Happy holidays, everyone! It’s been a nice and restful break over here. Today, though, a special surprise shook things up: Hal got a late-coming package from his cousin Fil!
Fil started knitting during the first lockdown. Apparently, he’s only been getting better, because he managed to make a whole hat for Hal! It’s not quite the right size and style for Hal’s head? But, it’s the thought that counts. Hal had to call him to thank him for the gift right away.
Did you get any late-arriving surprises from relatives? More likely, did you catch up with loved ones over the phone? However you’re celebrating the end of the year, Hal and I wish you a safe and happy holiday season.
For those of you not in the know, Hal is a U-M student studying remotely this school year! Check out the Study Hal tag for more of his antics, or come back on Tuesdays in the new year for new installments!
I’m no octogenarian, but I love the CBS Sunday Morning show. So much so that it has now become a sort of tradition…
Ever since I was a wee little girl, my dad and I had woken up bright and early on Sunday mornings (though sometimes pushing the limit with only one minute to spare!) We would pad down the stairs, careful not to wake my still-slumbering mom. Armed with warm beverages and the coziest of blankets, we would snuggle up together as the show’s notorious sun yawned and stretched out his rays.
There was Wynton Marsalis’ trumpeting fanfare, which we’d mimic by putting our fingers to our lips and wiggling them around, making sure to hit all of the invisible and silent octaves. “Good morning, Charles,” we would say to each other in Bob Schieffer’s famous grandfatherly voice. And then, suddenly, Charles Osgood himself was speaking directly to us, welcoming us to a wonderful new day. Even though we would have to mute yet another commercial for arthritis medicine and tio-tropium bromide inhalation powder, this Sunday morning tradition became the thing I looked forward to most each week. I hope my dad did, too.
Now, of course, I am in college and come back home less and less frequently. But my dad makes sure to write down all of Steve Hartman’s heartwarming stories and Mo Rocca’s squirrel-eating shenanigans on tiny little sticky notes, so we can still bond and learn together over a breakfast at Angelo’s.
During my sophomore year of college, I was taking an introduction to theatre course through the RC. One of my fellow students happened to be a woman from CBS who was spending a year at U of M for a journalism fellowship. I asked her if she knew Charles Osgood, Tracy Smith, and Anthony Mason, and she said “Yes!” She even had been at a dinner party at Osgood’s house, where he played the piano for her (the episodes where he plays the piano are very special occasions in the Finch household). I asked my classmate if she would become a messenger between myself and the CBS reporters who had secretly shared Sundays with me for the past ten years. I had a very important message to send.
Following a discovery and proceeding obsession with the odes of Pablo Neruda, I had tried my hand writing odes for the previous weeks. I would write about anything: yawns, bubbles, robots, jelly beans. And then I had an idea. I would write an ode to the sun. But not just any sun. The CBS Sunday Morning sun. This is what came out:
ode to the sun
patient,
like the quenching juice
of a ripened orange
trapped behind its rind,
the sun
waits
within its black box
in all its shining glory
like an armored knight
summoned
by regal trumpets
to its kingdom.
A moment ticks by-
The horn is blown.
Footsteps pad like shadows.
And here again…
the sun,
with rosy
cherubic cheeks,
has come:
just in time
for Sunday morning.
* * *
I had remembered that sometimes letters and poems by fans had been read on the show by Charles Osgood himself! What did I have to lose? The girl in my class eagerly did some magic behind the scenes and sent my poem to the friends at CBS. I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Perhaps, it would be seen, swallowed, and cast down to the bottom of the intern’s inbox.
But no! One night as I worked late on a paper for class, an email dinged. <From: Steve Hartman> it said. Steve Hartman – the man who each week reports on a story of real everyday heroes who battle diseases, help strangers for nothing in return (let’s face it, basically stories that end with you running to the bathroom to grab a tissue to stop the tears forming in your eyes) – had written an email to me, from his own personal email address.
The email basically acknowledged that he had seen my poem and wanted to let me know how sweet it was. How it touched him to know that what he and his colleagues did at the Sunday Morning show was meaningful to my dad and me. Although my poem was never read aloud on live air, I can’t help but feel like it’s almost better that it wasn’t. The people who needed to know now know and we can keep that knowledge between ourselves. They know they have a fan who appreciates what they do. They know that the sun shall rise again and again, because someone will watch it. That’s what traditions are for: they are little private moments that don’t need to be vocalized to the whole world, just to the ones who are there to share it with you.
