Category Archives: Family

Being an adult isn’t easy and, whenever possible, I try to avoid it at all costs. But when you’re in charge of watching over your niece and nephew you have to put on the big-boy pants and act like a grown-up. For the most part, that’s what I managed to do when Andy and I hosted Noah and Emi for their first sleepover at our home. It was a test-run to see if they were going to be invited to Boston with us for this December’s Children’s Holiday Hour. 

It began with Suzie and her family joining us for a pizza and Ghapama, a very traditional Kardashian dish, or so I told the children. They listened a little too attentively (why does ANYONE listen to what I say, especially children?) and peppered me with Kardashian questions over the course of dinner.

Lesson #1: children are very literal. Too literal. My life is like a simile – no, my life is a metaphor, and a literal reading of what comes out of my mouth is a recipe for disaster. Oh well, it’s far too late not to be fanciful now.

After dinner, it was just Andy, the twins and me, and we went on a treasure hunt to see if the fairies left any gifts around this year, as they had in years past. It was dark out by the time we were ready to go on our search, which made following a rainbow ribbon to the metaphorical pot of gold an intriguing and slightly spooky experience. With flashlights in hand, we walked through the backyard before finding our way to their gift baskets, in which they were given a few crafts and fun Halloween items, including some monstrous fingernails. 

We also made a cornucopia for next month’s holiday which added to the coziness of the night. There was some, shall we say, discussion about whether the twins were going to sleep in the main guest room or the basement where the television was, and there was another discussion about which DVD they were going to watch, so the compromise was that Noah picked out the movie ‘The Money Pit’ and Emi picked the sleeping quarters (the guest room). 

Lesson #2: when it comes to children, especially twins, everything is a negotiation. Pray that a compromise rears its welcome head. 

Uncle Andy made some popcorn while the twins and I started the movie. It was about to be a Shelley Long weekend, which brings back its own memories of my brother, who called to see how things were going. We put him on speaker phone, gave him a brief update, then went back to the movie. The last time we attempted to watch a DVD together we couldn’t make it through the whole thing. This time we had a break to get something to drink, and then finished it out. It was a good sign, and boded well for a trip to Boston. 

These twins know their way around the selfie, and I could see they are just beginning to become a bit phone obsessed, so I made the most of the time we had now. 

Lesson #3: Madonna was right when she said she lost her kids to the cel phone. Make the most of the time now. Or just tell them to shut it off and engage in the real world like Uncle Al did. 

My biggest fear was that going to bed would be an argument, but as we traipsed upstairs to the guest room, they didn’t put up any resistance. I asked them to brush their teeth and told them Andy and I would be in to tuck them in, then explained that we could go to a diner for breakfast the next morning. We hugged them good-night, then they set about to settling in. Emi asked if they could watch some videos on their phone before falling asleep. I said that was fine. 

Lesson #4: maybe cel phones aren’t entirely evil. 

The next morning, we woke and set about our day. Noah caught me brushing my teeth and did the same without asking, then we dressed for the diner. As the fun Uncle, it’s not my responsibility to nag and instill healthy-eating habits into kids, hence these ice-cream covered waffles from the 76 Diner. I ordered the Eggs Florentine but clearly no one wanted to emulate that kind of behavior. 

Lesson #5: sometimes you just have to let kids be kids, even if that means ice cream for breakfast.

For a first sleepover I think it went remarkably well. As the test run for our upcoming Boston Children’s Holiday Hour, they passed with flying colors, so Andy and I gave the go-ahead for them to join us in December. I’m already working on ways to make it magical…

This photo popped up on one of my Facebook memories, and it’s probably one of the few good things left about FaceBook. It’s Andy and Noah at the dining room table, with Noah in typical form, and Andy in equally-typical form, and it warms my heart to see this again. Emi is happily focusing on her own world, and together the three remind me of all that matters. Some days we need that more than others. I’m lucky to find such love on those days.

We are teetering on the brink of the quick shuffle to holiday season, which makes this all the more fitting. In a couple of weeks we will be having the twins over for their first sleep-over, to see how they might do on a trip to Boston. I have to plan these things out. Trust me. It’s better that way.

Tomorrow marks my Dad’s birthday, but since this site remains silent on 9/11 we are giving him a proper post a little bit early. He’s getting up there in age, and like many of us he’s starting to show it, but whenever I’m with him I can always find some bit of spark or a sly smile that reminds me of some laugh from 30 years ago, and I’m reassured that he’ll always be my Dad. 

I am now one year shy of the age my father was when he had me, and thinking of that gives a whole new perspective to my childhood. Imagining having a baby at this point in my life sends shivers down my spine, and though my father was older than most people when he had his first son, when you’re a kid you don’t always notice such things. I certainly didn’t – my Dad was all-powerful and unstoppable. He got up and went to work early each day, he would get emergency calls in the middle of the night and bolt out of bed to the hospital, he could mow the lawn and plant a vegetable garden in a single morning, and somehow have the frame of mind and delicacy to peel me grapes after dinner. But by your mid-forties, you pretty much are who you are, and adding a child to the mix is bound to disrupt even the most accommodating of people. My brother and I no doubt pushed against the orderly life of a Virgo, but we all managed to make it through, and are in many ways richer and better for it 

Through hard work, stubbornness, loyalty and love, he’s been the patriarch of our family – someone who came all the way from the Philippines to make a better life for himself and his family, while never forgetting where he came from or the people he had to leave behind. He deserves more than one day to celebrate all that he’s accomplished, and all that he’s been to us over the years, and as he gets older I’ve been trying to make sure I’m present whenever we’re together, so that I can remember. Tomorrow we will have him over for a Filipino dinner and celebrate his special day.

Happy birthday Dad – I love you.

My family and I have been attending performances at the Mac-Haydn Theater since I first came out over two decades ago. The ride to Chatham is a summer treat, as are most of the productions we have seen. This year was a banner one for the troupe, with ‘Sunset Boulevard‘, ‘Ragtime’ and the upcoming ‘Oklahoma’ rounding out a stellar season. 

Our most recent excursion was for ‘Ragtime‘ and we dined at Yianni’s before the show. I’m up for any decent place that offers a nice selection of sushi in the middle of upstate New York. And a Manhattan. (Though I will save that for the cooler months.)

When dining with Mom and Dad, you must order dessert. It’s the best part. Then it was showtime. 

This is the day we celebrate the Dads in our lives, and mine is certainly worthy of celebration. He’s getting up there in years, and slowing down a bit (as are we all), but every now and then I’ll capture the youthful glimmer of sharp wit or the quick flash of sorrow from a childhood in the Philippines during the war and the early loss of his only sister, and I’ll realize what a great many things he’s witnessed and in which he’s taken part. He is the ultimate example of an immigrant realizing the American dream, and a reminder of what it means to be a noble man in an ignoble world.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad – thank you for everything!

We also take this day to remember Andy’s Dad, who’s been gone two years now but is not forgotten. Dads are always with us. 

These days it’s much more fun to be behind the camera phone than posting in front of it. I’m sick to death of selfies, and not even a new selfie-stick has done much to curb that waning interest, but the opportunity to catch my niece and nephew in all states of silliness has not lost any of its enduring appeal or entertainment value. Like private jokes and home movies, this may prove less amusing to you than it does to me, but too damn bad. We need more family love in these parts.

In this quick series of shots, I directed the twins to act like they were crossing a dangerous stretch of molten lava. Not sure how those wooden stumps survived such temperatures, but there they were, and there they had to manage.

One of the best parts of being a kid is the power of imagination to turn the dullest of objects into items of enchantment. Such magic is especially powerful at the start of summer.

Soon fireflies will sparkle in the deep blue of evening.

June bugs will buzz from tree-top to tree-top.

And summer will unveil her long-awaited charms.

The grass was green, the sunlight was slanting through the trees, and the afternoon at my childhood home was idyllic. Andy and I drove to Amsterdam for a Memorial Day dinner with family. The lighting was perfect for a bunch of photos with the twins – these will show up in the Christmas calendars at the end of the year, but a fun sneak-peek is on preview here.

The unofficial start to summer was surprisingly filled with sun – a rarity this spring – and we took advantage of it with an outside dining experience. And this photo shoot. I’m not sure which we enjoyed more.

While Andy talked with Mom and Dad, I entertained the twins, first with these i-Phone pics (they also insisted on video, which I will not be posting on my YouTube channel because I hardly post anything on my YouTube channel, and it’s rather ridiculous that I even have a YouTube channel, but I digress…)

Following dinner, instead of letting digestion work its time-honored magic, I got roped into a game of tag with the twins. Thanks to all of us getting a little older since we last played, it was more and more difficult to get ahead of them. I no longer had to slow down to even the score – they were quick and relentless enough to genuinely give me a challenge.

Thus summer began at the Ilagan house.

A happier start I could not have conjured.

We left satiated and spent – the best way summer can close a day.

The twins are at a perfect age for summer memories, and I often wonder when that line of memory demarcation will solidify for them.

Will they remember the day that they started to catch up to Uncle Al as we raced through the grass together? Will they recall the way the sunlight filtered through the oaks and pines, lighting up the last of the lilac blooms and the bleeding hearts?

I hope so.

If not, maybe this Memorial Day post will memorialize it for the future.

From our family to yours, here are some scenes from Easter Sunday before the week is over. Perhaps even more-so than Christmas (because Lent is a much longer and more arduous build-up), the anti-climactic nature of the Resurrection sets itself up for a let-down. Thankfully, that didn’t happen this year because we no longer place much hype into the whole holiday. Maybe it’s all those run-ins with various frightening bunnies, or just the realization that the archaic Catholic constrictions upon which I was almost destructively raised were man-made rules of arbitrary nonsense – whatever the case, we enjoy Easter as a spring holiday designed to bring the family together. I suppose that’s what the underlying importance of any socially-constructed holiday is, and I’m not unhappy that it should be so. Any excuse to party, if you ask me. Here are just a few photos from our gathering. Hope you enjoyed yours too.

Today marks my mother’s birthday, the number of which shall remain private, not that she would mind, but a lady never reveals her age or weight, and everything I know about being a proper lady I learned from my mother. The lady part is a joke, but the sentiment is true: so much of what I know about honor, honesty, deportment and class was taught to me by my Mom.

I remember going to the supermarket with her when we were little kids, riding in the little seat of the shopping cart, and watching as she went about her routine. I’d see various people recognize her, but more often than not she wouldn’t even notice, too preoccupied and focused on getting everything on her grocery list. It wasn’t that she was rude or intentionally ignoring anyone, she simply had other tasks on her mind and went about her business blissfully unconcerned with other people’s watchful eyes. That was a powerful lesson: if you focus on your own stuff it’s much easier to stay out of trouble and play no part in local gossip. I don’t know if anyone ever thought her aloof or unapproachable because of it. I do know that I’ve been tagged as such over the years, and it always tickles me. I learned it by watching her.

Happy Birthday Mom!

My brother and I will bring the twins to select my parents’ Christmas tree next week. It’s a holiday tradition that goes back to an impromptu trip to Bob’s Tree Farm when I was home from college in the mid-90’s. Somehow, we’ve managed to preserve this rare moment of brotherly bonding, as we wind along the curving roads of Galway in the dark of an almost-winter night. The holidays, at their best, bring out the better sides of brotherhood, and this is one ritual to which I always look forward.

This blog is littered with little recaps and references to our previous tree-seeking trips and the dinners that often follow. One day I’ll do a comprehensive list of links to that; for now, let these scattered highlighted portions offer a few portals to the past.

I paused in my brother’s childhood (and, well, adulthood) bedroom at my parents’ home. We had finished Thanksgiving dinner and I was lolling about upstairs in a turkey-trypto haze when I noticed the sunlight pouring into his room. At first, I couldn’t remember the afternoon light streaming in like it did. I have vivid recollections of the morning sun peeping in my bedroom at the northern side of the house, and of the moonlight coming through my window as well, but I couldn’t place this bright warm scene in my memory bank. Puzzled, I sat down on the bed and almost spoke aloud the words ‘I don’t remember this…’

I remembered dancing to ‘Dress You Up’ in this room, jumping up and down on the bed to Madonna’s early music. I remembered sneaking through the rust-colored shag carpet that used to be here in order to get to the guest room when our Gram was staying over for the holidays. I remember the whispered stories that my brother and his friend would tell when we would have sleepovers. But I couldn’t remember this sunlight.

As much a test for my failing memory and middle-aged forgetfulness, I forced myself to think back to my youth, but nothing was coming. I simply did not recall a time when the sun was this strong. It flowed through the window, in spite of the frosty panes. It roamed over the warm carpet, climbed atop the bedspread, and rose all the way up the wall. In spite of the cold, the sun heated the room. It was always warmer in my brother’s room. I wondered if that informed his disposition, whether that explained why he was sometimes sunnier than me. Cool and reserved, like my bedroom, which only saw the morning sun or the moonlight, I held my emotional cards closer to the vest. It was safer that way.

Then, as I watched the dust particles floating through shafts of sunlight, I began to remember. An old television, with the knob you had to manually turn to switch channels, once sat in front of the window. It didn’t broadcast anything but static, yet we still fiddled with it, hoping for a station to come in eventually. One never did. A box of stale dog biscuits, which we dared each other to bite. These were distant and dim memories, but still largely intact. Images and scenes without plot or point, they were there buried deep in my memory castle, and instantly I warmed at their presence.

Only then could I leave the room.