By Brenda Cannon Henley
With Christmas coming fast and furious and this weekend being the wonderful Dickens on the Strand in Galveston, my thoughts have strayed over the years. When I married Ted, he came with his own detailed and corrected each year Christmas card mailing list and three English looking gentleman’s vintage outfits.

Rather unusual for a single man, but he was an unusual and gifted man. I, on the other hand, had never been to a Dickens on the Strand, but I soon was initiated. I was still working full time and he was retired, so he shopped, found, and decided what I would wear. To say I was skeptical would have been a vast understatement.

I was always more comfortable behind the camera or interviewing for an article than in front of the camera posing for a photo in clothes that were not mine. Great learning experience.

Ted had attended many times, even driving from Amarillo with groups of Texas Education Association employees. He also sailed twice on The Tall Ship Elissa in her sea worthy trials as a representative of the state.

The first years were great fun and I soon got the hang of it. Beach friends, Ron and Bonnie York, also participated and became faithful volunteers. For that one weekend each year, we were rich, English aristocrats, a poor chimney sweep family, a writer and camera man, and several other characters. I have the photos to prove it.

One year, the festival organizers arranged for Charles Dickens’ great-grandson to be present and to bring artifacts from a traveling museum of his relative’s life. Ted met Mr. Dickens at the famed Tremont Hotel and arranged for me to get an exclusive interview and photos. I was given the rare opportunity to hold one of the quills Charles Dickens used to write A Christmas Carol.

My point is that for four or five years, it was a wonderful adventure that we looked forward to with great joy. The last Christmas of Ted’s life, he still wanted to do Dickens. I did not think it wise because he wasn’t feeling well. He was diagnosed with cancer in February and died in August, but he was already very ill. We just did not know it at the time.

He chose new costumes and we added photographs on the beach to our collection. We had a blast and made new friends. On the outside we represented well, but on the inside, it was a way different story.

That is the way it is on social media, photo shopped beauty, hairstyles, makeup, autos, trips, experiences, and relationships. Ran across this thought with which I totally agree:

“Don’t let social media play you. We all have problems, issues and needs. No matter how pretty someone’s life looks on the outside, they are in desperate need of God’s grace just like the next person.”

Let’s not allow ourselves to fall into the wicked trap of believing everything we see or read is true or that we are not in the running. It may not be as it seems or is portrayed.

Brenda Cannon Henley can be reached at 409 781 8788, or
[email protected]

[12-09-2019]