Tangled Tinsel

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and I expected elegance this year. We now live in a darling little Victorian house and I’ve been planning a Picture Postcard Christmas for months: delicate lights and garlands outside, candles, garlands, tinsel, and a glorious tree inside, covered with lights and my collection of old world glass ornaments, all sparkling and filling the house with the scent of pine. I even had the perfect place to set up the Christmas Village (about 15 buildings and 50 or 60 figures, with street lights and fences and shrubs and cobblestone paths) where my grandson could enjoy it.

All of our children would be together: Ed’s two, my two, and their two. My first husband and his new wife and his dad would be coming for a couple of days, also. It was all working out beautifully. We got our 5^th-wheel ready for the girls and their babies to sleep in. And I got the last of our moving-boxes unpacked and the perfect space prepared for the tree in the Library. Then life got in the way of my expectations.

Daughter #2 and Grandbaby #1 moved in with us in November and suddenly there were blankets and pallets and toys all over (not unusual in a grandma’s house). Then she got a Christmas job in Hanford so I was home with my grandson and no car every day. This was all good (except the car was inconvenient), but it rather made cheese of my schedule.

Then it started to rain.

Daughter #3 had a fender-bender in our good car (actually a side-crusher), which made it impossible to open either of the passenger-side doors and also resulted in a huge ticket to be paid in December. Our already-low-budget Christmas turned into a no-budget Christmas. But nobody was hurt and the car still ran, so we took a deep breath and went on.

And it rained some more.

We finished our stint as King and Queen of the Christmas Festival in Wonder Valley, very grateful for the money, which was now going to pay for the car accident instead of Christmas gifts, and settled down at home in anticipation of the holiday. It was dark when Ed came home from work each day, so we planned to get a tree and get the Christmas stuff out of the shed on the weekend…but it rained. Every weekend. Except the one when we had back-to-back book signings.

For our book came out in November and we had meetings and books signings in December right up until the day Daughter #1 and Grandbaby #2 arrived from Wyoming. It was still raining that day and we discovered that the 5^th wheel had sprung a leak – right over the bed. So luggage and gifts and baby paraphernalia went back into the house, piled in with the blankets and pallets and toys, and our house turned into a crowded, cacophonous chaos of joy for a week or so.

For the first time in my life, there was no Christmas tree. We’d finally gotten the Christmas boxes out of the shed the day before Daughter #1 arrived, but the only decorations that got put up were the candles (and they never got lit) and the Christmas Village. There was no tree, no lights, no ornaments, no tinsel, no star, no angels…I couldn’t even find all of the stockings. And, strangest of all, I never played any Christmas music (if you know the size of my Christmas music collection, you know how amazing that was). To top it off, we celebrated Christmas five days early because this was not our year to have Ed’s children (Daughter #3 and Son #1) for Christmas. I didn’t bake pumpkin bread or make Hard-Crack Cinnamon Candy, the Advent Calendar never got out of a box, and we didn’t do stockings on “Christmas Eve” -- none of our family traditions were in evidence. But this was the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER.

Our Picture Postcard Christmas never happened. And we will probably not be in this house next Christmas, so it never will. But that was only a dream for the photo album. The very real and absolutely perfect Christmas happened in the middle of that noisy, messy confusion of undecorated house and toys and diapers. My two-year-old grandson fell in love with my six-month-old granddaughter, holding her hand, giving her “sisses” (kisses), and stealing her new toys. Daughter #3 bought, wrapped, and gave all of her own well-chosen gifts with her own earned money. Son #1 (who is Child #4) engaged in hilarious cyber-wars with Daughters #1 and 2. My mornings all started with one grandchild or another coming to my bed for some cuddle time while Mom either got ready for work or snagged a little more sleep. There was hot chocolate, loads of cuddles, sweet hours with long-time friends, family meals, lots of rowdy, chase-me-around-the-house time. It was loud. It was exhausting. It was perfect. My expectations had fallen so far short of the awesome reality.

Then, as one last inconvenience-transformed-into-gift, I drove Daughter #1 and Grandbaby #2 back up to Sacramento, dropping Grandbaby #1 off in Fresno on the way. My energy was gone. My emotions were volatile. I was not looking forward to 8 hours of driving in a broken, whistling car. But then I had the sweetest time of the week with my daughter, laughing, talking, holding hands…it was the perfect end to a perfect week.

I stopped for a nap on the way back and got home tired, but wide awake. Ed and Son #1 were playing a video game in the living room. Bless the man, he’d cleaned up all the mess, folded all of the blankets, vacuumed, done the dishes…the house looked wonderful. I looked around at the candles and the Christmas Village…the only evidence that it was December. I laughed at the tumbled state of the village. My two-year-old grandson had played delicately with them, placing everything back carefully. Then some 5- and 6-year-old friends had come over and left the village looking like they’d played dice with it.

I packed them all up and set the boxes by the door for Ed to return to the shed. I looked around my now-quiet kitchen and smiled, remembering a baby face smeared with sticky cereal, lively conversation around the expanded dinner table, a Play Doh game ending with a very sleepy "Ta la" (too tired to actually say "Ta DA!"), and "land shark" chases. No amount of tinsel could improve on memories like that. Though I'd forgotten to take pictures because I was busy chasing babies, the images in my memory are better than any Norman Rockwell rendering. This Christmas wasn't picture perfect....it was magic!