2022 Layne Family Christmas Letter

The holiday season is for many a time of pause when we curl up in front of a warm fire with a hot cup of cocoa and watch snowflakes drift gently past the window while reflecting upon the fond memories and happy events of the year just passed. 

While such maudlin sentimentality may have a place in Hallmark movies and plaque psoriasis commercials, we will instead do our best to recount in this small space the unprecedented misery which befell our family during the preceding year.

2022 began as many years do with winter.  Shortly after ringing in the new year, Sylvia embarked upon an epochal change not seen on Earth since the end of Pangea. 

It commenced with her decision to vacate the family homestead in exchange for an independent living situation in her beloved Addison.  Touted as a cruise on land, her new home came complete with a park view, one bedroom, one bath, a beautiful, fully equipped kitchen, three meals per day in the onsite restaurant, a lounge with Friday happy hours, free transportation, activities galore, and friendly neighbors many of whom she knew from her days as a village trustee.  Naturally, she was miserable (Mark’s fault).  Nevertheless, we moved her in on March 1^st.  The house hit the market a month later, receiving five offers above asking the first day, mice and all. 

Not long after settling into her new digs, she was diagnosed with stage-four ovarian cancer which had metastasized throughout her torso, thus beginning several months of chemotherapy (probably also Mark’s fault).  Days before her last chemo treatment, she contracted COVID which she unsuccessfully tried to give to Mark. 

Speaking of the dreaded “c” word, Karen’s brother’s rare non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma returned with a vengeance after seven years in remission.  Forced into retirement at the ripe age of 56, Gary spent the fall months in CA at Stanford University receiving T-cell transplants and is now back at Northwestern in Chicago receiving additional immunotherapy treatments.  We all pray daily that the latest round will succeed.

In February, Mark was informed by his long-time wireless industry benefactors that his services were no longer needed.  This news coincided conveniently with several brilliant policy decisions on the part of the current administration in Washington which brought the economy to a screeching halt and an end to the once flourishing real estate appraisal business.

In May, the world lost one of the greatest Chicago sports fans of all time.  Following in the footsteps of Don, Al succumbed to sepsis at the hospital and made his transition into the light ten days into his 88^th year.  He is no doubt hanging out with the likes of Harry Caray, Bronco Nagurski, Ron Santo, and Walter Payton, commiserating over the fortunes of his beloved Cubs and Bears.

Speaking of great losses, while helping Sylvia pack for her move, Karen discovered the cremated remains of Don and Rob hiding in a cabinet in her living room.  Mark eventually persuaded Syl that her wish to spread them on the front lawn probably wasn't the most appropriate (or legal) way to commemorate their lives.  Although determined at first, she eventually relented, allowing Mark to arrange for a formal military funeral and interment on July 5th at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, IL (an hour or so south of Chicago).  Leslie, Jayson, Carol, Mark, Karen, the girls, and two of Don's closest friends attended.

  

The gang kicked off summer break with a trip to Gulf Shores, AL, by way of New Orleans.  The Big Easy didn't disappoint, fully living up to its reputation as the sewer of the US replete with multigenerational filth and the nation's highest per capita population of degenerate alcoholics.  The bulk of the trip was spent at a lovely resort in Gulf Shores where the girls got 3rd degree sunburns the first day and temperatures averaged three million degrees F with 170% humidity, forcing everyone to remain indoors for most of their stay.  The high and low of Mark's experience was visiting the USS Alabama on their way through Mobile which was offset by reticence on the part of the Navy to lob a few 16" shells into the French Quarter in the hopes of clearing out the riffraff. 

During summer, Mark landed a new wireless gig working remote for T-Mobile in MN.  He ably surmounted the language barrier thanks in no small part to the year he spent at the University of North Dakota where he became fluent in low Canadian – the dialect spoken in our northern border states and throughout Canada made fun of by Bob & Doug McKenzie and the film Fargo.  He now spends his off hours removing cat-size hair clogs from the bathtub drain, picking up dog poop, and teaching the deaf to see and the blind to hear. 

In late summer, Karen developed a nervous tick from her many years doing data entry, so accepted a position as parish administrator at a nearby Episcopal church.  Not having set foot in a church since the Crusades, her experience began with a degree of discomfort.  Often there alone, hidden away in her basement office, she often feels creeped-out which Mark attributes to the sixteen-foot tall, crucified Jesus looming in the chapel on the floor above.  She is nevertheless worshiped by the pastor and parishioners who beg her weekly not to quit.  The spookiness notwithstanding, she seems to enjoy her new role in what is a far more wholesome environment than her last out-of-the-house job with the DuPage Senior Citizens Council where every hour was happy hour.  It not only offers a welcome respite from her obsessive domestic proclivities but a break from Sparky who follows her around like an obsequious Taylor Swift groupie.

Speaking of Sparky, determined to dispel our belief that white dogs can’t jump, all were shocked during a fall a visit to Iowa when, quite without warning, he leapt over a concrete knee wall into the lower level of a parking garage adjacent to the Iowa City Arby’s.  Fortunately, the clueless creature was attached to his leash which played-out to its full length before jerking to a halt, arresting his freefall a couple feet shy of the garage floor, and depositing him sans harness at the bottom of the 8’ abyss where we found the great white dope running in panicked circles looking for Karen.  But for the grace of God and a foot or so of cord, and Maggie would have been an only pet, prompting Mark to add “longer leash” to his Christmas list.

Amanda continues to suffer the slings and arrows of her outrageous good fortune.  She often threatens to move out, but the specter of paying rent and living without free cable and daily maid service has proved too powerful a deterrence.  Going on year two in the marketing department at Moraine Valley CC, she spends her 12 weeks of paid vacation crisscrossing the globe to follow Greta Van Fleet while ever looking forward to scraping the gum of Illinois off her thick-soled, patent-leather boots for a warmer, cheaper, and less politically liberal climate.

In what the family now refers to as “The Many Follies of Amanda,” after impassioned warnings from Mark and Ally who reminded all of her disastrous experience with bird ownership when she was eight, Amanda ignored all sense and applied her practiced skills of incessant begging and nagging to coerce her mother into letting her buy a parakeet.  Other than all the noise, noise, noise Ally endured from the adjacent room, the warm months passed uneventfully.  But as temperatures dropped and we closed the windows for winter, Amanda was beset by such severe allergies we threatened to stab her to death with her own EpiPen.  In a repeat of history, Sammy now lives with Grandma Carol where he will eventually expire along with the rest of Amanda’s failed pet experiments and Karen’s unwanted home décor items and furniture.

Ally keeps herself shrouded in mystery. While home, she remains sequestered in her room behind closed doors.  We suspect she may either be a spy on the payroll of some foreign government or Spiderman.  Though well suited to a career in law enforcement owing to her secretive nature and ability to subsist on a diet of donuts and Dunkin iced coffee, she continues to pursue nursing, impressing naysayers with her stellar GPA.  Having spent equivalent to the gross national product of Guam the past two years, it is unclear whether the University of Iowa will figure into her fall 2023 plans.  Nevertheless, living in her first apartment has proved an eye-opening experience fraught with domestic peril but enhanced by the positive benefit of her learning to cook more than Taquitos and macaroni and cheese.  Although we hear tell of the many delicious meals she makes at school, we haven’t yet convinced her to repeat them at home… or change her socks.

In November, Sylvia decided it was time to give up driving lest she add vehicular homicide to her resume’.  The day after Thanksgiving, she sadly waved goodbye to her Lexus 350 GS, no doubt recalling the many good times she had running into and over anything that crossed her path.  Although it didn’t take long for her to adjust to losing the ability to drive around town endangering the lives of pedestrians whilst shopping for items she had ten of in her pantry, being deprived of her ready access to fast food has proved devastating (definitely Mark’s fault).  The dawn of her 90^th year on December 10^th found her off the streets, fully recovered from COVID, effectively cancer free, and trying to learn Door Dash.  (If there was a positive side to Sylvia’s illness, it was that we saw Leslie more frequently which gave Syl someone to point her finger at besides Mark.)

As we at last drive a stake through the heart of 2022 and look ahead to a hopefully less cataclysmic 2023, we are reminded of Woody Allen’s observation in Annie Hall that, “Life [is] full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.”

A Heartfelt "Howdy Ho!" to All, and to All Good Grief

Karen, Mark, Amanda, Ally, Maggie, and the DWB (Dirty White Boy)