December 2, 2014

One of the best presents I’ve received I gave to myself one week before Christmas. Then I gave it as a gift to someone else.
It was a bundle of branches; pussy willow stalks, actually. Not the real kind, the fake ones. They were 50 percent off at the local home décor store — an odd present at any time, let alone during a season of white lights and holiday cheer. Maybe that’s why they were on sale.

I placed the branches into tall matching ceramic vases on either side of the fireplace in our living room. Since it was December, I added some faux holly berry ferns for a festive look, a clear affront to nature, but I loved it.
So did my nephew Josh. He was visiting from Jacksonville.
“I love your sticks, Aunt Amy,” he said.
I wasn’t going to parse the difference between sticks and stalks of beauty. I was thrilled someone noticed them, especially my 29-year-old nephew. Josh had recently purchased his first home a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. Sitting on the brick lip of the fireplace in between my jolly holly-willow vases, Josh invited me to visit his new place. But, he laughed, I had to bring him some sticks.
Three months later, I visited Josh. I knew what was expected of me: fine looking sticks.
I searched local stores to find more, but they were gone. So I returned home, grabbed the stalks from my vases and headed to Jacksonville.
Josh gave me a tour of his home. He was so proud. I was, too. My nephew had blossomed into a successful young man running his own company while making a place for good friends and good times by a white-tipped sea that fed his soul for surfing. He was charismatic and whip-smart funny, always making me laugh. Our tour ended in his family room where Josh declared the sticks would be prominently placed.
The story goes that pussy willows have legendary significance. They are viewed as harbingers of hope and prosperity. In early spring, the dry barren twigs bloom fuzzy white buds called catkins that look like tiny pieces of cone-shaped cotton. The Chinese believe the fuzzy buds signify wealth and abundance.
We hear a lot about prosperity these days. Headlines tell us the economic fog is lifting. Consumers are spending again. Retailers are optimistic about this holiday season, predicting what buyers want with such statistical accuracy they can identify how much each consumer will spend and what they will buy. There’s something unnerving about a formulaic equation can predict what I will buy.
Trends, however, are made to be broken. My spending choices have changed significantly in the past few years. I shop less, and I’ve learned what to keep and what to give away. Like the pussy willows.
Josh died from an undetected heart condition two months after my Jacksonville visit. Eight years later, it’s still hard to believe.
Life sometimes can be brutally barren with loss and grief. I now try to find harbingers of hope in the small things. Today, on this second day of December, Josh would have turned 38. And while his time in this world was abbreviated, Josh had an abundance of so much else: friends and family who adored him, a fulfilling job, and a welcoming home exactly where he wanted it to be.
I have curtailed my holiday shopping, instead focusing on spending time, not money, on what matters most to me. But I will never regret buying those sticks of love.