Picture Perfect or Not

  • By Karen Wilson
  • December 15, 2010
  • 284
                        
You have thoughtfully considered and purchased just the right presents. The tree sparkles with lights and carefully chosen ornaments. You have laid plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. You imagine the most perfect Christmas celebration yet. But then real life interrupts your vision. Is that really a bad thing? Often, the most interesting memories and stories come from the things that fail our expectations or that we never imagined happening. Sometimes it’s just the little happenstances that turn into interesting memories. A few years ago, our family had so many desserts at our Thanksgiving meal that many went uneaten. So, several of the family said we might bring dessert for Christmas but promised to bring other meal components. You guessed it. Everyone decided not to bring dessert because there would surely be plenty. We all laugh about it now and get more specific in our plans. Sometimes mistakes lead to traditions. The morning of our first married Thanksgiving, my husband casually announced that he had agreed to supply the salad for the meal. My shocked response took him a bit by surprise. He said something like, ”What’s the big deal? You make salads all the time.” The problem was that I had no lettuce and no grocery stores were open. After several stops, we found one head of iceberg lettuce and a bag of carrots in a convenience store. To stretch our limited vegetable ingredients, we added a bunch of cheese and ham. Everyone liked it, so we have taken salad to nearly every family meal since. My mother loves to tell the story of her first turkey preparation as a bride. As she pulled the turkey out of the oven, my father asked where the giblets were for the gravy. She told him the turkey hadn’t come with any. When he started cutting the bird, he found the bag still nestled inside the turkey. When I first made a turkey for my husband, he too inquired about the giblets. To his disappointment, I had already disposed of them. Like holidays, weddings always involve extensive planning and everyone hopes to have the perfect one. Most, however, have something that doesn’t turn out quite as planned. I was once in a wedding where shortly before the bride was to go down the aisle, we discovered that her shoes had not been picked up at the store. Fortunately, she had planned to get married in flats. I don’t think anyone but her bridesmaids knew she got married in her socks. Since my husband and I were married in August, I made sure everything had good air conditioning. Unfortunately, on the day of the wedding, the air conditioning wasn’t working in the bride’s dressing room. Just as we were about to say our vows, the phone in the pastor’s office, just off the sanctuary, started ringing. Apparently, his wife thought the wedding was an hour later. I accidently left my flowers with my maid of honor instead of carrying them back down the aisle and our photographer missed our first married kiss. But, those are the things of life. The important part was that we wound up married and have been so for 19 years. Life is like that, not quite perfect. But, if you fuss to much over the little mishaps, you will miss wonderful experiences. Enjoy the good things of the holiday season and laugh when things go wrong. You’ll wind up with lots of good stories.


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