Christmas, 2012

Fiorella loves decorating for Christmas.  She loops den windows with red and green paper chains.  She hangs ersatz greenery from the big dining room window and loads it with her beloved fruit and vegetable ornaments, interspersed with butterflies and birds.  Greenery also festoons the front door and the kitchen door and the door to the guest room hall and the double-door opening between the front room and the dining room (on both sides) and the display cabinets between the kitchen and the den.  Then Fiorella loads the greenery with her other special ornaments--miniatures and paper storks and feathered birds.  In the upper hall she nestles redbirds in the greenery draped from the railings.  And, of course, snowflakes, which she cuts out fresh every years, decorate every window pane downstairs and even some upstairs.  The front door is treated to wreaths back and front, as are the front windows, the area over the door to the guest room hall, and the tall window at the top of the stairs.  Three nativity scenes are tucked into the mantel decoration in the den, two more in the extensive buffet decoration, but the mantel decoration in the front room must make do with "Twelve Days of Christmas" bells  plus more butterflies and lots of tinsel.

Fiorella's light-up deer bit the dust last year, but she still has big snowflakes and for the trees outside and a plastic bow for the mailbox.

Then there's the Christmas tree--aah, the Christmas tree, laden with so many garlands and ornaments that Firoella can scarcely see the the sturdy iron(?) boughs that have sustained the tree for ten years.

Fiorella usually spends hours and days and weeks on Christmas decorating.  It's her love, her splendor, her artistic achievement. But not this year.  Recovery from hip surgery, which Fio didn't realize would take months rather than weeks,  precludes climbing ladders and carrying in boxes of ornaments and greenery and lights and all her other decorating goodies.

And Fio is very sad.