This is really just a personal reminiscence, and probably of little interest to most Zephyr readers. But it occurred to me recently that this is the first Christmas, where I am the only surviving member of my immediate family. My father died in 2009. My brother passed away two years ago, in December 2020, and my mother died in February at the age of 94. I’m the last Stiles standing. And of course my grandparents all left us decades ago.
While families have always managed to find something to argue about when pushed into confined places, it was certainly different for me a kid. .
When I think back on my childhood and those first ten years, it occurred to me that it was our grandparents — they were the real glue that kept the family connected. I grew up with all four of my grandparents, alive and relatively healthy, and all of them within five miles of our home. So we saw Grandma and Grandpa Montfort and Grandma and Grandpa Stiles on a regular basis. We had Sunday dinner with one or the other almost every week.
Holidays were always like family food festivals. In fact, for a decade, I would guess that Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and the 4th of July were all holidays in which attendance was mandatory. And none of us minded. We loved it.