Something will happen, I know. I still don't have a tree, and I'll be running around this weekend, mostly on the Cape, so I'm hoping to pick one up then. I have Monday off, but I really don't want to get one then, when I could be hanging electrical lights on a wet tree.
I guess I have to get one, though now the thought of spending money I don't have for a tree and putting it and decorations around the house just so I have to immediately take it down again isn't a pleasant thought. Sue and I have so much to do and think about for our move; one more chore just seems like one more too many.
My kids will come over Monday night, we'll laugh, we'll play Christmas carols, we'll go out and light a candle in honor of my mother's birthday, drive around and look at the lights, and Bob and I will have a moment outside when I take him out to do his business before we go to bed. He's so old now that he always looks at me with either a wry or rueful expression, like he knows something I don't know. I bet he does, too.
Sue will drive up sometime Christmas day. J may show up, or not. A dinner will be cooked, probably a chicken. Rice in the cooker. We don't have a lot of money this year, so it won't be fancy, not that it ever is. Of course we will have lots of wine; we always seem to have money for that. That seems to get us through things.
It's so funny around work right now. Only one or two of us are here, the clicking of keyboards is all you can hear. Muffled conversations. The few of us here who, I guess, don't really have lives. Here everything is so wonderful and positive, or that's the facade. No one would ever let on to troubles here, at an agency where the product is image and that image is always sunny and happy and positive, where if there is a problem it's quickly alleviated by the product.
I don't really want anything for Christmas. I don't want any products. The troubles I have won't be solved by anything manufactured in the world economy. One of my daughters pumped me, insisting I had to get something under the tree. I told her to get me a set of decent guitar strings. I'm trying to get rid of stuff in my life, not acquire more. I'm giving stuff away to the poor, selling stuff for money and to lighten my load for the road. Ain't it nice that I've simplified things to where the one thing I could use is spare set of guitar strings, weighing a couple of ounces and costing maybe tops thirteen bucks? And I'll lighten it even less. I've learned to live with almost nothing. Not the right attitude for what my good buddy calls the Christian Shopping Season.
There's something complex and crazy about Christmas. Of course it's all the materialism, but there's something else, too. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it has something to do with age and experience, wisdom and a bit of cynicism.
Once more, I just don't fit in to all this. I've tried. Lord knows I've tried. And I really don't care anymore. Just happy to be who I am.
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