Roses in December Redux

Last week one day, I was reading one of my usual blogs Sprite Writes, and she mentioned being a part of this year's Virtual Advent Tour.  I was intrigued, and followed her link (as I hope you will follow mine), and decided it just sounded like so much fun, I wanted to join!  I was given today's date, and have been thinking about what I wanted to write when it was my turn.

Here is what the basic idea is, according to the website:

"Each day anyone who wants to participate takes turns sharing a treat with our friends here in blogland. For example it could be something about your family traditions, recipes, your country's holiday traditions, or a favourite Christmas memory, movie, book, song...anything you like. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas we would like to hear about what your family does during the holiday season, whether it be celebrating Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever it is that you do during this time."

I had several ideas, and when it came down to choosing something, I decided to re-post this piece from 2009.  It is one of my favorite Christmas memories, and one of  my very favorite Christmastime posts.   The thing I just noticed is that it is dated exactly four years ago today - which makes me think it is definitely the right choice!

For those of you who will remember reading it, you may just want to wait a few days for a newer post, but if you haven't seen it before, I hope you will enjoy it.

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10 December 2009

Roses in December

God gave us memories that we might have roses in December. 

~J.M. Barrie, Courage, 1922

  

It happens to me every year in December, but it's not something I can predict, or make happen when I want to.  It just happens when it's ready to happen, and to be honest, it's a bittersweet experience. 

  

You may have noticed that I am quite the fan of holidays, and Christmastime in particular.  I get this honestly, in particular from my father.  He grew up during the Great Depression, in a family who lost their father as youngsters (my father, the oldest, was only 13), and where the kids (4 of them) were split up among relatives afterwards.  In spite of hardship - or perhaps because of hardship - holidays were extremely important to him.  

  

Of course, this was just fine with my sisters and I.  My father loved to cook and bake, but was not home a lot due to his work, so the "big" holidays - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter - meant he would not just be around, but be the one cooking.  In spite of the fact that this entailed him using every single pot and pan, and every single dish for his preparations (which we then had to wash  and dry later), this was something we looked forward to and counted on.  Though my mother loved to eat, she was not too crazy about cooking.  And needless to say, we never starved, but we couldn't wait for Dad to be home and be the cook! 

  

I will admit to being a Daddy's girl.  I was the youngest (by quite a few years), and so was nearly always home when my Dad was still around.  Thinking back, I realize that I probably drove him nuts hanging around with comments, questions, etc., but to his credit, he never treated me like he wished I was out of the way, even for a while (or, if he did, it was never obvious to me).  I loved to "help" him cook, watch baseball and/or football, clean - whatever he was up to, I liked to be right there. 

  

My father died of liver cancer when I was 13 years old, at a time when a diagnosis of liver cancer literally meant no hope of any amount of survival time.  This past November 24 was the 40th anniversary of his death, which occurred on the Monday of Thanksgiving week that year.  I could write volumes about this, but this post is not meant to make you (or me) sad, but rather to share something with you that happens every year at Christmastime. 

  

As I said earlier, I cannot wish this experience, or predict it.  But it happens, and even though I more or less expect it, I am always thrown by it.  

  

I can be reading, doing dishes, decorating the Christmas tree, or at work, and all of a sudden it happens.  I am walking in the door from school in the second grade, and my father, who is home recuperating from one of his many cancer surgeries, is there - in the middle of the afternoon.  He is putting up Christmas decorations, more specifically, hanging our Christmas stockings for Santa to fill.  The most amazing thing?  They are new stockings that he went out and bought that day.  And mine is green with Santa coming down the chimney!  Do you realize what that means??  GREEN.  Not red, like my sisters' and everyone elses' stockings.  And not just with Santa onit, but Santa coming down the chimney!  As far as I know, nobody else in the world has such a stocking, but my father found one, and knew it was the right one for me!  I remember the feeling of special-ness, of knowing that Santa cared about who I was that that particular stocking represented.  

  

Of course, now I realize that my father probably bought a green stocking with Santa on it because he wanted us to each have a different stocking and the remaining red ones were the ones he had already chosen for my sisters.  But at that moment in time, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  And every year, out of the blue, I am unexpectedly transported to that very moment, surprised, pleased, and thinking my dad is the best because he knew I needed that stocking. 

  

When the moment is gone, I'll admit to being sad, at least for a minute or two.  But it's always the point when I know that Christmas has officially arrived, and that my dad is never that far away. 

  

Roses in December, indeed.

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Snow!

For the past few days, the meteorologists on the TV and the radio have said that a storm was coming.  But each and every one of them said that in Philadelphia, we might get a few flurries or a coating, but it would be mostly the never-popular "wintry mix" and would turn to rain overnight.  

So far, it's more than 4 inches.  

Usually, they spend days warning us that we could get A MILLION INCHES OF SNOW (yes, I'm exaggerating ...), and then it barely rains.  They seemed to have missed out on something for today's forecast - even this morning when I left to go to Rosie's for my shift, they were saying it would just be wet, and it was already snowing pretty hard then.

Of course, I hope no one is injured or worse as a result of the snow, and I'm not looking forward to skating to work tomorrow in what will likely be icy conditions, since it is supposed to turn to sleet and freezing rain overnight (and I.do.not.like.ice!) ...

But you know what?  It's December, it's snowing, and there are 17 days until Christmas.

I may be the only one who feels this way, but I like it.  :-)

Christmas, A Little Bit At A Time

One of my favorite things about Christmastime at our house is that it doesn't happen all at once.  Most of our decorations are packed away and in the basement, but some are more easily at hand.  It would probably not surprise you to know that they show up first around the house - the Christmas linens, the smallish items that can be packed and cushioned by being in that box as well.  We actually kind of "build" to Christmas!

A lot of our decorations are ones we have had since we have been married, with various themes - our pets, our trips, family.  And of course there are newer ones as well that we have chosen or that have been gifted to us by others.

But even before those first things mentioned above show up, this decoration is taped onto the inside of our door.

Yep, a cardboard Christmas wreath.  It's one of the first decorations we ever bought together, at our first Christmas after we were married.  It hung on the outside of our apartment door (which was inside, protected from weather) when we lived in married student housing at the University of Notre Dame, where The Tim was in graduate school, and I worked in the library.  We had neither a lot of money nor a lot of room for decorations, but were determined to make our place look Christmas-y.  Until a couple of years ago, you could see the price marked in pencil on the back (69 cents!)  Most of the year it lives in a plastic bag in the basement, with the other non-Christmas things.  When I take the few things we have for Thanksgiving to put them away, it's right there, so it's easy enough to just bring it upstairs and add it to the door - voila, Christmastime has begun!

It's showing some signs of wear (I mean, it *is* a 35-year-old paper cardboard decoration), but as long as it still looks like what it is, and doesn't smell weird, get moldy, etc., I'll hang it up.  I like hanging it on this door, with the peephole to the outside in the middle.  (Note to the NSA - festive spying is more fun!)

Is it cheap-looking?  Yes.  Cheesy.  Yes.  But it's also colorful, cheerful, in one piece, and full of Christmas memories.   And in our house, it means the festivities have begun!

Not a bad deal for 69 cents, if you ask me.

Anticipation and Celebration

December is all about anticipation for me.  Christmastime is my favorite time of the year, and I think part of it is that it's nearly an entire month of happy anticipation, followed by celebration.

A lot of people don't enjoy December, Christmastime, or anything about it. Which is up to them, though it really annoys me when they have to tell you every single time you see them or talk to them.  We all know someone who falls into this category, and we all have to listen to them, regardless of our feelings about things.

It occurred to me today that for a lot of aspects of my life, I have decided for myself the way things are, and I work hard to follow my patterns and beliefs that I have devised.  I am also good at compartmentalizing things.  For instance, when Christmas decorations go up at stores immediately after Halloween, I have no trouble ignoring them altogether.  Because Thanksgiving comes first, and should never be eclipsed by Christmas, as far as my beliefs go, so those way-too-early decorations are compartmentalized in a place where they are completely ignored.  I can then easily enjoy Halloween, anticipate and enjoy Thanksgiving, and only then give any serious attention to Christmastime.

It's all part of my own "rules" and it works for me.  I guess I enjoy holidays so much, that I don't want any of them to be cheated out of their special-ness.

This year, I'm not going to go out of my way to be rude, but I'm going to ignore the  holiday grouches.  They can be miserable, angry, frustrated, or morally superior to their hearts' content, and I am not going to stick around for it.  Life is too short to allow others with no Christmas spirit to decide the atmosphere for everyone.

Christmastime only comes around once a year.  And every bit of it is worth my time.

FO and a New [To Me] Stitch

I think I mentioned in a previous post that my knitting output this year was underwhelming.  Not that I haven't thought about a lot, I just didn't knit as many things as usual.

However, a week and one day before his birthday, The Tim said casually, "I hope you are thinking of knitting me a hat for my birthday, I could use another knit hat." Let's ignore the fact that he waited to mention this until his birthday was nearly here, and know that I was kind of excited to hear that, since I'd just seen a newly-released hat pattern I'd wanted to try.  I wasn't really convinced that I'd have it ready for his birthday, but I could at least get started.

Another thing in my favor was that I had stash yarn I could use, so I was able to cast on right away.  I got started, and was going along merrily, until my osteoarthritis flared up.  Sigh.  So I had to put things down for about three days.  Meaning that it was even less likely to be ready for the intended day.  But at this point, I wasn't going to worry about it, because it could always become a Christmas gift.

The most surprising thing is, on the weekend before the actual birthday date, I ended up getting quite a lot of it knitted - so much so that I was able to finish it the morning of the day in question!

Ta Da!

Project:  Welsh Gathers

Pattern:  Gather, by Alexa Ludeman, at Tin Can Knits

Needles:  Size US4, US6

Yarn:  Garthenor Organic Pure Wool Organic Shetland DK (received in a swap)

Modifications:  None

Comments:  This was fun to knit, as I had never done smocking stitch before, and enjoyed learning something new.  I like the look of it, and this yarn really showed it off well.  The yarn itself was really nice to work with, and made a lightweight but cozy hat.  

I called this "Welsh Gathers" since the yarn was Welsh and the pattern is called "Gather."  I made the Large size, but if I made this again, I would consider making it shorter than the pattern indicates, as it turned out to be a very long hat.  The Tim was thrilled, and just turned up the brim/ribbing, so he was happy with some extra warmth on his ears.  The pattern is very well written, and though the smocking doesn't go all the way around (as I thought it did),* the end result is really attactive.

So for something that had a questionable and shaky start, it all turned out in the end.  I don't know which one of us was more surprised!

*I'm sure I could have figured out how to get it to work so that the smocking was all around, but had neither the time or the strong desire to do so ...