End of the Year Christmas Re-Cap

As long as I am working, I can keep up with the holidays, make the gift lists, check it twice, make the dinner list and the Christmas Eve appetizer list, buy the wine and beer, send out the greeting cards, make the cookies. I wonder as I go along, why do I do all this stuff? I answer questions at work about what are you going to do for the holidays. I am not a religious person, so I don't go to church. I celebrate Christmas more as the festival of lights, the end of the year, the winter solistice, a time to re-examine your bounty or lack thereof.


Then I have my first day off! I am usually alone because everyone else is working, and the melancholy sets. I remember the Christmases of my childhood, not pleasant memories, but not unpleasant ones either. I think about my mother who is not gone, and lately, I think about how some day I shall not be here either. It is kind of depressing, but I am unfortunately a thinker, a planner, a projector in the future. I try to shake the negative feelings, and eventually I succeed. I realize that people who have problems or no family must have an extremely difficult time at this time of year, and that saddens me too!


Somehow, I shake it all off, work it all out, and come out enjoying the holiday, a time to share with family. I do it for them. I do it because they are best children in the world, and the greatest husband.

Every year, my husband and I exchange a Christmas ornament. I always have a hard time thinking of one, but this year not at all. My best friend, Lorraine, dubbed him the Humming Bard, because he likes to write poems and he hums when he exercises. A steady, unidentifiable hum. It is kind of annoying, but kind of funny too. Here's the poem that when with the ornament.




The Humming Bard
Not a sound in the house
Except from the wife
As she yaks and she screams
He escapes to his dreams.

All around she does look, but she cannot see
Oh where did he go? Oh where can he be?
As she listens and she wonders
He escapes all his blunders.

But soon she will find him
In a corner that’s dim.
As she hears and she sighs
At the humming he tries.

The meter he paces,
The words he erases,
He tries to keep tune,
And, he hums until noon.

She smiles cause she love him.
Her poet at heart,
And she listens to his humming
Until death, they may part.