This is always an odd time of year for me. Ava and Chet fly down to rural Georgia to spend August with their mom, their grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle and cousins. I know it's important for them and I really love the family down there and they love my kids and me, but still, after just about two days without them I fall to pieces. I rattle around the apartment, find myself wandering in and out of their oddly non-messy room and call them every day on the phone.
This August, of course, is different. I'm here in NYC with A and M. I still miss my kids but I am also loving spending time with little M by herself. When my kids are around they tend to hog her attention and her hugs but now I can greedily hoard them myself. It's still hard to believe how radically my household has changed in the course of only a few months. This month of just the three of us will be good for us.
Before they left Ava and Chet were very funny. I'd bought a bottle of hard cider, 4% alcohol, for A and I for our family dinner, and Ava pulled me aside and said she worried that I was developing a drinking problem.
"Why do you like that stuff anyway?" she asked.
"It tastes good."
"No it doesn't. I tasted some wine once with Lucia [our old nanny back in L.A.] and it tasted awful."
"Well grownups have different taste buds."
"But if you drink it you will get drunk."
"Have you ever seen me drunk?"
"NO!" and she folded over giggling at the thought.
For a guy who weighs 190lbs I'm the lightest of lightweights. I'm guessing it has something to do with all the pills I pop to keep my kidneys sort of working (they're at 23% right now, I'm hoping to get a new one.). Whatever the reason, even a half-glass of cider makes my head wobble. I assured Ava that she had nothing to worry about.
I remember my grandfather waking the whole house up when he and grandma were visiting. He would be banging around the bathroom loudly grumbling and trying to pee. She would be behind him whining and trying to steady his shoulder to steady his aim. His speech was so slurred he sounded nothing at all like the brilliant man I knew in the daytime -- the first of his family to finish college and Dayton, Ohio's, first black fire inspector. I was maybe six and vowed never to drink too much myself and never have. He was later diagnosed as manic depressive and meds and will power cured him of his drinking.
I used to spend a month every summer in Dayton with him and my grandma and they pampered me shamelessly. Every day was some wonderful adventure: King's Island amusement park, swimming, firing a bb gun (my parents would have killed us all had they found out). They're some of my happiest childhood memories. So although I miss my kids I know that I can't be too greedy for their company. Still, I'm counting the days till they return.
