Christmas card list

Not that anyone asked, but I was looking over my Christmas card list the other day, musing about the different people I found there. Here are some of them:

-The friends we’ve made on Caribbean cruises. A couple from Regina in Canada. That pronounication (with a long i) always gave me pause. Couples from British Columbia, Maine, North Carolina and California.

-The guy I went to grad school with back in the 70’s. He was from Philadelphia and we both wound up at the University of Illinois, out in the middle of the cornfields. I wore a Villanova t-shirt to class one day and that got a conversation started. We’ve stayed in touch since then.

- A couple with whom we used to be close. We drifted apart a few years ago. I saw him in the supermarket the other day and I remarked that I had been thinking about him and his wife. “What have you been thinking?” he asked. “Why did we drift apart like that? How come we don’t go to your house for our annual Christmas get together or celebrate family events like we used to? What happened to our friendship?” That’s what I had been thinking, but it’s not what I said to him, standing there by the meat counter in the store.

-Dave-Here’s one for a guy I used to work with. He hired me, a failed Social Studies teacher, back in 1977 for a job he thought I could do. He was my first mentor, but I didn’t know the word at the time. He was rather irreverent, did not suffer fools; it took a good bit to earn his respect. Smiled a lot. His card this year said he was now retired.

-Vince and Jan—He and I were in the YMCA Indian Guides program when our boys were little. I wrote a note in our card bemoaning the fact that they are now called “Adventure Guides”. He wrote back advocating lawyercide. He worked for big city newspapers on the press gangs. Moved to Arizona years ago to “shovel sunshine” as he joked.

-Frances, the widow of a older friend from church. We used to have a men’s Bible study group that occasionally met at their house. I was never sure if she approved of us. He once posed a question to the group: “What is grace?” Well, heck. I can find that out. I pored over my concordance in a scripture research project and later presented my findings to him. I talked about what I had learned about grace from all the reading I had done. He listened politely and when I was done, he—well, he said something like: “What else you got?” something that indicated he wasn’t satisfied with my findings. What a guy he was.

- Here’s the only high school friend I exchange cards with—John. Isn’t that odd? I had come over to the public high school fresh from Catholic elementary school in 1964. Plopping down into ninth grade, in the midst of Protestants and Jews who had been together in public schools for eight years already. At some point we got to be friends and I would go to his house to watch Star Trek and Wild Wild West on TV. He always anguished over his ineptitude with girls. Compared to him I must have been a smooth operator. His wife writes their Christmas missives and we wait each year to see which medical procedure or mishap she will be describing in great gory detail. It hasn’t arrived as of this writing. Sometimes it doesn’t show up until after Christmas.

-Oh here’s a strange one. Maureen. She retired from our office back in the 90’s sometime. She’s a staunch Republican. Used to listen to Rush Limbaugh during her lunch hours, tried to interest me in that activity, but I didn’t go for it. Anyway, one day she said we were going to do some “employer development”, visiting companies to tell them about our services. She picked me up at the leisurely hour of 10am. We did a few visits, then went to lunch. A long lunch. We did a few more after lunch and then knocked off at about 2pm. She was close to retirement—can you tell by her pace?

-Kathy lives down the block. She is a couple years older than me, and already a widow. Her husband John died four years ago after a brief futile struggle with an especially virulent form of Lou Gehrig’s disease. It just swept over him and quickly robbed him of any ability to move and finally to breathe. Some time ago, my Kathy and I started going out to breakfast with her about once a month. She’s doing OK—leaving our parish now to go to the church attended by her children and grandchildren. We still plan on breakfast, though.

- Gene, my eleventh grade English teacher. She was also the advisor for the school newspaper and talked me into writing for it, thus sending me into a life path that I have enjoyed immensely. In each Christmas card she sends me suggestions about what I might want to read. She’s the one who got me into Annie Proulx. Isn’t she wonderful? (Yes—I mean either or both: my teacher and Proulx.)

So who's on your list?