"You and Timmy have to come visit them! We'd all have a ball!"
Karen said she'd love to do so and addressed my sister as Aunt Suzie as requested. While I was more than pleased the two related so well to one another, I was a tad miffed it had taken arm pulling on my part to not remain Mrs. Blanding.
Suzie was off to a doctor's appointment. We were on a tight schedule so our late luncheon, successful funded by plastic, was shorter than any of us wanted. Suzie kissed Karen on the cheek and me on the lips, as was our usual practice.
"I love you," I said as we parted.
"Enough to miss Christmas," my sister replied.
Karen and I were back on the road with both of us in a high mood.
"You just got a full dose of regular people," I said to Karen as we drove from our meeting. "Suzie is as 'regular' as anyone! What do you think her?"
"I like her. She's different from you but all you regular people talk with your mouths full and laugh a lot. You don't seem to care what people think." Then she asked, "Why did she say, 'enough to miss Christmas?'"
"It's something we started when we were about your age. We'd try and outdo each other on how much we loved. Enough to miss Christmas was the max."
"Why?"
"You have to understand. Christmas at our house wasn't just a nice day when Aunt Mable gave you pajamas and if it were a good year you might get a toy or something; Christmas was a season. It began sometime in November with the planning and list-making, and digging out of all the stuff we buried last year, like the manger, the villages, the outside lights, everything! Then there was the cooking, not just for us, for nearly everyone we knew, fruit cake, and cookies and pies! Things we only got to eat once a year! There was a contagious excitement I can't explain and it lasted weeks, even after the big day passed and school started back up. It wasn't that we received so many presents; there was just enough money to get by; but December was a state of mind, a wonderful, peaceful, joyous, loving state of mind! So when Suzie says she loves me 'enough to miss Christmas,' well, that means she loves me more than anything in the world. And it makes me feel very, very special, and very fortunate to have her as my sister."
Karen didn't respond and I dared not ask her about holidays in her Newton castle. I envisioned central casting providing Santa and a team of interior designers doing the decorations while choirs of hired angles strolled the grounds.