As I sat enjoying my hot soup in my warm house, I thought about the fact that most tall tales are based in fact…

After the snow storm hit, my assistant, Cathy could not even fling herself out her sliding door like she had in the past. The windows were plastered with snow.

Meanwhile in Grand Rapids my family and I had a Christmas dinner with ham.  My mother suggested that I take the ham bone home to New England since my mother was leaving for the warm southwest in early January. The ham bone was put in the freezer to await its flight.

Back in Rockport, Cathy did not want to abandon her mother when she went exploring outside.  She strapped her mother to her back, both having had relevant experience in the Andes Mountains.

Meanwhile back in Grand Rapids, I packed the ham bone in my bags, preparing for my trip home.

Back in Rockport, Cathy and her mother went through a window in order to get to the roof and get the lay of the land and see the results of the storm.

Meanwhile, in Grand Rapids, I put the ham bone back into the freezer when my flight was cancelled.

Back in Rockport, Cathy and her mother could not identify the landscape nor identify which lump of snow hid their car.

Meanwhile in Grand Rapids, I packed the ham bone in my bags for my rescheduled flight back to Boston.

 Back in Rockport, Cathy and her mother could not identify the landscape nor identify which lump of snow hid their neighbors.

 Meanwhile, in Grand Rapids, I put the ham bone back into the freezer when my flight was cancelled.

 Back in Rockport, Cathy and her mother sat and viewed the beauty of the snow from their rooftop framed by the ocean and the winter sky.

 Meanwhile in Grand Rapids, I packed the ham bone in my bags for my rescheduled, rescheduled flight back to Boston.

 Back in Rockport, Cathy and her mother continued to enjoy the view from their roof.

 Meanwhile in Grand Rapids, I packed the ham bone and unpacked it when my I got the cancellation notice for my rescheduled, rescheduled, rescheduled flight back to Boston.

 Back in Rockport, Cathy called me from her rooftop, claiming that the weather had warmed and that I was obviously telling a tall tale and trying to keep the ham bone from arriving in Boston.

 Meanwhile in Grand Rapids, I packed the ham bone and went to the airport to take my rescheduled, rescheduled, rescheduled, reschedule flight to Boston.  It was cancelled.  At 4:30 a.m. the next morning I drove the ham bone through the Arctic vortex to Detroit to catch a direct flight to Boston.

 Back in Rockport, Cathy’s mother, finally tired of being on the roof, commanded her to fly off that roof.  The neighbors ran to their windows to see a flame of red hair streak through the sky…

 And then, finally, after an ice storm, a 2-foot snow fall, an arctic vortex, 4 cancelled flights, a Michigan Christmas ham bone that came to Massachusetts, a Cathy that was came back to ground, and one mother warmly established back in her home and another off to Phoenix, the holiday season came to an end.

 And I enjoyed my spit pea and ham soup, thinking how proud my Midwestern grandmother would be of my persistence in not making a ham bone go to waste.