I ran into two pre-teen girls selling sprigs of mistletoe on my way into the grocery store. They had a plastic garden tray, a flat that would hold a whole set of bright and deep violet petunias for sale in the spring. Their flat had neatly arranged rows of small plastic bags, each holding a branch of mistletoe with its velvet green, almond shaped leaves and almost pearl colored beads. One of the girls told me they had just picked these that afternoon. The mistletoe was fresh and sparkling like the girls.
That was a year ago and now the box that keeps last year's ornaments has been dug out from the accumulation of boxes of mementos, books that have overflowed their shelves upstairs, the remains of paper plates and plastic tumblers from the mid summer parties we threw and the old clothes I said I would donate to a good cause but never did anything about.
The ornament box is it's own memory lane and reminders of the forgotten. There was the cardboard box that Christmas cards came home from the store in and has just spent the year keeping that sprig of mistletoe. My wife showed me a glass ball from her first marriage that her husband particularly liked. I suppose it was a cheery green when it hung from their tree. Now it is a sickly faded hospital wall green with the eerie reflection of the glass as though time had faded the color but not the intent. Yet another small box held a rag doll of Dionysus.
"Do you remember Dionysus at the top of the tree last year," she asked. No, the truth is I didn't. The truth is I didn't even recognize who this little creature was but I nodded as I usually do when I don't know and hope nobody will notice.
Dionysus took his place again at the top of the tree, hung by a small length of what was probably gold ribbon that wrapped a package in yet some other year but the mistletoe was a sad shadow of the ravages of just a single year being held in the dry and lifeless darkness of the ornament box. The only thing left was a forked stem and a few crumpled brown leaves. I don't know where the those pearly balls went to at all. There was nothing else in the card box, just the faded Santa sticker on the outside.
Being ever resourceful with small things, my wife hung the remaining mistletoe stem on one of Dionysus' arms and that brought my attention again to the doll and my admitted lack of understanding. At least one of his hands is a tiny plastic bunch of grapes so I can hold on to that symbol but he is wearing a silvery plastic heart necklace with an macabre plastic eyeball glued to it. His other hand is a small round mirror and I suppose mirror-handed Dionysus must mean something.
Maybe it is a reflection back into time as my thoughts went back to those young girls who sold me the mistletoe. I wonder if they are still there again this year and think about how practical it would be to just buy another little baggie of mistletoe again. Or maybe that mirror is just what it is. I carefully slid around the tree trying to find my own face in the tiny round glass on the doll's arm that was also carrying the dry stem of mistletoe like a towel over a waiter's arm.
Without moving, I slid my arm around my wife gently pulling her to my side, "Look. There we are in Dionysus' hand." As she craned her head around so she could see in the mirror exactly where I was looking, I gave her a small love nip on the side of her neck and imagined those smooth, plump pearls on the mistletoe being held very close between us as if our drying and blotched skin were those boxes under the house. My wife squirmed. Just maybe the rag Dionysus cracked the slightest smile.
