Next year starts 2026. As we have done since 2015,each member of the family chooses one word for the next year. We each share the reason behind the word, and then design our display. This year we are using small wooden clipboards.
As you can see from the picture my word is MAGIC.
There are a number of reasons behind my choice for the word. I want to create more magical moments, which I tried to do this Christmas, actually, when Santa visited our house for everyone. There were 8 filled stockings under the tree (my six children and my new daughter-in-law and my son’s longtime girlfriend). And yes, Santa visited my wife, even if she didn’t get a stocking, she had presents under the tree.
But to have magical moments I have to be active as a father, a husband, and even as a poet. Magic doesn’t happen staring at a screen. It happens when my children laugh, my wife smiles, someone replies to a poem I wrote.
I have some really big goals this year. Accomplishing them will be magical. Jon Finch once said, “Magic is the poetry of impossibilities, each trick a stanza in the verse of wonder.” And I am a good poet.
I’m not sure what actually triggered the slight shift of my perspective. I can not pinpoint the week, the day, or the hour that I really started to consider how important it is to make sure my actions represent love.
For the last couple of months I have been conscious of what my actions are revealing about what this world is about. It is a daunting thought. My smile for a person in the grocery store will not create a viral trend. My dad joke in class only gets a few chuckles and quite a few groans. The question about Christmas gifts I ask for the barista is only for them. My insight on a poem shared on X is quick but could be so much deeper.
My actions will not change the world.
I could easily walk past the person in the cereal aisle. Get right to the lesson plan in class. Wait for my coffee silently. Just repost the poem.
The world would continue as is.
Except for the change in the moment and what the world could be like if all the moments were like the first examples. And let’s see if I can express this personal idea clearly.
In one way, Ben Rector said it well, “But now I just wanna look more like love.”
On the surface that is the idea, but the reason why is important. My actions express to everyone what the meaning of life is. But so does everyone’s actions. The person driving while busy on their phone says that the content on the screen is more important than driving safely. The fights in the stands of sporting events say that being a fan of a team is more important than being respectful of another person. There are so many examples of heartbreaking actions in this world that reveal people’s meaning of life is not love or the well being of others. Even my own parents taught me that drugs, alcohol, and other people were more important than me.
Our everyday actions reveal our meaning of life to the world. To the people around us, the people we love and the people we can’t stand. And it’s hard to not be swayed by things like money or success (which Ben Rector’s song deals with). It’s hard not to be judgmental, especially for people we don’t get along with.
But, the other day as my wife and I were having dinner at Red Lobster, a little boy across the aisle was looking at us. His mom and dad were trying to get him to eat some broccoli. His other brother was nicely eating corn and shrimp. I smiled at him. His face lit up and then he buried his head in his mom’s arm. Then he shot a look back at me. I smiled again. He smiled and then buried his face again.
I remembered when we would bring our children to Red Lobster. How my oldest daughter loved the broccoli, but my boys wanted applesauce. I smiled again at the little boy because I wanted him to know this world was filled with love.
Even though I know the little boy would learn that the world is also filled with things like hate and broken relationships, I wanted my actions to show him that this world can be a wonderful place, as I hope others would show my own children.
My actions will not change the world. But at any given moment, I can look more like love. I can show another person in that single moment that the meaning of life is love. If you put enough moments like that together, a life can be wonderful. It can be strong enough to withstand the negative waves that happen to us all.
The following picture started my idea of sharing some of my older blog posts.
I shared this image in our family group chat to show what our freezer looked like when the boys were growing up.
It is funny how time changes things… even Toaster Strudels. The mixed berry flavor used to have blue frosting. There were so many cool flavors.
Then there is a family joke that I have a poem or a blog post for everything… and the joke might be true! Here is the blog post about Toaster Strudels from 2009 as best as I can confirm.
“Small Things”
This morning I was preparing Toaster Strudels for my two boys. I decided to do some frosting art. I made a somewhat recognizable reindeer and a Christmas tree with blob ornaments. The boys loved it. The rest of the morning went smoothly and the house was filled with energy.
On my way to work, I watched people run yellow to red lights, got cut off, and saw the aftermath of a wreck.
What do these two moments have in common? The small things.
Life is the collection of small moments. Our level of fulfillment in life is in the way we handle all those small moments. Many big events are the result of us not handling the small things. Traffic is an example. That simple decision when we see the yellow light, speed up or prepare to stop? A small moment.
Just hand them their breakfast, or make them smile? A small moment.
2024 has been a hard year, for a number of reasons. Which I will not elaborate on because Christmas letters are not supposed to be sad and depressing. They are truthful, but should bring some happiness to the readers. So, I will just say 2024 has been a hard year, and leave it at that.
A Christmas letter has a number of purposes. The first is to highlight important events from the past year.
And I know everyone wants to know what my Spotify Wrapped entailed. Prince was my number one artist, again. But thanks to my youngest daughter, Taylor Swift landed in second place! Plus, she had three songs make my top 100 for the year.
My number one song of 2024 was actually a surprise. It is “Satellite” by Harry Styles.
I do like this song… just didn’t know I played it so much. The rest of my top 10 was not surprising.
I spent a lot of time on the road attending different author events (I blogged about some of those events, A Poet Travels 1550 Miles). Those events really kept my spirit filled.
So did producing The Creative Moment podcast with my son. We have recorded 8 seasons so far. And have no plans on stopping anytime soon.
One of the most bitter sweet aspects of life is family. As a dad it is amazing to see each of my children grow and build their lives, but it is also a reminder that time is moving forward. Change happens. New hardships appear, but so do new joys and experiences. Being a dad is enduring the most joyful heartbreak everyday.
I will not complete my reading challenge this year. I try to read 60 books each year. I am projected (got three books I’m reading right now) to finish at 47 books. But that’s OK, I have read some cool books this year. Here are five of my favorite (in no particular order):
1. Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
2. What Happens in Nebraska by Cat Dixon
3. Impossible Knots by K.P. DeLaney (a guest on The Creative Moment)
4. Denison Avenue by Christina Wong
5. Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby
And last a Christmas letter is meant to stay connected with family and friends, to share joy… and so I wish you a joyful holiday season!
And I’ll end this letter with my 100th song from my most played list:
My best friend and I have been sharing our top 100 favorite songs of all-time in countdown style since January 1st. We share one song each day with a quick insight on why the song was chosen. Usually we send the song info each morning. Today was no different. (Today was number 59, “A Different Corner” by George Michael for me. For my best friend it was Jane’s Addiction, “Summertime Rolls”)
I sent my text as I was waiting for the oven to preheat. The muffin pan was filled with the paper muffin cups. Coffee was about halfway done. A regular Sunday morning vibe. I smiled as I sent my song because I remembered the music video we made for my song. We filmed my reflection in a closet mirror as I sat backwards on a kitchen chair… where was TikTok when I was a teen?
Over the last month it has been a musical journey sharing my list with my best friend. Yes, many of the songs are connected to our friendship, but others are soundtracks to other times in our lives. My best friend has songs from obscure artists that he has seen in concert. I have songs that I sing along to with my daughters. It is fun to continue to learn more about my best friend. It has also been good to remember the better moments in my life.
Good moments like blueberry muffins on Sunday morning.
Last school year I poured a total of 19,536 ice cubes into water bottles every morning. It is part of our family routine. My wife and I get up about an hour before we wake the kids. I make lunches and fill water bottles with ice and water (if it is a reading camp day, then Gatorade or something like that).
As a dad I have poured 214,896 ice cubes into water bottles for my kids. This is a very conservative number because it does not include any sporting events, and is based on last year when I filled only three water bottles. There were years when I had four, even five water bottles to fill in the morning. (If you’re wondering, yes I counted the ice cubes on Monday as I poured them into a water bottle… whatever it takes for a blog post.)
Why am I writing about this?
Let me see if I can connect the dots. First, our lives are actually filled with small things that add up to some big numbers… I don’t think I can even calculate how many times I have heard a basketball hit a gym floor… Just this week we watched seven basketball games. And we have another game tonight. Add all the games my son’s played during their school days and the number is unbelievable.
How many pieces of toast have I eaten in my lifetime?
How many M&M’s or pieces of popcorn have you eaten in your lifetime?
How many brush strokes have you used to clean your teeth?
Crazy to think about. There are so many parts of our daily life that seem insignificant, yet add up.
We live about 2.5 billion seconds (based on average life expectancy).
Crazy to think about.
Our lives have important moments: state basketball games, first day of school, a wedding. But what we spend most of our time doing is living with small elements in this world that add up to determine the quality of our life.
Tomorrow morning I don’t have to pour about a hundred ice cubes into three water bottles. But I will, and I will do it again next week. Each week adds up to over 500 ice cubes.
Why? Because I want to spend a few seconds doing something that shows my children I love them.
I probably will have some popcorn tonight while watching one of my daughters play basketball. My ears will be filled with the dribbling of basketballs but my heart will beat with the joy of being a dad.
I’ll brush my teeth tonight, then kiss my wife goodnight. In those last moments before sleep, I will be happy with the way I spent 86,400 seconds.
For those who may be new to my blog. My word for the year is Moment. To enhance this year I decided to do a monthly challenge. Something I could do each day that month. Here has been my year so far.
January: Drawing
February: Write a letter / email
March: Photography
April: Poem a Day (Which I do every year anyway)
May: Yoga
June: Listen to a different artist each day. A full album or random play their catalog.
I have also been involved in a few other different challenges, like reading all the Curious George books with my youngest daughter. We are up to 57 books.
Also, my wife and I are doing a movie challenge for the 90s. The basic rule is to pick a movie from each year of the 90s to watch. We both get to choose one and we move through the decade. The only aspect I don’t like is that I don’t get to choose any horror movies, but I understand.
I decided to blog each day for the month of July. If I can’t think of something I will answer one of the questions WordPress provides as a prompt for bloggers. We have some travel planned and I am working on how to handle that.
It has been interesting challenging myself each month. Especially since there have been some rough moments this year. But the challenges help remind me of things I love (drawing) and help to create moments (photography).
So, I hope you will join me on this month’s journey. You can read about it each day…
My mom passed away at home as dad held her hand on June 9. Just four days from her 69th birthday. She battled cancer for five months, but we didn’t know it was cancer until April. My wife and I made a quick trip home in April. I wrote a tweet to share with my Twitter friends that my mom was sick and that my engagement on Twitter would be erratic.
Over the last few months I gave quick updates for my friends and colleagues of my mom’s journey.
My wife and I again headed home on June 3 because my mom was in the hospital. Again, I sent a quick update for those who know me. I also recorded my poetry lesson for Move Me Poetry on the way home. I was scheduled to provide the lesson for Tuesday. My mom was released on Sunday, things were looking good. So we headed home on Monday.
My dad texted me Friday morning (June 9) that she had passed. I called my brother, called my two sons, and broke down sharing the news with my four daughters that afternoon. Then I tweeted the news on Twitter.
Why am I sharing this? Because something powerful happened.
As I am writing this blog, that tweet has been seen 15,684 times. It has been retweeted, liked, and commented on thousands of times. What happened? Why did this simple tweet make its way to so many people and why did they care enough to interact with me? I have some thoughts…
First, and the most important thing, is that some aspects of life connect us on an important level. Grief, heartbreak, but also joy and love are emotions and moments we all share. The stories are different, but at some point we have to deal with the loss of someone important to us. We all grieve, yes in our own way because of the uniqueness of our stories, but we feel that loss.
Some of the interactions with my tweet were of the stories of people losing their mothers, some just as recent as mine and others were years ago but they still missed their mom.
I tried (and I think I did) to respond in some way to everyone that left a comment or an emoticon for me. There were some small but powerful conversations because of sharing the pain of the moment.
For a few days, I have connected with strangers because we shared a common moment, understood a powerful emotion. For others, they simply wanted me (a stranger to them) to know that they understood and cared.
That’s a powerful thing. I wonder what this world would be like if we could do this in the real world, on an everyday basis.
The second aspect isn’t about the tweet, but the stories, including mine and my family’s.
I mentioned that people did share their stories, as best they could in the space Twitter gives us. And life is not that simple, and neither is death.
As a dad I broke the news to my children. The three oldest took it the hardest because they have had their grandparents involved in their lives for over 19 years. Summer vacation, Thanksgiving trips, graduations and other big moments.
My youngest three have had their grandparents in their lives too, but that relationship has been different and less interactions. (We now spend Thanksgiving at our own home instead of traveling.) I realized that they all had their own story with their grandma.
My dad lost his wife. He held her hand as she passed, married over 40 years.
She was one person, who played so many parts in different life stories… her death is just as complex. As is our lives.
My wife has said a number of times that life never lets you handle just one thing. It doesn’t. As my mom’s health declined, my oldest daughter was graduating and we had college orientations. My youngest had art camp the week of my mom’s death. We moved our oldest son to his new town as he starts his first year teaching, then moved my wife’s parents into assisted living and then headed home to see my mom the first week of June.
Life will not allow us to handle just one thing at a time, it is a complex mix of joys and heartaches. Stress and good music. Eating on the road and tweeting to friends. But it is also, just sitting, holding the hand of your mother, trying to give her all the love you were going to share with her in the future.
At the end of the tweet, which is now at 15,753 views, I wrote that we should say “I Love You” more, laugh more, and that life is a gift.
I hope that message goes viral for everyone today, and each day they are given to experience this life.
Today the snow was perfect for making snowballs. After my walk I took on two of my daughters in a snowball fight. We used the piles of snow on each side of the driveway as our defense. I lost. In my defense, I didn’t have gloves, so I had to take breaks to warm my hands.
Afterwards we ate Dilly Bars. We stood among the shattered pieces of snowballs on the driveway, soaking in the sun and just talking.
In the midst of this crazy time we are living in, we enjoyed a Sunday afternoon. For those who are regular readers of this blog, you know my word for this year is “Moment”. This afternoon was a great moment. It was a moment of living, of fun, of family.
I don’t know if it is because of my word, or just me getting older, but I notice that what too many people call living is just enduring life, or simply being entertained by a screen. Even in the simplest moments, there is a depth of joy to be experienced that you can’t get from a screen.
The snow is perfect for a snowball fight today. And Dilly Bars can be held with frozen fingers.
That means we had blueberry muffins for breakfast today. We also had scrambled eggs and sausage patties. An addition we added years ago, but the tradition’s foundation hasn’t changed. And that is important as thousands of New Year’s resolutions are being made today, and thousands of them will be broken during the year.
On Tuesday, the next episode of The Creative Moment will be published. We talked about goals and resolutions. As we talked I had a thought that I shared during our conversation. That we are OK letting ourselves down. We will work harder at not letting others down than we do with our own personal goals. That is crazy to think about, yet thousands of resolutions will not last even the first month of this year.
Later tonight we will be setting our word for the year. This will be the ninth year of this tradition. This year we are using small canvases to create an artistic expression of the word. We also have a small easel to hold the artwork. My word this year is Moment. The idea is based on being fully in the moment this year. Not to be on my phone, not to be worried about things until I need to be, to feel the ups and downs of every day.
The base of the idea does come from one of my favorite books, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and I have blogged about some of the ideas expressed in the book before (“I took out the trash today”). Maybe it is the fact that I feel time is running faster, but I want to be fully in the moments of my life, not to let myself down in 2023. That’s not a tradition I want to set…
It is all Connected 