Krampus Cards and the Drive to Knoxville

December 17, 2015

My last day of teaching was the 16th and on the 17th I drove straight through to Knoxville to get Jojo. No stops except for gas. Just hours of highway and the feeling of the semester falling off me mile by mile.

It was wonderful to reunite. We spent Friday there doing errands and making our silkscreens for our Krampus card. This was our thing — every year we made our own Christmas card, and every year it was Krampus, not Santa. We designed it together, carved the screens, pulled the prints by hand. The kind of project that justifies the relationship to anyone watching. Two people bent over a table covered in ink, arguing about registration marks, laughing when the print comes out wrong, pulling another one. The cards were always a little unhinged. That was the point.

On Saturday we drove back and got to Algoma that night. We spent a couple days there and drove to Green Bay to print more cards. Sunday the 20th the kids came over to Caffe Tlazo for breakfast and then back to the house where they helped me decorate the Star Wars Christmas tree. They also helped me move furniture and get the place ready for the holidays. It was really nice to have them over — the four of us in the house together, Jojo and the kids, the tree going up, music on, the whole place starting to feel like something.

That was the opening of two weeks where I wanted to do everything. Every family event. Every holiday gathering. Every year I seemed to miss something, and this year I decided I wouldn’t.