I very much like to live in the present, but last night, Kate and I started remembering all the Christmases we have spent together. It was fun.

She recently remembered a few years when I gave her $100 cash and she walked to Burlingame Avenue to buy all the stocking stuffers for her sisters. Can you imagine doing that these days?

For some years, I had to go back to the December posts on this site to recall. For others, for some reason, there were no pictures, but plenty of delicious food memories.

One sweet memory worth immortalizing here is the very first Christmas I did not put up a tree in my living room and headed out very early one morning to drive to Kate’s.

Driving down, I made my traditional dog-friendly-overnight stop at the Motel 6 in Red Bluff.

Behind the motel, someone had tossed out a potted nandina bush. I rescued it. I saw it as a miracle: my Christmas tree.

When I got back to 1880, I planted it in the garden and every Christmastime since, I have brought a bit of it inside.

A memory of a Christmas past and a happy Christmas present to add to the list.

Turned a news channel on this morning after not having it on for over a week. It was a good respite and I highly recommend it.

What I saw today were media folks trying to fill the air waves with clips of crowded highways and airports and all kinds of advice for shopping and cooking turkeys.

I highly recommend faux. Get together when you can. Celebrate when you can. Cook and eat when you can.

We had such a good time that only today when I tried to sort through the pictures did I notice that they are all about food and furries and cannot possibly be sorted into any coherent order. So just deal with it.

Company!

Finding comfortable spots at 1880.

Katherine sent a puzzle for us to work on, which we did while binge-watching the GBBS.

A walk in the woods

On to Burgerville. The November specials were waffle fries, spicy milkshake, and a blue cheese bacon burger.

And somewhere in there, we made it to Trader Joe’s for Elizabeth to stock up. No TJ’s in Montana. And to La Margarita for lunch.

Several desserts were made from home grown pumpkins from Montana.

Pye was happy to lick the whipped cream bowl.

Dinner by the fire:

“Christmas” breakfast was a Dutch Baby after exchanging lots of presents. And, of course, following a long-standing tradition, listening to Johnny Mathes’ Christmas album.

All back to normal here at 1880 today. Just got a text that the Montana crew is safely back home now.

Where, you may ask, was Dolly in all of this? She came downstairs from time to time; evaluated the situation; and went right back up to our bed. She may look like a dumb labradoodle, but discretion is the greater part of valor when there’s so much company downstairs.

I saved a piece of pie, a piece of cake, plenty of cream to whip, and a chocolate turkey to eat tomorrow on actual Thanksgiving. And there’s a KC game for Joannie and me to watch simultaneously though not together.

This may not be the way most people celebrate. Frankly, I think they probably should.

It’s funny to think of this old body as a treasure, but it’s certainly the most precious gift I’ll ever own. But in a little more than a year, it and I will be entering our ninth decade. Hard to believe when inside I feel eighteen.

I was thinking today, that it’s bit of a chore to maintain this body Sort of like a vintage car for which you can no longer buy parts at Auto Zone. So you look for parts in all sorts of places. Or, in the case of a human body, maybe in the clinic of all sorts of medical specialists.

With a newer model, you just get gas and have the oil changed and the tires checked now and again. You might even give some thought to trading it in when the warranty has expired.

But a vintage car and an old human body deserve special attention. If you want them to keep on keeping on. Nowadays, although I am in pretty good shape for someone in my age group, I have all these specialists who advise me regarding whatever their particular specialities happen to be. One knows about bones. One about kidneys. One about rheumatoid disorders. One about pain management. One about skin. One about vision. One about hearing.

I’m going to be needing some new parts pretty soon.

Joannie is now getting Mother and Daddy’s house ready to sell. A lifetime of things, most of them only of sentimental value. But Joannie is very sentimental, so this is hard. Some things, she is shipping to me — like the contents of Mother’s piano bench — because it is too hard for her to toss them into the dumpster.

She shipped some of Mama Harrison’s dishes all the way to Maui for Mary-Margaret.

Today, FEDEX delivered this to 1880. So much foam and bubble wrap.

It’s very old and very fragile, but it arrived in perfect shape.

It was brought back to the United States over 100 years ago by my maternal grandfather, Papa Harrison. I have no idea how.

He was shipped out from Oklahoma in 1919 to Vladivostok. He was eighteen. Joannie found a copy of his deployment papers. Fort Mason, San Francisco. They read: “Siberian Replacement Company.” I wonder what was in the mind of a teenage Indian boy from Oklahoma?

It reads “med corps” I wonder what that means his job was.

This ewer always had a place of honor in all the houses Mother and Daddy lived in. And there were quite a few. They lived the longest in this last one.

Now it has a place of honor in mine.

Sometimes you meet someone who changes how you think about things.

Sharon is ninety now. A widow. I first met her when she drove her husband, a retired obstetrician, to choir rehearsals. He had Parkinsons. He delivered most of the babies in town but not hers. She sat in the library and read until time to drive him home and often brought refreshments for the entire choir.

She’s one of those women I refer to, with great admiration, as a hoot.

She has four children and jokes that her husband was never around when she went into labor.

She’s a retired English professor who kept teaching until in her eighties. She invited me to join her book group which was mostly made up of old professors. It was a great group. Sort of disbanded now.

I just bumped into her coming our of Fred Meyer’s. We were both loading stuff into our old Subarus. She had big bags of bird seed, cat litter, and potting soil. She keeps her wild and crazy hair blond. Today it looked like she is now doing it herself. Fabulous, I say!

Before we really greeted each other, she said, “What are you reading.” I told her and put the question back to her. She’s reading the new book by Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway. I’ll be reading that next. She and I loved Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow a few years back. It may be my all-time favorite read.

She said we should try to get what’s left of our book group together and she would have us over for lunch soon. I said I would do it. She said “Oh, I should be able to fix lunch for a few old women.”

When I grow up, I want to be like Sharon.