Mutt Lights
by Flora J Massaro
My friends ask me what I’m doing for Christmas this year, and my answer is, “not much in the way of decorating!” I’m sure they’re worried about my emotional state and they should be: Since Joe died last summer, this will be my first Christmas without him in 23 years. I’m already anticipating some sadness, the second helping of the grief I had at Thanksgiving without Joe sitting at the head of the table. I’m still trying to cope with it all.
I know that without Joe, I can’t duplicate the predictable fun we had at happier holidays in the past, and I’m not up to being the sole host of the usual family gathering with kids, grandkids, in-laws, outlaws, friends, strays, et al so I’ve decided to go really low-key this year–I’ll let my kids cook for me in their homes. And, for once in my life, I will adopt a minimalist attitude towards holiday decorating.
I can’t put up a tree anyway because our tradition was for Joe to climb into the attic and haul down the fake 8-foot tree and the boxes and bins of trimmings and then we’d work as a creative team to string the tree with lights. Anything that had to go in or out of the attic was always Joe’s job because, traditionally, the male is the brave hunter/gatherer, venturing into dangerous territory and females are the nurturing, food preparers, so I had very important preparations to attend to down on terra firma kitchen. The logic made sense to me–why would I want to step out of my traditional role as nurturing food preparer to enter a mouse-infested attic?
An important part of my primary nurturing role was to set the mood for serious tree trimming and I would start by having hours and hours of Christmas music loaded into the cd player and then I would get onto baking and making my holiday cookie and goodie treats and then every inch of the kitchen counters would be taken up with mixing bowls, measuring cups and spoons, baking pans, and cookie sheets and cans and canisters of ingredients and . . . Oh my, I was in my glory and it all would smell so good!
By the time Joe would drag the tree in, I’d be almost giddy with excitement of the season and I would always remark to him that it was so nice being empty nesters, having a quiet evening together, quality bonding, without the chaos of kids. While he assembled the tree, I would get all the nativity sets unpacked and set up and then we would tackle the light strings.
Now everyone knows, men and women never agree on the amount or placement of tree lights, but every year I would optimistically forget this. Before long, Joe and the tree would be tangled up together in what looked like hundreds of strings of lights and he would start cussing under his breath about petty stuff like tangled cords and burnt-out bulbs and lost fuses. All my creative suggestions seemed to worsen his mood but I was always determined to keep it pleasant and so in between my off-key singing parts of Joy to the World! and Deck the Halls! I would try to jolly him into seeing the fun of it all. That never worked so then I always reminded him that quality bonding was very important for empty nesters so we wouldn’t grow apart in our old age at the “home.”
No matter what comforting words I said, before long, Joe would work himself into a full neck-vein pulsating rage and start cussing out loud—right in full view of the nativity sets!
I can almost see him again now, symbiotically connected to our Christmas by strings of light sets sprouting out from the tree and wrapping around his neck and shoulders and here and there winding around and embracing his body parts before the lights finally laid splayed out on the floor around his feet and onto the surrounding furniture. And I, trying really hard to keep a straight face, would have to admonish him about not swearing in front of all the baby Jesuses in my nativity sets but then he’d get even madder and stomp off and leave me to string the tree all alone, shouting back for me to, “ . . . do it any #$&^%!* way you want to! I don’t give a *&%$!”
He usually ended the evening in a silent huff, bonding with the TV clicker in the bedroom while I finished off the most beautiful tree ever with just the right quantity of lights, all perfectly placed. I would tell him all about it hours later when I crawled into bed. When the grandkids came over the next day and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over our beautiful Christmas tree, Joe would agree with them and generously share the credit, saying that, yes, he and Nonni had made the most beautiful Christmas tree ever, just for them.
So, since I can’t have any fun being on my favorite Christmas tree light-stringing team, I see no reason to put up a tree. Besides, far be it from me to climb up into a cobwebby, mouse-infested attic.
Okay, those team effort and quality bonding time tree-decorating days are gone for now, but so as to not disappoint the grandkids and to keep up the image of our neighborhood, I had to put up lights outside anyway. Joe always had a “bah humbug” attitude about those too, and would always hang what our daughter called “mutt lights.” Left to his own devices, Joe would not have decorated outside at all but our daughter and I convinced him that it’s a law that grandpas have to do it for the grandkids every year. And so every year Joe would do it his way, reluctantly and with absolutely no eye for aesthetics. He’d mix strings of little twinkle lights on part of the house with strings of big blinking C-7’s, and bigger, now extinct 1970’s unblinking C-9 bulbs . . . And no matter how often I coached him, he never hung them evenly on the nails! Well, first off, he never evenly spaced the nails (—nails! The pros use hooks or staples, don’t they?) Joe’s system had different sized nails tapped in under the eaves, in a meandering non-pattern of different heights and separated by anywhere from 10 inches to several feet. He only hung them on the front of the house and so there would be a long tail of bulbs hanging forlornly down one side of the house. And he didn’t believe in changing out burnt-out bulbs because he said light strings were supposed to die naturally and gradually go as an original string to a dead lights heaven. I always meant to ask him if we were supposed to sing “Amazing Grace” when the last bulb on a string burned out . . .
Given all that, a lesser widow might call her dear departed husband a passive- aggressive pain in the butt but instead of wasting my energy on the negativity of the ghosts of Christmases past, I decided that this year I would do the outside lights right, the way they should be done, the way I always wanted to do them. However, far be it from me to a brave the cobwebby, vermin-infested attic just to get our old mutt lights; I figured my ideal outdoor light display had to start with brand new light sets. Actually, I decided this on a spur of the moment at the drugstore when I saw the twinkle icicle lights on sale. Big red letters screamed off the box, “Guaranteed for 1200 hours of lighting magic! Entire string is guaranteed to stay lit, even if some bulbs burn out!” I immediately bought six boxes, enough to go around three sides of our house.
My 13-year-old grandson Mickey was staying with me that weekend and we risked life and limb to hang those guaranteed, magical twinkle icicle lights–the ghosts of Joe’s Christmases past had skewed the ladder into dangerous rickety-ness. We figured we were in it together so we’d take turns, one of us holding the ladder steady while the other was at the top, wielding a hammer and swaddled in a twinkle light icicle cape and boa, mouth full of nails and cup hooks to close the gaps between the uneven, meandering nails that Joe had tapped in years ago. During one of my turns to scale the ladder, I was so totally focused on screwing in a cup hook that I didn’t see that some of Mick’s friends had dropped by. Nor did I hear them ask Mick if he wanted to shoot some hoops down the street–I’m sure the high altitude had an adverse affect on my hearing. So unbeknownst to me, Mick abandoned his ladder-steadying post and joined his friends somewhere far away. I discovered he went AWOL as, after a vigorous turn of a cup hook, the ladder started to teeter a bit and one of my feet slipped off an upper rung and I looked down to see that I was 10 feet away from hard concrete with no grandson in sight to cushion my fall and prevent my premature demise. I screamed out some of Joe’s favorite holiday decorating words and Mick came running quickly back to his primary “save Nonni’s life” duties.
Then, once all the lights were strung up evenly, we plugged them in and stood back to admire our hard work. Our magical icicle lights twinkled festively across two-thirds of the garage with unlit gaps meandering here and there over the front porch and to the side of the house, where, surprise! One-half of the last string lit up the backyard corner of the roof. We climbed back up the ladder and checked every single bulb on every string, but still, the entire line never did completely light up. So much for the &*%$#! 1200 hours, stays-lit guarantee. Mick and I looked at each other and smiled —“Mutt lights!”
We can only surmise that Joe’s spirit is still with us this Christmas.
Photo credit: blog.parentmap.com
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