The finest Christmas message we can bring you is news of the arrival of a new grandchild, the thirteenth. We suggested to the young mother that she might avoid the adverse number by having twins, but she claimed she wasn't THAT superstitious. So now we have Victoria Hope in the family, young sister to Cynthia Jo of whom we told you last year.
Joe, you remember, was our tagalong postscript baby, seven years younger than the preceding one (Ruth, Wilbert and Ernest Vail having come close together). Joe finished his Army service, then his interrupted college career, before he married Carolyn. It logically follows that we have a tagalong postscript family of grandchildren, and what a joy it is to break out the baby bed and high chair from storage in the attic for another round of happy infants.
All but Ruth's family, who live in Connecticut, were together for Thanksgiving, and Cynthia, such a good little girl, fairly beamed with contentment as she trotted about in a big house all day, surrounded by what must have seemed to her a multitude of loving relatives, while the new baby demonstrated her charming disposition by sleeping so well that we almost forget she was there except at feeding time.
Among the grandchildren there is one name-sake for Jim. Wilbert and Betty called a son James Michael. And there are two for me. Ruth gave her daughter my real given name, and now Carolyn has given hers my pen-name. That is appropriate, because Carolyn was a journalist herself and is probably more impressed by me as a columnist than as a mere mother.
Both the names she chose are especially touching to me. Hope because of the rich associations through the years with all of you, as well as because of the look to the future which it implies. Victoria because it symbolizes victory of youth over age, light over darkness, life over death, and stillness over grief.
The best of Christmases to you all. -- Hope.
Memory Gem
Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more. -- James Stephens.
Memory Gem
And so I hold it is not treason
To advance a simple reason
For the sorry lack of progress we decry.
It is this: instead of working
On himself, each man is shirking
And trying to reform some other guy.