My Christmases

It was fun having a Christmas book. It was especially fun giving away books to people I met... most notably to people who touched my life.

Greg, a plumber from Seattle got the first signed copy in November.  He saved my neck with a truly heroic effort to unclog my sewer line (on a Saturday no less).  His ingenuity and hard sweat saved me what might have been a $10,000 sewer line dig. Whew!  Merry Christmas Greg!  

My dear neighbor Carin got the 2nd signed copy.... she's been my neighbor the longest and is a totally amazing person.  She's got many amazing stories to tell.

Mark of Atlas Masonry in Seattle got the next signed copy.  In December Mark did a miraculous job on restoring my broken down chimney to it's original 1926 glory.  A kindly modest man who astonished me with his ability to lift 500 pounds of brick and cement up 35 feet onto an icy roof.  He got the next signed copy. 

And of course all the family got signed copies.

Overall I don't care much for Christmas. It has painful memories for me. I hate malls. But the closest I got to the spirit of Christmas this year was actually on TV.  It was a news feature about homeless families living in motels.  It broke my heart to watch.  

The humanity of simple love - owning nothing - and having nothing but one another to cling to seemed to originate directly from the pen of Dickens' Christmas Carol.  I gave a copy of my signed book to the local TV book drive.  So maybe that helped.  I hope a needy child might have received my book.

Merry Christmas All - and to all a good night!

:0)