Chapter 68: Family Christmases

Sunday, December 25, 1983

Christmas Day dawned seriously cold. The temperature outside was all of eleven degrees (Fahrenheit!), which is ridiculous for Houston, even in December.

I’d seen worse, but that was nearly forty years from now, in early 2021, when it was desperately cold in most of the state for days. This was better, but only by comparison to something I might be the only person in the world to know about.

Thinking about it, I might want to write that down somewhere (encrypted or the like). By the time it was 2021, I might well have forgotten that awful cold snap. Knowing about it in advance could be of real significance.

Of course, it might never happen. Perhaps it was the height of hubris to imagine that anything we did could change the weather, but that was literally the theory behind ‘The Butterfly Effect’: that small actions could sometimes change entire weather systems.

Once I was up, I checked all of the faucets (still dripping, thank goodness, because dealing with a frozen pipe now would have been awful). After that, we had breakfast, bundled up, and then headed to church again, in the same way we always did. Christmas morning service was just as important as Christmas Eve service (though, personally, I enjoyed the Christmas Eve service quite a bit more).

As with Christmas Eve, the service itself was nearly unchanging. It didn’t need to change, and most people enjoyed the tradition.

We stayed for a bit after the service, wishing each other a Merry Christmas and catching up. I wouldn’t really miss most of the people, but they were all nice enough, and some of them would be in Dad’s life for decades.

Dr. Ott came by long enough to greet us. He asked after Lizzie. I told him that I’d last talked to her a couple of months ago and that she’d been doing well, but was very busy. That also reminded me that I needed to catch up again.

We headed home after church, chatting about the service as we went. Thoughts of Lizzie nagged at me. If we wanted to remain friends, we’d need to do a better job of keeping in touch. People at a distance tend to drift apart unless they put in the work to stay connected.

Not right away, though. First up: presents. Angie and I sat on the floor and handed out packages to everyone. There were very few surprises. Mom and Dad had gotten us both some clothing and a few gift certificates. I’d gotten Angie her travel kit, and she’d gotten me a new toiletry bag. As far as I knew, no one had spilled the beans, so it was just one big happy coincidence.

The relatives had sent cash, of course. That’s what we always did. It made sense. They didn’t really know us enough to know what we wanted, nor could they find out if we’d blown their plans at the last minute.

Once presents had been opened, Angie and I had to go fetch Jasmine and Paige. They were having Christmas lunch with us. After that, Jas and I would be off to Jasmine’s in my car, while Angie and Paige would head to Paige’s house in hers. In both cases, it’d be easier (and more fun) than their borrowing a car.

We were back in plenty of time to help get Christmas lunch ready. Mom had put my casserole in the oven, so I helped with the beans and the wild rice. Most everything was family favorites that we made every year (and would probably keep right on making every year).

Paige and Jas jumped right in, helping make sure things were served, that dishes arrived on the table, that the table was set, and so forth. Mom and Dad had small gifts for both of them, too, of course. They knew that travel was on our minds and had purchased each of them a concealable travel belt with room for money, identification, a credit card, and so forth. Angie and I had already gotten identical ones.

It was a perfectly classic gift (one that I’d actually received before from them, twice, in my first life) but this was their best timing ever with it. They’d always managed to give me those right when I wasn’t planning any big trips. At least now we all were.

Lunch itself was lively, as you’d expect. Mom and Dad had lots of questions about college. Our answers were still mostly vague. I’d almost certainly be somewhere in the College of Business Administration, but where was uncertain. Most likely I’d minor in political science. Jas was strongly considering journalism, as the closest thing to a communication major, but wasn’t set on it, while Paige was the most likely to join me in the business school. Angie, of course, was set: Economics and Mathematics, with a focus on quantitative analysis. Neither Dad nor Mom had completely come to terms with Angie the Mathematics major, but they could see her determination.

For her part, Angie was clear that it was Tom Myerson’s doing, if in a very round-about way. She might be the first high school student that he’d ever pushed into mathematics, and while that was inadvertent, he deserved the credit.

All six of us agreed that we could probably all do anything we set our minds to. That said, it looked like we were all playing to our strengths. I was, of course, the wild card, since I’d done very little with ‘business’ in my first life. That said, having some technical skills hiding and ready to deploy was a good thing.

Perhaps I’d try for a second minor in Computer Science. That might throw everyone for a loop!

Jas and I excused ourselves around three and headed over to her house. Angie and Paige headed off at the same time. We parted with hugs, and encouraged Angie and Paige to take the high road with respect to Ted. They promised to at least try.

Jas grinned when we got in the car. “Last Christmas as kids. Even if you are only nominally a kid, mister!”

I chuckled. “You are only nominally a kid. In many societies, now and in the past, you’d long since be an adult.”

“Which is scary! I don’t feel like an adult, yet. I want to take a shot at it, but as a college student adult, not an adult adult.”

“It’s a learning process. We do it slowly. In my previous life, it kept slowing down, with kids in their middle or later twenties routinely moving back home after college and living with their parents.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It wasn’t. Our kids should know that we’ll always support them, but that moving back in after they’ve moved out is a last-resort, short-term sort of solution. Obviously, that doesn’t include coming home for the summer if they’re living in a dorm or something.”

“Agreed!”

We exchanged presents a bit after we arrived at Jasmine’s house. I brought Camille a small wooden wine rack that would suit her kitchen. For Francis, I had a small travel umbrella. He was forever forgetting to bring one with him, and this would fit neatly into his car.

From them, I received a very nice road atlas, which would be very handy on our travels. I could’ve gotten a free one from AAA (Dad and Mom were longstanding auto club members), but this was a very good one with grid maps of virtually every major city, detailed maps of every state, and so forth.

It was a reminder of a bygone time. Most of the driving trips I’d taken thus far required no more than a map of the city and a bit of searching. Most of it hadn’t even required that much, not with decades of experience driving around Texas. I tended to know where everything was without needing to look it up.

That wouldn’t be true once we got on the road, especially the more we ventured off of the interstate highways. I was only ready for it in the sense that I knew I’d done it before. The last decade and a half of major road trips in my first life had involved GPS units, followed by cell phones, giving me directions that changed whenever my route changed. We were decades away from that happening again. I would need to plot routes, make notes, and check maps whenever we made a major deviation.

It was a very useful and very thoughtful gift, and I told them so. They, of course, insisted that it was no big deal and they were happy that I liked it.

Jasmine’s gift to me was useful in a different way. She’d purchased me a nice, sleek wallet. I’d gotten better over the years, but I was still prone to stuffing my wallet full of all sorts of things on the off chance that I might need something. This might help me resist temptation. How many of the things I stuffed in there were actually ever of value, anyway?

I could take it as being ‘about appearances,’ but appearance mattered, and I’d much rather pull out a nice-looking wallet than a fairly battered, overstuffed mess. I could use all of the credibility I could get, at least for a while. The world would change in a few years, when people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and my friend Michael reshaped people’s notions of what successful businesspeople could look like.