There's still a kid living upstairs, and I'm in no hurry for him to leave home

You don't have to watch any of this video, let alone all 4 minutes of it. I'm not even sure why I include it here, since it's only tangentially related to the subject of today's post. These are scenes from our house on Christmas Eve 2006, Jack's first Christmas. It makes me feel nostalgic.

Terry and I find ourselves in this interesting period of life in which four of our kids have moved out and we have a grandson, yet we also have a child of our own still living with us.

This isn't a case of, say, your 35-year-old son moving back in with you, either. Our youngest, Jack, is only 20 and a sophomore in college. He lives in the big bedroom on the top floor of our house.

For as much attention as we give grandson Cal, we still haven't finished the job of raising our own children (not that you ever really do finish). While Jack lives a largely independent life – as college students do and should – he still needs us for a lot of things.

We see him every day because he's a commuter student at Cleveland State University, so it's not like he lives on campus and is gone for weeks at a time. The way his class and work schedules are structured, he's at home a lot more than he's away.

The happy result is that we get to talk with him, eat dinner with him (sometimes), and play a role in his search for a career and a direction in life. Years after having done all of that with Elissa, Chloe, Jared and Melanie, I'm glad we still get to do it with Jack.

A lot of parents are excited to enter the empty-nest phase of their lives, and I'm sure we will be too when the time comes.

I'm just not ready for the time to come quite yet.

For one thing, Jack is fun. And funny. He probably plays the same role my siblings say I did for our parents, which was living at home throughout their 50s and early 60s and "keeping them young."

I love going to hockey games with Jack, talking about his plans for school and a career, trading funny YouTube reels with him, and generally having him around.

I can't imagine not hearing his footsteps upstairs when gets out of bed in the morning and heads to his bathroom.

I don't know what it will be like not having him around to gather the upstairs trash when it's time to take out the garbage on Sunday afternoons.

I simply can't fathom the idea of Jack and his cat Cheddar living anywhere but with us.

But it's going to happen, and probably sooner than I think. Like his brother and sisters before him, Jack will reach a point when the need to be on his own outweighs the financial and practical benefits of living with Mom and Dad.

I get that. Terry and I bought our first house when I was just 22 years old. The second we got the keys, I was anxious to move in and live by myself for a few months. That very weekend I moved out of Mom and Dad's place, the only home I had known to that point in my life. 

We're all programmed to seek independence in young adulthood. Whenever Jack is ready for that, we'll be there to support him.

But it's OK if it takes at least a few more years for it to happen. I really love having him around.

Parents, make sure you get video of your kids doing everyday things, not just the big holidays and special occasions

 

The advent of home movie cameras in the mid-20th century (and later the camcorder revolution of the 1980s) meant that families for the first time could capture video of events formerly documented only through still photos pasted into scrapbooks.

The result, for many of us, is a library of old reel-to-reel, VHS and Super 8 tapes on which our moms and dads recorded birthday and graduation parties, Christmas morning gift openings, and other such notable celebrations.

All of those are wonderful, and I'm grateful for modern conversion devices that allow us to transfer those memories into longer-lasting digital formats. But as a parent of grown children, I will say this: My favorite videos aren't necessarily the parties and school concerts, as great as those are.

My favorites are when we thought to record the kids just doing normal stuff. Whether it was playing with toys in the living room, interacting with siblings, or even something as seemingly mundane as reading a book on the couch, the clips I most value are the ones that remind me of the stuff of everyday life all those years ago.

The video above is an example of that. It was shot by Terry in late August 1999, just as our oldest child Elissa was starting kindergarten. It shows Elissa getting on and off the bus, and her almost-three-year-old sister Chloe saying how much she would miss her.

That's it. Nothing seemingly special, yet it means everything.

It brings me back to a time of the most enjoyable chaos I've ever experienced. It triggers memories of family dinners with young children, cherished bedtime stories, and everything else that made up the fabric of our existence.

So parents, keep on taking video of the big things. But every once in a while, record the smaller stuff, too. One day you'll be grateful you did.

(NOTE: Speaking of Chloe, she begins her 5-year medical school journey today with a week of orientation at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. Good luck, Dr. Edmonds! By this time in 2031, you will officially be Dr. Dr. Edmonds. Or Double Doctor Edmonds. We'll have to figure out how to say it...)

No more teenagers in the family

For the past 6,883 days, we have had at least one teenager in our family. Tomorrow that streak comes to an end when our youngest, Jack, turns 20.

I say "at least one" because for most of that time, there have been multiple teens among our children. There was one stretch from September 2013 to March 2014 when four of them were teenagers.

Come tonight at midnight, the counter resets permanently to zero.

It's another one of those little life milestones you don't think too much about until they actually happen. As I told someone recently, the combination of having our first grandchild and seeing the family teen years come to an end really brings home how quickly time passes.

Other than a string of car accidents and some other relatively minor crises, I've enjoyed having teenagers. I really have.

I got to see them all graduate high school and go off to college. Four have degrees, with Jack currently working his way through the second semester of his freshman year at Cleveland State University.

I've seen one get married and have a baby, one get engaged, and one build an incredible life with a longtime partner we absolutely love (that last one is Elissa, whose boyfriend Mark has long been a full-fledged member of the family and is one of the best bakers I've ever met).

On the other hand, as the kids have gotten older, I've come to realize that much of my fondness for their teen years stems from how much I didn't know. As they get into their 20s and 30s, they're very free about confessing stuff they did as teenagers that, in retrospect, I'm glad I wasn't aware of.

Ignorance is truly bliss, in this case.

Still, Terry and I can't deny that we've been blessed with five great kids who are turning out to be some pretty great adults. We experienced our share of homecomings, proms, high school sporting events and all the other stuff that comes with having children in the 13-19 age range.

And now we're past it all. Time to move on.

Which is just fine.

(Happy early birthday to the one and only Mr. Jack Tennant!)

For a brief time before COVID hit, my family and I were Cleveland hockey celebrities...sort of

"Celebrities" is way too strong a word, but we did appear on the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse (now Rocket Arena) video board many times throughout the abbreviated 2019-20 and 2020-21 Cleveland Monsters hockey seasons.

We have been season ticket holders for the American Hockey League Monsters since the franchise was born in 2007. Which means we have seen lots and lots of hockey games together. In nearly 19 years as Monsters Hockey Club members, we have watched the team win one Calder Cup championship and several playoff games, and we've also seen them lose a heck of lot.

Through it all, as we point out in the video above, the real key for us has simply been the chance to be together. More specifically, the chance to be together two at a time, as we have just two seats in our account (club level, second row on the aisle, right at the red line...the absolute best seats in the house).

In the team's early years, I remember Jared and I attending postgame season ticket holder skating sessions in which the only people on the ice were team mascots Sully and the Mullet Brothers, in-game host Olivier Sedra, a few other fans, and us. And that was it.

Nowadays, the Monsters lead the AHL in attendance every year, drawing north of 10,000 fans for most games. They're a hot ticket here in Cleveland, largely because they're so affordable compared with the major league sports in town.

We were selected to make this promotional video because we were one of the "founding families" among season ticket holders, I guess. Whatever the reason, we had a blast doing it.

Chloe and Melanie weren't available for the video shoot in our living room. And as you can clearly see, poor Jack didn't much want to be part of it.

Every time it would appear on the arena "Humungotron," we would receive a stream of texts from friends and acquaintances at the games. "We just saw you on the video screen!!" "That was so cool!" "It was so much fun seeing you guys up there!"

The video was shot and edited in January/February 2020. Once March rolled around, of course, the pandemic changed everything. The 2019-20 season was cancelled, and the number of games the followed year was greatly limited as in-person events slowly returned.

Things got back to normal in 2021-22, and our video was played several more times, but by then the always creatively marketed Monsters had new content to show their fans, both in the arena and online.

Our video eventually ended up in their virtual scrap bin, which is fine. It had served its purpose.

Our relatively short stint as stars on the big screen was over. We have maintained our season tickets and our memories since then.

Now the one thing we would like is another Calder Cup championship, if it's not too much to ask.

Two of my three college-educated daughters have gone back to school, and I love the reasons they're doing it

 

Elissa (left) and Melanie (right) both find themselves back in college. Chloe (middle) has a PhD and plans to go to medical school next year, but that's another post for another time.

My daughters Elissa and Melanie both earned bachelor's degrees in marketing from Cleveland State University. Both have experience in the professional world. And both are back at CSU for reasons of their own.

I admire them, especially when I consider the prospect of doing homework and participating in group projects years after my own undergraduate experience.

Let's hear from both to understand what it's like being a young adult going back to school and how they hope it benefits them long term...

Elissa (Age 31)

What are you studying?

Right now I am just taking a Biology 201 class. Next semester I am scheduled to take BIO 202 and Chemistry 201. The ultimate goal is to study environmental science.

Why are you doing it?

After working for a climate change organization for so long in marketing, I'm realizing I'm more interested in the science/research/policy part of climate change rather than the human behavioral/psychological/ marketing part of climate change. I've also always been interested in wildlife conservation and ecological restoration.

I thought about getting an MBA but realized it would make me miserable, so I started looking into getting a master's in environmental science. The only school that would accept me without asking me to 1) move, and 2) go back for a full science undergrad first was Cleveland State. If I take three undergrad science courses there, I'll be eligible to apply for the master's program in environmental science.

How long will it take you?

I don't know because I'm only taking one class, and I told myself if I hate it then I'll just let the dream die. But so far so good. I think the master's program is two years, so if I started next fall I wouldn't be finished until 2028 at the earliest. But again, I could dip out at any second. I'm keeping everyone (including myself) on their toes.

How is it going so far?

Going back to one of the most formative places of my life, where I met many of the people I love and became the person I am today, is a form of psychological torture I wouldn't wish on anyone but currently endure twice a week now. (Thus why I tried to go to LITERALLY ANY OTHER SCHOOL and couldn't find an in.) But at least I already know where the microwaves are on campus.

Also, biology is really hard, but I'm doing OK so far. I like learning about plants and cells. Recently I learned how to find variation and standard deviation for a dataset in Excel. I also learned about nucleotides.

Melanie (Age 25)

What are you studying?

I'm working toward my MBA.

Why are you doing it?

I wasn't diagnosed/medicated for ADHD until my last semester of undergrad, and that was the one and only semester of college I ever felt like I enjoyed and learned a lot from. I want that experience now that I have ADHD under control and feel like there's a lot I could learn. Also, I want a masters degree and felt like an MBA was the most broad and non-specific, since I don't really know exactly what I want to do with my life.

How long will it take you?

It's probably going to take me around 3.5 years, but that may change depending on my financial situation. Currently I'm only taking one class per semester because I'm paying out of pocket and working a full-time job. In the future if I can ever afford/feel like I have the time to do two/semester, then that would shorten the time. It's only 10 classes I need to take overall.

How is it going so far?

It's going well. My first class is 100% group work and pretty low effort. I could honestly probably do the assignments without any studying based on my previous knowledge and common sense, but in an effort to make it worth my while, I am doing the readings and taking notes and all that jazz. I am hopeful that future courses in the program will be less group work and perhaps a bit more challenging.

Sometimes it feels like your kids match their chronological age and sometimes it doesn't

Tomorrow our son Jared turns 27, which feels about right.

What I mean is that, yes, instinctively I think of Jared as someone in his later mid-20s. Or early late 20s. However you want to say it.

He's well established in his career, he has a wonderful fiancée we all love, and he's a responsible adult of the sort you expect your kid to be at this age.

Our other kids are also doing well for themselves, but with Elissa, for instance, I still can't believe she's 31. I can't believe she's 30-anything.

Maybe it's because she's the only one of our kids who has crossed that three-decade age barrier, but man, I have a hard time equating 4-year-old Elissa (who by my reckoning was part of our lives as recently as last year) with successful, mature 31-year-old Elissa.

It just doesn't seem possible.

And Chloe? Same thing. She's 28, married, and on the verge of becoming a mother. But to me she's "Little Chloe," which is how she would refer to herself when she was of preschool age. "Little Chloe, coming through!" is something she used to say that Terry and I reminisce about often.

Don't even get me started on Melanie and Jack. They're doing adult things now but simply shouldn't be. Maybe I've tried to hold onto their youth too long simply because they're our two youngest children, I don't know.

But yeah, Jared turning 27 feels about right. I've often called him "the hardest working man in sports communications" and I still think that's true. He puts in a lot of time and effort on behalf of his employer, the Tampa Bay Rays, a sure sign he has made significant progress since he was a hard-working but somewhat disorganized high school student 10 short years ago.

It's baseball season, so Jared is of course hard at work. He can't be in Ohio celebrating with us, but we'll at least grab him for a quick phone conversation tomorrow, I'm sure.

Happy 27th birthday to our oldest son and a man who fits his age.

Birthday Week makes you take stock of the relationships in your life

My brother Mark had a birthday yesterday.

There are a couple of times each year when I have a slew of family and friends celebrating birthdays all at once.

One is the month of March running into early April. I won't even get into the list of people in my life who have birthdays during those five weeks, other than to say it's long and includes both Terry and Elissa.

The other stretch of birthdays happens right now in mid-July. It doesn't involve as many people as that March/April run, but it's no less important.

It began yesterday with my brother Mark's birthday, it continues tomorrow with my good friend Kevin's big day, and it concludes on Sunday when my sister Debbie turns a milestone age.

I won't tell you exactly how old Debbie will be, other than to say it's a number ending in 0 that falls somewhere between 69 and 71. And she makes it look good.

Oh, and also, when my Aunt Peg was alive, her birthday was also this week.

All of these people have played important roles in my life, and they're all good folks worth celebrating.

The fact that they're each a year older this week makes me appreciate them all the more.

As I've often (morbidly) pointed out here on the blog, we all have an expiration date. As much as we would like to believe life as we know it now will go on forever, it won't.

One by one, I and the people celebrating birthdays are going to shuffle off this mortal coil. And that's OK.

Really, it's OK. It's the way of things, and there's no getting around it. Acceptance feels a lot better than dread and denial.

Anyway, I digress. Here's wishing the happiest of birthdays to my big brother, my big sister, and my buddy Kev, and here's to the memory of good old Aunt Peg.

I only wish to point out that you're all older than me and always will be.

This old house: Where we sleep, eat, and pile up memories

Later this month, we will celebrate having lived in our house for 22 years.

We moved in on July 19, 2003. I remember the exact date because...well, because I remember dates like that. There are vast expanses of my brain crammed with dates and details I really don't need taking up space perhaps better filled by more practical information.

I also remember that day because it was my friend Kevin's birthday, and while he has nothing to do with this story, I still equate move-in day with Kev's birthday.

Anyway, 22 years is in some ways a long time and in others not so long at all. My mom lived in her house on Harding Drive for 56 years. And I know lots and lots of people who have been in their homes nearly that long.

Still, it feels like Terry, the kids, and I have always been here at 30025 Miller Avenue. When we took occupancy of the house, Elissa was 9, Chloe was 6, Jared was a few weeks away from turning 5, and little Melanie was still two months from turning 3.

Jack wasn't even a thought yet.

The house has hosted graduation parties, countless birthday celebrations, our 25th anniversary shindig back in 2017, and a whole lot of visits and sleepovers involving family and friends.

I've cut the grass 8 million times (or so it feels). And I think Terry has pulled an even higher number of weeds from the flower beds.

It's the house to which we brought Jack when he was born in 2006. It's the place where we watched all of the kids grow up.

And for now, it's the place where Terry and I intend to spend at least a few more years, if not several.

When you're in your mid-50s and still able to get around well, you don't often think about stairs, for example, being much of an issue. But in 20 or 30 years, if we're still in the house, they very well could be. We have both an upstairs and a basement, and we travel between them regularly.

Interestingly, by the end of this year, our current house will be the place where I've lived the longest in my life. I spent the first 22 years and 4 months of my existence living on Harding Drive before Terry and I bought our first house in 1992.

It gets to a point that even if you decide you want to sell your home, you can't imagine anyone else living there after you. I still feel that way about the place on East 300th Street where Terry and I spent the first 11 years of our marriage. Three different families have lived there in the two decades since we moved out, but part of me still thinks of that house as ours and the others as just renters.

In the end, there's an obvious difference between a house (essentially a container for your stuff) and a home (a place where you always feel warm, welcome, and safe).

I would like to think we've created a nice little home on the southern edge of Wickliffe over 22 years filled with love, light and fond memories.

In the mood for some joyous chaos? Try a Brazilian soccer match

My daughter Elissa, my wife Terry, and me before the match enjoying some Brahma Chopp beers, which I would describe as Brazilian Bud Lite.

Last month, four of us (my wife, our kids Elissa and Jack, and me) took a one-week vacation to Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It was the first time any of us had been to South America, and the trip lived up to our every expectation.

Rio is a wonderful place with a rhythm and vibe all its own. I highly recommend it to anyone anxious to experience Brazilian culture and the friendly Brazilian people, though it does present some minor obstacles for the American traveler.

For one thing, while there are English words on signs all over the city, relatively few people there speak our language well. I wouldn't expect them to (it's THEIR country, after all), but we tend to get spoiled traveling to many popular destinations in Europe and Asia where you can find English speakers on almost every corner.

We learned the words you need to be polite in Brazilian Portuguese, including "hello," "goodbye," "please," "thank you," and "I request that you not steal my iPhone." Beyond that, we relied on hand gestures and the godsend of an app known as Google Translate.

Fluminense supporters waving flags
and screaming at the top of their lungs.

There's also quite a bit of traffic in Rio, so don't expect to get anywhere quickly. The locals accept this as a fact of life and make up for it by driving like suicidal maniacs.

That's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. We got around via Uber, and we found the Uber drivers to be somewhat aggressive in their driving. By "somewhat aggressive" I mean changing lanes on a whim without really looking, not bothering to even tap the brakes at stop signs, and seemingly targeting pedestrians for no other reason than the sheer sport of it.

While the Uber rides provided enough thrills to last us a long while, so did my favorite part of the trip, which was the chance to attend a soccer match between Rio-based teams Fluminense and Vasco de Gama.

We did this through a tour company that specializes in bringing foreigners to Brazilian soccer games. Buying tickets directly as a non-Brazilian is a difficult experience – perhaps intentionally so – so you have to do it through an accredited agent.

Our tour guide Leo was outstanding. He was effortlessly trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish and English) and did a good job preparing us all for the experience.

Because Brazilian soccer is an experience. From the pregame festivities outside historic Maracanã Stadium to the match itself, rare is the time you can even hear yourself think. Everything about it is loud. All the time.

A small portion of the pregame crowd near Maracanã Stadium.

The streets around Maracanã were filled with people sporting Fluminense and Vasco de Gama colors. While it was technically a home match for Fluminense, the Vasco supporters seemed to be out in greater numbers.

We were told that Vasco fans generally draw from the region's working classes, while Fluminense fans are somewhat more affluent.

Regardless, we didn't overtly root for either team. We just tried to soak in the atmosphere. Outside the stadium there were fireworks aplenty (M-80s and bottle rockets mostly) and people yelling specific chants/cheers for their team. Europeans and North Americans mingled freely and happily with Brazilians and other South Americans, giving the whole thing an air of intense but friendly rivalry more than dark menace.

Once inside, we were struck by a few things that differed greatly from American sporting events:

• The only reason we knew the Brazilian national anthem was playing was because the players stood at attention and the words appeared on the video boards. The fans continued cheering loudly as if nothing important was going on. We couldn't hear the song at all.
  
  
• Once the match began, everybody stood. Everybody. The whole time. There was virtually no sitting.
  
  
• On a related note, people clogged the aisles of our section rather than just staying close to their seats. If you wanted to go get a beer or visit the restroom during the match, you had to wade through a dense sea of screaming fans standing in your way.
  
  
• I say "their seats," but there is no assigned seating in Maracanã Stadium. You just claim a seat and sit in it. If you leave, the seat is fair game for anyone else.
  
  

That's me and my son Jack before the start of the match.

Each side's supporters seemed to have an arsenal of chants and songs they would shout together in large groups. These were obviously in Portuguese (as were all game announcements and video board messages), and Leo tried to teach me one for Fluminense.

When the Fluminense fans launched into this particular chant, Leo turned around and looked at me like a teacher quizzing a pupil, but I immediately forgot almost everything I had learned. Instead I just sort of yelled along using nonsense words that somewhat approximated what I heard from the fans around me.

No matter, though. It was still a lot of fun.

In fact, the whole thing was a lot of fun...loud, crazy, and carried out in a beautiful language I will never be able to learn no matter how hard I try. But in the end, Fluminense's 2-1 victory (even including the shower of beer that hit us when Vasco scored the first goal of the match) was undeniably enjoyable.

I will not, however, be trying out anything I learned in Brazil at, say, the next Cleveland Guardians game. Between standing in someone's line of sight the whole game and claiming seats for which I don't own a ticket, something tells me I would be in a lot more danger at Progressive Field than I ever was at Maracanã.

Is tearing up at old Raffi songs a symptom of man-o-pause?

Elissa & me, 1994

When my now-31-year-old daughter Elissa was born, Terry was working a 9-to-5 job at Lincoln Electric while I worked nights as a sports writer at The News-Herald.

This was an ideal arrangement from the standpoint of child care in that, once Terry went back to work following her maternity leave, I was there every day to take care of Elissa.

When Terry got home around 5:30pm, I would eat some dinner then head out to cover a game or go right to the newspaper office for a shift on the copy desk.

Elissa, a champion sleeper almost from birth, thankfully slept until about 9:00am every day, which was a good thing for someone like me who didn't get home from work until 1:00 or 2:00am.

Many weekday mornings, I would awaken to the sound of Elissa on the baby monitor quietly playing in her crib or babbling the way infants do.

I would get out of bed and go into the nursery, and Elissa and I would greet each other with smiles and hugs.

I would then put her on the changing table, take off her onesie or whatever jammies she was wearing, give her a fresh diaper, and dress her for the day.

Usually I would pop a cassette into Elissa's little Fisher-Price tape player to give us some music as we went about this morning routine. We had a lot of kid-oriented cassettes, but the ones I remember most were from Canadian musician Raffi.

Raffi put out a string of smash hit children's songs in the 70s, 80s and 90s, my favorite of which included "Baby Beluga," "Morningtown Ride," "Bananaphone" and "The Changing Garden of Mr. Bell." These songs and many others of Mr. Raffi's take me back to those mid-90s glory days of new parenthood like nothing else.

Elissa, of course, remembers none of this. She was too little. But I think back to the way I would sing to her and she would smile, and suddenly the room gets very, very dusty.

This wave of nostalgia is perhaps unsurprising for someone like me whose kids are mostly grown and who is 2 1/2 months away from becoming a grandfather.

I also wonder whether it's a byproduct of the tongue-in-cheekily named "man-o-pause," which medically speaking is more about the gradual loss of testosterone in men and its related physical effects.

In my reading about male menopause, I don't see anything about hormone-related emotional swings, so either I'm just making this up or else I haven't read the right sources.

Either way, I wouldn't mind going back for just one hour to 1994 and listening to some Raffi tunes while changing and holding a smiling baby who was as happy to see me as I was to see her.

What a time that was in our lives.

I am now vaccinated against yellow fever and never thought I would have to say that

Very soon, I'll be headed to Brazil with my wife, my oldest daughter, and my youngest son. We're looking forward to nearly a week in sunny Rio de Janeiro, home of the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue as well as, apparently, various exotic tropical diseases.

Well, to be fair, there's really only one main disease they warn you about, and that's yellow fever. And even that is more of a thing if you venture into rural areas, rather than Rio itself.

Still, if you're going to Brazil, the U.S. Department of State and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) make it pretty clear that you should consider being vaccinated against yellow fever.

Both entities take a decidedly passive-aggressive approach to this warning. Read what each has to say about traveling to Brazil and you walk away with a message along the lines of, "Look, you don't have to get the yellow fever vaccination, but if it were me..."

So we got it. All four of us.

Let me say two things about that:

• We had the vaccine administered at a place in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, very near our home. I found it on a list of approved yellow fever vaccination sites, but it was only after Elissa went that we learned it's less of a medical clinic and more of a beauty/wellness center that also happens to stock some vaccines. This was somewhat disconcerting.
  
  
• Guess how much the yellow fever vaccine costs. Go ahead, just take a guess...If you said $400, you were correct. Now guess whether anyone's insurance actually covers this cost. I will give you only one hint, which is that the answer is not, as I had hoped, "yes."
  

To that second point, the vaccination was just one of many unexpected costs and hassles we incurred getting ready for this trip.

Another was the Brazilian tourist visa, something that only just became a thing last month. If we had taken this trip in say, January, we would not have had to worry about it. But now travelers to Brazil have to apply for a visa.

The visa itself is $80 per person which, eh, isn't so bad, I guess. But the Brazilian government's frustratingly exacting standards when it comes to uploading your passport bio page, submitting a precisely edited and cropped head shot, and answering questions written by someone who likely did well in English classes at school but still lacks that real-world touch when it comes to getting across their true meaning, made the whole process more difficult than it should have been.

One good thing in all of this is that our travel itinerary and reservations were completed early on by Elissa, our oldest child and top-notch travel planner. At least that part of it hasn't been difficult.

What could be difficult, though, is getting back from this trip in one piece, given the list of other diseases besides yellow fever the State Department says can sometimes be found in Brazil. Those include chagas, chikungunya, dengue, zika, leishmaniasis, rabies, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and the always-festive traveler's diarrhea.

Why didn't they just throw cholera. diphtheria, beriberi, rickets and the vapors in there to complete the cavalcade of 19th-century maladies we could theoretically contract?

Despite all of that, though, I'm very excited to go. It's going to be like the Oregon Trail of international vacations.

Q&A with the Kids - Part I - Elissa

 (NOTE: You always hear from me, so I thought it might be fun to hear from the kids for a change. We begin our Q&A With the Kids interview series with my 31-year-old daughter Elissa. She is among the smartest, funniest and most interesting people I know, inside or outside of my family.)

What was the best thing about growing up in a big family?

Always having someone to play with/boss around. Never had to worry about finding extra players for a board game. We had enough people to make two sparsely-filled kickball teams. I also feel like the general sense of belonging and love was good. And I got very good at reading in noisy environments because my house was loud 24/7. I have since lost this talent, but people noticed it when I had it. 

What things didn't you like about it?

Four people to play with is also four people to fight with! And you have to share everything: TV time, computer time, toys, parental attention, food, bedrooms, and everything else. I still think I'm terrible at sharing because I got used to hoarding resources as a lifestyle. And I can't eat snacks normally, I have to devour them as soon as they enter the house out of inherited fear I won't get any in time. It scares Mark and he often has to hide junk food from me in various secret cupboards. I also didn't like when I babysat Jack and he threw up on me.

What are your favorite memories of things we did as a family?

I think we had great vacations and staycations. I really liked the week we stayed at home and pretended to have a vacation because Dad took off work, which was very Midwest poor of us but in a classy way. I liked going to Red Robin for birthday sundaes and freckled lemonade and having dinner at Grandma's house on Wednesdays. I liked board game tournaments and family kickball. We did a lot of other stuff like making snowmen and playing Barbies and going to the library and community pool, but not all seven of us at once, so I am not including them here. 

Elissa and me, 1994

What is something you wish you could have done or had growing up, but you couldn't because you had four siblings?

TRAVEL. Before college I had only been to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, and Florida. My boss has two kids and they've spent a month in Scandanavia, a month in Italy, a month in Taiwan and Japan, etc. every summer. Those little California worms have no idea how lucky they are. 

Do you want kids of your own? Why or why not?

No! And that is a full sentence requiring no explanation.

Elissa and me, 2013

What was your favorite thing Mom used to make for dinner? Do you ever make it for yourself?

I love Mom's homemade granola. Her beef stroganoff and London broil really stand out to me, too. And obviously her pizza. I've been vegan for 8 years now, so while I still have her pizza with vegan cheese and veggies, it's not as easy to veganize a flank steak for London Broil. I make my own beef stroganoff recipe now with Beyond Steak Tips and Kite Hill cream cheese, and I make my own granola with whatever grains and seeds I have in the cupboard!! 

Here's what I'm doing to prepare to become a grandfather

Nothing. I'm doing nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited my daughter Chloe is due to give birth to our first grandchild in 4 1/2 months.

It's just that, in the grand scheme of things (haha, "grand"), Grandpa is the most fun and easiest job ever. My assignment, once this little one is born, will be to love him, play with him, and teach him stuff.

I can absolutely do that. All of it. Bring it on.

There's no manual to read in advance. I don't have to strip wallpaper and paint nursery walls like Terry and I did back in the 90s when we started having kids. And speaking of Terry, she is already in the process of preparing our house for a baby. My input there is minimal.

The only thing I have to do as Grandpa is to avoid doing the one thing my own dad, an otherwise outstanding grandfather, did when Elissa was a toddler.

Elissa was at my parents' house eating lunch, I think. Terry was there, too, and specifically said Elissa couldn't have any potato chips until she ate some of her healthier food.

But my dad – always one to spoil his grandchildren – gave Elissa those chips anyway. Just handed her the can of Pringles, right there in front of her mother.

Terry fumes about it to this day.

Note to self: If Chloe says the child cannot have or do something, no matter how much I want to spoil him, honor his mother's wishes.

Unless I want her holding a grudge against me 30 years later.

Having an adventurous daughter means you end up in some exotic places

 

One day several weeks ago, Elissa sent me the text above.

The minute I read it, I knew my fate was sealed. There was no way I was saying no to an invitation to visit Brazil.

Thus, next month, Elissa, Terry, Jack and I are hopping on a plane and heading south for five days in Rio de Janeiro.

It would never have occurred to me to travel to Brazil. I simply wouldn't have thought of it on my own.

But Elissa thought of it because she is a traveler (and travel planner) par excellence. One time she went to Sweden by herself and attended a Kendrick Lamar concert in Stockholm.

Again, by herself. Who does that?

Elissa and her boyfriend Mark will have just returned from Scotland by the time we take this Brazil trip, so Mark opted to sit this one out. I don't blame him. International travel, while always a thrill, is also exhausting.

You may recall that my last overseas trip was to Paris to attend the 2024 Olympics. I came home with a head full of memories and a body full of COVID.

You take the good with the bad, I guess.

One of the great things about Rio for American travelers is that the time difference is negligible. The city is just one hour ahead of Cleveland this time of year, which is great.

On the other hand, getting there is going to be a bit arduous. We take an afternoon flight down to Houston, stay there a few hours, then board another plane for an overnight flight to our destination.

I don't sleep particularly well on planes when I'm not in business class, so I'm expecting that first full day in Brazil to be a tiring one.

Still, it's Brazil, and who knows whether we'll ever have the chance to get back? So off we go.

We have somewhat of a personal connection to the country in that we hosted two Brazilian students in our home for a week back in 2012. Paula and Luiz were wonderful young people, and we still occasionally connect with them on Facebook.

(Click here to read a 13-year-old blog post about that experience.)

I'm looking forward to meeting new Brazilian people on this next adventure. They are, as a rule, outgoing, generous and very hug-oriented people.

I just wish we could get to them without the whole overnight flying thing.

Our oldest kid consistently brings the funny

One of the funniest people I know was born on this day in 1994. She also happens to be my daughter Elissa.

Elissa's humor is perhaps best described as "dry," "biting," and I'll go so far as to say "dark."

Whatever you want to call it, she makes me laugh all the time.

She is, for example, a master of using capital letters to humorous effect in texts. A funny word is somehow 10 times funnier when Elissa types it in all caps for emphasis.

Each of our kids has the funny gene, but Elissa started at a particularly early age. I remember one time when she was very young – maybe 18 months old – riding in her car seat while Terry and I sat in the front. A song I liked came on the radio, so I started singing along.

Suddenly from the backseat came a little voice urging me, "Sing it, Scotto."

Terry and I died. Elissa knew she was funny, and she has never wavered in her comedic confidence since.

Elissa's hobbies include crocheting clothes for her plastic goose Fernando, who sits in her front window and entertains the whole neighborhood with his fashionable 'fits. Only someone with a deep sense of the absurd would spend so much time making a plastic goose look good.

I am inordinately proud of her.

Happy birthday to our first child and the headliner of our family comedy festival. And thanks for the laughs, kid.

Yes, Ring camera, I know there's a person at my back door because it's me...again

Do you have one of those Ring doorbell camera thingies? The ones that show you who's at your door or walking up your driveway?

Or, depending on how you have it set and the direction it's pointing, when a squirrel runs by or a bee lands on a flower 100 yards away?

We just got a Ring last month. Actually we've had it for quite a while, but it was only recently that my daughter Elissa and her boyfriend Mark came over and installed it for us.

It's not that the Ring is especially difficult to set up, but there was some mechanical work involved, and well...as we've established, it's better if you don't give me tools of any kind.

It helps, too, that Mark is very mechanically inclined. I wasn't there when he got the Ring doorbells mounted outside our front and back doors, but he probably did it in less time than it would have taken me to pull everything out of the package.

He also cooks well and is generous with his time when it comes to helping others. It's disgusting.

Anyway, the Ring has worked out fine, but at first it was more of an annoyance than anything else. It's designed to detect motion and to tell you when a person is approaching your home or a package has been dropped on your porch.

Which sounds great except for the fact that, 99% of the time, the people approaching (or leaving) our house are us.

For days after the Rings went up, this sequence repeated itself:

I would walk out the door, my Apple Watch would vibrate, and I would immediately look at it, only to find a small photo of myself with a notification reading, "There is a Person at your Back Door."

YES, I KNOW, THAT PERSON IS ME.

If I was headed to, say, our mailbox, my watch would again vibrate seconds later. And I would again check it, forgetting that it was going to be another Ring notification, this one telling me, "There is a Person at your Front Door" as I came into range of the front camera.

This has happened over and over, and I have yet to try and figure out how to change the motion sensitivity of the cameras. Eventually I might just turn off the notifications altogether.

Which largely defeats the purpose of having a Ring camera.

But at least I will maintain my sanity.

ATTENTION POTENTIAL INTRUDERS: Yes, there's a Ring camera there, but trust me: I'm not checking it. You're free to enter our home as you please. And don't hesitate to rip the Ring camera off the door frame and take it with you.

It's already to the point that I can't clearly remember when the kids all lived at home

I used to live with all of these people. Just don't ask me about the details.

It's not like Terry and I are 80 years old or anything. We're not even officially empty nesters yet.

But to my surprise, I have trouble remembering the days when all seven members of our family lived together at 30025 Miller Avenue. The last time it happened, I think, was 2015. Maybe 2016.

Which for the math-impaired isn't even a decade ago.

Yet things get blurry when I try to recall what the mornings were like, or how we all squeezed in around the kitchen table for dinner. I was at work quite a bit of the time, of course, but I was there enough that I should be clearer on the details.

What I do remember is general chaos most of the time. Sports, band, church activities, movie nights, sleepovers, vacations. It was great, but it has all run together in my increasingly addled mind.

It's the small-but-important details that have escaped my brain. Who slept in which room? Who left the house first in the morning? At what age did they start spending more time with their friends than with us? Were Terry and I the only ones who woke up for late-night infant feedings, or did the newborns also awaken their siblings?

It's all a jumbled mass that has separated itself into two broad periods of time: the years when Elissa, Chloe, Jared and Melanie lived with us (1994 to 2022) and the years when it has just been Terry, Jack and me in the house (2022 to the present).

The particulars are increasingly fuzzy.

Naturally, this effect is most pronounced with my 30-year-old daughter Elissa. I know she lived with us for the first 20 or so years of her life, and I remember many individual moments and milestones, but the day to day is indistinct.

What did she eat for breakfast? How often did she hang out in the living room and talk with us? Where did she do her homework?

You got me. I was there, but I just can't recall much of it.

I would feel much better if other middle-aged parents consoled me with tales of their own kid-related amnesia. Otherwise, I can only conclude that my cognitive decline is accelerating and I am that much closer to being a drooling mess who can't even remember yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

Those three months when the kids' ages are easy to remember

Me trying to compute the exact ages of my children

I call August through October "birthday season" in our family, as three of our kids were born in this time frame.

It starts with Jared on August 5th, continues with Melanie on September 21st, and culminates today with the anniversary of Chloe's birth.

In addition to Chloe being a person worth celebrating, I also like getting to October 23rd because it means that, from now until late January, all of the kids' ages are either even or odd and thus easy to remember.

Today, for example, Chloe turns 28. That matches nicely with Elissa (30), Jared (26), Melanie (24) and Jack (18).

Until Jack's birthday arrives on January 27th, I don't need to give much thought when someone asks me how old my children are. As long as I remember Elissa's age – and I always do – I can just step down in two-year increments through Melanie, then subtract another six years for our relatively late-in-life baby Jack.

Once Jack turns 19 in a few months, though, it all goes out the window. It will take me a few extra seconds to get all of the ages in order in my head, at least until we get back around to next year's birthday season.

Your kids reach their 20s and 30s and suddenly their exact ages are not only a little blurry, but in some sense a little less important, too. There's a lot more of a difference between, say a 10- and 12-year-old daughter than there is between a 26- and 28-year-old.

I think the same way about myself. I'll be 55 in 10 days. To me, 55 is pretty much as the same as 51, 52, 53 and 54 were, and probably essentially identical to 56, 57, 58 and 59.

Of course, by the time I get to 60, I'll probably start forgetting the kids' ages entirely, no matter what time of year it is. At that point, family birthday season won't mean much.

But for now? It's a life saver.

(And happy birthday to Dr. Chloe Edmonds!)

Happy birthday, Dad

My dad and me, circa 1980. Nice bowtie, Scott.

Next month my dad will have been gone for 25 years, which is strange to me.

On one hand, it feels like 25 years since he passed away. So much has happened since that terrible night in October 1999, not the least of which were the births of his last two grandchildren (my daughter Melanie and son Jack). So many milestones missed, so many sporting events I would have loved to watch with him.

At the same time, it doesn't feel like 25 years ago at all. I can still picture him. I can still hear his voice clearly. Heck, I can still smell his post-shower Aqua Velva aftershave! (I am a frequent shower-taker just like he was.)

I think he would be pretty proud to see how his family is doing now. My mom, his wife of 48 years, is gone now, as is my sister and his oldest daughter Judi. But the rest of us are doing OK.

My sister Debbie and brother Mark are the most youthful 69- and 67-year-olds (respectively) you will ever meet. You would have no clue of their chronological ages just by looking at and talking with them. I love them a whole bunch.

Dad's oldest grandkids, Mark Jr. and Jessica, have children of their own and are among the best people I know. They've both lost their moms but soldier on with their wonderful families.

And Terry and I can certainly count ourselves blessed not only by all of our kids but also by the lives we get to lead. Speaking for myself, at least, I don't feel I especially deserve any of it, but I know our situation would have made Dad very happy.

In fact, if he had somehow made it to 95 (the age he would have turned today), I'm sure his life would still revolve around his kids and grandkids, as it did up until the day he died.

This is the point where I'm supposed to tell you to hug the people around you and tell them you love them, but you know that already.

You also know to count your many blessings, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded.

One thing I learned at the Olympics: We should let the Dutch run the world

Last week I was in Paris with my wife Terry, my daughter Elissa, and Elissa's boyfriend Mark. We were there for the Olympics, and other than coming home with a case of Covid to a house without electricity thanks to a powerful storm a few days earlier, it was incredible.

We didn't get to any of the truly high-profile events. Or at least I didn't. I was already coming a day later than Terry, Elissa and Mark, but a delayed connecting flight forced me to miss my plane to Paris and to arrive on Sunday morning, rather than Saturday afternoon as planned.

The result was that my three travel companions got to watch the U.S. women's soccer team defeat Japan 1-0 on Saturday while I was still hanging around the airport in Atlanta.

Even though I wasn't there, my favorite thing about that match was that a number of people apparently asked to take pictures with my family, especially Elissa and Mark, who were dressed like this:

Elissa is on the left and Mark on the right, The woman in the middle was one their adoring fans at the U.S.-Japan women's soccer match who asked to take photos with them.

I just loved that. Elissa says cowboy hats, in particular, are a novelty for Europeans, who quite naturally don't get to see them very often.

Anyway, I didn't make women's soccer, but I did get to attend women's field hockey and a session of track and field. For all the hassle it was to get to the some of the venues – and make no mistake, the endless subway rides and countless steps we took to reach these sites were a hassle by any definition – the atmosphere, energy and fan camaraderie at Olympic events almost can't be described.

As Ferris Bueller would say, I highly recommend it.

Among the people we encountered during our week in Paris, my favorite were the fans from the Netherlands. They come from a relatively small country, but when their nation is represented on the international athletic stage, they show up loudly and proudly in large numbers.

I quickly realized that all of us who don't happen to come from the Netherlands/Holland have quite a bit to learn from the Dutch. To the point that I think we would be better off if we formed some sort of world government and allowed the Netherlanders to oversee it.

Three reasons why:

(1) They're smart: Mark and I were standing in line between field hockey matches outside Stade Yves-du-Manoir waiting to refill our water bottles. The line was long and the sun was hot. At one point the two Dutch guys in front of us persuaded almost everyone to move the line about 10 feet to the left so we could all be in the shade. It was a simple idea, but it hadn't occurred to anyone else. They convinced several people with whom they do not share a common language the mutual benefit of shifting the line over. That takes impressive communication skills. And brains.

(2) They're very comfortably bilingual: We talked briefly with the two smart Dutch men, and their wonderful grasp of English reminded me how effortlessly people in that part of Europe switch among languages. I worked with many people at Goodyear who were fluent in at least three languages and it always impressed me. In my experience, people who can speak in multiple tongues are generally people worth listening to.

(3) They proudly wear orange in mass numbers: While the flag of the Netherlands is red, white and blue, the national color is orange. Their fans deck themselves out in orange shirts, orange pants, orange hats, orange socks, etc. When we saw them take on Great Britain in field hockey, the stands were a sea of orange and orange variants. The only people not wearing orange were the relatively reserved British fans and us. Everyone else was cheering in unison for a Netherlands team that would go on to win the gold medal in the event. Want results? Get everyone on the same page, no matter their role in the process. The Dutch have known that for years.