Christmas Greetings

I’m not very good about sending out Christmas cards. That’s an understatement. I’m terrible at it. That being said, it’s always nice when I receive a card that I wasn’t expecting.

Kath and I recently bought a small second house in Richmond that would make it easier to visit our daughters who live with their families in Richmond and Culpepper. But before it gets easier there is work to do—tear down the ceilings and tear up the floors and paint everything in between.

A few days before Christmas I was doing what my kids probably think I was born to do—attacking a house with a crowbar and a hammer. I have to admit that in spite of mess—plaster, insulation, and unfathomable dust everywhere I was having a pretty good time.

I was recalling, as I like to do, the demolition work I did as a college student at the Powers Hotel in Rochester. There is hardly a more fun job than being given a crowbar and sledgehammer, shown a room and told to take it down. I had my CD’s playing and was engrossed in my little world that was literally falling apart all around me—in a good way.

Christmas was the furthest thing from my mind. And then I pulled a hunk of plaster away from the overhead beam, shook the dust and insulation from my head that came with it and saw fall before my eyes something completely out of place and totally unexpected. It was our first Christmas card at the new house.
 

Thanks to Cecilia Havergal, a Victorian era poet, for the verse, Linnie for sending the card, and the Pickard family for saving the card for me.