Christmas past and Christmas future

I was seriously fretting about Christmas this year, the weather, the plum pudding, oh forget the lies,  it was all about the personalities. Mostly I was worried about Kate's experience with her cousins. Arnie had decided to approach the visit as a visit to a movie set with appropriately deviant characters and because of that, I think he had a good time. But for Kate the ages were all wrong this year. Lucy Banks is 22 or 23,  Mckay was in Europe leading the high life which left Andrew closest in age to her at 18.  We deliberately shaved a day off our trip and  arrived when the cast of characters was assembled and waiting for us to make our entrance.  Lucy Banks came in from Los Angeles where she is struggling to be ACtress which is all fine and good. Unfortunately she has also become a militant vegan which I think is an oxymoron. And Andrew who is now a freshman at Mercer College in Macon, Ga is turning out to be a very nice looking albeit tongue tied guy. well, tongue tied unless his parents are out of the room and it's all very kick back.

We made a stop in Atlanta for lunch and then arrived in time for supper to be followed by The Brunch the following day, Christmas eve gumbo dinner and church which I bailed on this year in spite of my love of christmas carols. Big Lucy and I have agreed to go to the Family/children's service next year.When we first started going to Columbus for Christmas, Kate was  4 I think and they made a huge effort to included her in everything including the Christmas Pageant. Kate outfitted in white gowns and wings or some other costume always looked adorable but oh, my god, you really got how homogenous the crowd is and  she was the only non blonde in the crowd.

Columbus is a relaxing place for me and I often wonder how my father became the man I knew  growing up there.  But I understand  why he left pretty quickly and never went back. I like afternoon napes punctuated by the sound of the train whistles, random dogs barking in the night and this time I had a replay of a childhood experience: I got locked in the bathroom. Every grandchild who visited Mothers' parents in Roanoke, Virginia got locked in the bathroom. I don't know why but it was a rite of passage with a worried parent kneeling in front of the bathroom door trying to stay calm and coax a crying child to follow directions and take the key out of the lock and slip it under the door. This happened  in the middle of the brunch so I knew someone would have to use the bathroom and luckily when I knocked, there was someone there to rescue me.  John Sheftall's friend Tom King.


We left the day after christmas and had another one of those trips back to New York. Snow in New York which slowed down LaGuardia..planes backed up at Atlanta..cranky...could only get 1 seat on the earlier plane so that wasn't an option...kept hoping that we wouldn't end up in Harrisburg, Pa. god help us and then  have to take the train into town. That was disaster thinking at its finest. We got back with only a 4 hour delay. When she was good she was very very good but when she was bad she was horrid. Well, the same could be said of plane travel.