🎄 2020 December FROM MY PERSPECTIVE 🎄
DECEMBER, the twelfth
month of the year, but it’s really the tenth if you understand the beginning of
it. DEC means ten, just as NOVE means
nine, OCTO means eight, and SEPT means seven.
Two rulers decided they needed to be remembered. So, they took days from other months and made
July and August (Julius Caesar and Agustus Caesar). What would your month be called?
A friend of mine tells
me of what her husband did one Friday night.
He arrived home later than usual after an evening with his buddies. He’d evidently had a bit too much to
drink. My friend met him at the door
with a broom in hand. He slurred, “Hi
there, sweet pea. Are you sweeping the
floor or flying somewhere?” She told me
he stayed home in bed for two days.
My friend, JoEllen,
told of this happening to her. “Well,
this was a crossroad: the young man in
front of me at the gas station was purchasing a bottle of vodka and a pack of
condoms. He was carded. 1998. I chuckled
for a second. “Oh to be 22..”. But then,
the mom (of three girls) in me was like, ‘what the hell are you planning, punk?’”
Aint Daisy was in her
kitchen fixing delicious rolls and pies.
She invited me in to “set a spell” and chat. She saw I was a bit perturbed and asked what
was bothering me. “Oh, I just had an
encounter of words with someone I thought was really kind and caring. It surprised me what she said, and it hurt,
too.” “Well, do you know all there is to
know about her past?” questioned the wise one.
“She was a lonely child, ignored by her parents, picked on and smacked
around by her siblings, and didn’t have many friends. Then she met her former husband. He seemed just right for a while, then he
started hurting her, too, with words and hitting. So, the words which came out of her mouth,
which she may not have been able to stop, are the history of her hurts. Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight, chile;
and ‘sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ is
not true. Words, kind and mean ones said
to you, are with you forever.” I learned
one more thing that day.
It seems that now
days, the cars have such bright headlights that the driver is trying to see
into the future or read the thoughts in my brain. Talk about Manfred Mann’s “Blinded By the
Light” song hitting home, driving at night anymore is it.
At 75 there isn’t much
I want or need in the way of Christmas gifts.
I really have all material things I need and plenty of what I want. So, when my sweet children ask me what they
can give me for a gift for Christmas, I tell them, “M’love, you can’t give me
what I truly want because they are in Heaven.
What you can give is: continued
success in all your endeavors, continued love for those who love you, continued
acceptance at me slowing down, continue to make me proud you are my child,
continued kindness to those who might irritate you, and continued laughter at
life’s dilemmas and tweaks. And, for
what I can hold in my hand……well, MOUNDS is my favorite candy.”
I was making stained
glass cookies using very thinly sliced gumdrops for the “glass”. Brenduhh came over and saw them on the paper
cooling. She asked what they were. I told her, “Stained glass cookies.” She became concerned and asked, “That’s
really dangerous, Trudy. Aren’t you
afraid people will cut their mouth on the stained glass?” You know how you roll your eyes sometimes and
hope they don’t get stuck? Well, hello
eye rolling.”
Four birds were sitting on wire. One says, “CHEEP.” The one next to it says, “OH great. Now that’s stuck in my head all day!” I can relate. Child said, “Mom, see? A baby shark.” Gods all day long!
There was a lamp found
at a thrift store with the clean, glass base filled with popcorn. I could imagine the newspaper headlines
saying, “SMALL ELECTRICAL LAMP CATCHES FIRE.
Fire department requests butter.”
A little town, Downs,
IL, was having troubles with the parcel post organization cooperating with
deliveries there. You might say, “It had
UPS in Downs from time to time.”
Everyone has a secret
or 2 about themselves. I eat peas with a
spoon; slucking long spaghetti is fun; I think spiders are interesting to
watch---outside; I shower naked; I’m very quiet at home; I loved teaching others
and still do.
I asked someone how
much more time the job they were doing would take. They replied, “It’s almost finished.” That didn’t give me a time amount because
“ALMOST” is difficult to measure. “A
BIT” is another ambiguous, immeasurable amount to me. I can measure “a skosh”, “a pinch”, or “a
smidgen”, but not “ALMOST”.
Aint Daisy’s living
room was all a glitter with garlands on the mantel and a beautifully decorated
tree filled with twinkling lights (my favorite). “Oh Aint Daisy, what a lovely tree you have,”
I exclaimed. She smiled and told me to
sit a spell, and she’d tell me a story of the tree. “You see the shape of that tree, chile? Well, those are God’s trees more than any
other. It has 3 points on it
representing The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. These trees are decorated at this time of the
year to honor the Holy Trinity and a pretty gift for the new born savior. I put twinkling lights on mine so others’
attention will be drawn to it.” Once
again, wise words from a beautiful soul.
Oxymorons are one of
my favorite rhetorical figure of speech in the English language. The word means, “Contradiction in
terms”. I’ve found some more: found missing; open secret; small crowd;
fully empty; pretty ugly; original copy; only choice. The best at this time is----SOCIAL
DISTANCING.
When my two
grandchildren, whom we had adopted, were very young, we had gone to my son’s
home for Christmas family celebration and dinner. The daylight was short as it always is in
December around here. We thought it
would be best to leave their home around 5 to return home. Here is the account of the highlight of the
drive home. Amara, our greyhound, was very glad to see
us. She ran circles around us and in the
yard only stopping for a bit to relieve herself. We were all in bed by 8:30. It had been a tense drive home due to the
fog. Just after the Marshall County game
reserve, 3 deer were in the road licking at the salt residue. I slowed down, blew my horn a lot, and off
they went. The truck behind me flashed
his lights. I don’t know if it was for
“thank you” or something else, but since I was the leader, I got to choose what
to do. I uttered, “Good Lord!” Guy responded with “Yes?” I let him know I really wasn’t talking to
him, but was glad he was alert to help me with the “deer drive”. The dash board has his hand print on it for
some reason. Stephen & Tara, in the
back seats, asked why I blew my horn. I
told them about the deer. They, of
course, wanted me to turn around and go back so they could see them. I told them I’d get out the “D” encyclopedia
and they could look at the pictures.
Did you know it’s o.k.
to be o.k. in Okay, OK? Yep, there
really is a town named “Okay” in Oklahoma.
It’s a town of 620 people located along the east bank of the Verdigris
River in Wagoner County, Oklahoma. It’s
only 529 acres big. Vatican City is 100
acres big; Monaco is 499 acres big.
May your Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanza be blessed with love and laughter. Trudy
