Posts Tagged ‘family’
Happy David Day
How many people have a little brother whose birthday happens to be today? I wonder if he reads here or whether I should find a better way to send him a greeting. I have an idea, how about you all surprise him with messages, too! Especially, if you don’t actually know him. You can tell him I sent you. Write to him at drghays at yahoo dot com. David, if you are reading here today, just ignore the last paragraph. Happy birthday.
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Here is a present for you, from me. An update on our investment:
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The 1969 Boss Hoss Mustang was one of 3 chrome cars that were given as a part of the Hot Wheels Club Kit in 1970. There was the Heavy Chevy (Camaro), King Kuda (Barracuda) and the Boss Hoss (Mustang).
The Mustang is the most common of the three with the Heavy Chevy being the rarest. The Mustang in mint condition with it’s stripes intact is worth about $25.
'69 Hot Wheels Chrome "Boss Hoss" Mustang
Interesting that if it’s worth about $25, how come in auction, bids are over double that? People are funny. But we know it’s not worth nothin’ unless you sell it. SELL IT!? You gotta be kidding! Then I wouldn’t get to play with it. Don’t worry, it’s safe with me. I’ll put it back in a safe place in a min… in a few… in a little while.
Creating Christmas Memories
This is what Christmas is all about. There is no comparison for the little ones who are just learning the wonderful moments that make up the gathering of loved ones for festive foods, bunches of laughter and, of course, the giving of gifts.
About 22 years ago, with just our little 1-year-old daughter, Cyndie and I moved from our home in Minneapolis back to the suburb where we grew up. In Cyndie’s search for local baby-sitters at that time, she decided to check with the nearby churches to see if there was anyone they might recommend. She struck gold. We didn’t know how lucky we were at the time, but it seemed pretty great that there was a young girl who lived within walking distance that they referred us to.
Melissa rather quickly moved from just baby-sitting to more extended child-care and then our summer girl and ultimately became a natural extended member of our family. She not only took care of our kids when they were young, she stayed connected as they grew and went off to college. She stayed connected even as she grew up, got married and started her own family.
Last night we kicked off this year’s Christmas events with Mel’s family, over to our house for dinner and presents. What a treat to have people like this in our lives to share the love of family and the nurturing of children toward healthy, happy developing individuals. We are truly blessed.
We have a pretty funny tradition that has unintentionally developed between Cyndie and Mel’s husband, Greg. It started quite a few years ago when Cyndie gave Greg a snow-globe ornament that she had seen in a catalog. When he got it all unwrapped from the protective packing material, the little scene inside that was supposed to be a quaint winter landscape was revealed. It looked kinda spooky. What was supposed to be a tree that had lost all its leaves, looked more like a tree that had lost its life, …years ago. But this snow-globe was a deluxe model. It came with sound-effects. We found a battery and turned it on. I think it was supposed to sound like wind, and occasionally, a crow calling from the dead tree. It sounded as spooky as it looked and the squawking conjured up visions of horror movies more than anything pleasant about winter. I can’t imagine what Greg must have thought about this family that Mel had gotten mixed up with. He ever so graciously navigated receiving that lemon of a gift and it has become a great source of laughter ever since.
Poor Greg must flinch whenever he learns it is time to visit the Hays family for a Christmas gift exchange again. This year, Cyndie gave him the option, before he even opened his present, to exchange it for a gift card to Home Depot. He politely took her up on the offer after he saw the plastic mold of the front end of a 69 Corvette with a 3″ wide piece of glass that rests on top to make a shelf to hang on the wall. Um, I guess it looked a lot more impressive in the catalog.
Avert Your Eyes
The holiday collage-photo was hastily thrown together at the last minute on Sunday when Cyndie asked for something to send to her friends. I regret that it is ripe for critique in all aspects of artistic integrity and discretion of composition. The kids in front of an icy waterfall in the high country of Norway, wearing their sunglasses, and totally out of context head shots of mom and dad pasted in opposite corners –Cyndie dressed for work, John from his Himalayan trek. I’m sorry. Now it just needs the annual letter describing more minutiae about each person than can be believed and we have a classic package.
I’m going to pretend I don’t know anything about it and carry on with my usual activities as if I have nothing new to be embarrassed about. Too bad that it is like the proverbial car crash. It’s awful to witness, but you can’t get yourself to look away. Oh boy. What have I done?
Remember Anytime
It may be the contrarian aspect of my character, but for no obvious reason –say maybe a birthday, anniversary, or Mother’s Day– I find myself thinking about Mom today. Not just a passing thought, but a really robust feeling of closeness to everything that comes to mind when I think about her. And it’s all wonderful. I can think of a variety of potential triggers that likely combined to bring this on, not the least of which involves Thanksgiving and Christmas memories of childhood. So, for no other reason than today is the second day of December, I am claiming this a valid day to celebrate the memory of my wonderful mother, Betty.
A Thanksgiving Memory
I can’t help falling into my usual cynical attitude about a holiday that celebrates this country’s good fortune of decimating the tribes of original nations living here and building massive wealth and success on the backs of immigrants, many, if not most, of whom were mistreated as slaves. At the same time, I have nothing but fond memories of this day of family, friends, power lounging, game playing, football watching, over-eating, Christmas-season launching fun.
I particularly recall a neighborhood football game when I was a young teenager. We often played games with whomever was available, usually with limited success on adequate numbers. On this day, not only did we have plenty of players available, since it was a holiday, we even had spectators showing up to watch us. It was the absolute best! Until I got hurt. I don’t recall the exact mechanism of injury, but I bruised my tailbone something awful. At the time, I figured something might be broken. I cried. That is brutal for a teen boy to do in front of such a big audience. As I gingerly walked off the neighbor’s yard, headed for home, my sister, Linda, took a photograph of me that captured the moment, eventually helping sear it in my mind evermore.
That moment is closely followed by a vivid recollection of trying to sit at the dinner table on the hard chair for the traditional Thanksgiving feast. It required a pillow. For some reason, the second memory is a view outside of myself, seeing me try to sit down on the chair. I understand why I might remember how I looked walking off the neighbor’s yard because of the photo, but I find it curious that I have remembered the image of trying to sit down on that chair from a similar vantage point, instead of from within as I experienced it.
This year, I am thankful for all the blessings I am able to enjoy, and I continue to regret that it comes at the expense of others less fortunate than I. It’s as if our society is just another variation of a Ponzi scheme. It’s no wonder that I have always loved and hated this holiday at the same time.
Look at that! I can’t commit to one feeling or the other and a story about my ass hurting, all in one post.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
More Sports Speak
It is Sunday morning and after a two-week wait due to a bye in their schedule, the NFL Vikings play football again today. As if I really need more sports this weekend. Friday night, I attended the Gopher basketball game at the U of M, and yesterday morning, I was back down there to see the football team. Later, at home, I caught the hockey team in fine form on television, triumphing over Bemidji State. But this year, with Brett Favre as quarterback, watching the Vikings is once again becoming almost as interesting for me, as college sports.
One other thing has renewed my interest in professional football this year. Julian organized an online pool of competition in which we pick the winner of every NFL game each week. Brings back memories of the old ‘office pool’ I used to do when he was young. It instantly makes games that I would otherwise care less about, particularly interesting. It also forces me to become aware, if even superficially, of the status of every single team in the league.
We are competing for bragging rights, but win or lose, I have gained the increased entertainment value that playing such pools provides. As well, it has been interesting to witness how often Julian’s and my predictions appear similar. As a result, our year-to-date total is dead-even. Just last week, I was thinking that I will need to find a way to get a little distance between us. When all the participant’s selections were locked in and became visible, it became clear how difficult that is likely going to be. Julian’s and my picks were identical.
One of the tricks to getting more guesses correct than all the other people in the pool, is to pick at least one unlikely upset. The hope is that no one else will have the same selection, and then you just need your underdog team to steal a victory for you. The reality is that the odds are much greater for the outcome to go doubly against you, since being wrong instantly puts you behind everyone else. There ends up being multiple ways the game can be seen as an upset.
One easy way to assume you will get a pick that most of the others won’t choose, is to bet against the home team. That can be a hard decision to make. This year, when I finally felt the situation was right to try that ploy, it turned out perfect, except for one thing. Julian saw it exactly the same way. He and I were the only two who correctly guessed the Vikings to lose that week. Like father, like son.
Laughing at Life
Woke up this morning in just the right mood to enjoy the silly interactions that being up early together with my lovely wife can bring about. It is interesting to discover how funny, old Saturday Night Live skits can be when revisited, decades later, by way of discovering you are living the scenes of which they were poking fun. This morning we found Gilda Radner and Bill Murray’s characters, Lisa Loopner and Todd DiLaBounta, materializing. I thought it was funny enough, until Cyndie pointed out that I was being Lisa, not Todd. Ha ha, that’s so funny.
Together we found ourselves remembering some difficult times of days gone by, raising children together, and from this distance of time, were laughing about things that were far from funny back then. Then there was some mention of sleeping long enough to heal our livers, …or not. Not sure if we accomplished that, but we seem to have rested our funny bones, because they were rarin’ to go this morning.
Mary's comment response... depicts it beautifully
Finding some of the stupidest things to laugh about can be such a treasure. And cultivating the ability to laugh together, the deep belly laugh that takes your breath away, can be such a priceless treasure. It is, indeed, a reward that can be earned for the work done to develop a long-term relationship; a healthy, growing relationship. All those tough times together finally produce this. Funny, isn’t it?
My Side of the Bed
It’s funny, how time allows the best of intentions to succumb to our natural inclinations. I think it is pretty obvious that a vast majority of people evolve to a comfort zone of familiarity. We do a lot of things a particular way because that is the way we did it the time before. If something works, why change it? When you select your seat for lunch everyday, how often do you pick the same one you were in the day before? Do you park in the same space at your workplace everyday?
When it comes to stories about doing things a particular way, since that’s the way it’s always been done, I have a favorite. It involves a recipe being passed down through generations, on how to prepare a roast. When a daughter finally asks why the instructions say to cut the end off of the roast, Mom explains that she does it that way because her mother always did. Eventually it is revealed that Gramma started doing it because she didn’t have a big enough pan at the time to fit the whole thing. There are variations on that theme, but they all present the similar point.
One of the primary examples of a person with patterns, for me, was my father. There were certain ways that he did things, and there was a strong level of importance transmitted about not messin’ with his routine. He always sat at the head of the table where he kept a tray with his items of interest: ash tray, box of Kleenex, course-ground pepper, smoking pipe and paraphernalia. When he wasn’t around, it was the first place I wanted to sit. If we ever monkeyed around with anything on that tray, you can bet we understood the value of getting everything back the way we found it.
A long time ago in my life, I made a decision to specifically not do a lot of things in the same way my father did them. Many of them were pretty valuable health decisions involving diet, smoking, and alcohol. One of them was more frivolous. I wanted to intentionally NOT have one place where I sat at the table. I didn’t want to have one side of the bed that was mine. I wanted deliberate randomness.
Time, and my natural inclinations, overcame my intentions. I have developed many, many patterns, not the least of which is vividly revealed by my side of the bed.
28 Years Ago Today
The last time I showed this photo, someone exclaimed that I looked like I was 16 years old. Well, I was a whopping 22, and today marks 28 years hence that day that Cyndie and I exchanged vows in the public ceremony we call a wedding. It was 7 years after the day we mark as our dating anniversary. I asked her yesterday what she thinks would have happened if we hadn’t attended the same high school. Maybe none of this would have transpired. I said we would have met anyway.
I am a very lucky guy.
For all our differences and the many difficulties, we are pretty well suited for each other. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the counselor who helped us to work through some of the issues we each were dealing with at a time our relationship was under the most strain. I can truly say we are happier together now than ever before.
On this very same day, 21 years ago, we received a most stupendous gift, with the birth of our second child, Julian Walker Hays.
I am a lucky dad.
We are celebrating separately this year. Elysa is flying to Chicago to be with Julian, and Cyndie and I are up at Wildwood. It is a very happy day. Ain’t love grand?
Thinking About Family
Thinking about family has me remembering a period of feeling disconnected from my family of origin. When we would gather for holidays or family events, I found myself feeling out of the mix, like oil and water. Topics of conversation, attitudes about the world, parenting styles, life choices of behavior and activity, all seemed to clash with my perspectives at the time. Either as a result of how this made me feel, or because the same feeling wasn’t occurring when I was involved in activities with my wife’s family, I was finding it more comfortable to be with the family I married into.
It didn’t last. However, one factor during that time related to my feeling disconnected, was some self-examination I was doing that involved my father. I had recently identified that depression was a contributor to my less than ideal life experience and one very vivid demonstration of it manifest in my behavior with my wife and children that mirrored how my father behaved. I was finding myself developing an adult life that patterned right off the one in which I grew up. It actually felt quite natural. It wasn’t anything I had to learn, it was how I already, inherently knew how to behave. But it was imperfect, and I label it as dysfunctional. To behave differently was something that I would need to learn.
One of the facets of that learning involved recognition. It created a conflict in me when I was amid my family of origin, as I struggled to recognize signs and interplay that were once invisible to me, and identify my reactions and my role in it all. At the time that I was trying to change my thinking and how I interpreted the world around me, I seemed to struggle the most when I was with my family of origin. In hindsight, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I believe that as I change myself, others eventually change their interactions with me and that may be part of why I don’t feel uncomfortable around my family of origin now. That, and the fact that I have had more time refining my role of practicing better mental health in my own head.
There is something oh-so-pleasing about rediscovering your own people. I don’t remember the specific incidence, but I definitely had a distinct “aha” moment of recognition that there were others who are more like me than anyone else I’ve met, and they are my siblings. I am a Hays. Regardless any differences we may have, there are basic characteristics that form the foundations of who we each are. Any time I have had a bit too much exposure of other people’s families, I now know that I just need to get together with my siblings and find connections with someone who deep down shares an entirely unique bond with me. It allows me always to remember how lucky I am to have family.
Relative Something 