As I mentioned in the last post, my right eye had a run-in with a vine and took one for the team on Thursday, in the process of helping me get Otis out of the tree. As of today, Sunday, except for some watering, light sensitivity, and a minor burning sensation, I’m functioning as normal. Mostly.
I cannot recommend corneal scratches. Like many body parts that you don’t give that much thought to as you go about your daily business (feet, knees, fingertips, teeth...,) do one an injury and you find that its incapacity renders you near-useless for days. But, after an intermittent pirate eye-patch, indoor sunglasses, antibiotic drops leftover from someone’s pinkeye, and lots of doing not much, it is with great gratitude that I welcome my right eye back to the world of useable body parts.
This weekend--the first in December--seems to be the one for getting the Christmas game on. As of last night, numerous houses in town had sprouted an assortment of carefully or carelessly (mostly somewhere in between,) lights. Hence, I did mine today, taking care that the job did not involve any peripheral objects ready to take potshots at my face. I don’t do much--just some strings of white lights more or less following the contour of the front porch and its railing. Additionally, we bought a tree and stuck it in a washtub of water on the back patio. Voila...I am maxed out! Until such time as I bring the tree in the house.
Susan Reimer, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, opined this week that she would never--no matter how weak her motivation--slack off on the holiday fussiness, due to the fact that she perceived such a slow-down in her mother to have represented a slow fade of vitality. And maybe it is. But I don’t plan to worry about it when the time comes. I’ll fade if I good and want to. Meanwhile, it is most fortunate that I set the holiday bother bar very very very low for myself from the get-go, and have never upped the ante.
It is with equal measures of wistfulness and wry chuckling that I think about certain images that so tantalized me as a kid and hopeful romantic. Holiday special magazines, in which the snug log house in the distant snow-frosted vale, glowed golden-warm at dusk. Inside, a festive garland hugged the banister, while mom (that would have been the future me,) greeted dad (that was the unsubstantiated future mate with a twinkling eye or two) in a kitchen with a couple not-too-aggravating children and a pleasant pet or so. The funny thing is...as I stand in my kitchen looking across the eating table toward the stairs descending, mid-house...it looks almost just the way it was supposed to look. Except there’s no garland. That would be just too many pine needles to sweep up later. The pets are there though, and sometimes so are the children--they’re just a little overgrown. As for the dad...sometimes his eyes do twinkle. It’s a rather unfocused, uncomprehending twinkle, but then, we’re not in a snow-frosted vale either.
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