What I wanted to do...

Yesterday I wanted one last evening out in the conservatory, to enjoy the comforting smell of the still very fresh Christmas tree mixed with incense, but, of course, I would sit with hubby first, watching his daily crime movie. This one usually ends at 9:30, time aplenty to sit by the lights of the outdoor decorations, me eventually contemplating who had done the job of packing the many glass ornaments the year before. There´s only room enough for one person to do this, so husband and I take turns. We tried to do it together, but this had always ended with ornaments dropped and smashed, when we practically ran into each other. Unfortunately, towards the end of the movie first reports about the riots in Washington showed up onscreen, and I had to change plans. Instead of mulled wine I pulled myself a glass of whisky, snatched a cigarillo from hubby´s humidor and sat in the conservatory contemplating. Christmas lights had deactivated by then, the brightness of the freshly fallen snow outside and the candles on the tree - battery-operated ones, of course, we would not want our wooden conservatory go up in flames- were lighter than my mood. Could people be so blatantly dumb to partake in such a riot? The answer is yes, given that there´s one luminous figure you are willing to follow. We had one relative who lived in the States, first Nevada, then Arizona, Lake Havasu City. I do not even remember her name, no matter how hard I try. She had come to the States in the sixties, married and had children. This one turned out our household upside down when on visit. Her opinions on political life must have been outright gaga to dad. Sister and I were too young to understand what was going on. Why would this lady top it all? Top what? we thought. My father, a confirmed socialist, always hollered Don´t bring this witch into the house, or domestic bliss will get cut short the next years! He was partially right. Of course did mum invite her relative, of course she and hubby had intense quarrels over the next weeks, until things calmed down again. Mum always said She has not been this way before she left! No, she hadn´t, but she had married a die-hard Republican, and his attitude had rubbed off on her. This we came to know when her husband came with her to visit. Mediocre businessman, passionate hunter - a no-go, sister and I thought we´d better try to be vegetarians back then, might have been my mother´s way of mis-cooking meat. All this man talked about was his love for guns and how to protect his country. He was a racist from head to toe, but we were too young to see this. What else shall I say about him? My sister and I loved his hat, and that was about it. Only later I understood that people like this one are either dumb or endangering, probably both. He never came back to Europe but stayed in his little backwater town and was happy. Maybe he shifted from hunting to fishing, I don´t know. Mum had been visiting a few times, when she was older, but always sans dad, and after dad had died she quit. At one time the correspondence between the two stopped, too, so maybe the relative had died, I never asked. And if not she and her husband would have been too old to wave to or riot for beloved Trumpel then, Trumpel refering to German trampel, a word used on slow-witted clods. And now I wonder what happened to the real Republicans, the ones who had fought against slavery once...