MY Tahn!
MERRY CHRISTMAS
and
A SAFE AND HAPPY 2003 TO ALLA YUNZ!!
--- Martin & Mrs. Fierro
Posted on 12/24/2002 7:59:30 AM PST by martin_fierro
MERRY CHRISTMAS
and
A SAFE AND HAPPY 2003 TO ALLA YUNZ!!
--- Martin & Mrs. Fierro
| It's a 'Burgh |  |
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Certainly looks a hell of a lot better than Tampa Bay, eh?
Hee heeee! I loved seeing the Bus stick it to Sapp last nite!
If you'd like a peek into prisoner6's community near da 'burg (Crafton) and my online Christmas Card (Picture O' the Month) go here and scroll down...expecially for the links "Here Comes Santa" and "Picture O'The Month". Also the link on a button reading "CATWOK WEBSITE LINKS" and then the link "First Snow". CRAFTON CHRISTMAS
prisoner6
Read or not...enjoy or not...but please accept...
Christmas is only a couple of days away and here sit I no closer to finding "the gifts" than I was a couple of months ago. Oh I DID buy each of the Kidz a rather nice Victorinox pocketknife, but that's all. Besides, as The Kidz get older and Wife and I get crankier, the quantity if not quality of gifts plummets in direct proportion.
Don’t get me wrong. For almost 3 decades Christmas in my house was something to behold. When Kidz were all under ten there were years you could barely see the tree because of the wall of gifts piled in front. And our trees were no midgets on tables. I‘d cram in the biggest tree my nine-foot ceilings would allow.
But Christmas rush wears on a person, and while I still had - and still do have – plenty of enthusiasm for the holidays the piles in front of the trees have been growing smaller especially over the past several years. Falling finances in spite of an increasing workload, a disdain for The Holiday Crowds, and a chronic procrastinating personality flaw have all contributed to the shrinking gift pile. But compounding all the usual excuses for not buying anything yet are my recently busted up and still not working ankles, as well as a splendid drop-by from Mr. Flu Bug.
It was so bad going to the company Christmas party and spending time with people I really spend way too much time with already was out of the question. Messrs Jack Bogut, Bill Cardille, and Doug Herth along with the incredibly politically misguided Lynn Cullen and the rest of the crew at the Renda Radio Ranch will just have to enjoy their holiday bash without my lively, self-proclaimed enlightened and admittedly perhaps instigating presence.
So with Wife at work until late Saturday and 2 of 3 Kidz out of the house, maybe out to lunch as well, it fell to youngest Kid and me to spend quality time together. Sick as I may be, an ability to sit and do nothing for lengths of time is not one of my attributes. So I decided to get a few things done Christmas-wise and see if I could get in The Spirit.
Just the day before and with my fever well over the century mark, Youngest and I took off in the van looking for a tree. I had wanted a nice three piece set of smallish artificial trees you cluster together to make your own forest. They even have that old-fashioned Charlie Brownish look about them. You know, short needles, not a lot of branches and the ones they did have angled DOWN.
Am I the only one who remembers Christmas trees with down-pointing branches instead of those new-fangled up-turned types so popular now?
But Wife nixed that even giving the boot last spring to Old Faithful, the 35 year old fake - as opposed to artificial - tree I bought and stored in one of the rather darker, damper regions of that vast, scary habitat to unimaginable creatures-that-make-sounds-in-the-night, referred to some of the more naive as The Basement.
Despite an occasional appearance over the years Wife claimed said tree smelled of mildew and rot while I perceived the odor as more of a fragrance accumulated and aged over the decades and emitted as a badge of honor for enduring the onslaught of Time’s fury.
How will she like it if Kidz toss her and I out just because we get up in years and acquire the Aromatics of Age?
So Youngest and I headed to The Shopping Center where I swear just a few days ago an entire forest from Northern Ontario had been hauled in on a couple of flatbeds. But where thousands of prime Spruce and Scotch trees once stood, only a few scraggly, brownish examples remained.
We found one greener than some, fuller than most and picked out as much of the dead biomass as possible. Having on occasion seen duty in previously mentioned Basement allowed my cavalier use of hand to reach in near the trunk and extricate as much of the brown stuff as possible.
We got a guy who obviously hailed from West-By-Gawd-Cupcake and had trouble communicating not only because of frighteningly bad dentistry but an obvious abuse of some controlled substance to wrap Tree up and load it in the van. As it went in Youngest stood by solemnly shaking his head. “Except for that nasty crook in the trunk right at the bottom, this really isn’t a bad tree,” I said trying to convince him we did OK.
It didn’t work. He shrugged, and as he climbed in his only words were “ Mom isn’t gonna like this”.
Saturday with my fever still raging, we maneuvered the tree past the accumulated piles of coupons, papers, unfinished knitting and other projects, and bags of Lord-knows-what-but-it’s-been-sitting-there-for-months stuff into the living room.
We got it into the stand but as so often happens my mortality betrayed me and physically I was out of it for at least a while. Decorating was going to have to wait for the second shift. I retired to the computer to try and get a few things done on that front.
Later, after I got a second wind and Wife was home, I talked her into driving me to the Town Circle so I could get a picture of the community Nativity.
On the way I glanced up at the night sky. Coal black and despite the wash of a near full moon, pierced by thousands of shimmering points of light.
Something stirred inside, if an action can be stilling and calming.
Using Wife’s idea to use wax paper as a filter over the spotlights in front of the manger scene, I got the shot I wanted and we headed home. But I couldn’t keep from glancing at the sky. A brilliant moon was now well on the rise, but the stars endured, even twinkled brighter perhaps accented by the ice crystals high in the winter air.
Finishing up at home my body was ready to go down. Stumbling up the steps to bed, I began to think more about the Christmas gifts for Wife and Kidz. The reality of how little time was left began to sink in. The yearly holiday panic was building, overcome only by the fever chills shaking my body.
Rolling into the heated waterbed I snuggled down trying to warm up although worry over gifts and the presence of Mr. Flu Bug promised to make any sleep I got fitful at best, a nightmare before Christmas at worst.
At least it was a Saturday night and I was home instead of at work at the radio station I consoled myself.
Gazing out the back window of my bedroom I once again peered into that beautiful, dark, frozen still night sky. Earlier in the year I had taken the curtains off the back window because I would rather look outside than look at curtains. So the scene that met my eyes was almost as if in a wall hanging.
Framed by the rough, weathered and leaking old window sash, and through a dirty, distorting old glass I saw the beaming moon haloed by a dozen or so unconquered, bright stars. It was breathtakingly beautiful despite the dirty glass and the effects of the fever. It was a scene of total calm, complete silence, an epiphany of stillness.
And then I noticed something quite curious.
It wasn’t just far out beyond the window, across the gulf of space. The silence penetrated the window, the room, the entire house.
Downstairs there was no sound from Wife and Kidz. No TV or music playing.
Outside, no noise from the busway or other traffic. The dog next door was unusually quiet.
Even that great heartbeat of our house, the windup pendulum clock in the downstairs hall was stilled and in communion with a moment of peace.
Wrapped in The Quiet I received The Gift. I’ve received it before, and hopefully will many more times before I’m able to leave the earthly tempestions.
It is really the one and only Gift of the season. Cost is insignificant, but the finding of The Gift is the key. It can be given by all but rarely is. Few even recognize it when it’s offered. But I usually know when it’s passed to me, and with this story I hope I’m passing it along because The Gift is for sharing. Without the giving, one might as well leave it wrapped and stuffed in some dark, damp place in the basement of their soul.
You see for the moment at least, even in the fits of the flu and with put-off shopping wearing heavily on my mind, I was able think about the picture I had just taken of a baby in a manger, and bask in the glow of the true Christmas. That holy night a half planet and millennia away when a star shone bright, a newborn cried it’s protest, a mother calmed her baby and a heavenly choir quietly rejoiced with the chosen few in that very first Silent Night.
A newborn, a new mother and father, and the promise of…someday…PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN.
Willbill Kelton ‘68 aka prisoner6
Ya Go Pack!!! One of the few times everybody here was Cheering on the Steelers.
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