2010 Christmas Letter

The end is near

2010 is coming to a close with a disturbing turn of events at The Kingman. The kids can pretty much swap clothes with Ann Marie and I now. Nina regularly raids her mom’s closet and Ann Marie doesn’t hesitate to grab Nina’s hoodies when I refuse to turn on the furnace.  Likewise, Peter will head off to basketball wearing my gym shorts and fleece pullover. I can never wear those clothes again because he sweats a lot and it would not be right for me ever to wear them again. Still, I take a smug pride in being the only one around here that stomps around in size 15 boots (although this, too, is just a matter of time; Nina is only in 8th grade).

Beckerhead

I took a book along, just for times like this, and found a empty couch in the TV lounge near the cafeteria. Empty and quiet, there must have been 25 similar couches scattered around the room. Some had burnt orange cushions, others powder blue. It was going to be a long day at the nearby community college during the First Lego League regional qualifying event. As a quasi-chaperone I had no real responsibility or usefulness. I took a seat reclined and dipped into my novel. Within seconds some guy comes in, I don’t look up, but I can hear him talking to himself, like he is deciding where to sit and wants me to acknowledge him. I don’t. Sure enough he sits on the other side of my couch. My Couch. I could smell him.
“Reading a book, huh?” he says. Clearly this guy has powers of observation beyond that of us mere mortals. I look up, not to smile, but rather to just to look pissed and mean. Ann Marie says I have a gift.“Great idea,” more from him now. “Yeah, I just love to read, been readin’ my whole life. Whatcha readin’ there?”

Another mean look. This time I try to muster a true evil glare and turn my pissed off vibe up to eleven. But when I look up, he is bent over the front of the couch with his face next to my knee attempting to get a peek at the cover of my book.
“Oh, Hemingways. I love that guy.” He then produces a Glen Beck book from kids backpack and smiles at the cover.

“Lemme tell ya,” he says. “This fella… this Glen Beck. Whoa!” Then he goes on to evangelize about how Glen Beck is the single true voice of the nation and how he reads all his books and even drove all the way to Washington DC just to hear the dipshit give a speech. I never looked at him once, never stopped pretending to read Hemingways. Finally he shuts up about Glen Beck, talks to himself about the weather for a while then says, “Nice talking to ya!” and leaves the room.

2009 Christmas Letter

Fifth graders are a tough crowd.

Behind the smiling, rosy demeanor affected by every fifth grade teacher I have ever known lurks a neurotic individual hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Stuck in a room full of insatiable 11 year-olds for 25 hours a week, they walk a tight rope between fear and love that is both noble and frightening. Charged with bringing these creatures into adolescence gently and efficiently, they must realize one slip of the tongue will damage these youngsters for life.

So it was in my fifth grade year at St. Francis of Assisi Elementary. It was Christmas; Sister Bernice Marie was explaining the story of how Mary and Joseph were traveling to Bethlehem for the census called upon by the Roman Emperor Augustus. Although it was fairly well known among the class how the story ended, we wanted details, no matter how tangential. What’s the big deal with the census? Why didn’t Joseph have his own mule? What color was the mule?

Kindly, Sister obliged our whims. In fact, in order to avoid further questions, she eventually began to embellish her story with rich details relevant to our own lives. By the time the very pregnant, very uncomfortable Mary got to the stable it was clear to all present that Jesus was going to be born in Lyle Meeuwsen’s loafing shed (seven years later our senior class would build our homecoming float in Lyle’s barn. It became a much less sacred place when I was gluing crepe paper to a giant sombrero while standing ankle deep in manure).

But when Sister got down to the nitty gritty, she was oddly vague: Mary and Joseph were in the stable; Joseph went out to collect wood for fire (Mary had complained that the barn was drafty); when he returned to the stable, presto! Jesus was swaddled in the manger. Apparently, the lesson in biology was sort of an added bonus. In the time it takes to gather an arm load of sticks, a woman can go into labor, fully dilate, and deliver. Granted, the Holy Land is a fairly arid region, wood is scarce, and Bethlehem was no doubt a zoo with the census and everything. We had just one question: How did Mary barricade the manger to prevent the livestock from getting to Baby Jesus?

We all bought it. The labor/fire wood timeline was never brought into question. It wasn’t until the birth of my own children that I really began to question the whole “go get some kindling while l have a baby” scenario. Even 2,000 years ago I doubt that men got off that easily.

Still, it is now impossible for me to look at a Nativity scene without imagining a plywood cut-out of Joseph, stumbling around in the dark behind Lyle Meeuwsen’s barn, cursing the inn-keeper and picking up brush. Minutes later, he clumsily enters the stable: “Hey Mary, I found some dry gopher wood over by the silo… Jesus Christ!”

------ 2009 Bonus -----

As a father he was prone to favor pushing forward rather than clinging to the past. It was his nature to disparage stopping to document, record, and authenticate an experience when another, brighter moment lingered in the near future. His guilt was eased by the habit of his thoughtful wife to save and pack away the artifacts of his children’s recent history. He appreciated that she took the time and care to file away the earliest scribbles and most current social studies projects. Handling these tangible items is like collapsing time itself.

So it was a bit surprising to find Joe on a warm autumn night making his way down the dark hallway, after his wife and kids had since gone to bed, holding in his cupped palm the recently self-extracted lateral incisor formerly belonging to his 10-year-old son. It was the last of the baby teeth from any of his kids; Peter had given it up in hopeful exchange for a handful of quarters. At the end of hall Joe opened a glass front display cabinet and found the tooth jar, a repurposed container that once held candy sprinkles used on a birthday cake. The little tooth, tiny relative to the current size of his kids, gently floated through the stale water and settled with a click onto the pile of teeth at the vessel’s bottom.

The father held the bottle up to the dim light in the hall and shook it, the teeth slipped around, stirring up not-so-distant memories along with bits of gum tissue in equal measure.

For now, the tooth jar is back in the cabinet at the end of the hall. As he makes his way to his bedroom each night, past the doors to his children’s rooms, Joe sometimes glances at the cabinet and is content in knowing that when his kids are long gone, traipsing across the country, busy with their own grown-up lives that he still has his little bottle of little teeth. He will always have their teeth.

2008 Christmas Letter

Everyone is familiar with the feeling of leaning back in your chair to the tipping point and momentarily reacting to the weightlessness of the impending freefall before you catch yourself and get steady again. It is similar to hitting an icy patch on the highway. Everything converts to slow time, the guard rail just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the fact you have no control is only transcended by your disgust for getting into this situation in the first place. You know that something really bad is about to happen; something that is out of your immediate sphere of influence. Yet you started the process, you put into motion the string of events that is pointing toward potential doom. And so it goes that Ann Marie and I pulled the lever on our own demonic Rube Goldberg device this summer.

Lacking better judgment and for having nothing better to do, we kicked off a major remodel of The Kingman. Oh, The Kingman, our Kingman: How we despise you yet are captivated by your magical spell. Like a moth to an open flame, we cannot resist your allure. It was an afternoon in July, the brightest day of the brightest month of the brightest Iowa summer. We were smiling and giddy as we handed over a fat check to our new contractor, who quickly sped away in his pick-up, 2x4s dangling off the tailgate, promising to see us Monday with The Guys. There was demolition in our future. Walls had to come down, we have to get the roof off this thing, get the concrete poured.

Flash forward to a cold snowy Iowa morning in November. The weatherman has upgraded the forecast to include ice and sleet. I can’t move my hands after a previous night’s work ripping soffits out of the kitchen. The digits not covered in coagulated blood are swollen up like kielbasa. I have ingested at least one roll of dusty ceiling insulation and am having trouble breathing. If I could muster a breath, I could certainly see it; our furnace is still getting hooked-up so it’s cold. The HVAC guy is waiting for me to summon the courage to go back into the crawlspace and attach this thing to this other thing. I am not fond of what is under the house. Last time I saw some kind of marmot.

A thin sheet of clear plastic stapled around the perimeter of the addition serves as walls, windows and a front door. Six mil sheeting doesn’t carry a lot of R-value, walls would be better. The kids share a room now. Each night we wedge them between two space heaters, wrap them in quilts and shut their door. Safety standards around here have ebbed a bit. For them to get to the only functioning bathroom in The Kingman they have to navigate a patchwork of holes in the old floor, assorted power tools, cords, and various unidentifiable substances which constantly appear on the floor and walls.

There really is no kitchen now, just a general area where we stand and spoon peanut butter straight from the jar. My family and I pace around the general kitchen area each morning in our heavy coats looking at what the previous day’s construction has wrought. It is a solemn time. We nod a lot. Grunt and gesticulate with our peanut butter spoons, admiring the devastation, imaging doors, cabinets, windows.

Two weeks. Our contractor tells us, “Two weeks.” Ann Marie is tolerant. Ann Marie is tolerant.

So we put this horror into action. We asked for it. Eyes wide open. It’s a process: One day at a time. We started this thing and we will finish it. We hope to be done in time for Nina’s high school graduation.

Now 2009 is bearing down on us fast: We have walls with paint; carpet and cabinets; windows and an indoor toilet; and a furnace that that does a more than adequate job of blowing drywall dust and construction debris into every corner of the house. We still have a Dumpster parked in the front yard, our driveway is littered with lumber and covered in a blanket of snow and ice and the front door is somewhere in Altoona. But it is beautiful (sorta) and we are truly thankful. Peace to you.

2007 Christmas Letter

I am not surprised that my children listen to the music I play around the house and in the car. In fact, I am pleased because I consider it my obligation as a parent and an American to school the youngsters in the foundations of roots music and its modern legacy. The trouble is some songs on these records contain less than wholesome lyrics. Peter has detected this and points this out to me. Constantly. He’s like the FCC. I tell him that it wouldn’t be rock n’ roll if it didn’t offend somebody’s parents (or kids).

“By its very definition rock n’ roll should rebellious, loud and offensive,” I tell him. Sometimes I get a little preachy in my defense of Rock. “So that makes it all right. Sit back, buckle up and prepare to have your mind blown.”

Now that the filth has been exposed, Peter is simultaneously repulsed and fascinated. Part of him wants to deny his interest, but yet he cannot turn away. He has the same response to cheerleaders. He listens closely and tallies taboo words and subject mater. “That’s three of the S and one of the F,” he points out. I assure him that the quality of a song is not determined by the presence or lack of S or F but it does little to deter his enthusiasm. Maybe I should have refrained, but Peter was even more engrossed (appalled?) when I pointed out some lyrics in certain songs that he had misidentified.

“I thought he sang, ‘Here comes the children.’”

“No, Peter,” I replied. “That would be ‘Here comes that shit again.’”

Initially horrified, it was a satisfied, outlaw smile that crept across his face.
Peter made a list that catalogs the S and F in most of my disc collection categorized by artist name, album, song, and the exact time in the song at which the offense occurs. We’ll be driving when he blurts out “Dad, skip ahead to one minute fifty five. He’s about to sing the first S.”

So now the burden shifts to my daughter, she must carry the torch of purity and innocence that my son has so violently shattered. Nina was in the garden by herself the other afternoon chasing a butterfly from flower to flower in the late autumn sun. She was singing softly to herself. It was a picture of beauty and peacefulness that can only be captured by an 11-year-old girl. As the wind shifted, her lilting, sing-song voice carried up to the porch where I was sitting: “I shot a man in Reno… just to watch him die. . .”

Everything is smooth here in Iowa: A little of this and a little of that. Ann Marie and I would like to confer upon you a Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for 2008.

2006 Christmas Letter

People of The World:

The world is becoming too easy to navigate: Press a button and a motorized mechanism will close the hatch on the SUV; heated blanket/robes with footies and zippers allow us to take our bed with us when we roll out of the rack; body wash saves us from the laborious task of pushing a bar of soap across our cans; and, of course, slip-on shoes have made bending over a distant memory. The Man is convincing us to be treated like veal—and we’re buying it. The time has come to take the hard path and face this great malaise. So after months of tremulous deliberation and a few days of training, I have embarked on the dream of a lifetime.

It may be hard to believe but after responding to an ad in Street Fighter Magazine I am just weeks away from a fulfilling career as a World Class Ass-Kicker. Early next year I leave for Malaysia where I begin my final training. My manager assures me that within days of arriving at the fighter’s compound I will be prepared to combat opponents that have far more experience, knowledge and physical ability. After a bit of deprivation and a series of regional bouts in SE Asia, I will be fully prepared to unleash my fury upon the Ultimate Fighting world back in the states. Look out Cleveland, here I come!

I am not worried that my lack of street fighting experience will inhibit my rise to greatness in the Ultimate Fighting world. According to my new manager, competing against seasoned martial arts champions who have been training to maim and disfigure since they were 5-years-old is the best way “to hit the ground running” and “learn on the fly.” I am looking forward o putting myself to the challenge. My manager says that I will adjust to the extreme punishment and unbearable pain during these early bouts. I wish sometimes that I would have listened to the voices in my head much earlier; we must never forget to act on our dreams.

Things are happening so fast that it is blowing my mind. We finalized the sale of the house, cashed-out the mutual funds and liquidated the IRA just last week. Hobnobbing among the Ultimate Fighting elite does not come cheap! My manager assures me with the proper financial investment anything is possible. It was hard to cough-up our entire net worth but my manager says it will be a tremendous motivator. Anyway, soon enough I will be kicking ass and making wads of ass kicking cash.

It works out good because Ann Marie will finally be able to shed the chains of oppression that have so plagued her. She has enough of The System. She will pursue her lifelong dream of studying at The Supreme Academy of Non-biometric Thought. As you probably know, The Academy is doing ground-breaking research in sustainable lifestyles based on the timeless artistry of Shields and Yarnell. We feel fortunate to have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the future Salvation of the World. Ann Marie will be living in the main concourse at Berlin International Airport until further notice.

Nina and Peter are experiencing good fortunate as well. They have decided to stay in Ames and continue their education. Although just 10-years-old, Nina has proven very responsible and seems able enough to manage on her own. We have been advised by both my manager and The Academy to give this time to our kids and let them Blossom. So it seems perfectly clear to us that this is the right thing to do. Needless to say, Nina’s Girl Scout skills will be put to the test this winter when she will be forced to find shelter and forage food for herself and her brother. We decided to leave the mini-van with the kids, Nina is tall enough to be an adequate driver and Peter always laughs whenever the airbags deploy. If that doesn’t pan out we also left them a few bus passes and a map.

Merry Christmas, we hope to be back in a while (don’t be surprised if it takes a few years). Keep an eye out for our kids, we left them an address book and some stolen credit cards. Be kind to each other and keep it tuned to Spike TV where I will be ass kicking very soon.