In the hymn, the words have a broader religious meaning.
Not wanting to let go of their “shred of family” but never free to simply enjoy it, their experience of family ties at the holidays made me remember a line from the Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
It’s nearly always wrapped up with fear, tied up tightly with a ribbon of anxiety and played out to a soundtrack of jangled nerves rather than jingled bells. The passage likely would have caught my eye anyway.īut during the holiday season, conversations with a couple of friends gave the words “this little shred of family” a particular sense of desperation for me.įor those friends, both women, time spent with family during the holidays is less fun than the annual mammogram. Which is why last week I was reading Delia Owens’ current best-seller, Where the Crawdads Sing” and came across the quote that opens this column. That was facilitated by a Kindle and a daughter kind enough to help me shop for the right one.
MORE FROM TOM STAFFORD: Waitress shows why there can be hope to bridging differences
In that sense, boob was most often paired up with the rhyming word “tube” to create “boob tube” or television.ĭecades ago, when Crest commercials advertised that those who brushed with it had 25 percent fewer dental cavities, the boob tube was the rough equivalent of the anti-Crest - a device thought to cause 25 percent or more mental cavities in those who had too many brushes with it.Īnd so it seems odd to confess that it took a fall down the basement stairs two months ago for me to stop staring at the boob tube so much and start reading again. When I was growing up, it was most often used to point out the kind of person Yosemite Sam might have called an “idjit” or “maroon” in outbursts that were the spittle-filled Tweet storms of an earlier age.
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