Monthly Archives: December 2011

Nassau and The Worst Day Ever

An ornament we brought back from our honeymoon for Emily

On our honeymoon we were going to go para sailing.   MQD was excited.  So was I.  It was a very honeymoon thing to do.  I had a picture in my head, of the day, of us, holding hands high above a beautiful beach and crystal blue water.  The sun on our faces, smiling.

Only it was windy that day.  And they canceled our excursion.  There was a temptation to try and “do” something else.  Something special.  We strolled around Nassau, hand in hand.  Looking for something “to do.” We went in and out of a few shops, we thought about buying a watch.   And we laughed about how this was “the worst day ever.”  And that our honeymoon was the pits. We bought a Christmas ornament that says “Nassau” for Emily.

The dates that MQD and I plan have a way of not working out.  We have abandoned more concerts halfway through, or not gone at all, choosing instead to stay at dinner an hour or two longer, just talking.   He likes me.  And I like him.  It’s easy to have fun when you’re with your best friend.  I hope I look at him just like this for many, many years to come.

Honeymoon, May 2011

Disco, the ornament not the music or the nap

I have a tendency to attach a tremendous amount of meaning to the most trivial of things.  I remember where I got them, who I was with, how I felt.  This item, a lighter, a tshirt, a coffee cup, it becomes a touchstone to that moment in time.

It is only very occasionally that I have had something for a long time and I don’t have any recollection of where it came from.

I know I have had this disco ball ornament for a long time.  I know I bought it for myself. I can vaguely recall taking it out of the box.  I am not much of an impulse buyer of things like ornaments.  Again, always so sentimental, my ornament collection is largely made up of memories.

I know it hung on my Christmas Tree after Em and I moved to Chapel Hill and then hung from a teeny hook in my living room for the remainder of the time we lived in that apartment.  I remember it hanging on my first big Christmas Tree in our house at the beach.  And I am fairly sure it graced the tree in my dinky little duplex the first year I lived in Kill Devil Hills.

Going back in time to Williamsburg and the Christmas Trees I had in college, I don’t think I had it then.  Those years were full of disco naps and a tree decorated in Happy Meal toys.  But I don’t think I had a disco ball.

 Strangely, I can’t be sure.

Merry Christmas to you, mysterious Disco Ball.  And thanks very much to the Kelly of Christmas Past that had the good sense to snag you off the shelf.