I miss my mantel

The divorce grief that has nothing to do with people

No ornaments are as unhinged as vintage ornaments made in Germany or Japan. I bought a little baggie of random ornaments at a resale shop this past week, just wanting the snowman reading a book full of dots (you’ll see it further down.) I had no idea yet the magic I’d find in that $2 Ziplock.

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I didn’t get a Christmas tree until December 14th. There was a big run on trees this year, or maybe that’s just how it is every year. I wouldn’t know since we always used to get our tree Thanksgiving weekend, so it would be one of three Christmas trees that were up and decorated before our party. Our party was always the first weekend in December, before everyone’s weekends were booked up with a bunch of other parties. I wanted our party to be the only stop, that is, until I started kicking people out around one or two in the morning by walking up to them and saying get out of my house.

My tree stood in a pricey and extremely easy-to-use stand for days, without a single light or ornament on it. Teenagers will ask you to wait for them to decorate it with you and then never be around. But I was ok with that, truth be told I didn’t feel much like doing it either.

I’m not sure when I bought a Christmas tree stand last, it was probably when we moved to Vermont, 21 years ago next month. This one required research, because that’s the phase of life I’m in now, the Wirecutter phase. I had to drive to the neighborhood where we bought our first house in order to pick it up, at the Ace hardware store that’s next to the tree lot run by the Boy Scouts. When I arrived the lot was already empty, no people and lights off, just one big fat tree sat in the rain, tipped on its side. It was almost dark out at 4.

I sat in my car as the rain (not snow) barfed down. The only time I actually like snow is right now but, nope, we’re getting rain. Truly, what is the point of living in Vermont—of all places—without a white Christmas. It’s absurd. Anyway, I surveyed this depressing tableau, whispered jesusfuckingchrist to myself and then got out of my car. Why is everything about this particular holiday season so grim and gloomy, aside from all the obvious reasons absolutely everywhere.

I’d be surprised too if I didn’t even have a whole-ass tree

Last year, my first solo holiday season, I had a small fake white tree that I loaded up with fat old school C9 Christmas lights and packed with vintage Japanese ornaments. I loved that apartment very much, a 30-ish minute drive from here, but it might as well have been an Airbnb (which is probably why I loved it so much.) I didn’t have to move all my stuff there, that’s what the family house was for, the most expensive storage facility. My kids never visited my apartment because they didn’t have a car and it was too far and who knows why they didn’t visit but I have my theories. First off, they didn’t have to. I thought last holiday season was hard, but there are a hundred reasons why I’m deeply nostalgic for it now.

I keep getting frustrated that I’m surrounded by piles of things constantly, that I can’t seem to find a moment of calm anywhere in this apartment that is less than half the size of our old house, with a carpet color and style I absolutely loathe, yet with a rent payment that’s higher than my mortgage.

We’re so close to our old neighborhood that a couple weeks ago I ran into the new owner of our house as we were both out walking our dogs. I couldn’t place him at first and let’s just say the wheels in my brain were smoking trying to remember if I had gone on a date with him or chatted with him until I was like ding ding ding you bought my house, jesusfuckingchrist.

I knew that work was being done on the house, that was always going to be the case of course. When you sell a house it is no longer yours. You no longer have a say in what happens to it. Anyway, I like him, we had a nice quick chat and he told me we could come by any time to see the house. I paused and replied, “Oh I appreciate that, but I think it would be too hard.”