’twas two weeks before Christmas (from 2018)

...and all through the yard only Spike and I were stirring,

Pretty and Charly were inside and warm.

Pretty and I like to keep the pool open in the winter,

but it has a much different look from summer fun and sun

Spike keeps me company whenever I walk around the pool

(I think he likes the cold, and I like his company)

so beautiful, but Pretty battles the leaves until they’re all gone

the bottom of the pool looks like a Rorschach test to me sometimes 

even the bottle tree loses its colors in winter

Spike is ready to go inside to check on Pretty

While family members in the upstate of South Carolina have been without power this weekend after unusually large amounts of snowfall, we have been covered in grey clouds peppering us with rain, rain and more rain. Almost cold enough for snow, but not quite.

I am reminded of Granny Selma’s motto: Sheila, we have to smile more on rainy days.

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Back in the days before two new knee replacement surgeries in 2019, before the birth of two baby granddaughters ( Ella in 2019 and Molly in 2022) who already take swimming lessons in the summertime and love to play in this pool, before an elder dog named Carl whose primary mission in life has been to terrorize the equally cranky old Spike since Carl came to join the family in 2020 – Spike and I took to the backyard for early morning “walks” while I pushed my walker six times around our pool. 

We moved to our house on Cardinal Drive in 2017 because our two-story Casa de Canterbury was too difficult for me to navigate fourteen stairs from one level to the next. Pretty found the house for us with her usual former realtor eyes – she had been in the business for seventeen years before the insanity of the markets in 2010 saw her return to retail at Mast General Store, a new store opening on Main Street in Columbia in 2011. She greeted customers, worked with super employees who became friends for life, and filled tons of candy into barrels every week for five years to create nostalgia mixed with modern taste buds as Mast became a cornerstone for changing the Main Street look and vibe of Columbia.

The last picture of this piece in 2018 caught me by surprise because I had forgotten about the original hot tub hidden behind the two rockers under a small portico; hot tub gone, portico torn down to be replaced by a small screen porch the following year. Rockers didn’t survive, either, gradually deteriorating in the elements like my knees worn away by time. Pride Flags flew from day one in 2017, replaced with new ones through the years but keeping watch over the changes in our lives as surely as the shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.

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Slava Ukraini. For all children everywhere.

Pretty is merry at Cardinal Christmas in 2018