Home For Christmas, Dearly Beloveds, and A Nearly Dead Tangent at Year’s End (Ring Out, Wild Bells)

Well, Merry Christmas!  I know it’s late.  Actually, I know it’s pretty much over….But that’s ok.  Really.  In an obscure way, my belated holiday wishes sung in a deserted room might be stylishly edgy, like a minimalist independent movie  shot in a coat factory’s janitorial closet.  There might be meaning here, in my solitary, almost irrelevant words.  Truth.  Hope.  A narrow beacon of light. Possibly.  Probably not though.

And yet, I insist…Merry Christmas!  And I hope you (God Bless You, Every One) were all home for Christmas, in the best, warmest, happiest sense of the phrase.

I was home for Christmas.  It was nice.  I liked it.   With all the kids (mostly healthy), and Frank (consistently sweet), and even Mimsy (as long as she was leashed, darn it…at large, she is most untrustworthy)  I felt my heart swell at least one and a half sizes larger.   But if I were to recount my Christmas tale here, which wouldn’t be unreasonable because after all this is supposed to be a lifestyle blog, it would be long and might sometimes sound whiny.   And there would probably be tangents.  Like this one (you can skip the next paragraph, if you hate tangents.  But then, you’ve probably long since stopped reading my blog if you hate tangents, so…read on, dearly beloveds):

Tangent:  Since flu season coincides with the holiday season, we’ve been watching a lot of silly dramas.  No high brow janitorial closets for us (seven shades of blond zombified to the couch—or in my case, listening from the kitchen).   No.  In our flu-ish state, we’ve fallen prey to the almost clever devices of nearly mainstream screenwriters, and are, even now that most of us are feeling better, particularly intrigued by the theme of Almost (or Nearly) Dead.   Maurya came up with classifications for the varied elements of the Nearly Dead spectrum, and we are thinking of submitting them to some sort of committee.  There’s Mostly Dead as diagnosed by Miracle Max (Princess Bride)—rudimentary and uncomplicated.   I think I might have experienced this once or twice, even though I’m hardly fictitious and not as likely to be motivated by True Love or even Revenge so much as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and/or Daydreaming.   There’s also Rory Dead (of Dr. Who fame),  if you happen to be fictional, invented by a writer with a penchant for unbelievable plot twists, and your name is…well, Rory.   When you’re Rory Dead, you simply don’t stay dead for more than a couple of episodes, even though each of your deaths (there will be many) are at least dramatic, if not altogether tragic.  Exterminated by  a lizard woman with a ray gun?  Obliterated by a crack in the universe?  Melted to nothingness in the wrong time zone during the London Blitz after guarding the Pandorica for endless centuries?   No worries.   You’ll be back,  sans the typical decomposition most of us would expect after our demise—whether it were our first, or our third.   And last, there’s simple, generic TV Dead, a condition also most likely to be experienced by imaginary persons, though America’s Most Wanted would have us believe it is practiced by real mortals with sinister intentions.  TV Dead is really about artful deception.   It is Faked Death (Sherlock), a lie that sooner or later changes its story and insists it was alive all along, hidden in a secret room or across the street or possibly even in a Parisian cafe while tears were shed at the funeral and loved ones spoke sentimental dirges through the gray days afterward.  

Before we leave this tangent, I do have relevant pictures:  Maurya and Nora either recuperating from, or actually in the midst of the flu (note Nora’s bowl), or jetlag (note Maurya’s beautiful toes).  And to make it germane to the whole Home for Christmas thing… they were home with me.  I love them.  I relished the sight of their pretty blond heads on the couch and  even on my pillow, probable muss notwithstanding.  And they are feeling better now.

And so, no Christmas Tale.  Not really.  Nor will I be posting (this time) lovely pictures of my holiday decorating, telling you in lively and vivacious tones how I made it all look good.  Not because I’m great at exercising restraint (if I were, you can bet I’d be making one of those minimalist janitor closet films), but mostly because I never did completely finish decorating, although….I did  get a few pictures of some scattered nearly-done vignettes…

In the end, what I loved best, and what I wish to mention here,  is that we were all Home for Christmas.  Together. We even gathered round our second hand baby grand (the one that lived…or did it die?  Mysteriously.  In a house fire sometime during the vague years before we found it on Craig’s list),  singing Christmas hymns til Ez hyperventilated and we all went to bed.  Except for me because I’d procrastinated wrapping.