Going to Disney World

Before we left the hospital nearly a year ago, we were warned that Maggie might not respond the way we expected to the news of Elena’s death. Sure enough, her initial response was very concrete. A little later while she and I waited in the car for Kim, Maggie said “now we’ll never go to Disney World.”

We had put off Disney until Elena was tall enough to ride the rides. We had thought about going a few weeks earlier but hadn’t. Elena had never gotten to Disney. She loved the characters and totally bought into the magic.

Me too.

I love the parks. I had contacted them a couple of times trying to get them to hire me as a contractor to do podcasts about the various parks at WDW like a friend of mine does for Disneyland. At one point they posted my dream job - working with podcasting and blogs about the parks at WDW. I’ve never actually gotten a response to my inquiries or applications - not even an acknowledgment - but a boy can dream can’t he.

Elena was all about the magic. She loved the princesses. Maggie never did. Elena would be in her room having a make believe party with one or more of them. She would become one of them for a day or two. For a while she was in the habit of talking to an invisible friend named Stephen who was the handsome prince in one of the stories.

For her bedtime story she would often bring out a Disney collection of chapters on the different princesses.

“Are your teeth brushed?” I’d ask.

“Yep,” she’d open her mouth wide and bare her teeth to prove it. She’d move in and blow towards my mouth.

“What are you doing?” I’d ask.

“Smell my breath. It’s minty.” She’d put her hands on her hips and hold out the book. “C’mon big boy, read me a story.”

“Which one should we read?” I’d ask.

“What’s your favorite, daddy?” she’d ask back.

“I don’t know,” I’d say, “they are all so good.”

“That was sarcasm, wasn’t it daddy?” she’d ask.

“Yep, it was.”

And then she’d pick a story. We’d read it together sitting in my and Kim’s bed and then I’d carry her into her room while she held her book. She’d thumb through the other stories telling herself shorter versions based on the pictures.

Disney was made for Elena. Going without her would be difficult but how do we not take Maggie. A couple of weeks later the issue was resolved. There in the Dells with Maggie’s Shen sisters we decided that for the tenth year reunion of the girls we would meet in Orlando instead of in Wisconsin.

We still had park tickets from 2001 when we were supposed to go down there with my parents. Elena was a couple of months shy of her second birthday and Maggie was four. It would have been a very different trip. We asked my parents if they wanted to go to Disney with us for a few days before the Shen sisters arrived. We ended up flying down with them on Monday and staying with them through late Thursday night.

Maggie had a ball. We stayed in the least expensive Disney hotel we could find and took buses back and forth to the parks. We got a late start on Monday but still managed to explore some of the Magic Kingdom before taking the monorail over to Epcot.

Tuesday we started at the Animal Kingdom. Any time a Disney character got close, Maggie would take my arm and lead me the other way. She loved the animals and steered us away from most of the rides. We went on a water ride that left her soaked so we decided there was no harm in riding it again and again. Drenched to the bone we headed over to the Lion King show.

The Circle of Life show, like all of the Disney shows, is presented in a theatre dedicated to that show. We sat in the second row in a theatre in the round. The stage craft was amazing. The show began with a parade of color. People dressed in costumes of different animals. The stage rolled in on four trucks. The stagehands quickly assembled the center stage for a trapeze and trampoline act. The show was a fun combination of music and acrobatics with the actors coming right up to our seats. At one point they asked Maggie if she wanted to join them on stage for a scene in which the animals paraded with children from the audience. She said no. She’s just not big on characters.

Kim and I teared up throughout the show. There was no way to watch music from Elena’s favorite musical without feeling her presence. And then they began to sing “The Circle of Life”. I moved away from Maggie a bit so she wouldn’t feel me sobbing. Kim was right there with me. She moved away from my mom so as not to disturb her. The two of us sat close to each other thinking of our little girl as a woman sang the line that we’d just chosen for the side of her headstone: more to do than can ever be done.

We had another couple of numbers to bring ourselves back in control. I guess we had brought Elena to Disney with us. And then the lights came up on the audience and we all headed back out into the rainy day.

If Elena were physically with us we would have gone to see the characters standing along the way. We would have ridden more rides. We would have seen more shows. Instead, we spent some more time with animals on our way to the front of the park. We took a bus to the transportation center and then a boat back to the Magic Kingdom so that we could catch a nighttime parade where the floats were lit up.

At the end of the night we took a bus back to the hotel and Maggie and I went swimming while Kim and my mom went to get us all hot chocolate. We were in a building with a giant replica of a can of Play Doh in the middle and a giant yo-yo at each end. I’m sure Maggie had a great time and don’t know if she noticed anything missing.

I know we can’t live our lives saying “Elena would have …”, and yet, Elena would have loved this week. It would have been a very different week for Maggie - but she and Elena would have been able to have told each other these stories for the rest of their lives.

To be set in stone

It was cold yesterday and today. Not like Monday and Tuesday when it was bone chilling cold. School canceling cold. It was zero Monday morning when we woke up. Not zero degrees Celsius but zero degrees Farenheit. Add in the windchill and it supposedly feels like twenty below. Today it’s back to double digits and, although it hasn’t warmed up to the freezing point yet, it feels much warmer.

Maggie was off of school for two days at the beginning of the week. It’s been a short week for her and we’re heading out of town on Monday so she’ll have no school next week. Kim’s off of work today so we called to see how Michelle was doing with the design of Elena’s headstone. Her plotter had been giving her problems but she thought she could be ready with something to show us later in the day.

What about three thirty or so after Maggie is done with school?

That sounded ok to her.

Kim and I picked Maggie up at school and told her where we were heading.

“Is that ok?” I asked.

“I guess,” she said.

We parked next door. Maggie reached in her bag to get some snacks to bring in with her. “Leave it,” I said. She started to give me one of her looks and for some reason decided not to. When we got to the inner door she read the sign and rang the bell.

Michelle led us into the office and showed us the work she’d done. Maggie looked at it quietly. Michelle said she wasn’t sure about the Chinese character. She couldn’t tell if these two lines were supposed to connect of be separate. Maggie shook her head and pointed. These two are separate. So are these two over here.

Michelle nodded.

She pulled out her eraser and pencil and soon the lines were separated. Maggie nodded.

Michelle asked about the rabbit. The three of us nodded. It looked nice.

Michelle took out two sets of sketches of forget-me-nots. Kim looked at both and decided on the single flower.

Finally, we looked at both sets of fonts. I still didn’t care for the serifs but I really didn’t like all caps. The only decender in Elena’s name was the “g” in her last name so that made the vertical spacing work out well. We decided on the serif font for the top and didn’t really have much of a choice for the side - it would be in the non serif all caps font.

Michelle asked which of the three designs we wanted to include. Kim decided we want all three. We would put the flower on the left and then the Chinese character and the rabbit on the right. Michelle thought she could make it work.

“Come back next week and I’ll show you a proof you can sign off on,” Michelle said.

“Actually,” I said, “next week we’ll b e at Disney. We’re going for a reunion of the girls Maggie was adopted with.”

“Cool,” Michelle said giving Maggie a big smile. She turned to see Kim looking at the special monument with the statues of the boys climbing the wall. “Do you like that?” Michelle asked.

“I do,” said Kim.

“It’s at Lakeview,” Michelle answered. “I don’t think it’s far from where your daughter is buried.”

“I’d like to see it,” Kim said.

“Hang on,” Michelle said, “I’ll call my dad.” A couple of minutes later her father was looking up information on the memorial and the cemetery and showing us where on the map it is and the best way to walk into the section to see it. Michelle thumbed through books and showed us some of the other stones near by. Her dad was quiet and modest. Too modest. When people let him, he did amazing work.

Michelle looked at her dad and back at Maggie and said “I have to tell you my story about Disney World.” The two of them tried to figure out what year it was when they had gone. Michelle was one of five children and they were all at Disney watching a parade when she ran away from the group to give Mickey Mouse a letter she had written to him. By the time she turned around to find her family again, she couldn’t find them.

Michelle said that since we would be gone the following week, she would have the proofs ready for us when we got back from Disney. We would have to sign off on them and then they could be cut into the stone.

I asked for another copy of the proof. They weren’t going to have the stones in time for the anniversary of Elena’s death so I wanted to have a proof that I could show the people coming over to our house. Michelle said that wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Maggie paused on our way out to look at the stones on the floor of the room next to the office. I told her that Elena’s would have the same shape as that one but the same color as that other one with the same writing as this third one.

Maggie nodded.

Their Garden

At the end of our street is a garden for Jan and Elena. Elena died a month after Jan - and both of them died well before their time.

I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before. “Before their time.” I’m not sure what it means. Maybe it means, before those of us around them were ready.

Jan lived down the street from us. If you’d watched Jan and her relationship with the  high school girl who lived next door to her you would know that she died well before her time. As for Elena, six years may be longer than some people get but it’s way shorter than her mom and I needed.

Jennifer and Carolyn decided that it would be nice to have a garden planted for Jan and Elena. They wrote an application to the city and were given a grant with which they bought trees and plants and mulch and a bench. Elena would have liked to stop and sit on the bench.

“Daddy, I’m so tired. I just need to sit down on the bench for a minute.”

“But we’re almost home.”

“Please?”

“Elena, we live four houses away.”

“You never let me do anything.”

“Elena, we can sit on the bench tomorrow.”

“You always say that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, give me one good reason I can’t sit on the bench.”

I would have given in at that point because there wasn’t any good reason. I guess no good reason except that the bench wasn’t here until she was dead seven months.

In September Jennifer and Carolyn organized a day of digging and planting. The whole neighborhood turned out. We dug out a big oval and smoothed over the dirt and mulch that was delivered. We planted the tree and the plants and the flowers in the pattern that someone had designed and then we stood back and looked at the work.

Someone passed by and shouted to us, “it’ll never last.”

Someone else, trying to be friendly, saw a bunch of us digging up the dirt with shovels and called across, “who died?”

But mostly it was neighbors building a garden for two or their own.

There was a flood in George and Jan’s house. I still think of it as their house. A problem with plumbing while he was away led to water damage and a lot of work. He shrugged and said that it bothered him less than it would have a year earlier. Perspective is everything.

George paused in his digging to tell me a story. He had been telling his sister that Elena had died. He described her as the little girl who had come to the house after Jan had died. The sister said, “I remember her. She was the little girl who told me she had always wanted to see the inside of your house.”

It made me smile. Elena had met this woman for just a few minutes and had made an impression.

The bench came a couple of weeks later. A beautiful and simple stone bench with a simple engraving. A couple of weeks after that on a cold and rainy morning the neighbors gathered again at the garden for its dedication. People said words here and there while we stood with coffee in styrofoam cups warming our hands. The words were beautiful and we’ve asked for a copy to post here but mostly I remember George being nice enough to repeat that story for Kim and her parents.

We looked at the garden. We looked at the bench. We thought of Jan and Elena and we smiled.

Dateless for the Dance

I’m sitting home while everyone else is at the dance. No one asked me to go. I knew this day would come but I thought it would be years from now.

Maggie didn’t want to go to the Girl Scout dance this year. She and I went together and then she and Elena and I went. Last year she announced that she would let me and Elena go alone this year. She’d said that the year before and then decided she wanted to go to.

Not this year. This year she told Kim that she just didn’t feel like going without Elena.

Me neither. There’s a lot of things I don’t feel like doing without Elena. But I still would have loved to have gone with Maggie.

They were as different at the dance as they were in every other aspect of their lives. Maggie dances like I do - very self-consciously as if she is counting every step - as if there is a right and a wrong way of dancing. Elena danced like her mother - with abandon as if the music is flowing through her - as if she was the personification of joy.

When we would go to the Boulevard Bash kids would be dancing to a DJ. I would point to Maggie’s friends up there dancing and ask her, “do you want to go up and dance?”

“No,” she’d say, “that’s ok.”

Once Elena started at Boulevard there was no holding her back. “Dad,” she’s say, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to dance with Sophie.”

“Excuse me?” I’d reply.

“There’s Sophie. We’re going to dance.”

“Do you mean, ‘Dad, can I go dance with Sophie’?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she’d say in words that look insolent on paper but were cute in person, “whatever.”

“Not ‘whatever’, you need to ask,” I said.

“OK. Daddy, may I please go dance with Sophie?” she smiled sweetly.

“Sure, we’ll be here.”

And she’d go over to Sophie who, I assume, would have the same sort of conversation with her parents. Then the two of them would run, hand in hand, to the dance area and find other friends to dance with.

I still see her dancing. Brushing her hair back every once in a while, head tipped back, taking all of the music in and converting it to pure enjoyment.

Jan

Our block is more of a rounded triangle than it is a rectangle. A triangle with a point at the bottom. Across the top is Woodland. We live on the Warrington side of the triangle - you can picture it running diagonally from the point on the bottom to the top right. There is actually a curve to it. Huntington runs along the left side of the triangle.

There are two twin houses down at the point where Warrington and Huntington come together called the two sisters. They mirror each other and look out onto the big grass strip the separates the two directions of Coventry Road. I don’t know if they are really called the two sisters or Kim just calls them that. She thought the Van Sweringen sisters used to live there but a quick online search suggests that they lived together in a mansion on South Park.

In any case, Jan and George owned the one that is mostly on Warrington. Jan was one of those people who anchored the neighborhood. We are lucky in our neighborhood to have more than one such person - but Jan was special.

Maggie and Elena loved walking by their yard on the way too and from school. They loved looking at the house. They looked forward to seeing Jan in the front yard. Kim remembers that her house was on the garden tour and she loved to plant flowers. She would come over and talk to the girls like they were real people worth talking to. Kids just know when an adult is really listening and not just humoring them. Elena and Maggie loved talking to Jan.

When Jan lost much of her hair to chemotherapy. She didn’t hide it under a wig. She wore a baseball cap and continued to work in the yard. Some days she would be out there without her cap.

It tells you what kind of a person she was. My girls never asked why. Jan was someone you saw, but she was more someone you felt. You felt her warmth. You felt her calm. You felt her presence.

At the summer block party in 2005 we sat and talked to her for a long time. We talked to George too, but Jan was the one we seemed to know much better. In mid October George and Jan hosted the neighborhood clam bake. We hung out in their backyard - adults only - and ate hors d’oeuvres and chatted while the bakes cooked. Everyone took their food down to the basement to eat. It was one of those nights where everyone is relaxed and comfortable.

Jan tired early. The neighbors helped George clean up the basement and put the chairs and tables back where they belonged. We said our goodnights.

I’m ashamed to say that it was the last night I would see Jan alive.

Two months later we went from house to house for the neighborhood’s progressive dinner. Jan wasn’t doing well. George joined us briefly for one of the courses but you could see the worry on his face. Fran asked neighbors to volunteer to cook meals for Jan and George. Kim signed up but Jan didn’t live long enough for us to actually cook for them.

Jan died in January. Someone, Fran or Carolyn, called us and told us about the funeral and the visiting hours. When the girls got home from school we told them that Jan had died. We told them that we were going to go down the street to visit the family. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. I’m so awkward around death. Wouldn’t we just be in the way?

The four of us walked down the street the same way we walked to school each day. We went up the front walk. Half of our neighbors were in the house already and the rest would follow. His family was there to support him and her family was there to say goodbye. We talked a bit to George and a cousin of Jan’s and shared our memories of her.

We looked around for Elena. She wasn’t in the dining room with us. I thought I heard her voice coming from the kitchen. I headed that way to see her talking to a woman I think is George’s sister.

“I just love this house,” Elena was telling them. “I’ve always wanted to see the inside.”

It was a six year old full of Jan’s spirit.

When it was time to leave, Elena still wasn’t ready. There were more people to talk to and more rooms to explore.

I held out her coat for her to take. Instead she put it on while I held it as if I was placing an expensive fur coat around her. She started to make the rounds one more time as we left the house but I cut it short.

It was tough to leave this house where Jan lived. To say goodbye.

Cursing the Darkness

It’s way too early in the morning and I’m leaving for my first trip of the year. I’m heading to MacWorld in San Francisco on a 9 am flight and so I’ve gotten up at six to finish packing my carry-on items.

Last night, Kim finished taking down all of the ornaments from the tree and packing them away. I carried the boxes upstairs where they will sit waiting for us next year. The tree stopped smelling of pine a few days ago. After doing my laundry and packing my clothes for the trip, my last job of the night was to take the tree out to the curb.

I propped open the front door and lifted the tree out of the outer base and carried it out to the curb. There’s a large pole across our entire tree lawn. I drop the christmas tree on the other side of the pole and unscrew the inner base from the trunk to take it back in the house.

The pole is there for a replacement street light. There’s nothing really wrong with the one that’s there. It’s 11:30 on a Saturday night and it’s brightly lit. It never fails to go on. The problem is that it doesn’t go off either.

It took me a long time to notice that the street light stayed lit during the day. Our neighbor Tom noticed that it happened when Elena died. Kind of a vigil.

And now they’re replacing it with a light that only goes on when it’s dark.

Choosing a Stone

Kim and I dropped Maggie off at Lizzie’s house for a playdate and headed over to Mayfair Monuments. We’d been meaning to order Elena’s headstone for months and just hadn’t done it. The place was just a couple of blocks from where Kim grew up. We’ve driven past this little building for years on our way from our house to Kim’s parents house and back. This was our first time inside.

We rang the bell for admission and were let in by a woman who ushered us in to another woman’s office. There are decisions you have to make.

What kind of stone? What color? What size? What shape? What do you want the stone to say? What font do you want to use? Are there images you’d like?

Elena would have loved to have been consulted on these decisions but we thought such a discussion would have been many decades premature. Maggie, however, had helped us pick out the color, shape, and contents of the stone.

It turned out that she hadn’t been specific enough. Rose color could mean any of a half a dozen colors. We liked the more orangey-red stone.

We also knew that we wanted a rounded stone and that we wanted Elena’s full name to be on it. “Elena Maxine ChunXue Steinberg”. That’s a lot of writing. Underneath it we wanted her birth and death dates: March 3, 1999 and February 22, 2006. A lot of writing.

We wanted a picture of a rabbit. Elena was born in the year of the rabbit. We also had the Chinese characters for her Chinese name. A lot of writing.

Finally, we wanted a quote from Elena’s favorite song. It came to Kim and me and about the same time. The same line from the same song: “more to do than can ever be done”. That, of course, was too much writing for one stone.

Elena had also loved stones so I wanted some of the roughness of the stone to show. Lakeview doesn’t allow rough stone on the sides but they do allow some on the top. Monica sketched rough around the edges of the top with a shiny polished area under the lettering. The sides would be smooth and, we decided, unpolished. On the front would be the quote from the Lion King.

Monica called her sister Michelle in. Michelle does the artwork and layout. Michelle came back with a couple of rabbits and told us to bring in the Chinese characters for her. Kim asked her about forget-me-nots. Michelle brought in a couple of photocopies of a group of flowers and of a single one. Kim asked if she could sketch something with each of them.

Of all places, Kim and I disagreed on the font. She liked the ones with serifs and I liked the ones without. Unfortunately, the one I liked didn’t support upper and lower case lettering. Michelle offered to do a markup with both styles for when we came back.

Kim admired a picture of a stone they had done. It’s something that amazes me about my wife. Even there - even given what we were doing there - she notices extraordinary beauty and comments on it. The sisters were pleased and told us that it had begun with a statue that the deceased had owned of two kids playing. Their father had incorporated it into a beautiful monument that looked like two kids sculpted in metal scaling a stone wall. One of them was using the headstone of the deceased as a leg up.

It was beautiful and I would have missed it if it weren’t for Kim.

We paid a deposit for the headstone of our daughter gone nearly a year. We asked if it could be ready for the twenty-second. Monica wasn’t sure. Kim mainly wanted to make certain that if we missed that date that the headstone would not be delivered near Elena’s birthday. Monica made a note of it.

Circles and Lighthouses

I’m having a hard time with resolutions this year. Of course there are things I need to do to improve myself - but would my being a better person have saved Elena? I’m working to separate these things that have nothing to do with each other.

Every time I put my iPod headphones in my pocket they get all tangled up. The first thing I have to do when I pull them out to use them is to untangle the knot that wraps left around right.

I’m sure it’s a metaphor. If I took the time to put some system into place or to wind them in some other way I wouldn’t be spending so much of my life untying knots.

There are so many things I could resolve to do differently or better this year. I could resolve to lose weight - again. I could resolve to be more patient or understanding. I could plan to learn to play an instrument, to learn to draw, to write a novel, or to learn a new language. I could resolve to listen more intently. The potential list is endless.

Resolutions don’t need to come on New Year’s Day. They tend to be ignored by Groundhog Day a bit more than a month later. That may be the limit for such resolutions. It’s roughly the same time period as Lent.

I’ve been thinking about Stephen Covey’s circles. Years ago when I was in graduate school I was spending a lot of time working but not really accomplishing much. Someone gave me “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

There were many little things that made the book worth reading. One was this notion of your circle of influence and your circle of concern. Think of all of the things that you have the power to influence and think of all of the things you spend your time concerned about. Covey represented each as a circle. He placed the circle of influence inside of the circle of concern. I thought that wasn’t quite right. There are things that you can influence that you don’t even think about - but that does complicate the point he is trying to make.

As you look at these two circles, often the larger circle of concern dwarfs the inner circle of influence. You spend your time worrying about things that you can’t possibly change in any way.

You are less happy and less productive the greater the area of this region of things you worry about that are outside of your circle of influence. You can actually work to improve this situation from two directions. You can increase those things you can influence and you can decrease those things you are concerned about.

I think that will be my resolution.

Notice, there is no circle of control. I can do things that influence outcomes but I can’t control them any more than I can grip a handful of water in my fist to hold on to it. The tighter I grip the more quickly it leaves my grasp.

I can freeze the water into ice. Now - now I can grip it and hold it tight. But in my hand it becomes water again and slips away. Much as I try to change it - it is water.

I can influence the safety of my children. I can do all that I can to keep them safe. But in the end I can’t control things enough to truly protect them without destroying who they are.

Covey also told a story of a captain aboard a large ship who detects another smaller vessel in his path. The captain radios the other vessel and tells it to alter its course or they will crash. The answer comes back that the captain should change the course of his large ship. The captain explains how much larger his vessel is and why it is important that the other vessel be the one to move. The answer comes back that the other vessel isn’t a vessel at all but a lighthouse which can’t move. Only the captain can avoid a crash.

I think there’s a resolution in there too.

I probably need to spend less time getting lighthouses to move. So many of my obstacles can be avoided. Of course it’s easier to scowl at them and explain why they should change - but they are lighthouses. As hard as it is for me to turn, it’s what needs to be done.

This years resolutions: circles and lighthouses.

King Meaty

King Meaty

It was one of those nights with the girls. Kim was out somewhere and I was getting them dinner.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Maggie. Really she said something more like “mmmmph” but I’d learned that that meant she didn’t know.

“Whatever you want us to have daddy,” said Elena. She was at the top of her sucking-up form. Anything to make Maggie look bad. “How about noodles?”

I said ok. I looked at Maggie, “do you want noodles too?”

“I guess,” she said.

“How ’bout Mac and cheese?” suggested Elena.

“I don’t feel like it,” Maggie said.

“What do you want?” I asked again.

“I don’t know,” Maggie said again.

I hated this game. “I’m going to make some spaghetti. How’s that?”

“OK,” Maggie said. So I put on the pot to boil.

For the next twenty minutes the girls alternated calling me to tell on each other.

“Dad,” Elena would say running in to the kitchen, “Maggie won’t let me use the computer.”

A minute later as that had been resolved Maggie would shout from the other room, “Dad, Elena is using the computer without washing her hands.”

I dumped the pasta into the pot and threw some frozen meatballs in a dish which I put in the microwave. Mmmmmm, fine dining. I called the girls to the table.

They washed their hands.

“Dad,” Maggie said, “Elena didn’t use the towel to dry her hands. She wiped them on her shirt.”

“Enough,” I said. “I’m tired of you guys running in here and saying ‘Dad this’ and ‘Dad that’.”

“Well,” said Elena putting her hands on her hips, “what are we supposed to call you? ” She looked sideways at me with a mischievous look. “Daniel?”

“No,” I said as I went to get the meatballs out of the microwave. I put them on the table and announce, “for tonight you can call me ‘King Meaty’.”

“King Meaty?” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Oh brother.”

“Well,” I said, “you can also call me ‘your highness’ or ‘your royal majesty’.”

I turned the stove off and drained the pasta. I put it on the table along with some carrot sticks and slices of cucumber.

“What do you want to drink?” I asked.

“Well, King Meaty,” said Elena, “I would like some milk King Meaty. Is that o.k. King Meaty?”

“Sure,” I smiled. “What about you?”

“Well, King Meaty,” said Maggie, “I would like some milk too please.”

It had worked. The girls were playing along. They weren’t fighting any more. After we finished dinner I asked if they would like some dessert.

“King Meaty,” said Elena, “I cannot hear you when you speak to me like that King Meaty.”

“What do you mean Elena?” I asked.

“Who is this Elena you speak of?” she said. “You may address me as Queen Frostine.”

“OK, Queen Frostine, what would you like for dessert?” I asked.

“That’s no fair,” Maggie shouted.

I was totally confused. What had I missed? What was so unfair?

“She can’t be a queen,” Maggie yelled, “I want to be the queen.”

“So you be a queen too,” I said.

“That’s just stupid,” Maggie said. “There’s only one queen.”

“You be the princess,” Elena suggested - and not kindly.

“I don’t want to be the princess, I want to be the queen,” Maggie sulked.

Uh oh. Good game gone bad.

“Ok, ok, ok, ok,” Elena said, always the peacemaker, “you be the queen, I’ll be Princess Frostine. Are you happy.”

Maggie continued to sulk. She could now be queen but she could see that it wasn’t a victory.

“Clear the table, girls,” I said.

They took their plates into the kitchen. I gathered up the serving dishes and said, “everyone take two more carrots.” They came back and munched on two more carrots while I put the dishes in the dishwasher.

“King Meaty,” said Maggie.

Phewww, I thought, storm over. “What?” I asked.

“Can we play a game?” she asked.

“Sure queen,” I said.

Maggie smiled. Elena raised her hand like she was at school and unable to control herself.

“Princess Frostine?” I prompted.

“How about Harry Potter Uno,” Elena suggested.

I looked to see if Maggie would agree but she was already on her way to get the deck of cards.

It’s good to be King.

Chili and Fudge

There are some traditions that begin with the birth of a child and some that end. The last time we held our annual Chili and Fudge party, Kim was six months pregnant with Elena. The year that Elena was born we just couldn’t get things together to hold it. I don’t remember - the kids were sick or something. The year after that went by and the tradition was gone.

Years ago, when I first worked under the name Fudge at WDMT I just loved coming in to work. Radio was one of those jobs where most of the talent was treated badly by management, most folks didn’t make a lot of money, but there was just something magic about it. I stood at a microphone in a little studio out in the middle of nowhere playing music for friends I’d never met.

By Christmas time I’d worked my way off of weekend overnights and was working the Saturday night club-style shift and the Sunday afternoon shift. Club-style was fun. Local club dj’s would come in with their stack of records and do some incredible live mixing on the air. Dean Rufus had come up with this as a way for us to broaden the music we played and to reach out to the community - it worked great.

I subbed Christmas morning to give the regular host the morning off to be with their family. I think I pretty much did that every year I worked in radio. This year I brought in a big tray of fudge I’d bought at Malley’s. I figured that all of the people who worked Christmas deserved a treat.

A year later I was working the morning shift with my partner Matt Morgan. Christmas was coming up and I’d worked under the name Fudge for long enough that there were people who didn’t call me anything else. I wanted to do something special for my friends but the Malley’s fudge had been pretty expensive and it wasn’t very personal.

I decided to make a couple of batches of fudge for my friends. I got the Kraft Marshmallow creme with the recipe on the back and made three pounds of plain and three pounds with nuts. I bought little gift boxes and wrapped up the fudge for a handful of friends and for my family and made a little card that I signed “Santa Fudge.”

Early Christmas morning I drove to each of my friend’s houses and left the little box by the front door. And then I went in to work.

And then I worried. What if they didn’t find the fudge. I’d left it by the front door but what if they went out their back door or went directly to their cars and just left? What if the paper boy thought it was for him and picked it up and took it with them?

One by one each of my friends called me at the station and thanked me for the fudge. My mother was the most surprised. How had I gotten the fudge out there? Who had I given it to? That year I had driven it out. It was my Christmas gift.

The following year, and for many years to come, I made six or more different kinds of fudge. In addition to plain, and nuts, I tried mint, orange, rum raisin, and a variety of other flavors. My favorites were always the mint and the orange. I added a Christmas poem to the tradition.

Each year, early early early Christmas morning I would load the fudge into my car and turn on Handel’s Messiah while delivering my homemade presents. Once I met Kim I would end at her parents house and then drive down to the GE Nela Park lights display before the sun came up.

After Kim and I were married for a year it became clear that I couldn’t leave her Christmas morning to deliver the fudge. She suggested a party. We thought about it a bit. You can’t just have people over for a party to eat fudge. You have to serve something substantial.

We decided to serve chili and put out all the fixings so that people could have it seven ways. We made a good beefy chili and served it with spaghetti, cheese, onions, peppers, olives, sour cream, oyster crackers and a host of other toppings. I cooked gallons of the chili ahead of time and froze them in plastic bags. People can’t come to a party and not bring food so the table was always overflowing with things to eat. No one ever had room for the fudge but there were to-go boxes for them to pack and take with them.

On Maggie’s first Christmas with us, people brought her gifts as well. That was the Christmas she received “meow one”, the ratty see through stuffed animal that she has loved to within an inch of its life. The next year Kim remembers her sitting all night in a brown chair looking wide-eyed at all of the people in her house.

The year after that Elena was nine months old. But no chili and fudge party.

We talked about bringing it back after we moved houses. But it seemed that everyone had a Christmas party and it was too hard to schedule yet another one. We talked about doing one for the Chinese New Year. We did a small one with some friends but never the big open house we’d had with the other party.

I’m told that my parents kept kosher til the day I was born. It probably would have happened a year or so later when we moved away from Boston to a small town in Ohio. Family traditions begin and end with births and deaths.