Our youngest child, Andrew, turned 12 this past Thursday.
Older sister Leah is not impressed.
A week from today, he’ll wrap up 6th grade at Sands Montessori, the same school his three older siblings attended (and the first public Montessori school in the United States!).
We’ve had kids there since 2005, and have made great friends with fellow parents over the years. It’s hard to believe that a week from now, we won’t be “Sands parents” anymore. It’s the end of an era, the closing of another chapter in our lives.
I work from home most Tuesdays, and drop Andrew off at Sands in the morning. I won’t miss the school drop-off line – for some inexplicable reason I fully expect preschoolers and grade schoolers to disgorge from their parents’ cars with the swiftness of WWII GIs leaving their Higgins boat during the D-Day invasion… a sure recipe for frustration.
But I’ll really miss my time with Andrew in the morning – waking him at 8 (I call him “Lieutenant Lazybones”), serving him a nutritious breakfast of… whatever sugar-laden cereal happens to be handy…
… listening to music on our three-minute ride to school, giving color commentary on the other cars in line (“look at this one, stopping only halfway through the circle… c’mon, your snowflake can walk an extra 20 feet!”)…
… sending him on his merry way with a quick “love you!”… and getting back a “love you too” because he’s not a jaded teenager yet.
Come August, he’ll be getting on a bus with two of his older siblings, headed to Walnut Hills. He’ll still be my boy, he’ll still be our baby… but baby boy has left the building. And I really miss him.
I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel like celebrating today. Not only is it a dreary day in Cincinnati, but 5/5 was my mom’s birthday. As most of you know, she died when I was quite young. Three years old, to be exact. Leukemia stole her away from her husband and 4 young kids, at the age of 33 (a.k.a. the “Jesus year”).
Let’s get the easy answers out of the way first:
No
No
Sorry, I forgot this isn’t Jeopardy. The questions are:
Do you remember her?
Did your father ever remarry?
Those two questions are usually the ones I get when I tell someone about my mom’s untimely departure from this world. #1 is a lot tougher to wrap my head around. Trust me, I’ve tried my best to remember her, but to no avail. So how do you miss someone that you didn’t really know? It’s a weird feeling, for sure.
I know the time from birth to age three is a crucial period, and so my mom was my first/best teacher. But when I try to conjure up some sort of happy memory, a warm glow from those halcyon days… nothin’.
I’ll tell you what I do know. My mom was a first generation Italian-American.
She too lost her mom young… and a sister as well. She played basketball in high school. (We had her b-ball jersey at our house in Arkansas… long after we moved from Jersey City, where my mom and dad met and married. I studied that jersey like it was the Shroud of Turin.)
When she went into labor with her third child (yours truly), my dad took a route to the hospital that featured a few cobblestone streets… and my mom gave my dad some good-natured grief about that. (The extra bouncing might also help explain why I’m wired differently.) When she was trying to teach me how to tie my shoes, I got mad and kicked off one shoe, and it flew up and cracked one of the window panes in our front door… or at least that’s what my older siblings told me… or something like that. It’s been too long.
There’s a Superchunk song call “Void” that expresses my feelings very well:
I look for you
And all I see, all I say Is a void All I see, all I say Is a void
“Pity? Party of one? You’re table’s ready.”
OK, I’ll stop wallowing now. Cinco de Mayo’s for celebrating, right? So rather than focus on the negative space, I’ll celebrate the fact that my mother laid such a strong foundation in our short time together that I do miss her to this day, even if my “miss” is different from most. Diamonds are forever, but so are DNA and “imprinting.”
I’m far from a masterpiece, but my siblings and I are her masterpieces. Superchunk, bring it home:
Don’t go wait for me, No, don’t go Wait for me Because I don’t believe I don’t believe everything I see No, I don’t believe I don’t believe everything I see
Our second child, Peter, celebrates his 16th birthday today. Hard to believe. Seems like only yesterday he looked like this:
Peter on June 15th, 2002
HT to my friend Dale Doyle for the wonderful photo – he took some great shots of Peter and our oldest child Gabriel (yes, “Peter Gabriel” but not in that order, and not for that reason, although Peter Gabriel is a great musical artist).
Now Peter’s getting his driving temps:
Peter refusing to smile… because that’s what teenagers do.
I know, “sunrise, sunset…” – I sound like every other parent ever.
Peter’s got a great sense of humor, and I like to tell him about one of my favorite Dave Barry newspaper columns, where he picked up his teenage son at school in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile just to embarrass him.
It’s a funny column – as all Dave Barry columns are. Check it out here. Love the last paragraph:
Of course I did not expect thanks. My reward is the knowledge that some day, somehow, Rob will be a hideous embarrassment to his son. That’s what makes this country great: An older generation passing along a cherished tradition to a younger one, in very much the same way that a row of people at a baseball game will pass along those tasty Oscar Mayer wieners, which by the way also have been shown in laboratory tests to prevent baldness.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article1934773.html#storylink=cpy
Although the way Peter is wired, I don’t think he’d be embarrassed if I came to pick him up at school in the Wienermobile. Now that he has his temps, he’d want to take the wheel… after attaching his customized sticker to the rear bumper:
My oldest child got his ACT score this past weekend.
I’m thrilled for him… and happy for my wallet too. Life is not a standardized test, but fairly or unfairly, how well you do on a standardized test strongly influences scholarship offers.
He’s certainly thought that he’s smarter than his old man for many years now, but this makes it official.
Although I told him that I took the test way back in the 80s, before they dumbed it down.
My wife and two youngest children are on a Spring Break trip out west, with our friend Heather and her two kids. Meanwhile I’m stuck in rainy Cincinnati with our teenage sons. (I’m not bitter.) The way my music-loving mind is wired, every time my wife sends me a photo of their adventures, it makes me think of a song.
They started their trip in Las Vegas (where my Raiders are moving):
So naturally that makes me think of “Viva Las Vegas” – but not the Elvis version, the Shawn Colvin version from the Doc Pomus tribute album (and The Big Lebowski credits).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPo3G4IWuHM
Next up was the Hoover Dam:
I cannot hear the words “Hoover Dam” without thinking of Sugar’s song by the same name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBqZHPTCV58
They spent some time on Route 66:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrKxBhKdFM
Then they headed to the Grand Canyon:
That’s your cue, Drive By Truckers…
They’ve been spending a lot of time in Arizona
That calls for a double-shot, twin spin:
Yesterday they were in Sedona:
Great scenery… great tune by Houndmouth too!
And tonight they’ll get to Phoenix.
Looks like they’re really enjoying their time way out west:
And I am too, vicariously, via the soundtrack in my head.
My 13-year-0ld daughter Leah is not what I’d call a “morning person.” I suppose very few teenagers are, but she’s the poster child for pre-dawn sluggishness. And guess who gets to wake her up every school day, at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m.? That’s right, her dear old dad. It’s somewhat akin to poking your bare hands into a rattlesnake den, or opening a hornet’s nest with a head-butt. If there’s a right side of the bed for her, we haven’t found it yet.
I try to wake her as gently as possibly, because I know that according to research, teens naturally need a later wake-up schedule. But we’re under the gun if she and her brother are going to catch the school bus at the end of our street at 6:32 (not 6:33… we’ve learned the hard way). Here’s how it usually goes:
6:00 a.m. “Leah, honey, it’s time to wake up…”
6:10 a.m. “Leah, it’s 6:10… I’m going to turn your light on now.”
6:15 a.m. “C’mon Leah, we have to get going.”
6:18 a.m. I stomp up the stairs from the kitchen, and that’s usually her signal to get up and shut her door in my face. I don’t care, because at least she’s up.
But now I have a secret weapon, a brand new musical alarm. It was inspired by my college buddy Vinnie, who used to wake up his teenage daughter Alana by playing the first 12 seconds of Carole King’s “Beautiful” on repeat until she got out of bed.
So I’ve put together my own little morning mashup medley for my precious only daughter, as a reminder that we need to catch the bus:
Yeah, it’s not as sweet and harmonious as a Carole King song, but it gets the job done. Better yet, it combines classic indie rock tunes from the fantastic Royal Crescent Mob and The Replacements (one of my all-time favorite bands) with a snippet from a new song called “Old Friends” from an up-and-coming band out of New Jersey called Pinegrove. (Check out their debut album here.)
Sure, Leah might be psychologically scarred for life, but at least she could turn out to be an indie rock fan!
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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