There is a little piano store up on the Phinney Ridge that has been there since God was a Child. The prices are all hand-typed or written very neatly in old Palmer script on yellowed index cards and taped just so in the middle of each piano. The reason I love this store is not just for the index cards but because of their Christmas decorations. In each window ledge, on every wall, on the pillars holding up the ceiling, resting gently upon most pianos are every sort of retro, old-fashioned, "heritage"Christmas decoration imaginable..except in this context. Not retro at all. They fit the scene. Waving Santas, angels singing, belling, harping, flying, hovering, gazing beatifically, lingering, harmonizing, and what looks to be pestering some Magi's camels or shepherd's lambs (I can just hear it from a couple of the adolescent angels on that Very Special Night--:Pssst! God won't mind...let's go buzz a couple of those sheep. No one'll see!")..back to the decorations: Victorian everybody-shoppers, carolers, passers-by, skaters, carriage riders, church-goers, tree-carriers side by side with snow villages lit by lights connected by the first kind of electrical cords manufactured after WWII, tinsel, bells, poinsettias, and a myriad of creches in the most important spots. Here and there are certificates for the best neighborhood Christmas display year after year since 1952 or thereabouts. I have been walking up the hills to find and enjoy this wondrous site since I moved here. It takes near two hours and knees in strong-elasticized condition, and a travel mug of coffee. Attach my favorite dog or dogs and off we go. Then it is more sauntering to window shop and cafe sniff and rapture at winter gardens and yard whimsy. Before dawn, after dusk, in morning winter light, in rain, in sparkle, in the time of year where I just start walking and end up there saying to myself "How did I get all the way up HERE?" and then glad I did. I'll call it tradition. One of my own. I'm finding I have several now. Some old. Some new. Some borrowed. Some extremely sappy that drive other people mildy crazy and I don't care because it's all about the Love. Love being Here. Love being Now. Love being shared. Love being Present and Healing. Love making us Laugh. Love reminding us that Mary and Joseph didn't bring a whole lot of retro psychological or physical baggage with them--the donkey couldn't have handled it and the stable wasn't big enough for that kind of clutter. Neither were their Hearts. Neither are Ours. Or I'll just speak for Mine.
I loved the Scrum yesterday. Started bright and early with a no-sleep, panic attack kind of morning where old tapes started drowning out the Messiah Choruses...exacerbating an already tense neck and head...all kinds of soothing had no effect until I began to sing. And turned on the lights and Xmas music and threw in a bath (And had coffee and drugs but it really was all about the singing).

Anyway, the Scrum was the scrum. In my Heart, at the Homestead, and in the world. And when I embrace it for the Gift that it is and power that has to teach and to heal and to hurl (Baggage that is), then I can really sing. And I did. Didn't drive my sisters too crazy while we were doing dishes before the 11 p.m. dessert...at least all they did was laugh uproariously as they opened another bottle of pinot gigio and one other scowled....And as Thomas Kinkaide wrote in "The Sentinel on Bedford Street", "All the flash and sparkle and tinsel are just fine...just so long as there is something old and true and alive underneath."...so glad Porter and I made the long walk up the hills to look at the little piano store on the corner. Made me feel old and true and alive.