Susan’s Shorelines: Ballooning to Bethlehem

As Community News Editor, I’m grateful to be opening 2025 with our first issue of the Reporter.

There was a time in mid-2024 when we thought our year-end issue would be our last. But this community raised loud and eloquent voices to ask to keep their newspaper, and thankfully they were heard.

It’s my honor to fill this Around the Island section each week with contributions from the wonderful organizations that enrich the life on the Island – from the Library to Mashomack, Sylvester Manor and the Historical Society, to the Lions and Legion and Garden Club and so many volunteers who look out for their neighbors.

The column on this page offers advice from some of them, a gentler approach to welcoming the New Year than the annual guaranteed-to-fail resolution. I hope you enjoy their words of wisdom.

In the lead-up to the holidays, I gained a bit of insight myself from an unexpected source — my 4-year-old grandson, Oscar.

I had Oscar with me as I began the unpacking of the Christmas decorations, including some familiar favorites that hadn’t come out of storage since we downsized a few years ago.

A Santa figure about a foot high; a traditional Nutcracker doll of the same size; the Nativity set. Santa held a list of names sorted into Naughty and Nice; under Oscar’s dictation, I wrote the names of everyone he knows under Nice. Designated as Naughty were Bad Dinosaurs and Bad Farmers. Good Farmers, I’m glad to report, made it onto the Nice list.

The Nutcracker fascinated him, with his red soldier uniform and chomping jaws. In Oscar’s hands, the lever in the back turned him into a puppet named Nut, with a surprisingly deep voice.

He later decided he wanted to put Nut to work, and a bowl of peanuts were enthusiastically cracked and freed from their shells. In short order, Oscar and Nut had created an unholy mess, so we turned to the next player in this drama, the Dustbuster.

As he eagerly vacuumed up the broken shells — and some dusty corners I helpfully pointed out — he looked at me with a beatific smile and said, “We’re doing housework!”

He’ll make a wonderful husband some day.

I started to set up the Nativity set, arranging the figures in their traditional tableau. They’re made of hard rubber, so perfect for little helping hands that immediately began to move them about, conjuring up a fierce battle. The kings on their camels, Oscar told me, had to be guarded from attackers, with us wielding the sheep, shepherds and Mary and Joseph against the horde we could not see.

“They’re invisible, right?” I asked. “No, they’re not invisible, we just can’t see them,” he patiently explained.

Soon, he moved on to explore the ornaments that would go on the tree once it was set up, playing with a tiny hot-air balloon. He wanted to hang it from a garland stretched along our mantel, but I cautioned that it might be too heavy.

The time went by quickly as always, and after my daughter came to take Oscar home, I began to impose a grown-up order to the scene. The figures were returned to their customary places in the creche, but I realized the infant was missing.

Peeking around the corner of the mantel, I found the hot-air balloon delicately suspended from the garland. And there, lying peacefully in the balloon’s basket, was the baby Jesus, ready to float through the silent night to Bethlehem.

If I could share with you a good wish for the New Year, I’d hope you have the chance to step back and see the usual, the familiar, with a new perspective.

Should you have the good fortune to find yourself in the company of someone about 4 years old, take a deep breath, hop in the balloon and enjoy the ride.