Mexican beer with lime;
Debi's manger scene moved close together




Last night, the evening before we deconstructed the Christmas decorations to pack them carefully away for next year, I moved Debi's hand-made salt-dough nativity figurines closer together, to make room for some refreshments. In so doing, I noticed that her camel had his face right up to the baby Jesus, as though Mr. Camel was a google-eyed myopic. She made him kind of looking that way. Likewise, the lamb was hugging Mary's knee. All the players in the tableau were almost on top of each other, because I moved them.

Now, Debi, who as I explained elsewhere, did not know the significance to me of her hard work on my gift. She got the instructions from a Christmas magazine. She was neither Sunday-Schooled nor churched, and barely had a handle - I thought, - and maybe I was wrong - on the "Christmas Story." We've always set up the deceased maker's manger scene reverently, but with some respectable (what's that?) distance between the clustered enactors. The way one customarily does, on a table-top or mantle.

But last night I pushed them together, and that made all the difference. This could have been dear Debi's intent.