Over the weekend while I was rolling across the carpets in the dining room and the living room with our elder grandson, 23-month-old Gabriel, on his home turf, I kept thinking how lucky I was, getting a belated second chance at fatherhood.
What with a nasty divorce and the accompanying acerbity, now in its 19th year, the earlier try at fatherhood was neither very long nor very fun.
Gabriel thought it was great sport to gently yank off my cap and my yarmulke, then to hand me back my black yarmulke while he put on my cap, backward of course. Just as quickly he would remove it, maintaining a perfect record against his grandmother. She has the fastest camera hands in the West, but she never was able to snap a picture before Gabriel uncovered his head.
After 10 or 12 rounds, it was time to repair to the dining room where his pre-school operator mom had converted a mattress into a trampoline for pre-schoolers with genetic springs in their shoes.
How many times can a grandfather, whose only remaining springs are encased in his memories, jump up and down, down and up, up and down with 6 enormously energetic 2-year-old boys and girls? Somewhere between 10 and 75.
Scratchin’ at the Sidewalk
Yesterday morning, after returning from a Farmer’s Market outing near a foggy beach, Gabriel and I hunkered down on the sidewalk in front of the porch.
Each of us found a different-colored, oversized cylinder of chalk to inscribe instructive markings in the cement. Before going inside, we also inspected a parade of industrious insects, oblivious to observation, making their way, by inches, to a new location in Gabriel’s front yard.
Second chances are precious. Even though it is 700 miles round trip to the House of Gabriel, we make an excursion every few weeks, for good and for selfish reasons, because Diane and I crave every opportunity to re-create our slipping-away parenthood.
Changing the Subject
We were in Northern California on Thursday night by the time the State Supreme Court’s ruling, sanctioning same-sex marriage, began to jubilantly reverberate off the lush green hills, forests and valleys that surround the House of Gabriel.
By the yelping headlines in every newspaper I could find, you would have thought the Giants had won the World Series or that Mr. Obama had just been declared President of the United States by fiat.
I know of no insider who saw this rocket coming.
In capital letters, the San Francisco Chronicle’s next-morning headline was, “MAKING HISTORY,” roaring above a page-wide photo of two sign-wielding, graying women boasting they have been together for 34 years.
The Chronicle’s editorial was bannered, “Equality affirmed,” and if there was a dissenting voice anywhere in Northern California, it was less than a muted squeak.
The head-spinning suddenness of the marriage ruling matched the bomb-like intensity with which it struck my family. A member of my family, who is very private and gay, is thrilled. He long has wanted to marry. And now, hopefully, he will win his wish.
Which Way Would Middle Lean?
Inveterate newspaper readers swam through oceans of opinions on Friday. We were asked to digest the overwhelmingly favorable written responses, the few opposing views and the several shrugs.
Ex-Angeleno Debra J. Saunders of the Chronicle, one of my favorite conservative thinkers, said: “Like many people I know, I am ambivalent.” We may find out in November whether Ms. Saunders speaks for a majority of Californians, and if so, which way they will lean.
“There was no substantive reason for the court to rule as it did,” she wrote in the afterglow of Thursday.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron George seemed to be saying the court acknowledged changing societal mores. Standards have moved. He seemed to be awarding one of life’s rarest gifts, a second chance. Now two members of my family, gratefully, have received second chances.