Holiday Daydreams

We didn’t travel this year for Thanksgiving and somehow it seemed like a great relief. I have always harbored a subliminal angst about holiday gatherings because, as a youth, they were mostly punctuated by agitated conversation, laced with maniacal non sequiters, that often resulted in at least one of the nine of us storming out of the house before coming back in to consult with Dr. Jamesons to set the record straight. To be fair, we have mellowed, although I cannot fully attribute that to single malt therapy.

Our own newer family traditions are more subdued, though fully lubricated, because we have only two sons, and we have shed some of the generational ballast that comes with being raised in a hive of Catholics. And I do admit to missing those moments when we routinely congregate for the ritual over eating of Thanksgiving. That is why I am reviving an old remembrance from ten years ago when things seemed normal in comparison to today’s quarantine standards. Here’s to family gatherings yet to come.

Remembering Good Times

I’m back after a brief winter vacation – and it really did feel like a vacation, right down to the moment I had to get back to work.  I got to hang out with my kids – one home from Korea for a brief visit before he returns to teach English and the other visiting from Pittsburgh where he teaches whatever they throw at him.  Both decided early on that their father’s profession was about as appealing as sleeping on a bed of nails after being flailed with stinging nettles.  (They were denied a strict Catholic upbringing so they don’t really comprehend how easy this lifestyle is by comparison.)  Instead they took a cue from their mother and opted for careers with a regular paycheck and legitimate vacations.  But they get a lot of mileage from growing up on a farm where they were supposedly shackled to a life of forced labor in between marathon sessions of Nintendo and watching “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” for the millionth time.  Most people are enthralled by their description of their childhood, their single-minded attempts to escape and their ultimate triumph over a perpetual fate of servitude in the potato field.  Yes, they are prone to hyperbole and their memories become more embellished as they get older.  The other day while we were sitting in a restaurant reliving yet another horror story of their childhood, a woman came in with her two young children.  One toddler clung to a plastic noise making educational toy that from my perspective only verified our culture’s addiction to meaningless sounds.  Seamus, who is twenty five, looked over longingly and with transparent envy.

“You know”, he said plaintively, “I always wondered where the batteries were.”

“We took them out,” I said.

“Yeah, we had to go out and play in the dirt.  Big whoop-te-doo.”  He gave me an accusing look which I deflected by taking a sip of my beer.

In the meantime Jake, who is twenty seven, was still agitated by the fact that he couldn’t order a beer because he left his driver’s license in Korea.  He was on his third orange juice.  He was having his own conversation.

“I can’t believe they carded me,” he was lamenting.  “I teach college for crying out loud.  How old do you have to look to get a drink around here?”

“Don’t worry,” I said.  “There’s plenty of beer at home.”  (Never thought I’d be saying that to my kids.)

Now I had two sets of accusing eyes on me.  I looked over at the other table where the two youngsters were just beginning their ritual dissection of their meal.  The mother was the soul of patience as she chatted with a friend.  Some things never change, I thought.