Steel Trap

“I have something to show you. Wait here,” he gestured to the chair in the kitchen. This is not the first time that he’s said that. Dad’s full of random artifacts that at first glance don’t really look like much, but then when he explains you end up thinking about it for days.


See, he’s the kind of guy who has a stack of newspaper pages on the bookshelf in the small TV room near the front door of his long ranch house. He reads the newspaper every day, cover to cover, and often finds something randomly interesting about an article. He tears out the page and sets it on top of the stack. Over the years that stack has grown to about 12 inches high. My mom pleaded with him to throw it away. But on a frequent basis he rifles through the stack and finds the exact article he was thinking of, and he almost always knows exactly where in the stack that one article is.

This time the thing he wanted to show me wasn’t in the stack. He pulled out an envelope from the photo processing place; my nieces and nephews tease that their Dziadiu is the only person left on the planet who still shoots with film. He sets the photos in front of me.

In the picture is a museum exhibit of a nuclear bomb. It’s a B83 gravity bomb that weighs 2,400 pounds, 18 inches in diameter, and 12 feet long. He points to a metal plate somewhere near the midpoint of the fuselage.

Then he pulls out a photo from another envelope; in it is a metal object resting on a granite table. I recognize the table; Dad has these granite tables at his machine shop. The stone doesn’t chip, so it’s easy to slide precision measuring instruments on the surface to get an accurate reading on some part he’s made. See, Dad is a machinist, job shop primarily. Other companies come to him to make components that go into bigger things. Over the years he’s made things like engine parts for the F-14 fighter jet, and hinges for missile silos on submarines.

He points to one end of the part, and sure enough it matches the metal plate on the picture of the nuclear bomb. “I made 360 of these things in 1981,” he points out. “And then we went on vacation in New Mexico and I see one on display in a museum in Albuquerque.”

Turns out, he still has a few of them at the shop, and he dug one out when he got back from his trip. At the time he didn’t know that these parts would be used on a nuclear bomb. He had suspected they would be used on cruise missiles. But that was a common thing at the time. He got most of his work from defense contractors back then, and most of the time the part he produced was so obscure he had no idea what it would be used for. And that was precisely the point.

We scratched our heads over the random nature of how he found one of his pieces. I scratch my head at how he was able to recognize the one at that museum that day, after having produced it 30 years ago.

It’s not just the newspaper articles that he remembers. It’s everything.

Damn Hippies

I was a surly 14 year old. I would have rather stayed home, but she insisted I go with her. I don’t even remember where we were going. I think it was to meet Dad at work for lunch and to do something scintillating like grocery shop, or worse, shop for clothes for Dad.

It was summer, and I would rather have stayed home. I would have liked to sit out on the deck in the sun, listening to Rush, and trying to get tan. I’d just bought a copy on cassette of “Hold Your Fire” which I was *thisclose* to wearing out. But no, that was not to be the plan.

I scowled as I sat in the passenger seat. I slipped off my sandals and put my feet up on the dash in just the way that annoyed her. She raised her eyebrows, and I think she was counting to 10. I defiantly stared back.

Mom’s second language was English. She often said things incorrectly. Like I said yesterday, she thought that “junk” had a plural. We drank milk chocolate sometimes, instead of chocolate milk. She measured things with a measure tape. I think at one point she’d even used towel paper to wipe up a spill on the counter.

But her arch nemesis was the hippies. Mom didn’t really know who the hippies were, though. To her, hippies and hoodlums were synonymous despite my efforts to explain who hippies were. She pointed out the window at the trash can that was left at the curb. The garbage trucks came through that morning.

“Hey, bring that garbage can back to the house before some hippie steals it,” she ordered. I burst out laughing. (Years later I relayed the story to Todd and he said “Yeah, because hippies are always looking for things to put their recyclables in.”)

She asked me what I was laughing at, but I was too far gone to explain. I got out of the car and dragged the bin back to the house, and then got back into the car.

A few years later Mom came home with a blue bin that said “Western Massachusetts recycles.” We didn’t live in Western Massachusetts. But she beamed as she set it in the garage, “Look at this great bin I found on the side of the road.”

I flashed her the peace sign and went back into the house.

What I Miss

I miss how you never understood that the word “junk” didn’t have a plural. You’d say something like “I need to clean up these junks.” Thinking about it now makes me smile. But it also makes me sad because I’ll never hear you say that again.

I miss the messages you used to leave on my machine. Your accent combined with the awkwardness you felt when speaking to an answering machine were pure comedy gold. “Bih Jeh….. eet’s me. Eeet’s yurr Mum.” I used to smile and say “Yeah, no shit. How many people do I know talk that way?” I used to gather my co-workers in my cube so they could hear one of your adorable yet unintentionally hilarious messages. I wish I’d thought to tape one of them, because now I’ll never hear one ever again.

I miss walking out into the cold with you. You’d react to the cold blast of air the same way every single time. You’d jam your hands into your pockets, snuggle inward and say in Polish, “Oh how cold!” I can still hear you say it, as clear as day.

I miss your blueberry pierogi. I miss your homemade applesauce and crepes. I miss the apple pancakes you used to make for breakfast. I miss the way you did scrambled eggs with bacon pieces inside. I can’t seem to cook any of these things.

I miss the way you’d fill me in on all the family gossip, whether I wanted to hear it or not.

But most of all, Mom, I just miss you.

An Evening with the Ya-Yas

Years ago I read “Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood” and thoroughly loved it. I even envied the connection the characters had, the lifelong friendship, the brutal honesty and the got-your-back-ness that these characters have for each other.

And then I met these women in real life on the back porch of my friend Sean’s parents’ house on Sunday night. I hadn’t met Sean’s parents, or these women, before. But I heard the stories. Sean’s mom and these women get together every year—the get together usually involves consuming every drop of alcohol within a five mile radius and holding their sides from laughing constantly. They took me into their fold on the back deck and kept my margarita glass filled.

It was the margarita pitcher that first got my attention. It couldn’t have been more than 2 quarts, yet Kathy had upended the bottle of tequila into it. A salted glass was placed near my elbow as I helped Todd in the kitchen, I sipped it and felt my nose hairs burn from the overpowering tequila and who knows what else was poured into that pitcher. I swirled the glass to get the ice cubes to even out the drink. I told myself that after finishing this one, the next one would taste better—only because my tastebuds would be drowned.

When I brought snacks out to the deck, the women convinced me to join them. I had imagined I’d help Todd, Sean and Heidi in the kitchen, but felt superfluous in there as they buzzed around like bees in a hive. I pulled up a chair and listened to their stories, and their gossip.

They roped me in immediately. Cookie was talking about the group’s arch-nemesis, Nancy. I gathered that this Nancy character had a nasty habit of talking trash about the children of these women. I held up my margarita glass and declared, “Nancy Schmancy!” The rest of the women cheered. I was in. The subject of Nancy came up a few more times. I tipped my marg back, felt the tequila sting and then soothe my throat, and said “This Nancy chick is a downer! Let’s talk about something else.” They cheered again and my glass was refilled. Kathy agreed, “Let’s talk about the subject!” I set my marg glass aside, my hand covering it as if I was attending a frat party. I wondered which of the Real Life Ya Yas would slip me a roofie.

I didn’t end up getting roofied, but the chowder did. A few of the women occasionally left the patio and then came back minutes later saying “I’ve just been kicked out of the kitchen.” It happened to Donna. To Karen. To Cookie. I was talking to Cherry and didn’t pay much attention to the comings and goings from the kitchen. I assumed Todd and Sean were being polite “Go on the deck, have fun, we’ll take care of the cooking…” Because that’s exactly what they would say when cooking at a party.

Later on, as I helped with grilling the corn on the cob, I learned the real story. Todd and Sean fiercely guarded the pot of chowder. They’d left it unattended a few times and had drunken women spiking it with various spices. Out of the corner of his eye Todd saw Donna think aloud, without tasting the chowder, “This needs salt.” Before he could act she picked up the container of sea salt and, because she was drunk and lacked coordination, dumped a cup of salt into the pot. Karen desperately searched for dried parsley and peppercorns to lob in there. Earlier in the night Sean had tasted the chowder and said “Man, this is so salty…” he tossed some corn starch into the pot and I guarded it until Todd turned it off. Apparently the spiking had been going on longer than we thought. Sean’s sister ran out to the store to retrieve more milk and cream, Todd resuscitated the chowder as Sean's niece served as a rodeo clown to keep the women out of the kitchen and then dinner was served.

The lobsters glowed red from the platter. The stuffed quahogs (also very salty as Donna had mysteriously struck again) and stuffed lobster tails were lined in neat rows and ready to eat. I was pulling charred corn off the grill, and we feasted into the night.

We said our goodnights, and I received hugs from all the Ya Yas. On the way home I vowed not to get so caught up in my own life and be better at maintaining my own friendships. I also vowed to let Todd do the cooking and to keep my own hands off the salt.

It Just Worked, Somehow

My blog pal Crisitunity had just written the other day about changes in her fiancé’s work schedule. He’s putting in later nights these days, and spending time together is getting harder and harder because of it. It got me thinking about how normal that sort of thing has always been in my life. Yet, I sympathize.


My dad started his machine shop the same year I was born. At the time my parents had five children ranging from newborn to age 14. Eventually they put all those kids through college without taking a single student loan. When I graduated college, 22 years after Dad started the shop, I had no student loan debt at all. I was blessed and thankful. Still am.

But I know it wasn’t easy. Dad went to work well before I woke up; I can still remember the sound the old blue pick up truck made on cold mornings as it wheezed to life and he pulled it out of the driveway. He came home after I went to bed. He worked Saturdays. He loves his work, and borders on obsessed with it. He still works long days, at age 72. He’s tops at what he does. It never fails to amaze me when he glances at a blueprint and a piece of steel and knows exactly to make that piece of steel look like what’s in the drawing. I struggle with basic things like recipes and furniture assembly, but Dad makes big metal things from scratch—things like parts on the engine of an F-14, or parts of machines that paper companies use, or hinges on submarine missile silos.

When I was a kid, Mom fed us all dinner at home. Then she’d pack up a plate for Dad in a sauce pan. These were the days before she had a cabinet full of Tupperware, and she probably would not have spent the money on something like that anyway. She put a lid on the saucepan and put it into a paper grocery bag that she’d rolled shut. The bag was set on the floor of the passenger seat in the light blue Chevy Impala wagon, she piled all of us in there and didn’t take any crap from us when we argued about who got to sit in the front.

Dad ate his dinner at his workbench. Between bites he made adjustments to the machine nearby cutting or drilling away at some hunk of metal. He and Mom talked while he worked and ate, me and my sibs played. Sometimes we did the sweeping up, but mostly we played. There was an office on the other side of his space that Dad never used, preferring to use a desk in the corner of the shop floor rather than a far flung office on the other side of the building. The office was empty, but he’d stuck 2 desks in there that he’d probably picked up from somewhere. The desks were also empty and they didn’t have chairs. We eventually stocked the drawers with things like paper, markers, crayons, and small toys. But mostly we climbed on top of them and slid across their slick surfaces on our bellies.

In the office there were two glass brick windows on the east wall. There were deep ledges under those windows. Of course we climbed onto the ledges and marked up with walls with our dirty sneakers on the way up and down. It was a big deal when I was finally big enough to climb that wall to the ledge. I felt like I’d graduated to the big kids club. My brother Kaz could jump up there and land perfectly seated without having to use his hands. (I would love to see how high that ledge is now.  In my mind's eye it's somewhere up in the stratosphere.)  When I wasn’t trying to climb up to the ledge, my sister and I made a Barbie house in the gigantic safe in the corner opposite the ledge. On nice days we roamed the neighborhood, or walked to the pharmacy where I had once shoplifted a candy bar.

Then Mom piled us all into the wagon again and got us home on time for bed. Dad stayed at work and came home at some point after I’d already fallen asleep. Just to do it all over before I ever woke up in the morning. Dad didn’t work that way because he didn’t love his family. It was quite the opposite. He worked that way because he loved us all so very much and wanted something better for us. Sure, he worked a lot of hours, but he was still very present in my life as I was growing up. He went to the band concerts; he went to the basketball games. He went to the really big track meets on Saturdays, but had to miss the week day ones. I don’t think he ever saw me play field hockey, because those games were always in the afternoon. With Dad there were no excuses for bad grades, and he sat up late with my sister and her algebra homework, and the tutoring session didn’t stop until her answers were perfect. (And for that reason I avoided him when it came to homework. I liked to get my sleep.)

My mom was exceedingly patient with the way Dad worked. She always had her eye on the future. That future was all about sending her kids to college because she and Dad hadn’t gone. It was all about buying us things like musical instruments because she’d never learned to play anything. Mom crunched the numbers and she made it happen. After Mom died, when I was 27, Dad and I were sitting up late in a hotel room in Poland. With tears in his eyes he said, “She knew what needed to be done and she never complained.” And it was true, and it’s what I admired the most about her. She took the team mentality of a marriage to a whole other level that I cannot even comprehend.

And it’s that quality from my mom that I try to bring to my own marriage. My husband works hard, and is often home late. I don’t complain because I also have my eye on the future. He works hard, but he makes sure that we take plenty of time to play. He doesn’t work Saturdays like Dad did (and still does). But if I had half of my mom’s energy, then I know that the future we’re working for is going to be great.

A Different Kind of Nativity Story

“Watch this,” my sister nodded toward her daughters, then age 6 and 4, playing in the living room. Rachael, the older of the two, rolled the Fisher Price school bus up to the nativity set my sister had set out on the hearth of the unused fireplace in preparation for Christmas. I had noticed that the figurines were askew when I came in, but didn’t say anything; I figured that they were a casualty of having little ones in the house.

Rachael piled the three wise men, and whoever else was present at the birth of Jesus, into the bus. “OK, let’s go,” she called cheerfully to them. She drove the bus in a loopy pattern across the off-white berber carpet, all the while chattering to her bus full of biblical vagabonds. The bus stopped at some unseen wonder on the far end of the couch, in front of the end table.

“OK everyone, five minutes,” she instructed the wise men. With the help of Rachael, the passengers filed out and stood facing some unseen wonder on that side of the room. It must have been one of the wonders of the world, as that bus had to traverse the entire living room for them all to see it. I wondered whether they were viewing the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore, on the far side of the sofa that day. I wonder what Rachael imagined they were looking at.

“Time to go back, we're going to be late” she warned her passengers. They filed into the bus and stood on the seats. Their heads stood out of the sun roof, which I am sure must have been a chilly ride back to a manger in a barn at the end of December. She helped the “wise guys” and friends out of the bus and carefully arranged them around the manger.

She held up one of the wise men and examined the figurine carefully. “Hey,” she pointed to it, “Why isn’t he wearing shoes? Mom says I can’t wear sandals in the winter. It’s too cold.”

Want to Hear Something Creepy?

My mom arrived in North America in October 1961. (Well, that’s not the creepy part, just stick with me.) She went, alone, on a boat from Gdansk, Poland to Montreal, Canada. She was just 24 years old, and all she knew how to say in English were “Bristol Pennsylvania” and “Ham sandwich.” The boat she traveled on was called the Stefan Batory, and she found a way to game the exchange rate en route and made a bit of a profit before landing in Canada.

She had no idea how long the train ride from Montreal to Bristol would be. She stayed awake the entire time, terrified that if she fell asleep she would miss her stop and be lost without being about to communicate. She kept herself awake for 48 hours until her cousin met her on the platform in Bristol. She eventually made her way to Chicopee, Massachusetts where she met Dad. Then all of her siblings and parents ended up in America, and Mom wasn’t alone anymore.

On the day she died, October 4, 2001, we were going through old photos of her so we could put them up in the funeral home. There was a picture of Mom riding a motorcycle when she and Dad visited Poland in 1973 that just had to go into the collage. It was their first time back since they’d left more than a decade earlier, and I was born 9 months after the trip. There were pictures of all of us, and Mom and Dad’s wedding pictures. Dad scoured the house and couldn’t find the picture of Mom parasailing when they went on vacation to Marco Island. We tore the house apart and looked in every cabinet, every drawer and through every photo album. No dice.

Dad opened Mom’s memento box that she had kept on the floor on her side in their closet. The box had always been there. We’ve all seen it a million times when in there, but none of us ever thought to ever open it. It was just one of those things that we didn’t even notice anymore because it was always there.

I don’t think Dad ever thought to open it until that day when he was looking for that picture. Inside the box was a print of the Stefan Batory that Mom had saved from her boat trip. The picture was on the front of the dinner menu on the boat, and Mom’s legendary sticky fingers had swiped the menu and taken it from the boat as a souvenir. On the back of the print was the menu. That night’s dinner selections were written in Polish, and the date was at the top.

It was dated October 4, 1961—exactly 40 years to the day before she died. She was 24 on the night she swiped that menu. She was on her way to a brand new life in a new country. If someone had told her that night “Forty years from today you will die” she would have laughed at them. She was young, brave and invincible. There was a certain brilliance and vibrancy about Mom right up to the end, and I would have loved to see her in action at age 24. (Hell, I’d love to see her in action at age 72, which is what she would have been this year.)

Dad stared at the menu, speechless. I don’t remember who asked him what was wrong, but he showed us the picture and the menu and we all fell silent. The air in the kitchen felt heavy and none of us knew what to say. It was a feeling we all felt all day long. We fumbled around the house while picking out what she’ll wear. We all shrunk into ourselves, exhausted and drained from the day. My sisters made grilled cheese sandwiches that filled the house with a smell that nauseated me as I couldn’t stand the thought of eating anything.

We debated on whether or not we should put shoes on her feet. My cousin Theresa once told us a story about how Mom went to help pick out a suit for Theresa’s father, who was Mom’s older brother, when Theresa was making her father’s arrangements. Theresa had asked Mom if she should bring shoes for him as well. Mom said, “Of course he needs shoes. How will he walk into heaven without shoes on?” My sisters recounted the story and laughed at how it was “so Mom.” All I could do was cry because it was just “so Mom.” I can just see her saying it with that spunk that she had. It was the same spunk she used when she would yell at the ref at one of my high school basketball games. I can still hear her, with her accent and rolled r’s, “Ref! She travel! Blow the veestle!” And then she’d holler to me “Bih Jay! Dreeble! Dreeble the ball! Shoot!!”

The thing about the date on that menu haunts me still. I wonder if my 40 year out mark has passed or not. When Mom was my age, her 40 year mark had already passed; in fact, she only had 29 years left. I wonder when Dad’s was, as he’s 71 now. I look at my brothers and sisters and wonder if theirs passed or not too. Has Todd’s? Has anyone’s? My friends? Strangers I see when I am out and about? Unfortunately, not everyone will have a 40 year mark, and that bothers me too.

So, I pose this question to you, Internet. If you had the chance to know when your 40 years left mark would be, or when it was, would you find out? Would you live your life differently if you knew?

I wonder if Mom would have done anything differently.

Exposed Nerve

On Sunday it’ll be 8 years since Mom’s been gone. The last six weeks of Mom’s life did not at all represent who she was. Her cancer spread, and the tumors compressed her spinal cord and she lost all feeling and ability to move from the waist down. My sisters and I dropped out of our lives for those weeks and took turns taking care of her. I blew off work for most of that time, and only went 1-2 days per week.

I never really let myself fully absorb what was happening at that time. I slipped into denial robot mode and shielded myself from the possibility of losing Mom. Everything I did during those six weeks was done with the sole purpose of making her live. My mind assigned extreme importance to every little mundane task I accomplished every day. My first thought in the morning was how making her favorite breakfast would make her live. The laundry, done just so, would make her live. I concocted protein shakes with fresh fruits blended into them to make her live. I was careful not to get shampoo in her eyes, because one sudsy splash would tip the scales in the wrong direction. Any little thing could make her live, and denial robot had to perfectly execute every chore so not to risk causing her demise.

The denial robot mode fully took over. Nobody could talk about any other fate than Mom surviving around me. There was no other option for the denial robot. Mom dying simply did not compute. Period. It was exhausting. But when you’re a denial robot you never get tired. You push and push because nothing else matters. (My sister and I watched the 9-11 attack on TV, then simply turned the TV off and bathed and dressed Mom so we could get her ready for radiation treatment in Hartford.)

I vividly remember her wake, when my cousin Anna had said to me “It gets easier.” Anna’s dad had died when we were seniors in college. Later on that night my cousin Theresa said, “You just have to live through the pain.” Her dad died when she was in her early 20s and I was only 7 or 8.

And it’s true. They were both absolutely right. I’ve said the same things to other people I know who have lost their parents. “The first 6 months will completely suck. Just get through them and you’ll be OK” I told them. Later on they told me I was right.

But my first six months were riddled with spontaneous sobbing at inopportune times and vivid nightmares. The denial robot’s battery ran down and left me to deal with what actually happened in those six weeks. Mom’s health gradually degraded until we were all with her when she took her last breath. And none of those things I did, that would surely make her live, worked. In those six months I waited for the answer to be revealed to me, but of course it never was. There wasn’t a chore I missed that didn’t make her live. It was the cancer that didn’t make her live.

Now here it is 8 years later. And while the pain of losing her has subsided, there are times when it bubbles to the surface. It's usually something entirely random that triggers it. Today a client at work called me from Bristol, Pennsylvania—where Mom lived when she first came to the United States. I’ve only visited Bristol when I was a kid. It wasn’t a part of my childhood—but I knew the story of Mom taking the train from Montreal, Canada to Bristol when she first arrived on this side of the pond. I spent the rest of the day walking around feeling like I had a stone in my stomach and I randomly burst into tears in the car on the way to dinner at a friends’ house tonight.

And that’s what nobody prepared me for when they were trying to comfort me at her wake. That it never fully goes away.

Belated

Sydney, Australia 10 September 1994

It was a Saturday night like any other in Sydney. The dorm I was living in had organized a pub crawl for that night and I, along with a large crowd of American and Australian students, boarded the city bus bound for downtown Sydney.

I don’t remember the details of where we went, but the idea was that we’d spend an hour at this pub, then an hour at the next, then the next and continue for a half dozen or so pubs. It was just long enough to get a drink, or two if you were ambitious, and then the crowd would move on to the next pub on the list. We pulled our hand-drawn photocopied maps out of our pockets, they were harder to decipher after each stop on the crawl.

I successfully completed the crawl and boarded the bus with my illegally gotten student rate bus pass. American students weren’t allowed to have them, only the Australians. I risked detection from a random bus inspector every time I rode on the bus, but I couldn’t resist the allure of a half rate bus fare. At the wee hours of September 11, I stumbled up the stairs to my 4th floor room. It was conveniently located right across the hall from the stairs, and one door away from the communal hallway payphone. I squinted as I tried to read the small note taped to my door. It was written in blue ink, in impeccably neat handwriting.

“Congrats BJ!! You’re an auntie!! Call home.”

I didn’t bother to unlock my door, and instead scrambled to the phone. I frantically dialed the international calling code, the calling card number, and drunkenly navigated the ridiculously complicated process of calling home to Connecticut.

“Mom! It’s me! I just got the news!”

“It’s a girl!” she cheered into the phone. She gave me the number of my sister in law’s room at a hospital in Hartford.

Your dad answered the phone, and you were crying in the background. I started crying too.

“Her name is Magdolene Jeane, and she’s perfect!” your Dad raved. “She’s so beautiful!”

Months later my brother sent me a video that was shot on the morning of your baptism. It was December, and I was in the throes of the Australian summer. I was living in a flat down the road, because the dorm was closed for the summer. The flat came equipped with a TV and VCR, but the VCR’s format was different than it was in America. I could hear the audio, but couldn’t get the picture. My flatmate Vanessa and I tried to get it to work, and I began to cry because I could hear your dad talking, but all I could see were the static-y squiggly lines.

I ejected the tape and ran to the media center in the library on campus. They had a machine that would show American tapes. I located it, and slid the tape into the VCR. With the headphones firmly in place on my ears, I pressed the play button.

Your dad’s voice guided me through the house until the camera panned to an infant giggling and bouncing in one of those jumpy swing things suspended in the doorway.

“And there’s my baby!” he cooed. His hairy hand extended from behind the camera and caressed your face as you smiled at your dad and the camera. Tears streamed down my face, and I laughed at the same time.

I didn’t meet you until you were 10 months old. You tottered up to me, after having just learned to walk. Without a hint of shyness, you smiled at me as I picked you up and held you for the first time.

And now you’re 15. You’re cool. You’re poised. You’re whipsmart. And I am so very proud of you.

You Know It Was a Good Weekend When...

...four nieces and a nephew vandalized the bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker....

...and then they camped out in the living room...

...after draining two flavors of slushie from the machine.

Both of my sisters visited for the weekend, and brought along their five kids and our aunt. On Saturday night we headed to Providence for Waterfire.

While we were at Waterfire Todd made a donation at the Dreamgarden. He handed two of our nieces a ribbon on which they wrote a wish. Their wishes will hang from this star for the rest of the summer.

Then each of my nieces and nephews were given a card to write down a wish. They each set their wish down next to one of these candles on the ground.

Rubber Sandwich, This is Night Hawk. Come in, Rubber Sandwich

Leave it to Todd to give our nieces and nephews secret agent code names. Back in June, 7 of our nieces and nephews invaded our house. On the Sunday morning of that weekend only 4 of the 7 were left. No, we didn’t sell them on the black market. They went home with their parents.

We took the remaining 4 geocaching on that Sunday morning. Todd decided on the way there that because we were going on a secret mission, we needed to have code names. He left them to pick out the perfect code name. Spencer, 11, named himself “Night Hawk” while Rachael, 15, named herself “Rubber Sandwich.” I let Cassidy, 5, a.k.a. “Rainbow” name me. She thought about it for a few seconds and promptly christened me “Beautiful.” She is still my favorite to this day.

My sister reports that my crack team of secret agents is still living incognito, even though the mission has long been over. All she hears at home are conversations between Night Hawk and Rubber Sandwich.

One night they all went out as a family with my sister’s boyfriend and his two sons. One of boyfriend’s sons is also named Spencer. They met a woman who asked my nephew, “So, you’re named Spencer, and he’s named Spencer. Does it get confusing with two Spencers around? Do they call you Spence to tell you apart?”

He replied, “No. They call me Night Hawk.”

Counting to Seven

1…2…3…4…5…7…

And then a sigh of relief that I reached seven. Had I only reached six, or heaven forbid only five, then surely one of my siblings would have skinned me alive and poured acid on my corpse for good measure.

Over the weekend my brother Kaz and my sister C trusted their children in our care. Kaz has 3 kids, age 8, 13 and 14, while C has 4—age 4, 11, 13 and 15. This is quite possibly the greatest compliment I have received from either of them. By doing this they are basically saying, “I trust you with my most precious of irreplaceable possessions.” It’s tremendously flattering and terrifying at the same time.

And boy did we have a blast.

The rules at Aunt Beej and Uncle Todd’s house are different than they are at home:

Rule 1. The only choices for breakfast are things like Trix, Fruity Pebbles, or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Aunt Beej will also make a fruit salad for you, but only because she knows you like it.

Rule 2. Aunt Beej and Uncle Todd will take you to have an ice cream before dinner. It’s how we roll.

Rule 3. The dogs require a great deal of Frisbee throwing and chasing. They also require a great deal of cuddling and treats. This is your job.

Rule 4. The most important thing to Aunt Beej and Uncle Todd is that you are smiling, laughing and having fun.

I am pleased to report that all seven of the nieces and nephews who visited over the weekend followed these rules to the letter. Saturday we went to the Rhode Island Air Show at Quonset Point where I practiced counting to seven over and over as we made our way through the crowds. But the kids had fun watching the planes and playing in the inflatable amusement park section. (The zip line obstacle course was particularly cool.) We were most impressed with the Oracle bi-plane and the Canadian Snowbirds’ sequences. I got a good chuckle from the older kids as I yelled out, “Yay Canada! And I love your geese too!” after the Snowbirds concluded their routine.

On Sunday morning Kaz and Melissa grudgingly returned from their freedom fest overnight trip to Providence, and three of the seven went home. By five in the afternoon my sister C and her boyfriend returned from their jaunt to Mansfield, Massachusetts to see Jimmy Buffet, and an afternoon side trip to Newport. We gathered for a beer can chicken dinner punctuated by a few margaritas.

This morning I kissed my sleeping nieces good-bye as Griffen tried to scam a second breakfast off of my nephew. I feel a bit empty knowing that they won’t be there when I get home from work.

Ideas at Supersonic Speed

This weekend we will have seven kids in our house.

Seven.

Like, more than 6.

A few months back my sister called me up and said “Hey, I am going to Jimmy Buffet. Without my four children. They’re staying with you. Mmmmkay?”

Then a few weeks back we said to my brother, “Hey, we’re going to have C’s kids that weekend. Your kids don’t get to hang with them that much. Drop ‘em off and we’ll have a big slumber party.” Before I knew it my brother had booked an overnight on Cape Cod, and he’ll drop his three off at our house on the way. And then I’ll have to put out the fire left in his driveway from his tires peeling out.

I am ridiculously looking forward to having all of them in the house this weekend. Seven kids aged 5-15. What to do? What to do?

No, seriously, what am I going to do with seven kids for the weekend?

Then the idea came to me yesterday. It screeched across the sky in the airspace above my office in East Greenwich, RI in a blur of shiny navy blue. The Blue Angels have been rehearsing their near supersonic speed air ballet for the air show at the Air Force base in Quonset this weekend. Forget about light bulbs going on over my head. My ideas tend to come to me powered by jet engines.

Perhaps we’ll drag seven kids, in two cars, to the show tomorrow. Or we’ll force them to clean our house and wash our cars. Either way, it’s all good.

Blame it on the Kielbasa Nova

On Monday I was asked by my co-workers, "So, Beej, what did you do this weekend?" I casually shrugged and said "Oh, I went to my dad's house and made kielbasa," as if this is something that everyone does all the time. I said it in a tone that I reserve for "Oh, I went to the movies," or "Oh, we hung around the house."

"You did what?" co-workers asked.

Making kielbasa is something that my family does at least once per year. When I was a kid we'd gather at my grandfather's house--located in a scary neighborhood in Springfield, MA. His kitchen smelled like natural gas and garlic on the day that we made kielbasa. And every time I smell that combination, it reminds me of when I was a kid and watched the blue flame emerge under a pan on his stove. Dziadzu (Grandpa in Polish, pronounced ja-JOO) had a smoker in the basement of the 2 family house he owned. A Hispanic family lived on the second floor, and I remember my cousins and I playing with Mario, the little boy who lived upstairs, while my parents, Dziadzu, and my aunts and uncles made kielbasa.

Years later we made kielbasa at my Uncle Joe's house. Joe had the smoker in his shed in his back yard. My cousins and I ran around and played all day while my parents, the aunts and the uncles ground the meat, stuffed it into casings, set it to smoke in the smoker, and drank vodka. Then one of my aunts would take a sausage from the smoker, and cut it up so that all the kids could have a piece of it.

Making kielbasa on Saturday was surreal for me. I watched my nieces and nephews play in the backyard, and I taught them a few of the games that I played as a child when my parents were making kielbasa. Todd ground the meat with my sister and my sister in law. They took a handful of it and fried it up so that they could test the recipe, just as my aunts and uncles had done. My sister and Todd stuffed the meat into the casings, while my nieces and nephews carted tray after tray to my brother who was tending to the fire in the smoker in the shed.

I sat in front of the smoker, watching the thermometer and drank a few Mike's Cranberries. We laughed and joked. I stood in the doorway and listened to the kielbasa sizzle with one ear, and my nieces and nephews play in the other.

After about 3 hours the kielbasa was done. I carried a fresh link into the kitchen, peeled it and cut it up. I called out to the kids, and they descended like vultures. Before I knew it, the cutting board was empty, and I counted my fingers to make sure I still had 10. Dad cut up a few pieces in the shed and picked up his vodka laden drink,"You need to have fresh kielbasa with a chaser."

Here's the raw kielbasa, waiting to get smoked.

This is the ominous looking smokehouse that my dad designed and built. Dad's a very inventive machinist. He built those doors himself. Behind the doors he has a retractable arm that the rungs of kielbasa rest on. The whole arm assembly swivels so he can rotate the kielbasa so they will cook evenly.

Almost done. You can see the swiveling retracting arm mechanism here. Dad built that whole thing himself.

The smoker is deep enough to fit several rows.


Fresh smoked kielbasa. 20 of these bad boys are now in my freezer.

I Was Once the Spazzy Sister

Friday night at 8:30 or so I arrived at my sister's house. C lives approximately 3 hours away from me, in a small town on the Connecticut/New York state line. To get to her house I have to leave Rhode Island and cross the entire state of Connecticut. But half way there, in Cromwell, CT, there is a Dairy Queen that is always worked into my itinerary as I travel to and from C's house.

When I arrived, C and her boyfriend were in the kitchen having some wine and preparing the food for my niece's confirmation the next day. Her two oldest children, my 15 and 13 year old nieces, were out, and C's 10 year old and 5 year old were watching a Bond movie. I helped C in the kitchen as she had wine. At 11 or so her girls got home. She grabbed her coat and said "OK, we're going out. Let's go! Let's go! Let's GO!" We hopped into my car and headed to a bar.

At 1:30 we got home. I only had 1 beer, C had a glass of wine at the bar which added to the wine she'd already had at home. I hauled my tired self out of bed at 8 or so in the morning. C was already up. She'd already run 4 miles that morning, dropped her son off at basketball, took her daughter to the hairdresser, and was cooking for Saturday night's party. The itinerary for the day included finishing up the food, cleaning the house, picking up the 13 year old from the hairdresser, bringing the 15 year old to get her hair done, picking up the boy from basketball, going to boyfriend's house to iron a shirt, fixing the piano bench, sweeping out the garage, and a zillion other things. (Luckily Dad arrived early, so he fixed the piano bench. Dad's wife helped with the food, while I cleaned the house. )

"Beej, oh my God we have so much to do!" she whirled around the kitchen, gesturing wildly.

"Aw come on. We have 3 more hours. It'll get done. You cook, I'll clean, it's all good," I said reassuringly.

And of course it did come together. The house was clean, the food prepared and presented beautifully. Guests arrived and I filled their hands with drinks. C's house was full of people mingling, laughing and having a great time.

After my niece's confirmation we all returned to the house to sit around C's kitchen table to drink and to poke fun at C. We stayed up until roughly 2-3 in the morning. In the morning I heard C's footsteps walk down the stairs, and the front door open. C was out for her morning jog, after downing some ridiculous quantity of wine the night before. She dropped the 13 year old off for indoor soccer, taught Sunday school, returned and cooked breakfast for the 10 and 5 year old. Shortly after breakfast her boyfriend arrived, and they went for a hike just after I left for the 3 hour drive back to Rhode Island.

It used to be that people said that of the two of us, I had a lot of energy. But watching her in action exhausts me.

Impromptu, Surprising, Awesome

Todd and I had a long weekend last weekend. Here it is Tuesday and I am still recovering from not being at work on Friday. I reluctantly went to work yesterday, and I am still not quite ready to get back into the groove of going to work.

On Friday we headed to the boat to do a bit of work. This winter Sabine’s getting a face lift:

1. The woodwork is getting scraped and sanded down to the bare wood, and will get varnished.
2. The top of the cabin is getting painted. Our boat will no longer be classified as a 90 mile boat (looks good from 90 miles away) and instead will look hot.
3. We’re getting new hardware put on that will make using the sails easier, and just about eliminate the possibility of losing a finger when coiling ropes around the winches.
   The radar system, formerly only decorative, will be functional. There will be a wire that will run from the radar dome to the display that will actually make the radar system serve its purpose.
4. Years ago we bought an anchor windlass, and for one reason or another we haven’t installed it. This handy device will pull the anchor up for us. Our current windlass, otherwise known as my husband, is starting to get worn out.

Once these repairs are made, living on the boat will be a lot more comfortable. It will no longer rain inside our boat, and onto our bed. We will be able to see other boats in the fog. We will be able to anchor easier, which will make travelling cheaper as well—as anchoring for a night is free. What’s even better is that the professionals are doing 99% of this work. There will be no all-nighters at the marina with this project. There will be no asphyxiation on propane heat this winter. There will be no running back to the marina at a million o’clock every night to swap out the propane canisters. Life is good.

On Saturday my brother Kaz and his family came to see the boat. On the back of our boat we have dinghy davits, that are largely decorative as well. The purpose of the davits is to lift the dinghy out of the water while we’re underway. This will cut down on the drag and make the boat sail just a bit faster, in addition to keeping the bottom of the dinghy from soaking in the water and getting slimy. So Kaz, the super awesome machinist, will re-fabricate the davits so that they will be functional.

After we had lunch we said to Kaz and my sister-in-law Melissa, “OK, we’re keeping the kids. You can go home now. We’ll see you tomorrow.” They laid rubber in the parking lot, reveling in the possibilities of a night of freedom. The kids rubbed their hands together, considering the possibilities of a night away from their parents. We played indoor mini-golf. We baked a quantity of cookies that can only be quantified as obnoxious. We played shoot-em-up video games, we ate pizza. We made sundaes with way too much whipped cream, we watched a movie, we soaked in the hot tub while Maggie and Hali dared each other to get out and roll in the snow. (They both did.)

Sunday morning we drove to Connecticut to return the three scoundrels, er, kids. We exposed them to the unseemly life of no parental rules, then sent them back to their parents as any aunt and uncle worth their salt would do. Then we headed to my dad’s house to celebrate his 71st birthday.

Sunday night I found myself passed out on the couch at 8:00, barely to keep my eyes open. Monday morning I pressed the snooze button at least a dozen times.

Beejutante

“Doesn’t he know you at all?” Brent asked me on the phone and laughed. I returned to my dorm room senior year of college, and called my friend to tell him about my dad’s hare-brained request from that morning.

I had gone home for the weekend. I didn’t go to church with my parents, and they returned from 8:00 mass to have breakfast with me. My parents are very religious, and attended a mass said in Polish every Sunday morning at the very same church in which they were married. Dad still sings in the choir, as do my uncles, and over the years he’s made friends with the people he’s sung with since before electricity.

Dad sat across from me at breakfast and said, “I was talking to Mrs. M. this morning after church. She’s organizing the Polonaise Ball this year. She wants you to be in it.” The Polonaise Ball is kind of like a debutante ball for eligible Polish girls. Supposedly being asked to be in it is some big honor. But it was an honor that made me bristle as scooped up scrambled egg and spread it onto my toast.

“A debutante? Me? Are you kidding, Dad? There’s no way…” I sat across from the table and tried to get Dad to recognize me. I am his youngest daughter. I hold my high school record in the unfeminine shot put event. I had stopped shaving my legs in some rebellion against “The Man” and was probably clad in a pair of men’s jeans, a humongous flannel, and faux Doc Martens. I was the daughter who ran a drill press in his shop when I was on breaks from school.

“What the hell was I supposed to say to her?” he asked, as if the concept of saying “My daughter’s not really into that kind of thing” was such a foreign concept. “And now,” he added “I will have to face her every week. How am I supposed to say no to her and see her at church every week?”

“Wow, she must be pretty hard up for girls, if she’s asking for me,” I snorted. “Dad, just tell her I am not interested. Please. There’s no way I am doing this.”

“No, I will not tell her. If you don’t want to do this, you’ll have to do it yourself. But don’t just ignore her request. I don’t want her asking me about it every week,” he growled at me.

I found Mrs. M’s number in my parents’ address book, wrote it down and shoved the piece of paper in my pocket. I drove back to school, an hour and a half away in Rhode Island, and tried to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why I couldn’t possibly be included as a Polish debutante. Most of the excuses that I rehearsed in the car started with “Are you fucking crazy? Have you seen me lately? At the moment my hair is magenta! Surely we can agree I am not Polonaise material.” I knew I had to do better than magenta hair.

I walked into my room, and picked up the phone and dialed. “Mrs. M? Hi, it’s Beej. How are you?”

“Oh, honey, how are you? I haven’t seen you in so long!” she replied, excitedly. I was sure that the last time she’d seen me was at the choir picnic when I was 10. I had skinned knees from playing too hard. As a senior in college I had skinned knees from falling down after partying too hard.

“Listen, I am calling about the Polonaise Ball…” I began. I don’t remember how I worded it. Nothing I rehearsed in the car sounded right. I decided when I dialed the number that I would just wing it. I think the words “painfully shy” came out of my mouth, and the words “couldn’t possibly stand up in front of a room full of people while wearing a gown…” also popped out. At least feigned shyness couldn’t be covered over with hair dye, and couldn’t be shaved off my legs.

“I wish you’d reconsider,” she said, soothingly. “There are so many benefits you’ll miss out on of you don’t go. You won’t be introduced properly to the Polish society as an eligible young woman…” I bit my tongue hard to keep in my disdain. My brain was pounding with ‘You mean I’ll miss out on the chance for my life to revolve around making cabbage-laden food for some Polish guy who wears sandals with black socks? Oh damn!’

“Thank you for the opportunity, but I think I will have to pass. Thanks for thinking of me,” I quickly blurted before hanging up the phone. I stared at it for a few minutes, as if it grew a layer of mold in the time I was talking to Mrs. M.

I dialed Brent’s number and heard him laugh. "Hey, you're lucky I am not doing this. I would probably make you go with me, and you'd have to wear a tux," I laughed back. Then he stopped laughing.

Inauguration

I don’t like discussing politics, and I sure as hell never considered writing about them on my blog. Mostly it’s because I fear I’ll look uninformed when I express my opinion, despite my CNN, NPR, cnn.com, and msnbc.com addictions. Today I am deviating from my usual political hermit crabness, and will write my first politically themed post here on A Life of Adventure, so there you have it—history in the making.

For the first time since the Clinton administration I am excited about presidential politics. When I was a freshman in college I voted for the first time. I stood inside the booth and flicked the lever next to Bill Clinton’s name. I stood there for a moment looking at all the buttons, names and levers and felt the butterflies in my stomach wake up. The second time I voted for him, in 1996 was when I first lived on my own. I registered as a voter in Massachusetts, and I walked to a local school a few blocks from my first apartment and pulled the Clinton lever again and hoped for another Clinton victory. My wish was granted.

I have come from Republican parents. While my brothers have largely carried on the Republican gene, my sisters and I are more left-leaning. When home from college, and in the period between college and moving out of home, I worked for my dad at his machine shop. I worked with my brothers and my sister on a daily basis. It was my job to do anything from answering the phone, drilling holes into pieces of metal, entering data into an ancient amber screened computer system whose information was backed up to tapes at the end of every day. I spent most of my time working in the office along side my die-hard Republican Limbaugh listening brother, Walter. Part of my duties was to answer the phone during the 12:00-12:30 lunch period. Walter usually ate at his desk, and blared the first half hour of Rush Limbaugh while he ate and while I was held prisoner in the office, chained to the ringing phone.

“Listen to this guy, Beej,” Walter prodded, “he’s the God of politics. He’ll teach you something.” So I listened. And I hated every minute of it. But I still listened and tried to give it a chance.

“If he’s so smart,” I began, “why doesn’t Rush run for President? All I hear his him bitching about this and that, and then telling everyone over and over how smart and great he is. I don’t really hear anything interesting here.”

“Then you aren’t listening. You’re what’s wrong with this country. You elected that idiot we have in office now,” Walter sighed, referring to President Clinton.

“I don’t think he won by only one vote. In fact, I think he won by a lot of them,” I replied, cheekily.

“You know what I mean, it’s people like you that elected him” he growled, and bit into his sandwich. I gazed at Walter’s blue eyes, an anomaly in my brown-eyed family, and not for the first time wondered if he was adopted. There was no way to logically infer that we’d come from the same womb.

On a November morning in 2000 I stretched on the floor of my gym as I watched the news. I didn’t stay up the night before to watch the election results. I couldn’t bear to. Still a Massachusetts resident, I cast my vote for Gore, and hoped for the best. I watched the drama unfold with the election results in Florida, and bit my nails down to nubs hoping for a miracle. I did the same in 2004. It’s not that I was a Gore fan, or a Kerry fan. I would have voted for a panda bear if one ran against Bush. The choices for President for those two elections didn’t interest or inspire me. “At this point, I am voting for the candidate I dislike the least,” I would dejectedly sigh when the conversation turned to politics.

In November, Todd and I watched the election results roll in. At the top of each hour, the newest tally was presented from which ever state closed their polls. We watched politically themed movies like “Black Sheep” and “American President” while we waited to be updated every hour. We cheered every Obama victory. We watched McCain’s concession speech, and commented on how classy it was. We sat up and watched Obama’s victory speech, and giggled excitedly. We barely slept that night for the excitement.

I’ve been listening to the preparation of the inauguration on NPR in the mornings on my way to work. More than once I’ve felt the slight sting in my eyes as I feel like I am about to cry out of joy and excitement. For the first time since my first time voting I am excited and inspired by my country’s President. Mr. Obama, please don’t let us down. There are a lot of us out here rooting for you.

Feed the World

When I was a kid, my Uncle George (the only uncle I have whom I’ve ever addressed with his English name) had the best record collection. He had a stereo in the basement, where my brothers, sisters and cousins would all hang out when we were visiting the great old Victorian that they lived in.

The basement was fully furnished. One side, if you turned left at the bottom of the stairs, was set up with a bar, and he had lighted Tuborg beer signs on the light wood paneled walls. Bench seats were built into both sides along the walls, and the center of the room was left empty—plenty of room for a bunch of kids to bounce around as they danced to George’s Rolling Stones and Beatles records.

The other room, a right from the bottom of the stairs, was the stuff of imagination. The only source of light in the room was recessed into the walls, to illuminate whatever he had displayed on insets in the walls. There was a huge drafting table on the far wall, and that’s where the stereo and the records were stored. We had to stand on a chair to reach the record player to change the record, or to move the needle back so that we could play the same song over and over again.

To the right, just as you walked into the room was a small work bench with shelves above it. On the shelves were numerous beakers, a Bunsen burner lighter (you know, one of those squeeze-y things with the flint in the metal cup), test tubes, and a vial with litmus papers in it. I still have no idea what Uncle George was doing with all this stuff; I suspect that these items were just a part of his eclectic collection. At the time I pictured Uncle George wearing a lab coat and swirling some unknown liquid in a beaker on the days when we weren’t visiting. He’d take the rubber stopper off a test tube and sniff the contents of the test tube, then dip a piece of litmus paper in it and examine the paper under the short fluorescent light that hung over the bench. Then he’d frustratedly pour something else into the beaker and swirl it around again. Then, disgusted, he’d put it all away and go upstairs for dinner.

He also had old army stuff on display in the room—old helmets, a gas mask, and a huge military radio system in the middle of the room about which we used to fight over who got to be Radar when we were playing M*A*S*H. Next to George’s vinyl collection, the military radio--complete with headphones, and numerous cords, switches, and plugs—was the coolest thing in the basement.

But his record collection still held the number 1 spot for coolest thing in Uncle George’s basement. On one visit Uncle George held up a record for me and explained that all the better songs were on side A, while all the other songs that the band didn’t like as much were on side B. I recited all the Rolling Stones songs that I liked, and he concurred with me on most them. He wasn’t entirely convinced that “Ruby Tuesday” was the world’s best song, but said he understood why I thought so.

When I was 10, I saw the video to Band Aid’s “Feed the World” which was the British pop singers equivalent to the “We Are the World” that the American pop stars put out sometime around 1984-1985. I declared “Feed the World” way cooler than “We Are the World,” and found vindication when the record showed up in George’s collection. I was visiting one afternoon when my cousin Joanna put the song on. Then we listened to it a dozen times more, and tried to identify the names of the singers. We easily picked out Boy George and Simon LeBon, and we tolerated Bono as he sang. (I wonder if now Joanna, just like me, tolerates Boy George and Simon LeBon and smiles when she hears Bono’s voice.)

Every year I look forward to hearing “Feed the World” on the radio at Christmas time. It brings back the excitement when I saw it in Uncle George’s collection and the afternoon I spent with Joanna listening to the song. But it also makes me a bit sad every time I hear it. The song is actually quite a sad song, designed to make the listener feel guilty and donate to the cause of feeding the world. The first time I hear the song every year, without fail, I start to cry. I call myself a big dork, and laugh as I brush the tears off my cheeks.

Today I was in my car doing the last bits of Christmas shopping. I endlessly pressed the scan button, looking for “Feed the World.” I lamented hearing the “War is Over” John Lennon Christmas song, I rolled my eyes at “Santa Baby” and I gritted my teeth against that piece of crap “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” and once again wonder how nobody has yet gotten around to destroying every copy of that song in circulation.

Just as I got back into my car, I heard the familiar chimes . I squealed in delight and cranked the volume up, and was instantly transported to Uncle George’s basement.

Insanely Jealous, Yet Ridiculously Proud

Last week I talked to my oldest brother, Walter, for a bit. I haven’t talked to Walter in awhile, and normally conversations with him are very on the surface. We don’t talk too much about the intricacies of our lives, and we don’t know much about what goes on day to day in each other’s lives because we talk so infrequently.

But on Friday we talked for a good 15 minutes, a record, and the conversation left me grinning ear to ear. Walter has 3 kids: a pair of boy-girl twins that are 11, and a daughter who just turned 9 last month. The twins started at a new school, a magnet school that is located about 30-40 minutes away from their town. The new school has had a very positive impact on my nephew, Robby. He hated going to school, refused to crack open a book and couldn’t get up out of bed in the mornings because he dreaded school so much.

This year is different. The bus picks up the twins at 6 AM, and Robby cannot seem to stay in bed at 5 when his alarm goes off. He leaps out and is ready to take on his day. Walter also reported that Robby can’t seem to put books down either. His approach to school has been the exact opposite of last year. He looks forward to it. He devours his homework. I could feel the pride come through the phone as Walter talked about him. I could just see the gleam in his eyes, and my pulse began to quicken in response.

Robby has been rewarded for his hard work and good grades with a once in a lifetime opportunity. He is going on a trip to Washington DC in late January. Specifically his trip will fall on January 20th. And while on his trip he will attend the Presidential inauguration. His school managed to secure a few dozen seats at the ceremony, and then they will attend a ball at night. Rumor has it, the new President will stop in at the ball and Robby might have a chance to see the President in person.

For that I am insanely jealous.

Yet I am also ridiculously proud.