Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late. The cannons don’t roar, there’s nothing to loot. I am a forty-year-old victim of fate. Arrive too late, arrive too late.

Perhaps best known for his Parrothead drinkfest songs like Margaritaville and It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, which true Jimmy Buffett fans will appreciate A pirate looks forty for his honest reflections on life. After 40 years of drug smuggling, this modern-day pirate realizes that his chosen calling was long gone at birth as he ponders his future.

As we turn the calendar page to a new year, we can identify with this pirate as we resolve to shed bad habits and reinvent ourselves. However, redirecting our global positioning systems often requires examining our erroneous misadventures.

I recently looked through our album of Christmas cards from previous years and was struck by how succinctly these letters reflect our family’s long and winding personal journey. It starts off on a straight, happy highway, but later deviates with detours and dead ends. The first cards feature pictures of our children under the Christmas tree and on vacation. They move on to covers created from their art and then to current poetic reviews of the year. Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, but most notable is the transition from page perfection to raw reality.

In 2002, my oldest son cooperatively and proudly contributed his drawings for the covers. When his enthusiasm waned, I used my strong talent to force all three of my children to create art together. In fact, this chilling excerpt from 2007 portrays my technique as draconian rather than forced.

“Now Pete, now Patrick, now Nori, you know,

That the work of art you promised is progressing painfully slowly.

Until you’re busy, I won’t cook food.

Your clothes will be dirty, I took your car keys with me.”

Ouch. No wonder they called me “Dragon.”

When the manipulation method no longer worked, I replaced her art with my poetry. As the following examples suggest, it is in these poems that cracks in the Perfect House of Page begin to appear.