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At one end of the couch, someone will be reading the newspaper. It’s usually pretty thin. There isn’t much news and very little advertising. One of the editors has had a reporter do the story about what the homeless will be having for Christmas dinner at the Salvation Army kitchen, but it’s slim pickin’s in the paper.

My sister Nancy sits there reading out Christmas cards and looking at presents given to other people that she missed when they were being opened.

There are usually a few nappers. Someone will hog the whole couch by stretching out and falling asleep on it. The smart, serious nappers will disappear into an upstairs bedroom.

One of the kids will be working on or putting together a present he or she got. Someone will be reading a new book. (No one watches television in our house on Christmas Day.)

At some point there’s a flurry of phone calls, in and out. We’ll start making calls to other members of the family who can’t be there or who are close but not in our inner circle. Usually one of the twins’ classmates will call to see if they can get together during the few days they’re both in town.

There’s always someone who wants to know if the drugstore is open. They don’t really want anything, they’re just looking for some excuse to get out of the house.

If I’ve been given some new tool, I go down to the basement and try it out on a piece of wood. That’s usually interrupted by a call from the head of the stairs asking if I want to go over to the indoor courts and play tennis. I’m always touched by the fact the kids want me to play tennis with them. It wouldn’t be because I pay for the courts, would it?

By about four o’clock the Christmas Day lull is over. We all congregate in the living room again to have a drink. Nancy has slow-baked almonds and pecans that have been kept hidden from Brian and Ellen all day.

Everyone’s relaxed again now. Dinner’s ready but a Christmas dinner can be put on hold, so there’s no rush. A turkey is better left at least half an hour after it comes out of the oven before it’s carved. Mashed potatoes, creamed onions and squash are all easy to keep warm. The peppermint candy cane ice cream stays frozen.

I hate to have Christmas end.

An Appreciative Husband’s Gratitude

Wives do a thousand little things for their husbands that they don’t get credit for.

Right here I want to give credit where credit is due. A few weeks ago, while I was away, Margie did something for me I’ll never forget.

An Appreciative Husband’s Gratitude 175

Andy and Marge Rooney, at home in Rowayton, Connecticut

She cleaned up my shop in the basement. She got our friend Joe to come in and help and between them they tidied up everything. It must have taken several days because it would have been impossible to put that many things in places where I can’t find them in less than several days.

I confess that the shop would have looked as though it was a mess to anyone but me. To me, everything was in its place. I had little scraps of wood everywhere. If I use six feet of a seven-foot piece of maple, I don’t throw away the leftover foot. I save it. I don’t always put my scraps of wood away neatly in a pile of other scraps, but I know where they are. Now my scraps of wood are in neat piles. I can’t find them, but they’re neatly piled.

I would be the first to admit that I’m not neat. (Come to think of it, I was not the first to admit it. Other people have said it several hundred times before I ever did.)

My wood treasures, pieces of lumber, were leaning against the basement walls or were stashed up in between the beams under the diningroom floor upstairs. Because there were years of accumulated sawdust everywhere, Margie and Joe moved everything. Margie said she was afraid of fire, but if the house had burned down, it wouldn’t have disrupted my shop any more than the cleaning job did.

There were dozens of different sizes of nuts, bolts, nails and screws on my workbench. When I wanted one I pawed through the pile until I found the size I wanted. No longer. Now only the three