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| Birthday Girl Daughter and Son |
Today is the birthday of quite possibly the most perfect
daughter in the recorded annals of western civilization. She’s much too far away in New York City
celebrating with her friends and husband, the inimitable Wing Man, but today
she’s even closer to our hearts. I will
always remember that first moment of seeing her wheeled out of the delivery room
and the overwhelming emotions she elicited.
The years have done nothing to mitigate the impact of seeing her. She is everything we, as parents, could
possibly have hoped for. Brilliant,
caring, insightful to mention but a few of her qualities; oh and she’s drop
dead beautiful as well. It’s almost not
fair for the rest of us. Happiest of birthdays
Heart of my heart.
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| Teeny Bopper Days |
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| A Smile that Would Melt Glass |
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| All Grown Up and Celebrating with Wing Man Yesterday |
Yesterday was one of those elusive, all too fleeting, but
truly cherished days of returning home.
I’ve written a lot about my quest to find a place that truly feels like
home and put a lie to the old Army saying of, “you can never go home”. Well yesterday, I was. We had a very aggressive schedule of seeing
houses up in Keene but everything worked out like clockwork. We saw a total of seven houses, one more than
scheduled, and we liked three of them.
The biggest disappointment was a house I’ve been stalking for almost a
year now through Zillow.
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| Disappointment House |
I now understand why it hasn’t sold yet. Even though it has a wet bar, two fireplaces,
and a huge party room it would require significant upgrades to be livable. The day wasn’t a disappointment other than
that. There are definitely houses in the
price range we are looking for and we identified a couple areas of Keene where
we’ll focus our search when and if we sell this place.
It felt like home though because of the memories evoked as I
drove around the city. We didn’t take
the usual roads since we were wandering fairly far afield and in many cases
this was the first time I’d driven on them since doing so as a young guy with
my parents. The memories were cascading
all day and thrown against the rapidly coloring foliage and perfect weather – it
could not have been a better day; or so I thought.
We stopped by to see one of my mother’s oldest friends and
she’s recovering nicely from a broken hip last year. We then traveled to see another of her
friends who lived within a stone’s throw of the first house I can remember
living in. She and her husband are still
feisty and throwing barbs at each other despite the fact they’ve been married
for sixty years. We picked up the Keene
Friend and we all went to eat at one of my mother’s old haunts, the Pub restaurant. It was a fun evening of catching up and remembering
my mother from her good years. There’s something
incredibly special about knocking the rust off a lifelong friendship that had
been allowed to inadvertently oxidize.
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| Dinner at the Pub With Oldest Friends |
After dropping them off we sped over to the Cantankerous One’s
house where we kidnapped him for an evening at the local sports bar – Scores. We were by far the oldest group in the bar as
the college is in session and they’ve discovered this place. I thought it was interesting that all the
young men were paying scant attention to the dozens of sports channels
playing. I’m guessing it had something
to do with the young ladies present clad as only an Indian summer day can
provide; but I digress.
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| The Oldest People At Scores Last Night |
The Cantankerous One was in fine form and tried to take me
to task for my chronicling his adventures on the night of my son’s
wedding. Apparently his mother reads this
blog and had several pointed questions concerning his antics on that
night. He tried to claim that I was
using artistic license but if his mother only knew the truth! Well decorum
prevents me from going into too much detail about his repeated run ins with
hotel security and the thirty minute marriage to one of the PanaGals.
We noticed a Notre Dame game on one of the screens and
called Keene Friend 2 who is a fanatical Fighting Irish fan. He reported he was watching a movie with his
girlfriend and we were all shocked to absolute silence. This boy is in love!
After finally deciding our gray hair wasn’t adding anything meaningful
to the hormonal mating dance of the college kids we adjourned to Keene Friend’s
house for additional libations. A call
was placed to College Roommate who dutifully reported on his spouse’s lavatorial
activities. We all guessed we weren’t
the only ones that had sampled the brewer’s art last night. After spending these hours with these people –
I knew I was finally home. Now I just
have to figure out how to live there.
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