Festive...all year long

The time has come to take the holiday decorations down at our place.  Like anything holiday-ish, we're minimalists, of course.  What did we do?  Well, we dragged in the pony tail plant that resides on our front porch and I wrapped it with colorful lights.  I added a tree skirt to the bottom and called it "done".  Dave got the ladder and strung lights on the pillars and awning and called that "done".  Oh, and I hung our four stockings on the rock wall.  Seriously, that was it.  I figure it'll take us fifteen minutes tops to take everything down and have it back in the shed.  Awesome!

This undecorating routine reminded me of one of my clearest childhood memories.  When it came to Christmas, my mom was seriously all in.  She loved everything about the festivities involved and did all of them to the nth degree.  Well, one year when Christmas had come and gone, my mom met with refusal from everyone in the family when she asked for help with undecorating.  Everyone!  Even the cats, all eleven of them, just turned the other way and yawned.

So, what happened?  Did she just begrudgingly dismantle everything all on her own?  A task, mind you, that likely would've taken a crew of four multiple hours to complete.  Did she budget her time and take just a bit down each day?  No, she decidedly did not.  I don't remember her actually saying anything at all at the time, but come August, when our fully decorated artificial tree was still standing in the living room, we figured she wasn't going to do the undecorating without our help.  And, by the time it was September, well, that meant only three more months till it would need to be put up again, right?  So, there the tree stayed.  It became a fixture in the home.  After a while no one even bothered to ask about its presence in our home when they stopped by for a visit.  It was like the crazy aunt who came for a visit during the holidays...and never left.

Come January of the next year when it was time to undecorate once again, I don't think my mom had to even ask twice for help.  We were all over it.  She didn't even have to lift a finger.

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