This morning I woke up thinking about Christmas next week and remembering this beautiful experience from two years ago. with a few little changes I am re-posting this account. The trip had been planned a long time in advance. My friend Shawn had invited me to go with him to Disneyland for their very special, once-a-year Christmas candlelight concert. We had the tickets, we had the rooms, the flight was booked … we were ready to go. Then I got sick. Really sick. In the hospital sick. Shawn assured me everything could be cancelled, no pressure. But I really wanted to go! I’d been out of the hospital for a week and was feeling okay, but then I did something that I normally would not do. I asked the doctor if it would be okay, and I promised myself that I would abide by his decision. “It’s a short plane… Read More »
The Highway Robber
I was in high school before I discovered that the name of the store was not actually The Highway Robber. It was in fact The Circle Delicatessen. They stayed open late at night, Sundays and holidays when everything else was closed. I thought of them this Christmas morning when I reached for the egg carton and found there were only two eggs left. I had decided to make some bread pudding rather than throw out the last few slices of the week-old bread. If you were raised by parents who lived through the Great Depression as I was, you remember that NOTHING was wasted. Did your mother put a little water in the empty ketchup bottle and shake it to get the very last drops? Did your dad take a piece of bread and mop up the gravy on his plate at the end of dinner? Leftover roast became hash or… Read More »
button, button — who’s got the button?
Last night I sewed the missing button on my Christmas sweater. The button had been missing — off and on — for a year. How can a button disappear and reappear and disappear again like that? It was a mystery, but I knew that the little sucker was going to do another disappearing act if I didn’t sew it on right then! It started just over a year ago when Debbie invited me to her parent’s home in Big Bear to give a talk to her mother’s book club about my book (Beyond the Spotlight: On the Road with Phyllis Diller). I was, of course, delighted. As I tossed my overnight bag in Debbie’s car, a button fell off my Christmas sweater. “Oops, let me grab that,” I said as I stooped down and picked up the little leather covered button and stuffed it into my pocket. (I thought.) That evening as… Read More »
Asking for Directions
A man once told me why he never asks for directions. “Half the time, the person you’re talking to gives you bad information.” He’s probably right. In fact, I remember with chagrin one day when I was walking back to the office after lunch and a car pulled up asking how to get to Boulder and I gave him directions to Bonanza instead. As the light turned green I realized that I had sent him in the exact opposite direction! So yesterday as I was coming out of an appointment, I realized I had forgotten to ask the receptionist if there was a post office nearby. My Christmas cards have been written and addressed for a week. I had actually remembered to buy stamps and so they were ready to go — and they had been; riding around in my car for two days! At the entrance to the building, I saw an information… Read More »
