Advent Calendars
Advent Calendars. Tracey uses the wooden LL Bean one. Years of Reese’s peanut butter cups behind the small doors have now moved into legos, making me only half tempted to say, “We didn’t get toys in our advent calendar when I was a kid.”
The truth is my mom did well with the advents. Different ones for different years. Some years had candy others demanded coloring. The pop up village was probably my favorite and may have been sent to me in college, with my roommates acting like siblings and taking turns opening the tiny doors.
“You went yesterday, I go after Jeannie!”
This year around Thanksgiving, I got an email saying my mom had gifted me a Jacquie Lawson virtual advent calendar. A lesson she learned from the Italian Postal service.
When I downloaded it, I was a little skeptical. But the day, I got to make a snowman and it showed up in the little town square...
‘Sort of cute,’ I thought. I wrote to say thank you again.
My mom wrote back to say she had gotten one for my nephews and dad too.
“Of course, he is a day behind..." she added, "he just made his snowman today, and what a sight it is!!”
(A father's daughter)
I walked to the Duomo at dusk. Milan is starting to be transformed and I wanted to feel it. Or at least grab the brass leg on the duomo’s door and hold my angels missing hand.
Trying not to admit my disappointment in Milan's Christmas tree.
“Why do they need to put red plastic flattened bows all over it?”
But, to the right of the piazza, in the windows above the square are numbers, 1 thru 25. When I saw them for the first time on Saturday, they seemed like an advent calendar to me, but I kept walking, with the sudden realization that I had been the ungrateful child who had not even acknowledged my mother’s gift that had been sent more than two weeks ago.
Today, I stood looking at the tree I swore I would hate until Natale, realizing it looked quite pretty in the dark. There were suddenly trumpets coming from somewhere and a crowd assembling... I looked up and there in the balconies of windows 1 and 2 they stood. I found a seat on the light post and watched the city pass me by.
“Well done, Milano, very well done.”
The truth is my mom did well with the advents. Different ones for different years. Some years had candy others demanded coloring. The pop up village was probably my favorite and may have been sent to me in college, with my roommates acting like siblings and taking turns opening the tiny doors.
“You went yesterday, I go after Jeannie!”
This year around Thanksgiving, I got an email saying my mom had gifted me a Jacquie Lawson virtual advent calendar. A lesson she learned from the Italian Postal service.
When I downloaded it, I was a little skeptical. But the day, I got to make a snowman and it showed up in the little town square...
‘Sort of cute,’ I thought. I wrote to say thank you again.
My mom wrote back to say she had gotten one for my nephews and dad too.
“Of course, he is a day behind..." she added, "he just made his snowman today, and what a sight it is!!”
(A father's daughter)
I walked to the Duomo at dusk. Milan is starting to be transformed and I wanted to feel it. Or at least grab the brass leg on the duomo’s door and hold my angels missing hand.
Trying not to admit my disappointment in Milan's Christmas tree.
“Why do they need to put red plastic flattened bows all over it?”
But, to the right of the piazza, in the windows above the square are numbers, 1 thru 25. When I saw them for the first time on Saturday, they seemed like an advent calendar to me, but I kept walking, with the sudden realization that I had been the ungrateful child who had not even acknowledged my mother’s gift that had been sent more than two weeks ago.
Today, I stood looking at the tree I swore I would hate until Natale, realizing it looked quite pretty in the dark. There were suddenly trumpets coming from somewhere and a crowd assembling... I looked up and there in the balconies of windows 1 and 2 they stood. I found a seat on the light post and watched the city pass me by.
“Well done, Milano, very well done.”
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