The Feeling of Christmas

Last night I heard those magical words from my wife that I long to hear this time of year...I think I’m finished buying presents! It’s true. We are done. With four days to spare. That’s not to say that we have nothing else Christmas related to do. Yesterday’s big job was giving Lucy her all important Christmas bath. Today’s will be cleaning the house from top to bottom, while Pam tends to all of the Christmas baking that she hasn’t had time to do. At some point this weekend we will need to wrap all of the stocking stuffers.

Up until now Christmas has been a hassle for me. Long time readers of this space know all about my antipathy for what Christmas has become in America, so there’s no need to rehash that. But, once it gets close, and I can pry myself out of its consumerist grip, my heart melts....a lot. Something comes over me when the big day nears, a deep appreciation for and awareness of the wonderful people in my life.

It starts with my family. I begin thinking about each of them, and how fortunate I have been to live nearly 35 years with my wife. I marvel at my two grown children and am overcome with pride at what they have become. I consider the kind of people they chose to marry and it occurs to me how profoundly lucky I am.

But, it’s not just family. In the days leading up to Christmas I think about the many friends that populate my world, some life long, others new. They are the people who add substance and richness to my life. They are people I work with, people I go to church with, neighbors and even Facebook friends. How empty would my life be without them? 

When Christmas Day nears I find myself filled with more grace, more forebearance, quicker to forgive, less likely to take offense, more willing to grant the benefit of the doubt. It is this time of year when I wonder why I find it so much easier to be a better man? What is it about February and August that drains away the warmth? What is it that hardens the soft heart of Christmas? I don’t have the answer and over the next few days I won’t spend much time trying to find the answer. I will simply stay in the moment and enjoy the better angels of my nature that the Savior’s birth uncovers. 

Maybe the feeling of Christmas is God’s way of reminding us of the kind of people we could be if we could just get over ourselves...if we could stop pursuing our mansions long enough to consider the child born in a stable.

Of Shutdowns and Quagmires

It wasn’t my plan to write about politics four days before the day of our savior’s birth, but...that’s 2018 for you. In a year marked by an unending series of baffling ineptitude in high places, the last few days have brought the chaos to a fever pitched crescendo. In less than 36 hours we have witnessed the President declare the fight against ISIS won, followed by the resignation of his Defense Secretary in protest, and a government shutdown hanging by a thread in the United States Senate over a 5 billion dollar appropriation for the border wall...or roughly the amount of wealth wiped out by the stock market’s reaction to this shit show during the first five minutes of the President’s explanation of the mess during his press conference. Yesterday afternoon was a dizzying example of what the world becomes when you decide to elect a television show as president.

I don’t care about the wall one way or the other. It’s a football, and a meaningless one. Every President, from both parties, over the past twenty five years has voiced support for a wall. The amount of money requested by the President doesn’t even qualify as a rounding error in a trillion dollar budget. This is about politics, not border security. It’s posturing, not policy. Given the meaningless impact it will have either way, the fact that it can shut down the government is an open, mocking rebuke of logic and reason.

As far as Gen. Mattis’s resignation goes...I do care, but not all that much. When Trump was first elected, one of the things that I hung my hat on was the idea that he would surround himself with competent, professional patriots who would discourage him from his most loony tendencies. The lynchpin of this strategy was...General Mattis, the adult’s adult. Now that he has finally had enough, I count exactly zero adults left in the administration. Maybe you can count Pence? It’s hard to tell about him though...sometimes when he’s sitting there in the Oval Office listening to Trump prattle on about some cockamamie idea in the full hearing of a dignified foreign leader and the press corps, he has the look of a man gazing upon a chimpanzee in a suit juggling a bottle of nitroglycerin, a ticking bomb and the nuclear codes while blindfolded...struck dumb by the spectacle, and powerless to do a single thing about it!

What I do care about is the President’s decision to withdraw the 5,000 American troops from Syria. Word on the street is that this edict will be soon followed by a similar edict for Afghanistan. I have spent the last 36 hours reading all the Washington DC beltway crowd along with all the smart internationalists among us decrying this betrayal of our allies. I have listened to all the pearl clutching pundits declaring this withdrawal as a dark day for American leadership in the world. In response, I have the following to say:

# How does the presence of a mere 5000 troops guarantee anything but an eternal presence in a war zone? If the threat of ISIS is so potentially catastrophic to the survival of civilization, why have we committed so few to the fight? And...where the hell are the troops representing the rest of civilization?? Where are France’s divisions? Great Britain’s? Where are the legions of blue helmeted United Nations troops rushing to fill in the gaps in the line? The foreign policy gurus at the State Department who have set this open ended, unending, and unwinnable war on terror before us have never had a plan for victory. Their plan has always been a permanent presence on foreign soil of the American military as some sort of mythical deterrent. What I see as the result of this is permanent hostility towards America in that part of the world. What I would like to ask each of these pearl clutching pundits is this...Why do you insist on asking American men and women to continue to die trying to save the lives of people who hate us?

Every week, news trickles in about some marine who stepped on an IED in some backwater village somewhere a million miles from here. Nobody cares except the kid’s parents. Why? Why did we ask him to make such a sacrifice? Oh..we are there to protect the defenseless innocents, the Kurds, peaceful Afghanis who don’t want to be governed by the Taliban. There are plenty of defenseless innocents in the world, millions of them in Africa. What of them? Are we to place 5,000 troops in every hot spot on the planet to protect innocents? What about the innocents on the south side of Chicago? Who is protecting them? And what of the cost of these adventures? Will the other nations supposedly made safe by our vigilance in the Middle Easy quagmire pony up some Euros to compensate us for our trouble? If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brussels I’d like to sell you. No, all we will get from our famous European allies is criticism and contempt, while they enjoy having the American taxpayer subsidize their own national defense. Let those stupid Americans police the world while we take potshots at them from the safety of our summer villas. Everybody hates the cops, right?

If nothing else, much like a broken clock that is right twice a day, if Trump follows through on getting us the hell out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I will actually be grateful to him. So grateful, in fact, I will remember to send him a Christmas card every year when he’s serving his prison sentence.

“Y’all Leave Douglas Alone!”

A couple of days ago I was minding my own business, having all my personal data shared with several multinational corporations on Facebook, when I stumbled upon a video which my big brother had posted. I should at this point, by way of possible explanation, say that he is now retired with lots of time on his hands and has in his post-workaday life discovered many new passions. Nevertheless, there he was hosting his own meal preparation video! All of the ingredients had been laid out in meticulous order on the counter, as he was extolling the virtue of the meal he was getting ready to create before our very eyes. However, in sharp contrast to..cough cough...other cooking videos shared by other Dunnevant men, Donnie had received no help from his wife. No no...my big brother has suddenly morphed into a regular Bobby Flay. My brother...who at one time couldn’t boil water without consulting a three page tutorial...is now showing off his cooking skills on Facebook.

Of course, the first thing that popped into my mind upon viewing this slickly produced video was...he’s copying me!! As many of you know, I have a running Wednesday evening cooking video gag that I’ve done for a year or so now featuring me in various attempts at cooking a meal for which 90% of the work and planning has already been done for me by Pam. So, big brother decides to get one over on me by cooking from scratch....a blatant rip-off. He is so copying me.

Now, in the old days, back when I was a kid, this is the sort of thing that would have prompted me to plead my case to the ultimate judge, jury and executioner in the Dunnevant household...my mother. I would have run into the kitchen and informed her that my brother was copying me. Then, she would have responded with her favorite judgement with the oft repeated injunction...Now y’all Leave Douglas alone!!

My siblings would immediately begin moaning, groaning and catawauling about what they all considered to be a clear example of judicial misconduct. When it came to me, they all thought that Mom should have recused herself since they considered her to have a conflict of interest. They would accuse her of a blatant disregard for any mitigating evidence that might change her decision...like the fact that I was a brat, for example. In their minds, I was the spoiled youngest child who always got away with murder.

Balderdash.

The truth was that our sainted mother had a Solomon-esk sense of justice and a finely tuned sympathy for the underdog. She knew that I was the youngest, and most vulnerable to bullying by my exploitive and malicious siblings. So, the catch all...y’all leave Douglas alone...served as remedial justice that did not require a special prosecutor or extensive investigation. She rightly deduced that the odds that one of the three— or perhaps all three— of my siblings had been up to no good were greater than the odds that I might have been exaggerating their crimes. Washington DC could learn a thing or two from the judicial temperament of Betty Dunnevant. Her rulings were fair and swift!!

But, now that she isn’t here to redress my grievances, I am once again left at the mercy of my big brother’s blatant theft of my cooking video idea. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. Mom and I had a good run. Now, I’ll have to learn to deal with getting picked on by my older brother and sisters. You know...mob justice!

Party Pictures

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the fifty or so letters I found from many years back when Pam and I had hosted New Years Eve parties for kids from Grove Avenue. Yesterday, I mailed them out.

Finding all of their addresses wasn’t as hard as I imagined it would be. Most of them are friends of mine on Facebook, even though I haven’t heard a peep from many of them in years. I simply sent out a private message to each of them explaining why I needed their current addresses. Literally within a couple of hours, almost everyone of them responded.

Last night, Pam searched through her computer files for some of the pictures she took of the ball drop moment each year, when as many of them as would fit would cram into our family room and throw confetti and scream and holler. She found pictures from five of the years. I post them below to give you an idea of how much fun it all was. As I scanned through each picture I thought of each one of these kids. Some of them I have kept up with and know how they have turned out. Some of these crazy, silly girls are now mothers, some have gone on to earn advanced degrees, one of them is a doctor now. A couple of these knuckleheaded guys are actually missionaries and pastors. It truly boggles the mind! But others have dropped off my radar. I have no idea what has become of them, where they are, what they are doing. These pictures are a freeze frame of an instant from a crazy, loud and raucous night from over a decade ago. Depending on who is looking, these pictures could conjure up fond and fun memories...or a melancholy longing for a simpler time before life got hard and confusing. That’s the thing with photographs, they communicate different things to different people. 

For me, these images recall a time of great purpose. I never felt more needed and more valuable then those years when I was hip deep in teenagers. But now it also looks so exhausting! You guys should have seen our house the next morning after one of these parties...Good Lord, what a mess!

So, now fifty two letters are on their way. I wonder what stories, if any will come back to me?

2005

2006

2007

2008

2010

Letters From 2008

Time flies. 

Back in the day, my wife and I used to host a New Year’s Eve party for the high school kids from Grove Avenue. Every year, 30-50 of them would all descend upon us and lay waste to every morsel of food in the house. The noise and chaos was off the charts. By the time the ball dropped, our house was literally shaking from the kids jumping up and down and throwing confetti. Usually around June the 1st, the first time we turned on the ceiling fan in that room, we would get reminded of their presence when a shower of confetti would drift down from the blades. But it wasn’t all chaos and tomfoolery. I always made them sit down at some point and reflect about their lives, usually in the form of a letter I asked them to write to themselves about what they wanted to change in the coming year. I would collect them all and hand them out the following year. One year I asked them to write a letter to their future selves. What would you like your life to look like in ten years?

That was ten years ago. 

I found the letters yesterday. They are all sealed up and self addressed to wherever they lived ten years ago. Most don’t live at that same address anymore. Getting these letters to them will be a logistical chore. I can’t be totally sure all of them are from 2008. Maybe some are from the next year. I can’t open them to find out because the contents of these envelopes are not for my eyes. Part of me doesn’t want to do it. What if the letter will disappoint them. Suppose they have had a hard time in life, and their dreams from 2008 will only serve as a bitter reminder of their failures? Some of them might be thankful for their blessings, others might laugh at how small their dreams were. The life perspective of an 18 year old can be a universe away from what a 28 year old’s would be.

Even though I’m hesitant...a deal is a deal. I promised them I would send them these letters in ten years, so that’s what I’m going to do. Maybe something good will come from it.

Drew Brees

We live in an age of what can fairly be described as celebrity worship, where simply being famous is imbued with virtue. It will be remembered by historians as a time when the answer to the question, What was Kim Kardashian famous for, was simply...for being famous. We see this tendency most prominently in sports. Lebron James isn’t just a very good basketball player, he’s The King. Tom Brady’s five Super Bowl rings has bestowed upon him an almost mythical status, something very close to football royalty, what with his good looks, supermodel wife and immense wealth. But it’s not just the entertainment and sports businesses which have given us our idols. Two years ago we elected as President perhaps the most shameless self promoter of all time, a man more famous as a reality television star than as a developer of gaudy casinos and builder of high rise hotel/phallic symbols, all of which bear his name. As a culture, we worship these men, and project upon them our own hopes and dreams.

And then, there’s Drew Brees.

For those of you who don’t follow professional football, this guy just broke the all-time passing yards mark, eclipsing the record set by Peyton Manning. Despite his incredible success as an athlete, he has never gotten the kind of star treatment of Manning or Brady. When talking heads start discussing the...greatest quarterbacks of all time...the names that come up are Montana, Manning, and Brady, but hardly ever Drew Brees. He’s easy to overlook. If it bothers him, it doesn’t show.

So, back in October he breaks the passing yards record in a game against the Washington Redskins. Almost immediately, he began working on a plan to commemorate his great accomplishment, not by promoting himself, but by coming up with a way to...thank everyone who ever helped him. This week we find out that he has somehow located every single player who ever caught a pass from him, along with every lineman who ever started a game blocking for him, and all the coaches who played a roll in his developement as a player...and sent each of them a letter of thanks along with a game ball embossed with each of their accomplishments...

There were 174 in all.

Ask Drew Brees and he will tell you that there is no such thing as a self made man. These 174 balls testify to this fact. Everyone of us who have achieved anything in this world have someone else who helped make it possible. All of us stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Our parents, who sacrificed for us, teachers who inspired us, friends who encouraged us...even enemies who motivated us. Each of us are a product of a group of people who came along side us at just the right time. How many game balls would I have to hand out if the spotlight ever shown on me?

Maybe this Christmas, instead of waiting until we are on our death beds to acknowledge these special people, how about we hand our game balls out now?

My 2018 Christmas Letter

The worst form of communication ever to enter the mind of human beings is, of course, the Christmas Letter. However, when it becomes time to write one, having a blog is invaluable. I can just flip through the archives and all of 2018 comes back to me as if it just happened...since cosmically speaking, it just did. Besides, relying on one’s memory can be a dangerous thing after a certain age. What follows is my attempt at an honest Christmas Letter for the year 2018, which, except for several notable exceptions, has truly sucked. I have taken the liberty of using initials for things that were important to the year’s narrative, but none of your business. I have gone with the bullet point style simply because it is my Christmas Letter and I can write it in any style that suits me. If it seems braggy at times, I offer no apologies since this is a Christmas Letter after all, and isn’t that the point? If it seems overly whiny in spots, it may be because I am not feeling well as I write this. Again, no apologies. You will note that this is not a Dunnevant Family Letter. I don’t presume to speak for everyone. They all had a better year than I did. This is just my 2018 story

Dear Family and Friends,

-January

2018 started with Pam and I spending 8 days in a hotel as our floors were being replaced because of an exploding dish washer left over from 2017. It was snowy and cold the entire week, which was great since our hotel had a giant hole in its exterior wall, which allowed sub-freezing air to flow into our room 24/7.

Our new church challenged us to attempt to read through the entire Bible in 90 days starting January 1...much like a spiritual version of binge watching British dramas. By the end of the month, words like beseech and verily had found their way into my vocabulary.

-February 

A dear friend becomes suddenly, deathly ill, and her struggle dominates our thoughts for the entire month. While we are so engaged, our washing machine dies, and we become embroiled in a three week saga trying to have a small hole in my library wall repaired, the first attempt at which required photographic evidence to believe...

I embark on an eight month battle with an UMI ( unnamed medical issue ). It will consume practically every minute of my private thoughts until October when I will finally discover that it was...nothing.

-March

I plan a getaway trip to Myrtle Beach. The first day we were there Pam is informed that she just bought a $1300 Apple laptop from a store in Va. Beach. Hours later, she starts getting emails from stores all over the world. We discover the joys of identity theft. But, after that fire got put out we had a wonderful time relaxing on the beach. Got to spend a couple days with my beautiful and talented daughter. By the end of the month I finished reading the entire Bible! About the time I did, and to the palpable relief of sinners everywhere, the Pope declared that hell isnt actually a real place.

-April

I turned 60, Tom Brokaw got accused of sexual harassment, and I fell out of this collapsing desk chair at work, to the hysterical delight of all of my colleagues....all in the same month!

-May

Celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary at the beautiful House Mountain Inn, with a side trip to Natural Bridge.

We also joined Hope Church, ending a nearly 60 year run of being Baptist. Absolutely love the place. It has been one of the best things to happen to us in a long time, finding this community of Christians. To end the month, and in perfect keeping with the theme of 2018 being...what the???....i saw a giant naked man in the middle of Three Chopt Road on my way to work.

-June

Got to see my son be united with the beautiful and talented Sarah Upchurch in holy matrimony in Nashville with 100 of our closest friends and family. Although the planning that went in to this blessed event was off the charts, and the expense was considerable, it had an unbelievable payoff, bringing much joy and happiness to me and my entire family. One of my favorite pictures from the day was this one...

...my wife, on the phone, taking care of some last minute detail...when suddenly a light shines down from above and a thunderous voice can be heard saying, Behold, the mother of the groom in whom I am well pleased.

-July and August

Got back to Richmond after the wedding only to discover that our upstairs air conditioning unit had decided to expire in the middle of a heat wave. But even this expensive annoyance couldn’t spoil my mood because July could only mean one thing...

...Maine. This was the first of two three week adventures which 2018 would provide, redeeming itself in sublime fashion. This first one was at the Chill Lake House (I’m not making this up), on Pemaquid Lake. Kaitlin and Jon were up for two weeks, and Patrick and Sarah spent the second week of their honeymoon with us as well. By the time we came home in mid August, I had forgotten about all of 2018’s pratfalls and misfortunes altogether.

-September

Between these two wonderful Maine escapes was a five week stretch of real, actual...work. Yes, I still work for a living, and I don’t get paid for time off. Luckily, 2018 has been a good year. After 36 years of my career, if I can’t afford to take this amount of time off, I’m doing something very wrong. In my case, my ability to disappear to Maine for long stretches during the summer and fall is made infinitely easier by the fact that my assistant, Kristin Reihl, is sharp, organized, relentlessly capable...and vastly underpaid. To my great relief, nothing horrible happened during this five week stretch of work. No household appliance broke down, I was not plagued by some new manifestation of physical decline, and there were no new sightings of naked human beings on the streets. Still, by the middle of the month, I was ready for another trip up north, this time to my favorite destination on earth...Loon Landing...

I caught fish like it was going out of style, ate clam chowder like it was my job, and was able to host two of our dearest friends for a week. Neither of them had ever been to Maine, and since we nearly lost her back in February, we figured it was time! They had a blast, and watching the two of them enjoying this place with us was one of the highlights of the year...

But, every trip to Maine, no matter how glorious, eventually ends. This one ended in a flash of beauty...

-October

October in America 2018 could only mean one thing...mid term elections. Trump this, Trump that. The transition from Loon Landing to American politics was like going from a suite at the Ritz-Carlton to a room at the Super 8 out by the interstate. It was like going from a five course meal at Ruth’s Chris to the drive thru window at Taco Bell. It was like...well, you get the picture. Eventually, I made the necessary adjustments...just in time to replace our water heater. Wait...was that October or July...?

-November

Started a mentoring program through my church which paired me with two younger gentlemen over the next eight months. Great guys. The fact that someone at Hope thinks me capable of providing worthy spiritual guidance to someone is quite charming, actually.  No, seriously, I’m enjoying it so far and am looking forward to getting to know my guys better in the coming year. Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. Great food. House was beautiful. Got to see the kids again for a long weekend.

-December

This month begins with a bizarre UMI that is causing me a great deal of angst and consternation. But I fully intend to have it dispatched by the time my kids all descend on the place in a couple of weeks for Christmas. Over the next ten days, I’ve got a lot of shopping to do. Pam will require me to perform many mundane yet crucial tasks to get everything done before the big day. Lucy will be blissfully unaware until Jackson shows up for a week of slobbering, wrestling, barking fun.

Ok...there you have it, my summary of the year of our Lord, 2018. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But, it was the only year we had. A couple of other things that didn’t make it in to the narrative but are worthy of note...

-2018 was the second wettest on record for Richmond, Va.

-my small group at Hope is filled with wonderful people who have enriched my life and made church more fun

-I’m not entirely sure, but I think that 2018 may have been a vomit-free year, always a plus.

- got a weekend visit from Deen Entsminger, who managed to refill my coolness tank which was running on empty.