The Weekly Meat

Where Babies Come From

When I was in third grade, with two younger siblings, I finally asked my parents where babies came from. They smiled uncomfortably and looked at each other in a way that said, "The day has come."

"Where do babies come from?" I repeated.

"Well," my father volunteered — the one syllable hanging on his tongue like good wine — "two people have to love each other very much."

"Oh." Good enough. "Well how long does it take?"

"Nine months," my mother volunteered.

"Oh."

I was satisfied with the answer. What did I know? I had never heard any different — as opposed to the four-year-old daughters of two separate friends, who each volunteered recently that babies come from "my mommy's vagina." Needless to say, my parents must have been ecstatic that I was satisfied with their non-answer.

It seemed very simple to me. Too simple maybe. But then again, I had never tried it.

I figured I'd give it a shot. I tried to think of which girl in the third grade I loved enough to make her have a baby. I wondered if I'd even have to tell her, or just love her and wait nine months. Kelly? She kissed me once. Maybe she was already pregnant. I didn't think I loved her when she kissed me, but who knew?

It was then that the full impact of this love thing hit me. Forget the girls in class. What about my girlfriends on TV? Leather Tuscadero, Daisy Duke, two out of three Charlie's Angels (sorry Kate). I couldn't say exactly whether I was more in love with Suzy Quatro, Barbara Bach, Jaqueline Smith, or Farrah Fawcett, but clearly — as the Notorious B.I.G. once sung — "I see some ladies tonight that should be havin' my baby."

In any case, I waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. I started to think maybe there was more to it than my folks had told me. I thought back on it. "Two people have to love each other very much." Ah. Okay, so maybe that was the catch. "Girlfriends" needed to reciprocate your love. Now we're getting somewhere.

But who knew how women felt and what they thought. (I still don't know.) But for argument's sake, say one loved me back. Then she'd get pregnant? Again, I'd have to wait nine months to find out. And there was the nagging Charlie's Angels question. I wondered: if Jaqueline or Farrah were pregnant, would they still be on the show? You can imagine my concern.

At school, it didn't strike me that anyone in my class was pregnant. But I was getting a little scared. Whom had I been in love with — and when? I wasn't ready to be a father. I was hardly even ready to be an older brother. It all seemed like a heavy responsibility, and one that had little to do with the other things I loved — namely hockey, and pasta, and TV.

A few short years later, my friends and I knew all the titillating facts about where babies came from, and had seen all the requisite diagrams and such — which we augmented with full-color glossy photos of airbrushed nakedness from the drawers and bookshelves of our 1970s suburban fathers, all of whom seemed to have countless samples of "gentlemen's magazines."

But still, we had no real concept of what sex was all about.

Around these Playboy (or as one younger neighbor mistakenly called them, Pep Boys) years, one friend described walking in on his parents several years earlier while they were "making Shelley," as he called it (he had a younger sister, Michelle). At the time, it didn't occur to either of us to question his logic: his parents were having sex, he had a younger sister, therefore, he must have seen them in the process of creating his younger sister.

It would be yet another year or so before we finally understood — despite our preoccupation with the feathered-hair girls of prime-time TV and our familiarity with the soft bits of the female anatomy — that sex was not just for procreation, but for recreation.

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My older daughter is three-and-a-half. It is only a matter of time before she is no longer satisfied with knowing that from time to time, our friends and acquaintances have a "baby belly." She'll be looking for answers, and we'll be expected to supply them. Still, AKL and I have not discussed what our story is, let alone gotten it straight.

I don't imagine it will start and end with the conceptually obtuse "two people have to love each other very much." Then again, I don't see it containing only the clinical facts either. (Though, clearly, I might be forced to say the word vagina.) For me, and for my kids, the story lies somewhere in between, I imagine, in that gray area that, admittedly, I sometimes still don't quite understand myself.

Summer of Sal

I graduated college in 1990 with a degree in studio art and not the faintest clue how to put it to use. So after skipping town, I decided to backpack through Europe, largely solo, for a month and a half. I left soon after graduation, traveling on the cheap, and quickly dropping the bit of weight I'd added over four years of beer and late-night pizza.

It was a fairly lonely time, but I fancied myself an artist and a writer, and figured solitude and thought went part and parcel with being a creative person.

In college, due to both my love for Jack Kerouac's persona in On the Road, and a used-clothes-buying habit, my friends called me Sal. I liked the name, the chance to have a persona slightly bigger than myself.

Like Kerouac's Sal, I was excited by life and on a quest to discover all it had to offer. I talked to strangers, visited friends, slept on floors, ate and drank, read voraciously, wrote pages and pages of songs and poems, sketched a bunch, and mostly had a great time.

And then I got sick.

Somewhere between Salzburg and Munich, I managed to pick up Salmonella and Rotavirus, and by the time my night train from Munich arrived in Paris, I was sick as a dog.

It was early morning (maybe 6), and I had no place to go. I hadn't been to the Louvre on my first pass through the city weeks earlier, so I went there, figuring it'd be empty right when it opened. Alas, the Louvre, as you might imagine, doesn't open quite so early in the morning. But it was a warm enough June day and so I laid down on the edge of a fountain by I.M. Pei's then-new ziggurat façade.

I'm usually a bit of a fussy sleeper, but I passed out proper right then and there, lost in the emptiness of the plaza. When I woke, hours later, there were hundreds of people milling around me, in a line that snaked through the plaza, waiting for the doors to open.

I made it through the museum, barely, and for the next day or two — knowing full well that they contained some of the city's finer public restrooms — I gamely toured many of the city's finer museums and subsisted on take-away Cantonese Rice (which I still love and which still comforts me to this day), bread, and water.

Finally, unable to keep in food any longer, and with my fever skyrocketing, I hunkered down in a crappy one-star hotel in the garment district. For more than a week, as the parasites went about their business, I was delirious and dehydrated and went without food for long stretches (days, not hours). I alternately burned and shivered, slept and could not. Looking back on it, it seems far less like Salmonella and far more like what a long heroin withdrawal must be. I awoke one night certain that I was going to die in that hotel room, and I earnestly wrote down a last will and testament so I could fall asleep again. Clearly, it didn't come to that, but in many ways, it was the most frightening and defining period of my life.

When, finally, I threw in the towel and changed my plane ticket to come home a week early (best $50 change fee I've ever spent), I weighed 20 pounds less than I do when healthy, and looked every bit as strung out as Brad Davis in Midnight Express. Still, instead of being tossed in a Turkish prison, shockingly, I passed through Customs at JFK without a second glance.

I hadn't been to a doctor in four or five years, so I went to my childhood pediatrician, who took one look at me and whose first words to me (in the pinnacle of bedside manner) were, "Wow. You look like shit." He sent me down the hall for the lab to run tests on my blood, urine, and stool, and a few days later called with the results.

The worst thing about Salmonella is that there is no curative magic pill; they just let it run its course. And run it did. It was several weeks before I felt better, and another month just getting my strength back. In the meantime, the board of health called my house (to make sure I understood the health risks of Salmonella and that I had no contact with the public food supply), and I moved back to my college stomping grounds for a final summer before real life set in.

Slowly, I recovered, and I did stomp, working my old bartending job and living in a garage-top apartment I had sublet from my acting professor — who left his old tube amp for me to use when the guitar-playing muse struck me. It did, as did many other muses. It was a magical summer, post-college and stress-free, but I was serious about life and its prospects. I had no idea what that fall would bring, yet I had nothing but optimism. I could paint and I could write. Neither paid well (and they still don't), but I was Sal Paradise, dammit, and — clad in beat Salvation Army garb — I had outlived Salmonella. I was alive, and healthy, and at the top of my game.

Bad Daddy

My children are still toddlers, yet already they have no trouble letting me know the small but myriad ways in which I constantly fail them as a parent.

They ignore their toys that invariably trip me up in the kitchen, but gleefully point out to me the day-old food scraps on the living room floor, dust bunnies, cat hair, my drying hockey gear. One of their favorite things to say is "What a mess!" — which would be cute, if they weren't so damn judgmental about it.

Bad daddy.

When young E-O was just a crawling infant, she would literally stop halfway up the stairs to turn around and hand me the bit of paper or fuzz she had just found on the carpet. Thanks, kid. Now, pay attention to the task at hand.

I don't wipe their noses in time, nor brush their hair right, nor dress them in the right outfits. I'm too loud when they want to be quiet and too quiet when they want to be loud. I insist on eating before bedtime, at the table, and when possible, not allowing food in the hair. I'm bossy, yet apparently clueless.

Bad daddy.

From the holes they point out in my jeans, to the stain on my shirt, to the ever-popular "I smell something..." RK has upon receiving a good night kiss, looked me in the eye and commented, "Beer mouth." So as not to single myself out, RK has also noted this of my wife (as well as "wine mouth," I might add).

In our defense, we needed the drink.

Parenting is difficult stuff. It demands Trappist patience, combined with an ability to work on deadline, to multitask, and to push through physical exhaustion.

Young E-O has the agility and cunning of a samurai, the mindset of a middle linebacker, and the recklessness of a Kennedy. Older sister RK, on the other hand, has the stubbornness of a lug nut, the lungs of Lance Armstrong, coupled with the sensitivity of a morning glory. They are 17 months apart. They are in each other's business. E-O enjoys little more than smacking her older sister on top of the head. Over and over. This, of course, is occasionally funny in a Three Stooges way, but as you can imagine, RK audibly disapproves.

"Tell E-O to stop hitting me!"

RK, tell her yourself.

Bad daddy.

When we all get a good night of sleep, parenting is a completely manageable endeavor and one that I'm quite good at — but the perfect sleep equation is something that occurs approximately once in a blue never.

And so I fail. Over and over.

Such is my lot. But part of this whole parenting thing is the developing ability to understand that being a bad daddy has little to do with being a good dad. And my daughters' opinion of me can only go down as time too quickly pulls them into the vortex of their know-it-all tween and then teen years.

So I have no doubt that I will continue to fail epically. And I will fail and fail and fail, until one day, quite suddenly, I will succeed.

Until then, I'll just do what I've been doing, and when the situation calls for it, damn right I'll get my beer mouth on.

Obama's Ear

When my oldest daughter, RK, was born three years ago, my mom passed along to me an aging keepsake book from my own birth. With newfound context, I pored over the details of my early months that my mom had written down decades earlier. Sure, I compared birth weight and growth and pictures of my daughter and myself, but what struck me most was a note in one of the margins. Along with a small illustration, was the notation: "Right ear comes to a slight point."

I looked in the mirror. Indeed it does.

I hadn't really paid my ears much attention since my freshman year of college, when in a nice Punk rock moment, I downed a shot of whiskey, rammed a safety pin through one lobe, and clipped it on. I've since let the piercing close, but the point is still there. If forced to consider it, I suppose it gives my head a slightly asymmetrical quality that I like.

It was only a few weeks before I noticed that young RK has a very similar point, on the very same ear. I could not have been happier. One could certainly pass along far worse genetic abnormalities than the point.

And it was not long after that when I first noticed the ears of one Barack Obama.

Barack's got the ear. He's got more of a matching set than I, as opposed to being the long-lost left-pointed yin to my right yang. But I like to think of us as brothers in ears.

Now, admittedly, any presidential aspirations on my part have less to do with James Monroe than with Marilyn. Still, in moments of grandeur, I like to think that the extra nub of cartilage is where the hand of God yanked me from the womb. Maybe even to be something special.

Sure, I'm 40, and still struck by the fact that I'm not really sure what exactly I want to do when I grow up. But that never stopped, say, Hitchcock, or Cézanne.

Sure, Barack's only seven years my senior, but we can't all be that one.

In my early twenties, because I could write and paint and photograph with some skill, I half believed I'd be famous in short order — lauded for the creativity and talent that I rarely had the energy and persistence to properly market — and able to make my way doing the things I love. I thought it just came to you. I could not imagine working full-time for The Man. I could not even imagine being forty.

And at 40? I'm slowly getting it together, putting in my time, working for The Man; delivering The Weekly Meat in the off hours, to keep my hand in the game; and trying like hell to be a good husband, a good dad, and a good human being. I'm occasionally overwhelmed, and almost constantly whelmed.

I'm less creative than I once was, but more consistenly so. I think differently, though not often as deeply. Like my once-rebellious now-presidential brother in ears, I listen better. I feel more. And if the unjustified fame came, I could probably now deal with it without the self immolation that would surely have come back in the days of spontaneous unsanitary cartilage piercing.

Time Away

In the same way that sobriety tends to shed harsh light on scenes of drunkenness, for those who have children, traveling without them can lead to the realization that most children are, in fact, horrible little monsters — and I'm not sure what could lead any sane couple to knowingly conceive more than one. (Yes, this despite the fact that last week I nearly melted into a puddle of tears in a cab still on my street as I kissed my own kids goodbye for a week-and-a-half of business a half a world away.)

Horrible little monsters?

Indeed. Firstly, filthy:

I knew having kids would be a life changer. That's a given. But the ways in which living with said kids lowers the bar of what is socially acceptable can be staggering.

In the past three years since our older daughter was born, I have — in public, mind you — eaten the odd piece of food off their faces, fed them off the floor, sniffed their bottoms, changed their diapers, and been spit up on.

Add to the public face of our family the mayhem of what my wife and I endure in our home — where, a few weeks back, I picked up what appeared to be a prune, which had been sitting quietly underneath the kitchen chair of our one-year-old. Memo to self: when you live with two cats and two children, always look before you leap. What I picked up, it happens, was a cat turd, which had managed to wind its way down two flights of stairs, through a swinging cat door, around four turns, and into my theretofore clean fingers.

Mild infantile spit-up is one thing, but at one week old, I picked up our younger daughter, who in turn (and with all the strength in her young body) projectile vomited adult amounts of yack all over my face. My wife walked into the room, saw the carnage and said to me perhaps the most brutally honest words I've heard in my life: "You have some in your mouth."

This is what I have been reduced to.

Lest I digress. Secondly, kids are loud:

Boy, nothing drives this one home faster than a plane ride next to children who are not your own. They simply do not make melatonin and earplugs potent enough to drown out the din of crying child on a transatlantic flight.

Blame it on evolution, for we are hard-wired to be alarmed by the cries of a child (yes, even dads). We cannot ignore it. Nor think through it; nor sleep through it; nor watch TV through it. Indeed, the cry of a child is the precise pitch at which madness is induced and lobotomies considered. We can barely even live through the cries of a child not our own.

And that's just the half of it. Our toddlers take unfettered pleasure in screaming as often as possible. They make a game of seeing whom can maintain a higher tone for a longer period of time. I can assure you this is not artful and worthy of musical encouragement. Our girls hit notes that shatter glass; cause car alarms to go off, and neighborhood dogs to wet themselves.

Thirdly, kids are stinky:

The first diaper I ever changed was filled with an alarmingly black, pitch-like substance perhaps designed to scare off posers who should have considered practicing by first buying a dog. I didn't scare (OK, maybe I did, but I didn't run screaming), and my horror was all explained away by, well, this.

In any case, the constant diapers of our first infant daughter got better. But like nearly everything that gets better, it then got worse. Much worse.

What can you say about diapers, other than the fact that, mercy sake's alive, when the kids start in with the solid foods, it gets ugly quick. And when on TV doctor shows or mortuary shows or forensics shows they toss off hard-boiled lines about getting "used to the smell," let me just say that they are full of shit. And none of these shows would maintain any sex appeal whatsoever if they were produced in Odorama. Because in real life, even pee reeks. And kids, well, they have plenty of that.

That new baby smell people talk about? Sure, it's nice. But it's far less potent and wears off far more quickly than new car smell.

Fourthly, kids are just plain obnoxious. They're snotty and demanding and adamant, and always up in your business. It's all about them, 24-7. They're thuggish little Id monsters, always with the wanting to watch TV or play or be fed or changed or bathed or held.

Nothing is more fun to our younger daughter than to simply punch my leg. Over and over again. Things that are also fun include the pulling of hair (leg, arm, and chest included), batting off of glasses, slapping the face, throwing the food, smiling and looking at you while throwing the food, and so on.

My wife and I recently discussed the fact that we have to stop reacting to similar outbursts from the three-year-old with the demand, "What is wrong with you!?" Because, probably, that sort of thing later comes back to bite one in the ass in the form of therapy bills. But the fact remains, that whether we edit ourselves or not, it is generally one's knee-jerk reaction when a thinking person, regardless of age, does something with the intent to injure another, or even just to piss one off without provocation.

Am I right?

Well, lastly, let me just say that after a week-and-a-half away (and often without it) I too am horrible and dirty and loud and smelly and obnoxious. And I love it. I miss my two young daughters right now more than words (even words other than these) can possibly convey.

RK, E-O, I would not trade either of you for the world. Daddy's coming home. Yes, to clean your filth, bear your screams, smell your diapers, and take your beatings. And I can't wait.

Let's just hope I don't have to sit next to someone else's kids on the plane.

A Jew at Christmas

Until I met my wife, "the holidays" for me meant New Year's, and that somewhat misunderstood festival of lights for which there are multiple accepted spellings. My friends and relatives never really called to wish each other happy Chanukah. Though a friend one year did send a great card wishing me a "Happy ChakaKhan-aka" and featuring a fabulous pic of said '80s pop-funk diva.

My family always chose to place the onus of grand celebration not on Chanukah, but the non-secular and more easily scheduled Thanksgiving. We gather around the turkey instead of the menorah, and eat and drink instead of eat and drink and light candles and open presents.

I'm not alone. Christmas for us U.S. Jews has always been a slightly awkward time of wonder, envy, outsider-ness, and Chinese food. But eating fine Sichuan cuisine can also bring out the outsider in me, and — especially during the countless years I spent as a single guy during the holidays — it was not a stretch for me and those like me to feel as Brendan Behan famously said about critics, "like eunuchs at a harem."

And this despite the fact that until I married into Christmas, I was a real go-to Christmas Jew. That is, as sort of a reverse Shabbos Goy, I was the guy all my celebrating friends would invite over on Christmas Day in an attempt to make the festivities run a bit more smoothly among their observant brethren.

Yet I did not even see It's a Wonderful Life in its entirety until I was well into my twenties. (And let me just say, that's some dark shit you Christian folks get all auld lang syne about.) Though I'm a big fan of some of the better Christmas tunes (though not as early as the local retailers like to start in with them), I'm not sure I could make it through all the words of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on my own. And to this day, no one in my immediate family is partial to what I label the "Christmas spices": cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and allspice, despite our love for food of all kinds.

The flip side for non-celebrants is that Christmas is pretty much the single best day of the year to go anywhere that's actually open. I've spent some excellent Christmases skiing, flying, and going to newly-released movies, all without crowds. It's exhausting to ski on Christmas day; it invariably involves long runs down the mountain and skiing directly onto the chairlift, all with barely a "Shalom" to those jumping on a few chairs ahead of you. Because on Christmas — while much of the god-fearing world is home opening presents, eating fruitcake, and drinking egg nog — there is no line and no waiting.

The reality nowadays is that I haven't done any Christmas skiing in years, I know It's a Wonderful Life better than most, and I've stood out in the middle of driving snow debating the finer points of various fir trees. Christmas, like Chanukah and Thanksgiving, is a part of my life — and one I look forward to each year. I've got no love for the egg nog. But the holidays have always been about family. And with marriage, I've gained another holiday and another family. And I love them both. "Merrrry Christmas, Bedford Falls."

Adam Sandler — The Chanukah Song

Catching Up: 20 Years in 600 Words

I've been doing all this reconnecting recently with people with whom I haven't had a substantive conversation in 20+ years  — which got me thinking I should just write up a short blurb of my life since then. Because without the backstory, having even Facebook "friends" with whom you don't at least share a laugh now and then is just an exercise in polite cocktail party chatter, counting coup, and social masturbation.

So — at the risk of "too much information" in response to a perfunctory rhetorical "How's it going?" — here goes:

After high school I went to [small liberal arts college in upstate NY] and loved it. Majored in studio art; did lots of painting and photography and ceramics. Effectively double minored in theater and chasing the sort of good-looking women I hadn't previously had the confidence to talk to.

Graduated with decidedly indefinite plans. Traveled around Europe for a month before contracting Salmonella (miserable sickness I'd wish on few outside the neo-con Project for a New American Century). Came home early, recovered, worked my old bartending job to play out that summer, then moved back to Philly in the fall and fell into a gig as the A&E editor for a local professional monthly newspaper. Did arts and restaurant reviews, played some guitar in bad bands at night, and painted in my cheap loft. Eventually, the paper started having to borrow money to make payroll — at which point I bowed out, hopped in the car and drove across the country, hiking and camping, and visiting friends along the way. Returned to Philly energized, finished up a novel, took a job at a nearby Borders, and applied to graduate writing programs.

Left Philly for grad school in Boston in '93, and have lived here ever since. Did tons and tons of reading and writing, along with further chasing of women, wrote a pretty good full-length play as my master's thesis, graduated, and put my degree to use, teaching college writing and lit. Did that for several years, while concurrently working contract publishing and editing jobs. Published a few articles and poetry, sold a bunch of paintings. Finally, editing led me into technical editing (thankfully, better pay), and in the waning days of the tech bubble, I was offered a full-time gig at a big B2B software company, which I'm fortunate enough to still hold.

Along the way, I met a funny, smart, beautiful woman, and eventually and humbly asked her to marry me. (For good or ill, I did so on a quiet Saturday afternoon, with a load of laundry in the washer, sitting on the couch, the bling in my pocket. I thought, "Screw pretense, this is what life is like.") She agreed and we soon got hitched. (The only problem with my technique, of course, is that my wife now says things like, "You can't throw that out. That's the ratty old sweatshirt you were wearing when you proposed.")

We've done some traveling here and there, had our share of ups and downs, she got an MFA as well and is a good writer in her own right. The real estate market allowed us to trade in my non-descript bachelor condo for a house, which we've since partly gutted and rehabbed, and in which we're currently raising the two most beautiful, smart, and funny girls I've ever seen (for which I'd like to take credit, but the editor in me notes I used the very same three adjectives to describe my wife, above. Coincidence? Methinks not.).

That's about it. Not too much excitement at the macro level. Health is good, thank god, despite various broken bones and such along the way. Continue to play hockey once a week and do daily lifting of kids to stay in shape.

Not that you asked.

Story of My Life — Social Distortion

Running the Table

Every so often, a confluence of three major events occurs in my life. Sometimes I can see these trifectas coming, sometimes I can't.

In the spring of 2004, the Philadelphia Flyers (over which, longtime readers will recognize, I'm a bit fanatical) went deep into the hockey playoffs and had a good shot to win the Stanley Cup (a feat they haven't accomplished since I was 9); superhorse and Philly native Smarty Jones had a legitimate shot at winning the Triple Crown; and my wife and I were trying our damndest to get pregnant. Not a one happened.

A few months later, John Kerry was vying for the White House, while my local if not lifetime obsession, the Red Sox were vying for their first World Series in 86 years, and still, my wife and I were trying our damndest to stay pregnant. At least one of those three turned out well.

The latest confluence, I could see on the horizon for the past month now, and (somewhat shockingly and for maybe the first time in history) this time the deals have all gone down in my favor.

Within the span of a week, my hometown Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series, Barack Obama won the election, and I was not one of the hundreds of employees at my workplace to be laid off.

Three major deals. And it would be a lie to say I haven't toyed with their order of priority many times during the weeks leading up to their occurrence. It was possibly the biggest throwdown of my life. Or, as my brother emailed in regard to the Phillies and Obama victories, "It overstates nothing to say that we've witnessed two of the most exciting moments in our lives within the last 7 days." And he wasn't even in danger of being laid off.

I know full well, as we all should by now, that past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results, but damn, I don't generally run the table like this. I mean, in addition to the election of Obama, all state races and ballot initiatives even went the way I voted.

Now, of course, because fate is too often a cruel wench, I find myself wondering if there is a fourth unforeseen shoe waiting to drop. As anyone familiar with the parimutuel windows knows, it's painfully possible to hit the trifecta but miss out on the superfecta. Because typically, when the hits just keep on coming, I'm being beaten down and feeling pimped by life, not lifted up.

Which is why the latest trifecta success seems to be almost a referendum on how I see myself. I mean, as a guy from a city of underdogs as also-rans, can I allow that not only do "bad things happen to good people" but that sometimes good things actually happen too. And when they do, can it possibly be without adverse consequences (possible longer term presidential missteps notwithstanding)?

Who knows? Funny though how a phrase like "run the table" creeps into my thinking — as if I ran the table. Yes, I've been a Phils fan for a long time, went to a game while in Philly this year; yes, I donated to Obama's campaign, advocated his candidacy on this blog, and proudly voted for him Tuesday; yes, I do my job well and try to make myself invaluable to the team at work. Clearly, though, these scenarios that affect me hugely — emotionally, economically, spiritually, professionally — are being played out by those far above my pay grade.

But still. It's been a hell of a week.

Family

George Burns said, "Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city." And indeed, this describes both my and AKL's family.

I write this because we will be on vacation next week with my family. My whole family. Not just me, AKL, and the girls, but my brother and sister too, with their spouses and kids. And my parents. All told, we'll be 14 people. Relaxing? Maybe. Insane? Maybe.

Here, I need to stop and say that in my life, I have taken exactly three women to my parents' house for Thanksgiving with my family. All three have cried at some point during the trip.

Now, mind you, I never really went in much for criers. All three are with-it, smart, together women. So how is it that the Great Festivus of Turkey and Excess can bring otherwise rational women to weep inconsolably? The promise of tryptophan? Perhaps. My family? Perhaps. Me?

Whether the cause was me, or them, or my family, or the stress brought on by the prospect of the three coming together, who knows. I know this: The last time my family went on vacation together was a dozen years ago. There were only six of us then, all adults, in a foreign country, and we did well to stay out of each other's hair. But now we're twice as many — with six kids younger than four years old — and we'll all be under one roof. We'll be able to avoid each other only so much. Either we'll get along, or we won't. And either we'll deal well with that fact, or we won't.

Now, before you start thinking my family (most of whom will read this) veers into Long Day's Journey into Night territory, I should clarify our situation a bit. Sure, we're fully capable of putting the "fun" in dysfunction, but what family can't, in their own way? My siblings and I had a pretty easy, happy childhood. Occasionally a bit disaffected and Ice Storm-y in parts, but it was suburbia in the '70s, and that couldn't be avoided. My parents are married 40+ years, and bless us all if we can manage the same.

Because, as Preznit Bush likes to say about his day job, "It's hard work." And even when ruled by iron-fisted matriarchs from Gentile genteel places like Kennebunk, families can be, well, difficult.

We all tend to act differently around our family. Like the cast of a play or nearly any team of people, we fall into familiar roles among them — the black sheep, the overachiever, the scapegoat, the people pleaser, the entertainer, etc. — and my kin are no different.

Typecasting is problematic and difficult (especially when you're not being paid SAG minimum for the "acting"). You can get bored with it, try to inject something new into the role, begin to resent the staleness.

I'm still not exactly sure how to classify myself — though I know it when I've fallen into a role. And sometimes I'm fine with that. Other times, it annoys the hell out of me.

Back in the day, one of the Thanksgiving criers had a family dog that would actually play fetch by itself. Her folks had a lake house, and the dog would get a stick, then excitedly run out to the end of the dock with it and drop it off the dock and into the water, at which point it would run back to the beginning of the dock, then turn right around and hustle back once again to the end of the dock and jump straight into the water. It would then retrieve the stick, swim back to the shore, shake itself off, and start again.

I thought the scene spoke volumes about her family dynamics at work. What I realize now is that my judgment about my then-girlfriend's family was only partly valid. The rest was merely a reflection of my own family dynamics.

But that was then, and while having kids stirs up whatever feelings we had toward our own parents — just as they experienced the same — it also forces on you (OK, on me at least) a certain level of maturity.

So, with George Burnsian distance and maybe even some basic emotional growth, our roles can change as we age. Without it, of course, they stagnate. Either way, side effects may include headaches, nausea, vomiting, and horrible vacations.

Wish us luck.

Letter to the Former Homeowner

First, let me just say that we found your dog, Butch. Quite by accident, actually. I'd love to be able to tell you that he's in a better place now, but the fact is that he's still very much in the backyard — right where you buried him.

Thanks for that.

I don't know, but I think if you bury a family pet in the yard, you ought to either A) not be lazy about it, and dig down below the frost line, or B) have to exhume it upon sale of said residence. I mean, old Butch was still a bit, well, leathery when stumbled upon. Sure, the collar — with his nametag still attached — spiked to the fencepost should have tipped us off, but back in that shady corner of the yard, we didn't exactly notice it until after shovel struck carcass.

Also, I found the handgun in the basement. You left that too. Boy, you forget how heavy those things are. It scared me for a bit, until I looked at it closely enough to break it down and realize it shot BBs, not bullets. Which explains not only all of the BBs rolling around the third floor, but the pockmarks in the window molding as well.

What else? Oh. Newspaper does not insulation make. Darn stuff is flammable, see. Inside the walls of an old balloon construction wood-framed house it's called tinder. We've since added real (read: that with both a far greater R factor and ignition point than newspaper) insulation.

And the aerosol can of DAP foam you left inside the bathroom wall. Boy, glad I didn't hit that sucker with the Sawzall. God-awful mess that would have been.

I know it wasn't you who notched the first floor joists so deeply, but thanks for knocking out that pesky 8-by support column in the basement. It's not like the foundation couldn't support the extra weight. Oh right. Yes, it is like that. Well, I put up some steel lally columns to alleviate the over-stress.

The threat of an impending slow collapse of the house was perhaps what caused you folks to stow so many crucifixes around the place. We found all manner of them in hallways, and closets, and cupboards, and crawl spaces  — and not a damn one glow-in-the-dark.

The flowering pear tree out the back door. Maybe you could not have foreseen it growing to its 30-foot height when you planted its root ball. In a half-barrel planter. But, see, growing is what trees do.

Don't get me wrong. We do, ultimately, love the house, despite its often frustrating 1880's character. We paid you fair market value for it. (And we do want to thank you for letting us know the dead tree out back hid a live electrical conduit. Because we got the electrician out here before the tree removal guys, and that saved us a possible wrongful death lawsuit.) It's just that, well, you could have at least left behind the stack of vintage late-'70s and early-'80s gentlemen's magazines we spied in the basement during our initial walkthrough. I was looking forward to reliving much of my youth. And then selling them on eBay for a tidy sum. But of course you took those. Bastards.