Christmas Day

Merry Christmas Everyone!
I suspect that most of you are spending this day with your families and friends. Later on I will be doing the same. Not much in the way of family, but I will visit my son at 2:00, and at 5:00 I will have dinner with friends. We’ll play games, take pictures, laugh and have fun. I’ve actually done more this holiday season than I’ve done in the past few years. I’m just not allowing myself to back out of plans. It’s easy enough to do . . . . back out that is. I attribute part of it to being an introvert, and part of it to being a seasonal thing and then there are lots of other complicated parts that make up who I am. But I know that it’s just not good for me, and it’s not the right thing to do. I’m trying hard to be a better person.

The best part of this whole holiday season for me was being able to be a part of making this Christmas a very special one for someone close to me. I wrote once before about my friend Ricky. In case you don’t remember him, click on his name. It’s a link to a short entry from 2001 about him and his very rare and incurable disease. He’s now 22, and confined to a wheelchair. When he told his mom all he wanted for Christmas was a laptop my heart sank. I knew they couldn’t afford it. A friend and I decided that somehow we had to make it happen. I even wrote the DiaryMaster, asking him if he might be doing any charity work over the holiday. I gave him my email address, hoping to hear one way or the other. Ya know?!? Yes or no would have been nice. What would it have taken to set up a paypal account? Oh well. Jamie and I ended up taking a huge leap of faith and fronting the whole amount, and then running a fundraiser in town after we ordered the laptop. We didn’t get enough money, but we did get some, and any help is better than none. We’d like to help out also with getting a phone line installed so that he’s not using the home phone line.

Last night when Ricky opened the Christmas card, showing him a picture of a brand new laptop he was in total shock. His mom and dad both cried. What better gift could you ever give yourself? I think I drove all the way home with a smile on my face.

“What you keep to yourself you lose, what you give away, you keep forever.”–Munthe