Spare the change in the holidays, please

I spent the last week of 2002 in Boulder, Colo. with my youngest

daughter, Debby, and my two grandsons Trevor and Trent. The timing

was a considerable break with tradition. So were a lot of other

circumstances of this visit, which set me to thinking about the

dynamics of change in human affairs and how we deal with them.

For many years, I have made an annual pilgrimage to Boulder during

the first week of December. The scenario was always the same, which

was exactly how I wanted it and seemed comfortable to the rest of my

daughter’s family, as well.

On the first evening of my visit, we would set out as a family on

the search for a Christmas tree, which I would always buy after much

internal wrangling over the best tree. The final decision would be

made by my daughter with the males usually in full retreat from the

whole lengthy business.

The evening would be spent in setting up the tree and stringing

lights. We would decorate it the next day and evening to the

accompaniment of Christmas music. Then I would spend the next few

days shopping, wrapping gifts and playing interminable board games

with my grandchildren, usually against a backdrop of snow outside and

torturous lectures about being good losers inside.

Change happened slowly those early years and it mostly involved

the children. Board games turned to basketball games in the driveway

in which no concessions were made for my girth or my age. Repeated

regular activities became near-religious events. Visits to feed the

ducks on a nearby pond with Trent, for example. Or squirming through

a forbidden fence with Trevor to feel the sensation of throwing a

football in the vast emptiness of the University of Colorado stadium.

Then, of course, came the inevitable sense of command performance

in the boys when we went tree shopping, and their disappearance to

teen-age activities speedily afterward. The house was frequently full

of young people, and the gifts changed from bats and gloves and balls

to technological items I didn’t understand and music that

reverberated in my eardrums. And, finally, came the absence of Trevor

at college during those early December dates.

Until this year, we muddled on through, recognizing change but

still denying it at the same time by wrapping it a little

uncomfortably in nostalgia, mounted in a frame of beneficent history.

Then Trent went off to college, and we could no longer look away from

the breadth of other changes that had taken place. It was time to

begin painting a new picture.

Trevor lives in San Francisco now, has an administrative job with

a local radio station, and could only get away for a few days at

Christmas. In two trips to South America to study Spanish, Trent had

fallen in love with a young lady in Paraguay and would use most of

his Christmas break to fly there before returning directly to college

in Washington, D.C. The Christmas gift most appealing to both of them

was money.

And so I came to Boulder the last week in the year because that

was the only time I could see the boys. The tree was bought, mounted

and decorated without either my help or my money. There was no snow.

My favorite Boulder restaurant -- the only place west of Indiana I’ve

found serving breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches -- was closed.

I had to catch time with my grandsons between conversations on

cellular phones, which now seem to be permanent attachments to the

arms and ears of young people. And there were a multitude of more

substantial changes I let wash over me this time in order to start a

new picture to mount beside the old one.

My daughter is a single mom, now, and handling that role with

strength and spirit. There is a new man in her life who is both warm

and gentle. I must make room on these visits to be sure to see

another man, who once helped pick out the Christmas trees and will

always hold a place in my heart. And my grandsons are dealing with a

different level of problems, more complex than ducks or footballs,

some of which they share with me. I can even be useful to Trent in

helping him improve the writing on his term papers.

So, as I write this flying home from Boulder, I am thinking about

the inevitability of change and how best to deal with it. Change is

resisted most powerfully by children and old people. In those stages

of life, I guess we find even an uneasy present preferable to an

unknown change.

But this is a counter-productive position to defend. It puts off

-- or, at least, mitigates -- risk. Adventures involve change, and

they are by nature risky. Banishing adventure -- even a small one

like a break in habit -- from life takes the larger risk of missing

out on some of the real juices that make life stimulating.

It also ignores an element of change that came home to me very

powerfully on this visit: that in the midst of change, I must not

forget that some things remain the same. Like love. And like the

escalloped potatoes and ham my daughter cooked for me because she

knows how much I like it.

That dish made it clear that even when the mix is different, some

of the basic ingredients don’t change. And for me, that recognition

turned out to be the most important thing to remember.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.