My good buddy Mikey always has something up his sleeve. When invited over for cocktails or an intimate gathering, he always walks up my apartment steps with an assortment of party favors. Last weekend his plastic Hy-Vee bags carried a corked bottle of 1759 Geniuses Limited Edition Amber Ale and the tongue-in-cheek game of Cards Against Humanity. Mike always knows how to set us up for a night of hilarity — albeit a bit politically incorrect.
From his sack of tricks Mikey also pulled a Christmas gift wrapped in non-glossy, cardboard brown and red holiday paper with a little tag which red “To: Mike From: Mike.”
“I didn’t think you had enough nerd gear in your apartment, so I saw this and knew you had to have it,” Mike said as I opened the package.
Inside I could feel The Force flowing through me as I found a LEGO Darth Vader alarm clock. It could stand or sit and with its claw-like LEGO figurine hands, the clock was fully capable of holding a lightsaber.
“And when you bonk his head, that’s snooze,” Mike said.
The clock fit nicely within the realm of classic Mikey gifts from years past. For my birthday three years ago, as I moved to Jasper County for the first time, Mike gifted me a statuette of the Travelocity Gnome. With is pointy red hat and proper manners — hands held behind his back — the gnome stills stands guard in the planter outside my apartment door as he has at my last two residences. Mike is a brilliant network engineer — successful but never one to tout his meteoric rise in the Des Moines tech market in any way other than pure joy and excitement for his trade. He gives without thought of return. He’s given me a custom beer glass and spotted me an apartment deposit when a beater car ate the last of my savings. It’s hard to find a better human being than Mike Williams.
With each passing year I find my circle of close friends thinning. This isn’t through argument, malice or conscious choice but an organic process. As life grows more complex I find my correlating circle of friends become more concise yet harder to break.
As we approach our 30s and family dynamics change, I’ve enjoyed incorporating my friends more as family into my holiday celebrations. This week I’ll get the Christmas treat of listening to a life-long friend sing in a Broadway style production of “Two from Galilee,” at the New Hope Assembly of God in Urbandale. Since we first met on the hotch-scotch carpet in Mrs. McCormick’s kindergarten classroom, I’ve wanted to see Seth perform. But when you’re a kid, family obligations tend to take precedent and it’s hard for a 5-year-old to pedal his bike across the city in December.
As I prep for the future, incorporating my girlfriend’s family holiday traditions into my own, I believe it’s important to keep those non-familial Christmas ties sound and strong. One of the key tenets of Christmas is the perseverance made possible by the bonds of family whether related by blood, spirit or friendship.