Maybe One Day
On our very first Christmas together my wife and I put up a tiny Christmas tree on her grandmother’s old oak side table. I still have it. We lived in a two-story garage apartment we rented for $75 a month. She gave me a copy of the collected poems of EE Cummings. I still have it. And how do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death, which is from his poem about Buffalo Bill.
And I think perhaps, I’ll give that old book a center spot in my decorations this year because I’m all in after last year’s black Christmas, which was no Christmas at all if you ask me. Not that anyone will. And if Mister Death comes looking this year, he might want to listen to a song my friend wrote once upon a time. Because if it’s still a chill heart he’s got, I’ll send him to some place that’s hot. Not that I’m James Butler Hickock, but we’re celebrating this year, and it’s a nice continuation of the cowboy theme.
The festivities kick off tomorrow with the gathering of the children, mine, and my friends. The little ones. We’ll eat cookies, drink sweet drinks, have a bit of chili. Then we’ll walk into town. Watch the fireworks, see the courthouse light up, look at all the lights. Maybe drink some hot chocolate. When it’s all done, we’ll walk home. Tired and happy. And we’ll do it because maybe one day, somewhere down the road, one of them might say, “I remember…”
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale