{"id":2783,"date":"2013-12-08T00:42:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T08:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2783"},"modified":"2013-12-08T00:43:35","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T08:43:35","slug":"once-again-as-in-olden-days-victoria-12072013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2783","title":{"rendered":"Once Again As In Olden Days\u2026 – Victoria \u2013 [12\/07\/2013]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Christmas-Dream\"<\/a>Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree, in the eyes of a child they are all 30 feet high<\/i><\/p>\n

Of course, in amongst the packing and the prep work\u2026it\u2019s Christmas. Of course, I\u2019ll be away for Christmas, just as I\u2019ll be away for Yule, but my family \u2013 as always \u2013 is amazingly understanding, and we move the holidays nearly every year to accommodate when I\u2019m actually going to be in town.<\/p>\n

This house\u2026at Christmas\u2026people don\u2019t believe me until they see it for themselves. The think I\u2019m exaggerating, because everyone thinks their house is the most amazing over the holidays.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not exaggerating.<\/p>\n

Of course, before the trees are put up \u2013 or sometimes while they\u2019re going up \u2013 everything else has to go up around them. Lit garlands drape down the stair-rails like something out of a Victorian Christmas card, a giant handcrafted nutcracker takes up residence in the front window (his name is Josh, and my mother made him when I was so small I don\u2019t remember a Christmas without him) and a big red satin bow gets tied to the support of the open baby grand in the living room.<\/p>\n

The pictures that live in the house year \u2018round come down and get put in storage, and every one is replace with a framed puzzle; everything from Santa Clause to the Twelve Days of Christmas<\/i> (that one\u2019s my favourite). Every one of those puzzles we\u2019ve done over the years, at first we didn\u2019t glue them when we framed them, so a great many of them are still doable, some though were done only once before being framed in red and designated a place on the wall. There\u2019s one though, that hangs in the living room, which we did every year from the time I was a little girl. The whole family has that puzzle memorized, we could put it together in an hour while blindfolded, but we\u2019ve never rushed it \u2013 that puzzle is Christmas Eve and egg nogg with nutmeg, the crackle of a wood burning fireplace, and fresh mandarin oranges by the sparkle of the lights, \u00a0\u00a0and the King Singer\u2019s on the record player (first record I ever remember handling, and I have every scratch of it memorized)<\/p>\n

And then\u2026there are the trees\u2026and yes, that\u2019s plural\u2026and it\u2019s not a typo\u2026<\/p>\n

The house has four trees. No, I really mean that. Four trees. Every one of the four big front facing windows in the house has a tree visible in it, one in the living room, the dining room, and both the upstairs bedroom. And I don\u2019t mean tiny trees; I mean proper full sized trees. Two are live (the main one in the living room, and the one in my parents\u2019 room above) the other two are artificial. Each has its own theme. Mine has the ornaments I\u2019ve collected from childhood, and as I travel I add things to it, my parent\u2019s tree is all blue and white, the dining room tree is the memory tree \u2013 all angels and musical instruments.<\/p>\n

And the main tree? The main tree is nine feet high, its spire brushing the top of our living room ceiling. We phone in the order early, I think ours is probably the first tree the lot owner goes out to find. It doesn\u2019t have a theme, it doesn\u2019t have a unified colour scheme, but every ornament on that tree has a story; there are pieces on there purchased specifically to represent family members who have long since taken up residence in the Summerlands, ornaments that have been passed down from my grandmother and her mother, ornaments I\u2019ve brought back from all over the world, that I bought for my mother and father when I was a little girl saving quarters.\u00a0 It has two sides, because we put it in the archway that divides the living room from the sunroom that \u2013 long ago \u2013 was an open sunporch before some bright spark finally realized that open sunporches are not a smart idea in a climate that involves as much rain as ours does.<\/p>\n

That tree\u2026has its own kind of magic. And every year we haul it into the house and think that this year it won\u2019t work, that it\u2019ll be too small or two short or too\u2026something\u2026and every year we\u2019re wrong, because every year we make it work.<\/p>\n

And every year, it takes my breath away\u2026<\/p>\n

There used to be more of us of course, over the years, people have left; have moved on in one way or another, sometimes permanently. But those people \u2013 they never really leave, they\u2019re still here, in the laughter as we put up the mantelpiece village, in the angels we hang on the memory tree. Of course, not everyone is gone for good, some are simply not in the city\u2026and there are people\u2026that I would give anything to have here, that I would give anything to share this with. People who are a plane ride and a long distance phone call away and there\u2019s just nothing to be done about that\u2026<\/p>\n

But those people are still here too\u2026I can hear them at my shoulder, so real sometimes that I whirl around expecting to bump into them only to find they aren\u2019t there. Perhaps that makes me crazy, but if so \u2013 well\u2026I don\u2019t want to be sane\u2026<\/p>\n

Like the song says\u2026<\/p>\n

Through the years we all will be together if the fates allow
\nUntil then we\u2019ll have to muddle through somehow\u2026
\nSo have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree, in the eyes of a child they are all 30 feet high Of course, in amongst the packing and the prep work\u2026it\u2019s Christmas. Of course, I\u2019ll be away for Christmas, just … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-2783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vacation","tag-christmas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-IT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2787,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2783\/revisions\/2787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}