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Holiday Letter 2009


Just today, again, Mari said, “This is a nice house!”

She and Annie agree. Annie is our Animal Shelter Cat, brought first to our house in Minneapolis where she liked best to be able to go to the back screened porch, or to a small screened outside window perch, in front. Before we moved here, we lived temporarily in a tiny cottage where Annie hid most of the time. We worried. But the day we moved into this house, Annie looked about, and started to explore, gingerly, curiously, up and down and in and out of everything. She, almost instantly, knew this was a good house; she and Mari, and I knew. (Our Orphan Cat is a bit more opaque. She has her secrets.)

It is snowing outside. A blizzard is grazing by. The wind is picking up. Tomorrow I will bundle up and battle the snow to a standoff.

We have gotten past the stage at which people ask us where we moved from, when we said, “Tucson”, and they said, “Why?” They raised their voices half an octave and said, again, “Why?”

No one said, “Of course!”

We all know that warm and pleasant places are warmer and more pleasant than cold and snowy places. But that is like saying that you would rather be rich and healthy than poor and sick. We do not get to pick the pieces and build paradise. We get to accept necessities, and to choose alternatives.

We live in a civilized city in the Upper Midwest, with fine restaurants, splendid museums, a peculiar accent that loves to massage vowels, lovely summers and brittle winters, something that encourages deep roots, that develops near-religious respect for a good snow blower, a warm parka and warmer gloves, and most of all, a house you are glad you live in.

Winter is crowding in, but we are warm. It is light inside. Our spaces are generous and interesting. The carpeting is as old as the house, and cupboard surfaces are also two decades old and scarred. There is some evidence that two pack rats own this house, but it is a good place. Our cats assume we will not step on them. It is their house, too.

These are hard times for us as a nation, and for too many people. We are lucky that the marginal times have not harmed us deeply, and that we have a warm space.

Our disparate band of kids live everywhere, doing everything, from Georgia and Kansas, Iowa and California and Oregon, and Arizona. They are shaping their own circumstances, necessities, and alternatives. Sometimes we worry for them, but mostly we cheer quiet cheers. I want them to learn to cook, and to appreciate spaces, and words. Mari wants them to blossom, to remember good things, and to stay in touch. Together, we hope they will take their own paths to places like the one we share here.

Together, we hope that for all of you.

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