I spoke with two of four of my sisters on the phone, leaving VM's for the two who were too busy to answer my Christmas calls. I didn't call my brother because I don't think I know his latest throw-away cell phone's number and I have been addressed once too often by this conservative of the family in the subject line of an email from him to me as, "Hey Government A**Hole." He needs help I think, and I particularly didn't appreciate his last email's closing line, "So, how are your kids?" How wickedly clever of Jack, he knows I haven't had any information about my kids in a long time. His brilliant Yale and Wharton pedigree shined through on those emails, late night shade thrown, some deep-in-his-cups rumination fer sure, but I found them offensive beyond remediation.
I spoke today with my college roommate who now lives in rural NC, to congratulate him on becoming a grandad this week for the fifth time, courtesy of his two children; we speculated on how many grandchildren I currently have because my three long-estranged kids, all boys, are now men in their thirties. I have no doubt that my former wife, Sharon R. Lightbourne (nee Rogers), would NOT tell me a single thing about any of them, not even if one of them were to suffer a tragedy, get married or have a child. The last time I saw Sharon in Virginia on a public street, when I happened to drive by her while she was walking a German Shepherd dog with her latest husband and all of his adult children, I parked, hopped out of my car and as she walked by asked her regarding each of our three children: if he was alive, well, married, a father and where did he live, and she stonily did not answer a single one of the 15 queries. What kind of a person is she anyway, who wouldn't impart this basic information to the other parent? This same question goes for her latest husband Jim, who easily could have blurted out to a heartsick father that his three children were all alive, at least.
The Christmas holiday is behind us now in this gruesome year and in a week we'll be in the new year, which surely has to be better. Within the fortnight my middle child Johnny, the serious, sober one now flashing through his thirties, will have a birthday. That day I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover as always at noon to procure lunch; maybe I'll see him then, or another child of mine, for the first time in well over a dozen years. Although I'm a cynic, I'm also the-glass-is-half-full type of guy, at least until suddenly the glass is not only empty but completely broken into pieces.
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