Christmas past…

Reid and his big sister Ellen back in the day. This is from a 2011 calendar that shows them down through the years. Still the best gift I've ever received.

Please believe me, but I have tried to be creative when it comes to Christmas gifts.  I really have.  Every time I get the itch it goes away just as quickly.  Maybe I am just not cut out for shopping.  The adage that generations of guys have repeated to themselves over and over, ‘women shop and men buy’,  is sort of my guiding light, mantra and rule of engagement all rolled into one.

All of which does take me to the mental spot where I do give things a long second thought, and that would be the days of Christmas past.  Right about now I think a lot about the days when Ellen and Reid were peanuts.   Contrary to the letter below, neither of them were jaded about the season of giving nor did they bother to make detailed lists.   Whatever they got, they liked.  I wish one or both of them would be here this season but with their lifestyles, its just not in the cards right now.   To have at least Reid here next year is item #1 on my early wish list for ’12.

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December 5, 2011

Ellen/Reid: I have been on snooze-control when it comes to shopping.  But you guys haven’t been of enormous help after I have pled on end for you to tell me what you want.  Yoga classes and a jacket?  That’s the best you can do?  When you were tots you were much more detailed about the stuff you wanted.  A Cabbage Patch doll (Paddy Patch, as you said, Ellen) and Sega, a GI Joe (or, as you said, Reid, ‘Gee-Jii Joe’) and whatever that ultra-spiffy doll was, Ellen (American Girl?).  Those I remember distinctly.  You guys never got up really early, in fact, if memory serves me correctly (which it may not) we had to roust you two out of bed to get things moving more often than not.  But once you were downstairs, it was shred-central.  So much for opening presents in a slow, even-handed manner.  Holy smokes, you were both destroyers of wrapping paper and boxes.  Don’t get me started on what went down every time we went to see Santa; Ellen, you forced your bro’ to break the ice with the old coot instead of playing the proper older sister and leading the way.

Scrawny, fake and short with cheap ornaments, what passes for the 2011 Christmas tree sits in the corner.

My tree hardly made it out of the box this weekend.  It is upright, naked of any trimmings.  The lights and stuff are sitting on the kitchen table.  Maybe I’ll get around to it tonight.  Felicia golfed with me one of the two weekend days and I tried to do a little shopping (see paragraph one) but couldn’t think of anything for either of you.  I just can’t shop.  I want to buy, and until the idea strikes me of what it is you might like, it serves no good purpose just to look.

Reid, yeah, you should bank on coming down for next Christmas.  With any luck we can head over toward the ocean for some R&R and maybe a little fishing.  We’ll take our sticks with us just in case the weather is uber-favorable.  EP, I wouldn’t think you and Tim will be in any situation to travel easily and besides, that’s the best Christmas of all when you want to be home and cozy.  That’s as it should be.  Maybe I can find a way up there for Thanksgiving again.  That was so much fun.

The Post Office has nearly gone bust and it announced a couple of days ago that they may slow first class mail, which means who knows when these letters might arrive.  I’ll keep putting first class stamps on the envelopes and getting second class service.  I’m thinking of upgrading to my own URL.  That could make things simpler.  Reid, you’re a whiz at this stuff.  Do you think it’s worth $100 a year for the privilege?

I saw where the Tea Party is losing some strength, and it’s high time.  They were just too negative and attack-dog like.  Just shows how fickle the populace is when we are communally wish-washy.  We can’t hold a position for more than 10 minutes.  There have to some middle-of-the-road politicians left who aren’t always beholden to special interests.  Maybe I’m in la-la land about that.  Maybe that would be my Christmas wish; for people to be civil again and look for the common good.  The employment news all across the Carolinas just continues to be depressing.  The people are beaten down.  There are a few signs of things picking up, but way too few.  It’s just taking a hell of a lot longer to overcome eight years of abject neglect and politicking.  I was watching some news show were a talking head blamed the current prez for the bailout when in fact it began when the prior administration sent out the big bailout checks.

But enough of that.  Time is a wastin’ so let me know what it is you want aside from Yoga and a jacket.  I can still get things there fast enough, but in a true chicken and the egg scenario, you must first tell me what you want.  Capiche?

The thoughts are good…

We bought some flowers for Caldwell's Sunday service. Felicia made the arrangement look pretty. It was a nice way to honor dad.

This week it will be a year since my dad passed away.  As is the case with fathers (and moms, too, most likely), you wonder why you didn’t listen to them more.  And then when you’re ready to be all ears, they’re gone.

Still, the thoughts are good.  So are the memories.

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June 22, 2011

Ellen/Reid: Felicitations.  I hope this finds both of you well.  What’s not to like about summer in those parts other than heat, mosquitoes and humidity?  Same thing down here, but here you toss in snakes and other critters.

This time next week we’ll observe one year since your grandfather’s passing.  I’ve been thinking of him quite a bit lately and it’s hard to believe (like your and Tim’s two year anniversary, Ellen) that it’s really been a year.  That whole blitz of worry and travel and arrangements last spring and summer seems like so long ago.  My PC screensaver is still the shot of him hoisting a frosty MGD just a couple of weeks before he died.  Even the few sips of a cold one he managed to get down brought some joy to him.  I’ll probably replace the screensaver sometime soon with a shot of your grandmother but will keep that photo of him handy for those moments when I wish he was still here which is more often than you think.  I replay the final day and hours not as often today as I did those months ago and it occurs to me now that he passed with some solace knowing that his family was pretty much in order, his wife was being cared for, his own kids had grown and were relatively responsible, and he had four grandkids that have more than exceeded his expectations.  There wasn’t any unfinished business on that score and given the amount he talked about you guys and Andy and Joe those last few days he could for the most part just let things go.  At the time the hospice lady kept telling us to remind him of those very things as a way for him to ease his own passing.  How they know that he could hear and process what we told him is beyond my meager comprehension.  But that was good enough for me at the time and was probably as it should be for him.  Next time I’m in the Midwest I plan to stop by to pay the old boy a visit.

Nothing new out West.  Ellen, grandma certainly appreciated your call.  She sounds pretty good, all things considered.

And thanks, too, for your Father’s Day calls.  Those were nice to get.  Route to me a few more photos now and again so I can see visually what’s going on in your worlds.  I giggle every time a shot comes through of Henry.  If there is a more contented dog who knows his place in the scheme of things, I don’t know where that dog would be.

In a month we’ll be in Wyoming.  Really starting to get gizzed about it.  Ellen, please don’t fret over your plans to join us.  No biggie at all.  Your summer is full enough with a kitchen and just rejuvenating from the school year.  People are nervous about the nighttime temperatures up high but it will be what it will be.  Hope for the best and plan for the worst.  I’ve been climbing aboard the elliptical machine for 20 minutes or more and every day brings a little more improvement.  Just have to keep at it.  I’m not so lucky when it comes to those arm exercises where you push yourself away from the table.  That’s not working out so well.

Well listen, I’ve got to run, literally and figuratively.  Again, keep those calls and photos coming, and maybe, hopefully, we’ll all get together under fun circumstances sometime soon.

The Social Network…

In keeping with my status as a habitual late adopter on most everything in life, including the last adult to see most of the trendy movies, The Social Network finally made it to my 42″ LCD screen.  It earned two thumbs up from us.

Far be it for me, though, to cast the first stone toward the film’s main, but questionable, guy.  Yet I would hope by this time both Ellen and Reid would have a clue as to how their mother and I would want them to go about their lives in terms of how they treat other people along with a sense of fairness and  right-and-wrong social balance.  It was never, however, a matter of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do.  They would have turned out far differently if they had patterned themselves on that credo.

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January 31, 2011

Ellen/Reid: My vote on the Oscars won’t be worth a hoot, but The King’s Speech and True Grit get my two thumbs up.  Of course, those are the only two films I’ve seen as of late so my vote is a little short on all the facts.

I’m still in a state of shock about Jane Hemminger’s book about our September golf trip to Coeur d’Alene.  It is absolutely fabulous.  A short run printing disguised as a hard cover coffee table book.  This really is my first exposure to on-demand printing on this small scale and it just floored me.  It was that good.  I am just so awestruck of Jane and her force of will when it comes to sheer creativity.  She ought to be in this business.  She wrote a cookbook a few years back, it was sort of a nutrition guide for young athletes (I think), so she knows here way around the genre.  If I can ever crank up my tome about you two, I can think of no one better suited as an advisor (Bob F. would be on that short list, too).

I guess you wouldn’t be in the South if the specter of race didn’t rear its head now and again.  A couple of weeks ago when our most recent “snow storm” occurred, the few inches of snow closed the schools for a few days.  The superintendent and the board, along with a committee that had spent months talking about how to schedule make up days, thought that Monday, January 17 – Martin Luther King day – would be a good substitute since there were no other holidays in the foreseeable future and weekends weren’t so hot.  But the backlash was incredible from the black community.  The NAACP leader called Charlotte a “racist bastion” plus other harsh words.  How dare the school board disrespect (disrespect is not a real word, I don’t think) the black community but scheduling – heaven forbid – education on that holiday?  I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now.  If Dr. King were alive, I suspect he would think that might be the best way to honor him: keep kids in class to give them an education.  But people went bonkers.  Absenteeism for the day topped 28,000.  Ellen, I know you wrestle with getting parents involved in the classroom, but wouldn’t children have been better served if these parents would have volunteered to help in classes to educate kids about honoring Dr. King?  I just don’t get it.  It’s basically a lot of B.S. since so many people across the race spectrum at least have a sense of civility and respect for Dr. King’s cause, and now it’s out the window.  The race card should’ve been put back in the deck.

So in the February issue of my church newsletter, I convinced my pastor, John, to have a couple of our members write about their take on the controversy, from a Christian perspective of course.  We have a pretty diverse little church congregation: black/white, gay/straight, homeless/well-to-do.  I’ll be interested in seeing what my two volunteer writers come up with.  It’s going to be a good issue.  You can see the back issues online at Caldwellpresby.org.  The newsletter is a lot of fun for me, creatively speaking, and is a measure of atonement for sins past, present and future.

Betsy just pinged me that she got a new job at the bank, with more bucks, no less.  She is really good at what she does and knows the people and knows how to get things done.  She is the poster child for going about it the right way.  If only I were in such demand.  Some day.

I wish there were a better update on your grandmother.  It appears to be a matter of time now, although I hope to be wrong on that score.  Not much is going right for her but she’s a pretty strong woman and perhaps she can bounce back one step at a time.  I’ll keep you up to speed.  But in the spirit of Betsy doing the right things, time for me to get back at it and do the right things, too.  Be good, and hope to see you both sooner than later.