Merry Christmas to all of you, plus a few thoughts about time

As tends to be the case, I went to my parents' house for Christmas dinner this year.  My brothers and I give gifts to my sister's kids and my sister's kids give gifts to the three of us.  (We stopped exchanging gifts among the adult portion of the family a few years back.  Great move, as it turns out.)  So the evening went fairly well.  Mom made lasagna.  Madasyn and Darek got some new toys.  Joe, Jake, and Nick got some new trinkets from Santa's Secret Shop at Raupp Elementary.  We drank a little whiskey and shared a few laughs, all the while knowing that the whole point is to spend time with family and appreciate the gift that all mankind received from the original Christmas.

We also place a traditional phone call to my grandmother.  This would be my father's mother, for the genealogists among you.  My mother and father were married shortly before I was born.  Then came my sister a few years later.  Then there was an unpleasant divorce, followed by my father skipping town to avoid paying child support.  The world was quite a bit different in the early 80's, I suppose.  In the modern world the states have treaties to deal with this sort of thing, but there was a time when a fella could settle in Arizona and avoid paying for his kids in Michigan.

Despite whatever shortcomings my biological father may have possessed, his mother has always been a different sort of character.  A better sort of character, in my estimation.  After my mother remarried and my two little brothers came into the world, my grandmother simply had two more grandsons.  Of course they weren't related to her in any way, but who cares, right?  In point of fact, Jake and Nick have probably had more contact with her than I have over the years.  In any case though, they were her grandchildren and anyone who said otherwise could go straight to Hell.

I wish I could say that I can relate, but I can't.  It's a foreign concept to me, but I'm glad because she's a wonderful person.  My brothers are fortunate to have her in their lives.  After I was divorced from my ex-wife, I wanted nothing to do with her or her family.  There's absolutely zero chance that I would knock up some other broad and then the ex-wife's parents would see the offspring as their grandchildren.  But that's the way it went for ole Grandma Tigue.  My stepfather even takes his turn when the annual phone call occurs and the phone gets passed around.  She loves him as a son-in-law, even though he's... whatever... the dude who married her son's ex-wife.

So anyhow, she and I were chatting about things that have gone on during the past year.  Work, life, etc.  Since I'm heading to Ireland next autumn, she took some time to share her thougts about what I'll see and what I should do.  Then the philosophical part about time came around.  She said that, as she has gotten older, the little memories have become more prominent.  It seems like just yesterday that the three girls - Robin (my sister), Lauren, and Andrea - were sitting by her Christmas tree and opening their gifts.  We haven't spent Christmas together as a family in at least twenty years, but she remembers those days as vividly as ever.

During our conversation, it occurred to me that she's exactly right.  The older you get, the more time becomes a negotiable quantity.  When you're young and it's all in front of you, you remember the things that happened last week or last month.  Somewhere along the way you start to remember the things that happened last year or the year before.  Eventually you end up remembering the things that happened ten or twenty years ago.

I'm not nearly as advanced in years as my grandmother, but I'm seeing the same pattern that she described.  The last few years of my life - whatever.  But I remember quite disctinctly the Christmas mornings when Jake and Nick would come into my room at 6am and tell me that Santa had been to the house.  We would walk upstairs and look in the living room, then wait for Mom and Dad to come out and join us.  Nobody cared about the mundane details of life.  There was no thought of politics or finance or anything like that.  There was just a family gathered around a tree, enjoying the moment.

Now we enjoy those moments through my niece and nephew, but my siblings and I have grown to forget how simple the world can really be.  We each have our own brand of bullshit to endure, but for one day each year we can leave it all behind.  For one day, time can stop.  If I could write the script for the future, I would insert more of those occasions where we can all stop and appreciate the little moments.  I'll bet quite a few of you would do the same.

Merry Christmas everyone.