December 19, 2008

• Scrooge McGreyfox, Madame Defarge, and me

  Greyfox is trying something new this holiday season.  He has rented table space in a small mall-sort-of-place to hawk his wares.  Previously, winter income was limited to a few gun shows, until it warms up enough to reopen his roadside stand.  The “bazaar” or “crafts festival” is on the upper floor over an upscale cookware store, a used bookstore, and a Japanese restaurant.  Traffic is sparse and business is slow up there.

  The sellers are all women except for the Old Fart and an even older fart who does wood-turning, making ballpoint pens.  Every evening I have been hearing reports rants about Greyfox’s days there.  Most of the venom focuses on one woman, a knitter — whom he calls, “Madame Defarge,”  but there’s a moderate amount of animosity left over for some of the other elderly ladies up there with whom she sits and knits and natters.

  He describes these crafters as “rich white women,” and calls them, collectively, “the old biddies.”  Having come from a long line of dirt farmers, when I think of a flock of biddies, the picture that comes to mind is chickens, sweet little hens pecking at the corn I have tossed to them.  I love biddies.  Biddies provide eggs and fried chicken.  Biddies are nice, but what Greyfox is thinking when he speaks of those old biddies is not nice.

   

  A feud developed during the first day of the festival  It started over Christmas music.  In general, Greyfox does not like despises and detests Christmas music.  Christmas itself holds sad and traumatic memories for him.  Evidently, he can tolerate a few old carols such as O Holy Night, but he cringes at anything even remotely like Frosty the Snowman, I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, or Granny Got Run Over by a Reindeer.  Each evening for a week now, I have listened with amusement as he tells me with horror how many times each of those songs played on the mini-mall’s PA system and/or the boombox upstairs.

  I honestly cannot remember all the details of the daily blow-by-blows, and wouldn’t subject you to them if I did.  The general gist of the whole conflict is that she wants the volume high and he wants it down or off.  Each of them has at various times complained to the management about the PA and gone behind the other’s back to adjust the volume of the boombox.  Greyfox has been getting increasingly worked up over it, and I have been doing my job, reminding him to be more inner-directed, tolerant, and loving, and to look for things to enjoy and appreciate.

  Talking it out each night seems to give him some relief, but each succeeding day spent with the music and Madame Defarge sets him off again.  Last night he started head-tripping about various forms of revenge upon her.  I let his imagination run free for a while, until his fantasies went beyond pranks into crime and mayhem.  To one of his particularly egregious schemes, I responded, “That kind of thing could come back on you.”

  He paused, agreed, and then started saying something to the effect that it wouldn’t be worth going to jail for.  I said I had been thinking more about his Karma.  I gotta give him credit for quick wit.  He came back with, “That’s okay, you’ve got enough good Karma for both of us.”  I’m not exactly a slouch in the comeback department, either.  I responded, “Whoa!  Wait a minute there!  I’m not taking on your Karma for you.  Maybe I should take out one of those legal ads like guys do when they’re getting a divorce:  ‘To whom it may concern:  I will not be responsible for anyone’s karmic debts but my own.’”
  

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  This morning, I persuaded Doug to take down a bunch of boxes of Christmas ornaments from a high shelf, and put back the ones I didn’t want.  At this moment, some of them are still scattered on my bed, but most have already been hung on the hanging ivy plant in my front window, the one I festooned with little white lights earlier this month.

  Doug was unenthusiastic about the project until he saw the results and recognized some of the old decorations.  We have not had a tree for about twenty years, and I had thought long and hard about it before taking on the task this year.  I have to stand on my bed to reach the “tree”.  It is tiring, and when I took a break to write this, it was because I had been getting too fatigued to go on.  I’m rested now, ready to go finish the job.

  I had frankly questioned the value of even doing it, given the big cost in personal energy and subsequent deficits in function.  I vowed to go easy, and this morning I did all the unpacking, sorting and attaching of hooks in a leisurely fashion while sitting down.  I knew it was all worth it when I saw Doug’s smiles as he looked at the old ornaments.  Doug’s laughter each time Koji moves now, since I hung a rope of bells around his neck, is as much music to my ears as the dingalings of our Jingle Dog.

  Photos to follow, I suppose.
  

  • 7:30 pm
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