Bah, Humbug!

Happy official first day of Winter (I'm beginning to write this post on December 21, no matter what it ends up saying for the post date.) Yeah, yeah, it's about time I got back to this thing. Just what with all the listing, shopping, hiding, wrapping and decorating, and shuttling young'uns hither and yon for lessons, winter rehearsals, recitals and concerts, time's flown.

So this post began on a maudlin note, but that's because I've been waxing nostalgic of late and thus, as is my typical personality, quite melancholic. For the past two weeks, late at night, I've been either 1) staying up late and being attacked by the dark night of the soul or 2) waking up in the middle of the night and being attacked by the dark night of the soul.

The character of the attacks is as follows: Like Scrooge, I suddenly remember people from my past en masse and miss them terribly. (Not all of them are ghosts, but incidentally, many of them are. In other cases, I don't even know.) I think that without them all somewhwere accessible, I feel naked, vulnerable and alone. Now that I have had enough incidents to make a list, I can see that the thread running through the series is the "comfort and joy" they made (or make) me feel. Sometimes all it took for them to get on my list was that they made me laugh my ass off, which I (as the aforementioned melancholic) desperately need every day just to remember I'm alive and ought to want to keep it that way.

I wish I could have a party and invite these people and have them attend one and all, no matter where they are spiritually or geographically, alive or dead. It would make a room full of touching (I mean emotionally, not physically), rollicking fun.

Today I will deal with only #1. Otherwise I will never finish this post.

Paternal Grandpa. His personality tickled me silly, and sometimes he just actually tickled me silly. And then there was the time I had my hair in a braid long enough to sit on, and he came up behind me with the vacuum cleaner and sucked it up right to my scalp and scared me to death. Or like the time when I was seven and he was in the driver's seat and let me sit on his lap and actually let me DRIVE the car on the beach. Or the many times he had me help him develop and hang photos to dry in his darkroom. Or the times we were at my Cherokee relatives' house next to their oil field, and he would always ask me if I wanted to go ride one of the big horses (the oil drill, like this picture).

Or the time he got me a pet turtle without asking my mom. Grandpa often had really bad judgment, like the time when he and his crazy brother Dee took my dad (then a young kid) to Mexico and they rented a Jeep and parked on the beach to go to sleep and woke up floating in the ocean. Or the time way before I was born when he let a dog off the leash and it immediately got hit by a car.

My grandmother left all his stuff to me, and after she died I found an incredible treasure trove of memorabilia. I was quite shocked to find among it a hidden collection of his photographs all the way back to--it must have been 1914 or something. In that stash was a set of apparently candid photos that would have been considered scandalous then--they were of people at what looked like a Montana resort coming out of the water naked and heading toward a lodge, and the ladies had their long hair flowing behind and were certainly unaware that some kid was snapping pictures of them. [Oh, my lord, I hope it wasn't his 11 brothers and sisters!] But he was always the life of any gathering and told amazing funny stories (over and over and over again) and just loved everyone to bits. Also, he was a genuine gentleman and was always gracious to the ladies, opening doors, kissing hands and cheeks, giving lavish but sincere compliments. And he dressed like an absolute dandy.

I miss you, Grandpa. I hope you and Uncle Dee and everyone else are having a grand old time, wherever you all are.