Pipes provide punch of Christmas spirit
It may sound strange, but I don’t think all that much about Christmas until it’s, well …
Maybe the night before, and all through the house, only Sammie the World’s Greatest Cat is stirring.
That wasn’t a very good take-off on a famous poem, I confess.
Christmas, which was such a wonderful time in our house when I was growing up, has kind of gone south in the intervening years.
That’s not to take anything away from the spiritual meaning of the day, of course, nor from all the folks who get in the “Christmas spirit” and seem so jolly at this time of year.
Quick note: This isn’t really where today’s column is headed, but I’ve always wondered why we need “Christmas spirit” to treat each other better, say hello to strangers, worry about the homeless and needy, etc.
Why can’t we think like that all year ’round?
BEYOND whatever spirit seems to float around as we approach Christmas Day — I’ll just leave you to think about that — I have my own reasons for allowing this holiday season to make me a little sad.
Where to start?
My dad died just after Christmas, five years after a car accident that left him partially paralyzed.
Then 13 years later, on a day when we were planning to get our Christmas tree, I went downstairs to change shoes and returned to find my mom on the hallway floor — victim of a heart attack from which she would never regain consciousness.
To compound that heartbreak, she lived several days with the help of various machines, and it was left to my sister and me, you know …
Tearfully, assured that Mom truly had been left without any brain function, we had to make the awful call to halt all the machinery.
There have been other Christmas downers, far less critical but still kind of grim, like pets dying and business trips to far-off places all alone — so married staffers could stay home with their families.
YOU MUST be sensing the trend here.
Christmas seasons past have tended to be dire.
This year, though, the craziest thing happened to change my entire mood through this festive season.
I saw a photo.
It hadn’t even been published, but our friend and photographer Duane Rasmussen sometimes sends me pictures of people or events that he thinks I might use with one of these Brand New Day columns.
And the very odd thing was that this particular photo didn’t actually seem likely to fit with anything I’d be writing.
It was a shot — with no context provided — of a boy with a set of bagpipes.
I didn’t know the young man, and Duane only sent along the photo because he had a memory of summer bagpipe lessons offered on the North Idaho College campus a few years ago.
But THAT wasn’t why the photo made the hair stand up on my arms and back of my neck.
No, what Duane didn’t realize is that my family was not only Scottish on both sides, but that my mother and her seven siblings were raised in Dumbarton, a suburb of Glasgow.
And beyond that, I lived in northern Scotland for a bit more than three years within the last decade and a half.
It’s all so close on so many levels.
So you can imagine my connection to the pipes …
Not to mention with my family.
Back in the day, at Cameron or Gordon (my mother’s side) reunions, one of my uncles almost always would drink a snoot full, and then someone would say, silly enough: “Tom, get out the pipes!”
Bagpipes, you may know, were not meant to be played indoors. They were basically a call to arms to be heard for miles in the (I have to say it) “Braveheart” days.
Hate to plug nutcase Mel Gibson, but would you have known William Wallace or Robert the Bruce right off the bat?
Or the Battle of Culloden?
Meanwhile, back at the family parties …
Uncle Tom would puff up despite the craziness of it, and even we kids were supposed to sing along with “The Flower of Scotland,” or something else too loud to understand.
SO THIS Christmas feels different, all because I saw a photo of 12-year-old Andrew Martinov, of Coeur d’Alene.
That name might throw you off, but Andrew also comes from a family of pipers (his mom Laura’s maiden name was Robieson), and he took up the bagpipes — which are incredibly difficult to play — in part because he’s a third-generation piper.
Laura’s dad played the bagpipes, as did Andrew’s tutor, Uncle Josh.
“I really didn’t expect (Andrew) to take up the pipes,” Laura said, “but he was enthusiastic from the start and he’s stuck with it.”
And I’m so, so glad Andrew has held on to the tradition.
Just seeing the photo, talking to Laura and letting all those GOOD family memories of my own come drifting back on the piper’s notes of “Scotland the Brave,” well …
This could have been another gloomy sort of Christmas.
My partner, Melissa, is stuck in Kansas City, I’m here and the holiday hex seemed to be covering me once again.
Ah, but seeing the wee lad Andrew with his bagpipes …
It’s made everything different.
The echo of those pipes brings my entire clan back to life, all smiling, and I even have my own Scotland memories of events like the Edinburgh Tattoo.
Andrew Martinov, you have made this a merry and remarkable Christmas.
The traditional north Scottish greeting on meeting a friend is to say, “Fit like?”
It’s the same as a Yank asking how you’re doing.
I very much hope, Andrew, that you and all YOUR family can reply …
“Nae bad!”
•••
Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.
A Brand New Day appears from Wednesday through Saturday each week.
Steve’s “Zags Tracker” column on Gonzaga basketball runs on Tuesday.
Email: scameron@cdapress.com
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