November 29, 2009
Sunday — First Sunday in Advent

People look east, the time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People look east and sing today.
Love, the Guest, is on the way.
                 — Eleanor Farjeon 1881-1965
English author

It’s a milestone, I think, when an adult child, in her second year of professional employment, gifts her parents with something substantial for the house.

Lynn and her boyfriend, Matt, arrived yesterday afternoon for the third leg of their Turkey Trot. Lynn was with us at my sister’s house on Thursday while Matt was in New Jersey with some of his family, and yesterday they had another traditional Turkey and Trimmings feast with Matt’s mother and brothers and others.

Today they came to Bradley Drive for a combined Thanksgiving dinner and the beginning of Advent, the day we have traditionally trimmed the tree and had the first Ceremonial Watching of the 1953 Dragnet Christmas Episode. (If you follow the link now, you won’t have to read Markings on December 24, when I post the “Dragnet” piece again. If you’ve been reading me for a long time, you already know why this is so important to me.)

Decorating the house, especially the placing of the Christmas tree, takes some preparation and requires several steps. The tree occupies the southwest corner of the living room, beside the fireplace. Usually a six-and-a-half-foot artificial flowering dogwood occupies the corner. That has to be moved to the kitchen, where it takes the spot where there is normally a tall plant stand holding the arrangement Lynn’s fellow hockey team members sent when Ron’s mother died in 2005 and which Ron has kept thriving ever since. During the holiday season, the plant stand holds the Advent wreath, so the planter has to be relocated as well. In addition, my cobalt glass pieces have to be moved from the mantel so they don’t get knocked over during tree placement and to make way for the Limoges plates that tell the Christmas story.

Before Lynn and Matt arrived we accomplished the moving of the dogwood and the setting up the Advent wreath. Ron brought the Christmas tree up from the basement, but didn’t put it together.

We’ve had this tree since 1984, our second Christmas together, the year before Lynn was born. We’d had a real tree in 1983, the year we were married. As I recall, it was more bushy than tree-like, and Ron remembers that it required several sawings at the trunk to get it to stand in a way that might be regarded as upright. And it dropped needles like crazy. He declared then that he would never again wrestle a natural tree into the house. The artificial tree we bought in 1984 must have looked nice in the picture. In service, the only thing remotely natural-looking about it was the color, and even that was a uniform green such as one would not find in the wild. The needles were truly needle-like, long spiky sticks of polyvinyl chloride that made each branch look like a bottle brush.

By about 2000 I truly hated it, and wished each year for a new one. For reasons I cannot now recall, Ron was resistant to the idea of replacing it (although it can’t be because he loved the thing), and with one thing and another, it always came around to the Thanksgiving weekend and we hadn’t come to any agreement about replacing it, so we just put it up and moved forward into the season.

Lynn had told me on Thursday that she was bringing our Christmas present on Saturday because not having it until Christmas Day would just not do. I gave my usual speech — that no one has to get me anything, that all I want is to spend time with the people I love but if you REALLY want to give me something then write me a love letter. But she said the gift was already procured and that was that.

I was upstairs when she arrived. She stood in the hallway between the living room and the library and called for both Ron and me to assemble there. She then went back out to her car and returned with a long narrow box. “Merry Christmas,” she said, and handed us a brand new tree.

It’s the same model she bought for herself last year. I’d admired it — its realistic shape, the variation in the color and the texture of the needles.

I was delighted.

So we put it together, and decorated it. Even though the new tree is a little smaller and not as bushy (or brushy) as the old one, I thought it looked bare. Lynn had to remind me that twenty-three of the ornaments, the ones that had been acquired over the years for her, were gone, packed up and taken to her house last year. I had forgotten that.

When we were finished, we looked at the old tree still in pieces on the floor.  We put it together and set it out at the curb, with a sign that said “Free.” We don’t have “Big Trash Week” in our township anymore, those days when folks would troll the neighborhoods looking for large castoff but usable items. I said I’d keep an eye on it and bring it in if nobody had taken it by Thursday, trash day.

It was 4:00. We had enough time to watch Dragnet while the turkey rested before carving.

By 6:30 we were finished with dinner and Lynn and Matt were on their way. The Turkey Trot is over. It’s time for the inward searching of the heart that we are called to in Advent. As I stood in the driveway to watch Lynn’s car disappear up the street, I noticed that the tree was gone.

I hope its new family truly enjoys it.

**********************************

The NaBlos of the Past

2008: I did not post on this day in 2008.

2007: A Change of Pace — . . . . although it’s true I am an introvert, and sometimes shy and uncertain around people, I am not a hermit. I am interested in people, in their lives, in what they do. I’ve enjoyed and made use of this time apart [at an artist residency in Wyoming] without obligations to anyone else. But I took a break today from all that scenery and all that solitude, and went gallivanting.

2006: Dear Mr. Mann — . . . “panini’s” is NOT “Italian for sandwich.” It’s not Italian for anything. It is not English for anything either.

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say hi?
To comment or to be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the bracketed parts with @ and a period) OR
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/silkentent