First published in the Chronicle and Transcript Dec 19, 2020
I’m not sure how your holiday season is going, what with the pandemic and all, but it’s certainly not normal and we are finding ourselves doing things we never imagined. Like, just for example, hanging out in the poinsettia corner of Home Depot, sitting on milk crates, because an order for an outdoor fire pit had gotten complicated. These days having a fire pit is the only way to sanely have an outdoor gathering. Fine, sane may be too strong a word. Desperate, perhaps?
We ordered the fire pit online to be picked up in Danvers. But when we checked in, the clerk looked at his screen and shook his head. “There’s a problem.”
I braced myself. No fire pit, no outdoor gathering… what was plan B? Igniting our back woods? Digging tunnels underground?
“You’re at the wrong Home Depot.”
“Noooooooo,” I groaned, instantly knowing it was true. I’ve never emotionally attached myself to two Home Depots in Danvers. I feel strongly that one is more technically in Peabody. However my feelings did not dictate reality in this case (or in any case).
We traversed across town. The traffic was crazy because Christmas was looming, and just to make things extra fun, it was the night of the impending blizzard. Everyone had to decide: stock up on bread and milk, or hit up Kohl’s one more time for stocking stuffers? Tough choice, and I’d say based on the parking lots, most people were going for option C: Total Wine.
Finally we pulled into the other Home Depot where a helpful clerk looked up our order number and laughed.
“It’s item number 138 on a pallet that just came in… so it may take a while,” he trailed off.
That sounded ominous.
“Or,” he continued, and we perked up, “You can pick it up yourself. It’s just down that aisle, and through those doors, past the garden section to the far back behind the pallet, after the other pallet, once you walk through the wardrobe.”
Uh huh. I had no idea what he meant, but I liked the idea of controlling my own procurement destiny and we set off searching for item number 138. We made it as far as candy cane lane, better known as the corner where all the red and white poinsettias get stashed, and thankfully a jolly Santa Elf came up and offered to help us. Ok, it was just an older gentleman in an orange apron, but still, he was friendly, which was all the Christmas magic we needed.
“Give me your slip, I’ll grab this for you. It’s way back there on the pallet behind the pallet.”
Ah yes, the pallet situation again. It felt best to steer clear of it. So we agreed to his plan.
He told us he’d be back in a jiffy ,which in Elf-speak means about 30 minutes, during which we took up residence in aforementioned poinsettias. No one really cared that there were two people just lounging in the poinsettias. It was weird, but what wasn’t weird?
My Facebook feed told me that on this day last year I’d been at a school concert, three years ago a Christmas basketball tournament, seven years ago dressed up at a winter gala in the city. But, on this night in 2020, we were in Home Depot, in masks, one aisle over from the tool section, ensconced in potted Christmas plants.
We got our fire pit home eventually, and as we all know, the storm dumped over a foot of snow, making it a bit unclear how anyone could really sit by the fire when all the chairs were buried. Not even our abnormal social gatherings were going as planned.
But, as I’ve wondered how to make sense of it all, I remembered that the original Christmas story, with the angels and shepherds and animals, was totally abnormal and atypical, too. Nothing went as any of those people expected or planned. And Mary, sitting in the hay (if the picture books are to be believed) after traveling across a vast stretch of tricky Middle Eastern terrain, while pregnant but before the invention of good car suspension, missed most of the party. She didn’t get to be out where the angels had the light show and the giant choir. She missed the big Christmas spectacular, like we’re missing it all this year. But she had what mattered most; She had the answer to the “hopes and fears of all the years,” lying in her arms. She held the promise of a Peace that was for all mankind.
Here in 2020, we are carrying on in that great and ancient tradition of a holiday season that isn’t going as planned, that won’t be normal, and where we are all missing out on a lot. But, like Mary, we can have what matters most. We can have true hope as we, too, wait patiently (OK, some of us less patiently) for a new year, with dreams of 2021 and for peace for all mankind.