Tis a gift to be simple

Life can get so complicated -- don't you agree?

And, with a sick kid, a girl who rips through 3 boyfriends in a week but can't do her bio homework, work, and other diverse forms of intrigue, it's evolving into a nest of ledes, subplots and sidebars.

When drama, whether boardroom or barroom, sneaks into my life, I get cranky. Long ago, I figured out that I don't do cute (I'm genetically incapable of perky) and I most enjoy the melo when it's on a stage or screen in front of me.

I don't think its age. It's more a desperate desire (at least I feel desperate desire for SOMETHING) to hang on to the threads of sanity I have managed to maintain in this menagerie.

Last night, we finally ended up in the same place at the same time. Trust me, this is a feat. That being so, we had no other option, but to seek out a Christmas tree -- and what better place than Bethany Farm?

We could easily stop, I figured, on our way to have Mr. C practice the trumpet for the evening Christmas service with the husband of our interim organist. Dick's 60 plus years on the instrument might outweigh my son's three or four -- but a kinder guy it would be difficult to find.

As we jumped out of the car into the frigid air, Farmer Dan limped over to us. We got a white pine last year -- or was that the year before? he wondered. Whatever we buy, I'm going to replant it, Dan, I said.

All the delivery details taken care of, we clambered into the car, leaving the redolent stench of chilled manure behind us.

As we turned right onto the road that would take us over the covered bridge, past the mill, still not bought, I began to relax. Time didn't seem to have ravaged much on this lane. We could have been taking this drive 50 years ago, and the road, with its fields and trees, might have looked almost the same.

A whitewashed house glittered with porch lights. A Victorian home loomed up on the left. The evening was quiet -- we were the only car on the road at that moment. We could have been anyone, any time in the last hundred years.

I turned right on Chestnut Tree, and the lights of the church windows shone on the hill, as they have for more than a 100 years.

There is a solace, amid the frantic changes we all desire or resist, in what has been handed down to us.

New is lovely.

But sometimes, older is even lovelier.