Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Jan. 3, 2003: Christmas, Gone with the Wind

"In Vermont," my brother said, "they stop for you when you walk in the pedestrian crossways. In Vermont, they don't have any billboards. Does this town have any used book stores, any coffee shops?"

I took him to a little country coffee shop I'd found in the rural area where we'd grown up. The coffee shop also sold remaindered furniture. My brother and his wife had a good time, examining the furniture for flaws, talking about what they wanted to get for their new house, in Vermont.

Before coming down, my brother had directed me to a picture of the house on the Internet. "It looks better if you squint," he'd told me. He was right.

We didn't find a used bookstore, but we found a discount basement and took a look around. It was amazing most of these books had ever been published.

One of these bargain basement books was a sequel written by Margaret Mitchell, of Gone with the Wind fame.

"I've been wanting to read The Wind Done Gone," I told my brother and his wife. "But I figured I shouldn't do it until I read Gone with the Wind, and I can't make myself do it."

"It's not bad," my brother said. "Or at least, that's what I'm told." None of us had read it.

Later that night, hanging out at my dad's apartment, my sister found a 3D jigsaw puzzle someone (perhaps me?) had given him a couple Christmases ago. It was Tara from Gone with the Wind.

My brother's wife pulled out the pieces, started putting them together as the rest of us tried to decide how to get out of cookies the following night with some old family friends. They had ambushed us at the Christmas Eve service. This was incredibly bad timing; we'd already made plans to see "The Two Towers." Our plotting was made unnecessary by the friends calling to say they'd come down with the flu.

We gathered around Tara and tried to put it together.

"Where are the slave quarters?" I asked. They didn't seem to be on the box.

"After we're done building Tara, do we torch it?"

The jigsaw pieces were made out of Styrofoam covered with paper. One of the drawbacks of this construction was that you could force pieces to fit in places they really had no business fitting.

We'd each worked on sections separately for quite awhile before my sister's boyfriend discovered half the house was wrong. He swiftly shifted the pieces around, and Tara took form.

By now, my brother had us all singing that holiday classic from the Spongebob Squarepants Christmas episode, "Santa's coming tonight, tonight. Santa's coming tonight."

He'd also managed to convince us we had to finish the puzzle or Santa wouldn't come. But despite our best efforts, Tara was resolutely unfinished. I renewed my suggestions to torch it, this time to only weak resistance.

Midnight was drawing near, and since I'd told everyone that animals are supposed to talk at midnight on Christmas Eve, we made a halfhearted effort to stay up, debating what our animals would say. "I need a treat" or "Give me the softer pillow" were the most popular guesses.

Of course, given that we all fell asleep before midnight, we figured they wasted most of their words saying, "Come on, wake up! I have something to say."

My sister claimed the next day that her dog had woken her up and said, "All your base are belong to us." I'm almost certain mine did, too.

The next day, we finished Tara. Its chimneys were lopsided, and the porch wouldn't fit quite straight. Scarlet O'Hara lurched out the front door, falling forwards into a paper version of Rhet Butler.

It was so beautiful I forgot to torch it.

Moral:
Finish the jigsaw puzzle or not. Frankly, my dear, Santa doesn't give a damn.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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