Labor Day (with postscript)

It’s Labor Day, and the boys and I are swimming. We’re meeting Elley and Nicholas and Loren any moment. Cyndi is working in the day care this morning at the club. The day is sunny but cool, probably in the 70s. The boys and I went to the park earlier where Jackson and Rylee rode around in circles for about an hour. Ry cranks his little bike (14”) hard, and Jack cruises in an easy gear at a fairly fast speed around and around the park. Some people were already saving tables for bbqs and get-togethers later in the day. Ariel is catching the train to Long Island at this moment for a party. Cyndi and the girls will go to the Bernalillo Wine Festival this afternoon. I don’t know what the boys and I will be doing. I hear there’s a family potluck and birthday cake for Dorie later this evening.

The weekend started with a little infusion of cash, so we could do a Costco run and catch up on a bunch of bills. The boys and I ran to Target, for nothing really, just toothpaste and shampoo, but we checked out skateboards there and a school backpack with wheels that Jackson wants but I’m working to discourage. He hasn’t mentioned it this weekend since I gave a little talk in the car. We stopped by a skateboard shop to scope out real skateboards. There’s a real difference in price, and I’m sure there’s a real difference in quality. We asked a lot of questions. We’re not in a hurry to get them...yet. We splurged a little by going to Bravo in ABQ uptown. I’ve talked about the place before. It’s a fairly good place for Italian. It’s a franchise, like PF Changs, and at under $100, with the least expensive bottle of wine, the bill and tip were about as much. I have to come up with a name for these kind of places. The boys had pasta and pizza and ate a bunch of bread with the olive oil served with sundried tomato paste, Cyndi ordered a few appetizers, including a lobster bisque, and I ordered a decent rosemary grilled shrimp on orzo, a salad with gorgonzola and bacon, and a tomato bisque. We checked out the Apple Store (Cyndi’s Anthropologie was already closed) and went to the Eddie Bauer’s, where Jack found a $24 headlamp on sale for $9. He got one with his birthday money (he took the wallet Ariel gave him for his birthday) and Ry got one, too, from his leftover birthday money. That was about it for our Friday night.

Saturday morning I attacked the garage and the yard, cleaning and reorganizing and pruning and weeding and even fertilizing. A lot of things have been neglected this summer. The boys loved it because they could play outside in the front yard all morning. After a small lunch, we headed down to Belen. Bennie’s doing much better. He still can’t walk, but you can see noticeable movement where there was none before, and I’m guessing there’s much less pain. We loaded up his ipod shuffle with a book on tape we got from the library (I’m going to load it on mine for the car trip to California) and grilled some brauts and hot dogs for supper. The boys got to ride some more.

Bennie and I talked a long time. He told me about going to California when he was 15 and living in Santa Monica with a friend who didn’t know how to cook. He had to go to school one day a week in Glendale, and he worked in a plant doing finishing assembly on B24s. I asked him when he first met Ursula. It was just before and after that time, but they hardly talked. He talked about the long hours he and Ursula spent upholstering in a shop smaller than his den. He told me a little about his brothers and sisters and the war. He told me about buying the movie theater that’s now his store. The building is over a hundred years old, and it was once the American Legion building where they held dances. The theater owners were asking something like $30K and sold it to him for $9K, but it took a lot of loans from family, friends and neighbors, many of whom agreed to co-sign the loans even though no-one had any collateral. He sold off the seats, seat by seat. People bought them to use outside their homes in Belen. He used the lumber from the raised floor to build a loft for more inventory.

It reminded me that I should write down the story my dad told me one lunch in a Salinas restaurant. It’s a classic story I tell: how he described himself as something of an underachiever in the Jesuit high school he went to and then worked for the American Can Company; how he and his friend went down to Chicago and enlisted in the Army; how his father was disappointed; how he went to Korea and met a guy there who liked to talk about how he was going to be a dentist, and my dad thought, well, if this guy can do that, I can do that; how he got accepted to Marquette (I think I remember another story how his dad, my grandpa, went with him to apply) and he studied hard and achieved top grades, got accepted to dental school in three years and started the program before ever completing his bachelor’s. Well, that’s one story.

On Sunday morning, Rylee and I went to the grocery store. I think Jackson stayed behind to do some crafts projects he designed on his own. We cooked up some bacon and eggs and cinnamon buns. The boys rode again in the front. (They can only go to the next driveway and back.) Then the dreaded shower and church. I took the boys to the children’s eulogy. Jackson has such a negative attitude about the whole church thing…except for the donuts afterwards, of course. I thought taking them to the children’s eulogy downstairs during mass might help. Maybe it will. I doubt any fellow churchgoers are reading this, so I can report that the children’s eulogy isn’t very interesting for the children attending it. The material and commentary are way over their heads, not to mention all over the place. Maybe it’s worthwhile if the boys learn a little church manners and etiquette. There isn’t much interaction among the children, which is what Jackson would love. The one thing I think is interesting is the few moments the children raise their hands to give intentions for prayer: an ill grandparent, a friend who broke their arm, a trip somewhere, a missing cat.

After the donuts, we went to the Explora museum near Old Town. That’s a good place and it was very popular, but not too crowded, on Sunday. The exhibits are fun and well-designed and constructed, and the boys can move at their own pace from station to station. There’s a puzzle café, a bubble pool, and a marble maze that were especially fun. A pretty top quality place. We spent a little over an hour there, and then had lunch at the Slate Street Café, a relatively new place near the courthouses downtown. I think I’d call it “creative comfort food.” Cyndi and I split a really nice fish and chips, with homemade chips and batter-fried salmon, served in a open paper bag. I also ordered a corn chowder, because I love a good corn chowder. The boys got a grilled cheese. It wasn’t on the menu, but the cooks graciously made one. The bill was quite reasonable for a nice Sunday lunch. It seemed like a good place for an evening beer and wine in the loft, and it had an outside patio, too. Locally owned, it’s not far from the Marble Brewery, another new place on the north side of Lomas downtown.

At this moment, I’m having trouble remembering what we did the rest of the day and it’s time to move on. The boys have played in the pools, Lauren and Nicholas have left already, and we’re ready to go.

P.S. I heard from Ariel as she was returning on the train. She sounded happy, and maybe a little anxious about starting a new life there, figuring out where everything will fit in. Later that night, the Albuquerque families got together, and the cousins played magnificently together, with a lot less shrieking, whining, and hurt feelings. The four boys played football in the grass for a while, which Loren opted out of. Ry skateboarded with Brendan, of course, making his first attempts at an ollie on the back porch. It's quite a thing to watch him kick and step on the the board with so much confidence, and I can imagine him in a skate park much sooner than later. Don told a story about how Jackson is helping Nicholas, his cousin, at school. I guess Nicholas has been telling Don how Jackson is showing him around and including him in things on the playground. It's Nicholas's first year there, and from what I hear he's really enjoying his new school and appreciates seeing his cousin there. The cousins are in different grades and don't share the same recess time, so I gather it must be before school that they can be together. Don mentioned that it was good to see all of the children growing up to be such good cousins to each other. I was proud of Jackson when I heard the story. He's going through a stage when sometimes he'll be mad and say harsh words and tease Ry (tho Ry is not afraid to fight back), but both of them are such sweet boys who show a lot of affection and appreciation. Bennie remarked again this weekend how good Jack's pronunciation of Spanish is.