h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sunday, December 23

Morning was taken up by some routine laundry work: three loads at
a nearby laundromat. Afternoon was quite different: caroling for three
hours at a couple of nursing homes in Natick, Massachusetts. I met with fifteen or twenty other members of my choral group at a friend's house in Natick. This was an ad hoc group, composed of anyone who could make it. Balance was weird. Last year's caroling group had multiple sopranos, altos, and tenors,. but no basses. This year, we had two basses, two tenors, two sopranos, and at least six altos.

We rehearsed for half an hour, then piled into four cars for the trip to the first nursing home [I called it "Carol pooling"]. This was the same place we sang at last year, when sixteen carolers, a nursing home administrator, and a dog were stuck on an elevator for thirty minutes. It took two firemen from the station down the street to extricate us. We learned our lesson this year: don't overcrowd the elevator. There are four floors to this nursing home. We sang on every floor. The elevators behaved themselves.

Then it was on to the second nursing home. When we got there, the powers that be ushered us into a large room filled with residents and informed us that they expected a 45-minute concert. There wasn't 45 minutes worth of music in the folders we had been given. In fact, many of the arrangements in that book were so weird that we disregarded them and sang our own harmonies. The last four pages were just lyrics sheets, with no notes. Heaven help anyone who didn't know the tunes for some of them! But we sang the songs we had, and it lasted 25
or 30 minutes, and our alto-heavy sound worked pretty well.

After the caroling, I dashed over to a bookstore and bought gift certificates for my brother and a nephew, then went home for food and some rest.

Monday. December 24

This was fish-or-cut bait day for me. I dashed around doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. Many other shoppers were doing the same thing. I spent much of the afternoon wrapping presents and reading emails from worried relatives who had been hearing about a snowstorm scheduled to hit late on Christmas Eve and continue for about 12 hours. They thought I should immediately drive to my brother's house for the big Christmas family gathering rather than waiting until the morning of Christmas Day. I was supposed to pick up my father on the way [he lives halfway between my house and my brother's house], but my
sister was offering to bring him instead. My father wasn't worried about the storm. He had considerable expertise in weather predicting. He preferred to ride with me on Christmas Day. I called him, and he said the storm would be minimal.

Tuesday, Christmas Day

Dad was right about the driving conditions. I set out a little before 10:00, and was at my father's house less than an hour later. We left soon after that, and got to my brother's house in plenty of time. There was no snow on any of the roads. There was very little traffic. We ate marvelous food: sweet potato soup, standing rib [a type of beef roast], scalloped potatoes, asparagus, Yorkshire Pudding, fruit salad, grilled winter vegetables, plum pudding, and pecan pie. Between dinner and dessert, we asked my nephew and grand niece to open the presents, and then had Yankee swap. Around four o'clock, my father and I got in my car for the return trip. We stopped on the way at my mother's nursing home for a nice visit. She was eating supper when we arrived, so we sat in her room until she was finished. My brother had brought a poinsettia for her room, and I had brought her a small artificial tree with ornaments that had the names of most of her family members. She liked those, but her favorite gift was a shawl that my sister had brought the day before. After visiting with my mother, I dropped my father at his house and then drove back to my house in Boston.

[To be continued]