Well friends, the day is here. Each year a local residential care facility (nursing home, for those who are nearly old enough to join one) hosts a Christmas crafts fair, where the handiwork of the residents is displayed and sold on large tables erected throughout the building. Each year, Mrs. Ten insists on touring the grounds, buying handfuls of cute little items priced from $0.10 to the lofty sum of $1.00. There's the popsicle-stick Santas and the acorn reindeers, the painstakingly knitted but functionally useless Christmas Tree potholders, the horridly bad but shockingly earnest watercolor and oil paintings (an exception to the $1.00 rule, in price if not in value), the beaded-styrofoam tree ornaments....you get the idea. Mrs. Ten will purchase a grocery shopping bag full of these crafts and after we get them home, she will exclaim over them for an hour or so until it's time to put them away in the bottom of the closet. That is the opportunity for me to retrieve the shopping bag full of the same crafts that we bought LAST year at the same venue and pitch it in the trash.
Perhaps you gather that this little excursion could strain my patience and my credulity. I've learned over the years that our yearly visit has very little to do with the items on display and everything to do with the social atmosphere at the setting. The residents are so glad to see thier visitors, and so proud to display the items that they've made. People speak to them, and they converse. If there is a spirit to the impending holidays, this is my notice to become aware.
Perhaps you gather that this little excursion could strain my patience and my credulity. I've learned over the years that our yearly visit has very little to do with the items on display and everything to do with the social atmosphere at the setting. The residents are so glad to see thier visitors, and so proud to display the items that they've made. People speak to them, and they converse. If there is a spirit to the impending holidays, this is my notice to become aware.
