CARLTON FLETCHER: A message from grandson Sam’s borrowed desk

“When you coming home, dad? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then.”

— Harry Chapin

I’m sitting at my grandson Sam’s desk in the room he’s so kindly allowed me to use, basking even at this late hour in the glow of a three-days-delayed Christmas celebration with Sam and his sisters, Lily and Amelia.

I made the five-hour-plus trip to Jasper in north Alabama with my daughter Jordan and her husband, Matthew, pulling in a short while after Sam, Lily and Amelia — along with mom and dad, my son Steve and his wife Jessica — returned to their home from Christmas with Jessica’s family outside Athens. Even with all the travel, everyone was in the mood for a late-night basketball shoot-around (Sam got a ball that glows in the dark for Christmas), and an even later-night Fletcher family pajama party after we opened gifts and everyone (but Poppy) got new PJs.

I know there are only a handful of people who care about those first couple of paragraphs, but I bring them up to make a point.

After taking four days off last week — the first days off I’ve had in so long I can’t remember the last time — I’m taking a couple of days this week to see and enjoy most of my family. And even though I’ve only been here a few hours, I’m overwhelmed right now at what I’ve given up over the last several years. By working day after day after day, never taking time to see the people who are so vital to my life, I’ve missed out on large chunks of time with my kids and grandkids.

Who knew that strapping young man who came to Alabama full of the enthusiasm and promise that life gives you when you’re in the prime of your life would actually have a few gray hairs in his beard? And who knew those little babies of his, stairsteps a couple of years apart, would turn overnight into big boys and girls, 11, 9 and 7 … not 5, 3 and 1.

Who knew that fun-loving daughter who’d spent a couple of years halfway around the world would return home and, with a degree in hand, start working with autistic children, her eyes lighting up and excitement filling her voice as she told about the inch-by-inch breakthroughs she was a part of?

And, no, I’m not sitting here whining about time lost and pointing fingers. If I did that, the fingers would be pointing directly at me. I have great bosses — Scot Morrissey and Mike Gebhart — and one of the things they have been telling me since I was booted up — kind of the last of the old guard still standing — to my current position is, “Take some time for yourself. The paper will get done.”

Not that I didn’t trust or believe them or that I was so egotistical I couldn’t fathom an edition of this newspaper being put out without my input, but I just felt compelled to make sure the best edition of the paper possible went out every day. I know, I know. That was not always the case … there were excellent editions and awful ones and everything in between. But at least if I was there, at my desk and doing my job, when people pointed their fingers at this mishap or that, I could rightfully take the blame, learn from it, and try everything in my power to make sure those mishaps were not repeated.

I knew, though, sensed it, really, that I couldn’t do my usual thing this holiday season — beg off a visit, not drive a few hours to help one of the grandkids celebrate a special day, or be there to offer a hug and all the love I have in my being to these people who are so vital to my existence when their lives go awry. Maybe that’s the lone bright spot I can find for this hideous virus that’s taken so many from us and continues to run rampant even as a hoped-for miracle vaccine is ever-so-slowly administered. I felt compelled this holiday season to spend time with the people I love. To rely on someone else rather than allow my ego to think I am the only one that can do things the way my “other family” — you Albany Herald readers — expect.

So as I get ready to rest up for another full day of playing with Amelia, Lily, Sam, Jordan, Mathew, Steve and Jessica, I vow that I will reprioritize my life from here out so that I can spend the rest of the time I’m granted being a part of the lives of the people who, I’ve realized anew, love me as much as I love them.

And I’ll remember Christmas/New Year 2020 as one of those defining moments all lives deserve and need.