Once, when I was in college, my grandfather sent me a check for fifty bucks—maybe it was a hundred. I was really strapped for cash then and had even, a few months earlier, taken a cash advance then on a credit card to get groceries. But I was working a pretty good job, so I didn’t have to worry about the present. I just had to take care of a couple of past things like a long distance bill or some equally boring but important nuisance.
So, when the money from Poppa Bob came in, I did what I thought was really, really responsible. I paid off some of those nuisances. Then I wrote him a thank you note, explaining myself, thinking that he’d consider me to be a model citizen and a perfect grandson.
Well, I did not hear back from him directly.
About two weeks later (this was way before e-mail) my mother called to tell me that my grandfather was furious. I was to call him and explain myself. I told her that I’d used the money responsibly (occasionally I wasn’t responsible with money, and I thought this was a good time to feature my good behavior). She said she understood that, but I needed to call him and talk to him.
I did what anyone who knew they were in trouble would do: I put it off for a few days. That was a terrible choice. He called me, used my first and second name.
“Todd Robert,” he said. Normally his voice boomed, but he was ill and didn’t have much oomph in the diaphragm anymore. “Your mother tells me you used that money I sent you to pay bills.”
I gulped. “Yeah, I did.”
“Windfall is not for taking care of business,” he said. “Doncha have some girl you can take out?”
I did not, actually, have one of those at the moment. So I lied, “Yeah, I suppose.”
The conversation didn’t get any better, but the end result was that I learned a major lesson. Windfall is not for taking care of business. You use it to do something you’re not doing because you don’t have the cash. Windfall relieves a person from the duty of being responsible with money all the time.
What he was saying to me was this: “You need to remember to live a little, or the world of taking care of business will chew you up and spit you out.”
I have to remember that this advice came to me from a man you nearly lost his life in the Solomon Islands rescuing a crate of bourbon from a landing strip while under Japanese mortar fire. He’d spent months getting the requisition filled, and he knew the boys sweating it out there in the Pacific theater might need some relief from taking care of the business of the second world war.
So now, when I manage to win an award of some kind, I try to do something extravagant with it. It’s become a kind of family rule. If you work for the money, its primary job is to take care of business. If someone just gives it to you, its job is to make life a little brighter. So, for example, when a royalty check for my first book comes in, we go out to dinner (That usually causes the sum to evaporate, but that’s life in the world of niche publishing).
Recently, my next book, Rift, won the Association of Mormon Letters Marilyn Brown Unpublished Novel award, which is a real honor. The citation had lots of nice things to say about the book, including a comparison to Levi Peterson, which is welcome but undeserved. What’s also nice is the fact that there was a cash award. A generous one, care of Marilyn Brown. It is about as much money as I have ever seen from my writing. I am very grateful, and I am acutely aware that I should not use it for business.
And that might just rouse the dead.
My Letter from Santa
One of my favorite new traditions (other than Rickrolled for the Holidays) is the Father Christmas letter, which I write after everything has been sent up, and the incriminating evidence burned. It is completely coercive and really, really fun to write. You’ll notice a certain Snickety tone to the letter, a liberty I have taken because the children are very into the tales of the Baudelaire children right now. So, with about one minute left of Christmas Eve, and with my apologies to Mr. D. Handler, I submit to you, dear readers, Santa’s letter from me to my credulous (but not for very much longer) children.
Dear Zoë and Isaac,
I got the note from your father about Isaac and his rough day. I hear this kind of thing all the time. It’s difficult to be cooped up in the house when it’s cold outside. “Cooped up” means being kept inside a small building, like the ones used to keep chickens or rats. Usually school is a break from all that cooping, so I understand how hard the holidays can be for kids. Just so you know, the elves have put Isaac on the check-twice list for next year. He has twelve months to be good, especially to his mother.
Zoë, you have asked a very good question about stores. You noticed some IKEA labels on your gifts from last year. Sometimes, when there is a perfect gift for kids that has already been made, I prefer to purchase it from a store and save the elves a little time re-tooling the factory. Re-tooling, means changing the factory from making one kind of thing to making a different kind of thing. It takes a lot of time to re-tool, especially at the North Pole, where is it so cold and windy that no one wants to tool anything in the first place.
I hope you enjoy your special gift, Zoë. I understand that you enjoy projects like this and do a very good job. Ike, I believe your special gift will be fun for you and someone else. There is also one special gift for sharing. It should make the rest of the vacation a little more fun.
I enjoyed the fudge. Thank you for sharing. While the reindeer and I were flying North, we saw Madi and Cal, your baby cousins. They were sleeping in the truck with their parents, safe and snug. I’m glad I got a Change-of-Christmas form for them in time. Their presents will be waiting for them in Montana.
Ho, ho, ho…
Love, Santa