Christmas 2011 Is GONE

I spent today taking down Christmas and packing it in boxes.  Normally that would mean wrapping each ornament in its own piece of tissue paper.  I simply could not do that again.  I know some of that tissue paper is as old as I am.  That's some forty-seven year old tissue paper whose time has come, to go to tissue paper heaven.  It had to be done.

I could see my mom cringing at the way i was sorting and putting things in new packages, and wishing I had just done things as they have always been done.  There are a lot of things worth being traditional about, tissue paper is not one of them.  I know if she could have gotten up out of that chair, she would have and chased me as I ran around the house with her forty-seven year old tissue paper.  For the record, the Christmas memories you have accumulated over the years are not in the tissue paper.

You ever done the job of taking down all the decorations with your parent watching and they sit there and try to direct you?    "You missed one", "No I didn't, I am taking down all of one size at a time".  "There is a hook on the floor", "No, there are several hooks on the floor, I am accumulating them there.  Maybe we should get your eyes checked."  After a while I just gave her the look when she tried to direct, and she gave me the look back.  The same look her mother used to give.  I was just waiting for the, "Oh, horrors" (when I was a kid I thought it was, "Oh, whores".) that went along with it.  In the end, she saw and appreciated the logic of it all.