Our First Christmas Together

Now, remember all this stuff happened in the year 2000, so don't go getting all emotional on me. And, don't notice that this is posted in August and that the story is about Christmas. We can have crises any time of the year.

Frankie and I bought a live white pine Christmas tree (the kind with a root ball), and put it in a huge red bucket in the living room. This was a first for me. In my first marriage we always had a plastic tree or a cut tree that shed needles all over the living room, but never one that I had to feed a tray of ice everyday!

After going through the bedraggled box of ornaments leftover from our other marriages, we bought some ornaments of our own to personalize and decorate the tree. Frankie loves Christmas and I, well.... you know my take on holiday hoopla. It seems different this year even though there are no children living with us who are curiously snooping under the tree wondering what Santa brought them. Frankie’s 15-year-old son, Steve, is the youngest of all our children. He is here visiting to celebrate Christmas with us. We’ll have a dinner here with the blended family and pretend that we are the Brady Bunch.

My Son and Anna moved into an apartment last week. My ex-husband gave them the old plastic Christmas tree that we’d used for years when we were pretending to be a family. You know the one that kept falling over? How generous of him. Somehow the stand didn’t make it to the apartment. I brought over the stand that Frankie had used during his years with cut trees. Mom, Anna, and I tried to get it to stand up, but the metal screws in the stand had nothing to grip on the slick skinny pole of the fake tree. We propped the tree in the corner and threw some leftover ornaments on it. Merry Christmas! Anna took it down last week after it fell over for the fifth time.

Frankie’s car finally died. The engine locked up and was leaking yellowish brown stuff from underneath. We’ll check into a rebuild after the holidays. Elsie, Frankie’s oldest daughter, gave birth to a son on the 21st. His name is Jackie. They are planning to move here after the first of the year. I am looking forward to spending more time with the grandkids.