The Modernish Father

The Wife had a bridal shower to attend on Saturday and we were both already off on Thursday and Friday for spring break, so we decided to pack up the kids and head home for a four-day weekend.

Being from the same town (and the same graduating class), The Wife and I both have a wealth of memories about our hometown of Lake Jackson, a place I lovingly refer to as the Swamp of Enchantment. But since we didn’t have anything to do with each other until we reached college, none of those memories include each other. It generally makes for interesting conversations when we return home.

We managed to leave the kids behind Friday night and escape town for a nice calm dinner in Houston at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. We enjoyed it so much that we ended up sitting at the table for two hours while we talked about how we had very different experiences growing up just a few blocks away from each other. Our conclusion: The Wife is a fun person, whereas I am generally boring and these qualities were firmly established during our formative years. I would argue, but it’s pretty much true.

Going home is always weird. Some things are exactly the same as they were fifteen years ago. There are still a ton of trees. My favorite hamburger place is still clogging arteries. A lot of the houses still have the same cars parked out in front. It still feels like its detached from the rest of the world, a little insultated pocket where the hustle and bustle of the larger world goes unnoticed for the most part.

Other things (many things) are completely different. My intermediate school is gone. The movie theaters that I grew up with are gone. There are some new overpriced subdivisions and some of the older neighborhoods have gone downhill a little bit. A lot of the town’s sweet mom-and-pop personality has been eclipsed by a horrifically ugly conglomeration of strip malls, car dealerships and big-box retailers on one end of town.

And then there’s the people. The Wife and I are always amazed by the fact that we can go home for the weekend and not see a single person that we recognize around town. It’s not like the population has boomed in the past decade or anything. They must have just shipped out everyone we knew and brought in some pod people to replace them.

Despite all those changes, it is nice to be able to go back every couple of weeks or so now that we live within driving distance again. It makes the changes seem a little less drastic and a wee bit more palatable. I also like being able to show The Boy where I went to school and played baseball as a little kid, even if he doesn’t fully understand it.

The weekend was a success for The Boy, as weekends in Lake Jackson generally are. This weekend, his obsession was crossword puzzles and Sudoku. He made the grand tour of grandparents, mixed in a little Skip-Bo and dyed a couple dozen eggs for Easter. And his uncle displayed his usual affinity for the sweet taste of PAAS.

The Girl had a good weekend too. She got passed around the relatives quite a bit, practiced standing some more, discovered the wonder of ceiling fans, discovered the wonder of sink faucets and mixed in a couple of pretty happy baths to boot.

It’s becoming apparent that The Girl is a little more outgoing than The Boy was at three months. He was a happy little guy, but The Girl seems to be insanely happy most of the time. As long as someone is talking to her, she’s more than happy to give a big toothless grin at the drop of a hat and can be coaxed into some tiny laughter with a little effort. She also talks back quite a bit and likes to have conversations with anyone who’ll listen.

She’s probably already more socially adept than I am. I predict she’ll be quite the little social butterfly when she gets a bit older.