Here's Another One

Here's Patrick. He's eighteen today. He can vote (hmm.) In June he will graduate from high school. He has pretty much decided which university he will attend in September, but I am not sure if he has crossed the T's or dotted the I's. We will go and have dinner with him and his family tomorrow—not as much fun as today when his girlfriend came over early to cook him bacon and waffles. Patrick worked at both his jobs today—the kid is no slouch.

His aunt, one of my other daughters, said she burst into tears after she phoned him today and thought about the passage of the last eighteen years. I know what she means.

My Youngest Son Hits 45

I think this is the latest photo I have of Andrew. I think it was taken when he was here last summer. Trouble is, I just downloaded a bunch of photos from my camera, and they all appear to have been taken on May 12, 2007. Now I know that is impossible, so I must bite the bullet and buy a new camera if and when I buy a new laptop. We will see.

We just talked to Andrew. Marcie is cooking a birthday cake, but it is one of those (very frequent) evenings when one or the other of them will be shuttling Theodore and Linus to and from swimming practice. Now Andrew has a a taste of what we faced when he and Al played basketball.

He's happy, and as he remarked when he saw a "5" and a "4" candle—better to be 45 than 54.

Brooklyn

Recently I went with the male movie critic in this house to see Brooklyn. I didn't think he would care for it—"It's a chick flick"—while I would enjoy it. As it turned out, he enjoyed it, and as for me . . . it hit too close to home.
Eilis and I had rather too much in common.

I am not sure how old she was when she left Ireland in 1950. I was twenty three when I left England in 1963. She left because she had no job and no prospects of getting one, while I had no job, but I made my decision sometime before I finished my course and I had plenty of time to apply for a position, especially armed with my letter from the Minister . O dear, I forgot I had written that account when I wrote about it again, this time with a visual aid. I know I went for adventure. Eilis made the trip to New York by boat. For someone leaving home for the first time, she looked remarkably calm and brave, although sea sickness took its toll. I flew to New York in an old turbo pro plane. I had flown once before, when I went to Geneva to visit a friend who was working there. Nasty feeling crossing the Alps. When I got to New York I had a day to kill before I boarded the plane for Los Angeles. I know I got from JFK to Manhattan. How? I know I wandered around a department store. Which one? I have a photo I took of the Empire State Building, but I decided the cost of going to the top was too much for my meagre budget. Somehow I got back to the airport and on to LA.

Eilis had a place to live, an Irish boarding house with four or so young Irish girls whose journey to New York had been arranged by their Catholic priest. The boarding house was presided over by a woman who presumably had the job of keeping the girls out of trouble. But how much Eilis learned from her fellow boarders! I was supposed to be living in a graduate dorm, but when I arrived I was told it was unfinished and that I would be living in the undergraduate dorm for one semester. My roommate was a grad student from Lubbock TX (as if I had ever heard of Lubbock, TX!) She was an opera vocal student. I, however, spent a lot of my time with the undergrads. How much I learned from them! It was the era of the Beatles and being English made me quite an attraction to these younger students.

Eilis had a job arranged for her in a department store. I had a job set up for me in the University, although towards the end of my three years, when it was obvious to me that I would not be staying to complete my Ph.D, I also worked part time in a department store to make some extra money. I sold handbags and Ernie will never let me forget how I was as stiff as Eilis was when she started out and how I shooed him away from the handbag counter.

I suppose it goes without saying that Eilis and I were both homesick as we got to know our new surroundings, but it was less of a problem for me as I fully intended to return to England. And Brooklyn was somewhat of a cocoon for Eilis with its Irish dances and fellow immigrants.

Like Eilis, I went home for a visit: she because her sister died, I because I wanted to see my parents and brother and friends. Like Eilis, when it was time to go back to America, I hesitated. She already had a secret husband in Brooklyn, but the ties to Ireland were pulling at her. She eventually boarded the boat back, this time a mentor to a young girl as she left to start a new life. I hesitated because I knew that if I went back to LA I would never leave. My reason for returning was not unlike Eilis'.

It all worked out just fine. Thomas Wolfe was right when he said that you cannot go home again. But sometimes it is hard to know where home is.

Love to Lydia Jane

This cute little girl is my granddaughter Lydia Jane, commonly known as Diddy. Not hard to figure out that she is eight years old today. Elizabeth, her mom, allows each of her children to take the day off for their birthdays and she takes them out to lunch, shopping etc. Tomorrow we are the destination for the two of them and I am so excited that we will be seeing them.

Any of your cake left, Lydia?

It's Ron's Turn

Ron and Andrew, Chesapeake Bay, 1994

Happy Birthday, Ron. This is not a photo which highlights your activities for the year. No mention of another great theatrical role (although I wanted to post the photo of your face when you wore—and dropped—the towel in Enchanted April). No mention of all the bread you baked and the garden and the koi you tended. No mention of the trips you took with your family to check out colleges for Patrick. No mention of your ambitious blog (https://ronsbookshelf.wordpress.com/
and sorry, Ron, I am still catching up with that.

And I am not writing this because you are the only person in the family who could read the paragraph above and recognize praeteritio.

No, this is a photo of an act of kindness which made me so happy to know you would be a part of our family. In 1994 Lucy was about to start college in St. Louis, 600 miles to the south. On the same day Andrew would start graduate school 500 plus miles to the east. Both had a great deal of "stuff" which needed to be transported. We were all set to take Lucy and trying to figure out how we could help Andrew. Kate's boyfriend at the time came up with an offer of help, which was so welcome. While they were there Ron's former roommate, who was living in the area and who would be Ron and Kate's best man the following year, took them sailing on Chesapeake Bay.

Amazing how digging out old photos can be such an aide memoire.

A Political Post Devoid of Politics

On May 21, 2014, way before the American political arena was populated, I wrote a post advising Hillary Clinton not to run, based not on her political viability, but on her age and the difficulties we all encounter as we get older. Then here comes Bernie Sanders, who is now 74 and who would be 82 at the end of a second term, assuming he got one. Sure he looks pretty good now—they both do and they have both been facing the rigors of campaigning and riding around on buses and eating suspect food in diners. But there is a limit.

I swear I had figured that with the advent of Mr. Sanders it would be a good time to repeat my warnings, and by one of those co-incidences or synchronicities, today Ronni Bennett wrote a very a propos post, listing some of the ways we are robbed of time as the years go by. People who wrote comments were delighted to find themselves members of a club, sharing their experiences. I know I was. Forgetting how to spell: check, getting mixed up with numbers: check. And so on.

How does this play in the political arena?  Bernie can't fly to Europe, Frau Merkel,  because he's having a double bunionectomy. Hillary can't get to the phone, Mr. Putin, because it takes her so long to pee these days. If we pay heed to these and other examples in the comments, neither of them would get much done because they will both sleep longer and need naps.

I rest my case and am off to bed.

A Week for Birthdays

First there was Andrew's wife, Marcie, who celebrated her birthday on Monday. In addition to raising six delightful children (and all that involves as they segue into the teenage years), she works full time on a schedule which involves a commute from Rockville to downtown DC, arriving home at 2:00 a.m. Marcie has had to confront many crises head on, as those of you who followed Veronica's first year will recall, and there is now another dragon to slay.

Yesterday and today marked birthdays for two grandchildren. Yesterday was Charlie's sixteenth birthday so we joined the Bernas family for dinner. Charlie is the proud owner (and player) of three guitars, so a number of his gifts were guitar related. Thanks for inviting us over for dinner, Charlie. Today we celebrate the fourteenth birthday of Andrew and Marcie's oldest child Liesl. She's our oldest granddaughter and it has been such fun to look through photos and see how much she has changed. Next year she will be in High School!