Chirstmas Stockings Butting Toes

Half point right, half point to the left. It’s not a political statement. Our family just can’t decide how our stockings should hang. It’s that extended family stuff, maybe, since every family has its own Christmas customs which newlyweds have to mix and match as they sort out how to accommodate all their new in-laws’ quirky holiday expectations.

It was easier when Nita made the first two pretty stockings for her new husband--me--and herself. But as two stockings grew into ten, the simplest thing like which way to point the stocking toes grew complicated. And if our offspring keep on having more offspring of their own, we’re either going to have to stretch the fireplace mantle or shrink the size of the stockings, and we all know that size matters. Who wants a Christmas stocking that’s too small for a tire gauge, or the other useful things I enjoy dropping into my kids’ stockings?

 

As to Nita’s broken arm, it’s mending without a cast or surgery, but she is wearing a fitted cloth sling cinched up tight 24/7, except during her showers. What I learned the second day, however, is there’s another treatment required for a broken right upper arm, when the arm is attached to a lifelong wearer of contact lenses who suddenly could not take out or put in her contacts with only her left hand available. The girl had to have prescription eyeglasses--that day. So, a shout-out to the Vision Works store that efficiently provided one-day service using her contact lens prescription, had hundreds of choices of stylish frames, and took our vision insurance plan.

In fact, the whole stressful broken arm episode including an ambulance ride, instant X-rays by a Star Wars-looking mobile contraption in a hospital ER, then the eyeglass shopping under duress, was a fine example of the under-appreciated luxuries we Americans simply expect. Everything worked when we needed it to, when we were short of patience, dependent on others for their services, and Nita was coping with a constant pain-in-the-arm, trying not to be a constant pain-in-the-ass to me and others.

So, this Christmas blog post is all about our blessings. Blessings for living in a place where things work, and there’s no Civil War going on, no bombing of apartments and neighborhoods like in Syria where children are being buried in the rubble of their own homes. Where Nita’s broken arm can receive immediate response no differently than if she’d suffered a life-threatening injury. And where Christmas stockings pointing both directions on a mantle still sing Merry Christmas in somewhat harmonious joy.

Enjoy the last few shopping days.

Two Ladies-Two Cities

Life mimics art.  Well, maybe not really art. In Defiant Honor I needed to inflict a “minor” battle wound on the main character, Major John McBee. It had to be a wound that would heal soon enough for his return in a few months for the next battle. So…I aimed a cannon loaded with canister-12 golf ball sized iron marbles-at him. One canister ball bounced a couple of times, causing it to lose velocity, before the “spent” ball hit McBee’s upper arm and broke the bone.

I wrote that a couple of months ago, and it must have struck my wife’s curiosity bone. Two days ago, just home after two weeks of grandmothering little Rory and his sisters, sweet Nita tripped and fell, hitting her right arm on the hard, non-yielding edge of our china cabinet. Her upper arm bone broke. Snap. She yelled.

In Defiant Honor, Major McBee was the recipient of the new procedure that British army doctors had developed for their soldiers in the Crimean War in the 1850’s—wrapping the broken limb in plaster of paris to prevent the reset bone from shifting. We’ll see next week if Nita gets surgery and a steel pin in her arm, or a cast or something else. Meanwhile, her right arm is in a sling, strapped to her torso, and she’s learning how to function as a one-armed lady.

Speaking of ladies, a few weeks back a middle-aged lady approached my bookstall on vendors row at the Plantation Liendo Civil War reenactment just north of Houston.

Every year, I reenact at Plantation Liendo, and for the last three years I have spent the time before the afternoon battles hawking my Civil War novels to spectators and other reenactors.

In my newest novel, Defiant Honor much of the action takes place in the fall of 1864 during General Grant’s siege of Richmond, Virginia, which was the Confederate’s capital city.

Back to Plantation Liendo: The lady picked up the display copy of Defiant Honor and asked a good question: “Why is the title defiant honor?”

My response was honest: “Because by that time in 1864, after Atlanta fell, and Lee’s army being hugely outnumbered, I suspect General Lee and President Davis knew they weren’t going to win. They were holding out in hope that Lincoln would lose the Presidential election and the new president would sign a peace agreement. But when Lincoln was re-elected, Lee knew Lincoln would not negotiate a peace settlement that would let the South become a separate nation, and Lee knew the Confederacy didn’t have the resources to win militarily, so their hopes turned into honorable defiance-hence the title Defiant Honor.

The lady’s facial expression suddenly darkened, and she countered that General Lee kept maneuvering his army and it certainly was more than defiance.

I replied that his maneuvering during the second half of 1864 was only to shift his outnumbered forces around his ring of defenses to keep Grant out of Richmond and Petersburg. I said Lee’s army was far too small to both defend Richmond, and take the war to Grant out in the countryside away from the city defenses.

Here's a simple map of the Richmond-Petersburg seige.

She told me she was from northern Virginia and I had it wrong, that battles were fought on her family’s land, that the people who live in Virginia, where it happened, understand that General Lee still had a real chance to beat Grant.

I said something about food shortages in Richmond and repeated a comparison of the sizes of the armies. About midway through my final rebuttal, she quit listening, and walked away in a huff.

I think maybe my answers just made her mad. Boy, did I break the first rule of salesmanship, that the customer is always right.

But the exchange was a good reminder that some folks are still sensitive about things that happened 150 years ago, and at least in the South. Always remember Faulkner: “The past is not dead; in fact, it’s not even past.”

Moreover, this nice lady reminded me with her very clear body language: You just don’t mess with the memory of General Lee. Even now.

Rory's Home

New Grandson Rory was born at noon on Monday and came home at noon on Wednesday-yesterday. Here he and I are, still in the hospital, meeting each other. I think I was paying more attention than he was. 

 Now, I’m sitting in my son’s nice two-story house in a Dallas suburb watching how new baby Rory is an instant change –agent, more powerful than a new boss in any office. 

In Defiant Honor, I awarded one of my favorite three-word sentences to Elizabeth McBee, who is the main character’s mother. She lives in Lexington, Virginia, a war zone. Her prodigal son brings home a pregnant woman, his new “wife,” seeking refuge for her. As the war drags on, two of Elizabeth’s slaves die violently. She is herself shot and carries an ugly scar on her temple. Her financial security is kaput. Her house is struck by a cannon ball, and invaded in the middle of the night by Union soldiers, one of whom she fatally shoots. Elizabeth McBee is a formidable grandmother. After all that, as Elizabeth comforts an odd young woman whose life has included even more unexpected turns than her own, Mrs. McBee hugs her and confesses, “I hate change.”

Don’t we all, at least every now and then, even if fleetingly, hate change. But life brings an endless series of unexpected changes. For better or worse, change is inexorable. Those poor folks who live where wars rage around them, whether in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1864, France in 1916, England in 1942, Iraq in 2001, or the Congo, Syria, or Afghanistan right now, surely have it the worse. Wars toss all the rules out the window, and those whose land and towns become battlegrounds, suffer.

Yet, we can’t stop studying war, writing novels about war, and going to see war movies. We profess to hate wars, but we are addicted to them. Why? Beats the hell out of me, but I’m one of the afflicted. 

Back to the here and now, Rory’s two sisters clearly love him, but we can already see the youngest sister, Violet, barely beyond her baby years herself, grappling with her changed status as the wee darling of the family. The first grader, Eva, is doing better, much to her parents’ relief.

This would be the place to shift into a post-election sermon about change, but I won’t. I’ve promised not to let politics seep into my blog posts.

I just took a break from the keyboard to cook bacon and eggs with granddaughter Violet. Her favorite part is cracking and dumping the raw eggs into the bowl.

Reminds me of the old quip about the chicken and the pig. When it’s time to prepare breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig, well, he’s committed. He’s all in, no more standing back to watch. I suppose the great American electorate decided to take on the role of the pig when we chose our next President. I mean, we’re all in, all committed, no going back. I just hope our new head chef keeps a sharp eye on the frying pan and doesn’t burn the bacon. Oops, I did preach, didn’t I. Sorry.

With the McBee Civil War saga a done deal, I’m briefly between writing projects. Which reminds me (yes, two ‘reminds’ in one blog post) of what granddaughter Eva asked me as we were waiting in the car drop-off line at her school yesterday. I told her that I had been a school principal once upon a time, and the astute first grader replied, “I know that. Why did you like being a school principal more than being a book writer?”

Since my sales have yet to reach to John Grisham or Jeff Shaara heights, I answered something about paying the bills. Then, it was time for her to get out. I went around the car, opened her door and helped her put on her massive backpack from which her lunch box dangled. With a guilty channeling of Forrest Gump, I called out as she trotted happily toward the front door, “I love you, Eva Rose.” And without turning she called back, “I love you too, Granddaddy.” What gets better than that to start a new day?