My wife and I were both sick for the entirety of winter recess. We were sick on day one with whatever respiratory nonsense is going around and we continued to cough all the way through the end. Finally, yesterday, we decided to get out of the house and treat ourselves. We got a room at the Hotel Elkhart, the newly renovated nine-story building in downtown Elkhart, and I asked for a room on the highest available floor, a king-size suite, complete with a separate room with a couch and chair. We went out to dinner at 523 Tap & Grill, one of our normal favorite places to eat. They’ve recently made some changes to the menu that I didn’t care for, and the ribeye steak that they used to offer with a coffee rub, now has a Za’atar rub. I don’t care for Middle Eastern food, so I asked if it could be done another way. To my utter surprise, I was able to get a steak seasoned simply with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt and pepper. It was delicious. Magi had a clam chowder that was one of the best I’d ever tasted. After dinner, we stopped across the street at Vanilla Bean Creamery for some take out ice cream to bring back to the room. We sat in the spacious living room area, sharing a pint of dark chocolate, and just reminisced about our first Christmas together, 25 years ago.
I wrote a novel back in November, and I’ve been editing it with a friend’s help, rewriting much of it. I’ve never written a romance before, and the main character in this novel is similar to how I was at age 32, before I met Magi. One of the things it has brought to my attention is just how much Magi has changed my life. The character in the book has no love for theater, has a very unsophisticated palate, and would never have even considered spending seven dollars for a pint of ice cream. I’ve traveled, well, the world, or at least some of it, in my life with her. Thirty-two-year-old me had flown exactly once, to Arizona, to visit family. I spent that Christmas with her in New Orleans, and since marrying Magi, I’ve been to San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Utah, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Hawai’i, Atlanta, New York, Key West, and even China.
We talked about our daughter, and how she has changed our lives, and how we’ve watched her grow so much. We really just spent hours counting our blessings. We also talked about retirement, and what things could look like for us now that she’s a month away from being eligible to collect Social Security. So many possibilities are up in the air right now, we need to talk to a financial advisor to really put it into concrete terms.
Perhaps the most incredible part of the staycation came this morning at Relish Café & Confections, the breakfast and lunch restaurant in the Hotel Elkhart. Our breakfasts, including dark mochas for each of us, were just truly out of this world.
New Yorker Sunrise: Chive and potato waffles topped with smoked salmon, arugula, avacado, pickled red onion, capers, pico, and chimichurriChicken, Smoke, and Waffles: Chive and potato waffles topped with southern fried rosemary chicken, smoked sausage, and chipotle syrup
While we were sitting there, Magi spotted Elkhart’s mayor, Rod Roberson. We smiled at him and he came over to the table. I had worked with Mayor Roberson’s wife, Regina, for years at Pierre Moran Middle School, and I knew him from before that while I was a basketball coach. He thanked us both for our many years of service to the city of Elkhart, and I have to tell you, when the mayor thanks you, it feels pretty darned good. Then our server asked me if I had been a math teacher, and sure enough, she was one of my former students, which guarantees a 100% tip on the bill. I love seeing my kids out in the world.
Every once in a while, we just have to get out of the house. We have to get away from the dog, the cats, and the distractions of everyday life. We don’t have to get away from Sera, because she’s hardly ever home! Looks like we’re ready to start the second semester with a fresh outlook.
This machine, The Great Hot Air Popper, is one of the finest ever devised by humankind. Note, I write is, not was. How do I make such a claim? Because even though I got it in 1978, it still works!
When my dad bought this KMart blue light special, it was an outrageous $9.99. Little did we know, however, that it would see me through decades. My dad was out of work for about six months in the winter of 1978-79, and we didn’t have a lot of extra money. So, in the evenings, we ate popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn. Even then, half a cup of popping corn cost practically nothing, and all you had to do was melt a little butter in the butter tray, add some salt, and you had a reasonably healthy snack for literally pennies. Now, in those days, I liked to experiment and think outside the box with my food. So, when my dad had me put Lawry’s seasoned salt on my popcorn, I thought, why not? It is simply the best, takes less salt to make big flavor, and it’s still my preferred way to eat it.
That Christmas, we had a small tree, and no decorations to put on it. We had a needle, thread, and popcorn, though. We strung popcorn on that tiny tree, and I fed my dog Ladybug about 100 pieces of popcorn as well.
When I went away to college, the Great Hot Air Popper came with me. My dorm room was a popular place in the evening, because cooking appliances were not allowed in the dorm, yet somehow, my roommate knew how to block smells from leaving the doorway, and popcorn was to be enjoyed by many a poor college student who only had to bring an empty bowl.
In November, I wrote a novel. I don’t think it was a very good novel, but I wrote 60,000 words in a month nonetheless. I just started writing for no reason at all, and then within five days, I realized that it was NaNoWriMo, and thought that I might as well keep going at a pace that would allow me to finish by the end of the month. I had 50,000 words down by November 22. I’m working with a partner to revise and edit it now, and it’s turning into a decent one, I think. We’ll have to see when it’s all done.
I used to read a lot. I mean a LOT. I haven’t done so in several years, because I’ve been so busy with other creative endeavors, like Solution Squad. But when I was a kid, our school library had to bend its own rule about checking out books just so I could take enough home to keep me occupied over weekends. It’s funny to think that I wasn’t allowed to read superhero comics at home, but I could read any novel I wanted from my mom’s books or the library. I was reading far ahead of my grade level, and I was often inspired to read novels upon which movies and TV shows were based, especially if I hadn’t seen a movie.
My favorite show in the 1970s was clearly The Six Million Dollar Man. And my grandma bought me the novel on which it was based, called Cyborg. Yes, like the Teen Titan, but written a full eight years before the character appeared in DC Comics Presents #26. I read the first two Cyborg novels back to back, and they were not intended for kids. Steve Austin was a killer, and even came equipped with a cyanide dart gun in his bionic finger. I remember reading The Love Bug, Island at the Top of the World (the original novel, not a novelization), The World’s Greatest Athlete, The Hardy Boys, and a ton more.
One year for Christmas, my stepfather’s mother gave me two hardcover novels as gifts, Huckleberry Finn, and Treasure Island. I didn’t care so much for Treasure Island but Huckbleberry Finn was a great escape from having to spend Christmas away from my own family.
My grandma bought my brother a book for Christmas that I know I loved more than he did. It was Doc Savage: The Sargasso Ogre. This was my first exposure to The Man of Bronze, and I read the whole thing to my brother, who was only four at the time.
When I got a little older, I read Logan’s Run, which would make a nearly unrecognizable movie if they used more of the novel than the 1976 film did. I read anything I could get my hands on, science fiction, westerns, Reader’s Digest Condensed novels, even books that we had picked up from the local flea market, nearly sight unseen.
I remember one particular novel, Brandywine’s War, which was sort of like M*A*S*H for the Vietnam War. Imagine learning about gonorrhea from a novel when you’re 13. I bought The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin from a garage sale for a dime, the same way I bought all the original James Bond paperbacks. I was always on the lookout for something new to read. I lived in the country, with no cable, no internet, and barely any radio.
I read the novelization of Star Wars months before I finally had the chance to see the movie. Same with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien (years before I saw the movie), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I enjoyed the novelizations because before the advent of video recording, it was the only way to revisit the movies and I could run the visuals, sound effects, and scores in my head as I read the words.
Then there was the fluke. Superman The Movie was released 45 years ago this month, and the same day the movie came out, there was a tie-in novel–that had nothing to do with the movie other than featuring the origin of Superman. This was a surprise, especially since there was a section in the middle with photos from the movie. Superman: Last Son of Krypton was written by a Superman comic writer with whom I was very familiar, Elliot S! Maggin. He had written some of my favorite Superman (and Justice League of America) comics. This was different than a movie novelization, though. There’s no way that many of the scenes within the book could have been filmed with the technology of the day. Superman taking all of ten seconds to disable a squad of twelve hang gliding armed bandits using nearly his entire array of super powers? It was just as thrilling to read it in prose as it would have been to see it on the big screen. And I could imagine Curt Swan drawing it, or better yet (to me), Neal Adams. This was the first time I had read a novel with an actual superhero in it, and I loved it. I read it three times that year.
I’ve met Elliot, and talked to him a couple of times, explaining how much I loved this novel and the follow-up, Miracle Monday, when they came out. I’m kind of inspired now to write my own superhero prose novel. I hope my efforts compare!
Twenty-five years ago this month, my then-long distance girlfriend took me out to dinner in New Orleans. We had only met face-to-face one other time, two months before when I traveled to visit her. We had by this time spent an entire year talking on the telephone, exchanging emails, sending packages with our favorite books, music, and video. Yes, the Internet was still very young. But during that winter recess, at that dinner, I truly fell in love with her.
We had gone Christmas shopping already, and had exchanged gifts. I only had a few days left before I had to go back home to Indiana. Magi wanted to take me to her favorite Chinese restaurant, and who was I to say no to that? As we stood by the host stand at Five Happiness, waiting to be seated, she reached into her jacket pocket and got a strange look on her face. I said, “What’s wrong?” She pulled from her pocket a small envelope. She had forgotten to give me one last gift. I told her she had already spent too much on me, but she put it in my hand anyway.
In it was a gift subscription to Comics Buyer’s Guide, a weekly trade newspaper that used to be published back in those days. Now, I had mentioned to her, in passing, maybe in March, that I had let my subscription run out and that I really missed it. No, I mean it. I mentioned it once. In passing. Months before. And from out of her pocket, she pulls one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.
She listened to me.
Magi listened to me and made note of what I had said, and months later, gave me something that I missed. That was when I knew it was love. If had had any doubts before that, they were instantly erased.
The following is republished from my old blog on this date in 2017.
What is it about this time of year that gets me now? Is it that everyone concerned (except my brother) is gone now? I think it must be. My dad, my mom, my sister, my grandparents…all gone. Everyone I spent holidays with as a kid, except my brother (who doesn’t remember much of it), is dead.
That’s a lonely thought. But the wonders and the joy and the smells of the holiday are hardwired into my brain. It’s colorful Oz compared to the dreary black and white days of Kansas in the every day nightmare of my childhood. Spending time with the people who loved me most for a glorious week, as opposed to being beaten, belittled, and berated every day. There was nothing better. I know for a fact that if I had not had those respites to look forward to, I wouldn’t have made it out alive. Even now, I weep with joy at the happy memories.
My grandma baking batch after batch of cookies. Ice cream with chocolate syrup and peanut butter as a treat every night. Endless coloring books and comics and silly putty and drawing paper and colored pencils. Sleeping on the hide-a-bed in the living room. Trips to Cadillac and Traverse City, visiting the best bookstores in northern Michigan, and knowing that I’ll be able to choose something new to take back and read in peace without being tortured for reading “those damn comic books” again. An oversized treasury comic bought for the extravagant sum of $1.00, hearing my grandpa chuckle, saying, “A dollar for a funny book? Jesus Christ, Ma,” but knowing that he didn’t care.
Riding snowmobiles for endless hours and warming up by the woodstove and drinking hot chocolate. Egg nog that I helped make from the time I was able to reach the counter while stepping on a stool, with freshly ground nutmeg. Chocolate milk with dinner; the decadence! Getting our action figures out and playing to our hearts’ content while my dad and grandparents sat around the table drinking coffee.
I remember every gift no matter how small. My dad’s tradition was to give us Lifesavers storybooks and McDonald’s gift certificates. The reason behind the gift certificates is so terrible: My mother and stepfather wouldn’t let us eat very much at McDonald’s so in order to allow Jeff and me to order what we wanted, he gave us gift certificates. It didn’t work out. They just used them to order the usual and kept them. Yes, I know, even my holiday stories have darkness to them. Welcome to my world. But don’t think for a moment that the thought wasn’t appreciated. It most certainly was. We knew we were loved, if only for a while.
As I put this last paragraph down, I’m already crying at the thought of leaving each year. And not just tears rolling down my cheeks. We’re talking the ugly cry. My grandpa would slip us each a dollar and kiss us goodbye. He wasn’t exactly an affectionate man, but there was no doubt of his love. One of his favorite things in the world were cordial cherries and I made sure he got a box of them from me every single year. I think it was his favorite gift. By the time we got to the back door of the mud room, we were begging to stay. “Don’t make us go back. Please! We’ll be good.” And my grandma would hold us close, and whisper, “I know you would. You’ll be back soon, I promise. I love you.” And she would have to leave the room before we saw her cry as well. Then my dad would hug us. I knew he didn’t want to let us go. And with hindsight, I can’t imagine the guilt he must have felt for causing this disruption not just for us, but for his own parents who didn’t get to see us except for twice a year. It was not ideal. But in my darkest hours lying in bed at night back with my mother, I know we were loved for a short time every Christmas. That’s why I’ll always celebrate regardless of religion. It wasn’t about Jesus or God for me. I got beatings in the name of God.
It was about family. It was about home. It was about love. And it was about hope.
