I watched a few short films by a group called Teton Gravity Research. Several of them were adventure films about snowboarding. I’m not a good snowboarder, but I do love to ski. These films reminded me that there will be good times again even if the pandemic looms large right now.

One of those films was about a ski shop that’s been in an immigrant family since 1920, Lahout’s in Littleton, NH. It told the life story of a man named Joe Lahout who died at 93 in 2017. Joe’s life story made me think about my grandfather, Tony, who was also the son of an immigrant family and also quite a character.

I made roasted pork and sauerkraut for dinner tonight. I’d planned on it for New Years Day, but we ended up doing something different. I can never eat pork roast without thinking of the time when my grandfather turned out electric oven off two hours before a pork roast would have been done. It was raw when mom took it out of the oven. He was accustomed to gas ovens and claimed that he thought it would cook in retained heat. We laugh about this now, but it wasn’t so funny that day.

I’m grateful for these reminders and memories.