Christmas Letter 2008

I'm mostly filling space...this is the Christmas letter that I wrote for my mother last year.

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December 15, 2008
Dear Friends and Family,

Mom sent me an email this weekend, asking to improve on her rough draft for the Christmas letter. Dad had called it “boring” and upon reading it Josh decided that “it made Dad and Richard seem a little too hillbilly.” (Now that he is, before God and the law, part of the family, Josh feels entitled to make these judgments.) At any rate, the letter provided very quick glimpses of the seasons of 2008, poignant in their brevity, but not encompassing enough to give justice to the happenings of the year. Two thousand and eight calls more for my style, (generally long winded, marked by feeble attempts at humor, dotted with non-sequiturs), and so it seems that the Christmas letter will fall or fly by my hand. Without further ado, I present to you the long version of the events of the Williams family.

The Boston radio scene does not really provide me with quality country music, and so I am frequently listening to WJVL from Janesville via the internet. I know, then, that home is being hammered with brutal temperatures and snowfall like has not been seen since, well, last winter, but then not since those mythical days of barn high drifts and months of snow days of the early 1970s. We were prepared for last winter’s fury and fun, thank goodness, by a jackpot garage sale find of cross country skis and shoes in every size. The skiing was grand, the ice skating smooth, and, due to Dad’s foresight and commitment to cutting wood, the house was warm. This is worth revealing, of course, due to the relative novelty of a warm farmhouse in winter. Those icy days found us all nestled on the dining room floor, soaking up the figurative rays, and taking advantage of the miracle of radiant heating.
More miracles came upon us with the spring, as snow melted, flowers grew, and Randall, Melissa, and Audrey had a baby boy: Zachary Hunter Moore. I have found this year that my mom has only two names for babies. The first is pistol, as in “Oh feel her kick! She doesn’t like to be held at all. She’s just a little pistol isn’t she?” The other is snuggle bug, as in “Oh look at that little snuggle bug” or more frequently, “Give me that little snuggle bug.” Zack is the latter, a snuggle bug like no other (except for maybe Richard circa 1988, when he was the largest, and I mean fattest, snuggle bug in the Arthropoda).
The original snuggle bug had quite a spring as well. He was chased down by the girls on the track team, they’re very fast, and was persuaded by the coach to join the team. A string of impressive high jumps all spring and finally a victorious performance at the conference meet has cemented Richard as a Carthage College varsity letter winner.
Not to let Richard out do us, Dad and I entertained ambitions to run in the inaugural Rockford Marathon (until we tried running a 10k) and though we fell (quite) short of this goal, we returned to our two mile forte with a mighty sweep at the Harvard Milk Day Race. Mom also jumped on our fitness bandwagon: that little pistol has been swimming nearly everyday for the last year and, per usual, has been schooling all comers (usually the Richard, Josh, and Carrie crowd) in tennis matches.
In between all the other parts of everyday life, The Wedding encompassed everything else. At the risk of sounding biased, it was a spectacular and glorious event that fills me with happiness every time my thoughts alight upon it; not only for the fun of getting married and being married, but at the joy of having so many friends and family members gathered about. Of the aftermath: at the very least, it would seem that I had sewn the requisite number of seat covers for wedded bliss.
The summer found Richard coaching basketball camps, hosting basketball tournaments, playing in basketball tournaments, and cutting wood. Jaded after his time in the foundry, he also spent the summer determined to find a job for the school year. In August he demanded a job at the Texas Steak House in Kenosha, (demanded being the operative word, as he walked into the restaurant, declared “I’m here for my interview,” sat through his interview, and was offered a job before he realized the Olive Garden, where he was actually offered an interview, was next door; “this is better,” he said, “because I can wear blue jeans to work and I’ll smell like steak, instead of spaghetti”), and so had to go to return to school early in order to learn the ins and outs of waiting tables.

Two changes of scenery marked the summer’s end as well, and so some tales must be recounted here, as a tribute to our memories of very dear, but inanimate things.
The red corn crib has been replaced with a far more useful, industrial, large silver drying and storage bin. Built just in time for use with the fall harvest, the bin has been many years coming. In fact, I had to persuade Dad not to build it last year, as I was certain that the corn crib was essential to the ambiance of the wedding reception. I was right of course, and the corn crib will always be connected with memories of grilled pork chops, country music, and lemon crème filling. Other memories that made us love it, though it was never used to its full potential as an implement, will be related here (at the risk of sounding too hillbilly Josh…).
When we were little, we would sometimes play a game called Corn War. Like Round Bale Tag, in which we ran about on the round bales, shoving each other into the pits formed between round bales, Corn War relied on sibling rivalries and the improper and therefore dangerous use of feed. In Corn War a team would situate itself on one end of the corn crib, high atop the piles of corn on the cob, and build a bunker of corn against the thick boards that supported the building. From this vantage, you could peer out the slats at the farmyard far below and feel summer breezes sneak through under the roof while you waited for the opposing corn army to ready their fort and ammunition. The Bergen Convention allowed corn off the cob and cobs without corn to be hurled, but never corn on the cob. The game continued until the novelty of being riddled with corn subsided, or perhaps earlier, when a renegade soldier landed a full ear of corn squarely onto the target of the enemy, causing an escalation of fury that required all games to end immediately.
On an early spring day, probably twenty four years ago, the corn crib was being emptied of corn and, subsequently, of the mice that had lived there in peace for several months. Swarms of indignant mice scurried from the corncrib doors, past Christi and Melissa, who sat outside “helping.” At some point in the affair, Melissa decided that her time would be better spent in pest control, rather than sitting idly, and so the little pistol grabbed a shovel and began walloping on the mice. Christi burst into tears and hurried into the corn crib for support from Dad. “Melissa is murdering mice!” Christi heeded, and then rushed back outside insisting the injustice cease. When Dad questioned Melissa about her actions, she stammered the infamous line “well, I accidentally hit these mice on the head about fifty times.”
During a wild summer storm, a huge limb was ripped from the Norwegian Pine tree in the front yard. Though it missed the house, the remaining parts of the tree were ominous enough to necessitate removing it entirely. Even though there is a Giant Sequoia growing in the back yard, (it is still in its infancy and won’t be a Giant for another two thousand years), it was a melancholy day when we cut down the mighty pine. The memories of this tree are difficult to recount, because its history is too long and they belong to too many people. It was a landmark of the yard, in the Stanley drawings from the early 1900s and in every aerial photo since there were cameras in airplanes, and as we stood around and counted rings we had the very same reaction that anyone who lingers over a fallen giant has: “What a shame, to cut it down. But what a life this old tree had.” So we wonder at the futility and frequency of passing days, relieved that the tree won’t crash through the house during another violent storm, happy to be able to see the front of the house, and measuring time based on when the tree was taken down. For example, we all graduated high school before the tree was taken down. Mom and Dad were married twenty five years before the tree was taken down. Christi had her twins after the tree was taken down.

Ella Marguerite and Aiden Allen were born in September, and though they will never get to play beneath the Norwegian Pine or throw shelled corn at each others’ eyes, they are both at home at the farm right now. After the tree was taken down, Christi had enough of warm, comfortable Southern living and took a job as a speech pathologist for the Algonquin School District. While she is looking for a permanent Algonquin area home, she has taken up my recently vacated roll of daughter in residence. She is far more popular with the locals due to her dear little snuggle bugs, (maybe they’ll be pistols in the long run, it is a bit early to tell), and her generally agreeable and helpful demeanor.
Richard’s basketball season is off to a great start, right now the Carthage Redmen are playing in a tournament on a cruise ship off the coast of Florida. He has been playing much and well, and I’m sure that he is working quite diligently on his tan at present. Josh and I are in Boston pretending to be cosmopolitan. We drew careers from the deck of cards from the game of LIFE. I am a coach and Josh is a scientist. And we are all looking forward to being home for Christmas.

But enough of this rambling! We all wish you a very happy Christmas time and wonderful 2009s! Should you find yourselves in any of our neighborhoods: Blaine Road, New England, the Bread Basket, Kenosha—well, we would welcome your presence and look very forward to seeing you!

With love,

The Williams Family