I don’t really celebrate holidays unless I have to. It is true. I try to be thankful for what I have every day. I try to tell the folks that I love how much they mean to me whenever the opportunity comes up. I am not shy about that. I don’t need a special day to remind me of how lucky I am to have this bounteous life. 

I remember a Thanksgiving with Jenny’s family, back about a million years ago. The house was full of relatives. Jenny and I were visiting, and she and her sisters were in the kitchen taking the turkey out of the oven, and mashing the potatoes, and getting ready to put food on the table. I was sitting at the dining room table drinking a beer with her dad, and some aunts and uncles and cousins. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the turkey come sliding across the kitchen floor, and kind of jumping up when it hit the edge of the dining room rug, taking a couple skips, and stopping by my feet under the table. The girls in the kitchen were laughing. I snatched the hot turkey up by its wings, before anybody noticed, and hustled it back into the kitchen, and dumped it back into the baking tray. Jenny was beating the mashed potatoes with the mixer, and laughed so hard that she pulled the mixer out of the potatoes while it was still running, and it threw mashed potatoes all over the wall and cabinets. That caused even more laughter. They had taken the turkey out of the oven, and tipped the tray, and the turkey, in a last bid for freedom, had leaped off the tray and slid across the tile floor, and raced into the dining room. It was hilarious. We cleaned the rug fuzz off the turkey, wiped the mashed potatoes off the wall, and served dinner. It tasted fine. Her big Catholic family was like that. They just took things in stride, and laughed. 

Just before one Christmas, about 8 years ago, my house was robbed. The thieves stole all the presents below the tree, and the stockings hung on the mantle. My stocking had been knitted by my grandma, back in 1952, when I was born, and I put it up every year until then. It said “Bill 1952”. Bill is my real name. How serendipitous that someone named Bill robbed my house.

In Africa, celebrating holidays was different. Christmas caused complete strangers to approach me and hold out their hand and say, “Ngicela ikissimusi” which meant “I want my christmas present.” I looked in the mirror, and I did not look like Santa Claus at all. Once, when a little kid asked me that, I too, held out my hand to him, and said “Ngicela Ikissimussi” right back. He reached into his pocket and gave me a lilangeni. I was so surprised. I handed him the loaf of fresh bread that I had just bought. He went away happy, and I went away wiser.

My sister would send me a christmas package to Swaziland, in July, thinking it would take months to arrive. It did take a month, but then I would have her gifts sitting there on my table in my room in their holiday wrapping paper, from September until December 25th. People would come by my house, and ask me if I was going to open them. Of course I was, on Christmas morning. I was the master of delayed gratification. I had felt the gifts, and was guessing that my sister had taken my letters seriously, and sent me tighty whities and socks. There is no better way to cheer up when you are far away, than to put on a new pair of undies or new socks. And after Christmas, I would squirrel them away, saved for those days where I needed an emotional boost. 

Celebrating my birthday embarrasses me. I just don’t see the day I was born to be something worth major attention. It is not like I am Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King. I am just a poor schlub, trying to live the best life that he can. Though I am always happy to be alive when my birthday rolls around, it never moves me to think more than that of it.

You definitely won’t find me celebrating Columbus Day. His name wasn’t Columbus, and he didn’t discover anything. He stumbled upon Hispaniola, and robbed and enslaved the people there. Nope, not gonna celebrate him.

Most  years for the past 30 or so, Christmas has been a time when I fight depression. Daylight savings time is in full bloom. It gets dark early, and Christmas lights go up. I drive home from work in heavy traffic, in the dark. Those things bring up a subliminal memory of the year Jenny died. She died on December 16, and though I try to ignore it, those memories of fighting traffic every day in the dark, after work, to go to the hospital where she lay sick from the cancer, bring on a deep sadness.

This Christmas I feel like I broke through the sadness in a big way. For me, Christmas is for kids. To head the sadness off at the pass, in November, I started gathering gifts for the kids of my Mexico girls. It was so much fun to think about the new generation coming up, and see the small ways that they are better off because I had a role in the lives of their moms. 

On wednesday, I drove down to the Rio Grande valley to visit some of them that live on this side of the border, in Donna, Texas. My truck was full of poorly wrapped gifts in bright colored wrapping paper. I am the worst gift wrapper that ever lived. I have no patience with wrapping paper. If I can’t get it to fold where I want it to, and trying to hold the paper closed with one finger while tearing off a strip of tape, I eventually just bunch the paper up in a blob, and stick a big piece of tape over it all, stick on a bow, and call it done. It makes people laugh.

To make things even more fun, Alicia’s birthday had been a couple weeks earlier, and I wanted to take her a birthday cake. I woke up at 3 am, to get ready to leave for the 5.5 hour drive south. I baked 3 cakes because I wanted a 3 layer cake. As they were cooling, I loaded the gifts and my day pack and sleeping bag and pillow in the truck, and just before I left, I packed the cakes in a box, and put it in my truck.

Texas is an ugly state. Especially the drive from Austin down to the valley. Flat, dry, boring. People rave about the beautiful Texas Hill Country, but it is only comparatively beautiful, when juxtaposed on how ugly the rest of the state is.

Arriving in the valley, I went to Yaretcys house, and dropped the gifts for her family, and grabbed her and her little sister Pelos, and we drove over to Saidas house, where she lives with her hubby and their 3 boys. I brought in their presents, and the cakes. I had bought a couple cans of frosting, and some colored sprinkles, and some tubes of decorator frosting, with fancy tips, and candles.

I sat the girls down at the dining room table, and told them to get to work. They looked at me like I was nuts.

Pelos: I don’t know how to do this, Sam. I have never done this before.

Saida: Si, padrino, no se como tampoco.

Me: Well you are educated women, How hard can it be for you?

I went and got some knives, and gave them to the girls. They discussed it for a bit and got to work. 

Once they got going, I just sat back and let their creative sides happen.It came out beautiful. Of course. They all had fun, and each put in their ideas, helping each other surmount the learning curve. The day passed by quickly, and I went to bed on Saidas sofa with a smile on my face.

I woke up around 6am, and put the cake in the truck, and breaking my own vow to not drive into Rio Bravo Mexico again until it was not a war zone, I drove nervously across the border, to Alicia’s house. Nobody shot at me, thank goodness.

Alicia came out and hugged me, and told me that Tania was at the clinic getting some medicine for the cold she had come down with, and would be back soon. We unloaded the presents and the cake, and I sat there with my arm around Alicia, and got caught up on the latest. Her baby, who I had never met, woke up and came out and hid behind his mom, looking at me. His name is Luisito, but I call him La Garrapata.

Tania got home from the clinic, and we went to a taqueria and bought fish tacos, and brought them home and had a pleasant repast. Then we ate some cake. It was beautiful and deeelicious! I spent a couple hours visiting them, and then drove back across the border without getting robbed or shot at. I think it was because I am a chico afortunado.

Arriving back at Saidas, on this side, we sat and talked, and I told her how happy I am that she has become a terrific mom. She is truly amazing. She runs the house with a firm hand, just like her mom did. Washing dishes, talking to me, telling her boys to calm down, and take out the trash, all at the same time, calmly, effortlessly. It made me smile to see how different she is from when I first met her at 9 years old. She is 30 now. It seems a lifetime ago that she was this precocious girl that came to work with us on the projects I was running at that time.

I left there for the long drive back, much lighter of heart, with a smile on my face, once again feeling like I had done a good thing in trying to mentor teenage girls. It was 72 degrees and sunny when I left the valley. About half way back to Austin, I ran into the leading edge of the cold front sweeping across the country. The wind picked up, and was so strong coming directly at my truck, that my gas mileage dropped from 22 mpg, to 13 mpg. I had to keep kicking it into passing gear just to maintain my 70 mph. By the time I got to San Antonio, the temperature had dropped to 27 degrees.

Arriving back at my house, I got a message that Juany, my first ahijada in Mexico, was driving down from where she and her husband and kids live in Minnesota, and would be at my house the next morning. It might be cold for me, but for them, it was just normal.

Juany and Lazaro and their kids came in, and it was wonderful. Her oldest son Lazarito is now taller and bigger than me, at 14 years old, and is a confident and mellow young man. Her daughter Leah, 11, is an amazing, joyous young woman, who played her clarinet for us. She told me that she is really enjoying the Physics Kits that come each month from Mel Science, a subscription I bought when I found out that she loves Physics. Girls can be Physicists too, if they want to. Jesus, the youngest, was terrific to talk with. Juany and Lazaro have taken the opportunities available here in America, and the kids are involved in sports and band, and all sorts of programs with their schools. We talked, and went out to eat, and then they left to head back to Minnesota. 20 hours of driving, just to visit with me. I felt very loved.

As I have said so many times, I am truly a lucky boy. My life is so full of joy and love. As I lay in bed last night, I thought back about Jenny, and thanked her again for planting the seeds that made me the man that I am today.  

Merry Christmas to all of you who read my stories. I hope that they have given you something positive to take away with you. I am smiling.

Family. <3

Love   <3

Life   <3