If I have a bad thought about someone, I immediately stub my toe on the sofa and hop around on one leg until I fall over. If I curse up a storm and yell “a pox on all their houses,” the cat knocks a thumbtack or a saw-tooth picture hanger off the table and my foot plunges right into it. My husband then has to come over and pulls these things out of my foot.
“Why are you laughing?” he often asks, “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Yes it hurts!” I laugh, “God, it hurts it hurts it hurts.”
Even when I haven’t done anything wrong, I’m mired in something –like last year’s Christmas for example. We didn’t get a Christmas Tree because it just didn’t make the budget. I had discussed this with my husband, wondering if it would be an especially tragic event. We decided that while it was too bad, it was something we could forgo. I didn’t get that upset about it, despite constantly hearing stories that opened with “We didn’t have much, but we always had a Christmas tree…” And though I felt more than a tinge of irritation when I saw a tree lighting up the window of our neighbors upstairs, I just put it out of my head. I really didn’t feel truly bad about it until I needed something in the basement and I came across all the ornaments lying dormant in their boxes. I suddenly regretted having kept the lid on an occasion to celebrate. They sat there limply missing out on their one and only purpose. It felt like a sad waste, and I wished we could have gotten a tree.
Then, on Christmas Eve I got a voicemail from Trump Tower in New Rochelle. They had a package for me. They were sorry, but they had mistakenly signed for it in the “Christmas Rush” and that they would hold on to it for me. They would keep it refrigerated, per the box instructions, and wait for my call. I knew it was medicine that I was expecting. I was so grateful that it hadn’t been returned to Fedex for another round of return and re-delivery that I called on Christmas and said I would be right over. So we drove up to Trump Tower and I ran inside and stopped short and drew back my breath at the sight of not one, but two twenty foot Christmas Trees, reaching high into the ceiling, bedecked, bejeweled, betwinkled with white lights and red velvet bows running all around. I had to laugh. Behold the Karma God, the trickster who comes in all directions. -lauren de rosa
Then, on Christmas Eve I got a voicemail from Trump Tower in New Rochelle. They had a package for me. They were sorry, but they had mistakenly signed for it in the “Christmas Rush” and that they would hold on to it for me. They would keep it refrigerated, per the box instructions, and wait for my call. I knew it was medicine that I was expecting. I was so grateful that it hadn’t been returned to Fedex for another round of return and re-delivery that I called on Christmas and said I would be right over. So we drove up to Trump Tower and I ran inside and stopped short and drew back my breath at the sight of not one, but two twenty foot Christmas Trees, reaching high into the ceiling, bedecked, bejeweled, betwinkled with white lights and red velvet bows running all around. I had to laugh. Behold the Karma God, the trickster who comes in all directions. -lauren de rosa
Here's to Christmas Trees and the joy they bring they us!
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