David Heiller
Dear Grandma,
The big week is here. The tree is up in
its new spot in the new house. It’s small, only about five feet tall, so I put it on top of two
bee boxes, and Cindy put a tree skirt around it. It looks
great, like it belongs there,
and it has three presents under it.
We went out and bought a tree this year, the first
time for as long as we can remember. No fir trees on our property down here.
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| The first Christmas in the new home. |
Christmas different this year, Grandma. The kids are gone now. When they were little,
it seemed
like they brought Christmas with them.
The concerts and school artwork and Sunday School pageants, even our trip to the woods to cut the tree were all a
big part of the Christmas feeling.
I miss their excited talk about the presents under the tree. They would shake and rattle them, with an occasional word of warning
from Cindy or me. “Careful with that one, Noah.” “I wouldn’t squeeze that one
if I were you, Gol.”
They would count the presents too, to see if they each had the same number.
They almost always did, thanks to Cindy, who could keep
track of such things. I was lucky to know what they got. It’s a guy thing. Maybe
Grandpa was the same way.
Cindy is still doing her part. The crèche has a new home on a table in the living room, and there is holly on the stair railing. And she has
made hundreds of cookies, many of which have found a home with me. (She got up
at 5 a.m. last Saturday to bake. That’s as sure a sign of Christmas as any.)
Your chocolate cookies are still my favorite. It was nice to see your
once-familiar handwriting on the recipe card on the counter.
But I am seeing and feeling the Christmas spirit, Grandma. It seems
like every day for the past couple weeks, I have taken a picture or written a
story about some good Christmas deed. Students gathering items for soldiers in Iraq. Groups donating to the food shelf. The huge Care & Share effort
to distribute gifts to children in need in the county.
And in all those cases, I sense that old saying, ‘‘Tis Better To Give
Than To Receive.” A lady at the Care & Share gathering told me something like
that. She said this was good for the
kids, but it was good for the community too. Good to give, to come together and
help your neighbor. Even if you don’t know who you are helping. Maybe that
makes it even better.
One of the recipients of a Care & Share gift came into the office
last week to pick up a late donation. I sat in the other room, and could feel
the woman’s excitement and gratitude from there. It was a new jacket for her teenage
daughter. The
price tag was still on it. It would fit perfectly!
The girl had never received a new jacket in her life, the mother said.
Jill was gracious as usual, and deferred the thanks to the whole
group, which of course was true, although without the Jills of the world, there would be
no Care and Share. But that’s the subject of another letter.
Anyway, the glow of good will
in The Argus after the lady left lasted for about a day. You could almost feel it radiate like a heat lamp, or like the light from a Star in
the East. It just sort of summed up Christmas for me.
So that’s it for this year, Grandma. I will try to track down an
orange to eat on Christmas day, in honor of your favorite story about getting a Christmas orange every Christmas, how fresh and good
it tasted. And I’ll have a few of your cookies too!
Love, David
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