'Tis The Season

Monday an arctic snap sent Pittsburgh temperatures plummeting to the low single digits. Late for a dental appointment, I charged from the house with wet hair and no hat, leaped on my bike, and pedaled for 15 minutes directly into the face of gale force winds. My right ear is now, quite predictably, frostbitten to a farthewell, and as I hobble around the house in my red longjohns, rustling up grub, pouring drinks, dandling the baby, dispensing cheer, I find myself, on the one hand, hoping against hope that the old adage "frostbite in January, surgery in June" will prove wrong, and on the other, imaging the suite of Russian bear-skin hats I will need to acquire in the future to conceal my missing ear.

Uncle Andy is in for the holidays. As usual, he got himself run over right before showing up, so instead of taking the town by storm, we are committed to yet another quiet convalescent leave. He pulled in on Wednesday night, having weathered 11 hours in a greyhound. This feat proved both aesthetically and physically injurious: tired and bus-savaged when he arrived, he was chain-vomiting in the bathroom the next day, having apparently caught the same Bulgarian Death Flu that laid me and my wife low a couple of weeks ago. He is still on the mend.

My Aunt sent us a Christmas card the other day. It begins as follows: "No matter what our circumstances, we all have much to be thankful for. On March 12th, in my home, I broke my right ankle on the stairs, then fell two stairs down onto the cement floor." She goes on to describe, in lurid detail, how she spent two weeks in the hospital, lost mobility in the foot, eventually returned to her job at Walmart, lost her basement to a freak flood, and is now forced to inhale the moral fetor from the new Miwok tribal casino a few miles down the road from her home. The letter ends with the sentence "It seems the Casino's do well even in a bad economy", no final period, no seasonal greetings, and no signature.

For obscure reasons, the spirit of the holiday seems to have left Benny totally untouched: he ogled the Uncle, blinked happily at the Christmas lights, stuffed gift paper in his mouth, chatted up the turkey, and sat happily in his papasan as his parents broke bread with friends, the distant dry-heaving of the uncle yet another coruscating novelty in a day of bright sparklies and rapturous rituals.