Mondays with Mike: 40 handmade, homemade years

Beth models her gifts–bracelets made by her 9-year-old great niece.

Forty years ago this coming Sunday, December 24, Beth and I got in my junky Pontiac Ventura and headed north from Beth’s house on California Street in Urbana, to Beth’s mother Flo’s house on Colfax in Elmhurst, Illinois—a suburb west of Chicago.

Phew, if I only known what was coming. To start, the temperature (not wind chill mind you) reached minus 20 Fahrenheit that night. (The wind chill reached well below -60 overnight.) The advertising slogan for my Pontiac when it was new was, “It’s a prestige car. It’s an economy car.” Kind of like that Saturday Night Live skit that touted a fake product as “A desert topping…no, it’s a floor wax!,” my Pontiac was neither economical nor prestigious.

But it did start. What it didn’t do was warm up. The temperature gauge wouldn’t budge and, even set to its warmest setting, the heater fan blew cold air. Enter a big piece of cardboard and a bungee cord, and I blocked the radiator from the cold air so the engine reached proper operating temperature, and Beth and I remained reasonably comfortable.

Out of towners could skip treacherous drives and teleport in.

The wind was howling and visibility was bad but we motored on. When I stopped for gas it was like an arctic landscape and it felt like an act of survival to just get out, get the pump started, and fill the tank. I imagined being found next to the pump with icicles hanging off my beard, the way they find unlucky Mt. Everest climbers.

We made it that night. As did Beth’s sisters and their families from points around the United States. It was my first full blown introduction to the full complement of the Finke family, which I came to call Finke Nation. I grew up with one sister, so Beth’s mom’s living room looked like Beijing, China that night. Beth and I slept under the dining room table. Snoozing kids were strewn across the living room carpet.

The next day I participated in my first homemade Christmas. Beth’s family, being as prodigious as it was (and is), concluded that gift giving would bankrupt everyone and decided to do a drawing. Whoever’s name you draw, you make a gift for. (This being Chicago, there have been known to be shenanigans around these drawings.)

Back then, the soft rule was that it couldn’t cost more than $5. But whatever, the main thing was you had to make it.

I don’t remember much clearly about that day. I recall being drafted into being Santa. Other than that, children skittered everywhere and, well, it was all a little overwhelming.

Yesterday, I attended my 40^th homemade Christmas. It was hosted by Beth’s nephew and his wife Julie. Ben was maybe 13 back at my first one in 1983. He and Julie have four kids. And a lot of those skittering kids from Flo’s living room have kids of their own.

There’s always plenty to eat.

This year’s event was well-attended, and it included Zoomers from Florida and Minnesota and a hospital room in Kentucky (not to worry, patient is unbreakable). I mean, you can only drive through blizzards so many times in a lifetime, and Zoom worked fine.

What I didn’t know back in year one of homemade Christmas about Beth’s and my future was as massive and dense as a black hole. For everything that’s happened, this homemade tradition—one that I’ve groused about (and I think everyone else has, too) at times—has been a lovely constant.

Thank you Finke Nation.