The Christmas Letter

Dear Family & Friends:

“How are you enjoying married life?” This seems to be the standard question people feel compelled to ask a newly married couple. Do you walk up to people that have been married 20 or 30 years and ask them “So, are you enjoying married life?” But, in case you were wondering, we are enjoying it very much!

We have had a good year. John’s birthday is in January and this year we celebrated with a trip to the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), dinner at Ivar’s Salmon House on Lake Union and a visit to the Sci-Fi Museum. In February, we took John’s brother, Jared and our friend, Zachary, on a trip to the Museum of Flight. We also added Rex to our family. He is a dappled miniature daschund and he seems to think the sun rises and sets on John.

John braved last season at the Seattle Opera with dad and I. We saw The Pearl Fishers, Bluebeard’s Castle and The Marriage of Figaro. John said that M of F was more what he expected opera to be like. Dad and I are going the new season alone. We started off in October with La Traviata which was excellent!

John and I took on the roll of youth group leaders at our church. In January, we did a progressive dinner to various church members’ houses and in March, the girls had a slumber party at our house. September, we had the kids over for homemade pizza and a movie and in November we took them to MOHAI for a photo scavenger hunt and dinner at Dick’s Drive-In on 45th. We are having a lot of fun and the kids seem to be too.

We did have some health related adventures this year. John’s stepfather, Gary, had hip replacement surgery in April and will have a second hip replacement surgery on the other side in December. John had shoulder surgery to remove bone spurs on his right AC joint in August. He is still recovering from it but continues to improve.

In April, we took a trip up to San Juan Island to celebrate our 1st anniversary. We had a very relaxing time at the Lonesome Cove Resort. In May, John took Jared to Walking with Dinosaurs for his birthday. We also went up to Snohomish for the annual variety show and a poke around the antique stores. Over Memorial Day weekend, we helped my folks host a 40th birthday party for my mother’s sister, Beth. June took us to Leavenworth for a little getaway. John took his first whack at fly fishing in the Icicle River.

We went down to Portland in July to visit our friends Bruce & Dawna. Dawna and her sister, Nancy, drove us out to the McMinnville Air Museum and we got to see the Spruce Goose. I also took John for his first visit to Powell’s Bookstore. July was also our church’s annual camp out and my mother and I hosted a baby shower for my cousin, Bethany. In addition to John’s surgery in August, my friend, Monica, visited from Minnesota on her way to her sister’s wedding in Oregon. It was so much fun to get to spend a few days with her. She was here for our annual church picnic as well.

We made it to three Mariners games this year. We took John’s mom and step-dad to a game in June for their anniversary and did the same for my folks in August for theirs. In September, our friends, Bruce & Dawna, came up and went to the Mariners/Yankees game with us. Also, we had a visit from my friend, Ana, from San Francisco who was in town to go to a wedding that same weekend. John had his first experience with the St. Demetrious Greek Festival in September. In October, we went to M____ R____ High School’s homecoming football game with John’s family.

In November, I was privileged to sing a solo for Pat N___'s memorial service. Her husband, Jim, is one of our church members. We also went to see Jeff Dunham at the Tacoma Dome. Thanksgiving was spent with my sister and her family in Chewelah. Dad, Mom, John and I made the long drive there and back without incident for which we are thankful. December promises to be busy with parties and other events.

I continue to enjoy going to book group, playing the piano for church and working for the Court of Appeals. John has taken up collecting fossils (besides his wife) and fly fishing. He is back doing light duty for Total Reclaim as he continues to heal from surgery. We trust you are happy and well. Feel free to call me some or John sometime or drop us an email if you get the chance!

With Much Love & Wishes for a Happy New Year,
John & Laurie

A Keeper

My husband is a keeper. I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day yesterday. It started Sunday night with a migraine headache and a poor night’s sleep and just went downhill from there. I struggled through the day and was thoroughly despondent by the time I headed for home.

When I got home, there were a dozen peach colored roses in a vase on the table. He said he knew I had a bad day and he wanted to cheer me up. He had also put up the new racks we had bought to hang our coffee mugs on and greeted me with a kiss and a smile. By the time I had fixed and eaten dinner and sat in the hot tub with him for awhile, my whole frame of mind was back where it should be.

Today, I woke up feeling refreshed and in a much better state of mind. I am so thankful for John. What did I ever do without him?

The American Socialist Party

My dad told this story Sunday night as an illustration in his sermon. I’ve heard it before but it had been quite awhile since the last time he told it. When we lived on Beacon Hill in Seattle, we always shopped at the Safeway down on Rainier Avenue. The American Socialist Party had a semi-permanent booth outside the store and invariably there was some earnest young man or woman appealing to people to throw off the yoke of the oppressor and go join a union.

This particular day, the young man was particularly pressing and called to dad as he passed, “Sir, we workers need to unite against “the man” and form unions to establish a more equal society.” My father stopped and riposted, “Young man, I work for the best employer in the world and He has never wronged me.” It sucked the wind right out of the kid’s sails and the best he could come up with was “WHO do you work for?” Dad smiled at him and said “I am a minister of the gospel and I work for the Living God. He has never wronged me and it is my privilege to work for Him.” The boy was left speechless.

The Cornerstone of Marriage

When I first started out working in the legal field, I worked for a small two man law firm in a small town. They did a little bit of everything – lots of wills, estate planning stuff, some real estate contracts and “family” law. Family law was mainly divorce and custody battles. It gave me a distinct distaste for divorce which I have to this day.

As a little girl, divorce was still not that common. I had only one or two kids in my class whose parents were divorced. By the time I got to high school, divorce was becoming more of an everyday, ordinary experience. Several classmates had divorced parents or parents that were headed that direction. This was about as close as I ever got to the divorce experience.

After I started at the law firm, I had a lot to learn about everything to do with the law so the first few months were occupied with that. Once that was finished, I was able to devote more of my mental energies to our clients as they came and went. I like people and I am always interested in their stories and backgrounds. One man in particular I remember, he was older to me but I realize now he was probably only 35 or so and was going through a divorce. His wife had left him with some small children and more than once these were deposited with me to keep an eye on while he met with the attorney. He would spend his entire time with the attorney weeping over the end of his marriage. He always came in looking spent and left with red-rimmed eyes. It was very depressing for my attorney and I felt so heartily sorry for the man and his family.

I had not thought about him for many years but I recently saw him again. Well, it wasn’t the same man actually but it was the same look. I was lending a hand up at the front desk here at the court last week when a man came up to the window. At first I was a little suspicious that he was a felon because most people that come to the court are either a) attorneys, b) legal messengers, c) felons, d) other pro se individuals, e) private investigators or f) the press and each group have pretty distinct appearances.

This man clearly worked some kind of manual labor job because he was dusty and grubby. He also looked a little shifty at first which is what set off my felon alert. He had come to withdraw his appeal because he could not afford to pursue it. He was very worried because we had a set a court’s motions for dismissal or sanctions for failure to file something or other and he didn’t want to end up in trouble with the court so he had brought in the documentation to withdraw his appeal.

I found his case and realized that he was appealing some aspect of his divorce from the lower court. Then I looked more carefully at the man. His eyes were a little red-rimmed, he was fighting for his self control and he looked exhausted and beaten. I was very gentle with him as I finished taking his documents and reassured him that he would not be in any trouble with the court at all. As I watched him go, his shoulders sagging, I had an almost overwhelming urge to go after him and offer to buy him a cup of coffee. He looked like he needed a friend. I didn’t because it would not have been ethical or appropriate to do so but I did breathe a prayer for him and his family.

I know that there are times and situations when divorce is not just inevitable but imperative to protect one’s person or life or those of one’s children. I also know that divorce is part of our world today but I don’t have to like it. When John and I were moving toward getting married, we had some long hard talks about marriage and our expectations. One of the things important to him and to me was that we would not consider divorce an option that was open to us. If we married, it was to be the until-death-us-do-part kind of partnership. We had to think long and hard about that before we even got engaged. It was scary. It was difficult. In the end, it meant that we felt a mutual commitment to the life-long success of our marriage. Love is important in a marriage but commitment is its cornerstone.

Hogs and quiches

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My dad just called me to talk to me for a minute. Before he said goodbye to me, he said, “Hogs and quiches.” This is our strange little family saying for hugs and kisses. It made me think about all those odd little family sayings, nicknames and jokes that most every family has. My mother’s extended family abounds with nicknames. She has an uncle “Swede” and her grandfather was always known as Beano.

My father’s extended family, being English, abounds in strange little phrases and family stories. When my dad pours a cup of tea from the teapot and it is too weak, he says we need to “show it to the pictures”. This comes from my great-grandmother who had a friend that would never put enough tea into the teapot because she was a cheapskate. Instead, she would pick up the teapot and use it as a pointer. She would wave it about and tell my great-grandmother to “look at that lovely photo of Susan” or “isn’t that a good likeness of Ethel” in order to get the tea to steep well enough to be drinkable.

We have lots of tea related sayings. “Water bewitched and tea begrudged” is what you say if the tea is weak. “Kisses and lies go to the side but a gift stays in the middle” refers to the bubbles that form on the tea’s surface after a good stirring. “Better to burst bellies than to waste good tea” means you’d better finish the pot rather than throw tea away.

I’m not sure when or where hogs and quiches originated but it is always makes me smile to hear my father say it to me.

The Hardbound Book

I like to read. Unfortunately, I also lead a very busy life that doesn't leave me with much time to sit down and get lost in a good book. A few years ago, I joined a book group in order to get myself disciplined to not only read regularly but to comprehend and be prepared to discuss a book. It did help and we have read some great books together. It also has reawakened my desire to make time to read no matter what.

One of my favorite indulgences is to go out and purchase a brand new hardbound book. Usually it is by an author that I am already familiar with and whose newest book I am anxiously anticipating. Very occasionally, I buy a hardcover edition of a new book by an author with whom I am unfamiliar because the book has caught my imagination and I don't want to wait six months to find it on a used bookstore shelf. Sometimes, I have been disappointed that I purchased a hardback book at full price but mostly, I'm not sorry when I do.

Earlier this month, I was at Powell's in Portland, Oregon (a must-visit bookstore) and while my husband browsed through geology and history, I made my way to the literature section and hunted down a copy of The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. I have not read anything by this author before and I don't know that I will read her other books but this novel has caught my fancy and so I plunked down full price for a gorgeous, hardbound copy. Just the feel of it, the weight of it, makes me anxious to read it straight through. I will try and write a review after I have finished and let you know if it was worth it.

Novels I have purchased at full price in hardcover without regret in no particular order:

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

A Common Life: The Wedding Story by Jan Karon

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith

The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper (a memoir not a novel but worth every penny)

The Birthday Beach Ball

I love my niece. She is six years old now. I called her Tuesday morning to talk to her a little bit on my birthday. We usually have the "shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings" type of conversation. We talked a bit about the hair pretties that I had sent to her the week before. I sent them because she had cut her own hair. As usual, the result was not perhaps what was hoped for and my sister had been hopping mad at her for it. Granted it was the THIRD time she had cut her own hair with disasterous results so her mother had a right to be upset. I sent the hair bands and bows because I felt sorry for her. EVERY girl cuts her own hair and ends up with a questionable outcome at least once in her life.

After hair, our conversation turned to my neighbor's swimming pool. I told her that Uncle John and I had been for a swim the day before and that when she comes to visit in August, she could go swimming with us. Then I said we would blow up the air mattresses and float around in the pool. She thought this sounded like a good idea. I mentioned that Uncle John and I did not have a beach ball and that we were going to get one to play with in the pool. My niece then said "Well, maybe you should just wait for your birthday." This remark went straight over my head. I thought how like a child to tell you to wait for your birthday to get something you want and then gave no further mental acuity to it.

That night when I opened my birthday presents after dinner, there was a small flat package marked "From Marta" that my sister had sent in the box with my other gifts. I opened it and burst out laughing because there was the beach ball. I was so tickled that she had managed not to tell me while still giving me the large, economy-sized hint that a beach ball I would have but not until my birthday!