Always There

Washington at Valley Forge, freezing cold but up spoke George, he said, “Bo doh de oh, bo doh de oh, doh.”

As I changed my infant son’s diaper, I’d sing this song to him. It had many lyrics, most of which didn’t make any sense at all. But I’d sing it through and then, when we were both clean and fresh, I’d hold him in my arms and I’d say, “I love you; I’ll take care of you; I’ll always be there when you need me.” This was our ritual, carried out a few times every day until he was old enough to recognize the song. He’s thirty two years old now and he can still sing it all the way through.

The Two Car Garage

My father was an old world craftsman, not in the sense that he created exquisite furniture for people who had been born into “the purple of commerce or who had risen through the ranks of the aristocracy.”(see Wilde, Oscar) No, he was a craftsman in the sense that he tried to make whatever he needed out of whatever he had on hand.

 I remember many happy childhood hours with my little hammer, straightening nails that he had ripped out of old boards. I don’t think I ever saw a box of store-bought nails or screws in my father’s workshop. We didn’t make trips to the lumber yard; we scrounged.

 We were a two-car family saddled with a single car garage. My father decreed that we would house both cars in a garage.  The obvious solution for a typical American family would be to tear down the puny little unacceptable single car monstrosity with the double doors that you had to get out of your car to open and replace it with a modern two-car edifice with a remote-controlled overhead garage door.

 My father’s solution was to saw through the peak of the roof from front to back and continued the saw cut directly down the back wall. With the help of a few cousins imported for the occasion, he then moved half of the garage outward to rest on a makeshift foundation he had constructed, mostly from concrete blocks. As most of the cousins held up the roof, some of them joined my father in splicing extensions to the beams upward to form a new, higher peak. (Are you getting this?)

How I Met My Wife

If my daughter’s friend had not thrown up, I would have met my wife in July 1993.   As it happened, however, I didn’t have a first coffee date with her until February 1994.  I guess I need to back up a bit.

Sometime in 1991 (the years from 1990 through 1992 are a bit hazy in my memory) I was divorced and found myself with a great big bulls eye on my chest, the target of  unseemly largesse among a few of the unattached women in my church.  They offered everything I might need: casseroles delivered; someone I could talk with; home cooked meals; tickets to the symphony (actually, one ticket and companionship); housecleaning; furniture shopping and arranging; most things a wife would provide. (In a couple of cases, I think, everything a wife would provide.)  Now, I’m not generally all that desirable and I found the situation pretty creepy and so managed, on principle and without exception, to avoid being the recipient of any of it.

Then there was Susan.