CHARGING MY BETTERIES

 

Doesn’t it seem longer than One Month since the cold came?   These raggedy-cold days---even those with such glowing sunshine that you’re called OUT into whatever daytime interests are motivating (or in my case, merely upstairs into that bright sunny sitting room with all the Christmas lights and two trees glowing and the TV tuned to “fireplace” just for the warm feeling of it---I swear I feel a little drift of warmth sometimes when I pass by.   There are great big Mole’s House chairs, with comfy pillows and soft blankets and BOOKS for an afternoon, as well as TWO new books of Cryptic Crosswords---those mystifying Brit ones with the anagrams and words-inside and sly jokes that I swear Benny Hill must have contributed.   I’ve spent three evenings with those fabulous mind-benders since they appeared in my stocking, and have completed just three and about a third of the fourth).  These days are gone in a blink, yet it seems ages since Thanksgiving, though there’s probably still a smitch of dessicated cranberry in the TUP and maybe four forlorn peas rattling in an old Melmac cup in one fridge or the other.

 

 I’m moving as slowly as the time, hardly working, letting things and chores pile up around me like liabilities of largesse.   We had fun and festivity and food and togetherness during Christmas---indeed from Thanksgiving on, with little spates of special cooking and decorations (all of which, contrary to tradition and sense, are still UP.   The tree still shines out the front windows, most presents are here and there on chairs and floor, divested of their shiny paper and pink ribbon. Rudolph, Clarice and a tee-ninecy Bumblesnowman inhabit a big wicker rocker in the living room, presiding over all the unsent/unclaimed presents languishing on the tree skirt.   I do miss the downstairs, where for decades great swoops and swags of ribbon-lights twinkled an eternal carnival onto our breakfasts, our evenings, our TV nights, and scattered around the room, across the pages of our Nooks, the printer, the TV screen and picture glass on the walls like strings of glowing beads in some magical hall at Versailles.    I've been a neon-fiend since childhood, and that was Heaven. 

We had a wonderful time with the Girls on Christmas eve, and now my batteries (typed that "betteries," and I think there MUST be a place in us all---a magical socket seldom used, for betteries to keep us primed for the slow times, the hard times, the INTERESTING times of our lives) are storing up and my mind refreshing, for the words are coming, though sparse.     I'm trying to think of something, anything, to write about, but present events are sparse, and I think I’ve related every story of my first eight decades, and “Reminisce” might well be the Word of The Year. 

Today we're having our 97-year-old neighbor and her daughter over to lunch,---our eighteenth Christmas gathering since we began the tradition, and though the colored lights across the street are still hazy through the fog, they SHINE, and we'll make more memories.