Fallen Angel

The angel plummeted, not in slow motion trailing flames toward hell, her former beauty twisting into ugliness.  She toppled from the mantle so quickly I couldn’t follow her descent to the hearth where she broke a china wing and tiny hand.  I was rearranging greens, clumsily it seems, and the pretty thing was maimed.

But not smashed.  I put her back, her broken parts toward the wall and carefully tucked the pine and holly around her so she could kneel in her imperfection just as she has done for so many years.  We are not idolaters.  Things are things and pass away, but our hearts belie our reason, and the child in me imagines her persevering in a state of reduced capacity, just like me.  

Christmas Deer

Days are short now;

four o’clock is twilight time.

I’ve been reading poems

(Christina Rossetti, if you want to know.)

Rising, I look out the bedroom window.

A creature is on the lawn –

a deer – no, two deer – does – and there’s a third!

They nibble and browse in the growing dark.

Across the road,

my brother-in-law’s

Christmas lights

glow brightly.

Greed Deficiency

Christmas is coming, and the New Yorker is getting fat.  So are Martha Stewart Magazine and a whole lot of others that are crammed with ads for things to buy as gifts.  Unlike some people, I don’t get depressed when I look at pictures of merchandise I can’t afford.  I’d feel silly in a diamond-studded wristwatch, and I don’t think I could pull off the swagger one needs to step out of a Ferrari. When I’m watching TV, I find I get used to the size of the screen and concentrate on the ball game, the movie, or the news. 

I was looking at a picture of a 9 ½ inch tin-lined copper sauté pan that can be mine for $329 and will last forever so long as I keep sending it back to be re-tinned.  They say it gives you great control over your cooking. It heats evenly and quickly and cools promptly when you take it off the flame. 

I’m pretty good at sautéing, but with this tool I could be better. Usually, if I’m paying attention, I get good doneness.  But apparently it could be better doneness – maybe perfect doneness.  I try to imagine the ecstasy of eating food that is perfectly done, and it doesn’t come to mind.  Marilyn Monroe complained that the men she made love to were disappointed when she turned out to be just a woman, and not the sex goddess they expected her to be.  I think it might be the same for the perfectly sautéed flounder filet – nice, but still fish.

It seems to me that some of these electronic devices people are buying are mostly for showing off.  They always want to demonstrate what the bright little things can do.  During intermission at the opera someone offered to make on-line dinner reservations.  Of course it was nearing evening on a Saturday, and none of the restaurants the gizmo selected as being nearby had available tables, but it performed excellently other than that. 

Somehow I don’t feel left out when I pass signs in stores or look at ads in magazines that have those coded targets you can read with your pocket phone.  I suspect what the electronic marvel would show me would be more advertising, and I get enough of that.  If I were offered something that would shield me from ads, I might be interested. 

It’s not that I hate expensive things.  I like to drive down Washington Street in Duxbury and look at all those big sea captains’ homes with their lovely gardens and lawns.  I’m glad I can admire them, but I don’t want to live in one.  I’d rattle around in all that space. If I had the home, I’d need the money to pay for lawn care and appropriate furniture, and I’m able to imagine having that.  What I can’t envision is being any happier. Even maid service has to be managed. 

I’m afraid I have that condition dreaded all up and down Madison Avenue – contentment.  It’s something that can’t be bought.  If you get the enormous house, someone, somewhere is liable to have a bigger one.  There would be smarter devices, more glittery watches, and faster cars.  Only the calm satisfaction that the stuff you have will somehow do eases you into happiness.

Perhaps that’s a subversive thought at Christmas time when the economy needs a boost, and I do like nice things up to a point.  But what I get from the fat magazines is a comfy feeling that there are a lot of possessions I can get along without. 

Paradise Sustained

Paradise is unchanging.  Adam and Eve lived on fruit and worked on their tans.  Nothing

much happened until the serpent showed up.  Here in the world things change, and when they do, we’re pretty sure we’re not going to like it. We have a deep-seated fear that life never gets better.  Oh sure, some people are sitting in their living room and the Prize Mobile pulls up with video cameras and a gigantic check.  It just never happens to you and me. 

I started noticing the downhill flow of life somewhere around the second grade. A bunch of us were hanging around the back yard reminiscing about the past.  “Little kids are lucky,” we said.  “They can play all day long and never have to go to school.”    

There we were, seven years old, and we’d figured it out; Eden is the place you’ve been kicked out of.  In former times we were carefree, and now we had to sit in rows and listen to Miss Cassidy go on about subtraction. 

You never know you’re in a Golden Age until it’s over.  When it came to Christmas, we were still there.  We knew there was a Santa the same way we knew, if you went swimming less than an hour after you ate, you’d get a cramp and drown.  It was like being a Christian in the middle ages; if there were any skeptics around, they were keeping their mouths shut. 

There came a time, different for each of us, when the clues surrounding Santa added up to the awful truth. Of course we kept it to ourselves.  The loot was good, and besides a world without magic wasn’t any fun.  But we couldn’t sustain the pretence for long.  The Age of Faith had been supplanted by the Age of Reason, and it was a little like subtraction instead of play. 

From then on Christmas changed.  We became providers, not consumers.  We shopped, we baked, we decorated, we stuffed stockings.  Our children grew up, but they came back for the holiday meal. 

At our house we cooked the turkey in the Italian manner with chestnuts and sausage in the stuffing and wine in the basting liquid.  We had Virginia ham we bought through the mail, soaked in the pantry, simmered in a big pot, and then baked it in the oven..  It was salty, dense, and delicious and kept ’till almost Easter.  There were six or seven kinds of cookies, three or four kinds of pie.  There was pudding. 

Now we can’t sustain the effort and have passed it on to the younger generation.  We help, of course, and bring what we can, but a little of the magic faded away like the faint tinkle of sleigh bells when you’re trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve. 

We get lists of wanted presents complete with cyber-links.  We sent our daughter a webpage with a shirt we thought might be good for our son-in-law.  We got approval and the suggestion of a color. It’s the easy way, but it’s not like being a hunter-gather at Filene’s and Jordan Marsh.

At home we decorate a tree and make sure we invite people in to see it.  We watch some of our collection of Christmas videos.  Then we set off in the car for the ceremonial hanging and the opening of our grandchildren’s stockings. 

Christmas didn’t diminish: it was we who changed, and as we did, we experienced different aspects of the blessed time.  As we aged, we lost and gained, and the trick was to forget the losses and embrace the gains. Christmas is still there and always will be. Scrooge was a fogy after all, and he learned to keep Christmas better than anyone.