🎶 We need a little Christmas, right this very minute 🎶

As some of you know, I’m a Christmas fanatic. (See Fa La La La La) A Christian? Not so much. I don’t identify as a member of any organized religion. However, I do believe in magic and wonder and love, and I love a good excuse to festoon. I come by this naturally. My mom was a crafty Martha Stewart type who provided an elegant and festive backdrop for all of our family dramas, especially Christmas. The disposition to ornament a home is woven through my DNA. I will deck the halls no matter what.

Among my vast assortment of Christmas knickknacks (aka sentimental keepsakes) is a collection of Annalee angels. The “first born” among them is nearly 40 years old. My mom gave her to me when I was a college kid living in a studio apartment in Manhattan. I identify with her. She has a worried brow and confused frown. It seems that she’s fretting over everything – her inferior offerings for the baby Jesus, whether she shined the guiding star just right, the antics of the cherubim that might get everyone kicked out of the celestial choir. This angel appears to be miserable with her heightened sense of responsibility, so I affixed a large, fake poinsettia bloom to her praying hands to refocus her on joy.  

On the first weekend of this December, I made the two hour drive to my mom’s home to help her decorate for Christmas. My mom was diagnosed with dementia almost three years ago. My siblings and I are doing our best to keep her in her own home, and each of us brings different skills and concerns to this precious family table. As my mom’s condition became glaringly apparent to me when I arrived for a visit in the spring of 2019 and discovered her home adorned for Easter and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, Christmas and St Patrick’s Day too, I’ve been consumed with syncing her decor to the proper holiday and season. 

While decorating her home for holidays has confused her, until now, caring for her personal appearance has not. She has dressed impeccably with matching accessories her entire life, and even in the thick fog of dementia, has remembered to pin on a brooch. However, when I arrived this time, her attire was a disheveled mishmash. She was shoeless. One pant leg was up around her knee, the other was dragging on the ground. She had on a thin pajama top and was clutching a blanket around her shoulders. Her face was pale, her hair was wild, and she stood before me quaking and stuttering, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I seemed to have lost something. I’ve lost my memory.”  And she went on to make heartbreaking promises to try harder and do better so as not to be a burden to anyone.

My immediate response was, of course, to care for her. I tried to sooth with words, to tidy her appearance and dress her in comfy warm clothes. I tended to her nourishment. Then as soon as Mrs. Humpty Dumpty was glued back together again, I festooned her house. I assembled her artificial tree, staged the carolers and Santas on cabinets and tables, wrapped garland around her door railings, and restrung all the white lights on her rattan reindeer in the front yard. And while my mom inquired repeatedly about whether it was morning or night, what meal we were having, and how many people would be dining, I obsessed about decking the halls just right. I kept my eyes on that fake poinsettia bloom, and I swear it saved me.

🌟 Wishing you all the tinsel and fairy lights, yule logs and cocoa, whatever you need to connect with the undaunted spirit of this season. With love, L