Putting Away Christmas

 

I don’t know who it was, but I’m pretty sure someone came into my house during Christmas and left a bunch of decorations that I didn’t have before Christmas.  There is no way I could have had all this stuff stored, even in this big house.  Now it was all over the living room, waiting to be put away again until next year’s insanity compels me to drag it all out again.  My plan had been to organize everything and decide on things to discard during January.  A bout with sinus, no doubt due to our bipolar weather patterns that brought record highs, thunderstorms, and snow all within 24 hours.  We were on our second snow, and it seemed an apt time to put away Christmas decorations.  Organization and purging can wait until next year.

Clay, my handyman friend, was ready to help restore it to the Christmas closet, a deep, narrow old closet just off my bedroom with shelves in one end.  It’s not good for anything else, other than seasonal decorations and a few seasonal clothes and coats.

“You know,” I said thoughtfully, “we should just take every single thing out of that closet before we put this stuff back.”  That was pretty simple, since most of the things in there were just haphazardly stuck in there to make room for Christmas decorations.  Turns out, there were also quite a few odd shoes in there.  Scout was delighted to have so many new shoes to add to his toy collection and I found a couple I had been wondering about.  I also found the missing part of an over-the-door hook thing I had puzzled over.  Now, if I can only find the other part again.  In no time at all, the closet was empty.  We even swept off the cobwebs from high overhead.  And took the time to hang a mirror that was stored in the closet.

Clay’s next sentence sent a chill down my spine.  “This would be a really good time to paint this closet,” he said, looking at the bare walls in speculation.  I looked at the expanse of old wallboard, which had never seen a paintbrush, and almost got swept up in his idea.  Luckily, I came to my senses. 

“That stuff will soak paint up like a sponge,” I said.  “No.”  Then, more slowly, “Wallpaper would actually be better.”  Clay looked alarmed.  He doesn’t do wallpaper.  I looked again at the very tall ceiling and thought better of the idea.  “No, I’m not doing wallpaper in there.  The walls are just fine like they are.”

It wasn’t so much the idea of painting that alarmed me.  It was what it would probably lead to.  A few years ago, when I was still in my other house, I enlisted Clay to build some shelves in my bathroom closet.  He built some really nice custom shelves, no problem.  But before the project was finished, we had done new tile in the bathroom, the kitchen and dining room. We also painted the dining room and the trim in all three rooms.  I sort of understood how it happened – it made sense to do the floor while the closet was empty, the tile in the bathroom looked really pretty, and we had a couple of boxes left over to start the kitchen.  Then, I discovered that the tile was on sale, and it seem prudent to get enough to do the dining room too.  The new tile made the color of the dining room look off, so we painted and of course then the trim needed refreshing.  So, there we were – two months and several hundred dollars later.  All I meant to do was build some shelves.  There is no telling where painting that closet might lead.

The next problem was the closet door, which only opens about three quarters of the way and leaves barely enough room for a skinny person to pass by.  The configuration of the closet, which was added much later than the original house was built, is a little odd.  This would mean that we had to close the door every time we took a box to the closet, reopen it and repeat endlessly.  There were a lot of boxes.  “Maybe we should just take all the boxes in the bedroom first,” I said.

“I’m going to take the door off,” Clay said.  To me, this sounded like a project that would involve the rest of the day and many, many tools that we wouldn’t be able to find.  Then putting it back would be a major undertaking.  I expressed my thoughts, but Clay seemed confident.  He was right – a few taps with the hammer and the door was off. 

Somehow, we got every box on the closet shelves.  There is not room for so much as a piece of cardboard in there, but all the Christmas stuff is there.  I still can’t believe it.  And the door was easily replaced on the hinges.  I did think out loud that we should have painted the door while it was off but it was too cold and rainy outside, and now I know how easy it is to remove the door.

It never fails. Four days later, I noticed a Christmas decoration we missed packing.  It will just have to stay where it is until next Christmas.  Maybe no one will notice.

The Right Place

 

It started with a craving for cigarettes and diet Dr. Pepper.  Add an empty wallet and my reluctance to leave the house on a chilly afternoon and you have one of those situations I find myself in on a regular basis.  

My friend Clay was working on my shower, which has proven a challenge among many challenges in working on a century old farmhouse.  He mentioned that he was out of cigarettes, due in large part to the recalcitrant shower.  I said that I was out of diet Dr. Pepper and if he went to town for cigarettes, he could bring me one but that I didn’t have any money.  He said he didn’t have any money either.  The bank had closed and  he didn’t have a debit card.  I have a debit card, but I was not willing to leave my house and my fireplace.  It was a standoff and it appeared that no cigarettes or diet Dr. Pepper were in our future that Monday evening.

Clay went back to tinkering with the shower and I returned to my chair, where I was reading and listening to Christmas music.  Inexplicably, next thing I knew, I was going through my purse again, looking for money.  I found a lone dollar bill, then pulled out a handful or two of change.  I had wondered why my purse was so heavy.  Soon I had stacks of nickels, dimes and quarters that almost equaled cigarettes and diet Dr. Pepper.  Surely I could find a little more change around the house.  In the long ago days before ATMs, these searches were a common occurrence in my life and I knew all the places to look.

By the time Clay came back through the living room, I had rounded up enough change for a trip to the gas station that would satisfy our addictions.  We both laughed at how pitiful we were, but Clay scooped up the change and left for town, just at sunset.

He was gone what seemed like an extraordinarily long time for a three mile trip to the convenience store, and then the phone rang.  It was Clay.  “I need some advice,” he said.  He had encountered a mother and daughter in the parking lot of the gas station.  The mother was drunk.  Not just tipsy, but what we call around here knee-walking drunk.  Trying to start her car when it was already running drunk.  The daughter was, it turned out, 14 years old and when Clay asked her if she felt safe getting in the car, she said “No.”  So the drama began.

Clay said he noticed the car in the first place because it was a car like his and caused him a second look.  Then he saw clothes, pillows, blankets and other stuff piled in the back seat.  About that time, he observed the condition of the woman in the drivers seat.  “Are you all right?” he asked her.  “Do you need some coffee?”  It was abundantly obvious she was in no condition to drive.  Then the child came out of the store.  Further conversation brought out that the young girl wanted to go stay with her grandmother in Memphis, several hours away.  A phone call to the grandmother was the next step, and she said that she not only wanted her granddaughter there; she had been trying to get custody of her.  But she was eighty years old and could not drive halfway across the state in the dark to pick her up.  I was blank – I could not think of anything except the obvious, which was to call the police.  “I don’t see that you have any choice,” I said.  But what would happen to the child?  Here it was the week of Christmas and neither of us could bear the thought of her going to children’s services or worse.

Clay managed to get the woman to turn off the car and give him the keys and he told the child not to get in the car, whatever she did.  The police arrived and managed to get the woman to admit she had taken a Xanax on top of three beers.  I think everyone suspected that she was under-reporting the numbers.  Thankfully, another conversation with the grandmother changed things. A cousin was willing to drive her to collect her granddaughter.  Amid some tears, the young girl was allowed to collect some of her belongings from the car and the police took her to wait at city hall while they took the mother to jail. 

Clay came to the house before he went home and collapsed on my couch.  “I am not the right person to handle something like this,” he said. “All I wanted was a pack of cigarettes.”  I didn’t ask him how many of his cigarettes he had already smoked on the way home, but he did tell me later that he only had one left by the next morning.  Clay does not handle drama well.

“You were exactly the right person,” I said.  “You were in the right place at the right time.”  Offhandedly I added, “I’m glad I found all that change.”  It was at that moment that it hit me – now I understood why I had been compelled to gather up the money.  Something led me to put Clay, a very unlikely angel, in the path of that mother and daughter.  Maybe someone else would have noticed and intervened, but he was the one that did, and possibly saved a couple of lives.

Bottom line is, God can take the most ordinary, mundane things and make something divine.  Just like he took a manger in a dirty stable and turned it into a sacred space when time stood still on a long ago Christmas.  You just don’t know where you will find a miracle or what will lead you to be in that particular place just at that moment.  It can even be in the parking lot of a gas station on a cold Monday evening on a frivolous quest for cigarettes and diet Dr. Pepper.