Dear friends and family,

Oh, but our cheeks are rosy! Oh, but our hearts pump away!
Isn't this a glorious season? What a happy chore it is to
send you this annual missive of warmest wishes and holiday
greetings from all of us shivering Lindqvists: Godfrey,
Marvin, Melinda, and me, Sue. And from Pump, too, whose
series of barks just reminded me not to leave her out, loyal
old girl that she is.

I hope this finds you well, and as awash in good health and
family spirit as we all are. I'm so glad to be able to take
this time to bring you up to date on our doings and,
perhaps, if you'll bear with me, to share some reflections
on the ending year and the new one upon us.

Here, where we like to think of ourselves as perched on top
of the world, we live in awe of our splendid surroundings.
Each day we take it in. The blinding glare of the frozen
tundra. The stark, still silence. The air's empty chill that
masquerades as a taste, a smell, a clean, cold nothing that
infiltrates your palate, your nostrils, crystallizes in your
lungs when you inhale. No, there is naught but the great
outdoors here in the north country, and we revel in it,
reminded every day of Mother Nature's ways here amid an
unpeopled vastness untainted by society's ills.

I wish you could see us as we pile outside each morning for
a gelid lark. All buttoned and bundled, we're a spunky crew,
I think you'd agree about that if you could see us. Some
might think this a godforsaken wasteland. Some might find no
opportunity for fun in these stripped naked barrens devoid
of all life, all warmth. Well, we do, by golly, we find the
fun of it, seizing that old Frosty the Snowman spirit and
wrapping it round, Godfrey, the kids, me, all of us
determined to turn frigid exile into family merriment. Look
at us! We frolic and tumble, our icy breath billowing before
us like the smoke signals employed by the ancient denizens
of this sparkling, pristine countryside.

We love to think of those stolid, noble souls who once trod
this same solid sod on sturdy homemade snowshoes. We imagine
them moving among the hidden, frozen lakes, through the
evergreen forests, trapping, hunting, singing, praying.
Peaceful, pure, at one with God and the natural world. Yes,
we think of them often, the original inhabitants, their love
of the land and respect for the way of all things, as we
speed over hillock and field on our splendid, shiny black
snowmobiles.

Godfrey's in heaven since I got him the absolute latest
model, a ZRT 600 with AWS V double-wishbone A-arms with
Arctic Cat gas (IFP) shocks, adjustable preload springs and
sway bar. That baby comes equipped with a two-passenger seat
complete with backrest, and Melinda couldn't be happier than
to hitch a ride with her father as we while away the
afternoons zooming through this wintry wonderland. Oh, I
wish you could see her, rosy-cheeked, laughing in the wind,
passing the Wild Turkey to her dad as he eases down ever so
slightly on the hydraulic disc brakes and reaches behind to
take a swig.

She's all grown up, our Mindy. You can't imagine. She looks
like a beauty queen behind Godfrey, hair bleached blonde as
a beachcomber blowing backward as the two of them blast
through the glazed-white woods. She'd be crowned ice queen,
I don't doubt, if enough people lived hereabouts to sustain
such cultural events.

And her dad, my darling husband of 22 years? He is master,
as always, of all he surveys, even here, where all he can
see is snow and more snow. He's a speed machine, my Godfrey,
here where no motor has ever before roared just as he was
before, lolling back against the soft black leather of his
Lincoln cruise-controlling past lesser mortals along the New
Jersey Turnpike.

I wish you could see Godfrey and Melinda racing through the
hoarfrost. Him like a great gaunt mountain cat hungry and
cold in the depths of winter yet still proud, still
dangerous. Her like Lana Turner on the stool at Schwab's,
all naughty undiscovered innocence, laughing at the
reverberation of 120 horses' power. Daughter and dad,
together they look like they don't have a care in the world,
blank eyes blinking against the white white planet.

Sad to say, though, they do. Even in such a remote spot as
this, no one is without cares. That's life, isn't it? I'd like to tell
you a little about what's happened in ours since my letter this
time last year. First of all, let me just say that Mindy is
a trouper. In March she suffered a severe fracture of the
third, fourth and fifth metacarpals in a freak DVD accident.
What made it doubly tragic is that it happened on her 18th
birthday, and that the machine was a present from Godfrey
and me! I won't go into the details of the pain, both
psychic and physical, that we all suffered, but you can just
imagine. As I say, though, that girl is a trouper. She does
her physical therapy exercises religiously, and although it
appears that she will never again have full use of her right
hand, she has invoked that good old Scandinavian
stubbornness for which our whole Lindqvist clan is justly
celebrated. She simply decided that she would not let this
hold her back or change her life one iota. And it has not.
She has trained herself to compensate, using her tongue for
many daily tasks she would have formerly performed with her
fingers, and, with the caveat that I'm still trying to get
used to the slightly moist coating that seems to have
settled over many household surfaces as a result, I must say
it has really worked out well, especially for Mindy's
partner Leanne, who, it turns out, is particularly
enthusiastic about the new lingual regime.

As for Marvin, he's marvelous! He's 20 now, a college junior
and an all-A student. He'd be a BMOC--remember when they
used to call them that?--if he were on an actual campus,
living in a dorm, attending classes and all. I wish you
could see what a smart, sweet, funny, amazingly well-rounded
fellow our son has grown into. Not to mention a hunk! What a
strapping stud of a chip off his old man. And, as I said,
all As, no easy accomplishment when you're getting your
college education at a correspondence school. Believe me, he
earns that 4.0 the old-fashioned way, not by batting his
dreamy long lashes at the profs. The faculty in his program
are mostly female, of course, and I can easily picture how
they'd swoon if they were ever in the actual physical
presence of our fine young specimen. It's just as well, I
suppose. Marvin is single-minded in his devotion to his
chosen career. He's studying to be a wet-nurse. He can't
wait to graduate and get out there in the real world, turn
theory to practice. Who'd have thought conventional old
Godfrey and Sue Lindqvist would have turned out a
trailblazer? But I must say, we couldn't be prouder as the
lad breaks the boundaries of this last bastion of
gender-based employment and claims his rightful place in the
nature-nurture equation.

I'm equally pleased to report that Pump, our old collie, has
thrived up here. We didn't know if she would. New Jersey
winter is one thing, the top of the world quite another,
especially for a gal like her, getting on in dog-years. It
hasn't been fair the way we've lugged her around from home
to home, forcing her to adjust to new climates, time zones,
to find her water bowl in apartment, condo, ranch and, now,
a timber-paneled hunting lodge.

In a funny way, I think this unsettled life is harder on
Pump than on any of the rest of us. Mindy and Marvin have
proved extremely adaptable, Godfrey's happy as long as he
has a satellite dish and one or two high-powered toys like
the Arctic Cat, and me, well, I guess I'm just thankful
we're all still together and more or less intact. But don't
worry about Pump. She's okay too. Even if she'll whine and
mewl when we get back from our outdoor outing this afternoon.

We couldn't very well take her along--where would a collie
sit on a snowmobile? And there's no way she could have kept
up running alongside. Marvin is no slouch, but he and I fell
behind Godfrey and Melinda, since we had to make do with a
two-year-old model. Our 500 is a beaut, but sadly old-hat in
the horsepower department at 92. I don't mind. Really, it
doesn't matter. On a day like this you don't have to go as
fast as the devil. I can appreciate the desolate scene even
if we pass through it slowly enough to search the snow for
animal prints or some sign of life. Slowly enough to scan
the sky for a cloudbreak. Some sign of sun.

This is in the present tense as though I'm on the
snowmobile, but of course I'm actually writing it after all
that adventure was done. An exhilarating afternoon in the
northern wilderness. We returned, shed our layers of down,
built a fire, heated some soup for dinner. Mindy and Leanne
have retired for the night. Marvin is in his room studying
for his lactohydraulics midterm. Godfrey's conked out in the
La-Z-Boy after two mugs of hot, spiked cider. Pump lies
quietly beside me, sniffing at the lingering cinnamon scent.

I'm writing this in the present tense because I want you all
to know that although we're not there with you, we think of
you and we miss you and we love you oh so very much. And I
mean that sincerely, right now at this very moment, even
though this moment might be July, not December. Please do
not doubt the depth of our love, even if we're not really
sending it from the north country. I'm not at liberty to
divulge either a verifiable date or our precise whereabouts.
Too dangerous.

You see, I have been feeling a soaring need to express
myself, and I just had to write you. I even read a book--A
Punch in the Gut: Writing from the Solar Plexus--for some
guidelines. I'm trying to follow its tenets. Primary among
them is this dictate: tell the total truth. Unfortunately,
as I'm sure you well understand, the truth is hardly
available for the telling. So I'm conveying a version of it
which, while strictly speaking may not be factual at all, is
in its essence true in some deeper sense. And I just have to
hope that you, my dear friends and family, scattered to the
four corners as you are, are the kind of people who can
intuit what I'm really trying to say along with Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year. That you'll read between the
lines and glean the truer truth that underprops these
glacial greetings.

Nevertheless, I understand if you're perplexed. We have had
to take on new identities. Several times. For starters, we've
all changed our names. Which explains why, as you read my
jolly-holly snowy-blowy tale, you might have been wondering
who in the good grief this Godfrey and Melinda, Marvin,
Pump, Leanne and Sue are. Perhaps you now feel the need to
reread the previous pages; if you can keep in mind the fact
that you used to know us by other names, a second perusal
should help.

As you review in your mind's sky the whole starrily arrayed
constellation of your family and friends, are you still
having trouble placing us? OK. This is no doubt due to the
mom-and-pop, daughter-partner-son-and-a-dog configuration.
That's not how you knew us. Not how many we are, or our
sexes, ages, or even, perhaps, in Pump's case, species. It's
all concocted. To protect the innocent ... and darn it all,
I'll have to sign off soon because to say much more would
give away too many hints. All I really wanted to do was
reach out to you who are so dear to us, try to make do with
a word or two where a smile, a hug, would mean so much.

The human touch. Even this small thing we are not permitted.
Too risky. Look, the location is a feint, the Lindqvists a
figment. I grant you that. By now you may doubt even the
claim that there's any "we" here--any here here--at all. And
maybe you're right. Maybe there's not a soul to share my
snowmobile ride through petrification. Maybe it's just me.
It's hard, after all, to keep a family together in
circumstances like these, even for a woman with deep stores
of inner resources, Or maybe I'm a man-Sue to you, Godfrey,
Jeffrey or Sidney to me.

I don't know. It may be that I can't pull this off much
longer. I wasn't cut out to be a solo act. So I whacked a
guy and told who told me to; or I stole industrial secrets
and sang like a canary to save my skin; on the lam from a
massive credit-card scam gone bad; battered wife dragging
the kids underground; does it matter; do I deserve this?
Anyway, it's none of those, rest assured, for I know better
than to even allude to why I hide. No clues.

Which is why you never knew us, not even by the names we
used to use. It's too dangerous to write to anyone we really
love, too risky for them and for us, and so we've
relinquished all ties, all relations. Instead I scatter this
annual letter about the land. Yours are names plucked at
random from pages torn from local directories in the towns
we've traveled through. I don't feel like you're strangers,
though. I feel we share so much. Therefore, whoever you are,
please accept our fondest wishes for the coming year,
pretend you miss us, and think of us, the Lindqvists, mittens,
parkas, rosy cheeks, just rolling along, here on top of the
world, just singing a song.

Until next year,

Love, Sue