The Armbruster clan were gathered before the fire (it had dipped down into the 40’s) to discuss who would write this year’s Christmas letter.

“Not me!” squeaked a tiny voice from the wall; the mouse, who wrote last years letter, did not care to join us for these gatherings.  “Ever since the kittens Lily and Molly arrived, it’s not safe for me to show my nose.  I still remember Lily carrying me around as she growled at everybody; do you know how demeaning it is to be displayed as a trophy by someone who’s only just learned to use a litter box?”

“And you know that I can’t type,” said the greyhound Millie; “it’s too painful with my arthritis.”

“I’ll write it!” yelled Lily; “I’ve spent lots of time sitting on your lap watching you try to type.”  “No you won’t, I’ll do it!” yelled her sister Molly; and the two kittens rolled across the floor locked in combat.  Every so often an insult—“Fuzzbutt!” “Furball brain”—could be heard from the tumult.

“That settles it,” said I, asserting my shaky dominance as head of the household.   “Each of the humans will  write their own part, and the rest of you will have to put up with whatever mention you get.”  It can be a tricky household to live in, sometimes.

Robie:    I’ll start.  As you may remember from last year’s letter, I planned to retire early this year.  It was a simple plan: the Captain in our office would retire around January, and I would retire around April.  Since there were only three military in the office (plus four civilians), and it takes about six months to have a clue what’s going on if one is not familiar with the kind of programs we worked, it was important to stagger our leaving times as much as possible.  Then the problems started: it turns out the Navy was really, really short of aviation captains, and there was no one to relieve our Captain.  So his retirement slipped, and mine had to slip commensurately (rank still has its privilege).  The good news was that I found somebody to relieve me: coincidentally, we had been trying for Bill Chinworth to relieve me over a year earlier, but the detailer felt it was important to leave him where he was, despite the fact that the job could have been done by an enthusiastic high-school student rather than a commander, and he was bored out of his head.  Bill and his family have been good friends of ours ever since Lee Ann accidentally locked me out of our apartment when I was a young ensign the same day that Bill’s wife locked him out accidentally when he was a young third class petty officer, over twenty years ago.  In the intervening years we have often crossed paths, and been together for the birth of our son and both their children.  So it was a fitting completion of the circle that he should relieve me in my last Navy job.

Then, in March, my sister Sandra called to say that our father had been taken to the emergency room for, what later turned out to have been, a cranial bleed.  After surgery to relieve the pressure in his brain he seemed to be doing relatively well, he was even coherent; but in the ICU he developed breathing problems, and they couldn’t intubate, so they had to do a tracheotomy.  Meanwhile, Lee Ann, Adrian and I flew out to Toledo to take over being with him from my oldest sister Sandra, and a week later my other sister Pam would come from England to relieve us.  The next month was a series of ups and downs: he finally got out of ICU into a step-down room, then promptly went back to ICU because it was the only place with an isolation room and he had developed a MRSA infection.  He finally got back to a step-down, then transferred to a long-term acute care hospital (LTACH).  (By this point we were into April and on the second round of taking turns being in Ohio.)  The second or third day in LTACH they were able to replace his tracheotomy tube with one that would allow him to speak (not being able to communicate was one of the most frustrating things for him).  The next morning they couldn’t wake him up, and it was back to the hospital.  In the end, it appeared he had a brain stem stroke and would never regain consciousness, so we transferred him to the palliative care facility (between ICU, and various step-down units, palliative care was the only place on the fifth floor he hadn’t been yet).  The whole family converged again.  After several days, we were advised that we would need to transfer him to a hospice;  as it turned out, there was a very nice one much closer to his home town, and we moved him there.  That night (April 24th), he died.  The eeriest thing was that we had been through all this before; six years previously our mother had gone through much the same sequence of events in the same hospital.

Sandra, Pam and I spent the next month in Dad’s little house in a retirement community, gradually going through his stuff, but mostly cooking, eating, drinking, telling stories, and entertaining a stream of friends and relations.  I think we were avoiding the finality of finishing clearing the place out, and in the end we had to set firm dates for all of us to leave to force us to finish.  It was a sad time, but a healing time.

The upshot was that I had far less leave left to take as terminal leave, and was way behind on preparations for, and sending invites for, my retirement.  Meanwhile, the Captain’s relief had slid to the right again.  But since we had a room booked for the ceremony on June 27th, and relatives who were planning to travel had already saved the day, we went ahead and had the ceremony that day, even though I continued working until August 15th.  It was not an easy ceremony for me to get through; I had been looking forward to my father being there, since he was the one who commissioned me 24 years ago (he retired as a Commander in 1973).  We had an empty chair with his hat on it in the front row,  Given that I cry uncontrollably at AT&T commercials, I knew it would be tough getting through explaining the chair in my speech;  I would have preferred to leave the explanation towards the end, but it only really fit at the beginning.  I think the ceremony went quite well—it was somewhat different from the usual Navy retirement ceremonies.

I took the rest of August and all of September off, and was thoroughly lazy.  Had many great plans for doing stuff in the yard, but in the end enjoyed being a house husband and getting the chance to explore the many cookbooks that normally get ignored.  In the end, I found that a job I had been offered two years ago was still available, have joined a company that works government contracts (no, not Blackwater!), and am back at Submarine Force Headquarters doing what I did from 2002 to 2006, only dressed better and paid better.

Lee Ann: I’m very relieved that the Armbruster letter is finally being written after all the discussions and wrestling matches over who would actually do the deed! I probably say this every December, but is the year really over? 2008 was a monumental year in our lives; one we’ll not forget in a while. We experienced much happiness and extreme loss. Robie ended his life as a Navy man and Adrian graduated from high school. Now each has begun a new chapter in their lives as a civilian worker and a college freshman. As for me, I’m still teaching too many visually impaired children spread around a very large city with not enough time to serve them all adequately. It becomes frustrating at times but then I see one of my braille students reading aloud in class as his classmates follow along in their print textbooks. At that moment I realize I’ve done my job and I’m in the right profession.

I spent much of 2008 organizing celebrations. In March Adrian gave his senior piano recital and we celebrated with a gathering at our house. Bob, my father-in-law, had flown in from Ohio. We spent a wonderful afternoon surrounded by friends and family, scrumptious food, happy talk and memories of days gone by. The following month Bob was taken from us. We will treasure our memories of this happy day.

In June we celebrated Adrian’s high school graduation with Granddad and Lazelle, visiting from South Carolina. Three weeks later we celebrated Robie’s Navy retirement. During that time we partied at three different gatherings with family and friends from Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a portion of Hampton Roads Virginia…which includes Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk, and Portsmouth.

          In July we adopted two sweet, energetic kittens from the SPCA. These calico sisters have definitely added some adventure to our lives. We named them Molly Weasley and Lily Potter… without realizing that we were in for a linguistic challenge. Try saying Millie, Lily and Molly three times fast. Besides the name confusion, Lily came to us with pneumonia. After a couple weeks of tender loving care and vet bills, she began to heal. She is now the dominant of the two and eats her food, Molly’s food, and Millie’s food(!)…along with any scraps lying around. We tolerate her appetite because of her affectionate nature and excellent mouse hunting skills. Her sister, Molly, is our problem child, always pushing the limits by walking on banisters 15 feet above our living room or jumping on the table during meal time. I guess every family needs one challenging child!

In September we welcomed my 50th birthday with another celebration with more delicious food. Robie prepared a glorious Indian banquet for 12 of our friends and family.  2008 was definitely a year of good food and drink!

As I reflect back over this emotional year, I realize that my greatest blessing is all of you, my friends and family. I feel like George Bailey in “A Wonderful Life”…the richest (wo)man in town. Your love and support has made the passing of our father, father-in-law, and Grandpa a bit easier, and the many endings and beginnings in our lives this year more exciting.  May we each continue to celebrate life together in 2009.

Adrian:   The beginning of this year marked auditions for the music departments in colleges. The first of these took place on a cold February afternoon in Chicago at DePaul University. Apart from the cold, the most memorable parts of the city were the salt-covered roads and cars, a Greek section of the city (I never knew Chicago could be so Greek), one lane roads where the right-turn only lane is apparently a passing lane, and an Asian man on the hotel elevator who forgot he needed to use his key to choose his floor and may still be inside today, stubbornly pounding on his floor button. DePaul University is in the middle of the city and exists as if it is its own country inside of a bigger country. Once you enter the campus through a metal gate and the city noises vanish. This particular audition was horrible, but amusing at the same time. After ruining a Bach Prelude and performing Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu, the judges (conveniently sitting far away from me in the shadows) asked which piece I had been working at longer and which I felt more comfortable with. At first, I thought I had somehow managed to pull the Bach through since I considered the Chopin to be one of my specialties; however, this was apparently not the case as I received the rejection letter in the mail, which was conveniently written the same day as my audition (not all the piano auditions had even taken place).

          I next auditioned for Christopher Newport University (Newport News, VA) in March with Dr. Brown, the head of the piano department. He emailed me about a week afterwards to congratulate me on my audition and inform me that the music department would love for me to join. Obviously, I was ecstatic. The only problem now was to wait until the university itself accepted me.  I was initially put on the waiting list; however, after my grades rose by .06 and Dr. Brown wrote a recommendation letter to the admissions board, CNU accepted me. I was now a piano performance major at Christopher Newport University under the direction of Dr. Brown.

          The next major event for college was moving in. I brought all my Crusades novels (including a catapult model), all of my music books, enough tea to caffeinate the whole university (4,000 students and ~500 staff and faculty), as well as basic means of survival such as a toothbrush and a proper pillow. My roommate didn’t arrive until about three hours after I did. His name is Will Hughes and he is a history education major, though he’s leaning towards becoming an automobile mechanic as well. We get along nicely without any disputes, apparently a rare occurrence between roommates.

          CNU was a bit of an idiot when they put me in a hall made up of mostly history majors instead of music majors. Apparently because I took two Advanced Placement history classes in high school, this meant I wanted to major in history, despite the subtle hint on my college application. My major was not only indicated in a check box to be scanned, but also handwritten to be piano performance. Apart from their lack of attentiveness, I do not mind the situation at all. Many of the people in my hall became close friends in just the first three weeks.

          My classes were very interesting, except for statistics which I had already taken in high school (college credit wasn’t offered for that high school class). My critical listening class was designed to ensure that all the incoming music majors had a very basic understanding of classical music. To my surprise, many of the freshmen had very little or no classical music experience. Only a handful of people had seen an opera, of them (apart from myself), all had only seen one. Despite my exceptional classical music knowledge and appreciation, I was still able to learn much in the class such as various terms, information about composers I wasn’t too familiar with, following a symphonic score, and improving my abilities to pick up minute details in musical pieces. For music theory, I was also adequately prepared as I took music theory in high school. For this class we learned how to number pitches, analyze chords, and part-write a three and four part (such as soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) chord progression while obeying strict part-writing rules.

          All music majors need to take an ensemble class each semester. As there are no ensembles with a piano part, I needed to improvise. My options were to join the marching band and play the xylophone (which apparently is similar to the piano apart from the lack of strings, bench, tonal qualities, using mallets instead of fingers, being a much more rhythmic instrument, and just a completely different instrument altogether), join the jazz combo (jazz style is not something you can learn overnight), or join the men’s chorus as a piano accompanist. I joined men’s chorus. I was unsure how the director would take this, but he was quite happy. He found it frustrating to play the piano himself as well as direct, so I became very useful for him. It didn’t help that I had to rehearse while just receiving music seconds before; however, my sight reading and rhythm improved immensely as well as my abilities to follow a conductor and play. I didn’t sing at all at first, apart from participating in warm-ups. Near the end of the semester, our pieces didn’t have a piano part, so I ended up singing. The instrumentalist and choral majors have sort of a war between them as to who is superior. If I could sing accurately without any experience whatsoever, I’d score one for the instrumentalists. I did no worse than any other singer in our group.

          Ear training was quite the experience. This class requires us to identify (write down) intervals, melodic progressions, and rhythm progressions by hearing them a set number of times. We did this in music theory in my high school, so I felt comfortable. I also have relative pitch, which helps tremendously. The worst part of the class was the singing requirements. We had three tests over the course of the semester. The singing requirements made up 30% of the grade (the 70% remaining came from writing down the above items). We needed to sight sing a melody using only a tuning fork to find our pitch, sight read a rhythm while saying specific syllables, sing intervals using only a tuning fork, and perform a sing and play (a singing melody with piano chords).  We did all this without any singing instruction whatsoever. And to further favor the choral students over the instrumentalists, the instructor’s first words were, “as a musician you must always carry your tuning fork with you to make sure your voice or instrument is in tune. You won’t always have a piano in front of you to help you tune your instrument.” Despite all this bias, I did reasonably well for the class and passed unlike half of the freshmen.

          My favorite class overall was of course my piano lessons with Dr. Brown. Not only is he an amazing pianist, but he is an excellent teacher and very easy to get along with. He is always polite in correcting mistakes in musicality (interpretation), tonal qualities, or incorrect pitches and rhythms. When he’s in an exceptionally good mood while demonstrating parts of the piece he conducts and counts or hums like a sugar-high five year old trying to remember the tune of a favorite song. Over the course of just one semester we’ve both seen improvements in my general playing, my practice habits, and the rate at which I can master new material. After the remaining time I have with him, I hope to enhance these abilities even more as well as use him as a reference for any future competitions.

As we greet the New Year, we put the final touches on our Christmas letter.  Millie’s knowing eyes let us know we’re late, but her nature is forgiving and she’s not one to nag. On the other hand, the kittens insist they could have done a better, more expedient job. Maybe they can show us next year.

Wishing you peace, prosperity, and happiness in 2009.