Category Archives: Family

Our Easter Holiday was spent with the Ilagan family, such as we are these days, but one of the tribe – Noah – was out sick and spent the majority of the day napping. (Until he woke up and started running around immediately, at which point it was time for us to go.)

Noah’s sister Emi, however, was very much awake and in (thankfully) rare form – as evidenced by the photos below (which are the best ones of the lot, so you can imagine.)

As is most often the case, the day was all about the food for me, and the traditional ham-centered dinner was served with some delicious glazed carrots and creamy potatoes as made by my Mom.

I’m just glad that the time for bunnies is over for another year.

The family-friendly trend of posts that started over Easter weekend continues with this one about my brother’s birthday. It was belated when it happened, and belated to be posted, but it’s here now and that’s all that matters. One of his gifts, the one that he’s trying on in the photo below, is a re-gifting of a coat he’d given me way back in 1995. I wore it to the infamous New Year’s Eve gathering in which one of my so-called-friends berated me for the crazy things I wore. As such, it holds a special place in my heart.

Anyway, my brother had given it to me because he didn’t like or want it, and it quickly became a favorite for its warm furry lining and cold-blocking hood. I hadn’t thought much about it until this past winter when he asked if I still had it because he wanted it back. Not to be outdone in dickery, I gave it back. As a birthday present. Happy happy!!

When you reach a certain age, you need a little help in blowing out all the candles.

The more help, the merrier, as demonstrated by Noah and Milo.

There’s only one Easter egg hunt that I recall with some detail. It was at the old Nichols store on Route 30 in Amsterdam. In a storage area with high unfinished ceilings, and a cement floor strewn with straw, a bunch of kids were let loose to find a golden egg. The one who found said egg would win a prize – in this case an enormous chocolate rabbit from Fariello’s. My lactose-intolerant ass was largely uninterested in that much chocolate, but it would be nice to find such a special egg among all the cheap plastic pastel bullshit that kept turning up as I waded through the smelly straw. I was in it to win it, and I scrambled with the rest of the kids, including my brother, as we searched and sought out the elusive golden egg.

Our baskets filled with the colorful also-rans, and I soon grew anxious that others were going to find it first. Part of me also slowed, not wanting to accept the notoriety and attention in which finding that golden egg would result. My shyness was almost crippling as a child. I hesitated and paused, going through the motions but not actively pursuing paths others hadn’t yet taken. Luckily, someone else found it first, which ended any dilemma of stumbling upon the pretty oblong object and dealing with all that attention. And it just happened to be my brother.

The prize was almost as tall as he was (though it ended up being hollow, much to our collective disappointment) and I think the local newspaper took a photo of him beside it. We ended up eating chocolate for months, even if it upset my stomach. One doesn’t look a gift bunny in the mouth.

In a few weeks (give or take, as there doesn’t seem to be a set schedule or hard opening), my brother will set up shop for his furniture-making business: Dead Wood Field & Furniture. He does rustic pieces, made from raw and sometimes reclaimed wood, with occasional metal accents and a vaguely country/barn slant that was the style of his first house. It’s a popular style, lending itself to industrial spaces that need an injection of warmth, or a more traditional home in need of something raw and hefty and grounded in wood.

Pictured as the featured shot (and below) is a birthday gift from him – it’s a shelf stand that will hold a few plants for our outside patio. This is his style, and it’s simple, substantial, strong and clean. There’s a shabby-chic raw edge to it as well, but it works well in the right setting. He’s also open to creating pieces per the customer’s specifications and requests. Check out the Dead Wood Field & Furniture FaceBook page here (and while there wish my baby bro a happy birthday). Store details forthcoming…

It was a fall day, but it must have been warm enough to ride our bikes, because my brother and I were speeding down Lincoln and turning onto Romeyn as the wind whipped more leaves from the trees. The once-green canopy of maples and oaks littered the streets, sidewalks and lawns. Shiny black garbage bags lined the curbs and the cutting scent of wood smoke filled the air. Soon, it would be impossible to ride our bikes anywhere until after the winter thawed. We pedaled harder to outrun the advance of time. As we neared the bottom of Pershing Road, we skidded to a stop in the leaves. I remember the feel of their crunchy points, and the asphalt hidden beneath them.

A large log – the carcass of some decayed and fallen tree – rested at the bottom of the street. Intriguingly hollowed out by time and circumstance, it was like some fairy-tale object from the forest, incongruously dropped at the edge of the street. We moved closer to it and examined its soft, mossy exterior. As I peered into the dark hole, looking for some chipmunk or other woodland denizen to be asleep in its shelter, my brother kicked the other end of the log. A swarm (okay, maybe five or six) hornets or bees flew into my face. I got stung near my eye, which promptly began to swell itself shut, and the pain was horrendous. “Why did you do that?!” I screamed as I began pedaling furiously home. Such is the stuff of brothers – and it goes both ways.

Two babies could not have been born further apart in the calendar year. The most distant dates possible (February 25 and August 24) marked when my brother and I came into the world. Following such a pre-destined journey of diametrically opposed lives, we have lived up to those dates and are as different as two brothers could possibly be. Yet through it all, there was a closeness forged in the first part of our formative years, when some of us have our happiest memories, that can never be altered or taken away, no matter what paths we make and take.

Brothers know each other’s weak spots, their sensitive issues, their strengths, and their merits. They know how to get under each other’s skin like no one else, and they have the weapons of a shared childhood and history to wage the dirtiest wars imaginable. As such, I marvel that some of us maintain such good relationships. Ours is far from perfect, but the love at its core has seen us through the argumentative periods. He’s the only brother I have, and that’s something that neither of us has taken for granted.

On this day, I wish him a very happy birthday, and I count myself the luckier of us both because I get to have him as my brother.

{Background note: the featured photo here was taken on a summer vacation at, you guessed it, Disneyworld in Florida. Check out the matching t-shirts. I tucked. He didn’t. Opposites in every way.}

They wheeled her into the room during a tense time. I can’t put my finger on what was wrong, and this was, after all, just a dream, but even in dreams the ominous can be felt. The atmosphere just felt worrisome, the way you feel when you’ve forgotten something but don’t yet realize what it is. She looked tiny, much smaller than the childhood memories I have of this grand woman, who always seemed larger than life. Now, in my dream, her hair was shrunken like the rest of her, and her legs were so diminutive that at first I thought they were gone.

My grandmother, gone from this earth for a few years, now visiting my dreams, and looking, despite her size and wheelchair, full of color and life. Her skin was no longer pale or addled with veins. It glowed a healthy color. Around her head an aura glistened like sun on the sea. Yet it was her eyes that transfixed me most: they sparkled.

Then the dream was done, and the uneasiness that has plagued my nights of late returned in the dark and empty room.

It’s been a while since I’ve spent some quality time with my nephew and niece, so I assembled a treasure hunt at our home, and asked my Mom to drop them off for a couple of hours of Uncle babysitting. Some planning was required beforehand, with a few ‘treasures’ that needed to be buried in order to look like they’d been there for a while, and the making of a treasure map.

The map had to look distressed and old. Some rolling and weathering, along with judicious burning of the edges, contributed to its ancient feel, and I placed it in a corner of the storage attic, telling the twins I thought I had seen it around there and sending them in to find it on their own, Goonies-style. I think they were onto me, but they went along with just enough suspension of disbelief to enjoy the adventure.

The day started out sunny, but the cold soon advanced, and some strange cloud-cover issued spells of snow during part of our backyard journey. With Halloween just around the corner, I had added a few elements of spookiness to the trail that led to the treasure: a half-way buried skull in the ‘secret passageway’ (the dark walkway – only allowing enough room for a small child – between a towering hedge of Thuja and an old fence) and a pair of ‘Fairy Trap Kits’ that held all the lures to capture those pesky fairies (who could be both good or bad depending on what lesson one was trying to impart).

For those who do not know about the best ways to catch a fairy, the most effective bait is a mixture of glitter, feathers, bells, and the tiniest little clothespins (because fairies are constantly in need of clothespins).

At one point in the path, I’d suspended two small nets of chocolate coins. Hung by relatively-invisible clear plastic thread, they seemed to float in the air, gently spinning and swaying, and the kids were so eager to grab at them they barely noticed the string.

After making it to the end of the hunt, digging up their buried treasure (don’t tell them, but the jewels were made of plastic), and exhausting themselves with some fairy-trap-setting, we headed into the warmth of the house, with cups of hot cocoa and miniature marshmallows. From there we watched for signs of fairies, while Uncle Andy and Emi had a heart-to-heart over cocoa.

Being that my Dad’s birthday falls rather inauspiciously on September 11, I always miss out on the public well-wishes for his special day. Here they are now, a day late, but with no less love or fanfare. Earlier this summer, he had a series of health issues which scared me to the core, and it made me wonder what a world without him would be like. I didn’t, and I don’t, want to face that, and if this birthday means a little more because of it, I’m happy that it’s so.

Every boy who’s lucky enough to have a father can’t help but look up to him. Every boy who has a father as good as mine holds him in iconic status, no matter what he does. That doesn’t change as we grow up. If anything, my love and respect for my Dad has grown in stature, as has my understanding of the man who left the Philippines, and the only life and family he knew, to make a better life for himself – and his future family. I’ve never forgotten that – and I never will.

Happy Birthday, Dad – I love you.