Ten days...

I have never been a very patient person when it comes to waiting. I get tense and stressed and short tempered and, well, to be honest, bitchy. I have ten days to wait until Alex gets here. Then, I am off work, with pay, until January 5th. I've started the countdown, believe me. I find myself checking the National Weather Service at least four times per day. The weather here is unpredictable and we've gotten more snow than usual for this time of year. I love snow but it also means O'Hare shuts down or flights are delayed and the thought of that just adds to my overall tense bitchiness. Ah hell, I'm excited!

I spent part of today at my mom's house helping her put up her tree. When I was a kid we always got a real tree. It was a highlight of the season, going out in the cold, arguing about how tall of a tree we should get, tying it to the top of the car, losing it a couple of times, and then putting it up. My dad always managed to get it to lean one way or the other and would end up tying to a nail in the wall just to make sure it would stay upright through the holidays. A couple of years ago, my sister, who thinks she is Martha Stewart, convinced my mom that a fake tree was the way to go. Which is weird, since this particular sister always has a real tree. My mom agreed and another sister just gave her an old fake tree that she had. Now this tree is the artificial equivalent of that poor scrawny tree that Charlie Brown chooses. I got it out of storage today and unwrapped it. My Martha Stewart sister had trussed it up with so much twine it a bit of a mental challenge just to get the damn thing unwrapped. But we got it up even though it is leaning to the right. I kind of like that it is. It reminds me of my dad. The lights were already on it, thank god, so that was one argument we could avoid. My mom has gotten shorter over the years so I had to put the angel on the top. I've always felt sorry for the angel topper that my mom has. It's pretty enough and has lights that twinkle but to get her stay on the tree I literally have to shove the top branch up her hiney. No wonder her lights twinkle! Ha ha!

We left it at that because my mom likes to decorate it herself. She'll do some every day this week until it's finished. She'll also put out her old creche. One of my other sister's made it a long time ago in a ceramics class she once took. The manger is enormous and each king, shepherd and camel weighs a ton. It takes up a lot of space and over the years some of the paint has rubbed off the Baby Jesus and I think one of Mary's arms is glued back on. But you know what? Those are the exact reasons that I know that after my mom passes away we will all be fighting over that thing. It's the visual embodiment of a memory. Just like all those goofy hand painted ornaments we all made when we were kids, the bread dough choir I made with the funny pinched faces and paper mache dog bone ornament with the name of our long dead family dog on it. I think I know why my mom likes to decorate her lopsided tree all by herself. My mom is 90 years old now and, I think, each one of those crazy homemade beauties reminds her of all those years when we were all there together. I know the sight of her tree makes me feel that way. I think it makes us all feel that way because the first thing we will all do when we gather at her house on Christmas Eve is take some time to look at the ornaments, remember the stories and laugh.