I usually love that. Cleaning up, getting rid of all the red and green, the glitter, the shedding fir. I was always the first on the street to drag the tree to the curb, sometimes as early as Christmas afternoon. My reason, ostensibly, was that it had become a fire hazard. But, really, I just wanted it done. Out. Over. Back to normal.

Not this year. Don’t know why but taking stuff down and stowing it away was not fun. Not even a little bit.

Santy went peacefully back into his drawer, carefully tucked in with his old sheet, not to be seen for another 353 days. But who’s counting?

The ornaments are nicely organized but, more importantly, they are in a closet where I can easily see them if I want to take a quick peek.

I’ve left a few vestiges of the decorations tucked in spots around the house. Only I know where they are. And they’ll still be there this time next year.

I don’t understand this at all.

But as the song says, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”

It was a display item in a garden and gift shop, a fixture designed to show off shiny ornaments and other Christmas decorations.   For some reason, we ignored all that jazz, peered behind the glitter and saw the strange and twiggy thing that was meant to be our very own unique and special Christmas tree.

When the store manager removed all the beautiful ornaments, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Anything but. It wasn’t green. Had no needles. And it wasn’t even for sale.

But we were smitten and found a way to bring it home.

We bought pretty silk flowers to stuff into its many unsightly gaps, slathered it with our favorite ornaments, filled its odd limbs with odd things and declared it the best tree we’d ever had. This was well over 20 years ago. It has faithfully followed us wherever we’ve gone.

Two years ago when we moved to this old house with no storage, there wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. Twig Tree would come with us even if we had to give up one of our few closets to keep it nearby.

Now, in the Christmas season, it has own Life On The May, overlooking the bluff. The old moth-eaten L.L. Bean blanket still warms its trunk in the chill. We don’t concern it with ornaments any more.

It’s perfect just as it is.

I’ve been called many things….some to my face and, I’m certain, some behind my back. No matter. One thing I’m sure of is that I’ve never been called a cook.

Oh sure, I prepare food. I also order-out and bring-in.   But real, honest-to-goodness, get-your-hands-dirty, mess-up-pots, measure-ingredients kind of cooking. No. Not my idea of fun.

But lo and behold, in the paper recently, I read a quote from Julia Child and it appears we think alike. Julia says that things will always go wrong in the kitchen. You can count on it. And her mantra is: “Never apologize. Never explain.” Well, if she thinks that way, and I certainly do, well, then maybe I am a cook after all.

There was the always reliable Tuna, Mushroom Soup, Spaghetti and Curry Delight. A mainstay on our table for many years. We’d add little bowls of raisins, hard-boiled eggs and bananas because it was a curry dish and we were attempting to disguise the ingredients.

One night we had company and Tuna Delight was on the menu. As I went to the kitchen to retrieve it, I saw the cat in the dish. Not sniffing, not nibbling, not testing. He was totally immersed. And most of the tuna was gone.

I’d like to think that Julia would have done what I did. (Of course, she never would have served Tuna Delight in the first place but that’s another issue.)

I plucked out the cat, rinsed off his paws and his whiskers, fluffed up the Tuna Delight and carried on. No apologies; no explanations.

To my knowledge, no animals or humans were harmed in that experiment.

Well, we’ve actually not seen those people since that evening so I can’t be totally sure about them. I am, however, quite sure the cat was happy.

Fanciful cat image thanks to colourbox.com

At a White Elephant party a few years ago, we were fortunate enough to win a dear, fairly large, stuffed-animal turkey. He looked like he’d been dressed by Vera Bradley. We quite admired him and felt we’d gotten a real prize. We put him on a high shelf, in the hall closet for the reasons cited below. When we returned from a brief out-of-town trip, we discovered he was gone. Shortly after that, his original “parents” called and said he had returned home with the accompanying letter.

We miss him but he is with his rightful family. Clearly, he had a few things to say about us that were not entirely flattering. They were, however, correct. I share his letter to his family with you, not without some level of shame.

THOMAS T. TURKEY

HILTON HEAD, SC.

November, 2013

Dear Mommy and Daddy:

 Just exactly what the hell you were you thinking when you auctioned me off as a “white elephant” at that silly party? I felt betrayed, and to be honest, a little dirty….as something with a mere price on my head. All our years together I’ve been your Thanksgiving centerpiece. Have you no respect? No affection? No memories of all our good times together?

Anyway, that family stuck me on a top shelf in a closet…ostensibly because they have cats and were afraid they might rip up my outsides and tear out my stuffing. That’s all well and good except they put me the closet where one of the cats tosses its favorite toy named “Baby”.

All day long, those people say:

”Oh, Felix, did you put Baby in the closet again”?

“Oh, let’s go look, Felix”.

 ”Oh, look , Felix, there she is, in the closet….just where you put her.”

And on and on. Nauseating. Truly.

Life in this house, as they say, is not exactly a bowl of cherries,… or cranberries…for which I long. I am, after all, born to celebrate Thanksgiving and from what I can see of these people’s kitchen, there’s not a whit of cooking going on. I know she keeps sweaters in one of the ovens.   What does that tell you?

As it turns out, they were gone for a couple of days in October. They had a cat sitter who left the closet open where “Baby” lives and I snuck out. 

I jumped down from the shelf, waddled into the kitchen, knowing that I would never be discovered there and found this sack in which I am coming home.

 Please don’t ever give me away again.

 I love you.

 Tommy.

We join Tommy in wishing you and yours…all creatures large and small…a very happy Thanksgiving.

Two years ago, our sons gave my husband a weather station kit for Christmas. I must tell you that there were some snickers and inappropriate twitters from the distaff side of the family. In retrospect, it was most unkind, and, ultimately wrong of us, to have treated the gift, and the givers, that way.

In fact, it was a wonderful present. He loves it.

It came in many pieces, much assembly required, directions printed in several foreign languages and just exactly what my husband needed….even though he didn’t know it at the time.

Things that come in many pieces, by their very nature, require trips to Lowe’s. And, in this house, a day without a trip to Lowe’s is, well, a day without sunshine or purpose.

I’ve been told that the weather station lives on our dock. I prefer the accu-window style of forecasting but, apparently, there are better, more up-to-date and precise ways to determine the weather.

As an aside, I’ll admit to a bit of jealousy here. That weather station sometimes gets over 8,000 hits a month. 8,000! I, Dear Reader, don’t get that many. Not even close. Can you feel my angst?

In defense of the weather station, it’s fun to learn that you’re going to get a pop-up shower at 2:15 in the afternoon. On the other hand, it’s also fun to be surprised by the dark rain clouds forming in the west, bringing a cooling storm our way. It’s a little like knowing….or not knowing… the sex of your unborn child. Okay, maybe not quite that dramatic but still. You get my drift.

One of my daughters-in-law, who lives near us and shall remain nameless, said she has her own weather station and has had for years. Do tell, we asked. It’s simple, she said.

She hangs a piece of rope from a tree in the back yard.

If it’s dry, it hasn’t rained.

If it’s wet, it has.

And if it’s gone, we’ve had a hurricane.

I just love the way she thinks.

P.S. For the curious and those who may want more than a rope, just click here

I don’t much like crowds. I don’t like being told where to sit, and I really hate to be strapped in.

Ergo, I don’t like airplanes. Especially airplanes with that three-seats-across thing.

The mister likes the window seat. I naturally get the middle and then there’s that awful suspense about who will sit on the aisle and hog the arm rest. None of this equates to happy.

I was middle-seating it recently on a trip home, nerves on edge waiting to see who’d be intimately sharing the next three hours with me.

I saw him get on the plane.  I knew the minute he walked through that door that he was The One! Clearly a New Yorker, dressed in black from head to toe, not a teenager, but not an old geezer like us.

The minute he walks through that door onto the plane everything erupts. He’s greeted by nearly everyone, kissed, hugged, congratulated. They’re all happy to see him. Has the whole plane done Red Bull? This early in the morning?   Clearly, there’s electricity in the air and we are not plugged in.

My seat mate is now chatting with everyone in sight. We offer to move so he can be with his friends. He demurs and says that most of people on the plane are his friends and one seat change won’t matter.

At this point, I’m longing for a crying baby. At least it might drink some warm milk and go to sleep. This could be a long trip. How will my grumpy self handle all of this energy, this obscene level of cheerfulness?

I try to figure out what’s going on. Finally, I hear the word “wedding.” When I can get a word in with him, I quietly say: ”Oh, off to a wedding?” Yes, he says, and I am the father of the bride.

I’ll cut to the chase. As I listen happily to all the details of the wedding, I soon realize that I’m sitting next to an extraordinary man. A generous, kind, open and, above all, happy, man.

No wonder all the people who were going to the wedding were so excited. They were going to spend the weekend with this man and his family.  I’d have been happy too. It was a destination wedding….in Savannah….and people had flown in from all over the world to be there. It was going to be a joyful occasion.

We sat on the tarmac for an hour with not so much as a wiggle towards the runway and finally learned that one of the engines had an oopsie. We had to find another plane and were seriously delayed. Nobody lost their cool. The wedding party’s positive energy prevailed and no one cared…..including us.

They had absorbed us into their joy, their excitement and we were, at long last, plugged in and part of the happy.

A three hour trip turned into five and the time flew by.

After a Bloody Mary or two, it occurred to me that there was one little detail they might not have thought of…..their being from New York and all.

My advice: “ On the way to your destination, stop at a Walgreens and buy every single can of bug spray you can get your hands on. Human beings aren’t the only creatures in the south who like this beautiful weather.”

He gets it. Makes a note in his phone and says: “How many cans???? Six dozen???? No, we said, a couple of dozen should do it. Think of us when you press the nozzle.

We sat on our porch during the wedding, knowing exactly what time they’d be walking down the aisle, having cocktails and eating dinner, and I saw some bugs start to flit about.

Barry, I thought, let me count the ways I enjoyed meeting you and your friends and I hope that perhaps, just perhaps, one of those little cans of bug spray came in handy.

Nothing, certainly not a single mosquito, or ten thousand, should be allowed to get in the way of what was destined to be a beautiful occasion.

Thanks to Ponderweasel.com for the airplane interior image above.

So I read a really great book on writing the other day. It’s called Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamotte. She’s a beautiful writer. I was perking along, appreciating her thoughts and her elegant style.

Then apparently, her editor said to her: “You have made the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting.”

Wow. That was a zinger for her.

And a real head twister for me.

Now, I’m the first to admit that I use the “I” word more than I’d like to. (See, there I go again.)

My problem is that I don’t have any other resources. It’s just me. All by myself. I know Anne Lamotte’s editor’s remark is wise and astute but it leaves me way out in left field. Not even sitting in the stands. I’m parked in a car many moons away from the action.

It seems that all I’m doing is scribbling, little bits and pieces, about the stuff that I’ve seen, enjoyed, laugh about, worry about, think about.

But, I said in the beginning of this venture that I would be writing about nothing. So then, nothing has changed except I read a book that was beautifully written and shook me up a little.

The bottom line, for me, is if I’m lucky enough to conjure up a connection or a common experience, spark a thought, maybe a smile, well, then there’s nothing more to be said, is there?

We’re at the ball game together. How lovely.