Season’s Greetings, everyone! We’re Counting Down to Christmas, 17 days away, just like the song in Paramount’s A Christmas Story which I just can’t seem to get out of my head this morning. I’m rushing around while my mind is riffing on “Present.” How being present is the best present I could give my Mom this Christmas back in New Jersey. It seems like ever since I left home to attend Loyola University in Chicago; I get to see my family just once a year. Life happens. I’ve made life about work. Like a show biz gypsy, I’ve always gone where the work is. I work because I have to. It’s not a choice. My Mom and family understand that. But this time of year makes you wonder. A lifetime of separation is quite the high cost to pay. Our love is unconditional like it is in a blue collar Italian Catholic family. But Christmas makes you want to feel close to parents and brothers and sisters and their children, the nephews and nieces. Forgive me getting so personal today, but there is a point to it. Appreciate those you love and hold them close. See them and hear them. Listen. Whether they are the family you were born to or the family Life has chosen for you to work with and live with, love them. At the very end of A Christmas Story, the narrator Jean speaks to how Ralphie cherishes his Red Ryder BB Gun as the greatest gift he would ever receive only because it was from his Dad. How back in those days you never had to wonder if your parents loved you. The show playing on our stage means a lot to me because of this. It’s been eleven years since my Dad passed. I know how Ralphie feels.
Love & thanks,
Jim