Stop Christmas, I Want to Lie Down

I want to figure out how to make things stop happening to me. Or, better yet, I want to figure out how to stop myself from happening to "things". Days ago, in reading Jim's early Journal, I noticed he had written (in 1965) "One thing is: Kay must not be allowed to ever drive a car." I was indignant when I first read that statement, but later I understood. It's pure and simple and honest and true. Kay must never be allowed to drive a car. Because there is so much else one can do while driving a car and those people out there are doing them!! Not only do you have to keep your hands on the wheel and look back and forth and keep your eyes going forward into the rear view mirror and to the left and right and keep in mind that half of those drivers out there are on the verge of nervous breakdowns and heart failures and have just broken up with their loved ones and have just had appendicitis attacks or have been bitten by dogs or bees or their girlfriends - - but they are also yelling into their cell phones and turning up their Ipods and God knows what else, if only God had been keeping up with all this technical shit which, of course, He/She/It hasn't been because He/She/It hasn't had anything at all to do with any of this shit.

I found another pole to run into. That's three. Two on my very own drive way and one on the Olympia freeway. I backed into it because (denial? River of De-Nile?)---my car has no visibility. And neither do I. If I were a car, I wouldn't. I'd be a tricycle. I was highly successful as a tricyclist. Also, as a wagon-puller. I once had a red wagon that I pulled incessantly. But, folks, I can't even get a piece of toast to brown up to the standards of anybody who likes their toast to come out even, and, no, it's not the toaster, it's me. I'm impatient. I'm impulsive. I'm an instant replay sort of person. Not good for toast.

I was so embarrassed about The Third Pole I paid for the damage myself instead of letting my insurance pay. Why should they have to pay for my mistakes? These are things I do not understand. If the world were full of "me's" we would all be much poorer even than we are now.

So I went to the store today. Standing on the curb was a woman, nicely bundled up, holding a sign that read "NEED". I parked my car (I do happen to be a great parallel parker), went up to her and said, "What's going on?" "I need everything," she said. "I've got allergies, I need food, I came here on the train but I got off at the wrong stop, today is clothing day at Helpline House but I don't need clothes, last night was food night and I had a good steak but there won't be steak tonight, there all kinds of foods I just can't eat...." her teeth were all worn down and I'll wager she was quite a few foods I can't eat...." I pulled out a twenty and handed it to her. I gave her a hug. "Oh! You're perfume! You're perfume!" she called out, in protest. I backed off, muttered, "sorry" and kept on walking. I decided I didn't like her very much. I decided I don't have to be a wonderful, heartfelt, angelic giver, just a giver.

This past weekend, at Alan's house near Olympia, the one with the fabulous full frontal view of Mount Rainier rising above Puget Sound, we trimmed his Christmas Tree (a real one - - I put up an iron tree --not true, Robin put up my iron tree and it's beautiful- - maybe I could manage to back my car into my Christmas tree, as well) - - we each put up ornaments from our past. It occurred to me that this tree is a journal of sorts, his two marriages, my two marriages, his child, my children, my life with Jim, his times with his two wives, all the stories, the laughter, the disappointments, the parties, the Christmas dinners, the boxes and platters of cookies, fudge, fruit cake (which I happen to adore), the new robes, the old robes, the children banging their chubby little noses into the lowest ornaments, the children, shaking the boxes, me down there, shaking the boxes, Jim dragging me away from the boxes, the great Christmas music, the crap Christmas music, all those stories from Alan's life and lives and my life and lives and now here we are merging this tree with his precious ornament he made for his daughter Star, the one which is so fragile it keeps breaking year after year and he keeps patiently glueing it back together year after year - and the little perpetually damp pipe-cleaner angel which Jim and I hung near the top of every tree we ever had. Alan's tree has presents beneath it - my tree has none. His tree is the the pig that went to market, my tree is the pig that stayed home. This weekend he will bring his presents here and we'll open them up....I can't remember where or when. We'll be in Port Townsend at the Manressa Castle over Christmas - do we open them there? Or here?

I like our tree that is a Journal. Everybody who has been with each other for at least a few years - - or who is doing it "our way" - has a Journal-Tree - and is fortunate to have such a tree, so that they may tell each other stories, may hold the stories in each other's hearts, adding credence to the 'jimmied up' phrase, "Everybody's Christmas Tree is worth a novel."