Coprolite newsletter, December 2007

Every December, my six kids quiz me about what I want for a Christmas gift. There was a time, during my childhood, when that was such an easy question for me to answer. Tinkertoys. Lincoln logs. Toy soldiers.

Not any more. For some reason, when a person gets to be a certain age, it's a lot more challenging to figure out an appropriate gift.

I remember the trouble my mother and aunts and uncles always had in buying gifts for my grandfather. He led a simple life, working his 80-acre farm. Theater tickets or dinner gift cards would have been a waste, since he was pretty tired by the time he finished milking every night. He didn't take vacations. He didn't dress up.

There were only two things on his wish list each year - blue work shirts and Prince Albert pipe tobacco. Every birthday and every Christmas, his ten children were likely to give him between one and ten blue work shirts and (ten minus that number) cans of Prince Albert.

I think I'm becoming almost as big a dilemma to my own kids. Take clothing, for example. The top half of the closet in our guest bedroom is completely filled with my T-shirts, sweat shirts, and (in deference to Grandpa) even a couple of blue work shirts. The bottom half is filled with jeans, corduroys, and khaki pants. The dresser in that guest room is packed with my sweaters. (I'll give you one guess whose clothes fill the closet in our own bedroom.)

Despite an instinct on the part of children to want to buy clothing as gifts for their parents, this would be kind of awkward. In order to make room for their current gifts, I would have to throw away some of their (still highly prized) gifts from years gone by.

Last year, when I was pressed for a wish list, I told the family that what I really wanted was time. By that, I meant an extra hour or two in every day, an extra day in every week, an extra month in every year, and of course some extra years added to my life. Apparently, they weren't able to come up with any of those things, but some of them made a very thoughtful effort to come up with a gift just as nice. The three daughters who live in our area gave me a big chunk of their own time.

True to their Christmastime promise, our daughters, along with their husbands and children, showed up one weekend last summer to give me two days of their time. They cut up fallen trees and split the wood, cleaned the yard and garage, and worked in the garden. Giving of their own time was even nicer than if they had managed to increase my own storehouse of time, because they also contributed all that work along with it. It was a wonderful gift.

What could I ask for this year that could be better than time? What comes to mind is warmth.

Warmth is on my mind a lot this year. For one thing, this has been the first winter in quite a while when we've had some really cold stretches of weather and a lot of snow. That made it even more significant that we've just started to be able to use our wood-burning fireplaces again after doing without them for the last two years.

That was when we discovered that the company that built our house 14 years ago hadn't properly finished the top of our fireplace chimneys. The name of that builder (who of course has changed corporate identities and denies any responsibility) will be furnished to you on request.

The building inspectors and fireplace people we consulted said they were surprised we hadn't burned the place down. There were dire predictions that we might have to tear out walls and completely rebuild the fireplaces before they could be used again. But everyone was afraid even to tackle the project through fear of liability issues.

Finally, this year we found a contractor who was willing to do it. Not only that, but after further inspection he found that it was a simple project and only required the installation of two fireplace caps. The other night we had our first fire. It was great! As my father-in-law used to say, having a wood fire is like having another person in the room.

So warmth seems like a good theme for this year. On our side, Mickey and I rented a Reunion House in Florida and invited our kids and grandkids to join us for a wintertime warmth break. I don't know how the kids will interpret this warmth idea. Maybe they'll go for gifts like scarves and mittens. I would be every bit as happy with a group hug. Like time, warmth is something that's best when shared with your family.

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com

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