Happy Father’s Day

… to all fathers; particularly:

• mine own
• mine by marriage (two living, one deceased)

My family almost always spends the day with Karin’s dad and his dad, in Goshen. We eat grilled meats, then go out strolling in the heat. Today it was painfully bright if not quite sweltering. We took the boys to a park.

Photos of my progeny: Samuel, Daniel, Abel.

Notice Samuel’s fighter jet: a gift from his grandpa, who, I believe, had just toured the Grissom Air Reserve base. (Daniel got one, too.)

The boys all loved the swings. Daniel fell off his, soon after the pic was taken.

I’m not used to being celebrated. It’s been only a few years since I became a father. Karin asked if I wanted anything. I said an opportunity to mow, a fastfood snack, and a thriftstore book hunt; and that’s what I got.

A wedding

Continuing on the subject of gluttony, yesterday was my “last hurrah,” at least for the season: I made two trips down a Polish buffet line. (If anything has a claim to being “South Bend cuisine,” it’s Polish food.) The occasion was my mother-in-law’s wedding. You’ll recall that she was widowed in 2020. Now she is married to Scott, her dead husband’s ex-roommate. It was a canny move. When Rick died, she griefstrickenly bequeathed Rick’s guns to Scott; now, presumably, she has got them back. Karin and Samuel and I rode to the wedding with McKenzie, Karin’s mom’s ex-foster daughter. McKenzie wore sweatpants and swigged from a half-gallon of milk and talked on her phone to her imprisoned boyfriend. “I have a gift card,” she told him. “I’m going to sell it to buy you another phone card.” It was a cheerful conversation. Like Scott and unlike the rest of my mother-in-law’s family, McKenzie is a happy-go-lucky sort of person. She gleefully told her boyfriend that her tattoo artist had just been jailed.

We also had a delicious venison stew, courtesy of my mother-in-law’s Uncle Fred, who shoots deer and hangs them up in his front yard. Uncle Fred preached the sermon. Karin said it was about sin (Uncle Fred is another happy-go-lucky sort of person). I didn’t hear it; Samuel started howling as soon as the bride walked up the aisle, so I took him to a Sunday School room where he played with toy cars and I read Agatha Christie. Karin told me not to bring a book to the wedding, but I did anyway; one never knows. I don’t think Karin’s mom noticed. She seemed to be relishing everything else that was going on.

Baths for the kitties

… because Jasper has been harboring fleas. We believe they came into the house via some clothes we inherited from Rick (Rick’s dog, George, recently had fleas).

Ziva has never been bathed. We’re going to postpone that ordeal until we’re sure she has fleas.

No such luck for Jasper, who, last night, suffered his first bath since early kittenhood. He moaned and tried to claw his way out. On the whole, though, he was rather brave. He came out smelling of peppermint and cloves.

Unfortunately, he had fleas again this morning.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

We’ve tried, on several occasions, to vote; but at every polling place, the queue has wrapped around the block. We don’t want to stand out in the cold for a long time with our baby, and the paucity of weekend voting hours makes it hard for us to go stand in line one after the other.

That leaves two options: (1) trying to vote during business hours this week, and (2) voting on Election Day, when more polling stations will be open. Both options are complicated by Karin’s having to manage her workplace – the regular manager will be recovering from surgery – and by my having to care for Samuel.

“A U.S. president has never been elected by a majority of eligible voters,” writes Jason Brennan in Compulsory Voting: For and Against.

In the 1964 election, 61.05 percent of voters cast their ballots for Lyndon Johnson – the largest majority a president has ever enjoyed. Yet, at the same time, because turnout was so low, Johnson was in fact elected by less than 38 percent of all voting-eligible Americans. We call Reagan’s 1984 victory a “landslide,” but less than a third of voting-age Americans actually voted for him. Less than a quarter of eligible Americans voted to reelect Bill Clinton in 1996. In all elections, a minority of the voting-eligible population imposes a president on the majority.

Whether or not you endorse compulsory voting (Brennan doesn’t), it’s hard not to conclude that many of the non-voting majority choose not to vote because they are significantly hindered from voting. Set aside legal disqualifications for criminals, non-citizens, puertorriqueños, those without I.D., etc. The logistical obstacles can still be formidable.

This sort of problem can be grasped in theory; but, as with the stifling of access to health care, transport, and other basic goods, it acquires a more sinister character when it is experienced.

I take on more responsibility in the home

Yesterday’s temperature plunged to sixty (F); it felt downright cold. I decided that Samuel should wear pants. He thought this was hilarious; he thrashed and thrashed, taking one leg out of his pants while I tried to put the other leg in. He did this every time I changed his diaper.

I do my share of caring for the boy; but, also, until now, I’d hardly ever bathed him or put him to sleep at night. I’m expert at putting him to sleep during the day, but the night-time task is altogether different. I’ve regarded it, and the bathing, as within Karin’s sphere. Well, tonight, I did both those chores (Karin needed to compose her remarks for Rick’s funeral). I did the bathing particularly badly. Samuel wasn’t pleased. He usually lingers in the tub and splashes the water with his legs for several minutes after he’s clean; this time, he was eager to get out. But he came through the ordeal. I expected his bedtime ritual to go even less smoothly. But he listened respectfully as I read to him, and he finally dozed off during his third book, Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks.

There is a social worker who talks to us about our baby every other week. It seems she’s been grading Samuel. Two weeks ago, all his grades were high, except in the category of gross motor skills; but this week, the social worker was pleased to report that his gross motor skills had received a grade of 55 out of 60.