My lovely eldest daughter bought me a toy. It was the latest Mr. Potato Head, complete with Indiana Jones Costume. Since I am a big Indy fan, this was a real treat. I’m just waiting to get the “BIG” Lego set, I just don’t know where I would put it.

The newest installment of the Indiana Jones series comes out this Thursday. While I would love to be there on Opening night, there may be other things that keep me from the movie house. I’m sure I will see it this weekend, but the exact day is up in the air.

I’d like to say something insightful or thought provoking about the movie, but I’m just making this up as I go along.

My youngest is growing up, she is now a Junior in High School, and in her Second to last High School play. She only had a small role, but to me she was the loveliest lady in waiting on stage. I tried to follow her every time she appeared on stage, and every time I felt a pain in my heart. This is another one of those times when I hate being a widower. Her mother should have been there to watch this.

This is not the first show my dear wife hasn’t been to, and knowing my daughters it will not be the last. It startles me every time I watch them perform. Every time I feel that same sadness in my heart. Knowing it will come doesn’t seem to help much. While I don’t break down into tears much anymore, the emptiness is still very real. I can’t be both parents, I can only be the Dad. I try my best, but that isn’t always good enough, at least not for me. Not a lot more to say on this right now as I wonder what the next time will bring.

When do friends become family? When do family members become friends? I’ve heard many times that you choose your friends, but are born into your family. Is there ever a time you choose your family as your friends? Do you ‘adopt’ friends as family?

All deep questions, to which I have very few answers. I know how I feel about some family, and some friends. But that can’t be the same for everyone, can it?

I was born into a large family. When I came into this world, I had 1 brother and 3 sisters. A younger sister came along just a few months later (22.5 or so). I liked to think I could be friends with all of them. At times I was, at other times we were just siblings. I married into a family and got 2 more brothers, and 1 more sister. Yes, this is the way I thought of them. Time and distance prevented a normal ‘friendship’ but I felt it could be that way if distance wasn’t an issue. My sisters married and I got more brothers. My brother married and I had another sister. Marriages came and went, so did some of the new siblings.

Now I have four daughters. Two of them have husbands, so I now have sons. I don’t know how they think of me, I tend not to pry, but it doesn’t really matter. As long as they treat my daughters well, they will continue to be sons to me. It will be this way for all my girls and their spouses. I don’t buy the in-law route. You’re either family or not. And I’m beginning to think my family are also my friends. Different from my chosen friends, but to me they are friends on some level. This allows me to give that quality of concern that should be expected of family.

Now for friends I choose. Yes, some of them are very much like family. The brothers/sisters/cousins/strange-aunt or uncle 😉 that I found instead of being born into the family. Friends are the family I choose.

And when the weather turns cold (figuratively or realistically), it is good to have friends and family, or both.

One of my daughters lives in Florida with her husband and kids. This weekend, on Mother’s Day, some wildfires started in their part of the state. By Monday, their town was hit with fires. Sections of I-95 were closed due to heavy smoke. Monday night I was on-line looking for maps of the exact locations of said fires, and seeing if any area near them was being evacuated.

There are many things a parent worries about when it comes to his/her children. When they are younger it is how much they get to eat, how much they sleep, why they are crying, what hurts, why does it hurt, are they sick, ect. When they get older there are different things to worry about. School, sports, friends, drugs, ect. When they move out, most of the time you can put worry behind you. Until of course something big happens where they live.

Accidents in the area they live in, with cars that look similar to what they drive are seen on the news. Fires in their apartment complex. And then any other acts of nature, in this case droughts and wildfires.

For the better part of the day, I was more than a bit concerned about my ‘little girl’ and her family. I finally got another phone call saying that all the fires are contained. A relief was felt.

The other part of this, is that I am an ONLY parent. I emphasized the ‘only’ for a reason. On this earth, there is no other parent than me. This is a huge responsibility. I don’t have an Ex who can share some of the burden (I burden I gladly took by the way). No one to share ideas with. No one to complain about the kids too. I tend to internalize all of this, for better or worse. I know my girls can see it most of the time, but I’m not sure about the rest of the world. Even as the children grow older, and need a parent less and less, the worries still come. There are times when I wish I wasn’t on my own in this. Fires scant miles from where one of your children is, is exactly one of those times

I don’t know if anyone noticed the sunset I have on my blog page. This is a picture I took years ago on a late winter or early spring day (notice lack of leaves). This was taken on one of those old Sony cameras with the floppy disk to store the pictures, and also one of my early attempts at using the camera. I had 3 floppies of sunset pictures, this was one of the last and happened to be the best one. 1024×768 Jpeg file with a size of 110 Kb.

You may ask why I’m explaining all this today. I would ask that if I didn’t already know the answer. So I’ll tell you.

This picture was one of my wife’s favorites. She put it on our computer as the wallpaper (until she took many pictures of her chinchillas). I was happy that she liked my first attempt at digital photography. Anyway I now use this picture on almost everything that needs my personal stamp. I have it on my computer wallpaper, my cell phone wallpaper, I panel on the front of my laptop has this picture and so on. It is one little memory I have of the good times I had with my wife. And it is a picture in our woods that we purchased (a long way around) from my parents. It was my mother’s wish to live in the woods as long as I can remember. When I was in High School, she finally got her wish. So that picture also reminds me of my mother.

So for the two mothers in my life that I have lost, and for all other moms reading … Happy Mother’s Day.

Quite a few years ago my wife gave a speech about being hard of hearing. I found her hand written speech today. I wasn’t looking for it, but I was cleaning out a drawer looking for an old “Windows” disk. For those who know me and my safe places, it is amazing that I found the disk.

Anyway, today I held in my hands something my wife wrote. That is a very strange feeling. In reading her words, I can hear her voice, I can see her smile at certain parts of the speech. I can even see parts of this speech where I’m quite certain her anger/disappointment would show through. I never saw her give this speech, but I did today.

From her speech these words I remember because they were said more than once.

[ Quote from SJO]

… Over the years I have become quite adept at conversation by reading lips and body language, anticipating what will be said, filling in blank spaces in a sentence with the correct word or phrase based on subject matter, number of syllables in the words, and placement in the sentence.

Certainly, I am wrong frequently. This causes embarrassment and confusion, but the alternative is silence – no conversing because of fearing embarrassment. I don’t enjoy embarrassing myself, but I am not afraid of embarrassment — it does no permanent damage. …

That last sentence, if my girls would have learned only one thing from their mother, this would be right at the top of the list. We don’t enjoy embarrassing ourselves in any aspect of our lives, but as my dear wife said “it does no permanent damage.

To SJO 1962-2003. A life not long enough, but lived fully.

I’m sitting downstairs at the theater while tryouts are going on for “Little Women”. My youngest is one of the singers/actors trying out. I’m sitting down here to get out of the way, and to make sure they don’t ask me to try out. I don’t sing, I don’t dance, don’t ask. But as I sit here we have some very lovely voices filling the air. I’m not sure who is who, but I think I heard my daughter once or twice. Me, I would hate trying to determine who would be in the show. For a small little theater in rural Ohio, we have a lot of very talented people. I’m sure the director will have a tough time of it, but in the end this will make a better show.

Fun stuff theater. I’ve been involved in almost every aspect of it. I do stay away from musicals, except to run lights or back stage stuff. I’ve had lots of fun with all of it. This is sometimes my second home. So check out the dates of the show and come on by.

I used to have a very good head for dates and numbers. I can remember all sorts of birthdays, anniversaries, phone numbers and other such stuff. Somewhere along the line my head got full. I can’t seem to remember a lot of dates that I should.

Let’s see. I can remember all the birthdays of my brother and sisters. I can remember birthdays of my children, parents and even get close on most of the in-laws. I definitely remember all the important dates that occurred in and around my marriage. I remember my oldest sister’s phone number, even though she hasn’t had that one in years. I even remember the birthdays of my best friend in grade school, and the first girl I had a crush on.

Things I can’t remember… Birthdays of my daughter’s husbands and children. Anniversaries of said children and their spouses. Dates that specific bills are due. Dates for Drs. appointments. Dates of the next show one of my girls is in. Dates of the next show that I’m in… Dates set up longer than 1 week away. My cell phone number. My desk extension at work. Hmm a pattern is forming….

These dates are all more recent than the dates /numbers that I can remember. Maybe my mind is filled up with dates and numbers that I don’t need anymore. If there was only a way to replace the numbers I remember with the new numbers I should remember. If I could bottle that, I’d make a mint.

One of the things I remember from my childhood, is reading the comic strips of Charles M. Shultz. The Peanuts strip. I read them in the paper, I read them in book form. At one point I even had a Snoopy dressed in a space suit. To this day I will occasionally pick up and re-read one of the books I have, or put in a video of one of the seasonal specials. My wife and I had both liked the Peanuts Characters. And now, I assume my children like them too.

Today with family I saw a theater production of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown”. This is the second time I saw this show. The first was over 25 years ago when I was in College. My roommate played the part of Snoopy. Seeing this show with my youngest daughter, my dear wife’s parents and sister, and a young niece was a trip to the past for me.

For those of you who don’t know the show, it is a full musical filled interspersed with “panels” almost straight from the funny pages. Of the show I saw 25 years ago, the only thing I could remember was the “Suppertime” song that Snoopy sang. My roommate was blessed with a very fine singing voice, and wonderful acting ability. He was one human who could make you believe he was a dog. Not just any dog, but the one and only WWI flying Ace beagle. The Snoopy of today’s show at the point of “Suppertime” had me re-living that one short segment of my life. Good memories.

As good as the show was, the best part was seeing and being with family. My In-laws are some of the best people I know. Not always perfect, but who is? For my children reading this, of course I know who is perfect. That was a rhetorical question. Back to the family… In the years after my wife’s death, I have come to appreciate the good relationship that I developed with them over the years. So many times people treat there spouses family as outsiders. I tried to treat my wife’s family as my own, and I hope they treat me the same. When I got married so many years ago, my wife and I decided that we would accept both families as our own. That didn’t mean there was always smooth sailing. There were many “disagreements” between various members, but I bicker with my natural family, why should the same go on with the in-law side. The point here is that even today, four years after the death of a wife, daughter, sister, and aunt they are still my family, and that my friends is something to be happy about.

No, I’m not going to write about “Fiddler on the Roof” or small things used to start fires. I’m talking about the past, present and future dating world.

Now a very long time ago, or in other countries even today, you had arranged marriages. At some point in time, the girl’s family would get in contact with the boy’s family and the marriage would be set. When the dowry price was met, or a certain age was met, or some other condition. All well and good, but not always a happy match.

In another age, you had the major courtship ritual. You get introduced, meet social in groups for a time, and finally you ask permission to “court”. Usually this was done in the house of the girl under full supervision of her family. Usually slow, but it must have worked, the human species survived.

I never did any of that. I didn’t date much before I got married. I had 2 or 3 ‘girlfriends’ in College. None before that. College dating (at least for me) was lots of hanging out in each other’s dorm rooms. Maybe a dinner off campus every once in a blue moon — cash was tight. After College, I spent almost a year working. I had a few dates after college. My sisters were kind enough to set me up a few times. I would say, that after the 1st date, I had fun. I never did like that first date feeling. Then I finally got my own place. I had a small apartment warming when I finally got furniture for people to sit on. One of the people that came to that event was my future wife, — we just didn’t know it at the time. About 1 month later we had our first date. I still remember what we did, even though I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, if it was still there I could take you right to it. Unfortunately it is long gone. We went out to eat, to a movie (Return of the Jedi) and stopped afterwards at a Dunkin’ DoNuts. In less than 1 year we were married. We liked the first date so much, we did the same thing on our wedding weekend. I went from someone who had very little dating experience to a married man in very little time, but it felt right. My feelings weren’t too far off, since we spent 20 years together, and would still be together except for a beast called cancer.

On to now. Four years after my wife’s death, I find I may be ready to date again. I’m not 100% convinced of this, but the feeling is that it is almost there. Now I’m quite sure that I could live the rest of my life with that almost there feeling. I hated the initial dates that much. I’m not sure I want to go through that routine again. However, it is what it is.

Now onto how dating is done today. Most of what I’ve heard is that you go “online” to find a date. I guess that is a possibility, but it doesn’t seem right for me (more on that in a bit). I don’t go to bars, so I don’t think I’ll ever find someone through that route. There are also people who go to church just to find a date. Hmm, on that one, something just doesn’t seem right there… My big social events seem to revolve around a small little community theater I where I tend to hang out. Some of my closest friends were met there. But I know the people there, and I can’t see myself dating anyone I’ve met so far. Not that they aren’t nice people, but I know a connection when I feel it, and that hasn’t been there. My other activities are mainly things I do by myself, so meeting anyone interested in my hobbies will be difficult at best.

That is unless… There is always that…. Come on you can type it. Ok, that internet dating route. There are any number of dating sites popping up on the internet. It seems like there is a new one every week. Some you have to pay for, some are free. Some are free and pay, but you can only send messages if you pay. Some do “Scientific” personality profiles to get your perfect match. Others are like on line supermarkets for dating. And there is probably everything in between and farther along on each side. I’ve seen add for dating a specific race, religion, occupation, location and there are plenty of other qualifiers. For some reason, none of this appeals to me. I get a little freaked out over the thought of putting anything out in a dating site. I’ll blog, or visit boards for specific talking points, but a dating site? Am I just someones bit of data that goes through hundreds of personality profiles, or a slab of meat waiting to get checked out? Or worse, am I the shopper looking over those cuts of meat? It just seems like a foreign world to me, and I really don’t want any part of it.

Now back to my title… I knew a matchmaker. Shortly after I was married, we lived near a lady who took it upon herself to find the perfect match for everyone. She knew people from all over the area and then some. She would make sure that certain people were introduced. And she wasn’t above getting in there to push things together or pull them apart. Maybe that’s what I need. A real live honest to goodness matchmaker. Do they still exist? But then again, not for me.

My best bet is to get a new place, have a house warming and see if lightning strikes twice. Or not. Maybe I’m not ready after all. I guess I won’t really know that until I take that first step. For me, there are days when I still feel married to that lovely lady I met at my first place. There are days when I think she might be walking in the door. The next person I meet will have to be willing to take on those days. I don’t think they will ever go away.