by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver. Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999.

Over the years, I’ve read a few marriage-type books. Many of them have some great information in them. However, this one stands out to be as being the most practical and most likely to actually have a positive impact on your marriage. I’d highly recommend that you read through this with your future spouse before getting married and do a lot of the exercises in it. It focuses on the foundational things that really make a marriage great.

The Truth About Happy Marriages

6 – If we would spend 20 minutes a day on our marriage, we would get three times the health benefits of exercising. A good marriage means reduced stress, healthier immune system

8 – The biggest myth of all is that communication – and more specifically learning to resolve your conflicts – is the royal road to romance and an enduring, happy marriage.

We’ve also felt this. There can be times when we logically and mentally know how to navigate our way through a conflict, but it doesn’t help the conflict at all in the end and we don’t end up feeling much closer.

10 – Active listening was meant for individual psychotherapy. Teaching couples how to listen and communicate better resulted in only a 35% success rate. “Active listening asks couples to perform Olympic-level emotional gymnastics when their relationship can barely walk.”

15 – Avoiding conflict won’t ruin your marriage, as long as both partners are practicing the same style.

17 – “The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship. For men, the determining factor is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship.”

 19 – “Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.”

This is completely true, through and through. When our marriage is at its best, it is because we are acting as friends. When it is at its worst, we are ignoring each other and not friendly or pleasant to the other.

20 – They are well-versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams.

21 – Once your marriage gets set at a certain degree of positivity, it will take far more negativity to harm your relationship than if your set point were lower. 

23 – Almost everybody messes up during marital conflict. “What matters is whether the repairs are successful.” 

Most marital arguments cannot be resolved. 

How I Predict Divorce

1st sign – a harsh startup to a conflict

2nd sign – the four horsemen

• Criticism
• Contempt
• Defensiveness
• Stonewalling

3rd sign – flooding

4th sign – body language

5th sign – failed repair attempts “The failure of repair attempts is an accurate marker of an unhappy future.”

6th sign – bad memories, not being able to remember the good times

Principle 1: Enhance Your Love Map

Get to know more about your spouse. Know their friends, enemies, stresses, worries, likes, dislikes, ambitions, hopes, aspirations.

Principle 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration

64 – “94% of the time that couples who put a positive spin on their marriage’s history are likely to have a happy future as well. When happy memories are distorted, it’s a sign that the marriage needs help.”

Remind yourself often of your spouse’s positive qualities to prevent a happy marriage from deteriorating.

67 – If your fondness and admiration are being chipped away, the route to bringing them back always begins with realizing how valuable they are. They are crucial to long-term happiness of a relationship because they prevent contempt from becoming an overwhelming presence in your life.

Principle 3 – Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away

82 – Couples often ignore each other’s emotional needs out of mindlessness, not malice.

83 – Happily married couples noticed almost all of the positive things the researchers observed their partners do for them. However, unhappily married couples underestimate their partner’s living intentions by 50%.

96 – A more profound friendship will be a powerful shield against conflict.

Principle 4 – Let Your Partner Influence You

108 – As boys get older…they rarely play with girls, so they miss out on the chance to learn from them. Although 35% of preschool best friendships are between boys and girls, by age seven that percentage plummets to virtually 0 percent. From then till puberty the sexes will have little or nothing to do with each other.

…Once a couple move in together or get engaged, the groom-to-be is suddenly immersed in what is probably an alien world.

Two kinds of marital conflict

Perpetual problems and solvable problems.

131 – Despite what many therapist will tell you, you don’t have to resolve your major marital conflicts for your marriage to survive.

Dan Wile in After the Honeymoon*: “When choosing a long-term partner…you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you’ll be grappling with for the next ten, twenty or fifty years.”*

The key is avoiding gridlock with perpetual problems.

Marriages are successful to the degree that the problems you choose are ones you can cope with.

149 – The basis for coping effectively with either kind of problem is the same: communicating basic acceptance of your partner’s personality.

You will not accept advice from someone unless you feel that they understand you.

No one is ever right in perpetual problems. There is no absolute reality in marital conflict, only two subjective realities.

Principle 5: Solve your Solvable Problems

158

1. Soften your startup
2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts
3. Soothe yourself and each other
4. Compromise
5. Be tolerant of each other’s faults

161 – discussions invariably end on the same note they begin.

Principle 6: Overcome Gridlock

Respect each other’s dreams

224 – “Couples who are demanding of their marriage are more likely to have deeply satisfying unions than those who lower their expectations.”

Principle 7: Create Shared Meaning

Create Family rituals

• Triumphs
• Bad luck
• Guests
• Birthdays, holidays, special events
• Visiting family

We aren’t very good at handling poetry in the church; most of the good stuff goes way over our heads.

We look at Song of Solomon and try to squeeze it into a Bible study about a good marriage. If King Solomon put on a Marriage Retreat weekend, it would be the laughed out of town. Who is he to teach us about marriage? But if he published a poem between he and his lover, we would be all ears and would walk away learning a thing or two.

Or what about the Psalms – a horrendous place to create our theology, especially the kind we like – crisp, clean, simple. Good luck with that. Kill my enemies, don’t let me be put to shame, great are you. I’d hate to see what kind of theology develops when someone tries to take the average of my best and worst prayers. If the Psalmist wrote some systematic theology, it might be the worst book ever.

The writers were sharing an experience they thought others might benefit from by hearing; they weren’t there to teach with a three point outline and an application at the end.

We miss the point all the time in poetry. Poetry is meant to help you experience something, not teach you something.

Take Job. All in all, it does a terrible job of teaching someone about the meaning of suffering and the problem of evil. Especially if we try to approach it like a historical guide.

Was Job really a person? Where does this book fall chronologically? Where did Job live? Does Satan really go in front of God all the time? Does God really ask him, “Whadda been up to?”

All of that misses the point. There’s an experience we are meant to share in and we lose it when we ask these questions too much.

I mean, for starters, it’s a story that starts off with a bet between Satan and God. This seems like a pretty good clue how much we should care about the historicity of this story (and if it proves the existence of dinosaurs in biblical times).

Satan shows up in God’s office one day on roll call, obviously in a bad mood. God asks him what he’s been doing.

“Little of this, little of that.”

“Hey,” God says. “Would you get a load of Job? That guy is great; he’s killing it right now.”

“That’s because you go so easy on him,” says Satan. “He’s just in it for the perks. He’s a moocher. Take all that stuff away and you’ll see what he’s really made out of.”

“Ok,” God says. “Let’s see. Just don’t kill him.”

Then we see Job’s life crash before his eyes and he and his friends stand up like Shakespearean actors and offer their soliloquies. His friends inform Job why this is happening to him. Job defends himself. Then a young man named Elihu shows up and adds his ideas.

I haven’t for the life of my found a single person who can answer the question of “who was right” among the five speakers. We have a bias against Job’s three friends, but a lot of what they say sounds a lot like what we say in churches today. Elihu remains a significant mystery. Is he a prophet? Is he dismissed? We never really know.

What we do know is that the story keeps moving on and the argument gets more and more heated. The audience is on the edge of their seat as Job gets closer and closer to toeing over that edge, completely unaware of the cosmic wager he’s a participant in. Is he finally going to curse God? Surely not, right?

But the worse things get, the more Job’s selfish core starts to take over. He’s asking for vindication. He’s asking for God to bring these accusations against him so that he can defend himself. At any moment, we just know he’s going to turn around and flip the bird toward the sky and be done with it.

One man, split to his core. No family, no money, no health. He’s down to his very essence. He’s at the edge of his life and he’s calling for God to show up and prove to all these other fools that there’s been some mistake.

Job has been put through the ringer and is fighting back like a trapped animal. “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? You have the wrong guy. I followed the rules.”

You see where he’s going. The words are nearly on his tongue. He’s almost gone through with it.

Then, in the climax of the story, God comes to the rescue (although it may not have felt like a rescue for Job). He doesn’t save him, but puts him in his place. “Where were you when I created the earth?” is not exactly the “Well done, good and faithful servant” that Job was probably looking for. God shuts him up and says game over.

One piece of this story that seems the strangest is that despite our best expectations, Satan nearly won the bet. Had God not shown up, wouldn’t Job have continued on the path he was walking? Would he finally have cursed God and died? We don’t know for sure and God didn’t let it play out all the way to the end. He restores Job’s health, family, and possessions and the story ends.

In my mind, Satan comes back to God with a bit of a smirk on his face and claims victory, at least in principle. “You and I both know what was going on there. I told you this would happen. They don’t really love you. They just like the things you give them.”

God comes back to Satan and says, “Ok, double or nothing. But this time, I get to pick.”

And God starts the process of preparing his own son to go into the world. He is boiled down to his essence. Everything is stripped away from him: his family, his friends, his religion, his health, and even the presence of God is removed from him. Won’t he just curse God and die?

But this time, he’s faithful to the end. No cries for justice. No demands for a recount. No one asks him where he was at the beginning, because he remembers it like it was yesterday.

Then he dies. He sees it through. And Satan finally loses the bet. What Job, who represents the best of us couldn’t complete, Jesus does.

Poetry is meant to be experienced. Don’t bother with the easy applications and key takeaways. Just get wrapped up in the story and walk away changed.

Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling by John Holt and Pat Farendga. Perseus Publishing, 2003.

“Why do people take or keep their children out of school? Mostly for three reasons: they think that raising their children is their business not the government’s; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn, and don’t want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically, and spiritually.”

This pretty much sums up a lot of my motivations for wanting to do homeschooling with you guys. When I struggle to think of a good reason for the Why? behind homeschooling, this sounds right to me. I like you guys and want to spend a lot of time with you, I think you’ll get a better education with Mama and me than with our current system, and I want to be close to you when you get hurt.

At some point in the book, he talked about the bias that people have against children and that many people don’t actually like or respect children. Just today, I heard a guy talk about Job having a “juvenile” faith. What the hell is that? Jesus told us we need to become like children to enter the kingdom. He was using “juvenile” as a word to mean “not there yet”, but in a very pejorative sense.

If I like you guys so much, why would I be willing to give you over to someone else and to a system that took you away from me most of the day and didn’t do a great job doing what they said they would do?

From a man in Iowa in an area where full-time farmers must do extra work in meat packing plants to make ends meet:

“The work ethic has been ground into these folks so thoroughly that they think anyone who doesn’t hold down, continually, a full-time painful job is a bum.”

In this case, school becomes a place to teach children about life as pain, as a place to Shut Up and Do What You’re Told. Because that is the life the parents are going through. You may win the lottery and end up with a high paying job, but it’s not likely, so you need to get ready for it.

This is not the life I hope for you.

From a wealthy family who was worried that their son was having too much fun in class:

“After all, he is going to have to spend the rest of his life doing things he doesn’t like, and he may as well get used to it now.”

Some other great quotes:

“The needs of the children have little to do with the needs of the school curriculum.” (24)

On responding to the objection that children need the valuable social life of school. “If there were no other reason for wanting to keep kids out of school, the social life would be reason enough.” (33)

Common question from parents: How am I going to teach my child six hours a day? “Who’s teaching him six hours a day right now?” (47)

“Many people who quite like and enjoy children still seem to be in the grip of the old idea that in civilizing them we have to give up or destroy some important part of them.” (80)

On repeatedly saying “No” to kids: “As parents, we can simply SHUT UP! If we can sit back and listen to ourselves, we can hear how much negative harassment we throw at our kids.” (88) I often have to catch myself with this. Sometimes I’ll notice that in the course of a few hours, all I’ve done with you is corrected you with negative statements.

On the need for rewards: “Very little children are like the Balinese. Just about everything they do, they do as well as they can.…Our intrinsic motivation to learn is warped in school by inappropriate praise and reward.” (98)

On language learning: “…all over the world many poor people in nonindustrial countries speak more than one language…and that on the whole it is only in nation-states that have had several generations of compulsory schooling that we find most people speaking only one language…people no longer learn their languages from people who talk to them…but from professional speakers who are trained and paid to say what others have prepared for them. (116)

I loved this one: Any kids truly free to run their own school exactly as they see fit, will immediately declare a permanent vacation, and that will be the end of it. They may get together as before, and do the same things, but they won’t call it school unless you make them.” (124)

“Some years ago I was reading aloud to a small child, as yet a non-reader, perhaps three or four years old. As I read aloud I had the bright idea that by moving a finder along under the words as I read them I might make more clear the connections between the written and the spoken words. A chance to get in a little subtle teaching. Without saying anything about it, and as casually as possible, I began to do this.

“It didn’t take the child very long to figure out that what had begun as a nice, friend;y, cozy sharing of a story had turned into something else, that her project had by some magic turned into my project. After a while, and whitout saying a word, she reached up a hand, took hold of my hand, and very gently moved it off the page and down by my side – where it belonged. I gave up teaching and went back to doing what I had been asked to do, which was to read the story. (144)

You guys already do this to me all the time.

On playing with a kid who asked him to pitch her some balls: “She didn’t ask you to coach, she asked you to pitch. So shut up and pitch.” (147)

This was an interesting observation about animal trainers in connection with schools: “It must continually be made clear to the animal that, when he knows what is the right thing to do in a given context, that is the only thing he can do, and no nonsense about it. In other words, it is a primary condition of circus success that the animal shall abrogate the sue of certain higher levels of his intelligence….I happened to make a remark about horses being intelligent. “Goodness no” he laughed, “They’re not intelligent. If they were, they’d never let us ride them.” (164)

“School is a place where children learn to be stupid.” …others had taken control of their minds. It was being taught, in the sense of being trained like circus animals to do tricks on demand, that had made them stupid.”…

“The elephant in the jungle is smarter than the elephant waltzing in the circus. The rat eating garbage in the slums is smarter than the rat running mazes in the psychology lab.

On doing really important work: Many people who are doing serious work in the world (as opposed to just making money) are very overworked and short of help. If a person, young or not so young, said to them, I believe in the work you are doing and want to help you in any and every way I can, and I’d be glad to do any kind of work you ask me to do or that I can find to do, for very little pay, or even none at all if you can give me room and board, “ I suspect that many of them would say, “Sure, come right ahead. ..in any case, he or she would learn far more from working with them and being around them than in any school or college. (188)

A college degree isn’t a passkey that opens every door in town. It opens only a few, and before you spend a lot of time and money getting one of those keys, it’s a good idea to find out what doors it opens (if any), and what’s on the other side of those doors, and to decide whether you like what’s on the other side, and if you do, whether there may not be an easier way to get there.” (189)

“If you know what kind of work you want to do, move towards it in the most direct way possible. If you want to build boats, go where people are building boats, afind out as much as you can. When you’ve learned all they know, or will tell you, move on. Before long, even in the highly technical field of yacht design, you may find you know as much as anyone, enough to do whatever you want to do….But don’t assume that school is the best way r the only way to learn something without carefully checking first. There may be quicker, cheaper, and more interesting ways.” (193)

“If you learn, the schools get the credit; if you don’t the student gets the blame. In short, you can’t sue a school for educational malpractice.” (212)

Some more practical bits we can use:

“One thing I’ve found useful, when helping kids go through [the process of choosing what they want to focus on] is to make three lists. One list is for things that come easily, things that you would do anyway, whether or not you say down and made a plan about them. The second list is for things that you want to work on but feel you need some help with – maybe suggestions of ways to pursue the activity, or maybe some sort of schedule or plan regarding it. The third list is for things you want to put aside for a while, things you don’t want to work on right now.” (241)

“It is a mistake to think that learning is an activity separate from the rest of life…When we lock learning and teaching in the school box, as we do, we do not get more effective teaching and learning in society, but much less.” Schools have tried to corner the market on knowledge. (278)

“The only difference between a good student and a bad student is that a good student is careful not to forget what he has studied until after the test…Adults continually demand that children learn facts and information that they themselves do not use or know” (283).

Schools teach not to cheat and share answers with each other, but this is not the practice in the outside world.

“Eros love is love that reaches upwards. It is love for what we need to fill our emptiness, love for what is lovely and lovable…William Blake engraved the picture of a tiny human figure with a ladder pitched toward the moon and underneath, in block capitals, the words I WANT! I WANT! Those are the words that eros always speaks. Not so with agape. Agape does not want. It gives. It is not empty. It is not full to overflowing. Paul strains to get the distinction right. Agape is patient; eros champs at the bit. Agape puts up with anything; eros insists on having things its own way. Agape is kind – never jealous, boastful, rude. It does not love because but simply loves – the way the rain falls or the sun shines. It “bears all things,” up to and including even its own crucifixtion. And it has extraordinary power.

“…Beauty does no love the Beast because he is beautiful but makes him beautiful by loving him.”

– The Clown in the Belfry (1992)

This is a passage that I’ve never been able to live up to. Only on rare, passing moments have I been able to think about giving this kind of love. No matter how much I know and believe that agape is what I need to do, I always feel entitled to eros. I will give agape if I get my eros needs met first.

It is a great fear of mine that I may never get this right. Like trying to sprint at the end of a long run, I can keep it up only for a very short time before I ease back into my normal eros stride.

May God help me.

“In my own experience, the ways God appears in our lives are elusive and ambiguous ways. There is always room for doubt in order, perhaps, that there will always be room to breathe. There is so much in life that hides God and denies the very possibility of God that there are times when it is hard not to deny God altogether.”

“The danger [with writing about saints] is that you start out with the idea that sainthood is something people achieve, that you get to be holy more or less the way you get to be an Eagle Scout.”

–The Clown in the Belfry (1992)

Billy stared out the window of his office while the meeting continued on without him.

Last quarter’s numbers exceeded the proposed budget by 12%, although receivables are still lagging…

Billy had been running the company his father had started for the last fifteen years. Billy and Bill Sr. were never close. People around the office called Bill Sr. “Bull”. Bull made deals with handshakes, but broke a few hands along the way too. But the rock crushing business was like that. You couldn’t be weak. At least that’s what Bull always said.

Bull had sent Billy to college to study business, assuming he would take over the company one day. Billy was more interested in science, but Bull was a lot better at negotiations in those days.

An MBA, a wife, and two sons later, Billy was the youngest executive in the company. A sudden heart attack for Bull forced the company to draw up a clear succession plan and Billy became a thirty year old Vice President. A second heart attack made him an orphaned CEO.

Import sales are continuing to pick up on a month-by-month basis, with granite showing the largest gains…

Billy had done good things with the rock crushing company. He combined his ingenuity, passion for technology, and his father’s continued influence to grow the company into a nationally recognized name. He was the first in his region to start international operations and made opportunities where none existed.

Billy’s sons, Will and Nick, couldn’t have been more different as brothers. Will was the kind of kid who knew where his bread was buttered. He liked running and football, but mostly liked being at the plant with Billy and watching the huge machines do their work. Since he was four years old, he had told Billy that he was going to work for the company on one of those big machines. Will had stuck to his word, and spent every summer working at the plant. Will and Billy had an immediate connection on work and machines. They could sit and look at product catalogues together for hours. Will told his mother he was going to get married and move into the house next door. And he did.

Nick was different. Billy had struggled to connect with Nick when he was younger. Nick preferred reading comic books or playing video games. He never wanted to go to the office; he thought the machines smelled bad. Bull had passed away when Nick was five, and Billy had other priorities at that time.

As Nick got older, he spent more time with his friends and less time with his family. His summers were spent at movies, camps, and down by the river with his friends. At first, Billy didn’t think they were bad kids, but admittedly didn’t know much about them at all. There was one time when the police brought Nick home. It wasn’t as serious as it sounds, although Billy’s wife didn’t agree. But Billy knew Nick would turn out alright. Most kids do anyway, that’s what Bull said.

When both boys were in high school, Billy took the whole family on a trip to India to begin some new expansion plans in granite. The trip was a magical one for Billy and Nick. It was the first time Billy really felt a connection with his younger son. They both loved the travel, the train trips, the auto rickshaws, and the street food. They would stay up at night talking about what happened that day while Will spent most of the time complaining about the smells and counting down the days when he could get a real hamburger.

Billy had promised his wife that he would never force his sons to join the business, but on the plane trip back, he had already drawn up an org chart with Will managing all of domestic production and Nick using his charm and wanderlust to lead all of the international sales and partnerships. The family would spend Christmas together at the cabin and take a trip to the Bahamas every year. Billy could already see all the grandkids running around, collecting shells on the beach.

But it didn’t work out that way.

That concludes all the new business. Billy, here are some papers to sign, and Mr. Sturgeon from the bank is coming at 3pm today. 

Nick and Billy’s connection slowly faded as did memories from India. Nick continued to spend more time outside the house. He grew more reclusive, aloof, and sarcastic. It wasn’t uncommon that Nick wouldn’t show up for a few days. He would come in and fight with his parents, and Will would smile with satisfaction that his brother was finally getting what he deserved.

If it had been someone else’s son, Billy would have suspected drugs, but he really didn’t want to admit it. Nick’s quality of friends had significantly decreased, but Billy didn’t feel like pushing the issue. His wife kept telling him to do something, but he was afraid of losing him for good, so he didn’t push it.

After barely graduating from high school, Billy pulled some strings to get Nick into a college a few states away. By Thanksgiving, Nick was back in the house just before a letter came that said he wasn’t allowed back on campus.

The next few months were like living with a ghost. Billy and his wife would see Nick once every few weeks. He would grab some food and money and then leave again.

Then, on a day that Billy would never forget, he was in his office and saw Nick’s car pull into the parking lot. Actually he heard it first. Nick had been driving an old beat-up coupe that badly needed a muffler. He watched the tall, gangly young man get out of the car, and pull his long hair back in a bun. A girl in a tight shirt and shorts emerged from the passenger’s seat, followed by a few more bodies from the back seat. Nick walked confidently toward the office building while his friends stayed with the car. Nick hadn’t been to the office in more than twelve years. The receptionist had no idea who he was and asked if he had an appointment to see Billy.

Nick opened the door to the office and sat in the chair farthest from Billy’s. “What’s going on, Nick?”

“I need money.”

“Are you in trouble?” Billy’s mind raced through every possible reason Nick would need money, hoping a new car topped the list.

“No. I just want my money.”

“Your money?”

“Yeah. I mean, look Dad. We don’t need to pretend anymore. I think it’s obvious that things are pretty much over here. I have some things I want to do, and I need money. So I figured I’d do us all a favor and get my money out now, and then you’ll never have to think about me again.”

“Quite a plan,” Billy said in shock. “Look, Nick, if you need some cash, I can help you out, but I can’t just give you ‘your share’ now. That’s not how it works.”

“I just want to be done with this and move on. We all know where this is going.”

“So you just want to act like your mother and I are dead? Is that what you want?”

Nick just stared back at his father. “Don’t worry. I won’t bother Will later on. I’ll be out of his hair too. You can leave everything else to him.”

“Nick, I can’t just do that. You are talking about the house, the business, the properties. I can’t just magically make that much appear as cash.”

“Just do what you can. I’ll come back on Friday.”

Nick got up and left the office. Billy watched him jump in the car with his friends and drive off. Billy grabbed for the antacids he kept in his desk. He called his secretary and told her to clear his day. His stomach started to churn as he held the receiver to his ear. “And get my accountant on the line.”

On Friday, Billy’s eyes shifted to the window every 30 seconds. He had an interview with a new HR manager at 10. He ended it not remembering if he had hired her or not. Will came in at 11:30 to talk go over the new expansion plans. Billy suggested that they delay the expansion plans for a while, based on sales forecasts. Will asked Billy if he was coming home for lunch, but Billy said he had a meeting.

Finally a little after 3, Billy heard Nick’s car thumping down the road. He looked out the same window, watched Nick get out of the car and walk into the building. Within a minute he was walking out again, stuffing an envelop in his jacket pocket.

Billy, Mr. Sturgeon just arrived.

Ok, Judith. Send him up.

That was all four years ago. Billy hadn’t heard a word since then. No phone calls, no emails, no text messages. Billy and his wife didn’t talk about it anymore.

Will and his wife and kids spent every Sunday at Billy’s house. Will was smart, and Billy suspected that he figured out what happened. The company was still struggling to rebound, and the trips to the Bahamas had been put on hold.

“Do you want to go to the game this weekend, Dad?” Will asked. “No, I think I’ll sit this one out.” Billy sat a lot of things out now.

Billy tried taking up some other hobbies, but he didn’t have the patience for gardening and hated golf. He and Will had done a 10k together, but that stopped after a bad knee injury.

The only thing Billy had changed in four years was that he moved his office around so that his desk looked out over the big window that used to be behind him.

“Mr. Sturgeon, good to see you.”

“Hi Billy. I’ve brought my partners here for this meeting. You remember Stan and Ted, right?”

“Of course. We played golf together last year.”

“Right. Billy, I hate to get right into business, but we need to talk. We’ve been very generous and patient. I’m not trying to talk tough, but we have to start getting serious.”

Billy nodded his head. He knew this day might come. He’d thought it would come a lot sooner. He’d weathered through these seasons before and this one wouldn’t be any different.

Frank Sturgeon kept putting it in the nicest way possible that he was going to crush Billy for everything he was worth, and Billy kept smiling the same way he smiled through their last golf round.

Then, Billy saw a figure move in the window. But, it was just another homeless guy walking down the road. He hadn’t noticed how many of them had walked by the office before he shifted his desk. He made up names for the regular ones he saw. Billy squinted his eyes. “Too tall to be Shorty, and he didn’t have anything with him like Cart-Man always did” – Billy wasn’t that great at nicknames.

The man kept walking down the road. Then he raised his arms to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Then he pulled back his matted hair.

Billy’s eyes dilated. He pushed back away from his desk.

“Billy, what’s going on?” Frank Sturgeon was suddenly off his game.

Billy rushed out of the room. He knocked over Judith who was coming in to serve coffee to Frank Sturgeon and his partners. He passed by the elevator door and burst open the stairwell. He took three leaps down each of the three flights of stairs, and busted through the door at the ground floor. He started to feel his heart now.

He came to the double doors, but the delivery man was bringing in a big stack of boxes on a cart. His inner twenty-year-old thought of jumping over them, but he quickly thought better and ran for the side entrance.

Billy ran down the gravel entry road that led to the paved parking lot. He wished he had kept up with running as his heart pounded. As he rounded the security booth, he prayed that his knee wouldn’t give out.

Billy made it to the main road and the man was about 200 feet away from him. The man stopped walking and Billy ran harder than he ever had in his life. About 20 feet away, Billy realized that he would not be able to stop and completely ran over his son, knocking them both to the ground.

As he tried to regain his breath, Billy wondered if he was having his first heart attack. Nick tried to choke out something, but his face was wet with tears and the wind was knocked out of him too. “Dad, I…”

“It’s ok son. It’s ok.” Billy said as he slowly regained his breath. “You came back.”

This Christmas, our family got together for a dinner.

People walked in and out from 5pm to 9pm. Food was laid out buffet-style in the kitchen; eat as you want. I think my mom said a prayer and the grazing started. The food included snack sandwiches from Chick-fil-a, three pre-made trays from the local grocery store, store-bought dip, and exactly two homemade dishes.

Grandpa distributed checks to everyone. My aunt waited for someone to notice that she was engaged, which nearly didn’t happen until the end and happened with as minimal of a ruckus as possible. Then everyone left.

As it was going on and after it happened, I was struck how empty it all seemed. I shouldn’t complain; at least I have a family to gather with – more than my dad can say now. But at the same time, aside from gathering, it didn’t feel like much was going on.

Family culture and traditions are hard; they take work. They take planning, preparation, going to the grocery, sticking to it when no one else wants to anymore, motivating people like me to get up and do something. And they usually take a strong woman to keep them going.

Maybe this loss of culture is bigger than just my family. As our lives get more and more convenient, we gratefully give more and more of them over corporations and technology who want to do the work for us for a reasonable fee. Anytime something gets hard, it probably isn’t worth it anymore. We get used to easy. And anything that isn’t easy is harder than it used to be.

Previously, on Thanksgiving, Grandma and Grandpa gave all the kids a new ornament to hang on our trees, and we drew names for gifts – all the cousins in one hat, and all the aunts and uncles in another. We spent the rest of Thanksgiving trying to figure out who had whose name.

Christmas was never celebrated on Christmas day because my Grandmother was a saint and always worked around the family schedules of everyone else. When we did get together, it was always at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We would play with cousins as usual. One year we dared each other to walk out on the frozen pond out back in the new subdivision that was being built.

If there was a gift we were particularly proud of that we had gotten earlier in the week, we would bring it and show it off. One cousin brought a Vanilla Ice cassette. I had no idea what that name could possibly mean and why it was such a big deal. Pretty sure New Kids on the Block made an appearance one Christmas. As my younger cousins got older, they brought their handheld video game players and didn’t interact with anyone.

Before the big gift exchange, Grandpa would read the Christmas story from Luke. Then someone would get the first gift of Christmas, which always was a camera. Then, baby gifts for anyone under 5. Then the cousin exchange. Then the adult exchange. Grandma used the same huge big blue holiday bag for at least eight years in a row for gifts that were too big. Basketballs were pretty easy to spot in the wrapping. Not too much cash or gift cards, though that started showing up later.

Then it was time for dinner. Grandpa prayed “for the nourishment of our bodies”, and then everyone went in the kitchen and filled their plate with homemade food – ham, corn, potatoes, salad, Grandma’s yeast rolls. Cousins ate wherever we could find room. There were little card tables spread out around the whole house. Adults were mostly at the big dining room table.

After dinner, we played board games and euchre like a good Midwest family. Then we travelled home.

As the family grew, we had to stop meeting at Grandma and Grandpa’s house because there weren’t enough seats. Then we decided to stop the gift exchange, partly because it was too expensive for some and partly because we didn’t really need all that stuff. We switched to giving to a charity, which was a cool idea. But the Christmas story didn’t get read all the time after that. I moved away and wasn’t there for a long time, so I can’t track all the details, but later Grandma died and my cousins all got married, divorced, remarried, etc.

And somewhere along the way we got what happened this year.

My mom tries. She made Grandma’s rolls (one of the two homemade dishes). She made the German cookies that are the only thread of culture left from my dad’s side of the family that doesn’t even get together.

But still, it feels that we’ve lost our culture. Maybe it’s the natural decaying process that is supposed to birth new mini-cultures around it. Maybe it’s the truth that culture lies heavily on the back of the matriarchs and with my Grandmother not there anymore it all crumbles away.

But I fear it’s worse than that.

Traditions are hard. Mama’s family does them better. I hope to do them better and more intentional with our small family. I keep waiting until we are ‘settled’ which is legitimate, but hell, I’m also 32 now, which is about as settled as you can be.

The best news in this whole story is that during my culture-less Christmas, you guys were playing completely independent of what the adults were doing. You had your own universe going on, just like I remembered. So maybe one day you can chastise me for taking the culture out of what you remembered.

Till then, please put up with my feeble attempts to reconstruct something.