Christmas Windows

CHRISTMAS WINDOWS

It has started to snow.

It isn't much and it still isn't the right time for it to stick around, but it's snow and a step in the right direction.

It's dark too. Not pitch black night time dark, but the fuzzy dark that happens as the sun makes its final exit and the day comes to an end.

And it's cold. Not really cold temperature-wise, but damp cold: the kind that gets into your joints that you don't really understand until you get older.

Ronin and I are out walking.

This is our time.

I try to mix up the routes we take just to keep it interesting. I think I am doing it for him, but the truth is he doesn't care. We could walk the same path every day and he would be fine with that. He makes new discoveries every day and everywhere. All that matters is that I honor the commitment and take him out.

As it gets darker outside, we become more aware of the lights on in each of the houses we pass. We are not voyeurs, but, on these dimly-lit streets, the lights from the houses just naturally draw your attention.

It's hard not to notice as the occupants move from room to room and turn on lights. It's hard not to notice who's having dinner and who's watching TV. And, at this time of year, it's hard not to notice who have already put up their holiday lights.

As the blue-gray of dusk becomes the charcoal gray of twilight becomes the black of night, we cross streets and round corners. At every pole, sign or hydrant, Ronin stops to read and/or sign the guest book while I search my pockets for anything I can find with which to wipe my running nose.

We pass more houses and more of them have a tree, or a wreath, or one of those inflatable lawn sculptures. Each reminds me that I need to find our decorations and get started on our house. Each is like the open door on an Advent calendar reminding us that Christmas is coming ever closer.

Each window is also a reminder of every Christmas past: the trips to the Atwater Market to pick out the tree, untangling the gordian knot of lights and promising myself that I would take more care putting this year's lights away so as not to have the same problem next year, sitting in the living room late at night bathed in the warmth of the decorated tree and Mahalia Jackson's version of “Silent Night” on the hi-fi. Each is a reminder of gifts given and received and the growing list of family and friends who have “gone on ahead.”

As Ronin and I walk on through the darkening evening, I become aware that I am looking at these decorated houses through the soft-focused lens of memory. It doesn't snow much around here, but at each house I see with a yard tree, I am imagining it poking up through a snowbank, its limbs staggering under a thick frosting of snow. As our six feet move silently along the pavement, I am hearing the sound of them crunch in snow—the same sound you hear when you chew a mouthful of cereal.

There is a real danger of being kidnapped by memories of Christmas Past: it robs you of your Christmas present and the ability to appreciate the here and the now. Just as Hollywood stars of a certain age look better in soft focus, too much time spent looking in the rear view mirror can give you a false sense of how things really were. I know that and yet the nostalgic warmth that emanates from these houses seems really tangible to me tonight.

We walk past a house with a screened in porch and right at the corner there are a pair of figures from a large molded Nativity scene, but instead of being arranged in the traditional semi-circle around the manger, the figures of Mary and Joseph are right up against the screen looking out toward the street. In this context, without the figures of the Wise Men and the Baby Jesus, the figures look like the expectant children who used to crowd around the Morgan's Department Store window watching the animated holiday window display. They literally have their noses pressed up against the screen in anticipation.

I am struck by this image because it seems to capture my own arrested perspective on Christmas.

Without a doubt, this was my most favorite time of the year and now....

I guess I tend to approach each Christmas with the same ambivalence that I have for my own birthday. There is a hope that is mixed with disappointment; there is fear and anger, there is depression. (I'm not sure that I am not confusing Christmas with New Year's.)

Christmas is a benchmark, a milestone and a goal. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,” “I'll Be Home for Christmas”: the notion of comparison and contrast is built right in. “Look what Santa brung me!” “You have to put up the lights, everyone else has theirs up already.”

I suffer by comparison.

I had goals and expectations and each year they seem to be further away, like Santa's sleigh at the end of his hard day's night.

I walk past these windows and see glimpses of the Christmas of my past and I can still feel the scratchiness of the new clothes, smell the aromas of the holiday baking and hear the frantic competition of oneupsmanship in the telling of the horribly corny riddles from the Christmas crackers. It calls to me like the memory of the ocean's roar trapped in a sea shell.

Ronin and I pass more windows with different degrees of lights and decoration. Many of the major movements in art history are represented in the houses we pass: realism, impressionism, expressionism each are expressed in light and texture, line and color. There are even some nihilists who don't bother decorating.

I write about Christmas because it has the same sort of all and nothing meaning represented by our neighborhood's decorators. It informs where I am by reminding me where I came from and also that another lap around life's racecourse is coming to an end. It's a time to be warmed by the familiarity of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” mourn losses, and be reminded of victories.

That is Christmas's present to us all.

It's getting darker and I have forgotten to bring my gloves.

We turn the last corner and enter the final stretch of our walk.

Ronin stops, stiffens and, from somewhere deep in his massive chest, a growl begins to form.

He's staring at something but, try as I might, I can't make it out. There's only one street light on this part of the walk and everything beyond its beams is out of focus to my stigmatic eyes.

I hear them before I see them, a trio of deer wander lazily into the light from between a pair of houses.

Ronin barks.

They stop, turn in our direction and then, in a twinkling, they are gone in a flash. They clear the split rail fence that encloses the golf course on our left as it it didn't even occur to them.

The dog stares after them as they disappear into the darkness.

I tighten the lead and pick up the pace. Time to go home and get warm.

Posted by Graham Campbell at 11:31 AM No comments:

 

Originally published by http://notanotherslideshow.blogspot.com/

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

I used to have a tabletop pre-transistor AM radio that would emit this warm orange glow through its back grill. It wasn't a very bright light, but you could make out the shapes of objects a few feet away. It was like sitting next to the embers of a dying fire.

The radio had a large yellowish tuning knob and I would run that from one end of the scale to the other listening for someone to tell me a story after my mother had left the room and turned out the lights.

There were the local stations like CFCF, CJAD, and CFOX, but on a clear winter night I could also pick up stations in Boston, Chicago and New York City. These stations would come in only after the dial had been manipulated with the delicate touch of a safecracker and even then the signal would be riding a wave of static that would routinely rise up and drown it out completely.

Between the peaks of static, I would hear about traffic on the Dan Ryan, nor'easters threatening the Cape Cod, Boston and the Maine coast. It was while listening to this radio that I was introduced to "traffic and weather together on the eights" and to "The Shadow."

On various nights at different spots around the dial, I would find rebroadcasts of old radio shows. These programs would mix sitcoms like Fibber McGee & Molly with shows like The Whistler and Inner Sanctum. These programs were once mainstays of the airwaves long before call-in shows and before computers replaced disc jockeys.

The Shadow was ideally suited to radio because only at home, in the dark, could you accept the idea that one man could convince another that he was invisible. In real life, if you saw someone talking to an invisible crime fighter then you would contact organizations like ours.

Whereas radio sitcoms tended to thrive when translated to television and the movies, the spook shows were much less successful. The camera could never show anything as vivid as the images conjured by the imagination. It's the same reason that the best ghost stories are the ones we hear around the campfire, or from our friends. We remember these stories long after the punch lines of a great joke, the phone number of that cute girl, or where we left our car keys. Our brains file them some place different, some place more primal.

***

It will come as no surprise then that my favorite Christmas story is a ghost story.

"A Christmas Carol" tells the story of a man haunted by memory, by perspective and by possibility. Though often read to children, the story of Scrooge is the story of adults and their changing perspective on the holiday.

Children don't need ghost stories to know what Christmas is all about. They learn very quickly that it's all about them.

This is such a powerful idea that the traditions of the season become like critical ingredients in a recipe that we try to follow throughout our lives in order to recreate the perfect Christmas. What we learn as we grow older is that, like in cooking, some ingredients are not always available and substitutions are inevitable.

When we were children, those ingredients seemed to be in abundant supply. With few exceptions, the tree and its decorations, the meal and its menu, the guests and their jokes didn't vary all that much from one year to the next. And that was pretty comforting. No matter what happened throughout the year, Christmas was a red and green colored constant.

After I left home, the reassuring consistency of a family Christmas became even more important, but instead of having the whole month to marinate in it I only ever seemed to have a few days.

Compressing Christmas into smaller and smaller windows seemed to make it all the more important to get home and reconnect and regenerate. The traditions that evolved over time became desperate stations that had to be checked off in the hopes that some of the old self-affirming magic would return.

It was no wonder that the holidays were exhausting and came to be anticipated with a certain amount of dread.

And then there came the years when I couldn't be home for Christmas and even that couldn't be experienced without mixed emotions: I was both disappointed and relieved.

Dickens' story does a pitch-perfect job of capturing the contrasts and the mixed emotions that Christmas evokes in me. Christmas Past haunts me, Christmas Present is unsettling and Christmas Yet to Come is always challenging me to change my ways.

As I think about Christmas today, I find myself in a kind of a neutral zone trying to figure out what is left after all of the trimmings have been packed away.

There are no default answers. I do believe that it is important to work for peace on earth and goodwill to all. I like finding the perfect present and bringing a smile to the faces of the people I care about. (In the absence of a self-affirming answer, I will settle for affirming others.) I take comfort in making time to watch "White Christmas" and "Scrooge" (the 1951 version with Alastair Sim). But, unlike Scrooge, I don't think I have yet woken up from my dream. I think I am still working on the meaning of the season.

***

When I was growing up, one of the holiday staples was the annual Christmas show of local broadcaster Paul Reid.

Each year, he would devote one night of his show to stories of his childhood growing up in Peterborough, Ontario, as one of sixteen children, interspersed with holiday readings and Christmas music.

Reid had a magnificent voice for radio. It was warm, mellow, deep and tinged with a bit of sadness. He would guide his audience through the evening on a snowy Montreal night and make us think we were seated in front of a crackling fire listening to familiar tales.

Reid's fondness for the depression-era Christmases of his childhood was as undeniable as it was removed from his position as a big city radio host. It was almost as though he was telling these stories as a way of keeping them alive for himself.

I used to look forward to this show each year because it was something to look forward to. It was a fixture and a benchmark of the approaching holiday, like opening the doors on an advent calendar. I have been thinking about it recently because I recognize and connect to Reid's need to present it as a way of sustaining himself.

In the end, maybe that's all there is. Perhaps it is in the act of creating joy and obtaining some measure of satisfaction that we are really learning from the ghosts that haunt us.

Happy holidays.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Silent Night

Thanksgiving morning I went out to get a coffee and drove past some well-insulated souls who were camping out in front of the neighborhood big box electronics store. With their coolers and lawn chairs, thinsulate and sweaters, they were bound and determined to be first in line when the store opened early the following morning.

It's always struck me as strange that we refer to the "official" start of the holiday season as "Black Friday." It's the "most wonderful time of the year" and yet the associations with the Great Depression and its own black weekday are undeniable. (More undeniable when the January credit card statements arrive....) And while I can think of little more intolerable than wading into the shark-infested waters of bargain-hunters hell-bent of finding the perfect holiday gift for their loved ones, I know that there are a great many people who look forward to this experience every year. It has become a holiday tradition right up there with any depicted by Currier and Ives.

I've been thinking a lot about holiday traditions.

It seems like the older we get, the farther we are prepared to go to honor the memory of a Christmas past.

People do things at Christmas that they don't do at any other time of the year: they go to parties, eat strange foods and even watch Hollywood musicals. People make appearances at soup kitchens, nursing homes, churches; they donate money and clothing, go sledding and even sing. And they do things to their homes that they would never do at any other time of the year.

I saw a television special about the "most extreme Christmas houses." They interviewed people around the U.S. who each year install ever more elaborate holiday light shows. Each of the people interviewed talked in terms of the hundreds of thousands of lights they put up and the hundreds of extra dollars in additional electricity they consumed. One man, a law enforcement officer who proudly identified himself as Mr. Christmas, even runs a low power radio station from a closet in his home during Christmas.

It would be easy to default to the bromide that Christmas is for children but, like most things adults say, I think it's more complicated than that. I think adults extend themselves at this time of year as a way of finding their way back to their own Christmas Past.

From my Christmas past, I can remember being excited to go to have my picture taken with Santa. I remember going downtown for the Christmas parade. I remember looking forward to the annual showing of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." And I remember sitting on the floor in the gym in my elementary school and watching "Babes in Toyland" just before the Christmas break. But as I have been thinking about Christmas this year, the dominant image has been surprising in its stillness.

In our living room there was a bay window and window seat and directly across the street there was a very bright streetlight. Each year, when it came time to put up the tree, we would experiment with different locations, but one of the most popular was to center it in the bay window. Lit or unlit, decorated or undecorated, it was thrilling to see a tree standing in the living room framed by the yellow curtains and silhouetted by the light coming through the window from across the street.

The image that I have been carrying this year is from my polo pajama days--I can't remember what year. I do recall waking up way too early and, like Cindy Loo Who, going into the living room just to see what Santa had been up to.

We had apparently been very good that year because in addition to the wrapped gifts that had been there when I went to bed, there were unwrapped gifts from Santa for my brother and sister and me. But what I am remembering is the site of that tree and the light from the street as it bounced off the snowbank and into the living room. The house was still, the scene was magical and like the wrapped packages, the day had promise.

Growing up is a lot like unwrapping those packages: despite wishing and hinting for a Major Matt Mason with jet pack, you never know when you're going to get something practical like socks, or a sweater.

Over the years I have spent quite a few Christmases organizing events for children and generating donations for worthy causes and so by the time that the 25th rolls around, I am pretty Christmassed out. I try to "gear up" for the holidays by playing the holiday music and I really do look forward to watching "White Christmas" every year, but Christmas for me happens late in the evening the night before.

Round about midnight I like to go outside and just listen.

It gets quiet in a way that doesn't happen at any other time of the year. After the last of the retail warriors has hung up their coats, after the kids are in bed, after everything, there is silence. There is no traffic, no car alarms, no dogs barking: it's still. As I listen, I am standing again in the living room of my childhood. All too soon the air will be cut with the sounds of traffic and children, dogs and sirens, but for a couple of hours it really is a silent night.

The escalating chaos of the ever-lengthening holiday season is over. The preparations are as complete as they are going to be and, as the poem says, people are at last able to settle their brains.

It's kind of like when your computer locks up and the only way to move forward is to turn it off and wait a couple of minutes before turning it back on again. In the silence of the Christmas overnight, we are rebooting.

I recently read a news item about research that showed children are innately sociable and helpful to others. As we get older, we learn other behaviors that seem to be driven by our need for protection and self-preservation, but right at the very beginning we seem to have very strong instincts to help other people. That, as adults, we are more likely to manifest these same behaviors at this time of year suggests that we are driven by a spirit from our past.

As our brains are settling and we are reconnecting with our most essential selves, we humans are capable of some remarkable things.

Not a year goes by that someone does not reference the Christmas of 1914 and the 48-hour spontaneous truce that broke out through the trenches. World War I would claim approximately 9 million lives, but for a brief period, the enemies exchanged gifts, shared food and even played soccer. It only happened once, during the War's first Christmas, but it speaks volumes about the difference between our instincts and our learned behaviors.

Out of the silence of the Christmas overnight can come the ideal gift, the ideal moment and even our ideal of who we want to be. I am not a person of faith, but, in my own way, I do recognize this night as being different from every other night and one that is full of promise and for that reason I do look forward to it every year.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

The Value of Gas Station Cinamon Rolls

I know that no one does this but me. It’s my secret defense against a world that continues to disappoint, frustrate, and aggravate.

There’s a shop around the corner that sells my rescue remedy. Sometimes it’s a bottle, sometimes it’s a bar, sometimes it’s cold and sometimes it’s hot. And on the really bad days—more frequent of late, it seems—my remedy might be a combination of these ingredients.

I eat.

I’m not one of those foodies who seem to be all over the TV extolling the virtues of chocolate covered ants, or wolverine toenails with ceviche. I prefer the gas station cinnamon rolls to those you get in a bakery and I like my cold drinks with as many syllables as possible.

As a result of my caloric-clad cowardice, my inability to confront the issues and the people that drive me to find my ho-ho-ho in a plastic wrapper, I am truly the bigger person. Bigger not because I turn the other cheek, but because I have more cheek to turn—chins too.

Another result of my rescue remedy is that I have spent more time with doctors than I would prefer. Blood tests, treadmills, HDL and LDL are now a part of my vocabulary. I make monthly trips to the pharmacy and am constantly surprised by how much money goes into so few pills.

I take the pills and the stress tests because, however frustrating everyday life can be, I’m not done with it yet. I would like to live long enough to be able to give my wife the kind of life that she deserves.

So my health is important to me and I pay a premium to maintain it. And like many, the dollar cost of that premium keeps going up far faster than my salary.

Don’t get me wrong, I know I am very fortunate to have access to any kind of insurance coverage. But I also know that having less money to pay the other expenses of daily life because of it is one of the reasons that my car seems to stop at the corner store.

Being sick in this country is frightening: more frightening than anything they could come up with on television, or in the movies. For an increasing number of us—even with coverage—it is the nightmare from which you never awake.

The simple doctor visit, with the odd test and prescriptions, can be make a sizable dent in the family budget, but if hospitals and specialists become involved then not just their health, but their economic future can easily be jeopardized.

I am not a stone. I would love a chance to drive a fancy sports car, live in one of those McMansions that were so popular a couple of years ago and have a big enough yard to have more than one dog. I want all of that, but I know that it will have to wait until my bank balance can support it. If I get seriously sick, I do not have the same luxury of deferred gratification. I have a simpler choice: follow the doctor’s orders, wherever they lead, or wait for nature to take its course.

And once you get sick, you increase your risks not only for related disorders, but also that your insurance company will only selectively cover your expenses, or drop your coverage entirely.

Seen in those terms, every trip to the corner store for a flavored, or frozen, or chocolate-covered anything threatens my life, my health and my family’s future.

Great: more stress.

It’s like wearing a Velcro suit in a velour-covered world: once you start down this path, it can take a real effort to break loose.

In some respects I am more fortunate than others who experience congenital disorders, my problems are entirely of my own making. Cutting back and cutting out, walking the dog more and finding other ways to work out can significantly impact my health issues. This in turn will reduce my need for medication and the associated costs.

Sounds all very rational and straightforward, but my car keeps stopping at the store. And will keep stopping until I can address the underlying issues that make junk food so attractive to me.

My mental health and my physical health are connected around my ability to manage stress. There are healthier alternatives to inhaling a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream, but none nearly as enjoyable.

My brother keeps trying to get me to take up boxing, or some other physical activity. He claims that beating up a bag will be just as satisfying as anything I could eat. I understand that there are people for whom that is true, but to me, it makes as much sense as writing down what’s bothering you on a piece of paper and flushing it down the toilet. I could never do that out of fear that the toilet would back up.

A component of the current discussion about healthcare has been the need to get consumers more involved in their own care. The assumption is that having an accurate picture of the cost of care will encourage us all to get healthier and the healthier we get, the less we will need medical care and the cost will go down. It’s a lovely idea and based on sound economic theory, but people are already afraid to get sick. Sticker shock is not going to get me to go to the gym either, but it will get me to have another cookie.

There is no doubt that fear is an excellent motivator: it was responsible for the high level of engagement in the recent town hall meetings on this issue. But comfort and security are perhaps more powerful: this is perhaps why the couch always seems to win out over the exercise bike.

A lot of ink has been already spilled on this topic and I certainly don’t claim that I have any new insights, but I believe this is too important a conversation to be left to insurance companies and politicians.

I keep coming back to the idea that this entire debate is, first and foremost, a conversation about values. What kind of a country would oblige so many of its citizens to live in fear of disease?

The rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence are fundamental to the American character, regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. Of the big three—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—the notion of a “right to life” is clearly galvanizing. Liberty and happiness are important, but they are meaningless without life. Should we really be drawing a distinction between life and health? Between happiness and health?

Reforming healthcare goes to the heart of the question of what the country stands for. The health of any community is a reflection of the health of its citizens. Safe water and effective sanitation are basic to any model of communal living. We demand the government intervene at the threat of pandemic and we volunteer to give blood in the event of disaster. Even the most vehement of libertarians support the notion of a common good.

And if you don’t accept the notion of being your brother’s keeper then you should appreciate that providing access to basic healthcare to the many will reduce the cost of healthcare for the individual. Hospitals spend millions of dollars every year providing care to those uninsured patients that we have heard so much about. There isn’t a healthcare facility that could stay in business if they didn’t pass those costs along to the rest of us.

This is the essential pro-life discussion and should not be hijacked by the misdirection of “death panels”, “Obamacare” and socialism. It is not hyperbole to note that this is a conversation about what a 21^st century America is about and what it stands for. And if you accept that there is some minimum standard for the health of the public then I am convinced that people of good will can develop a practical plan to make that happen.

As the holidays are approaching, I look forward to the opportunity to watch “A Christmas Carol” the essential holiday fable. Early in the story, Scrooge is told that there are many who would rather die then go to the work houses that were so common in Dickens’ time. Scrooge’s response is that if they would rather die, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

By the end of the story, Scrooge is able to change his fate by extending his hand to those less fortunate than himself. By investing in his neighbors, he enriches himself. This is not an idea unique to Dickens, or Christmas, but, I would submit, part of the national identity.

Just as the time has come for me to take responsibility for my health and my future and stop using food as a band-aid, we must decide that investing in healthcare for all is the only responsible thing to do.

I have to go now and take the dog for a walk.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Families Are Like Opinions

With wars, recession and a sleigh-full of uncertainty, holiday spirit has been in short supply this year. Each night, the inflatable Homer Simpson as Santa comes to life in my neighborhood, but the grim sense that a larger and more menacing inflatable Mr. Burns is just around the corner is never too far away.

For just about as long as I can remember, the holidays have made me a nervous wreck.

We had the tree and the stockings, the presents and the toys, but the centerpiece of every Christmas was the dinner. Because we lived in a small house, our family always went either to the home of my aunt’s family or to that of my uncle. So instead of the anticipatory preparation of turkey and fixings, there was the dread associated with getting into scratchy clothes and snow boots for the drive to dinner.

My parents were of the cocktail generation and so once the coats were hung up and the “what did you get for Christmas-es” were dispensed with, the kids were dispatched to the television room not to return until dinner was served. My father was fond of saying that “children should be seen and not heard” and so we quickly learned our roles at these gatherings.

All of the cousins were just enough older than either my brother or me that we never had all that much in common to talk about. At these gatherings we would still be sitting at the kids table while they were able to sit with the adults.

Among my clearest memories about these gatherings was the laughter. The meal would begin with an old English tradition of opening Christmas crackers. These are tube-shaped paper novelties that contain a paper cap, a small toy such as used to be included in Cracker Jack boxes, a paper hat, and a piece of paper with a merry joke or riddle. (“Q: How do you stop a charging rhino? A: Take away his credit card.”)

Once the multi-colored paper hats were in place, the adults table would take turns reading their joke over the sharp-tongued critiques of the others. A small laugh initiated by the old joke would become a belly laugh when “topped” with some sarcastic remark about the joke teller, or some reference to an incident from the past that cast them in a bad or embarrassing light.

The challenge for anyone wishing to join in the conversation was that they had to be loud enough to seize any gap in the conversation and they had to be funny. And once you had everyone’s attention, there was no room for any kind of uncertainty. You either had something to say, or you didn’t and if you fumbled then that only provided more grist for the comedy mill.

It was kind of like the celebrity roasts that show up on television from time to time. There was not as much bleeping, but the tone was the same. It was not an environment for the faint of heart. Bringing an outsider to the table was a real test of the strength of your relationship. If they came back, it was a sign of the promise of the relationship and if they participated in the comedic free-fire zone and were funny then that was a whole different ballgame.

From my vantage point at the kids table, my cousins all seemed really smart. They could give just as well, or better, than they got, they were laser-accurate in their observations and they all seemed to enjoy the game. They made it seem effortless and like something you would want to be a part of.

By the time I was old enough to sit at the adults table, many of my cousins were no longer coming home for the holidays and I discovered that I had neither the confidence nor the ability to participate in the conversation.

There’s another old riddle that goes, “What’s the secret of comed--? Timing!”

If I have any skill telling a joke—a question frequently debated—it was hard-earned. Even reading the lame Christmas cracker riddles, it was far too easy to misplace the emphasis and lose the joke. And when I did, my loving family was right there to point it out. (Perhaps I should have read more into the fact that those paper hats never fit me....)

As children, we only ever know what we know and so we don’t often have the luxury of seeing our situation for what it is. Often it takes an outsider to tell you that you are having a hard time, or that your environment is toxic. The work I do now is based on this idea.

Still, family is complicated. It’s not destiny—we’re not all doomed to be just like our parents, cousins, etc.—but it is complicated. It’s years later and I don’t go home as much as I used to. I’m not as close to my family as I would like to think but if I don’t go home, I don’t have any relationship with them at all.

Families are like opinions: everybody’s got one and everyone thinks their’s is the most screwed up. There’s no question that some are better than others, but there’s help available to work on those relationships, or how you respond to them. Mental Health America exists to connect people with resources to improve their mental health, including their family ties. If we can help you, please give us a call.

Please accept my best wishes for a safe and healthy holiday season.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director