A serene view of the loony bin, don’t you think?

Kathleen will be away every weekend this month. To be sure, I’ll be away with her for two of them, around Thanksgiving. But that’s even worse: that means that I’ll have to travel, too. So I begin the month with the solemn wish that I could give it a pass, and wake up in December. (Although Kathleen will be away the first weekend in December, too.)

Did I just say December? Christmas? During the summer, I thought that I just might be ready for Christmas when it came round, but, now that November is here, I’m not so sure. I haven’t done anything about Christmas cards – that’s always Step One. And Kathleen and I haven’t decided whether to re-launch the Christmas Day at-home that we hosted earlier in the decade. And will we have a tree?

It’s a familiar split. Half of me believes that, if I take a deep breath and think as clearly as I can, I’ll be able to devise a satisfying but not arduous plan for Christmas. And half of me wants to run away.

(I’m struck by how willing I am to settle for “satisfying” these days. “Satisfying” is good. For one thing, it is often about as good as things get. It makes a far more realistic objective than “wonderful” or “unbelievable.” Beyond that, though, it’s about all I can take. Anything that’s better than “satisfying” is really too much!)

And, mind you – we don’t do Christmas presents anymore! It’s not as though we had that to worry about!

Having broken my neck in September, of course, I have a perfect excuse not to do anything at Christmas. Seeing that my life has not so much returned to normal as re-launched in New and Improved form, it’s a totally bogus excuse, but it still sounds good, and nobody would dare argue with it.*  Kathleen least of all. If you think that I’m skittish about Christmas – !

And, if we have a tree, can we put up the nice ornaments? When Kathleen’s father retired, and her parents downsized, Kathleen came into a small treasure of beautiful old glass ornaments. They might be worth a great deal, but probably not to us. (It’s the difference between “used,” as they are in our hands, and “antique,” in a dealer’s.) If Kathleen has no intention of peddling them at eBay, though, she’s also disinclined to hang them on spindly spruce branches from which they might be knocked by clumsy visitors, or tumbled by a faulty tree stand.

When did we last have a tree? The old Daily Blague doesn’t cast much light on the matter. It has seen three Christmases come and go without leaving a record. Certainly there have been no snapshots. I wonder if Kathleen will remember… and if she’ll let me use at least a few of the good ornaments this year.

If, that is, we have a tree.

* People would be far more likely to think that I’m deluded about the “New and Improved” part.

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