Preheat your coffee cup time of year

More winter/holiday memories. With all the cold whiteness we've been having I've been getting nostalgic every time Sephie puts her snow pants on to go play.

Waking up early this morning reminded me of all the early winter mornings I had to deliver the Appleton Post-Crescent when we lived in Menasha. 42 papers stuffed into my courier bag which was slung across the bars of my hard-earned black Schwinn 20" BMX bike. It wasn't a true BMX frame but with the route and a couple summers working at the Menasha Public Library I'd earned enough for a red Mongoose BMX frame and all the best parts. I'd later trade that frame for my brother's Mongoose Team frame, which I still have in the basement. Yes I was a librarian, don't make me get all Dewey Decimal on you...

Those were good holidays even if times were hard. Dad wasn't always working but that meant he was home with the three of us boys. Between camping, running, bike riding, fishing or just sitting at the dining room table playing Mille Bornes or cribbage, I had a pretty good holiday.

Skip ahead if you want to miss the emotional baggage.

Then Mom would fly in. It still pisses me off and I'm thinking it does my brothers as well, when she expects me to let her slide into my life as though she's been here every day. Now she's trying that with my family and I'm not handling it any better. If she still lived in California it would piss me off a bit less but she lives 12 miles away now.

Back to being a bike blog...

Having Dad give me a bike part or tool for a gift back then was pretty significant. Now that I'm a father, and as Rick put it "a man of leisure", I find myself standing squarely in my father's shoes of 30 years ago.

Which is a good thing. Those cold mornings of '77, '78 & '79 now have more meaning to me. Life took care of itself if you just woke up and made coffee.