Cousins

How many people escaped the savannas of Africa to confront the Neanderthal of Europe?  There is a theory that we walk upright simply because once we left the safety of the tree filled jungles we needed to stand upright to see the predators in the tall grass of the savannas.  And another theory that once out of these jungles where fruit and nuts were in abundance we ate fish and meat, more protein and our brains got bigger.
Even today people from Northern China are wheat eaters and much bigger than their rice eating Southern counterparts.  Somehow I think we are all related.
   I have more cousins than I could count.  They are a scattered bunch and much like the natives who escaped the deepest, darkest African Continent, they are all over the world.  Eating fish and chips I suppose in England and whatever it is that Canadians eat.  Seal eyeballs and whale blubber?  Just joking, cuz!  I know it is Subway Sandwiches!  Food is so International now.  Meaning we get the same refined processed crap everywhere we go!  Everything measured by the McDonald's Standard!
   I think I have a cousin who lives in the same town that I do but I don't really know for sure.  I have cousins whom I have never ever met.  When my uncles were alive we had family reunions and I would meet these strangers whose only connection might be a smattering of DNA.  They have long since died off and now there are no meetings in the park, no shared stories, no family connections.  We are strangers now
   Somewhere deep in a history I have no memory of,  I miss this Tribalism, this clanmanship, a connecting "Popsie" or elder who held us together.  I think that must be my DNA and not my brain or the other way around.  I don't know.  There is a necessity to escape and like birds who fly their nest we must spread out and venture on our own.
   Yes, Hi, Megandy Moo Cow!  You were two or three and I was nine or ten and we walked to the store a half mile away and I held your hand the entire way and we were careful of the cars!  Tribalism. Protective.

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Father's Day...

and a lot of other holidays were created to sell more greeting cards but it is a special day for me.  50% of American households are single parent, mostly headed by women and the father isn't there at all.  I couldn't imagine anything worse.  To have an unbreakable father-daughter bond is the most special gift I have ever received.  I wish I knew the recipe for this so I could share it with everyone but a lot of it just develops without a plan.
   I admit when my daughters were very, very young and we were alone I would sing to them but as they got older and winced at my voice while singing that pretty much stopped.  I did go to the dreaded soccer with them but I think they always knew I hated that.  I listened politely as they suffered, or mostly I suffered, their playing the piano or the violin.  They were horrible, probably inheriting their father's ear for music!
   Mostly what I was good at and shared with my daughters was talking.  I always treated them like real people and listened to what they had to say because it was important.  We didn't always agree on everything and they learned that that was okay.  I wanted them to stand up and be proud, to defend their position and not be fearful.  Confidence is a singular key in being successful in life.
   I did have expectations of my daughters. From the day they were born we talked often of going to the University.  What they were to study was up to them but going there was never a choice.  That dream alone controls a lot of behaviors and they did well in school.  I think we all live up to our expectations...or down to them.
  I have a million great memories of my children, growing up and falling down, getting up again, their childhood, youth and now young adulthood.  I am lucky, we are close and although this economy has driven them farther away we have a connection, unbreakable.  A father-daughter love.

My Daughters

     I was just 21 years old when I got married for the first time.  Jane, the English girl I met in Italy was just barely 21, in fact she came here on her birthday.  Those were crazy days, 1966, a long time ago.  We were married young but didn't "settle down" until much later.  There was a lot to do and we didn't even know each other.  There was a mystery there of some kind and certainly an attraction and she believed everything I said!
We travelled together after only a two hour conversation in a bar next to the train station in Genoa, Italy. We hitch-hiked through Spain and were together only three weeks. That summer we wrote, the old fashion letter writing with mail that took three weeks to get from one of us to the other.  Then, just like that she came over here on September the first (her 21st birthday) and we were married a week later!  Not much paper work in those days.
    We were kids still and being married didn't translate into a nice house with a picket fence and a dog.
We didn't even have a car, two bicycles, three speeders at that, and we lived near campus.  I was still a student at the University.  Being married did keep me in school, gave me a sense of responsibility and a direction in my life.  But while others bought cars, stereo systems, and this and that with their earnings, Jane and I saved to travel.
    Fifteen years went by before we decided to have a family, settle down and become parents.  That would make a change but we knew without much discussion that changes were coming.  I had what I thought was a good job as a school teacher and we had turned a 900 square foot house into a 2000 square foot house with bedrooms to fill.  We were ready and we even had a car!  A brand new car for $2,395.
   Jane (my first wife, my only wife) made an appointment with a doctor, just to see if there were anything we should be aware of, anything to know about all of this.  We were driving in our new Datsun "Honey Bee"
along a stretch of road between two towns, going the speed limit of 35 MPH, maybe the radio was on and maybe it wasn't.  We were talking when we were hit.
   Some idiot had robbed a store, stole $300. from the clerk and then stole a huge, heavy American car.  He was being chased by four police cars all going 80 MPH and he just smashed right into the back of my little Japanese car. 
That is quite an experience.  We went flying, literally, the car leaving the pavement and turning every which way, smashing us head on into a guard rail, the river forty feet below.  Jane got a concussion and a broken leg and I had three discs in my back crushed.  We spent a week in the hospital.
     Two months later she was pregnant!  We were going to have a family!  A daughter?  a son?  We didn't want to know.  We wanted a healthy, happy, normal baby!   More to this story if you are interested......
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