A few holiday tales and tidings

I’m sorry I didn’t get around to posting a Thanksgiving run-down yesterday. I spent nearly the whole day stringing Christmas lights at a huge house belonging to an old rich man. We put up a number of fake Christmas trees, which were mostly the sort that are made to look like real trees, with fake needles that fall off and all that. One tree even had one fake pinecone on top of every fake branch, where pinecones do not grow in real life. I wondered if the people in charge of designing this tree had ever seen the real thing, a reallifetree grown in dirt and decomposition, home to bugs and birds and smells . . . birthing pinecones not as decorations, but as seeds to be crushed beneath the soil, take root and slowly spread simultaneously underground and toward the sun.
I decided that if I ever become a rich old man, I will buy giant aluminum trees, like those from the Charlie Brown Christmas movie, in reflective shades of silver, pink and blue. I will flaunt my shimmering artificiality without shame. I want it to be obvious to everyone that I taken traditions that meant something with mere symbols, creating a Christmas out of tinsel and abstract iconography. My nativity scene will be twenty feet tall and gleam with neon. Every song on the stereo will be digital re-mastered and feature flawless 30-part harmonies, so beautiful that the actual words will not need to mean anything any more. And I will burn money in my fireplace. It is, after all, the most luxurious way to heat a home.
Tra la. I didn’t know I had that in me. Regardless, I do rather like hanging Christmas lights. The very idea of hundreds of tiny lights all strung together makes me happy for some reason.
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So Thanksgiving. The Nanneys, a very nice family from church, were the first people to invite me for dinner, so I ended up going to their brand-new house Thursday afternoon. They had moved in only a little over a week ago, which I know because I was one of a group of people from church helping them move in. It was hard work, but because there were a lot of us, it went a lot faster. And it was pretty cool to have Thanksgiving in a new home that was piled high with boxes the last time I was there.
The Nanneys used to live in Puallup, Washington, and their oldest daughter Amy, who is a few years older than me, can sing nearly half a dozen songs about Puallup – their city song, their county fair song, their high school fight song, etc, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so unashamed to have been raised in a small town in the Northwest. It was cool to hang out with them, because they actually know the area where I grew up, too. Amy went to Willamette University like my sister, and her mom worked for REI.
Shay and Melissa, a couple from church were there, too, and it was good to see them. It’s strange to have friends who are “grown-ups.” I may have been the youngest person there (I don’t know how old the youngest sister is) but I didn’t really feel out of place. A year ago I probably would have.
Amy also had an old friend visiting for the holiday, and Mr. Nanney’s (Bob) mom and sister were there as well. The sister was . . . what’s the proper word? . . . developmentally disabled? She sat on the floor most of the time flipping through magazines, scribbling on a legal pad and listening to the radio. She must have been over 40. She took a liking to me because I made a point to listen to her, even though I couldn’t always understand her slightly slurred speech (I am bad with that sort of thing). Mostly she wanted to point out the things she found in the magazines ads that appealed to her (“Do you know what that is? That’s ice cream. Do you know what? I like ice cream, don’t you?”). She was sweet, although sometimes distracting when I just wanted to have an “adult” conversation. I guess I need more patience?
The grandmother was a huge golfer, so she and Shay (who is a golf pro) got along swimmingly (golfingly?). When I got a chance to talk to her I wound up asking how she met her husband, which was one of the most incredible stories I have heard in a while. Apparently she is English (she only had the smallest hint of an accent) and grew up during World War Two. When she was around eight the Germans began bombing her village and her father dug a bomb shelter in their garden, where he found a ring that he gave to her. She still wears it today. Crazy! But that is a side story.
The main story is that her husband-to-be was in the United States Merchant Marines and his ship was visiting England for a week or so. They met at a dance that the husband didn’t even want to go to (he wanted to go to a pub, but lost a coin toss to his buddy who wanted to go to the dance). She was eighteen. They saw each other a few times, he met her family, etc (I am shortening the story) and before his ship sailed out again he asked her to marry him. She said she would if he came back.
A few months later, he returned (via Scottland) and they got married. It was a “white wedding,” she said, scrapped together in just five days thanks to friends and family pitching in rations tickets. She wore her sister’s wedding dress left-over from when the sister had been jilted (at the alter?).
Then she flew to New York where he met her a few days later. He had promised to show up in a green Plymouth, but due to complications, he drove in on a motorcycle. The first thing they had to do was buy her pants, as not only did she not have any pants in her suitcase, she had actually never worn them before in her life. They bought two pairs (and two flannel shirts) from Macy’s, then started off on a cross-country motorcycle honeymoon, ending up in Washington state over two months later.
Is that not the craziest story ever?? There is at least a book and a movie in that.
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Hopefully I will be learning more crazy stories from my elders, as I am starting a project to volunteer making “life story” videos for hospice patients. I have to get a TB test first, though. I made one of these videos years ago for my Great Great Great Great Aunt Rosana. The last time I talked to Aunt Rosana we were talking about Thanksgiving. She usually goes down to my grandparent’s house in Medford for Thanksgiving and for Christmas, and has been doing so for years and years, since before I was born, since most (if not all) of her siblings were still alive. This year my grandparents will be in California for Christmas, so she was only going go down to Medford for Thanksgiving (she will spend Christmas with my family in D-town), which she was sad about. She is over 95 years old. Tradition is nearly all she has left.
Anyway, she was still excited to go down and see everyone on Thursday morning when my parents were going to pick her up to drive down there. She told my mom she figured it was probably the last time she would be able to make that drive. But as she was getting out of bed that morning she slipped and broke her hip. Of course, she was rather furious and frustrated with herself.
The last I heard, she was in the hospital and my dad was watching over her. She probably won’t get to go back to her beloved house in Salem and it’s doubtful she’ll make it back down to Medford again.
I stalled on my National Online Novel Writing novel early in the month, but now I am vowing to finish it by Christmas (which gives me another month and not much of a head start). It may not be any good, but Aunt Rosana has always loved books, even though she now listens to them on cassette since she can no longer see to read them, and I will do my best to dedicate my first “book” to her.