I Reach for the Stars
Dec. 14th, 2017 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyWe don't usually decorate for Christmas so early. Christmas Eve is usually the day. Boxing Day is usually the day for taking them down. (Or Christmas afternoon, as suggested my mother one memorable year when she was bored after lunch.) It's not that we're not festive, you understand. Just low-key. But because we had people round for dinner last week, we've put them up early this year. (My mother did suggest taking them down the next day and putting them back up on Christmas Eve, but eventually agreed that would be a bit silly.)
On the tree is a bauble that that John's relatives in England sent my mother. It was while he was still alive, so at least three Christmases ago. It's a clear plastic bauble with interlocking shiny snowflakes inside. Very pretty, quite sturdy, just the thing to roll at a stripey cat. Alistair batted it around for a while, then I went to hang it back on the tree. It was the first time I'd looked at it all that closely, and I saw something unexpected.
"Did you know," I said to my mother, "that there is a pair of pearl earrings in this bauble?"
She did not. She thought they'd sent her a pretty bauble, so she has been decorating her tree with pearl earrings for years. How swanky.
On the tree is a bauble that that John's relatives in England sent my mother. It was while he was still alive, so at least three Christmases ago. It's a clear plastic bauble with interlocking shiny snowflakes inside. Very pretty, quite sturdy, just the thing to roll at a stripey cat. Alistair batted it around for a while, then I went to hang it back on the tree. It was the first time I'd looked at it all that closely, and I saw something unexpected.
"Did you know," I said to my mother, "that there is a pair of pearl earrings in this bauble?"
She did not. She thought they'd sent her a pretty bauble, so she has been decorating her tree with pearl earrings for years. How swanky.