{"id":1316,"date":"2016-12-23T06:02:15","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T14:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2016-12-22T20:11:36","modified_gmt":"2016-12-23T04:11:36","slug":"father-of-the-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2016\/12\/23\/father-of-the-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"Father of the Feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

By holding our big family gathering the weekend before Christmas, most of the pressure is off around here\u2014except for doing the Man Overboard galleys\u2014which have just now shown up in an e-mail message.<\/span><\/p>\n

A centerpiece of our annual celebration is the fact that the house is pretty much gift-wrapped from top to bottom. \u00a0There\u2019s a story behind this process. \u00a0As Bill will tell you, with me there are no short stories, so here goes:<\/span><\/p>\n

By 1984, I had been divorced for four years. My kids and I were living with my sister in a condo in Seattle\u2019s downtown Denny Regrade neighborhood. \u00a0My first spouse had died at the end of 1982. In early 1983, I went searching through the strong box for the official documents I needed to send to Social Security and insurance companies. \u00a0Tucked in among all the paperwork, I discovered bits and pieces of poetry I\u2019d been writing in secret for the better part of twenty years. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As soon as I read through the poetry, I could see that what I had originally thought of as \u201cart\u201d really wasn\u2019t. \u00a0Instead, it was a poetic retelling of very sad story\u2014the realities of losing a spouse to the ravages of alcoholism. \u00a0When I showed the poems to others they said, \u201cThis needs to be a book.\u201d \u00a0And that\u2019s what happened. After the Fire became my first published work. I\u2019m proud to say that it\u2019s still in print today\u2014in both paper-and-ink and e-book editions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Initially, however, it was a very humble, self-published effort. In order to sell copies, we went to see a guy named Jim Hunt who ran a flower shop in the office lobby area of our building. \u00a0He took a few on consignment and sold one to a woman named Diane Bingham, a Vietnam War-era widow, who was one of the movers and shakers behind the establishment of WICS\u2014Widowed Information Consultation Services of King County. \u00a0She took her copy of After the Fire to the grief support group she was facilitating. Later she contacted me and asked if I\u2019d do a poetry reading at a Widowed Retreat in June of the following year.<\/span><\/p>\n

I agreed to do so, but with a good deal of misgiving. \u00a0I had been divorced for a year and a half when my first husband died. Although the presence of that decree of dissolution did nothing to lessen the grief I felt when my former husband died, it did make me question the suitability of my showing up at a \u201cwidowed\u201d retreat. \u00a0After all, those other people were still married to their spouses when they died. \u00a0I was divorced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since I had said I would go, however, go I did. \u00a0While there, I met Bill. \u00a0He was a member of Diane Bingham\u2019s grief support group. He showed up at the retreat because he had offered to drive some of the much older widows in his group to the retreat site which was out in the wilds of Hood Canal. \u00a0We both went to the retreat not so much because we wanted to be there, but because we had promised someone else that we would. \u00a0It turns out it was a good thing we\u2019re both people who keep our word.<\/span><\/p>\n

We met briefly at lunch on that Saturday and again during an after-dinner grief workshop. (Bill did NOT attend the afternoon poetry reading.) In the workshop, we discovered that our first spouses had died on the same day of the year, two years apart\u2014a few minutes before midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve. \u00a0Based on that coincidence, we struck up a conversation on the evening of June 21,1985 and married six months later to the day on December 21,1985. \u00a0That means that today is our thirty-first wedding anniversary.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the process of our whirlwind courtship and my moving from Seattle to Bellevue, we lost track of Jim Hunt. \u00a0Then, about fifteen years ago, while doing a remodel on a house in Bellevue, we ran into him and a neighbor of ours at a plumbing supply store in Seattle. \u00a0Jim is a very talented interior designer, and that chance encounter put us back in the same orbit.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we bought a new house in Bellevue in 2005, Jim came and sat in the house for hours on end, studying it while it was still completely empty and entirely Ralph Lauren Brown\u2014unmitigated Ralph Lauren Brown! \u00a0He helped us remodel the place to suit us, a process which included ditching the brown both inside and out. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not wild about shopping. \u00a0It\u2019s something that has to be done, but I\u2019m not inclined to linger. Get in, get it done, get out. Jim still shakes his head in wonder at our epic forty-five-minute long shopping excursion to Dania where I picked out sofas, chairs, dining room set\u2014complete with table, chairs, and buffet\u2014office furniture, and a bedroom set. \u00a0It took longer to make delivery arrangements than it did to choose things. I picked the stuff out. Jim figured out how to put it all together.<\/span><\/p>\n

That year, when Christmas rolled around, we asked him if he\u2019d come help us decorate the house.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1985, in advance of our Christmastime wedding, putting together that first Christmas was a challenge. \u00a0Joining our two families’ separate styles of decorating for and celebrating the holidays was one of the first stumbling blocks in blending our families. \u00a0By 2005, when we hit on the idea of having an outsider do the decorating, it seemed like a no-brainer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jim has taken charge of the Christmas decorating around here ever since. \u00a0He has an artist\u2019s eye. \u00a0He\u2019ll place something somewhere and then stand back and study it for a while before maybe or maybe not moving it somewhere else. \u00a0This year, he was working on the living room piano. \u00a0When it was time to do the studying part, he shook his head and said, \u201cNope. I added one thing too many. \u00a0Now it looks like a yard sale.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

My idea of decorating would be to put a phalanx of Santa Clauses in one spot and an army of angels in another. \u00a0He doles items out judiciously until every piece of furniture, every window sill, and every table top has at least some piece of holiday magic. Old decorations come out and show up in new places and in new arrangements. \u00a0New decorations are syphoned in while some of the bedraggled old ones disappear without a trace. \u00a0This year a beloved snow globe and ceramic rocking horse didn\u2019t appear until almost the very last minute when they turned up at the bottom of an improperly labeled box. \u00a0The light-up dachshund didn\u2019t make the front porch cut this year but it will next year for sure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trust me when I say, this is not an instant process. \u00a0The Christmas gear is dragged into the garage on rolling shelving units the day before Thanksgiving. A design table made from an eight-foot door is set up as a work table in one bay of the garage. Decorating in earnest starts the day after Thanksgiving, and it takes as long as it takes\u2014in this case until December 16. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching Jim work is watching an artist at work. \u00a0This year someone asked me, \u201cDo you tell him what to do?\u201d Absolutely not. \u00a0Why would I? Someone else wanted to know, \u201cAre you ever disappointed?\u201d Same answer. Absolutely not. Having Jim decorate the house is a gift Bill and I give each other for Christmas, and it\u2019s one we both savor. I went to the mall a few days ago and was disappointed in the decorations. Compared to Jim Hunt\u2019s magic, what I saw in Nordstrom’s didn\u2019t measure up.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, Jim was working around me as I fought my way through copy-editing purgatory. \u00a0At some point, he walked by my chair and remarked, \u201cWhen you\u2019re working this hard, you\u2019re just no fun!\u201d Sorry about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

In case Jim Hunt\u2019s name sounds eerily familiar to some of my readers, it should. \u00a0In addition to being our real decorator, he\u2019s been Beau and Mel\u2019s fictional interior designer in several different books.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, on our wedding anniversary, it\u2019s only fitting that I should sing Jim Hunt\u2019s praises. After all, without him and that long-gone flower shop, this wouldn\u2019t be our wedding anniversary because Bill and I never would have met.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why this blog is a big wedding anniversary shout out to Jim Hunt who really is, as Charles Dickens would say, \u201cthe author of the feast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And speaking of Charles Dickens, for everyone who\u2019s reading this? \u00a0As Tiny Tim would say, \u201cGod bless us every one.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Bill, Judy, and Jim<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By holding our big family gathering the weekend before Christmas, most of the pressure is off around here\u2014except for doing the Man Overboard galleys\u2014which have just now shown up in an e-mail message. A centerpiece of our annual celebration is the fact that the house is pretty much gift-wrapped from top to bottom. \u00a0There\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-le","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}