website: youtu.be/OlTx6HeWrlM

Who gets 10%: Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services https://eldercare.org/ helps older people and people living with disabilities remain safe and independent in their own homes by providing a wide range of supportive services, as well as information and advice.

http://paypal.me/vancevancevance or
https://venmo.com/vancevancevance or
a check to VanceFunder P.O. Box 17,
Arlington, MA 02476 for this web-groovery.
Pay or not. Up to you. Let’s stay connected.

This week’s pajamas = pilled-up over-washed sweat bottoms, hoodie top.

I teach and coach stuff.

Good Good Man - the CD - streaming all over, even get one from me.

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ONE CHRISTMAS STORY

We weren’t as broke as we were broken. We ate out once a year. Summer vacation was a trip down route 95 in an Olds 88 for a few days to bunk in the rooms of my mother’s sister’s house. We’d never see a live baseball game, or go further west than Pittsburgh. But we never went hungry either.

I was 9 or 10. I knew there was no Santa. But this morning the spirit of what was supposed to be went challenged, the only thing left me beneath our white-tipped green plastic tree was a plastic model kit of the USS Constitution. Had somebody lost a job? Was there really a Santa, and was he pissed at me like God always seemed to be, handing me my comeuppance for disbelief? This was it?

As I opened that kit of the Constitution I resolved to make those plastic sails look as realistic and wind-filled as humanly possible, using either thinned coffee or cream colored paint. Maybe I’d even cut my own sails from cloth. I swore that every cannon wick would have a red tip like it was freshly lit. Not a glue smear in sight. I was going to make the best of this one joyous thing beneath the tree. I made some kind of quick childhood brain readjustment as to what Christmas had to mean this year. I was going to cherish this boat. And by golly I was going to make this boat look so for real that you could shrink down, like I knew how to do when I needed to, and step onto it. One boat. One best effort. One big thankful.

The guttural call, choke, splash, bleary-eyed sick that always, always came after a previous night’s drunk was a dependable alarm, sunrise its emetic, singing down the hall, never spoken of an hour later, like it never happened. Whether it was a quiet or violent drunk depended on who crossed the ever-changing line. And this morning’s purging song would be as forgettable and forever effecting as the last one, regardless the calendar day or review of my boat plans.

He then stumbled down the hall with a large black plastic bag, dumping its contents, asked for and guessed at, at my feet without ever looking me in the face, this book, that car, the clatter mingling with the smell of half-digested, 14-hour old Seagrams, dinner, and Crest.

I’ve been a lifelong model builder since. And I’ve never been much on tons of things beneath the tree. One or two true real things will do. Once again, through the rug snatched out from beneath and an uppercut, I learn that that’s what it’s really all about.

Sure, I’m still scarred from the lesson, but better for the learning. Go Love Each Other the best you can. That is what it’s all about.

Happy Holidays.