Month: December 2013

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Tree Cheers

Tree Cheers

 

Missy loves to help. We love to let her. But we’ve learned she can get a bit – er, enthusiastic.

Give her a cloth and spray, and she will gladly clean a mirror. And clean it, and clean it, and clean it, until the glass retains a 50 percent Windex content.

Leave her in the vicinity of her sneakers and she will lace them up. Elaborately. To the point where two laces emerge from the same hole in a wonderful Gordian knot after a long, winding trip up the shoe … which, in turn, may be jammed firmly on the wrong foot.

All of which explains why our Christmas tree is a bit crowded this year.

I had been out on my usual Tuesday night jaunt, covering the Longmont City Council for the paper. (Before you groan, remember that city government is a lot like watching a soap opera: initial confusion followed by almost addictive interest once you learn the characters and storylines.) With a quiet night ahead, my wife Heather decided it was a good time to put up ornaments – well, minus one that I dropped on the basement floor earlier and that we didn’t really need anyway, right?

Missy, our developmentally disabled ward, took to it with a will. And with a LOT of ornaments. Three, four, even five ornaments could be found hanging from a single branch. Candy canes collided with landscapes as teddy bears jostled with Christmas mice; the tree-topper angel, safely above the fray, had to be wondering if her perch was being turned into a high-rise.

“She was having fun,” Heather said later with a smile. “As long as she was enjoying herself and the branch wasn’t going to break, I thought ‘Go ahead.’”

Not a bad rule of thumb. And for more than just trees.

At this time of year, a lot of people write about “Simplifying Christmas.” I’ve done it a couple of times myself. It’s an easy target, after all, with the peace and joy at the heart of the season often crowded out by crowded parking lots, frantic Santa-themed ads and the musical Chinese water torture session otherwise known as “The Little Drummer Boy.” A space to step back and reflect seems welcome, even essential.

So far, so good.

But at the same time,I don’t want to build the monastery walls, either.

I like Christmas lights, even when they reach levels of glorious excess. (Maybe especially then; they make better stories.) I like wall-to-wall holiday music, both sacred and secular. I have friends who are energized rather than stressed when they “deck the malls” to hunt out presents for family, moving down the list like Peyton Manning driving for the end zone.

It’s noisy. It’s chaotic. And – forgive me, Linus – for some of us, it’s darned fun.

And that’s part of the holiday, too.

It’s no sin to enjoy the time of year. After all, this is a time of transformation: lights rending darkness; snow making familiar landscapes into something new; calls going out to not just exist, but to look neighbor-to-neighbor and live. Anyone who can stand unmoved by all of that is a stolid soul, indeed.

But remember the Missy Rule. Are you enjoying yourself? And is the branch breaking?

Both sides are important. When actions are done out of grudging obligation rather than honest delight, it can turn even the most joyful season into a miserable slog. When the buzz and activity no longer enhances the important things, but crowds them out, then it’s time to hold off and listen for cracking bark.

But if the stress isn’t building to dangerous levels, if it’s still a joy and not a chore, if peace and family and so many other good things are still in sight and close at hand – well, have at it. Tear into the season like a 3-year-old into wrapping paper and don’t look back.

Do look up, though.

After all, that Christmas mouse above you can only hold on for so long.

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A Little Something Extra

I read the email twice. Three times. It didn’t change. It wasn’t a prank.

Which meant I really did have three and a half days of vacation I hadn’t known about.

Wow.

How?

It didn’t seem possible. Not this year, anyway. “Lucky” 2013 had been the Year of the Minor Family Emergency for our house, after all. It was like a dark version of Old McDonald’s Farm: here a flu, there a strain, everywhere a … ah, you got the idea.

With each micro-crisis, another couple of days off got eaten up. Soon sick time was gone and the rest was going, like some survivor in a post-apocalyptic movie who throws Louis XIV furniture on the fire just to hold off a blizzard.

Finally, I’d counted off the last of my time. Or thought I had, anyway. But there it was.

Part of me gave three cheers for reporter math skills.

The rest reached back to grade school. And the year of the Christmas Map.

It had been a pretty successful holiday that year, all things considered. My sisters and I had carried off our usual plot to wake Grandma on Christmas morning, who then helped us softly sing off-kilter carols as we waited for Mom and Dad:

 

While shepherds washed their socks by night, all seated round the tub …

 

Followed quickly by that seasonal favorite:

 

Good King Wensceslas looked out, in his pink pajamas …

 

The day dawned into family and fun and books and games and the sorts of childhood memories you want to have on Dec. 25. But as we started to break up the morning revelry, Dad took a glance at the tree and then at me.

“I think you missed one.”

I looked again.

Long and skinny, it looked like a forgotten roll of wrapping paper tucked out of the way. A few quick rips revealed the truth: it was a map. One of those great Rand McNally-style wall maps of the U.S., with bright colors and thick sprinklings of small towns, perfect for journeys of the imagination.

It hadn’t been on any list or in any letter to Santa. But the surprise made it all the more fun, an unexpected present sneaking in the door.

And I’d almost missed it.

It’s easy to do, and not just with the ones that look like gift-wrap. I think many of us count stresses more readily than blessings these days – the stacked-up highway traffic, the cough that takes three weeks to leave, the bill that’s waiting still one more week to get paid. We all know the list and it starts to get deadening after a while, to the nerves and the soul.

But then there are the other moments. The ones hidden behind the tree.

For me, this year, a lot of those gifts have been wrapped in people. Like the friend who unexpectedly appeared at the grocery store, in time to help change a flat tire. Or the one who sent us a puzzle book in the mail one day, just because. Or even the online acquaintance who’s never met me but sent a shoutout during the flood to be sure I was OK.

Unexpected gifts, all of them.

Wonderful to give. Even better to be, especially at this time of year. After all, what is this season about if not a present that no one was expecting?

I wonder whose gift I can be.

I suppose I’ve got an extra three and a half days to figure it out.

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A Light Matter

It still feels wrong.

It’s like the Grinch that stole Boxing Day. Or Ralphie getting a Nerf gun under the tree. Or Santa Claus taking to the skies in a B-52. (“We have chimney acquisition!”)

But there’s no avoiding it. This Christmas, after a years-long struggle, I’m running up the white flag – preferably with multicolored lights attached.

This year, for the first time, Casa Rochat is getting a pre-lit tree.

OK, I know, I’m a little late to this party. There’s probably enough pre-lit wattage in the world right now to make the words “THIS WAY TO BETHLEHEM” visible from space, along with the related GPS coordinates.

But to me, it always seemed like cheating. There’s a right way to do Christmas lights, and that’s to drag out a series of dented cardboard boxes, untangle 17 miles of electrical cord, and solemnly intone the Ritual Seasonal Words Of Profanity before finally invoking the phrase that makes everything perfect:

“Honey … do you have a minute?”

Heather, you see, was my ace in the hole. My wife is a past master of Christmas  light spacing, trained by her father in the arcane arts of making a tree “glow from within.” No gaps. No globs. And usually, no doubt about which way her blood pressure was going as she sought perfection.

By the end, this was a tree that knew it had been decorated. With love, attention and borderline insanity.

As Heather’s back began to develop problems, I became a larger part of the crew. Which usually meant that our tree got decorated twice – once by me, and once by Heather fixing the mistakes I had made.

“Honey, I really think it looks …”

“Scotty, there’s a huge gap right in the middle. It’s really obvious.”

“Uh … gap?”

“Here, let me do it …”

Well – it’s the thought that counts, right?

But this year, things came to a head. Repeated topplings by our canine companions Big Blake and Duchess the Wonder Dog meant that our old plastic pine had gotten a little ragged. Heather’s back hadn’t gotten any better since our last tree. Mine had gotten quite a bit worse.

So – surrender.

And not without regrets.

I can feel a few heads nodding here. We may be a minority these days, but I know there’s still a solid chunk of people that mistrusts making something too easy, who insist on doing things ourselves even when it no longer makes sense. Maybe it’s a leftover strain of Puritanism, a belief that if you haven’t suffered over it, it doesn’t really count.

And I still believe there’s a value in that, of putting something of yourself into what you do. That’s why I continue my long war with Scotch tape and wrapping paper, producing the most awkwardly-wrapped presents in the Western Hemisphere, rather than simply buying a gift bag. No one can doubt that time, effort and love were spent. (Notice I did not say skill.)

But when the time comes – so be it. There’s no shame in bowing to necessity. And while my stubbornness may be a bit ridiculous, at least it’s also ensured that it wasn’t done … er, lightly. That there was a reason beyond simple convenience.

That sort of close examination isn’t a bad thing. At any time of year.

So bring on that glowing tree. I’m sure it’ll be as tall and welcoming as anything we’ve raised before.

Especially once Heather gets through fixing it.