CPC 2012 Vol 1 The Holidays…This Year It Was An Extra Special Time.

The new year always starts off a little on the slow side. This is because a lot of people in my business tend to head south after Christmas to chill out after all the festivities are over.

 Christmas In The East End

Our Christmas was a pretty quiet affair. But there was one thing that was particularly significant. My daughter, whose name is Star, and her husband Ben showed up in our lives again. After a couple years of what we could mildly refer to as estrangement. They were off living on another planet that was quite a distance from ours in almost every way imaginable.  Like most families on this planet, ours has pretty much as much discord as anyone else’s, so I wont go into all the details. We missed her, and frankly had not gotten to know Ben all that well. But that all changed a few weeks before Christmas. I remember that it was a Sunday night and we were watching a movie. After it was over, my wife was looking a bit sad and when I asked what was up, she said that she was really missing her daughter.  Men are a little more stoic and philosophical about things like this, but I had to admit that I pretty much felt the same way.

As fate would have it, my wife went upstairs to check her email and lo and behold there was a note from our daughter.  It was written in a different tone than most of the other emails we had been receiving over the past few years and after reading it a couple of times we were encouraged enough to invite her over to talk.

That was the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a long process of hers and Ben’s re-integration into the family. Needless to say that during any family stuff, there are bridges that get scorched. But because its family, we can only hope that these can all be repaired.

We spent Christmas day with my son Dan, his wife Mel, Rowan the young Prince of Scarborough and Mel’s mother, Jean over at Daniel’s house where a great turkey was consumed along with some of the world best treats.

The next day, Star and Ben came over for dinner and after it was over, they asked me if I was going to come with them over to Ben’s family home to meet his parents, his brothers and “a few other people”.

Christmas in The West End

Ben’s parents, Dan and Deb, live over in the west end in a beautiful older house that appears to be built for large family gatherings, which is exactly what we walked into.

I don’t really do parties much, but walking into this house was really something else. First of all it was filled with people who had obviously been sipping a few more than we had. I genuinely wasn’t sure what to expect, but we were greeted with real open arms.

When you walk into a room full of people you don’t know, it can often take a while a while to get the lay of the land, so to speak. For me, this is usually a very uncomfortable feeling as I have never been very good at small talk. But this gathering was different. Ben’s mother Deb, and his father, Dan, immediately introduced themselves and then announced us to everybody in the room. It was kinda like I imagine and AA meeting where everyone shouted back a greeting. It was completely disarming, not having to break any ice whatsoever with these people. It was kind of like a pleasant narcotic that softened you up and opened you up at the same time. Before long, I was deep in conversation with a series of people starting with Ben’s dad who is in the same business as me more or less, so we had a lot in common, Ben’s uncles both introduced themselves and we immediately got into a discussion about network TV series vs US Cable series and how the US cable companies and the BBC and ITV are really leading the way when it comes to series development on TV.

During my chatting, I watched the kids. Ben was deep in conversation with his two brothers and my daughter was perched on a stool beside my wife and Ben’s mother Deb, and all three of them were having a great old time. I remember my wife looking at me with this strange enchanted smile on her face, convinced that we had landed in some sort of people heaven, when it was really just a large family who all seemed to be bonded tightly together.  It felt very much like a complete thing and yet this family opened up and embraced up so easily that I felt like I had been within these walls many times before. It was the strangest thing for me, who had always felt like a bit of an outsider, even in my own life sometimes, to feel so embraced and welcomed by a group of complete strangers. It could only be that the energy this group of people possessed and radiated was something  I haven’t really experienced much in my life. But it was pretty amazing. We had the greatest time and came away feeling really connected to Ben’s family.

Needless to say, I got a bit hammered and was evidently quite amusing on the ride home…or so I am told.

 New Years On The Danforth

The rest of the holidays slipped by in a kind of quiet blur. On New Year’s eve e went to an early screening of the new Sherlock Holmes (√√√√) and then up to the Danforth for some Greek food, then home to watch the ball fall in Times Square. I have always marveled at the people who are part of those crowds that you see on TV, filling up Times Square or the City Hall downtown.  Myself , I prefer to be somewhere quiet and warm when the year ends. Mostly because, for me, it’s not about the event per se, but more about the spirit of the season. And when you work for yourself, it’s kind of an enforced vacation, so you end up in total relax mode for most of it.

This season, I was just happy to have my immediately family all back, albeit it not totally together just yet as there are fences to be mended and other complex matters to be attended to before that can happen. But for us, it was certainly going to be a Christmas to remember, as our family began to both become a family again, and expand in a most delightful way.

 Belated Christmas On The Peninsula

The last event of the season came on the Saturday after New Years day when we drove down to Jordan Harbour to the beautiful Lake House Restaurant and had a great lunch, overlooking the lake with my sister Sharon and her husband Bob. My brother Ray and his wife Bette were suppose to make it, but with Ray, there’s almost always something that gets in the way. In this case, a new client that needed something done right away.  But we’ll catch up them them…we always do.

All in all this was a very interesting holiday season. I hope yours was every bit as wonderful.

 

 

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