Our 2018 in Review
This has been a crazy year. Here at Pistachio House, we had designated 2018 as the “Year of Hygge“. This was going to be the year that we concentrated on coziness. Pistachio House would be finally made into the cozy home we imagined.
There would be coffee cake, walks, and new furnishings.
It started out strongly enough, and it certainly ended with a flourish, but the vast middle of the year was unlike anything we could have imagined.
This is my review of the year. Your mileage may vary. Think of this as the Christmas letter I never remember to write.
January
Hygge! Plenty of boardgames this month, including an all-day session of Star Wars Rebellion with a buddy the very first week of the year. Francine made coffee cakes, and we installed candles in most every room of the house.
I caught a flu in the middle of the month, which laid me out for more than a week and at one point confined me to the house for four days. As I recovered, I served at the Mass for the dedication of the new altar at Visitation Church.
Our tenth wedding anniversary was this month. We had originally planned to spend a couple of weeks in Portugal, perhaps taking day trips to Morocco and Spain. Sadly, it was not to be, as I had by this point been unemployed since the previous autumn.
Here we are, having lunch at a local brewpub. Not exactly as planned.
Tenth Wedding Anniversary, January 2018
February
Crêpes for Candlemas, huzzah!
Ash Wednesday came mighty early this year: February 14. Candlemas was barely over and suddenly, Lent!
Candlemas 2018, view from the choir loft
Our Altar Society sponsored soup suppers before Stations of the Cross every Friday in Lent. Francine was instrumental in making these happen. I had to lead the Stations at one point, which was totally nerve-wracking. And of course, we chanted vespers every Sunday evening.
Violet de Pistachio, the hen who laid our first egg back on Ash Wednesday of 2012, died peacefully in her sleep. It snowed, the only snowfall of the year.
March
Just home after Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Normally, I take Holy Week off of work to prepare and to celebrate, but this year I wasn’t employed anyway.
There was a lot to plan, and I always come out on the other side exhausted. Joyful, but exhausted. In fact, our previous Caminos had always started with a flight on Easter Sunday. This month, I also tentatively announced a Spring 2020 Camino being planned.
Easter! Huzzah!
April
The Easter Season, which runs for fifty days following Easter Sunday, is supposed to be the most joyous of the year. In the past, I’ve called it “fifty days of Sundays“.
This year was different.
On Tuesday, April 10, Rev. Michael Wagner, Priest Administrator of Visitation and Holy Rosary Parishes in Tacoma collapsed during the celebration of the holy Mass. He was admitted to hospital with an irreversible brain hemorrhage.
Our parishes immediately began doing nightly prayer vigils for his recovery. The parish Facebook posts went viral, eliciting hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of comments and questions. I help manage our parish web presence, and Francine and I and a small corps of folks came to the aid of our parish secretary, Laurie, to try to keep on top of everything.
In the midst of this turmoil, I started a new job contracting for GitHub, thanks to the persistence of my former boss, now running his own infosec consulting company, Smooth Sailing Solutions. I gave a talk on the Sacred Liturgy at the nearby parish of Our Lady, Queen of Heaven. Appliance after appliance failed at Pistachio House, including now the washer/dryer. And then even the toaster caught fire.
Meanwhile, we prayed, we visited Father in hospital, and we fielded questions from parishioners, the media, and concerned people all over the world. Masses were prayed for Father as far afield as Australia, South Africa, and of course Father’s native Poland.
And night after night the prayer vigils continued.
May
The Reverend Michael Wagner passed to God in the early morning hours of May 2, 2018.
We sang Vespers for the Office of the Dead that night, led by our former pastor, Rev. Nicholas Wichert. Rev. Caleb Insco, FSSP at the nearby parish of Saint Joseph celebrated a truly moving Requiem Mass.
Archbishop Sartain celebrated the funeral at Holy Rosary, joined by his two auxiliary bishops and more than fifty priests. The church itself was packed with more than 1100 people.
We pushed ourselves to the edge of exhaustion, and then beyond.
My prayer life collapsed for a while after this, as did any plans for gardening or home improvement. In retrospect, it was blue funk of mourning with a dollop of physical exhaustion on top.
We did continue hiking, which was a blessing.
After several weeks of fill-in priests, we were sent Rev. Francis Xavier Kikomeko, a visiting priest from Uganda, for the six weeks until a new pastoral team would be in place. Father was a blessing: devout, forthright, and reverent. He was just what we needed.
During his first full weekend with us, he celebrated the full Vigil of Pentecost with us for the first time.
On the very last day of the month, Father celebrated the Mass of Corpus Christi on the high altar. We had first Communions and our traditional procession to Saint Joseph and back, followed by a parish picnic. The ladies of the Altar Society put on a hot dog bar, while the men of the newly formed Holy League did their best to cook them. The photo below is one of my favourites.
Father Francis Xavier Kikomeko with the Holy Rosary Altar Servers, Corpus Christi Rehearsal
Our cat, Sophia de Pistachio, was feeling poorly the last week of the month and had an unexpected trip to the vet. Something was wrong with her throat, but after a few days of Francine squirting meds in her mouth, she recovered.
Meanwhile… more hiking! Basically we were going out for a couple of hours about four days a week.
June
My granddaughter Charlotte Franchesca Robinowitz was born on June 11 at 11:11. She passed away early the next morning. The whole family was devastated, as you might imagine, Sam and Stephanie most of all.
It was a long time before I came to terms with this, coming just a month after Father’s death. In fact, it was probably October before the worst of it was past me.
More prosaically, just a few days later somebody in California used my debit card to pay for four Uber trips, and had put through a charge for several thousand dollars when the bank canceled the card.
We said goodbye to Father Francis, and our new pastoral team came in – on a weekend where neither myself nor my assistant MC were in town. I took the train to Salem, Oregon for a four-day Sacred Liturgy Conference.
The conference was amazing, and even now there’s still a lot to unpack. If nothing else, I came away with the firm conviction that I wasn’t some sort of crazed loon for wanting the sacred liturgy to be celebrated in a way that was traditional, reverent, and true to the rubrics and texts given us by the Church. Plus, I got Bishop Athanasius Schneider to autograph his book.
Elevation of the Chalice, Solemn High Mass in the Dominican Rite (celebrated at the Sacred Liturgy Conference, 2018)
July
Busy, busy, busy! I got back from the Sacred Liturgy conference to immediately go off camping with my lovely bride, Francine, and a pair of Jasons. (Why is everyone of a certain age named Jason, anyway?)
Then, after a day or so to regroup, it was off to Chicago for a family reunion. We flew there, had a great time, and then took the Empire Builder train back. It was a glorious, multi-phase vacation that both Francine and I sorely needed.
A Fraction of the Cousins
On our return, I finally got to meet our new pastoral team of Deacon Jim Fish and Father Martin Bourke for more than ten minutes.
We also attended the long-expected wedding reception for some lovely friends of ours who, by trying not to make their wedding a big deal, kind of made it a big deal. So much fun, but eventually I had to get back to work.
Finally, at the end of the month we had to bid goodbye to Rev. Michael Stinson, FSSP. He had been pastor at Saint Joseph since 2015, and he will be sorely missed. Much to his chagrin, Father was appointed Superior of the North American District of the FSSP.
August
In the first week of August, Francine and I finally decided we’d had enough. We bought plane tickets to Spain for October. In planning for our 2020 Spanish adventure, we suddenly decided that we needed a “mini-Camino” to tide us over. I looked up prices, and we discovered some tickets that were cheaper than a round trip to Chicago. And we basically had two months to get ready.
Then Francine went on a multi-day backcountry hiking and camping adventure with her friend Callie into the Olympic mountains. There were new backpacks and bear spray involved. My training hikes commenced upon their return.
Our buddy Kevin was admitted to hospital with some serious heart troubles. (You can – and should – support his GoFundMe!) We visited with him and his lovely wife Liz. He gave us quite a scare.
The western forest fires got close enough that the sun was blood red for days, and we were all wearing filter masks when we went outside. It seemed the perfect metaphor for much of the year.
September
A month of work and of training hikes. Not to mention last-minute scrambles to find or replace equipment.
Most of my equipment was making its second, or even third, Camino, but there’s always something lighter, more durable, or multi-purpose.
The month culminated in the blessing of the pilgrims, which Deacon Fish was kind enough to perform for us on our last weekend in the country.
October
In October we flew to Spain and walked the Camino Francés from O Cebreiro to Santiago de Compostela. This walk, about 160 km or 100 miles, was entirely within Galicia. This is where I brought my mourning and my anger and my despair to the Lord. As Saint Augustine says, solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking.
While we were in Santiago, I received an offer letter from Smooth Sailing Solutions, making the transition from contractor to full-fledged employee.
When we got home, hiking weirdly fell off our agenda for a while. Must get back to that in the new year!
We did, however, come back to new episodes of Doctor Who, which remains my favourite television show, pretty much since my childhood. So there’s that.
At the end of the month, another priestly good-bye. This time, Rev. Caleb Insco, FSSP, who moved from Saint Joseph to North American Martyrs in Seattle. It was sad to see him go.
November
November continued our re-integration into the world following our Camino. And of course there were complications.
During our absence, a five-foot chunk of plaster fell from the wall into the choir loft of our parish church of Holy Rosary. We’re gone a couple of weeks and the place starts to fall apart! Portions of the church were blocked off while assessments were made by an architect and a building contractor. In the end, we were forbidden from using the building for worship while more extensive assessments and any resulting decisions are made.
So for the next six months, maybe more, Mass is being celebrated in the school auditorium. This is not the first time. When the original wooden church was condemned in 1912, we were in the auditorium for almost a decade while funds were raised for the current church and it was built.
This has had a devastating effect on our parish, and I pray that the restoration of the building is approved and begun as soon as possible. We have some amazing folks within our parish community whose careers are to write grants and raise money. They’ve volunteered their time and expertise; all we need is permission.
We’ve had so much sadness and loss in our parish this year – really over the past three years – and some days we can feel abandoned and forgotten in our suffering. But there is comfort in the Lord. As a great saint once said, the Lord must truly love us to give us such crosses to bear.
Coincidentally, a project I’d been working on for more than two years finally published. Firmly Rooted is a full-colour coffee table book about our parish history and the art of our parish church. The proceeds benefit the previously established restoration fund.
Francine spent some time at an author’s conference in Las Vegas. This was all a bit sudden, as she suddenly came into a free ticket, and we had to scramble to find her a plane ticket and hotel.
November concluded with our annual Franksgiving Feast, celebrated in memory of Francine’s father Frank, and on the Solemnity of Christ the King.
December
Hygge made a comeback, as I finally installed the (fake) fireplace in my office and rearranged to suit. Francine likewise finally got her loveseat/guest bed for her office. And both of us got new desks. Huzzah!
We chanted Vespers on the Sundays of Advent, as has been our parish custom. This time, we had in choir the choir leaders of a number of Pierce County parishes, which made it all the more glorious. Sadly, we were unable to celebrate our Rorate Mass this year.
My birthday was low key. And I finally bought that Doctor Who scarf I’d wanted since I was in high school.
For the Third Sunday in Advent, Bishop Mueggenborg visited and celebrated our Masses. Add to that a bake sale put on by the ladies of the Altar Society, and you certainly had a memorable weekend. This, this is how we fight back against loss: the sacred liturgy and the strengthening of community.
Bishop Mueggenborg, Deacon Teskey, and some of our Altar Servers
The Ladies of the Holy Rosary Altar Society
For Christmas, our friend Jason once again flew in from South Carolina, and our friend Julia and her husband Tony were also in town and joined us. Normally, I’m not the most social guy in the world, but for these holy days, I really do enjoy having company over and turning Pistachio House into a great feasting hall as of old.
So what’s on the schedule for 2019? Francine and I have decided that this is our year to work on outdoor projects that we’ve been putting off: new fences in front, a restored vegetable garden, new pathways and paving, repairing and painting the trim on Pistachio House.
Perhaps we’ll even finally finish our chapel out back.
I’ve also got some writing projects queued up, fiction and non-fiction both.
Stay tuned!
One busy year for sure, and next year sounds busy as well. But also sounds like it will he a good year for you and Francine 🙂
2018 was certainly a year of the abundant life Jesus promised us: abundant in the joy, abundant in the struggles, abundant in the sadness. Sometimes I can’t believe so much happened in a mere 365 days.
I am glad to know you and Francine. May God bless you both richly this year, and may He reward you for all you do in service of Him and His Church!