Black Hole Blues

Apparently there's a black hole somewhere in my house.

So far this week that black hole has swallowed up my favorite pen, my cell phone, a scrap of paper with a phone number I want, two edited pages of a manuscript I'm working on, last week's issue of Entertainment Weekly, and an almost full pack of Extra watermelon-flavored gum and deposited them into another dimension somewhere far outside the scope of all of my mortal senses.

As in the past I presume the black hole will spit them back out come laundry day but for now I wish my things well in whatever alternate universe they are now dwelling in (well, except for the gum...which is cloying and kind of vile and doesn't have to return if it doesn't want to...)

Fathers' Day

Sons…Fathers…Grandfathers…

I belong, in one way or another, to each of these groups.

My father was not around (by his choice) during most of my childhood but I am his son just the same (he had no affinity for the day-in, day-out trials and tribulations of parenthood…I allowed the formation of a different relationship between us in my adulthood, long past the time when I needed or wanted a father but not past the time when he wanted and needed me to be his friend.)

I have no biological children but I have children just the same (I put in the heavy lifting of helping with puberties and teenaged rebellions and the journeys into adulthood and the like and am thus counted by three precious souls as being a father despite not sharing blood with any of them.)

I have a granddaughter who melts my heart every time she calls me “Papa” and a grandson who is filled with an abundance of life and laughter.

Sons…Fathers…Grandfathers…

In the way of too many men, many important things between these groups go unsaid…go taken for granted…thus has it been…thus, perhaps, shall it always be…

Happy Father’s Day…to all of us who are sons and fathers and grandfathers…