Editor’s Note: I was going to do something else this morning- my intentions were good enough, but news from the outside intruded, and not the kind we have sadly become accustomed to these days. I would elaborate, but my family is intensely private- and I can’t blame them in the slightest. Would you blame them?

The kids do not trust social media any more than I do, and the kids want very much to protect the next generation until they are old enough to make their own stupid mistakes. That is going to be a while.

Suffice it to say succinctly that I have been blessed with the birth of another grandchild this transformational morning.

That, I think, is about as far as the baby’s mother and father would authorize me to go.

So no more for the press release. But know this much from Your Nation’s Capital: this will forever be the Christmas I will remember as having something magical about it. For unto us this day, a child was born.

Vic

There was a lot to ponder this morning, and my thoughts were dragged thousands of miles away to the birth of my sons. It is the season to consider the miracle of the Nativity, though you can be forgiven for thinking of a right jolly old elf these days- I know I have been, though possibly not the one you have. It was a magical morning. On impulse, I switched off the mercury vapor lamp atop the telephone pole in the side yard and let the darkness envelop the farm house as it began to slowly dissipate with the coming of dawn under the crystalline Culpeper sky.

It is on days like this, the Eve of the Eve, that I particularly like to be out of the Emerald City. I park the Panzer (implacable German efficiency) outside the gate to the farmhouse, walk in, pour a tall one, turn on the game, decide what flags to fly and start to decompress. It really is good. I can feel the anxiety start to bleed off. Refuge Farm is close enough to the city to go there when you need it and utterly away from it when you don’t.

Nice compromise, and I fully intend to work on that relative balance of time in the Brave New Year that is almost upon us.

In the meantime, there are some close-out items from the old year. The Gnome was waiting for me when the green-painted door swung open. I had managed to get the new, longer bolts inserted inside the iron of his iron legs, drilled out the platform to accommodate them, and got him thoroughly screwed in. I was done with the project, almost, an odyssey of restoration that had begun with discovering the little dwarf face up on the dirt of the crawl space in the house on the bluff above the bay.

I don’t want to get you going on another dwarf tale, but it has been quite an odyssey for the little fellow. He has been with our branch of the family since they broke up Grandma Socotra’s house when she passed years ago.

I recall seeing him there in the partial darkness of the basement storage during one of the endless series of visits when Mom and Dad were still in their house in Michigan, mostly barricaded for the long winter in the sanctuary of their back bedroom.

I felt guilty about taking him- that was the awkward time when removal of their things felt a lot like theft, not realizing that it was soon enough going to be just more junk that had to find a home someplace or be discarded.

The glass panes of his lantern were long gone, and his paint chipped and his wiring was the original 1905-vintage copper, the canvas fabric skin of it long rotted away. He still had garden-dirt from New Jersey inside, a connection to the massive old house where Dad grew up at 98 Sagamore Road in Millburn.

I had grand plans for his refurbishment, but those fell away with the distractions of the last few years. In a rare moment of focus, I got the frame guy from K&S Art in Arlington to cut me new panes for the lantern. I purchased the paint to color them a festive mellow yellow, got a new cord and paint for his boots. And there the matter rested for the last two years.

I actually got around to re-wiring the little fellow, painted his panes and restored his lantern. I wrestled with his base and mounting screws, a project requiring two-trip-to-Lowe’s Home Center, and last week I got him just about complete, though the new mounting bolts protruded below the base and needed trimming.

The Dremel tool that would have knocked that off was in the closet in Arlington, so with regret, I laid him flat on his back on the dining table and took off for the working week in The Big Clueless.

That was a matter of just a few minutes labor when I got back yesterday. The skies were clear, not cloudy as they were in the great city to the north. The sparks from the cutting wheel made a merry fountain of festive crimson in the afternoon sunlight. In a trice, my right jolly old dwarf was able to sand on his sturdy metal legs. I put him out front to greet the Russians, when they came over for a festive drink.

My Jolly Old Elf is now completely ready to great the Brave New Year. I hope I am up to his standards!

Merry Christmas!

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com