Hi Abbigail,
In my previous post I showed you all the Christmas cards I mailed to you over previous years. Now, as promised, here is my 2022 Christmas letter to you. I don't think you would have got it, since you had moved out of apartment 22S by that point, and I didn't know your forwarding address.
I have removed some important biographical information from the letter to preserve family privacy online.
Have a read!
Love, Dad
19 November 2022
Dear Abbigail,
It is the time of year when we start thinking about Christmas, holiday times, and the end of the current year. Halloween has come and gone; Thanksgiving is just a week away. (This makes me think of pumpkin pie. Yum!)
Before I pack up your Christmas presents I will write you this short letter to introduce myself, seeing that you and have not properly met each other.
My name is Warwick Young. My first name was chosen for me because my parents (your Grandpa Francis and Grandma Heather) were living in England just before I was born, and there is a famous town called Warwick that they visited. My middle name is a Welsh name meaning "John." (I don't know why they chose that.) Young is my father's side of the family; my mother's side is McQuarrie, a Scottish family name.
I was born in 1966, which makes me 56 years old as I write this. I was born in the small town of Lower Hutt, in the North Island of the Pacific nation of New Zealand. So I started life as a New Zealand citizen. (New Zealanders are called "Kiwis" after a large, flightless bird that is found only in New Zealand named the Kiwi.)
My sister Helen (your Auntie Helen) was born in the same place in 1967, so she is a bit younger than me.
My dad got a job as a civil engineer in Chicago, Illinois, USA, and our family of four moved from New Zealand to start a new life in America when I was three years old. We lived in Mount Prospect, a town near Chicago, for six months, then moved south to live in Urbana, Illinois. That is where I grew up.
Illinois is a very flat state with no hills or mountains. Urbana is a town with lots of large trees, hot steamy summers, and very cold winters with wind and snow. Sometimes we would see a huge line of dark grey storm clouds heading towards town, and then we would get hit with heavy rain that was so strong it was like a thick wet fog! We could not see much until the rain passed.
I grew up riding my bicycle all over town, and I loved to go sledding in the snow and build snowmen in winter. My hair is grey now, but when I was I kid I had dark red hair. When I was outside in the sunshine I had to put on lots of sunscreen, otherwise I would get bad sunburn.
When I was very young my parents gave me an electric train set for Christmas. Over time I bought more track and equipment for it, so it expanded into a large train layout mounted on a special table in my bedroom. I played with my trains almost everyday. But then I started collecting miniature soldiers and military tanks and cannons, and I gradually lost interest in the trains. I started to play war games with my miniatures; I still collect them and have games with them even today.
My family used to fly back to New Zealand every three years to visit the rest of our family, since we were the only branch of our family living in America. New Zealand is so different from Illinois. For one thing, there are very few people in New Zealand, and many are farmers who raise sheep and dairy cows. New Zealand is full of hills and mountains, and the Pacific Ocean (with beautiful beaches) is always close by because New Zealand is an island nation. I think the coolest thing about New Zealand is the volcanoes and geysers. Illinois does not have any hot spots in the earth like that. I was always excited to visit New Zealand, even though I liked living in Illinois.
I enjoyed school, but sometimes the other students made me nervous. Grade school was fun. Junior high school was a bit scary for me because there were lots of new kids who were sometimes unkind or mean. High school was more enjoyable because the students were more mature and treated each other with more respect. I had lots of friends at school, and most kids thought I had a good sense of humor, but I was also very quiet. I watched other students and teachers carefully before I opened my mouth. I guess you could say I was shy at first, but when you got to know me I was cheerful and chatty.
In school I was very good at most subjects, but what I really liked to do was draw and make art. My dad brought home piles of scrap paper left over from his work, and I would sit down with my friends to make drawings for hours. We also loved to play games, and we made up our own games for fun. Our favorite games were role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. We would pretend to be fantasy characters fighting dragons and other monsters. We rolled lots of dice to decide how the battles would go. We usually won.
After I graduated from high school, I went to university in Urbana to study art. I learned painting, printmaking, and photography. Then in 1990, when I was 24 years old, I moved away from Illinois to go to art school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was good for me to leave my hometown and see more of the USA. Boston is very different from Urbana, Illinois, because it is a big city (like Chicago) with huge buildings and lots of interesting people. While I was going to school I explored Boston and many other places on my bicycle. I saw old buildings that were built over 300 years ago! So I started to be interested in history.
After I graduated from art school, I decided that it was time to leave Boston, and I moved to California to try something different. I decided not to make art, and I needed to find a way to make money. I worked in a game shop first, then I was a gardener, then I worked in a art supply shop, then I built fancy lights for people's homes, then I worked in an office, and finally I was hired by a friend to build models and paint miniatures for his collection. Since I moved to New Zealand I have worked in a brewery, then worked as a gardener and cleaner, and now I am starting a new job as someone who builds LED lights for new buildings.
My favorite color used to be blue. Now I think I have lots of favorite colors, but the top three are blue, green, and red. I still like to bicycle everywhere. I do not own a car, and probably never will. I think a lot about climate change (also called Global Warming). I recycle and try to avoid wasting energy.
I like to taste different foods, and I really enjoy eating! My favorite foods are pizza, Italian pasta, Thai curry, Indian curry, cheeseburgers, fresh bread and butter, Mexican burritos, guacamole and corn chips, and so many other dishes. I love chocolate!
Anyway, that tells you a little about who I am. :)
Abbigail, I would like for you and I to get to know each other. If you want to, you can send a letter to me at my New Zealand address, or send me an email. I am on Facebook and Instagram as well. If you do not want to communicate, that's okay. You decide. I am happy to wait until you are ready.