“Oh boy. This piano’s out of tune. I love out of tune pianos.” —Rowlf

This time of year, I always feel a little like Rowlf, one of Jim Henson’s Muppet creations. Actually, I feel a lot like Rowlf this year more than most, because the meaning of Christmas is lost to me.

Both my parents have been deceased for more than a decade, and I have no children of my own. For the first couple years after their passing, I struggled with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. TV commercials push remembering Mom and Dad, and my email inbox fills each spring with spam for products to buy for them. I felt then that I was the only person whose parents were deceased. But I got used to it. These many years later, I acknowledge my parents’ existence in my own way.

My girlfriend and I broke up a couple years ago, and we recently found that trying to maintain a friendship wasn’t working either, and so this year, for the first time in many years, I find myself alone for the holidays.

My second novel, Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings, will launch after the first of the year, and I’m happy, thrilled, by all that publication portends. But I have moments of melancholia, too.

In 1998, when the first edition of my first novel, January’s Paradigm, was published, I had no significant other either. Mom had passed away and Dad had but a few months to live before colon cancer claimed him. Cancer plays no favorites, waits on no one. Dad knew of my publication, but sadly, when my author copies arrived, he was gone. I poured a glass of scotch—Glenfiddich 21-year-old—lit a cigar (an Ashton if memory serves me), and opened the box. As celebrations go, it was subdued; but as sharing my publishing success with my parents went, it was the best I could do.

I have much for which to be thankful, but I have regrets, too (does anyone get out of life without a few of those?); and I’m sure I’ve disappointed my parents, maybe more than most children. Those days on which I succeed, I wonder if my parents, wherever they are, are proud of me. On those days I fall short, disappoint myself, I hope they care nothing at all about what happens on my plane of existence.

On Christmas morning I’ll arise early, as is my custom, have breakfast, put on coffee, light a cigar and put down a thousand or so words toward completing my next novel. After lunch, I’ll pour myself a glass of scotch (Aberlour a’bunadh), put on a Monk CD (I love Monk for all his dissonance and split notes), pull out some Christmas cards from my parents, and look ahead to a new year, as out of tune as many of its predecessors, and try to make the best of it—productive and, hopefully, prosperous.

Merry Christmas to one and all: may you find it to be all you wish.

—J. Conrad Guest/December 2009