Writing for Mama Kat’s Writers’ Workshop prompt #1 (except instead of the letter being to me, it’s to my son).

Dear Menininho,

Grampa Gary here, your mom’s dad.  First of all, let me say, I love your name. It’s the name I’d picked for your mom (your Nona and I thought she was a boy); it’s partly my name. It is, in a word, groovy. However, I still would have preferred your parents to name you Robert or Dylan, after the great Bob Dylan. But what do I know about names, anyway? I gave myself the nickname Juan Garcia and my family came over on the Mayflower.

Now, you don’t remember this, but we met before you were born. My dad, your Great-Grandpa Brown, died a few days before your birthdate and the two of us sat you down and spent those days teaching you how to be a member of the family, what it means to be a Brown. We told you about the family you’d meet once you were born and how much they’d love you, and all that jazz.

But really? We just wanted you to carry on the tradition of driving everyone nuts.

Remember last week, when your mom sat you down with a nutritious lunch of broccoli and whole wheat bread, your favorite? And then she sat down with a bowl of bean with bacon soup and a good book? But something in you cried out for that unnaturally-orange-colored-goodness, and you weren’t happy until you had some. [Specifically, every other bite.]

That was all me. I laughed so hard I thought I’d die…except I’m already dead. Your Nona HATES that soup. HATES IT. And now I get the last laugh because I’ve passed my love of it on to you. I’m a genius.

And while we’re on the topic of smarts, let’s talk about the whole cat-biting incident. Funny? Yes. Totally avoidable? Also yes. Did you forget everything I taught you about animals? 1) Convince your parents to let you have a dog. 2) Never walk behind a strange horse. 3) Don’t bite your cat’s tail.

In all seriousness, I wish I were there to watch you grow up. I wish I were well. But know that I’m having fun with my dad, and we’re keeping close watch on you. Give your Nona a hug for me, stay out of trouble (well, stay out of tooooo much trouble), and know that I love you.

Love,
Grampa Gary aka Grampa Garcia

My dad and Grampa Brown

Since having Menininho, Valentine’s Day has become much less of a big deal in our house. Pre-baby, we’d get dressed up and go out for an Italian meal (and for Brasilian food on our anniversary, to celebrate our heritages). This year, we decided last minute on Saturday to try Applebee’s, where I had a very disappointing pasta dish and Mark ended up with some cheese dip appetizer because that was the only thing he could be confident was gluten-free.

Aaaanyway, the point of this post is not to talk about the flies that accompanied our meal (talk about nasty!), but to tell you about a family tradition: the Valentine Man. As far back as I can remember, each Valentine’s Day I received a small gift from the mysterious Valentine Man. When I was little it was a My Little Pony. As I got older, it might be a CD or a box of my favorite donuts. The gifts were never costly, and I appreciated that it was my dad’s way of letting us know he loved us, when his illness often kept him from being able to express that.

The Valentine Man is a tradition that Mark and I want to pass on to our kids. We went through Target tonight, looking for after-Valentine’s deals because, let’s be honest, it’s not like the baby knows/cares, but next year we’ll be more organized about it and do a card and everything. For now, though, Menininho is enjoying the toys he can take to the playground sandbox when the weather warms up in a few weeks.

Do you have any Valentine’s traditions?

And, have you entered the Have a Heart giveaway?

This week I’m answering the MamaKat’s prompt #5: Describe a moment you felt embarrassed by your parents

I think a more apt prompt would be “When WEREN’T you embarrassed by your parents?” My mother is not usually one to over-share or cause a scene (except when she passed my baby picture around my class in middle school, or took my girlfriends and me to see Spice World [I only saw it out of peer pressure, I tell you!] and screamed OH MY GOSH THOSE ARE NAKED BUTTS COVER YOUR EYES! during the “male dancers” part…). My father, on the other hand, was a bipolar artist. We lived in a small town and EVERYONE knew who he was, for better or for worse.

Now, in high school we lived in a house whose back could be seen well from the highway. Not built by us, it was an open-beam home and had been constructed with a crane dropping in the skeleton of the house, which caused attention in our town: enough that we got a lot of unsolicited feedback when we did some necessary remodeling.

Christmas was Dad’s favorite season of the year. He loved to decorate the house inside and out, sometimes in unconventional ways. The new house proved to be his perfect canvas, and our first Christmas there he decided on a blue theme.

I don’t have a problem with blue Christmas lights. I do have a problem with abstract designs done randomly all over the exterior of the house in those huge, no longer sold, blue Christmas lights.  Frustrated with trying to detangle the lights, my dad literally threw the whole lot of them onto the side of the house and nailed the mess in place.

You can imagine the comments I heard around town.

The icing on the cake though occurred when I was being driven home from a babysitting gig by a neighbor. “Oh my GOODness!” she yelled as she slammed on the breaks. “YOU HAVE THE VIRGIN MARY ON THE SIDE OF YOUR HOUSE in Christmas lights! How did your father DO that?”

I looked at the mottled mess.

“Oh, you know, he’s really creative like that.”

Please don’t strike me down for that fib. I was an embarrassed teenager.