Our Christmas Letter, 2015

CHANGING SEASONS

10 December 2015

We have been enjoying autumn, where the trees around here burst into wild colors -- yellow, orange, red.  But now "autumn" is morphing into "Fall," named for obvious reasons.

The tree in front of our house has been beautiful this week, though less beautiful than it was a couple of days ago.

But with all this beauty comes the inevitable price to pay.

It is not unusual to gather all these leaves, turn around, and discover another blanket of leaves under the tree.  They seem to be floating down almost nonstop, though I expect that with the day-long rain that is predicted for tomorrow (be still my heart!) that may take care of most of the rest of the leaves.

I'm not sure how I feel about the changing seasons.  While autumn and winter have always been my favorite seasons, ever since spring my mother's most common topic of conversation is how beautiful the leaves outside her window are. She is obsessed with them. Now, as she watches them fall, she snorts, makes a sour face, and says soon the trees will look "yucka" and I expect a couple of months where we sit and discuss how ugly the trees are....which isn't nearly as pleasant as spending time listening to her rhapsodize about how beautiful the green leaves are, and speculate whether it is hot or cold out by whether the leaves are moving or not.

With the approach of winter...and of Christmas, I happened to find a place where I could find my very own "ugly sweater" in my size (though I have to admit that I don't find this sweater "ugly" at all...I think it's cute!)

This sweater, and another, with a penguin on it, arrived this morning and I was thrilled with them both.  I wore the sweater to Atria today when I had lunch with my mother.

She loved the sweater.  All three times she first saw it.  When I arrived (11:30), I woke her up and she never noticed what I was wearing until I pointed it out to her.  Then she told me how much she liked it.

On our walk to the restaurant, she suddenly noticed my sweater and said how much she liked it and asked when I got it.

At lunch, she pointed the sweater out to Margaret, at our table and they talked about how cute it was.

Then on the walk back to the apartment, she noticed it again and she asked when I got it and told me that it was cute and how nice that I got myself a new sweater.  Sigh.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with someone to discuss my mother's current situation and find out what options are.  She has been just fine since her last anxiety attack so I am less inclined to do anything about her right now.