orna­ments, even apart­ments and hous­es! She loves to shop. Now, nor­mal­ly I do not. As you know, food is the excep­tion: I’ll go in any place that pur­ports to act as a food pur­vey­or and be quite hap­py. But clothes, well, I wear the same things over and over, and if they aren’t black they’re grey. Books, I tend to read the same things over and over! Or real­ly branch out and read the new thing just out, by some­one I already love. And I have so many Christ­mas orna­ments from these many years of mar­ried bliss that I real­ly should nev­er buy anoth­er. Don’t even get me start­ed on the real estate hell that is rapid­ly tak­ing over our lives. 

So I have to admit that Rose­mary’s arrival has been a real shot in my acquis­i­tive, com­mer­cial and hol­i­day spir­it arm! Boy have we shopped. Not even so much buy­ing things, although Marks and Spencer ben­e­fit­ed a lot from a sort of ran­dom “hey, this would do for Sarah!” moment last night. But we have been in and out of Sel­f­ridges hun­dreds of times, and lit­tle shops in St. Christo­pher’s Place, and every­where around school. She is such a tire­less walk­er, too, that we’ve been get­ting plen­ty of exer­cise. Then, too, my father in law Jack arrived on Sun­day and he just eggs us on. It’s good for peo­ple like me who tend to run a track in sort of a tri­an­gle: home, sta­ble and school, and I just wear that out, but nev­er do any­thing new. We’ve had fun. And of course we’ve spent plen­ty of time the three of us, and four of us includ­ing John (when he’s not run­ning apart­ments and hous­es to earth in his tire­less search for our next home) doing the home, sta­ble and school circuit.

I’m def­i­nite­ly get­ting in the mood for Christ­mas. What are your ear­li­est child­hood Christ­mas mem­o­ries? Mine are fun­ny, not real­ly about Christ­mas per se, but fam­i­ly things with a hol­i­day tint. One of my most cher­ished is of my new baby sis­ter dressed in a minute San­ta suit giv­en her by two maid­en aunts who were our rare babysit­ters (my par­ents’ bud­get not real­ly run­ning to a night life), in her antique cra­dle, beside the fire­place my dad built. And speak­ing of my dad, he claims to be the Com­pleat Cur­mud­geon the rest of the year, but Christ­mas turns him to com­plete mush. He often says he wish­es he could keep my moth­er’s beau­ti­ful dec­o­ra­tions up all year round. And my broth­er and me wait­ing at the top of the steps out­side our bed­rooms, wait­ing for my father to bring us a glass of orange juice before we descend­ed into Christ­mas land, because alleged­ly my moth­er once fell down­stairs from being light­head­ed and spent Christ­mas con­cussed. This being my fam­i­ly and giv­en its pen­chant for Writer’s Embell­ish­ment, one nev­er knows, but the tra­di­tion holds. And being giv­en the mam­moth task of vac­u­um­ing the fam­i­ly room before my grand­par­ents’ vis­it, and my grand­fa­ther’s boom­ing laugh and pipe smoke, his face obscured by arm­loads of tow­er­ing presents, my grand­moth­er laugh­ing gen­tly, nice­ly girdled.

And com­ing home from col­lege, com­plete­ly worn out by the round of exams and par­ty­ing, to my moth­er’s per­fect­ly dec­o­rat­ed house, sev­er­al Christ­mas trees all round the place, mulling spices sim­mer­ing on the stove, and not hav­ing to DO any­thing to get it that way! Adult Christ­mas, espe­cial­ly with a small child, is anoth­er mat­ter. Every­thing that needs to be done has to be done by… me! And my hus­band, who would also like to “small­en down” as Avery says, and have Christ­mas done for us, at times! Youth is wast­ed on the young, as they say.

All right, it’s time to pro­duce spaghet­ti and meat­balls, amidst the piles of wrap­ping paper, end­less bot­tles of sin­gle malt scotch that accom­pa­ny any gath­er­ing of John and his dad, and figs in every form to please my moth­er in law. Avery has just burst in from rid­ing, so between those sto­ries and home­work, I had bet­ter scoot.

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