It was 32 years ago today that my grandfather died. This was my Mom's father. I was in the fifth grade at the time. I had been looking forward to Christmas because I knew there was a brand-new cassette recorder waiting for me, my first. I had caught the bug for recording my favorite songs off the radio that year, using my Dad's old Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder. It had 2 speeds: 3 1/4 and 7 1/8. I always used the slower speed because it made the tape last longer. It had a big mike with a silver front to it, and you could set a switch on the recorder to turn it into a PA system. It really was very loud. Of course feedback was even louder. Anyway, there I was anticipating Christmas. I remember saying at breakfast a day or two earlier, "This is going to be the best Christmas ever." This was 1971.

On that particular morning I was in our living room with my younger brother, watching Major Mudd , a local kids' TV show where the host dressed in an astronaut suit and would run epsiodes of Bugs Bunny and Three Stooges, to name just two. As usual at that time of year, Santa was visiting Major Mudd. While half watching this, I was also reading a paperback book entitled, "Lost Race of Mars." I think it was one of those SBS (Scholastic Book Services) books. My Mom had gone out at about 8:30 in the morning to buy a few last-minute groceries at the local supermarket, which in those days was owned by an independent proprietor, and which has long been replaced by a huge chain market (actually several) a couple of towns away. It was about a quarter to nine when the telephone rang and I heard my father say "Oh No...Oh No..." I knew immediately what had happened. For some reason, I saw fit to circle the page I was on in my book, and to close the book and never read beyond that. I actually later stapled the book closed out of fear that I might inadvertently look at that book again, and to this day never have. My father called us into the kitchen and told us the news, that [pet name for my grandfather] had died. There was one tear rolling down one cheek when he said this, but no sobbing. We took the news rather coldly, as I look back. Our grandfather had been a stern man, but had loved us very much, I know that. But for whatever reason, we did not cry.

My grandfather was 77 at the time, my mother 37, me 10. He was born in 1894 and had fought in World War I and had been exposed to mustard gas, "not nerve gas," my mother would always be careful to point out. She would sing to me the songs that he used to sing to her, I suppose, such as "Hinky Dinky Parley Voo" and "They Don't Wear Pants on the Other Side of France." She used to tell me how at the end of the war, a German soldier had given him a pack of cigarettes. And she was always proud that he had been granted U.S. citizenship out of gratitude for his service to his new country. But over the years the residua of mustard gas exposure, cigarettes and cigar smoking finally took their toll. I'd hear him early in the morning clearing his throat and coughing, on those nights that I might have slept at their house. And at the time he died he was in the VA hospital for a respiratory infection. A week or two before this, I recall overhearing the word "emphysema," and repeating it to my mother, whose comment was "just a touch of emphysema." I remember being told that he had said, "I can't breathe" the night before his death. One can imagine the efforts put forth by the interns and residents, the nebulizers, steroids, maybe in desperation a nitro and an injection or two of Lasix. Was he intubated? I don't know. Was he DNR? Did they have DNR's back then? I don't know. I only know that in those days, at least in my family, kids didn't go to hospitals. Kids also didn't go to funerals. My grandparents died in 1969, 1971, 1972 and 1993, and it was only the last one that I attended, perhaps for the better. Actually the first dead person I ever saw was a distant uncle on my father's side whom I had never met, when I was 16.

In any event, my brother and I knew that when our mother got home from the market, all hell would break loose, so we ran upstairs and huddled together in my bedroom. We heard the car come up the driveway (she had just got her driver's license in the preceding year or two, and she was so proud to show him that she could drive), a few footsteps , a door, some hushed voices, and then in loud wail, "I don't believe it, I don't believe it," and a stomping on the floor. My brother and I cringed.

I don't remember the next few details, but obviously everyone got dressed and we got into the car, because what I next remember was that, on the way into the city to be with my grandmother, we had to stop for about half an hour at a department store called Jordan Marsh (now Macy's) for my mother to buy a black dress. She didn't cry in the car; she didn't say a word. She came back with the dress and we got on the tollway and headed into the city. It was a very rainy day, no snow on the ground, and I recall noticing for the first time the way cars and especially trucks leave a kind of mist behind them when they are going fast, which obscures your windshield much more than the rain itself. All was quiet and the gold Cadillac pulled off onto the surface roads, and we parked near my grandmother's house, a Victorian townhouse, I guess you would call it, which had been broken into multiple apartments, and which my grandparents had bought back in 1927. We rang the bell, and my mother's brother answered, at which point my mother spoke his name and fell sobbing into his arms. From that point on the crying was constant. My grandmother was sitting on the sofa, which was actually a convertible which I had slept on innumerable times. She wasn't wearing her glasses, and we were not used to that. Without them she looked older and more tired. When she put them back on things seemed more normal. She criticized my mother for her show of grief. At this point my brother and I were pretty much left to our own devices in the front room, which was the living room, while in the kitchen, in back, the adults dealt with their loss. One heard crying, arguing, some laughter between tears, but not that first day.

My younger brother and I ended up staying there till the day after New Year's, when my parents came back to get us. My youngest brother was only 2 and had remained with my parents. When we got home around dark the Christmas tree smell filled the house, and we were allowed to open our presents in a very subdued manner. And then came the guilty pleasure of taking the cassette recorder out of its box, with the smell that only new electronics have, and bringing it upstairs to my room, and playing a prerecorded tape of "Peer Gynt" by Edvard Grieg that had been bought along with the recorder and some blank tapes. To this day that music reminds me a little bit of that time. Also serving for me still as potent conjurers of the feelings of that distant time, were a few songs in particular, "Mother and Child Reunion" by Paul Simon, "Drowning in a Sea of Love" by Joe Simon, and "Get It On" by T. Rex.

I've never told anyone that story as recounted above. Now it's on the web. But it would take an unusual degree of serendipity for any of the family members identified in my story to happen upon this particular blog. But who knows. I am always amazed at how much you can find out when a person has any kind of web presence, with just a little bit of diligence and no particular hacking skills. Anyway, this is the real story of Christmas Eve for me. It' s never really been the same since. The next year we got a fake tree, and the only time since then that I have lived where there was a real tree was in 1984, when my roommates and I got one for our shared apartment, and in 1994, when I was essentially living with the woman who is now my wife. We actually went out to the tree farm, on a bitterly cold, windy day, and picked out the tree for the man to cut down with a chain saw. After the holidays were over I put the dried-out tree in some woods near her house, where I'd visit it occasionally, until some houses were put up and the tree presumably disposed of once and for all.

As for this Christmas, stay tuned. With our very unfortunate estrangement now in its 8th year, my annual jabs at reconciliation have become more feeble, though last year was a hoot. I won't even attempt to start on that now...I'm much too tired and, hey, it's already Christmas morning (C.S.T.)

Christmas Eve. My wife and I enjoyed watching the DVD of "Finding Nemo" that she bought me about 2 months ago. I had insisted that I wait until now to open it, and it was well worth the wait. A classic story about the journey of the hero and struggle with the father. Not to be too pat, but that's the best I can come up with right now. Then I proceeded to watch the first 1/2 of "It's a Wonderful Life." Surely this must be about the 15th time I've seen it. I only have one comment right now: If Mr. Gower were a pharmacist working in the local outlet of whichever chain drug store is your favorite, I can assure you that his close call with almost dispensing poison to the kid with diphtheria would have resulted in at the very least a period of counseling and reeducation. They'd never make a serious movie now with his character being allowed to get away with it, as it were.

First the good news: It snowed today, about an inch, enough to make a bit of a mess of things at rush hour. Of course what passes for rush hour in this place is pretty tame.

A comment I want to make while I remember: A sure way (at least for guys) to know that you're growing older is to note the way young women no longer meet your gaze, even for a second. It's uncanny. I've seen the same thing again and again. Where once upon a time not so long ago you'd at least get a nod and a smile, you don't even get an acknowledgment of your existence. I mean, their eyes just glaze over when you pass by. It's like if you've ever been in a nursing home, the way everybody seems to wend one's gaze around the old people skirting about aimlessly in their wheelchairs. It's like that. On the flip side, I've sometimes been greeted with an unexpected degree of enthusiasm by those women whom one generally would call "middle aged." And this can be a pleasant consolement of one's bruised ego..Now, I haven't forgotten my marital status--I am merely making a sociologic commentary about a real experience I've had again and again lately.

And from me and mine to you and yours, have the happiest of holiday seasons!

Monday night. There, it wasn't so bad after all (yes it was). Just heard we're in for a brown Christmas this year. No doubt, this would have devastated me as a child, but the realist in me hates to slip and slide on the road, now. I do still like watching snow falling, especially when there's a howling wind and total whiteout, but since leaving the northeast in 1989, I haven't seen the kind of heavy snow I used to. And to think I used to complain that it didn't snow enough back then. I'd have never believed that one day I'd be in a place where--oh yes--it gets cold all right, but where snows are generally a 2 to 5 inch thing. Then again, it's only December.

Well, we actually did go to the movies rather than just waiting for it to come to on-demand or on DVD. Now I remember why we actually do that only twice a year. It's the cramped hard seats, the audio turned so loud that it hurts the ears and distorts like a cheap radio, it's the smell of rancid popcorn butter. How about a movie theater with plush seats, that have armroom for two people next to eachother instead of having to put an empty seat between us. Maybe even have those seats rock.

Yes, such theaters exist; I've seen them, but not in my fleabag part of the world. This place is so flat, and now cold and dreary, that you have to find a personal coping strategy. Mine is to watch the sun's course along the analemma, and to relish the still-warm (though darkening) days of late fall as well as the still-cold (but lightening) days of late winter. Once you get past the beginning of February not only are the days getting longer, but the rate of increase of the length of day is also increasing. That's the true meaning of Groundhog Day, boys and girls!

Anyway, the movie, "Something's Gotta Give" is thought-provoking and funny. It dragged slightly in places, and the point was not to guess the ending but to enjoy the ride along the way. It's hard to believe Jack Nicholson is portraying a character so similar to the one he portrayed exactly 20 years ago in "Terms of Endearment." It sounds sappy but even though I was 22 at the time, that movie struck a part of me that brought me back to see it 8 times. And as a bounus I became very familiar with the "Footloose" trailer. And it seemed as if it would be eons before the movie would appear on TV but back in those young days I couldn't afford cable, and even my parents didn't have a VCR yet. But a few months before the movie finally did make it to NBC in 1986 my brothers and I had broken down and bought my parents a Quasar 4-head (!) VCR, the one where you had to get down on your knees and manually tune in each local station on its own separate tuner with a cute little dial, and then cut out the number of the station (channel 4, etc.) and stick it into the front panel above the tuner. We also had to shell out (would you believe) $60 USD for a "membership" that allowed us to rent movies! I carried around that 1986 recording of Terms of Endearment and watched it a few times, till finally, sometime after I got married, which was in 1996, I ended up recording something (I think it was "Mary Poppins") over it. And now I don't even feel motivated to buy the DVD that is surely available for a song at my local Best Buy. Anyway, Jack hasn't changed much to me, just a little bit jowlier and voice a little gruffer, and everything just slowed down a bit...he's changed a helluva lot less than Shirley MacLaine did... But, now, let's not leave out Diane Keaton, who has aged moderately well.

And of course, I've felt guilty all day after my earlier post, because I had identified it as a "Jack Nicholson flick." It's just that the geezer in me's oozing out a bit...here, darling, let me wipe that off. "No, no, no...it's a Keanu Reeves flick. And oh, yeah, that old guy's in it--what's his name, from that Cuckoo's nest thing...whatever!"

I discovered a wonderful website last night, whose webmistress is apparently a most vivacious and intelligent young lady. I want everyone who reads this to try the 1980's music quiz she has up. I truly bombed! (boomers beware)

Oh well, gotta go. I'm going out to see the new Jack Nicholson flick with my wife, "Something's Gotta Give." I hear it's hilarious.

Today I am back. You know it's Friday night, when everything's all right, at least until Monday morning. Then again, Mondays aren't so bad. Sundays can be worse. Like anything you dread, Mondays never turn out as bad as you fear. And by lunchtime, you're almost always back in your workaday groove. As for Saturdays, they loom ripe with possibility. But how often does a Saturday pass unopened, the box put back on the shelf for another week. It's like you don't want to open it, for fear the box will be empty. But, how can life be empty when it's so miraculous. You get to live in a world, with eyes and ears, a mouth, nose and taste buds, and a mind...what a joy, a mind. You can explore the history of mankind, the outer reaches of the universe, the microscopic world beneath the surface. All without leaving your chair. And who are you, armchair historian of the quotidian? You work, you rest, you play, you age. All without knowing why you are here or where you will go afterwards. In six days it will be Christmas, Yule, the Roman Saturnalia...the turning of the sun at its southern terminus, holding steady for some three days before slowly, achingly slowly, starting its ascent northward again. There was a webcam that I loved to visit, located in Hobart, Tasmania, in Australia, that showed a street corner in that city, outside the webhosting company's offices, that was recently taken down, much to my eternal disappointment. I emailed the staffer in whose office the webcam resided, just to tell him how much I enjoyed seeing spring turn into summer down there, just as we were entering the darkest time of the year here in the midwestern United States. He emailed me back, thanking me, signing off with a "cheers." I liked it so much that I've taken to signing my emails the same way. But I dearly miss that webcam this year. Last Christmas there was a parade, and you could see that the sun was high in the sky, as though it were June. Ah, June, the Saturday morning of the year. And January 2? The biggest of Monday of all, especially if it actually falls on a Monday. I'd have to consult my Palm Pilot to see exactly when that will be. I need to remember to ask for leave time that day, just to recover!