Erma and Me

For some years, the letter R stood for Reindeer and all the joys they brought during the Christmas Season, but this year, I’m afraid the R stands for Recession, a financial down turn that has led to the brink of a Second Great Depression.

            Money boys on Wall Street and in Washington failed to note the presence of a Recession until a year too late. So how can we recognize the advance of another depression? Let me count the ways. Joblessness. Joblessness. Joblessness. Do I have to say it again? The Big Three auto manufacturers going belly up. Shaky banks cutting off credit to companies. Foreclosing on homes. 45 million people without health care. Newspapers taking nose dives. Google and Yahoo laying off and Newsweek magazine, along with National Public Radio, curtailing their operations. Wonder Bread is slicing back. Food kitchens closing for lack of resources. Lines of hundreds of people at Job Fairs. A one hundred year old china manufacturing company in Syracuse – closed. AND WATCH OUT, if farmers begin to dump their milk into gutters.

              By the way, why isn’t anyone talking about the billions of dollars being spent on wars and the billions misspent on the blunders of rebuilding Iraq? Do you think that might have something to do with the hard times we’re experiencing? This may explain why the Lame Duck is ducking flying shoes.

              In my last blog I wrote a spoof about a president-elect with a conflicting and dual personality. Then this week Governor Blagojevich of Illinois flew out of the cuckoo’s nest and tried to sell Obama’s now vacant Senate seat.          

             But let’s get back to the Season to be Jolly. Many of us will have to cut back on buying gifts and hosting holiday parties, but we must not cut out gifts for the children – those who still believe in Santa Claus. Somewhere money must be found to give them a joyous Christmas.

            Some years ago I wrote a one-person play based on the columns of Erma Bombeck. She was noted for her humorous outlook on life but often allowed her writing to move in the direction of pathos. Her death was a great loss to her thousands of readers. The play ended with a column concerned with her children outgrowing Santa Claus. The young actress playing Erma was standing in front of a bulletin board, with the shape of a Christmas tree cut out of newspaper surrounded with Christmas tree lights. Below is an excerpt from the play.

Everything is in readiness. The tree is trimmed.  The cards taped to the doorframe.  The boxes stacked in glittering disarray under the tree.

Why don’t I hear chimes?

Remember the small boy who made the chimes ring in a fictional story years ago?  As the legend went, the chimes would not ring unless a gift of love was placed on the altar.  Kings and men of great wealth placed untold jewels on the altar, but year after year the church remained silent.

Then one Christmas Eve, a small child in a tattered coat made his way down the aisle and without anyone noticing he took off his coat and placed it on the altar.  The chimes rang out joyously throughout the land to mark the unselfish giving of a small boy.

I used to hear chimes.

I heard them the year one of my sons gave me a tattered piece of construction paper on which he had crayoned two hands folded in prayer and a moving message, “OH COME HOLY SPIT!”

I heard them the year I got a shoebox that contained two baseball cards and the gum was still with them.

I heard them the Christmas they all got together and cleaned the garage.

They’re gone, aren’t they?  The years of the lace doilies fashioned into snowflakes…the hands traced in plaster of paris…the Christmas trees of pipe cleaners…the thread spools that held small candles.  They’re gone.

The chubby hands that clumsily used up two dollars’ worth of paper to wrap a cork coaster are sophisticated enough to take a number and have the gift wrapped professionally.

The childish decision of when to break the ceramic piggybank with a hammer to spring the fifty-nine cents is now resolved by a credit card.

The muted thump of pajama-covered feet paddling down the stairs to tuck her homemade crumb scrapers beneath the tree has given way to pantyhose and fashion boots to the knee.

It’ll be a good Christmas.  We’ll eat too much.  Make a mess in the living room.  Throw the warranties into the fire by mistake.  Drive the dog crazy taping bows to his tail.  Return cookies to the plate with a bite out of them.  Listen to Christmas music.

But Lord…what I would give to bend low and receive a gift of toothpicks and library paste and hear the chimes just one more time.

END

            So with those words I bid you a Merry Christmas and hopefully a Happy New Year! For your edification, here are the youngest and oldest in my family. Selah Elizabeth Jane Witt arrived October 24, 2008, and most of the time she finds me hilarious!

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