Columbus OH

'Tis the day after Christmas. The Lindner family must report a very untraditional but deeply gratifying holiday.

It seems like the Lindners observed almost none of the traditions of past Christmases. More honestly, they didn't get any of the traditional preparations started, much less completed. The unaddressed cards still sit in a large basket in the living room underneath Bobbi's hospital bed, which she no longer uses but hasn't been able to give away. There is no traditional Christmas letter to write since this blog does the job far better. None of the plastic trees stored in the basement were brought upstairs. No lights were installed indoors or out (admittedly, the family orthopedic problems made that unwise).

However, there was the Christmas music. A couple of weeks ago Lew brought all of his and Bobbi's CD's into the 21st century by ripping them to a hard drive as MP3 files. Ever since he has played selections from this trove impulsively.

Not only was there no tree, but there were few gifts to to under one. The week before Christmas the Lindners each received four new tires for their cars (actually, Lew's tires were for the Airstream), so they weren't going to give each other any additional gifts.

The holiday actually began on Christmas Eve, when Bobbi's closest friend from church asked them to join in their family dinner - as has been their custom the past few years.

Christmas day dawned bright but not early for the 2 geriatrics. They left quickly for 11 o'clock church, hanging around to gossip with the priest for nearly an hour afterwards.

Back at the house, Bobbi and Lew unwrapped their remaining gifts. Bobbi's church friend, Bobbi's brother Pete and his wife, and the eldest son in Florida provided the only gifts for them to unwrap on Christmas day. But this did not result in any sort of deprivation, because the gifts had been chosen very carefully to match Bobbi's and Lew actual needs/wants/desires, rather than some conventional "gift" item. Bobbi's friend gave Lew a small statuette of St. Francis (whom Lew greatly admires) and Bobbi a hand-turned walnut bowl, a sweater, and a fruit cake. Pete and his wife gave Lew biographical compositions for his family history collection, and Bobbi a book on meditation. Eldest son Scott and his wife gave Lew a DVD dubbing of some old family recordings that had been made in 1971 on open-reel tapes, and preserved all these years. They gave Bobbi a bunch of romance books, and a meditating fountain. They also gave Bobbi and Lew each a tongue-in-cheek bright red T-shirt with a large wolf head on the back (one of Scott's parishioners gave them away as promotions for his restaurant).

The rest of the day was devoted to long-distance calls to a variety of relatives.

Now they only need to get on the stick and get those delinquent cards out.