Decatur With J.

Today J. and I went to Decatur (Georgia; not the one in Illinois)(thank goodness I clarified that -- otherwise you might have been confused!) to walk around for a while. Here are a few of the pictures I took:

After walking around Decatur for a while, we went to the JoAnn and Sprouts on Church Street, near where the Ingleside bowling league used to bowl when I was a kid in the 70s (it used to be called Suburban Plaza, but I don't think it is anymore), then we had lunch at Fellini's (the one on Lavista, because it was kinda sorta on the way home).

Spring Break in Sarasota

For the past few days, Anna and the kids have been on a road trip to Sarasota, Florida, to spend a few days at an Airbnb house with Molly and Dave and their kids. (It was only Spring Break week for one of the colleges where I teach, not both, so I stayed home so I could teach.) Here are some of the pictures they texted to me from their adventures:

This is at the Florda Welcome Center, sometime Sunday afternoon when they finally broke free of Georgia.

In the pool of the hotel where they stayed Sunday night in Gainesville, FL.

So as not to arrive in Sarasota too early Monday, and because it seemed like it would be fun, they went here for a few hours.

The pool at the rented house in Sarasota, lit up at night

The beach at Sarasota

Another picture of the pool at the rented house in Sarasota, during the day.

Anna at the bubble-tea place

The kids at the bubble-tea place

Kayaking in the Mangrove Forest

On the way home today, they stopped at Georgia's Indian Springs State Park, where this and the following pictures were taken.

Becoming a Dad at Forty (or so)

Me, shortly after becoming a parent for the first time, and right around the time I turned 40

Another picture from around the time I turned 40. I'm not sure if I was really asleep in this picture or just pretending.

I was forty when I became a parent for the first time.

Actually, that's not true, that's just what I tell people. I was 39 when my first child was born, though I did turn 40 about ten weeks later. For simplicity, though, I tell people (if it ever comes up, which frankly it hardly ever does) that I didn't become a parent until I was forty – even though the truth is that I was still in my thirties. Just barely, but technically in my thirties nonetheless. Practically still a kid!

There are, of course, a lot of things a person isn't prepared for when they become a parent for the first time, but in my case there was one extra thing I wasn't prepared for, in fact hadn't even thought about: How often I would be mistaken for, just assumed to be, the grandfather rather than the father.

The fact that I was going gray, was in fact mostly gray, by my mid-forties didn't help. By the time my second child came along when I was forty-three, I probably really did look like a grandfather. A young one, true, and devastatingly handsome – er, well, young, anyway – but lots of people become grandparents when they're in their forties. There are plenty of people my age, younger, even, who look like me, and who are grandparents.

But I was not one. And it really bothered me when people just assumed I was.

I can't remember the first time it happened, but I remember once when Elyse, my second child, was about three and I was forty-six, we went to McDonald's for breakfast – Elyse had gotten a McDonald's gift card for Christmas; whoever gave it to her knew that we liked to go there once a week or so and get pancakes and sausage after taking my other child to school.

So this one morning I'm writing about, as Elyse and I sat and ate our breakfast at the McDonald's in Snellville, the one near the Target, there was an older couple at a table near ours – and by "older," I mean older than me; probably in their sixties if not in their seventies; old enough to justify an assumption that they were grandparents – anyway, this older couple was smiling and waving at Elyse and trying to make friends with her, as some people do when they see young children in public.

On our way out I tried to avoid them, but we had to go right by their table to get to the door, and Elyse smiled at them and told them her name (after they asked, of course) and proudly showed them her gift card. The woman looked impressed and said, "Did you take Grampa out for breakfast?"

My heart sank. Elyse was probably confused. (Grampa, or Pa, my father wasn't with us; what was this lady talking about?) I just smiled a smile I didn't really feel, didn't bother to correct them, muttered something about how we loved the pancakes, and got us out of there as quickly as I could. I hope I didn't show it to Elyse, but I was in a funk the rest of the morning.

This was not the first time some version of this had happened; by then it was common enough that I steeled myself for it, knowing it was likely to come.

Why did I dread it so, though? There's no shame in being a grandparent, even if you aren't even fifty yet, and, as I've already said, plenty of people are grandparents before they're fifty. I'm sure if I really had been the grandfather, I would have been proud and pleased to be recognized as such. But since I was not the grandfather, I felt a little insulted that these people might be implying (not on purpose or with any awareness, of course) that I looked too old to be the parent of a toddler. I wasn't obsessed with youth or with looking young or anything; it didn't bother me at all to look like I was in my mid or late forties when I actually was.

But to be someone who was forty-six, and looked it, and was just assumed to be too old to be the father of a young child? That bothered me. And I guess in part that's what I felt like was going on when someone referred to me as Grampa or Granddad or whatever.

But I was proud of my kids – still am – and didn't like it when people didn't realize I was in fact the father of these wonderful children. Now that their ages are in double digits – Elyse is less than a year from being an official teenager, for pity's sake! – people tend to realize I'm the father, which I appreciate. Also, it does give me a bit of added security, and also some pride, when I fill out an official form, at the dentist's office, let's say, and on the "Relationship to Patient" line, I get to write Father.

1995: A Saturday Night at ExecuTrain

Kevin Eames, in his office at ExecuTrain, one Saturday very much like the one described below (except, obviously, this picture was made during the day and not at night). I really miss Kevin.

A corner of my office at ExecuTrain in the middle of the 1990's (and man do I wish I still had that Marx Brothers poster!) 

The lake and the back of the ExecuTrain building

It's dark outside. Sitting at my desk, not actually working, I can't see the lake that my office window overlooks, but I can see my own reflection in the window, and the reflection of my office and all the stuff in it. From my computer's CD player and speakers Ella Fitzgerald sings "Oh, Lady Be Good." [I realize now, more than twenty-five years later, that she was still alive then, though only for a few more months.] I love that album – The Songbooks (a compilation of some of the best songs from Fitzgerald's "Songbooks" recordings for Verve). I borrowed that CD so many times from my friend and coworker Chris Luse that my boss, Karen, gave me my own copy for my birthday. Ella Fitzgerald and jazz are still new to me, and I love this form of music that is so different from what I grew up listening to.

It's Saturday night and I am at work in my office at ExecuTrain in Alpharetta, Georgia. I'm twenty-eight years old. During a lot of weekday afternoons, when I otherwise would be at work, I go out looking for a house to buy, my first house, which I will borrow from my 401(k) to purchase. [The house I ultimately picked was that blue two-story in Lawrenceville, the one I lived in when I first met Anna, and in which we lived for the first three years of our marriage.] The arrangement I have with Karen is that I can leave work early in the afternoon to go house-hunting with my real-estate agent, Evelyn, provided that I still get all my work done and meet my deadlines. That is why, despite being in what is typically a Monday through Friday job, I am at work on a Saturday night.

My friend Kevin is here, too, working in his own office a few doors down from mine. He has an arrangement like mine with his boss, Jason, except instead of looking for a house – he and his wife Lisa already have a house – he is working on his Ph.D. at Georgia State. [I didn't know this at the time, of course, but a little less than a year later Kevin would have a heart attack, from which he recovered fully, but which was the first manifestation, as far as I know, of the years-long struggle with heart problems that would ultimately end his life, twenty-three years later.] I wish I could spend the whole evening hanging out in Kevin's office and talking about the things we like to talk about--books, music, Rocky & Bullwinkle, and sometimes even work--but we both have a lot to do.

So we are in our offices working. Right now, in this moment [and from the present I am writing in, as opposed to the present I am writing about, "this moment" is actually a quarter of a century ago], before any of what I know will happen to us happens, Kevin and I are both young – I have yet to turn thirty; Kevin is still five years away from forty – and healthy, and we have years of living before us. We have a lot to do; we are at work on a Saturday night; it is dark outside, and we cannot see the lake that's just outside our office windows.

Reflecting on Things

The bathrooms in the building I teach in on Tuesday nights have mirrors that face other mirrors, so that one sink is reflected in one mirror, and that image is reflected in the opposite mirror, and so on, so that if you see it from the right angle there appears to be an infinite number of sinks--and counters, and paper towel dispensers--curving up all the way, one might imagine, to heaven.

Visiting Madison

Today Anna and Jessica and I went to Madison (Elyse was in school, but Anna was out of school on Spring Break--too bad their breaks didn't line up!) to walk around and take pictures and have lunch. Here are some of the pictures I took:

This picture shows Anna and Jessica in one of the many antique stores/flea markets we went into--I don't remember which one this is--looking at an old Steely Dan record (I think it's Can't Buy a Thrill--the album that had "Reelin' in the Years" on it--but I'm not sure)

Having Breakfast with the Birds

The tufted titmouse
Doesn't flee when I step out--
But she looks my way
And the scolding she gives me
Is quite unmistakable.

After a short while
None of the birds seem to care
That I am out here.
There are no more screeching scolds
Aimed at me. Just the flutter

Of dozens of wings
And the hammering of beaks
On sunflower seeds.

Garage Door Opener Pulley

Over the weekend, one of the extension springs on our garage door opener broke. I decided to replace it myself rather than pay a bunch of money for somebody else to do it; while I was getting ready for the repair, I took a bunch of reference pictures in case I needed them along the way. I ended up not needing any of them; it was a fairly easy and straightforward job which I finished in only about an hour. (I might have done it in fifteen minutes if I hadn't kept dropping things or forgetting where I put something, and also having to go back inside to wam up my hands--I did this last Saturday night, when it was very cold!)

Anyway, I really like this picture, even if I didn't need it to get the garage door working again.

My Fourth Birthday Party, 1971

Back in mid-November I wrote a musing looking at a picture from my fifth birthday party, and I wrote (among many other things) this:

...the cake was decorated with a plastic horse and cowboy. Sometime after this party, later the same day or the next day, perhaps, I took them out to play with in the neighborhood, and I left them on the curb a street or two away when Mom called me home for supper. I went out to play with them some more, later that day or maybe the next day, I'm not sure, and I was incredulous that they weren't still there on the curb where I'd left them. Someone stole my horse and cowboy from me!

Well, it turns out that the cake I was remembering was from the year before, when I turned four, as shown in this picture--if you look carefully you can see the white-topped plastic wagon I remember playing with atop the cake, and you can kinda-sorta tell there are horses there too. (The green icing on the side of the cake was supposed to be cactuses (cacti?), I think, but I didn't play with those, of course, I just ate them.) It was these decorations, from my fourth birthday party, that I remember being stolen.

Much easier to distinguish in this picture is my cousin Scott, right beside me, with the business end of a cap gun in his mouth. (I'm not actually sure which end of a gun is the "business end," I just really wanted to use that phrase.) Behind him is my aunt Danelle, her head cut off in this picture, holding my brother Jeff and, it appears, a red balloon; Jeff would have been only a little more than a year old here. (You can't tell it's either Danelle or Jeff in this picture, but I have other pictures from this birthday party in which you can.) Also shown in this picture, sitting down and apparently smoking, is a woman whose name I don't remember; she lived in our neighborhood, I think, and was a friend of Mom's. The little boy beside her is her son, whose name I think was Anthony.

This whole affair--my fourth birthday party, I mean--took place, like my fifth birthday party the following year, in the finished basement of our house in Clarkston. I'm sorry to say that I don't really remember this party, except for the sad business of the stolen cake decorations. I do, however, remember the basement well. I have no memory of my bedroom in that house--I was five when we moved away from it, after all--but I do remember the basement clearly, and with great fondness. At least a couple other pictures I have written about here show this basement, and my attraction to basements probably started here. (I also have a fascination with attics, but that isn’t necessarily connected with this basement; I blame by C.S. Lewis and The Magician's Nephew for starting the interest in attics.)

Goodbye, Leaf!

Today we took our Nissan Leaf to CarMax and sold it back to them.

We bought it back in 2016, almost five and a half years ago, and it was a great car for a long time. Lately, though, its battery--the big one, I mean; the one that makes an electric car like a Leaf go--can't deliver a charge for a long enough drive to make keeping the car worthwhile, especially since we have two Hyundais (an Accent and an Elantra) that have no range limitations, so we decided it was time to give the Leaf up.

Here's Anna pulling out the garage and heading off to CarMax:

Coming Home

Today, the last day of 2021, Elyse and Anna came home from their four-day visit with Gramma and Grampa (or MaryJo and Denny) in South Padre Island, Texas!

Here are some of the picture Anna texted to me in the last hours of their time on this mini-vacation:

They spent last night in a hotel near the airport (since their flight out was very early), and got pizza for supper--and had the leftovers for breakfast!

Pizza for breakfast, donuts for lunch--sounds fair!
(This is from the airport in Dallas)

They had a three-and-a-half hour layover in Dallas; it got boring, but there were plenty of photo opportunities in the Dallas airport

This is what the Atlanta airport looked like while I was waiting to pick them up. The perspective in this photo makes the airport look more interesting than it actually is.