Throughout my long stint in info technology, I kept skinning my nose on the grind stone.  I’d go in on weekends, skip vacation days, and often work from “can’t see” in the morning till “can’t see” at night.  It was another addiction.  I told myself that because of all the burning bridges in my past, I had to be the best of the best.  Often my projects were so ambitious they would span months of development time.

I wish I could rewind.  I wish I could have given my wife and kids some of the experiences that my parents had given me.   In the fifties, our whole family would go on a camping trip almost every summer – Yellowstone, Glacier, the Black Hills, the Grand Canyon, and California.  I did take my boys to New York once to see my sister and we passed through Niagara Falls.  One of my wife’s oft repeated recriminations is that we went to see her family in Mexico only twice in all those years.

I hope that my more modest activities gave my boys the assurance that their father loved them.  We worked together on science or writing projects.  When they were little, I specialized in telling crazy bed time stories.  I was their number one fan through various baseball leagues – including their days on the field for the Whitney Young Dolphins.  I taught them to swim and to drive.  They learned along with me how to hang drywall and refinish wood doors and trim.  On the other hand, I recall a time when Ricky wanted to learn to fish.  I took him to the mouth of Bubbly Creek, helped him bait the hook, taught him how to cast, looked at my watch, and said, “Hey, I got to get to work now.”

One of my favorite memories was when the Little League coach brought in Billy to pitch.  He was one of the youngest guys on the team and just wasn’t ready for the task.  After he skipped pitches in front of the plate and threw wide enough times to fill the bases, the coach yanked him and put in Ricky.  Ricky threw just as wild and wide.  After the game, I asked Ricky, “Why couldn’t you get those guys out?”  “Because of Billy”, he said.  He didn’t want to make Billy feel worse.

A few years later when Billy was pitching for Whitney Young, I was behind the backstop at Clarendon Park up by Loyola.  My kid got a batter out swinging at a curve that looked like it broke almost six inches.   I let out a loud and crazy, “All right!”  All the parents and coaches swiveled their heads toward me in one motion.  They gave me their most disapproving and negative stares.   Just another of the many life embarrassments that come flooding back with memoir writing.

Sometimes I stepped up with a new variation of my characteristic weakness – trying too hard.  That was the case when I capsized a canoe in the fetid waters of the South Branch of the Chicago River.  We were over by Lawrence’s Fisheries collecting water samples for a science project.  My glasses, Gloria’s cell phone, and my reputation as a naturalist all joined the muck at the bottom of a tributary made famous by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.  Billy almost jumped in to save me; Ricky just laughed at me.

Another time we decided to learn auto body work to repair a deep gash in my Stratus’ passenger side door.  We didn’t pull the dent and instead applied about an inch of bondo.  Six months later, the patch had peeled off and we were back to square one.  I always told them that mishaps and failures are the best ways to learn.

When I used to send them off to school, I’d say, “Try things you haven’t tried before”.  When I came home, they took turns running to me and jumping into my arms.  I also tried to get them to repeat, “You bad, dad.”