aleo recently asked me about getting a camera, like a real one. i think something at school spawned this conversation. i told him if he was serious he should learn how to shoot for real. by this i meant manually, where he controlled all of the settings himself (eg. shot speed, aperture, focus). the closest thing to an electronic aid would be the light meter which is nothing more than a bar the mov ...

one of the family that came of marty's smores party had four kids. all boys. their children's ages perfectly align with our kids except they have an extra one, a three year old, on the end. with four kids eleven and under in your care, you can imagine how little uninterrupted social time they had to talk with others. all evening their kids ran up interrupting their conversations in need of help with a toy, a thirst, or an injustice. as the night wound down and the father gave the five minute warning, the children disappeared from view and never returned (excepting the three year old who was asleep on the mother's lap). after ten minutes time and conversation the man said, "wow. i haven't seen any of my kids since i told them we would be leaving soon. this is kind of nice. in the future i think i'll give the five minute warning ten minutes after showing up."

his discovery reminds me of the advice my father in law, pappa ken, gave me after we had kids: "you just gotta be smarter than your kids." i know i've mentioned this wisdom before, but i think of it often. surprisingly often. on paper it sounds trivial enough. in practice it is most slippery.

after posting about the mom-dream i had, marty reminded me of the first dream she had about her father after he passed. the dream took place, fittingly, at her childhood home and around their long kitchen table. this table, like many home's dining tables, serves as a social epicenter and usually supports many competing conversations. after laughing at the thread of conversation she was tracking, m...

marty's father passed away on new year's eve.

when the phone rang, marty was at the store with alex. after answering the phone, i couldn't understand the caller. i couldn't even tell who the caller was. this was because the caller was sobbing uncontrollably. after placing the voice, it took effort to understand what they were trying to say. twenty minutes later i was the sobbing individual trying to tell my wife her father had just died.

at the hospital, marty's mother described the morning. she said they slept in late. when they woke they sniggled. her word. i don't know if sniggled is a pet name for snuggled or a euphemism for something else. either way it sounded warm and special. they went downstairs for breakfast. she was sitting at the table reading the paper and eating. ken put a cup of coffee in the microwave and came to join her. in her peripheral vision she noticed that the hand he placed on the table when sitting down began to slide across the table top. she looked up already saying, "ken, what are you doing? are you alright?" he collapsed. it was that quick. that immediate.

when we told our children alex was the first to speak, "grandpa? not grandpa. we need grandpa. he's the only one who can fix the trains in the basement when they stop working."

for me, ken was a man who took me into his family without an outward ounce of angst or judgement. and at the time i came to him, i wasn't a young man exactly brimming with potential (i assure you, i was no stranger to overt demonstrations of displeasure from young women's fathers regarding their daughters' taste in men). when i asked ken and nat for their blessing to marry marty, ken explained to me that he was catholic. that he raised his children as catholics. that he educated them in catholic institutions. and that obviously he would prefer that they marry catholics. after a measured pause in which his wife watched him with curiosity, he went on to say that i seemed like a good man who loved his daughter, treated her with respect and made her happy and that he supposed he couldn't really ask for more than that in a husband for her. i learned that he later confided in someone that he thought it was also a plus that marty could 'take me' in a scrap if she ever had to.

papa ken's support for me did not waver in time and he was never anything but a kind, interested and supportive father-in-law to me. in that he was all i ever knew i didn't realize how special his role in my life was until after receiving that mid-morning phone call on the last day of the year, twenty years to the month after i first met him. this is something i will forever be sad i did not tell him.

obituary

growing up, there were seven kids in marty's house. as they awoke christmas morning they were to go to their parents' bed. only after all nine people were assembled could christmas begin. one at a time groggy children appeared in the doorway and slowly took account of who beat them to the christmas bed before climbing in themselves. excruciatingly, only after a majority of family members were pres...

i'm starting to feel like my father-in-law, in certain regards at least. he had seven kids. when they were older, the phone in his home rang thirty plus times a day. over a month we're talking about almost a thousand calls. for sure, i've worked at help desks that got less traffic than this. and of all those calls, you know how many of them were for him? not a one.

legend goes that on the rare occasions when he was the only one home, he'd be sitting in the living room watching a sunday tv movie or the like, eating a sandwich. if the phone rang, he'd pick it up and simply say "they're not here right now" and hang up. when the family returned they would ask if anyone called. yes. who was it? i don't know. what do you mean you don't know? i don't know, i didn't ask. the girls would go and complain to their mother who would come in and ask why he couldn't take a message. his response; i couldn't reach a pen.

now i'm certainly not there yet and i don't plan on ever having seven kids but when you consider the fact that bella is four and already gets more calls than me, this more resembles my future than it does not.

marty abandonment update:
day three went swimmingly, one might even say spectacularly.

i attribute this success to the single-best piece of parenting advice i've ever received: the source of this sage insight, my father-in-law, who by my estimation did a pretty bang-up job.

thanks for the bail-out papa ken.

marty's mother is a freezer. there isn't a culinary item ever eaten that hasn't passed through the walter's super freeze found at the bottom of their basement stairs. milk, christmas cookies, hell, i bet you'd even find nonfood items like light bulbs in that cellar deep-freeze. the two things i've heard my mother-in-law say more than anything else is "oh, sure you can freeze that" and "run down an...