The Cruciger Christmas Letter

2001       

Putting it all into perspective.

I am going to begin this year's letter with a small example of different perspectives.  Consider the following sentence and without reading ahead, memorize your first take on it.  I will attempt to guess what you came up with from here.

 "Lauren, who is thirteen this year, purchased a bumper sticker for my car. It says: It's all about me!"

 Please note that this is content analysis - not a sentence structure or grammar test.  This is a true statement by the way.  You may also note that the message on the sticker is perfect for me.  I do live in a Cindy-centric universe. I sincerely believe that what ever happens in this particular space in time I currently occupy is all related to me in some significant way.  For those of you who consider this selfish and self-serving, I would like to point out that even saints exercised their altruistic bent for the sole purpose of personal, spiritual enrichment.  You donate to charity because you "think" this is helping someone less fortunate.  You could be wrong.  It doesn't matter if you are wrong.  What matters is that you did it because you have a personal desire to donate.  I have a personal desire to get all the crap out of my house.  It's all one in the same process - just personalized.

Let's get back to the sentence.

 My "glass-is-half-full" friends like Mary Beth and T.M. will think that Lauren is such a sweetheart for buying me a bumper sticker.  Debbie Shannon's Father will freak when he finds out that I actually put the sticker on the bumper of my brand new 2001 Monte Carlo. (He parks 20 miles from the next nearest vehicle to prevent dings in his car.  Someday, a meteor will land on his car and end this strange parking paranoia.)  My husband will think that Lauren has no money of her own and want to know who actually paid for the sticker and how much did it cost.  My editor friends will note that the word "purchased" is probably too formal and suggest that I use the word "bought". 

Only the parents of thirteen year olds will see this sentence as it truly was written.  (Yes Dave is her father but Dave is only the alternate parent of a thirteen year old.  I am the primary.)  No thirteen-year-old child currently living in America willingly buys anything for her parent with out some ulterior motive.  A real parent of a thirteen year old will immediately cut through to the chase and ask the following question.  "What did Lauren want?" And they all know the answer.  "Lauren wanted to see if she could get me to spend money on a bag full of stuff that no one actually needs.  This satisfies the single savage desire of all thirteen year olds to see if they can get Mom or Dad to buy it for them."  The bumper sticker was a dollar.  The rest of the stuff in the bag, which was for her, was over a hundred dollars.  That is what our ratio to our children has become 1:100.  My engineer friends may all heave a sigh of relief.  I have placed the chaos of the thirteen-year-old mind into a mathematical ratio that can be used as a launch pad for theorems and proofs.  If we can quantify and calculate the projected damage our children are capable of, perhaps we can negotiate a settlement.  Walk away with our bank accounts and dignity intact.  Salvage our retirement.  Or.  Not.

I say all of this because, as I approach forty, I have noticed that more and more people around me are dying.  I don't think the numbers are disproportionate to the population mind you.  I just notice it more.  I also take note of ages and the cause of death.  They all seem to hover somewhere around my age range.  They all die of diseases that I am positive I have but, because I ignore the symptoms, I will not die of them.  It is possible that our thirteen year olds are like vultures circling their aging prey. 

Last year Lauren complained because she was not mentioned prominently enough in the Cruciger Christmas letter.  This year she will come to see that omission as a kindness.  Grab a cup of coffee, a diet coke or a glass of wine.  This year's letter is gong to be a long one.

Aruba in January

 We celebrated the New Year on the Island of Aruba.  For the geographically impaired of my friends, Aruba is part of the Dutch ABC islands south of the Lesser Antilles and North of Columbia.  Warm climates and luxurious locations seem to be the preferred haunts of the world's best narcotics smugglers -- lucky for us.  While Lauren was taking lessons at the Hyatt for Scuba Diving, Dave and I took Jon to the Hyatt's "Little Bubblers" pool diving certification class.  They have kid-sized scuba gear and take the guppies into the Hyatt's pool to scoot around the bottom like little squid being chased by a big teacher dolphin. We had a room at the Holiday Inn, just one hotel over.  The drug smugglers have suites at the Hyatt. 

You may think that is just an educated guess about the smugglers staying at the Hyatt, but it's not.  As we lounged on the pool deck chairs, watching Jon and the other guppies make bubbles, we chatted with the parents.  Between Dave and a man, who looked exactly like James Gandolfino from the Soprano's, sat a very nice woman from Connecticut who winters in Ft. Liquordale.  The wealthy Jewish winter residents have renamed it to something else but I can't recall what.  I think she called it Hallendale and was very offended that I hadn't heard of the pricier name for what used to be the Spring Break grunge capital of the world and now looks like Tammy Faye Baker's Make up case - on a much larger scale.  Anyway, Dave and "Tony" were talking shop, among other things.  They discussed how they were both here on working vacations with their families and what a pain that could be.  They chatted about fishing.  Dave explained how hard it was to get Customs Agents to stay in third world locations such as Mexico and Puerto Rico and "Tony" said he had to pay double wages, plus provide a mansion and full staff for his key personnel and STILL the ungrateful bastards bitched about the living conditions in those locations.  We discussed hotels.  "Tony" said that his "family" takes three suites at the Hyatt twice a year for 2 to 3 months at a time. Dave said the Army booked a block of rooms year round at the Holiday Inn for Spooks, DEA and Customs.  "Tony" spoke about his "Button" factories in Mexico and Columbia and how the politics of each country was making it difficult to export during season.  Button Season, I presumed.  But the truly magical moment for me was when the nice socialite from the North East realized exactly what was sitting on either side of her.  I thought she was going to throw up. 

Moving on.

A container cargo ship from China pulls into Aruba every year, three days before New Year's Eve loaded with fireworks and replacement glass, for windows blown out from the fireworks.  These people take their fireworks very seriously.  The only rule appears to be that after the 2nd of January, all fireworks have to be disposed of.  They roll strings of huge firecrackers down every single street on the island and over the next several days and set them off.  Red paper from the exploded casings was a foot deep in some places, but that wasn't even half of the show.  For three nights the Arubans launch rockets from their back yards, all night long.  Looking out from the 5th floor stairwell balcony of our hotel, it looked like Baghdad during the height of the Gulf war, only more colorful.  At least once in your life, you must go see this.  Dave was in his element.  He loaded up the back of our rented jeep and launched fireworks from our balcony and then, after melting the hotel's PVC table and nearly setting fire to our room, from the beach for hours.

As for the wild life . . .

There were iguanas and other, smaller lizards everywhere.  Jon spent a great deal of time chasing them, to the horror of many of the other hotel guests.  When one gentleman had the audacity to chastise Jon for this harmless little past time, Dave intervened.  He said something to the effect of, "Look.  The kids gotta eat."  And that pretty much ended that.  He said that people staying at a Holiday Inn should not be putting on airs, even if the rooms are $350 a night.

We chartered a boat to go completely around the island, while fishing the entire way.  The wind blows twenty knots all the time.  The waters off shore are always rough.  The local charter fleet of five boats compensates for these conditions by charging a mere pittance compared to the same number of hours and running time here in Islamorada.  About a quarter of the way around the island, Dave realized that our captain and mate had no idea what they were doing and he took over the very serious task of getting fish.  We caught two huge Wahoo's and two huge dolphins.  When we came into the docks, we were the only boat that had caught a fish.  I got the distinct impression that we were the first passengers of this particular fleet to EVER catch a fish.  Our captain and mate are now celebrities.  There is a reason you don't find many seafood restaurants on Aruba and you never hear about big fishing tournaments there.  You have to really want to fish to go out on that water.  Once we got used to the rhythm of the waves, they weren't too bad.  We have been out in way worse for far less worthy causes.

We drove over every square inch of that island and went into every cave. On our first day with the Jeep, we discovered that the island prostitutes considered the rental Jeep fleet their own personal mobile bedrooms.  They are ragtops and the doors don’t lock.  Dave cleared one working girl out of our Jeep on the second morning of our stay. Part of his routine in the morning included clearing out the night crawlers before the kids and I came down for our adventure drives.  He neglected to remove abandoned articles of clothing, however.  Jon was kind enough to wait until the last day to throw up in our rental Jeep.  Dave turned it in to the rental place after a quick clean up with our last bottle of Evian and Wendy's Yellow fast food napkins.  Their billboard reads: Three Wendy's, one happy Island. A nice Venezuelan couple was at the rental store trying to get a jeep.  Dave warned the owner that the jeep needed to be cleaned.  The couple, fearing that they might have to wait and end up losing the car to someone else if they went and came back, insisted on taking it "As is".  The island was booked. People were willing to sacrifice for the small comfort resources available.

Lauren wanted to take a trail ride on local horses on our last day of vacation.  We sent her and Jon off to mosey through the cactus and down to the beach on one of the equestrian guided tours offered by the local tourist herders.  There appear to be no "Must be accompanied by a parent or guardian" laws in Aruba. Dave and I took full advantage of this egregious lapse in their culture.  We happily ferried our offspring from one activity after another and then snuck off to snuggle, shop, gamble and just generally de-evolve into puddles of Goombay Smash. It was bliss.

The flight home was packed with pissed off cruise ship passengers who had disembarked at Aruba when their ship was repossessed.  I sat on the disgruntled American, paying passengers row.  Dave sat on the happy-to-be-fired, blond British cruise ship employee's row.  As soon as Dave mentioned that he was a pilot, these women crawled all over him.  I am convinced that a troll could get a date if it could fly an airplane.  Ladies.  It's just a bus with wings smacked on each side.  You wouldn't find the Greyhound bus driver guy irresistible, would you?

Sigh.

The Cruciger Zoo

Many of you may wonder who cared for the Cruciger Zoo while we were away for three weeks.  My friend T.M. volunteered to take ALL of the creatures for the duration but since I actually like T.M. I only saddled her with the bird and Jemima.  Jemima was a model houseguest apparently, and Cookie, our 20-year-old Molucan Cockatoo, was her usual self.  Cookie is actually David's bird and is his alter ego in the aviary kingdom.  She is loud, demanding, stubborn, destructive, annoying, completely unaware and uncaring of where and when she moves her bowels, has a rabid aversion to the vacuum cleaner, and snuggles up on you at every opportunity demanding that you love her unconditionally, in spite of all her unappealing character flaws.  T.M. adored her too. 

Sadly, Jemima developed cancerous cysts at some point in time and when I picked her up from T.M.'s she had lumps.  The vet removed four in total.  She survived the cancer surgery, but P.K. and Precious scratched her eye when we brought her home and she needed three months of eye treatments for the infection that set in.  P.K. and Precious - my two gray Persian cats, are now outside cats.  Andi, Dad's Himalayan is still inside - much to her personal disgust.  She tries to sneak out on a daily basis.  She doesn't go far.  She just wants to have you open the door for her as she goes in and out, in and out, and in and out.  For revenge I had her teeth scraped and her fur shaved.  Dave was selling tickets to neighbors who wanted to see poor Andi with her Lion cut.  She handled it all with her usual disdain.  I suspect she pee'ed in Dave's closet later though.  Lauren has adopted Andi as her cat.  They both share the belief that they belong in a different family, a better family, a family that buys them things just because they think they might want them.

 Dave finally realized his life long goal to master animal husbandry with our giant red-tailed Boa constrictors Sneaky and Montana.  Many of you will recall the hamster homosexual disaster of a few years back and possibly wonder at how anyone who couldn’t successfully identify the sex of a hamster could manage to figure out the sexual preferences of a snake -- or, snakes, as the case may be.  He guessed. 

I found, on the Internet, reams of information on the difficulty involved in successfully mating a pair of giant constrictors, beyond the first step of actually determining that you are indeed mating a male and a female snake.  Cage conditions must be perfect.  The temperature must be precise.  Humidity levels must be monitored carefully.  Snake diet must be regulated.  Sneaky is a live bearing snake.  This means that there are no eggs laid to give evidence to successful fertility.  The only measure, by which you can ascertain that your pet Sneaky is knocked up, is her size.

 “Sneaky is getting fat.”  Both Dave and Jon announced this at the dinner table in February.  Deep down, I knew what this meant.  I was, however, in the deepest throws of denial.  It was patently impossible that Dave had succeeded in breeding a snake as complex as a live bearing constrictor.  I mentally ticked off the last time I had seen all of my other animals and ruled out the possibility that Sneaky had been snacking after midnight.

“How fat?”  I had to pretend a polite interest.  Jon loves his snakes almost as much as Dave does. 

“OH, man Mom.  She’s getting HUGE.  Her scales are separating, she’s so fat.”

“Didn’t you just feed her a jumbo cane rat yesterday?”  Perhaps she was just digesting.

 “She didn’t eat it.”  This statement filled me with an even greater sense of dread,

 “What did you do with the rat then?”  When Sneaky refuses to eat a live rat, Dave empties Jon’s toy bucket and “stores” the rat in there with a bowl of water and cat food.  There is no lid on the bucket.  Dave believes the rats can’t climb out the plastic sides of the bucket.  I have seen rats scale a side of sheet metal, five stories high.  For some reason, Dave is always surprised when the rats escape.  It says a great deal that neither of my offspring find encountering a rat in the hallway on the way to the bathroom at night a reason to wake Mom and Dad.  They simply pick it up by the tail and deposit it back into the toy bucket. 

 “Montana ate it.”  Oh thank god. I could now entertain the joyful possibility that Montana would suffer irreparable internal “burstage” from the consumption of two jumbo cane rats and the Cruciger household would number one less snake.  When the babies were born, the Cruciger family included 38 more snakes.  Dave recruited half the neighborhood to clean and process the foot long babies and managed to sell every one of them to the president of the local Herpetological Society for $20 a piece.  One baby shed its skin in the truck on the drive over and it wasn’t discovered until a week later.  We had to fumigate the truck.  Dave bought boat electronics with the money.

 And a completely unrelated thought . . .

 In February I discovered a charming little quirk in our Keys Dental community.  I found out that if you lose a filling, call for an emergency appointment and they graciously squeeze you in, Novocain is not administered.  The Dentist had ten minutes to fix my filling between regular patients.  He drilled and filled with no drugs.  Those of you, who know me, also know that when even the mention of pain is whispered, I require chemical sedation.  And now, my dentist knows this as well. Here's a tip.  Get drunk before you go in.  The fumes from your breath may set off a spark when the drill hits the enamel of your teeth, but you won't feel it until later and you will have the added benefit of seeing the sadistic squid Doctor's eyebrows scorched.

Dave, Chapter fifteen.

 In March, Dave painted the living room pink.  In April, David decided that he needed a bigger boat.  I explained to him that until the house note was paid off in August, I wasn't willing to take on a boat payment.  I told him he had to wait.  I pointed out that his current boat was completely paid for and that he had the whole summer to look for something else at his leisure.  He listed his boat with a broker for $3,000 more than it was worth the next day.  He thought it would take months to sell it.  He figured only serious buyers would even look at it with the price he had it listed at.  A week later, a nice young Cuban gentleman came in with a paper bag full of twenty dollar bills and offered Dave what he was asking for it.  If we refused the deal, we still had to pay the broker $3,000 in fees.  Dave called me in a blind panic as I was shopping at The Gap on my lunch break with T.M.. 

"What do I do?"

 He wanted me to say that he could sell this boat and buy another boat immediately and that I would suck in the expenses of such a purchase with out complaint.

"Sell it."

"But, then I won't have a boat to use until August!"  He had conveniently forgotten the two other boats in our driveway.

 "What's your point?"

 "I can't go all summer with out a way to get out on the water."  Pathetic.  It's tragic.  Really.

 "You have to sell it. The man is offering $3,000 more than it’s worth.  I’m not eating the broker’s fees just because it didn’t occur to you that a 30’ go fast boat disguised as a fishing vessel would sell in less than 24 hours in South Florida."  I honest-to-god wonder, sometimes, if Dave actually knows what he does for a living.  Just a few months earlier, he had bagged a slice of a local smuggling gang affectionately called the flying Avanti brothers.  An Avanti is a go fast boat.  They occasionally fly their Avanti’s into the mangrove trees during particularly heated boat chases, hence, The Flying Avanti’s.

 "Will you let me buy the bigger boat?"

 "No."

 "Thank you. I knew you would agree."  This is called spousal interpretation of the spoken word.  He heard the word "no".  He knew, however, that I did not want to listen to his whining all summer and that I wanted him to buy his bigger boat.  I just couldn't actually say the word "yes" because then I would not have a decent platform on which to nag him later when the checking account was empty and the boat needed repairs and gas.  Years from now, Social Behaviorists and Linguists will join forces to study this hidden language and earn Nobel prizes for writing the marital equivalent of the “Rosetta Stone” to decrypt it.  He bought a 34' Silverton which, he said was in perfect repair, except for the $4,000 or so dollars needed for electronics, generator rebuild, batteries, etc.  It is docked behind a neighbor's house down the street.  It came pre-named.  Jet Lag.  Dave is happy.  It won't last.

Dave found a new way to take deer this year.  He hit one with his airplane.  He called me from the office after nearly totaling the Custom’s King Air by hitting a deer on take off at 130 mph.  He landed at Homestead Air force base, barely. This is the plane with the plaque in the back with the number 2 on it that asks the final owners of the plane to ferry it to the Smithsonian when it goes out of service, as it is the oldest remaining plane of that make and model in existence.  Customs got this plane because, while they had no money to purchase new equipment, they had plenty of money for repairs.  They took it on donation from a branch of the government that had no money for repairs, but lots of money for new purchases.  They may be able to fix it up enough to put on display at the Smithsonian.  It will probably never be flown again. Then again, this is the U.S. Government we are talking about here.  A few parts from the plumbing department at Home Depot and she might be good as new.

 Dave had me on speakerphone when he broke the news.  Until that moment, I don’t believe anyone in his office truly believed the stories he told them about me.  They know different now.  My thought process was as follows.  He’s obviously OK, since he is talking to me on the phone.  He hit a deer.  Is the deer OK?

 The question nearly unmanned half the office.  How in the hell am I supposed to know if a deer can survive the impact of an airplane at 130 mph.  Dave managed to breed snakes for god’s sake.  Anything is possible.

 Would he be bringing the deer home for dinner?

 Those of you who find this question weird do not know Dave.  It is well within the realm of possibilities for Dave to drive back to Collier Air field in the truck and retrieve the carcass.  He’s just that way.  And he did consider it.  Past experience, however, had taught him that the collateral bruising sustained from such an impact would render the meat inedible for anything but a dog.  Maybe not even a dog.  I bet most of you didn’t even know that.  Well.  Now you do, because I asked.

 His co-workers and supervisors were merciless once they determined that no death other than the deer had occurred.  His boss sent him out flying again almost immediately.  On take off, the radio room attendant said that while the possibility of bird encounters with the airplane was minimal, the area was dense with deer.  Did he want to wait until a truck could clear the field?  Another voice mentioned that Santa was reporting a missing reindeer.  Earlier, while Dave was in the bathroom, they announced over the PA system that Florida Fish and Game were on the phone wanting to investigate the taking of a deer by an unsanctioned method out of season.

I am considering buying one of those lighted deer lawn ornaments and putting an airplane through the middle of it.

Summer Camp

 Lauren went to Horseback riding camp in Ocala.  There she discovered that there are mom's way worse than me.  The Girl Scouts of America run the camp.  Aside from a slightly cult-ish view of the Christian religion, they are a basically harmless group.  I did warn Lauren that there might be a few strange people.  Her first strange person encounter was one of the councilor moms.  This mom insisted that elbows on the table killed fairies and that Lauren would have to circle the table twice, singing.  In college they call this hazing.  Lauren adapted very well.  We’ll elaborate more on Lauren’s innate ability to handle strange female rituals later.  When camp let out, Grandma Daphne, who lives in Ocala, picked Lauren up and spent the next few days with her shopping.  Lauren believes that if she kills Dave and I off, Grandma Daphne might just get custody.  I'm not sure what's kept her back thus far, but I am beginning to think we better get a will completed stating that she and Jon would be wards of the Machetaros in Puerto Rico should anything happen to Dave and I.  There's more than one kind of insurance for every occasion.

Home Improvements

 Daphne drove Lauren here from horse camp and Daphne’s shopping camp.

 I believe that every person brave enough to visit the Cruciger abode for any length of time experiences an uncontrollable urge to “fix” it.  Daphne’s urge took form in the front yard.  We actually live on the second and third floor of the house.  The guest apartment is on the first floor.  Dave and I skate up the stairs to the second floor and try to pretend that the front yard doesn’t exist.  We found out after we bought it, that the beautiful grass we fell in love with when we purchased the house was actually maintained by a three-month cycle of replacement.  The former owners of the house would lay down sod.  Water it until it died – usually in 2 1\2 months.  And, lay down more sod.  Any new plants interred in the ground – I use the term interred correctly here BTW – was dug up and slain by Jemima.  We put in a gate for the back yard and moved Jemima and her accessories to the back of the house.  But the devastation to the front yard remained.  Daphne stared out at our yard as she smoked her cigarette and a deep steel stake of determination pierced her heart.  This week, her son’s front yard was going to be tamed.

I should stop and mention here that I had only recently discovered that I have a resting pulse of 106 and my blood pressure hovers at 212 over 107.  I am now on medication for this genetic flaw, I wasn’t on medication during the great lawn renovation.  I should also mention that this took place in the middle of the summer.  Feeling any sympathy for me yet?  Send Flowers.  Cut Flowers.  Do not send plants that require care.

In two days, David’s dreams of paving the front yard and transforming it into a boat yard turned to mulch.  160 bags of cypress mulch, 20 bags of cypress chips, 40 bags of decorative granite rock, and approximately 40 plants were used to transform our horticultural tribute to Somalia into a decent looking yard.  The neighbors watched in awe.  Some, knowing Dave’s deep aversion to yard work, took great pleasure in taunting Dave as he caved in to matriarchal pressure and lent a hand in the project.  Dave’s mother can get Dave to do things that I would have sworn he would never do.  She is my idol.  I am a mere mortal apprentice to her Avatar level of wizardry.  I bow.

The yard looks great. 

 Inside the house, no one has yet managed to circumvent my “Decorating by Death” motif.  As relatives die, we inherit furniture and artwork.  As creatures die, Dave stuffs and mounts them. Someday, Better Homes and Gardens will want to publish a volume completely dedicated to this generation-x innovation in interior design.  Consider this, as the baby boomers die; someone has to take on their stuff.  I predict a trend.   Ask me in twenty years how it panned out.  People think that disposition of their loved one’s mortal remains is the most difficult aspect of dealing with a death.  I predict that, as the cemeteries run out of real estate, the heirs will run out of rooms, and the home improvement industry will boom as Gen-x’rs add rooms to their homes to hold all the stuff they get stuck with.  I am hereby imploring all my remaining relatives not to die before I do.  We have six desks, 16 bookcases (that’s a good thing BTW), and literally a ton of dishes.  I admit some culpability in the excessive dish tonnage.  Someday, I will tell you why.

 The inner guts of our house began emitting a foul stench some time in August.  My first fear was that one of the escaped rats had died in a wall and we would be spending the next month or so living in a house sized version of a bottle of ipecac.  But, the smell was more like dead fish than dead rat.  Dave sniffed his way through the house like a hound dog after a raccoon.  I dreaded what he would find.  My maternal instincts suspected that Jon had failed to dispose of his fishing bait in a socially acceptable way.  He really likes to fish.  He will use three-day-old shrimp if that’s all he has to bait a hook with.  He – like most nine-year-old boys who consider farting a sport – has no sense of smell.  In a sinister development, pointing to organic decay, the A\C vent in the master bedroom began dripping a brownish goo.  I called the A\C people immediately.  Some people may have called animal control. Others might have chosen an exterminator.  I have a few twisted friends who would have called the funeral home.  I figured if the smell was coming out of the A\C vent, it was a problem for the A\C repair guy. 

Did you know A\C filters need to be changed out on a regular basis?  Well then one of you should have mentioned that to me.  We have been living in the house for over four years now.  No one said, have you changed your A\C filters?  I believe our old filters are now on display at John’s A\C Hall of fame for most disgusting grunge build up.  The smell is gone.  Nothing was dead.

 Our appliances sense the impending doom of Thanksgiving every year and take a vote on which one of them will be giving up the ghost for this holiday season. The dishwasher has drawn the short straw two years in a row now, and Dave, in a fit of domesticity, decided to rip out the entire, rebellions lot of them and bring in new appliances.  The new dishwasher arrived the day before Thanksgiving.  The rest of the appliances apparently disappeared off the truck enroute.  Dave always seems surprised by crime here in South Florida.  There’s something refreshing about his ability to maintain that level of optimism in the face of such blatant larcenous evidence.  He’s just cute that way, dammit.  I have no idea why.

The kids.

 Although many of you expressed the wish that Dave and I not reproduce, we have obviously done so.  Some of you have mentioned concerns about the very real possibility that our offspring may turn out to be very much like Dave and myself.  I understand your fears and they are well founded.  You won’t be surprised then, when I tell you that Lauren is developing a philosophical perception of the world contrary to the view accepted by the average mainstream middle American.  You might suspect that she is turning out to be just like me.  She is not.  Lauren is warped in ways I never thought of.  She is an innovator in the complex world of male manipulation.  Like all mother’s I asked her – as casually as possible since she will not answer if she thinks I really care about the question – if any young men had expressed an interest in her at school.  I had heard rumors and wondered if I needed to start worrying.

 “Yes.”

 “And what did you do about that?”  She has her own phone, email account and enough personal freedom to carry on a clandestine relationship right under my nose.  She could marry and birth kids with out my noticing.  I would never be so foolish as to underestimate the stealth capabilities of a thirteen-year-old.

 “I hurt them.”

 This was a new thing.  I had never considered pain as a romantic deterrent.  Years ago I discovered that Dave – no – I just pictured Lauren shrieking “Too much information” at me - maybe in my memoirs when I get older. 

 Dave taught both Lauren and Jon self-defense.  Lauren has erected a no touch zone one foot out from her body.  Jon discovered this when he attempted to pinch her one-day on her derrière.  She didn’t do any real damage to him.  Then again, he was hit by a car and walked away from that.  I shudder to think about the damage she could inflict on an ordinary human.  I think it’s covered by our homeowners insurance.  It’s possible she has a particular interest in some unfortunate member of the opposite sex.  I just don’t know.  And.  I don’t want to know.

When she told Dave that she wanted to compete in the Miss Jr. Orange Bowl pageant and Dave agreed, I nearly collapsed from shock.  It’s not that she’s not beautiful.  She is beautiful.  It’s not that she’s not smart and talented.  She is smart and talented.  It’s that events like the Miss Jr. Orange Bowl thrive on the good ol’ boy system.  In Orlando, Dave and I might have the social connections to ensure at least some chance of success for her in an event like this.  In the Keys, the numbers of relatives who have both successfully and unsuccessfully run the gauntlet of the Federal Law Enforcement Agency measures your social status.  If you want to research the Blue Book of the Keys, you need look no further than the Federal Courthouse.  I do not say this in a negative way.  The Kennedy family got their start smuggling, after all. This is a hard working community of people who I have come to admire and respect.  They just don’t necessarily see things on par with the U.S. Government. What this really means is, Lauren, as the daughter of a U.S. Customs Pilot, didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of making the finals.

 And her response to this was, “Jesus mom, lighten up.  I just want to get an invitation to the ball.  I don’t care if I win.”  Hallelujah.  I was afraid I would have to give her my backup feminist lecture on women as sex objects.  All she wanted to do was make me buy her a new dress.

 In sports, Jon made the traveling All-Stars team.  Lauren learned that not everyone views recreational team soccer as a way for kids to get out, play with friends, get exercise and absorb character enriching lessons such as, showing up for practice on time, attending games regularly, good sportsmanship, doing your best, etc and so on.  Lauren learned that some parents are out there to see their kids win.  If a member of the team isn’t a natural athlete in the soccer arena, then showing up to practice and trying your best to play well does not win any respect.  Her coaches managed to convey to her in the cruelest way possible, that they considered her the worst player on the team and she was treated accordingly.  These are the life lessons I wish I could shield my children from.  Since I can’t, I will record them here duly for my grandchildren to remember.  My father was a coach.  No adult who cares about kids and who calls himself or herself a coach would ever behave in such a manner with kids.  I let Lauren quit soccer in the middle of the season.  It wrenched every piece personal integrity I value out of my spine to do it, but she didn’t deserve to suffer through the rest of the games.  The team had more than enough girls to compensate.  She said I could make her feel better if I took her shopping.  I did.

 Jon, who I believe is a genius, has been struggling this year in school.  He is making decent grades; he just doesn’t seem to have his act together.  Case in point.  Every morning the teacher gives them a quick assignment to do and the kids grade their own work as the teacher calls out the answers.  Ms. Peterson said, and I believe her, that Jon was erasing his answers in anticipation of her called out answer and then writing in her answer.  Did you follow that?  This is Jon we are talking about.  He did not wait to see if he had written the correct answer himself or not.  He pre-emptively erased what he had written to write down Ms. Peterson’s answer.  This assignment does not get a recorded grade.  It assesses how well the students have absorbed yesterdays’ lessons.  He got caught cheating on a null assignment. I explained to him that, since he did not appear to have a talent for cheating, perhaps he should just try the traditional methods of passing school course work.  A few failed variations on this theme later, he finally buckled down and got to work.

The Weather

It hasn’t been a decent year if we haven’t had a hurricane.  This year, as I was putting up Halloween decorations, I made the colossal mistake of saying, “Gee, I guess we aren’t going to get hit this year.”  This is the karmic equivalent of murdering a million people along with yourself and reincarnating as an experimental lab animal in Iraq.  Hurricane Michelle formed up twenty-four hours later.  We did not evacuate.  The lethargy with which Dave and I approached our hurricane preparations sent Lauren and Jon into a blind panic.  Honestly, we just weren’t in the hurricane spirit.  Maybe if it had arrived in July, or even August, we could have mustered up some enthusiasm.  As it was, only Lauren’s screeching that we were all going to die, motivated Dave to attach the metal shutters to the windows.  He punished us for making him put them up, you will recall his extreme fear of heights, by leaving them up for a week.  Local officials were perturbed by the island wide lack of enthusiasm for Hurricane Michelle.  Officials were reported uttering, “We train hours each year for this sh*t people, could at least SOME of you have the courtesy to take us seriously and evacuate?”

For many, Hurricane Michelle was a last opportunity to trim down their endangered trees, or in some cases, remove their tees completely. For those of you who do not live here in the Keys, it may interest you to know that permits are usually required to trim a tree with a trunk diameter greater than six inches.  I think.  If the tree is on the endangered list, you probably won’t get a permit.  Hurricanes provide the perfect opportunity to claim downed branches as collateral storm damage. As the new residents were putting up storm shutters and packing their cars, the natives were rev’ing up chain saws and vivisection-ing forests.  My neighbor in the house behind me got a late start on the tree carnage train and was, at the height of the storm, standing at the top of his sapling endangered hardwood tree, in full foul weather gear, swaying with the wind gusts, sawing off branches.  You have to admire that level of dedication to yard work.  Especially when you are married to someone who loathes it as much as Dave does.  His reaction to the senselessness of it all was priceless. 

“Lightning is going to strike that tree and someone is going to have to deal with the mess.”

“I’m betting on a tornado ripping through it, actually.” 

Dave and I are not nice people.  I know you know that.  I also know you pass these letters on to total strangers for some perverse reason.  I am just making sure the strangers aren’t reading this with any expectation that Dave and I are the type of people to run out and rescue someone who dons a Yellow Rubber suit, straps metal tools to his arms, climbs a small, weak tree, and trims the branches off in the middle of a hurricane.  We are the type of people who will watch this lunacy from our back balcony and write it down for future generations to enjoy in our annual Christmas letter.

With Love From,

Cindy

Dave 

Lauren

Jon Jon