A Christmas Story on December 19th or...

How I learned to decorate for Christmas from my friend Bea.

This was written last year (I am not that caught up now) and because I spied the little gold angel in the corner of the china closet this weekend that Bea sent to me some years ago, and because this very week she will undergo a procedure that has her very bright smile a little worried ( which I can see even in her email from several states away), I dedicate this very fond memory to her.

I found myself uncharacteristically and eerily ahead that afternoon in the scheme of Christmas planning and executions.  The tree was up and decorated, mostly everything was wrapped, almost all the baking done and stored away, and even my cards, which gave me so much trouble, what with the thirteen steps it required, and oh the glitter….well, there they were, done, written and stamped.  How odd, I mused. I needed to do more, like expand the chores to fill the available time or something like that.

I mentioned that I was intending to climb out on the ledge, twelve feet over the living room, in order to string a garland intertwined with multi mini lights, across the span.  And maybe I would swag it as well. I was met with an affirmative for the decorating idea, and the offer of some help with a ladder from down below.  Okay, so we did it.  I then made my way into the bedroom where I could escape the roar and thunder of the football game and the accompanying cheering and yelling, and I could quietly watch Miracle on 34^th Street for the third time that week.

And why wouldn’t I begin to utilize the extra lights – twinkling whites, and the three foot gold, fold out tree, made from some twigs or something that my friend Lisa gave me years ago when I was running the craft gallery and she thought I might be able to use it in the window sometime, which I did.  But I could see that it would fit nicely on the flat part of the built in’s behind the bed.  He probably would complain that it was too near his head, but I would tell him it’s only for a few weeks, and he burrows down  towards the end of the bed anyway.  The box of small gold and silver ornaments – some with glitter – god I love glitter, were perfect for it, ditto the gilded thin garland thing with gold leaves.  My old angel, who is too small for our big tree now, fit perfectly on top, and the tiny crèche snugged up under it just right. 

This still left me with the special string of golden lights in the shape of pine cones, that I bought last year.  Hmm – where to put them.  Maybe the downstairs bathroom, I had not ventured there yet.  But no, the yellow room, or as my granddaughter calls it – her room.  She would definitely love the lights.

I digress.  I was inspired, or was it compelled, by a phone chat that afternoon with my friend Bea.  Bless her heart, this is all because of her, I must tell you.  Many, and I mean many years ago, when we were both young mothers and our kids were small, with warm, sticky hands and high pitched voices, my idea of decorating corresponded to what I knew from my mother.  You put the tree up and hung the wreath on the front door.  You’re done.  Oh sure, there might have been some weird aluminumy, papery folded bells on a ribbon or something that she would hang on the dining room mirror over the credenza.  The extent of her baking was chocolate chip cookies and a fruitcake.  You’re done. 

So, as a young mother, I was pretty proud of myself that I had painted some wooden ornaments for my first child’s first Christmas and I made at least two kinds of cookies, and then we put up the tree, decorated it, and hung the wreath on the door.  I’m done, right?  This is where Bea comes in.  The first Christmas that we knew each other, we’re chatting on the phone, as we did so many mornings, and she proclaimed “I’m almost done decorating the house” and I’m thinking did she say decorating the house?  And so I ask “what do you mean decorating the house?” Ha ha, she laughs heartily. “Well no, I like to have things in almost every room” No way! I say.  This was unheard of, I couldn’t wait to see it!   

Was that year she had small sprigs of baby’s breath in her tree, and I saw small velvet ribbons as well?  And pine cones here and there in baskets. And wreaths everywhere, and Santas and snowmen and pillows, oh my.  Even little somethings in her bathroom.  She loved to tell the story of how she first learned the mysteries of a septic tank problem.  “And there was my Ho Ho Ho toilet paper coming up in the yard and I yelled to Paulie – do something!”  We loved that story.