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The family got together this evening for the big holiday dinner.

The folks, my sisters, my nieces, two aunts, one uncle, a cousin and her son. The food was excellent, of course; my mom’s holiday dinners always are…

The highlight for me was my Aunt Dee. (She has always been my favorite…) She is the crazy, fun, stylish aunt. You know, I have said it before, she is the aunt that was I was going up, Would wear light-up dangly earrings for Christmas Eve service. Mind you, back then, such things were powered by two AA batteries, in a box about the size of a cigarette pack. She would schedule a hair appointment so the box could be hidden in her head with her hair stacked up to god.

Dee is one of those women; if you ask her age, the answer is plenty-nine. She is a few years older than my mom, which would be mid-seventies, and she stills folds her feet under her legs and sits on the floor by the fireplace after dinner…

The night was also filled with flipping through albums my dad has been logging for his massive family photo project. Through them all, Dee showed some of the greatest style and the brightest smiles…

I love my family. They hold all the secrets I need to find myself and find my happiness. I think…

There was a moment where Dee had forgotten my bout with cancer… And it brought up a point I have been seeing in my family:

To list the events of this year, my parents have had a truly shitty year, but – honestly – they are fine. They will be fine. My parents have the little dramas and battles they have always had, but my dad lost his leg this year, and his spirits are perfectly bright, even if he is already looking for ways to cheat his food intake. My mom is in the middle of radiation treatments, and I hate seeing how tired she gets from light tasks, but she is fine otherwise.

It is a good holiday, and I am happy to be home for the moment…

When re-gifting takes most of a lifetime, it can end up being a pretty cool thing…

My dad’s jewelry box, most likely from some point in the fifties… The cuff-links that remained from the day he gave it to me when I was home this time last year. The only remaining thing of importance that he kept in it was his wedding band. He never wore it when he worked because it was a hazard to do so. Then he fingers got too big for it to fit. I noticed when I arrived that it is back on his finger, possibly for the first time since before I was in high school…

I asked him about the jewelry box and he didn’t think twice before letting me have it. Decent ones are hard to find. On top of that, this one has history. I like that. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the bottom has a gold foil stamp that reads ‘SWANK”… They are possibly the most prolific producer of cuff-links and other mens’ accessories of all time… most from the mid to late 1900s, I think.

Most cuff-links that I find from the 80s have the SWANK stamp on the back (or post).

The inside lid is missing what seems to have been an embossed paper strip, maybe for storing tie bars, but the rest of it is in fair condition. And it is freakin’ roomy. Most jewelry boxes these days are simply crap, or are much too small.

Even with all the space in this one, I will need to keep other boxes… I know, go figure.

Anyway, my holiday gifts include this and a repaired exhaust system (OMGosh, stealth caddy! Yay!) which was not cheap.
I am quite content…