Memo to My Son

I wrote this many years ago. And I meant every word then and now. Tomorrow is  my son, Patrick Michael's birthday. (I'm trying to steal a march on him this year and bragging on him early) When I type 'my son' or 'my daughter' (when speaking of his sister, Michelle Alison) or 'my wife', Sigrid Katharina, I smile, not because of a pride of possession mentality but because I am truly the most fortunate person on the planet. 

If we've not met, count your blessings-I am NOT likable. Take my word on this and be assured I could send you a list of folks who could attest to this fact, and that this list would vaguely resemble the census in size and scope, helps underscore my point. 

Being not likable makes it a difficult stretch to be lovable, and yet, my wife, an otherwise sane and logical person, could not possibly be married to me for nearly thirty-eight years, but has. Our two children are the result of her ability to make someone into something they feared they never could be. She not only raised two children, she transformed a self-absorbed obliviot into an Approximate Dad. Considering what she had to work with, she done good.

I was afraid to have children--the actual, 'here's a small human to take care of and worry about for the rest of your life' portion of the program seemed more daunting to me than I could ever handle. When Sigrid shared with me she (and we, by extension) was pregnant, it was the early winter of what had been a rough year. Having successfully placed half a world between us, I discovered more guilt and anger when my dad died that Spring than sorrow at his passing. That's how we had been and I was afraid it was a preview for my performance.

Sigrid went into labor in the middle of the morning and we drove across town to the Offenbach Stadtkrankenhaus. German physicians in the early Eighties were pretty much an unknown species to me (Sigrid's frauenarzt was cool enough-I still have the black and white Polaroids of Patrick in the womb, his (ahem) ornaments clearly visible) and I was to them as well.

Their luck came to end with my son's birth and they were pretty good sports about it. As Sigrid's labor continued and the contractions shortened and the delivery preparation's tempo quickened, I was asked where I would be during her stay in the geburtsaal, and I assured the doctors, 'right there with her', which surprised them. 

I attempted to explain in what pretty passable Deutsch (I thought) since I had placed the order, I had every intention of taking delivery. Maybe my German wasn't that good-it was like playing to an oil painting, no smile, no nothing, gar nichts.

When Patrick was born, after what's considered a spontangeburt (for the male doctors who can NEVER experience pregnancy, in their opinion, the childbirth was accomplished without labor. Sure it was-from your lips to God's ear, Herr Arzt),

Sigrid looked she had just run a marathon and was utterly exhausted. I watched while the midwife cleaned up my son and, as she swabbed off the blood, he peed on her. Crying, basically blind, totally helpless in an alien world, he was my son and I laughed out loud maybe in amazement but more likely in joy and thankfulness for what I had just witnessed. 

The midwife placed Patrick on Sigrid's chest, for mother and child bonding and my disappointment knew almost no words. At that moment, I was so jealous of the woman I loved. I asked as politely as I could if, after she had 'had enough of holding him', if I could, and was stunned when she picked him up and fixing me with a stare that bordered on a glare (leading me to suspect that the geburt wasn't quite as spontan as the wizard in the white coat had thought and just because it was spontan hadn't meant it was schmerzfrei) handed Patrick to me, saying 'I've carried him for nine months, it's your turn now.' 

Patrick was and is, my deal with God. From the moment I held him, I no longer cared what happened to me and egotist that I am, that's saying something. I know, your children are beautiful and smart and talented and handsome and sorry they're not my children and my son and my daughter are the absolute best not only in the world, but in the history of the world (there's a barn in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (I think), that might want to argue that point but no chance, sorry).

I walked him around that delivery room for the next two hours or so, singing I've Been Working on the Railroad (the drum and piano would have cluttered the delivery room) and really working those Fie-Fi-Fiddly-I-Os, making up in volume what I lacked in pitch. I don't know why I sang the song--I'm shaking my head in bemused bewilderment as I type this. It seemed like a good idea at the time actually, it was a perfect idea.

And point in fact, I've gone on for way too long--Patrick was born faster than I'm telling you about it. In many ways, the years seem to have sped by at that same clip. He and his sister have overcome the handicap of being my children, mostly because they've had the good fortune to have the love and devotion of my wife as their Mom. And, yeah, he's made me crazy, angry, frightened, delighted and every emotion in between--because that's what children do.

And as long as you remember to make sure they always know that sometimes they will do things you will not like, but that you will always love them, they will be able to do anything, even leave you when they grow up to be adults of their own. 

There will be phone conversations that start out about one subject and become all that and that infamous bag of chips. And your eyes will fill with tears as you watch them end a chapter of what you still see as their childhood and begin to write their own novel as the life you always wanted for them finally begins.

And it hurts, my God it hurts, and maybe the keyboard blurs as I type this because it's really warm and my eyes are perspiring-yeah, that what it is I'm sure. Sorry if the folks you work with razz you today for having a dotty dad-you knew that long ago.  

Happy Birthday, Patrick! Love, Dad.

Time the Conqueror

One of the amazing things about this era of worldwide connectivity is how you can reunite with people you never actually knew and yet knew of. Sometimes it's a heartening experience and other times more disheartening when you discover the person behind the facade is someone you would never choose to otherwise know.

I never really have had that problem since nearly all of the people I've known in all my years here on the ant farm are well rid of me when we go our separate ways and relief, not regret is what they more than not most often feel. If I had a dime for everyone with whom I had lost contact who was happy when we re-established it, I'd have closer to four cents. So much for change I can believe in.

I'm on a message board of an organization I was in a long time, well over three decades ago, with hundreds of members from various eras with cohorts and generations of folks who worked in all aspects of the operation. Some people worked there for many years, spanning decades and are touchstones for a lot of us who don't really have a lot else in common. It's nice, but it can set you up to get hurt if you don't tread lightly.

One of the group posters, who is (and this will surprise you) considerably older than I am, shared that he's about to return to the workforce (in this case, radio broadcasting). He's very much old-school, with a great voice and terrific phrasing, very important a generation or two of broadcasting ago.

I was discomfited years ago to discover he was nothing like the icon I had admired professionally for decades when through our joint membership in the group, I had the opportunity to get to know him as someone beyond the microphone. Crestfallen might be a word I'd use, or chastened by the encounters and I avoided his postings by not dropping by the group board.

So in recent days when I had a note from another former colleague asking me about  the pending 'return to the arena' I had to catch up on a lot of postings including one announcing he was "...ready to kick a$$ again." I hope he does but perhaps on his way to the studio that first day 'back' he'll pass a river, not unlike one of the three that runs through my current hometown that will  give him pause and food for thought.

It's important to realize no one enters the same river twice because both the river, and you, have changed. Not always for better. And to remember in this life, change is both a constant and our only constant companion.
-bill kenny

You're the Misbred, Grey Executive I've Seen Heavily Advertised

As I've mentioned previously, and unceasingly, my heart beats on the left side of my body and, for the most part, my politics follows suit. But it need not so do in order to appropriately react to the recent announcement that the Fatuous Fool on the Hill, with the complementary tower and golf course, Donald Trump has thrown his toupee in the ring in pursuit of his party's 2016 Presidential nomination.

Sadly it appears his head was still attached (damn you, Gorilla Glue!). I'm not sure there wasn't anyone the Trumpster didn't offend within 48 hours of starting his campaign. But I find it vaguely karmic that his 'straight talk' managed to outrage Hispanic people of all ages and political beliefs like nothing I've seen since Frito-Lay reluctantly changed their spokescharacter for their corn chips.

But The Donald trumped even Frito-Lay (¿viste lo que hice allí?) in provoking the kind of reaction you dream about as a comedy writer but never really manage to ever pull off. didja see what I did there?

I'm surprised he doesn't have a licensing deal in place for this already-I checked amazon and didn't find it, but look at all the other Trump stuff, you cannot get in Macy's (separate piece of outrage, not to be confused with Univision).

The clown car of candidates for 2016 has long since become a stretch limo and probably now needs to be a jitney bus. I already know who should sit closest to the rear exit clutching his own imported water bottle of seltzer. It's already been a dark ride to the White House 2016 and we've got more than a fair piece yet to go. When's the second show of bread and circuses start? Soon, I hope.
-bill kenny

Birthday Presence and Presents

Today everywhere, except on that side of the International Date Line is the 4^th of July. But only here in The Land of the Round Doorknobs, or as the Germans used to say somewhat wistfully and enviously, Das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten, is it Independence Day.

We who have always lived in this society and enjoyed all the protections our Constitution and Bill of Rights provide may sometimes take for granted what others elsewhere cannot, in their wildest fantasies, ever even imagine. For generations, everyone everywhere has wanted to come to America and be free. Newsflash: they still do. There's a reason why we have a Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor and nobody else does and it doesn't have anything to do with who gave what to whom as a present. 

Who we are and what we do are the envy of the world even when we sometimes do thoughtless, hateful and hurtful things. We are the most powerful nation on earth (and in the history of the world) and I want to believe we embody and epitomize a rare and noble notion that we and we alone should determine who we are, where we live, how we worship and for whom we vote as leaders. 

We are the United States of America, not because our cars are faster, our grocery shelves better stocked, our homes prettier, our armed forces more powerful, our hair bouncier, our teeth whiter or our clothes cleaner. We are the sum of all of that and ten thousand other things--the freedom to get up tomorrow morning and move across the street or across the country and never need anyone's permission. The right (some feel it's a duty) to think our elected leadership are cloth-eared clowns who are leading us to ruin (and have been since 1776, I guess).

We have more freedoms we never use than the rest of the world put together, made possible by everyone who has ever been an American ever since there's been an America to be from. George Bernard Shaw once noted "(p)atriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." 

But I don't think we feel superior--I'm not always convinced we think at all. But if we did, and do, think, today might be a good day to think a little more about who we are and how we're going to pass what we have to our children, as our parents did for us. 

We're a country whose Founders insisted our birthright included, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Not a lot of other places start out with 'fight for your right to party' as the major premise (with 'soda and pie' as the minor premise). It may not make us 'better', only different; but at least for today, different is normal and our normal is better than your normal. Whoever and wherever you are.
-bill kenny 

A Small Instead of Tall Tale

How about a Holiday Twofer? What?!? you say, how can you do that at such a low, low price? Volume, my friend. I cull the finest, sad moments of our history, well of someone's history anyway and bring them to you directly, eliminating the middleman. Are you ready? No, I'm betting you're not.

Abraham Lincoln signed the Declaration of Independence from the South on this date in 1984. Kill me now, say the last surviving high school history teachers. Sorry, gang, 'thou shalt not kill.' You're stuck with us.

Meanwhile. Rewarming an old chestnut. 

I love tall tales even though I'm more short and squat than is good for me. Truth be told my name translates from the original Latin as 'that stubby little fellow' and I try to never lose sight of that in a never ending battle for truth, justice and a Superman only cable channel. 

So while I've always wanted to believe that from childhood on, I've lived next door to Princess Anastasia or that Jimmy Hoffa, in costume, has trick-or-treated annually in my neighborhood or that, by gum!, it really does take two hands to handle a Whopper, experience has led me to believe a very small percentage of all the things I've seen with my own two eyes. 

So when I read this story the other day and read of this woman's dilemma, I went down right quickly and got lickity-splitly out to my Ol' '55 because I, too, have lost more than my fair share of tennis bracelets as I was strolling by unmonitored metal donation bins. 

Those things are pernicious and vicious. Perhaps I am the only person in the history of the world who ever dumpster-dived (dove?) when I was a slip of a boy back on the Banks of the Olde Raritan. 

But somehow, I don't think so. It is mean of me to mock the woman in the story and I know that, but she doesn't help her case by phoning for help from inside the collection box (as I read the story) and then, after all the travail and extricational activities, NOT finding the bracelet she 'dropped' that led her into temptation in the first place.

I'm wondering if this could be what happened to The Donner Party? Did you smell that? Smelled like Mongolian Barbecue to me, coming from over there. Let's just look and we'll come right back here and tell the others. Yep, that's what we'll do, as soon as I pick up a box of napkins. Have we started again? 

-bill kenny 

Awakening Sleepy Jean

We are, as of this morning, a day plus halfway through 2015. So all that stuff you were going to “get to in the new year,” the meter’s running, Pilgrim, and the sands in the hourglass are racing to the bottom so hurry up or hurry sundown. 

Lots to do before this holiday weekend to include wishing our friends to The Great White North all the best (belatedly) on their holiday, which was yesterday, appropriately enough “Canada Day” (possibly because Canada Dry was already taken?). 

We’ll take three days to do our Independence Day celebrations and about twice as long after that to get everything cleaned up afterward because that’s how we roll around here, South of Your Border.

I came across an article in the Christian (but they let all denominations read it to include Alexander Hamilton but only for a limited time longer) Science Monitor earlier this week on Rat Dreams. It had a more elegant title to be sure, but we’re selling sizzle AND steak ladies and gentlemen, as you can read here. 

For my part, I’ve had worries about rodents since shortly after reading about The Great Plague, and viewing the movies Willard and most especially Ben didn’t do anything for me at all (except creep me out even more), I  am taking some small consolation in thinking, far-fetched as it might be, that their dreams are being overrun by nightmares of us. Boo!

Considering the lives they lead, always on the periphery of our society, I’m surprised they can even get, to say nothing of keep, their eyes closed long enough to sleep (much less) perchance to dream. Their claws and teeth are absolutely necessary for their every waking moment and, of course, they need their whiskers a lot more than I need mine. Though “the shavin’ razor’s old, and it stings.”

- bill kenny

Almost Independence Day

I don’t think I’m being all that premature today when I wish you a safe and happy Independence Day holiday, which the calendar says is this Saturday but many including the Federal Government, which is closed and the City of Norwich are observing this Friday. 

Actually, The Rose of New England is getting a head start with a literal bang with the traditional Norwich Harbor Fireworks slated for tomorrow night, weather permitting and darkness enhancing, with Friday evening as a rain date. 

Hopefully, the weather will cooperate because so many of us have a lot of celebrating planned for this weekend.

But I hope we can find a moment to remember the reason and the struggles which marked the brave beginnings of who we are with the freedoms we enjoy today. Not meaning to sound like a scold (well, maybe a little) there’s a heedless hedonism we sometimes practice when remembering the men and women who paid for our freedoms with their lives that continues to discomfit me. 

Nearly thirteen thousand Connecticut residents fought against the British Crown during the Revolutionary War. That's not an insignificant number when you realize the state wasn't that heavily populated. Perhaps at some point in the coming days between laps in the pool, beach runs, oohing and ahhing at fireworks or manning the grill, we could stop into one of the cemeteries that are parts of so many of our neighborhoods across the city. We'll find a final resting place of an original New England Patriot, to devote and dedicate a moment of thought to those whose selflessness has in recent years been replaced by selfishness far too often. 

While we’re enjoying the fireworks, we can realize as marvelous as they are, nevertheless, they're a poor approximation of the often deadly barrages an unbroken line of heroes and heroines withstood without flinching so that we can lead the lives we have. We, who cannot be bothered to attend municipal meetings, who always have better things to do than visit our children's schools, who sit silently and sullenly on the sidelines never volunteering anywhere for anything and whose voter participation sets record lows for turn-out. This is who we are now, but not always.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember we were the revolutionaries, the visionaries who set a course for a new nation with values and standards that defined both who and what we are, Americans.

All we need to do is look around: our history and our country’s is on every street corner and public green. 

Perhaps a holiday homework assignment?

I hope we’ll have the time on our big holiday weekend. Today, after all, is only Almost Independence Day.

- bill kenny