AT
LARGE
Late for the mail
December 23, 2004
By
Doug Cabral
Christmas is
well marked on the calendar. You can’t miss it. What’s
not so red letter is the last day to send Christmas cards so they’ll
arrive in time to embarrass friends and loved ones who have not
thought to send you a holiday greeting. But, whatever the Christmas
card deadline was, we’ve missed it again this year.
So, as we have done once or twice before, we’ll mail our Christmas
greetings on Christmas Eve and supplement the sentiment with a tatting
of cheery blessings directed toward the year ahead, all in hopes
of finessing our delinquency.
Perhaps you are, as I am, mildly curious about how folks can be
so organized as to get their cards into the mail on time year after
year. But to be honest, I would be more than mildly curious if I
thought that whatever I might learn from a rigorous inquiry into
the subject would eventually lead to better Christmas card performance
on my part. I know it’s unlikely.
I confess, on the other hand, that I am absolutely thunder-struck
at the friends and family who are able to compose Christmas newsletters,
get them illustrated in color and copied in volume and then into
the mail in a timely fashion. That is beyond mere Christmas-card
accomplishment and off in another, distant galaxy of efficiency,
whose alien inhabitants I tremble at the thought of meeting.
We’ve had two- and three-pagers this year, with photos embedded
in the texts. For instance: “Timmie’s just back from a
Peace Corps stint in Zimbabwe,” some distant relation reports,
“where he saved an entire village from starvation. Zooey will
graduate from Harvard Law in June, she’s at the tippie-top
of the class, can you believe it? And Tom and I have sold the little
holiday boutique we opened a year ago for, well, I’m ashamed
to say, but $10 million. I know, it was a stroke of luck. We don’t
deserve it. Anyhow, we’re looking around for a new project,
but we’ll probably travel for a while. What’s new with
all of you?”
I’m thinking, Nothing I want to tell you about.
What would I write? Let’s see: The kids saw Moll and me fast-dancing
at a summer wedding we went to, and they ran shrieking from the
room, saying we had ruined their lives with embarrassment.
The septic system quit just before Christmas, and we had to dig
up the whole lawn to repair it; in the spring we’ll plant grass.
Every time the septic pumps fail to work, a warning bell sounds,
and a flashing red light illuminates the cellar. It’s become
the highlight of our year. I wonder, how is it the warning bell
and lights work, but the pumps don’t?
So many things are broken around the house that Moll thinks we may
have to move because I’ll never get them all fixed.
Career-wise, we’re not planning any big moves. I know it may
sound dull, but we like what we’re doing. Talk about self-satisfied,
it still seems to me that the luckiest day of my life was July 2,
1987, when the wife and I tied the knot.
The older kids are heading toward graduate school, but not in business,
I’m afraid. They have nobler ambitions.
The deer ate all our foundation plantings. The dogs have ruined
the new living room rug.
Although it may sound like complaining, I’m really not. I know
these Christmas letters are meant to touch just the highlights —
the graduations, the births, the marriages, the anniversaries, the
professional advancements — but real life has more to it than
highlights, and I don’t think many Christmas newsletter writers,
for all their efficiency in getting the news written and mailed,
want to swing at the unavoidable curve balls of family life. When
I think back over the years, not just this one that’s ending,
I can think of plenty to say about the family, lots of it worthy
of a Christmas newsletter, some of it better left unreported. But,
I know that even if I did set out to put it all on paper for the
annual Christmas newsletter, I’d never get it in the mail on
time.
|
![[Valid RSS]](../../Templates/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}