Ms. Claus Has a Dilemma
I have nowhere to put my Christmas tree this year. The living room still has the new bedroom furniture in boxes in front of the fireplace, which is where we normally put the tree—to the left of the fireplace in the corner. However, there is no access to the corner because of the huge boxes. The only other possible place is the space between the living room and the dining room. However that space is currently being occupied by what I like to call an art nouveau sculpture: a chair on which is perched precariously a box, another box, some file folder, various papers; behind the chair is another box containing mysterious content; next to the mysterious content box is what I believe to be an old CD holder, some more file folders, possibly some office supplies, and other colorful pieces of unidentifiable stuff, for lack of a better term.
The sculpture is being held together by a substance known as dust, which, when left alone for months at a time, becomes very durable. No one has tried to move this sculpture because we have become so used to its presence that it is now a part of our daily lives. We walk around it, reach over it, and occasionally add a new piece to it in an attempt to expand its essence. Even the dogs give it a wide berth.
I have lost several items over the past year, a few books, a sweatshirt, some sunglasses. It is entirely possible that they have been absorbed by the statue. I have no doubts that it has begun to take on a life of its own, which is why I no longer have any interaction with it. It is slowly moving towards the table on which the printer sits. I expect it to mind meld with the dining room computer at any time. In a way, it reminds me of the plant in Little Shop of Horrors. Any day now, I fully expect it to demand to be fed something or else it will devour the Jack Russells.
Nevertheless, until someone tackles this mass of clutter disguised as art, I will have no place in which to set up a Christmas tree. This will not be a good thing for all involved, believe me. I keep to myself for most of the time, have given up the living room and the big screen HD television to those who use the XBox. I don’t use the dining room computer because I have my own nice wide screen right here in the bedroom. But when it comes to Christmas and the Christmas tree, that’s when I have to draw the line. That’s my holiday, and I refuse to budge on this issue.
Even though I stress myself out completely in the attempt to create a wonderful Christmas each and every year, I still go through the madness. I want the house decorated inside and outside. I want the tree up, and I want all of the lights on it. To add to the madness, my OCD about Christmas lights is one of the things that I have not relinquished. I wrap the lights on the branches, not just around, which means that I end up putting about 12 strands of lights on the tree, and I won’t give this job to anyone else because no one does it the way in which I want it done. Admittedly, when I’m finished, I am not pleasant to be around, so we usually decorate the tree in a two-step process: lights on one day, ornaments on the next. I do lights, everyone else does the ornaments.
I do the cards and most of the wrapping. Brett has started to help with the wrapping, which is nice, but even he can’t understand why I get to OCD over wrapping presents. Why three strands of ribbon instead of one? I love to make presents look beautiful even if no one really notices. It’s just part of the tradition that I’ve created over the years, a tradition that albeit is more stressful than anything else, and one that I refuse to let go of even though it sends me off the deep end. If you are trying to find logic here, there is none. Believe me, Corey has been trying for years, and he has finally just accepted the madness rather than try to understand it.
Truthfully, I think that really it’s my last connection to doing things the way in which I used to that I just cannot let go of, no matter how much it costs me. I love Christmas. I love the lights. I love the trees. I love the packages. I love to give things to people I love. Corey doesn’t love Christmas in the way that I do, so he doesn’t understand my compulsion about all things Christmas. I want him to love Christmas in the way that I do, but he doesn’t. I try to understand that not everyone likes the holidays, but the kid in me wants to pout and make everyone love this holiday.
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m sure that it goes back to my childhood. Being an only child didn’t necessarily mean that I got a lot for Christmas because actually, I didn’t. But as far back as I can remember, we always had nice celebrations at Christmas. In England, Father Christmas would come to school, and we would have Christmas pudding and sing lot and lots of carols. When I was about eight or nine and my dad was out to sea at Christmas, we would spend the holidays either at Great Bridge with all of my cousins, or we would go to Winston Salem to spend the holidays with my mother’s other sister and my cousins there. So it was always a time for family. My mother always made sure that I was surrounded by lots of people when Dad wasn’t there, so I have very warm, loving memories of Christmas as a child.
It was never about the presents. It was about the season. As I got older, I carried that with me, and I created my own traditions, and I don’t want to let go of these. The boys have always gotten up really early and cheated by looking in the gift bags, which is why I wrap about half of the presents. We always unwrap presents as a family so that everyone pays attention to what other people are getting. There are always presents from Ms. Claus and from the dogs, too.
Everyone has homemade stockings, and filling the stockings is as important as the presents. No one ever knows what might show up in their stockings. And of course, when the kids were younger, we left a plate of cookies for
Santa and some milk. The boys asked me if I ate the cookies, and I could honestly say that I did not becaue I didn’t.
I suppose, in the end, for me, Christmas is still magical. I am still filled with wonder and hope, which is why one day very soon, someone in this family is going to have to kill the beast that has grown in the dining room so that I can have my Christmas Tree. Otherwise, the Grinch may take up residence until the problem is fixed, and that just won’t be good for anyone. We’re going to have my Christmas, dammit, even if I have to kill everyone in the process.
More later. Peace.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 