"Stuff" and Mortality...and Christmas

I'm sitting by the Christmas tree all lit up - in the dark -waiting for Brandon to come home. Boys are in thier rooms for being naughty, while baby naps soundly. You could hear a pin drop in here.

Rosina, 1950's. Chicago.

My grandma just passed away a few days ago on December 14th, and I've been sort of pondering my own mortality, like we all do when death comes near.  She was a beautiful airline stewardess. A devout catholic raised by nuns in boarding schools, and later had four children (one was my mother Lilly).

Her name was Rosina Cook, and I am her namesake (middle name). I recently gave the same name to my baby daughter as one of her two middle names. I wish we'd known each other better. We did visit every few years but I grew up in Minnesota after my grandparents had already moved to New Mexico for the warm weather.

Man it's nice that the house is dark and silent - and at 5 o'clock! Anyway, I'm looking at the old scars on my right thigh from when I was 15. As I view them I think, One day they will be old. Really old. That seems so strange to picture myself old, because but Everyone was young once.

These legs have carried me so many places since then.... Various high school jobs for 8 bucks an hour. Running track in college. Dropping to my knees in a dorm to cry for my father. In and out of classes. Running again often at midnight down midway in st. Paul. Loooots of shopping. Walking down the isle.
These legs have danced with the vacuum a lot, and cuddled my husband. Waddled during pregnancies. Been numbed in styrups for childbirth. Chased after babies and toddlers amidst thier laughter, and ran around the country-side here.

I have my Grandma's legs to the tee. Last time I saw her two years ago her whole body was so old, but her eyes had that twinkle. She was a stay at home mom like me. not to be too dramatic but, I just can't believe I will get old too!

I look over at the beautiful glow from the frosted glass snowing birds resting on the boughs of our Christmas tree. Ornaments from my childhood, they have holes on the bottom where you set them over a bulb of light on the tree and they glow glow glow. I grew up feasting on their mysterious beauty every Christmas-time. How often I truly enjoyed the tradition of these gentle Christmas keepers - sometimes with my dad too.

I'm looking at them thinking, this very bird might have been the one chosen by him on an "I spy" game. We used to throw out colors and guess which ornament it was.

These are my kids' ornaments now.

We played that Christmas game not far from here, in my parents' home in Lakeville - where a family of seven now resides.

Now it's their childhood home and not mine.
Just like now this world is mine and no longer my grandma's.

We grow and we move on. Things change. Stuff changes hands. We grow older. We die.

And what of all these things? This stuff? I think tonight, I will let my kids play with the snow villages on the shelf I've inherited from my childhood. (Play on the carpeted ground of course).

Because what's all this stuff for if not to just be enjoyed by it's owners in thier time? Even if it does break. Because everything breaks. And so do we. So for now they will play with my snow-village.

*Later edited to say that this activity definitely had me whipping out my trusty glue-gun the next day.