I and the Boys*

A rare photo of the mother with her children. The mother is usually the one behind the camera. To get a picture like this, the mother must order the father to “Grab the camera! This is a photo moment!” despite the fact that she just returned from swimming at the gym and the little splotch of tomato sauce by the corner of her mouth. At least it was from delicious homemade pizza.

Over the last few weeks I have been obsessed with the Showtime series “Weeds,” despite the fact that I don’t have Showtime. In fact, who needs cable anymore when you have Netflix? The problem is that I sped through the discs from the first two seasons and now I have to wait until season 3 comes out to find out what happens. Obviously, she lives. But don’t any of you DARE tell me what is happening in season 3 or I will read the last page of the last Harry Potter novel and put it up here without a spoiler alert. (Speaking of which, don’t tell me what happens in that book either.)

Anyway. The premise of Weeds is that Nancy’s husband dropped dead of a heart attack leaving her with two boys to raise on her own, so she becomes a pot dealer to make ends meet. I wish I was in that pitch meeting. Do you think the producers brought samples?

The younger son watches videos of his dad. There are pictures of dad everywhere.

Yesterday I watched the 9/11 Oprah in which she had “the children of 9/11” on and asked them if it ever gets easier. Oprah, as an aside, can I just ask you to please give us a break? I almost didn’t watch the show because of what eventually happened, which was me, in tears, watching the episode on DVR fast forward because I could not handle the emotional weight of the children talking about their parents over old home video footage of said parents.

There’s not much of me around here, except in the billions of photos from high school and college that I keep in my Crate and Barrel cabinet in the bedroom, collectively titled “The Great Photo Archiving Project.” Eventually I will have all of those photos in albums. But if I disappeared today, my children would have a good idea of what I looked like from age 0 to about the time that they were born. But after that there are only snippets of me in our home videos and a handful of snapshots. I don’t want them asking people what I was like or crying because they forgot the sound of my voice.

I’m just thinking ahead. Believe me, I hate the way I look on video (our camera is an Evil Magic One that adds 20 pounds, or maybe that’s the remaining baby weight) and I really hate the sound of my voice. But those are two things a child could love about his mother. I can at least give them those things for hopefully much, much later, when I am gone.

*Despite its grammatical awkwardness, this is a quote, that works for me every time, from a classic novel. Any guesses?