A merry little Christmas story

“What if I choose not to believe?”

It’s a line from one of my favorite movies of the holiday season, “The Santa Claus.”  

I’ve always believed in the power of mystery and magic and the older I get the more I understand that my attitude towards everything really is everything.

I have an old rotary dial telephone in my kitchen—not wired in—but yet a direct line to the North Pole.

No “elf on the shelf in my house.” I’m the elf.

I can call the big guy in the red suit at any given hour on any given day and have a heart to heart.

My grandchildren know about the phone too, and this time of year it’s an especially popular item in my neck of the woods. It’s mystery and magic.

My grandchildren also know that the North Pole never says a word in return. Instead, the other end of the line has the best listening skills of all. The North Pole is a “mouth closed, ears open, presence available,” kind of mystery and magic connection.

You’d be surprised how many times I’ve picked up that phone, too, and made my own wishes known to the mystery and magic. Granted I’ve asked for “grown up” things—patience (because sometimes mine lasts about as long as my pinkie finger in a clothespin,) world peace, a break on my taxes, and a rush job on getting answers for some of my “issues.”

Why, just the other day after fighting my way into the porch with the “real” big Christmas tree I’d purchased and laying waste to the rug with sawdust after a pathetic attempt to saw a slice off the trunk, did I call the North Pole.

I was good and hot under the collar. I told the North Pole all about it and that I was swearing off the one-woman Paul Bunyan exploration for a Christmas tree. Next year I was going to instruct my “honey-do” to  “pick whatever tree you like honey, it’s not my department.”

Don’t get me wrong; home queens like me have got it together. My mind is a multi-tasking bionic unit like nothing man will ever know. I’m one of a kind. And I also know what a good Christmas tree looks like. I just shouldn’t volunteer to put it up.    

After my rant to the North Pole, a calmer me went back to the tree, now cringing in the corner of the porch—and mathematically evaluated whether or not 15 strings of LED lights, 20 years of ornaments and children’s Christmas art work would be enough to cover the monstrosity I had just purchased. 

At closer attention, I realized the woman with the saw had hacked off the trunk just below the two good branches on the bottom, leaving no room for the tree stand. Awesome. The tree would be just the right height for a dog to pee on—but that’s another story.

Merry Christmas everyone. Don’t stop believing in the mystery and the magic.  

Goldfish looking good right about now

One minute I was having the best of dreams and the next my eyelids dragged themselves up off my eyeballs to reveal the night—black as the inside of a cow. I looked at the clock. It was 2:30 a.m.  The soft jingle of a Christmas bell rolling across the floor pulled my carcass to a sitting position.

I listened. The bell rolled along, bumping into static objects where it stopped jingling until a kitten paw knocked it back across the floor. I flat stared the darkness.

When nothing is stirring—not even a mouse—how does a cat manage to find things capable of making noise?

Nonetheless, I had a mercenary kitten with nighttime vision terrorizing the Christmas decorations on the inaugural evening of my holiday decor.

Yet there I sat slack jaw, a trail of dream drool leaking from my bottom lip. I just couldn’t pull the rest of my carcass out from under the warm flannel sheets to investigate the festive mayhem.

Instead, I took the plunge and fell back upon my memory foam pillow and bed like the girl in the 1970’ s “Nestea” ice tea commercial, and drowned again into my dream world.

In the few precious minutes before my 5 a.m. alarm, the mercenary of the night pounced upon me—a yet unmoving entity—to knead upon my skull. As my forehead got a facelift I pondered about the things I wanted to do today, like “not move.”

I pried my carcass from my cozy nest and dragged it to the kitchen for my routine morning glass of water and contact lens insert.

No sooner had I drank the vital liquid regenerate and reconnected my eyes to the world around me, did I soak up the scene spilling into my waking brain.

Meanwhile, the one in trouble purred and rubbed along my pajama bottoms in a show of pleasure at my morning awakening—seemingly happy to show me the Christmas catastrophe. 

I would have rather found three dead mice presented in a row on the kitchen floor with their heads missing than what I did find. 

Instead, copious beheaded buds of holly berries, ripped from the vines of décor I had placed most creatively on my bookcases and shelving, lay in twisted piles on the kitchen and living room floors.

Handfuls of Santa’s wee elves, uprooted from their holiday posts, were prone on their backs under the kitchen table, legs and arms askew in defense of cat mania.

And how did the kitten make it to the ceiling?  Sprigs of mistletoe from up there, dangled suspiciously, and Christmas lights from windows drooped in near spills of disaster.

The little cat sat down its haunches, fluffy black and white-chested with a big furry tail wrapped ‘round the front of its body like a photo from a Christmas card.

I just couldn’t help smiling at its cuteness amid my firm and pointed finger reprimand. “Next time I’m getting a goldfish.”

Then a mouse ran across the floor and up the Christmas tree.

“Oh no!”

My slant and rant

At the end of my fingertips, every day, there is a story. I see, I feel, I think, I write. 

I could take the next 500 words to expound on what I feel about the media’s obsession with terrorism.

I could take the next 510 words to paint a picture of what I think about the business of racial profiling that I see every single day in the news, when the media giants decide what is the most important story and suck the marrow out of it. 

I could add another 500 words to express my opinion and disgust for how we are drawn to the major news stations each day with a really good cup of coffee, and where we seek and find a stirred and foul pot so full of the bad and the ugly that it makes us bitter.

 Many of us come away with an empty cup, convinced there is absolutely no kindness anywhere, no smiles, no happiness, no friendship, no goodwill, no simple humanity, nor hope. 

I don’t have “cable.”  Call me naïve, it’s okay.  (I learned a long time ago that what others think about my choices is their “stuff” and not mine.)

I woke up one morning in mid-2012 excited that I was planning a trip to Wales, U.K. and the television news gurus were spouting at the mouth about how dangerous it was to fly.

All of the bad and scary news immediately robbed me of my excitement about my trip abroad and I was drawn deeper into the fray. From inside my heart leapt my joy--exchanged in an instant for fear, trepidation, and suspicion. Absolute joy sucked out—and replaced by the second-guessing of “living” for the “what if” of dying. That is when I turned the television off. 

Yet I’m not stupid. I know the world has a tremendous amount of chaos and angry disruption and unthinkable days that bring many of our innocent fellow earth dwellers to an end far short of their expectations. Despite the fact that I don’t have a intravenous line to cable television, I am not clueless. I am not heartless, and I am not ignorant of “what is.”

But, despite all of it, I will not respond in a conversation that begs the question “What is this world coming to?” That way of thinking is a direct result of too much media influences and be sure of this—the big guns—the mainstream media—capitalize on shock value and they are winning. 

And if you are going to spew out negative comments about the Syrian refugees and immigrants who will be given a chance at a new life in this great country within the next few weeks—I, for one, will not fuel that conversation either.

Unless you grew from an amoeba at the river’s edge—we are all the lucky stock of immigrants who long ago came from lands of unrest and poverty to find a better life.

Welcome home.

To paraphrase the best sayings of the moment;

Shut off the television. Dance, sing, and talk to strangers. Smile at everyone. Say “thank you” to someone who doesn’t expect it. Love, and make it count. Take chances. Spend a lot time with kids, laugh every chance you get.

Help someone in need.  Help others, again and again and for Heaven’s sake, be positive.