2017 Close Family Holiday Letter

December 2017

Hope this Annual Close Holiday Letter finds you all happy and healthy!

Despite the long winter and many snow days in PDX, 2017 fired up Mr. Close - personally, professionally and politically. He found himself inspired by both passion and a generalized anxiety about the state of the world. In order to manage the agitation and “resist the Man,” he continues with many of his social justice ventures at West Linn High School and the community at large. And to keep things fun, he commutes by bike occasionally, plays indoor soccer weekly, ‘studies’ whisky with his teacher-friends monthly, and discovered his love of plunking away on his grandfather’s refurbished typewriter.

As for Joanna, let’s just say she’s ready to ring in 2018. Life has been more home-bound and sedentary than years past. She continues to enjoy her work as an adjunct at Pacific University, where she supervises speech-language pathology graduate students in memory care settings, and works on-call for a rehab hospital treating patients following stroke and traumatic brain injury. With a daughter now in school, she’s enjoyed volunteering in the classroom and looks forward to doing more of that. Her must-read book recommendations from the year include Shrill by Lindy West, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby, and Hunger by Roxane Gay; her favorite movie of the year was Bandaid. 

Francie is now 5 ½ years old and enjoying kindergarten (“recess is my favorite”) at our neighborhood school. Things she’s learned in 2017: to ride a Big Kid bike, snap, pump on our backyard swings, back float, all the words to the Moana soundtrack, how to regularly beat her parents at Uno, and “the robot dab.” She has demonstrated an unwavering love of Elsa and Wonder Woman, and a burgeoning interest in Star Wars. She is learning to read and write to the daily delight of her parents. She’s a total extravert but spends her solo playtime in creative pretend worlds drawing, with dolls, and lately, playing with a haggard old nativity set in which Baby Jesus is frequently the offspring of superhero parents defeating Bad Guys with swords. 

While the Close Clan typically looks most forward to summer together, and the many adventures free time and sunshine bring, this June they embarked on an adventure of a different kind - (“geriatric”) pregnancy! A surprise, yes, but not an accident (yeah, yeah, don't talk about secondary infertility in public, it's taboo). The pregnancy has gone well so far, and Baby Birdy (not her real name) is due stateside Feb. 6. The news pretty much rocked our world, mostly by way of interminable fatigue and concern about remembering how to do it all again. Fortunately our current favorite child is gifted with grace, a wonderful sense of humor, and a way with words. 

- "You're belly is gonna get so big. You're gonna turn into a fat lady. But it's not your fault. It's the baby's fault."

- “Does Bob Lynn Close sound like a good name for the baby?”

- “Once you get used to the baby it will be your favorite person also.”

- “Don't worry. Your love will just get bigger! Right now, my love fills the whole room. When Birdy is here my love will fill the whole house!"

Take care and many well wishes in 2018!

With love, 

Alex (36), Joanna (35), Francie (5 ½ years), and Birdy (30-something week-old fetus)

***
P.S. This interweb version of our holiday letter has room for me to include some extra Francie quotes, for those who get as big of a kick as we do out of shit kids say ...

“Soooo, my preschool had 6 kids but my kindergarten with have 21 KIDS! That means I need to: 1) get out of pull-ups, 2) tie my own shoes, aaaaand 3) wipe my own butt!”

"Adults are better at getting all the poop off our butts because your necks are longer."

“This is how a robot does the dab.”

Monday morning eating cereal: “I wish my whole life was a weekend.”

“You know what I came over here to tell you? That I love you the most. And that I'll wipe your butt when you're old."

“I thought in my head, 'if I let my mom go meditate she won't be so mean.'”

“When you sweat it's like your face is CRYING."

Beebee: Do you know any dirty jokes?

Francie: Yeah! (Giggle giggle).

Mama: Oh yeah? Like what?

Francie: About mud!!

At Powell's, she spots one of the books by Mindy Kaling, with her photo on the cover.

F: Look! It's Mindy!

Me: Oh yeah, we really like her, don't we.

F: Yeah! She's our best friend that's on TV!

Out of the blue she touches my face: "I don't think you're old, I think you're just right."

“I think because I'm an Oregon girl, the sun chose to come out for my birthday.”

Sadly, on her 5th birthday: “I don't feel five. I feel like a person.”

Francie, getting upset and whiny about having to do a puzzle alone:

Me: “You don't have to do it alone. But you have to use your words to tell us what you want. Not your whiny words, you big kid words. We can't read your mind.”

Francie, stopping the puzzle to address me directly: “But you can read my mind sometimes.”

Alex: "How about you go outside and play for a bit."

Francie: "No, I don't want to."

Me: "How about you go outside and find five things that start with the letter F."

(Less than five minutes later, she returns.)
Francie: "I did it! I found five things. Flowers. Fence. Fire pit. Fucket."

Me: "Uh, what's a fucket?"

F: "It's like a bucket. But with no handle."

Me, laughing: "But also, that's only four things."

F: Maybe every night you remember me you could read “the magic string.”

Me: I could never forget you.

F: Yeah, because you're nothing without me.

Throwing a fit one night before bed: “It's not hard to be tired, it's hard to be FIVE!”

"Ghostie did it … he likes to get into mischief.”

I have a shell that my mom brought me from Bali in 1998. I have it in a shelf in my meditation corner, and Francie likes to listen in it. One night before bed she says:

“I'm listening to Grandma Nancy. ‘I wish I could be your grandma’ she says.”

Then she holds the shell up to my ear and says,

“She says she wishes she could live until you're a grownup. Until you're an old lady.”

She's been toying with jokes now for a couple years, but she FINALLY made up a good one!

"What does a coyote say when he gets a shot at the doctor."

"I dunno, what?"

"Owwwwwww, ow owwwwww."

Thursday evening, F sitting in my lap drawing in her notebook, me picking my nails and kissing on her, Alex playing the guitar.

Mama: I think it's pouring out.

Alex: I hope our basement isn't flooding.

F: Uh oh … But daddy we're in luck.

Alex: What's that?

F: No more snail tracks!

Francie told us a story from Art4Life (aftercare) …

"We have FAIRIES at our school! But a boy and his friends were destroying the fairies and their houses. So I asked him if he lost all his teeth yet. He said no. I told him that he wouldn't get any gold coins because he basically just killed the tooth fairy."

Continued fascination with Africa and concurrent drumming class at school had us talking/researching all things Ghana and Ethiopia one evening ...
Mama: Why might Ethiopians only eat with their right hand?

Francie: Uh, because maybe they want to look at their phones with their other hand?

And later, “you know, Hazel eats like an Ethiopian all the time!”

Francie: "You know what Natalie and I do when Owen is being mean to me? We teach him a lesson.”

Mama and Daddy: "Uh, like what kind of lesson?"

Francie: “When he's mean, we're nice. To teach him a lesson.”

Allllllmost asleep: “You know who I want to marry? I want to marry a donut. And I would dress my donut in some fancy clothes!”

***

P.P.S. The Cliff's Notes version of some highs and lows from the year ...

Highs:

Snow days and sledding. Multi-generational Women's March. Screen-free success for a month. Learning to: snap, ride a Big Kid bike, pump on the swings, dab. Superhero 5th birthday party. WLHS Unity Day. “Phucket.” Our Uno savant. Refurbished typewriter. Suncadia WR 2017 with hubs/families. Graduating pre-K. Cow Camp in Central OR and Family Camping at Timothy Lake. Summer swim lessons. Learning Birdy's a girl. George Rogers Park. Daily dress-up - Wonder Woman, Elsa, Moana, Dorothy, Minnie Mouse. Family bike rides. New backyard swing set. Near-total solar eclipse. Francie feeling Birdy kick. First carnival. Graduating Pre-K and starting Kindergarten at Maplewood. Manzanita with Jo's besties. Cirque du Soleil. OSU soccer alumni weekend. First sleepover away. Portugal the Man album. Francie's expertise implementing Montessori-type tasks with individuals with dementia. Unified soccer tourney. Visit from Telluride Hartmans and QT cousin time with Hazel. Erika’s new baby, Evie. A white Christmas in PDX with the whole Close Clan and Beebee. 

Lows:

The daily blows from the current administration. Feb/March illness. Racism. Spring Break stomach flus and subsequent panic. The Sisyphean task of grading English papers. The shock of pregnancy after three years if secondary infertility. First trimester fatigue. The Tahoe 4th that wasn't. A sedentary summer. National natural disasters. The 'geriatric' part of being pregnant at 35. Fires. More stomach flu. Louis CK & Matt Lauer. Net neutrality. Banned words. Iron-deficient anemia. Worries of a receding hairline. Bloody noses on bike commutes. The new tax plan.