Sunday, May 14, 2017

A Mother's Day Moment

We're at The Prime Bar and Restaurant in Trego WI. It’s Mother's day morning. I'm seated at the head of a long table. Sitting at the table are 15 of my family members from my mom's side. I'm generally feeling uncomfortable. It's not Christmas uncomfortable, but it's ranking up there for some reason or another. I look over at Hayden, my 7 year old son sitting about halfway down the table. Across from him is my cousin's 6 year old son whom my dad calls LP. I turn my attention away and moments later, LP kindredly and excitedly remarks, "He picks his nose too!" 

I look over, and there's my son shamelessly picking his nose. And I wonder what I've got to worry about.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Fathering and Fiddleheads

Sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by books, bookmarks, and notebooks. Enjoying the silence, except for the hum of the old freezer. Everyone but my oldest son sleeps. He's sitting out in the woods somewhere listening to a myriad of birdsong I imagine. The other day he returned from the woods with some fiddleheads. He boiled them in a pot along side a frying pan of scrambled eggs with chopped sweet-white violet leaves and flowers. I begged some fiddleheads off him. My first time ever having them. After a lot of butter, salt and pepper were added they weren't too bad. 

Yesterday, while going for a barefoot run in our yard, I noticed broken robin egg shells. Something about seeing them lifted my spirits after delivering over 400 boxes and 100 miles of mostly junk mail yesterday. Days like this I wish everybody would sit down and write a love letter sealed with a kiss, drop a postcard to a friend, write their representative about something that really pisses them off, or you fill in the blank. Anything to help people get in touch with their soul, elevate people above products, and make my job a bit more satisfying and worthwhile. 

We're headed south to Bloomer this afternoon. It'll be the 4th baseball game this week I will be attending in the capacity of fan and proud father. I will most likely see about half of it or so. The rest of the time will be spent playing catch with whatever kid wants to play catch, and there's never ever been an instance where this wasn't the case.  I pretend that it's a chore, but it's really not. The only time I can focus in on a game is in the capacity of coach or player. I like to keep moving I guess.....

Spring just keeps springing along.