family, Health

A Comedy of…?

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I think that line is usually finished with “errors”. A comedy of errors. Though I don’t remember exactly why or where that comes from. Maybe Shakespear. No matter.

That’s what yesterday morning was: a comedy of something. Problems. Troubles. Difficulties. Setbacks. I have to go back a few days to set this up—which I will try to do succinctly.

Lynda has had heart troubles for a while, mainly a-fib. At the same time she had high blood pressure and took a medication for that, or maybe it was two medications. One time she blacked out while walking the neighbors’ dog and fell face-first on their driveway.

When she was in the hospital in April 2020 for her burst appendix, her heart acted up. They worked on meds for that, eventually figured she needed an ablation, had that, and seemed a little better. Her episodes of a-fib slowly became fewer, less frequent, and less severe. But they still came, even more than a year after the procedure.

Then Sat night/Sun morning, she had a severe episode of her heart racing then stopping. I don’t mean stop racing, but stop all together. That kept her up in the night, but she was better by morning. Then it happened again on Sunday afternoon and on Monday sometime.  Talks with the staff of her primary doc and cardiologist brought different answers. When it happened again Tuesday as we were about to eat supper, we went to the ER at our closest urgent care facility.

They were able to get an EKG just as an episode took place. Sure enough, we could see speeding up followed by missing beat. They decided to admit her to the main hospital, and took her by ambulance. After a few hours of monitoring, they decided she needed a pacemaker. But that couldn’t be done till the next morning, Wednesday, and would be followed by 24 hours of observation in the hospital.

I spent the night with her Tuesday, rushed home Wednesday to see to my meds, brush my teeth, get a few things; got back to the hospital literally two minutes before they wheeled her over to the OR. As the day went on she seemed ok and would likely be released on Thursday as planned. So I went home around 9 p.m. Wednesday.

That brings us to Thursday morning. Through a Messenger post, I learned that her heart was still racing some, making her sick, causing her to vomit and not keep her med down. I gathered the things that would be needed for her discharge, got in the car and—it wouldn’t start.

What now? It didn’t sound like a dead battery. I called AAA for a tow. Right as I was talking to their automated system, Lynda called to tell me what was happening with her. So I didn’t really hear what the auto system said, just that someone was coming and would be there in an hour. Lynda thought her discharge was still possible.

Great. My wife is sick in the hospital and I can’t make the 20-mile drive to see her. Then I remembered that our old minivan was back in running condition. Barely, but I could take it to get her. Except, AAA was on their way. And it had started snowing. One thing not working on the old minivan was the windshield wipers. No, I couldn’t take that.

Who could I call? Several people in church would help, if available. Maybe the shop would give me a loaner, though last time I needed one they didn’t have one. Hmmm. This was a major stress point for me.

Then things turned around. AAA got here, tested the battery, said it was bad, jumped it, and it started right up. It was a nearly 6-year-old battery. I drove it the four miles to the Dodge dealership and they got me right in. I drove back home, took care of a few things, and headed to the hospital.

It turned out Lynda’s pacemaker was working properly, but those gadgets are for the purpose of stimulating the heart when it beats too slowly or when it skips a beat When her heart started racing, it was also skipping a beat and the pacemaker kicked in. They control the proper beating of the heart with a combination of the pacemaker and medicine.

Except she was nauseous and couldn’t keep the medicine down and they didn’t want to re-start the IV to give the med intravenously. Problem upon problem.

Eventually, as the day wore on, she got a shot of anti-nausea medicine. She felt a little better as that kicked in and was able to keep her next heart pill down. By evening, she was much better and they were ready, not to release her, but move her out of intensive care. I went ahead and went home. As soon as I walked in the door, the hospital called. No, nothing was wrong. They told me they had finally moved her to a different room.

What a day it was. Problem upon problem. Except, one business adage is that there are no problems, only opportunities, right? Sure didn’t feel like it at the time. Her heart racing to 170 beats per minute. The car not starting. The nausea. The despondency that caused. The hours ticking by with no apparent solution coming. None of that felt like opportunities.

Our children called, which helped ease Lynda’s mental condition. A good friend from church, a woman whose husband was ill and had just been released from the same hospital the day before, called and prayed with her on the phone. Lynda’s brother called a couple of times. And, through social media, she was able to see an outpouring of love, prayer, and support.

Problems make you stronger, right? Perhaps so, but I never want to go through a day of problems like that again. Maybe some day we will look back on yesterday and be able to say it was a comedy of problems and laugh about it.

Maybe, maybe not. I just hope we don’t go through anything like that again.

Bible study, Christianity, Writing

From Fog to Sun

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Dateline Sunday, 8 January 2023

Today began with the temperature 10 or 15 degrees below yesterday’s low. The caused a thick fog to be about, so thick that I didn’t feel like driving to church on the high-speed interstate that is the quickest route. So I went through town on the slower roads. The closer I got to the church, the thicker the fog. Yet, going slowly and having a well-marked road, as well as enough traffic to see the road ahead of me clearly.

I’m hoping that, by the end of the year, this will not be the only Bible study in my bibliography.

Thus, the drive to church was easy. I had to be there a bit early due to a schedule change in the new year and a desire that all the adult Sunday school teachers be in the lobby at certain times today. I had to take my computer upstairs first, set it up, and log into the Zoom account we are using for those who can’t come to class. Except I couldn’t log in and had to hunt someone down to get the 6-digit code to log in. Eventually I logged in, we held the class, and the new lesson series for the new year started well.

Church was good, except for the announcement that our minister of music is leaving for another church. So at present we are without a pastor, soon to be without a music minister, and have a temporary, parttime youth minister. But we will carry on. Spirts are good, workers available, and the cause will continue.

Upon exiting church, I saw that the fog had lifted. Bright sunshine and still cool temperatures were invigorating.

This afternoon, after a small lunch, I went to the sunroom to read. I got some read in a writers magazine and in an essay related to some Bible study lessons I’m writing, got them done, and fell asleep. I was in a bit of a sleep deficit due to my wife’s heart episode last night (no details required) and getting up early to study my lesson. After that. Lynda and I went for a two-mile walk, then it was reading and supper.

We watched some TV, including Midsummer Murders and All Creatures Great and Small. To multi-task while watching, I worked on the Bible study series I want to write at least part of this year. It’s a multi-volume series. In February we’ll start with Part 5 of the six-year Lenten/Easter series. One volume is about 95% done, and another somewhere around 40%. But, as I’ve worked on writing the book form of Parts 3 and 4, I’ve come to see that the way the series was broken up to teach didn’t make sense in book form. So I played around with it and felt a lot of fog—lack of a clear path on how to structure the split of the books.

I finally settled on dividing the series into eight separate books. What we taught the first year really needs to be two book volumes, and what we taught the third year needs to be two volumes. That, I think, would make it easier for people to use for a series of Bible studies.

However, it’s still a little foggy to me, this lesson series, and so I have to call that a tentative decision. I’ll have to perhaps work with it a little more. Maybe it could be seven volumes, not eight. I have some work to do on that.

But at least I made a little progress. The eight volumes will work (and, I should say, these are not meant to be big books: maybe 35,000 to 40,000 words each). Perhaps by morning the fog will have lifted and I’ll have better clarity on the issue. I hope so.

Bible study, Documenting America, letters, The Forest Throne, Writing

2023 Goals

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A few days ago, I gave some January goals. I did that before I had given a lot of thought to 2023 as a whole. I’ve since been able to do that, and have come up with some goals for the year. Here they are.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study.
  • Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution.
  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to go, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done.

Since these are goals covering a full year, and since way leads on to way along this path through the woods, I reserve the right to change these as the months go by. Possibly there will be updates. If not, look for a post in late December 2023 as to how I did in 2023 relative to these goals.

Bible study, books, The Forest Throne, Writing

2022 Recap

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This was one of my two new publications in 2022.

In terms of my writing career, what can I say about 2022? It was productive, but not overly so. That seems to be the best I can say.

As 2022 started, I finished the first draft of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel, and was ready for beta readers and to figure out what to do about a cover. Also finished, and not yet published, was our church’s Centennial book. I had finished it—all I could see to do on it—in October, and was waiting on proofreading and editing. So two books were essentially ready to go to publication.

While waiting for those to projects to grind through to publication, I began writing a Bible study. Our Sunday school class has been studying Holy Week, during the run-up to Easter. It is a multi-year effort. In a few weeks we will start our fifth part of this, the Roman trail. I had no intentions of developing this into a published Bible study, but in early 2022 said, “Why not?”

I began with what we studied in 2021, the Last Supper. That was our third year. I made some progress on it, then came the time to teach the fourth year, Gethsemane and arrest of Jesus and the night trials. I found writing it as I was teaching it much easier than trying to write what I had taught in prior years.

I count sales of these in the year’s total, even though it wasn’t a royalty producing project.

I worked on the current year and the previous year simultaneously. By the time the end of April rolled around, I had the current year’s mostly done, the previous year’s about 40 percent done, and a plan for the entire series. Although it is a six-year study, I came to see it should have been a seven-year study and that the published books should be divided into smallish seven volumes.

That’s when other things got in the way of writing. That included the three special projects, as well as a number of things around the house and health concerns. Writing lagged behind. Publication went forward, however. The Centennial book was published in April and seemed to be well accepted. TNSTATT was published in June. On-line sales are nonexistent, but in person sales have happened, with much effort and pushing on my part.

Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on.

In July I began work on the next book in The Forest Throne series, titled The Key To Time Travel. After delays of putting a major effort into it, I knuckled down in December and finished it. It is now waiting on beta readers, as well as for me to edit it. Early chapters have passed muster with my critique group.

The Kuwait Letters book is done. This is the final cover—before the typo was fixed. Now done, distributed, and un-published for now.

Two other publications in 2022 were letters collections. One of these was the letters with my good friend, Gray Boden, as a tribute to him after his passing in 2020. I suspect this book will soon be un-published, as it actually includes items for which I don’t have permission of the writer (i.e. copyright holder) to publish. The other was the collection of letters from our Kuwait years. Copies of his have been obtained by all family members that want them and has been unpublished. These were not really commercial ventures, but took time away from what could have been time on writing and marketing books.

I took part in three author events near the end of the year, and spoke three times to the letter writers society I’m a part of. I wasn’t aware of any other events I could have participated in. I’m hoping 2023 will see more of them.

I wound up selling 279 books, my highest year ever. Without the Centennial book (which I count as sales for me even though it was a non-commercial venture), I would have been a little behind 2021 sales.

So I enter 2023 with a completed, unpublished project, two works-in-progress and another soon to start. Here’s hoping and praying that 2023 will be more productive than 2022 was.

Bible study, goals, The Forest Throne, Writing

December Progress, January Goals

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It’s a quiet morning at Blackberry Oaks. Ten people in the house and, at 7:19 a.m., I’m the only one up—unless some are up and quiet in the basement. It has been a good post-Christmas celebration, one that will continue for a few more days.

So I’m going to give a somewhat quick progress and goals post. I may come back with a follow-up post later, when I’ve had more time to think about it. First, how did I do relative to my December goals?

  • Finish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I managed to do this. Added the last words on Dec. 16. About time to edit it.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. Yes, did this, with real posts, not just fillers.
  • Attend three writers’ meetings. I may even slip in a fourth. Just three this month. I decided to to forego the fourth.
  • Read at least some of the Bible study I’ve set aside. I’m going to read it for my own morning devotions. Yes, I’ve been doing this. I’m now up to the fifth chapter, out of seven. Each chapter is divided into seven parts, providing a daily reading for those who want to do it that way. That’s how I’m reading it right now. It has been a blessing to me as I read. Of course, the writer/editor in me can’t help but fix typos as I’m reading for devotions. Occupational hazard, I’m afraid.

Now, to make a few modest goals for January, 2023.

  • Edit The Key To Time Travel, at least once and hopefully twice.
  • Finish one pass through A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 4. If time allows (which it should), make a true editorial reading of it. Also, write whatever introduction is needed, and whatever ending makes sense.
  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend four writers meetings this month. The one I sometimes make, sometimes miss, is a lunch brainstorming session, which I plan to go to.
  • Work on at least one other part of A Walk Through Holy Week, probably Part 3, which is already well along.
  • Plan out the next part of A Walk Through Holy Week. I will be teaching that in February through April, and last year I found it was easier to write the current part than one from a previous year.

That’s plenty. I’ll review these over the next week, after things calm down here, and see if this makes sense.

fiction, The Forest Throne, Writing

The Key To Time Travel

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I don’t have a cover for the new book yet. Before long I’ll get that process started.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was writing fast and furiously this month on The Key To Time Travel. I’ve been working on this since around July 10th, when grandson Ezra and I put the first words on the computer. I suggested a way to begin it, and he gave me some ideas of what to put in the prologue. In a few days I managed to complete the Prologue, Chapter 1, and some of Chapter 2. Ezra and granddaughter Elise read and approved it at that point.

Due to the several special projects I had over the summer, I made little progress on the book. But I kept thinking about the plot and how I would get Eddie into trouble with the forest throne, a.k.a. a time portal. I worked on it some in October and got it up to around five or six thousand words. Again, there it sat. Again, I pondered the plot even as I was busy with other things.

As I reported recently, I got into a good production rhythm after Thanksgiving, and wrote and wrote. The words flew from my mind to the keyboard and screen. December 19 came, and I wrote “The End”—figuratively, that is.  Soon I will start the editing process, as well as look for beta readers.

So what’s the story about? Somehow I need to describe the plot without giving the story away. It’s about Eddie Wagner’s experience with the forest throne. As the second of four children, he is anxious to ‘one-up’ on his brother. He knows enough about the throne from older brother Ethan to know what it does and how to work it. He needs the blue and orange pegs. He knows which one does what, and that the ends are marked designating ‘past’ and ‘future’.

But did Grandpa destroy the pegs? Eddie gets to spend an extra week at his grandparents’ Ozarks home after the rest of the family goes home. He has a long conversation with Grandpa and learns things that Ethan didn’t reveal. Grandpa also said that he couldn’t destroy the pegs, and that he didn’t yet want to throw them away.

Eddie makes up his mind to search his grandparents’ big house and find the pegs, then go to the throne and send himself into the future. He will stay there just long enough to get something to prove he was in the future, then he would go back to his time and show Ethan how he himself had the greater adventure.

As you can imagine, it won’t work out the way Eddie wants it to. He takes the pegs, one sawed in half by his grandfather, then sneaks down into the hollow to the throne while his grandparents are busy. He uses the pegs the way they are meant to be used, and…

…well, it just didn’t work out the way he expected. If I say anymore, it will give the plot away. You’ll just have to wait till the book is published, buy a copy, and read it.

Christmas, miscellaneous, poetry

In Search of a Metaphor

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It is very cold today, two years before Christmas day. Perhaps some of the snow will stick around and we’ll have our first white Christmas in over ten years.

Last night was cold, probably -6°F, with the wind chill around -25°F. That’s a little colder than the coldest day here in the average winter season, which is more like 5°F. And it’s only December. Lots of winter days and nights to come.

Despite that, the house felt warm last night. Our new (as of August) heat pump kept cranking. Once I turned the heat down to 65° for nighttime, it kept the temperature there without having to resort to emergency heat. When I got up this morning just before 7 a.m., I walked around the house a little before dressing for the day and felt warm.

Our Christmas cacti are all blooming, both upstairs and down. They know the season even without us doing much with them except occasional watering.

Then again, for some reason I was hot last night. It’s -6° out and I’m hot. I got up and sat in my reading chair with a light blanket over me until I cooled down a little, then went back to bed. Now, down in The Dungeon, where I keep the basement thermostat cooler than upstairs, I feel just a little chilly, as I like it. I can just see a little of outside through the blinds, where the one vertical slat is missing. Tree branches are not swaying, so it appears the wind has tapered off. I see snow on the ground on the far side of the hollow from the 2 inches we got yesterday. And, just off to the right, I see the bright horizon where the sun is about to break over. We haven’t seen much of the sun for three days or so.

The tree may not be fully decorated, but at least the Christmas village is up. But only because after last Christmas we left it up, toys added by the grandkids and all.

Upstairs, our artificial Christmas tree is up and the lights are on. Today, Lynda and I will work together to add the ornaments, then clean up the boxes and storage bin. Might even vacuum, though that is more likely a tomorrow task. I wouldn’t even have put it up except for the family coming in a couple of days after Christmas.

In all of this, I’ve been searching for a metaphor about Christmas and life and maybe writing, but no metaphor comes to me.  Alas, just as poetry no longer comes to me. Maybe that’s because I’ve been working mainly on prose for the last 18 years. Or maybe it’s because I wasn’t much of a poet to begin with.

A metaphor of the Christmas season, a metaphor of the start of winter, a metaphor about writing. Seems like something should come to me.

Well, I will end this, my last post before Christmas.  Be safe everyone. Remember Jesus on this celebration of his birth. And as Tiny Tim said, “God bless us, everyone.”

memories, miscellaneous

Changes in the Old Neighborhood

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This was our house. Note the magnolia tree on the left. It’s twice as big as it was when we lived there. It seems to be marked for preservation.

One day a couple of weeks ago, Lynda and I were in Bentonville, we decided to drive out by our old home on NE “J” Street. A ranch home on 7 acres, we sold that in 2002 and moved to Bella Vista. We have rarely driven by the old house over the years, and it had been several years since the last time. So we were ready to see how it had changed.

To our surprise, we saw it had been demolished! Yes, the home we lived in from 1991 to early 2002 was a pile of rubble. We were so shocked that we didn’t think to pull off and stop. Plus, it was starting to get dark.  Therefore, we went by it again a day ago. A trackhoe was in the process of loading the rubble into a dump truck. What we hadn’t seen before, the house to the south of ours was also gone. The house to the north of us was still there, but appeared to be vacant. What was going on?

We pulled into the driveway to the back five acres the owners after us had put in. We also drove back to the house on the back acreage and discovered that the house back there was gone. Four houses on 21 acres of land. What was going on?

Another house used to be across the field behind the row of pine trees, which were planted just before we moved to this house in 1991.

Looking at the County GIS site, 14 of those acres are owned by what appears to be a land developer. It appears it’s going to become a subdivision. Or could it be going to condominiums or townhouses? A sign for a public hearing was laying on the ground. Possibly I’ll contact the City and see what it’s going to be. Or, perhaps I can just go to a website.

But do I really care that much? Well, this was the house our children spent the most time at before they hit adulthood. They both went on to college while living at this house. They’ll get to see it when they are here before the end of the year. So yes, I do care. The house was built in 1970. So it’s only a little over 50 years old. The house I grew up in in Cranston RI was built in 1919, and it’s still there, still occupied and, last time I saw it, in 2015, was changed only in color and loss of the front evergreens.

But that was a stable neighborhood whereas Bentonville is a rapidly growing city. The property backs up to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The 5 acre parcel two lots to the north is now owned by Crystal Bridges, and the large house at the back of it appears to be an office of some kind.

Not only is the neighborhood changing, the world is changing very fast around me. The culture is changing. I’ve kind of purposely absented myself from the current culture, such things as the music. Nowhere is that more evident than the music sung in church for Christmas. So different than what we sang until just a few years ago.

There’s not much about modern music I like, though I suppose without partaking of it I have no basis for saying that.

I think I’m rambling now. The house is gone, and the culture I loved is mostly gone. The world moves on and changes just like the neighborhood did.

Forgive my ramblings. It’s kind of hard to see the house you used to live in now being a pile of rubble being loaded onto a dump truck.

Christmas, memories

A Christmas Memory: When our kids were young

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I don’t think this was a Christmas photo of Dad and his four grandkids, but it’s a good one.

Most of the Christmas memories I’ve posted had to do with my childhood years and how the family I grew up in celebrated Christmas. A day or two ago, I came upon another memory, but from the time when our children were young.

It was either 1983 or 1984. In ’83, we were newly home from Saudi Arabia. We flew into the US around Dec 15, left our kids with my dad in Cranston, RI, and flew to Asheboro, NC to house hunt in advance of our move there. Lynda flew back to RI Dec 23, and me on Dec 24, if I remember correctly. Christmas that year was celebrated at my brother’s house in Snug Harbor. Our sister, Norma, flew in Christmas morning, surprising all but my brother.

Or, it might have been in 1984. That year we drove from NC to RI for Christmas. I don’t remember if Norma came that year, but the rest of the party and the location was the same. Looking back at the age of the kids, it’s hard to tell which year it was. I believe that beginning in 1985 we stayed in NC for Christmas, so it had to have been 83 or 84.

Our two kids and my brother’s two boys put on a “pageant” for the adults, I think before Christmas supper, which would have been early evening. As I recall, our son Charles was the instigator/organizer of it. The pageant was merely singing Christmas songs, the more common ones that the kids knew. But the highlight was the opening. The children came out, oldest to youngest, and introduced themselves. It went like this.

Edward said, “I’m Mr. Todd.”

Charles said, “I’m Mr. Todd.”

Christopher said, “I’m Mr. Todd.”

Sara said, “I’m Mrs. Todd.”

I remember Dad looking in anticipation as to how Sara would introduce herself, and she said Mrs. instead of Miss, causing great laughter in the adults.

The pageant was good. The kids forgot the words to the songs, or sang the wrong song, or the wrong combination of kids came out from the bedroom—which served as the offstage—to the living room to sing. At one point Charles became frustrated with something that went wrong, or someone who didn’t come on stage when they were supposed to, and Charles blurted out, “We can’t get a d——d thing done!” Again, causing much laughter.

Later in the evening, after dinner, the kids got a little boisterous. I remember my nephews’ older cousin, John, was also there. Dad got tired of the noise, or pretended to get tired of the noise. My dad was a naturally kind-hearted soul who put on a pretense of being gruff most of the time, especially with his four grandkids. The noise got to the point where he said, loudly and gruffly, “All right, you boys. Out to the sun porch for ten minutes of silence!”

The four boys dutifully followed Dad from the kitchen, where they had been cutting up, through the living room to the sunroom. The boys showed no excitement. But there, behind the boys, was little Sara, also going out to the sunroom for “ten minutes of silence.” She had an excited look on her face and was obviously looking forward to what she thought would be a fun time.

As I recall, silence reigned in the house for the next ten minutes, excepting for whatever conversation the other adults were engaged in. The kids obeyed their grandfather (the cousin also obeying).

Anyhow, that’s the memory. Nothing special in a way, but very special in other ways. I tried to get my grandkids to do five minutes of silence out in the sunroom one year. It didn’t work. But Dad got the job done.

Christianity, Christmas, family

Christmas Memories: Church

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The Epiphany was less elaborately decorated than this church, but the decorations seemed sufficient and appropriate.

In a number of past posts in Decembers previous, I shared Christmas memories. I had thought of doing another one of those posts this year, but am not sure what to write about. I’ve covered such things as the way we did our wrapping paper, how we bought and decorated the Christmas tree, the idea of progressive decorating, and the candy house. What else is there to write about?

I’m writing this on Sunday evening. Today we had an excellent service, the guest speaker being Dr. Mark Lindstrom, our former pastor and now district superintendent. Then our adult Sunday school class had its annual Christmas party, something we hadn’t had for a couple of years due to the pandemic.

Church growing up in Cranston, Rhode Island, meant services at the Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal church. Our church was more English Catholic than Protestant. We attended Christmas morning when we were young, but I remember the year we were first old enough to attend Midnight Mass. That would have been when my brother was around 7 or 8 I would guess. I remember it was a normal work night for Dad, so Mom’s parents came from Providence to get us and take us to church.

I remember the church was nicely decorated with garlands, wreathes, and votive candles on the ledge of each stained-glass window down each side of the sanctuary. The decorations were not as lavish as churches put up now, but they seemed appropriate to us. I guess I ought to say to me, as I can no longer ask other family members about it.

The processional was “O Come All Ye Faithful”. That was different than the processional for morning service, which was “Sing, Oh Sing This Blessed Morn”. But that song wouldn’t have been appropriate for a nighttime service.

About 3/4 of the way through the service, we sang a slow version of “Silent Night”. On the second verse, the house lights slowly started to lower. By the third verse they were out completely, and only light was from the candles on the altar and the votive candles. I remember how beautiful it seemed. A few years later, when I was an acolyte at Midnight Mass, I was the one to control the lights, and was quite nervous about doing it right.

When mass was over, many families exchanged presents. I don’t remember us doing that. What I do remember is that Dad was at the back of the church. The Providence Journal let him off early from his shift, and he came straight to the church.

Once we began attending Midnight Mass, Sunday morning became a little different, but that’s a memory for another day.

Author | Engineer