Parenting

The Unofficial Billet Boy Survival Guide

We have had hockey boys from all over the United States and even a couple of international locations. None of them have been perfect, although some have certainly worked harder at perfection than others.

With one of our boys leaving our household yesterday, it seemed like a good time to put down a few pointers for the hockey players who find themselves living in someone else’s house for a season. These won’t guarantee universal success, but they should increase your chances of becoming a favorite billet in our house.

Remember that your billet parents are responsible for you. If you want to spend the night at your girlfriend’s house, we are probably not the right billet house for you. We actually had one boy “move” to another billet house because the billet mom there didn’t care if he stayed at his girlfriend’s house instead of coming home.

If you choose to go down that road, I recommend buttering up your current billets first. Ask if they would mind making pizza for dinner. Maybe compliment the cooking. Make everyone feel like you are really connecting with them. Then, when the billet coordinator calls the next day to say you want to move, the whole puzzle will come together beautifully.

If you are under 21, there isn’t much wiggle room on alcohol in our house. My theory is pretty simple: you are here to play hockey. If you have other priorities, we probably aren’t going to be a great fit.

And if you decide to drink anyway and think you are being sneaky, remember that you are dealing with someone who has raised four children. I have seen things. I am also sneakier than you are.

We make a pretty serious effort to cook dinner every night. And if we fail at that, we usually beg you to indulge us on the occasional “warm-up” night where dinner might be less ambitious.

So if your mother decides to send a two- or three-pound bag of chicken nuggets to our front door without warning, there are only so many complimentary ways I can interpret that.

And if you don’t eat the dinner because you claim your ADHD medication makes you not hungry, but then order a meal from Uber Eats later that evening, I am going to notice. I may not say anything immediately, but I will notice. I have been doing this for a while.

We are happy to provide your water. And if you insist on spring water instead of filtered water, you are probably going to win that argument. No matter how many times I see the people at Sam’s Club peddling those five-gallon jugs, I will continue to walk past them.

I know you like your 16.9-ounce plastic bottles. You like being able to count them so you know exactly how much water you have consumed. That’s fine. But I do think you need to finish the bottle before taking credit for drinking it.

Turn off the lights.

This one varies by boy, but I have walked into the guys’ rooms and found as many as five lights on at one time. I am not judging. I am simply suggesting that if you can flick the switch on, you can flick the switch off.

Electricity is not free, despite what your bedroom may be telling you.

Technically, you can walk around the house shirtless. But out of respect for the women in the house, please wear a shirt.

The hot tub is an exemption.

I am not unreasonable.

We used to assign jobs. One boy would load or unload the dishwasher. Another would set the table. This worked beautifully right up until the boy with the job was taking a nap, out golfing, or otherwise unavailable for reasons that were apparently very important to him.

Hockey boys do a lot of napping.

So, to simplify things for the adults in the household, we have boiled our expectations down to two rules:

  1. Help clean off the table after dinner.
  2. If you make a mess or see something that needs to be done, take care of it.

This won’t get everyone on the same page, but at least it gets everyone pointed in the same direction.

Game-day breakfasts are a little different. We know the rules are going to slip sometimes, but as much as it depends on you, refrain from using inappropriate language.

There are younger fans around, and you are in a position to be a role model to them. There are plenty of role models in the world who curse without hesitation. Be willing to stand out and be different.

Besides, if you are going to spend the season in our house, I need to believe I have at least a little influence over you.

We know you like to shower.

I am not entirely sure why you need to shower before your nap, after your nap, and again before getting back on the ice, but apparently this is important to you.

Do what you have to do. Just don’t overdo it.

Hot water is not free, and I have yet to discover a hockey scholarship that includes unlimited water usage.

If it is here, it is yours to eat. That is typically what I tell the boys.

However, if you develop a particular affinity for something in the pantry or freezer, it might be helpful to let your billet parents know about it.

If you and your billet parent both develop a hankering for the same sweet or salty item on the same night, somebody may be disappointed. If I know what you like, I can at least keep an eye on it and try to keep it stocked.

This is one of the less complicated ways to keep the peace in a house full of hockey players.

Your parents and your billet parents are on the same team.

The best boys typically had parents who understood that. We are both trying to get their son through the season safely and successfully.

If there is an injury or a bout with the flu, we try to work together. I might say to one of our players, “Does your mom know about that injury? If you don’t tell her, I will text her tomorrow.”

We aren’t there to get involved in how they parent their son. We are there to provide some on-the-ground accountability.

Sometimes a hockey player’s enthusiasm can make him think that playing through something is more important than dealing with the thing he is playing through. That is where we can help.

I can’t guarantee that I have an infinite supply of wise words, but the next hockey boy I talk to will be far from my first.

Whether we are discussing a coach’s decision, a hockey situation, or whether he should eat more vegetables, I will probably have an opinion.

On the hockey stuff, I will defer to his parents and hockey adviser.

On the vegetables, he is going to have to develop a pretty strong resolve because we are not going to stop presenting them as an option.

Eventually, he may even eat one.

If you have your own vehicle, you may not always get a spot in the driveway.

And if your billet parents’ daughter is pregnant with twins and already has a toddler running around, be a gentleman. You may have to park somewhere else and walk a little farther.

This is not a complicated concept. You are young. Your legs work.

Pay your billet fees on time.

With the Warriors organization, billet parents pay the fees directly. When we first started with the Brahmas, billet parents paid the Brahmas, who then sent us a check. Now, we are paid directly by the parents, and we fill out a form online letting the organization know we have been paid.

A failure to pay on time comes with a warning. Multiple warnings come with penalties to the player.

But please don’t do what one parent did.

Her son had wanted to be traded for several weeks. We barely knew he had actually been traded before she sent us a Venmo request to refund the unused portion of that month’s billet fees.

Not surprisingly, this was not a hockey boy we were a particularly good match for.

It is unlikely that we would ever ask for a boy to be moved from our home. But it is also unlikely that we will shed many tears when some of them move on.

And that may be the strangest part of being a billet parent.

If you are going to live in our house for any length of time, you are going to spend some time marinating in our version of right and wrong. Where we think we can have an influence, we will. If we find ourselves pushing our ideals too far, we will back off.

It was our home before it was yours.

It will still be our home after you leave.

Even if every one of our boys gets cut, we aren’t going to lower our standards just to make sure we have hockey players sitting around the dinner table. Just like with our own children, the rules can flex. Some can be partially ignored. Every boy and every situation is a little different.

But the basic expectations remain.

Be respectful. Be responsible. Be considerate. Help out. Tell the truth. And, when somebody is trying to take care of you, recognize that they are actually trying to take care of you.

We wouldn’t be worthy of the title “billet parent” if we weren’t willing to roll up our sleeves, adjust the rules when necessary, and occasionally remind a hockey player that there is a world outside the rink.

And, despite all the lights left on, showers taken, chicken nuggets delivered, vegetables rejected, and questionable decisions made along the way, we really are glad to have them.

They come into our house as hockey players.

If we do it right, they leave having been part of our family for a little while.

Talk To The Team

As my daughter gets closer to becoming the mother of three, I could not be more excited for her. Or more aware that I personally will do none of the work involved.

She has spent this entire Oklahoma summer—certainly the hottest one since we moved here—getting kicked from the inside by two little people who do not yet have names and somehow already outrank her in the house. Yes, I was gone for a few weeks of the summer. That does not mean I wasn’t sympathetic. I was rooting for her from wherever I was.

Of course, when your daughter has three kids, that means you have at least three grandkids. I would like credit for that arithmetic.

A friend sent me a video last week of his grandson getting ready to have a sibling. Since my friend already has other grandchildren, something ugly woke up in me. Not sadness. Something closer to a scoreboard.

I would love to tell you I am above comparing my family’s headcount to another man’s family’s headcount. I am not going to tell you that because it isn’t true.

The frustrating part is that there is nothing productive I can do about it. New kids don’t get born because Grandpa felt competitive on a Tuesday. If I want to add players to the roster, the actual work has to come from somewhere else entirely, and I am, at best, in a spoiling and snack-providing capacity.

I brought this up to my daughter while she was complaining about getting her ribs kicked from the inside and having trouble putting socks on her swollen legs. She listened to my grandchild-count predicament with the patience of a woman who has significantly bigger problems and said, “You need to talk to the other members of the team.”

The team.

Currently, the team has one active member, my daughter, and three others on the bench. Of those, only one of them are currently qualified to help me pad the stats, by my own arbitrary rule that I would prefer marriage happen first. I would welcome any grandkids, of course, but please forgive me for preferring that my kids get married before they start producing them. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

So, let’s talk about how I got here, competitive about something I have absolutely no control over.

I didn’t become a father until my thirties, which means I spent a good portion of my life watching other men become grandfathers while I was still working my way through the fatherhood portion of the program. My wife and I always assumed we’d be the kind of grandparents who leaked enthusiasm out of every pore the second a grandchild showed up.

Apparently, our other kids—the ones older than our pregnant daughter—either never noticed that enthusiasm or noticed it and decided it wasn’t worth compromising on a spouse to make it a reality.

Their loss, frankly.

Their siblings’ children are going to get the toys, the outfits, and the opportunity to have us visit more. There is a reason I didn’t lead with the visits.

More grandkids would obviously help my case when talking to my peers. It would also give me even less free time than I have now, especially since the odds of getting the other two kids’ grandkids within the ten-minute driving radius their siblings enjoy are pretty close to zero.

Realistically, it would mean my wife and I doing a lot more driving or flying to keep tabs on whatever new pieces of our extended DNA show up somewhere else. I’m willing to make that sacrifice, although I reserve the right to complain about the mileage.

So, to the rest of the team, if you’re reading this, I have no deceptive motives in mind.

We’ve already proven ourselves to be pretty good grandparents. We are soon to triple our grandchildren, which sounds much more impressive when you don’t mention that we started with one. Tripling again—or more—is something your sister is not going to be able to do on her own.

So, do everyone a favor.

Spare her body the record attempt. Go ahead and get married, have some kids, and give your sister a little competition of her own. She has set some lofty goals, but we have faith in every one of you.

And to the hockey boys: you have also been added to the team, although I realize your membership is temporary. We are only your parents for the season, which means in a few months you are going to leave, start your own lives, and—if everything goes according to plan—eventually contribute to your own parents’ scoreboards.

Just to be clear, I am not counting any future children you might have on my scoreboard. Those are your parents’ points. I have my own scoreboard to worry about.

We aren’t trying to rush you. You’ve got plenty of hockey, growing up, and other things to figure out first. We are glad to have you guys around, and we will be sorry when the season ends and you head off to whatever comes next.

But when the time comes, remember that your billet parents are going to be looking for ways to keep the family roster growing.

As much as we enjoy having you guys around, our focus has to be on boosting the score in Grandpa’s selfish little game.

So, if the Gruenbaums can’t cook and provide a bed for you next season, we hope you understand.

After all, there is a team to build.

The Eve of Controlled Chaos

Friday was an errand day—well, at least the morning was. With the hockey boys arriving this weekend, I had to finish up the grocery shopping. Earlier in the morning, Judy and I had discussed what the menu might look like for the first week. After that, we would have time to pick their brains and figure out what foods we could slide into the rotation without causing anyone to thumb their nose too high.

Our returning boy told us, “I like to eat everything.” So naturally, the first night he was here last season, we made a tomato pasta dish. (The things he liked was hence modified to be “everything except tomatoes.”) Our two Alaska brothers have already informed us that they dislike tomatoes and onions, and one of them dislikes peppers. The next few meals should help us get into the finer points of these dislikes. Is it the size? How they’re cooked? Or is it the flavor? Apparently, we are not simply cooking dinner. We are conducting a culinary research project.

The first night this year is tacos. Our carnitas have a few jalapeños beaten into a pulp, so we’ll get to test where the pepper line is. If the problem is flavor, they can fall back on brisket tacos. There is always a backup plan when you are responsible for feeding three teenage hockey players. It just happens to involve another kind of meat.

With my daughter within a month of her C-section—we are all rooting for the natural birth—I picked her and my granddaughter up so she could get out of the house and run some errands. It never hurts to have another adult available when a toddler decides to spontaneously melt down. This particular outing also resulted in one of my rare visits to Hobby Lobby.

I don’t shop at Hobby Lobby. Judy will buy craft items there, and on this day my daughter was shopping for birthday gifts for a church friend’s daughter. My granddaughter had her own opinions about what should be purchased, naturally. My daughter worked within her $25 budget and found a couple of things that seemed like they would actually feel like “her.” Ruth, my granddaughter’s code name for purposes of this blog, allowed Grandpa to push the cart while Mom did the math and performed increasingly sophisticated guesstimations about each gift’s position on the enjoyment spectrum.

As we checked out, we passed the inevitable temptation along the checkout aisle: Horehound lozenges. My daughter didn’t seem particularly excited to see them. I did. Not because I wanted any, but because they reminded me of my dad and the stash of horehound he kept tucked away in the kitchen cabinets of the house where I grew up.

Apparently, even a trip to Hobby Lobby can turn into a brief visit with your past.

The trip to Sam’s was more of a refrigerator “topping off” than a major shopping expedition. We’ll see which boys are still in our house next weekend. They started with 51, and we are told they will cut that number to 34 next weekend. Three of those 51 are staying with us, and there is also a boy trying out who happens to be the brother of a hockey player we had when we lived in Texas.

He is a goalie, so we are hopeful he makes the team. If he does, the billet coordinator has already promised that he will be “ours.” We really enjoyed his family when his older brother was ours. Most billet parents are fine. His parents were exceptional. When they came down for one of their son’s games, they were great fans and made it obvious how much they appreciated what we were doing.

That is part of the answer when people ask why we let young men stay with us when we could just eat out every night and avoid the whole cooking-and-parenting-adjacent experience.

First, we would cook anyway. We just throw a few more pieces of chicken on the grill. Second, most of the boys are genuinely appreciative. Yes, we’ve had a few entitled players enter our home. We tolerated them. And, regardless of whatever antics a kid might attempt, having parents we really liked tended to raise our tolerance level considerably.

There is a little chaos involved, but the boys also bring something we probably wouldn’t get otherwise. They are chasing a dream. Watching them work toward it gives us a reminder of what it looks like when something matters enough to work for. And when that dream takes a detour, we get a chance to help them figure out how to handle it.

The only truly “new” thing on this set of errands was voting early in a runoff primary. There were a series of tables I had to graduate through before I could finally get my ballot. At the first table, I signed an affidavit saying I wouldn’t vote again at another location during the remainder of the voting period. At the next table, I presented my driver’s license again, along with the affidavit. I believe they attached a label to it before sending me on to get my ballot.

At the previous table, I heard someone mention that about 120 people had voted. My ballot number was R103. I’m not entirely sure what the numbering system meant, but it made me wonder if the Republican ballots were winning the early-voting popularity contest. Then I remembered there apparently weren’t any Democratic runoffs, so that probably wasn’t much of a contest. The rules of the runoff simply meant the people participating were concentrated on one side.

There were only two state issues on the ballot, so I filled in the little rectangular boxes the old-fashioned way. No electronic ballot for me. I was told the ballot could be scanned with either side up. In my case, the scanner apparently preferred that I maintain my privacy and scan it face down.

I usually don’t take the “I Voted” sticker, but I thought it might entertain my granddaughter, who was already fighting a cranky mood brought on by incoming teeth or whatever other battle toddlers wage in their ongoing effort to preserve a good mood.

It did not entertain her at all.

Aldi’s was our final stop. We needed a few taco supplies—vegetable toppings for those who eat them and plenty of cheese because meat and tortillas need cheese to graduate to official taco status in all parts of the country. Tomatoes are optional.

By the time the errands were finished, I realized the day had been more than a grocery run and a few stops around town. It was the eve of another transition for our family. The boys arrive Saturday, and with them comes an eight-ish-month commitment.

We “get” to be parents again, but with some significant upgrades. They are mostly self-sufficient, although we may need to help with transportation from time to time. And if they screw up, we don’t have to blame ourselves for whatever parenting mistake supposedly caused it. We can help them navigate the challenge without taking their indiscretions personally.

If they have a great year and grow into better players and better young men, we get to watch that happen, too. Their parents deserve the largest share of the credit, without question. Our job is mostly to provide a home, feed them, encourage them, and occasionally nudge them back toward the idea that their priority right now is supposed to be hockey.

And if I ever need a reminder of just how good I can be at the nudging part, I can always ask my wife.

Yes, dear. You’re welcome.

Andy: 1, Death by Sneezing: 0

I am the unfortunate one who is “it” today.
It with what? Cold, sinus infection, COVID, mystery crud with commitment issues—hard to say. Whatever it is, it picked me to carry it on Father’s Day. I’m not sure if this thing started two weeks ago or sometime back before our son’s wedding, but the headline is simple enough: I am sick on Father’s Day.

I won’t blame the sickness entirely for my lack of a blog post lately. It hasn’t helped, but it doesn’t deserve full credit. My stubbornness has played a strong supporting role, especially the part where I refuse to rest like a man my age who has, allegedly, earned the right to lie down without guilt. Instead, I’ve been spending my limited energy knocking items off the pre–vacation list: swapping Texas plates for Oklahoma plates, finally closing out a business that overstayed its welcome, babysitting through both scheduled and “guess who’s here” Ellie visits, and getting the house ready for the hockey boys we’re expecting again in the fall.

Written out, it doesn’t look like a heroic montage. It looks like paperwork, childcare, and laundry with extra steps. But when you layer those things over days where my body is operating on the “barely functioning” setting, I’m oddly proud of it. It’s not dramatic, but it’s the real shape of being Dad at this stage: still moving forward, even if I’m wheezing while I do it.

Last night, as we got into bed, my wife gave me a pep talk. At least, that’s what she thought it was. She caught something too—worse than mine, in her version of the story. My theory is we have the same bug, her symptoms just showed up in different costumes. Either way, what I received was the “the next few days of your life will be miserable” speech.

She used gentler, more reasonable words. What I heard was, “You aren’t as tough as me, but I’ll try to support you through the certain misery ahead.” She denied this, naturally. I reminded her that communication isn’t about what you say; it’s about what I hear. And what I heard sounded like a pretty unflattering movie trailer. We agreed to disagree and rolled over for yet another night with no goodnight kiss. Nothing says romance like marital plague protocols.

The funny part is that the night went better than her forecast. I took something for drainage, then waited to see whether it would help or if I was just participating in expensive wishful thinking. She had one coughing fit, so her suffering continues and, by extension, my predicted misery has apparently been extended by at least another day on principle. I blew my nose a few times, rolled from left to right more than usual, and then—somehow—actually slept. Morning showed up, and I felt more rested than her non-prophetic words had promised. For that one night at least, the scoreboard read: Andy 1, Death by Sneezing 0.

Possibly out of guilt, my wife turned the leftover half of a French loaf—the half that didn’t get turned into garlic bread—into French toast this morning. We reheated some sausage, sat down together, and had a real breakfast. We did not hold hands to pray over the food. At this point, I’m not sure how much difference hand-holding makes when we’re living in the same air and sharing every surface known to man. She put up such a strong “no goodnight kiss” boundary when she got sick, which would have been adorable if she hadn’t kissed me the night before my symptoms showed up. By then, the virus had already RSVP’d.

I’m no specialist in germ theory, but I’m fairly confident she’s enforcing a rulebook the viruses never agreed to follow. That said, the French toast was a satisfying touch. On a normal rough morning, “I’ll make the coffee” is about as extravagant as we get. Guilt offering or not, the extra effort landed.

We decided to skip church, too. On any other Sunday, that decision would have been straightforward: we’re sick, we stay home. On Father’s Day, it comes with a little extra twinge. On Mother’s Day, our church passes out “Her-She” candy bars. Hershey, with a wink. I can’t remember if the men get anything. Our big treat is the chance for the willing and able to sit up front in the choir area and help lead the singing. I skipped every practice, which technically should have disqualified me. But practices were optional, and my secret plan was to sneak in anyway and let my voice blend in with the other dads who also didn’t rehearse.

My voice still works. My conscience apparently works better. The close quarters up front started to look less like worship and more like the opening scene of a documentary called “Superspreader: The Tenor Section.” As much as I hated to miss the male bonding, staying home felt like the least selfish choice. I may have lost the joy of singing off-key with the guys, but somewhere a congregation is slightly healthier for my sacrifice.

Tonight’s dinner with the kids is still technically on, but it now carries an asterisk in all the group texts. We might cancel. We might rally. I hate even imagining not being there, but everyone else has earned the right to stay healthy, too. No one wants their Father’s Day dessert with a side of virus.

Whoever I end up seeing today—however upright or congested I am—I’m calling this Father’s Day a win. This year, we added a new daughter-in-law to the family. Our daughter is due late summer with twins. There are murmurs of permanence in the lives of our other two kids, the kind of quiet conversations that sound suspiciously like future weddings warming up in the wings.

Father’s Day has never really been about me, at least not in the way the cards suggest. It’s more of an annual status report on what’s happened over the past year and what seems to be growing underneath all the noise. The real takeaway isn’t “Look what I built.” It’s closer to, “Thank God my kids are out there choosing kind people to build a life with.”

I’d be thrilled to be a grandfather many times over. That’s no secret. But the part that actually feels like a report card on my parenting is simpler: they make decent choices; they care about the people around them; they’re building lives that look, for the most part, healthy and hopeful. My wife and I blurred plenty of roles over the years and improvised more than we’d admit, but the results walking around out there seem to speak for themselves.

On the low end of the scale, they graduated from college and pay their own bills. On the high end, they’re married or moving toward it, they’re happy—or at least earnestly trying to be—and grandkids are starting to appear as the bonus round I selfishly can’t wait to keep playing.

By next Father’s Day, I’ll get another snapshot of where everyone has landed on that spectrum. Maybe more weddings. Maybe more babies. Maybe more ordinary Tuesdays that quietly matter more than any of it. For now, I’m just glad to be here to take attendance. Healthy would’ve been nice. But present and accounted for, even with a box of tissues under my arm, feels like enough.

The Freezer Reckoning

Our son got married last weekend, and the hockey boys cleared out about six weeks ago, and somewhere in there I started walking around feeling like a man who had just solved a very complicated equation. Fewer people. Less food. Maybe I’d finally figure out what a normal grocery run looks like.

I have not figured that out.

What I’ve figured out is that our three freezers — the kitchen one, the garage one, and the chest freezer that operates mostly on faith — contain a fairly accurate biography of the last several months of our family’s life, and that biography is not well-organized.

The honest version is that I did this. I buy a ten-pound tube of hamburger because that’s who I am, probably during some kind of Sam’s Club fever dream, and then I brown it and portion it into freezer bags I’ve flattened out because flat is more efficient. Except they’re not flat. They have ridges. They develop personalities. They stack the way things stack when the person doing the stacking is optimistic but not precise. Over time they’ve been joined by what I can only call the Chicken Bag Cousins — bags from three different cooking sessions, a couple of optimistic grilling sessions that nobody finished, reheated once and found wanting, frozen again on the theory that Past Me was looking out for Future Me. Future Me has since learned that Past Me was overconfident. There’s also a respectable quantity of brisket, some sausages I can’t fully account for, and enough frozen banana halves to suggest I had real smoothie ambitions that I haven’t quite followed through on. My job is to rotate all of this back through the kitchen before it becomes archaeology. I am failing at that job.

The problem isn’t just volume. It’s that everyone eating out of these freezers wants something different. My wife is dieting, so there’s browned turkey in there for her taco salads. My son’s new wife is vegetarian, so we’ve got black bean burgers, vegetarian pizzas, and somewhere north of a dozen sweet potato and bean burritos she can heat up when whatever I’ve made for dinner doesn’t work for her. The hockey boys left behind pizza rolls and mozzarella sticks the way other people leave behind furniture — just part of the place now. And then there’s me, standing in front of an open freezer at 5pm, trying to figure out how to turn any of this into something that resembles a meal.

My daughter gets a tour about once a week. I open the chest freezer and make my case. “Wouldn’t sloppy joes be good? I’ve got the beef right here, already browned.” Last visit, she left with a few things and agreed in principle to two dinners next week, which I’m counting as a genuine win. Our granddaughter Ellie is less useful — she’s refusing to grow teeth at any kind of reasonable pace, which I respect as a personal choice but doesn’t help with the chicken situation.

The cruise is in mid-summer. That’s the finish line. Every freezer-excavation dinner between now and then is doing something — keeping us honest, keeping us from buying more food we don’t need, keeping my wife and me from just staring at each other while eating tonight’s protein selection and pretending we planned it that way. The dining room on the ship is going to feel earned.

I grew up in a house where you didn’t waste food, and that’s still in me. Some of what’s in those freezers isn’t exactly what I’d serve company, but it deserves better than the trash, so we eat it, and we move on. It’s a strange thing, eating your way through a freezer that was packed for a different version of your life — when the house was full, when I was buying for a crowd, when nobody thought twice about four frozen pizzas on a Tuesday night. The house is quieter now. It’s a good quiet, mostly. Our son is happy and our daughter’s family is close and Ellie is growing up even without the teeth. Things are good.

The freezers will catch up eventually.

Inherited Love, Acquired Like

After a wedding, you don’t just gain a son- or daughter-in-law. You gain a brand-new human you are now morally obligated to love, whether or not you’d voluntarily spend three hours in a car alone with them.

You love your kid. You love the person they chose. The spouse becomes an extension of your child, like an emotional annex. You don’t need a sociology degree or any other “-ology” to know that doing right by either of them is a good long-term investment. Love one, love both, everybody’s happy, Hallmark can roll credits.

But “loving” the new spouse does not automatically convert to an immediate “like.”

For the purposes of this little ramble, love means treating the spouse with the respect and honor your child would appreciate. They’re married now. They’re one. Your treatment should reflect that, whether or not you fully understand every choice this delightful new person has made and will continue to make with great confidence.

Like is different. Like is earned. Like is slower.

“Fake It” And Then What?

There’s that old line, “Fake it till you make it.” With in-laws, it becomes: fake it until you really love them. The initial love is inherited—you love your kid, so their spouse gets swept into the coverage area like a dependent on a health plan. Basic kindness and benefit of the doubt, grandfathered in by your affection for your child.

The “spousal like” is acquired. It’s not instantaneous. It shows up in oddly specific moments. You know you have it when you’re both stuck in a car together and the conversation just keeps going—serious to stupid, jobs to movies to “what is wrong with that guy’s driving?”—and you realize you’re not just being polite anymore.

Then there’s the social setting version, which is its own beast. One-on-one is not the same person who walks into a party. For some of us, parties are draining. A room full of small talk feels like being slowly pecked to death by well-meaning ducks. Give me a corner, a chair, and one solid conversation partner.

My married son is far too extroverted in a group for my taste. He works the room like he’s on a campaign trail. But he knows his dad, so we can drop out of the noise and settle into something real—serious enough to matter, sarcastic enough that it doesn’t turn into a lecture series nobody registered for.

The Introvert Who Won My Heart

My daughter has been married almost four years to an introvert. He doesn’t give you a lot to work with. Conversations are never hard, but they’re not the same elastic back-and-forth I have with my kids. More pauses, fewer punchlines, less verbal jazz.

But he won my heart anyway—by how he takes care of my granddaughter and looks out for my daughter. I wouldn’t volunteer for a ten-hour road trip with him. But I know he puts the women in his life on a pedestal, and that matters more than whether he appreciates my running commentary on the state of the universe.

That’s a kind of like that grows from watching, not talking.

The Many Versions of a Daughter-in-Law

My son’s new wife is a different kind of story entirely.

First she was simply our son’s girlfriend. Then the woman he wanted to marry, from another faith tradition—which added some complexity and a few extra conversations. Then she got baptized, and she became our future daughter-in-law in a much more layered way.

On top of all that, she spent the better part of this year as a near-aunt to our granddaughter, a doctorate candidate who crossed the finish line one week before walking down the aisle, a bride planning her dream wedding on a budget that kept shrinking in her imagination, and a person who loves her life in Oklahoma while missing parts of the family and culture she grew up in.

That’s a lot for one person to carry, and she carried it without visibly unraveling—which, having watched the whole thing unfold, I find genuinely impressive.

Now the wedding is over. Real life starts.

I’m looking forward to the spouse she’ll be once the adrenaline settles. I’m looking forward to watching them build rhythms and traditions and eventually a family of their own. And selfishly, I’m looking forward to the car ride where the conversation bounces between serious and sassy and neither of us has to work too hard at it.

But even if we never become natural road-trip buddies—if the rapport stays warm but never quite effortless—I’ll still be grateful if she loves my son well. If his heart got handed to someone who’ll protect it carefully for the rest of his life, she’s earned a lifetime pass.

She’s just starting. So are we, honestly.

Maybe We’re Not Missing Adventure After All

There’s a certain kind of person who goes to a wedding in another state and thinks, “What a beautiful place. We should come back and kayak sometime.”

Then there’s us. We went to our son’s wedding and thought, “Did we remember to thaw the hamburger before we left?”

While we were basically quarantined at the venue, guests were out doing actual things — lakes, museums, zoos, little downtown districts with string lights. More than one person commented specifically on the lack of rain, which felt borderline miraculous given that the week before, Judy and I were mentally preparing for Noah’s Ark: Wedding Edition. Instead, the sun came out, people got mildly sunburned, and Midwesterners started wearing Thunder attire with reckless confidence.

One guest called it “Texas-lite.” Fewer cities, less traffic, but still that independent spirit with a side of, “You wanna go to the casino for a couple hours?” Honestly, that might be the most accurate tourism slogan the state has ever had.

The wedding yanked me out of my shell like someone grabbing a turtle and dropping it into a family reunion. I do better than most actual turtles — I walk four or five miles a day, Judy swims or lifts nearly every day — but the wedding forced us into a different category entirely. Socially active. Emotionally on-call. Logistically overbooked.

For one weekend, I became outgoing. Charming, even. I made conversation, asked follow-up questions, made eye contact for what felt like six consecutive minutes. That kind of performance takes a toll on a middle-aged man. By Monday I had fully reverted, quietly staring at a grocery list and wondering if we already had shredded cheese at home.

Here’s the question I keep asking myself: are we addicted to being needed?

All the local kids are married now. We have one grandchild here and two more on the way. Judy still works full-time. In late August, we become billet parents again for a couple more junior hockey players. When free time appears, our minds don’t drift toward “let’s disappear into the mountains.” They drift toward whether we’re stocked up on snacks before the kids come over, or whether Once Upon a Child has anything worth grabbing this weekend.

Judy ran the wedding as both head planner and mother of the groom. Centerpieces, linens, and boxes of “we might need this” colonized every spare room in the house. I’m fairly certain we lost a closet.

Even after the wedding, with friends still in town, Judy’s first reaction was not enthusiasm. The tank was empty. But the grill came out, lawn chairs appeared, people laughed — and at some point it just felt right again, the way it always seems to once you stop dreading the thing and start doing it. The storm shelter in the garage floor remains our unofficial tourist attraction. I’ve given that tour more times than I can count.

We’ll take our two-week vacation this summer. We’ll probably drive to see our parents in August while Judy works remote to stretch the days. We check those boxes. But I wonder sometimes whether we’re healthy because we don’t spend three weekends a month chasing adventure across Texas and Oklahoma, or healthy because emotionally we know we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

Not every morning do we wake up thinking, “Great day to reorganize everything around babysitting.” But when too many days pass without seeing the kids or grandkids, we look at each other around 7 p.m. and say, “I miss them.”

That’s probably the pattern until it isn’t. Someday the house will be still. No baby clothes to hunt down, no hockey kids rolling in, no one asking to see the tornado bunker. If we’re lucky — physically steady, mentally intact, still on the kids’ good side — we’ll buy that camper and drive around the country.

And if we’ve behaved well enough, maybe they’ll even give us their address.

The Thermostat Chronicles

I found the paperwork for our smart thermostats a couple weeks ago, stuffed in one of those builder-special drawers that exists purely to hold things you’ll ignore for months. I let it sit there while the hockey boys finished their exodus—gave it roughly the same priority as calling the dentist or figuring out what that dashboard light means.

Yesterday I finally set them up. Took about ten minutes.

The downstairs thermostat runs on a theology, not a formula. Cool to 68 at night, off in the morning, coast on captured coolness until we hit 74, then grant ourselves a brief mercy breeze. My wife runs warm. She’s rejected blankets as a concept by 3am and is down to a sheet, while I’m doing a careful negotiation with my own fluctuating temps. Nobody is fully comfortable. We’ve made peace with this.

The hockey boys upstairs had their own thermostat—which is a sentence that should concern any adult paying utilities. Most days they were actually responsible about it. I’d conduct routine inspections anyway, like a very underpaid HVAC auditor looking for an offender. Most days I’d find it off and feel mildly ridiculous. The days I found it cranked below my downstairs temperature, I shut it off and sent it to thermostat jail. Once my eyes shifted into critical mode, I noticed just how messy a room can be and still qualify as technically livable. Apparently, 64 degrees and scattered laundry is peak comfort for teenage boys.

One of them stayed home sick once and ran the AC all day through peak afternoon heat. I stayed downstairs trying to remember I was their on-site parent. No app, no way to intervene—just a man staring at his computer, listening to the AC run in a room he wasn’t sitting in. Next season, boys. Watch out.

Texas was a different category of problem entirely.

Multiple thermostats, multiple HVAC systems—which sounds luxurious until you learn that the upstairs unit was hilariously undersized for several hockey boys and all the heat their lives generated. Setting the thermostat to 60 doesn’t make the AC work harder. It just makes you feel more desperate. The unit cooled at one speed, like a tired old man doing his best and being yelled at anyway. I bought two window units for the upstairs bedrooms. In a closed room they worked great—small icy caves of relief. In the bonus room over the garage, that cold air just got eaten alive.

More than once I found myself promising “the AC guy is coming tomorrow” like some kind of sweaty HVAC prophet.

Then there were the buckets. Window units pull a shocking amount of moisture out of Texas air. That moisture goes in a five-gallon bucket. The bucket fills once, sometimes twice a day. If it’s more than halfway full at bedtime, you dump it—unless you’re a teenage boy, in which case the bucket simply doesn’t exist for you as a concept. Water eventually got into a cabinet. When we sold the house I disclosed the general situation. I did not give the buyers a TED talk on what awaits anyone who tries to keep that upstairs cool. Some things the next owner just has to discover at 2am on their own.

I am still the thermostat guy. This is not changing.

New boys come in the fall. They’ll crank the AC and sleep under twelve blankets like they’re filming a winter survival documentary, and I’ll watch from the couch on my phone app—quietly, in stealth mode, without tromping upstairs to prove a point. I feel less like a spy when I don’t have to stand up.

They brought chaos and laundry and Chipotle bags and a house that felt like something was happening in it. When they leave it gets quiet in a way that takes some adjusting to.

I’ll take the higher electric bills over a quiet house every time.

I Love You More Before 8 P.M

I had a busy day.

Not “storming the beaches of Normandy” busy, but “Oklahoma suburban dad with three doctors, a land rush anniversary, and a fajita deadline” busy. By the time it was over, my social skills had clocked out at 5 p.m. and left the rest of me to freelance the damage.

Fun fact: this particular Tuesday in Oklahoma is the anniversary of the Land Run of 1889. It’s the day people lined up, waited for the cannon, and sprinted for free dirt. The nickname “Sooners” came from the folks who slipped out before the start time. They didn’t cheat; they just identified as “time-flexible.” Meanwhile, I wasn’t cheating anything. I was just trying to survive my schedule.

The day started with me putting the final touches on a project I lovingly call “Bleeding the Benefits Dry” at my wife’s employer. The schedule was aggressive. Some men are made for times like this. I am not one of those men — I am, however, just enough of one to say yes and then regret it in stages.

First stop: the dentist. Routine cleaning, plus a cavity that earned me a bonus visit the next day. On Day One, I wore a bright turquoise shirt. On Day Two, I wore red. I could have worn the same pants, but I cannot let the dental staff know I am capable of a multi-day streak with the same shirt. There are mysteries I prefer to keep between me and my laundry basket. The cavity fill itself was painless. The drill fired up right as Huey Lewis and the News started singing “Heart and Soul,” which felt like my molar’s last request.

From there, the GPS announced I’d arrive at the dermatologist in NW OKC with less than ten minutes to spare. I did what was necessary to buy a little more time and arrived in reasonable shape. Once inside, they weighed me and generously shared my BMI while I was still fully dressed, shoes and all. I’m fairly certain Mr. Body Mass Index never intended his invention to be used in “winter coat plus wallet” mode, but here we are.

The doctor came in apologizing about thin walls and how they talk to reduce stress. What I learned next was that Integris has decided dermatology is now a luxury, and they’re dropping coverage. My earlier-in-the-week appointment turned out to be a minor miracle of timing. The doc, however, was locked and loaded with his cryotherapy gun and not afraid to use it. He addressed a couple of spots on my back and one in my eyebrow — an old acquaintance, originally treated twelve and a half years ago after a trip to China. Most spots barely registered on the “Did you do something, Doc?” scale. The eyebrow one probably wasn’t cancerous, he said; it was just growing with more enthusiasm than I wanted on my face. He double-tapped it and sent it to keratosis jail. If anyone wants to post bail, they’re welcome to it. I don’t need that barnacle of aging marring the wrinkles and other disfigurements already collecting on my face.

Parting instructions: a blister may form. Don’t pop it. It’s nature’s band-aid. Use Vaseline.

I am a man who now has Vaseline on his mental checklist.

The GPS said I could make it home before Ellie woke up. The gas gauge disagreed. The next driver is also my wife, so I filled the tank and accepted I’d be a few minutes late. Marriages are built on these small surrenders.

She was still sleeping when I arrived, which gave me a short breather. When she woke at noon, I was on duty until 3:15. She got her bottle and then spent forty-five minutes making faces and drooling all over her peanut butter toast. She’s operating on gum-and-slobber settings right now, but the volume of drool and the frequency of bib changes suggest teeth are on the way. The afternoon was mostly play and exploration, followed by the subtle art of convincing her it was nap time. Grandpa has his methods. None are scientifically validated, but they eventually work.

Before she was up again, I slipped out to the eye doctor. I paid the small fee for the retinal camera instead of the dilation drops — quick, easy, no blurry afternoon to manage. I aced the vision test. My prescription hasn’t changed. The doctor couldn’t find the floaters or the Fuchs’ Iris Crypts. Boring is good. I awarded this the Best Doctor Appointment of the Day, an honor it earned simply by not finding anything worth worrying about.

One grocery run for guacamole fixings later, and I was home for dinner. My daughter had already sliced the peppers and onions and put them in the oven to roast. There was marinated chicken to grill and Ellie to entertain. When we sat down, we could have won a regional Mexican condiment award: homemade guac, cilantro salsa, and street corn dip, with strawberry shortcake queued up for dessert. It was a good dinner. The kind of good that tricks you into thinking you still have gas left in the tank.

After dinner, my son and I took a walk. He filled me in on honeymoon plans and some work challenges. Good conversation. But when we got back, I was already sliding toward wind-down mode, and I retreated to the den hoping my wife and I could salvage some TV time together.

That was the plan.

That was not what happened.

His fiancée came over for strawberry shortcake and, more dangerously, conversation. I sat in the den watching the clock, wondering at what point a household should put a “Closed” sign on dessert service. My daughter, who had been at the house most of the day working her online job while we babysat, wrapped up her final call around 9:20.

That was my moment.

I walked out of the den and announced: “Everybody needs to leave so I can get ready for bed. I had a busy day and I am tired.”

That line doesn’t invite much counter-dialogue. They shut down their conversations and headed for the door. My son walked his fiancée home. He probably apologized on my behalf and explained it wasn’t personal — just one of his dad’s quirks. That is, unfortunately, a very accurate assessment.

Here’s what I know about myself after all these years: I’m usually a happy, snarky guy. But when the tank is empty and the façade runs out, I become a less pleasant version of myself. He is not the one you want at game night or in a room full of people who are still wide awake and full of things to say. The den is supposed to be where I go to keep him contained. Sometimes it’s just where he simmers until he needs to vent. I am responsible for all of it. I’m just not always able to steer it in the moment.

So to the people who had to deal with that side of me — I’m sorry.

If you’re scheduling time with me, mornings are good, afternoons are fine, and evenings are a gamble. After 8 p.m., you’re probably working with about 75% of my usual civility, and that’s on a calm night. Consider this your operating manual: Andy is at his best — and yes, it’s a narrow best — until about dinner time.

I love you all. I just love you more before 8 p.m.

The End of Full-Time Grandpa (And Other Things I’m Not Supposed to Admit)

I’m going to confess something, and I need you to hear it with some grace.

When I found out Ellie’s babysitting hours were getting cut roughly in half this summer, I felt something I wasn’t entirely prepared for. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t dread. It was approximately 30% relief — and somewhere between “pleased about it” and “absolutely horrified that I’m pleased about it.”

Here’s the thing about spending the better part of eight months as a near-full-time caregiver to a tiny human: you become incredibly important. You control what she eats. What she plays with. When she sleeps. You are, functionally, the benevolent overlord of her entire world — which sounds like a power trip until you realize the overlord is also cleaning up after every snack and quietly celebrating when she naps on schedule. The point is, Ellie is my buddy, my partner in crime. My best one right now, honestly. And I’m not entirely sure I’ll find her caliber of companionship roaming around in the wild.

But she is also, for the record, almost entirely dependent on me. Which makes it a healthy grandpa relationship. Not a control thing. I want to be clear on that.

The Alibi is Gone

For the past eight months, Ellie has served a dual purpose in my life that I didn’t fully clock until just recently: she was both my greatest joy and my best excuse.

Can’t make that thing? Babysitting. Can’t get to that list? Babysitting. Skipping the world’s least urgent errand? The baby. Sorry.

It worked because it was true. My schedule wasn’t my own — it was a rolling remix of my son-in-law’s class schedule and music lesson calendar, with occasional guest appearances from “early drop-off day” and “can you just grab her a couple extra hours?” Neither of which I ever once actually minded. Love my girl. But now that the schedule is loosening, the alibi evaporates with it.

And here’s the uncomfortable thing that emerges when the alibi goes away: I have to look directly at what semi-retirement actually is. No more buffer. No more built-in structure. Just me, a calendar with some new blank space in it, and the gnawing suspicion that “semi” is becoming less defensible by the week.

The identity crisis, it turns out, keeps scheduling follow-up appointments.

So, What Now?

I have been running through the options with the seriousness they deserve, which is to say I’ve been loosely rattling them around in my head between walks and online chess games.

There’s the bucket list route — though I’ve always been a little suspicious of people who pursue bucket lists “blindly.” Life tends to edit your bucket list for you whether you ask nicely or not.

There’s the T-shirt brand idea, which sounds ridiculous until I remember I occasionally hit a genuinely funny idea in what I can only describe as an elusive zen-sarcastic state. Mugs, maybe. Something.

There’s volunteering — the classic semi-retiree move that buys you grace, purpose, and a totally legitimate reason to defer the bigger decisions until your wife retires and the two of you can figure it out together. I’m not above this plan. I’m almost in favor of it.

What I’m not doing: more crypto. More forex. More anything that requires me to hand my optimism over to an algorithm and hope for the best. I made it to semi-retirement with most of my wits intact, and I’d like to keep that streak going.

What I am doing — and this one feels right — is leaning harder into the semi-autobiographical writing I’ve been circling for a while. There’s something in there worth saying. There are stories I’ve been carrying around waiting for someone to sit down and actually write them, and lately that someone keeps making eye contact with me in the mirror.

The Part That’s Easy

Here’s what I already know, even before I figure out the rest:

I want to be the grandpa who’s down on the floor. The one who pretends to sleep and gets “rudely” awakened by a curious toddler who thinks this is the funniest game ever invented. The one who’s genuinely present — not physically in the house but mentally somewhere else drafting a passive income strategy.

I missed parts of my kids’ childhoods that I can’t go back and retrieve. That’s just honest. But I get a second pass at this — not to rewrite anything, but to actually feel what I apparently drove past too fast the first time around.

If every project I consider from here on out has to fit around that commitment — being available to my kids, being present for my grandkids, staying on the floor — then that’s not a constraint. That’s the whole architecture.

If I never find anything more valuable than that, I’ll consider it a life well-lived. Ellie didn’t know she was giving me an eight-month tutorial in how to be that grandpa. But she was. The “semi” might be fading. The purpose is getting clearer.