Tag: family

More spoiling…

In Tom’s family, we all give stuff to the kids and the TomParents for Christmas, but among the siblings and siblings-in-law, we draw names. Among the many gifts I got from KT, who drew my name this year, this ornament which I posted about back in November sometime should be my favorite, and I do love it!

But I think my favorite has to be my Janet Jackson headset, because now I can have those hours-long phone conversations with Jim without tears over my strained neck. Yay!

Thanks, KT!

A new day

Truly, it’s a good day. I stayed up all night to try to get control of the sheer volume of things I’ve been letting fall by the wayside. The rest of my Christmas cards done… the rest of my packages–except one–shipped (FYI to Montrose readers: midnight and seven a.m. trips to the post office on Richmond were great–no lines, the machines were working, they even had stamps–the machine in the post office on West Gray has been iffy lately)… some e-mails answered… bills paid… ATM receipts found and dealt with… presents wrapped and put under the tree… went to the bank this morning to make a deposit… all the bagged leaves and prunings and the branches were picked up by the city so The Compound looks better…

I didn’t get to sleep until around 9:30 a.m. I was dimly aware of the phone ringing around 9:45, but there was no way I could pull myself back to consciousness. When I finally woke up around 2:00, I listened to the message. Dr. Minton said the dogs’ tests came back with no abnormalities. They can stop taking the Vitamin K, but she said it won’t hurt them, so I’d rather err on the side of caution and finish out the dose.

This is a HUGE relief, to know Margot and Guinness will both be fine. Every time I look at Margot, I’m flooded with gratitude that Tom saw her pick up the rat bait and reacted so quickly, and that Tim was here to keep things calm and interact with Poison Control. If you’ve read Margot’s history, you know I say that she saved me when we lost Pete and Stevie. Both Margot and Guinness are the joy and comfort of The Compound, and I’m glad we’ll be having another merry Christmas with them and their crazy dog antics.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s been concerned about The Compound Hounds. Your good wishes helped more than you can know.

Then this afternoon, I got an e-mail from my editor at Kensington. German rights to A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS have been sold. He says I’m going to be international. I’m not really sure what that means, except that it’s possible it’ll pay a few vet bills. =) If anyone reads German, maybe one day you’ll be able to tell me how the translation compares to the English version.

On a Beck-is-really-weird note: At some point yesterday, it occurred to me that I made a mistake on the tags for my nephew Josh’s little girl. Her name is Amelia, and for reasons beyond my comprehension, I thought I might have put “Jessica” on both her gift and an ornament I made for her. I called my sister a few minutes ago hoping that the box of gifts had arrived. It had, and indeed, I did rename my great-niece. Fortunately, my sister will change the name tag and can touch up the ornament to correct it. Thanks, Debby!

How did I get so senile at…THIRTY-FIVE!?!

My niece and nephew make old men cry

I was just talking to my mother-in-law on the phone. Every year, Tom’s parents take his niece and nephew Christmas shopping with a set amount of money, letting them fill up a cart with toys they’d like to receive. The kids love this excursion with their grandparents.

Once they reach their money limit, Tom’s parents pay for the gifts.

And then…the last thing they do before leaving the store made an elderly store employee cry on this year’s shopping trip. Just as in other years, the kids laughed with excitement as they donated every toy they’d picked out to Toys for Tots.

I love my husband’s family, and I’m glad they’re my family, too.

Lit Tree

Even though decorating a tree can be a pain, every year when I open the bins and trunks that contain ornaments, I am opening a door to my past. I have too many ornaments and too small a tree, so there are some that are never used because they hold no sentimental value beyond memories of when I’ve used them on past holidays.

We used to live in bigger houses. Then, before Tim moved here, we’d put a large, real tree in the apartment and only decorate our house with smaller things. Some years we didn’t decorate at all because we traveled. However, the year that Tom sadly hung a single ornament on a cactus made me feel so guilty that I think I’ve decorated ever since.

There are some ornaments that I use every time I decorate because they mean so much to me. Small glass ornaments that hung on my family’s tree from the time my brother (eight years older) was a baby. Ornaments cross-stitched by my friend Amy, as well as the AIDS Santa she gave me one Christmas after Steve R. died. A little hand-quilted ornament that my mother gave me after the Thanksgiving that she, my sister, and I worked on Tim R.’s AIDS Quilt panel.

There are ornaments that hung on Tom’s family tree when he was a little boy, and ornaments from his grandmother, who always decorated lavishly at Christmas. Ornaments that symbolize times that Lynne and I have shared over the past 38 years of friendship. (Yes, years before we were even born! Another miracle!) As I said last year, the two garlands that hang over two doorways are filled with the Star Trek ornaments Lynne has given Tom, and the Barbie ornaments she’s given me over many years. There’s a pink rhinestone pig that Lynne says is ugly but which I love that was from her son Jess and his wife Laura one Christmas.

There are little picture frames with pictures of my family and Tom’s nieces and various dogs. There’s the ornament I bought in December of 2001, a fragile ball of cobalt blue with an American flag on it, and each year when I take it out of its box and hang it, I honor everyone lost on September 11. There are several handcrafted ornaments from Tom’s mother, an artist, as well as ornaments she and his father have bought us when they’ve traveled. And there are plenty of Winnie the Pooh ornaments, although most of these stay out all year on an antique set of shelves that bear the name “Pooh Corner.”

Since we don’t have kids, there’s no knowing what will happen to all this stuff when Tom and I die, but I don’t care. It’s enough for me that our ornaments aren’t just glass, plastic, metal, or pewter, they’re memories of and gifts from people too many to mention: people who taught me about love, friendship, and the comfort of tradition.

Holidays can be hard when they remind us of better times or people we’ve lost. The real gifts though, are that we had those moments and those loved ones in our lives. Try to carve out some quiet time to cherish your memories and honor your past.

Holidays

Although I usually don’t decorate for the holidays until the last possible moment, if at all, since we were having friends and family over for Thanksgiving, I talked Tom into decorating early (he gets stuck doing all the hard stuff). Though I STILL don’t have my sleighbells out, so it’s not official yet. But here are some photos taken Wednesday.


And so it begins, after a trip to the attic.


Bored by it.


Aliens are trying to beam up Mrs. Claus!


Only one ornament was harmed in the trimming of the skinny tree.

Explanation of the next two pictures follows:

My friend Steve R. had a copy of A Christmas Angel Collection with only one angel partially colored before he died. The book contains drawings of angels based on Renaissance paintings that can be colored or painted, glittered or otherwise adorned, and cut out.

I ordered several copies many years ago. Now I have dozens of these angels done by various friends and relatives. Each year, usually Tim places them on the molding over our windows in the living room and dining room. This means we can’t use the ceiling fan in the dining room, or angels go flying. Some of the angels are signed by their artists, but not all of them.

Jane-Jane’s Hand

Last night Jim and I were talking about crazy grandmothers. It seems nearly everyone has a crazy grandmother story. I didn’t know either of my biological grandmothers–they died before I was born. However, my father’s father did have the good sense to remarry, so I had a step-grandmother. I adored her, and certain scents always make me think of her. I had actually been remembering her the other night as I was slicing fresh okra and enjoying its smell. To keep me out from under her feet when she was cooking, she’d give me a big metal bowl full of the ends and peelings of her vegetables and sit me on the back porch outside her kitchen. I would pretend-cook okra, squash, carrots, and potatoes while she cooked the real thing.

Her name was Mary Jane, and among other things, she’d been a postmistress in their little Alabama town. She’d had a breast removed because of cancer, but I never knew her to be sick or to complain about anything. My brother, sister, and I called her Jane-Jane. When my brother was little, he misheard a church hymn with the lyric, “hold to God’s unchanging hand” as “hold to God and Jane-Jane’s hand.” To all of us, that was perfectly logical, so we always sang his version.

Jane-Jane’s thinning white hair was always pulled back in a tiny bun at the nape of her neck, and no matter how hot the Alabama summer, she was always in a dress with all the proper undergarments and her thick support hose. She managed to be every bit a lady even when she dipped Bruton snuff (a brand I misspelled in A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS and another of those scents I associate with her). One of my mother’s most “mortified” memories is when Jane-Jane went with us to the laundromat one morning. I was around two, and letters had begun to fascinate me, so I would always call them out and ask, “What’s that say, Mama?” Apparently, I found some new ones scratched onto a washing machine, because I began spelling out, “F…U…C…K…. What’s that say, Mama?” Fortunately, like all ladies, Jane-Jane could be conveniently deaf.

Jane-Jane drove a car that looked a little like this:

That car always smelled like gasoline, and so did the outlying garage where she parked it. I loved to sit in the car and pretend-drive, though I may have just been addicted to the gasoline high. My mother hadn’t learned to drive back then, so when my father was away, Jane-Jane was always our chauffeur. I remember one day when coming home from church, I heard my mother’s sharp intake of breath as Jane-Jane drove past a man on a bicycle.

“Miss Mary Jane, I believe you brushed his pants legs with your car,” my mother said a little tensely, but again, Jane-Jane became conveniently deaf and never acknowledged that she heard her, any more than she acknowledged that she shared the road with anyone else.

Jane-Jane had transformed the entire front yard of my grandfather’s house into an unruly flower garden. No sweet flowers for her, she liked the ones that gave off more acrid, pungent odors, and I still like those best, too, and they always evoke her memory when I smell them: black-eyed Susans, marigolds, daisies, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, zinnias, and four o’clocks.

I thought of her today at the grocery store when I saw these flowers. I was much too young when she died to have been able to tell her what she meant to me. I hope she knew I loved her.

‘Cause a little girl inside me will always be holding to Jane-Jane’s hand.