TRADITION! It was the entire premise of Fiddler On The Roof.  And it drives our holidays (and I have no doubt-yours too). And it was tradition that I reflected on as David and I made the crepes this morning. Crepes, you ask? For as long as I can remember, Christmas morning breakfast has been  crepes. In my family we called them Danish pancakes (since we are…at least a good portion….Danish). Crepes with powdered sugar. Or with syrup. Or with fruit topping. Or with a sausage rolled inside. Or all the above! Today it was just DH and me for Christmas breakfast.

It was different when John died.  He was shot dead of course, still a young man and with the promise of great things to come.  But I remember that year George Harrison died-just before my birthday.  I was turning forty-nine (or, as my dad gleefully pointed out-entering my 50th year) and I was feeling particularly old, fat, cranky and....irrelevant. A bona fide baby-boomer, I grew up with the Beatles, screamed to "Yeah, yeah, yeah," "ohmed" to "Lucy in the sky" and mourned when they broke up the band in the early seventies.

Our Christmas tree cutting permit had arrived, and we made a last minute decision to drive "up north" to Arizona's high desert to cut one. Throwing a half-bag of cookies and some sodas in the truck, my husband and I and our young son (then about 4) took off on a Saturday morning adventure. We knew the cutting area well, having camped in the area over the previous two summers. A storm had come through the area, and 16-20 inches of new snow was on the ground.

The instructions said that in order to make my Poinsettia bloom again, it needs to spend time outdoors in the summer, then be cut back in the fall, and then experience uninterrupted darkness for at least 15 hours a day until Thanksgiving.  Cut the plant back, plant it, dig it up, replant it, place it in a closet, take it out of the closet...the discussion went on for pages. Certainly more work than I wanted to do!

The light

The Leonid meteor shower occurs in November every year,  and this year was to be extra-special.  We heard numerous news reports telling us that with no moonlight, and clear skies expected, it was going to be a spectacular sight. The day started off cloudy, though, and stayed that way all day. At ten o'clock pm I looked outside and saw faint snow flurries falling. It didn't look as if we would see the light show, so we found other tasks to occupy us.