“Don’t let your face be the third
point of contact (with your truck).” –Delivery worker wisdom
Christmas 2022
This year there was a real competition between milestone events and aesthetics when I was trying to decide
on a theme for this letter. As I pondered, one of these would appear dominant
and then the other would come from behind and take the lead. So I gave up choosing
and am including a tally of both.
Emily turned twenty-one in March, followed shortly thereafter
by Jenn turning an undisclosed (rhymes with nifty) amount. We got to watch our
oldest ordering and consuming wine in a fancy Temecula vineyard with her two
best friends and our parents. All weekend there was a constrained but
persistent interest in the boozy entitlements of turning twenty-one. No one got
drunk, as everyone’s parents were there, for heaven’s sake, but we had a great
time. Jenn had booked a lovely house for the weekend with a great view of the
valley north of Temecula and a pool/jacuzzi. Emily was so excited by the
occasion she memorialized it with a tattoo of her friends’ birth month flowers.
She intended the friends to get the same tattoo but only one of the two had the
same intention. Body decoration: score one for aesthetics. Two big birthdays:
score two for milestones.
In late March, we took a trip to Catalina with the daughters and the grandparents. I always get a stiff shot of nostalgia in the Fifties’ flavor of downtown Avalon: pizza at Tony’s, mixed drinks overlooking the bay, and Sinatra belting one out. It was as if social media never existed. I have to stifle my inner old man, “Ahh, the world was a better place. Being an influencer was not a thing! I had never heard of even a single Kardashian! Har-umph, har-umph, grumble, grumble, grumble…” Don’t listen to him, I think; he’ll get tired and fall asleep soon. One last old man observation: Buffalo Milk tastes better than it sounds. Catalina still looks like it has been lifted from a 1930’s travel poster: aesthetics, one.
Claire completed her first college year living in the dorm. There
are few larger milestones than living free of parental constraints for the
first time. We are very confident of Claire’s life skills, but Jenn still required
a weekly text as “proof of life.” In the third quarter Claire and Emily decided
to take a class together, North Korean history. Did you know North Koreans read
Gone with the Wind in high school?!
Ask Claire or Emily why—it escapes me. More tattoos followed, matching ones on
each daughter. Aesthetics: two. Milestones: one.
Emily graduated from UCI in the Spring with a thousand of
her very close friends. The speeches were actually enjoyable! Can you believe
it? Some wit, some wisdom and a lot of enthusiasm, even some self-deprecating
humor. She saw her opportunity and leveraged the goodwill to remind Jenn of a
long ago promise to get a cat, and viola! Angus the cat now graces our abode.
Houseplants and clothespins quake with fear. There is talk of building a Catio
on our sunporch, which I find preferable to a Catropolis. Milestone: one.
Jenn, butting in here, to give a reprieve from John’s witty
musings on our year to talk about the trip Mom and I took to Europe in
June. 2020 marked the 400th
anniversary of the Mayflower landing in Plymouth with a few of our ancestors on
board. A tour had been planned to
coincide with the anniversary to retrace the steps of the Pilgrims in England
and Holland. It turns out that 2020 was
not a great year to travel. So, on the
402nd anniversary we visited many small towns and villages in the
English and Dutch countryside to see churches, pubs, museums, and civic
buildings that all claimed a connection to the Pilgrim story. The guides we met were so thrilled to be able
to share their stories with descendants of the Pilgrims. It was really special to be able to stand in
the places our family had lived. Back to
you John…
Bailey has had a very good year…if you are considering her ongoing crusade against screens of all kinds. Truthfully, it was no 2013 when all fifteen screens in the backyard were destroyed after we left her alone (and trapped!) while maybe were inside having fun, but still a very destructive year. In Bailey’s eyes, the screens had it coming. “I can see where I want to go, but this gauze, this nothingness stretched tight is stopping me? It’s an insult, is what it is. They must go.” And so, on a warm afternoon, fueled by the anxiety that only July fireworks can bring, she took on the Mother-of-all-Screens: the three by seven foot retractable screen in the front door: huge by screen standards, majestic and somewhat magical, moving on its own. Now this screen had already suffered unsuspecting cleaning ladies and at least one grandparent running into it, but it had held firm and only had slight stretch marks near the bottom. But when a hundred pounds of speeding chocolate lab missile came its way, it collapsed like a human pyramid in a fail video. And so, a nice neighbor caught her and brought her back from the school yard next door, and I saw the destruction for the first time. I had not heard the impact and not anticipated that she would try to run away while I was at home. Of course, this screen had a lot of time and money invested in it a year ago and was now a twisted heap on our front porch. Add one item to the project list. A few days later, on the actual Fourth of July, she decided she was not content with a single victory over the screens and was still just as frantic about the fireworks, so she took out one more in the door to the backyard. It was too high off the ground for her to jump through but she could reach it by standing on her back legs. Does she really need a logical reason to destroy a screen? No, she does not. She prefers them, but shredded screens are an eyesore to us, aesthetics: negative one.
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| Bricks down... |
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| Ta-da! |
In August we took our daughters to Costa Rica for a week of
non-stop fun. I have decided that I really cannot improve on the description of
it in my notes with verbs and well-formed sentences; so here is a smattering of
images. Catamaran afternoon excursion including leaping manta rays, Claire
drinking rum drinks, snorkeling, a cave with two ocean outlets and surging
waves, and sunset from the boat. Views
of the mainland in the soft pink light of sunset. Day 2: jumping 20 feet into a
clear pool fed by a small waterfall, a jungle tour seeing ten sloths, blue
jeans frogs, red eye frogs, and for lunch traditional Costa Rican food,
plantains and savory chicken. Day 3,
Guachilepin adventure resort: ziplining in a canyon over a rushing river,
horseback riding, whitewater tubing. Day 4, Cerro Cortes: puma encounter, water
slide that you do just once, biothermales warm tubs. Hike with monkeys in the
trees, light so golden and greens so intense. Day 5: La Fortuna waterfall,
lunch in a sit-down restaurant with cloth napkins. Milestones: four, one for
each of us.
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Fresh off of graduation and the receipt of a couple of
paychecks, Emily decided it was time for a newer car, the first of her own
choice and purchasing power. She bought a Toyota Rav-4. I argue that this is a
milestone, but the neighbors an improvement in the beauty in the neighborhood
by the lack of a fourteen year-old car. “Only two more in your driveway to go!”
said one. I complimented him on his counting skills. One point each.
September 21st should be recognized for being
mentioned in the greatest dance song of all time, Earth, Wind and Fire’s
“Dancing in September”, but instead this year it was the day on which the FDA
had to issue a warning not to cook chicken in Nyquil. Yep…that pretty much sums up where we are in
2022.
And that was our year. All our love to you and yours,
The Leebs
