Dear Friends,
The end of year, century and millennium approaches. You may be as bored as we are with the wrap-ups, summaries and listings of what has been best for the last 100 or 1000 years. Back in the good ol’ days of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when we first met many of our long-lived friends like you, none of us gave much thought to being around for the year 2000, let alone being concerned about something called the Y2K bug. We were more interested in surviving the current year, hoping for the best in the next and keeping up with our VW bug. (Ours was gray before we graduated to that first yellow minibus which burned up while we were living in Oregon. When was the last time you played the game of trying to remember, in order, the models and colors of the vehicles you drove over the past four or five decades? Our first car was a ‘57 black and white Fairlane 500!)
Yes, it is the time for nostalgia and reminiscing about all of those events of our life. For us, looking over Christmas letters from years ago has been a blessing. The first is dated 1963. Pat, as you might suspect, is reluctant to discard anything that might be “important” to us at some unknown time in the future; but then, Karen has the better memory (as most wives do.) There are also those old photograph albums and the boxes of slides that never made it into the cartridges buried in the back of the closet. They help in stimulating warm reflections on where we were when we first met you. So as we wrap up whichever interval is worth celebrating, year, century or millennium, there are those personal time capsules we cherish because they remind us of our friends and relatives who have journeyed with us. It’s for this reason that we continue to write (keyboard!) these annual Christmas letters.
We are hoping that there will now be more time for such reminiscences, since Pat has, as of July 1, retired from Baylor College of Medicine. During the last two weeks of June he went on his vacation and never went back to work. For those of you who have not yet begun this new life, you might consider this method of beginning. He maintains that this is the way to do it. He also keeps on saying that every day feels as if it were a Saturday. (For those of you who have been there, when does this “feeling” end?)
That June-July “vacation” included a week in South Bend and a workshop at Notre Dame in spirituality. Karen is still devoting much of her time to spiritual direction at The Cenacle Retreat House in Houston, although she maintains she is “cutting back” in order to have more “free time” like Pat’s. The post-Notre Dame visit included a week in Ohio visiting friends and relatives and seeing old favorites (Kent State) and new ones (the Amish country.)
This Ohio trip was a prelude to our annual “big trip.” During two weeks in September-October we were on a river-boat cruise from Vienna to Amsterdam. It was relaxing to be on the Danube (not quite blue), the Main and the Rhine with their 73 locks (but no bagels.) We lost track of the bergs and burgs along the way. However, Regensburg, Nurnberg, Bamberg and Heidelberg are stand-outs. Karen took over 20 rolls of photos; Pat managed to record only six hours of video which he hopes to edit to two hours with a computer program he is finally getting around to using. He would be farther along in his cinematography if he were not also involved in additional parish work (preparing couples for marriage), in rose gardening and in taking Spanish classes at a local community college. (This is “retirement?”) Karen has continued with her CanCare (cancer) ministry and with a Labyrinth meditation that traces its history back to the Cathedral at Chartres.
Being grandparents has also taken on new meanings … along with a new grand-daughter, Victoria Elizabeth, who has joined Jordan Michael, Dillon Andrew, Christina Noel and Thomas Joseph in Ken’s and Tracey’s family. Chris and Kelly continue to be involved with Kirby Michele and Kennedy Lane. Computers for Ken and teaching for Chris and Kelly keep them otherwise occupied. Deb and Joe maintain their library work in San Antonio and road trips to Dallas for the Cowboy games.
Thus, another page is added to our personal time capsule, a capsule also filled with love and affection for all of those who have made this passage of time so worthwhile, so filled with joy and warmth. As we rush towards the closing of one series of doors, we eagerly await the opening of many others. May the new days be as warm and bright as the ones we have already spent with you. As Christmas Day approaches, we again wish you the joy and the rejoicing found in the Celebration of the One who continues to make all of this possible.