Home For The Holidays

Not being much for holiday celebrations, it's usually just the immediate family on Christmas. While my mother comes over for dinner and the boys open the presents the grandparents and aunts and uncles send, that's the extent of it.

This year my best friend invited us to his house. The holiday there is more traditional, with crowds and feasting and all the rest of it. He's been my best friend since seventh grade, more years than I like to count, so I know his relatives and his wife's relatives, and his kids who I think of as my own. Who could refuse?

My oldest son. He likes my friend, he likes my friend's kids, he likes going to my friend's house. Crowds, he doesn't like so much. I understand. They suck the life out of me too.

Even I can't leave my child home alone on a holiday, though. I told him that. He understood, but he still didn't want to go. So he decided to ask his grandmother if she'd like him to make dinner for her that evening.

My mother is not a sentimentalist. She's given me far more detail on the disposal of her organs and ashes than I ever needed or wanted. I'm not sure she's cried since the day Bobby Kennedy was shot. She's got a soft spot for our kids, though, and when she heard her grandson wanted to cook for her, just the two of them, she got a little misty.

And that's what they'll do, have dinner together. My kid's got the menu planned already, and he'll do a nice job, he always does, and they'll talk tennis and discuss my shortcomings and do the other things that grandparents and grandchildren should do. The rest of us will get home from my best friend's about the time they finish cleaning up, and God willing, my son and my mother will exchange a glance and share a last laugh. That will be the best present I could have.