The Love Song of Jim McInnis

I grow old, I grow old/I shall wear the cuffs of my trousers rolled ...

These thoughts intrude my slow freight train of thought typically in fall and winter. Today they intruded in Starbucks. That's not right; nor was it right that I was the oldest guy in the store, at least until the apparently two-days-older guy emerged from the prep kitchen after a refreshing break. We exchanged Secret Boomer Knowing Glances: Pretend I'm not here/Not to worry, I'll be there soon enough. Camraderie interrupted by the inheritor of the earth: I'll take your order HERE NOW (HURRY IT UP will you)! What I go through to keep the guyses in chocolate, sakes!

It wasn't that long ago that I thought myself numbered among the inheritors of the earth, thanks to my mastery of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, having studied it for at least two days in high school English. What a wimp, snickered I knowingly -- obsessing over th' minutiae of his days! Not us -- we're the greatest generation ever sired! CBS News said so!

At some point I forgot my life rule of never letting my inner thoughts cross my lips, because I blabbed something about my Prufrock thoughts at the next family get-together, no doubt to show off my Major Learning Education. My Uncle Jim, the mailman, immediately remarked, "You know, I know him."

"Who?"

"Tom Eliot."

(Two...three...four...how in the world am I gonna score?)"The Chancellor of Washington University? Well, yeah, they're family ... but that's Thomas Hopkinson Eliot. I'm talking about Thomas Stearns Eliot, the poet. Who lives in England." (Which is not, last time I checked, on the US post office's standard letter carrier routes for St. Louis. Nyah!)

"So am I. The family has a house off Lindell. He comes home a lot to visit. Always has a good word or two. He autographed one of his books for me. Next time you come over I'll show ya. That poem you like is in it."

(But wait! There's more!)

"Yeah, I see old people like that on my route all the time. Growing old's a bitch. For some people."

(Wait for it ...)

"But not for me!"

Good ol' Uncle Jim. After he retired, he was the one who organized my parents' annual jaunts to Las Vegas. Seems they always wanted to go; seems he was the one who asked if that was so, why didn't they -- and when he put it like that, they had no answer. He would come to my collegiate Works o Art with my parents, and he would challenge me on my jejune public foolishness.

He died a few years ago, Alzheimer's. My aunt tells me it was horrible, and I believe her. She waved me off from visiting -- warned me that he wouldn't know me, and I wouldn't know him. So I hold his memory as he was, which is probly right. Because that way, he didn't grow old. And he would kick my hinder just like he used to if he thought for one second I was getting maudlin because of Starbucks, fergawdsakes.

So I believe I shall do something useful now; I believe he would expect that from me.

It's the thought that counts (tm)

If I was more organizized, I would be perfectly on top of all my obligations real and assumed; and would, among other things, have sent my perfectly charming nonsectarian winter obligatory shopping holiday acknowledgment cards out oh I'd say about 29 days ago. But I'm not, so I didn't: some stuff beyond our control had to happen (or not), some inspiration had to germinate (uh huh), and truth to tell I'm rapidly beyond unimpressed at the necessity of celebrating Christmas before the day itself. Our forebears had the right idea about waiting and preparing in darkness, and then celebrating like there was no tomorrow for a couple of weeks, stretching the celebration well into the new year. I note with displeasure today's appearance of the first Valentine's Day sales of the false spring.

But I did finish our family charming nonsectarian winter obligatory shopping holiday acknowledgment cards. How I love writing the letter; ditto adding to the list of card recipients. Can't say as I care for addressing the envelopes, deleting with sorrow a name of a terminally disappeared friend, or displaying my deteriorating penmanship on the innards; but I know that the handwritten parts are important. I know that thanks to Bill Gates' minions I can have the machine do the mailmerge thing and print out the barcodes so that the epistles will get to their domestic destinations about 6 hours sooner, the better to languish in somebody else's central post office; but the ier I get, the more I treasure the handmade edges of the stuff of our lives.

This year I noticed something at work: nobody received a signed corporate end o year acknowledgment o bidniss relationship nonsectarian winter shopping holiday acknowledgment card. Imprinted, yes; signed, no. Nor did we receive blank corporate yada yada cards so as to sign ourselves, insert into hand-addressed envelopes and run through the postage meter to speed away to those folks who become friends through the bidniss relationships. They were all outsourced. Probly have been for years.

I figured it out after spending a couple of hours trying to figure out what a New York law firm sent me a pound block of chocolate with their best wishes. I thought for a while that because my peripatetic job assignment had me mostly in the General Counsel's office (where I held the largely ceremonial role of satan, warming the chair as it were) that I received my chocolate bribe in the normal course of legal buidniss. The truth was out there after Googling long enough: they bought a mailing list that I was on. A couple of three years ago.

Well all righty then. When next I change careers and become a roid-free professional athlete who needs to establish to the penny the value of my contribution to the franchise, I'll make sure those guys are in the database. They'll receive a suitably thoughtful memento of my appreciation, courtesy of some folks in New Delhi who are also thankful for my trade, and toast our mutual healths with smoking bishop. Hopefully not a bishop I know.
Tomorrow the year ends. Hopefully not with a bang, probly with a whimper.

Silent night

Our family has seldom been able to attend church in a nice family unit bunch; one or more guyses has seen church as a fine place for making less than joyful noises unto the Lord while surreptitiously shoving a younger sibling or two, maintaining Keane-painting eyeballs o innocence all the while. The family motto on too many occasions morphs into "Who, me?" The solution is the double-shift approach to worship: Mom and Our Andrew the early risers take the early shift, Dad, Nan and Mikey the PM shift. J, although shrived, is still the heathen -- even as we type his lissome bellows two floors up waft unmusically through the walls, no doubt convincing our neighbors that perhaps it might be more prudent to put off parenthood another year or five.

This becomes problematic when scheduling for the holy days, the entomologic roots of holidays. We've fortunately moved a bit beyond responding to the great theological Why do we have to go to church again? with the equally great theological Because; Dad however tends to grump that scheduling and logistics are how we earn our daily bread, not how we live our daily lives and so we drift happily into the hardly great yet traditional Whoops, hurry up we're late trope. And so it came to scheduling shifts for Christmas Mass.

The home church offers the vigil Mass, the Midnight Mass, and two AM Masses Christmas morning. Keeping Nan and Mikey up past their bedtime is a strategy long-proven to be doubleplus unwise; best to let them do that themselves. The Christmas AM Masses potentially interfere with present unwrapping, can't willingly schedule that no no no. This leaves the vigil Mass, which is the poster child for the old architect saying (told me by a middle-aged architect) "Don't design the church for Christmas." This is the so-called Children's Mass, which means that it is the preferred Mass for every christened child for miles around. For the last three years, we have had preferred seats behind the organ pipe box; kind of like radio church in real space. This year, we decided that the Mass being licit no matter what or where so long as the priest is legit and the rubrics are followed, we the B Shift shall go to the Next Church Over, which has a later-evening non Children's Mass at an appropriate time in an appropriate nearby place.

The Next Church Over has a lovely little traditional church down the road aways, the site being the beginnings of the American Red Cross. It also has a not-quite-so-lovely big traditional Worship Center much closer in; the Worship Center can also be used for Pinewood Derbies, flea markets, high school proms, and if you brought in big enough electric service you could do a decent product roll-out for Microsoft if you wanted. No doubt it is from time to time, but for Mass it does have the right number of candles and an altar that appears more permanent than a folding cafeteria table. Smells and bells worship is available elsewhere.

Nan and Mikey were suitably impressed: padded chairs, not wooden pews! Carpeting (no pad, slab on grade, pile a sainted memory rather than a reality), not kneelers! Three-quarter round seating! And people aren't quiet and shushyful, like they are in Some Churches We Might Mention! And the choir is better, too -- they don't sound like old ladies (come to think of it, they don't look like old ladies, they look younger than you and Mom). Out the mouths o s. Dad, quite aware that his Meyer-Briggs places him among the J-est of the INTJs, smiles pleasantly and considers that catholic means universal, which implies bigger than puny humans. Then the servers and priest entered, and the fun began in earnest.

I had forgotten the traditional "Hey, wow that was great!" dialogue 'twixt the priest and the choir leader that follows the opening prayer, echoing the ancient stychomithia between Johnny and Doc; I had forgotten the traditional "Let's do that again!" invocation. I had forgotten confessional homiletics ("You know what we really think up here at Midnight Mass? What the hell am I doing in church at one o'clock in the morning!" Wacka wacka wacka). I had forgotten the second homily that comes right before the Eucharist, reprising the theme of the first homily in case we forgot. And I had blessedly forgot the padre's tambourine, hauled out to joyous congregational whoops and whanged arhythmically for the curtain call. Recessional. Whatever.

The guyses loved it. Can't wait to go back. They got donuts there, too.

You know, the people there are wonderful. We had more greetings from parishoners in our hour-or-so time there than we've had in seven years. There is great love and small-c communion there, no question. These folks love the liturgy they celebrate. There are families younger, way younger than us, eyes shining in the church like I've never seen. This seems Good. It's certainly a church, would certainly align easily with the churches that sponsor our scouting guyses, and certainly was a place we stopped on our way long ago while we searched for the road.

It's not our church. Sigh.