As I’m writing this entry, the school year is winding down at the university where I work. Students look more like zombies as they trudge from final to final, their frazzled expressions belying the late night hours spent cramming every last piece of information they think the professor will be demanding of them. It’s a transitional moment on campus, one where we shift from the daily grind of instruction to determining just how much was retained; in another week, campus will be a ghost town, reduced to the core set of staff who keep the place running. Parking garages will be empty; the broad swatch of green at the center of campus will lie quiet, awaiting the return of the frisbee players and dog walkers and those just out to burnish their sun tan.
I have to admit it’s always a welcome moment to catch our breath, a time to reset and re-energize for the demands of the coming Spring semester. My role isn’t nearly as frontward facing as others, but our team plays a significant part in creating the exceptional student experience our college provides. Not being on call for a few weeks makes for a wonderful respite, a reminder of what the much longer Summer break will provide.
With the hubbub finally calming down, I had a chance to finally do what little decorating I manage at my office each year. It’s not much — just a small silver Christmas tree that I find a home for on my desk, one that lights up with beautiful white lights. I forget now where I picked it up, but it has become something of a favorite — a reminder of the far larger and more definitely mid-century version my German grandmother had for many years. Her aluminum tree even boasted a small spotlight with a rotating color wheel, a device that I found exceptionally enthralling as a young child. The way the various colors played across the silvery limbs of the tree were endlessly fascinating to me, though in truth, I far preferred the multi-colored blinking string of Christmas lights my father spent hours weaving in and out of the giant Frasier fur that used to dominate my childhood living room.
Oh those lights! How I remember the frustration as they were pulled out of the box, completely and thoroughly entangled despite how carefully we had packed them away the prior year. Or how, after finally managing to get a string extricated from the mess, we would stretch it out along the hardwood floor and then plug it in, but not before sending up a prayer that it would light up on the first try. Generally it wouldn’t, of course, requiring us to get down on hands and knees to carefully expect every single one of the tiny bulbs to determine which one had burned out and therefore was the criminal culprit. The day I discovered LED lights at the hardware store, tears of joy started to stream down my face at the realization I would no longer have to perform this age old ritual.
If the weather stays warm this weekend — and I know that sounds odd, considering I live in Arizona — I’ll be putting out the lights in our yard. That’s a tradition I brought with me from New England, although back home it was always an extremely chilly exercise. Here, now that my blood has thinned significantly, I usually wait until it’s in the mid-sixties before winding lights around our mailbox and garnishing our less prickly plantings with LEDs of various colors. Last year, I picked up some solar powered landscape spotlights and got a bit creative; I use them to highlight the cute ceramic snowman my mother-in-law gifted us many years earlier, as well as the organ pipe cacti my mother decorates with Santa caps. This year, I upped the game a bit and picked up a Mickey-shaped wreath that we place on the front door; it’s a little touch of magic that adds to the overall atmosphere.
Still, at the end of the day, the lights are what I enjoy the most. When my mother-in-law was still living here in Southern Arizona, we used to drive through the various neighborhoods and revel in how people had done up their homes; some hints of that experience have made their way into Baubles though I feel like my prose doesn’t quite do it justice. I had a chance to see the Osborn Family Lights at the Disney Hollywood Studios the year before they packed them away forever, and while I’m not sure I could ever go to that level, I do have fantastical dreams of covering every square inch of our home with lights, and then synching them with the soundtrack from Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
I’m not so sure my neighbors would go for that, thought. So for now, it will remain just that: a dream.