The Kids and I

It's a beautful morning in Athens and though we arrived much too late to hook up with the kids, we still made a night of it. There is the fall chill in the air that everybody says they love so much (to which I say "To Hell with this! Give me hot weather and girls in bikinis!!") but it's college football season so I go with the flow. It's that quiet time before the explosion of hyper activity that will lead up to the game and then the game (with a damn noon kickoff because that's what happens when you lose your first two games) but then the evening in Athens will be a pleasant and intimate affair. A quiet dinner with the kids and then ...

who knows?

They're my kids.

They are different.

Last time we got here and met Jeremy and my brilliant daughter-in-law Marie, Mark, my illigitimate brother and his wife Kim and Angela, I have no idea who is ... but we hooked up at the Globe, then moved to 8-T's and danced till 2:30 in the morning.

Jeremy is now enrolled as a student again working on his Ph.D. in Athens while Marie is Assistent Professor of Film at Valdosta State University ... meaning they live four hours apart from one another. They are cool with it. In fact, this isn't the first time they've done in. Once Marie lived in LA working on films while Jeremy lived in Atlanta working on ceiling tiles so in the scheme of things they've actually gotten closer.

Jeremy and I have done everything together from surviving a head on collision that should have left us both dead to one night three years ago when I told him goodbye to stumble home in this very city with two of Savannah's most upstanding Catholic individuals. His lap was occupied at the time so he didn't go.

Marie just laughs when she hears the things that my son and I do.

Kristen is the wild child. Beautiful, athelically blessed, she somehow survived St. Vincent's Academy until the nuns threw her out with a degree. She came to Athens for one semester, dated the entire University of Georgia football team by Thanksgiving and felt that college had little more to offer. So she returned to Tybee.

"You're keeping your ass in school," I told her like a good parent would.

"I'm going surfing," she said sitting at the kitchen table across from me.

"Can I go?" I answered.

Kristen and I have a long history of kitchen table conversations. We lived two years by ourselves and I learned several things about her. (1) She will replace the rum in the bottle with tap water trying to hide the fact that she drank all of my rum; (2) We once compared bite marks lifting up pieces of apparal and saying "Oh yeah?"; (3) She once picked my up from the airport insisting that she would drive and she kept jumping out to open the door for me. We got home. The next morning I went to go the work and she had ripped off the entire driver's side of the car.

Then again, Krissy is my caregiver. She will break into my house at any moment that she perceives I need something. It doesn't matter what I'm doing or if I need anything.

Chelsea is the baby who is now a senior at the University of Georgia. She and Jeremy are in the same school at the same time. Chelsea is engaged to Sam who is at Georgia Avenue Trade School (sometimes referred to as Georgia Tech). They are a soon to be mixed marriage. Chelsea is an artist of the finest quality so I assume she is going to do this magnificant makeover of Samuel who I can't imagine her being without. It's going to be fun to watch.

Once we were suba diving in Key Largo and excitedly she dove in first. On top of a shark. I now completely understand the concept of Jesus walking on water. Chelsea sprinted!

That same night she was asking me theological questions sitting beside the pool. Like Kristen, Chelsea went to St. Vincents Academy so everything had a Catholic bent to it. Finally I don't her, "I don't know. Ask the Pope!"

So we called the Vatican. 1-800-Vatican and sure enough it rang and we got an answering machine. We left a message but never heard back from them.

We also never won the St. Vincinets annual Father/Daughter dance though clearly we were the best dancers on the floor but Sister Pat knew we were not Catholics. And that whatever I am is largely suspect all of the way around. I further believe she has a copy of the tape from the answering machine at the Vatican and was punishing us ... as Catholics are prone to do.

So those are my kids.

We are close.

And the more life rolls along, we grow closer. I am blessed. A lot of other things may not have gone right in my life, but the kids and I ... well, I've turned the hat trick. The children whom I love so much are also friends and we dearly love one another ... individually and as a group.