wemon

My Son, Folks… (ba-dum ching)

Here’s another Christmas story from this year: my son Nevada got me good!

First, he texted me a few days before:

I don’t football a lot. Do you have any strong feelings either way on the 49ers?

Wanting to be helpful without being completely indiscreet, I replied:

I don’t know how to answer that. There’s Seahawks and there’s everyone else in no particular order. I was a big 49er fan in the glory years. If we’re talking about a windbreaker, I don’t care if it’s FC Barcelona.

Then on Christmas Day, I opened a present from Nevada and there was a beautiful, hooded, lined, LaCoste windbreaker. The only graphic was a tiny LaCoste alligator. He also gave me a bendable Ichiro doll. After thanking him profusely, I asked, “There’s one thing I don’t understand: what’s the 49er connection?”

And he grinned and said, “Exactly!”

Well done, son!

2 CommentsLeave a comment

Memoir: The Pacemaker

The Pacemaker

Ten years ago, Dad couldn’t get himself out of bed. Mom called the ambulance. One week and a quarter of a million dollars later, Dad had two bovine heart valves and a pacemaker courtesy of world-famous heart surgeon Albert Starr. Dad was not grateful. He continued to abuse my mother, push her around, lean on her, and make horrible jokes like “I’m a walking cadaver.” Five years later, Mom was thrown to the floor on a train and broke her hip and was taken to the hospital in Centralia, a hundred and some miles north. Dad never visited Mom in the hospital up in Centralia once. Any of us kids would have taken him from door to door. When she was transferred back to town to a convalescent center, where she stayed for two months, Dad visited one time. When she finally got home, Dad went right back to making her wait on him, even as she was trying to rehab from her hip replacement.

Continue reading →

15 CommentsLeave a comment