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)

2016* Layne Family Christmas Letter

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse. Then up in the parlor there arose such a clatter, we sprang from our beds to see what was the matter. When what to our horrified eyes did we see, but a yuletide disaster which had once been our tree. Decades of keepsakes lay smashed on the floor, bits and pieces of shrapnel flung 20’ if not more. The lights once so bright were all tangled and smashed. Only the star on the top had survived the great crash. The water spread out from the stand like a tide, the parents stood dumbstruck, the children both cried.

The past several months saw such fighting and tears, the worst we’d all known in some seventeen years. As we stood there in shock, our hearts brimming with dread, the jingling of bells pierced the air overhead. We ran to the window, looked up to the sky, and saw good old St. Nick on his sleigh flying by. Unwilling to stop at this sad, angry place, he urged the team forward and picked up his pace. But we heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, “Not this year Layne family. Enjoy your next fight!” 

In an apt end to a grossly inharmonious year, we were jolted from bed at 6 AM the Tuesday before winter break by an explosion of snapping limbs and breaking glass, only to find our Christmas tree splayed horrifically on the living room floor in a tragic entanglement of branches, light strands, and the shattered remnants of 20-plus years of memories. Karen believes it was an unfortunate accident. Mark is pretty sure God smote our holiday experience owing to His displeasure over the perversion of Christmas into a commercialized frenzy of avarice and pagan symbolism.

Truly, it was a long brutal year of rancor, invective, and mudslinging where nary a feeling was spared by the rapier tongues of the two battle-hardened combatants whose bitter, long-standing rivalry seems to have come to a temporary truce. As in years prior, M&K pray Amanda and Ally will get along better. So far, their prayers have gone unanswered.

In January the clan attempted to take in another dog. Stanley was a bright and energetic Schnauzer/Jack Russel mix who loved to snuggle, eat, and bounce off the walls like a racquetball. The experiment ended when it became apparent Taffy’s interest in other dogs is limited to their excrement. Taffy’s indifference to and impatience with Stanley forced a tearful Karen to return Stanley to his foster family in hopes they might find him a home without an aloof, unwelcoming resident dog.

Despite her sexist, racist leanings, Taffy was voted the most interesting and beloved member of the family the second year in a row. Sure she begs for food nonstop and occasionally locks herself in Karen’s car, but very few dogs have the ability to hear bacon.

       

As Illinois enjoyed another lovely winter this spring, the family broke to DC so the kids could see firsthand why their parents can’t afford a condo in Hawaii.  Mark stopped by the Department of Treasury to demand his money back.  In a classic example of poor timing, it was Sunday and the doors were locked.  He was nonetheless treated to a free pistol whipping courtesy of Secret Service.

Having successfully passed driver’s training and waiting the six month cooling-off period required of new Illinois drivers before they can pilot an automobile in anger, Amanda now counts herself among the millions of motorists clogging our highways and polluting our air.  Before granting her access to the keys of freedom, M&K were forced to ask if a person who can’t remember to shut off the lights when she exits her room or wear her retainer at night could possibly have the presence of mind to open the door before backing out of the garage.  As is her mission in life, she has thus far proved us doddering fools.

It’s difficult for most people to comprehend what it’s like living in a place where the welfare of the many is outweighed by the personal interests of the few, so like a parasitic organism, the few will gladly bankrupt the host so long as the parasite survives. If Governor Bruce Rauner thinks Illinois Democrats are spendthrift opportunists, he should try living with two teenage girls. 

 

Having grown tired of humans, Karen now directs all her motherly affections toward Taffy. Taffy doesn’t seem to mind being cradled like a baby, having her own place at the table, or assuming Mark’s position in the marital bed, although the doggie sweater Karen fashioned for her from bacon is starting to smell.

Mark has finally crossed the precipice from youth into old age as he now finds golf a strenuous physical activity.  Leslie observed that if he could only embrace NASCAR as a legitimate sport and accept Nick Saban as his personal savior, there will always be a place for him in Alabama, mullet or not.

This fall, Ally took a brief respite from traveling around the tri-state area channeling her inner Jennie Finch, to try her hand at stunt driving. After M&K pulled the tractor out of the lake, Ally was quick to remind them that brakes are for cowards. (If you ever get the chance, ask Ally about her potato.)

This November marked the culmination of a derisive campaign which divided families and deepened the rift between supporters and detractors of a once storied institution, the aftershock from which continues to ripple across the fabric of society to this day. The angst of White Sox fans notwithstanding, if you aren’t worried about the Cubs winning the World Series, you should be. Although not one to place much credence in a 2000+ year-old document, some guys Mark was talking to over beers assured him that buried deep w/in the gobbledygook of Revelations is a vague reference to baseball, Chicago, and the end times.

 

In December, Sylvia, Leslie, Jayson, and Mark traveled to Maryland for their Aunt Ursula’s 100th birthday. To put things in perspective, during her lifetime she witnessed two world wars, the stock market crash, the birth of the civil rights movement, the election of 17 presidents, man walking on the moon, and Kaitlyn Jenner. 

 

 On this the sunset of eight years of bend-over-backwards tolerance of individual differences where minority rule prevails and the expression of opinions which conflict with popular sentiment is considered offensive, insulting, and/or racist, let us recall the words of John Kenneth Galbraith who observed that, “Politics is not the art of the possible.  It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” 

 

Merry Christmas to All, and to All Good Grief,

Karen, Mark, Amanda, Ally, and Taffy  

*Editor's Note: Those of you who pay attention to this nonsense may notice this is technically the second 2016 Layne Family Christmas letter, essentially because Mark is hard pressed to remember what time, day, or year it is. As he posts this edition, he's pretty sure it's still 2016, but not totally convinced last year was 2015.

White Sox Fans' Silver Lining

Dear Chicago White Sox Fans,
The nightmare many of you feared and most never dreamed possible has finally come to roost as the Cubs won their first World Series since the release of the Ford Model T.  No question difficult times lie ahead as you are forced to endure the speech-making, proselytizing, and gloating of the die-hard faithful, each of whom believe they played no small role in the franchise's historic rise to glory.

To add insult to injury, baseball gurus are predicting this team could become a dynasty with the potential to make multiple runs at the Series during the next four or five seasons, thus salting your wounds and prolonging your agony.

Let me explain why this is a good thing...

With their continued success, demand for tickets will leave the Ricketts family no choice but to move the team out of that archaic sandlot they call the "friendly confines" to a modern venue with a relevant seating capacity, thus wreaking economic devastation upon Wrigleyville and putting a swift end to the 24-7-365 frat party perpetuated by those smug, self-important locals who treat the neighborhood like their own personal theme park and the Cubs organization like a beloved pet.

It may be small consolation, but to paraphrase Carl Spackler, at least you've got that going for you, which is nice.