Frazzled Joy (Lynn Kerstan)

Every holiday season, despite my best efforts to avoid it, Doom sucks me in.

Doom being, this time of year, the madness that is last-minute Christmas shopping. The crowds. The long lines. The utter lack of parking spaces. Yesterday, winding around the circles of hell–er, the labyrinthine parking lots of Abandon-Hope- All-Ye-Who-Enter- Here" mall–I significantly depleted the world’s petroleum resources.

Eventually, I gave up and I went in search of less populated malls. Translation: strip malls.. Sometimes you don’t go shopping at the malls you want. You shop at the malls with a place to leave the car. Which is why I found myself in a long, slow-moving line at Ross to buy two pairs of part-cashmere socks (marked "Imperfect") and a tasseled curtain tie. I should have brought a book with me.

Bored, trying to preserve the spirit of good will I’d set out with hours earlier, I began to study my fellow shoppers. Directly in front of me was a tall, substantial woman topped by a weathered face and red-brown hair plaited into a pair of thick pigtails that reached to mid-chest. She looked ready to step out of her ranch house, shotgun in hand, and order us all the bleep off her property. No one was going to mess with her, no-siree, even when she needed price checks on half the stuff she was carrying.

Everyone behind her, including me, began to fidget. We were all thinking the same thing: Is what I am buying plus the time invested in getting here worth waiting out this woman and her infernal price checks? A harried sales associate was scurrying around the store like a hungry ferret, returning with a price for one item only to be dispatched for another. Two ladies with half a dozen tacky ceramic statuettes in their basket shoved it to one side and stalked away, glaring over their shoulders at the woman holding up the line. I figured that several people had been spared some truly gruesome presents.

Resuming my contemplation of the woman, I wondered why a female with a build like a linebacker would choose such a peculiar hair style. I looked closer. The hair on top of her head had a reddish sheen. But the hair on the back of her head, and the braids as well, were a flat, dull brown. Wait! Those braids didn’t belong to her. They were part of the ugliest el-cheapo hairpiece I had even seen.

Not for me to condemn her fashion choices. I’ve made some bad ones myself. But she reminded me of a letter to the editor of Newsweek I read a few years ago. The writer, commenting on an article about human evolution, wrote, "Anyone who thinks there is only one species of humans has never shopped at Walmart on a Saturday."

And yet, as people come together for end-of-the-year celebrations of every kind, we are all bonded in amazing ways. Most likely, someone behind me in the line was wondering why I would wait in line so long to buy socks. All of us must have wondered why the woman didn’t go rummaging through her cavernous purse for her debit card until the purchases were finally price-checked and rung up. Some of us longed to whop her upside the head with that purse.

After my own swift transaction, I got to the parking lot and saw She-of-the-Braids sitting in the vehicle parked right next to mine. Not a covered wagon after all. This out-of-date woman was at the wheels of a new, massive, lemon-yellow X-Terra. And as she pulled away, she gunned the engine.

The world is filled with fascinating people, and one of the joys of being a writer is observing and collecting the bits and pieces we might use in a future book. Before I started the engine of my bland little Corolla and followed the woman out of the parking lot, I murmured a prayer for her, and another that stays with me throughout this blessed season: Let there be peace on the earth we all share, and let it begin with me.

Joy and good wishes to you all!