I figured I had better write something today and post o just forget bout writing anything about the whole Holiday season! I wish I could report that this season has been super busy with shopping, parties, dinners and fighting horrendous weather like 10 foot snow drifts and gale force winds but no. What snow we did have has long melted, inversions have set in the valley giving us lot of sunshine and dangerously polluted air. I cannot tell the air is polluted when I go outside but a I can see the dirt hanging in the air just looking at the mountains when you can see the mountains there is and ugly brown smudge hanging in the air and I suppose that ‘smudge’ IS the pollution.
Dianne and I have essentially finished our Christmas shopping—we sort of got the immediate family covered, nothing for office mates and very little for neighbors. I could blame the lack of gifting to the economy but I much more feel the poor gifting s just me being, cheap, or lazy or both. I could use the excuse of last month’s biopsy but I do think that would be wrong but who knows how disturbed the event made me. No it’s just me being me. But anyway—yesterday we did get the opportunity to watch Anakah.
We were fortunate to look after Anakah a few hours as her parents made ready for Christmas: doing the last of the shopping and what ever. One of Anakah’s school class mate had a party and on of Dianne’s and my chores was to run Ani over to the event which in this case was clear over to the other side of the valley—but the sun was out, and fairly warm and we had recently filled the van with gas so why not? Besides getting out of the house and socializing might be a good exercise for Dianne and myself.
It’s atleast a thirty minute from our home to where Ani needed to go for hr party. In the best of driving conditions and we did not wish to have to make the drive any more then we had to so we decided we would drop off the granddaughter then find something to keep us occupied for the four hours when were scheduled to retrieve the girl. We thought about taking a movie, I am sort of interested in Avatar but the thought of battling holiday movie crowds was a bit unnerving. So we decided to find a restaurant in the neighborhood. This we found to be extremely difficult. We did find this little Mexican place just in this side of the Twilight Zone-our waitress barely spoke English and the locals looked at us like foreigners—which we were—Gringo invaders from east side. But we ended up experiencing a good meal even if we were culturally challenged. We still had hours to kill before we could get Anakah. So we decided to stop in at a Deseret Industries(DI) a major, local religion based second hand store here in Utah.
Checking out this DI , in this par of town, was almost as challenging as the restaurant experience. Hordes of non-English speaking families wandering the store, throngs of kids encamped in the toy section playing, moms inspecting the dish and glass section and the men picking over computers and computer parts looking for a deal, a step up into local white culture. Donated Christmas music played over the speakers. I powered my chair over to the book section looking for something to keep me occupied on my rides to and from work on the train. I looked at the kids, and I was saddened knowing this was “their” Christmas. This was the best the holiday was going to get for them—no new toys wrapped in plastic new and shiny—their were getting toys with pieces gone, or a bike not shinny and new but new to you—and workable or would be workable after dad or brother put a couple of hours of work and parts into the project, maybe a stereo which worked even if the speakers did not match, a CD player and maybe even a computer with a real
CD burner which could be made to work. I FBed my thoughts and was starteled when I received an answer from my daughter, Michelle, reminding me that these kids don’t care come Christmas morning, what matters to these kids is, there is something there for them on Christmas morning. They were remembered and they had “new” things for them.
Shelly, knows this she lived this to some extent and her response made my Christmas a little brighter…Merry Christmas.
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