'Twas a few nights before Christmas

and all the cards were to be hung.

Over the fireplace?

Surely not. A hazard: enticing flames for sure.

So why bother? After all, the decorations are always overdone.

But the cards and their notes make a book

Each writer's story, individually hung,

dresses a tree with histories

Of all these lives of folks we know and we knew,

And haven't kept up with day-by-day.

And so we read of Joshua and Joseph, both pushing fifty

(years of age that is)

Still scampering up and down the fields of honor

Chasing a ball and hoping to score.

GOAL!!!!

They hope to hear,

but admit that the sound surrounding them most often is

Huff, huff, huff and puff, puff, puff.

And Mary and Marie,

the little girls that disappeared behind the Good Humor truck

After beguiling two-bits from some daddy,

And scoring a big chocolate ice cream pop, resurfacing,

satisfied for the moment,

Safe, smiling, sweet and brown from head to toe.

Well, they too are busy now.

Up and down the aisles of providers:

bats and balls and beans and breads

On one hand

And in the other a telephone, magic jacked and wified,

ordering and directing

For JJ International Incorporated

(offices in London, Paris, Moscow, Saigon and New York)

And accounting for half the bread that comes into the house!

Of course Mary and Joe

Have Jrs. who, too, are making and reporting their way

Through this vale of happiness and tears

And finding, little by little, that all the things that

Dad and Mom say,

Repeating in some version what nana and gramps say,

May have some value.

History,

Being a retelling of repetitive failings and successes,

Has some current coin.

And there are yet two groups who people

Our cards and Christmas accountings not yet heard'uve.

The little Elles and Nickys, Avas and Matthews, Andrews and Olivia's and James and Johns,

And all initialed marvels; ours, JP.

Their stories tell of As and Bs (heaven forbid)

and soccer and football

(Jet's games and meeting Brickshaw).

Lacrosse, tennis and terpsiichore

Books being read and books to read.

And at dinner boys recall blushing

as they rose to field calls from Hermione

(and Wendy and Muffy, and Leslie and Debbie)

And three-year "skirts" (they're never in'em) are pictured as

Pouting and playing as their dishes grow food.

And some see gramps as a hirsute hairball

(only on his chinny chin chin. His Christmas prayer:

a natural covering for his Benedictine pate).

And Nana gets the go-to nod:

"Nana can you get us this? And Nana can you take us there?

Oh Nana, we love you.

And the last item in our annual catch-ups

Tell of those who have left us. You know

"______we went to a tournament. While in St. Louis

we heard that your buddy, Teddy,

Died."

And sadness swells one's heart for the moment

But memory seem to cleanse away the pain

And funny comes to the fore:

Remember when Teddy and I came out on liberty

Bent on chaperoning the new chaplain

Through the temptations of Yamato.

And no sooner had we turned into the ginza

Then we were approached by a young Japanese

Hawking the seductions of his stable of escorts.

Horrified, Ted and I pointed to the insignia of the cross

on the chaplain's lapel,

"Chu, chu (sure, sure),"

he said, his face breaking into a wide smile,

" I gotem good Christian girls too," he finished.

And so another story has been told,

A memory recalled,

The hard edges of reality softened and a new lesson has been

Scripted for enlightenment, for relief.

Histories.

That is why Christmas cards must be hung.