Ode to the Dying Turkey Décor

♩ Christmastime is here again! ♫

No, it isn’t, actually. The only thing that’s here in this mall is these stupid carols that annoy the crap out of me and a bunch of decorations.

♫ The weather outside is frightful!  ♪

Again, no it isn’t. It’s really pretty balmy.

♫ 'Tis the Christmas season! ♬

See, but it isn’t, and that’s just the point. It’s really more post-Halloween. Christmas used to arrive with fanfare—Santa used to land on the roof of The Cool Mall in a helicopter to long lines of eagerly anticipating children. Now he must sneak in sometime around October, because every time I try to pick up a few things at the mall since then, they’ve assaulted my senses with Christmas carols and decorations that shouldn’t have been put up for another month. The mall and television keep trying to convince me that it’s the Christmas season, but saying it doesn’t make it so. Halloween just got over, and all this Christmas junk is eclipsing the Thanksgiving season and ruining it for me.

I have decorations, even, Thanksgiving ones, and all but one were gifts at some point, which makes them that much more special to me. The year my mother-in-law inexplicably gifted me with a giant, accordion-type crepe paper turkey that ushered in Thanksgiving on enormous cardboard wings, I decided to embrace seasonal décor—the tackier, the better. I added my own Avon turkey basket in the 80s that really isn’t designed to hold anything because it’s too small for fruit, too basket-y for candy, and not tall enough for anything useful, like serving utensils. The cardboard turkey has long since flown the coop on lame and crumpled wings, but I still have the basket, which is currently trying to hold TV remote controls even though the weight causes it to topple over.

It’s joined by tapers designed to look like a pioneer couple. Never mind that their heads have melted off so that Papa Pioneer drips wax remnants of his hat like so much dried blood down his decapitated body. I admire the determined way their little arms still clutch that harvest bounty to their headless bodies. They are Halloween and Thanksgiving at once, festive in their own macabre way, and I hate that the malls are trying to deprive me of enjoying them along with my stuffed pumpkins and leaf dishes and maple-scented candles.

♪ Home for the holidays…. ♬

This carol I agree with, fleeing the mall and racing home to be with my turkey handprints and not-so-tasteful gourd arrangements. Bah, humbug.

Oh sweet mercy! A lime green hatchback! It’s a thing of beauty! ~Cars.com commercial

Rock of Ages

Not too long ago, I was riding in the car with my young adult daughter and mentioned the Rush concert that was coming to town. She giggled and said she thought it was funny that I knew about bands like Rush. She said it without the least bit of irony.

Anyway. A few weeks ago I watched part of a televised Deep Purple concert on TV. Oh, the memories!

My first favorite album ever was Deep Purple’s Mark I & II. It wasn’t even mine. I used to beg, borrow, and steal it from my older sister and then play it over and over and over again.

My mother used to tell me to “turn that banshee music” down. I remember thinking to myself that if I was ever the mother of teenagers, I would let my children play their records nice and loud. Ear buds weren’t the only things I didn’t foresee. There was a time in the pre-ear bud era—a very brief time—when some of their music sounded suspiciously like disco. The horror!

But one day, a miracle happened. As I sat at my computer, I heard, deep within the bowels of my son’s basement lair, the distant rumbling chords of “Smoke on the Water.” Turns out there was a game called Guitar Hero, and guess whose era those heroes were from?

I opened the basement door. “Is that too loud?” my son called up. Silly boy. He was born in an age when ear buds were the norm, after all. He couldn’t help it.

“No! Turn that music up!” I hollered. I was so proud.

Oh, the memories.

What was your first favorite song/album?

I fit into me now. I have an organic life, finally, not necessarily the one people imagined for me, or tried to get me to have. I have the life I longed for. I have become the woman I hardly dared imagine I could be. There are parts I don’t love—until a few year ago, I had no idea that you could have cellulite on your stomach—but not only do I get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side. ~Anne Lamott, Plan B Further Thoughts on Faith