Are You Busy?

One would think with years of practice, this hectic pre-Christmas freneticism, could be avoided. Two weeks ago I thought so. Even last week I had hope. This morning I can see it all slip away again. Instead of Merry Christmas, maybe we should be wishing one another "Calm Christmas." I long for that Bethlehem, "how still we see thee lie." A person could parse that phrase and come up with a different intrepretation around the word "lie."

I am not taking Christ out of my Christ-mas. Indeed, who do people think they are to even suggest it. But it would be nice to take the frazzle out of it.

Working on the Tuovinen manuscript and old photos is still in progress. But I can see the end of it. The most elusive character in it is my grandpa. He is still elusive. Only little hints define him, high hopes, energetic, political, highly literate in his native Finnish tounge but anxious to become so in his adopted land as well. He loved to argue, to sing, to be in control. Poor guy married into a family of matriarchs. I can recall his smell as clearly today as I could as a child leaning up against him, watching him as he packed tobbaco into his pipe and lit it with a kitchen match for me to blow out. His eyes were as light a blue as the sky above his homestead. He spurned the Czar of Russua to die too young of TB, miner's consumption, some called it. But we all know what it was and we were all tested for it upon his diagnosis. Only he and a small grandson suffered with it.