Thank You, My Friend

I'm sorry it has taken so long to tell you - your card and cash arrived intact and well timed. I had to make time to share with you the bounteous details and depth of the gratitude we feel for you.

As I shared in an earlier email, I am pretty sapped of strength this year for Christmas celebrating. Every ounce of energy and resource are doled out carefully. Before your gift arrived I had realized that we would not be involved in a frenzied exchange of gifts. Neither energy nor finances permitted.

But, I am a Christmas fanatic; preparing in years past from the first fall of an autumn leaf until the last January box was stored away with tears. It is impossible to squelch the visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. I began to pine and whine for the familiar tastes, sounds and smells of the season as my body refused to grant me means.

Out of fear of depression, I began to have the glimmer of an idea to satisfy my need for the familiar.

Christmas tradition, for me, is steeped in vision, taste and smells. If I could only bring into my home the tastes without the baking, the smells without the effort, and the sights without the frenzied preparations - I would have my Christmas.

And then your card arrived.

I told my husband the idea.

"Let's go to Trader Joe's and buy the things that we would usually do without. Let's add in some Christmas tastes that we would normally make for ourselves or receive as gifts. Mind you, I was thinking of old-fashioned taffy, peppermint sticks, sugar cookies and gingerbread houses and fruitcake. I was thinking of taper candle and pine bough centerpieces, cinnamon scented pinecones and poinssetias in gold foil covered pots. I was thinking prime rib roast, red potatoes, asparagus tips, shrimp cocktail, plum pudding, mince meat pie and whipped cream and clam chowder."

I asked him what he would add.

He said, "tomatoes".

My Bing-Crosby-snow-covered-backdrop-tinsel-and-bow-bedecked-crackling-fire-greeting-card vision-and-magic-spell moment went "kerplunk".

So, tomatoes it became!

We arranged to meet at Trader Joe's after work on Tuesday. My husband would arrive an hour and a half before I could, but he wasn't worried. He went first to Jamba Juice and treated himself. Then he went to Starbucks to warm up and wait. When I was in transit, he moved on to Trader Joe's and began to explore.

When I finally arrived he had gathered important things that he had been wanting and wishing for. In the bottom of his cart he had set eight avocados and two boxes of mini pearl tomatoes.

He was pleased.

I wondered why he had not chosen the salami that was next to the avocados. He had not eaten salami and cheese since we'd married and I know how much he loves it. I placed a salami in the cart while he wasn't looking. I had added the cheese and the crackers before he returned. He had wandered away and was beside me as I turned from the cart.

Between his thumb and his forefinger he was admiring and taunting me with a sample.

He said, "Here. Try This!"

He set it in my mouth and I became jello. Like the woman who "orgasms" in the shampoo commercial, I stood in the middle of the Christmas shopping crowd at Trader Joe's and made a fool of myself.

French Cocoa Truffles!

He had caught my vision.

We became like children in a candy store. Up and down the aisles we bolted and paused, bolted and paused. Dark chocolate covered mini-pretzels, smoked oysters (no comments from the gallery please), cashews, sweet potato bisque, Fleur De Sel Caramels, and lemon bread.

Oh - what a feast we were preparing.

We each headed for the shrimp aisle. Christmas isn't Christmas without shrimp before dinner. It is a long held tradition for me and it will be reality again this Christmas day. As will the Prime Rib, the garlic red potatoes, with artichokes and mini-pearl tomatoes on a tossed salad.

Christmas celebrations are a culmination of the wishes, the dreams and the memories that meld together those with whom we share the holidays. As we age and mature, the familiarity of all that came before lends a sense of security, continuity and peace that cannot be wrapped in boxes or slid inside a stocking.

As the sounds of my childhood Christmases echo from a CD in the other room, I have tried to share with you the warmth and wealth of the Christmas gift you so generously gave us this year. In gratitude, I pray that God will bless you with warm embrace and sense of security restored through the Atonement of His Son, whose birth and life's purpose we celebrate this season.

Know that you are loved this day and every day of the coming New Year.