Relative Something

Yesterday, Cyndie and I were reading together from the journals I’ve uncovered that I wrote back when the kids were young. This one elicited the most dramatic response. We both were surprised by it and couldn’t control our laughter for quite a spell, I think partly because it contains a combination of the tragedy and the comedy from that stage.

Jan 10, 1994

Monday : The other day Julian you got angry at me as I tried to rush you to get ready to go with (when you didn’t want to) to take Elysa to tumbling.  In your frustration you told me I was the worst dad in the whole world.  I stopped and looked at you with sad eyes and you realized what you had said and I think felt bad about the statement being a little too strong.  You quickly retracted it and said “no Dad, I mean you’re the worst dad in HALF the world.”

He was 5 years old.

I don’t know how many of you are aware of this, but I am not inclined to venture very far from the most rudimentary of food preparation in a kitchen. Well, food preparation anywhere, truth be told. As a result, I don’t have much of a drive to spend time in a grocery store. However, there are times when it is wise that I be prepared to join my wife, who does spend a large percentage of her precious time in food preparation, on her expeditions to a grocery store, even when it occurs on a beautiful evening… beautiful for doing pretty much anything, except shopping for groceries.

It can be quite a struggle for me. More often than not, I feel as though I become more of a burden, than an assistant to her. Without actually focusing on the significant difference in how we do things, it is more my grappling with the decision process that seems to snarl the event. And I have what I feel is a very valid excuse: there are too many options.

I get overwhelmed with the number of possibilities in a grocery store. Is there someone out there for every variety of item that is displayed on the shelves or is most of that stuff just for show? It becomes sensory overload for me, and my already challenged process of deciding gets taxed to a point of just plain stuck. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter.

“Take that one.”

“I don’t care.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t know.”

Lotta help I am.

Luckily, I am not a very picky eater. She can pretty much make anything she wants and it’ll suit me fine. But I understand her desire for a companion in the effort. Instead, she ends up with more of a cheerleader.

“Great choice, hon!”

“This tastes delicious!”

“I love this food you’ve prepared!”

“Thank you for doing the grocery shopping.”

Thank you, Cyndie.

In my mind, there is nothing quite like the change of seasons in places like Minnesota that enjoy the full variety of 4 seasons of the year to full extremes. If you stop and think about it, the seasons are in constant change, but it doesn’t seem that way, as we perceive it. To us, it appears to be summer for a while, then it changes into fall, then winter, followed by spring. Bing, bang, boom.

One of the amazing things about the seasons here is how far opposite summer and winter are. When standing in the midst of the most oppressively hot and humid summer day, it is incredibly hard to reconcile that just six short months ago it was a barren deep-freeze outside. I’m always impressed by how short our memories get for that difference. In summer, we hardly think that winter happens in this very same place.

It seems to me, the calendar dates of each season fall in the middle of that particular season, but the designation is, that it starts that day. By June 21st, it feels like it has been summer for weeks. Same for the other 3 seasons. Why not mark the equinox as the middle, not the beginning of one and end of another?

Today, it is feeling very fall-like. I noticed last week, as I left for morning soccer, it has been dark outside, and not long ago I needed my sunglasses on the drive. The hints of change sneak in little by little. Now that I think of it, one day last week I noticed the tree outside the building at work had dropped a whole bunch of leaves for some reason and I found myself mentioning as I walked in that it looked like fall out there.

By far, the one change of seasons that is most noticeable is fall. It’s got to be the leaves changing color. There’s always the onset of the football season and the start of a school year that scream of fall, but those have less to do with the weather and more to do with association, due to the coincidence of timing. It is the changing leaves that win fall all the attention.

Fall isn’t far off now. It feels like it is already upon us. The seasons are, indeed, in constant change.

The new major league baseball field in town is getting its grass installed! The Twins won 5 games in a row! Are we getting baseball fever?

I am a pretty intermittent baseball spectator. That’s too bad, in a way. I think one big charm of true followers of baseball is their ability to harvest entertainment from the periods when individual games don’t seem to hold great value. They get creative, transforming a game that on the surface can appear boring to the casual observer, by manufacturing intensity, tracking and recording statistics down to every single pitch, if necessary. I don’t seem to have that level of interest, even though Dad was one who seemed to track every game on radio or TV. It didn’t rub off, at least, not thoroughly. I do recall he taught Judy the art of filling out the scorecard on a game.

I don’t pay close attention to every game, but I tend to peek in on at least part of a majority of Twins games on a regular basis, if they are being broadcast. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like my watching must be bad luck. All too often, when I stop the channel surfing on a game in progress, it ends up being just in time to see an inning get away from my team and it goes from bad to worse until I can’t stand to witness any more and surf on.

I admit that one of my favorite features of the broadcasts has become the “Circle Me, Bert” routine. Something that has very little to do with the actual game. One of the best things about a gimmick like this is that it is the fans that have made it so popular, and I believe a bit of dumb luck for the team’s Marketing Department to have it take off as it did. Television color commentator, Bert Blyleven, uses his telestrator to circle fans who hold up signs urging him on during the broadcast. I love how it inspires fans who show up at away games to put a lot of effort into being very visible Twins fans.

I think we could all do with a little circling of our cheery little selves in a whole variety of life’s day to day situations. Doesn’t really translate, but somehow, I think it should. Or maybe it’s just that I like uttering the phrase, “Circle me, Bert!” regardless whether there is a ball game on, or not.

We are dancing with glee and banging gongs over our good fortune! Yesterday we traded in our 27-year-old clothes washing machine for a new model with the latest in high efficiency technology. The old one has given us everything it possibly could. Our Service Plus plan paid off more than once to extend the life of the old beast, once even installing a new motor that was reportedly a very rare component to still exist, but the guy had one in his truck that day.

But lately, the old machine was starting to fall to pieces, literally. One day recently, as I was pulling clean, wet laundry out of the tub, I heard a clank and figured it was some coin or metal button that had come from the clothes. To my surprise, I picked up a rusty chunk of metal that had come from somewhere within the machine itself! The wash tub did seem to have gotten kind of wobbly lately. We didn’t have a problem accepting that it was time.

I am a bit embarrassed over how gleeful we get over this stuff. Hours before it was scheduled to be delivered, we were preparing a path and cleaning for the new arrival. We cleaned up that laundry room like we were setting up a baby’s new room. Jake and Tish, I don’t know what the communication was that you maybe didn’t receive, but I found the envelope with your address looking ready to be mailed, but lost for who knows how long, tangled in the dust bunnies under the old machine.

Between how incredibly prepared we were and the fact that our laundry room is on the main floor, the installers must have been in and out in 5 minutes, even with running through a quick tutorial on the fancy electronic control panel. (Don’t tell their boss, I think they deserved to take advantage and use any spare time for a long lunch.)

I’m not proud of this extreme adulation for an appliance, but Cyndie and I seem to feed off of each other and together we somehow end up becoming overly exhilarated. For example, we jointly plotted for an anniversary present to each other one year and came out with a vacuum cleaner. But it was a Dyson! We felt it a grand way to say, “I love you!”

I wonder if the new machine will still maintain its energy efficiency rating if we keep finding something else to wash every few hours, just so we can use it again?

“You never know when you’re making a memory” from Young Blood by Rickie Lee Jones

A few weeks ago I was writing about some family history, and during that time I had pulled out a box of memorabilia that contained surveys I had family members fill out on a Thanksgiving back in 1990. I completely forgot they existed. Originally the idea was to bring them out in the year 2000 to share what everyone had written. It didn’t happen until almost 19 years after we recorded our answers.

Now I’ve uncovered even more memories from the ’90s, but these have taken a bit more effort. From 1992 through 1994, I tried to write a paragraph or two every morning when I got to my office at work, recording stories about what our kids had been involved with the day before. I wrote directly to my children and hoped that someday they would find value in hearing some of the day-to-day activities. I also was hoping to capture some of what Cyndie’s and my intentions were in our nurturing and educating of the kids.

When I conceived the idea to do the daily writing, I was infatuated with my new access to a Macintosh computer and a software novelty called, Hypercard. Hypercard is no longer compatible with the current operating systems. The software can be downloaded, but it won’t run unless you have an old operating system. Finding the folder of files, called Hypercard Stacks, on an old external hard drive was exciting for me, but I couldn’t get any of the software on my computer to cleanly read the text of the Hypercard Stacks.

It took a few tries and some research, but I finally have it all working again on an old computer at work. So far, Cyndie and I have read through the first three months of ’93 (unfortunately, ’92 is nowhere to be found). There are some stories that are real gems, and some revelations of things we don’t recollect, and also some descriptions of times I’d rather not remember. I don’t like revisiting moments of gnashing of teeth and intense sobbing. Sure, it happened, but some memories are better left faded by time.

One thing that struck me was how many times the kids were allowed to fall asleep in our bed and then later moved to their own. There are also a lot of mentions of kids they played with at the time, most, long gone by now. Overall, it is a treasure trove of memories. I highly recommend the exercise to parents of young children. Consider what you can do now, that when stored for a decade or two becomes incredibly valuable in subsequent years. …You never know when you’re making a memory.