MERRY CHRISTMAS... MOMMY & DADDY

The holiday season is a time for an explosion of emotions and feelings. There is the obvious and that is joy and happiness but then there are the feelings and emotions that many of us are either afraid to talk about or ashamed to talk about. These are the feelings of sadness, emptiness, and loneliness. The feelings you get when you miss someone(s) and you cannot just pick up a phone and call him or her. In my case around the holiday season (just a little more than other times) I seem to miss my mommy and daddy. Let us face it, it hurts.

I can smell the freshness of the real Christmas tree in our small apartment and picture the same decorations placed in the same places year after year. I can hear my mom on the phone to my father, telling him to stop at the grocery store and to pick up something she ran short of for her cooking and baking. In my home (when I was single), the holiday ran for the whole week long. There was different guest every night and a spread put out on the table, fit for a king. My mom cooked and baked for a whole week before the holiday, in anticipation for these galas. Friends and relatives could not wait for her specialties that she would cook traditionally at this time of the year. I remember that we lived in a very small apartment and my dad built her a steel box to put out on to the fire escape so she could use it to store her food, there was so much of it. This was the spare refrigerator (our fire escape). Every day different smells and aromas would mesmerize you coming from her kitchen. Dinners the week before the holiday were a little skimpy because mom would always say, “I had no time to make anything to extravagant for supper, tonight”. Yet it all seemed okay because we knew the payoff was next week. Yes there we go with the payoff (rewards) being food and cooking but what the heck it was the holidays. I am sure many bad habits of mine were established during those years but that is not what I am writing about today. I am writing about mommy and daddy.

I wish my mom were around to see my son (she missed him by a couple of months) she would have been a very proud “nana”. Her son’s son, her chest would have stuck out at least a yard with pride. It angers me sometimes, that she never got to hold my son, never got to see him laugh or smile. My son had a great personality as a little boy, everyone loved Mikey and why not he was and still is a great person! My dad did get to know him some what.

Yet neither one of them got to experience the “piece de resistance” and that is my grandson. Oh, man he makes every battle, every hurdle, and every step I take worth it all. Just the pleasure to hear his little voice call me Ga-ga. I wish my mommy and daddy could hear that. Is that selfish? It might be, some people may say, but I do not care! I wish they were here to share this joy in my life, to see that I am happy, their little (maybe not so little) boy has truly found the meaning of happiness. It is not in things that you can buy or own. Happiness can be measure by how much you are loved by others. My mother and father’s only child is truly happy. I am loved by my wife (and friend) of over 30 years. I am loved by my son and his wife, my family and friends and now by my special little ga-ga (my grandson). I have happiness and I would like my mommy and daddy to see this, especially now around the holiday season.

Well with technology the way it is going, maybe next year I can pick up my cell phone and dial 1-800- 4HEAVEN and ask to speak with Jeanette and Mike (my mom and dad). I miss you guys, I love you, have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, do not fight and remember I have found true happiness!

Love your baby
Michael

Ps

And to all of you my friends all the best for a holiday season and healthy New Year

Love
Mike