Epiphany, Please

Twelfth Night

Epiphany

Boxing Day

Gifts of the Maggi

Holiday cards to respond to.

Putting Christmas away

On Solstice, did I write down everything in my seed-to-nurture-this-year that I meant to?

Quicken

Taxes

New calendars up

Putting away the old year is like tucking an octopus into bed… Tendrils and tentacles, each with its own brain, each doing a different task, will not be unified and cooperate with my agenda. I keep finding bobbles and goo gaws hiding in decorative clusters on mantle and bathroom counters.

Why did I put it all up and out? For what purpose? 

The grandie fondled and played with every one of the table decorations I nestled into fresh juniper… the angel and choir-boy candles I used to marvel at on my grandmother’s table… sigh… that’s worth it, right? And I love the smell of fresh greens as I vacuum them up where they’ve fallen to the floor.

But now…

What do I do with the old calendar’s pretty nature photos? Toss or use for wrapping paper?

What do I do about found tissue wrappings lurking under couches from the grandie’s gift-opening spree on Capitalism Day? Recycling bin or fold and re-use?

How many boxes shall I save? There’s that really pretty gold-foil one that has a hinged lid… I’ll save that.

The rest of the detritus and hype go into the rubbish bin. 

Mercifully, every year gets easier and lower key. (Soon we’ll be in the bass register!)

My Grandmother Florence Stern started paring away all the madness in 1973 when she issued an edict stating that in this family we believe no one over the age of eighteen years is wanting for anything and that only the kiddies get gifties. We’ve (mostly) held true to that idea over the intervening forty-five years. Our daughters have had to remind us on occasion not to buy them stuff, but they don’t seem to mind the essential pouch of beautiful stationery hand-crafted of decoupaged flowers by their childhood dance-teacher Karen Fox. So that’s a given.

My oldest friend - meaning we’ve known one another since we were three - sends a box in the mail to me several times a year. Retail therapy is her sane-maker. Jewish Women’s Thrift Council Stores and Saint Anne’s are her go-to shops when the going gets tough. I no longer have wall space for the darling story-book character watercolor paintings, or the lithographs and woodcuts on friendship. I have a complete set of sock monkey dolls - one for every season and occasion you might think of. There is no more room in my house for the stuff she sends. Yet, she sends it. Ah, that’s what I forgot to put away… the Christmas-Tree-Apron-wearing Sock Monkey. She sits on the chair by the fire place, her jingle bells glowing in this morning’s cloudy light.

The new-fangled year of 2018 is upon us. I had hopes that it would be an easier one to navigate than 2017, but it seems to be off to a rocket’s red glare sort of start, as Kim Jong Un and  Mr. No-Collusion-Epitome-of-Sanity-Bigger-Button-Small-Fingered-POTUS trade insults. 

I do have that old folk album with the song made famous by the Kingston Trio in the 1950s or ‘60s which I still love…

They’re rioting in Africa

They’re starving in Spain

There are hurricanes in Florida

And Texas needs rain

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the poles…

Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch

And I don’t like anybody very much

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud

For man’s been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud

And we know for certain that some lovely day

Someone will set the sparks off and we will all be blown away

They’re rioting in Africa

There’re strikes in Iran

What Nature doesn’t do to us

Will be done by our fellow man

The whole charming song has cheerful whistling after each line.

May you find some semblance of JOY in the new year. May 2018 be kind to you and good for the planet.

Amen. Ah, woman.