December 28, 2004

The Christmas Loot

The Christmas Loot...With Nani guarding it all

I wanted to write about our Christmas, but yesterdays events overshadowed anything else I could say...

It happened again this year...Woody after telling me that he wasn't going to get me a Christmas gift and to not bother with one for him, did this... He went to our friend Margaret at "Phoenix Rising", the gift shop across the street from the store and asked her if I had been looking at anything. This lady is the Queen of sales and marketing... The proof is in these gifts... She remembers people, their faces, and their names and what she sees them touch, handle, and buy. She told Woody that she was surprised at me this year...but she was dead on. The selections were accurate to the letter.

The book is a hand tooled leather journal cover, featuring roses, my favorite flower... I still grieve over the lost of my lovely rose garden that I had at my home in California. The people that bought it removed the roses and planted grass. I understand that the roses were given away to neighbor's and relatives not chucked into the trash so I feel a bit better about it. I have kept a hand written journal since I was 16 and am about to complete my 36th volume... so you see Blogging is a natural extension of this life long passion of making my voice heard... I have never bought "filler" type journals, but rather the nicely bound cloth covered books. Alas I only see the spiral bound type these days... ugly and take up a lot more room. I store my filled volumes in my cedar chest for posterity... I can buy bound journals at Borders that will fill this nicely.

Then the velveteen, hand beaded Christmas stocking... We put up no decorations either at the store or at home this year...Whether that was just due to time restraints, or perhaps the subtle sense of mourning (which affected the atmosphere of the shop and trashed the sales, Im sure...) I think it had a terrible effect on us. I would walk in to Phoenix Rising and circle the store looking at things and each time I would pass by I would reach out and touch its velvety softness and marvel at the fragile beauty of it and think how nice it would look hanging from the stone mantle of our new home next year whereever it is...

The same with the beaded organza covered candle holders. Much of my life has been spent just trying to gain the necessities of life, trifles like these frilly things were not something "for me" I sold Avon for 25 years (from the time I was 14 till not long before we relocated to Hawaii) and bought little of the decorator stuff for myself... Woody knew to buy two, that impressed me, and bought the nice candles that we inside them as well.

In the ring box (Not from Phoenix Risisng but rather our own store Azure Seas ) is the reigning queen of our store. A 3 carat nearly flawless Aquamarine, set in 18kt gold with 2/3 of a carat of high quality side diamonds. When the light shines on it the stone sparkles like a pale blue diamond, look deep into it and its like pool of water in the midst of a rushing mountain stream...Clear and clean...Other than our Tahitian Pearl strands this is the last of the Big Big ticket items left. One of the signs of the store's failure is that we cannot afford to replace such items which you must have to really say "Yes, I am a jewelry store, not a junk outlet" I have coveted this ring from the moment that my vendor Sandy showed it to me in Feb of 2003. It is my birth stone as well... Woody said "Take it out of inventory. Its had two Christmases to go to a new home so it is ment to be ours..." With jewelry he always uses the royal "we", plural for "our" jewelry like his is mine and mine is his, its one of the few area that he does this...

These gifts are all symbolic of a new future. Woody, who is rarely stingy with money, much to his own hurt, sort of went all out (though I think he negotiated with Margaret to get a discount...) I was really touched by this. He asked me to wrap up the Christmas thing for next year and put them in a place where I can find them easily... Remembering the catastophic day in 2002 when I thought that my beloved nativity had been left in California, as I couldn't find it...I cried and cried as I tore through cartons of unpacked stuff...

..." You will have time to garden and a place to do it... We will have a nice place to live and life will be more normal again...That's what I want... Have the ring to remember the adventure of the store and lets go forward..." Woody said with a straight face... Sometimes he says serious stuff like hes making a joke but he wasn't joking about this. He's dead serious...

Well so am I. At Christmas Dinner, where I made a ham dinner and baked treats and sides all day, I raised a glass to "Next Year in Where Ever, USA" and Woody said "Yes, and Im sure everything will be fine..."

I pray to my God that this is so...