Recognizing that Friday is Christmas, by my math, today
is the Eve before Christmas Eve. I just wanted to get that fact in there before
offering the most traditional of seasonal salutations. Merry
Christmas to you and yours from me and mine. If you don't observe the holiday,
I apologize for the salutation but not the sentiment.
As I've gotten older, I've discovered there are
many different customs and beliefs, but so often they come down to different
ways to say and to celebrate similar situations, so however you observe, best
wishes.
Based on how my life
has gone for nearly 63 Christmases (so far and looking forward to more), I
don't need (or miss) snow or frosty weather or sparkling lights and boughs of
holly or gift wrap and holiday cards--though all of those
are very nice and help complement a contented and contemplative state of mind.
I've spent a lot of this year being sick, and
more time struggling to get well and realize I'm rounding the big bend in the
road where that ratio rarely evens out, so I'm grateful for the love of a woman
for thirty-eight years of marriage in sickness and in health, though
neither of us ever thought those circumstances would ever include Norwich, Connecticut.
Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
I'm filled with
gratitude for the presents of the presence of our two children, Patrick and
Michelle. From memories of walking the
floor of a hospital delivery room in Central Germany with a newborn son while singing "I've
Been Working on the Railroad" for hours, to holding our infant daughter,
her feet in my hand and her head in the crook of my arm as she clicked her
tongue just moments after being born.
He is now 33 and she is 28. The adults they
have each grown to be are as wonderful and extraordinary as the children who
blessed my life when I so needed those blessings. Through a move from a faraway
and very different country and culture that all three, my two children and my
wife, had known to a somewhat dour folk and
rocky near-seacoast of Southeastern Connecticut, with customs and a lifestyle
unlike any that we’d known, we have exchanged many gifts over many years among
ourselves--and as families in Germany still do, we’ll open our presents and our
hearts to one another on Christmas Eve.
I'm told there's no
such things as strangers, only friends we haven't met. If this true, and it is,
after all, Christmas, when miracles can and do happen, as you head home at
whatever time today or tonight from that last gift shopping expedition, rather
than follow The Star, seek out the sound of the ringing bell and collection
kettle and share some of the change, paper and coins, in your trouser and
jacket pockets.
You'll never miss it, and someone you'll never
meet will be grateful for a moment of peace on the ground.
-bill kenny
