SIng with me

Friday: Last night, my sons and I were driving home from dinner and I found myself singing along with Aerosmith's "Dream On." This is a song that was already old when I was a teenager, and my snotty 18-year-old self would not have been caught dead singing along with it or any song like it, even if dead people could sing.

In fact, I am so completely not a fan of 70s classic rock that I wasn't even sure if "Dream On" was an Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin song, though I was pretty sure that it was one of the two. So I looked it up, and found that this question is a pretty common one. Go ahead and Google "Dream On Aerosmith." The suggested auto-fill options will include "Dream On Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin."

I sang along with my sons, wondering if the song is actually good, and I just never realized it before; or if I'm just developing a new appreciation for the things of my youth. I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

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Saturday: Did you know that Charles Mound, elevation approximately 1,200 feet, is the highest point in Illinois? The mountain range closest to Chicago is the Great Smoky range, over 500 miles distant. Have you ever looked this up? If so, was it because you were watching "Christmas Vacation," and you wondered how far the Chicago-based Griswolds would have had to drive to cut down a tree in the mountains?

No? Just me?

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It's December 1, so we're watching "Christmas Vacation." It's not my favorite Christmas movie, but my teenage sons love it so much that it's entered my top ten. I sing along to "Mele Kalikimaka," while my younger son whistles. He is an exceptionally good whistler, and I can carry a tune, so we sound pretty good. It's cozy here, and I have to say that we're the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

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Diane Ladd played Chevy Chase's mother in "Christmas Vacation." They are eight years apart in age.

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Monday: Diane Ladd had to fake old ladyhood in "Christmas Vacation," but my Nana is the real thing. Nana looks very much like Aunt Bethany; though unlike poor Aunt Bethany, my grandmother is still as sharp as the proverbial tack. She might wrap up a cat and give it as a gift, but she'd do it on purpose. And you can trust me that if someone asked my Nana to say grace, she wouldn't confuse it with the Pledge of Allegiance, or with anything else.

She'd be quick about it, too. Like most Catholics of her generation, my grandmother is devout, but she doesn't waste time on long, flowery prayers. And she doesn't waste a lot of time on the phone, either; partly because she doesn't hear too well anymore, and because she doesn't like long phone calls. This is a sentiment that I share. I just spoke to Nana, to wish her a happy 95th birthday. It was a five-minute call.

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When you're 95, you watch as your spouse and siblings and friends and contemporaries die, one by one. My grandmother is lucky; she hasn't outlived her children, and her health is as good as a 95-year-old can expect. She had to give up driving about 10 years ago (and about five years after she should have); and she can't read any but the largest print anymore. And now she's outliving all of the greatest figures of her generation.

George H.W. Bush was born a few months after my grandmother. They lived very different lives, but they shared the experience of having been very young, but very grown-up, during a time of war. Like Barbara Bush, my grandmother married very young (18) and then waited for her husband to return from the war. Unlike the Bushes, my grandparents were ordinary, working-class people. Neither George H.W. Bush nor my cranky, Trump-supporter (yes) Nana led perfect lives, but they did the best they could and that's all anyone can ask. They are among the last of a generation that lived during a time when their country was almost totally united.

I wasn't a Bush supporter. I didn't vote for 41 or 43. But today was still a sad and solemn day. Maybe it's just nostalgia. Maybe President Bush is like an old Aerosmith song, and I like him now because he's a thing of my youth.

No, it's more than that. Politics aside, there's no hypocrisy in recognizing George H.W. Bush's greatness, as a public servant and as a human. Politics aside, there's no way that a reasonable, feeling person could fail to be moved at the sight of 95-year-old Bob Dole assisted from his wheelchair to give a standing salute to his friend. An era has ended. The past is gone.