www.roanoke.com

I haven't been feeling very Christmasy this year.

Maybe it's the weather, or the fact that we've been saturated with jingle bells and sweet orchestral swells and sappy sentimental movies, stories, news items and commercials since before Thanksgiving.

All the usual preparations are weighing on me -- gifts, decorating, holiday baking. Those things should be done by now, and they aren't. They used to be more pleasure than chore, so what's happened? Have I been taken over by a bad case of humbug? Grinch syndrome?

With no ready answer to that question, I find myself wishing someone else would take care of all that stuff. To those of us in the sandwich generation, a vacation from holiday demands might seem sweet indeed.

Recently, however, I was reminded that it won't always be my turn. A time will come when I may long to throw myself into Christmas prep, yet I'll have to let others take over.

One simple encounter served as my reminder. It happened to my parents just a few months ago.

Both senior citizens, they were having dinner in a booth at one of our local eateries of the fast food variety. All was going well as they dined at their table when Mom inadvertently knocked over a full cup of tea.

Ice and liquid poured over the table surface, onto the seats, into the floor. Vexed and embarrassed, she and my dad quickly soaked all their paper napkins trying, but failing, to absorb the spill.

Now here's where the story gets interesting. I've been around seniors quite a bit lately, and I've learned a few things. Getting used to being older is powerfully difficult. Today's seniors were yesterday's can-do people, taking care of kids and the seniors before them. Four or five decades of being in charge and doing things for yourself as well as for others isn't easy to set aside when it's your turn to be the more-needy, less-able one.

So I suspect tears of frustration may have gathered in my mother's eyes. Wet seats and arthritic body parts more or less trapped them in the booth -- they couldn't get up for more clean-up materials without getting their clothes even wetter. But before they could think of what to do next, help arrived from an unexpected source.

Another couple, man and woman, had been dining there in the restaurant, seated near my parents. They observed the spill and no doubt gauged my mother's distress.

The woman took quick action. She went to the counter, asked for towels to mop up the mess, and proceeded to render aid to my parents masterfully, respectfully and kindly. In a twinkling, scattered ice cubes and spreading liquid were dispatched, surfaces dried and things were put right again.

My mother was so grateful those tears in her eyes spilled anyway. She thanked the lady profusely, who was gracious but gave the impression she'd done nothing out of the ordinary.

Yet I would call her actions extraordinary. Although my mother and father were not her own parents, she behaved as if they were by making them kinfolk for a little while. She did exactly what I would have done for my parents if I had been there -- in fact, she probably did it better.

As Mom and Dad left the restaurant, they felt compelled to thank her once again. This time she simply replied, "Pass it on."

And Mom has relayed that good deed in many ways, one by telling me of it.

Now I'm telling you. We're all in this together.

Isn't that what Christmas should be about, year round?

Susan Stevens Huckle lives and writes in Blacksburg.