Oh! Tomato Man!

Sunday was a rare day, all mine.  On days like this, I usually go off to the flea market at 6:00 AM, treasure hunting for vintage costume jewelry or other curiosities.  I didn’t go flea-ing this Sunday because I am moving and haven’t yet figured out how to fit everything I own into a shoe box. Introducing one more object into the mix, great find or not, isn't the brightest of ideas.

So I went to my class at the community college, and ran a few leisurely errands. But by mid-afternoon my need to seek was so great that I found myself pulled, trance-like to the flea market grounds. I knew that all the vendors would be gone by that point. And I really wasn’t going to sniff around with hopes of finding an old brooch, slipped out of its box into the gravel or a fly-away antique photo, forgotten and left behind, honest - I wasn’t. But I was desperate for a discovery.  I set my sights on the antiques center on the complex knowing they would still be open. I just couldn’t get  my mind off the bins and bins of old postcards just sitting there in the air conditioned ambiance. 

Settling in, savoring the smell of mildew and history, I sat on a stool, while Sinatra sang from someplace, immortal. Ghosts of yesteryear, peered down approvingly from their ornate frames. The patina-ed furniture, welcomed like church pews.  I could hear other customers talking to the dealers about their furniture and jewelry purchases. “Can you do better? Is that a firm price? Is it oak, is it silver?" 


 I loved sitting there in collectible heaven, filing through the postcards.  There were thousands, mostly of the souvenir variety, not my favorite, which made the dig for art cards, all the more challenging.  After an hour and a half, yes an hour and a half, ( I left no card unturned )I narrowed my purchase down to seven – a select few Christmas postcards for a dollar each.  How much space can a postcard (or seven) take up anyway?

As I was leaving, I saw a dark-haired, burly man, an owner I guessed. He was eating a late lunch at the check-out counter  - a fresh Jersey beefsteak tomato (no doubt from the farm right down the road) served up in Tupperware bowl. He ate this neatly, merely this and nothing more.

“It doesn’t get much better than that,” I told him as I was leaving the store. He looked up in complete understanding. (If you have ever eaten a Jersey tomato, warm from the vine, then you, no doubt, understand too). The man smiled as I opened the door. He looked so sweet, almost vulnerable, sitting there enjoying his "tomada".

The bell clanked behind me. I took a step or two onto the sidewalk, and walked, without warning, right into a wall of loneliness. I suddenly ached for company. I ached to cut up a tomato for a man.

I dropped my postcards and ran back into the store. I rushed behind the counter where he sat and knelt next to the big man with the tomato. I didn't hug him, I merely rested my head on his chest, listening to the heart beat of a real man.

Come on. (Did you really think I would drop my postcards?)

But as I felt the sidewalk beneath my feet again, and my legs continued to take me toward my car, I couldn’t help entertaining that scenario. What if I had run back in? I pictured the man’s startled expression, his paw automatically patting my back in comfort; he and the other workers stunned by the surprise violation of  his personal space. Who was this woman, resting her weary head on his chest, breathing in his imagined chivalry?

 I laughed at the thought of it, and laughing when you are alone does have a tendency to send off alarm bells of lunacy. I saw a couple of other treasure- hunters hesitate, assessing the degree of  danger that I posed; a fifty-something woman, alone and laughing quietly to herself with no Bluetooth discernible. But, I must have seemed harmless enough, because they cautiously continued on. So did I, enjoying my day alone, doing things that I enjoy.

Beneath This Tacky Tree

This is the first year, in the 32 years since I moved out of my parents' home that I do not have a real tree for Christmas. I know, I can hear the collective gasp, but it is a big change for us, and since change has visited my family all around and over and over again these past few years, it just seemed fitting.

Used to be that Christmas just wasn't Christmas until we picked out our big evergreen from the tree farm.  The joke in our family was that the tree had to call out to mom, it had to softly, sweetly, beg to be the one; "kill me, kill me," the tree would plead, telepathically of course.But, before saw ever touched trunk, I had the family hold hands while I sang, O Tannenbaum. Seriously, we did this.  When they were little, the kids sang along, when they got older they rolled their eyes, when they got even older they hid in nearby trees.

But some traditions must fall by the wayside. This is the first Christmas in many years without our  old pets. It is the third Christmas as a fractured family.  It is the first year out of the only home my girls have ever known. It just didn't feel right celebrating in the same manner. Where we are now, space is limited, hearts are healing and it was time for something different.

Different came by way of eBay. Our tree arrived a week after the highest bid, shipped promptly in a recycled brown box with our address written in black Sharpie. I was the winner of a vintage, bedraggled, shedding, aluminum beauty, just under six feet tall and just like the one I had when I was four years old.

It was actually fun for my daughters and me to separate the branches according to size and fit them into the ill-fitting holes. It was nice having the old ornaments we had collected over the years, showcased on the sparse, stiff limbs. And, guess what? It sparkles without any lights at all. The truly vintage electric color wheels that spin and change the tree different colors were also a hot item on eBay, but they were out of  our budget this year. I do remember sitting fascinated when I was a kid, watching the tree go from red to blue to yellow, while the little wheel went round and round. It was so high-tech back then but now seems sort of  homespun.

At the moment, it is a temporary home, where my girls and I find ourselves. It might be a long time before we have a home of our home again. But right now, this place feels heavenly and this cusp we are living on, where the last two of my chicks are poised for take off, is oh so precious to us. It is a girls place here, where pink reigns and silver bangles sit artfully by the kitchen sink. It is a place, decidedly feminine. Our place for now. But isn't everything, only for now?

Some day we, I mean I, (I will have to get used to saying "I") will have a house of my own again.  And when that time comes, the tacky aluminum tree will come along. It will share the space with a real tree and be a sparkling reminder of these often trying, oh-so-fleeting, good old days.

 

Ugly Santas

What I love about Christmas is remembering what it felt like to believe in Santa. Of course if I believed Santa ever looked like any of these guys, I would have hid under my bed till New Years.  The girl in me still likes Santa, but now with a twist and it has been fun rescuing these guys from flea markets. The last photos is a postcard, the others all gather together on shelves with other tacky offerings of Christmas past.  There are dozens of cute little fellows that didn't make the ugly Santa cut and one much scarier guy, that my adult children were too frightened to let me bring out of the storage bin.  My dear friend, SteveMeeple, thinks his Santas are uglier than mine, but nope, not even close.