If RG Will Be Your Grandchild’s Boss Someday, Tell Them to Start Training Now…

“If Random Granddaughter some day supervises other employees some day when she has a career, she will not be a very patient boss,” I said to my wife. RG had been supervising my wife and me when we were taking care of her, and she was not very patient with us.

“RG was not very patient from the day she was born,” replied my wife.

From the age of zero to the age of four, RG was not allowed to watch videos on the theory that videos are harmful to developing little minds. Once she reached the age of four, her mommies decided she can watch one or two carefully chosen videos in a week, usually for not more than about twenty minutes of viewing time in a session.

One of the issues here is Can some of the most brilliant parenting of the century turn a brilliant young drama princess child into a wholesome human being? David Rochester is watching with interest from a safe distance as he works on reintegrating his fragmented personality into a wholesome human being.

May you live in interesting times is not a Chinese curse, but we certainly live in such times, do we not?

Anyway, the mommies asked the grandparents to babysit, perhaps because we work for free, while they took advantage of tickets to a concert that they also got for free. Free can be a very good price.

“Here is a DVD with wholesome videos for children,” Mommy (RG’s birth mother) said. She asked RG what videos she wanted to watch.

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type, was choice #1. This is a recent but already classic book for children, a book now animated movie about cows that type messages to the farmer on a typewriter. Unless he provides them with electric blankets, they will stop supplying him with milk. The plot thickens from there.

As a child of modern times, however, I doubt that RG knows what a typewriter is. When I was a high school student, I actually used a slide rule because calculators had not been invented yet. I used a buggy whip to make my slide rule go faster.

Courderoy was RG’s second choice. This is a book (now video) about a lonely little black girl who falls in love with a lonely teddy bear in a department store. RG lives in a world of multi-cultural influences. She has two mommies and two daddies. She has an adopted aunt from Singapore. And so on.

The mommies left for their concert. Grandma and Grandpa and Random Granddaughter settled on the couch in front of the combination television monitor/DVD player. Grandma held the remote. Grandma tried to start the DVD going. Mr. and Mrs. Random have a couple of television monitors, DVD players, and remotes at home. It’s not like we are video virgins.

Grandma could not get the video to start. RG expressed impatience. Grandma has a tendency to use bad words when she is frustrated, but she is very careful around RG. The mommies are prissy, goody-goody lesbians who do not much like to be described as “lesbians” and who certainly do not want a five-year-old daughter to hear bad words from Grandma and Grandpa. As RG is now attending kindergarten, however; it is only a matter of time before the first f-bomb comes home with her like a puppy following her home. [The mommies like cats better than dogs, also, and resist getting RG a dog.]

Eventually, after several tries, Grandma brought up a menu of the videos. She selected the typing cows video and pushed “Play” on the remote. The story began. The cows typed messages and went on strike. RG watched with interest. I haven’t heard about her going on strike yet, but it is surely only a matter of time. She didn’t ask about typewriters. I guess she figured a typewriter is something like a computer.

At the end of the story, Grandma tried to get back to the main menu. Instead of bringing up the menu, the entire rebooted and loaded slowly. RG expressed irritation. Eventually the list of videos appeared. Grandma tried to choose and start Courderoy. Each time she did so, the entire DVD rebooted. It took a long time for the list of videos to appear on the screen. About the third time this occurred. RG expressed her impatience and irritation quite strongly. “Perhaps Grandpa knows how to use the remote better than you do,” she told Grandma.

Grandma pretended she did not hear that remark. I kept my mouth shut.

Grandma said, “This remote does not work like the remote we have at home.”

RG said, “My mommies get it to work” in a very condescending and exasperated tone. I kept my mouth shut.

Grandma kept trying. On the fifth try, Courderoy began to play. Grandma said, “I did exactly the same thing I did on the other four tries, but this time it worked.”

RG did not say anything, but her face displayed an expression that eloquently communicated, Sure it did, Grandma.

She watched half the video. Suddenly, she said, “Let’s stop the video. I am ready to go to bed.” She has apparently internalize the time limit for watching videos.

RG went upstairs, flossed and brushed her teeth, picked out a book about church mice and a friendly cat and a party for me to read, and went to bed very peacefully and amiably without any drama queen theatrics.

The next day I tried to use my laptop. The mommies have changed their ISP/wireless Internet connection again. I could not get my laptop to connect to the Internet.

Mommy said, “Mama set this up. I don’t know how to connect your laptop. [Mama was at the university studying calculus.] Perhaps you can go to the library (which is only a few blocks away). Perhaps you can take RG with you to the library.”

RG and I walked to the library. I sat on a couch in the children’s section while RG browsed for books.

In the past, RG picked out books at random. Now she is learning to read, and her kindergarten teacher gave her some guidelines for picking out books. I don’t remember the exact directions, but the run something like this.

Look at a book. Try to read a little bit. If maybe two words are new, then choose the book. If five or more words are new, don’t choose that book.

RG chose several books. I looked them over. They seemed like excellent choices. One of the books struck me as an excellent choice for David Rochester as well, so I have ordered the book on the Internet and it is supposedly on the way to David and his Amazon. I hope they like it. If they do, RG gets all the credit. If they don’t, it is my fault.

We went to the self-checkout. I tried to check out all four of the books at once. The self-checkout only checked out one. I had to reboot the self-checkout. This was exactly like the experience Grandma had the night before with remote and the video player. As I kept slowly rebooting the self-checkout, RG twisted restlessly and said, “Grandpa, aren’t you done checking out the books? I am ready to go home.”

Eventually we went home, had something to eat, and went to RG’s cross-country race where she sobbed, ran 1/2 mile, and smiled when she received a blue ribbon. If your grandchild is thinking about working for RG some day or marrying RG some day, tell him or her to start training right now, because she will be a bossy boss and a severe spouse.

Part 3 of a Story of Late Dawning Realization

I remember J (my niece) visiting us when she was about 12. My wife and I compared her to our daughter, a year or two older, very unfavorably, and predicted that J would be a very messed up adult as she grew older. We lost all contact with my sister and my niece for a number of years.

When we were living in Oregon a number of years ago, J called us one day and told us that she was going to college in California and working in a conservation program for youth. She asked if she could visit us. At the time, my daughter was attending college at Oberlin in Ohio.

When J came to visit us, my wife and I, expecting a very messed up young adult, were surprised to meet a pleasant, mature, self-possessed young woman. We took her out to dinner and had a lovely time. She came to visit us a couple more times, eventually bringing along a boy friend, S, she had met at college. He also proved to be an intelligent, courteous, and delightful young man. Both niece J and boy friend S graduated together with degrees in environmental engineering of some sort. They moved to the east coast of the United States and got married. A few years ago, I attended a couple of family reunions on the East Coast, organized by my Aunt Naomi and financed by her millionaire daughter, my cousin Joanna. Now living in Vermont, both niece J and her now husband S attended. They not only attended, they served as brilliant organizers and facilitators, taking people on hikes through Vermont and later New Hampshire wilderness and invariably being kind, patient and endearing to everyone at the reunion, ranging from little babies to aunts in their seventies.

Being a rude person, I said to my sister, “I am surprised at how well your daughter turned out. When she was a teenager, I thought you were a terrible mother and your daughter would be ruined for life.”

My sister’s answer was, “I was indeed a terrible mother. I have no explanation of how well she has turned out except that she had a lot of strength of character and she attended a Waldorf School.”

[I am a little skeptical of that explanation. My youngest brother and youngest sister attended a Waldorf School and they are both seriously messed up individuals.]

Unfortunately, as my daughter and her partner live here on the West Coast, and J and her husband S live in Vermont, they have never had a chance to meet as adults, nor have their children had a chance to encounter each other. My daughter and her partner, of course, are parents to the inimitable Random Granddaughter, now attending kindergarten at the School for Very Bright Children.

J and S have two children. My sister, very close to my Aunt Rose, like her became a follower of the weird semi-cult of Anthropacifism, based on the teaching of the German nut philosopher Rudolf Steiner. The Anthropacifists are best known in the United States for the Waldorf Schools and for biodynamic farming. My niece’s two children go to a Waldorf school. Although I consider them to be nutty overall, the Waldorf schools have some good points going for them, and bio-dynamic farmers have some success with their method of agriculture, which includes some peculiarities such as planting by phases of the moon.

Mary from Peru to Visit

Some time back, I wrote about hosting a party at the mommies’ house for my two favorite volunteers: Mary (not Maria) from Peru and S from Romania.

My wife was quite taken with Mary. I think because they are much alike. Each is very intelligent but does not think she is. Each does exactly as she pleases regardless of what other people think they “ought” to do. Of course, they are different as well. Mary has a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering. My wife took one college class.

In any case, I asked my wife, “Do you want to invite Mary to visit us?” My wife seldom wants people to visit us unless she had decided to invite them. However, in this case, she said, “Yes.”

Mary said she has bought a condo and that things are going well at her job for a utility company and that she will visit us next month.

My wife said, “Be sure to tell her we will pay for her ferry ticket.”

I let the mommies know about the visit, but their lives are so busy and complicated I don’t know if they will join us. Perhaps Random Granddaughter can invite her entire kindergarten class from the school for very bright children. On the way, they could stop and visit the used car dealer that sells used fire trucks and as a project they could take a fire engine apart and put it back together.

Book Notes

Book notes for Pete and David.

Pete, you suggested I read Gold Coast, by Nelson DeMille. I just finished reading it. The book was very stimulating, entertaining, thoughtful, and well-written, and I plan to read the sequel. I thank you for the suggestion.

The main lesson I drew from reading it was not to get involved in a ménage à trois with a Mafia don and my wife, not a kink I am likely to pursue. (My wife has made it clear to me that if I am not faithful to her, I am not likely to live for a long time. I don’t think she would bother to hire someone from the Mafia to help her hit me.)

I presume you are adhering to the same sensible policy in regard to your lovely bride.

Pete, in turn I will suggest two possible books for you to read. They are not exactly like Gold Coast and I don’t know if you will like either book, so please don’t put out a contract on me if you read either and find you don’t like them.

One is called Vertical Run, by Joseph Garber.

The other is Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry.

David, on more than one occasion, you have suggested I read The Road to Wellville by T. Coraghessan Boyle. I just checked it out of the library and I have started reading it.

It does indeed seem to relate in a deep way to my family’s history. (My paternal grandfather was a big fan of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.) Although I have only started reading the book, I do already sense a connection and it does bring back moving memories.

 

What’s a Chelate?

A few days ago, I got an email from my cousin Julie, whom I barely know, about our Aunt Henriette. Henriette is the aunt who wanted to be an opera singer for the Metropolitan Opera. She married Morton, who told her he could coach her to be a successful opera singer. Henriette worked as a waitress to support Morton. As far as I know, Morton never did a day’s work in his life. The rest of my family despised Morton as a smarmy, anti-Semitic free loader, so Henriette has been rather isolated from the rest of her family. (It was eccentric of Morton to marry a woman from a Jewish family.)

Unlike many of my family members, I am not very musical. I heard Henriette practicing her opera singing. She did not sound very talented to me, but what do I know? For that matter, the Metropolitan never hired her, so perhaps they were as clueless as I.

After she gave up on her dream of being an opera singer, Henriette had a baby, Carl, and left Morton for a while. Eventually, they reconciled. When Carl became an adult he fled as far as he could, leaving New York City and hiding out with a girl friend in Oregon.

 

As I was the first child born in my generation, Henriette imprinted on me as a nephew she can depend on, especially for help with her computer. She called me from New York City and asked me to help solve her computer problems after her son Carl, who is actually better with computers than I am, refused to speak with her any more on the topic of computers. Henriette refused to believe that I could not diagnose and “fix” her computer over the phone. After I realized her computer was a hopeless mess, I bought her a new computer. Using reproductions of fine art works she pulled from the Internet, and the expensive ink jet printer I also bought her, Henriette put together calendars and advertised them on the Internet, hoping to make a lot of money.

Henriette and Morton had been living on money from my cousin Joanna, who learned to speak Chinese fluently in Taiwan and became a millionaire as co-founder of the baby furniture company Graco. After Joanna died of breast cancer, Joanna’s mother, my Aunt Naomi, Henriette’s sister, funneled money to her. When Naomi became ill and crippled in Australia, the money flow ceased.

My family is a great believer in “alternative health care.” My grandfather, Harry, was a dentist in Chicago who became a great follower of Dr. Kellogg of the cereal family. Dr. Kellogg believed in 1) never having sex and 2) solving all medical problems by giving people “colonics.” Colonics, in plain language, are enemas. Alternative health nuts believe that crap gets stuck in a person’s colon and needs to be flushed. Most medical authorities believe this theory is crap. I got a few colonics as a child, but mostly my parents believed that avoiding white sugar and eating organically grown vegetables was the key to avoiding disease. I think there is some merit to these policies, and my wife and I mostly eat food we grow ourselves or buy from farmer’s markets, but for medical care we mostly visit conventional physicians.

Although Grandfather Harry followed Dr. Kellog’s practices in terms of colonics, he was by all reports a horny old goat who sired four children on my monstrously narcissistic Grandmother, Agnes. As far as I know, Harry never cheated on Agnes, though I wouldn’t have blamed him.

Henriette and Naomi were big followers of alternative medical care. Naomi’s husband, Donald, grew up in a California high desert ranching family, became an electrical engineer, and then a chiropractor and professor of chiropractic “science.”. Their other daughter, Valerie, sister of millionaire Joanna, became a chiropractor also and now lives in Spain. After Naomi died, Donald had a heart attack. Valerie brought him to Canada for medical care.

Julie, my cousin, told me that Henriette, now in her eighties, is not doing that well. For one thing, her New York City apartment is full of bedbugs. This sounds like a bad joke, but it’s a real mess. The exterminators have fumigated her apartment twice. They threw her bed out into the trash. She is now sleeping on the floor.

Julie is a grade school teacher in upstate New York. Henriette, now lonely and poor, takes the bus up to visit Julie. Julie took Henriette to an “alternative” eye doctor who told her she has cataracts. However, it is not considered safe for Henriette to have cataract surgery at present (see below).

Henriette has been working at a senior center teaching computer classes to make some money. As I have spent hours on the phone trying to help her through her computer problems, I am somewhat mirthed at the idea of her teaching other senior citizens how to use computers.

 Her legs are swelling and getting varicose veins, and her heart has problems, with her arteries clogging.

As a big fan of alternative health care, Henriette has become fixated on “chelates” therapy, a therapy which sounds like quackery to me, that is supposed to remove blockages to arteries by natural means.

Henriette’s computer is sealed in a plastic bag because of the fumigation, so I have been sending her printed letters, pictures of my family and garden, and calling her on the phone. So far, Henriette, who is very conscientious, has been sending me about $30 a month to repay me for the computer I bought her. She has paid me a little over half. In my last letter, I said not to send me any more money. My wife and I have decided to forgive the rest of the money Henriette still owes us, though we are not going to send her any more money.

I allowed a week for the last letter to reach Henriette. I will call Henriette today. If she wants me to send her money for her chelates therapy, I will tell Henriette that as I would not spend money on chelates therapy for myself or my wife, I will not spend money on it for her, aside from freeing up the $30 a month she was sending me as repayment.

I am not looking forward to this conversation, because Henriette seems to be of the opinion that chelates therapy can keep her alive for a while, so she may be concluding I am helping pronounce a death sentence on her. Well, we all will die eventually, and we all have to make difficult decisions about what to do to keep ourselves alive and healthy as long as we can.

My wife, who is fairly healthy at the moment, said to me, “If I knew I had only a little while to live, I would try to be as comfortable as possible and occupy myself with activities I enjoy as much as I could, and not try to engage in extreme measures in a desperate attempt to stay alive.” That sounds sensible to me.

How My Wife to Be Threw Herself Out of Her Mother’s House.

 

A while back, at David’s request, I told the story of how I met my wife, hugely embarrassing as the story is. I promised to tell the story of how she threw herself out of her house when she turned 18 and didn’t speak to her mother for a year.

After I had been going out with my wife to be, she told me that she was going to San Francisco to spend time with her favorite older brother, a bohemian artist whom she idolized at the time. (In the long run, things did not go especially well for him, but that’s another story.)

I think she was not sure she wanted to see me any more, so she left the impression she might not be coming back to Los Angeles. However, I sometimes drove “accidentally” across the route I knew she walked to and from high school, and sure enough I one day saw her walking home from high school and stopped to talk to her, telling her I had accidentally driven that way. I learned that without telling me, she had returned home from San Francisco.

I convinced her to go out with me again.

I began to spend time at her house with my wife to be and her mother. I worked diligently at sucking up to her mother. It was not easy to do for two reasons:

1. Her mother was a very difficult and insecure person.

2. My wife to be, now in adolescence, had begun the difficult process of finding and expressing her own individuality as a person.

Her mother had many admirable qualities. After her divorce, working as a secretary, she had, by herself raised and supported five children. She was a splendid cook and mistress of many other household skills, which she taught to my wife.

However, her mother was full of resentments and grievances. Just as I am the oldest of my parents’ five children, my wife is the youngest of her parents’ five children.

Each of my wife’s siblings had left the nest already, not always on the friendliest of terms, leaving their mother feeling angry, unappreciated, and lonely. As my wife had been a very obedient and unchallenging child, her mother had come to depend on her, the youngest of the five children, for a feeling of security and success as a parent.

Also, her mother had a bit of a drinking problem. I don’t think she was an alcoholic, but she tended to drink more than she should and usually became more and more angry as she became intoxicated.

Often I would have dinner with my wife to be and her mother. Her mother was a splendid cook, and tended to interpret people eating and appreciating her food as appreciating her, so she would offer me more and more food.

At these dinners, my wife to be would offer some innocent opinion and her mother would take serious exception and they would bicker and snarl at each other as I sat in uncomfortable silence.

A focus point of these arguments became my wife to be’s black pants. These events occurred before the word “hippie” came into wide usage, so her mother used the word “beatnik” to describe depraved children rebelling against their parents’ values. The black pants symbolized in her mind how her daughter was rejecting her values, much as children today reject their parents’ values with piercings and tattoos.

(Random Granddaughter gets to wear transfer tattoos that wash off after a few days. I don’t know if this little indulgence by the mommies is meant to inoculate her against getting real tattoos when she gets a little older. I don’t know if Anne Elise will reject them or end up with her body covered over every square inch of skin with real tattoos by the time she is 15.

On the other hand, I don’t know if there is a similar way the mommies can let her have “pretend” piercings in her nose or such now.)

As my future wife neared the age of 18, I helped her buy a Citroen (the cars my family adopted at the time following the lead of my eccentric uncle Donald), and began teaching her to drive. I don’t remember the exact sequence of circumstances that precipitated the crisis. It involved her getting a “learners’ permit” to prepare for taking her drivers’ test. She did not have auto insurance yet. Her mother refused to let her get a learner’s permit.

Up until that point, I had been a quiet and polite observer to many scenes of bickering and argument, desperately trying not to alienate her mother. As this disagreement escalated into hysterics, I lost it. I told her mother what I thought of her. Finally, we stormed out of her mother’s house. At that time, I was still living at home with my mother.

(I had flunked out of college at the University of California at Berkeley a couple of years earlier and was attending a community college in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles to restart my college career in the college equivalent of kindergarten. Also, my father had died recently, so I was the “head” of my broken and incoherent family.)

With no other place to go, I took my wife to be to my mother’s house. I explained the situation to my mother and asked if my wife to be could stay at our place until the situation was sorted out. My mother, always complaisant agreed.

We were sitting around awkwardly a couple of hours later, when there was a furious pounding on my door. I opened it to see Mrs. Random’s mother and one of her brothers, L. L had just left the navy. He was always the “responsible” one in her family, eventually becoming a corporate lawyer.

At this time her mother demanded that Mrs. Random come home. She refused. At this point her brother seized her and began dragging her out of the house kicking and screaming. I remember thinking (in a absurd and ridiculous fashion) This is just like a scene from an overwrought Italian movie.

 

A Mystery about My Father

 

 

When I was a child, it was clear to me that

A) My father was a very intelligent (perhaps brilliant) man.

B) He was unable to get and keep (until late in life) a decent job.

C) My parents’ marriage had been a very bad idea.

One thought that has occurred to me only recently is that my father got my mother pregnant before they were married and that they had to get married. No hint of this was ever spoken to me by any of my relatives, but it might account for their ridiculous and pathetic joining together as a couple.

As I was growing up, I had the impression that my father had started attending the University of Chicago as a young man, but had dropped out about a year before he was to graduate because

D) He got married.

E) I was born.

F) He joined the United States Army (during World War II) and was assigned to serve in India.

I can’t remember if they ever specifically told me that sequence of events. I remember some college textbooks around published in the 1930s around our house. I remember my father talking about finishing his degree by distance learning. A lack of a degree (or so I understood) was one of the main reasons he never seemed to be able to get or keep a decent job (until the very last years of his life).

Quite a while after my father died, my extended family had a couple of family reunions on the East Coast of the United States (paid for by my “Chinese” millionaire cousin, Joanna Nichols).

At the first reunion, my father’s three sisters, Diana, Naomi, and Henriette sat around reminiscing about their childhood in Chicago in the 1930s and answering questions from the rest of us (the younger relatives).

I asked about my father dropping out of the University of Chicago.

My three aunts looked astonished. “Michael never attended the University of Chicago,” my aunt Naomi said in a definite manner. “He might have taken a class or two at the community college in Chicago, but that would have been the most college education he ever had.”

I was astonished. I looked at my mother in puzzlement. At that time, my mother was aging and failing fast but she was still coherent (though none of us realized that she was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s Disease). However, whether she was very weary that evening or chose to act as she was too tired to follow the conversation out of embarrassment, she acted as if she didn’t understand what we were talking about.

So I don’t know. Did my parents intentionally create a myth (mainly aimed at me, as the oldest of their five children) about my father dropping out of college when no such circumstances were in fact true? I will never know, I guess.

Meditating on Job Assignments and Marriage at the Wood Ministry

 

 

The Friendly Neighbors left town to go on a scenic train ride to the Rockies. My wife wants to go on a scenic train ride across Canada, something we may do one of these days if we live long enough.

I put the neighbors’ trash out for them and went wood splitting without them. I told the other splitters, “The Friendly Neighbor told me to watch you carefully so you work productively and safely, but I know you will do whatever you want and pay no attention to me, so you will have to deal with him when he returns next week.” They did fine. Mostly.

Although they have a volunteer team leader, they mostly work in polite, happy anarchy, each person doing the job he is best suited for and without needing to be told what to do by the non-bossy team leader. They are all older than I am. It is no surprise to me that they are more skillful in using tools such as chainsaws and splitters, or that they know more about the different kinds of wood or how to place the “rounds” of wood under the splitter blade so they split most quickly and efficiently. Although they are unpaid and give the wood away instead of selling it, they work with furious efficiency that would do a lumber company proud.

However, as they are older and even though they are more knowledgeable than I am, and even though they are all stronger than I am, they all have older bodies that are breaking down. Joints are wearing down; knees, hips, and shoulders need to be replaced; one or another of the participants will miss a few sessions because of an operation or to recover from a strain or sprain.

As we worked yesterday, each person worked at a job without being told what to do. However, each person kept working at it too long and made himself sore with repetition at the same job, and moaned about it at quitting time. Each person should have changed tasks in the middle of the session, but everyone was too polite to ask someone to switch with them.

Next week I will diffidently suggest to everyone that they take turns at different jobs so they do not make their joints and and muscles more sore than they need to be. Or maybe, I will suggest it to the Friendly Neighbor and he can suggest it to them. There are times when polite people are a little too polite and considerate.

 

 

After we got to the church for coffee and cookies, we talked about marriage. After everyone else had left, J, one of the volunteers, told me about a friend of his. “I went to all three of his weddings,” he said.”My friend is a very free spirit, very humorous and spontaneous. He married a woman for his second marriage who was very rigid and predictable. Neither would change a bit to suit the other; so it was no surprise to me that the marriage did not last very long.”

The church secretary, a very pleasant woman probably in her seventies, came out to refill the coffee container and to put out more cookies. She listened to this story and quietly said, “I have been married for 50 years. My husband never listens to me and never wants input from me.” She spoke in a restrained, discreet way, conveying patient resignation and she displayed little or no rancor as she spoke.

“I have often been this close to leaving him,” she said, holding up two fingers to show a short distance between them. “However, as the minister said in one of his sermons recently, ‘marriage is a commitment.’ It is part of my faith and my values to honor that commitment.”

She then said, “I better get back to work. I don’t usually spend this much time out here talking.” She quietly returned to her office.

J looked at me. “That is a very sad story,” he said. I did not ask him how many times he had been married or for how long.

When I got home I kissed my wife and told her I loved her. There is a time to be a sentimental old fool. Also, we got through the entire day without fighting. We have good days and bad days. I think this is true of every married couple. We should probably take that train ride sooner rather than later.

The Brother-in-Law from Hell

Story #2 is about his wife’s family. About the time he was laid off, his wife’s parents became unable to care for themselves. One parent had Alzheimer’s Disease and the other had Parkinson’s and they both had to be institutionalized (initially against their will) for their own protection.

Mark’s family owned a large, run-down house on the beach. Mark started working on the house to sell it. It had potential to bring in a lot of money once it was fixed up. Mark started working on the house to fix it up to sell it. His intent was to pay himself a reasonable salary for the time he spent working on it from the sale, but the bulk of the money would go for his in-laws’ institutional care. Mark indicated that he was not trying to keep a lot of money from the sale and I believed him.

Mark’s brother-in-law (wife’s brother) is a carpenter who works on remodeling houses and he offered to help out. At first, Mark thought this would be a wonderful stroke of good luck, but as he worked with the brother-in-law, he discovered that the brother –in-law was the kind of remodeler who works on your house and does a sloppy, terrible job that leaves you angry for years. He did hit-or-miss careless work, he drank on the job, and he came and went as he pleased. It was also clear that he expected to make a wind-fall profit from the sale of the house, regardless of his parents’ needs.

So Mark was fighting two battles at the same time, trying to get the job done as his money ran out, and trying to get the job done in spite of the incompetent and predatory “help” of the brother-in-law.

The Surprise Valentine’s Day Wedding

 

Recently, the Friendly Neighbors invited us to go with them to a Valentine’s Day concert at their church. The singer is a professional musician who recently joined a moderately well-known musical group founded in the 1950s. His music could be described as a mixture of pop, folk-rock, and light rock from the 50s and 60s. The musician’s wife (a successful writer of children’s books as well as a decent singer herself) joined him in a couple of songs. A couple members of the congregation (reasonably good musicians themselves) also joined him in a couple of songs. The performer played piano and guitar. The median age of the audience was around our age (mid-60s). My wife and I had a good time with the other old fogies, just as some of today’s rappers will some day sit around with other old hip hoppers and quietly beam at favorite lyrics insulting “ho’s” from the first decade of this century.

However, that is not my story today. The Friendly Neighbors, and in fact, the entire church congregation, were all abuzz about a “surprise Valentine’s wedding” held at the church service that day.

I don’t have every detail of the story, but it runs something like this. B, a member of the church, is a man of part-Navajo descent (though not much in touch with his heritage) about 40 years old and unmarried. About ten years ago he joined their church, suffering from alcoholism and other problems. His participation in the church helped him overcome his problems and today he is the sales manager of a large auto dealership. (As my wife and I have been seeking a newer used truck as we consolidate down to one vehicle, we had some contact B in his sales manager persona; not entirely successful but reasonably described as “no harm-no foul.” It’s part of a larger, rather irritating experience involving our vehicle purchase I won’t discuss right now.)

B has been seeking a wife in Russia, apparently using one of those lonely-heart services that match up lonely American men with attractive poverty-stricken Russian women seeking a better life by marrying an American man. This somehow involved a trip to Israel. I don’t know the whole story. Also, apparently a few years ago, B had married a Ukrainian woman but it didn’t work out. Romance is a difficult and dangerous business, but ever-optimistic, B was willing to try again, this time with M, a Russian woman.

B brought his Russian prospect to the United States and they became engaged. The wedding was set for late March. However, B apparently has a taste for the dramatic-romantic, and launched a plot to have a surprise early St. Valentine’s Day wedding (actually at the Sunday after St. Valentine’s Day, but close enough, don’t you think)?

 

As the Friendly Neighbor told us the story at dinner before we went to the concert, I asked, “You mean she got married without a wedding dress?”

“No,” said the Friendly Neighbor. “He told M that it is an American custom for the bride to wear her wedding dress a month before the wedding for good luck.” Deceived by this amiable instant legend, M wore her wedding dress to church that Sunday.

B had also clued in the rest of the congregation on his plan. He had already secretly brought her relatives to the United States, and scattered them in edges of the people listening to the sermon where M could not see them from where she sat.

The minister and the rest of the congregation were in on the plot. The Friendly Neighbor has a Navajo basket which he brought to the wedding; a friend brought an eagle feather.

In the midst of the regular church service, apparently B said something to the effect of, “Surprise!” “We are getting married, right now, right here!” Everyone then launched into the wedding. The minister, apparently an eclectic and flexible sort of cleric, worked some sort of Navajo rituals involving the basket and the eagle feather into the ceremony.

The wedding had occurred earlier that day. (My wife and I had not been there.) That evening, at the Valentine’s Day concert, the congregation were still buzzing about the surprise wedding. Apparently a scheme such as this represents pretty exciting hi-jinks for the members of this church. Everyone chuckled and muttered about it in a combination of lively delight and grave concern whether or not it will all work out for B this time.