I remember that cube!  It was a real pain!  Didn't it keep turning or something?

Oh lord a breeze just blew through my window.  95 degrees in NYC and our dumb contractor hasn't put in the AC yet.  Did I mention we were on the verge of suing him?  And filing a complaint with the NY Consumer Protection Agency (which actually carries some teeth in this state)?  And placing an ad in the paper announcing that we were planning to?  And already had contacted a skywriter about skywriting "X X (his name) sucks" above his house?

My wife and I love everybody.  But don't piss off 2 lawyers.

Err but I digress.

The thing that amazes me, and really has amazed me since I was about 17, was how real life seems and how quickly it passes.  I guess you guys will scoff that life seems real.  But there have been so many moments of intensity, good and bad, when I have felt overwhelmed by grief, struggle, frustration, sorrow, or flooded with joy, accomplishment, tenderness.  I suppose I'm a little emo. 

But also I wonder where it's gone.  The years have flown, often while I've felt as though I were in a holding pattern.  And now that we have Ben, with, God willing, the 2d on the way, and I'm so OLD, definitely middle-aged, and my biggest concern these days is that I will stick around long enough for them, I marvel at how brief life is and how myopic so many are given that reality.

I guess I got off onto this subject because of the currents within the thread about change and the past.  But these things are so real to me.  They inform what I do in the courts and how I treat people in real life and why, so often, I'm so discouraged and disappointed in our inability to see beyond immediate desires.

I didn't really have a point to this.  Except I have a kitty sleeping in my lap and I just put Ben to bed, sitting with him until he got sleepy enough to let me leave without begging me to stay.  And I was wondering which, if any of the moments of his life which have been so dear to me, which, really, have made all the difficult earlier parts of my life worth enduring, he would remember.

We are such tiny people and the universe is so large and we understand so little.  And it all is swept away, for me to the brink of tears, by the sound, so filled with the sense of glory, of my little boy's voice.

Thank you Jen.  Really I just worry that I won't be here for them.  My parents died in their early 50s, and I'm getting closer and closer to that.  We're lucky enough that financially they'll be set, but as I still remember too well nothing ever fills that kind of emotional hole.  Still, every minute with him is such a treasure, even when he's screaming at the top of his lungs about some perceived injustice.  I just want to grab him and tell him how beautiful he is, but he wouldn't quite appreciate what I meant.

I've learned a lot from Ben, including that no one ever really can understand how much you can love them and what it means you'd be willing to do for them.  He's also brought back a ton of memories from my own childhood.  Tamar's amazed I can remember, but I remember so much!  You really do fall in love with your children.  Also fascinating is that, even though Tamar finally understands how much her mother loves her (because of Ben), and no question she loves her mom, physiologically she is unable to love her mother as much as she loves Ben.

Tamar's just passed her first trimester, and as we're older and had a lot of trouble conceiving I'm trying not to expect too much yet.  When I first heard Ben's heartbeat I loved him instantly.  It's so curious that for all our affectations we are nonetheless biological creatures.

2003?  Geez has it been that long already?

I really truly loved the story and don't remember a better game story since.  It is a shame Jen never got that far into it.  Maybe this will be one of those games she'll go back and try.  Heck I didn't finish Planescape Torment for years.  I still haven't opened one of those Obliviion gates yet either.

Jen--it's a great story and worth trying again just to learn what it was.  Still can't figure out its connection to Nietzsche but that doesn't matter.