I like it because while “terms of endearment” are usually thought of a sweet nothings or pet names shared by those who are in love, a second meaning of the word terms is conditions - as in the no-nonsense terms or conditions of a contract, an agreement about a relationship.
YOSEMITE SAM IDJIT MOVIE
The various situations that lead to family conflict reminded me of one my all-time book and movie titles from an earlier period of reading: “Terms of Endearment” by the Texas writer Larry McMurtry. So though a brother sent a birthday present - and that was nice - she is largely separated from other family members by a cold wart style demilitarized zone acknowledged by all parties. The other’s more pitched battles are years in the past, and a kind of silently negotiated peace has held for years. What seems most important to her, she tells me, seems a waste to her family - a waste of the live that in which she finds her fullest meaning. One considers herself the black sheep of the family - the one who is decidedly different and whose differences that are not embraced but misunderstood. MORE FROM TOM STAFFORD: Phone scammers want to take you on a Sleigh Ride
My friends’ two situations are different. But for my friends, the emotional high stakes involving the fragility of family are the same as what the song portrays as the high stakes for the human family on a dark night in the streets of Bethlehem: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”įor so many people I know, those fraught moments of family togetherness are over for another year, to be stowed back in the attic next to the artificial tree, where they will bake during the summer and be served up next Christmas. In the hymn, the words have a broader religious meaning.
YOSEMITE SAM IDJIT FREE
Not wanting to let go of their “shred of family” but never free to simply enjoy it, their experience of family ties at the holidays made me remember a line from the Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It’s nearly always wrapped up with fear, tied up tightly with a ribbon of anxiety and played out to a soundtrack of jangled nerves rather than jingled bells. The passage likely would have caught my eye anyway.īut during the holiday season, conversations with a couple of friends gave the words “this little shred of family” a particular sense of desperation for me.įor those friends, both women, time spent with family during the holidays is less fun than the annual mammogram. Which is why last week I was reading Delia Owens’ current best-seller, Where the Crawdads Sing” and came across the quote that opens this column. That was facilitated by a Kindle and a daughter kind enough to help me shop for the right one. MORE FROM TOM STAFFORD: Waitress shows why there can be hope to bridging differences In that sense, boob was most often paired up with the rhyming word “tube” to create “boob tube” or television.ĭecades ago, when Crest commercials advertised that those who brushed with it had 25 percent fewer dental cavities, the boob tube was the rough equivalent of the anti-Crest - a device thought to cause 25 percent or more mental cavities in those who had too many brushes with it.Īnd so it seems odd to confess that it took a fall down the basement stairs two months ago for me to stop staring at the boob tube so much and start reading again. When I was growing up, it was most often used to point out the kind of person Yosemite Sam might have called an “idjit” or “maroon” in outbursts that were the spittle-filled Tweet storms of an earlier age.
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