(This is Grandma’s House in Massillon, Ohio. She loved it almost as much as she loved us).

It is Christmas Day. We are in the new condo in Big Pink, and shivering as that big blue air mass slides across the midsection of this nation. We had some of the old files open to see how things were in the fairly recent past. We sent a greeting from a joyous 1977 yesterday, the folks still alive, our sister smiling and vibrant. Now, of those five people, six living beings with the White Dog, only two are left. That made some memories from 2009 pop up for Christmas Past.

For Christmas 2009, I slept hard, nine to six AM, body aching from being curled up in the Bluesmobile the last two days. That was the first startling bit, the idea of a hurtling 1,600 mile round trip in a former Police cruiser across five holiday states to the little town by the Bay on the Big Lake.

We had been ready for that Holiday, though the decline in Mom and Dad’s health was  measurable since the last visit ninety days before. My brother and sister have been here since, so we are doing what we can, but still, the darkness and the gray snow weighed on our spirits.

There was more going on in the note from years ago. I won’t trouble you with that business, now resolved by God’s relentless entropy. But at this modest distance from those events we look back in amazement that things work out the way they do.

There is too much time to think behind the wheel of a big fast comfortable car.

I wondered then at how the folks could continue to live here in that place, in the harsh winter? It is such a nice in the summer, and so hard when the winter comes.

Mom had broken her printer again. That old technical problem for her is now one I share. The business model of those in the industry is to give you the device for nothing in base price as they sell you the ink at vast profit. Mom was making one of her books, that one a history of the Antique Club of which she served as President. She naturally went through a lot of black ink with an enterprise like that, capturing the past. She had attempted to replace the cartridge by jamming new ones into the bowels of the thing, which was not where they go. It took us a while to figure it out, and we talked about it extensively.

It naturally had happened again, always the same thing, over and over. There is a little perspective in the years that have passed, since it is now happening to us.

It reminded one of us about the last conversation they had with a Grandmother. She had been a sharp and quite lovely lady in her time. As the story went, they had been standing on the porch of her little stucco house in Massillon, Ohio. There were small sons sleeping in the SUV. The rain was coming down, soaking the little lawn.

“Do you think we should bring the children in?” she said earnestly.

“No, Grandma. We will just let them sleep until they wake up. I’ll keep an eye on them. They will be fine.”

She considered that for a moment, gravely.  Then she repeated the appropriate words that work with printers and small humans: “Do you think we should bring the children in?”

The story wasn’t complete then, though parts of it were done for her, and for her children, and it is no surprise that the same things are happening to us. So, we take a little comfort in that now. We take a little joy in the memories we can share today. And in remembering, realize the gift of our lives is a magical thing. And it will it be so long as we walk this wonderful world.

Merry Christmas, Gang. And as for the issues we confront, looking forward and back, is “God Bless us, Every One!”

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com