Christmas Cheer

Today is Christmas Eve. We stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of last minute items--hot chocolate mix, marshmallows, half & half--in anticipation of our Christmas sojourners. We stepped in line behind a lovely lady with a cart full of food. She invited us to go ahead.

"Are you sure?" we asked.

"Absolutely!" She replied, "I have five kids at home and this is the closest thing to peace and quiet I have had all day."

We laughed and I continued the conversation, "How old?"

" I have a twelve, a ten an eight and twin toddlers," she smiled.

"You have some built in babysitting, don't you." I added.

"They are really good," she was beaming now. It was obvious to me that this woman was a mom who was a real Home-Maker.

"May I ask a question," I pressed on. "Do you get some strange looks when people find out you have five kids?"

"People look at me and say 'You poor thing!' But I think it's great." She was still smiling.

"I think it's great too. Merry Christmas," and we parted.

There are moments when you know you are in the presence of someone special; someone with influence and strength. Too often we look to political leaders, business people or entertainers for inspiration. Tonight I was inspired by a woman with whom I shared a brief conversation. I saw in her a person creating an environment for her children for them to grow into people with the opportunity to be like her. In a very real way she is shaping the future by the sheer joy evident in her presence.

The Cousinette Epistles Volume 5: Oh Wow! Oh Wow! Oh Wow!

I turned 60 this year. My life is busier than ever and filled with the joy of children and grandchildren that never cease to bring a joy to my heart that is difficult to describe. In all that, my thoughts turn often to my dad, mother and sister who are no longer with us. I miss them.

I don't necessarily have anything to say to them. I don't know that they have anything left to tell me. Their absence from this earth has left a vacuum in me. This Christmas Eve, I remember them. I think of their lives, their trials, their joys and their legacy, and honor them. They were not heroes. They were not famous. They were just good people, loved by their families and friends and remembered fondly.

With that in mind, I share this essay by Peggy Noonan from today's Wall Street Journal. It gives me hope.

Your Crazy Uncle

Jobs, Thatcher and the Force of Life by Peggy Noonan WSJ 12.23.2011

The Apple founder's final words sound an awful lot like an expression of awe.

The great words of the year? "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

They are the last words of Steve Jobs, reported by his sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, who was at his bedside. In her eulogy, a version of which was published in the New York Times, she spoke of how he looked at his children "as if he couldn't unlock his gaze." He'd said goodbye to her, told her of his sorrow that they wouldn't be able to be old together, "that he was going to a better place." In his final hours his breathing was deep, uneven, as if he were climbing.

"Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve's final words were: 'OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.'"

The caps are Simpson's, and if she meant to impart a sense of wonder and mystery she succeeded. "Oh wow" is not a bad way to express the bigness, power and force of life, and death. And of love, by which he was literally surrounded.

I wondered too, after reading the eulogy, if I was right to infer that Jobs saw something, and if so, what did he see? What happened there that he looked away from his family and expressed what sounds like awe? I thought of a story told by a friend, whose grown son had died, at home, in a hospice. The family was ringed around his bed. As Robert breathed his last an infant in the room let out a great baby laugh as if he saw something joyous, wonderful, and gestured toward the area above Robert's head. The infant's mother, startled, moved to shush him but my friend, her mother, said no, maybe he's just reacting to . . . something only babies see.

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Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Anyway I sent Ms. Simpson's eulogy to a number of people and spoke to some of them, and they all had two things in common in terms of their reaction. They'd get a faraway look, and think. And if they had a thought to share they did it with modesty. No one said, "I think I can guess what he saw," "I know who he saw," or "Believe me, if he saw anything it was the product of the last, disordered sparks of misfiring neurons."

They were always modest, reflective. One just said, "Wow."

Modesty when contemplating death is a good thing.

When words leave people silent and thinking they are powerful words. Steve Jobs' last words were the best thing said in 2011.