“Where’s Daddy?” I asked. “Do you want to show him your slings?”

“Show Daddy!” both boys shouted, and ran upstairs.

“And how are you doing, dear?”

“Long day,” I said. “But I’m home, and planning to rest now.”

Which was intended as a subtle hint that if she was planning to enlist me in the redecorating, it wasn’t going to work.

“That’s nice, dear. Yes, it needs a little something.” She was gazing around the hallway with a small frown on her face, so I deduced that last part was about the decor, not my napping plans.

“‘A little something’?” I followed her gaze. The whole hall was decorated within an inch of its life. Evergreen garlands alternated with gold tinsel garlands, all ornamented with red velvet ribbons. Every horizontal surface contained at least a few branches of holly sporting clusters of red berries. Several dozen poinsettias were massed along the walls—elegant silk ones, of course, rather than real ones that might be poisonous to the dogs. In the front corner was a rather elongated tree, chosen specially to reach as close to the ceiling as possible without occupying so much floor space that we couldn’t open the door. It was completely decked with red and gold ornaments. We had two Nativity scenes, one small and traditional on the hall table, the other large and modernistic, on the floor beside the tree. Two handmade baskets held the Christmas cards we’d received. Special red and gold bowls scattered throughout held Rose Noire’s special potpourri blends—spruce and pine scent near the tree, cinnamon and apple flanking the arch to the living room, and clove and nutmeg in the hallway leading back into the kitchen.

Arriving guests generally spent the first fifteen minutes of their visit exclaiming over the decorations, which actually wasn’t as inconvenient as it might sound, since it usually took me five or ten minutes to hack my way through the decorations to get to the hall closet or the coatrack to hang their wraps. And once I finally pried the guests out of the hall, the marveling usually continued. Mother referred to her efforts in the living room and dining room as more restrained, though of course they were only so in comparison to the hall. It was all fine for social visits, but whenever anyone came on any business I’d taken to leading them to the kitchen, where they wouldn’t spend their entire time sightseeing and could be more easily induced to help consume some of the surplus of holiday cake, cookies, candy, and fruit that was piling up.