COLUMN, SNUG HARBOR by Gail Maggi — Holiday Spirit,-E pluribus unum
It is written on every coin minted in the United States of America. It means ?Out of Many, One,? and that is exactly what my motto for the week will be, as I get up each morning and look down into my living room full of boxes, Christmas gifts, Christmas decorations, etc…
I can never just tackle one project at a time. My mind always is scattered in many directions as I attempt to decorate our house for the holidays, interspersed with both sofas full of piles of Christmas stuff for the grandkids and our children. I am getting it ready to send in boxes.
All of a sudden, what once was a rather cleaned up, tidy environment, has become enmeshed in absolute chaos!
It just hit me, as I was looking at one of those new state quarters, and I was looking for the doggone letter designations for the mint it was created at, when I saw ?E pluribus unum.? I basically knew what it meant, but looked it up to be certain.
Yes, that is what is going to happen at my house. Out of many…one. Out of the many piles will come one box to send to each family. Out of many, many boxes of holiday decorations, will come one, unified, and beautifully decorated home in time for Christmas.
OUT OF THE many messes will come cleanliness. United we stand, divided we fall, and so on. A lot of mighty words for a mighty big mess at our house.
Actually, I don?t mind the terrible mess, as I poke through the piles of goodies I have selected. Each of 16 grandchildren will get a variety of candy, which I painstakingly will divide exactly piece by piece to make sure nobody gets a single one more than the other.
Each one will get a small toy or gift of not more than several dollars in value.
Each one will get a notecard with a few sentences of endearments from Grandpa and Grandma, plus a few dollars in cash. There will be four larger, more expensive gifts to be given to various age groups for all to enjoy, and finally each parent will get an inexpensive gift and a large box of candy to share.
That might not seem like much, but try multiplying that for one family with 13 kids! It all adds up pretty quick.
The postage alone on the boxes I send would make most people cringe. I think it cost me about $40 to send our gifts to everybody last year.
Still, I enjoy putting my ?care? packages together each year, and one of my sons told me the kids look so forward to getting that ?big? box each year; it really makes their Christmas special.
So, I guess it doesn?t take a lot of money or big gifts to bring happiness, only the fact that each one was remembered with a little something special just for them.
SPEAKING OF gifts, I talked to my daughter stationed in Germany just a few days ago, and she said she still has not received the Christmas box I sent her November 4, two days before the sending deadline. Egad, the cookies I sent will surely not be fit to eat by the time she gets them!
I was happy to talk to her Thanksgiving Day, as I could hear laughter from four of the guys she hauled over to her friend?s apartment for the special dinner. She said to me, ?They didn?t have anywhere special to go.?
She even made me bawl out one of the fellows because he had tried to eat a huge sandwich in the car on the way to the turkey dinner Gabe and her friend had prepared.
Sure, leave the dirty work to Mom. She actually made the fellow throw the sandwich out the window. I guess he obediently did so.
I could envision her immediately, on her tiptoes, yelling at some six-foot four-inch guy, nose to nose, in her best ?drill sergeant? voice, to drop the sandwich, or else!
When
ANYWAY, it was good to know they all seemed to be enjoying the day and spent the evening watching DVD movies following their feast.
She received my chart on Fahrenheit conversions that I had e-mailed to her, and has it posted in the kitchen.
As an afterthought, did you ever wonder why only the coins have the e pluribus unum written on them? Maybe because it takes ?out of many (coins), one (dollar)??
A dollar for your thoughts? Cause it?ll take a lot of e pluribus unums (pennies) to make it worth the trouble.
By Gail Maggi, Staff Writer
