Late on Christmas morning, before the influx of family began to arrive, I took a shower. After I stepped out, I found this spider standing still on the shower curtain. I do not like to have spiders in the house, nor do I like to kill them. When I find a spider in the house between breakup and freezeup, I catch it and take it outside.
It seems cruel to do this in the winter, so in the winter, I apologize to whatever spider I find. "I am sorry, spider," I say. "I do not wish to harm you, but I just can't allow spiders to overwhelm my house." Then I will kill it.
When I looked at this spider, one word came into my mind: "Chooo'weet!"
I could not kill it. It just simply was not in me to do. I dried myself with a towel, got dressed, left the spider in peace right where you see it and went out to greet family members as they arrived.
Jobe arrived with his mom brandishing a copy of the Anchorage Daily News. Whose picture do you think was in it...? Look close... heck, you don't even have to look that close... it's Jobe! Second from left on top, a crop from the Christmas card picture that I ran with yesterday's post.
Soon, Jobe took a seat on the floor. He looks good and happy as usual, but he had thrown up just a little bit earlier and he was not eating anything at the moment. None of us were too concerned. Babies throw up all the time.
You will note Kalib and Ama in the background. It is true that Rex is the one who discovered Ama and brought her into our lives, but I have to tell you, it was Kalib and Ama who were falling in love with each other on Christmas Day.
Jobe tried his hand at petting Jim. He was doing okay, but then he grabbed a big hank of fur and yanked. Jim turned around and meowed in protest.
Jobe was left with a clump of black fur in his paw.
When it came time for me to pass out the gifts, Jacob put a Santa hat on my head. Jobe came over and posed with Santa for this self-portrait.
Who would receive the first gift? I reached into the pile of gifts and grabbed one at random. It was addressed to Charlie, from Santa Paws. Which means it came from Muzzy and his family.
Charlie tore into the packaging to unwrap his gift.
It was a Betty Boop doll.
Well, actually, it was a grain mill. But if you squint until your eyes are almost closed and then look hazily at the box, those little pictures kind of look like Betty Boop.
Among the huge cache of gifts that cascaded down upon Kalib was this alligator, a triceratops, and a shark.
One gift was addressed to Diamond, Bear Meach and Poof, the cats who hang out with Melanie and Charlie. The cats had stayed home, so Melanie opened.
Somehow, I don't think those cats are going to wipe their paws.
As for me, I would rather wipe my muddy boots on the living room rug than to dirty this matt.
Margie held up a print of Jobe that I made for her.
"Joooooe - be!" Kalib said.
You will notice that Caleb is staying low key in the background, holding his throat. On Tuesday, he bought himself something to eat at Taco Bell and a crunchy taco shell scratched his throat on the way down. His throat grew sore and just kept getting worse and worse.
So he stayed low key, all day.
He didn't even play with Kalib.
Margie called me into the kitchen to tell me it was time to for me to carve the turkey, which she had just removed from the oven - with a little help from Lavina and Melanie.
Ama had been no help at all. As you can see, she had over-imbibed and had passed out on the dinning room table.
How could this have happened? This was an alcohol-free gathering.
It was Kalib that she had over-imbibed on. Kalib, and all his rambunctious energy.
So she passed out. Her head hit the table with a "thunk!"
I might exaggerate just a little bit.
As for me, I picked up the carving knife. The edge was dull. So I sharpened it, until it could have sliced right through a newspaper.
Instead, it sliced through the skin on the tip of my left pointer finger..
That knife was really sharp and went straight to bone, just like that.
Then Charlie brought some squash that Jacob had cooked with with berries and pine-nuts to the table. It was time to begin feasting.
Unrepentant and irreligious though I be, I have been walking a very ethereal edge these past five weeks and it did not seem right to start Christmas dinner without a prayer and a word of thanks. I did not feel up to the task myself and so I asked Lavina, whose strong sense of spirituality is rooted in her Dene beliefs. She agreed. I asked her to be certain to remember other members of the family who are grieving, those in South India.
She did, along with many others spread widely over vast distances.
Then it was time to eat. I put my camera aside and picked up my fork and knife.
Afterward, we were all stuffed. Turkey can put you to sleep. It put Rex to sleep.
But Rex would not be allowed to sleep long, for a shark came flying at him. It was Lisa who had hurled the shark.
Knowing how much Melanie hates the very image of a spider, I called her over and showed her the picture of the spider on my camera monitor. She shrieked, and almost dropped Jobe.
"Why would you do that, Dad?" she asked.
So I told about how the spider had showered with me and how I had left it in peace.
"Why would you want to shower with a spider, anyway, Dad?" Lisa chimed in. "Don't you know that a spider has eight eyes?"
Charlie had borrowed my guitar. The spider incident inspired him and he suddenly began to sing one of his improvised, on the spot, ballads.
I wish I could quote him, but I can't.
Anyway, the ballad was about a guy who took a shower with a spider. Everything started out fine, but then the spider got a little too perverse in taking in the sights with its eight staring eyes and wound up getting washed down the drain.
It didn't have to be that way, Charlie sang. Everything would have been fine, if only that spider had kept its eyes to itself.
As for Kalib and Ama, the two just kept at it. Melanie had given Charlie a top Canon Rebel. As the two frolicked, he read the manual so that he could begin using it.
Ama, by the way, is Jewish and also vegetarian. She grew up in New York and her family did not celebrate Christmas, but, as it was a holiday and they had the day off, they would usually go to a movie and a Chinese restaurant.
Readers who were with me then will recall that right after Thanksgiving, she and Rex flew to San Francisco and then joined Ama's family at Lake Tahoe. After that, they drove into Canada and then followed the Al-Can Highway to Alaska. On their way to Anchorage, they stopped here. It was the end of Hanukkah, and so they lit the last candle of the menorah, right here. I was in Barrow at the time.
Then they flew to New England but now they are back, Ama just found an apartment and will soon start her new job teaching massage therapy.
I lay down on the couch to rest a bit. I closed my eyes, and slipped into that place half way between sleep and awake. I am not quite sure how he got there, but when I opened them again, Jobe was on my shoulder.
Jobe truly adores me and I adore him.
So I did another self-portrait. A bit later, Jobe's mom put him down for a nap in his cradleboard. A bit after that, we heard a loud, awful sounding retching noise come from the master bedroom, where Jobe had been sleeping.
He had thrown up badly. He was feverish.
So Jacob and Lavina took him to the emergency room at Mat-Su Valley Regional Hospital.
Kalib stayed with us.
They came back about three hours later. Jobe had come down with some kind of mix of bacteria and virus and had been given medicine. He would be okay, the doctor had said. His spirits were good and his smile was there. His parents decided to spend the night here.
Kalib watched as his dad stoked up the fire.
By the way - today, Sunday, December 26, is Kalib's third birthday.
Happy birthday, Kalib!
How did it happen so fast?
And why do all events just keep shooting by, faster and faster?
About midnight, Jobe began to get fussy. He cried and cried and it was hard to see and hear - this little grandson of mine, who is always so happy and good natured.
Lavina picked him up and patted and soothed and rocked him. In time, he settled down. And he slept reasonably well until 5:00 AM, when he woke up and cried again.
He seems okay now, though.
While Jimmy had hung out with us through much of the day, we had caught only flashing glimpses of Pistol-Yero and we had not seen Chicago at all.
This was because Muzzy had come to visit. Jimmy doesn't care, he does not fear the big-hearted St. Bernard, but those other two stay away from Muzzy.
Now that Christmas, 2010, was coming to its end and it was bedtime, Chicago stepped half-way into the hall to see if she could determine what was going on.
Despite Jobe's temporary illness, it was a good Christmas Day, well-below zero outside but warm in the love of family inside.
I enjoyed it, and when Melanie brought up the memory of the exploding nitro-squirrels that we used to come upon when she was little and we would go walking, I laughed loud and hard.
Even so, were I to tell you that I went through the day without my eyes ever watering I would be lying.