Our Little Tree

We walked into the forest on a December day without snow, two years ago now and found just what we wanted, only a few feet from each other; our perfect Christmas trees.  Better even, for having been found in the woods on a cold winter's day.  The trek back with those trees, having pushed farther up the mountain than planned, was not easy.  Just as we reached the truck, tired and cold, the snow started to fall and we smiled in the delight of our day.

Back at home we put the tree in its stand and Tom carefully wrapped lights around and around.  They were little white ones to which were added many red bows.  Then the tree was finished with ornaments and placed in front of the window where it stood quite proudly.  During the next days it drank and drank and I thought that was a sign, of a tree that would stay quite lovely.  Family was coming for Christmas and I wanted everything to be just right.  And it was, until the tree lost a needle and then more.  I called my dad wondering what I should do and he shook his head (I didn't actually see it, but I knew) and said don't overreact that all trees lose needles.  No, no I replied, this one is losing a lot.  No sympathy there, so I told Tom and my mom and I think my sisters too and no help I found.

Then the day before Christmas Eve, I brushed against it perhaps, a little too hard and all of a sudden I heard quite a rustle and not one, not two, but all of the needles released from the tree.  Only minutes later my parents arrived and saw a quite bare tree with a skirt of green needles below.  Except for feeling quite vindicated about my lack of exaggeration, there was not much to do but laugh at the sight and shrug at the thought of starting over again.

My mom, knowing just what was needed, began to take off all the white lights wound so tightly around and then the bows and ornaments too.  Meanwhile, my dad and I went into town, for we wanted a Christmas tree, but all that were left, were the saddest and woeful of all.  Perseverance, however, is a trait of my dad and we trekked and we trudged through the streets (okay, we drove in his new shiny Subaru).  Finally we found a tree that we agreed would not only do, but was just right.  So home came tree number two.  It was put in the stand, with lights wrapped around and bows and ornaments too.  And it stood quite proudly, as the other one had.

All of that is to say that some of the joys of Christmas that year came not from my preconceived notions of how things should go, but embracing what is and through that finding laughter and cheer.

So Very

I am
so very
thankful.

Apologies Friends

Apologies friends but I really have
Been feeling quite under the weather
I shake and I quake and you should have
Seen when an actual quake shook
How I shivered.
We are still wondering what's happening to me.

And as my body has decided to do less of what it is told
It has taken some of the things away from me
And I began over these weeks to miss all that I like
Wandering in the garden
Driving into town
Coffee with friends
Walking the dogs
Reading a book
Baking a cake
Hanging out with my Tom
And so many things that I treasure each day.

But the funny thing is in the box way I'm living
I'm finding more of the things I that I love
My Tom who is tender
My family who cares
The touch of a friend
The outreach of neighbors
The thoughts of others
Time spent in prayer
And the comfort that love, friendship and God
All bring.
And I'm not missing much the things that I like
But loving more what has come with the box.

Now I'd like to get back to the things that I like
But also be better at finding the box's
That others find themselves in too.

And I hope that this
Is all okay to say
Because I am feeling rather
tired and teary this morning.

Frogs

I used to like to catch them up at Ponderosa Lodge.
Tree frogs we called them; they hung out by the pool.
I would poke holes through lids from leftover
cottage cheese or liver containers and set them in
with a bit of nature to make them feel at home.

Happy with my finds I would go to sleep at night,
but soon the little amphibians, hardly one inch long,
would start their evening croaks.  So loud,
they were, that my parents would be wakened and,
by morning, they had always been freed.
Just as well, I think since the joy was in the catching.

I had not seen one in so long, and wondered,
like the small snakes I used to pick up and let
wind around my fingers, if I could no longer see them
having grown now, long ago out of childhood
or, if perhaps, they were no longer there.

So it warms my heart to have them both here.
For I will freely admit there is something about them
that I quite like, a softness because they remind me
of youth and of nature.  So, the frogs, at least,
I gently cup in my hand from the sides of our hot tub
and send them on their way.  Fearing only of a gentle smush should I accidentally sit upon one.