2018 – The Year in Review
Holiday card exchange is a dying practice, and annual newsletter writing even more so. I bet half the younger folks I work with associate it with the mail marketing campaigns one might get from their car dealership or dentist just as I was born into a generation in which door-to-door caroling was on the wane. That said, I am not a model for the practice, and quite often my stuff goes out in a frenzied scramble with really bad penmanship produced by the worst ballpoint pen from the kitchen drawer.
EMPTY NESTERS!!! Hallelujah! Gloria in excelsis Deo! I love my kids. They are both wonderful, complete, first-class human beings, and two of my favorite people in a very crowded, noisy world, but I am embracing the new arrangement with a running-long-jump bear hug one might give the pitcher rushing the mound after winning the World Series. Emerson moved in with friends to be closer to school and Keagan left for Lewis and Clark College. I am a bit like Andy Dufresne in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION having crawled the prison tunnel to stand exultantly in the rain. Yeah, baby! I am not going to lie. Empty-nesting is pretty freakin cool.
I am thankful for my kids. I learned a great deal as a parent. Some lessons I might not have undertaken otherwise. To a very large extent, they helped make me who I am today. Fatherhood however was never the plan. I don’t think most would admit this in a way that might make it back to the kids. Don’t worry mine aren’t supercilious snowflakes. -But I married Theresa to selfishly consume all of her spare time and attention, and sharing her was never part of the design. -So you’ll have to forgive the confession that while on some level must be intuitively true for a good many couples ‘out there’, it more often than not goes unacknowledged in polite society I think for fear of revealing something perceived as unkind. It isn’t. It’s life. Some of us became parents accidentally…and repeatedly so. So, yeah, folks, to a certain degree this is a case of Matt being happy for a successful return to the factory settings. It only took 20 years. Judge me tenderly. I think my older newsletters were far more cynical than this.
Emerson, after returning home for a year, piled into a house rental with several of his friends and is plugging away at mechanical engineering. He recently started a part-time job doing data center maintenance (server rooms), and when I heard some of the companies he gets to visit, -all household names, I was impressed. I’ve told him to just keep on keeping on, and things should turn out. Heck, if he keeps this up, he might end up working at my company as my boss someday. I think I have only seen Emerson three times this semester. While I wish it was more, I usually get sucker-hugged when we finally do connect which is nice. Emerson’s my bud, and he is great company, but it makes sense that he has moved on. It wouldn’t be right for me to hold onto him.
Keagan stuck to her plan and went out of state to school at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. It was a surprise last minute pick, but as my best man from my wedding went there, one of the best and smartest men I’ve ever known, her decision has done nothing but grow on me. Freshmen at LC are all undeclared in their majors, but Keagan is doing great and is taking a very math and science heavy load. She even enrolled in one course I recommended, and I never thought she would agree to take. -So what’d’ya know?! She does listen to Dad now and then. After an ever so brief period of freshman jitters, Keagan settled in at school and I can tell she really loves where she is at and what she is doing. Her friendships at school already run rich and deep. I am jealous of her and happy for her.
Theresa has said for the last couple of years that she was going to move into the consulting arm of geriatric nursing. She’s waffling a little now, so who knows. If and when that starts, she will be off traveling to other nursing homes around the country, but home on weekends. She keeps cranking out the gourmet cupcakes which makes everyone at work happy when I bring in the leftovers. I don’t know though. If you were trying to quit heroin, I don’t think you’d be keen to open the refrigerator to find a half dozen sterilized rigs topped off with China white. One of these days, Theresa is going to come home to find me convulsing in the corner with cupcake smear around the edges of my mouth.
With the passing of each week, the house gets a little more organized. Whoa, Matt! Really?! House work?! You write some crrrrr-azy end of year newsletters! Seriously though, I want to get to a point where I know where all my crap is, and maybe eliminate some unnecessary clutter. I’m getting there, and it is a lot easier with fewer bodies in the house.
I’ve also been racking up the cycling miles – 4680 miles for the year at the time of this writing. That included another Triple Bypass and a very enjoyable 4-day ride from the Oregon border to San Francisco with Andrew W. I saw about 150 miles of northern California coastline I had never seen before on the back of a bicycle. -Always good to get away for a few days with bicycle-Andrew. I think I’ll finish up the year somewhere between 4800 and 4900 miles, -respectable but a little less than some prior years. It’s been cold and windy lately, so getting rides has been tough and uncomfortable.
I’ve read more books this year than I have in a long time, and Theresa and I have a date night almost every week which I’ve come to count on as my end of week payoff. Downtown Denver on Friday night is not the Denver of 20 years ago. It is young, bustling and feels like other cities I, when younger, admired as an out-of-reach modern city for some other lucky soul to enjoy as a playground, -like San Francisco or Seattle. Now, I live in the hot, trendy town. It is amazing the transformations in just the last five years.
Andrew E (different Andrew) and I got out for the archery deer season. He did the actual hunting while I scouted the area and kept an eye on him through the binoculars. We crapped out, but I saw some huge bucks walking around in some gorgeous country in the foothills west of Castle Rock.. We also got out for the elk season near Craig, CO but that turned out to be little more than a showcase for hiking, camping, and hunting gear as per my norm on elk hunts. Theresa takes these outings as opportunities to bring out her BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN material in dry, deadpan delivery. -Innocent, demure little Asian woman, my eye! She is hilarious in a sneaky way most people would never expect. Anyway, no new meat in the fridge unfortunately. We had fun though, -manly hunting fun, and if nothing else these trips validate owning my beloved Jeep.
Work has been….ahhh you don’t want to hear about work. -Endless, crazy, frenetic motion at work, but always with good people. I work with really good people!
As this is the first holiday season on the far side of parenthood, it’s obvious to me Theresa was always the legs of the holiday operation. Given the reduced domestic audience I made a point of enjoying one turn of the calendar with minimalist holiday observations. I barely change the flags on our 20-foot flagpole. The bulk of the Halloween and Christmas decor I usually put up stayed in storage. Theresa on the other hand is still pretty much into it, and I’ve noticed a good many of the things the kids now ask for or find memorable about the holidays were the sorts of things Theresa always did. Here’s a potentially controversial observation. I think that’s the way it is in most households. Moms do a lot of the little things that make kids feel special. This year, when the holidays rolled around, I found myself looking at the moms at work a little differently. I think the holidays are stressful for anyone trying to make childhood special, but I could always get away with a hail Mary pass or two to get by. -Not the case for moms. There is always just a little more for them to hold together this time of year.
To say any more would be rambling. The year flew by, -a hurtling mass of hum drum really. I started the year saying it would, and it really did.
Pax vobiscum,
The Gilmartins