Harold’s Room
Chapter Ten
Merry Christmas! It is in the mid-seventies! Harold is awake! He missed some of the festivities, but not all. Our Christmases tend to stretch out a bit, what with multiple family get-togethers and such. Even if he is awake he is not invited to all of them. I’d have to fashion a tiny papoose carrier, or belly pack of some sort, or he would undoubtedly end up someplace he shouldn’t be and get stepped on, or gathered up and discarded with the post-present-opening refuse. Better he should stay in known territory where he’s safe. He got to see Lisa’s family: Cara, JR and the kids, AJ, and Don and Jaylene. He did not get to see my sons or my dad. The boys couldn’t work it out, and dad doesn’t get around much anymore since he had to start using a walker, moved to the assisted living facility and sold his car. That saddens Harold, and myself. Dad is the one who taught me to stop to pick up turtles out of the road a long, long time ago, and Harold was always quite responsive to him and came out to chat, Harold style, when he visited. Do you suppose a turtle can sense a kind heart, much as some children and dogs do?
Harold also got to see Kelly and Paul. He likes Kelly and Paul. We always arrange Lisa’s family get together around Paul’s schedule. He is an airline pilot you might recall, or did I mention that before? I believe I did: he was pushed back into the co-pilot’s seat during a merger, got to fly the Steelers to the Super Bowl in Dallas, finally got his captain’s seat back? You remember. Anyway, as you can imagine, his days off are extremely limited during the holidays, so all plans center on his schedule. He’s worth it. Harold seems to think so at any rate. I shan’t disagree. I like Paul too, and of course we all love Kelly. She’s a mess, but a fun mess. Shall we talk about the cat she doesn’t have? Elwood is a neighbor, but he figured out very quickly when Paul and Kelly moved from Pittsburgh to North Carolina that his new neighbors were marks, and if he showed up at the door and gave them his best “poor hungry kitty who wants to be your new friend” routine a few times it would all work out. I understand Elwood now has his own place setting on his new friends’ patio and spends quite a lot of time lounging there, much like my raccoons. And how about her War of the Tree Frogs? The nasty, wet looking little creatures stick their nasty little sucker feet on her windows and hang there and stare at her with their huge, orb-like eyes, and worse, they stick on the exterior door glass and attack her savagely as she exits and enters! I heard several of them have taken a ride over the back fence into the woods where they belong courtesy of a tennis racquet. How about flying monkeys? No. No. We had better not talk about those. Let’s just say Kelly does not like flying monkeys and leave it at that. She does like Harold, and he her. When Kelly and Paul visit they both sit in the sunroom with him and talk to him, and he responds. This year he got to spend Christmas with them. Well, he got to spend a couple of days before Christmas with them. They only get to stay a day or two, three at most, and then off they must fly. It is Christmas Day as I set this down on paper. Lisa and I usually spend it in just the company of one another, though this year we have Harold with us. We’ll get to that in a bit. I wanted to mention Harold’s reaction when Kelly and Paul got packed up and were heading for the door the other day. We were following them out through the laundry room to the garage when I happened to look back, and there in the middle of the sunroom door about three or four feet away from it where he could see over the step stood Harold, watching them go. Say what you will, he IS the smartest turtle I have ever known, and I believe he knew they were leaving, and he knew he was going to miss them. In some ways he is smarter than many people I have met. He certainly has more common sense and better reasoning capabilities than quite a few humans I know, and I believe in his own way he is more compassionate. And I’ll stand by that statement. I would rather spend my time with him than them. We don’t irritate each other nearly as much.
Now back to how Harold spent his first Christmas Day. Lisa wanted to watch Christmas movies in her den on the recliner couch (Or is that a sofa, Lisa dear?) in comfort, to which I agreed. I like that sofa/couch, and that TV. The sofa/couch is more comfortable than the one in the great room, and her TV has a much crisper picture than my old Mitsubishi rear-projection. But I like my sound system more, so I usually watch TV in the great room on the dinosaur (I’m talking size and weight here, too, not just age.). The sound in a Christmas movie is not nearly as important as the sound in a sci-fi monster movie where something sneaks up behind you and suddenly snarls in your left ear, and then something snarls in your right as the monsters surround you. The only thing that might surround you in a Christmas movie is one of those horrible crowds of monsters at THE MALL the week before Christmas, and I do NOT want to go THERE in surround sound. Being in THE MALL at Christmas is like being stuck in a huge hive of giant killer bees, all buzzing at 130 decibels. Malls at Christmas are my flying monkeys, so I had no problem with Christmas movies in the den with no surround sound. At any rate, we didn’t want Harold to spend his first ever Christmas Day awake all alone, so we packed him up and took him in to watch movies with us. This was to his liking. Lisa’s den is the warmest room in the house, so with it being in the mid-seventies outside he was quite toasty in there, and was well pleased. He sat on the couch with us for a while, hunkered down and peering at the images on the TV, but then he started glancing back and forth between the two of us and getting antsy, so I set him on the floor and he began to explore. He poked around for a while, and I was a wee bit concerned when he went behind the sofa/couch. Being a recliner, it is heavy, and I didn’t want to have to roll up the rug and drag it away from the wall if a certain individual got stuck back there, or got stubborn and decided not to come out from behind it. I was also not exactly sure how much shell clearance he had if he managed to get under the recliner mechanisms, and did not want to even think about the possible consequences if one of us should happen to operate said mechanism while he was under it. He did, thankfully, however, make his tour behind the sofa/couch brief. There’s nothing much of interest back there but dust bunnies, and those just get stuck on his feet, make his soles slippery and irritate him when he can’t get any traction on our cork flooring, so out he came. He wandered about the room at his whim after that, and I did not have to hunker down next to the sofa/couch to watch him again. A short time later a commercial came on and Lisa left the room. She and I had been discussing Harold’s lack of suitable holiday attire a while earlier, and she came walking back into the den with a tiny, green, “Ugly Christmas Sweater” with big white snowflakes circling the midriff and white accents around the neck and hem. “Where on earth did you get that?” I asked.
“I took it off of a coffee mug I got from someone at work,” she said. “I just remembered I had it. Do you think it will fit?”
“Why, yes, I believe it will,” I replied. She handed it to me, and I commenced to dressing Harold. It fit very, very well. He and the coffee cup are about the same size, height and girth. Only one problem: coffee cups don’t have legs. The sweater was a wee bit long, and no matter how I tried to adjust it Harold would catch his hind toenails in it when he walked and drag it off over his butt. The sweater he did not mind, but this business of snagging his toenails in it did perturb him some. His capes do not give him that problem. The third time I managed to get it to stay on a bit longer, but eventually as he crawled across the rug it drug back down to the point his toenails caught it again and off it came, so we gave up. We are going to do some nip and tuck next year if it looks like he will be up for the holidays again. We pretty much know how it needs to be modified, but it has been a long, long time since I did much sewing. Remember when we used to repair our clothes rather than replace them? Or am I just that old? At any rate (you might have noticed I’m very fond of that term), next year we will be prepared.
All-in-all it was a most pleasant Christmas. Lisa and I were pleased to have Harold’s company. It was a rare treat. Though his exploring appeared to keep him occupied, I did catch him looking at the TV screen a few times. More than a few, actually, and he gave me his usual over the shoulder “Who? Me? No. I’m not interested in that!” response. However he felt about the entertainment, he did get to carouse with the family for Christmas, and as always got a couple of presents (one is a little ceramic turtle about a fifth his size). And this year he got to see them right away, which he had never been able to do before, because he never knew about them until late March. After the movies were over Lisa and I had left-over Wolf’s Barbecue Restaurant ribs, with three sides, for Christmas dinner. This was courtesy of Paul, who, no-matter what holiday or other occasion brings himself and Kelly to town, asks if we could possibly have Wolf’s for the gathering, all on him, of course, as it was his suggestion. (I told you I like Paul.) Since we all like Wolf’s Barbecue very much, but somehow, living here where it is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump away, never consider it a priority to go get some since we can do that any time, and none of us have probably had any since the last time Paul and Kelly were in, we all graciously agree. We are so kind to honor his wishes, are we not? Harold, being on a bland diet so-to-speak, had sausages and toast, garnished with chopped white grapes. He was very pleased with his first ever Christmas dinner. I wish he could have worn the sweater.
It is now approaching New Years. It has chilled off again, so I don’t know if Harold will see New Years Eve or not. He has been a bit more lethargic, what with the cooler temperatures and the lack of holiday company for excitement. “It’s cold, and mom and dad just sit and talk and nobody pays any attention to me at all. I’m going back to bed.” It’s supposed to be warmer by New Years Eve. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe he’ll come out of his post holiday funk and perk up for the party: Just Lisa and myself again, same as Christmas Day, partying right up until maybe ten-thirty. Harold won’t mind. If he’s up at all that day he’ll be asleep again by five-fifteen. Lisa and I will wake up when the fireworks, shotguns and cannons start going off. We’ll say, “Happy New Year sweetheart!” and kiss, and then after the noise quiets down a bit we’ll go back to sleep. It sucks getting old.
It’s New Year’s Day today, and though it chilled-off after Christmas and Harold napped between the holidays, it did warm up enough to roust him for New Year’s Eve. It went pretty much as I described, except he stayed up until around seven. That’s really late for him, even during the summer. Lisa hit the sheets shortly after ten. I should have mentioned Lisa has to work today, so it’s just me and Harold. Actually I guess I’m re-iterating again, in case you had forgotten she works most holidays, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. At any rate (See? There it is again.), she has a perfectly good reason not to stay up too late on New Year’s Eve. I, on the other hand, do not, so sometimes I spend what time I can with her until she has to retire, and I stay up and watch nature and science shows if I can find any, or old movies if I can’t, and fall asleep on the couch. Then, when the fireworks and shotguns and cannons go off, I go to the bedroom, wish Lisa Happy New Year, and she me, the New Year’s kiss, and then I crawl in bed. Slightly more involved, but equally boring if you’re a party going sort. But if your wife has to work New Years Day, you’re probably not much of a partier anymore, and if you like nature and science shows, or old, classic four-star movies, it is not such a bad way to spend New Year’s Eve. I mean heck, Dick Clark is dead, God love him and keep him close, and it just ain’t the same.
As January has moved by I’m afraid there’s not a whole lot more to report, at least as regards Harold at any rate. It has been more in keeping with the season, which is cold and damp in southern Indiana this time of year, though of course January and February are usually our coldest months by far, and frequently the “damp” has been a mix of sleet and frozen rain. We did have a couple of decent little snow storms, and they happened to come after warmer spells, so Harold got to see it snow again. Sometimes when the larger flakes start to come down heavily he stands at the window and watches them as they fall, apparently mesmerized, for quite some time, which for Harold can be an hour or more. One afternoon after a storm had dumped around three or four inches on the ground and then stopped, I saw him looking out the back window toward the feeding area, when suddenly the sun broke through the clouds. He blinked rapidly and swung his head sharply to the left, as if the sudden, dazzling brightness of the sun reflecting and refracting off of the snow were more than he could bear. As he became accustomed to it, he turned back toward the window, and then moved right up against the glass, looking back and forth across the expanse of sunlit radiance that had earlier been the usual winter gray-green back yard vista he was accustomed to. He has seen it snow in early November, and in late March or early April in previous years, and it always enthralls him. As the cold sets in and the novelty wears off, however, he retreats to the fortress, or to the potted jungle, and tucks in for the duration. Of course this year the durations have varied greatly, as have his naps, which previously lasted most of the winter with only very short breaks. We have spent a lot of time together this winter, and Harold has gotten to see and experience a myriad of things that were all brand new for him, as have I. It has been a most interesting winter compared to previous years, when all I did was check his bedding, nose and eyes, watch him sleep, and pray that he woke up in the spring.