you asked for it

Darling,

You asked me to write you a letter, so I am writing you a letter. I do not know why I am writing this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about, but I am writing nonetheless, because I love you very much and trust that you have some good purpose for having me write this letter. I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.

"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer

Happy Fathers' Day

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.
-Thich Nhat Hanh-


...and for that I am grateful. (Except the fact that my hands really do look just like my fathers')

Nich-Nich

Get YOUR Bruno fixx

happy anni-mc-versary aunt kathy and uncle dad!

In case you never heard "their story," here it is:

Once upon a time, my friends, Aunt Mom and Uncle Dad, lived in Watervliet, NY, the land where it is perpetually 1950.

Aunt Mom was a swingin' chick who liked record parties, drinking Coca-Cola in the bath tub, and of course, the mashed potato (the dance, not the starch).

Uncle Dad was kind of the same, but minus all the things I just said. He was, however, on the school's Latin team. This in itself would have made hime the coolest kid in school, but he always got beat up cause he tried to wear his toga to class all the time, when everyone knew that the toga was only supposed to be for Latin competitions. Man, that kid could declinate nouns like it was nobody's business (and it really was nobodies business, cause declination is a very private matter); he could also conjugate verbs like there was no tomorrow, but seeing as how he's since lived a heck of a lot of tomorrows, that theory has been disproven.

Anyways, in addition to being a Latin rockstar, Uncle Kevin was also a Church rock star. A Church rock star?, You ask incredulously, doubting that such a thing could exist. But if you ever saw that cat swing on stage, I mean on the altar, with his leather vest and capo, twinkiling his little fingers off during the Our Father, you'd know it does exist. And you'd probably develop a MEGA rock star crush. Unless he was your uncle dad too, in which case that's just gross.

And it turns out that Aunt Mom DID develop a mega Church rockstar crush on uncle dad. And by Aunt Mom, I mean Aunt Mom's best friend. But uncle dad didn't digg her, he dug aunt mom cause he had a thing for gals with polka dot eyes, and that's just what aunt mom had (green with brown polka dots). She could also sing somewhere over the rainbow in Russian, but that wasn't for a few years, so he had to go for the polka dot eyes.

So, the big moment came when aunt dad was gonna ask uncle mom out (wait, strike that, reverse it), and aunt mom responded by saying she had to "ask her dad," even though she really just had to go get a cootie shot and make sure it was ok with her friend first.

And the rest is really history:
-uncle dad and aunt mom went to the movies
-one time they went looking for a turtle and I'm pretty sure uncle grandpa called the cops cause he thought they was dad
-then it came time to want a dog, so they decided to get hitched
-then some stuff happened
-then they bought a really neat Chagal painting (because love just isn't love without a violin playing goat)
-then they moved to Newark, NY with a bunch of guys named Dwayne and lots of sauerkraut
-then they moved to Utica, NY with a bunch of guys named Tony and Rocco and lots of pizza and arsons

I think somewhere in there they had some kids, but no one is sure of how many are actually theirs except the one that looks just like them, Simon. Simon grew up to be get a PhD and be a MetaPhysician, but none of their other supposed children ever amounted to much.

A Couple of years went by and then it was today and it was their thirty-something-year wedding anniversary (if I knew how to count I could tell you exactly). I haven't talked to them, but I can only imagine they will celebrate very romantically by eating hot dogs, while watching Law and Order with my friend, Cousin Caitlin. If the night gets real crazy, they may even stay up past 10 pm.

Someday I hope I have an aunt mom and uncle dad as swell as my friends, aunt mom and uncle dad.