Monthly Archives: December 2009

At this time of year (as we think of others and buy buy buy to show our love), I find myself going back in time, to thoughts of my maternal grandmother who saved saved saved.

Yes, she was an amazingly frugal woman. She could save to the extreme. Grandma would stash a little away before she paid the bills, before she sent savings to the bank (which she did every pay check). This was her habit until after she passed away. Her thrift became evident when I went home for her funeral.

I was helping my granddad by making up all the beds for him; and as I was tucking the blankets into one of the guest beds, my hand touched something that felt foreign for the underside of a mattress. I lifted the mattress a bit only to find a considerable cachet of cash. I didn’t even count it. I took it straight away to my granddad.

I told him the story… how I came by the money. I waited as Grandpa took it, counted it, held it for a moment. Then he looked up with big tears rolling down both

A few days ago, I whiled away the early evening as I watched a Christmas flick where the hero made a complete fool of himself trying to put more lights on his house than anyone else on the planet. You know this one? He was totally obsessed with lights in every way shape and form. I thought, “That’s just nuts,” and then I walked outside. All of my neighbors (no it’s true!) were putting up Christmas lights.
*Lights on the roof.
*Lights on reindeer
*Lights around the front door
*Lights on the windows and in the windows
*Lights that blinked and lights that didn’t blink
*Lights sans color
*Lights of every color
There were displays of Santas that heaved with air inside and they were lit up! (Scary. It was actually a balloon filled with air, but still… Santa “breathing” like the last chimney was going to give him a heat attack? The sound was awful.)

We had put up our Christmas tree a few days previous. You could see it in the front window of the house, so we had lights that decorated the house… well, sort of. Now it was me who was thinking lights lights lights.

The very word can strike terror in one’s heart. And ya know? This was not that big a thing when I was a kid. My parents would toss their three kids in the car. We would park, get out. And immediately my dad would say, “I’ll take Carolyn.” It would be settled… Tom and Barb would go with our mother to shop for their Christmas gifts. One day I asked my dad why he always wanted to take me Christmas shopping. He said, “Because you’re the best shopper. You don’t have to see everything in town to buy a gift. You know the people you’re shopping for, and they always enjoy the gift you give them. And the very best part of this for me is that when I take you shopping we are done in a very short time; then we can just walk around and enjoy each other while your mother and Tom and Barb finish up.”

“Wow! That’s a pretty good thing,” I thought.

I had always believed that everyone was a natural shopper. Now that I am shopping sans father, I can’t say that I