"...it came without packages, boxes or bags..."

That was the text my wife sent to me around 9:00 pm Saturday night.  The words wrapped me up like a warm blanket.  It was a perfect "pull" - a quote from a movie perfectly insinuated into the context of a real life event.

The quote is pulled from Dr. Seuss's famous scene in the Grinch.  You know the one, the Grinch, at his grinchy best, believes he has frustrated the Whos in celebrating Christmas by stealing all the physical trappings of the holiday, only to be perplexed by the fact that they celebrate none-the-less.

The entire quote is:

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

Saturday was my birthday.  And I suppose like a lot of people, the celebration of my own birthday is a bit more complicated for me than is the celebration of someone else's birthday.  It all works its way back to expectations really.  Mine are that no fuss be made.  I would much rather spend the money, time, and energy planning a party for one of the kids than I would spending it on myself.

So Saturday was always going to be a kind of muted affair.  As it turned out this year, the muted affair happened to coincide with the annual meeting on the grid-iron between the University of Michigan (boo, hiss) and the Spartans of Michigan State University.  

I was raised in a Green and White household by a decidedly Green and White mom.  Both of my brothers are graduates of MSU, I live 10 minutes from MSU's campus.  I take more than a passing fan's interest in the outcome of these contests.  I admit, I am a bit of a fan.

So, in my mind, the idea that my birthday and it's self evident promise of "indulging Dennis" falling on the day of the UofM/MSU football game made me see visions of hot-wings, cold pop, and couches when I imagined how I might spend my day.  Such was the quiet fantasy I maintained until about Tuesday of the week before my birthday.

Then, of course, Jeanine, my wife of 19 years and the organized one of the bunch reminded me of...duh...duh...duh-duhhhhhhh...the camporee.

We talked a bit about the importance of this event.  Pretty much the last thing my 10 year old needed to complete this year to be able to cross over into Boy Scouts this Spring.  It was a no brainer that he and I would go. He and I would go.

I am not an outdoor person.  Sure I love to golf and to coach baseball, and to cook out.  Those are all outdoor activities.  But hiking?  Canoing?  Chopping wood?  Carrying stuff?  Sorry, but to my old and comfortable butt, these activities sound like work, not recreation.  Throw on top of that my allergies, which are nearly legendary, and you do not have the makings of an Eagle Scout in me.

Case in point - the camping equipment.  It is stored in the attic above the garage.  It has not been touched in exactly 9 years.  We took it out once to celebrate my son's FIRST birthday and then packed it all away in a gigantic Tupperware bin.  Two years ago I moved it from the garage to the attic thinking to myself "Note to self, when we sell this house 20 years from now, remember to get this stuff out of the attic - it'll likely be worth something on E-Bay as it is all in pristine condition..."

On Friday, I borrowed a ladder to fetch the gear from above the garage.  My allergies, sensing something was brewing, decided to remind me how much I hate dust and fiberglass and conspired to create an itch so powerful that I sincerely thought about just lopping off both hands at the wrist.  But, I survived and the gear, undisturbed in the last 20% of my life...made it safely down from the attic and into the car.

Just let that thought soak in a minute.  I was 36 the last time I had this stuff out. On the Friday before my birthday, I was still 45.  36 is 80% of 45 - I think.  Life is screaming at this point that I am not destined to do this.  This is not my purpose.  The very fact that I have not touched this equipment for any recreational purpose should establish my lack of credibility in building a fire with sticks or wiping with leaves.

"But," I reminded myself "...my son was counting on me to do it; my wife was expecting me to do it." So, on I went.

The local scout master is a great guy and was good enough to pick my son up early that morning so I could take care of a few appointments Saturday morning and then head out to the State Park in the early afternoon.  The schedule was such that we would stay over night Saturday and return Sunday morning.  Just long enough to miss every part of the game and related commentary.  Swell, I thought, grinchily.  Just swell.

So Saturday, after a drive through what even the hardest corners of my grinchy outdoor heart conceded was some spectacular Michigan autumn colors, I showed up at the park, alone, wondering if I could set up the camp and retire to my inflatable mattress in time to follow the game on my smartphone.

As I drove the lane down to the campsite, there passed me a group of boys so rough and tumble; so scratched and dirty and obviously outdoorsy that I actually smiled as they walked by.  The last one in line, arm looped over his buddy's shoulder and walking along laughing without a care in the world caught my eye.  He was handsome with blond colicky hair going wild in every direction. Filthy - yet he looked somehow familiar.  It wasn't until I saw him waving at me that I realized it was my son.

My grinchiness abated somewhat - I was delighted for him, and torn for myself.  "He loves this" my grinchy outdoors heart told me.  And at the same time, my rational brain was telling me "he loves this...", meaning "you better get good at it, Chuckles, because welcome to your future - he loves this."

I smiled my big smile and hollered out the window at him secretly hoping the extra volume in my voice would be mistaken for unrestrained enthusiasm rather than a disguised and uncontrollable cry for help.  My mind was racing,

"...I don't know the first thing about any of this stuff...." I thought,  "...when I was a kid we went camping with my dad and he shaved using a mirror stuck to a tree and his hunting knife! A HUNTING KNIFE!"  Quickly, my mind racing, I reached into my pocket and found "Old Sven", the Swiss army knife I bought after seeing a movie about a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness.  It was there but was about as dull as a lint covered JuJubee.  "DAMN!" I thought, "Good luck shaving with that." 

I waved to Michael and his pals and then drove into the campground.  The parking lot was at least 6000 feet from our campsite.  And, Scouts being Scouts, no driving through the campsites was permitted.  You loaded up and hiked into your bivouac.  A quick check of my supplies did not yield any surprise inclusion of an automatic heart defibrillator, so I resigned myself to making several small trips at the end of which my muscles felt like I was a gun bearer on African safari.  The cooler of pop, juiceboxes, pudding, yogurt and 40 pounds of ice seemed like a good idea in the Meijer parking lot - but that was before I knew I was "hiking in" to my campsight.

So, having made camp without a soul in sight, I was confident a) that my heavy wheezing, unobserved by any live humans, had none-the-less scared off any wildlife that might otherwise want to come and add the vision of me to the tales they told their woodland buddies, and b)  I could struggle in solitude, unobserved and unjudged, with the giant bin of camping equipment - none of which I had any idea how to assemble.

I looked around me and observed there were several scout tents already assembled.  They were cute and efficient.  Little one or two man tents all ship shape and sides as tight as a snare drum.

I unpacked my tent - filling a space about 13 feet by 13 feet - it looked obviously larger than the run of the mill tents.  Adding to my joyous outdoor birthday adventure was about a 20 mile an hour "breeze."

I wondered, half-way through my "no holds barred" wrestling match with the tent, what would be easier.  Smoothing out this tent in a 20 mile per hour wind, or smoothing out a giant octopus on a 13 x 13 foot patch of white hot concrete. Every corner of the tent lashed at me in the wind like the tentacles of an angry beast.  The zippered door opened wide and rose up all at once as if to gobble me up and end the fight there and then.  Resolute, I grabbed the bag of stakes in my teeth and with my trusty red mallet, I rolled, squashed, and smoothed my way around the fabric, pounding, hammering, and cursing until I subdued the nylon devil and had it staked firmly to the ground.

"Not so tough," I thought smugly looking at my handiwork. 

"Idiot" thought the wind as it promptly snapped one of the tent poles holding the tent up.

"It's my birthday, you sonofabitch." I thought as I watched the listing corner of the tent swing lazily in the breeze.

"I know," said the tent. "Go Blue."

The listing tent now standing large over my campsite like some kind of billboard for woodland incompetence, I urgently set about creating the rest of our campsite, knowing after my two hour battle with the nemesis tent, my son and his pals would soon be back in camp.  Not having any outdoor skills at all, I wanted to finish work before they had a chance to actually see me in action. 

"After all" I thought, "...we could have some disaster out here and, God forbid, if it comes down to eating people, they will eat me first realizing that my only discernible skill really is in mediating employment disputes."

So I attacked the listing tent with the only duct tape I could find and raised our lodging once again.  Seeing it there, amid the small, perfect tents erected by my son's scout friends, I was reminded of the old WWII photos from Pearl Harbor.  Here were the bombed out hulks of America's largest ships scuttled in the attack, surrounded by smaller, undamaged, sea worthy vessels.  In both images, it was easy to see at a moment's notice that something had gone horribly wrong.

My spirits were lifted when my son returned with his pals and was both excited and impressed with his impression of my handiwork "Lookit our tent!" he screamed.  "It's huge!"  Yes, it is sad but true, the boy has as little sense of the outdoors and structural integrity and camping as do I.  He did not for one moment realize how woefully pathetic my construction skills were.  He bragged and bragged about how much space we had all the while other scouts were quietly asking me "Dude, why did you bring such a huge tent out into this wind..."  Fortunately for me they had good graces enough and were kindhearted enough to not raise the issue publicly.

So, first order of business taken care of (shelter), I sought out facilities to take care of another order of business.  "Where's the Bathroom?"  I asked.

"Follow the path until you smell it" someone said.

The path led back through the camp on off into a clearing next to a beautiful, tree lined lake.  My dim expectations were buoyed when I saw a clean, well maintained structure on a cement pad, about 100 yards from the field where we were camped.

I opened the door and reached for a light switch.  Despite my fumbling and reaching, no light switch was obvious so I brushed passed it urgently wanting to address other pressing matters.  I rushed to the nearest stall and cast open the door.  Taking in that tableau, my first thought was:

Thank God there was no light switch.

The bathroom was actually the fanciest primitive latrine I have ever been in.  But....how can I put this delicately...you remember how much was made last campaign season about the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig..." Well, you can put cement, and boards, and fresh paint, and stall doors around an open pit latrine, but the moment you lift that lid and are looking down into an open pit latrine, well it's still an open pit latrine. 

"It's my birthday," I thought.  "All I wanted was to ..."  Well...it doesn't matter what I wanted to do, I sure as hell wasn't doing it there. It's just not how I imagined spending any part of my birthday.

So I walked back to the camp, my thoughts occupied by a) a mental note to eat and drink as little as humanly possible until we broke camp the next morning, and b) actually a wonderful, loving memory of my own dad, who was camping with me when I was about 7, and a time I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night at a campground where the facilities were called "rustic." 

I can distinctly remember going in there, him holding the flashlight for me and me taking care of my business.  He then handed the flashlight back to me as he washed his hands at which point I shined the light down into the latrine.  He laughed out loud, took the light gently and said "Denny, for God's sake don't shine the light down there..."  He and I laughed often about that moment for many years after that.

When I got back to camp, it was obvious that my son and some of his buddies (and their dads) had helped square things away with the tent.  I was moved by their kindness.  My spirits lifted by their generosity, and the fact that they did not judge me for my lack of woodmanship.  Perhaps, I thought as I watched the kids making camper pies for the grown ups, they won't actually eat me first.

We settled into our chairs and ate the dinner the boys made over an open fire.  Later there were skits, and laughter, and warmth all around.  I noticed that I was not sneezing, my hands weren't itching, I did not die of a heart attack lugging anything.

Then as the sun set slowly on a cloudless Michigan evening, and in that gloaming moment when the first few stars winked in to ensure all was well and good with our scout troop, I realized that I never once missed watching that football game.  I had no great longing to know the score or to count coup over my friends who were Wolverine fans.

Michael came back from a canoe ride and in front of God and everybody told me he loved me, wished me a happy birthday, and gave me a hug and a kiss.  I realized at about that moment, I had had perhaps the greatest birthday of my adult life.

About a minute later, my wife, as if knowing the exact words coursing through my brain, texted:

"...it came without packages, boxes or bags..."

She knew.  How she knew is probably part of how she is a great mom.  But she just knew.

Later that night, we snuggled into the leaning cavernous edifice that was our tent, giggling like a couple of campers - him with my iPod and permission to run the battery down to nothing, me with my smartphone and finally catching up on the headlines from the game, my son said to me "Thanks, Dad, for sharing your birthday with me.  I think this is my favorite night ever."

He's a good kid, and Halloween and Christmas are coming so who knows if it will long remain his favorite night ever.  But that night, and the fact that I let him pee in the woods rather than go back to that latrine, may just hang with him as a good memory for a long long time.

And that will be the best birthday present I could have imagined.

So thanks for coming by my blog today, a little longer than what I try and post but there was just perhaps a little bit more that I needed to say.  Here's hoping that whatever you do this week, you do so immersed in love and laughter, and are lifted aloft on the warm currents of a family's love.

Dennis

"Yep, that's about right." Kids laugh at, and with, their parents

Humor was a staple in my house growing up.  Both the deliberate and the unintentional kind.

My dad was one of the funniest human beings I have ever met.  A master of impersonations and improvisation, he was quick witted and funny on his feet.  His ribald sayings are not appropriate for this forum, nor would they be among a gathering of longshoremen or most cowboys, but the recollection of those raw and insightful "Bob-isms" is enough to have me and my siblings in stitches within moment of someone saying "well you know what dad always said..."

And he was also Tim Allen before anyone ever heard of Tim Allen.  One of my most cherished memories of my life with him comes from YMCA Indian Guides camp when I was about 7 or 8.  I was sitting on a large rock just off the lakeside path at Camp Ohiyesa, a YMCA camp in Michigan's Livingston County.  As I sat there, I observed silently, save the muffled snickering that was building in chest, my dad, staggering down the path like a drunken sailor wearing a canoe for a hat.  He did not see me (he had a canoe on his head) and I quickly surmised that he was going to take the canoe out for a spin on the lake.

So I watched him walk by.  I knew it was him because of his Chuck Taylor high tops (he only wore gym shoes on weekends and on vacation), his distinctive short sleeved Ban-lon orange polyester shirt with its usual pack of smokes rolled up on the left shirt sleeve, and, well, because he was walking like a tipsy version of one of those big-headed parade characters with a canoe on his head.

Knowing him as I did, there was not one chance in hell (yes, I believe at age 7 or 8 I thought it exactly that way) I was getting in that canoe with him.  This is the man who once zipped a certain part of me up into Dr. Denton pajamas and, later in life, blew himself up trying to light a boiler on a diesel burning furnace.  This is the man who every Saturday would venture into the basement to work on a project and within an hour would be coming upstairs, hands dripping with blood, in search of paper towel and Mercurochrome.  No, I am certain I knew enough about his habits to believe there was not a chance in hell I was getting in that canoe with him.

So I watched him wobble on by with that canoe on his head, and then not five minutes later watched him storm back passed me; talking...more or less mumbling really...to himself without even acknowledging that he saw me, and he was completely soaking wet from his arm pits down to his canvas high tops.

I remember distinctly thinking "yep, that's about right..."

As I said, there was my dad, who was funny.  And then there was my mother, who was more classically funny.  Bill Cosby funny, "Your Show of Shows" funny.  She loves a good joke, or a good prank, or a funny bit just as much as anyone.  I can recall vividly a trip we were taking to my grandmother's house and the four of us; both of my brothers and me, and my sister were all complaining about how "boring it was there" and how all Grandpa ever watched on TV was British comedy and opera.

So she made us a wager.  She said that when she was our age there was no such thing as television and that when we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house, she would play some records (RECORDS?!) for us that would make us think television was boring.  I remember thinking she had been riding in one too many canoes with my dad and had probably hit her head on something.

"Records?  Better than TV?!" we said.  "Ha! - okay mom, what's the bet?"

The wiley schoolteacher bet us that if we agreed, after an hour of listening to records, that they were better than TV, we would give up our TV after school for a week.  We all agreed because we knew there was no way we were losing that bet. 

So after our arrival and hugs and kisses were passed out all around, we settled into the living room with the record player and four records.  I remember them to this day:  The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow, RIGHT!, and an original recording of Detroit's WXYZ radio's Lone Ranger serial.

We listened to Winters first and were all hooked, immediately.  Each album seemed better than the last.  We gladly gave up our TV privileges in exchange for being able to listen to that Lone Ranger recording all by itself. 

So, as a parent myself, I can see there was some kind of plan to raising kids who weren't just plugged in to the TV, but who understood and appreciated funny things.  Everyone in my family has a sense of humor so it is natural for me to try and raise my kids with that same appreciation for playfulness and good humor.  I can also see that my siblings have a plan for raising funny kids - my older brother, himself also an educator - has what he calls the Canon for American humor that he works his way through with his kids.  Must see movies on his list include Young Frankenstein, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Some Like it Hot.

For my family, we try our best at having good humor and laughter as a part of our household routine.  It makes a difference, I can tell already.  I can remember one New Year's eve not long ago, my daughter was about 16 months old and my son about 7 and a half.  We celebrated and let the oldest stay up past midnight when he and I lit off fireworks in the street, another staple of my family.

As we counted down the minutes to midnight, talk turned to New Year's resolutions.  Now I have kept exactly one New Year's resolution in my entire life, switching from regular Pepsi to diet Pepsi many many years ago and I believe I was aided in that only by the addictive properties of my "dark master, Diet Pepsi."

Nonetheless, I make resolutions every year.  So I told Michael "This is the year that I am cleaning up my language, no more swears." 

Now talk about having a house full of humor, my wife and son laughed out loud at that mere fact that my tongue did not leap from my lying lips and run screaming down the street at the absurdity of that proclamation.  But, I figured, what the hell?  It couldn't hurt to try and ease up on the bad language.

So, after kissing us all good night and wishing us a Happy New Year, my wife climbs the stairs with the 15 month old, tucks her in, and goes to bed herself.  Junior and I light off our fireworks, cleanup and are headed to bed about 45 minutes later.  I say to him, about 50 times, to keep quiet once we are in the house.  "No lights, no noise, we'll brush our teeth extra hard in the morning. The last thing I need," I said, "a crying 15 month old" who has been awakened from her cozy slumber.

So my son tip-toes upstairs without turning on any lights and I hear him very quietly getting ready for bed.  I follow behind him but somehow manage to kick a stainless steel cookie sheet holding the dead bodies of all the fireworks on it into a picture frame, with glass, that sits at the bottom of our stairs. 

The quiet of our New Year's eve home was shattered and, all of a sudden, our house sounded like Chinese New Year for about 1/10th of a second.  I waited for the sound to settle to see if the little one was stirring, which, of course, she was, and then let out in a loud stage whisper:

"FUDGE!"

Only I didn't say "Fudge."

It's true.  Sad, inexcusable, but altogether true.  I considered the swear words in my arsenal and as a first strike reached immediately for the atom bomb.  It was out of my lips before I even knew it was coming up my throat.

The dim hope I had that no one heard me faded fast when, from my son's room through the darkness, I heard a little giggle and him say to himself "Well, that didn't last long."

I wonder if he also thought to himself, "Yep, that seems about right."

So thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Whatever it is you are up to today, I hope there are some laughs and the foundations for some warm memories involved.  Take good care of yourselves.

Dennis

Fencing, really?

My son, age 10, is an athlete.  Well, perhaps I should refine that statement.  He is incredibly fit, almost impossibly so. He has been blessed with foot speed, coordination, and an athlete's lean body which, aside from the striking resemblance of my "Fred Flintstone" big toe to his, would have me seriously questioning his paternity.  He is also pretty smart - all in all a good combination for most sports.

So when he begged for a year straight to play football, I gave-in and vowed to go to his mother, the lady who brought him forth into this world, and say "He gets to try it.  If he likes it, fine, if not - well at least he will know why not." 

Fifty years ago, in my grandfather's generation, they would have called it "putting your foot down."  In 2010 we call those ancient times "the good old days."  But after a much more cosmopolitan discussion with his mom, and no putting down of feet, his mother relented and agreed to let him play. I am certain she did it just to shut us both up.  She also let me know in no uncertain terms that if her beautiful boy suffered any injury that it would be my...well...let's just say she used a word not fit for a lady or for this family column...but she made her point well known that she expected her son to finish football in the same fine condition physically that he was in when he started.

Along the way she also said he did not have the temperament for football, was not aggressive, "did not spit."  I wondered what "spitting" had to do with playing football in her eyes, but ultimately we all threw ourselves into almost three months of football together.  We worried about him plenty, but, just looking at him, I knew he could keep up with anyone out on the field, right? Strong, smart, and fast.  Exactly what he needed.

Well, you know how they say that nobody knows their child like a mom knows her child?

Football season rolls around and we sign the boy wonder up.  And the first five practices are all fitness and conditioning - he loves it - he is a running, push-up, jumping jack doing machine and is having the time of his life.

Problem was, eventually they issued helmets and pads and started expecting the kids to hit each other. The boy wonder, who was raised "...not to solve problems using his fists..." didn't really understand the concept of hitting.  After the first practice in full pads I am sure, however, our first born firmly grasped the concept of "being hit."

So football was not an easy experience for our family.  His coaches, I am sure, sensed his unique brand of "Woody Allen-like" ferocity, I was terrified that if he didn't get more aggressive he wouldn't be able to protect himself, and his mom was spent emotionally over the concern that her terrific little kid would somehow be morphed into a flesh eating axe killer by three months of Rocket Football.

So over the course of the season, while I argued with his coaches for more playing time, and with him to protect himself, and his mom to not worry so much, he seemed to be working on his own agenda - survival.

Please understand that he is a beautiful kid inside and out. Ten times - no - scratch that - 100 times the child I was when I was his age.  But let's just say this; he is not overly burdened with aggression.  

He is incredibly competitive but his is ultimately a compassionate soul.  Turns out his mom did indeed know him better than any of the rest of us.  By the end of football season we were all ready to celebrate - him for surviving, and me and his mom for making it to the end of what was a contentious season for our family.  Contentious because I kept wanting him to play harder and play more; and for her wanting him to come home with all his Chiclets front and center and his bones, tendons, and ligaments still attached in all the right places.

I have to share that, after the second to the last game of the season, having watched him practice just as hard as any other kid on the team, I told him he could quit the team if he wasn't having fun.  That was a reversal of my deal with him when I told him I would "go to bat" for him with his mom over football.  I said I would do that but if he played, he couldn't quit.  He had to stick it out for the season.

I told him I thought he was being taken advantage of.  He never missed a practice, never talked back to his coaches, never quit.  He just wasn't real big into the whole "football aspect" of football.  Consequently, the coaches never played him. Understandable and true if you are coaching at the high school level, but this was a community league and this was his first exposure to the sport.  So I was miffed.

My miffedness escalated dramatically when family traveled from all over to an away game and my son got put in with 17 seconds to play in the 4th quarter and our team up by three touchdowns.  It was the only game that team won all season.

So after another game where he was only allowed in on a couple of plays; after working his butt off for the better part of two and half months, I said to him that if he wanted to quit I would turn his gear in myself.  I expected him to jump at the chance.

Instead, he looked up at me, arms covered in bruises from practice, after having played exactly two snaps in the previous game, and said "Dad, this is a little town.  I am going to see those guys at school for a long time. No one out there is going to be able to call me a quitter.  They can do whatever they want to me, but I'm not quitting." 

I was proud and relieved and angry all at once.  Proud because of how insightful he was at just 9 years old. Relieved because I was secretly hoping he would stick it out; and angry because I felt the coaches were just wrong.  None of it matters now, but I was livid then.

But that moment when he told me he wasn't quitting revealed more character in him than would have been created if he played every snap of every game all season.  I could not have been more proud of him.  So we agreed that his last game would be fun. He could do whatever he wanted, play if he wanted, sit if he wanted.  He was expected to give a good effort in practice and also if he got to play, but we weren't going to have any more fights, either me with his coaches or between him and me, about football. 

He played a lot the last game of the season - even made a spectacular tackle that he never got credit for.  I remember that they did not win but I don't remember the score.  What I do remember is that I saw in him what he was really made of that day he refused to quit and how happy we both were driving away from the grid-iron that day.  High fives and laughter all around, I remember that scene vividly.

So fall rolls around this year and we asked him what does he want to do.  He plays basketball and baseball but with no football this fall, what did he think he was going to do with all his free time?

"Fencing, dad."

"Fencing, really" I said to him.  "Son, we live in a small town - this is not exactly the fencing capitol of the world.  In fact our small town is probably not the "anything" capitol of the world so how the heck are we going to pull off fencing?"

Well, as it turns out we are close to a town with a major university and there is a fencing coach there who teaches youth fencing as part of the community recreation program.  So this fall I am proud and happy to report that my son, who attacked offensive lines with all the aggression and ferocity of your average cat burglar sneaking through a darkened museum, is Zorro when you actually put a saber in his hands.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Here's hoping that whatever you are doing with your kids this fall, it is fun for all and that everybody comes home with all their "Chiclets front and center."

Dennis

P.S.  What prompted this entry today was my reading of a news article about the suicide of a Penn State University football player who, after his death, was discovered to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy - a disease of the brain associated with repeated injuries.

I do not question the judgment of any parent letting their kids play football or any other sport, it's up to the parents and the kid.  But I wanted to throw this out there in the hopes that, as we continue to raise the awareness of kids playing while hurt, we also raise the awareness of the long term consequences of concussions and other chronic brain injuries associated with sports.

Yes Mom, I too am a fan of these beautiful Michigan autumn days.

Of my blogging efforts, my mom, the retired (and amazing) school teacher recently wrote,

"How about a piece on these fabulous September days? God how I love September in Michigan. All the years I taught, September would fly by and I never noticed. Now it is my favorite month."

Yes mom, I too am a fan of these gorgeous September days.  What's not to love?  This being Michigan, the Lord has finally turned off the "Sweat Lodge" setting for our pleasant peninsula and we can actually enjoy a brisk 68 degree day with no humidity and a light breeze.  Michigan is perhaps the only place on Earth where you can get a sunburn AND a windburn on the same day.

And this being Michigan, we can pretty much enjoy high school and college football anywhere in the State on any given fall weekend.  Unfortunately, this being Michigan, it is also virtually impossible to enjoy pro-football at any time of the year unless you are from the UP where they eat pasties and root for Green Bay.

But in Michigan, pro football woes aside, we get to drink our fill at the nearest cider mill each autumn as we prepare for Halloween and the onset of yet another Michigan winter.  Who among us hasn't eaten a warm doughnut or a caramel apple in Parshallville, St Johns, Hartland, or Northville?

Another terrific Michigan fall tradition is the changing of the season.  One of the things that makes this place really special is the leafy fireworks that splash through our hardwoods and color our lawns each fall.  Each year we look upon the same scenes and feel renewed by the changing of the colors - one last terrific "Hurrah!" before winter sets in and strips the leaves from the trees, turns the highways black with grime, and buries us in foot after foot of that white stuff that some people really seem to enjoy.  It's like rounding a third turn in a four turn race and the crowd giving you a standing ovation.

A glance out my window shows that the oak tree across the street is once again headed toward a fabulous crimson, yellow and orange farewell before it hibernates for the winter.  I have lived in this house for four autumns now, and every year that tree in particular just takes my breath away.

In the fall, we get all things good here - pumpkin pie, jumping in leaf piles, school and a welcome break from the heat and humidity.  It's our chance to slow down and take in the colors, flavors and sensations if we elect to do so. A graceful, gentle celebration of one more year in the books as we wind down toward winter and the New Year.  It is the calendar's warm twilight.

It is also the time of baseball's greatest season - the post season.  And a Michigan autumn is the time for the best golf anywhere.  For me, it's also a time to remember my awesome school teacher mom - who on one particularly beautiful autumn day when I was about 12 years old, chased down the school bus on her way to work and told her children "Get in the car, today is the kind of day we only get once in a while, so let's do something fun..." That day we all skipped school (except Pat, who had a test) and went to Greenfield Village for the day.

Greenfield Village in Fall, Dearborn, Michigan

That day we spent crunching around the leaves in Dearborn is one of my happiest autumn memories.  Not because of what we did there. I had been there many times before and have been there many since.  The memory isn't what we did there, mom.  It's what you did to get us there.  The teaching that you did that day in presenting a lesson whose object was to seize a moment because you never know if that moment is ever going to come around again.  Well, that is one of the greatest reasons why I love autumn in Michigan. Because it reminds me of that one day in particular. 

Lastly, I should add that my birthday is also in the fall, and please prove to me that any day has ever actually been made worse by the eating of birthday cake and the opening of presents.  So, for me, another reason to love fall :-)

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  I hope you and yours are enjoying the fall weather and making the most of your time together.  You never know when that one little thing you do will end up being the one big thing that sticks with someone forever.

Take care,

Dennis

The miracle story of my miracle daughter, on her fourth birthday

My daughter is 4 years old, today.  She is everything you would imagine in a great kid.  Bright, funny, cute with huge blue eyes and the personality of a dolphin.  She is our miracle.

I used to joke, after my son was born, that the miracle of childbirth wasn't that anyone would ever have one baby. It is that anyone would ever have a second.  It is a scary thing bringing a child into this world. So much responsibility and so many what-ifs.  That, along with the actual act of carrying a child to term and then actually delivering it is enough to scare many away.

When our son was born, the pregnancy was uneventful aside from the run of the mill stuff.  No real scares. We conceived the first month we actually set about trying to start a family and the pregnancy was pretty much textbook stuff.  There was, however, just one brief scare during his delivery when the bloodflow from mom to baby was obstructed and his heart rate plummeted in utero, but that was about it. In hindsight, comparatively speaking, it was hardly even a bump in the road.

But you know what they say, sometimes you just don't know what you just don't know.  Such was the case with the relatively minor scare during delivery.  As it was, that one little scare terrified me.  The thought of what might have happened was enough to convince me that one was enough.  I hated the hospital, the monitors, the not knowing if everything would be OK.  When our son was born I thought we took home the pot on our first round of blackjack against the house and that we should walk away from the table right then.  I told my wife I would be perfectly happy raising just that one wonderful child we had.  She said she was not sure just yet.

So after our son was about 2, we started talking about having another baby.  My wife, the organized one in the family (if we lived on Sesame Street, she would be Bert and I would be every bit of Ernie and then some), started planning for a second child.

"We'll start in December," she said "so we can have a September baby."

I recall laughing and saying that there was no guarantee that would work.  Nonetheless she was confident and we started in December...of 2002...so we could have a September baby.

By September of 2003 we were concerned.

By September of 2004 we had watched every TV special on infertility, worn out several computer keyboards searching the Internet, and tried just about every home remedy short of voo-doo ritual aimed at engaging the fertility gods and blessing us with a second child.  No luck.

By 2005 we were at the threshold of the dreaded "specialist."  Specialist is Latin for a place where "there is no modesty."  I recall she was a humorless, brilliant woman with cartoon sperm all over her office.  Ceramic sperm, cardboard sperm, sperm in bas relief coming out of the walls.  There were even several "sperm mobiles" hanging from the ceiling.  If it was in a movie it would have been hilarious.  I think there was even a sperm puppet but my memory might be wrong on that one.  My reaction to all of it was one of dread.

"How much hope, and how much money." Those were the thoughts that dominated my mind on the trips to the specialist.  I had a definite budget for both.

My wife, Jeanine, for her part, was as courageous as I have ever seen any person about the process. "Whatever we need to do, we'll do it," she said.

Yeah, easy for you to say, sister.  You aren't getting sent into the room with vinyl couch, dirty magazines, and Tupperware and everyone knows what you are up to in there. 

Honestly, talk about the place where shame goes to die, the "collection lab" is the epicenter of the "no humility" zone.  On my first visit, I walked into my private room, took one look at the vinyl couch and began to laugh so hard that the 20 something female lab technician came back to check on me.

"Yes, ma'am, of course I am OK" I recall saying. "No ma'am, I'm just laughing at the couch...I don't know why I am laughing at the couch...It's a funny couch...No, I don't need any help and I don't think my wife would appreciate you asking me that question in these circumstances..."  I told her.  After that I heard her walk away laughing.

So after all the tests, two surgeries for my wife, and more "procedures," plus the addition of a second job for me to help pay for the procedures, it was now September, 2005.  Along the way, in July of 2005, my dad died unexpectedly.  I felt like quitting.  We were broke, financially and emotionally.  I was working two jobs, my wife had already had a miscarriage, we had a five year old boy at home who was perfect in every way you could expect a five year old boy to be perfect - handsome, funny, strong, smart, well mannered, compassionate.  I was ready to quit. I wanted to quit and I told my wife I was quitting.  She was faithful and said, "not just yet."

It was late summer in 2005 that my wife, unable to sleep and channel surfing after midnight, made a significant discovery watching one of those morbid TV medical shows. You know the ones, they show you all the physical torment a person is going through and you see how all the doctors along the way have screwed up diagnosing their condition until that one special doctor sees something that fixes it.  She was watching this show and I heard her say "This is me, this is what I have..."  Skeptical and tired though I was, I had to admit that the symptoms described did seem like her in a mysterious, unsolvable inability to become pregnant kind of way.

So she, the "A" student, took copious notes and we made an appointment with our "specialist" and our family doctor.  Both  gave us a collective "m'eh."  I was going on 41, my wife just turned 39 and I think they thought it was time for us to start looking at other options (the specialist was talking "IVF" to which our bank account said "NFW" and our family doctor was talking about adoption).  But, the Nurse Practitioner, an enthusiastic force to be reckoned with, had heard of this condition, had seen it in her own family, and, after a simple blood test and the writing of a 7.00 per month prescription, ultimately got us on what we thought was the right path.

So meds in hand, we started a new course of medicine and procedures.  The specialist's fees were not enough to make us go broke all at once, but just enough to bankrupt us slowly over time.  By November, 2005 we started talking about what seemed obvious - if we weren't pregnant by December then we were done.

When the middle of December, 2005 came and the monthly pregnancy test came back negative, we decided we had had enough.  We were done.  Jeanine, earlier in the summer had another miscarriage, there was thousands upon thousands of dollars spent at the specialist, horrible fights, horrible tension, the romance gone from our marriage. We decided "enough."  Our November visit to the specialist would have been our last. That is, except, as it ultimately turned out, for that one part of living where, just when you've made up your mind to quit, hope has a way of tip-toeing in and whispering softly, "not just yet."

After 4 years of trying, our minds were made up. We resolved to meet our family at Christmas, 2005 and just get on with our life.  We gathered at my oldest brother's home for family Christmas - the first time we had all been together since my dad died. 

As one of the executors of his estate, I had a modest amount of his money to distribute to each of my siblings and thought this would be the perfect time to do it.  Dad's passing was a surprise and hit us all very hard, so I sought out each sibling privately and delivered to each, individually, an envelope with a little money in it from Dad.

My oldest brother, himself a family man, in the quiet of his beautifully appointed dining room, looked at me as I handed him the envelope and said "Denny, you got bills?"  I actually laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, Pat, you could say I got some bills..."

He met my gaze and handed his envelope back to me without even counting what was in it, and said "well then take this, and do something nice for your family."  It was a gesture so kind and generous and unexpected that I didn't know what to say.  I was embarrassed. Not wanting to refuse his generosity, I thanked him and put the money in my jacket pocket.

On the way home I told my wife about the encounter.  I am not too proud to admit that we both cried a bit as our son snoozed in the car seat behind us.  Without either of us saying it out loud, we both knew what we do with that sudden, lovely, unexpected gesture. We both knew what the "nice thing" would be that we would do for our family.

The next morning we called the specialist and arranged for an appointment the following week, the last week of December, 2005.  The money was just enough to cover one more "procedure." So once again we threw our modesty out the window, handed over the money, and said a little prayer.  That prayer was answered 10 months later when we welcomed a fantastic daughter into our family.

In the end, it turned out that we started in December (2002) to have a September (2006) baby.

The birth announcements we sent introducing our miracle daughter, the daughter who came home after we had all but given up dreaming about her, read "Sometimes, when life tells you to quit, hope walks in on tip-toe and whispers "not just yet." 

She is four years old today and, along with her big  brother, stands as the greatest thing I have ever done with my life.  She is a pig-tailed, giggly, wonderful slice of Heaven on Earth. 

Happy Birthday, little frog. Your mom, dad, big brother and all of your family loves you. Even the cats think you are cool.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and sharing this story of how the frog came into our lives.  I hope all is well with you and yours and that during your journey you take the time to remember that hope, just after love, is the greatest of all gifts.

Dennis