Yes Jiminy There Isn't a Santa Claus

The fake Santa Claus jostled into place the loose bed pillows underneath his bright red borrowed suit. With his body perspiring in the thick costume, he waddled into a fourth grade elementary school classroom yelping a round of his best ho-ho-ho’s. The elementary school children responded favorably with surprise and adulation. Twenty-four hours earlier, the fun-loving man playing iconic Santa Claus provided custodial care by wielding a wet mop in this same classroom.

In on the ruse, the teacher welcomed Santa Claus with Season’s Greetings.

“Merry Christmas!” shouted Santa Claus to Jewish and Gentile children alike.

The man playing Santa Claus had a pinch too much entertainer in him for perhaps even the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. He moved around the classroom greeting kids. Santa danced as if he had bells on his feet. He soon waddled to an aisle seat to his left. Santa stopped at a desk of his choosing hoping that his deliberate actions appeared random. Praying that his full white beard would not wardrobe malfunction, Santa hunched his upper body towards a sheepish student.

“Have you been a good boy?”

With all of the yelling, Santa’s voice sounded hoarse by now. This aided not only his disguise but concealed his identity. The male student, however, appeared shy about receiving individual attention. He squirmed in his seat and said nothing.

Good Ole Saint Nick needled him. “Santa thinks you have been naughty this year. I hope it isn’t going to be a lean Christmas for you.”

About this time, the boy’s eyes met Santa Claus’s eyes. Between the two sets of almond pupils bore a trace of familiarity. The boy searched for the gift of right words.

Another classmate broke-up the holiday cheer. “Jim, that’s your brother, stupid! You know, the school custodian.”

A Parting Gift

Anthony Gregory "T" Tornatore

1966-2009

Prior to my brother Anthony’s removal from life support to allow him to die naturally, the immediate family gathered at the hospital to pay our final respects. We positioned ourselves in the waiting room and drug our feet to his hospital bed to say our individualized fateful final goodbyes.

The sympathetic doctor in charge entered the waiting room. Using a soft low-key voice, she addressed a huddled family, whose collective emotions seemed already in mourning. "Is everyone here?" Yes, we answered like drones. "Is there anybody else coming to the hospital?" No, we fretted. "Has everyone been afforded sufficient time to say goodbye?" Yes, we muttered with heavy hearts. "Okay, I need a verbal consent from his daughter, to remove the life support." Between his daughter and my mother looking at one another, neither materialized an audible answer but both approximated reluctant head nods. The doctor accepted their mutual decision to proceed then informed the family the inevitability of what was expected to happen next. The doctor promised notification of the exact time of his passing.

Like victims of stolen love, our solemn sobbing and prayer monopolized the waiting room. The first minute of vigil felt like a wrecking ball hitting my heart. Everyone seemed to breathe heavier as if we were projecting our oxygen as a scarce commodity for my brother’s time off the ventilator. When the next few minutes produced no news, a vacuous blanket of silence filled the air. Concluding that my brother must be struggling to breath on his own, I prayed for mercy. I did not want his final moments spent in pain. After about twenty minutes, various family members began to mingle outside the waiting room doing the things people do when they do not know what to do….incoherent muttering, needless bathroom stops, mindless cell phone texts and unproductive pacing in looping circles.

As I personally prayed to a God largely unfamiliar to me, I enlivened my last moments with my brother there by his deathbed….stroking through the warm-blooded flesh of his arm, watching the white linen on his hospital bed my tears over his hospital bed absorb my transparent moisture. I recalled kissing him goodbye. I saw the final reflection of both of us in the hospital glass while I turned away for the final time. I canonized the last time I saw my brother alive.

All of a sudden, my brother’s ex-wife runs into the waiting room and shouts, "There is a woman in bed with T and nobody knows who it is. Help!" I knew then that my loving memorial of my brother’s last moments was about to be disturbed. Finding my brother unhooked to a vent and struggling to breath seemed a footnote subtlety to the shock of seeing a hysterical woman straddling him up on his bed. I witnessed her slapping his face side to side like a Three Stooges act performed with gallows humor. She was trying to resurrect a dying man with the insensibility of denial. The woman screamed now or never instructions. "Don't listen to the doctors! You can do this. Come on. Wake-up!”

After pulling her down from his bed and escorting her out of the area, we all began to breathe a sigh of relief. I was not the only one who found ironic meaning in what had just happened. My dying brother would have found this moment not only comical but a suitable parting gift. Although we had compassionately tried to define our final moments with him, it was typical of his personality to say goodbye to us…with the last laugh.

Lady Emma Blooms

My cousin from Texas wrote this article for her community newspaper The Rose Online.

Lady Emma Blooms For Anthony Gregory Tornatore by C.G. Spainhouer Wllis, Oct 19, 2009

Life imitates nature in its simplest forms sometimes.

A good old friend from church, Doris Wilkinson, is a certified judge for the American Iris Society. Doris was interested in irises much of her life, and after retiring from decades of working in the field of education, she pursued her flower hobby with avid tenacity.

Last week I drove out to Doris's place in the country to take a look at how she tends her Iris garden in the fall. It was a nice break to get outside in the cool autumn sunshine after weeks of rainy weather and gray skies. As I toured her raised up flower beds, each Iris was labeled and trimmed and ready for the colder months coming.

She said that iris bulbs are really tubers called rhizomes. They are not planted completely in the ground, but about ½ to ¾ way up with some exposed to the light and air. The odd thing about iris rhizomes, or the flower roots, is that they bloom once and then make baby rhizomes attached.

Doris pointed to one Iris that was the “mother with four babies.” Sure enough, there was a cluster of “bulb” looking like roots, one in the center, with four new ones surrounding it.

Then Doris pointed again and said. “Look. I think it’s gonna bloom soon. That’s rare for this time of year. Really rare.”

“What’s this flower’s name?” I asked.

“Lady Emma” Doris said, “It’s a special flower, a hybrid.”

I was speechless as the sun shined down on the bud and green blades of nature’s beauty.

“What is it?” Doris asked.

“I was thinking and saying a prayer for my cousin T, who was struggling for life after a heart attack just days before. He has three brothers,” I said, “and their mom’s name is Emma. The same name as this flower with four babies.”

We both looked down at the Iris plant, with one rhizome in the middle, four attached babies, and one stemming bud.

A few days passed and Doris stopped by with some more Iris pictures to add to our web site on Monday. She said Lady Emma had started blooming Friday October 16. “Look at these blooms! There’s three of them blooming. But there's a fourth bud may not make it, and I’m afraid the freeze will get it.”

Again, piercing irony. “T died on Friday, one day after his forty-third birthday. I thank you for these pictures. The blooms are so beautiful, so bright and yellow. Such precious a gift.”

Doris said, “I didn’t know, and am sorry for your loss. When I took the pictures, that’s the only part of the garden, the only flowers that had sun shining on them were Lady Emma and her blooms.”

Life imitate nature in its simplest forms ... sometimes.

Oh Darling, my niece

My niece, Jennifer Fritz, won a talent contest in the 8-18 years old range. The contest was featured in South Jersy magazine. She wound up on television appearing on the 10! Show. Here is a link to her singing Oh Darling by The Beatles.

Life Between the Alpha and Omega

Eulogy for Anthony Gregory “T” Tornatore 1966-2009.

I previewed thousands of pictures and countless home movie clips in order to make the audio/visual tribute shown here tonight. Although that consumed my emotions, it crystallized how to eulogize my brother. T, as he was affectionately known, had reoccurring themes in his life. He had a knack for humor, a regard for animals, a love of good food and passion for sports. If he wanted me to say only three words tonight about these four subjects it would be, “Let’s Go Flyers!”

My fondest earliest memories of T was watching him play superhero or dressing up as his favorite TV characters. Usually with T wearing costumes, he would often spend his free time roughhousing with his brothers.

Along with this irreplaceable male bonding, T developed a competitive nature and displayed a strong interest in sports. He lived to see a good fight whether it was a boxing match, mixed martial arts event or two toothless hockey goons dropping their gloves on ice. He rooted for the home team but would take timeout to cheer drunken spectators fighting in the stands at a ball game.

As a young man, T’s outgoing personality could make you laugh to delirium. An entertainer, he often wore the proverbial lampshade in the room and children gravitated towards his antics. T’s commentary spoofed outtakes that covered every slice of life. He had the overwhelming ability to make you laugh about nothing…or everything. His quick wit came with the complete assurance of a built-in laugh track. I admit just this once that his comedic timing made me envious.

Faced with hearing the familiar sound of crickets after I told a stale joke, T invariably took center stage. After he once whipped what I considered a tough crowd into knee-slapping laughter, he barked “Take that, bro.” T intentionally told better second rate jokes around me to add sadistic amusement to our sibling rivalry.

In his lifetime, T was a brother, son, uncle, cousin, husband and a father but T genuinely loved animals more than anyone I have ever met. After watching me discipline my weak-bladder cocker spaniel, T graded my obedience training. Lacking compassion in his voice, he swore that if he ever saw me do that again he would take me out back and go prehistoric on me. He left my company that day saying goodbye to only my dog. I concluded that T must have loved animals as much as people…at least more than me on that pissy day.

With the exception being his loving daughter Nichole, T rarely found a comfortable forum to talk with people about personal matters. He maintained a private and guarded front that was tough for everyone to penetrate. I remember once confiding to him that I started going steady with a girl. He smirked. Although I was smitten in love, T saw a man ungracefully approaching forty years old. He replied, “Steady? If the girl is still in eighth grade, I’m calling the cops! What did I tell you about watching those Happy Days reruns? Did you tell Fonzie, Ralph Malph or Potsey? Who goes steady these days? Get away from me!”

Regrettably, T’s ongoing medical problems began to affect his spunk and outlook on life. He distanced himself. In October 2008, he survived a heart attack. He came out of induced hypothermia and a coma with a quality of life. His family told him what he did not know and what he needed to hear, that the Philadelphia Phillies had won the World Series! What we didn’t know about his recovery is that we had T on loan for only another year. What a year it was. During this span, I witnessed his personality strangely revert back to his former self, a younger man full of vitality. Other people shared similar experiences with T before his second heart attack. I believe these moments of clarity were present day reminders as to how T defined living in terms of autonomy. In the end, his final prognosis vanquished him further away from his essence, a point of no return from the dignified way he might have wanted to live and probably how he wished to be remembered.

T’s lingering in a coma proved to be the fight of his life. It took me a trail of tears to come to terms with his irreversible condition. It is difficult to presume about another’s will to live but again T was not someone who freely talked about matters of the heart. Incapacitated, he left this legal decision to his family. We the reluctant spectators to his final battle became collaborative advocates on his unspoken wishes. Nobody wanted him to suffer.

As I look around this packed room, I can feel the power of his love. Anecdotally, I am also reminded that his banter often made me giggle inappropriately at funerals. So here I am at his funeral stricken with profound sadness and in no joking mood. Still the little twinkle in my moist eyes suggests that T would desire this occasion to be an upbeat celebration of his life.

In closing, I hold confident that T would not have opted for a comatose existence. If I dare frame my brother’s life, it ended more on the day his laughter stopped then when his heart actually stopped beating. The day of his passing was a day after his birthday, an abbreviated forty-three years between the alpha and the omega. God bless. Rest in peace. Anthony Gregory Tornatore.

-Joseph Tornatore

A Touchy Subject

When you live on a three acre wooded lot, raking leaves is not a seasonal chore but a never-ending project kept on my vigilant wife’s honey-do list as a top priority. Leaf raking and the lack thereof has always been a touchy subject in our household. I admit that I did not get the last bunch of the 226,000 leaves up off the ground before winter arrived. The forty-foot trees seemed to laugh at me as they shook leaves from their branches with me scraping the autumn ground below their guarded position. So I moved indoors where it seemed a lesser evil for my wife to pester me.

In between hiding the metal rake and praying for high winds that might blow my leaves to a neighbor’s property, my niece lost her expensive Itouch player at our house during a sleepover. When a welcomed snow buried errant leaves, it gave me a temporary stay of execution to my wife’s chagrin. So while I exchanged a leaf rake for a snow shovel outdoors, I turned the indoor of our house upside down looking for the lost gizmo. Flipped beds, a pulled out refrigerator, moved furniture, and a searched basement on hands and knees yielded nothing but a fine toothcomb in our sterile home.

Meanwhile, the white snow melted to reveal the ugly brown leaves besieging the beauty of our property. My wife began to complain about our depreciating property value. I tried to use the excuse of a surgically repaired foot to get out of another round of leaf raking but my driven wife had enough. Mumbling choice invectives found nowhere in our marriage vows, she grabbed the metal rake from the garage and started to rake leaves I would have been content leaving until they turned to mulch.

That is when my wife’s rake got tangled in a wire. Protected by a warm bed of leaves underneath an insulating blanket of snow near the porch was my niece’s Itouch player. Low and behold, it had somehow survived the coldest winter weeks without ill effects thanks to my gross dereliction of chores thus proving there are hidden benefits of not raking leaves for an old man in Old Man winter. Now I am sitting back and reaping the joyful smiles from my niece for a job well done. I just got to convince my wife that sitting on my duff was a good thing after all.

Mudroom on Your Face

My seven-year-old nephew took matters into his own hands when his older sister refused to do his school homework for him. No amount of his screaming could change her mind. When she tuned him out with IPod ear buds, she implemented a behavior modification technique called planned ignoring. He declared the situation an actual emergency and dialed 911.

On the telephone with police, his tattletale rage finger pointed intolerable big sister behavior but it also indicted his disproportionate sense of entitlement. By the time his mother intervened in the escalating argument, my nephew hung up the phone on the police dispatcher. After his mortified mother verbally reprimanded him, my nephew sensed that he overreacted a smidgen by involving armed men in blue over an incomplete multiplication table. Waiting for the police to answer the domestic call, my nephew barricaded himself deep in the closest of the mudroom under the camouflage of snowshoes.

During the police intervention, no amount of winter boots could hide his red-faced embarrassment. My nephew had mudroom on his face.

No Room at the Inn

My poor wife has been worried about her uncommon forgetfulness. I showed an initial level of support trying to convince her that she has been under an incredible amount of stress and responsibility which is impairing her mental faculties indefnitely. When she refused to believe me, she irrationally convinced herself she was suffering from early onset dementia. I could no longer get her to think in any other terms so I joined her worry wart program.

When she addressed me, I would say, “Why did you just call me by your first husband’s name? I began to prey upon her insecurities even more by asking her if she remembered fake memories from our past. Out of the blue, I would say we just talked about that yesterday. My torment about her forgetfulness peaked at a Christmas party, when repetitive bombardments in a family atmosphere had her ready for nursing home admission.

After the party, I felt a pinch guilty about my ornery behavior on my way back to my car. As I got in the car, a strange feeling swept over me. My leather seats were warm. I had just walked through frigid outdoor temperatures but the cabin operated at a comfortable 73 degrees. The dashboard was all lit up. I noticed that I had half of a tank of gas less than I remembered. Then it dawned on me. I forgot to turn off my car. I had left the car engine running for the last three and a half hours….the whole time I tortured my wife at the party..about her forgetfulness.

Marked Cars in Disney World

In 2002, we kicked off our vacation by arriving at star spangled Disney World early in the morning to beat the heat. To be present when the gates opened, our family exited our rental car with reckless abandon and determination to be in the front of the lines. Ten hours later, we returned to the Goofy parking lot a ragged overly stimulated family in no mood to be looking for our loaned car on tired feet. Without personal markings on the car or a familiar license plate to go by, every other rental car seemed to resemble our rental car. I used the car keys on a number of vehicles to no avail. A helpless feeling came over me, the only male adult in our party.

Dripping of perspiration, the kids did their share of complaining. Up and down the aisles, my wife and I searched only reasonably certain that we parked in Goofy. An hour passed before my hubris gave way to employing basic survival skills. Summer heat steamed off the Florida blacktop and the glare of the setting sun. I was getting punch drunk. Could we have parked in Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or Snagglepuss? Could the car have been stolen? Like accidental tourists, we must have foolishly walked by our rental car a dozen times without recognizing it.

This incident occurred back when the kids watched too many Looney Tunes cartoons. Braving the elements none too gracefully, the kids got easily spooked by the hawkeyed winged predators in the sky.

One of the children asked, “Why are there buzzards circling?”

My wife and I looked directly over our heads. A gaggle of buzzards circled high above our defenseless positions. We laughed hard…after we found our car.

Favorite Kitchen Smells

seasoned turkey baking in the oven

making stuffing on the stovetop

fresh minced garlic frying in olive oil

homemade chicken noodle soup cooking

a Jewish apple cake cooking

opening a fresh bottle of Vanilla Extract

buttered popcorn served piping hot

The Tightrope with Children

My youngest daughter and I sat across from one another in a diner booth. Maybe it has more to do that her parents are divorced but meaningful conversations are rare between her and I. I often find myself staying away from mushy feelings and mentally shuffling for artistic expression that might hold her interest. In between, there is considerable silence.

“Allow me to tell you about this circus I had the pleasure of seeing.”

You mention the word circus to a kid and you think you have their interest peeked. I was losing her already. I needed to pull a rabbit out of a hat with her name on it. Her eyes left mine and returned to the picturesque choices on the children’s menu.

I explained, “This wasn’t your usual smelly circus sitting on a bench seat where your feet crunch under a bed of peanut shells. Hardly. This was a royal circus under the biggest big top you can imagine. They performed live operatic music to coincide with dance movement to tell a story. The music sounded hypnotically penetrating like a lullaby. Oh, and the acrobats showed incredible showmanship and precision. The execution of the dance choreography seemed incredible. I thought my eyes were deceiving me. I did not think human beings could train themselves to that level of expertise. The wardrobe saved no expense. There was so much to see because they performed on multiple levels of visual sights with spotlighting. The variety of skills shown was nothing like the traveling circuses that I remember. Improbable stunts were performed with smiling faces. Some of the performers were children!”

She had yet to blink an eye. I wondered if I my animated storytelling, my showmanship if you will, was turning her off again so I decided to wrap up the description by walking the tightrope of visitation.

“This circus was a visual feast. It is something that is hard to explain secondhand. You really must see it to believe it. So the next time this troupe comes around, I want to take you there. We can experience it together.”

She gave me a blank stare. “Are you talking about Cirque du Soleil?”

“Ah, you heard of it. Great.”

“I don’t want to go. Dad, I saw it with mommy three times.”

“You know, we really got to talk more.”

Winning One for The Whimper

By raising me and giving me his last name, my stepfather earned the name of father. After he pitched Southern High School to the city championship in 1948, Connie Mack signed my father, Gregory Tornatore, to play for the Philadlephia Phillies. Like his tested life, injuries debilitated his playing career. He remained a diehard Phillies fan though and his zest for the game of baseball undoubtedly rubbed off on my brothers and I.

I have always wondered the more life-changing event for my father, devoting his life to athletics as a vocation then not being able to play baseball anymore or walking into a hospital for back surgery then leaving paralyzed from the waist down slumped in a wheelchair. As my father’s life sunk into clinical depression from his immobility and cardiac problems over the years, I hoped he would live long enough to see one more championship by a major professional sports team in the city he grew up in. This was not to be. Teary eyed, I placed a baseball with loose laces in his coffin after he died of congestive heart failure in 2001.

This same fallible organ remembers who taught me the game of baseball when the Philadelphia Phillies won the National League pennant earning a spot to play in the 2008 World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays. I trust that there are more important things to do in the hereafter than checking out your favorite team back on earth but this mortal son of his devoted this World Series to him rooting and ranting for the Philadelphia Phillies to win.

During the early innings of game three of the World Series, my younger brother Anthony suffered a significant heart attack. The crushing news and following commotion shot me back like a cannonball to the same hospital my father died in. The shot returned me emotionally to the relationship with my infirmed father. Staring at my brother’s prone unconscious body in an intensive care unit during the past couple of days, I could not help to think that the suspended play in the deciding game five of the World Series mirrored both my brother’s induced coma and a life put on hold.

While every story in roller coaster life cannot hold a fairy tale ending, from God’s ear to the strings of my heart I hope to soon say to my recuperating brother what inevitability denied me from saying to my father….The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series and that we finally won one for the whimper.

The Art of Parting in Parenting

My oldest daughter left for college today to start art college as a freshman. While she is only a short commute away, the distance could not feel further. Even though she has not lived with me since the divorce to her mother a decade ago, I got emotional at the send off. I did not want to leave her dormitory room and would have paid top dollar to buy just one more Ikea product to slowly assemble.

Alas, I was not expecting quite the reaction after we hugged goodbye. My feelings surfaced like a punch in the jaw. As I took to the dormitory steps, tears clouded my vision. I was happy for her declaration of independence but sad in a natural way. Leaving the college, I realized that the art of parenting is now only to the extent she wants and allows. She is considered an adult and living on her own in the big city. It was time for me to hit the pavement with both tears running.

Birthday Wishes!

A joyous happy birthday goes out to dear old mom. Mom turned a Methusal-like seventy years old yesterday. Despite her pressing medical issues, she keeps her mind ripe tackling daily crossword puzzles using an unerasable gel pen. Last week alone, she uncorked the obscure answer of Hootie and the Blowfish for 17 across.

As for her health, mom has been working out with lightweight free weights and her grip makes you think she is looking to enter arm wrestling tournaments. In comparison, I have been to the gym only one in the last six weeks. When your elderly mother has firmer biceps than you, it is time to get back into exercising.

Happy birthday mom! Next time I see you, do not hug me so hard.

Little Miss Sunshine

Olive at 5 weeks old

The newest addition to our household is Olive. Let it be told that I have never been endearing to felines but this little kitten is growing on me exponentially.

Her mother was a stray cat who used the garage of a Voorhees home for shelter during her pregnancy. Surveying the litter, Olive acted like the only docile cat among the ragtag clutching, clawing, hissing bunch.

Our first trip to the veterinarian revealed the following: She wasn't docile, she was dying. The vet diagnosed that she had an infection, that if left untreated, would claim her life in days. Now that she has received proper medical care and has rebounded...we are waiting to see if Olive will remain Little Miss Sunshine.

Life is a Beach

My first mistake was asking my wife to record me on the camcorder walking the bulkhead rocks of a jetty below the boardwalk of Atlantic City, NJ. My second mistake was not realizing how miserable my wide body looks and feels these days. An honest mistake, I suppose I got caught up in the scenery - The seashore for a visiting shoobie. Abundant sunshine. An intoxicating breeze aiding high tide coming in. Ah, it seemed like the right moment and the right backdrop to capture a natural home movie clip.

My sneakers spit sand in my jaunt to the jetty. I hopped with glee across the first few rocks then came a harrowing moment of self-awarenes. I realized too late that my ginger waltz not only must have looked effeminate for the camera but it has been recorded for prosperity. The next couple of steps I faced the challenge of a grating slope, some further spaced rocks, and an ocean trying to reduce my land to sand with the next wave. With the ocean to my left and right, it was like walking the plank. I did not feel my mortality all at once but rather in steps.

My proud desired stride shortened to a laughable length. I tried to make light of my frailty by turning back and looking at the camera. The wind parted my hair in a way that I realized a shortage of follicles. I begin to breathe heavier than I should for this little exertion. In my mind’s eye, I could see myself in action and it wasn't pretty. I took a few steps forward and am reminded how embarrasingly different this much look than the bleached blonde surfer dudes attacking the beach to my left.

Further out on the jetty, ocean pushes itself up onto the rocks. The slime coat created underneath my footprints is a slippery slope. My left foot kicks out like an accident acting to happen. My balance shifts. It is treacherous sailing and I consider turning back. I fret about falling but manage a Joe Cool wave back to my wife. She makes no reaction. I knew that I looked like an old man but prayed that my wife didn’t see me for who I am.

I entertain irrational thoughts like hitting my head, falling unconscious, and being swept up by the sea to a death by drowning. I visualize the headlines in the obituaries of the Atlantic City Press. Ripley’s Believe It or Not Man Who Defied Death Strangely Dies Near His Museum Exhibit.

With more than 50 yards of the jetty ahead of me to conquer, I make a surrender plea. I turn back around. My feet shuffle along the same wet rocks. My steps can now be measured in inches. Nursing home patients would lap me. My hands wing out to the sides to brace a potential fall. My wife continues to film me and I am too preoccupied to tell her to silence production. In the end, I made my way back to shore without falling. My goal to conquer the jetty like a he-man was replaced by a middle age concession of not falling down and getting hurt.

The ordeal looked even more pathetic on the playback of the high definition camcorder.

Foot in the Door

As children, nearly every neighborhood kid played the timeless game of hide and seek outdoors in the great wide open. When I was a kid, we often played with no out of bound markers and the playing field stretched as far as you could get away. One sun shining day, the exhilarating fun turned frightful when two neighborhood children failed to return from the game. The curious children, who had explored their surroundings, found an old abandoned industrial freezer in the woods. It seemed to be the perfect place to hide until the freezer door latch fell into a locked position. It trapped both of them on the inside of the appliance. The neighborhood banded together and formed a search party. By the grace of God, the confined children were found alive on only panted breath.

I began to recite this cautionary tale to my children who had started to play hide and seek games of their own. My children are no different than most in thinking they know everything of this world with only a foot in the door. They interrupted my parental toned voice and jumped ahead of the story just to hear me shut up.

My oldest daughter took the lead. “Yeah, yeah we know not to do that, Dad. These stupid kids probably would have froze to death.”

“Froze to death?” I repeated. “It was summer time.”

“The freezer, Dad.” reminded my youngest daughter. “I agree with sissy. It must have been ice cold in there.”

All-Star Converse

My eldest daughter was selected as a Gloucester County All-Star for Academic Excellence. The top five graduating seniors from each high school in the county receive this distinction at an awards banquet. My daughter finished third in her graduating class and has her sights set on college next year. Pictured is the cover story of the insert that was included in this past Sunday's Gloucester County Times newspaper. Congratulations from a father drunk with pride.

Child Visitation

Sunday, April 13th, 2008 -

After a dozen years of child visitation, I saw what was once my car approach the house. Something rectified inside me the moment I saw the car park curbside but I could not articulate the feeling at first. I watched what was once a child emerge from the driver's side. My oldest daughter had come to pay a visit.

It marked the first time one of my kids actually visited me on their own recognizance. She carried a smile and a birthday present for me. The fact that she still had Christmas presents to open from 2007 told a story in and of itself but that mattered little with her in the house again. She talked about her upcoming high school senior trip and the prospects of college. Her future sounded brighter than the bridge ahead of me. For a divorced non-custodial parent, I knew that court ordered child visitation was no more with her. There was no child before me. While I will maintain an open door policy, visits with this adult are now strictly at her discretion.

A Family Reunion

By the end of a three-day weekend, I took inventory of the only block of quality time spent with my wife. The nuggets of quality time that we spend together in a busy marriage are never enough but lately…it is all we have. Necessity dictated that we be together from morning until evening in a reunion with her family. Operating in tandem no further than one another’s side, the closeness we shared bonded us as a loving couple.

While making communal stops in the drearily chilly weather, my wife’s moist palms repeatedly caressed my inviting hand. I admired my wife’s strength yet supported her weak moments too. We attended a special service at Saint Monaca’s cathedral in downtown Philadelphia. Surrounded by breathtaking stained glass and piping organ music, the sermon’s sacristy fitted the occasion. The refreshing scent of fresh flowers filled my nostrils. A stranger sang an acoustic number on a guitar that was none short of inspirational.

Back outdoors again, raindrops cascaded off us like tears while we strolled through the city underneath a miniature umbrella. Navigating ungodly traffic patterns in the car, I watched the wind whip a hood-mounted flag in our windshield wiper processional. I ran red lights and beeped my horn to get to our destination, a final resting place. The outside world could have cared less about our purpose because we were making them late for life. A short march on foot later, someone handed a single red rose to my wife. I remember thinking that the thorns and petals represent the best and worst life has to offer. Prayers mumbled on our lips where the earth was turned.

The moments stolen alone together were as intimate as they were sad for a rusty married couple like us. We laughed, cried, and remembered. Our lips gently kissed and their firm moist quality moved me through past events in a nostalgic time warp. We did not want to wait for our lives to be over so we relished our hugs. We shared a humorous Seinfeld moment before dining at an Italian South Philadelphia restaurant aptly called Popie’s. The wine and cheer made it feel good to be alive but we remembered our place. By day’s end, it was time for us to say unfitting goodbye to one another as husband and wife…as we did to the dearly departed - David DiNicola - 1960-2008.