TheBanyanTree: Dismantling Christmas

[Margaret R. Kramer]

When all the tinsel has been laid away,
The tree is stripped, the fevered rush is past –
You still have trees, a hill, a child at play,
And love, and prayer, and fadeless things that last.
Anna Blake Mezquida

We had a fine Christmas tree this year.  Even though the tree guy cut our
tree’s trunk at an angle and we had to jostle it around in the stand to get
it to stand straight, it was a deep enough cut that the tree kept slurping
up water.

So this big 7 foot fraser fir is still very green and I continue to catch a
whiff of pine whenever I go by it.

But it’s coming down today.  We’ll take off the strings of beads, the
ornaments, and the lights.  We’ll drag the tree out of the house where it
will lay on the curb, a lifeless carcass, until the garbage guys come and
take it away to be ground into pine mulch.

The last of the tempting candy and cookies are gone.  Even the crumbs have
been swept up.

Empty cartons of eggnog are in the trash.

I burned all my Christmas candles last night – the green, the red, and the
white candles are stumps this morning.

In the pre-dawn light, my house is glowing from the Christmas lights, lit
for the last time before they’re taken down, rolled into coils, and put
away.  I need to remember to buy more multi-colored lights for next year.

By this afternoon, our house will be stripped of Christmas.  It will look
bare and lonely for a few days until we get used to seeing it without its
festive decorations.

2004 is a blank slate.  I have no resolutions.  I’m not sure what I want to
accomplish or where I want to go.  I have lots of loose ends flapping around
in the wind of my life, perhaps 2004 will be a good year to look at those
and try to tie them up.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the
other.
~Author Unknown