Strong As An Ox And Nearly As Smart: Our 2024 Christmas Letter

Saturday, November 23, 2024

Our 2024 Christmas Letter

Can a Christmas letter be a record of all the things we didn’t do? Would anyone want to read it?

Well, we didn’t go to Brazil. In fact we never have gone to Brazil, so why report that now after over 80 years of not doing it? Because we had planned to this year but Alice’s quests came first. Quest One was to attempt to change whatever was causing chronic pain in her right leg. After undergoing a variety of tests, her right hip was replaced, as previously the other hip and both knees had been. Still the leg pain persists. Undaunted, Alice accompanied by me and Radar, still walks four miles a day, much to all our benefit. Now her attention is focused on her back, so Brazil will have to wait.

Quest Two was a two-year project to facilitate the retirement of the CEO and majority owner of the company Alice founded nearly fifty years ago, Vulcan Wire, Incorporated, located in Hayward. The first option available was selling Vulcan to a competitor. Alice learned from exposure to business brokerage that such sales usually are financial disappointments plus cause loss of jobs and/or dissolving the purchased company, so she sought a 5/20-year plan to maintain Vulcan through engaging a future CEO, her oldest grandson, Kevin. It’s a win-win-win all around.

So far I’ve been a supportive husband by not getting in Alice’s way. Earlier this year our theater group gave six performances of The Greatest Show, a medley of twenty-nine Broadway show tunes with parts for me in eight. My personal highlight was a duet from Gigi, I Remember it Well. My musical performing “career” began ten years ago just after I turned 71, but this was the first time they let me sing outside a chorus. Now we’re in rehearsal for Fiddler on the Roof, and I’m back in the chorus facing challenges of not only singing with more precision than in previous shows, but also participating in demanding group routines where I struggle with hand movements. Being 82 unfortunately hasn’t improved my coordination.

It's easy to stay active in Gualala. We are in two book clubs and are always reading one book and listening to another. Then we have lunch with friends and two monthly Lions potluck dinner meetings and one Rotary breakfast or lunch. However, our daily routine centers on three walks with Radar. Radar gets to play ball and nibble seaweed on Cook’s Beach, then we walk through the woods behind us, and finish with a night walk in our neighborhood. We usually do five miles a day, although we shortened it a bit until Alice recovers. Radar understands that we have to take care of Grandma Lady Girl, his name for Alice.

Celebrating our 35^th anniversary at St Orres restaurant

Radar and I admire an old-growth redwood nearby

I pioneer the Gender-Neutral restroom in the Golden Gate Theater, San Francisco, for the Simon and Garfunkel Show (great impersonators). I was chatting with Alice and her oldest daughter Jeanette at intermission when I saw the gender-neutral sign and decided I might as well conform. However, I noticed that I was the only male who so decided.