Christmas Is So Just About Over

The tree is starting to smell old, the votive candles are banished to a box Jerry labeled "candle cups," and all appealing chocolate treats have been eaten, if only to get rid of them.  January's breathing down my neck.  Time to reflect.

One of the very best presents I received was a card from my friend Evelyn.  You may remember a blog post I wrote about her in July ("Being 89").  She's had some health problems lately, and  I thought, why not mail a copy of that post to Evelyn in a Christmas card?  Might cheer her up.  In return I received a homemade card, which you are lucky enough to share:

Front of the card, felt glued to sparkly paper

A message from Evelyn

High Dudgeon

This morning I threw open the little window in the closet of Jerry's study. If I stand on tip-toe, from there I can see directly into Laura's courtyard next door.  I called to her daughter Leah,  freshly arrived home from college in Boston.  She looked splendid, red hair bouncing, with a new green handbag, off to meet someone for breakfast.  Then Laura appeared at their door.

"Come to our Hanukkah party tonight," she called up to me.  "Between 6 and 6:30."

"I'll see," I said.

"Are you in a dudgeon?" she asked. 

"Yes!" I answered. That sounded right.   I came straight indoors and looked up "dudgeon" in the dictionary to make sure: "a fit or state of angry indignation usually provoked by opposition."

Well, if the opposition is the pressure to conform at Christmas, then I've been in an annual December dudgeon ever since I figured out there wasn't a Santa Claus. At that point, it just became a matter playing along.  One year Jerry and I escaped to Hawaii.  Another year I took down the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. Boxed up the ornaments and threw the tree out the door. Laura's been my neighbor for 24 years, and she's heard my complaints many, many times.

This year we have houseguests (Jerry's daughter and her husband) and a number of people coming for Christmas dinner.  It's important to keep up my spirits.  Today's remedy:  A brisk walk around Lafayette Reservoir--nearly three miles--and then a peppermint hot chocolate at Starbuck's.

Sorry State of Personal Chocolate Supply

Day 4 (or is it 3?):  6 left out of 30

Not A Casual Undertaking

I know--another Christmas post, but aren't we subsumed by The Season?  It's hard to get away from it and everything it dredges up.

Here's a Christmas card my cousin Marion sent from England:

Horseguards Parade

This card made me pine for England, and I began to cook up a plan to make a quick, family-only trip, in April. I called United Airlines, with whom we have frequent flyer miles, to find out about upgrades.  In so many words: forget it.  Try about a year in advance and you might be able to score a confirmed upgrade.  For $795 each, we could fly round-trip Economy in April, and for a mad moment--having many of them these days--I considered it.  But we're old, and we find  transatlantic hours in Economy to be physical torture. 

Is there any way to make a casual trip to England, the way we fly from here to LA or even to New York?  Of course, we'd have to make plans for staying overnight.  But where overnight?  London (expensive)?  With relatives (not a good houseguest)?  How would we get around (renting a car is out, too weenie for British roads)?  Are the passports up to date?  And what about the plug adapters I can't find?

After I spent a half hour at the computer,  the dream evaporated.  And yet all of my family, except for my sister and Jerry, live there.  I keep thinking of my mother, who kept a daily vigil at the mailbox, watching for the fluttery blue airmail letters from her family.

Pub lunch: Jerry and me with  three of my cousins and spouses

Family resemblance?  My cousin Marion and me, Yorkshire

Domestic arrangements

We've been having our deck repaired, a two-week job that started in mid-October and still isn't finished. I've agreed to go with Gunmetal Gray paint on railing, even though I didn't choose it.  The stucco is repaired, the new rain gutter about to be installed. In our last conversation, the surly-sexist contractor was so polite  it was unnerving.

This morning on the way home from Safeway, Jerry and I were talking about arrangements for our houseguests, who arrive on Tuesday. My arrangements, anyway.

"You'll move out of your bathroom into mine," I instructed.  "The guests get all the towel racks in yours.  Then when my sister comes, she'll use my bathroom."  We pulled into the driveway, past all the construction junk flung around the yard.

"Then I'll move to the porta-pottie," he said, without missing a beat.   Problem-solving: the Man's Job.

Jerry's bathroom while we have houseguests?

Objet (dans le Salle de Bains?)

Approximately 5" tall. 

Yesterday I bought the above item.  I was quite taken with it.   

This morning I couldn't decide what the hell it is, let alone why I bought it, though it was cheap.  I decided to run it past Jerry.


"What do you think this is?" I said, handing it to him.

"A candle?"  he said, giving it the scientist squint.  "It's hollow," he added, helpfully.

At the mad moment of purchase (what is it about Christmas?) I, honest to God, imagined placing it in the upstairs bathroom next to the Kleenex box.  Nancy Reagan, in her memoir, refers to small decorative items as "objets" and says they "warm up" a room.  Jerry refers to such things as knick-knacks, and he doesn't understand them at all.  Neither do I, except in a mad moment at Pier One just before Christmas.

Here is the object in its intended setting, except I can't actually imagine stationing it here:

When does sanity return?

Addendum:  My friend Lin suggests it's a placecard holder.  I think she's right. Got it all wrong.

Looking Micro

 I was all set to outline My Recent Social Whirl, dinners and gifts and generosity (and also some weariness at quite so many dinners out on consecutive nights), but today I came across a slew of posts on my Facebook page about the death of Christopher Hitchens.  He died yesterday of esophageal cancer at 62.   For months, he's been writing about his decline in Vanity Fair, clear-eyed and brutally honest.

 Hitchens's brother Peter wrote a heart-breaking tribute to his brother ("In Memoriam, My Courageous Brother Christopher, 1949-2011" at www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2075133).    I read it and felt  such a resonance with the recent death of my friend Rob.  Both of them, too soon.  So sad, so  unfair.  My God, is this what lies ahead for one after another of us?  I could feel myself sliding into a global funk, beyond sadness into what Jerry calls  "doooom."

When they were small, my adoptive nieces next door could instantly transport me out of these funks. One day when Leah was eight, she and I counted all the lavender plants in about a six-block radius, which takes a lot of careful looking. I couldn't believe how quickly I shed my worries. And it wasn't about distraction or denial: her world was very real.  Is very real.  Today  I'm trying to figure out the equivalent of counting lavender bushes. Just thinking about it makes me feel on more solid ground.  Doooom is quicksand.