Family Life - Love Among the Ruins

This is what our summer has been like: We’ve all been together every weekend and sometimes it’s been great and sometimes it’s been hard. The baby is sick this weekend and though he never cries normally he sure is crying now. His mum Carrie went running and a big golf ball-sized lump popped up on the side of her knee after. (The surprise that Fate had for us all last summer was to learn that Carries has the auto-immune disease known as Rheumatoid Arthritis, this athlete, this former Crew girl and Rugby player. Last summer she could not lift a glass of water to her mouth on account of it. Now she’s almost all better thanks to the new drugs but feels – I know she feels – that her youth is over.)

That’s Old Dave with the white hair. He still has his health and is still the strongest man I know aside from John Magee, shown here bench-pressing our first baby a couple of summers ago.

That’s the new child, the little sickie on the far right.

And me, I’m taking the picture so I’m not in it. My health is good except my neck hurts all the time. I have a mental image of myself as the Cat in the Hat with my skinny neck making all this trouble. The discs are bulging forward, squeezed out of alignment like marshmallow between two squares of graham cracker. The shot they give you for this feels like cold death must feel as it zizzes instantaneously through all your ductwork but it helps for six months or so and I will be glad to have it again soon and I'm content.

The baby has found one of the cats now and is patting him and seems better for the moment anyway. I love watching the ones who are watching each other. That’s family life I guess, and I sure thank God for it.