The Ennui of Christmas Cards

When I was growing up, a business associate of my father, Clark Dalgren, always sent a Xeroxed Christmas letter from Petosky, Michigan. After the letter arrived I listened to my mother, in less than saccharine tones, read out loud the pages of single-space type recounting the Dalgren's past year of accumulative success.

Every year the Dalgren children proved to be wonderful, smart, and taking the world by storm. Husband Clark, who made a million in the sunflower seed business, always took the family on a fabulous annual trip somewhere exotic like Portugal, Aruba or Port Antilles. Once, the Dalgrens visited Japan. Their annual family portrait attached to the Xerox showed them all in kimonos. The Dalgren letter typically concluded with a blessing of Christmas gratitude and a big curvy sweep of signature.

By the time my mother finished the letter we'd be laughing hysterically, my sister needing to pee, even my father, generally quiet and respectful, giggling behind his newspaper. Mom would drop the letter into the card basket and blurt out in between peals of laughter, "Those Dalgrens sure know how to have fun."

Needless to say, our family never wrote a Xeroxed holiday letter and to this day I always chuckle in memory of the Dalgrens whenever I receive a Xerox Christmas card. It's not just that I'm a minimalist, being more comfortable signing my name and letting the little message on the card take care of the rest. It's more the fact that the Dalgren letter was full of themselves and pretentious. They never included anything in their letter about the car breaking down, or some child flunking Spanish, or son Anthony being busted, or the lonliness the old lady felt watching Clark work 14 hour days so the family could visit Portugal for a week.

My mom still gets these Xerox things every Christmas and once every holiday season she'll read one over the phone and we'll try to giggle like we used to, but it's not the same. In this era of Oprah-like confessions and exposed secrets, there aren't that many Dalgrens left.

The Christmas notes I receive don't have any pretense of a model family. They seem to be written in unlikely soulfulness under duress from an eggnog haze. Take my college housemate Ned. He's an arthopedic surgeon, happily married with three kids in Roanoke, Virginia. "I, love my wife. I adore my kids. But I no longer have those ideals about medicine. There's too many parasites, too many wrongs. My only aim in medicine is to keep people from having pain." Another college pal, Allan, has always approached jobs the way I approach dating - with earnestness, wide-open hope, and suspicions of how long the feelings of the other party will last. He writes," Beth still sells real estate and we're doing OK. I took a job teaching at Duke, but ennui is spreading like ringworm."

It's not all that peachy keen for my friend Patty living in Southern California. "Thanks for the cassette tape on my birthday, but my car was burglarized for the fourth time. It went with the stereo. Now I carry a gun."

My Christmas letter has yet to be written, mainly because of other deadlines in my life. The other day, waiting in holiday traffic, I began mentally composing an epic description of my year.

At first, in wishful thinking, I embraced only my achievements and travels. I skated backward collecting moments when deadlines were always met, when traffic lights were always green, when the sun shined on my back. I slid so close to the Dalgren letter I began hearing my mother's laugh.

The truth is that, like Charlie Dickens wrote, it was the best and worst of times. The love of my life died in a car accident. My body continues to fall apart in a painful, frightening pace. My car, like my life, remains perpetually on the blink. I continue to lose a little hope the more time passes.

On the other hand, life, though full of shortcomings, is good. I climbed a big pinnacle in Wyoming. My third book is out. I even found a delightful woman who made me feel loved, if only for a short period of time. I'll go on to describe the year, and considering I have yet to begin it, my cheerful Christmas letter will arrive sometime during the month of January, proving in itself that everything's cool, but far from perfect.