Dear Friends,
I hope everyone is doing well. We are mostly fine here. I’m still in recovery from surgery on my left shoulder and my right hand, but I am getting better every day.
First, I’d like to say I made a pact with myself to, no matter what, remember the “Reason for the Season.” For us Christians, this is when we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
To my Jewish friends (who are like family), I wish you a Happy Hanukkah. You are a great inspiration for my life.
I have a story for you all. It’s about our Christmas tree.
For those of you who know my wife Martha, you know her temperament is different from mine. If I may summarize it, Martha believes, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing Now, Quickly, and Correctly.
If I’m honest, I’d have to say her attitude is beginning to rub off on me, and I see the logic behind it.
Ah, now, to get back to the subject at hand…
This year, setting up our Christmas Tree has been a challenge. It took five (5!) days to get it set up. With this length of time, we experienced a lot of frustration (especially for Martha).
Let me give you a little background so you’ll understand the scope of this.
Our living room has a high ceiling with three large windows above the ten-foot mark. They let in a lot of light, but the windows dwarf any tree under 10 feet tall. So, we’ve always used a ten-footer for our Christmas Trees over the years.
Secondly, Martha’s vision of our Christmas Trees has been the same for every year I’ve known her. She wants her trees to radiate white light and have no gaps greater than three inches between lights or ornaments. She’s right as far as I’m concerned. Our trees are always a sight to behold when it is set up.
It usually took us a day to decorate our tree.
Live or artificial, you might ask? Great question!
For a long time, we had a live tree. The reason was that they usually look very good, and we had a vendor nearby who would cut, deliver, and set up our tree (except for lights and ornaments).
But about five years ago, the vendor stopped selling trees. We still wanted a live tree, but it was out of our reach, so we adapted.
We bought a ten-foot artificial tree with lights embedded. There were many choices of lights — from white to multiple colors, and solid, blinking, or warm cycling. It came in four pieces with connectors to tie the lights of each section to each other. I noticed the light connectors were the same color as the tree, and there were several different connectors, so I made sure to label them so I would know which connectors should be attached to each other. Smart, eh?
It looked like a perfect solution for us.
After the first Christmas with this tree, we realized that Martha and I couldn’t set it up by ourselves. Thankfully, we have a son and a grandson nearby who have graciously helped us every year.
After the first year, we had problems connecting the lights. I hadn’t anticipated we might not be able to find the connectors. We spent a couple of hours finding the connectors and getting the lights working.
After several years, we decided to make it easy on ourselves. We didn’t search for the connectors; we just bought and strung lights.
And… that brings us to this year.
First, I couldn’t hold up my end — left arm in a sling; right hand still healing and in rehab. Martha was kind to me — she told me to sit down with a glass of wine and help her “in spirit,” which I was eager to do. I was feeling guilty because she was doing all the work.
We tried to find the connectors again and only found a pair, so we decided to turn those off and string the lights as usual.
We got out our big storage bin filled with lights and put them on the tree.
Starting at this point, we began having light string outages that didn’t make any sense (We would fix one, and later it would fail. Then suddenly, it would work again). We spent two days trying to figure out and fix it.
This was about Day Three.
At this time, Martha’s attitude spilled over into the “unhappy state”. She had other things she wanted to do for Christmas, and this was taking much longer than usual.
Well, we thought, maybe some of the light strings had gone bad? So, back to CVS for more light strings. But the same problems continued.
Then I remembered we had the issue last year and used extension cords strung up through the center of the tree.
Martha’s attitude moved into the “irritated state”.
We ran some tests with the only extension cords we had left… white ones. This proved to be the answer to the problem.
After a few hours, I finally reached for the box the light strings were packaged in. On the box, it clearly said to string no more than four light strings together. Calculating quickly, I determined we had at least seven strung together.
So, I went looking for a dark green or brown extension cord. They were harder to find than you might expect. Even Home Depot only had a few brown cords. I snatched them up.
When I got home, Martha told me, “I’m so frustrated, I might scream. Just be ready.” I had never heard her scream, and I didn’t want to.
At this point, I had to get involved. With a bad hand and a bad shoulder, I lay on my back and scootched (sp?) myself (one cheek at a time) headfirst under the tree. Well, at least I was contributing. With my sling clinging to branches, I finally got into position near the trunk. Martha fed the new extension cords through the branches, hoping to get them to me so I could pull them down far enough to plug them into the power strip.
All the lights worked. The venture was a success.
We had a little family party to add the ornaments. It’s a tradition for us. It was fun, and the tree was now full of lights and ornaments.
That evening, we sat in the living room with a glass of wine and admired our work.
It was then that Martha discovered a small area on the right side where the lights weren’t working. You couldn’t see it very well from the front, but Martha “would know it was there.”
To her credit, she didn’t scream. We chatted about it, and she decided to use a small light string in that area. When she was done, you couldn’t tell there ever was a lightless area.
Finally, the lights and the ornaments were stable.
Overall, we used over 1800 lights and hundreds of ornaments. It was finally up to Martha’s standards. She was happy, and that makes me happy. I love seeing her enjoy the Season. It makes it all worthwhile. Check out the picture to see the results of our labor.
We decided we would do the Christmas Tree differently next year.
In the end, it was worth the effort. Our Christmas Spirit returned, and we look forward to a great holiday, celebrating the gift of our Lord.
On a different note, I recently got a lovely review for my TIME LIMITS audiobook. Check it out if you have time.
Here’s the URL: https://www.instagram.com/p/DRRPgeLjlN1/
Also, I’m in the process of upgrading my website. When you have time, please take a look and let me know what you think. The address is: http://AuthorKimMegahee.com
I wish you all the best during this season. Be safe. Sing and dance. Don’t talk politics for a week. And, most of all, be thankful for the blessings the Lord has given you.
Cheers and regards,
Kim