Cracking the Bible Code???

The other night, 8M was texting with one of his buddies, when he stopped and chuckled to himself.  Jenn looked at him; "What's so funny?" she asked.

"I just realized that, to text 'Mom' from my phone, I key in '666'."

Serves her right for asking, I guess. . .

Middle School English Class. . .

8M, a 7th-grader about to turn 13, is having a lot of fun in his English class, just lately.  They're doing a unit on Poetry; his English teacher is a young woman who looks like she might not be much older than Middle School herself.  She's wonderfully creative, and puts across real joy and love for her subject, of which 8M, at least, seems to have caught a most virulent case.

She had them memorize two poems of their own choice.  8M asked Jenn and me what our favorite poems were; I told him Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' and Poe's 'The Bells' (inveterate lover of wordplay that I am; I thought about giving him 'I Am the Walrus', but wasn't sure if that would count as an actual poem).  Jenn gave him Rudyard Kipling's 'If'.  So the three of us spent a couple weeks memorizing all three poems, and had great fun doing so.

The class held a 'tournament' of everyone's favorite poems.  The teacher paired off the poems, and the class voted on which one of each pair they liked, one round every day.  Alas, 8M's poems were eliminated fairly early (evidently, our predilection for whimsical wordplay is not widely shared; pity).  The ultimate winner was a limerick by Ogden Nash (which seems about right for a middle school class):

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
     Said the fly, "Let us flee!"
     "Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

I love limericks. . .

Another recent assignment asked 8M to write a statement describing himself in three words.  He wrote, "I am a rebel," and showed if to 6F, who was standing nearby.  She looked at it and said, "But that's four words."  8M just looked at her, grinning. . .

Are You Ready for Some Football?

I don't usually post a whole lot about football around these parts, although in recent years, my Spartans have inspired me to wax rhapsodical from time to time.  But this weekend was a kind of football-ish harmonic convergence around here.  You would be very kind to indulge me. . .

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7M is a high-school junior, and a linebacker for his school's football team.  He's pretty darn good (if I may say so myself), and is usually among the leading tacklers for his team.  It never gets old, hearing your son's name called over the PA, I tell you.

His team has had a really good season so far, going undefeated, winning their league championship, and qualifying for the state playoffs, besides.  This Friday night past, they played another undefeated, highly-ranked team, and won, 27-22.  It was the only game all year that they won by less than 30 points.  It was actually kinda fun to watch a game that wasn't played with a running clock for most of the second half. . .

The team is sufficiently highly ranked that it wouldn't be a surprise for them to be playing in the domed stadium in Detroit over Thanksgiving weekend (ie, for the state championship).  There being four rounds of games to win before that comes to pass, I'll stop short of counting any unhatched chickens.  But it's been a fun ride so far. . .

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8M played football for the first time in his life this fall.  He hasn't been as athletically-inclined as his brothers, and I'm fine with that; he sure doesn't have to have athletic success in order to please me.  He has his own really unique personality, and his own set of unique skills and proclivities that make him a really interesting and fun person in his own very estimable right; we're glad to have him in our family, no matter how stunned we were to find ourselves expecting our eighth child deep into our 40s, all those years ago. . .

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun, watching him learn to play the game, progressing from "Where am I?  What am I supposed to be doing?  I have no clue. . ." to understanding his assignments, and making plays.  Last week, he got his name called over the PA for the first time (he made a tackle), and in today's game, he actually carried the ball a couple times.  Mind you, I'm not so much living vicariously through the success he's had (such as it is), as I am proud of him making the effort, and learning to do something that he started out utterly clueless of.  Very cool. . .

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And just for the sake of saying so, I have to mention the way my Spartans man-handled the hated Wolverines over the weekend, the sixth time we've beaten them in the last seven games.  Truth to tell, I didn't think that the Spartans played all that well, certainly far short of their best.  But even so, they dominated the blue-corn guys from start to finish.  It's a sign of how strong our team is, I suppose, that they can dominate their rival while still not playing their best.

I'm still getting used to this whole rivalry-dominance thing.  Our friends from down the road have had far more success against us, in my adult lifetime, than we've had against them (though we pretty much owned them in my childhood; just sayin').  I'm just glad (*shedding a small tear*) to have lived long enough to see the tables turned, at least for a while. . .

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And then this morning, the Lions played the Sunday Brunch Special from Wembley Stadium in London.  That's London, in the UK, not Ontario.  Five time zones to the east of here.  NFL marketing-types, gotta love 'em. . .

The Leos started out terrible, trailing 21-0 at halftime.  But they turned the tables in the second half and ended up pulling out a 22-21 victory on a last-second field goal (some real bizarre doings in those final seconds, which I'll decline to discuss in detail, but it did make things, um interesting).

I'm not quite ready to start calling them "MY Lions" just yet (6-2 and leading the division has gone down in flames too often, too recently, for me to jump on the bandwagon quite this soon).  But this could yet turn into one of the better years of my own personal memory. . .

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So, lots of football this weekend, all the way from middle-school, to high school, to major-college, to the pros.  And all of 'em went according to my own humble rooting interests, which was nice.

And the weather in these parts was spectacular this weekend - mid-60s, brilliant sunshine, cloudless azure skies. . . So I put another 32 miles on my bike, bringing me to 876 miles for the year.  Barring any nasty weather wiping out entire weekends, I should just sneak past 1000 before the snow flies.  But, we will see what we will see. . .

Double Digits!

Please join me in wishing a Happy 10th Birthday to 8M, our youngest.  So we no longer have any single-digit-aged children in our family.  Which seems like it must be some manner of a significant marker. . .

But not nearly as significant, at least in my (admittedly skewed) paternal mind, as the impending birthday of his eldest sister in a couple weeks, who is 20 years older. . .

Among his haul of presents was this blast from my past, which just seems way more fun than it oughta be. . .

Catholic Signs?

While we were down for my dad's memorial, we were driving along a road that was lined with several fast-food places.  8M, who is 9 years old, seemed particularly interested in one of the establishments, and asked Jen and me, "Are they Catholic?"

What?

"Are they Catholic?" he repeated, pointing to a particular franchise.

Um, why do you ask, son?

"Because it says, 'Pope Yes."

Pope Yes?

And at that point, Jen and I could only burst out laughing, because 'Popeye's' could easily be read as 'Pope Yes', if you're not too careful about where the breaks are. . .

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And to make it even more, um, fun (and, you know, keeping it in the family). . .

Another time, we were driving along in a minivan with one of my brothers and his wife, when she pointed to a glass storefront we were driving past.  On one side of the door, the word 'Roman' was painted on the plate-glass window, and 'Tic' was painted on the pane on the other side of the door.

"Now," my SIL mused, "what the heck do you suppose a 'Roman Tic' is?"

"I think," I replied, with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, "that it's one of those 'Catholic guilt' things; when a Catholic feels remorse for his sins, he develops a nervous twitch."

"Oh. . . really?  I guess that could make sense.  I don't know, though; why would they paint it on a storefront?"

Finally my brother, who is a singularly reticent man, chimed in.  "Ummm," he began, with a bemused smirk on his face, "I think that's supposed to say 'Romantic'. . ."

The she punched him for pointing it out. . .  'Cuz, you know, she's always tryin' to get him to be more romantic, and all. . .

And, you know, the funny thing is, there's not even any genetic connection between 8M and my brother's wife. . .

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Dad's memorial was good, and blessed, and rich.  I got to give one of the eulogies, which I basically took from my recent Father's Day blog post.  My youngest brother also gave a eulogy, and between the two of us, I think we gave a pretty good account of Dad's life.  I was able to say some things about his early life that most of the others might not have known about, and my brother said some things about him from after I'd left home, that I was less intimately acquainted with.  Jen and I and our kids sang a couple of songs ('For All the Saints' is a great funeral/memorial song); I was a little surprised by how many of the folks in attendance hadn't known how musical our family is, or even that I play the guitar. . .

The whole time we were there, it was just great family time, full of reminiscences and fond affection.  I even got invited to one brother's house for the first time in the 15+ years he's lived there. . .

I've shared some about our wacky, yours-mine-and-ours family, and I was appreciating my family on a whole new level this time.  I couldn't help thinking that it was, in lots of ways, a uniquely happy place for an adoptee (at least, this adoptee) to land - our family was formed out of folks coming from so many different, odd directions, that my adopted-ness was really no stranger than anyone else's path into the family.  And, given what I've come to understand in the intervening decades, about the unique challenges of 'blended' families, I cherish all the moreso that our family is still together, and we still love each other.  And it was very gratifying to experience that again this past week, in what could have been a particularly stressful time for us. . .

God Bless Us, Every One

It was Christmas Eve at our house, which, according to our family traditions, begins our celebration of Christmas. We had all ten of our family members present, along with a pair of overseas guests, one from Scotland, one from Lebanon.

We started with our traditional Christmas dinner of Chicken Kiev, with asparagus and brown/wild rice. After dinner, we got in our cars and hurried across town to where a small church puts on a 'Live Nativity' - a short dramatization of the Christmas story, complete with angels (wearing mittens and earmuffs, to protect them from the 20F cold), live sheep/goats (the shepherds have got to have something to tend, right?) and even a donkey (I don't even want to think about what it took to get the permit for the live critters out of City Hall). The part of Baby Jesus was played by a realistic-looking rubber doll (not a hidden 40-watt bulb).

Returning home, we gathered around the tree in the living room for our annual reading of O. Henry's short story, 'The Gift of the Magi', after which we handed out the presents under the tree, and opened them. Most everyone seemed to enjoy their gifts. After a few rounds, all that remained were a few envelopes, mainly containing cards promising Gifts to be Delivered Later. One of the cards pointed 8M (who is eight years old) to a fishbowl surreptitiously stashed at the neighbors' house, containing six goldfish, five of which had died by the time he got to them. The sixth died by the time we left for Midnight Mass, so there was much teasing of the poor boy, on the order of, "On the Sixth Day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me. . . Six Dead Goldfish. . ."

One of the last to be opened was an envelope marked for 6F, from 8M. At this point, I should mention that 6F is hoping to go on a mission trip next summer, either in Costa Rica or Honduras, and she is just getting ready to gear up her fundraising campaign of letters to various relatives and friends. When 4M went on a similar trip a couple years ago, to the Dominican Republic, we were stunned by people's generosity. 6F opened the envelope, which contained a few dollar bills and a small handwritten note. Her upper lip quivered briefly, and she passed the envelope and its contents to Jen, who read the note and dabbed at her eyes, passing the note along. In short order, it was passed to me, and I beheld four $1 bills, with a note from 8M saying, "It's not much, but this is for your mission trip. Love, 8M."

There was nary a dry eye in the house by the time the envelope finished circulating. After that, we went to Midnight Mass, which ended with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah (one can never sing the Hallelujah Chorus too often), after which we returned home to indulge in some celebratory treats.

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All in all, a most satisfactory celebration of Our Lord's Incarnation. And that note from 8M will stay with me for a long time. . .

When the Bough Breaks

This story actually starts three or four years ago, in the wintertime, when one day Jen noticed that the large maple tree in the back corner of our yard had developed a crack. About twelve or fifteen feet up, the trunk split into two large limbs, and a vertical crack had started at the crotch where the two limbs came together. The tree seemed fine, for the time being, but Jen made a few calls to the 'Tree Department' at the university, and a guy even came by to have a look at it. He outlined a 'treatment plan' involving a large band to hold the crack shut, and perhaps allow the crack to heal itself shut. It had a fairly hefty price tag, but at least we knew what we were facing. Alas, in the spring, before we had the opportunity to implement any plan, for 'treatment' or anything else, Nature took care of our problem for us, when the smaller side of the crack completely fell over. We were pretty fortunate in that nothing much was harmed in the process. It took out a section of our neighbor's fence, but between her insurance and ours, the cost was pretty minimal. The 'Tree Science' professor came back out to see what was left, and he told us that, sooner or later, the tree was gonna need to come down, but it was stable for the time being. The section that remained involved about 90% of the original trunk, so it at least had a good base. Although the missing third of the tree left behind a sort-of imbalanced situation, and the tree leaned a bit more to the left than it had before. I checked the tree a couple time a year, just to stay in touch with how it was doing, whether the crack was growing, or any rot was setting in. It always seemed OK, or at least unchanged, so I let it ride, even knowing that I was eventually going to need to take the tree down. ------------------------- Last Friday, I came home from work to find the house unoccupied. Jen and 8M had gone with friends to one of the summertime 'Plays In the Park' that they have over at the university, and all the other kids were at various and sundry of their friends' houses. I don't get a lot of quiet solitude, and so I fairly cherish it when it comes around. I got out some dinner for myself, and grabbed some reading material to catch up on while I ate. Eventually, Jen came home, with her friend Mary, the mother of 8M's friend Thomas. Jen and Mary stood chatting on the front porch, watching the sky darken as a storm approached from the west, while 8M and Thomas ran to play in the back yard. When the weather got progressively more threatening, they came inside, and soon 8M and Thomas came in, as well. Mary was concerned about driving home in a storm, so she said good-bye and took Thomas out to their car, and left, while the wind whipped up to a feverish pace. They left before it started raining, while Jen and I and 8M took in the excitement of the rushing wind and the oncoming storm. We went back in the house, and while I returned to my reading, Jen quickly went through the house, tidying things up just a bit. When she got to the family room in the back of the house, I heard her gasp sharply, and she called for me to come quickly. I hustled back to the family room, and the view out the back window, along with virtually the entire back yard, was filled with leaves and branches. In the back corner of the yard, the maple tree stood, with another gaping wound where one of the remaining limbs had broken off. The broken limb was huge - a foot-and-a-half in diameter, and 40-50 feet long, with numerous thickly-leaved branches. In its fall, it had also knocked a rather sizable limb off a neighboring tree. The pile of branches and leaves, even laying on the ground, stood 8-10 feet high. Amazingly, it hadn't hit anything else when it fell - the kids' swingset, right in the shadow of the tree that had just fallen, was untouched, as was our utility shed. Unlike the previous episode, even the neighbors' fences were unscathed. As we beheld the leafy carnage in our yard, 8M said, "Thomas and I were just playing right there a few minutes ago." And we realized how quickly it had all happened, with the wind whipping up so quickly, and so noisily that we didn't even hear a foot-and-a-half limb breaking loose. And how near a thing it had been - a pair of eight-year-olds had been playing in the yard just minutes before it fell. Their guardian angels deserve a raise in pay for urging them into the house with scant minutes to spare. ------------------------- So now, for the time being, our kids have a whole new maze of tree limbs on which to climb and explore, until we can get the chainsaw fired up to convert it into firewood (and you can trust me, that it'll be a few years' worth of firewood). Jen's brother is going to come with his more 'professional-grade' chainsaw; he's a wood-worker, and he might even want to take a big chunk of the limb home with him, to turn into furniture. Which will be fine with me. I also know that I can't afford to 'let it ride' anymore - that damn tree has just got to come down. It seems such a shame - when we moved in, it was a big, beautiful tree, providing abundant shade and sound insulation between us and our neighbors. It does a lot less of that now, aside from having now scared the bejabbers out of us for the second time. And never let it be said that I can't take a hint. . .

Generations. . .

For the past few years, there has been a little Starbucks stand tucked into the front of the Meijer store where we do a lot of our grocery shopping. I will stop there once or twice a week, and since my 'usual' order is a tad idiosyncratic (venti fat-free latte; three pumps sugar-free hazelnut, two pumps sugar-free vanilla), the retiree-aged woman who often works there notices me whenever I come by, and we've struck up a friendly little banter over the years. . . In the division of labor that Jen and I have worked out in recent years, the Meijer shopping has fallen into my pile, while she handles the rest of the grocery shopping, at the farmer's market, and a couple other places. . . 8M's birthday was a few days ago - he turned eight, which is a further indication that our childbearing years are drawing to a close (or that they have already). Which brings something of a combination of sadness and relief, along with being a marker that we're drawing closer to the end of our lives than the beginning. But this really isn't supposed to be a sad or dark post. Really. . . (bear with me; these seemingly unconnected strands will all come together eventually; I think) A week or two ago, I went out on my regular Meijer run, and I took 8M with me. When you have eight kids, taking them on errands is one of the ways you can wedge in a little one-on-one time with your kids. Which, honestly, works pretty well, for the most part. Except for the days when I'm craving a little solitude, but I've mostly written that off, for the foreseeable future. And 8M is a chatterbox of the highest order (a trait passed on to him from Jen's side of the family). Sometimes I just have to say to him, "8M, my ears are getting tired; could you be quiet for a few minutes?" Anyway, 8M and I were out doing some grocery shopping together. We filled our cart with all the items on our list, and after we had finished checking out, we wandered past the Starbucks stand, and on impulse, I decided to grab a latte for the road. My coffee-lady was there, and as I approached the counter (I don't even have to state my order anymore - she's memorized it; which is one of those little 'personal touches' that makes me want to keep going back there, rather than a different Starbucks, or whatever), she smiled, and started preparing my cup. Seeing 8M with me, she grinned and asked - "Is this your grandson?" Ummm. . . no. . . actually, he's my youngest son. . . I wanted to say something about how well my boys can swim, or somesuch, but I thought better of it. . . If I think about it, it really shouldn't be terribly surprising - I'm gray enough, and there are plenty of guys even younger than me who are grandfathers. But it was the first time that particular misperception has come my way (and maybe that's the 'truer' surprise; maybe I'm younger and more virile-looking than I think I am. . .) (or, you know, maybe not. . .) ------------------------- It reminded me a little bit of the time when I was in high school, and my dad was gone for a few days, and my mom and I, for whatever reason (I can't recall), were out to dinner. We had a nice time together, and when we had finished, the waitress put the check next to my place. With the implication that she perceived us as 'a couple', rather than a mother-and-teenaged-son. Which tickled my mom no end. And that waitress got a very generous tip. . .

Everything He Needs. . .

Overheard recently being sung by 8M, having been gifted with a wallet:

I have everything I nee-eed
I have everything I nee-eed
I've got a wallet to keep my stuff in
I have everything I nee-eed

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We should all be so content. . .

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No less than two (count 'em - two!) of our kids (2F and 4M) are currently spending their holiday breaks visiting friends in Europe. Yeah, you read that right - Europe. 2F made a very close friend a few years back, somewhere during all the time she spent in Detroit. Her friend's parents are members of a community related to ours, in that 'other' Big Ten town just down the road from here (and closer to Detroit than we are). And Martha is an absolute sweetheart; Jen and I 'adopted' her as 'our other daughter'. A year or so ago, Martha took a job in Spain (yeah, I know. . .) and 2F came to miss her terribly; and so, the two of them hatched a plan for 2F to fly over and spend a couple weeks in Spain over the Christmas holidays. Tough duty, ain't it?

4M is in Austria (by way of Ireland, Paris and Rome), staying with his confirmation sponsor, who is studying theology in Austria (and who just happens to be the son of my GF2).

You know, I understand that, in their young adulthood, our kids sometimes feel the need to 'declare their independence' from their parents, and make their own life choices. If we're a little neurotic about it, it can sometimes feel like they don't want to be around us, but really, we know that's not true. But when two of them, at the same time, don't even want to be on the same continent with us, it can make you wonder. . .

Have fun, both of you, and God speed you safely back to the arms of your family. . .