Entries Tagged 'family' ↓

Because it’s when I blog!

Oh, okay. We eat dinner too. Tonight we go to a special pirate-themed dinner here at the hotel. There’s a good buffet, a band that plays quite well, and a fire-eater who was not spectacular, but who was very picturesque.

Once all that is over, they hold a limbo contest. And guess what - Kate wins!

Now that girl can limbo…

Her prize is two tickets for the hotel’s barbeque party tomorrow night. Which I guess means that I have to buy three more tickets for that party.

I get back from diving at noon and meet up with everyone. We go out for some Mongolian barbeque for lunch (yum!). Then a couple hours shopping in town, followed by some snorkeling with Kate. A fine afternoon! Here’s some pictures:

Some of the ships in Georgetown harbor:

One of the shops we visited:

Kate and Diana getting eaten by landsharks. (Landsharks are a major problem in these parts.)

Kate, snorkeling. (She managed to recover from the landshark attack.)

Me snorkeling.  Note the water-level in my snorkel.  This is the worst snorkel we have - Kate grabbed it when we went down, so naturally I let her have the good one.  I’m lucky I didn’t drown.

Our resort, from where we were snorkeling. (We went out pretty far.)

This year has been a bit too much - details to follow in my year-end post.  For the latest roller-coaster flip: we had Christmas down at my beach house, with my mother invited along.  Not surprisingly, given that my father had died a little more than two weeks previously, it was an extremely subdued Christmas.  I don’t think any of us were expecting a whole lot of joy - certainly not my mother.

Then we called my sister Sara.  And Sara told us that she is expecting, her first child, due in June.  This is something that we weren’t expecting at all - very good news indeed.  It was about the only thing that could have happened to make this Christmas a joyous occasion.

The wheel of life keeps turning.  I do miss my father, but I welcome the new addition to the family.

Eugene Dzikiewicz, my father, died on December 9. A slideshow of pictures of him, presented at his funeral, is at http://flickr.com/photos/jdzik/sets/72157603519495034. The following is a eulogy that I delivered at that funeral.

If you ever spent much time with my father, you almost certainly heard one of his stories. He loved telling humorous tales of things he had done and people he had known, which he would finish by saying, especially when speaking to his grandchildren, “And that’s the truth.”

Which wasn’t always accurate. Oh, I’m sure that most of his stories were based on real events, though I couldn’t help but notice that the details tended to shift around over the years. But I don’t really believe that he got that scar in his hand from grabbing a sabre-tooth tiger by the fang, and I don’t entirely believe the story he loved to tell of the time his state-police cruiser went off a bridge, when he fought out of the car, holding his breath, and swimming up, reaching for the light, until he finished by saying, “And then I died.”

My father graduated from high school in 1945. Like many young men of that era, he was soon drafted into the army, where he served his enlistment as a clerk processing the discharges of men who had served in World War II. While he never said it outright, I always suspected that he regretted missing out on what, to his young eyes, seemed the great adventure of his age. At least, some years later, when the war in Korea broke out, he volunteered for another enlistment, this time in the paratroopers, where he liked to say that the first dozen times he took off in a plane, he never landed in it.

My father still did not get his wish to go abroad. Instead, when his superiors noted his natural skills at organization and teaching (did you know that my father served for several years as an instructor at Northwestern University’s Traffic Institute in spite of his lack of a college degree, having been expelled for pulling a prank on an officious dean?), they set him to work training new recruits. He still wanted to be sent to Korea, though, so, knowing that the usual penalty for going AWOL was to be shipped out immediately, he skipped off to home for 29 days, just short of the 30 that would result in an automatic court martial.

But it was to no avail. His commanding officer sighed, took away a stripe, and set him back to training recruits.

Soon after leaving the paratroopers, my father stumbled his way onto the Massachusetts State Police. Most of his best stories were about those days. From my father’s telling, the State Police were like one big sitcom, full of eccentric characters like the old-school Sergeant Sinkievich, Sinky for short. It was Sinky who once sent a rookie out to lead the way over a flooded-out road to make sure there were no holes big enough to swallow a police cruiser. When the recruit worried that he might fall into a hole, Sinky said, “That okay. I can replace you easier than replace cruiser.” It was also Sinky who testified in an early trial involving one of the first uses of radar to catch speeders. When asked by the defense attorney to explain how radar worked, Sinky said, “Radar work good.”

But most of his state police stories involved my father playing some prank or other. One day, he was on patrol with Joe Desolets, who often showed up in my father’s stories as a combination sidekick and straight man. It was a snowy day, and the cruiser got stuck in the ice. My father got out and walked to the front wheel while Joe looked on. “Hey Joe, I heard that if you’re stuck in the ice, it helps to let some air out of the tires.”

“I heard that too.”

“Right.” My father drew his revolver, took careful aim, and fired into the ground next to the tire. The last time he told me that story, just last week, he was still laughing at the look on Joe’s face.

Once he was returning from some late-night function with Joe when they saw a truck barreling down the highway at around 20 MPH over the speed limit. They hit the sirens and pulled over the truck. The truck driver, a little guy, climbs out of the cab and says, “Oy, have you got me!” And because he made my father laugh, my father let him off with a warning.

Another time when my father stopped someone for speeding, the guy had what he thought was a foolproof method to talk his way out of a ticket. He had read the local police blotter, picked out an unlikely looking police officer’s name, and was ready with his story. “But officer, I’m a close personal friend of Corporal Eugene Dzikiewicz. Maybe you could let me off this time.”

“You’re a friend of Eugene Dzikiewicz, are you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well I can’t stand that guy. That sonofabitch took my girl out the other night.”

“Oh, uh, I’m sorry. I’m, uh…”

“And make sure you read the name of the arresting officer on the ticket.”

Some of his best stories came from his years at the Police Academy. We have somewhere the memoir of a former Massachusetts State Trooper, and in his academy days the role of stereotypical ass-kicking drill sergeant is filled by my father, something that I always found far-fetched, as my father was anything by a strict disciplinarian when I was growing up.

One time at the academy they had an athletic competition between squads of trainees, with the winning squad getting a weekend’s leave as prize. After the winners packed up and left, my father was left with the sad losers.

Saturday morning, he took the troops out on their morning run. While running down the nearby highway, my father noticed that the door was open at one of the nearby restaurants. “Left face,” he called. “Line up.” And he directed them into the restaurant.

The place was empty, so he ordered them to sit at the bar. In a back room, my father found the assistant manager, cleaning up after the night before. “I’ve got a few men out here who would like a drink,” he said.

The assistant manager came out to the front, took a look at the line of sweaty recruits sitting at his bar, and sputtered: “What are you doing here? We’re closed! Go away!”

“All right, men,” my father called. “Form up.” And he had them run off, much cheered from the morning prank.

I’ll finish this with two stories of my own. When I was about ten or eleven, my father was working for the federal government, giving grants to state police forces throughout the New England states. One time, he had to travel through northern New England for a number of meetings with various police officials and assistant attorneys general. And so naturally, like any government worker off to meetings with important people, he brought his ten year-old son. I learned to love garlic bread at one particular dinner with Vermont officials on that trip.

At one point, we were driving on the New Hampshire turnpike. As we came up to a tollbooth, my father said, “Watch this. I’m going to go right through without paying toll.” Ever so smoothly, he slowed the car as we neared the booth. He suavely pointed to the toll taker and gave a knowing nod. The attendant gave him a little wave, raised the gate, and we drove on through.

I was astounded. “You did it,” I shouted. I couldn’t believe he had gotten away with it.

About ten years later, I was telling the story at a family dinner. And my mother, who often had the job of bringing a little truth to the proceedings, pointed out that we had been driving in a government car, borrowed from the federal motor pool. And in New Hampshire, government cars were allowed to drive on the turnpike toll-free.

I suppose I could have gotten mad at my father. But I thought it was a marvelous prank – after all, you never let go a chance to pull a prank like that, that’s one of the things I learned from him. And I had learned from that and a few other experiences with him that with enough chutzpah, you could get away with murder. That’s a lesson I often used during my teenage years.

A few years later, when I had children of my own, I realized another lesson from that trip. Sometimes it’s a father’s job to make the world a more magical place, and next to that, what difference does a little truth make?

My last story: this last summer was my father’s eightieth birthday. We had a party for him, just the family. And my mother had the idea that the thing he would most enjoy would be to give him a funeral when he could still enjoy it. So Sara, my sister, read a humorous poem that she wrote about him, and I gave a first draft of this speech. He absolutely loved it, loved being the center of attention, loved hearing his own stories told back to him.

Later that day, I stood with him outside by the pool. And he said to me, “You know, eighty years is pretty good. Eighty years is just about enough.”

A month or so later, after he was diagnosed, I reminded him of that, joking, “When you said eighty years was enough, I didn’t know you were serious.” Which also made him laugh, and which he repeated to others later. Because that, of course, was how he dealt with hard times – with a joke and a laugh.

But all I can say is, Dad, eighty years may have been enough for you. But it was not enough for us.

Over a month now since I’ve posted. Well, it’s been an incredibly busy month. But I’m at the beach for the next few days, so perhaps I’ll get to catch up.

First off, two weeks ago I had my Day with Dad with my daughter Kate. Day with Dad is a tradition that I have with my kids - something that we’ve been doing for fifteen years now. Once a year, usually in the summer, I spend one day with each kid, individually, doing something appropriate to that child. It’s a great way for me to spend quality one-on-one time with each of my children (something that can be a challenge when you have three), and we’ve generated some great memories over the years. I strongly recommend it to any parents, especially if you have more than one child.

There’s definitely been trends with the different kids. I’ve spent many Days-with-Andy traipsing over Civil War battlefields, including that notable wade across Antietam Creek. (We wanted to see if the Union troops could have just forded near Burnside Bridge instead of charging across into deadly fire. I don’t know if the troops could have done it, but Andy and I had no trouble.) Diana has often meant the Pet Farm and climbing the rocks at Great Falls. Kate’s day has often included the Baltimore Aquarium.

This year with Kate, we did something special. We tried Skydiving.

We went to Skydive Virginia in Louisa, about 1.5 hours south of the beltway. It’s a sleepy little airfield where they spend each weekend shuttling people up into the sky and dumping them out.

First timers do a tandem dive, which means that you are tethered to an instructor. You spend an hour in classroom training (which mostly consists of the instructor telling you all the ways that you might die) and then squeeze into a small plane with ten other skydivers and no seats. You jump out at 12,000 feet (two miles straight up!), spend a minute free-falling down to 6,000 feet, pull the ripcord, and then spend the next ten minutes floating to the ground.

I’m not sure what to say, except wow.

Here’s me:

And here’s Kate:

If you ever get the chance, and you don’t have fear of heights, and you don’t have claustrophobia (because the plane gets really crowded), then give it a try. The minute of freefall goes faster than you can possibly imagine, but it’s incredible.

My daughter, home from college, plays Dungeons and Dragons.  She is playing in a campaign over this summer with some college friends who happen to live in the area.

My son, who is now living in Charlottesville, used to play with these same people.  But he’s two hours away now, too far to stop by for a nice little game of D&D on the weekend.

Enter technology.  My son got himself a webcam yesterday.  He’s going to play remotely - at his computer in Charlottesville while the group here in NoVa play near a webcam.

We did the test of this last night.  The connection worked great.  (Video over AIM has some problems in my house, for some reason.  But Skype worked just fine.)

At around this time, I got an IM from my wife, who is in New York this week at an art seminar.  She has a Macbook with her, with a built-in webcam.  I IM’d her through installing Skype, and video IM’d with her from my Powerbook.

So, at one time, we had my son vid-conferencing from Charlottesville to my PC, while my wife was vid-conferencing from New York to my Powerbook.  And here I was in the middle, seeing and talking to them both real-time.

What a wonderful world we live in!

The gods of entropy have been having much play with the Dzikiewicz family of late. Within the last month, we’ve had breakdowns of a washing machine, car, and AC unit. Today I’m dealing with the biggest issue yet.

Julie got a call last night from one of the neighbors at the beach. Apparently water was streaming out of our house. That could be something relatively minor, or something relatively major. So we got her father to stop by the house to report further.

Alas, it was something relatively minor that has relatively major consequences. The toilets here have a habit of clogging up. The last time we were here, apparently we left the upstairs toilet clogged, and the flapper not completely closed. Had someone been here, the result would have been that we would have heard the toilet running in an annoying manner, someone would have noticed it, and we would have fixed things. But we were not here, not for the past two weeks. So the toilet overflowed and water continually dripped out, onto the floor, into the floor, onto the floor below, into the floor below, and onto the carport below that.

So, a relatively minor issue, but we’ve now got sopping carpets on two floors, water stains on a ceiling, and buckled hardwood floors in one section of the house. Which is particularly annoying because those hardwoods were just replaced about a month ago.

And here I am, sitting here in the beach house, having come down to meet the plumber and now waiting for the water-clean-up people. And cursing the gods of entropy - let them hover over someone else’s house for a while!

This has been a season of great changes. But this weekend was probably the greatest. Julie and I packed the van and drove one bed, four chairs, seven cartons of miscellaneous items, and our son Andy to Charlottesville, where he is working this summer.

This is not Andy’s first summer working in Charlottesville. He has, in fact, worked there for the past three. But this time, he is doing it as a college graduate, and he is not planning on returning to our home as a resident. Our little bird has left the nest.

I have mixed feelings about this. There’s the obvious fact that I’ll miss Andy a great deal. He has grown to be a fine young man, with a lovely dry wit and a wide range of interests and talents, and I always enjoy his company. His absence certainly makes our home a poorer place.

But I have always viewed this as the end goal of parenting: to bring a new adult to the point where he is ready to face the world on his own, capable enough to take care of himself and others, and decent enough to make the world a better place by his presence. In this, Julie and I have succeeded, and I feel a great deal of pride.

After a long day of heavy lifting, Andy took Julie and me out to dinner. It’s an old tradition amongst our circle: when your friends help you move, you treat them to a meal afterwards. Andy’s been on enough moves to know the drill. And it was a fine moment to see him step up into that responsibility, to treat us to this last meal together before he goes off to make his place in the world. A little funny, to be the one treated. But a joy to be the guest of such a good guy.

I’m actually fairly remiss here. Last weekend, Andy, my oldest son, graduated from U.Va. And somehow, I never posted. Congratulations Andy! Needless to say, we’re very proud. Also needless to say, it seems a bit strange to have my oldest no longer in college.

We had arranged for Andy and Kate (both of whom were students at UVA this past semester) to extend their stays in their dorm rooms through the graduation. As a result, Kate and Diana stayed in her dorm room, while Julie and I stayed with Andy in his. Andy’s room was not as cramped as you might think, as he had one bedroom in a suite of two rooms. Julie slept on the couch in the living room of the suite, while I slept in the other bedroom.

In order to show that though graduated he can still worry his parents, on Friday night Andy told us that he was heading over to the psychology department to work on some things that he’s going to be doing there over the summer. (Andy’s lined up a summer job at the university, one that shows promise of being extended into a full-time job past the summer.) He told us not to wait up for him.

At around five AM, I woke up. Andy was not in his room. Julie and I conferred, and around 6:00 AM I wandered over to Gilmer Hall, home of the psych department. The doors were locked, but I must have looked suspicious, trying to get into Gilmer, as the university police soon showed up. I explained that I was looking for my soon-to-graduate son, and that he was working all night before graduating in Gilmer Hall. (Yeah, right, I could see them thinking.) So the three of us wandered through Gilmer’s halls, looking for Andy. And all the while, I entertained a series of questions that left me with the realization of how little Andy tells us.

“Who is he working for?”"Someone in the psych department.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What office?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does he drink?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

We never did find Andy. (Later, he claimed that he had been behind a locked door working in an office. I suppose I’ll have to trust him on this.)

Anyway, he’s graduated now, with a BS double-majoring in Computer Science and Psychology. Go enjoy some pictures of the occasion, on the web at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdzik/

You can recognize Andy easily. He’s the graduate wearing jeans and a t-shirt under his gown.