This year, Number One and Number Two sons were spending the holidays with their in-laws. However, we’ve had K’s siblings and their offspring here at the beach house, as well as the usual family-less friends. All of which made for a group of about 30 – more than enough to make the house merry for a full week.
I woke at 8:00 this morning, feeling noticeably more clearheaded and more energetic than usual. Some of that improvement was due to having had a full eight hours of sleep rather than six or seven, which has, in recent years, become the norm for me.
But some of that improvement must have been due to my having drunk much less alcohol last night than usual – less than two ounces of rum. My “usual” – about 1,000 calories of alcohol a day – may seem excessive. I’m sure it would qualify me as alcoholic in some of the analytical diagnostics. But it never stopped me from putting in a full day of work – i.e., six to eight hours of “work” work, two to three hours of research and writing, and another hour or two of exercise. So “alcoholic” never felt like me.
Still… I remember that I had the same sense of improvement the last time I cut out or reduced my alcohol consumption. It’s not something I have a definite opinion about now, but it deserves to have some attention given to it.
Breakfast was served at 10:00 as usual, and in the usual Christmas Day manner – buffet-style in the kitchen with seating in the living room or dining room or at one of the tables outdoors. The menu was much like it has always been, leading off with K’s mouth-watering, once-a-year egg frittatas; sliced ham; refried mashed potatoes (my one specialty); a stack of maple-syrup-coated Canadian bacon; somebody’s Christmas casserole; cereals (for the kiddies); honey-flavored Greek yogurt; a cornucopia of fresh fruits; muffins and coffee cake; and bagels with lox and cream cheese.
The mood was holiday festive, the conversation cheerful. And for those in need, there were holiday quaffs and Christmas libations – sufficient to carry one into the new year.
Afterwards, came the first of three gift unwrappings (the first for the children, the next for the adults, and the last one, later, in private, for K and me). And after that, there were phone calls to siblings and cousins, stop-by visits from friends and neighbors, and pool time for the families with small children.
It was a beautiful clear day, the temperature in the low 70s. At about 4:00, some of us crossed the street to sit on the beach and watch the children, eager for more excitement, play in the surf. I brought a beach chair and a copy of a book I remembered having read and enjoyed many years ago: Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mortimer Adler. It wasn’t, admittedly, Christmas fare, but it was just what the doctor ordered. I spent a very pleasant hour reading the preface, introduction, and first chapter.
Back home as the sun was setting, I found the music room deserted, and opened my laptop to check on my email. There were, as always, about 200 new messages, most of which I was able to scan, sort, and discard or save for the following day. I did respond to the personal notes, though, including a thread of emails courtesy of my Myrtle Beach golf buddies. asking: “If Theodore Roosevelt were removed from the face of Mt. Rushmore, which president would you replace him with?”
The answers posted ranged from Franklin Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to Donald Trump. (That last one was from yours truly and succeeded in stirring the pot.) And that had led to nominations for a “Mt. Rushmore of Sports.” It had produced the usual suspects: Michael Jordan, Mohammad Ali, Babe Ruth, etc., etc. But while I was reading that, seven other “Mt. Rushmore” categories were suggested in a surprising range of subjects. Here they are, along with my nominations for each:
Inventors/Scientists: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein
Philosophers: Aristotle, Confucius, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke
Humanitarians: Marcus Aurelius, Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther King, and Elon Musk
Comedians (American): Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Dave Chappelle
Novelists (English-Language): Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Vladimir Nabokov
Poets (English-Language): William Shakespeare, W.H. Auden, W.B. Yeats, and T.S. Eliot
Dramatists (English-Language): William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, and Tom Stoppard
Painters (European): Hieronymus Bosch, Caravaggio, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso
Modern Dancers: Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine, Fred Astaire, and Michael Jackson
If you’re sitting around during the holidays with relatives and nothing left to talk about, try challenging them to come up with their own “Mt. Rushmore” categories… and let me know what happens.
