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Best Thomas in the world

On December 31, 2021

What you say, and how you say it, and why it’s everything to me.

Dear Thomas:

When I sat down to write this triennial letter to you, I closed my eyes to think of all things Thomas, and one thing quickly sprang to mind: your voice.

Your voice, I’ve decided, comes from the Williams side of the family. Much like your Mom and your Poppy, yours is a voice that rarely struggles to be heard. It booms, even if it comes from your young frame; it cuts clear above the rest of the family’s chatter. From time to time, we will remind you to use an inside voice, but it doesn’t matter. Your volume switch bottoms out somewhere around “indoor voice, but as if one is in a crowded arena.”

How you use your voice to speak, and what it sounds like, are the products of hard work. As we marked your ninth birthday, we were mostly convinced that soon you would need surgery to correct what we had found was a physical gap in your throat that caused you to have a slight speech impediment.

Reporting live from the edge of 2021

By James D. Hogan

On December 31, 2021

In diary

Shouldn’t it be enough that I bothered making a list of resolutions to begin with?

For the last several years, I’ve been taking stock of how well I kept my New Year’s Resolutions–a typewritten list stuck to the fridge with a magnet that in the last couple years haunts me more than anything.

2020’s list became laughably out of sorts as soon as we dove headfirst into the cesspool that became the pandemic. Lesson learned. I created 2021’s list with global disruption in mind–but I somehow failed to account for the personal disruptions that would come along this year.

Which is to say, another year gone, another list of resolutions left unresolved. At some point it might be worth pondering why I do this and whether I should keep doing it. And conveniently, I’ve already packed my typewriter. Makes it easier to avoid having a neat little list ready to go tomorrow morning.

Even so, there’s something worthy about having goals, even if you don’t meet them all. We all need something to aim for, and even if we don’t cross the threshold of accomplishment, we’ve at least moved forward.

I dialed back my typical list of 10 resolutions and came up with seven. Here’s my report from the last day of the year.

Waiting for Grief

By James D. Hogan

On December 13, 2021

In writing

I find myself staring at a bag of dog food.

We buy it in thirty pound sacks, this median-grade kibble, a nutritional blend made especially for senior pups. It’s cheaper to buy on Amazon, and following some unknown interval, the hockey puck wizard device in the kitchen will light up, and I will ask it what’s wrong, and it will reply nothing, nothing serious–just maybe it’s time that you bought another thirty-pound bag of dog food? Shouldn’t we do that?

And more often than not I agree, and soon the gray, boxy van stops in front of the house, and someone schleps a thirty-pound box to our front porch. I break down the boxes and slide them under the Wagoneer to catch little drips of oil.

The most recent bag sits in the basement about two-thirds full. Around the corner, draped across two memory foam dog beds, our oldest pooch, Taylor, quietly naps, her breath slow and measured, the kind that comes with precious, deep sleep. There are pregnant pauses between exhale and inhale.

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