Grab Bag No.2: Getting Along with the Fam

It’s time for another grab bag, which is what I call a post consisting of several short entries that I haven’t taken the time to develop. At least I group them under a common theme. This week’s theme is family relationships.

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1970 Boss 302 Mustang

My four year old boy, Caleb, wants to be The Boss and thinks if he’s insistent enough, he will be. In this way, he’s a lot like Khadafi. NATO forces (my wife and I) will not allow it, and his sisters are fighting for the resistance. The next time he tells us he’s the boss, I might say, “Caleb, you’re not Springsteen. You can’t even play guitar.” I doubt he’ll get it, but it will still be funny to me.

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In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy writes, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” He may be right. One implication of this is that we should watch other families who are happy and try to discover and adopt the qualities and behaviors shared by them. If we are not happy, we should be asking ourselves what we’re doing differently. I’ve abstracted this short quote from its context and, having never read the novel, I don’t know if Tolstoy gives further insight or explanation. Maybe my friend Kat, who studies lots of Russian literature, will weigh in on the topic?

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Christopher Boone, the main character in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, says, “Loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth…” Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. (Minor spoiler alert... It's when Christopher's father fails to meet the last of these criteria that their relationship suddenly unravels.)

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Actually not a good likeness-- I don't have
a cowlick, and I never wear suspenders.

Sometimes when a friend asks me to spend the day goofing off with him, I’ll say it depends on my wife, because she’s a strong woman. “So she’s stubborn,” he’ll say, “You’re still your own man!” Then I explain that she is literally very strong, physically. If she decides to not let me leave, there's nothing I can do about it. Have you seen my arms? They’re like noodles. Celeste once picked up a couch by herself. She runs something like three miles a day on our treadmill. When there’s snow in our driveway, she’s usually the one to shovel it. And she mows a mean lawn, including trimming around the edges. I carry in a bag of groceries and I’m exhausted. (I know as a man I’m supposed to be embarrassed to admit stuff like this. It’s okay—check the title of my blog.) Seriously, I can go out with friends, ride my motorcycle, and do pretty much whatever I want. But she really is strong.