The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

This Christmas Morning, Installment 9

Chapter 4: Christmas Dinner

If what the French say is true and you do eat twice - first with your eyes - then everyone at Grandpa’s table should have been stuffed before the turkey ever made it out of the oven. There were steaming fresh rolls, fruit breads and piles of lefse with real butter. There were sweet potatoes, fruit soups, wild rice hot dishes and two types of stuffing with tart and sweet cranberry sauces. Mountains of pure white whipped potatoes waited for rivers of succulent brown gravy. Three bright salads and four relish trays lined the beautifully decorated table. Apple, cherry and pumpkin pies lined the oak buffet. All of these were positioned perfectly on the dark green linen with white roses, a pine bow centerpiece and the festive red china setting them off. The expectant family sat with forks and knives in hand, awaiting the advent of the twenty-three pound butterball and drooling in Pavlovian splendor.

Ariel dipped her finger impatiently into the gravy boat for a foretaste of the feast to come. “This gravy doesn’t taste like Grandma.”

Leo couldn’t resist annoying her. “I hope not.”

“Hope not what?”

“I hope it doesn’t taste like Grandma. She’s dead.”

Monty didn’t want this to go any further. “Leo!”

“Well, she is,” said Leo, objecting to father’s objection. The walnut kitchen doors swung open and Jana made her grand entrance with the perfectly basted turkey on Grandma’s most beautiful antique Blue Willow platter. Steam rose above the golden brown bird and fogged her glasses as she lowered her head to find the table. “Ooohs” and “aaahs” followed as if on cue. Monty dimmed the lights, lit the candles and nodded at Grandpa. “Can you say ‘grace’ dad?”

“Rather not. Anyone seen my other cuff link?”

“Come on, pop. It’s tradition.”

Grandpa winked at Leo and everyone lowered their heads. “OK. Grace!”

Jana tried to kick her father under the table, but only managed to jostle the central pillar of the eagle claw oak table, causing Jurassic tremors in all the water glasses. Fern tried unsuccessfully to remove her son’s “No Fear” hat for grace, but Dewey insisted on receiving a logical explanation before parting with his treasure.

Roy

smiled through clenched teeth and glared at the boy. “That’s just the way we do it here.” Dewey wasn’t convinced. “Hat’s off.”

“Give me one good reason I should take it off.”

Roy

clenched both fists. “I’ll give you two.”

“Let’s just eat,” Leo pleaded. “My stomach growled.”

Jana wasn’t about to let so much as a parsley sprig off her platter without a proper blessing. “Why don’t we all hold hands and dad will offer the blessing?” One by one everyone complied—everyone except Dewey. He looked down upon Ariel’s hand as if the girl had leprosy.

“No way I’m holding hands with a girl.”

Ariel bounced her jet black hair and aimed a condescending smile at the boy. “Fine with me. And I’m not a girl. I’m a woman.”

Leo laughed and followed suit. Jana spied the turkey waiting for a prayer partner and quickly joined Dewey’s left hand to one leg of the bird and Ariel’s right hand to the other. “Father WILL say grace.”

Grandpa didn’t have to look up. The tone of his daughter’s voice was enough to tell all that she was through playing games. “Okay. Okay.” They lowered their heads once more.

“Ah, bless us oh Lord...” Grandpa paused a moment, as if he had somehow forgotten how to pray, then cleared his throat and sighed. “...and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord.” The entire family opened their eyes, expecting the prayer to finally be over, but for some reason Grandpa kept going. He took another breath and worked his way into his first real prayer since Thanksgiving. “And on, uh, on this blessed night we are mindful of those who have little or nothing before them. And, ah... on this first Christmas without our dear Melissa...” The old man’s voice seemed suddenly much older. It started to break. “We... we pause to... to... we are...”

Jana sensed she had pushed her father a bridge too far. She squeezed his hand and Leo finished the prayer. “We all hope Grandma’s having a hell of a good first Christmas up there with you and Jesus and all the rest of your company of heavenly ghosts. Amen.”

Everyone added their “amens” before Jana corrected the boy. “It’s not heavenly ghosts, Leo. Heavenly hosts.”

Fern lifted the water goblets to the light, looking for a way to complement herself into Jana’s approval. “Oh, what a lovely table you’ve set. And your crystal, is it Bohemian?”

“No, I couldn’t find any of mom’s good crystal,” Jana answered. “Grandpa packed it away so I used his next favorite.” She smirked at her dad. “Plastic.”

The old man stared at the goblet in disbelief and tapped it with a fork. Dewey stuffed his mouth with bread and threw in a pad of butter to mix it on the way down, cardboard and all. “Gramps, is your dead wife in heaven?”

Grandpa winced. “Don’t call me gramps.”

Fern forced a smile. “What would you like Dewey to call you?”

“How about long distance?” Grandpa had been waiting for that one all week.

Jana elbowed him under the table. “Dad!”

“All my life I’ve enjoyed annoying people, and now suddenly you want me to just up and quit?”

Jana was not amused. “Answer the boy.”

“What was the question?” He played dumb.

Dewey added a spoon of strawberry jam to the bread in his mouth. “Ish grandma Melissa in heaben?”

“Damn right.” The old man didn’t miss a beat.

Jana tried to elbow him again. “Dad!”

“She’d better be in heaven. After all the time she spent down here making the arrangements.”

This Christmad Morning, Installment 8

Chapter 3, Part 3

Ariel was back in the basement, engrossed in a pile of love letters and fingering her Grandpa’s Purple Heart. She was reading chronologically, and had followed Grandpa from basic training at

Camp

Rucker

in

Alabama

to the hills around

Nashville

for maneuvers. The letters trailed from the deserts of

Arizona

, where Grandpa was preparing to fight someone called “the krauts” to

San Francisco

where they were shipping out for the invasion of the Philippine Islands.

Knowing that she would be missed if she tarried longer, Ariel skipped to the letter at the bottom of the pile. World War II had just ended, the future looked bright and a young man was writing from a hospital ship on the way home, asking his beloved if she would be his wife.

It was the most beautiful thing that Ariel had ever read.

This Christmas Morning, Installment 7

Chapter 3, Part 2

 

 Ariel’s suggestion to leave Dewey in

Roy

’s car and bring him food for the next three days seemed completely logical to everyone. Leo volunteered to rig up mom’s old television for him. Grandpa seconded the motion and even Jana secretly entertained the idea for more than a moment. After all, the car did have a heater and the forecast wasn’t bad at all for this time of year. But hospitality won over common sense and Jana’s self-preservation instincts had to be muted. “He’s only going to be here for three days. Let’s make the most of it.”

“Three days?” Grandpa grumped. “It only took the Hindenburg only three minutes to explode and turn to ash.”

“I’d even cook it for him,” Ariel offered.

“We hate him,” Leo smiled, “but not that much.”

Jana shook her tinsel at the kids and tried not to smile. “Dewey is a member of this family now. That means he’s welcome in this house.”

“But, mom. . .”

“Quiet. Here he comes.”

The little marauder flew down the steep back staircase in three bounds, energized by the Mountain Dew and Twinkies he’d inhaled for pre-dinner hors d’ouevers. Leo had warned Fern’s little darling to keep the cat away from the tinsel. Predictably, the moment he hit the floor Dewey made his way directly to the tree, fingered a piece of the glittery stuff and began calling “kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Grandpa was cleaning potting soil from a fallen poinsettia when Dewey wandered within earshot. “You know, Dewey, I used to have other grandchildren.”

“Oh yeah?”

Grandpa whisked up the dirt and placed it in a cracked plant pot. “Yup. Did you ever hear the story of the old widowman who used to lock little neighbor children in his furnace and turn them into fertilizer ash for his flowers?”

“No.”

“Story goes, he had the prettiest poinsettias in the county.” Grandpa smiled insanely and tapped the boy on the shoulder with his little broom. “In this county, Dewey. This county.” He looked back toward his sorry smashed Christmas flower. “Gol-darnit. If this poinsettia doesn’t need a good dose of fertilizer right now. I wonder where I might procure some?” He leaned in toward the boy. “Drooping a bit, don’t you think?”

The phone rang as Dewey backed away from the crazy man. For the first time in his life, Dewey picked up the receiver on the first ring. “Hello?”

Jana’s stepped into the room with the good silver to set the table. “Who is it, Dewey?”

“It’s the turkey farm. They’re bringing the turkeys for your food baskets. How many do you want?”

“Twenty.”

Dewey repeated the message over the phone and waited until Jana was out of sight before speaking quietly and clearly to the man on the other line. “What kind of turkeys are they?” He flashed an evil smile. “Oh, no. No! They got to be fresh. Yeah. Real fresh. We want live ones. Yeah. No. We want to kill them ourselves. Yeah. Okay. Hurry them over, it’s almost time for dinner. Okay. Good-bye.” Jana thanked the boy for answering the phone as she stepped back into the room to place grandma’s Czechoslovakian cut glass water picture on the table. She debated for a moment whether the priceless ruby heirloom should be kept in the same county with Fern’s boy. If she hurried, she could pack it up and still get it to the mail before the window closed.

Dewey smiled all too sweetly. “It’s my pleasure to be of service.” He bowed and approached Jana.

Jana instinctively lifted the picture above her head. “Are they gonna bring the turkeys?”

“Any time now, Auntie Jana. Any time.”

Fern looked up from her crossword puzzle. “See! Dewey can be very helpful.” The boy pulled another piece of tinsel from the tree and resumed his efforts to gag the cat.

This Christmas Morning, Installment 6

 Chapter 3, Fresh Turkey

Ariel’s suggestion to leave Dewey in

Roy

’s car and bring him food for the next three days seemed completely logical to everyone. Leo volunteered to rig up mom’s old television for him. Grandpa seconded the motion and even Jana secretly entertained the idea for more than a moment. After all, the car did have a heater and the forecast wasn’t bad at all for this time of year. But hospitality won over common sense and Jana’s self-preservation instincts had to be muted. “He’s only going to be here for three days. Let’s make the most of it.”

“Three days?” Grandpa grumped. “It only took the Hindenburg only three minutes to explode and turn to ash.”

“I’d even cook it for him,” Ariel offered.

“We hate him,” Leo smiled, “but not that much.”

Jana shook her tinsel at the kids and tried not to smile. “Dewey is a member of this family now. That means he’s welcome in this house.”

“But, mom. . .”

“Quiet. Here he comes.”

The little marauder flew down the steep back staircase in three bounds, energized by the Mountain Dew and Twinkies he’d inhaled for pre-dinner hors d’ouevers. Leo had warned Fern’s little darling to keep the cat away from the tinsel. Predictably, the moment he hit the floor Dewey made his way directly to the tree, fingered a piece of the glittery stuff and began calling “kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Grandpa was cleaning potting soil from a fallen poinsettia when Dewey wandered within earshot. “You know, Dewey, I used to have other grandchildren.”

“Oh yeah?”

Grandpa whisked up the dirt and placed it in a cracked plant pot. “Yup. Did you ever hear the story of the old widowman who used to lock little neighbor children in his furnace and turn them into fertilizer ash for his flowers?”

“No.”

“Story goes, he had the prettiest poinsettias in the county.” Grandpa smiled insanely and tapped the boy on the shoulder with his little broom. “In this county, Dewey. This county.” He looked back toward his sorry smashed Christmas flower. “Gol-darnit. If this poinsettia doesn’t need a good dose of fertilizer right now. I wonder where I might procure some?” He leaned in toward the boy. “Drooping a bit, don’t you think?”

The phone rang as Dewey backed away from the crazy man. For the first time in his life, Dewey picked up the receiver on the first ring. “Hello?”

Jana’s stepped into the room with the good silver to set the table. “Who is it, Dewey?”

“It’s the turkey farm. They’re bringing the turkeys for your food baskets. How many do you want?”

“Twenty.”

Dewey repeated the message over the phone and waited until Jana was out of sight before speaking quietly and clearly to the man on the other line. “What kind of turkeys are they?” He flashed an evil smile. “Oh, no. No! They got to be fresh. Yeah. Real fresh. We want live ones. Yeah. No. We want to kill them ourselves. Yeah. Okay. Hurry them over, it’s almost time for dinner. Okay. Good-bye.” Jana thanked the boy for answering the phone as she stepped back into the room to place grandma’s Czechoslovakian cut glass water picture on the table. She debated for a moment whether the priceless ruby heirloom should be kept in the same county with Fern’s boy. If she hurried, she could pack it up and still get it to the mail before the window closed.

Dewey smiled all too sweetly. “It’s my pleasure to be of service.” He bowed and approached Jana.

Jana instinctively lifted the picture above her head. “Are they gonna bring the turkeys?”

“Any time now, Auntie Jana. Any time.”

Fern looked up from her crossword puzzle. “See! Dewey can be very helpful.” The boy pulled another piece of tinsel from the tree and resumed his efforts to gag the cat.

Ariel was back in the basement, engrossed in a pile of love letters and fingering her Grandpa’s Purple Heart. She was reading chronologically, and had followed Grandpa from basic training at

Camp

Rucker

in

Alabama

to the hills around

Nashville

for maneuvers. The letters trailed from the deserts of

Arizona

, where Grandpa was preparing to fight someone called “the krauts” to

San Francisco

where they were shipping out for the invasion of the Philippine Islands.

Knowing that she would be missed if she tarried longer, Ariel skipped to the letter at the bottom of the pile. World War II had just ended, the future looked bright and a young man was writing from a hospital ship on the way home, asking his beloved if she would be his wife.

It was the most beautiful thing the Ariel had ever read.

This Christmas Morning, Installment 5

Chapter 2, Part 3: Dewey
Leo glanced at his watch. “Only a couple more minutes until the Twenty Four Hour Christmas Extravaganza Wrestlemania Marathon begins. What a way to spend ‘oh holy night,’ right grandpa? With the greatest of the World Wrestling Federation right in your own living room.”

Grandpa eyed the tree and sighed. “I bet the Rock never had a plastic Christmas tree.” The phone rang and Leo jolted up but grandpa held him back. “Wait!”

“I’ll get it.”

“You’re going to be serving women the rest of your life if you don’t learn early. Now sit down and count to seven.” He grabbed the boy and body-slammed him to the couch.

“Seven?” asked Leo. They let it ring a second and third time.

Ariel called from the kitchen. “Can somebody get that?” A fourth time. “Can somebody get that?” It rang a fifth and sixth. “Will someone please get that?” With the seventh ring Ariel burst into the room. “Hello!”

Grandpa smiled at Leo. “Females. They can’t stand to let it ring more than seven times. Near as I can figure, it must be a genetic defect built into the X chromosome.”

Ariel stayed on the phone for all of thirty seconds, which was her own personal record for brevity, and only muttered a few “uh huhs” before hanging up. Grandpa winked at Leo. “ Oh, was that the phone?”

The girl growled back. “Oh, was that the phone?”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Something about the food baskets mom’s picking up. I’m supposed to ask you if you remembered to order the turkeys from your friend who has the turkey farm. They weren’t in the baskets.”

Grandpa snarled at himself and slapped his own face. “Shoot. Forgot. That’s the second worst thing about Altzheimers. You just keep forgetting things.”

“What’s the first worst?” Leo asked.

Grandpa and Leo smiled, winked and spoke simultaneously. “I can’t remember.” The stale joke was interrupted by a car screeching to a halt and sliding into what sounded like a garbage can.

“

Roy

’s here,” said Grandpa without breaking stride.

Ariel was first to the window. “An ‘82

Toyota

? And he’s got Barbie with him.”

Grandpa tried to keep from smiling. “Her name is Fern. Not Barbie.”

Monty emerged cradling the phone between his chin and shoulder, stuffing papers into a briefcase. “What was that?”

Grandpa licked his comb and smoothed down the sides of what used to be his hair. “Roy and Barbie are here.”

Monty wondered for a moment if

Roy

had found another new girlfriend since the funeral, then shrugged his shoulders and finished his call. “Gotta go, Bob. Brother-in-law and his new lady friend are here. You know. Yeah. The family thing. Okay, I’ll see if you can slip away for a while to talk about that Andersen Window account. Maybe tomorrow. What? Ooooh, you’re right. It’s Christmas.” He paused and glanced at his Palm Pilot. “Better not make it until after ten.”

The clang of Norwegian goat bells hanging on the front door hailed the arrival of the lovely couple. Fern burst through the doorway in a sexy red Santa dress two sizes too small, doused with enough perfume to choke a herd of reindeer. She immediately tweaked Ariel’s cheeks and pulled Leo to her bosom—which didn’t annoy him in the least. Then she snatched a cardboard mistletoe car freshener from her purse, kissed Monty on the lips and tried to do the same to an evasive Grandpa.

Roy

followed, staggering under the weight of a dozen bright packages and Fern’s seven pieces of matching designer luggage.

Leo steered uncle Roy toward the tree and asked him if he could show them how to thread spaghetti from one nostril to the other like he did last Christmas. Grandpa muttered a snide remark about

Roy

flossing his brain and retreated to the safety of his chair.

“Care for a cup of Java,

Roy

?” asked Monty. “Cafe olé? MoJo?”

Roy

accepted and launched immediately into a one-sided discussion about how the wall paper business was booming in

Grand Forks

since the flood. Monty nodded, emptying three creams and six sugars into a Cenex coffee cup.

“I might have to add somebody after the first of the year,”

Roy

confided. “You interested in investing? Where’s sis?”

Monty was more interested in putting money into Chia Pet futures than in his brother-in-law’s seventh business in ten years. He quickly changed the subject.

“Jana’s out doing some last minute deliveries. You know, the church thing.”

Fern elbowed her secret fiancée and nodded at the door.

Roy

cleared his throat for the announcement. “Uh, say. Fern and I have a little...” He paused.

Fern chose the word. “Surprise...”

“Yeah, surprise with us this Christmas.” Leo and Ariel were suddenly interested. Grandpa muttered that he didn’t want another cat in the house until he killed the last one they gave him. 

Roy

hemmed and hawed. “Uh, yeah. Well, no, it’s not a cat. To... to tell you the truth...”

Fern chimed in again. “What he’s trying to say is, my ‘ex’ ran off with his karate instructor for the holidays and we . . .”

“Big woman. Strong woman,” Roy added.

“Kind of at the last minute. And we weren’t planning on it but what we’re trying to say is... well...” They looked at each other and broke the news simultaneously. “We had to bring Dewey with us.”

A momentary silence was followed by an audible gasp. The cat’s tail frizzed to the size of a squirrel and Leo swore he heard Grandma’s ghost scream in the attic.

Grandpa scowled. “Dewey? The kid still owes me $746 for the chandelier at the funeral home!”

Dewey the Destroyer, as Grandpa fondly referred to Fern’s boy, was an eight-year -bundle of frenetic energy who could ransack a home in minutes while jabbering in a way that made even Fern sound like a Pulitzer poet.

“I know he’s a handful, but don’t worry,” consoled Fern. “He’s on Redelin so everything should be fine.”

“Forget the kid,” Grandpa whispered to Leo. “It’s me who needs the drugs.”

As if on cue, a freckled terrorist burst through the doorway screaming for presents and leaving a wake of destruction in his path. In the next few moments the house was ransacked. A Christmas catalogue, the reading lamp and three couch pillows found their way to the floor. A poinsettia was defoliated, a half dozen packages were rattled and a garland somehow managed to tangle itself in the boy’s foot, bringing the entire Christmas tree crashing to the floor.

Jana was humming “Deck the Halls” and smiling at the fact that her house was finally in order as she fumbled for the doorknob. Balancing three church food baskets in her arms, she hadn’t noticed

Roy

’s car by the barn. If all was on schedule, the turkey would be in the oven, the table would be set and she would have a leisurely hour to make herself presentable before

Roy

and Fern arrived. They’d fan out and deliver the care packages in three cars on their way to worship and all would return for a quiet evening of presents, food and reflection. A glass of Grandma’s homemade wine, a glowing fire in the fireplace, and the contented smiles of her thankful children would top off a perfect evening and all would sleep in heavenly peace. There was only one thing in the world that could possibly spoil her plans for a perfect Christmas. And, thankfully, Fern’s little something was quietly spending this holiday season with his father in

Fargo

.

Jana muttered only two words as she opened the door and drank in the destruction. The first was “Dewey.”

The second wasn’t fit for print in any language.

(Tomorrow's Installment: Chapter 3, Fresh Turkey)

This Christmas Morning, Installment 4

Chapter 2, Part 2, Time Machine
Jana caught herself mumbling something about not being her mother as she stepped over a golf bag in the back hall. “Grandpa, put these golf clubs away. Someone is liable to trip on them!” She jerked the frozen kitchen door open, stifled an urge to put the clubs away herself and sighed. She wasn’t her mother, but she wasn’t his mother, either. He could pick up his own toys.

Two heads poked immediately out of the kitchen the moment the door slammed. Grandpa’s eyes darted about the room. His bushy eyebrows rose. “Is she gone?”  

Leo emerged with a copper cooking kettle on his head. “Yes, Captain. She’s gone.”

The old man made his way toward his favorite chair and opened a beer. “

Turkey

’s in the oven. Pie is out. And the twenty-four hour Christmas Americana Wrestlemania Marathon starts in three minutes. Ho, ho, ho! Doesn’t get any better than this, eh boy?”

Leo plopped down at his grandfather’s feet. “Uh, it would if I could have one of your beers, grandpa.”

“Don’t push it, kid.”

“Worth a try. “ Leo dug out the TV Guide and settled on the floor. “What about the rest of the stuff on the list?”

Grandpa pulled Jana’s yellow note from his pocket, glanced at the pencil scrawlings, stuffed it into his mouth and began to chew. “List? What list? I never saw no list.” He swallowed. “When you get to my age, people expect you to lose things. Right? Must have misplaced it.”

“Grandpa, you’re way cool.”

“Yeah.” The old man chuckled at the notion and sat just a tad taller in his chair. “I am, aren’t I?”

Ariel leaned on a broken bureau in the basement, paging through some old yearbooks. She had descended into the spider-infested bowels of the farm house to retrieve two cans of grandma’s State Fair runner up beet pickles from the wall of jars when she noticed Grandpa’s mysterious old trunk wide open. Every other time they had been here, the dusty metal container had been locked. Leo overheard Grandpa saying it wasn’t a trunk but a time machine and they weren’t to touch it.

“This isn’t a time machine,” Ariel shrugged. “It’s just a bunch of old junk.” She noticed three ancient yearbooks and commenced to look for Grandpa’s name in the index. Grandpa had thirteen pictures in the book in all: Student Council, Honor Society, every sport, Jr. Air Wardens and something called “Gay Notes” which she decided not to ask about. She stared at the wavy dark hair and million-dollar smile of his senior picture. He was almost handsome in those days. A note was scrawled under the photo in smeared ink. Something about being careful “over there.” Ariel paged through the rest of the seniors but couldn’t find Grandma Melissa. She panned the juniors and sophomores and was almost ready to return to the index when the teenager’s eyes riveted on a freshman named “Missy” Aaslesen. “Freshmen?” Grandpa had robbed the cradle. Ariel studied the youthful smile a moment. There was something oddly familiar about this picture. She gasped. The girl had been looking at that very same face the night before in her mother’s bedroom. Only it wasn’t in this Spartan ‘44 memory book. It was in a yearbook labeled Spartan ‘78.

Scrambling up the stairs with canned beets and book in tow, Ariel retrieved her mother’s yearbook from a shelf and thumbed past all the long-haired boys in bell bottoms to find her mother’s photo. Then she opened Grandpa’s book, placed the pages together and gasped again. Not only were her mother and grandmother beautiful, but except for the hair, Elton John glasses and three decades between them, they looked exactly alike. They could have been twins.

Ariel was tucking the books under her pillow when a letter with a three-cent stamp fell from the older Spartan. She was about to replace it when all the x’s and o’s on the back jumped out at her. A small twinge of guilt hit as she opened the tear stained envelope. This letter was addressed to Miss Melissa Aaslesen from some man with sloppy handwriting on his way to a war:

“My dearest Missy: I can’t say what I want to say out loud because whenever I think of you I get all flustered and the words don’t come out right.

“When I leaned over and kissed you in the yearbook room yesterday I felt like I’d been struck by lightening. I don’t know why I did it, other than it was all I’ve ever dreamed of. You looked so beautiful and your lips were so inviting. I know I caught you totally off guard and it was improper. You’d have every right to call me a masher and never see me again or tell your dad and get me fired at the feed store. I’d understand it and accept it as my fate. But please, don’t YOU quit the store. It’s my fault, not yours.

“I’ll probably be going to

Germany

or

Japan

if Patton doesn’t end the War before I get my chance. And I may never come back. I know this sounds hokey, but I’d consider it an honor to hold your picture next to my heart and die - if I must die for God and country - with the memory of our one moment, our one kiss on my lips.”

Ariel sighed. She normally detested mushy romantic stuff, but this wasn’t half bad. She stuffed the letter into the yearbook and tucked it under her pillow before trotting back to the kitchen. She wouldn’t mention anything about it to Grandpa. He’d probably get all emotional about Grandma or yell at her for reading his personal letters without permission.

The kitchen was empty when she returned with the beet pickles. “Hey, you guys. Get back in here. I’m not going to do all this work alone. And where’s mom’s list? We got a lot of work to do before. . .”

Grandpa glared up from the tube and placed the copper kettle back on top of his head. He didn’t quite recognize the look in his granddaughter’s eye. “Are we going to take orders from her? She doesn’t even have a helmet on.” He pulled a phone card out of his wallet and handed it to the girl. “Here, Air - e - el. Why don’t you do the work for us, then go call your boyfriend back home? Maybe after a half hour or so on the phone you’ll forget about our little lost list.”

Ariel snatched the card and headed back to the bedroom. “Make that an hour and I’ll forget my own name.”

Grandpa muttered under his breath, “I wish you would.” Leo thought that was funny. “Ariel. What kind of a name is Ariel? Sounds like something you break off a . . .”

“Car.”

“Yeah, car.” Grandpa raised his eyes above his bifocals. “You know, kid, that’s what I like about you. You think like me.”

(Tomorrow's Installment: Dewey)

This Christmas Morning, Installment 3

Chapter II, Dewey the Destroyer

Garlands were hung, the plastic tree was trimmed and presents were wrapped neatly in gold, red and silver as Jana paused from her baking to inhale a moment of peace along with the scent of her fresh cut pie apples. She sighed and stared out from the kitchen door to the living room. Daughter and son had apparently called a cease-fire just in time to watch “The Simpson’s Christmas” and devour the last batch of Grandma’s lefse from the freezer. Grandpa was snoring in heavenly peace from his overstuffed chair by the window. Monty, bent over his laptop on the dining room table, was rubbing his temples. It was the first moment of quasi-quiet since they arrived yesterday. She wondered how long it would last.

A ringing phone answered her question. Jana called out from the kitchen. “Will somebody get that? I’m covered with flour.” It rang again. “Can somebody get that?” And again. “Will somebody please get that!” She popped her annoyed face out from the kitchen door. “Leo!”

The boy nodded but didn’t move. “All right.” It rang a sixth time.

“Leo!”

“Ariel’s closer.”

The girl objected. “Am not.”

“Am too.”

“Am not.”

“Am too.”

Jana stormed into the room covered with baking flour, slammed a bowl down on the coffee table and lifted the receiver with her cleanest hand. “Yes? What is it?” Her voice changed immediately from basic bothered to pseudo-civil. “Oh, hello pastor. Yes. Yes, thank you. Yeah, it’s good to be home. What? Yeah. Yeah. Merry Christmas to you, too. It’s been . . .” She blew the flower from her watch and squinted to read the digital display. “I guess it’s been exactly a month since the funeral. Who? Me? Oh, fine. I guess. Trying to hold everything together for Grandpa and the kids. You know, make it as much like mom used to have it around here as much as possible for the holidays. Some semblance of normalcy. Yeah. What?”

Monty could see the veins begin to bulge in his wife’s forehead from across the room. He traced a set of invisible Ginsu knives flying from her eyes toward her father’s chair. Grandpa stirred and yawned. “No, dad didn’t tell me about the Christmas food baskets for the shut-ins. How many? Twenty? Well, Roy and his girlfriend are due here any minute now and we still have a lot of... I know mom always used to deliver them, but I don’t think we’re going to have time to. . .” Jana rolled her eyes in a way that would have made Ariel and Leo proud. “Dad said what? That I’d be glad to take them? Oh. Well, yes, I suppose if mother... Okay. Okay. Yeah. They’re at church? I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye.” She stepped over to her father, rolled up the newspaper covering his face and whacked him sharply on the side of the head.

Grandpa was suddenly awake. “What? What did I do?”

Jana mimicked her father’s voice. “Oh, pastor, my daughter would love to deliver your twenty food baskets on Christmas Eve.”

Grandpa felt his head for a lump. “Well, your mother always considered it an honor to be asked. And she never turned anyone down for anything. Not once in her seventy-three short years, God bless her. I thought you’d want to do it one last time. In her honor.”

“But why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“I forgot. Give an old man a break.”

She wadded up the newspaper again and waved it toward her father’s nose as if to threaten a break of another kind. Grandpa quickly retrieved his glasses from the end table and put them on, pointing to his face. “Glasses!”

Jana gripped the paper in her right hand. “Weapon.”

The old veteran scooped up his grandson and held him as a shield. “Hostage.”

The word “diversion” popped into Jana’s head and she stared suddenly at the window. “Oh, is that

Roy pulling in?” She belted him over the head with the paper the moment he turned his head toward the window.

“Pain,” he muttered.

Leo had only one word as Grandpa released him to the floor. “Weird.”

An hour passed. Still no Roy. Ariel was paging through her Redbook magazine, calling every other model fat. Leo and Grandpa were fitting a 10,000-piece picture puzzle together upside down to kill the time when Jana finally finished the baking and picked up her coat. Monty was not to be seen. “Where’s your father?”

“Died and gone to Philadelphia," smiled Gramps.

“I was asking the children.”

“W.C. Fields had that put on his grave, you know. I’d rather be here than Philadelphia." Grandpa motioned to the den. “Business call.”

Jana stuck her head in the study door but Monty waved her away. She decided to try her luck back in the living room. “Dad, if I’m going to do this food basket thing for you, you’re going to have to get the kids to help finish everything in the kitchen before

Roy and Fern get here.”

Gramps spoke in his best Nixon impersonation. “I am not a cook.”

Ariel looked up. “Where you going?”

“To church to get the Christmas baskets. Someone ‘volunteered’ me to deliver them.” Jana rummaged through her purse for keys.

“I can drive! I can drive.” Ariel jumped up.

Grandpa had been waiting for that one. “That’s a matter of opinion.” Leo gave him a high five and the two belched out a three on the Richter scale before settling back at the puzzle.

“Grandpa,” said Leo. “It says eight to twelve years on the puzzle box. I think we’re going to be done by tomorrow.”

“What can you say?” said Grandpa. “We’re stinkin’ geniuses. Or is it genie-ai?”

Mother was not amused. “Look you three, the turkey’s gotta go in the oven in fifteen minutes and the cranberries have to be prepared and the pie gets out of the oven before the turkey goes in and somebody’s got to peel the potatoes...”

Grandpa gave his daughter a “can’t you do this when you get home” look and tried to wave her off.

“The list’s on the counter, dad. Into the kitchen and don’t you dare come out until it’s all done or I’ll bring home your Christmas dinner in plastic containers from Burger Doodle. You hear me?”

The word “plastic” was all it took to bring Grandpa to his feet. He rose, saluted and motioned the troops out of the room. “All right, all right. Say the word.” He picked Leo up by the collar. “Ours is not to reason why.”

Ariel resisted. “This is just like a prison camp.”

“Silencio! Macht shnell. Our is not to make reply!” He prodded the children into the kitchen.

“Even Mr. Scrooge gave Bob Cratchet Christmas Eve off,” Leo objected.

Grandpa saluted his favorite progeny and shoved him sharply forward. “Our is but to do or die.”

“And don’t you dare mess anything up in here while I’m gone,” Jana’s eyes swept the living room. “We’ve got this place finally together. Don’t touch anything. Better yet, don’t even breathe on anything in here. I want to find this room exactly as I left it when I return. You copy? Exactly as I left it!”

Grandpa exited, then returned with a frying pan in hand. Let me rephrase that: “Ours is but to do and fry.”

Jana tied a red scarf securely about her neck and tugged at the plaid beret, muttering to God or anyone who might be listening. “I try my best. That’s all I can do, right? Try?”

A shout echoed from the kitchen. “Ours is but to make the pie.”

(Tomorrow's Installment: Chapter 2, Part 2: Time Machine)

The Christmas Morning, Installment 2

• Chapter 1, Part 2: Leo's Earring

A car sped past the county road at the top of the hill, breaking into Monty’s memories. “I wonder when Roy and that new girlfriend of his are going to get here?”

"When he's going to get here?" said Grandpa. "You mean 'if' he's going to get here. That boy of mine never did learn how to drive on ice. Never did. Never will.” Grandpa squinted and squeezed out a sarcastic smile. “Come to think of it, he never learned how to drive on a dry road, either. Anybody seen my cuff links?” The old grouch winced at the sight of a silver ring in his grandson’s ear. His voice raised ten decibels. “And what, pray tell, is this?” Grandpa rose and joined his son-in-law at the window, disgusted at the massive icicles hanging from his eves. They were probably going to ruin the roof and cost him a bundle by next spring. 

"When Roy's going to get here? You mean 'if' Roy'’s going to get here? You mean ‘if’

Leo quickly turned his head and attempted to change the subject. “Maybe they stopped off at the Mega Mall.”

Ariel dropped her glob of tinsel at the sound of the word. “Mom, can we go to the Mega Mall for a Mega Mall Christmas?”

The phone rang. Jana’s hands were full. “Somebody get that?”

Grandpa was too busy trying to grab Leo’s ear to bother with his phone. “Is that my cuff link?”

“No, grandpa.”

“Well, what is it?”

Jana might as well have been talking to the tree. “Can somebody please get the telephone?”

“It’s an earring.” Leo opened a box of chocolate covered cherries and waved it up to Grandpa’s nose, but the old man was not to be deterred.

“Oh, excuse me. I thought I was talking to Leo. Leo, my grandSON.”

At the seventh ring Jana dropped her string of lights and snapped up the phone. “OK. I’ll get it. Hello?” She handed the receiver to her husband. “It’s your new business partner. Get rid of him.”

Monty aimed his wife into the closet and muffled the receiver to his chest. “I still can’t find those blue lights. They must not be in there.” Then he cleared his throat and shifted into his power voice. “Oh, hi Bob. How you doing? What? Yes. The Smith project? All together on that one big guy.”

Jana spent all of three seconds in the closet with her radar engaged before emerging with a blue box and a smirk. “Can some one help me with these blue Christmas lights?”

“Oh, those blue Christmas lights! No can do right now. Business call.” Monty stepped out of the living room and into his business transaction. “No, not you, Bob. No. That I can do. What? It’s the Christmas decoration thing. You know.”

Ariel noticed the familiar tiny jewel in her brother’s ear. “Is that my earring?” She immediately joined her grandfather in clawing at the boy’s head.

“Make her quit!” Leo covered his ear and dove behind his mother. “Mom, make her quit.”

“Mom! Leo has one of my earrings.”

“That’s not her earring. That’s my cuff link!”

“Make her quit, ma. Make her quit. I tell you, she touches me and she won’t live to regret it!”

Jana resisted the urge to step back into the closet for the remainder of the holiday season and forced a transparent smiled at the warring factions. “I’m so glad to be a mom.”

The boy’s eyes glazed. “I’m going to kill her. I’m going to kill her. She touches me one time and I’m not responsible for what happens.”

Ariel reached for her brother again and he mussed her hair before jumping away. “Mom! I just did my hair for tonight!” She let out her trademark “hrumph,” raised her sixteen year old nose to the sky and stomped out of the room.

Satisfied with his triumph, Leo dropped back to the floor. “I’m not helping you guys anymore. I’m going to watch TV.” He reached up to the dial and cranked the volume.

Monty shouted into the phone. “No. No. Nothing’s wrong, Bob. Just the family thing. You know, the Christmas thing.” He covered the receiver. “Can you guys pul-eeeese hold it down?”

Grandpa stared in disgust at the plastic tree and shook his head once more. In forty-two years of marriage he never once had seen a plastic tree in this house. Grandma Melissa would not have allowed it. His wife was a purist who, on her worst days, could make Martha Stewart look tacky. Anything less than a fresh cut long needle pine would have been anathema. This sorry excuse for a central decoration was probably made in China by slave laborers from Tiannamen Square.   Buying and decorating it was tantamount to supporting communism. And here it sat in the middle of his living room, taunting him and insulting everything decent he had fought in WWII and Korea to uphold.

Millions had given their lives. Now this!

Grandpa sighed and placed a heavy hand on his grandson’s shoulder. “You know what it’s like to cut your own tree, boy? To go out into the woods, just you and the ax? Nature?” In spite of the jewelry piercing the boy’s ear and his freshly shorn head, young Leo was Grandpa’s only acknowledged ally in this insane family. The two thought alike, looked alike and both enjoyed a good belch in public. Grandpa gripped his heir by the shoulders. “Just you and the ax. Nature. I tell ya, it’s a feeling like... like... like victory. Like nothing else. It’s like walking into a Norman Rockwell painting.”

Leo nodded politely, although he hadn’t the foggiest idea who Norwell Rockman was. Grandpa continued. “Now those were the good old days. The ax. The tree. The honest sweat of a man’s brow. I ever tell you about the good old days, son?”

“Yes, Grandpa.” Leo sighed and rolled his eyes. The boy honestly did enjoy the old man’s stories of the good old days. But being an adolescent, it was required in his job description to sigh and roll eyes whenever phrases like “good old days” or “put a hat on” were uttered.

“We used to put potatoes in our mittens to keep our hands warm on the way to school.”

Leo shook his head. “Rocks.”

“What?”

“Before you told me it was rocks.”

“No. It was potatoes. Hot potatoes. To keep our hands warm.”

“You said rocks.”

Grandpa’s voice rose to meet the challenge. “Potatoes. Whose memories are these, anyway? Potatoes! Potatoes! P-O-T-A-T-O...” He thought for a moment, then wrote in the air. “S.”

Grandpa motioned the boy toward the tree. The two stepped over to enjoy a mutual sneer. “Plastic tree. Plastic garland. Plastic baby Jesus in a plastic manger. You know what you get with all this plastic, Leo?”

“What’s that grandpa?”

“A plastic Christmas, kid. A classic plastic Christmas.” He sighed, scratched himself in a place that even Leo found disgusting and returned to the newspaper.

Mom tried to dismiss the comment and continued hanging the last string of blue lights. She had guessed it was going to be like this when she decided to try and recreate Grandma’s Christmas for the family. She knew Grandpa would grouch and complain. Nothing would be quite right to him. Nothing could possibly compare to Grandma Melissa’s Christmas. But she also knew her dad well enough to understand that he would be secretly and profoundly hurt if she didn’t at least try. In a world that had been forever changed only a month ago, the Christmas ritual alone held the possibility and power to initiate the process of healing for her broken father’s broken heart. It had to be tried.

Over the years, the Christmas holiday had become more than mere tradition for this family. Christmas was truce time; the one moment each year when Grandpa’s sarcasm, brother Roy's 

stubbornness and her own frustration were all put on hold. An unspoken cease-fire was called and the dormant love they actually held for each other had a chance to surface and breathe. Like a desert flower that blooms but once a year when the conditions are right, these holy days had the power to make this family whole once a year. To bring peace. Grandma Melissa was the midwife who birthed the magic. She was the referee who enforced the truce, the playwright who scripted the event, the stage manager who somehow miraculously pulled it all together year after year. No one knew exactly how she did it, but she did it. And now, in her absence, the impossible mantle had been passed on to her only daughter. Jana’s self-imposed sentence was clear. She would do the best she could to recreate the sights, sounds and smells that Grandma had prepared so well over the years, and hope that the magic of the season would take it all from there.

Jana found herself alone at the tree and called for her daughter’s help once more. “Ariel!”

Grandpa scowled and lowered his paper. “Ariel? Since when is it Ariel?”

She reached to touch her father’s hand. He pulled away. “She wants to be called that now, dad.”

“Melissa isn’t good enough for my grand daughter anymore? That’s what you named her. It was good enough for her grandmother. Why would you let her...”

“I’m just trying to be supportive. She’s such a sensitive girl.”

“Ariel! What kind of name is Ariel? Sounds like something you break off a car.” Leo thought that was funny and reached up from the floor to fondly elbow his grandfather’s shin.

The little princess wandered back into the room wearing a Mega Death T-shirt freshly pilfered from her brother’s suitcase. Leo’s laugh continued for a moment until he realized that he’d been robbed. “Mom! She’s wearing my shirt.”

“You wear my earrings, I wear your shirt.”

“Take it off! Mom?” Jana intercepted her son before he could rip the shirt from his sister’s back and aimed him directly to the TV. He hissed, plopped down on the floor and turned the volume up full blast. Grandpa countered by cranking Bing Crosby on even louder.

Monty began to yell into the phone. “Yes, Bob. I think we can get together on this one. How about tonight? Oh, it’s Christmas Eve? That’s right.” He looked about the room and plugged his ears. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

Jana glared at her husband, then at her children. “Roy and his friend... girl... whatever she is, are going to be here in an hour and we have to get the decorating done. You don’t have time to go anywhere for anything.” These words had barely passed her lips when her frown turned to panic. Somehow above the pandemonium, she picked out the familiar sounds of a creature gagging. “What’s that?”

Leo saw it first. “It’s the cat!”

Mom rushed to find the animal. “She’s choking!” 

Even Dad put down the phone. “Just a minute, Bob. Gotta get the cat!”

“Oh, gross!” Ariel shouted. “She’s going to throw up. Must have swallowed the tinsel again!”

Jana had only one thought: “Get her off the carpet and out the door! Out!”

They darted toward the choking feline, knocking over lamps and smashing decorations until, finally, Leo caught the sorry tabby by the tail and made for the door. But one step from the threshold, he dropped the retching beast in disgust. “Oooohhhh!”

Mom turned away, trying not to look. “Can someone get the carpet cleaner, please?”

“Yeah,” smiled Grandpa. “Might as well use the pine scent. Kill two birds with one stone. Pine scent. At least make it smell a little like Christmas around here.”

Monty returned to the receiver. “Huh? Bob, you don’t want to know.”

Everyone turned away except Leo, who picked up a golden object from the mess and buffed it with his shirtsleeve. “Hey, Grandpa. I think I found your cuff link.”

“Gee, thanks kid.”

(Tomorrow's Installment: Chapter 2, Dewey the Destroyer)

This Christmas Morning: A Christmas Story: Chapter I

Here's my little Christmas present for evening reading to your kids, a comedy entitled "This Christmas Morning" presented in installments for the next few days. If you want to perform it as a dinner theater next Advent to raise some money for your favorite charity, let me know and I'll send you the stage play. It's also a two-act musical comedy of Christmas tragedies - RAM

Chapter I. Classic Plastic Christmas

The snow was falling lightly in Grandpa’s meadow just before dusk. A doe and her twin fawns paused, listening to the muffled sounds emerging from the Victorian farm house before stepping cautiously into the yellow glow of the kitchen window toward Grandma’s salt lick. A red-tailed hawk circled silently above the house in the night sky, as if searching for something or someone. Had Grandma Melissa been alive, there would have been apples, seeds and fresh hay for all of God’s creatures on this most holy eve. But Grandma had flown to join the angels on Thanksgiving Day. And this Christmas morning would be quite different for more than just the animals of the forest.

Quite different, indeed.

Monty was digging hopelessly through a closet, searching for the long string of blue Christmas lights that Grandma always hung on her fresh-cut tree. He stuck his head out the door with a growth that looked suspiciously like a cellular phone propped between his ear and shoulder. “Lights! Where’d she put the lights?” No one bothered to answer.

Jana stepped into the room with a can of pine scent and surveyed the scene. Son Leo was lying on the floor, mesmerized by an MTV rock video with nose seven inches from the screen. The boy’s freshly shaven head annoyed her only slightly more than the Mohawk he had tried to wear to mother’s funeral. Daughter Ariel was busily tossing globs of tinsel in the general direction of the plastic tree while Grandpa sat scowling in his overstuffed chair like a fortified island in a sea of madness with newspaper in one hand and cigar ready to light in the other. As far as he was concerned, all of this was unnecessary and none of it was anything like Melissa would have done.

Jana sighed. She was trying her best to hold things together for everyone and make this first Christmas without mother as pleasant and as normal as could be. Under the circumstances, it looked to be an impossible task.

“I don’t see any lights,” shouted her husband from inside the closet. “They must not be in here.” Monty’s voice was followed by something that sounded like an avalanche of cardboard. Jana looked up from a box of colored bulbs and managed to suppress a satisfied smile. “Oh honey, I know they’re in there somewhere. That’s where Grandma always used to put them.”

Ariel glanced at her mother, then glared at her brother lying lazily on the floor by the television. She stepped over to him, tinsel in hand, barely resisting the urge to stuff a wad of the glittery stuff down his adolescent throat. “Mom, how come Leo doesn’t have to help?”

Grandpa shifted his bifocals toward the sports page and muttered just loud enough for everyone to hear. “We used to have a real tree.”

The echo from the musty closet was more than a tad perturbed. “Honey, if you think the blue lights are in here, why don’t you just come and look for them yourself? And Leo, help your sister.”

Grandpa continued his grump. “We used to have a real Christmas.”

Jana had to work to force the frown out of her voice. “It’s too late for that now, Pop. For a real tree. If you...”

“Plastic! Hrrumph!”

“It’s Christmas Eve. If you wanted a real one you should have thought about that ahead of time and gotten one yourself.” Jana was going to make this a pleasant Christmas if it killed her. And him.

“You sound like your mother.”

“Why, thank you, dad.” She threw a curt smile in her father’s general direction and nudged the lump on the floor with her foot. “Leo, your sister needs help.”

The boy didn’t bother to look up. “Sorry.”

Father’s baritone voice boomeranged from the closet. “What do you mean, ‘sorry’? Help your. . .”

“I can’t help her,” Leo shouted back.

“And why is that?”

The little comedian had been waiting to deliver his punch line all night. “I’m neither a psychiatrist nor a plastic surgeon.”

“Mom!” Ariel was not amused.

Jana picked up the aerosol can and began to douse the tree in pine scent.

Grandpa glared up at the assault against the stale air of his besieged private castle. This was the last straw. He hadn’t asked for any of it. “Spraying that pine scent around just doesn’t do it for me.”

His daughter was not deterred. “Oh, it’s going to be fine.” She sprayed on.

“Doesn’t take the place of a real tree. A real Christmas.”

Monty emerged from the closet empty handed and hovered over his son just long enough to switch the TV off. “You know, that stuff is rotting your brain.”

“Hey, I was watching that!”

Monty lowered his voice and his eyes at the same time. “Go help your sister.” Leo knew better than to sneer at his father. Mother would take a sneer and worse, but not dad. The boy paused for a moment before slumping as slowly as humanly possible across the room in the general direction of the sister he loved to hate.

Grandpa looked down at his sleeves and frowned. “Anybody seen my cuff links?”

“Let’s see if we can’t find something a little more in tune with the season,” said Jana, seizing the moment and the radio dial. She tuned from commercial to commercial to Southern Evangelists until she came across Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

For the first time in fourteen years, Leo and Ariel McCaffrey were of the same mind. They gagged in unison. “Ohhhh, pul-eeeease!”

“Cuff links?” This wasn’t anything like Grandma used to do it.

Miserable.

Monty emerged from the closet and paused momentarily by the leaded glass picture window to peer out at the long, white winding road to the house. It was as beautiful and still a night as he could remember; crisp, clear and frozen in time. Fresh fallen snow blanketed the fields and lay heavy on the evergreen bows. Icicles glittered like giant diamond stalactites from the roof of the house. A blue-white moon bathed the countryside in a peaceful half-light. The smell of gingerbread and Irish cream coffee flashed him back momentarily to his first Christmas in this house. He was only a junior at the University when he fell madly in love and his fiancée of three weeks dragged him home to meet “the folks.” Grandpa and brother Roy did their best to make Monty feel unworthy until they found out that he planned to be a millionaire by his thirtieth birthday. Grandma Melissa was just the opposite, lavishing him with food and kind words and food and presents and food and attention and food. He remembered trying to picture Jana in thirty years. If his fiancée were to turn out anything like her mother, this was going to be a wonderful marriage and he’d probably weigh three hundred pounds by the time he was thirty.

Snow was swirling across the barnyard in miniature cyclones and the glass frosted at his breath. Monty remembered the last time he’d looked through this very window. It was only thirty days ago and as many degrees warmer on the night of Grandma’s funeral, but it had seemed just as cold. The house was creaking quietly and he was alone, engaging in a one-sided conversation with death when a red-tailed hawk swooped in from no where and settled on the fence post directly across from the house. Something more than superstition drew Monty out onto the porch that night. He sat barefoot and motionless on the bent wood rocker for twenty minutes or more, staring the bird down. For some reason, Monty didn’t feel the cold wind. He eyed the messenger, fought a tear and recited Poe’s “Nevermore.” And then as he stood to leave, he entertained the strangest notion of his adult life. Maybe this bird wasn’t a bird. Maybe the hawk was actually Grandma Melissa, come down to see the place one last time before flying to heaven. He chuckled and thanked her for all she had done to make him feel part of a family. And then, as if to say good bye, the bird nodded, lifted off, made one lazy loop over the farmhouse and entered the clouds.

(Tomorrow: Chapter 1, Part 2, Leo's Earring)

Merry Euphanismas

This just in from Monty, and it is worth taking into the pulpit. I'll give you the first few paragraphs, then you'll have to go for the rest to

http://www.startribune.com/stories/804/5130274.html

Maybe it's just me. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive. But when I wish a store clerk "Merry Christmas!" they often appear stunned and flummoxed for a moment, as if I've just blabbed the plans for the underground's sabotage of the train tracks in front of the secret police. I've said something highly inappropriate for the public square, and I almost expect a security guard to take me aside on the way out. He'll lead me to a small room. He has no enthusiasm for this; it's the end of his shift, and he's done this a dozen times already today. But policy is policy.

Sir, you realize that the store does not use the, um, ah, C word. We have nothing against it, of course, and wish you a merry (cough)mas, as well. But when you say that to a store employee, it puts them in a difficult position.

"You mean that position where they have to smile while wondering if they're going to be disciplined for saying the wrong thing?"

That's the one, yes. I hope you understand that we have a long-standing relationship with the (cough)mas holiday --

"Like the relationship between a sucker fish and a whale? Only the fish isn't really interested in whether the whale exists or not, only that it doesn't fall off and die."

Sucker fish, remora, intestinal parasite -- we don't have an approved aquatic metaphor for the relationship. But that's not the point. We prefer the term "festive season."