Joy Wears a Rainbow

Last year, my husband's father passed away about two weeks before Christmas. It was not a very festive holiday season for us. My husband's father, age 82, had been the last remaining member of my husband's nuclear family growing up.

It was a very bleak time. I don't think we hung a single holiday decoration. We minimized our commitments, tried to go through the motions doing what had to be done, fulfilling our obligations . . . but there was little joy. In fact, it was the saddest Christmas I can remember.

This year, in late November, my husband asked me wistfully, "Can't we have a Christmas tree this year, even if only a small one?"

I had adopted a rambunctious tabby kitten in summer of 2008, and I gave up on having Christmas trees for a while, because I just couldn't see spending my holiday season defending the tree from the kitten's attentions. He was and still is a terrific climber!

So I got out and decorated a tiny tree (and put it in a high place where the cat couldn't reach it), and strung a string of lights inside our front window, and hung some stockings, and put red ribbons on the front stair banister. We were very pleased with the results of my small efforts.

My cat is a completely indoors cat; we don't let him go out on his own. However, every morning, and often through the day, the cat asks one of us to take him outside to sit on the front porch and enjoy the sights and sounds of the yard.

This is something my sister did with him and his two tabby brothers when he was a wee kitten - he spent many a morning with his head peeping out of my sister's bathrobe pocket, enjoying fresh air and nature as she read her newspaper while sitting on a fold-up chair in her yard. We try to keep that tradition by several-daily episodes of porch sitting.

Sunday night, I heard my husband go out onto the front porch. He came back inside and said, grinning, "Wouldn't you like to take the cat outside onto the porch?"

I looked through the window to find he had strung a string of bright lights, to surprise and delight us! The lights reflecting through the window on our front door make it resemble a stained glass window. Every time I walk past it, I smile.

Joy has come to live here again, and it wears a rainbow of blue and green and red and yellow - all the colors of a string of bright Christmas lights!