Eugene de Beauharnais:
The day before Thanksgiving I shopped for a house plant to fill the empty pot in the living room that once held a palm tree. My neglect was well on way to killing the damn palm, but the puppies got in there one day and ripped it up for me. Shopping produced a replacement in the form of a trio of Ficus lyrata, the Fiddleleaf Fig.
Poor thing. It may look good now, but wait until I've had a chance to ruin it.
Good grief, the things we think we need to do for Thanksgiving Dinner guests. You know, the things no one ever notices or cares about, but you get fixated on them for some reason, and they must be done! I even washed some windows. No one notices you did what you did, and you wonder why you bothered.
I washed these:
The blinds are usually drawn on that window. If nothing else, Thanksgiving made me open the blinds. We had a lovely time with family, actually, and the food was yummy and there was too much of it. I picked fresh roses from the garden for every room.
'Old Port':
I put super fragrant roses in the powder room. We kept the powder room door shut so the puppies wouldn't sneak in there to eat the toilet paper. Thanksgiving night late I went upstairs to bed and forgot about roses, and when I came downstairs in the morning I opened the powder room door to put the toilet paper out of puppy-reach again, because someone would forget eventually to close the door, and shredded toilet paper would end up everywhere. When I opened the door, intense sweet rose fragrance had filled the tiny room. Thanks, puppies!
'French Lace':
If you have lost loved ones, holidays bring them back in odd, fleeting ways. A turkey once meant Hoover and Cuddles both jockeying for the spot directly in front of the oven until the turkey was done. Gone now, except for happy memories like that, and two little boxes of ashes.
I got up at 5:30 am Thanksgiving morning. Thanks, puppies!. Zombie-like at that time, I put on the TV and channel-surfed infomercials until "Anne of Green Gables" appeared on TCM. I've never seen this movie or read the book. It was a particular favorite of my Mom's--probably her very favorite, which gave me the notion to watch it to understand her better--and I could see why it was her favorite. Anne (with an "e"!) was an ever-cheerful, brave and delightful heroine--a personality my very quiet and shy Mom would have gravitated to.
Gradually I began to watch the movie for her, because she's no longer here to watch it herself. Most probably I laughed at the bits she would have laughed at, and smiled at the bits she would have smiled at, and shook my head, and sighed, and empathized, and so forth.
It was a sweet, charming little movie, and watching it with puppies sprawled at my feet was a sort of celebration of family too, all before the turkey even went into the oven. A celebration of a family of Thanksgivings long gone. The turkey and the clean windows and the flowers in the powder room were for the family of the present.
'Sweet Vivian':
Like shopping for a Ficus, channel-surfing at six on a holiday morning, or just by opening some closed blinds and looking out an unfamiliar window, holidays take us to unexpected places--places past, places present. Where did you go this year?
The day before Thanksgiving I shopped for a house plant to fill the empty pot in the living room that once held a palm tree. My neglect was well on way to killing the damn palm, but the puppies got in there one day and ripped it up for me. Shopping produced a replacement in the form of a trio of Ficus lyrata, the Fiddleleaf Fig.
Poor thing. It may look good now, but wait until I've had a chance to ruin it.
Good grief, the things we think we need to do for Thanksgiving Dinner guests. You know, the things no one ever notices or cares about, but you get fixated on them for some reason, and they must be done! I even washed some windows. No one notices you did what you did, and you wonder why you bothered.
I washed these:
The blinds are usually drawn on that window. If nothing else, Thanksgiving made me open the blinds. We had a lovely time with family, actually, and the food was yummy and there was too much of it. I picked fresh roses from the garden for every room.
'Old Port':
I put super fragrant roses in the powder room. We kept the powder room door shut so the puppies wouldn't sneak in there to eat the toilet paper. Thanksgiving night late I went upstairs to bed and forgot about roses, and when I came downstairs in the morning I opened the powder room door to put the toilet paper out of puppy-reach again, because someone would forget eventually to close the door, and shredded toilet paper would end up everywhere. When I opened the door, intense sweet rose fragrance had filled the tiny room. Thanks, puppies!
'French Lace':
If you have lost loved ones, holidays bring them back in odd, fleeting ways. A turkey once meant Hoover and Cuddles both jockeying for the spot directly in front of the oven until the turkey was done. Gone now, except for happy memories like that, and two little boxes of ashes.
I got up at 5:30 am Thanksgiving morning. Thanks, puppies!. Zombie-like at that time, I put on the TV and channel-surfed infomercials until "Anne of Green Gables" appeared on TCM. I've never seen this movie or read the book. It was a particular favorite of my Mom's--probably her very favorite, which gave me the notion to watch it to understand her better--and I could see why it was her favorite. Anne (with an "e"!) was an ever-cheerful, brave and delightful heroine--a personality my very quiet and shy Mom would have gravitated to.
Gradually I began to watch the movie for her, because she's no longer here to watch it herself. Most probably I laughed at the bits she would have laughed at, and smiled at the bits she would have smiled at, and shook my head, and sighed, and empathized, and so forth.
It was a sweet, charming little movie, and watching it with puppies sprawled at my feet was a sort of celebration of family too, all before the turkey even went into the oven. A celebration of a family of Thanksgivings long gone. The turkey and the clean windows and the flowers in the powder room were for the family of the present.
'Sweet Vivian':
Like shopping for a Ficus, channel-surfing at six on a holiday morning, or just by opening some closed blinds and looking out an unfamiliar window, holidays take us to unexpected places--places past, places present. Where did you go this year?
Such a lovely post! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteEnjoyed catching up on your blog tonight. Can the puppies already be a year old? Now I want to close the door of my bathroom on a vase of old roses. Old Port would do nicely.
ReplyDeleteYes puppies no more, doggies now. Thank goodness! I'm getting 8 hours of sleep most nights again. It was zombie-brain there for a long while.
DeleteWonderful post.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Red!
Delete