Thank You, My Friend

I'm sorry it has taken so long to tell you - your card and cash arrived intact and well timed. I had to make time to share with you the bounteous details and depth of the gratitude we feel for you.

As I shared in an earlier email, I am pretty sapped of strength this year for Christmas celebrating. Every ounce of energy and resource are doled out carefully. Before your gift arrived I had realized that we would not be involved in a frenzied exchange of gifts. Neither energy nor finances permitted.

But, I am a Christmas fanatic; preparing in years past from the first fall of an autumn leaf until the last January box was stored away with tears. It is impossible to squelch the visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. I began to pine and whine for the familiar tastes, sounds and smells of the season as my body refused to grant me means.

Out of fear of depression, I began to have the glimmer of an idea to satisfy my need for the familiar.

Christmas tradition, for me, is steeped in vision, taste and smells. If I could only bring into my home the tastes without the baking, the smells without the effort, and the sights without the frenzied preparations - I would have my Christmas.

And then your card arrived.

I told my husband the idea.

"Let's go to Trader Joe's and buy the things that we would usually do without. Let's add in some Christmas tastes that we would normally make for ourselves or receive as gifts. Mind you, I was thinking of old-fashioned taffy, peppermint sticks, sugar cookies and gingerbread houses and fruitcake. I was thinking of taper candle and pine bough centerpieces, cinnamon scented pinecones and poinssetias in gold foil covered pots. I was thinking prime rib roast, red potatoes, asparagus tips, shrimp cocktail, plum pudding, mince meat pie and whipped cream and clam chowder."

I asked him what he would add.

He said, "tomatoes".

My Bing-Crosby-snow-covered-backdrop-tinsel-and-bow-bedecked-crackling-fire-greeting-card vision-and-magic-spell moment went "kerplunk".

So, tomatoes it became!