Christmas 2022

Dear Family & Friends,

(Sung to the tune of Mele Kalikimaka)

Meke Klikimaka is the thing to say when you power goes out today.

That’s the island greeting that we send to you as a storm blows through the bay!

Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright

If they get the power on sometime tonight!

Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii’s way to say “Good luck, Haole!” to you!

As this was being written, a powerful tropical storm was blowing out the power on Kona, where Joe and Nancy were spending a relaxing few days before Christmas. Every restaurant and most stores closed and were as dark as Nancy’s thoughts when Joe doesn’t put his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper. But there are a lot of things you can still get in Kona when the power is out, and since pregnant wasn’t one of them, Nancy and Joe enjoyed sake and Asahi beer in their condo, in the dark, in bed, the waves crashing below them in rhythm to their…. snoring.

The Franklins took other trips this year. In March, Joe, Nancy and Taylor threw caution to the wind, like a lacy French thong thrown from the bedroom of a pied à terre and onto the streets of the 9^th arrondissement, and fled to Europe. Nancy and Taylor stormed the counters at Harrod’s in London, bivouacked at the Bon Marché in Paris, and scared a couple of Irishmen off some bar stools at the Jameson distillery in Dublin.

Masks were off everywhere, just like the tops of the Moulin Rouge dancers, which explains how the Franklins all ended up with COVID (Because MASKS were off, perverts! Not the Franklin’s shirts! No one wants to see that!). Now many of you might not remember that at one time you needed to have a negative COVID test 24 hours prior to re-entering the United States. Of course many of you also might not remember to put on pants before you go outside. In any case, not to say that Joe is a COVID denier, but the man had to take three separate tests before he believed the results. Taylor and Nancy only needed one before they can-canned back to their hotel room with a box of Fortnum & Mason shortbread cookies, a couple of pints of Guinness and the remote control.

Five days and several hundred dollars in room service charges later, with medical clearance papers harder to come by than Lisbon letters of transit (Here’s looking up your nose, kid!), the Franklins were winging their way back home.

Taylor switched jobs this year. After four years as the front desk dominatrix at the Westdrift in Manhattan Beach, she is now the Senior Rooms Operations Manager for the Overlook Hote…er…Westin LAX. She controls where you sleep, when you sleep and how you sleep. She knows which rooms have a lingering ganja smell, the haunted rooms, the room with the screaming toddler next door, and the you-don’t-want-to-know-what-went-on-in-there room. Mess with her and you’ll be sleeping in one of those rooms. Or with the fishes. She has her own office, which she is decorating in a déshabille style, much like her bedroom which Joe and Nancy can only imagine since they’ve NEVER BEEN INVITED TO TAYLOR’S APARTMENT FOR COCKTAILS OR DINNER.

Jimmy, the ‘clown prince’ of the Franklin clan, and his wife, Christie, continue to provide entertainment for the Franklin family. When visiting North Carolina, nothing brings such pride to Joe and Nancy as watching the male heir to the Franklin throne willingly kicking back on a riding lawn mower, mowing the 1.3 acres around his N.C. home, nattily attired in a wife-beater t-shirt, drinking a beer. It’s enough to bring a tear to a parent’s eye. Seriously. Particularly since, as a teenager, he whined about having to take the garbage out. Back then you’d have thought Nancy and Joe had asked him to take his sister to the prom.

The ’grandgirls’ have become quite the little smartasses at ages 8 and 6. Liam, 3, has turned into a little Houdini. In a repeat performance of last year, Liam locked everyone out of one of the connecting hotel rooms, this time using the inside security locks! Come one, come all! See the hotel staff astonished at how one toddler can outwit two senior citizens (which is not all that hard to do, apparently)! Watch the hotel staff talk to each other in consternation about how Liam the Incredible was able to pull this off and who the hell would send their kids off with these obviously incompetent grandparents. And, finally, how the hell are they going to get inside? See the Franklins humbly apologizing to the hotel staff not only for that, but for the condition of the room once they were able to get back inside.

For his second trick, Liam made himself disappear at the Ft. Fisher Aquarium. Joe saw him; Then he didn’t. This was a great way for his grandparents to get their steps in while frantically searching the entire aquarium with the two older ‘grandgirls’ saying things like “I get to tell Mom and Dad!” followed by “It’s my turn! You got to tell them how they left him in the arcade!” It’s great to know that, after Liam was found, safe, in the gift shop, and all were bribed with copious amounts of ice cream and cotton candy, they will rat you out before they even get in their front door.

Joe and Nancy did take other trips. To the Stampede in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for example. Nancy likes cowboys; Got a problem with that? While there, Joe also insisted they take a bike ride up to Lake Louise. Only 5 kilometers. On an electric bike. Easy, Nancy thought. Nancy wasn’t thinking. Joe didn’t tell her it was 5 kilometers at a 7% grade. He also didn’t tell her that the bike had about as much electric power as a 40W light bulb. It was the rental clerk who told them about the bears, smiling, as he handed them the bear spray. Which Nancy kept because she knew Joe would pretty much leave Nancy as the charcuterie tray for any bear that happened by.

Which brings us back to Kona where, the day after arriving, Joe announced that he was having trouble with his ‘bowels.’ At least that’s what Nancy heard and immediately panicked because between Mauna Loa and Kilauea, Kona didn’t need another eruption. Joe finally clarified that he said ‘vowels’ and asked Nancy to stop pronouncing all the Hawaiian names, like Kealakekua , Wau’watalei, or Hakaloogie, and just shout out “left here at the Cheeseburger in Paradise café” or “right at the next coconut stand” when navigating.

And so it goes with the Franklins. They give thanks for the beauty of nature, cowboys who tip their hats to ladies (sometimes, by mistake, to Nancy), our health, grandkids, the power of love, and the warmth of family and friends like you. May you have health and good fortune in 2023!

Joe & Nancy Franklin