Happy Birthday, USA! I don't think we look a day over 234 years old-thank goodness for botox.
All's well that ends well says The Bard and if you're reading this and don't know I'm talking about the four goals to none $hit hammering the Germans gave Argentina on the pitch at the World Cup yesterday, or worse, you don't care, please move on as there's nothing to read here for you today. Ever since the Hand of God goal, I've waited for cosmic comeuppance and yesterday I realized my ride's here (how many times will I have the opportunity to work Springsteen AND Zevon AND the World Cup into ONE paragraph? You're surprised? You must be new here).
The greatest thing about watching the game on TV wasn't Alexi Lalas (it never is) but that I was joined on the couches in the living room by our two children, themselves grown-ups with their own lives. Our son, Patrick turning 28 later this week and daughter, Michelle, who was 23 in May, took time out of their lives to enrich mine, again. They have everyday since each was born and allowed me to try my hand at a job other than being Sigrid's husband.
They have a very cool Mom and an emotional runt for a dad but they've turned out very well-if totally different from one another. They have their Mom's ease in the world and her open manner with meeting new people. They have artistic skills and abilities and have always had comments on their report cards when they were small, 'plays well with others' that tickled me immensely, maybe because I never did and still don't.
Both have become remarkable grown-ups (not that they're done by any stretch of the imagination), and I'm sort of an expert on this as I've known lots of remarkable grown-ups in my life, with their own friends and lives. It was a blessing to have them join me in watching the nation of their birth beat the absolute snot out of the Gauchos. That the Germans flattened the opposition, the point of watching the exercise, was most swell but the chance to sit and cheer with people I love (their mother and the light of my life was puttering throughout the house popping into the living room in response to our repeated cheers) was my very most favorite part.
I give my time to total strangers, so to Sigrid, nach (fast) drei und dreizig jahren und trotz allem was wir durchgemacht haben and our two no-longer children, thank you, for the space we shared yesterday in a universe where wir waren unter uns. Understand what I've become, it wasn't my choosing. And people ev'rywhere think, something better than I am.
-bill kenny
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