Christmas in Casper

This year, I got luggage for Christmas.

Let me just say that, on the surface, the aftermath of last week’s storm in Denver seemed to be taken care of. When we arrived on Sunday evening, the hordes of people sleeping in the airport were gone, the detritus of all those thousands of stranded passengers was gone, and except for the 8 or 10 foot snow banks, you’d never know that the airport had just dug itself out of a blizzard.

But all was not well in Mudville.

When we got off our flight from San Diego, we checked the monitor for our outbound flight, got the gate number and headed there. We had a couple hours to kill, so we stopped for dinner. We got to the gate in plenty of time, and watched as standby passengers hugged and congratulated the ones who’d been called for a seat on each flight.

In retrospect, this should have been a warning sign. Standby passengers shouldn’t be that friendly with each other.

We waited until it was time for our flight to board, and oddly, we heard nothing about it.

I got up to check the monitor, because our airline? Might have changed the gate while we were having dinner.

So I’m looking at the monitor and it very clearly says that the gate where we’d been sitting for 90 minutes was our departure gate. But the gate closest to the monitor? The back board at that gate lists our flight.

As delayed.

I can often be helpful, or at least I’ve been told I can be, so I very kindly approached the gate agent and said, “Did you know that the monitor has the wrong gate listed?”

I did not expect the response I got. I expected the woman to say, “Oh, really? Sorry about that! Thanks for letting us know, I’ll get that fixed right away, and we’ll make an announcement at the other gate.”

When the shimmering that always seems to indicate the shift between my imagination and the Real World stopped, the gate agent simply looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “We have no control over that.” And then she turned and walked away before I could ask her another silly question like, “How long will we be delayed?”

When I walked back past the monitor, I got my answer to that question: two hours.

The girls and I relocated to the new gate and settled in for a two hour delay. The last time we’d flown through here at Christmas, it had been a five hour delay, so at that point we agreed that we were pretty lucky.

And then I got the phone call from Orbitz confirming the two hour delay.

I called my dad and let him know, and as soon as I hung up? Another call from Orbitz telling me that the delay had been extended by half an hour.

At some point after ten p.m., the gate agents disappeared. I’m sure they didn’t vanish into thin air, like Cheshire Cats, but they might as well have.

At around eleven, just about the time that we should have been boarding our delayed flight, another gate agent showed up, and my phone rang. Orbitz again: flight cancelled. I calmly walked over to the gate agent, who was setting up her stuff for boarding, and asked, “Is it true that our flight was just cancelled?”

“Was it?” she asked. “Let me check.”

She tapped a few keys on the computer, then said, “I better go ask my supervisor,” and hurried off to Customer Service across the concourse.

Right about then, someone’s kid said, “Hey, the board shows our flight’s been cancelled!”

I told the girls to grab all our stuff and follow me to Customer Service…I wanted to beat the rush.

When I got to the counter, the woman there took our boarding passes, lackadaisically tapped her keyboard a few times. The agent next to her told the passenger next to me that she’d be put on standby for the first flight on Christmas morning, but that the flight was already overbooked, so while there wasn’t much hope, there was at least some hope that she’d be able to make it out in the morning.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. The agent I was dealing with said with a bored sigh, “I might be able to get you on a flight on Tuesday evening.”

Tuesday? Tuesday as in two days from now, Tuesday? I was incredulous. “Oh, no,” I said, “you guys have been rude to me and lied to me and this cancellation is because you couldn’t fix your airplane on Christmas Eve…you’re going to make this right. You’re going to do right by me.”

The woman looked at me with fire in her eyes. She grabbed our boarding passes and crushed them in her fist before slamming them on the counter in front of me. “I,” she snarled, “am not helping you!” She spun and headed for the Customer Service office.

“What??? I want your name!” I shouted after her.

“You’re not going to get it!” and she disappeared into the office.

“Sir?” said one of the other agents. “If you don’t calm down, I’ll call the police.”

I thought about that for a minute. I didn’t doubt for a second that he was serious. So I stood there silently, wavering between astonishment and panic. What happened to the option to go standby on Christmas day? What happened to the customer service representative calmly talking the distraught passenger through the choices available? What happened to the recognition that the customer has the airline a lot of money to make sure that he and his kids could be with their family on Christmas? What could I have said that would warrant a threat to call the police? I replayed what I said; I did not use foul language. I only raised my voice to be heard across the room by the retreating customer service representative. Correction: the retreating airline employee.

And the ultimate question: Now what do I do?

Other passengers came to the counter, were apologetically told they’d be on standby for the next day, received their hotel and meal vouchers, and left.

I held my ground at the counter.

Other passengers reacted with shock, incredulity, and anger. They were given their boarding passes for the cancelled flight and told to go away, and I wondered if I was seeing some new company policy: don’t help any customer who is upset.

While I stood there quietly, the police did, in fact, arrive.

It was then that I noticed the mob behind me. If I squinted just right, the whole scene turned black and white, and those skis that guy had? might have passed for a pitchfork.

The girl from our gate who had so helpfully disappeared when I asked if our flight had been cancelled reappeared to help get things straightened out for me. She was friendly and talkative, and she got me a hotel voucher and meal vouchers right away. She tried to arrange for our baggage to be set out for us before we left for the hotel.

And while we were waiting for that, she refused to let me out of her sight.

At some point her supervisor told her that there would be another flight in the morning, an extra flight to take care of the passengers on the cancelled Casper flight. The flight time was so early in the morning that by the time she got me flight vouchers, it no longer made sense for us to go to the hotel.

When I told my daughters we’d be spending the night in the airport, they said, “Kewl!”

I did not sleep. Alanna slept on the floor for an hour or two, while Heidi and I watched part of “King Kong” on Alanna’s DVD player.

By 6 a.m., our extra flight had still not shown on the monitor, but a phone call to the reservation number and we had confirmed seats for the flight departing at 8:15.

Before boarding, I asked the gate agent to confirm that our bags would be on our flight. She said, “Yes, I show them waiting to be scanned for your flight.”

Perfect. We’d be there in time for a late Christmas breakfast, even if it wasn’t to be my Dad’s amazing pancakes.

The thirteen of us on that extra flight were relieved to finally enter the terminal to see our loved ones, some of whom had spent the night in the Casper terminal and faced a two or three hour drive home.

For the first few minutes after the baggage turnstile began to move, there was laughter and friendly banter, except for the one slightly crazy-looking woman who had arrived from Denver three days before and still had not gotten her luggage.

And then the turnstile stopped.

Not one of us on that flight had picked up a bag.

We headed to the counter en masse.

There was one. One? One. Airline. Employee. At the ticket counter.

And she was looking at a line of thirty passengers headed out on the next flight to Denver.

We went home.

Most of our Christmas presents were in our checked bags.

So. We had breakfast.

And we opened the gifts we had.

And we made each other laugh.

And we had a terrific dinner, turkey with all the trimmings.

And the morning after (Boxing Day, if you’re Meg), we went back out to the airport.

And there were our bags. So, I got my own luggage for Christmas. A day late, but just as appreciated.

In a perfect world, I’d be able to say that I handled it all with dignity and grace, but even the world inside my head isn’t perfect.

Has Christmas been wonderful, in spite of the adventure? Yes, and partly because of it.

As I write this, it is snowing outside, and has been for more than four hours. Denver’s airport is once again closed, and we can almost certainly look forward to more trouble on our return trip.

But the snow sure is pretty.

Christmas Time Is Here

You can because it's cloudy. The cloud is at the top of this picture, in the very center.

Also? It's like 68 degrees, but with the wind chill? Totally 65.

Brrrr!

Headed up to Wyoming later today, passing through Denver, where I imagine they are just beginning to dig themselves out of all the fast food wrappers left behind by the stranded travellers this week.

Merry Christmas!

Twelve Ways to Make Christmas Shopping More Pleasant

1. Stop talking on your cell phone and drive.

2. Try to walk in some semblance of a straight line so that people in a hurry can get around you.

3. No, it doesn't matter what direction.

4. Please stop talking on your cell phone and drive.

5. Keep your kids close to you or leave them with a sitter.

6. Put things back where you found them.

7. Stop talking on your damned cell phone and drive your damned car.

8. The holidays are much nicer if you treat everyone with the same respect you demand from them.

9. Trying to talk on two cell phones while driving is one louder than stupid.

10. Freedom To Go To The Head Of The Line is not one of the Rights provided by our Constitution. Please wait like the rest of us.

11. Neither is Freedom To Drive Like A Moron.

12. Hang up your FRIGGING cell phone and PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR DRIVING!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Planes, Trains, and Ships

Christmas, for me, always seems to be about airplanes. Or more precisely, travel.

Since I left home in 1979, the only Christmas I can remember that wasn't spent on the road or as a guest somewhere was the one I spent off the coast of Kuwait. 1993.

This year, my daughters and I will be traveling to Wyoming to visit my parents. I am not sure which of them is more excited about the visit. If I had to pick, I'd say it was my dad.

Like most kids, I got some cool gifts over the years, but what I remember most about Christmases when I was growing up was the laughter. And the music.

My mother has her PhD in Music Education, and though that came after I left home, she was the assistant music director at our church for many years, so from the time I was old enough to join the Junior Choir, my mom and I (and later my sister) had Candlelight Service and Christmas Sunday services to prepare for and perform in. By the time I was 11 or 12, I was in the Handbell Choir, and then the Youth Choir. My friends and I would join the processional, careful to take seats close to an aisle so that we could slip out for the bell loft before we were needed there, and then back down to our seats in time to sing with the choir. Performing added a level of excitement to holiday services that I long to recapture.

When Christmas didn't fall on a Sunday, our family tradition was to sleep in until at least 8 am...interminable for my sister and me until we hit our teens and actually preferred to sleep in. We'd all take turns opening presents, with my dad taking pictures of us nonstop, though mostly of my sister. When the base of the tree was visible once again, my dad would head for the kitchen to make the world's best pancakes.

One year, in my early teens, Dad and I went out for a tree on Christmas Eve...I have no idea why we waited that long, but those were lean years for us, so it's possible that until that day, my parents weren't sure we'd get to have a tree and food on the table. It's also possible that the season was so busy for my mom, and business so busy for my dad, that we simply put off getting the tree until the last minute. Whatever the reason, we found ourselves at the tree place in a parking lot on Hartford Road well after dark, looking at trees illuminated by the street lights and a string of bare bulbs through that thin, wind-whipped snow that falls only when the temperatures have fallen below freezing. When we'd decided, we went in to the office, where the tree guy waved us out the door again. "Take any tree on the lot, no charge," he said. "Merry Christmas!"

Our return home that night was both joyous and triumphant: we were men, and we had won that tree. Over the years, my mother has made many jokes about my father's frugality, and that tree remains in our memory as having elevated his sense of economy to legendary status. The Christmas Eve quest for a tree became a tradition steeped in egg nog and jokes, and on those few Christmases when I was actually home before Christmas Eve, my dad and I have upheld it. Once or twice, my brother-in-law has joined us. Men hunt tree.

My dad has an unbelievably creative mind, and no one who knows him will ever deny that he thinks of things in different terms than the rest of us. One year, he gave me a Marine recruiting poster. Not because either of us had any ties to the Marines, but because it had a photograph of a Phantom fighter on it. Cheap gift, a poster, right? Not very original? This was no ordinary poster: it was a billboard poster. One Saturday not long after, we wall-papered my room with it. That Phantom was 25 feet long, and covered two and a half walls of my room. No, my dad didn't just give me a poster. He gave me an image of the ultimate expression of my dream to fly, one that I'd see first thing every morning and last thing at night for as long as I lived under his roof. He gave me a celebration of a passion we shared, that we still share. The message was clear: "This is what yo can do, if you want to, Son." He gave it in a way no one I know has ever even considered, much less gotten...that poster stands as one of the coolest gifts I've ever heard of.

Years later, when I was in Maine to help build USS COWPENS, I went into the blueprint library at Bath Iron Works and printed out the exterior line drawings of the ship to give my dad for Christmas. That led to this:

...which is now on display at the Cowpens National Battlefield Museum. It was built mostly from scratch, out of plastic and fiberglass and wire and brass, and it is six feet long.

Over the years, there have been several occasions when I've been unable to be home for Christmas Day, so the family has moved the whole celebration and all the traditions that could be moved to whatever day I could be there. The important thing, as far as my mom and dad were concerned, was that the family gets to be together for the celebration. I will be able to offer this to any woman who chooses me: two Christmases.

For several years after my sister moved to California to be with Joe, the three of us have given our parents gifts that honor them with our creative talents. One year, we borrowed their video camera for several days before Christmas, and presented them with a short film about what Christmas means to us. The film was hosted by Joe as Wiley Beaton-Smythe, a vaguely British talk show host who goes around interviewing various people (all played by my sister and me) about the meaning of Christmas. Another year, we wrote and recorded a 40's style radio play about a Sam Spade-est-ce-que private eye hired by a mysterious and beautiful woman to find the meaning of Christmas. A couple years ago, we recorded an album of our music for them.

It's not just that I love how they made Christmas for us when we were young, I love that they gave us so many options for making Christmas wonderful now.

It's that one fact that makes being solitary at Christmas such a bittersweet thing; My most passionate Christmas wish is to share all of this with a woman who understands and appreciates it.

Anyway, I have all of that to look forward to.

And the best thing about Christmas this year is that my niece's EEG was normal today. There is no sign of the abnormal brain activity that indicated lurking seizures and infantile spasm. Yesterday, when Joe went to check on her in her crib, Clara heard his voice, rolled over, and started giggling.

So, this year, it seems there will be one more laugh in the Kalbfleisch household.

I Wish I Had a River

I called my sister on Thursday for the latest news about Clara, who was in the hospital last week, undergoing treatment for infantile spasm. The news was good, that the steroid treatment seems to be working, though we've seen this twice before...she'll start on a new medication, her seizures will disappear for a week, only to return in a week with greater intensity. Each medication is purported to be effective for 50% of those it's given to - so this being the third, and last, available treatment option, perhaps the Law of Averages will work in her favor. My sister is hopeful; I am not sure I have room for more disappointment.

What's been astonishing to me is how acutely I feel each piece of news about my niece, though perhaps it's my sister's pain that most deeply affects me. She and I have always had a special bond, but I am only just beginning to understand what motivated her to be so powerfully supportive during and after my divorce.

I seem to be feeling everything much more intensely lately. A cheesy Lifetime movie ended with me streaming tears this afternoon; what's more, I'd seen it before. Music can make me misty-eyed, if you'll excuse the alliteration. It doesn't even have to have lyrics: W.G. Snuffy Walden's rendition of "The First Noel" snuck up on me a little while ago, and Mozart's Overture from La Nozze di Figaro before that.

It must be because it's coming on Christmas, and they are indeed cutting down trees. They're putting up reindeer.

The other night, I took Heidi Christmas shopping. I had thought to let her go do her thing for a while while I knocked out my gift-hunting for her, but a phone call from an old friend kept me from getting much done. The call kept me on the outside of the Christmas rush for the evening, and I'm grateful for that opportunity. I honestly think everyone should set aside one evening during the busy season to simply sit and watch.

I guess that's how I've been feeling this Holiday season: on the outside, looking in.

I am hungry for something, and I know what it is, but like a kid looking up at a cookie jar on a high shelf, it's out of my reach.

When I get like this, I have a tendency to walk around in circles and cast off the things I have that I enjoy for want of the thing I don't have that I crave. Scott Peck would have said that I lack the ability to defer gratification.

It's not that I lack that ability, it's that I often choose the easier path, the one in which I don't have to exercise it.

I wish I had a river that I could skate away on.

Soundtrack

Inside my head, there is a large chorus singing in a minor key, with thematic counterpoints from cellos and violins.

I woke this morning to the call of the fog horns on San Diego Bay. Next to the sound of a lover's sigh as she snuggles against me and tries to hang on to the last vestiges of sleep, fog horns are my favorite thing to wake up to. They remind me of summers in Maine, of when I was young and the world had not shown me any of her crueler jokes.

I had a meeting this morning, out of the office and across the Coronado Bridge, just past my favorite part of San Diego: the beach in front of the red-roofed Hotel Del Coronado. I'd been asked to give a fifteen minute presentation, and the drive would be forty minutes there and back.

The sky was dark and low, especially out over the bay, where the clouds came right down to the water.

Given my mood, this was a welcome change from the perpetual sunshine we've been given for more than a week. The fog rolling in late yesterday afternoon, sweeping across the sea and pouring up the hillside below my office, gave us the first clouds we'd seen since Tuesday last. I'm not sure if the clouds were a precursor to my mood, or if the billowing vapor was manifested by my discontent.

Cresting the overpass on Pacific Highway, where the view of the airport and downtown is always best, the sun broke through the overcast for a moment, and I knew that neither the overcast nor my mood would last. This, too, shall pass, as my boss is fond of saying.

But what if I don't want the mood to pass? What if I don't want blue skies and warmth and sunshine? What if I just want an excuse to retreat a while, to hunker down under the covers to hold in warmth and ward off the daylight?

I don't want to spend today in the real world.

I don't want to spend the day in a world where selfish people act as though the rest of us should be okay with their erratic, cell-phone-impaired driving.

I don't want to spend the day in a world where babies have infantile spasms, and impaired cognitive development, and symptoms of autism.

I don't want the winter of my discontent to be made glorious summer by this sun of San Diego.

Just for a day, I want my world to be about biplanes with wires that sing in ninety mile winds and smell of gasoline and oil and leather, set to playful music on a single classical guitar.

Just for a day, I want my world to be about the softness of a loving woman's touch and the perfect eagerness of her kiss, set to Harry Connick or Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, or simply to the beat of my heart.

HCOD Redux

Last year, I posted about the dreaded HCOD...the Holiday Cutoff Date. As I explained in that post, the HCOD is random date beyond which you and your new love cannot include each other in family Christmas plans. "Anything less than six weeks," I wrote, "and including each other in family plans on the Big Morning are uncomfortable and weird. Everyone will just end up trying to be polite while sitting unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in their slightly-fuggy PJs, and that’s too much pressure to put on the family."

Begin a new relationship beyond mid-November and you're destined to be a little lonely on Christmas Day.

And then there's the problem of what to give - there's a lot of pressure on the First Christmas Gift Ever. It sets the tone for all the gifts that come after (or don't, as the case may very well be). It's hard enough making a meaningful purchase for someone you know well, but for the person you're still shy about, still uncertain of...those are treacherous waters, my friends.

This year, there is help on the horizon: www.findgift.com. There are so many choices here that finding a gift should be easy! Alas, one must be careful about the message in one's gift.

Some examples:

1. I'm not certain I'll like your family.

2. I want to maintain an air of mystery , or...I embrace your intrinsically selfish nature.

3. I know you're not , and I want you to know that I'm desperately okay with that.
4. Guess what I'm REALLY interested in!

5. I think it's time to redecorate your place in a South Pacific motif.

6. Is it too early to build a vacation home together?

7. No, really, I DO like your smile , but I could like it more...

8. I want to see you naked, but I also think you could stand to lose a little weight.

9. Your housekeeping habits need improvement, but that doesn't mean you should spend less time with ME.

10. Is it time for our blood tests yet?

The Internet can be so helpful!

And, Charlie...LIGHT A MATCH!

There's gotta be a better headline for this story.

I mean, the story is funny.

The funniest headline of the year was at the top of a story that was definitely not funny: Four Killed in Cartoon Bloodshed.

Maybe a humorous story needs an unfunny headline to maintain the cosmic balance.

And vice versa.

I still think they coulda done better.

A Star Is Born

It's not just pride that I say this: My daughter makes a great zombie.

On Friday night, I went to see her perform in "Night of the Living Dead" at the high school. She appeared in four scenes.

Thirty minutes before curtain time, when the audience began to take its seats, there were two sheet-covered corpses plainly visible on stage. As the play began, the corpses came to mindless life, rising from under their coverings with obvious effort. The audience was completely surprised; neither of the corpses had so much as twitched until the music began.

One of those two reanimated corpses was my daughter...she'd told me what to expect at the beginning of the play, so I'd been paying very close attention to them, and to the audience's reaction when they came to life. It was perfect...simply perfect.

If you've ever tried to lay still for half an hour, perfectly still, without breathing perceptibly, for half an hour, you get an idea of how she began her performance on Friday night. And she did it on the hard floor of the stage.

The discipline she can find, when she wants to, is nothing short of astonishing.

And that was only the beginning of her performance. It's been said that there are no small parts, only small actors. Heidi took that saying to heart, and though she had no spoken lines, she poured herself into the process of becoming her character on stage. She watched the film several times, then moved on to other zombie films, taking notes and pulling ideas from at least a half dozen places. She perfected a twitchy walk-of-the-undead that truly looked as though she only partially remembered how to move, and then she added a painful-sounding wheeze...the effect was stunning.

Afterwards, as I drove her home, she asked my opinion, and I told her honestly that I was amazed.

Last night, over dinner, she told me of plans for the musical, "Guys and Dolls".

"Will you audition?" I asked.

"Of course, Dad," she said.

Then she smiled a small smile.

I guess we'll be seeing some musicals now.

Licensed to Amuse

Tonight was graduation night for my improv class.

I won't try to explain the games we played in the lab...most of them involve a degree of physicality that makes them impossible to explain in writing without painting a fine glaze on the reader's eyes; there are high levels of you-had-to-be-there in this particular soup.

I will, however, say a few words about some of the people I've begun to know through improv in the last two months: These are kind, generous, intelligent, loving people, and I am glad they're in my life. It's rare to find another person who sparks your imagination and challenges you to reach without and within for warmth and growth, which makes this group of ten such human beings absolutely extraordinary.

Our graduation "ceremony" consisted of each person in the group taking a turn sitting in the center of our circle, to listen while the group pointed out the things they enjoyed about having each of us in the class. Some of the compliments I received were what I expected - things I've seen in myself; a surprising number were unexpected...things I never considered, and it's made me realize that people often see wonderful things in us that we never notice when left to ourselves.

I need to remember that. Yes, I do.

After sitting in the circle, each person had an opportunity to say a few words about what the class meant to them. I found it hard not to be emotional...it's astonishing how much more open and unreserved I am compared to how I was eight weeks ago. I love these people, this group of people.

The class is not over for me...there will be a holiday break, one which will seem far too long, and class will resume in January. Several of my classmates will return, and others will join the group, so the dynamic will change. Of course, improv is all about embracing change and building upon the unexpected, and Jacquie, our teacher, understands that it's important for her to assemble a group of people who play well with each other. Judging from this group, that's one of her great talents, so I have no doubt that it will continue to be something I dearly love.