On the agony of being an Eagles fan, the ecstasy of snow days, and the meaning of Hanukkah (vol. xxviii, no. 1)

Dear Family,

I suppose I’m not in a position to claim that Peter Cannon Willis’s missionary farewell address was the finest one ever given. But it was quite possibly the best I’ve ever heard. And I’ve listened to some pretty great ones, including two by daughters of mine that were considerably better than most. (Admittedly, great discourses are hard to objectively rank, and it’s also possible that Peter’s talk was just something I personally needed to hear this month.)

Before Peter (my nephew), I had never heard a departing missionary (or any sacrament meeting speaker, for that matter) open his remarks with: “I’m a few weeks late with this topic [it was January 14th] but I’d like to share some thoughts with you about the true meaning … of Hanukkah.”

I (Tim) am probably about average when it comes to a non-Jew’s understanding of Hanukkah. I know it commemorates a miracle. One night’s worth of menorah oil somehow lasted eight. I know the Maccabees were involved, though I’m a little unclear on who the Maccabees were. I’m not sure how the dreidels and latkes fit in exactly. Most of what I know is from the Adam Sandler song.

So I wasn’t going in with much, but Peter helpfully explained that after the Jews in Judea had finally expelled the invading Greeks, ending two centuries of occupation, their first priority was to rededicate the temple, which the Greeks had defiled. In Peter’s telling, this defilement included bringing swine into the Holy of Holies, slaughtering them on the Ark of the Covenant, and consecrating the temple to Zeus.

Just enough gory imagery to command everyone’s attention. Even the most determined Candy Crushers looked up from their phones (probably). An oratorical masterstroke.

So the temple had to be cleansed and rededicated. The dedicatory process required lighting the temple’s menorah, but only one night’s worth of menorah oil was available, and yada yada yada, everyone knows the rest of the story.

But the story raises a practical question: If it was going to take eight days to collect the requisite amount of oil, why didn’t they just wait eight days to light it. They’d been waiting for 200 years — why not wait eight more days? (I imagine Jews have asked and answered this question a hundred million times in the past two millennia, but it’s new to me.)

The story resonated with Peter because, not unlike his favorite uncle, it would seem that he’s a bit of a procrastinator. And he spun the menorah lighters’ example into a sermon about, among other things, the wisdom of not waiting to have all of our ducks perfectly in a row (or for some particular calendar event) to start doing a new good thing. If we start today with what we have, then God will meet us where we are and things will work out.

(At least that’s what I took away from it. I don’t remember what Peter actually said, but I’m sure he put it more eloquently than that. John Dyer, with whom I spoke briefly after the service, characterized the talk as “apostle-level” oratory.)

Usually, the setting apart of a missionary is not strictly a family affair. But it was in Peter’s case, as Peter’s father (the stake president) was joined in the circle by one of Peter’s grandfathers and three of his uncles. Grant pronounced a moving and insightful blessing. Peter, who has faced more health challenges in his 19 years than I hope to face in my lifetime, is certainly in a better position than most (better than me, anyway) to confront the struggles and rigors of full-time missionary work. The Washington Everett Mission has no idea what a gem they’re about to get.

Wet January

I am informed by the internet (and literally nowhere else) that there exists a cultural phenomenon known as “Dry January,” in which people choose to abstain from alcohol during the first month of the year.

Most of my family and many of my closest friends observe Dry January, but we don’t think much of it because we also observe Dry February, Dry March, and Dry all the other months. I don’t think I know any drinkers who actually observe Dry January. Like a lot of things, they appear to exist only on the internet.

If you happen to be a drinker who observes Dry January, I’d love to learn why you do it. The practice makes no logical sense to me. If going dry is good thing, then why limit it to January? If it’s not a good thing, then why do it at all? I suppose you’re marginally less likely to flatten me with your car that month. But apart from that, it’s like deciding you’re going to exercise every day, but only in January. There’s no lasting health benefit to that. Why go to the trouble?

Which is why I doubt anybody actually does it.

The only reason I’m thinking about this is because this January, in reality, has been anything but dry. I can’t remember the last time I rode my bike without having to dodge puddles.

After two years with no measurable snowfall, the D.C. area had two significant (significant for us) winter events in a single week this month. Combined, the two storms probably didn’t drop more than 6 to 8 inches. But that’s enough to create quite a bit of chaos around here. Between the weather and the holiday, the kids only had to go to school once during Martin Luther King week.

Since we’re all out of children, you might think school closures would be a non-event for us. But Crystal’s a teacher now. It never occurred to me as a child to think that my teachers might be just as excited about school closures as I was. But I would have been wrong to think that. Assuming they’re all like Crystal, it turns out the teachers get even more excited about it.

The same is not true of Ari, for whom snow days complicate their job as a before-and-after-school childcare provider and often result in a longer-than-average workday. But I’ll let Ari tell you about that in their letter. That letter might also elaborate on how Ari has also started taking the bus down to Shepherd’s Table, an organization that provides meals and other services to people in need, to volunteer between shifts. By their own admission, Ari is a pretty weird kid, but their heart is in the right place.

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The evening of MLK Day was no time to be on the roads. The snow was coming down at an inch per hour at times. The plows were struggling to keep up with it on the main roads, and the neighborhood streets had not been touched. But I couldn’t bear to watch what I knew would be the Eagles’ miserable season finale all by myself, and so I slowly drove up to Grant’s house to watch our team circle the drain one last time in the company of my beloved brothers. What is usually a 20-minute drive took 40 minutes because the roads, while mostly empty, were treacherous, and like a lot of other people around here, I suck at driving in the snow. (Unlike a lot of people around here, I at least am aware of the fact that I suck at driving in the snow.)

The Eagles were already down a touchdown to the Buccaneers (the Buccaneers!) by the time I arrived. There was little doubt in Grant’s, Andrew’s or my mind that this game wasn’t going to end well, and we were right. In my nearly half-century of irrationally caring about the outcome of football games, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a team implode the way the Eagles did this season. It’s certainly never happened to any team I’ve actually cared about. After winning 10 of 11 games to start the season, they closed it out by dropping 5 of their last 6 and then getting blown out in the first round of the playoffs by a joke team from a garbage division that the Eagles had defeated decisively early in the season.

It was all rather demoralizing. But somehow, experiencing it with my brothers made everything all right.

Mrs. Willis

Even though she exults at the prospect of snow days, and even though the short winter days and being relegated to an interior classroom with no natural light makes her bouts with seasonal affective disorder that much worse, I think Crystal still enjoys her teaching job and is fond of her students, all of whom are on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. I get the sense they like her, too. I haven’t met any of them and have no idea what any of them look like, but I feel like I know some of them, which is why I was so happy when one of them (the only girl in the class, I believe) made me a birthday card today.

The final semester (hopefully) of Crystal’s masters program finally got underway this month. She has found a modicum of fulfillment in it, but at this point I think she mostly just wants it to be over. Fortunately, all she has left is one not especially demanding class and her “internship” review. Since her “internship” is also her job, it is not an especially heavy lift.

The most annoying part has been the ordeal of convincing Johns Hopkins University that she has, in fact, completed all of the necessary prerequisite coursework for her degree program. It would probably be less complicated if she hadn’t completed it nearly 30 years ago while she was a BYU undergrad.

Crystal’s bachelor’s degree is in philosophy,¹ her love of which has a lot to do with why our third child is named Sophia. But even in her idealistic younger days, Crystal recognized that her undergraduate degree in philosophy was not exactly the parchment key to the job market that some other credentials are. And so, aided by a scholarship (sponsored, if I recall correctly, by the philosophy department), Crystal undertook a fifth-year undergraduate program to earn an elementary education teaching certificate.

She didn’t know it then, but this fifth-year program enabled Crystal to complete all the necessary prerequisites for her current master’s program. Or so she thought. Trouble is, some of those courses don’t really exist anymore (or are called something different now), and demonstrating that the courses she took 30 years ago at BYU are equivalent to courses that satisfy JHU’s requirements today has contributed to considerable consternation (and much justified swearing) on Crystal’s part. It would be easier if certain people at Hopkins were capable of/willing to read emails, but sometimes that’s too much to ask.

Anyway, it should all be over soon. I look forward to her having more time to swim and lift weights with me.

Sophie & Grace…

…both went back to school this month — Sophie to Provo, Grace to Buena Vista. Both girls are doing well. Grace was recently installed as her ward’s organist, which means she and I have the same church job². She finds if more overwhelming than I do, but I expect she’ll grow into it.

Grace continues to thoroughly enjoy the life of a music major. Based on her performance in theory class, Grace’s professor recently surmised that she must have taken AP Music Theory in high school and inquired into her familiarity with figured bass notation, roman numeral analysis/harmonic function, and writing in four-part counterpoint.

She did not take AP Music Theory in high school (I did not even know there was such a thing) but it’s reassuring to know that we raised her right.

I hope Sophie is okay with my telling you that she has a new boyfriend, Luke W.³ (I’m abbreviating it both in a rare nod to someone’ else’s’s privacy and because I’m not sure how to spell it. But the second letter is ‘o’ and, never one to think too far ahead, I have already helpfully pointed out to Sophie that if she takes this boy’s last name, she will have somehow managed to move down the alphabet — quite an accomplishment for a Willis.) I haven’t been telling a lot of people, but the news has gotten around just fine without my help. My mother had already gotten it from Luke’s mother (the two of them work the same Thursday temple shift). Luke is a charter member of Sophie’s campus Maryland Club I’m not sure whether they have official university recognition yet, but Sophie’s been working on that. Sophie is also Luke’s piano teacher and they have summited Mount Timpanogos together (though that was before they officially started dating). All these seem like good signs to me. I hope Luke doesn’t mind having his business all out on the internet like this. Because if this thing goes anywhere (and maybe even if it doesn’t), he will.

If Sophie wants to rebut any of this, she can do it in her own letter.

Love,
Tim

1. I never tire of pointing out that Crystal found great joy in her study at BYU of “the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.”
2. Organist is actually one of my four current church jobs, all of which I enjoy. More on that some other time.
3. Sophie also has a cousin named Luke W. This is somebody different. SOPHIE IS NOT DATING HER COUSIN!