Wednesday, December 20, 2000

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

An acquaintance I often see at Kroger asked me when I was going to write about Griz again.

She said she enjoyed reading about his adventures at Christmas time.

Truth to tell, I like to think of myself as a professional, and it's a bit embarrassing to be known as the writer who talks to her teddy bear, particularly one that talks back. Besides, lately he's been less quotable and more contentious than usual.

"Time for everything and everybody else but me," was the greeting I got one recent morning as I was making the bed. "Here it is, less than a week before Christmas and has anyone put my Christmas ribbon on me? No-o-o-o. She's too busy decorating a ficus tree. And where did that silly-looking panda bear come from?"

It was his annual self-centered rampage, delivered in a tone that can only be described as a cross between a snarl and a whine. A snine, I guess you'd call it. Why I feel obliged to respond to a stuffed toy is anybody's guess, although I usually have the sense to be sure there are no witnesses to my aberrant behavior.

"Griz, it's been a busy time, but that doesn't mean I love you less. Here, hold still " He was wriggling with indignation now as I tied and fluffed the plaid bow. "There. Is that better?"

"Humph," he sniffed. "It clashes with the comforter."

"Be sweet, Lord Plushbottom. And National Wildlife Federation sent the panda when I made a donation. Why can't you just sit there looking cute like he does? Quietly."

"Cute? He's neither cute nor much of a bear. Where would a bear get two black eyes?" my furry friend continued to snine.

"Well, you're right about one thing, Griz. Pandas actually are related more closely to raccoons than to bears. He's a Gund, too, you know."

"All he needs is a ringed tail," crowed the little guy. "That's the most wait! He's a Gund? I'm a Gund. That would make him a German panda. I'm from Germany, you know. Which is why I don't approve of your pseudo-Christmas tree."

"You're from Macy's, you little snob. Now Martin Luther was a real German, and a practical man. If he'd had a ficus tree in his sun room, I bet he wouldn't have dragged in a needle-shedding fir for Frau Luther to worry with."

How could I explain it to this bag of Fiberfill? Elaborate decorations (although ours were never very elaborate), late-night gift-wrapping, cookies we shouldn't be eating anyhow, stacks of Christmas cards no more. I've had a bit of an epiphany in my advancing years.

"Let me tell you about my mom, Griz." I sat down beside the scowling bear. "Every year she liked to arrange on the buffet a village scene of little cardboard houses with glitter on the roofs. Each house was lit by a Christmas light on a string, the kind that, if one bulb burned out, the whole string went dark.

"Around the houses, she stretched a sheet of cotton 'snow,' saved from year to year, and on it a pocket mirror served as a frozen pond. Then she added trees that looked more like bottle brushes than evergreens. From across the room, the houses lit from within the effect was magical.

"The thing is, Mom was worse than me, if that's possible, about managing time, and I remember a year that she got cookies baked and her little houses put up after New Year's Day. Getting it done mattered that much to her. And not a bit to us."

I didn't tell Griz that Dave says I'm so much like Mom I stayed up nearly all night one Christmas Eve finishing an elaborate wardrobe for Chatty Cathy, Alice's favorite doll. Cathy was the hit of the previous Christmas, and in an effort to renew and dress her in splendor, a friend and I had swapped sewing scraps so that neither of our daughters would recognize them.

Was Alice transported with joy when she found Chatty in a velvet cape and ear muffs under the tree? I honestly don't remember I was comatose by that time.

It dawned on me slowly (and don't tell Dave this, for heaven's sake): The frenzy of sewing was more for myself than for my daughter. As putting up the village scene and baking cookies were Mom's gifts to herself, even though she imagined she was doing it for us.

So this year, I minimized. I got a clever friend to make a pretty gold bow for the old wreath, and we floodlit the door, stringing tiny white lights in the window box. Our house looks prettier to me than acres of cartoon figures and miles of bulbs pulsing in a display that would horrify the angels who chose a dark field to announce the coming of Light.

The six-foot ficus that lives on the deck all summer has to come in in the winter anyway, and serves very well as a Christmas tree. Lights, ornaments, some tinsel, and at night you can't tell it's not an evergreen glowing in the corner of the room.

"What's your excuse for not sending cards?" Griz asked archly.

"We're sending them. But only to faraway friends. The folks we see all the time will get a cheery 'Merry Christmas' in person."

He turned and grimaced at the panda. "Fröhliche Weihnachten," he ventured. The panda just stared, nonplused.

"Some Gund," snined Griz.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. You see why I'm not going to write about him this year?

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