And then there was . . . .

 Hey youngest child of mine, I'm sorry that neither you or your brothers could make it yesterday (a holiday) to the Lost Dog at noon but you've got a birthday coming up this month! Maybe I'll see you at noon at the Lost Dog then ;-) and you can fill me in on your doin's for the last decade and a half; whether you graduated finally from that safety school you went to that you asked me in your last communication fifteen years ago to provide full payment for tuition and fees for, which I did, and how your wedding was and whether you're still married to that same ambitious lady Laura (whom I have never met), and how it's going being a sales clerk at that lightbulb store you work in, and whether you sired one or both of the grandchildren I reputedly have and how they're doing. You know, basic stuff like what their names are, when they were born and to whom, what sex they are, normal stuff that any parent would tell a child's grandparent about.

And I can fill you in on what's going on in the Lamberton world, not that you or your brothers have ever expressed a scintilla of basic human concern or even curiosity about your close kin for the last two decades. Come on, we'll party hardy for an hour!

Hope springs . . . away?

 After church and then an enjoyable lunch with a friend yesterday at the Lost Dog pizzeria, where we hoisted a toast to the always empty chair, I went to drop-in pickleball in my town and in very tricky windy conditions had about a break-even day on the court.

My breathing was labored due to my rib injury but my game apparently finally is getting better and I sat out every other game, win or lose.

Overall it was an enjoyable day even though I missed having my oldest son finally appear for his birthday party after all these years.

But today is a holiday, Presidents Day, so it is another chance for that rascal oldest child of mine, and any or all of his brothers, all of whom are in their thirties and apparently all very hateful men, to appear for lunch finally. ;-)

The Prodigal Son

Hey oldest son of mine, you've got a birthday coming up soon as you blaze your way through your mid-thirties! Come join me for lunch at noon on that day at the Lost Dog and you can tell me all about what you've been up to for the last 15 years, beyond changing your name on your 18th birthday, barely making it out of your magnet nationally esteemed public high school with a third-tier showing-you-the-door state diploma (not a TJ diploma), eschewing going to college which I would have provided full payment for in-state tuition and fees for, being an office boy at the divorce law firm you hired to baselessly and incompetently sue me (for which your mother was assessed almost $50,000 in costs and sanctions years later when the unjustified harassment petition got tossed out), launching a Go-Fund-Me campaign which collected its full allotment of money but accomplished nothing else of note, and engaging in gambling both on the internet and in Vegas. I can't wait to hear about all the other stuff you've been up to. I'll see you there then!

A Father's Love

 It's well known that the holiday season is a depressing time for persons who feel a sense of loss, as I do.  Two decades ago my three children were torn away from me extra-judicially by their mother in a classic case of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which is a form of child abuse in many people's opinion, including mine.  She had plenty of help from the "professionals" of the sort who hang around domestic-law courtrooms, not good enough to get honest work themselves but more than happy to pick up court-appointed work where they can practice their evil ways like "uncovering" repressed memories and slating their anti-male biases as they help in overbearing the wills of tender young children.

In my case, my three boys have birthdays that come hard and fast following the Christmas/New Year week, one in January and two in February.  Happy Birthday sometime this month, middle child Johnny, I feel I hardly know ye since the last time I heard from you was when you wrote to me in 2006 asking me to provide full payment for your four years of college tuition and fees, which I did.  Hey, you're welcome, not that you ever thereupon said thanks or so much as invited me to your graduation.

I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe at noon on your happy day for lunch, just as I was on New Year's Day, come join me!  With you and yours, if you want, or you alone, we'll start out finishing the rest of our lives one day at a time going forward.  Shed the ugly image of you now being a full-grown hateful man that cuts out an entire side of his bloodline, all the Lambertons beyond your two brothers who harbor the same hatred and spitefulness inside of them, for no reason that's particular to you or them, or at all.

It might continue to be a fool's errand for me to be there, since no one has ever shown in all these years, but a father's love for his children is never extinguished.  Those other two boys, now men, know I'll be there next month for lunch on their birthdays too.  See you there!  ;-)

November 11th

 Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, a midweek holiday this year to honor all veterans everywhere. A time for somber reflection to consider all the heroic sacrifices of our troops, soldiers in the Revolution who seized all those airport tarmacs, the Union troops in the Civil War who fought far from home to Make America Great by giving a version of freedom to all Americans, those who went Over There in a chimeric bid to End All Wars, the resolute warriors of our Greatest Generation who beat back fascism abroad, the stalwarts who stopped Communist aggression in Korea, and the brave men and women who fought in the waste of war in Vietnam and are fighting in the error of the War on Terror.

Grandad went, aboard a destroyer in the North Sea in World War I.

So did Uncle Harry, commanding a marine gun battery aboard the USS Vincennes in the Pacific against the Japanese.  Also Uncle Bill humping the hills in the Philippines and Uncle Bob high above the Mediterranean flying a B-26 Widowmaker.

And Dad, storming the beaches of and surviving six months of close-in combat on the hellish infernos of Peleliu and Okinawa.

And Jack who manned the line against terror in 1983.  Brave, resolute men all.

Hey JJ&D.  It being a holiday tomorrow, I'll be at the Lost Dog at noon; come along with your crew and I'll share my pizza with you and start filling you all in on the strong, wonderful family that you don't know Jacks*it about.

Children & Disappointments

 My dad used to joke that children are an expensive and gut wrenching form of constant entertainment.  As for me, I paid for child support for my three children for more than a decade at a rate that far exceeded my ability to pay given my liquidity and astounding legal bills at the time and expressed my love for them by physically presenting myself at their mother's curb for my court-ordered visitation every other Friday and every holiday only to suffer the humiliation of being met with an unanswered cell phone call during those moments and the regret that my covert narcissist (in my opinion) ex-wife was teaching them as juveniles to be as consumist scofflaws as herself in adhering to judges' orders and the societal norms of humanity in the four of them's disdain and contempt for mandated visitation.

However, love persists.  I had hoped that one or more of the three of them would have showed up to begin the first day of the rest of our lives after all these years of silence and unjustifiable estrangement for lunch today on this Presidents Day holiday, but being under the domineering and destructive thrall, still, of their deeply flawed mother is still too great for these three strapping men in their thirties to have exercised any decency yet towards their other parent and his family.

It was a nice day for being a February day in Virginia in the midst of an historic pandemic and I parked by the front door of the Lost Dog Cafe and at noon entered the premises, looked around but didn't recognize anybody there and ordered an Italian Pie and returned to my vehicle to await its preparation, watching the ingress and egress into and out of the restaurant the whole time.  Around 12:35 the establishment called to report that the pizza was ready and I picked it up, brought it to my car and enjoyed a lunch of a slice of pizza while I listened to the radio and watched the door.

The meal was delicious, marinara sauce and cheese slathered over sliced onion, pepperoni, ham and salami, and at the end of the hour I left three uneaten slices in the box as a talisman for Better Luck Next Time and drove away, disappointed a hundred or more times over.  Two of my boys have birthdays in the upcoming weeks and I'll be there then, again.

Kujo

 This past week the US has been faltering, 4,000 deaths a day to covid, hospitals at maximum capacity and starting to triage, nobody able to figure out the who, how or where of getting a vaccine, and the president spends his time on sending an armed mob to storm the Capitol to try to capture and maybe hang the legislators and overthrow the Republic.  Hmm, let's go get a takeout pizza.

I went to the Lost Dog at noon earlier this week, parked just outside its front door and went in at the stroke of noon to order a pizza.  First I went throughout the restaurant, which had limited inside seating for dine-in, and then into the men's room to wash my hands, but I didn't see any thirty-something person with a flower in his or her lapel.

I ordered a Kujo pie, a pizza with artichoke hearts on it.  I waited outside in my car for it to be prepared then went inside again to pick it up when they called to say it was ready.

I ate it in my car while I sat there by the door to see if anybody I knew entered the restaurant, but I didn't recognize anybody so celebrating Johnny's birthday was like all those birthdays for years where I have dined with the empty chair, in this time of pandemic, with the empty passenger seat.  When I was done with my slice, leaving the rest of the pie as a good luck talisman for next month, I went to the post office across the street to mail off a present to the birthday boy, a book about the first WW2 battle my dade fought in, a grandfather he never met, using an address I found recently on the internet on a voter registration form.

Happy birthday, son.  I'd like to see you but I wouldn't like to be you.