By Dave Parrish
We find ourselves now near the end of the holidays, at that most special time of the year for many: Christmas.
A reflective time, loaded with expectations and hope. Traditions and expectations abound. Within those, we carry joy and sorrow.
In the mobile society we have become, we are no longer bound to a single location or perhaps even to our roots. Even so, there is the yearning especially at this time of year to return to what was, to come home. Yet coming home for Christmas is often an elusive and difficult thing, sometimes a seemingly impossible thing.
David Parrish
This past week, I was a small part of a group of local businessmen and women that reached out to help ease the pain that can be connected with this longing to go home for Christmas. Early this fall, several of us had remembered a facility on Old Springville Road called “Three Hots & A Cot,” a shelter for homeless veterans. Our group is a small group with limited means but we wanted to do something outside of our own self-interests to make a difference. We decided that we were a good match for this group and so we began our Christmas project, a first for our little group.
We managed to gather quite an impressive collection of needed items, enough that there was no doubt we would need a truck to deliver them, a real truck, not just a pickup or minivan. Several of our members made it to the presentation of these gifts to the Old Springville Road campus.
In speaking with Buddy and Lynn, the managers of the Old Springville Road home, we received not only gracious thanks but also a reminder that their needs extended beyond the holidays, that their proverbial cupboards would be bare again in February. And so it is planted in our minds that perhaps our support should be more than seasonal. I feel certain that will be the choice made at our January business meeting. Perhaps you may want to help as well.
More than 70 years ago Thomas Wolfe wrote: “You can’t go home again.” Despite that observation that many now accept as fact, we carry with us our memories of home. Distorted and exaggerated as they may be, they have become our home, at least until we can construct a new set or memories in the homes that we build.
I hope you will make it home for Christmas.
May the market be with you.
