Christmas Dinner

As I suppose with any gathering of kinsmen (especially for a Christmas dinner), it is possible to be as tearfully sentimental or as bitterly resentful as one wishes. On the maudlin side of the equation, the nine of us at table (with the exception of the absent Nicholas, Barbara's boy friend, who was at home in Toronto with his family) represented everyone who matters in our immediate family; viz., the heads of the family (mother and dad), the first generation of children (my sister Nancy and I), Nancy's husband Tom, my partner Tracy, the second generation grandchildren Jill and Barbara, and Jill's partner Rosser. It made for an interesting (though somewhat quirky) collection of people, all of whom (as I later commented to Tracy when we were rolling home after our six-hour visit to my parents' house for the occasion) were essentially doing well, healthy as one's age customarily permits, either happily retired or meaningfully engaged in gainful travail or ardent study, and pointedly nobody suffering any great loss of companionship (a balance which alone is difficult to maintain in most families). Indeed it was undoubtedly the fleeting thought of everyone that this may have represented the last Christmas that we are all together, largely a reference to my father's advanced age of 90 and his added symptoms of declining health.

Leaving Town - A Fictional Tale of Happiness

Joseph Anger was considered tall for his age, but he wasn't heavy-set. In fact, "skinny" would be closer to the truth. So when his young school peers, who were between the ages of ten and twelve, badgered him, as they regularly did, he did not feel up to the confrontation, and he learned to withdraw more and more to avoid such scenes entirely.