This one's for you buddy.

Robbie,

As I write this, it's 7/11/10 and you're eight years old trying to get

me to join you in the bathwater temperature pool. It's unfortunate

this is the kind of time I take to start making notes, because these

are the times I get lost with you, and you are the only thing on my

mind. There's another list of stuff like this somewhere, your mother

might kknow, it might

be in your baby box. It's just a list of stuff I want you to hold on

to, not to forget because if I am lucky enough to see you grow into

the man I have in my mind, I'll be one of those annoying grandfather

types reminding your

kids about stuff like this.

Remember:

1) Frozen Freddies - 325 Washington Street Quincy

2) Tony's Clam Box on Quincy Shore Drive - you were a fan of the fries

and the ice cream but I couldn't get you to try a clam or an onion

ring.

3) Don's Joke Shop on Hancock Street in Quincy

4) New England Comics on Hancock Street, a few doors down from New

England Comics.

5) Pizza slices at Schoolhouse Pizza - Owner was former Eagle Scout

who liked to compare notes on Pinewood Derby Tips

6) whole pizzas at Alumni Cafe, where they'd sometimes turn on

Penguins of Madagascar for us if there were no sports games going on.

In addition, at ag 8, you'd discovered Blink 182 and the Foo Fighters.

You liked listening to Drunken Lullabyes when I played it in the car.

I hope you remember these because these were things we shared. Places

we laughed. Places we spent time. Places we loved going together.

Places I loved showing off to you. Places I loved showing you off to

other people.

There will be more to follow. I know it. Since you're only eight.

　

Goodnight, Ma.

So my last blog entry had more emphasis on Father's Day. I felt bad posting that one because I still hadn't written about my mother. The reason being, I wasn't ready. I still might not be ready. The truth is, the hands writing these words are attached a purse-holding, anything-you- say,-Ma, Mama's Boy.

My emotions regarding my mother, who left us May 3rd only come in sizes starting at "Louisiana Purchase" and getting larger from there. So trying to pour out a pint for the blog wasn't happening.

Ma let me come home when I was an irresponsible drunk who had hit bottom and had no noteworthy skills besides breaking her heart. She made room. She put up with me when I quit a respectable suit and tie, several thousand (I forget how much at the moment but at the time it was a lot) job to get up and tell jokes. She made sure I knew to walk on the outside of the sidewalk and not to talk with my mouthful and hold it in and count to ten and to have Kleenex with me at all times and if I didn't have something nice to say, compliment the weather.

My whole life she was mother and father, not just to me but to two girls and two boys who stayed that way regardless of age or legal designation. She did this through a combination of advice, a stern look and the technique that Clarence Budington Kelland said of his father, she just"lived and let me watch." The stern look was reserved for off-color language and unacceptable behavior among other things. In that area, I had an extra tool that would allow me to get a little further than my siblings once I'd developed the skill. I could make my Mom laugh.I could say more if I could get her to laugh at it. It didn't matter the subject. She made me a better comedian because she made me think and talk fast. Sometimes not right away though. The first Christmas I brought my future wife home for Christmas, my mom worked into the conversation how she didn't want a big deal made over her funeral.

Merry Christmas.

The subject came up again a few weeks ago when she was in the hospital getting a pacemaker installed. She didn't want any big to-do or any weeping because she had lived all she wanted to. She'd done all she'd wanted to do. So she absolutely would not have us spending money on a big send-off.

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma. We've rented a wood-chipper."She laughed to the brink of doing a spit-take with her ice chips. "We thought it would be fun for the kids." To top it off, she said through a laugh "I have rotten kids!"

I left a little bit after that, but told her I'd check in the next day when she was expected to come home.The next time I would communicate with her would consist of her ssqueezing my finger. At work the next day, my cell phone vibrated. I pulled it from its holster and saw it was my brother, Dick. I stepped away from my desk and took the call in the hallway near the elevators to talk to him. She'd had another heart attack during her procedure. It didn't look good. The rest of the week Dick, Marie and I would take turns just sitting in the room with her, giving her ice chips and cooling her face cloth. A week later, she was gone. Monday morning at 2 am, Dick called and told me she had passed. It was over.

The day after that felt better than the week before, when I could just watch her endure, instead of enjoy this vital life she lead. She'd had her last laugh. And I gave it to her. And that's the best way to close. With a huge crowd, or with my Mom.

Good night, Ma. You've been great.

Father's Day

So it's one of those moments I don't know if he'll remember Monday butI'll probably see show up in the scene I envision showing up in themontage that will flash through my head when he gets married.It was the first time Robbie went with me to plant flowers, clean thestone, and generally clean up the grave where my two parents now rest.I can still remember doing this stuff with my mother when my Dad wasthe only one in it when I was five or six, certainly younger thanhim. Young enough that I was one of the few kids in my neighborhoodwho had seen a cemetery both in the daytime and outside of a horrormovie.It had been a while since I'd even been to the grave, not that I didn'tthink about my dad pretty frequently. I think the fact I lost him whenI was four had me giving more thought to him, and maybe holding himhigher than I would have if I'd known him. It's conjecture now. But things changed when Ma passed and Heaven was a golden gate with lotsof clouds and wings and harp music again. So when I told Melanie Iwanted Robbie to help me with a project, she told me he might not be moved the way I hoped.She had both her parents until she was an adult, she didn't understand, I wanted Robbie to do the job with me. I didn’t want him afraid of the graveyard. I wanted him to want to make the cemeteryplot of his grandparents look nice, because it was a nice thing to do for them. We had some petunias for my dad's side and some marigolds for mymom's side. We did, the cleaning and he wielded the sponge and watercan like a pro. He lifted and replaced the toy car he'd placed therethe week before with the care and respect of a royal offering.Our last task, the one that took the most time, was cleaning off theplaque about 10 feet from the CARNEY headstone that identified theveteran status of my father. It was badly overgrown with grass untilthe four corners were obscured. Robbie tried using the weed whacker, which was taller than him, and he tried his best but he offered it backto me. When I was done I had him read that his grandfather was part ofthe 104th Medical Regiment. Born Aug 17, 1921, Died March 17 1970.Once the grass was cleared and it was readable, he gave it a gooddousing with the watering can.And I watched my son clean his grandfather's grave. I can't explainwhy that hit me as significant as it did. It was a connection. And ifyou believe in that kind of thing, which I do. I was showing my sonoff again for the only opinion I've wondered about but couldn't get. Ithink I know the answer. Yep. Great kid there.

I'd like to beat a child

Time to put the cards on the table. I have never abused a child. I have never struck a child. My son may
grow up one day with issues having to do with his father, but none of them shall ever involve my raising my
hand to him. We have, in fairness goofed around and things gotten out of hand, but each time out that ended
up at the bathroom cabinet seeking the mercy of mercurachrome of the soothing bactine and a band aid,
usually came along with at least one giggle while explaining what had actually happened. It's part of
playing hard. It's part of growing up as male. Females may encounter the same kind of experience, but
having grown up male, I can't speak to that.One way or another, you know the kind I'm talking about, I have never once raised my hand and struck my
child. I like to think I am raising the kind of a son with enough sense of self that he will one day, over
budweiser perhaps, admit that his behavior may have been worthy of it, but he'll admit that I never hit
him. Theyn, maybe we'll hug, or something Robert Bly like that.Now, that part aside, I have chosen as a subject today, how much I'd like to strike other kids. The loud
ones, the ones yelling in the nice restaurant, the ones yeslling without supervision at the movie theater,
the ones dressing like members of the Beastie Boys although they haven't passed the third grade, the ones
who have talked out of like to a check out girl and not been struck down, reprimanded, dirty looked, forced
to apologize or otherwise make amends for being a punk.
A child is a work of art you mold when he first comes out of the shoot, they wipe him off and hand him to you. He's your responsibility. He's got some of your DNA which is part of the equation. I'm a bigger beliefer in nature than nurter. Raising a kid is a verb. It's work, but, done well, it shouldn't seem like a job.
So this weekend when it came to my attention, that Robbie, who gets along with everyone I've seen him talk to, is telling me that a couple of incubi told him they don't like him because he's annoying. Which is a word I don't remember using when I was a kid. But it was ebough to make me want to clothesline the little kid.There you have it. I am a good father to my kids, But I have a recurring desire to beat on other kids. Fortunately, I've seen Robbie pushed by other kids, he's pushed back. I even had a report from the afterschool teacher that he had to have a talking to and a time out with the other kid about keeping their hands to themselves. I got the Paul Harvey rest of the story from Robbie later. His proud father bought him a happy meal on the way home. He'd earned it. He didn't provoke the problem, but he pushed back and ended it.Didn't matter. I still wanted to smack the kid. I've got my kid's back.

This is one of those days where I intended on doing some serious writing, so as a result, the laundry got more attention than it's earned. I loiter on facebook and make sure the dishes are in tip top condition. Anything but write something useful and readable.
This is also one of those days where I really don't feel like writing because I am expected to do so, so in true scribe fashion, I am writing about how much I hate writing. I have two papers due soon on highly technical aspects of computer maintenance and programming but prefer to bitch about the weather, crappy pop music and recently discovered pop music. If I can find the time, maybe drop a few F-bombs on the suckitude of the 2010 Red Sox season thus far.
I was thoroughly pumped a few weeks ago when I bought my son Robbie the most recent volume in Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Not only did he say "Yes!" with Marv Albert-like enthusiasm when I handed it to him, but he actually finished it the next day in a single sitting instead of bringing in his Nintendo DS unit where he normally chaired a lunchtime coffee klatch while networking the units together in a virtual outdoors while reposing in the warm, dry comfort of indoors. In the days before Bill Gates existed as a role model, parents frowned on such behavior. I'm still content to have him work that muscle in his head once a while as well.
More than once I've found Robbie paraphrasing Sam from iCarly's axiom that "reading is like TV for your head." Good man.
One the same trip I'd picked up Robbie's book, I'd bought Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Jim Butcher's Dead Beat. I was already reading Leg Grossman's The Magician's on the suggestion of a friend so they would be my to-do list once school finished.
Speaking of which, outside of the substances that inspired me in youth, my prime motivator was a deadline, which calls now. Two term papers are due by midnight. Let's see if I can make it. Later friends.

Goodbye, Ma

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote here. My mom had another heart attach two weeks ago and passed a few days later. By the time it came it arrived as mercifully as a pill that says 'this will make the hard part go away," and we more glad to see that after a week of seeing her suffer and feed her ice cubes and figure out which of her gestures had become part of her pantomime to identify her needs, which had gotten fewer and fewer as time passed along.Ice cubes in my mouth, cool cloth on my forehead, "soft" had become her code word for "I'm too hot, take this damn blanket.
None of us knew how much was pain or how much was inflicted by mercifiul morphine. She couldn't tell us. She didn't know. She wasn't having a good time.
What I was sure of is that my only method of communicating with my mother had been reduced to squeezing a finger or a thumb to express, I know you're here. I'm glad to see you. It's alright.I love you. I love you. A week before, once she'd had the initial heart attack. The one we didn't know until a week later, when the doctors worked it in as part of their usual updates like "by the way, she had a heart attack last Friday."
She and I were sitting in her hospital room, talking lucidly about the same stuff we always did. Robbie' Cub Scout Activity, the Red Sox suckituded that had opened the 2010 season.
This was not the first time we had brought this subject up of her checking out. Once someone passes what they consider middle age and enters old age. Maybe it just starts when someone decides they've done all they plan to do and each day becomes another race against the sun, starting watching the Guiding Light, reading Reader's Digest, sashaying into that night's Jeopardy.
Death becomes that elephant in the room. You're already paying taxes, there's only one other constant and it's sitting there with an abacus counting down your time.So she brought the subject up once again. "I should be home in a few days," she began. "But if this is it, I'm fine. I've done everything I've ever wanted to do. I want you to go on.I tried shaking my hands and go, ok, ok, I understand. We've talked about this and so much other stuff over the years that there wasn't much that had been untouched.
"I remember the first time you brought this up," I told her. It was the first year I brought Melanie home for Christmas dinner, it was you, me and her."We were having the roast beef dinner with potatoes and the usual trimmings and Ma mentioned how she didn't want a lot of rigmarole at her funeral. This would have been a buzz kill at any event outside of Christmas. I excused myself to the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes getting the crying out of my system. Melanie and I discussed it on the way home and how Ma and I didn't talk about this a great deal and the novelty had more that a little bit of effect on me.
Then she said it again in the hospital.She was determined to let me know, just like she had every day, that any debt that existed between us on my part or on hers, were square and covered.I knew Ma had plans written down and contracts and to do lists for everything she wanted done if she didn't make it out of the hospital.So when she started in again.
"Listen, If I die, I don't want a lot of rigmarole," she said. While I still had neglected to look up the literal meaning of rigmarole I knew where she was going "And no boo hoo-ing, I'm ready. There is no reason for anyone to get this old."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma," I told her. "We've already rented the wood-chipper."It wasn't shock. It wasn't anger. It was just a silent sink in of what she'd just heard her on say. Then she started to laugh.
"A wood chipper?" more laughs. Louder. Deeper. Faster.
"Yeah, we thought it would be fun for the kids."More laughs that turned into a laughing fit.I knew I'd won when she was laughing as hard as I'd ever seen her laugh and she managed to say "I have rotten kids."
That's how I got completion with my Mom. I made her laugh for the last time.
Thanks, for that, Ma. Love You.

Creating Jobs for the Philippines just because we like them.

So the sitdown with the operations VP started cordially and quietly before it went dark and morose. “Hey, Bob come on in and have a seat.” He didn’t come right out and say “Don’t worry, you aren’t being laid off,” so I knew it was out there.
My job was being shipped off to the Philippines where some shirtless guy who was currently selling jewelry made from his own kidney stones would begin doing my job for five dollars a day, or three drachmas or a chicken or whatever it is they use for currency over there. The last time I’d gone through this it had been in something of a classroom setting with the VP saying, you probably have been expecting this, but today is your last day.
At least this time it was a bit more vague, but gave me a fuse to work with. Sometime in the next thirty days, I'd be offered a package to stay on for sixty more should I chose to stick around.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, I had to stiffen my sinews,which hadn’t been stiff since I’d come to work at this job, make sure the suit still fit, and hit the bricks again for the next gig.