A CHRISTMAS SNOW GLOBE

Before he became a teen-aged rebel, Big Bore says he was a Mama’s Boy growing up, the baby in the family. He loved to watch/help her in the kitchen, a more than willing taste-tester. I’ve lost track of how many times he’s started a sentence with, “Mom used to….” followed with a story about her special way of cooking up a recipe. It happened twice just yesterday afternoon on our drive back from Wichita.

BB has told me how his mother loved music and how, when he was the only child left at home, the two of them would royally annoy his father when on vacations, singing duets while ol’ Dad was trying to navigate the highways. They would use fake operatic voices, joining in with whatever was on the car radio, making a country song sound like a classic aria, with some sour notes thrown in for good measure. Decades later, he’ll demonstrate their style, a piercing vibrato followed with laughter.

Which brings me to the snow globe. It can’t be easy picking out a Christmas present for a loved one who is living and dying in a nursing home. This is a snow globe that Big Bore gave his mother for her final Christmas, in 2006. I was with him when he picked it out from a big display in a department store. At first, he was looking for one with little dogs inside it, since his mother adored her pets. When he couldn’t find one like that, he was attracted to this white one. He thought she might enjoy the images of the singers in the “snow” and the music box in the bottom that plays a beautiful “Silent Night.” ---She died 10 months after he gave it to her. Big Bore is not much of one to express his feelings, but I would like to think he is hoping that she sleeps in heavenly peace.