...quiet, about a lot of things...

Aftermath

The partridge
is left in
the tree

But the pears
are all gone.

Eaten in one
glutinous feast

Finished off
along with
the sugared plums
and candy canes sweets.

The floor is cold
and covered with
hard needles of
the pine tree
dying in my
house.

Opening the fridge
packed full
with the remains
of the daze

I stand still
after so much
frenzy

not knowing
what I am
hungry for.

In the distant
living room,
an ornament
drops to the ground.

wlf 1:40pm



More at Poetry Thursday

Labels: Poetry Thursday

My kids always ask me if I still believe in Santa. i always say (and always will say) YES. Santa came to our house this year...and his hands looked oddly familiar.

Christmas is always a mixed bag for me. I'm highly charged..very tactile and heavy into sense memory.

The tree filling the house with pine..reminds me not only of my first married tree, but of the time I decorated a charlie brown tree with 7 boxes of white lights for the "devil". No ornaments...just lights...and the years that I finished my mom's tree..late Christmas eve, when she passed out, from sadness and beer.

The presents remind me of $100.00 bills my Grandfather used to hang on the tree...(a BUTT load of money...way back when...)My sister reminded my kids that I opened all her gifts before she woke one year...I think I may have been 3 but she remembers better than I do...My kids opening their gifts as little ones...and my husband giving me a TV antenna for our first Christmas together....

I have been sick my share of Christmas's... I think I've had double pneumonia 3 Christmas's since I was a mom...and my mom tells the ever famous story of having to pry my fingers from a kitchen chair on Christmas eve because I was so sick, and SO NOT breathing...that my lips were turning blue. My husband laughs as he recalls our trip to the ER one Christmas night, when my mom's new beau moved in with his new cat Avalon..I was released...with strict instructions not to enter my moms house again... My little heart was leaping out of my chest...from so much albuterol..and pure oxygen, and fear of a little place called admitting....So,I agreed..and went home, and watched the presents unwrapped from the patio, through the window, wrapped in a blanket. (The boy in the bubble in reverse.)

Whats the point? Christmas is just life magnified...love, longing, disappointment, surprise,sadness and magic. Yes, Virginia, I said MAGIC.

Magic ran thru my veins as a finished a doozey of a fight with Michael..magic won as I wiped the tears away and started wrapping presents. Magic reined supreme as I placed the gifts and filled the stockings...and DID NOT strangle my husband as he slept soundly on the couch as I worked.

Santa crept in to me, took me by the heart, and gave Wendy the heave ho..I wanted to give my heart, Wendys tight little heart, to Christmas...but life stepped in...so Santa saved the day. No other word fits but magic.

As for the lion lying down with the lamb...that's a miracle...and might take a bit more time..But I will never say I don't believe....it's just not in me.


Happy Girls




Scary Christmas morning Mom Now I would only show this to a friend...so if you are not a friend....shut your smarmy mouth...



See..I left him alive and smiling and looking oh so refreshed....

Well....I am alive! Really tired, but alive...so in the spirit of the Night before the night before...I'll post some holiday pics as my Yule log...and get back to writing when I have a brain in my head..Now, I wonder, when THAT will be??..Until then...

I wish you Peace and Joy, and a nice drink, and a warm blanket...oh yeah, and a parking space!

Merry Christmas...

All photos interiours at Chez F....

The two little people are of christmas past and will live forever frozen in the moment...

I could blame it on the retailers. The hype,the hoopla. But that's not the case. It's me. My sister is coming out for a ski week right before Christmas. She has never been to my house here in Colorado. It is accepted that I make the journey back to CA for the holidays. But she knew I wasn't coming west this year, and she's fighting with my mom, so she's coming here.

We'll ski for 5 days and then she'll go home for Christmas Eve. She's bringing her two kids, one niece, on neph. My niece never can remember my name. She's ten. I keep reminding her that I am her mom's sister. She looks me up and down, as if I must be mistaken.

My sister owns her own interior design firm. Her clients are wealthy, some famous. Her house is impeccable. She has teams of people who work for her. When she wants something changed, a team comes in and changes it. She has pristine taste. Unlimited funds, and as it is, in the "insiders" world...those that can afford..get comp'd anyway. My sister holds the keys to many a contractors cash box...and they fall over themselves to do her "favors"....that...and the fact that she is a beautiful woman.

So I pecking this bitter, slightly jealous, little sister-ish entry this evening with wood stain under my fingernails, and callouses on my hands. There are two manual laborers in this family... Michael..thank god, and me.

Let's put it this way..I've decided to remodel in nine days. A winter wonderland I want! A winter wonderland I'll get...or die trying.....

Place your bets....odds now are running 50/50.....

Now where did I put that scaffolding????

This is going to be a quick two parter.

Part I NOW

I'm watching PBS..yep...I'm a PBS junkie. For the last hour I've been watching a salute to James Taylor. I have spent the last hour of my life near tears, so close to memories of my childhood. Maybe James helped me start down the road of loving words...Carol King came to sing "You've got a Friend" with James....and I was 8 years old again. Tapestry and Sweet Baby James were two of my mothers very favorite albums. I see her laying on the floor, next to her 8 track, tear tracks stained on her cheeks. She taught me how to let music carry you away.

I am amazed to see how beautiful Carol King has become. A wild, fully bloomed woman. I watch her and wonder if it is her voice that is so sexy, or her playing the piano, or her living in her skin...hitting and not hitting the high notes,but smiling and loving every note.

I am not much my mothers daughter. But I carry her music in my DNA.


Part II THEN

In the last hour, my life changed. I came into this church 16 years old. I am the baby of all my friends. The last to get my period, the last to get my drivers license, the last to give up on hopes and dreams. Today is the day that changes.It all changes. I give up my fairy tale hope of happily ever after. I walk down the aisle. I find a seat next to other shoulders and down cast eyes.

Start the music.

Just Yesterday morning
they let me know you were gone
seems that the plans they made
put an end to you.

I sat down this morning
and I wrote down this song
I just cant remember who to
send it to.

Oh I've seen fire and I 've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
but I always thought I'd see you again.


She made her entrance now. She is not in white but instead in deep mahogany hues. Her casket floats on many sets of strong young arms, 16 year old arms, 18 at the oldest. In ust 6 months, half of them would have been her escorts, as she came out. She was born to be a debutante. She made a grand entrance anyway. James Taylor sings about airplanes in pieces on the ground. Roses cover her in a way that would have embarrassed her. She was a conservative girl. The swell of bloom and emotion was not her style.

She was quiet, almost icy quiet. Beautiful in an unknown way, and gloriously tall and elegant. How we all had envied, yes coveted her lithe body. We all knew she had a problem. Even I knew, and I wasn't a close friend. I had last seen sharing a clove with friends waiting for the bathroom at a party on Oak Knoll Place. She looked like she belonged there. I looked like I did not. But we were both alive. We were both drunk, a young drunk, (back when it was possible to be tipsy, and not bitter.) We both had to pee. I last saw her in the bathroom. We shared the bathroom...four of us, as teenage girls tend to do, and shared a bit of gossip.

All the songs at her funeral had been picked out, by her. To tell the truth,she had really hated the Death and Dying class she took last semester. She thought the idea of planning your own funeral was just ridiculous and more than a bit morbid. All my friend hate the teacher, Miss Hennar, but she is my favorite. I like all her classes. I am always into emoting and digging. I wonder how her parents had found her funeral plan. Had she shown them? Mine is buried in the heap of my room. My mother has no clue of my classes, let alone my assignments. But her funeral is sappy, heartbreaking and 16 year old. I wonder if she is thinking "What a joke...I just made it up 5 minutes before class...now, what a joke."

Sitting in my pew, watching her placed by the altar, my life changed today. I've learned the lesson. We all will die. It will always catch us by surprise. Youth isn't a place to hide from the world any more. Maybe an hour ago, you could have convinced me that all's well that ends well, but now I know better. All, well, all ends. That's it.


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I have this weird thing. It's not Christmas....til Christmas. My thanksgivng decorations are still out...no Turkeys....but autumn leaves and such. I will put them away this weekend, and slowly begin to change the season inside my house. Mags let me know that her friend Court's mom put up their tree and all their decorations..the day after thanksgiving....What a nice tradition for them I said, adjusting my cornacopia of sunflowers. My house. My rules. (yeah right!)

Before she left for indoor soccer Mags popped her head into my room saying "Happy Holidays Mom...It is December now, ya know....get a move on!!"

I know. I know. Better get busy! I've been warned!!