You’ve entered an elite fraternity. I applaud you for your ability to eat so much Halloween candy that you puked. Bravo!
Category: Family (Page 3 of 16)
Where I express my endless and boundless love for my kids through the stories of their youth. Someday you’ll all be old enough to be embarassed by these. Chuckle. I’d talk about Laura here, but she doesn’t like that… private she is.
I haven’t seen such an inundation of rain in a long time. The downpour was so intense that streets had turned into rivers. I arrived home from picking up Javier and Asier at school.
“Hey, you guys want to jump around in the rain?”
They looked at me their eyes growing wide. “Really!?” they exclaimed.
“Yes, go put on your bathing suits. Let’s run around in the back yard.”
They scampered off opening up drawers, tossing toys aside in a desperate attempt to find their trunks.
“Last one outside is a rotten egg,” I said. “Hey Javier, it’s gonna be cold, are you sure you’re ready?”
“Oh yes.”
And out we went into the pouring rain, the drops as big as dimes, and visibility a mere hundred meters or so.
“Daddy, it’s cold, but this is awesome.” And they slipped and slid and rolled around on the terrace, running back and forth and jumping around.
We all felt like little kids.
Nos echamos a reír hoy por la mañana haciendo el desayuno de panqueques. De momento empecé a acordarme del abuelo de Laura, Papi Quique (Enrique) y como su nombre junto con los panqueques resultaba un trabalenguas.
Mi papi hace panqueques de paquete.
Pero el papá de mi papá, Papi Quique, hace panqueques perfectos.
“Mommy, Daddy, I had a terrible dream,” said Javier. We invited him to tell us about it, because it always helps to talk about these sorts of things. “Well, I dreamed mommy was in jail.”
“Oh, no, Javier. Why was mommy in Jail? What bad thing did she do?” I asked with a smile.
“She brought butter into the hospital. They said you couldn’t bring butter into the hospital and mommy brought butter into the hospital, so they put her in jail.”
We all had a nice laugh and no more bad dream feelings.
We’re were all out the other day doing some grocery shopping, when we came upon the canned food isle.
“Hey, Daddy, did you have Del Monte when you were growing up?” Of course they said it as “Dayl MOAN-tay”
“What? Hmm…” I repeated it to myself as they had said it. There was something off, something wrong. In a flash there was an epiphany, a revelation. Del Monte, is Spanish for “of the hill.” It’s a brand as American as can be, and the name is Spanish for of the hill. My kids would see it and assume it was a local thing, something Hispanic maybe Puerto Rican but not necessarily American.
“Yes, we did have as we were growing up. It’s a popular American brand, but we say it; Dehl MAHN-te.”
“Eww,” they all said. That sounds terrible. “You really said it that way?”
“Yes, Del Monte said it that way in the commercials.” I paused letting the wrongness of the words sting my mouth. I realized in that moment that the Del Monte of my youth was gone. I turned to my children with a confession. “I never realized until this moment that the brand name is in Spanish.”
I left them scratching their heads as well, their minds perplexed by the idea of daddy not knowing “Del Monte” was actually del monte.
I’m not even going to go into all the Hispanic baseball players I grew up with but never realized were Hispanic on account of how the sportscasters pronounced their names.
Turns out that Del Monte was named for a brand of coffee in a hotel in Oakland, California. “Of the hill” is a good thing for coffee… not so much for peaches.
I was organizing my home office the other day. Among the many things that needed putting away, I came across a bunch of books my daughter got for me a couple of years ago. There was a school library that was closing and getting rid of many of their books. She gobbled up stacks for everyone in the family based on their interests. Among them were topics as varied as gardening, a guide to herbs, landscaping, some on wrestling, home improvement, electrical wiring, bicycle maintenance, books on inventions, product design, and innovation through the 20th century. I am touched by how much my daughter sees me and knows my interests. I don’t know which I like more, the actual books or the fact that the pile of them reminds me of how much she loves me.
Before
After
Laura and I were in a perfume store looking for a nice uni-sex perfume. We have always liked CK One ever since it came out nearly twenty years ago, and recently Calvin Klein has expanded the “One” line to include some other scents. Laura and I were trying them out and were thus far non-plussed. I turned to the sales person, “Do you have any other uni-sex perfumes?”
“Here, try this one.” She took out a red bottle. Unbreakable Joy.
“Ooo, Unbreakable Joy. I need that in my life. Give me more of that.” We spritzed it on a couple of paper strips. It smelled nice, we agreed.
The saleswoman hesitated, and mumbled, “It’s from the reality show people – you know…”
We paused, not understanding her hushed tone and downward glance.
“You know,” she paused, “the Kardashians.” And she left it hanging in the air as we nodded in understanding.
Still, I liked the scent, and the name on the bottle just wasn’t a concern to me. “Whatever – it’ll be our opportunity to not take ourselves too seriously. Unbreakable joy and a reminder to not be so serious… we’ll take it.”