Eighteen years ago I thwart
ed the definition of insanity by
realizing it would always be freezing in WV if I went home for Christmas. So I decided to flip-flop vacation days to
summer & instead spent the Holidays in my new home of St. Croix in the US
Virgin Islands.
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| My 'From the C' vending booth by the ships |
The upsides:
1.
Santa
wears jams & plays steel pan.
2.
Every Caribbean island has their version of
Carnival at a different time of year, & St. Croix’s is the Crucian
Christmas Festival.
3.
Fruitcake ships well.
The downsides:
1.
Without a really obvious change in weather,
there were no external cues to tell you to shop & ship any gifts you had
hope for the recipients to get by Christmas.
2.
How do you make it Christmas when you’re still
sweating?
3.
Fruitcake ships well. (Just kidding—my Mom’s
fruitcake is fab & has never suffered from a drizzle of the local Cruzan
rum I have occasionally added. It’s just
that fruitcake is such an easy target!)
After I committed to Christmas in St. Croix, I set about
figuring out ways to ‘Holiday it up.’
The most obvious would happen by accident. I needed something from the hardware (read
‘general’) store, no doubt to replace something that rusted. Aside:
If I calculated the percentage of my life here replacing items that
rusted, I’d probably realize that I could have pursued a career in neurosurgery
or the like with that time). Our major
hardware store, I found soon after I moved here, served many more functions than
rust prevention & maintenance. It was
run by a couple who understood the ‘continental’ (island speak for imported
statesiders) need to shop. They carried
a full array of hardware necessities, but realized empty space in their
shipping containers could be filled with fun housewares—dishes/glasses/pots/pans/linens,
etc. & that those would be the items that would prove irresistible to us
all.
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| My 'From the C' vending booth at the holidays |
At Holiday time, their stock magically transformed to the
most remarkable array of ornaments & Christmas décor imaginable. They would travel to gift shows every year to
source the fun, the frivolous, & the enchanting. And then they did the unthinkable…& the
thing that really makes it Christmas here.
They imported real Christmas trees!
When I got out of my car in the parking lot, I was hit by
the scent of real pine & I realized THAT is what makes it Christmas to
me. So I left the store with a
replacement part for something that rusted & broke in my toilet…& a
big, fat, smelly CHRISTMAS TREE strapped to my rusty roof rack!
It was only after I had cut it loose & put it to soak in
a bucket of sappy water in my back yard that I realized…I got rid of all my
ornaments before I moved here. I had
nothing to put on the tree. I had been
so thrilled to see trees & wreaths that I forgot my ex & I had moved
here via the Post Office. If it didn’t
fit in a box acceptable under the postal size requirements, or if we deemed it
so fragile we sold it or gave it away before we made the move, it didn’t come
along for the ride. So my ornaments were
all over the states now, with friends, family & strangers who had bought
them at our pre-move yard sales.
Initial regret was replaced with the thought perhaps that
was how it should be—the past scattered behind, replaced by the need for
something new & different to represent the radical change in our
lives. That sounded good, but I realized
we were still on a very tight budget, having taken jobs we weren’t really
qualified for at white-knuckle pay cuts.
On top of the cost concerns, there was the disconcerting fact that the
first 5 years we lived here saw very active hurricane seasons—not exactly
conducive to amassing big collections of breakables.
So I pulled from a family* skill set & looked at ways to
make ornaments from what I had. (*My
Grandfather was a collector of all things that might ever be useful—with epic
stacks of items from twine to foil, to the heavy aluminum pie plates from his
weekly favorite pineapple pies ). I had
been walking on the beach every day & picking up scads of sea glass. As with most who love beach combing, I had
filled most of the containers in my house with the beautiful shards…& then
watched them collect dust.
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| 'Bamboo Wrap' sea glass necklace |
To call that first year’s efforts abstract would be a
kindness. Ugly as sin would be a more
apt description. The saving grace was
that most were Heineken green & to an extent disappeared in the green (&
now brown, after a few days in our climate) limbs. At least the tree smelled great…as it expired
in the heat!
And now it is 20 years later & I’m plotting where my
tree will go this year while I work like a caffeine crazed elf, making the line
of whimsical sea glass ornaments that formed the basis of my company, From the
C Jewelry. Boggles the mind to realize
those ornaments & the related line of jewelry are now spread much farther
than my childhood ornament collection.
Visitors to St. Croix have carted them back to Denmark, to Seattle, to
Paris, to Germany & to RUSSIA. They
took with them the accompanying card that explains the formation of sea glass
& the fact that every item is made by my hand from authentic St. Croix sea glass. Stores in St. Croix & stateside are now
carrying lines From the C & after years of pleading cyber-ignorance, I’ve
launched a useful website with photos & descriptions for those who prefer
to shop from home.
And the newest addition:
this morning I began this blog to chronicle the quirky & challenging
fun of life in paradise. I’m adding a
link from my website, fromthecjewelry.com
so you can see what is going on in this special part of the world. Stay tuned, but now I’m going to celebrate
with a swim!
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