Feb 28
It was driving her crazy that I wouldn't open her box. She had wrapped it more simply than usual, as if its minimalism would entice me to set aside my usual reserved nature and rip it open to behold her gift.
But I wouldn't succumb.
Dec 26
It haunts me all year. An instrumental extravaganza I’ve only heard on Radio Classique Montreal, strings and horns and a crazy cuckoo bird. Once, the blasted song came on while I was in the bathtub, and I almost ended up in the hospital. My zeal to get to the computer and divine the song left me sprawling on the floor, bedecked in glitter and suds and nothing else.
MTM enjoyed that particular Lush bath bomb.
But, when I found the song list, my beloved cuckoo song was absent. Skipped. Anonymous.
I beat against the keys with my sudsy claws, incensed. Why was the cuckoo song a mystery, only to be savored in one hotel room, a few days a year?
Life was unfair.
But, not this year. I found the story of my beloved Cuckoo Song.
Kindersinfonie was written by Leopold Mozart, though his authorship is disputed. Leopold plowed his talent first into his daughter Nannerl, a gifted pianist, and later into his son Wolfgang Amadeus.
Perhaps you have heard of him.
Leopold’s Kindersinfonie, whether he wrote it or not, is one of the things that means Christmas to me. It’s exuberant chords and grandiose string sections, coupled with the plaintive cuckoo, signal that I’ve arrived in my Happy Christmas Place.
And, my Happy Boxing Day Place.
Now, to get to those boxes……………..
Dec 25
Well, over the last month Andra has made much out of the fact that I, MTM, was rather Grinch-like in my pre-Andra days. It is true that I had but two modest Christmas decorations then; certainly not the two-trees-worth I now share with Andra. It might be tempting to read between the lines of recent posts to conclude that I have suddenly embraced or am at least empathetic to the outpouring of ornaments that now adorn our home.
The truth is that I have been seduced not by sultry Santa stampings or alluring icicle adornments; it is the the temptations of Tradition that have taken hold of this tempered soul and transformed me into a Christmas convert. This is a much harder admission for someone whose ethic has long skewed to the progressive and modern…or as Andra has put it so often and honorably: Modernist Minimalist MTM.
To claim a tradition risks an admission of sentimentality; a difficult admission, especially for me. But here we are, ALW and MTM ensconced in the same hotel room, in the same northern city, doing the same thing we have done every year for the past ten (which conveniently corresponds to every year we have been in each other’s lives). Is this reiteration a force of habit, a lack of creativity or a fear of the unkown? I am confident that is not the case, as nearly every day of our marriage is embraced as a new revelation. Our extensive travels represent a kind of rootlessness, an antithesis to tradition. So what is it about this recurring Christmas custom we have to come to Montreal and cocoon in the cold and snow?
In my mind, ours is not a rejection of traditions we have been born into, whether they be expectant family gatherings or reverential rituals. Rather, I believe our coming to Quebec is a commemoration of our discoveries in common. That first Noël we shared was not intended to be an adventure, nor was it truly pregnant with the expectation that this would be a world-changing event, but nevertheless it changed us both. Or changed us into Both.
From that point forward we would always be Us, rather than her and him. As we learn new things everyday, things about each other and about the world, we do so together. And that has become our tradition. It is about more than the memories we share, it is about the discoveries we will make and the challenges we will conquer.
Notwithstanding all the memories attached to the ornaments that weigh down our trees back in Charleston, we are here and now celebrating our own Christmas tradition of looking to dreams of tomorrow and the new horizon that is still out there, continually receding as we hopefully charge towards it.
And so I have come to learn that the two ornaments that represented my Christmas tradition for so many years were one too many; it is my gift to have the one and only Andra by my side on this journey into the unknown. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
This post is part of the series Roll Out the Holly, about the stories Christmas ornaments can conjure. Click here to read the series from the beginning.
Dec 25
May your Christmas Day be twinkly and shiny. You continue to enrich my life. Thank you for spending time here. Merry Christmas, Everyone!
This post is part of the series Roll Out the Holly, about the stories Christmas ornaments can conjure. Click here to read the series from the beginning.
Dec 24
A pom-pom squirrel. It decorated one of the first baby gifts awaiting my grand debut. I don’t know what was inside the box. Most likely, it moldered away in a forgotten landfill long ago.
Squirrelly has remained. A stalwart first friend. A fixture of my whole life. Every year, I unwrap him. Kiss him. Release him for a few short weeks to preen at the top of our big tree.
What does it say about me that my true oldest friend is a squirrel made of yarn and some ribbon?
Happy Christmas Eve!
For more about good friends:
Into the Unknown: Lori O’Leary
Model Trains, Drugs and Thanks for Michael Carnell
This post is part of the series Roll Out the Holly, about the stories Christmas ornaments can conjure. Click here to read the series from the beginning.
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