Well, another year gone by, and quite the year it has been! As always, we are filling this Family Holiday Letter with exclamation points, to emphasize how upbeat and hopeful and thankful we all feel in this joyous season!! It is true that we journalists traditionally call exclamation points “screamers,” but don’t worry about that!!! Any screaming being done on this end is into a pillow, so no one is discommoded! Joy and hope is our mantra.
I won’t bore you with too many details of our personal lives, except to say they were filled with joy and hope, such as the time we learned Grandpop’s fever and coughing was only bilateral pneumonia, which meant he got to spend his final hours with us, instead of alone in a hospital bed squinting back at us on a staticky Zoom call wearing one of those elephant-trunk oxygen masks, attended by nurses in hazmat suits. God is good.
As you know we live 3,000 miles from Northern California, so our sky only got hazy white, like curdled milk, instead of traffic-cone orange, like in some less fortunate places within 100 miles of the fires. (Though I’m told that’s a spectacular sight, especially when seen prismatically through tears in burning eyes. So we’ll call that a draw!)
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The kids had a great school year with their new teacher, Mom! Mom filled in at home for Mrs. Gromelsky for a while, and she did quite well, with occasional glitches on account of she isn’t a real trained teacher, such as when she referred to a triangle’s “hypotemoose,” and Brooklynne laughed at her! It was a joyful moment! Mom swears it was just a slip of the tongue, though, when she referred to “Rudolph Hitler,” and we believe her because moms do not lie except maybe a teensy bit about, say, what time of the day they have begun hitting the sauce. Later, Brooklynne returned to school virtually, via Zoom, but Mr. Toobin, the civics teacher, accidentally showed the kids his penis! Ha-ha, that was a joke. The family is really into contemporary humor now. For example, Colton, our youngest, recently observed that daddies need only one pair of underpants.
It’s true that Bernice and I have lost our jobs as a cruise-ship events planner (her) and kissing-booth operator (me), but we’ve been doing well and eating fine, thanks to Bernice’s culinary skills, such as making succulent “sirloin steaks” out of turnips and garden slugs.
For the most part, we try to stay out of politics, but I have to say we’ve been impressed by the civility with which politics have been conducted this year, except for the constant name calling, but you know what they say: “Sticks and stones ... .” Of course there were a few stick beatings and stone throwings, too, but not that many. And our leaders have shown commendable warmth and compassion. For example, after the North Korean government called Joe Biden “a rabid dog” that “must be beaten to death,” President Trump stepped forward to defend the honor of his political rival! He tweeted to Kim Jong Un, “Mr. Chairman, Joe Biden may be Sleepy and Very Slow, but he is not a ‘rabid dog.’ He is actually somewhat better than that.” Civility and respect!
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And now we have a new president, and the old one (actually, they’re both old ones, ha-ha!) is leaving with class and dignity. That’s my signal to be signing off, too, still hopeful and joyful and filled with those important American values of neighborliness, love of family, can-do spirit and denial.
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