Sunday, December 26, 2004
Silent, Holy
Another blessed Quincy Christmas has come and gone.
Where shall I begin? The Concert for The Grandmother was a smashing success. True, there was some unprofessional snickering from my sister during her command performance of "The Sound of Music" (which may have had something to do with the nearly inaudible and completely unsolicited descant I was adding in the background), and I realized afterwards that the program was perhaps a bit heavy on the Baroque (Bach, Bach, Bach), but the audience was enraptured. That may have had something to do with the medication, but I'll take it. Frankly, I'll be stunned if next year this time The Concert for The Grandmother isn't playing to sold-out houses on Broadway.
As for gifts, Santa brought everything I never knew I wanted, because Christmas is all about transforming friends and relatives into the people you think they ought to be. My mom bought me five or six books I am sure I ought to be eager to tear into, and my grandma gave me clothes that in her 1940s worldview are precisely what a nice young man ought to be wearing. I definitely can't wait to try out the beautiful straw boater and darling spats; they're sure to make me the hit of the Spring Cotillion.
And then there was the incident of the ham. Despite the fact that we had Christmas dinner at the Holiday Inn Buffet (swanky) so as to save my grandmother the trouble of cooking, she somehow misinterpreted this as an invitation to bake what must have been a twenty-pound ham. And potatoes, and green bean casserole, and yams, which I'm pretty sure no one has ever actually liked. So I'll be eating leftovers for weeks, from a meal that never actually happened in the first place. I'm not sure, but I feel like this violates some pretty important rules of physics. Hopefully the hole in the space-time continuum will suck me in soon, before I have to eat any more ham. Next year I think I'm telling my grandma that I'm Jewish.
Another blessed Quincy Christmas has come and gone.
Where shall I begin? The Concert for The Grandmother was a smashing success. True, there was some unprofessional snickering from my sister during her command performance of "The Sound of Music" (which may have had something to do with the nearly inaudible and completely unsolicited descant I was adding in the background), and I realized afterwards that the program was perhaps a bit heavy on the Baroque (Bach, Bach, Bach), but the audience was enraptured. That may have had something to do with the medication, but I'll take it. Frankly, I'll be stunned if next year this time The Concert for The Grandmother isn't playing to sold-out houses on Broadway.
As for gifts, Santa brought everything I never knew I wanted, because Christmas is all about transforming friends and relatives into the people you think they ought to be. My mom bought me five or six books I am sure I ought to be eager to tear into, and my grandma gave me clothes that in her 1940s worldview are precisely what a nice young man ought to be wearing. I definitely can't wait to try out the beautiful straw boater and darling spats; they're sure to make me the hit of the Spring Cotillion.
And then there was the incident of the ham. Despite the fact that we had Christmas dinner at the Holiday Inn Buffet (swanky) so as to save my grandmother the trouble of cooking, she somehow misinterpreted this as an invitation to bake what must have been a twenty-pound ham. And potatoes, and green bean casserole, and yams, which I'm pretty sure no one has ever actually liked. So I'll be eating leftovers for weeks, from a meal that never actually happened in the first place. I'm not sure, but I feel like this violates some pretty important rules of physics. Hopefully the hole in the space-time continuum will suck me in soon, before I have to eat any more ham. Next year I think I'm telling my grandma that I'm Jewish.
