1989 Showalter Business Christmas Newsletter
I believe the publication of this, the fourth Touchstone1 Christmas Letter, may qualify it for entrance into the pantheon of holiday traditions. Admittedly, this epistle is not in the same league as Santa Claus; tree tops glistening; black and white movies with angels or Bing Crosby in starring roles; or nativity pageants with preadolescent shepherds giggling and hitting one another with their staffs. On the other hand, I do think 1989’s Christmas Letter and its predecessors are successfully competitive with Alvin and the Chipmunks’ rendition of “Please, Christmas Don’t Be Late;” holiday television specials featuring stars, their estranged children, and their ex-wives; fruitcakes that are at least six years old when presented; and the bottle of Old Spice aftershave my aunt invariably sends me.
In last year’s Christmas Letter, I noted that Touchstone was so immersed in organizational introspection and restructuring that we had opened nary a new program in over a year. Upon peering into our corporate soul, however, we found that starting, developing, and building programs was professionally satisfying — and fun (I suspect that this revelation could support a new DSM III R Axis II diagnosis; perhaps something like “Pervasive Program Development Syndrome”). Consequently, three new Touchstone hospital programs were born in 1989:
- Touchstone has taken over the Medical Directorship of the adolescent treatment program at XXXXX. The Program is yet another case of a great (this is not the time of year for false modesty) idea resulting from my inability to successfully adapt to massive frustration (I have obviously not been granted the serenity to accept those things I can’t change). This frustration evolved from what seemed like the daily experience of hearing an outpatient or inpatient clinician who was treating a defiant, angry, uncooperative adolescent exclaim, with enthusiastic support from the others involved in the case, ‘He (she) should be transferred somewhere else.” My unrequited thirteen year search to find that “somewhere else” where these kids are welcomed and successfully treated motivated Touchstone to create our own “somewhere else.”
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Complementing Touchstone’s Girls Program at YYYYY Hospital and Medical Center is The New Directions Program for Boys dedicated exclusively to the treatment of boys aged nine to fourteen. Fair Warning: the next person that suggests that our next Mercy program will be for young hermaphrodites will definitely get a lump of coal in his stocking.
- The exponential growth of the Adult Program at ZZZZZ Medical Center has resulted in an expansion of this unit into two programs, one for regressed patients and one for higher functioning patients.
Our other family has also grown this past year. Christmas came early for us; Max was born on 3 March 1989 while Julie and I were 28,000 feet over Salinas, Kansas. This is just as awkward and strange - if not as kinky - as one might expect. As Julie and I were jetting through the friendly skies on our way to our first romantic weekend alone since Sam’s birth two years earlier, the stork dropped Max off at Cook County Hospital. Pam Williams and Michelle Peterson enlisted as Max’s surrogate mothers by rescuing him from the Hospital and delivering him to our home while we made a U turn in San Diego. As far as Sam knows, Max is his souvenir from our trip to San Diego.
Max’s crawling expeditions, which resemble nothing so much as a tank plowing through crumbling buildings, have contributed to the holiday festivities by transforming the maintenance of a Christmas tree from a dull chore into an adventure. His adoption was final in October, the warranty is out, and we plan to keep him.
Sam, our three year old, has spent the last week initiating his brother into the mysteries of Christmas although it doesn’t seem such a mystery the way Sam Explains it - “Presents, Max; lots of presents.” Sam has obsessively and indiscriminately perused each of the cataloges we’ve received in the past months, including Sears, Toys R Us, L.L. Bean, and Victoria’s Secret. He has officially and repeatedly asked for a train (the exact model he already owns), a fire (the catalog featured a fire truck — Sam has no use for the truck, just the fire), and, of course, a microwave oven (a real oven, not a toy one). It’s mind-boggling to contemplate what he thinks he’s getting for Christmas since we long ago realized that all normal activity would be lost to us if we continued to answer every request for a toy with the parental standard “We’ll see.” Not to be deterred by our decision to get on with our lives by ignoring him, Sam has decided to take silence as consent and to answer his own requests. Typical conversation (all from Sam) as he is browsing the Sears catalog over his Rice Krispies: “Mommy, I want this. OK? OK!”
Julie is no longer Touchstone’s Practice Administrator since she finessed that task to Michelle, and, when Michelle started working on managed care projects, to Ruby; nor is she any longer responsible for Community Services (in a weak moment, Pam said it might be interesting to take on more responsibilities); but does remain my wife, Max’s and Sam’s mother, and Touchstone’s computer expert and financial planner. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to find new Touchstone jobs for her faster than she can train other associates to take them over.
My parents are visiting over the holidays. If they follow form, they will once again spoil the kids, buy them gifts that require MIT graduates and nine batteries to operate, and repeatedly hug and kiss them. This is not the way I was raised. The most likely explanation I can muster is that my father’s body has been taken over by an alien force.
And once again, stenciled snowflakes are appearing on Touchstone Business Office computer screens; countertransference is giving way to peace on earth and the requisite good will to men; Santa Claus and has sleigh are replacing Freud and his couch as our chief icons; and Sam, his already meager impulse controls disinhibited by visions of sugar plums, is raucously pounding out the percussion parts of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” with a candy cane on Max’s skull it must be Christmas.
Happy Holidays from our family to yours.
Footnotes
- ”Touchstone” was the name of my psychiatric group practice↩
