These lambs are Flip Flops--extremely relaxed animals--who were extremely relaxing to our mother during her last days.
Without our mother, we are trying to figure out our new Christmas normal. My mother loved Christmas almost as much as she loved Christ or us rotten kids. In our latter years, Christmas somehow came to revolve around her. If someone teased my mother about opting to do nothing for Christmas, to not buy gifts, to not prepare a special dinner or, in essence, to treat Christmas as if it were an ordinary day, she would get a blank look on her face and become as quiet as a patient hearing bad news.
Then the moment like a flashback would pass, and all of a sudden she would object. With her whole heart.
“No Christmas!” she would say. “How can we NOT have Christmas! We HAVE to have Christmas!”
My mother shopped for everyone . . . down to the fifth cousins who barely had a speck of original DNA in ’em (or the home-training to mumble a polite, Thank you.)
