It's a way different holiday season this year. How could it not be? We've been ambushed and overrun by this horrible COVID stuff. I hope that you're taking care of yourselves. I stay close to home these days. It's not much of a sacrifice. I always have, but it's been my choice to do so.
When I do get out, I can't help but notice that so many people aren't wearing masks. I figure they got hit in the head with something or are thoroughly confused.
It's not macho, nor is it a symbolic declaration of American freedom to go without a mask in crowded places. Not with this pandemic raging throughout the country. Rather, it displays, for all to see, that you don't give a flip about your fellow Americans.
I'm sure that this will make a few of you a little angry. Chances are, you're the ones not wearing masks. It's time for us all to straighten up and fly right.
Thought I'd lay that out there. I won't mention it again. Grown-ups really shouldn't have to be told more than once. Nowadays, maybe twice.
I've been thinking, as do I, this time of the year, about those in my family who are no longer here. As I've gotten older, the list has grown substantially.
I'm still puzzled as to why God took my brother, Ricky, when he was only 16 years old and let me live on. Someday, if I actually make it through the gates, I'm gonna make an appointment with the Almighty and ask him.
I know it sounds peculiar, but I also think about chairs. There's a reasonable explanation. It derives from a seasonal tradition that my grandmother, Miz Lena, over in Middle Tennessee, started up way back when.
Almost every year, most of my family on my mother's side gathered at Miz Lena's for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. A few years, both. Grand Mom's brick colonial home, with the big white pillars, was filled to the brim - my uncle Van and his wife, grand-uncles and grand-aunts and first, second and third cousins, whom I only saw on holidays.
On the mornings of holiday gatherings, Miz Lena was up at the crack of dawn, laying things out and getting ready to start cooking. She'd already baked pies and her "family-famous" banana cake the night before.
Just after her early church services, Elizabeth, Grand Mom's housekeeper, and a couple of Elizabeth's church sisters hustled down the breezeway and came in through the back kitchen door. The little kitchen.
There were three kitchens in Miz Lena's house: the little kitchen, directly behind the den; the big kitchen, up front, adjacent to the dining room; and a third one upstairs. In anticipation of old age setting in, Grand Mom had a complete apartment built on the second floor. Someday, she would have "live-in help," she said.
Elizabeth said, "Good mawnin', Miz Lena. Merry Christmas. Happy Birthday, Jesus." Elizabeth's "sisters" said, "Amen."
Elizabeth held out her arms to me and said, "Merry Christmas, Butch. Wonder what Santa Claus left yuh?" I was already up. The smell of baking ham will do that to a kid. Grand Mom told me to "take it in the den" and that Elizabeth would bring me some breakfast.
Grand Dad was in there, staying out of the way, sitting in his chair, that sat next to the big, cranberry-colored, circular couch. Although she sat at the very end of it, closest to Grand Dad, the whole couch was reserved for Grand Mom.
Grand Dad was confined to that club chair, with an iris-flowered slipcover and a stack of 20 or more magazines under the cushion. Rather than buy a new chair or have it repaired, Grand Mom had Elizabeth place the magazines directly under the cushion on which Grand Dad sat.
To the naked eye, it looked good enough, and Grand Dad didn't seem to mind. Every once in a while, if Grand Dad moved a certain way, the magazines would slide sideways, and he would almost disappear. Miz Lena never did get the chair fixed.
That chair was Grand Dad's friend. His safe zone. It was where he sat from the time he got home until it was time for bed. That is, in between all the little errands he had to run throughout the house for Grand Mom.
From that chair, he watched the 6 o'clock news out of Nashville, peeled oranges, cracked walnuts and took off his socks and picked his toes. When he picked his toes, Grand Mom sat way down at the other end of the couch.
After breakfast, it was full speed ahead. Everything, other than what was in the oven, got moved to the big kitchen, Miz Lena's command post. That's where the holiday magic was performed.
Every wonderful seasonal vegetable, mixed with some other stuff, that we never ate other than Thanksgiving and Christmas, was prepared to perfection. I used to wonder why we only had deviled eggs twice a year. I could eat a dozen of them.
Just before the guests started pouring in, Miz Lena and Elizabeth set the "grown-ups" table. It was the one in the dining room with a painting of James K. Polk just above the cherry wood buffet. The table sat 12. The rest of us, mostly kids, and a couple of adults Miz Lena wasn't crazy about, were seated at foldout tables, covered with white tablecloths.
Miz Lena pulled out the "good plates and silverware" and, very delicately, placed them around the table. They were the ones she'd bought from her favorite antique store down in New Orleans.
Almost always, the same family members showed up. Grand Mom had place cards, which she set out every year, made up for them. Their names were written in fancy cursive and slid into small gold placards. They really did formalize the table.
Without fail, she pulled out the place cards that displayed the names of family members who had passed on. There was one for my great-uncle Franklin. He was a well-known gambler. In a wee-hours game of seven-card draw, he took all of a newlywed fellow's money. As the sun was rising, Franklin was pulling out his car keys, and that fellow shot him from behind.
A few years later, my great-uncle JT, my favorite uncle, was coming around a country curve and was shot dead by a jealous husband. My other remaining uncles got together and took care of the shooter.
There was a place card for my great-grandmother, Mama Sue. She lived to be three days short of 100. There was another one for Papa Harvey. He lived to be old, too.
Before the feast began, Miz Lena would shut the kitchen door and set out the posthumous place cards on the other kitchen table, tilt the chairs in and say a little prayer for them.
After I got out of the Marine Corps, I moved back to Tennessee. I was just down the road from Grand Mom. Often, we sat back in the little kitchen or out in the den and talked about all kinds of things.
I reminded her of the place cards and the chairs that she tilted in honor of our dearly departed relatives. She told me that she had two prayers that she said. One was for those who died of natural causes and the other one for "them that was gonna have some explainin' to do."
I'll leave you with this: Be thoughtful and be careful out there. When you're out in public, please wear a mask. Your greatest gift to someone just may be their lives. There, I've told you twice.
Email Bill Stamps at bill_stamps@aol.com. His books "Miz Lena" and "Southern Folks" are available on Amazon.
Bill Stamps