End of Silence

After a couple months hiatus, it’s time for another installment of Baby Chaos, which I guess should really be called toddler chaos at this point.

The Boy had his last soccer game of the season on Saturday. He seems to have enjoyed it enough to play with the same team again in the fall. Even though we weren’t keeping score, I think they were undefeated. He’s shown a lot of improvement since starting in February. The coach decided to dye all of the kids hair green for the final game.

On a family note, we spent the weekend with the in-laws. The Boy had a soccer game on Saturday morning. He got into an altercation with one of the other players and had to be chastised by both the coaches and us. In all fairness, that kid was pushing. If they actually had refs, he would’ve at least gotten a yellow card.

While it was muggy and in the 80’s during the game, the rest of the weekend was unseasonably cold and very rainy; good for the lawn, but bad for easter egg hunts and antsy kids. We were treated to some Guero’s and Hoover’s along with some Amy’s and Krispy Kreme. I continue my donations to the gym with nothing to show for it except my ever-expanding middle. I spotted a former co-worker at Hoover’s and we both did a good job pretending that we didn’t see each other. The Wife almost ruined it by looking directly at him and smiling. I recognized him as soon as we walked in. He must’ve recognized us as we sat down at the table right next to his. I wonder if he’s still working at the same place.

Finally, on a less snide note, my paternal grandmother passed away on Saturday afternoon. I’m not looking for sympathy, so please don’t post any condolence comments, but this is the first death in my somewhat immediate family since I started blogging.

She was in her 90’s and has been having a variety of health problems for quite some time. My grandfather passed away in 1996 and I think, as with many widows/widowers of long marriages, she’s really just been waiting to follow him. I didn’t have a lot of contact with her because we lived in Texas and she remained in New York and wasn’t very fond of travelling. More recently, it’s been difficult to talk with her on the phone due to her poor hearing and the stroke that she suffered not long after my grandfather’s death. Still, I’ve always wished that we’d been closer and that I’d been able to ask her more about the past. It’s an old cliché that the elderly drone on about the past, boring everyone within earshot, but my grandparents never really did that. In fact, I wish they had done a lot more of it because now I’ll never have the opportunity to hear it. I think we all become more acutely aware of this sort of thing when we have kids of our own.

On my father’s side, I now have only one great aunt living in Midland and a great uncle who still lives in the village in England where my grandfather was born. My mother is actually scheduled to visit the aunt this weekend. I’m going to make a point of calling her while she’s there and try to get her to talk to me more about the past and see if we can make it a habit. My parents will also be in England for my cousin’s wedding over Memorial Day weekend. I wonder what the chances are of getting my great uncle to correspond via e-mail…

I wanted to make it to my grandmother’s funeral on Long Island, but it turns out that the ceremony is on the same day that the wife leaves for a vacation with some old college friends. It figures that the one week that I absolutely cannot leave town is the week that she dies. On top of that, I’ve had a sinus infection all this past week that I’ve been trying to treat without running to the doctor for antibiotics. I know from experience that having a sinus infection during landing isn’t the best idea.

I talked with my parents a couple of times over the course of the weekend and it sounds like they’ve unearthed a bunch of old photos, some of which my father hasn’t ever seen. I’m hoping my mother will bring them all with her the next time she visits so that I can get them scanned in and post some on the site.