Dec. 02, 2004 - 21:06 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Tug

Wandering the aisles of the marts searching for the impossible, magic gift is tiring. So today our daughter, her sons, her daughter and one great grandaughter came over and helped Heather dig out the tree stuff, get it set up and decorated. All visiting a mile a minute while being active. Job done, pizza and pop inhaled, grand daughter's husband came from work and shoveled the drive for us. Then, suddenly the silence was unnerving, they had left and it was just Heather and I rattling around admiring the tree.

Soon we headed out to chase the impossible dream of finding just the right thing for someone, stopped by the postoffice, a stop at Fazoli's to embrace some carbs and thence home.

When we got home Heather turned on the tree lights, some soft Christmas music and I went back, back to childhood when I would stand beside the table while Mom wrote Christmas cards, and addressed them. Telling me who they were to and what she had written. Sometimes she would add a word from me to them.

What joy when the cards began to come in from friends and relatives. Later when I was in school, returning in the afternoon from school and seeing the mass of envelopes that had been put through the mail slot, I would be anticipating their reading when the folks got home.

Somehow there always seemed to be a glow, an aura about sending Christmas cards, a very special mood, it was. Almost holy it seemed.

Thus it was for me tonight when I started on Christmas cards. That very same feeling came over me as I began to do them. Each card evoked memories of the person they were addressed to. I am relatively a kid on the net, five years in January, but in that time so many friends have entered my life. Most of them know more about me and my thoughts than live people around me. Of course if they asked me for my url I would give it to loved people and they could read it at their leisure, heck most of them know my political leanings as I know theirs -- nothing to be scandalized about on that count. And they know the skeletons that clank in my closet, most of them have been witnesses to some of them.

But being pretty deaf I am on the sidelines when it comes to social conversation amongst a group. Ah, but on the net, the world is open to me. I can type, I think, faster than I can speak. It all comes easily to me to communicate via the net.

I have become friends with many folks, from all over our country and England and Australia. Things we are interested in are so varied that it is hard to conceive. Some of us are Autumn Leaves, still on the bough but resting a bit. Still alive and interested in people and things in the world. Many of us seniors are coping with at least one ailment or another and have common ground there. So many individuals, couples and families I have met as I swung on the net, going from thread to thread. So much difference but so much in common. It is amazing, really.

Each card I write and address evokes fond memories of that person or family. Amost like a true re-run of my experiences for the time I have been on the net.

So the evening ends sweetly, my heartstrings have been given a great Tug . . . . . . . . .

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