A Very Stroock Christmas

Later today we shall remove to the Stroock Northern Strategic Direction in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where we'll meet our father.

This is going to a be a weird one.

From childhood till 2003 we almost exclusively spent Christmas with relatives in Livermore, Kentucky, our mother's ancestral home.

When her aunt died in 2003 we saw no reason to continue the trip.

As it happens that was the same year our paternal grandmother died, so we spent Christmas with our grandfather at the Algonquin in Manhattan.

[They let you in?-Ed]

We used the side entrance, the one for the Catholics and Jews. And by the way, you couldn't get in with that north country accent of yours, so stuff it, Ed.

Anyway, Lunch at the Algonquin became the new family tradition, from 2003 till last year. We'll go into more depth in another post.

Well...Christmas is complicated this year what with the ranks of the Fami de Stroock being decimated by disease and death. It feels kind of like Sir Percival coming back from the quest, 'I have found nothing but misery and despair.'

[Oh stop with the melodrama, you're fine-Ed]

Mrs. Stroock took the Strooklettes to see her father in Indiana, so it's me and my dad up in the mountains.