No, it was not the greatest of holiday seasons for me this year. The holidays are never easy for people at my station in life, i.e. the people who do not have families of their own, the people who now reside on the opposite coast from where they were brought up. I did what I always do: I flew the 3,000 miles back to Upstate New York. Not because I necessarily wanted to, but because I had nothing better to do. And because I don’t have enough guts to tell my 65-year-old mother that I’m not coming home. And because part…