#family

It’s coming down at about an inch an hour and we just spent four hours shoveling. 

Welcome to the planet. Your mother and father are two of the best people I know and you are so fortunate to have them as parents. Remind me to tell you the story about your father and salsa in the garden apartments circa 2001. Just whatever you do never watch my speech at their wedding. 

A STAND BY ME walk with the Breartons.

I have to say I love video chatting with my brother from across the country. 

My brother is playing this course this weekend. Lucky jerk. 

Today my Dad is 70 and my folks are celebrating their thirty-second anniversary. Here he is with me when I was ten. Yeah, we’re related, look at that doofy grin.

This photo was taken right before we moved to Connecticut. Today is very much the kind of day that I’m blown away about how far we’ve come and how old we are now. They’ve been married as long as I’ve been alive, I can barely comprehend how awesome that is.

I bought him a seventy dollar bottle of scotch because I’ve been drinking his scotch all summer (scotch, scotch, scotchie scotch scotch—sorry, can’t stop myself), we had mexican food and then chocolate cake. My mom got him a Rangefinder so he can do his best Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack impression. I have to say I’m really lucky to have the family I have, and I can’t wait for my future kids to meet my folks. 

Continuing my obsession with Roland Barthes, here is a photo of him being held by his mother. The photo is titled “the Winter Garden Photograph,” from Camera Lucida, his book length discussion on photography.

“Around 6 PM: the apartment is warm, clean, well lit, pleasant. I make it that way, energetically, devotedly (enjoying it bitterly): henceforth and forever I am my own mother.

The more I read him the more I think about how much I obsess over my writing, the source of it, where it comes from and how it relates to my family. I wonder what strand of DNA, from what side of my family, this Bug comes from. Before my grandmother passed away, it had been related to me via my Dad’s sister that their father (my grandfather, Murray) was an obsessive letter writer. That would be the Russian side of the family, which explains quite a bit as I’ve noticed Russians are exceptionally literate and humanistic, to the point of being depressing. (No pun intended—I’ll be making this joke until I die; sorry). Just before I went home for the summer, my grandmother passed away and I was planning on interviewing her for a family genealogy book, so that we have something as to where we come from. The book is really just for my family’s consumption, to know who we were before the DiTraglias met the Press family, so that we may better understand ourselves. I think this is the sort of thing children should do, and now I regret the fact that I never took the opportunity to talk to my grandmother more about where we’re from.  

I would post a photo or some other Mother’s Day related note here, but my Mom doesn’t like when I show something related to my family. I’d really like to post a photo of us on the Amalfi Coast but, Yeahhhh—today is Mom’s Day and today of all days, you should listen and do as she asks. She went through a lot so you could be here. Shit, she goes through a lot now just to put up with you.

So happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you and thanks for teaching me the difference between “warm” and “worm”. I probably would not have fallen in love with words and writing if you didn’t set me straight all those years ago.

My Mother just sent me this photo. Mom and Dad are playing the Whiteface Inn course today for their anniversary. In the background, the mountain with the white scar down its face is (obvs) Whiteface Mountain.

My mother, having recently had a hole-in-one on the Links course of the Lake Placid Club Golf Course, has had her name added to a plaque in the Clubhouse. Just another reason why my Mom is awesome.