Hope and Joy
Those little points of light during a dark time of year.
Tonya recently gave me an assignment.
“I’d like you to do another Christmas lights piece this year.”
“OK, no problem. Do you want just photos or should I write something?”
“Write something.”
“About what, joy?”
“Hope. Write about hope.”
“Okay, and we can write about worrying after the holidays.”
“Yes.”
When Tonya tells me to do something, I comply.
But let’s talk about joy before hope. If she cuts it out of the final version, I’ll put it out as a note on Substack. Let’s talk about 2024 - a hell of a year. I could leave it at that, but I won’t. Permit me to generalize and recap my own year in broad strokes.
For most people, the year began in January. For my purposes, I'll begin in February, in Florida, where I had retreated for my usual respite from the not-so-frozen north. Winters aren't what they used to be up here, but it still feels perversely joyful to wear a tee shirt in February.
In early March, we got word of a death in Kansas and had to pack up and leave Florida on a dime. It was a bare-knuckles, cannonball run that led to a 7-night stay in Pratt, Kansas while Tonya took care of estate business. The trip was difficult, but we took it a day at a time and then hauled ass back to New York City.
Following that were three more trips. First was another round trip to Kansas. More estate stuff, more difficult times, rummaging around in a past that was not mine. It was many years of a life that had nothing to do with me, but it still felt like a heavy weight to carry. I followed this with a solo trip to Denver to sell my beloved van. That big, modified Ford E-350 had carried me around for 15 good years to many wondrous places on and off the road. I was happy, if a bit rueful, to sell it to a quail hunter from Colorado. At least it found a good home. I drove back in a rented Ford Expedition Max that became my new favorite car - after the 4Runner, at least. I kept hitting the same lonely storage unit in Wichita on these trips and loading up stuff into cars.
We were back home for a few cyclonic weeks of activity, each one of us taking care of business. I continued to put off finishing the book I had suspended in Florida. Road trips require preparation, so I was in a constant state of either prepping to go, driving and staying at motels, or getting back and sorting things out.
The last trip was a cross-country with Tonya during a time I normally never hit the road - late July. It was close to 100 degrees when we left town and it stayed there for the whole trip. We drove with the AC on high the whole time and made short pit stops for gas and to walk the dog. It felt like traveling in a space craft. It was barbaric. I worried about the car. I worried about the dog. I worried about us. We went straight across and, again, hit the storage unit in Wichita, filled a rental Chevy Suburban with stuff, then drove to Utah, where we left it all for safekeeping. You want more details? Stay tuned and maybe one day you’ll hear about them.
We dropped off that big Chevy at the Salt Lake City airport and took off across the salt flats - again at 100 degrees. We finally hit the coast and it cooled down a bit. We saw family, then started up the coast, the only place in the country that wasn’t burning up. After we turned inland, the heat began to follow us and we fled across the top - Spokane and then on to South Dakota. We finally made it home, smoking around the edges, but happy to be back in New York City where, for the first time in years, I was content to not think about the road at all.
I had left all my routine medical appointments for August and September and they became a bit stressful. After a certain age, you start to dread regular diagnostic tests because they often require follow-up visits and more tests. I don’t handle this stuff well, anyway, but I do show up, so that’s what I did for a couple of months. I seem to be intact - for the most part - but I have a bunch of six-month follow-ups in the Spring and that’s something to look forward to.
This bled into election season here in the U.S.A., with all of the ugliness that now accompanies it. We have no more of the faux reconciliation afterwards that we used to pretend to have - “Let’s all come together as one and move forward.” No more of that happy horse shit. In fact, I think I can officially declare an end to the custom of PRETENDING to give a shit. Politicians and regular people don’t even pay lip service anymore to unity. We don’t seem to believe in grand causes anymore, just violent platitudes. We can’t agree on what’s true, either. But let me stop it at that. The elections were just another milestone for me in a crowded year and I, too, stopped pretending to give a shit by that point.
So, for a couple of months, I was taking care of medical things, as well as dental things, and worrying about paying for it all in a country that has expensive health care. Tonya was taking care of things, as well. We were knocking things off the list for the upcoming trip to New Orleans that we had planned months before, to be followed by a swing through Florida on the way home. Florida, oddly, has become a personal tradition for the past few years and I have come to enjoy the warmth and light of Florida when it’s cold and dark up north. I was already thinking about the logistics of the trip down south and fantasizing about rich Louisiana food and shooting photos in the bayou. We were down to the last thing on the check list - Santo’s annual physical.
Have I ever told you about young Santo? He’s seven now, but he’ll always be my “little guy” or my “young man.” I can’t go into his whole story now and he actually deserves his own piece, but here’s the gist of it. I had been without a dog for over two years, since my dear Elko had left this planet. Santo crossed my path via Instagram - that face! - when the friend of a friend posted a shot of herself with him. He was a 4-pound dog who had been wandering the streets of San Antonio, Texas, with a pack of big dogs, She picked him up and offered him to the world via a selfie. I wrote to her that I’d fly down the next day if she could hold him. I did. When we met, he jumped into my arms and began to lick my face. The rest is history.
Santo has been my dear, faithful companion ever since. He was 12 weeks old when I brought him up north, teeming with four different kinds of parasites. We took care of them all and then went through the joys and growing pains of puppyhood. We began to learn how to deal with each other - I with his puppyish quirks and he with my human issues - and we started to travel all over this country. He became a good road dog, a road dog nonpareil. We endured the pandemic together. We added another member to the pack. And the whole time, all this little trickster did, every moment of every day, was to teach me about love and play and joy. (I do remember that I was writing about joy.) We can learn a lot from dogs and cats. All animals, really, but the ones most of us are exposed to on a daily basis are dogs and cats.
At the end of October, just before his annual physical, I came in from some errands and lay down on the floor so that he could run over to greet me, which has been one of our happy rituals for years. There is no love like that of a dog greeting their person when they reunite. I lay down. He ran over to jump on my chest and then squealed in pain. For a long time. Then he staggered to the couch and lay down for a long while. Something was clearly wrong. But then he was okay again. We went to the vet the next day, where they examined him in all ways, gave him his shots and sent us home with some painkillers. This began four weeks of nightmarish episodes.
We took him to four different vets, including a neurologist, and the consensus was that it was a spinal disk problem. He’s 25% Dachshund and does have a longish back, but this was still a shock. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, as he has been a super active guy who has loved to jump and play his whole life. They put him on more painkillers and we had to take it easy with activity. Super easy. It made me realize that the sweetest moments in my life have been taking long walks with him, playing at home, and just having a healthy pack - the three of us against the world.
He was showing pain at odd times and suddenly, all the bullshit in this country and the whole fucking world became very small. Because friends, family and critters are more important on any day than the forces of colossal bullshit that comprise modern life. We finally got him in for an MRI and it showed severe spinal compression. “I’m surprised he can still walk,” was the diagnosis from the neurologist. He recommended surgery that day and was able to get him onto the schedule of a fantastic surgeon at the hospital. Santo came through it and we missed the hell out of him for three days while he was in the ICU. We got him back two weeks ago and are in the midst of 6 weeks of crate rest. He goes out for three short walks a day and spends the rest of his time in the crate. He seems to be recovering, but we need to be super careful while the spinal cord heals. It has all been a lesson in patience, trusting one’s gut, listening to professionals, and showing up for others.
The world has continued to speed towards a collision with the sun. And to this I say, “Apocalypse Now, baby! Bring it on!” To all the young finance and tech people who have invaded my once-sleepy neighborhood, the ones who walk around carrying golf clubs, wearing party dresses, and talking about money incessantly, I say, "Enjoy the future! It’s going to be grand! Buy some flood insurance and make sure your kids have plenty of sunscreen while they are fighting to get into top-tier schools on the conveyer belt to success."
You can have the afterlife if you like. You can live in the past if that’s your thing. I’ll take the here and now - the joy of the moment, whatever that is. A kind word, a small breeze, a murmur, a sunset, a dog or a cat wanting to be scratched, a slice of pizza, a sigh, words of love, a walk alone, a clear thought, some laughter, some tears.
Hope is a construct. A path forward so that we can believe there will be another day. Or maybe it’s a way to think that something bad will end. Hope is in the brain. Joy is what happens in the moment, though.
Having lived through some physical pain over the past two years, having witnessed my little dog endure horrible pain and then to see it removed, I tend to hew to a thought I first had not long ago - that the absence of pain is joy. It’s not the only joy. I remember the joy that running gave me as a child. It was effortless and felt like a superpower. Joy does not have to be relative to any other state. Nor does hope. I never worried about the future as a child. Was that hope? Is hope a conscious thing that we puzzle together from circumstance, something to mark the way? I remember what they used to say during preflight announcements on planes - “lighting will guide you.”
Perhaps the absence of despair is hope? But is the absence of hatred then love? I don’t think it’s so binary. I have had friendly arguments with people who insist that fear and faith cannot co-exist. I am no theologian, but I believe they can. I’m not so sure about love and hate, although this could be so much fluff if I don’t define the concepts. And that may be beyond the scope of this piece. Tonya asked me to do a piece on Christmas lights.
She wanted me to write about little points of light during a dark time of year. Dark in more ways than one in 2024, personally and globally. I have not felt this untethered in a long time. It seems as though the ideologies that we embrace are becoming more balkanized, all of them split up along political and tribal lines. It seems that we no longer think in critical ways, that we have auto-complete of the brain - our thoughts and beliefs and actions form themselves automatically in response to any situation. Confirmation bias. It feels as though people have been programmed and can no longer entertain opposing points of view, even if simply for the sake of argument.
It helps to have friends and family and critters. We can endure alone - maybe - but it’s better to stick together. And it would be nice if the anger, greed and hatred in the world all lessened, but I don’t see that happening in the near future, so I need to focus on the good, on the little things I can accomplish.
If you’re reading this, it means you have already lived through the winter solstice - the shortest day of the year. I go toward the days of lengthening light with some trepidation. Sometimes it feels safer to stay in the cave than to face each new day. But I take it a day at a time. If I have made it through everything else this far in life, if I have survived 2024 to this point, I can make it another day. The human spirit can endure. “As long as the eyes are open, there is hope.” I read that quote from the survivor of an extermination camp on the Eastern Front. He had seen some of the worst stuff humans can produce and he still had that thought.
All photos by Paul Vlachos.
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After the election, I had the most wonderful feeling of detachment. What's done is done. I did what I could other than grabbing a gun. As the Trump flags and signs disappeared from the neighborhood, I was relieved to think that maybe others are sick and tired of this ridiculous circus. Let it play itself out .... ? The important thing for me is like you said here. Family, friends, and critters. What happens now in our little spheres. And if we can get these little spheres to touch once in a while, maybe that's a start toward unity. Unity. That's an amazing word. Can it ever come to fruition? HA! Let us hope.
joy and hope. loyalty. surgery for a dog in pain. love shown in quiet ways. a beautiful piece, Paul. thank you.