Cigars:  on Indian reservations they call tobacco the red man’s revenge.  And yet ironically, my Choctaw Grandmother died from causes probably related to smoking cigarettes.  My daddy smoked cigars and pipes until the mid ’70’s when I showed him the PSAs that smoking can cause lung cancer.  I was the only kid in Kindergarten with a King Edward’s cigar box as a pencil box.  And yet as an adult I confess a love for cigars.  They are a treat to be savored, versus a daily indulgence.  I have gone from Churchills to robusotos though so I have reduced my smoking length considerably.  I do not want to write too much to glorify them; I’m just saying … one every now and then I think is OK.  Abraham Lincoln once said, “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.”  I am refraining from indulging after this post.  My next cigar will probably be New Year’s Eve.  Until then I have my little humidor and when I open it, for an instant, the years slip away and I am back sitting on my daddy’s lap.  His hands were so huge and so red.  I can still remember the heavenly smell of his tobacco.  And for a single split second I have him back.

You can call them thrift stores on the lower echelon, resale a step up, next I suppose is “vintage”, consignment a notch above that, and finally antique shops if you want to feel you’re on the high end of used things.  Really they’re all a mixed bag and there could be a treasure priceless only to the finder in any of them.  Some places can be funky and some can just smell funky.  Some I find depressing and others I find interesting to check out.  I try to reuse, reduce and recycle so it makes me feel good patronizing them.  Also, I try to shop local and they’re mostly Mom and Pop establishments wherever you go.  One man’s trash really is another man’s treasure.  American designer Kelly Wearstler said that “everything is inspired by history”, so that is why she loves vintage and antiques.  I have always loved history and consider it a passion of mine; not only “great” history, but the “little” histories of things and individuals perhaps forgotten.  About two years ago on bulk trash day I noticed a neighbor down the street had set out a heart shaped wicker chair.  It immediately caught my eye.  So I pulled over and went to inspect it.  It was only a little unraveled mostly on the back leg.  I thought it gave it a bit of character.  So I popped my trunk and squirreled it away, putting it on our front porch as a sign of welcome.  My little girl sat in that chair on her first day of preschool.  She posed next to it her first day of preschool this year as well.  On a whim today I walked into a resale shop not on the fancy end of the spectrum.  As I made my way around glass ashtrays and dressers I discovered the twin to my little white wicker chair!  I could not believe it!  Upon closer inspection I realized it had no arms, but otherwise it is identical and looked so lonely sitting there in between all that heavy furniture.  I knew I had to take it home.  Next Halloween Mr. Bones, our skeleton, can still resume his usual post in the chair with arms, but maybe one of my black cat decorations can claim the other.  For now the Libra in me is content with the symmetry on our front porch.  The romantic in me is happy that two lonely hearts have found their match.  And the treasure hunter in me is content with a priceless find.

My husband cannot understand what the deal is with Christmas cards.  Every year he sees me hunched over grumbling and asks why I bother.  I bother because ours is a “busy” world where handwritten cards of any sort are a rarity, and even birthday cards can barely be purchased and signed.  But at Christmas cards fly through the post harkening back to another era.  There are the braggy ones, the store-bought ones, the “look at my 10,000 family members” ones, or (like me for years) the “look at my animals” ones, but they are paper tokens that signify someone remembered you nonetheless.  My mother was big on cards.  Even in her last years I took her to the Hallmark store to buy her Christmas cards.  She always bought cardinal ones; they were her favorite bird and I can never see them without thinking of her and her beautiful red hair.  We would pass her cards around Autumn Leaves and she gave them to everyone — from the nurses to the grouch.  What a joy it was to watch.  It was humbling, as it was the only card many ever received.  It showed they were thought of and not just old and forgotten.  Today I came across her last card simply signed, “Love Mama” and it was painfully bittersweet.  To see something she wrote is so precious to me, particularly as she got very self-conscious about her handwriting.  And now when I can no longer see her tiny, freckled hands and I am struggling to get through the second Christmas without her, miraculously she went and did what she always did … she sent me a card.

“Somehow not only for Christmas but all the long year through, the joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you.  And the more you spend in blessing the poor and lonely and sad, the more of your heart’s possessing returns to make you glad.” ~ American Fireside Poet John Greenleaf Whittier

Other than animals, I’d say growing up my best friends were books.  Both of my parents loved to read.  Daddy read Dale Carnegie and Mama read murder mysteries.  My guilty pleasure has always been historical romance.  Burk prefers biographies.  Maris loves all her books, especially Anatole the mouse and Madeline.  Our family is not satisfied with merely browsing in a bookstore.  We all get drawn into its literary delights; the dichotomy of time standing still and yet time being transported.

“Oh, I just want what we all want:  a comfortable couch, a nice beverage, a weekend of no distractions and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence and alter my thinking forever.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”

Reluctantly the time had come to leave but we each walked away clutching our newest finds.  For Burk it was “Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates”, for me it was “Mary, The Most Powerful Woman in the World”, and Maris got the most darling book called “In the Forest”.  My parents taught me books were to be cherished and that is what we are instilling in our daughter.  Books are treasure troves in and of themselves; they are knowledge, they are escape, they are recollections, they are adventure, they are history and so much more.  As much as I adore my iPhone and have great concern over the conservation of trees, I hope there will always be books to hold and to smell.  There is a comfort in the rustle of a turning page, the soft “whump” when a book closes, and its reassuring weight as it slips out of sleepy hands and onto a chest.  Even the cats love scratching a cheek or two on its edges.  Each of our bookshelves will now have a new gem to house.  And with that I shall close this chapter in my blog and crack open my book.

There is a certain store my entire family has never been able to resist.  In the past four years I cannot recall a time we have ever come out having spent less than $200.  They always have something practical, seasonal, or just plain fun.  We have bought just about everything in there at some point — small appliances, diapers, books, electronics, luggage, toys, cards, decorations; you name it.  Today I went in for a Christmas CD to play during my daughter’s class party.  That’s it.  I put my blinders on and moved with determined purpose.  Peeking out from an aisle as I made my way to the back were two pretty little tops that beckoned.  Then I saw they had new pajamas and mine are shot.  Deciding I was starting to get caught as if it were the La Brea Tar Pits, I got myself out of there.  I found the CD and began striding toward the front like an arrow determined not to veer in either direction.  On the way back to the front a great looking bookshelf broke my focus.  My husband has needed a bigger, more sturdy one for ages.  American essayist Charles Dudley Warner said the excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than its value.  I really hope Burk will like it.  And so I rolled out with one small bag and one big box totaling $220.21.  Right on Target.  😉