Standing on the grass sipping a hot coffee, I am smiling at the lights. Many of the boats have Christmas lights up. I am gleeful about it. Everything looks so beautiful. The lights are stunning, doubled in the reflection of the water, punctuating the night with LED sparkles. Mentally I will my whole body to turn to stone so I can stay here, and be a slight, regal version of an Easter Island statue, gazing out over the beloved blue-green sea toward the future or the past or some semblance of life in between.
Caleb's boat has no lights on it. I'm not sure if I should request it or not.
***
The clerk at Tiffany & Co. informs us that, due to a busy afternoon, there is a waiting list to see a salesperson. If we'd like to add our name, she can see that we are taken care of. Ben defers, and invites me to look around first. I head off to do the diamond loop, beginning with the signature pieces and the bridal counters and ending with the leather goods and the Elsa Peretti collections.
He says all I have to do is point to something and he'll have it wrapped.
I walk straight out the door and turn right. In the window with the yellow diamonds they have a tiny snowy pink and blue carousel that spins around and around and around. I want that. I would never stop watching it.
But it isn't for sale.
***
I'm trying to emulate the girl on the other side of the ramen shop. She's using her spoon and her chopsticks in conjunction to eat the noodles. I'm good with chopsticks but every time I pick up the spoon with my left hand my right hand fails to work properly. I put the spoon down and I'm fine. It's so messy but so delicious. Ben is finished so I need to worry less about soup winding up on my dress and more about eating my spicy akaoni miso so we can go home. I'm tempted to ask for some gyoza to take away, just to eat in the truck on the way home. They are so delicious. It's like I haven't eaten in days. I can't remember if I have or not but for tonight the soup will suffice.
***
It's beginning to rain and we have returned to the house empty-handed, having set out seven hours ago with firm plans to go to the Christmas tree lot and bring home a tree. We have driven past ten different tree lots but somehow we needed to just lose a day, give it away, not become slaves to the hours, minutes and schedules of others.
PJ and Ruth present matching facial expressions, rife with disappointment but they are not bound by the same constraints of desperate timekeeping. We vow to rise early tomorrow and head straight to the lot. Ben will again tell me to pick out whatever I like best. Easily done, since these are not designer trees, unless you walk to the center of the lot where the Noble firs are. I will stick to the edges, where the misfit spiny Fraser and Douglas firs rest against wooden saw horses.
I want one that is perfectly imperfect, a tree for a home that is also perfectly imperfect.
I will give the man a handful of twenties and he will make a fresh cut and offer to help Ben get it safely into the truck bed. We will make small talk about Halifax, and compare readiness for what has become a dizzying carousel of holiday madness. We will promise to come back next year.
Next year seems like a million miles away but I know I will wake up in a week and it will be here already and Christmas trees will be the last thing on my mind as I fight to honor the resolutions I've been working on so diligently.
Ultimately I will fail, but I always try my hardest. And that's what counts, isn't it?
