JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I recall one year, maybe around 2000, when I was The Star’s Wyandotte County bureau chief, and I was working a day or two after Christmas. I had to make the rounds — police and fire department checks and such — because the beat reporter was off.

I went to the KCK Police Department building, then on Seventh Street, and an officer I knew was on duty. Before getting down to business, I said, “How was your Christmas?”

“Oh, great,” he said, with a beaming smile. “Just perfect. The perfect Christmas.”

I didn’t ask him why or how his Christmas was so perfect. With a comment like that, you don’t ask how or why, you just nod and go on, which is exactly what I did.

But I still think of that every once in a while because, I ask you, how many of us, as adults, have ever had “the perfect Christmas”?

Challenges, tensions, setbacks, disappointments and — sometimes — tragedies inevitably intrude, just like they do the other 51 weeks of the year.

So, here’s a quick rundown of our 2022 Christmas story…

:: I caught a cold — hasn’t everybody had something? — 10 days before Christmas, and it was still bothering me in the last days before Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I felt lousy and spent most of the day in an upholstered chair, watching the Chiefs’ game and taking a nap. Our daughter Brooks said she’d never seen me so “mopey.” She laughed when she said it, which at least got a small laugh out of me.

I had to pull myself together, however, because we were going to some friends’ home for a Christmas Eve party and gift exchange, and beyond that I had signed up to oversee the collection and sort the offering money at our church’s 11 p.m. service.

The party was very good, and by the time I got to church around 10:30 I wasn’t thinking about that cold at all. The service went well, except that I was struck by the fact I had never seen the vast majority of the approximately 110 people in the pews. The regulars probably had gone to the two earlier services.

On Christmas Day, I felt pretty good, thankfully, and we had a family gift exchange around noon. I had requested a sweater from Patty, noting that at least one sweater I already had was too tight. So, I opened a box to find a beautiful, merino, cable-knit sweater. I opened another box, which contained a bonus — a good-looking, casual shirt. Then I tried on the shirt. It was too big. “Put on the sweater,” Patty said. When I did, I must not have looked very happy because our 34-year-old daughter Brooks said, “What’s the matter, Dad?”

“It’s too tight,” I said. She laughed, which, like her reaction to my mopiness of the previous day, made me laugh.

Within a couple of hours, though, I was on the Dillards website, ordering a LARGE cable-knit sweater and a MEDIUM shirt.

Not “perfect” but pretty damn good.

:: Our 33-year-old son Charlie is in from Chicago, and it’s always very rewarding to have him around. Every since he could put a pencil to paper, Charlie has produced long Christmas gift request lists. But this year, oddly, he had sent us a request for just one gift — a Seiko, stainless steel watch, which, when he sent the request well before Christmas, was selling for slightly more than $100.

Usually, Patty takes the lead on the gifts planning, but I asked her weeks ago if I should buy the watch. She told me to hold off because she was thinking about presenting both Brooks and Charlie with the prospect of a family trip to Mexico in the fall. Patty said she thought Charlie would be fine with that very expensive proposition as a substitute, of sorts, for the watch.

Charlie still got some other gifts, but after all had been opened, he raised the subject of the watch. “I really wanted that watch,” he said. “It was on sale and now it’s not!”

Later, he requested that, in the future, if we we didn’t intend to give him the main gift he asked for to let us know so he could make other arrangements.

:: As usual, Patty worked hard in the kitchen on both Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, preparing dishes for the Christmas Eve party and a Christmas Day gathering at our niece’s house in Oak Grove.

There, we had a “white elephant” gift exchange, the theme of which was “keep it local.” My entry was a copy of “Tom’s Town,” the story of political boss Tom Pendergast. I had a feeling who would end up with that book, and I was right. Patty’s brother, a history buff, snapped it up in a “steal” from the person who first got it.

I came away with a recipe book. Although I don’t cook, I was satisfied because I knew it probably would be of use to Patty.

:: We got home about 9 last night and started coming down off the two-day high. Patty, Brooks and Charlie settled in the living room to watch Jim Carrey in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and I went to the front room to finish re-reading a paperback I had first read decades ago about an aspiring baseball pitcher who didn’t make it far up the ladder and ultimately became a sportswriter.

When we went to bed about midnight, Patty said, “Don’t wake me up in the morning; I want to sleep late.” We kissed goodnight, and I thanked her for the gifts and all she had done to make this Christmas a success.

When I woke up about 9 this morning, I looked over and saw that her side of the bed was empty. I started padding around, doing my usual ministrations in the bathroom, and half and hour or so later she came into the room.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “I’m going back to bed. I’m sick.”

There we were, hours from having had not “the perfect Christmas” but a pretty damn good one, and — wham! — another of life’s routine setbacks was at our doorstep.

…It got me wondering if that police officer had really had the perfect Christmas or if he knew that comment would end the conversation and we could just keep moving ahead toward the new year.