As we sit huddled all toasty and warm before the crackling fire displayed on our giant, flat panel television, we find another holiday season upon us.
The passing year has been most generous in providing much to ponder, loathe, and fear. Though global warming threatens to plunge us headlong into another ice age, we at least have an avian flu pandemic to look forward to. Perhaps the greatest threat to our health, safety, and longevity, however, may well be living right under our own roofs. Much as bats are known to carry rabies and politicians VD, so are children bearers of every known malady harmful to man. Case in point, Amanda has had a cough since August (of 2004), and Ally’s nose runs with such consistency she is being considered by the US Department of Energy as a site for a hydroelectric plant.
From a very young age, children offer clues as to the future directions of their lives based on their interests, predilections, and predispositions. Imaginative, domineering, and quick to defend her strongly opinioned ideas, Amanda will someday make a terrific surgeon, lawyer, or dictator. Thankfully, Allyson has all but stopped relying on her fists to express herself, opting instead to use her head – as a bludgeon. A Butkus Award finalist, she now “head bunks” her way through conflicts, striking fear into all who cross her, and earning her the household nickname “Urlacher.” K & M are hopeful the NFL will allow female linebackers by the time she’s draft eligible.
In June we traveled to northern California to attend Karen’s cousin Judy’s wedding. California was hot, but it was a dry heat – not unlike a steel mill, kiln, or active volcano. We visited Karen’s cousin, John, who lives suspended on the side of a cliff so steep that one misstep, and next stop, Tijuana. We also stayed with Karen’s best friend from high school whose husband is Silicon Valley’s leading trucking magnate and food critic. The children got along well, mostly because they let Amanda boss them around.
While there, we drove through California’s wine country which looked a lot like rural Wisconsin, but with grapes for corn and snooty ex-actors for farmers. We also had occasion to gaze upon the oldest living things on earth – no, not Gerald Ford or Zsa Zsa Gabor, but the awe-inspiring redwoods and sequoias of Muir Woods – majestic, 300 foot tall monuments of nature, many of which predate Christ. As we were leaving, a team of conservationists from the Department of Interior arrived with chainsaws. It seems the White House needed firewood.
Mark’s cousins from Maryland drove out for a visit, but after spending three days stuck in traffic on I-80/94, gave up and returned home. Mark otherwise spent so much time in swimming pools he began to grow a dorsal fin, placing him in grave danger of being caught, canned, and sold under the label “Squab of the Sea” (a wholly owned subsidiary of “Chicken of the Swamp”).
In September, Amanda began first grade and Ally preschool. As one might expect, it was not without a torrent of tears, angst, and trepidation. We’re all confident Karen will eventually adjust. The jury was out until the last minute as to whether Ally would attend school at all owing to her intense dislike of other humans, especially male humans (except, of course, for Shaggy, Freddie, and sometimes, Daddy). She finally agreed to go as long as she didn’t have to talk to anyone or share her snacks.
Amanda now wakes each morning, surveys her closet full of clothes, laments over which brown top and brown skirt to wear (hopefully UPS will be hiring when she turns eighteen), and then spends the rest of the time before her bus arrives whining that nothing fits. Ally isn’t nearly as difficult when it comes to clothes in that she prefers to not wear any, making getting her dressed like stuffing an angry porcupine into a gym sock. Owing to their eardrum bruising protests, Karen has given up trying to brush either girl’s hair. Good thing dreadlocks are all the rage with kids these days.
Mark hangs out with his two new best friends, Harley and Davidson, pursuing his lifelong dream of transmogrification, relieved property values have begun to recover now that the PGA has left town and Tiger Woods has moved out of the neighborhood. Karen prays for the ability to tune out the girls’ bickering if only long enough to hear herself cry.
If it is indeed true that much of life’s more poignant wisdom can be found on bumper stickers, then as we stumble forward into a new year, confronted by increasingly difficult decisions, we might do well to ask ourselves one important question: “What would Scooby Doo?”
Merry Christmas to all, and to all good grief.
Karen, Mark, Amanda, & Ally
