Hazy Shades of Me

Hung with care, I’m not so sure, but hung…absolutely!

The tree is up and lit, mind you, decorations adorn various nooks and crannies and from the outside the house emits a mysterious glow.   Mysterious, that is, because half our lights are burned out.  This realization came, of course, after hanging them.  Who checks beforehand?  “Probably everyone,” I tell my husband.

When the season was first upon us, I, in denial, stood before shelf after engorged shelf, each one literally bursting with boxes of dazzling illumination.  Seriously, if you had cash, credit or those nifty Canadian Tire dollars, the cream of the crop was yours for the picking.  They even light them now in tiny, little display portals so you can see what it is you’re buying.  This would’ve been handy years ago, when LED’s first appeared on the scene and we bought string after string of mismatched blues.

Fast track to today.  The shelves are bare, scattered with only what has been rejected and need I say…or, are you feeling my foreshadowing?  I’ll toy with you a little more…

They have big, acorn-sized white, they have primary shades (not the beautiful, crown jewel type gems) and they have, yes, the old school clear glass, non-LED (a.k.a. non-enviro friendly) type bulbs.

But, do they have the two strings of plain blue that I need to replace my, somehow, LED rule-defying burned out strings?  No.  They don’t have two.  They have one.

In the big ‘Christmas is too commercialized, this is not what it’s about’ scheme of things, it really isn’t a big deal. #firstworldproblems However, it is still frustrating and the fact doesn’t change that the lights, are indeed up, and our house be lookin’ cray cray.

Nonetheless, Christmas is well on its way in our good old homestead.  I was starting to think this was finally the year I’d actually have to say; I dunno what happened.  I guess we just missed it.

But missing it, we’re not.  There are all kinds of parties to get to, lunches to be had, shopping trips planned and family time organized and I know it will all be over and gone in the blink of an eye.

I do this every year.  I pull as Christmas pushes and anxiety builds with every popped Advent window.  It’s because I forget.  I forget that as it gets closer I start to stop.  I stop shying, shuddering and shirking and I start embracing, engaging and entangling whatever the season brings.

And it’s good.  Good to forget that I remember, good to remember that I forget, because I still want the magic and, it’s alway there….way at the back of the shelf.  I only have to turn on the lights to find it.

Our Tree!

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