The Wedding, the demolition, and the tornado – the hilarious Wyatt Chirstmas letter of 2019

            Welcome, Traveler. I see you have found yourself here again, on the threshold of the annual Wyatt Christmas letter. Some of you have been reading about our escapades for over 20 years. You’d think you would know better by now. For those few that might be visiting this strange aberrance of the written word for the first time, you have an excuse. But for the rest of you…What?…Rebekah says that just saying thanks for reading is enough, but you know me, always going the extra mile.

Headlines from our year would look like this: Kwinn Wyatt marries Calista Holmes in June wedding, Kent struggles with completion of second novel, Rebekah plans to publish a book, God turns tornado into blessing.

That’s wrong right. Kwinn and Calista tied the not knot. In June we traveled back to Pratt, Kansas and Kwinn and Calista had a lovely deception wedding…Okay, that does it. I can’t stand it anymore. The guilt is too much. I have to confess whether Rebekah is going to come clean or not. I didn’t want to have to tell Kwinn and Calista this way, but they might not really be married. There was a problem with a key part of the ceremony. I know it looked real with the preacher, the marriage license, the music and flowers and all the witnesses and everything but not all was as it appeared. The wedding cake was a fake. There I’ve said it. Please don’t hold it against Rebekah. It was a lot of stress and everything and it was such a big cake and all. Who could blame her for slipping in a little Styrofoam layer…or two…all right, I admit it. It was all fake except for the top layer that they cut. I’m sorry, sorry, so sorry. I know we’ll have to do the whole thing over now. Can you ever find it in your hearts to…Hold on Rebekah is yelling something…What do you mean, that’s the way they do it now? Well how are you supposed to eat a Syrofoam?…When you say, ‘It’s not about the flavor; it’s about the beauty’ do you mean to tell me that they make cakes they don’t intend to eat? What’s this world coming to. Well, at least I feel a lot better now. But boy are the loving couple going to be surprised when they bite into that piece we froze for their first anniversary.

With all the wedding preparations and subterfuge… “What?…Oh, yeah. It’s not subterfuge. If you say so, but when a person makes a Styrofoam cake and pawns it off as a real wedding…Ouch. Hey! No fair throwing frozen cake. That felt pretty real. Okay, Okay.” Anyway, I have to admit that all this has put me way behind on finishing my second novel. Once again, I am riddled with guilt. My publisher is waiting. My editors are waiting. My readers are waiting. Everyone is waiting except… “Rebekah, what do you mean you’re publishing a book? You’ve got to be my editor, like always…Well no, I’m not finished but you always wait for me and…you’ve never published a book before. You do the research and editing and I…No. It’s okay. I’ll be all right. You go ahead and publish your book and I’ll just be over here in the corner…writing.” Sniff…What?…The story about the tornado…right…I’ll try.” Sniff

Tornados have breezed through our lives a few times in the past. Since one destroyed a town 30 minutes away from us when we lived in Kansas, we always keep a weather radio in the house. When a storm approaches, the loud alarm goes off and a computerized voice begins announcing the advancing doom…As loud as the cries of a failed writer whose wife eclipses…No, I’m okay…I can tell it.” So anyway, the thing you don’t want to hear the computerized voice say is “take cover immediately.” Is he talking to us or the storm? What cover, our roof? And where will it take it? You know that guy that left his heart in San Francisco? Well, I have shingles in Kansas City. I’m starting a new smart phone app called “GoCollectMe.” It’s easy. You use your phone’s camera to photo each item in your home and the app logs it. After the storm, people along the path can photo the debris in their yard and the app will match the items. “Dude, I’m in Chicago and I got your collection of rare unused stamps.”

“Great. I’ll send you a postage paid box and you can send it back to me…Oh, okay.” What a nice guy. He said don’t worry about the postage because he had plenty of stamps.

            The tornado that hit our neighborhood on Oct 21 was a real benefit. It added attractions to our property. We could charge admission. We have the twisted tree of Englewood Street, the tipping treehouse of Jewell St. alley, and the leaning RV port of Pizza – named after the rain-soaked pizza boxes plastered to the side of it.

            Since we moved here, Rebekah has been after that RV port. As you know, my bride can be rather fussy about some of the most endearing features of our landscape. In Colorado, it was the pond I dug that she referred to as “that mud puddle.” In Oregon, it was the play fort that Kwinn and I build out of old gray pallets and baling wire. In Washington, it was the barn that she claimed was falling down the hillside…What?…Well, yes it did fall down the hillside but that could have been a coincidence. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that right now, any more than I want to talk about my wife abandoning me and running off to publish…Where was I?… Oh, right…I’m discussing the perfectly sound RV port on the east side of our house that made a great place to get our vehicles out of the weather – at least part of our vehicles. It was a little short on the sides but if you rotated which half of the car you left sticking out it averaged out to protecting the entire vehicle for half the year. That’s better odds than you get with a lottery ticket and people buy those all the time. Maybe the sun had faded the weathered side panels so you couldn’t tell what color they used to be, and the curling black shingles did resemble the crust of a smoldering volcano. But that didn’t mean the structure wasn’t sound…Until the tornado.

I think Rebekah conspired with that weather channel. (You think you can trust someone and then they go off and pub…Sigh) Everyone knows that those weather channel people generate storms, so they can have something to broadcast continuously. Rebekah must have called them and ordered a tornado just to lean my RV port over. That’s why she was so quick to come to the hospital to ride out the storm.) She has some story about watching the forecast, like I’m going to believe that.) Then she paid off the insurance adjuster to say it was dangerous and needed to be repaired before it fell on the neighbor’s house. The contractor that came and said he wouldn’t even chance repairing it because he didn’t need money that badly must be in on it too. It’s just all too convenient.

So, with a heavy heart I prepared to tear down a piece of history that had been a fixture in the area for as long as…well, since those black curling shingles were new, that’s how long.

It was bad enough that Rebekah had orchestrated the demise of such a grand structure but then she had the nerve to question my demolition tactics. Tying a tow strap and a log chain to the side and pulling it over with a pickup is a time-honored method steeped in male heritage. The fact that my pickup could only pull it back to an upright position before the tires started spinning just goes to show how strong the RV port really was. I was ready to pound a stake in the roof of the house, tie it off with some baling wire and we could go back to parking under it.

I want you to know that I was not swayed by Rebekah’s threats that the insurance would not cover us if the thing came down and flattened the house next door. It was only out of respect for my beloved (even if she did abandon me for her own book) that I continued with the next exciting phase of deconstruction. It involved getting on my hands and knees with an angle grinder under the towering edifice that was held up only by the bolts in the cement. Then I would cut half the bolts. Rebekah, who doesn’t understand the intricate details of many of my well-engineered plans, was screaming something about getting out from under there before I killed myself, but it’s hard to hear over a running angle grinder. After I had cut one side of the bolts, though, she apparently had come to see the wisdom of my strategy because she had started filming it. She got confused and said it was for the life insurance, but I am sure she meant that she wanted to show the home insurance adjuster just how wrong he had been because she said it was the only way anyone was going to believe it.

When I climbed into my Ford F150 and brought the whole thing crashing down onto our driveway, all the neighbors were outside pointing and shaking their heads. They just couldn’t believe my success. I felt quite vindicated at their admiration. I have to hand it to Rebekah. She didn’t hold a grudge about me being right all along and was telling all the onlookers that she didn’t know me, so as not to steal any of the credit for herself.

Uh, oh. Here she comes. She doesn’t look happy. I don’t see anything in her hands she can hit me with. “Hey…what’s the hug for. You were worried about me?…scared I was going to kill myself and you didn’t want to live without me? Are you really going to publish…What?…Not without me? You need my help? You mean we’re still a team? I’ll be right back. I’m going to unhitch my pickup and we can get started. I have some great ideas on how to make your book even better. “Ouch! You had that cake behind your back.” She must really love me.

            Speaking of someone that really loves you, God loved you so much that he didn’t want you to be lost forever. We are all guilty of sins worse than fake cake, but Jesus came to earth to take care of that problem for us. That is the reason for the celebration this time of year. Don’t let all the other things that have been added in drown out what is most important about Christmas. If you have been turning your back on God’s offer, don’t let another season go by. It is time to confess and start fresh. Maybe your heart is cold and hard like frozen cake or your life could be full of layers of fake frosted styrofoam instead of the real deal. Either way, Jesus Christ can change that right now. All you have to do is commit your life to him. If there is something you have against him or something that is keeping you from believing in him, I want to tell you right now it’s a lie. Don’t keep on believing it. Don’t make him hit you in the head with a piece of frozen confection or send a tornado to get your attention. He wants to work with you, to collaborate on writing the rest of your story. He wants to make it great. It’s time to get ready for the biggest wedding feast of all. I’m sure they’ll be serving real cake. Angel food, maybe.

And now for a personal message from Rebekah.

Dear Loved One,

            I love to write in each card every year, but I have been trying to create artwork for the book I am working on self-publishing, so my hand aches more than in years gone by. Hope you don’t mind.

            In August, I felt God led me to revisit compiling books. I compiled my first one 20 years ago and, after two or three, I set them aside. I am not a writer, but I do love to compile scriptures on subjects. I plan to publish books that are Bible Study/Journal/Coloring Book combinations. I am working on the artwork for the first one which contains a collection of scriptures pertaining to women. Since I am using the King James version, it must contain original artwork to qualify as an original work. Each book will include a free electronic edition with links to other versions of the scriptures and study resources. So that is my news. I hope you and your families are having a great season of remembering and rejoicing about our Savior.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The Wyatts