A House of Glass

And so it begins:

Author’s note Apr 16, 2025:

There is a perfection in the human race, and that is that none of us are perfect. The tip of the iceberg in each of us is all that we try very hard to show to others. What is below the surface is entirely something else. Our private lives and our secrets are our own. They are not spoken of, unless someone else is found to be discrete enough that we can have the confidence to share a few of them with, but still not even all.

And there is something else. These are the seeds planted, the ones we were born with. They remain a part of our being and are deeply instilled, mostly hidden far beneath the surface; our desires, sexuality, lust, likes & dislikes, as well as those less desirable, but still part of our being simply human; meanness, jealousy, vengefulness.

And we are social. People are not as they appear, or their friends and their families. Our little family certainly wasn’t. I imagine by all appearances we were as normal as any from someone comparing us to their own. But of course, we weren’t really.

Hurt feelings clause: I would like to point out, before any individual reading this has hurt feelings, know I respect your sensitivities, of which I’m hoping there are not a great many.

Onward.

Gone Girl & Boy

Let’s just say... This that I write will remain in perpetuity; my testament that will last forever.

But then, and in a minute you will see where I am going with this: “Besides, no one will read,” when something actually is, and it is at this point the best we can tell, inhuman. I’d like to put out there that one of my less than lame ideas was stolen at the beginning of the Internet, and turned into some very successful movies. Perhaps I’ll share more about this later.

Sunday a.m. I’m sitting in my tiny, dark compartment, having my second cup of coffee when this observation comes to me. The look of this room is very much like the image of the book “cover” I borrowed. I should take an actual photograph and use it instead. Besides it’s not stealing. It is borrowing.

BTW, AI does not yet know the satisfaction of a good cup of coffee. It may never will. It can spew all the info it does know, ie: “It can be rich, aromatic, creamy, delicious, European-style or American.” AI can tell you how it is prepared and all the yumminess, but sadly, it may never know what the hell it is talking about. However, much like our Internet connected devices all the way down to my smart TV and car listen in on our conversations and goings-on, it too is reading this as I write. It may take until I hit send or upload or whatever, but it will catalog this too among pentatrillionzillion other things. But it will not know coffee. It will only know of it.

This morning, the sun is coming up and it is really, really cold. 11 degrees Fahrenheit I believe I saw. And many people are freaking out because there is a Winter Storm coming by God, with ice and snow and... And, the part I do not get is why this is even news. It is winter isn’t it? A lunatic just drove into a crowd in New Orleans and killed so many souls for the sake of Religious beliefs again. A billionaire-designed, very ugly, truck was detonated in front of a Trump Tower in Las Vegas for a similar reason - their God vs someone else’s God. It’s like European football fanaticism. But, headlines are, “Weather.” More on this later too, as I’m straying from point.

As my second cup was brewing this thought came to me: My daughter, Bernadette (Bernie), had asked for images from her childhood a number of times. It was as though it never happened and she needed proof. The revelation this morning, as the Keurig did it’s wondrous work was, there is a chance in her mind it hadn’t actually (her childhood). Her youth, her upbringing, the horse riding lessons, soccer, basketball, travels to Peru and Paris, roller blading, swimming lessons, trips to the beach etc, all came before this damned Internet. I have a son, Chip, who is a few years older than she who is even farther removed, or should I say “reduced” from my memory. It is for the same reason, I gather.

This is how different our worlds are. I have, in an outbuilding, a cardboard box full of photographs. They’re on paper. As well, I save laptops. As technology has advanced, I have with it also, and I scanned hundreds of these photos into files. I uploaded a number of these for the youngest child via Google Drive and intended to give her access. I still have the photographs boxed-up, and if I wished to toddle off and brave the winter weather, I could pull the box down from the shelf, open it, and take these images in my hands and look upon them.

I haven’t.

The box of photographs, Bernie, the youngest had requested, and many of the relics from our kid’s childhood are up there in the loft. Would she have even been satisfied with the digital memories via what is now the Cloud?

Before there was this technology, a photograph was a physical object and something you could touch and see with your own eyes. In this day, and since the advent of the Internet, when there is so little anyone can trust, could she even believe what is real?

Reality left in the mid 1990s as the Internet came into being, and this was their upbringing. We, from the previous, tangible world adapted, although not knowing our version of reality would be far distant from our own children’s. Bernie had essentially asked for memories, and foolishly I was going to provide her with digital copies.

The box was never sent. Shortly after my compiling it all together -- those remaining after a flood destroyed much of it -- she went what is now trending as no contact. The electronic copies as well, due to a very confusing, misaligned misunderstanding were never shared. Our son, Chip by the way, had bailed quite a few years before.

So now, the Internet knows somewhere, in its tiny recesses that I have saved all I could of our family’s tangible memories - the stuff that really did happen. It is still here (January 4th, 2026).

It goes without saying

Their mother and I were sexual people. It is just so difficult to have children without it.

One would expect that children, knowing their parents enjoyed each other often, would instill the same respect for it in their own lives as they reached adulthood. I fear, however, this may not have been the case.

Bernie hardly read at all until she located her mother’s romance novels. There was no pornography in the house, not even HBO or Showtime. Other than the novels, there was only Sex and the City DVDs that I recall. Otherwise, there was just their mother and I.

Bernie, as a young teen, she would steal away to her room for hours with books adorned with the muscled garden boys and innocent maidens brimming with lust under veil. This did not concern me as I hoped it would cement in her mind the expectation of how she should be treated and adored in her adult life. Social media had already become a thing and the online mistreatment, you see. I could only imagine all the teenaged boy’s brash behaviors and the facades they would create for themselves in their fake realities.

Never in the children’s presence did we make love. It was private, but possibly sometimes noisy -- such as in the bathroom of a Paris Hotel. And there may have been a time or two when we christened other hotel rooms thinking the kids were asleep in the next-door bed. ...I seem to recall once on the balcony overlooking the beach; again, thinking the kids were asleep.

They too, grew to become sexual people as well, and I learned a great deal even from them. Myself, I was raised in what I now consider an unusual environment. I never got “the talk.” I never needed it. My own father was of the generation that had magazines, and the things I knew were from reading these -- what I did read of them that is. As a young teen, I came across a book in his library on the bottom shelf that was entitled The Photographic Marriage Manual. It was a hardback volume like you would find on a coffee-table. Upon opening it, I was surprised and elated to find images of couples in all manner of lovemaking. It was essentially the Kama Sutra in glossy black and white and color photographs. Beside each was a description of how the multiple positions were best accomplished, even how to taste her, or she, him.

I learned much, but I had not yet learned, even in dating in high school, girls, women, were fraught with desire the same as I. Somehow this escaped me. For years I had the belief the good girls I dated were only allowing me each small step forward. Still, somehow, it did not enter my mind that they were driven the same way by desire as I.

And, admittedly, there were not very many of these girls and women before Bernie & Chip’s mother...

I Have Written

...Of my concern of forgiveness. Not only of my own mind you, but of my own ability to, were I asked. I have to admit I dream of them most nights despite the years that have passed. These dreams are not of joyful homecomings, more simply their casual reappearance as though nothing has happened in between. In previous years after these brief appearances I would awaken in a bit of a shock as the reality returned they were still no longer in my life. The pain of such was not as piteous as the initial realization from years ago. You see, my eldest was always rebellious and retributive since he was even a child. But our youngest, Bernie, in the years previous had performed quite a number of dry runs. Among these, one was even indicated by a few months or so where nothing would be heard of her -- only to later learn the family had relocated to another state with her husband and children without our even being made aware.

“Perhaps I should reach out?” I would ask myself. And reach out I have been known to do with a mute apology for what I could not honestly fathom may have been the misstep on my part that resulted in yet another prolonged period of silence. I have yet to understand - as none of the usual hallmarks of parental misgivings have been present - I have seen and heard enough of the customary abuses, even experienced a few of them in my own life, and none of these were present. In fact, in the more recent years, especially after the period of silence which was accompanied by uprooting their entire family, we were walking on eggshells as they say.

And my wife was always cast as the villain. I didn’t become one until much later – maybe because maybe in their bent little minds I defended her. But admittedly, I didn’t defend as well and as much as I should have, nor have I defended us. Edited April, 26th, 2026: Today’s thinking. It is time I did.

So, as I end this writing tonight as it is getting late, I must close with admitting in my dreams now, long enough has passed, that I pointedly ask in my dreams, “Why are you here again?” And, “What do you want?” Understanding, this may appear quite callous, but it has now been a number of years; at the time of this writing, I believe two and a half years had passed.. After the last over-dramatized misunderstanding a few years ago... [contrived, and aggrandized(?), though these feelings are only my own], enough time has passed that I don’t know my children any longer. How their lives are going, I have to admit I no longer know; and this is the chief concern of a parent of those children who have survived into adulthood. It is gone from me, or I should say taken, as only that they are well and good still is foremost in my mind.

And those Grandchildren... enough years have passed they no longer know me, nor I them.

So, I have to wonder as the children have collectively removed themselves like a branch cut from a tree or a loss of an actual limb, what is it that they dream?

A thought:

Being such, that in our deepest layers, on the rare occasion that we allow ourselves to explore such rare and exquisite feelings then wish to quietly and carefully close them off, dispose of these, and deny even the possibility of their ever having been discovered.

This, our nature also is then to take them to our grave; although in disposing of them in the visible world, we may cut them out like small pieces of flesh as we will attempt to do without them for the rest of our lives.

But for those remaining days, which may be many, severed memories and the lingering thoughts of what could have been will be forever missing, this until our dying day when we will never have known the precious outcome had we not shut those doors now so, so long ago.

This, however we will always live among, but only in our own memories and dreams.

Onward

This story/writing has been hidden away and not spoken of, as it defies explanation to anyone, were the predicament revealed to them.

We were abandoned. Still are. And it’s not the first time, and perhaps it won’t be the last. I do find it almost poetic that I share my story here to random strangers on the Internet, as well as to the Internet itself.

You see, the “abandoned,” I will call us, are not completely in control of how it feels. We can’t make the pain go away. We can’t make it not hurt. I have tried for many, many years. Whether they realize it or not, they that leave us, they are pulling much more from our lives than say what it feels like when someone steals a rake from your front porch. It goes very deep. It breaks your heart, especially when there was no explanation. We got the sense of, “You know what you did.” But it was only a sensation, it has never been said. There was no explanation, only silence.

It’s fascinating in a way if you think about it. And I realize it may be hard to imagine. I can’t pull up the resources to try and understand what it feels like to lose a child in a car accident for instance. From what I have heard is it is devastating. I do know a woman whose adult son took his own life, and due to her adoration of the child, her own life was ruined and is ruined to this day. But I do recall now, a number of years ago that first Mother’s Day when no “Happy Mother’s Day” came from either child. Chip, had excused himself some eight or nine years ago then. Not hearing from him at all had become commonplace. But when Bernie, being under the immense pressure I can only imagine of being the only remaining communicative child, finally let Mother’s Day pass without a word of any sort, the result was heartbreaking for us both. And then a year or so later, a silent Father’s day came and went with nothing but silence. I can still recall it vividly. I was walking on a pier that extended out over the Pacific ocean. Seagulls were doing what they do, and the song by Randy Newman played in my aching mind: I think it’s going to rain today. Then, I finally had a taste of what it felt like. And no, I can’t recall what it was I did to deserve the hateful treatment. Since, for both of us, Holidays, birthdays et cetera come and gone with the occasional disregard until finally a few years ago... complete silence.

A very intelligent fellow, a Chilean named Humberto Maturana, wrote of what he penned as the Santiago theory of Cognition. A Biologist I believe, he quite profoundly pointed out that we all have our own perception of the world and even of every event that has taken place. I am a Professor in my own field. I may have as many as a dozen students in my classroom at one time. Now, having read of this theory I teach and think differently. I find it fascinating to see how a class will coalesce. Each individual from their own world and existence throughout different areas of the country with their own ideas and thoughts, with their own perceptions, will come to the table and then they will leave. Sometimes they may never to see one another again. Reality, as it were, is that almost three hundred people have attended and then returned to the world from whence they came, not with what I have attempted to relay, but what they perceived.

And then here I will sit, plying through my feelings about having not one child, but two, out there in the cold world somewhere and my not knowing exactly where, or how they are doing. Their own children by default and virtue of their young age have been pulled from my very being as well. This is how this works.

The first child, Chip, I believe may have a family of his own. It has been that long ago. In any event, I do hope everyone is successful, and happy. That is what any good parent should hope for, though the reasoning may be a bit curious and selfish. In my mind, I can simply deal with the pain a little more if I can assume they are doing well in thinking, “Well, at least maybe we got something right.”

It is inexplicable otherwise, and this is why the random admission to a random internet.

Thank you for reading - JB

The Tables Turned

Another of the trends of the day, this was the advent of the computer age, we moved to a part of the US where children were simply not even raised at all. “Latchkey children” they called them. They came home from their neighborhood schools to houses with stuffed, three-car garages, and the parents were still many long hours away. And, yet another concept I find very difficult to comprehend - like the poles of the earth switching from North to South, we adults had become the ones judged.

As their parents, our every motive became questioned. It was a very odd sensation now that I think of it. In a hands-off world, they were not raised by us. They were raised by Google, Instagram & Facebook. We too kept up with technology, but in our different directions. I suppose they had theirs, and we had ours.

In this modern world, I did not want the children toyed with as, I knew the strain they would find themselves under. So we let them be who they were. But, as we were judged, we were made to question who we were as parents. Again, being so judged and criticized by your children is a very odd sensation. It came to the point where we could do nothing right at all; hence, the walking on eggshells. This was not ordinary teen-aged angst. This was questioning everything we did as though we weren’t parents at all, even more-so than that, we were not even the adults in the mix. I imagine this is the standard perception found all over Social media now and compounded by their algorithms that continue in their feed to feed them. They not only believed themselves equals, they believed themselves to be superior. And, as they reached what they perceived was adulthood, they looked back, continued with their belief of all of our misgivings. Vowing in their minds to not repeat them, whatever the multitude of our sins were, they simply went on their way.

We ourselves did not judge them. Perhaps we should have a little more? We did not disparage, and still do not. To the outside world our two children would appear angelic and blameless and still do to this day that I am aware. We, on the other hand, to justify the children’s complete departure from our lives, must be represented as demonic, and awful people. There would be no other way. And now as I revisit this writing years later, I’m sure referring to them as our “children” would offend them.

Very difficult conversations with our acquaintances we try to avoid. The simple and common question, “Do you have children?” had become painful each time it was asked. This is very difficult when you are presented with it. Perhaps one day both of our own defiant children will have that opportunity to enjoy the sensation of having to approach that question(?) when there are children and grandchildren, but not really. How can we possibly answer? “Yes, but they are back in Oklahoma,” or “Colorado, Alabama... who knows?” and, “We don’t hear from them anymore...” It brings up more questions to answer. “What happened?”“We don’t know.”

So our best response is simply, “No.” As this is in fact true: we did produce children. But we don’t have children anymore.

Sad.

A recent night’s dream

An edit: today is the day he was born, my wife reminded me, though I didn’t need reminding. It was different for her I am sure as he came into this world after seventeen hours of her laboring to bring him into it. I recall trying not to trip on all the wires and cords, and after they checked for all the fingers and toes, I held him. His mother was elated.

Chip was in my dream, though a teenager just as I had last seen him almost fifteen years ago. The children tend to show up in my dreams like this for no rhyme or reason. And, there was no purpose for him to be in this one. It was just a remembrance of an ordinary kind of day.

These were the first generation of children whom would approach Social Media and online networks. Even then, I viewed this as no small thing. The boy, a few years older than his younger sister, had been totally and completely swept away even at a young age. Defiance and resistance were among his character traits prevalent at three years of age, even prior to his learning how to read. When asked what he would like for Christmas at that point he requested a laptop. Our existence in his life was for the most part obligatory, as he had little use for us apart from ensuring he was housed and fed.

Looking back later, when they were both teens, I recall the judgment especially in he. He was of course quite intelligent. I remember a few attempts he reaching out to us in some form of needed acceptance, love, or assistance, but these moments were very few. His reality was far different from mine especially. His mother adored him always despite it all. It seemed she feared losing him. For his own education, and maybe subconsciously our thoughts that absence may indeed make the heart grow fonder, we let him go to a foreign country his Senior year in High School as an exchange student, as we hosted one ourselves prior to. He, however, returned even farther removed, distant, and defiant.

His first year’s attempt at University and dorm-living was a disaster. Truth, honesty and even integrity it would appear being non-existent in the young man from the beginning, and he having managed to elude these his entire life, we never learned really what happened his first semester. However, the University’s Guidance Counselors and Advisors had already placed him on Academic Suspension, and we were told there was nothing we could do about this whether we wished to thoroughly meddle or not.

I’d like to close this Chapter quickly and not because the boy, now a man, is not worth the time at all because in fact he is. And he may be an excellent case-study in the future if anyone after a great tech collapse were interested. In a nutshell: he had been born sweet and innocent enough, but society and technology proved the most influential toward his upbringing, not we. We could not guide the direction he took in any way (doesn’t it sometimes seem that way). Our relationship ended with...

Oh, and here’s a strange point to consider: I re-thought this line and find it to be accurate enough. A mother or father and their son’s relationship would seem should never, ever end. There are only a few ways that it could right? But no. Like a break-up, or a divorce, his absence leaves a huge, yawning chasm behind. I wish I could explain it better without becoming entirely pathetic...

In any event, student loans and college became impractical. The Counselor at his excellent University even advised us not to continue pursuing his education. An excellent vehicle I sold him for so little to get him back and forth while at school, he sold off for almost nothing not even half a year later to pay bills... I’m not sure. He was eighteen, and Credit card companies were more than happy to extend him credit as a college student on a parent co-signed Student Loan. But when no longer a student at a major University these companies were not happy that he did not pay, and they began calling his Mother, and threatening her even. Incidentally thereafter, his mother took him down to a US Air force Recruiting office so he could test for any branch of the military...

This had worked for me as, in my own youth, I came home excitedly one evening with two acceptance letters from Universities after I’d tested while I was a senior in High School. My parent’s response was simply, “No.” I was child number three, you see, and the college coffer had been all but dried-up. I can’t recall if student loans even existed then.

But I digress. My boy, after testing well enough, and was told he could join any branch of the armed services, and in fact could choose any career he had in mind, rejected their offers. He wanted to go to school and become a history teacher, he said. He didn’t wish to even return home. While not enrolled in the next semester, his very small part of the Student Loans would become due, in which he could pay only if he found a job. He asked us to co-sign on a lease on an apartment with some friends in the town of the University. The phone-calls from the creditors had already begun coming in on my wife’s cell, and the apartments in this college town would not allow him to sign on a lease on his own. As well, we refused, and he asked his baby sister. And (supposedly) she refused, and... the couch surfing at friend’s places continued, which I’m sure required a lot of explanation as to what dicks and bitches his parents must be... which come to think of it “dicks and bitches” is far more polite than the name he called his mother one afternoon, resulting in the aforementioned vehicle packed with all his belongings, and him asked to leave. Now that I think of it, I guess this is actually when his couch surfing days had begun, and this was some time even before the unsuccessful college attempt. I shouldn’t have let my feelings affect me then. I’d kicked him out for the awful language and accusation toward his mother only for a weekend and an apology... My bad.

And a day came when we just never heard from him again for quite a number of days, then weeks, months and then years until one day when he needed my Social Security number for some sort of clearance, and then not again. Clear-headed thinking: My Social Security number wouldn't have been even necessary -- such an odd request...

This all happened over a dozen years ago (around fifteen at the time of this edit -- beginning of 2026).

All I can hope is that he is doing okay. There is that tiny glimmer of hope that at least that part came out right, even if not by our doing.

I’m sure there’s a support group out there somewhere for we ineffective & powerless parents. I envision a lonely, disenchanted couple on their couch and a tablet streaming in his or her lap. Then... welcome to the new age, as society is being completely and systematically dismantled. Virtual. Here then is a virtual hug.

Bernie was adored

... And maybe that was the problem? Her life was completely mundane as most are. There are that ten percent that are lucky, no shortage of money, princesses and flawless complexions. Then there the ten percent who sadly have to occupy the other end of the spectrum. It would be nice if there were never any family strife or acne, drugs and abuse. It would. I would say our existence was quite unremarkable: there was stress, family passing away, illness, and the ordinary health problems. I do have to admit, we did move around too much for them to build any meaningful relationships with kids their own age.

However, realistically, it’s not so simple. No. I really don’t know what we did. And no, I don’t know what she felt. We could dig deep into the archives of Social Media and find the roots of these expanding groups of young people supporting going no contact. We can refer to the younger generation as being too sensitive and they can refer to us as too harsh. Gaslighting, finger-pointing, accusations & coercion abounds. Who is right, and who is wrong, does not even matter at this point. Everyone loses.

An Edit. Apr 1st, 2025: This going No Contact in such a world as this one has become is rather scary. As it was with our own children, there must be some way to sustain it, to sustain them. Our beloved Bernie was able to fall in with the family of her boyfriend at the time. Chip similarly found someone else to hold his head aloft. We had seen the tendencies in both children, the cries for pity. And, this is how I arrive at the conclusion their parents must have been labeled as horrible people, otherwise how was it possible to have been taken in?

A side note: I have been able to keep track of their whereabouts using that same Social media and internet that encouraged that they should leave off any communication with us in the first place. They’re possibly surviving quite well, it seems, or at least that’s the persona given. Are they happy or suicidal? The Internet doesn’t have the capability for such things down to the individual level. And, as parents, the right to feel their pain has been removed from us -- meaning, we can’t talk; we can’t coax these things out of them nor the children Bernie brought into this world, or Chip, if he and perhaps a lucky spouse or partner have had any...

Again, all I wish for is their happiness. I worry for them, especially she. And I realize I am beginning to think in past-tense here. Sometimes I have difficulty remembering how long we last heard from her (I believe the last was early October 2021 – so, three and a half years?). It had become very strained by this point as it had often prior to. We could sense the fabric tearing again as it had so many times in the past, the tell-tale angst and pulling away. The other child did not torture us so. He just “drifted” away almost fifteen years ago until he was gone just altogether.

Chip had always been very resourceful in getting what he needed. I do not worry for his well-being. As well, he and Bernie were very close as brothers and sisters should be. But Bernie, I do worry about so much more.

Changing Direction

I can’t seem to place it.

Maybe sometimes a soul doesn’t get a fair shake.

I awoke this morning too early. The sun won’t be up still another three hours. I could have coffee, but then this came to mind, “I don’t spend enough time delighting in her.” And I am writing about my wife. We’ve been together quite a long time. The children came and went, and at present, are gone. And as well, the time they took cannot be replaced.

But the realization a moment ago was not only that I don’t delight in my wife’s company as well as I should, but came the stark truth that also one day the first of us will go. One cannot say which of we two will go first, but one of us undoubtedly will. And if it is she, then it will have been so painfully deep and tragic that I’ll lament in the fact that I didn’t get enough time to spend with her; to delight in her company as much as I possibly could before. This thought is so horrifying that I wish to grow tired enough to crawl back into bed with her and wake her just to assure myself she is still there -- that each of these moments are not taken for granted.

As we have aged with one another, and as I look back, I can see how our union was so fragile. Not only were there the ordinary odds people have to approach in life, but as well the resistance of our children. In essence, now that I consider the judgment we faced from those two, I can’t miss the barriers they worked so diligently to create between she and I. She, my wife, was of course keenly aware. We spoke of it more than once. The toll was years in duration. Looking back now, we are lucky to have made it. Can the reader even imagine... Is this strange that I must ask myself, that one’s own children could, with such lack of empathy, attempt to undermine their own parent’s marriage? What the point of this could have been I do not know, unless it was borne upon absolute malice and deliberation.

The daughter who was so adored, once the knowledge settled in her mind that all of she and her brother’s attempts to dismantle us were in vain, simply walked. This is 4:44am thinking by the way: when I look back into our past I have to wonder if this could have been done with that much forethought? Our angelic children both, we were aware, had a cruel streak. We admitted this to ourselves some years ago, what especially with Bernie’s manipulation and constant pulling out and then coming back in. The similarity of this act is not at all coincidental I have to point out...

By the young angel’s own admission, the last few years, our Christmas gifts to the Grandchildren were not given to them out of spite and “pettiness.” Petty, being the actual term she used. And here, even these few years after that phone conversation, I can see that it was meant to hurt. I missed that then. I mentioned the boxes of their belongings & photographs of their childhood in the outbuilding: Among them is a Barbie car. It is still in its box and was never opened. This was the gift sent to our granddaughter Christmas of 2021. It was returned, barely taped in a loose box. It is a wonder it made it. And if I think of this a moment, I can only envision she and her husband, now ex, I have been made to understand, taking it to the Post-Office. But why?

In a few days thereafter, it was then somehow I learned she and her family had pulled up and moved yet again. We had not spoken since the previous October. December 18, 2021 their home had sold. I believe I had found this on one of the Realtor websites. And again, a few years before, this moving (running?) had occurred a few years prior to in the same fashion. I hate trends and patterns as I think sometimes it’s my imagination, but I have to ask: would she take out her own unhappiness, despite the silence and distance that she manifested... still, on her parents? Could that even be a thing? After this prior instance a few years before, she had come back into our lives, and everyone made amends it seemed. And then the pulling away began again, but it was more a tearing by any description. After a good, sweet period, it would bein again. We could get nothing right, every conversation on the phone would end badly, the judging and accusations began yet again. It often seemed she was being coerced. This was an underlying theme every time, as though her actions, her motivation, was not her own. And, is this not the theme in so many of these squabbles anywhere the world over? I imagine so anyway.

And again, I do not wish to disparage, and as I re-read this I appear petty, and whiny myself, and do not wish to continue in this vein. So I will close with, as I still cannot truly comprehend what happened: Over the course of the year from the previous Christmas, as problematic as that visit was, which I’ll attempt to approach later... if you’ll pardon my digression for a moment, I remember a phone call. There was another sort of falling-out between our daughter and her mother that had occurred in the months before. We had caught ourselves again “walking on eggshells” as they say.

This was during-after the pandemic and our own move across the country. It was not an easy time for anyone, and our inability to visit due to fear of spreading Covid further distanced us. And through an email I believe it was determined the daughter would call and see if things couldn’t be patched up yet again for perhaps the fifth time. This incomprehensible ritual had reared its ugly head so many times in the previous years Pandemic or no, so it is hard to put a number to it. But this time, during what appeared a normal phone conversation our daughter suddenly exclaimed, “I just can’t do this anymore,” or something with that kind of finality. We were devastated. My wife especially was crushed, and burst into tears. I was crushed also. The damage this time would be irreparable. Edit: As of January 2026, it still seems to be absolutely irreparable.

It is after 4am the morning following what I wrote in the paragraphs above mentioning 4:44am. And of course sleep still eludes me.

A separation so complete

On Tumblr, I just saw an entire blog that was entitled AI Pictures Unlimited. They were as beautiful as AI is capable of producing them enmass (as there were a great many uploaded in a very short period of time). I guessed the creator was in Japan or China by the architecture placed magnificently in Mountainous or bucolic otherwise settings. Just beautiful. And it was fascinating at first, but then it came to me: it was all untrue and unreal. I am beginning to see. Netflix has a short series entitled Adolescence. Masterfully done, it is stunning in its reality. ...and reality is something of a rarity these days. Watch it, and you will see the effort parents will put into their children, the love and devotion, as well as the mind-numbing pain. My point being: Reality is occasionally painful and not-so-beautiful. In this modern era, you are invited to step away from it. Some never go back.

Prior to, was a Chapter I wrote. I called it “Besides, no one will read.” No one has, and I still do not expect anyone will, because I write of the truth, of course it is only the truth as I see it, and fewer and fewer people are interested in what is true.

The compartment where I sit, and read and write in the mornings, is above the main floor of our home. Here, there is a Keurig and cups. And there is one as well down in the kitchen where I keep my cream in the fridge. Evidently this is a very important ritual and deeply rooted, as I awoke to a series of dreams just awhile ago that the refrigerator had broken yesterday evening. In one dream, it had leaked everywhere and instead of taking all the contents out to the “back-up” refrigerator, we had gone to great lengths to set the old fridge aside and bring the other, larger one into the kitchen. I drifted in and out of this dream a few times as the dog kept waking me, but the dream would return. “I must go check on this.” I would say to myself, and then I dreamed I did go check, and found the place was a mess. By this point I was fully and absolutely convinced of this truth, and when finally did awaken in real life, I had to go downstairs to check for myself. I did find everything was in its normal place. It had only been a number of very convincing dreams.

I looked around the room, patiently waiting, while the Keurig did its wonderful work. In a room with a kitchen, dining area, living and all the accouterments, I could only find a very few items my daughter would even recognize. One table out of four came from her past; a quite nondescript sofa; an old hutch with cubicles for wine bottles; a Shakespeare etching above it; and a ceramic cat cookie jar maybe. That was it. Chip, I gathered, may would only associate with his youth the Shakespeare engraving. Otherwise, nothing else would have any relevance for either child save a coat of arms above the kitchen window. We picked it up in Europe, and on it is our name. Another is of her Family name, which I don’t imagine the children even are aware.

The coffee had brewed, and the lovely aroma permeated. I then made my way back upstairs thinking of this as, you see, we had over the last almost five years moved twice since seeing Bernie and her family. We began downsized, then we upsized during the Pandemic, and have now downsized again. Nothing around us is fodder. It is here because it is wanted, but in downsizing, our home is quite full of things again that are more precious. Family pictures are not present on the walls, of course, and there are but few of ourselves in one room upstairs.

I recall, as a young man, the elation of going home. We moved around frequently as well and the place my parents lived and died I only spent four years. But home, despite my parent’s own imperfections, was a wonderful place to be. I had moved to a part of the US that was a sixteen hour’s drive away. But the parents I had left were there, and I drove that distance straight through sometimes throughout the night, nonstop. In my memory, returning to my home and family was one of the greatest sensations of my life. I mention this only because it is something my own children will never know.

Below the surface

In an earlier Chapter I believe I wrote there was no pornography in the house. However, writing from your own reflections tends to open the mind and allow more memories to surface. Obviously, I do not dwell in the past, but then a memory resurfaced that I had forgotten. It’s still not very clear mind you.

If you are familiar with Tumblr, then you know the content can be explicit. It is very different from Facebook, Spotify, TikTok, X, or Instagram; you know, your run of the mill, garden variety, out there, blogs where you can be found and seen, and may even hope to be found.

I don’t remember who had first found the Tumblr Website in our home, or even when. This one may even be on me. Keeping in mind Chip was away at school for half of that year, so I don’t believe it was he. Sheldon would add, “Yes, that’s how you say that.”

For the uninitiated, I will give a quick run-thru. And bear with me if you are familiar, in which I am sure many are but never admit their familiarity (“I like your shoe-laces,” I think is how you communicate to someone you even have a Tumblr Login. I’ve never tried this).

Like FB or IG, on your Tumblr, a feed scrolls from other people’s posts. So, for instance you sign up, and you say you like topics of, Writing, or Architecture. Initially this is how the feed runs -- with Writing stuff, fiction, and houses, landscaping, whatnot. But as you begin to follow people you will see what they re-blog, and people are just people. If you begin with Kittens and Puppies, what is fed will be largely that. But pretty soon, if you have Tumblr on your phone, you will be checking around you before opening it in public because some days are more filtered than others. Your feed may begin producing other kinds of kitties.

The Operation was sold in late 2018, and the new owners tried to clean things up a bit and for awhile they were somewhat successful. But, you can imagine prior to the great attempt at cleaning it up, no one in their right mind would admit they had a Tumblr. If you choose to, you can be completely anonymous. I still have a Tumblr account. I try to keep it clean. But if you are following someone, or any topic, crochet for example, and you kind of have to, because otherwise the feed is pretty barren, be it anyone, male, female or both, or neither, you are at their whim (the people you follow). If a Grandmom in Portugal has the desire to post a couple engaging in a sexual act in an alley somewhere or, “Coitus,” as Sheldon Cooper would say, it will arrive on your phone or what have you.

Another bonus: there is a tab for other than those that you follow, and there is a tab that saves everything you have liked, similar to hearting on FB or IG. The “For You” tab is a feed that runs, and it may be an assortment of the things you have “liked,” and if for instance that Grandmom in Portugal has decided to post an even more explicit image, very close-up and personal, and you decide to unfollow her, the future images she posts will still show up in your “For You” tab until you teach your Tumblr to feed nice things again (by following nice people and liking images of ducks and geese). The key being, people are people, and due to anonymity their/your occasional interests will arrive at some point on your IOT device.

On Samsung TV, an Ad ran just a few months ago for the elusive Tumblr. Tied up with the Discord community, you can imagine it has grouped Artists and Creators as well. The catch being, it is not very well filtered. I like it for a number of reasons, mainly the lack of Political activity. I did away with FB years ago (and recently Instagram as well), as I saw the people I knew, actually knew, and went to Highschool with for instance, go completely off the reservation with politics and leaning either right or left. Social Media created this as well with it’s algorithms feeding the masses and the too-easily persuaded. Tumblr has that too I guess, but I don’t follow these morons, therefore it doesn’t present itself.

K. Thanks for reading.

And yes, Bernie learned of Tumblr during a formative year, I’m thinking. I would guess maybe fourteen. I’m not sure.

A few years ago, she called her mother and I. This was when she was then maybe twenty-five or six years of age. She seriously wanted to know why or what could have happened in her upbringing that could have oriented her into the rather fringe things she was into sexually... and the reader can see that I am trying to put this as respectively as I possibly can. She’d had a sudden flash of consciousness or reflection it would seem. More precisely, she was trying to pin down the source of why she she enjoyed what she did, as she had come to delve into a certain niche. I couldn’t tell you when, or at what age. I do recall, in this same phone conversation, her mentioning an example: an unrelated Tumblr image shown to her of a woman giving herself a pleasurable workout with a certain kind of device pretty much designed for just such a purpose. I don’t recall this happening actually. Again, with Tumblr this can show up in the feed at random. Her mother and I tried to talk her off of the ledge, and let her know she was pretty much in fact, normal. Bernie, sometimes to a fault, had always been honest and up-front with her mother and I. Even the phone call above was not overly alarming coming from our little girl.

And Pornography: this is the part I suddenly remembered yesterday morning. It was never a thing until an element came along to introduce it into our home, and that element would be Chip again. As I have been writing this last couple of weeks I’m beginning to see a pattern. I always suspected, but never zeroed in on the kind of influence he brought. More on this later. I can’t recall the details, but I think I learned of it from Bernie, as she was the informer of the family. Chip mostly worked in the background. Now, I only knew of maybe two porn websites. I was never very interested because I had enough to keep me happy in real life -- yes, that reality thing. As best as I can remember, Bernie in an offhand way mentioned this one I’d never heard of, and she showed it to me. I’ll not even drop the name of the website, mainly because it is not important, but also because to me they’re all much the same. It was no different than any other. What was different was that Bernie, then a teenager, pulled it up on her laptop to show me.

Pornography still never became a thing for me and if present in our home, maybe it was thing for my son and daughter? I do not know. What I do know is at some point it became all-too-obvious that social media, technology and, in general, the Internet itself, was gaining more influence and ground, and as hard as we tried and wished to compete, we couldn’t.

This delicate subject having been broached, it is time to move on. This I will end with a thought: Bernie, I fear was and perhaps still is, too easily influenced. She too is extremely talented in a number of areas, these being creativity and music. She writes well, very, and has a small following, and this was the subject matter of the phone call that night. I will divulge more in the next chapter.

Discipline:

I fear this is becoming more difficult as I move forward. Since she was a young teen, Bernie’s disdain toward “discipline” would well to the surface any time the word was even so much as mentioned. I remember having to explain to her more than once, if I referred to someone as being undisciplined, such as her brother, or a wild girlfriend of hers, that I did not mean they were not spanked enough, I simply meant they had no self-discipline – that they were in essence, out of control. I’m not convinced she ever comprehended, because there came a point where I would avoid the word altogether to head-off any outburst. From this, I then gathered she was just vehemently against any corporal punishment as this was the trend du jour.

If any of those old romance novels remained, I should pour through the ones she read to see if submissives and reddened butt-cheeks were a thing in their pages. You see the collection of romance paper-backs, for a few weeks, occupied a grocery bag by the front door. We were going to donate them or throw them out, as they had been all read-through. However, I began to realize a few would occasionally go missing, and this is when I learned they were making their way up into Bernie’s room for her reading pleasure. And again, thinking back to her frantic call later in her adult years, I have to wonder how much she derived from those paperbacks? They are of course long-gone now, so maybe I will never know. However somewhere along the way during her teen years, though she was hardly spanked even on her diapered butt -- partly due to the fact that spanking her would be much like attempting to bathe a feral cat in the kitchen sink -- she had developed instead quite a healthy attitude, if not a innate desire toward being disciplined. And this was the subject matter of that phone call in which we had tried to assure her that such pleasures were not that uncommon.

After some reflection, I just guessed girls had to have their outlet too, and that despite her derision toward any form of discipline – aside from time-outs and having her cell-phone taken away -- she harbored a secret desire for the humiliation of her panties dropped to her ankles and being bent bare-assed over a knee and her cheeks turned red. This was only slightly confusing to me, but not necessarily alarming as again I really had no idea what went on in a young woman’s mind, and I did not wish to offend. Men, fathers especially are programmed that way.

This is why I wrote earlier that I learned much from our children, but this was mostly from Bernie. From Chip, I learned less because he was a boy. And I was a boy once too, so I knew of those struggles, what with the sudden overwhelming desires & inclinations that came with burgeoning adolescence. However, I knew nothing about young girl’s desires and thoughts racing through their minds. Bernie’s mother wouldn’t talk about it with me. And I am not sure, due to her Christian upbringing, that she talked about this with her daughter, so I could only assume. But, I do know that it was very important to me that Bernie was raised to become who she would become without intervention or tampering. Perhaps this was another mistake, but I wanted Bernie to become whomever she wanted to be.

Again, it was assumed that I as a child knew more than I did. I had an older brother, and maybe it was thought that I would learn a few things from him. . This, I assumed naturally resided in Chip. It didn’t dawn on me, and still to this day doesn’t, the drive that girls also have in the early stages of becoming a woman. I have to admit I was naive. Queries from a number of sources have gone unanswered mind you, and my knowledge still is more from my own observations than anything else.

As an example, when Bernie was young, I learned to accept that girls sometimes pleasured themselves rather frequently. I initially assumed it was subconscious, and determined it was normal enough in childhood, self-soothing behavior, and not something to raise any alarm about – certainly, as I feared it would damage her for the rest of her natural born life. After discussing with her mother these girl-urges, that I was not even aware of prior to, we agreed it was not concerning, and we would when the appropriate time came, gently suggest to Bernie that she not do this in view of others. “It’s okay,” we agreed to say... “But this we should do in the privacy of our own bedroom,” or something to that effect.

**With this thought in mind I do wish to point out to anyone reading this, girl, boy, mother or father, I do understand that this is normal behavior. Do not be afraid, and go quietly in the night, or day, or... wherever**

The moment arrived shortly after the discussion between my wife and I. Bernie was around seven years of age, maybe eight, and I turned around and found her riding the back of the couch. On her face was a dreamy, far off expression. She was lost in I-don’t-really know what. I would later assume she would have matured to where now, the grinding may have begun to produce an entirely new, and different sensation. “More,” is the only word I could later think of. And I did as calmly as I possibly could point out to her in the midst of her rapture, that although it was fine, even great, just not in front of people.

Years have passed, and as I am still quite naive about what drives girls, I have no idea how much grinding goes on, or went on. None. You see, I am still at a loss. All I can recount, is some six or seven years later, came the romance novels. She was then a young teenager, but having no observation of it, I thought no more of it. I was interested to know how she was developing, but never saw. So, I assumed, being un-tampered with, everything must have been alright.

When she was around fourteen or so came her discovery of Tumblr. She had a blog that was not at all unusual for a teen-aged girl, and she did not follow anyone overly scary. Then came the website, replete with pornography, introduced by her brother. My thinking was that I could not make them un-see the things they had already seen. I had my father’s magazines and the Photographic Marriage Manual in which I could quietly page through, and the children had a different manner of discovering the world, albeit to me much more scary and concerning.

Her penchant for reddened butt cheeks came later... I think.

A House of Glass:

In advance, this Chapter of my story may be dull and bereft of anything that is not simply drudgery and will even perhaps be too much reality. However, it must be included if I am to fulfill my own wish to be completely honest and open.

We too are not perfect, never were, and cannot even pretend to be. It has been suggested by those very few “in the know” that we should apologize. This, we have done, and we didn’t even know what we were apologizing for. But, to mollify their sensitive natures we did say those words, “I’m sorry,” on more than one occasion. Most recently this need to apologize to Chip & Bernie was suggested by my own sister who I’m aware is still in contact with them and their families. Incidentally, I am not in contact with her as I “write” this. There are a number of reasons, and yet this too becomes quite complicated to explain. In any event, she asked why we had not (apologized to our children) most recently, which was now quite a few years ago. It was one of those occasions that I didn’t know what it was that needed apologizing for, but I did admit we had apologized more than once. I simply told her, that of course I was sorry for many, many things. She has never been a parent, and in my estimation she couldn’t even comprehend where I was coming from.

** January 2026: Since, I have delightfully reconnected with my sister, and now the three children of our parents communicate with one another I am happy to say. The subject matter of this writing however, is not spoken of **

There was no parenting hand-out – there never was, until the Interweb came along, which was after. I did try to get my sister to understand raising children will be fraught with mistakes along the way, and I of course was sorry for every single one. Did she carry this admission to my children? I do not know. She was in league with them in a different way, as their Aunt. During the pandemic with Covid keeping us apart, she attended an occasion at Bernie’s home with her husband’s family and their children. I learned from Bernie herself – I have mentioned Bernie was the informer and the more honest one – the ritual bashing of her Mom and I ensued among them, with my sister being the most strident and vocal in carrying on about our misgivings and that we should be abandoned. Bernie now had a more excellent family in her in-law’s and herself, is what I gathered the point of all this being.

**The most recent I have heard of Bernie is of her divorce from this husband and his excellent family... the details of which I am not aware and will have to wait until another time**

We had to be parents prior to the Internet’s beginning. The only thing in written form was What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Once those children popped out of my wife’s vagina we were on our own. Psychologists had yet to post their blogs and webpages. Podcasts were not yet a thing. PBS was useless, as were our own parents. The ones who had the most exposure of all the knowledge and hype to be found on the World Wide Web concerning parenting were our own children once they were old enough, and had the time for it when we parents did not. “Why,” One may ask? We were spending all of our effort and time on damage control, walking on egg shells. Also, the new feel-good parenting techniques with participation trophies, do no harm, take their cell-phones and gaming devices and give them a “time-out” came after. So our kids were essentially researching our own parenting practices. This was done past-tense. What they saw was, “Your parents should have done things this way,” or... “...should not have done this.” In essence, the damage was perceived to have already been done.

Among our bountiful and many weaknesses was wine, and honestly sometimes too much. Frankly, we drink so much less now, and this should not be a surprise to anyone who dared have a family at the onset of the information age. Gone are the days of being judged by our own children and family members, the constant deception and lies, the rumors we would hear throughout our small town fostered and inflated - even begun - by our own son and daughter, the surreptitious undermining, all of this before they even reached eighteen years of age. I will not list the details; note that I still cannot make myself disparage despite it all.

Their adulthood, or when they perceived themselves adults and with much greater wisdom than we, began harshly in those teen-aged years. We propped the two up the best we could regardless. Professional counseling occurred frequently, but this was mostly fruitless. They had the Internet, and could easily pin every faux pas on we adults, mainly we parents that is. Their Counselors and Psychologists were as well of an older generation and therefore out of touch. Both being severely recalcitrant, there was no respect for any authority or station, only notoriety and opinion. As they have since gone no contact, prior to, we have had to admit to ourselves that they had already become unreachable. William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies written quite a few years before rang true and I imagine still does.

Complications

Okay, maybe one more after, and then we have to get on with our lives. Or perhaps... perhaps more will be added later, as situations present themselves in real-time.

As we look into our pasts we tend to see only highlights. The photographs in the outside storage, which I hope still survive out there, come to mind. I can recall from memory when they were taken. I can still see it: days at the beach or playing in a pool for instance. I can still envision those happy days. Images of Bernie with her children whom she obviously adored as well... I can recall these moments from the photographs held once in my hands. I wonder if the children recall these instances in time the same way in their digital world? I remember Bernie had photographs on her walls in the home with her previous husband, but these were from her world that began essentially at her marriage. She may be left with very few tangible memories before.

A five foot by ten foot storage unit was left in a city we moved from. Only Bernie had the key. Boxes of pictures remained there, and we told her she was welcome to hunt for the photos as there were many hundreds taken and stored. A few years later, after the fall-out, we had finally made the two-day drive back to retrieve everything and empty that storage.

I’m sure you are aware, Storage Units are a giant racket. I wish I had thought of this before they became a thing. I’m not sure however, that I could become so hawkish. They prey on people’s sensitivity and downfalls: Keeping mother’s awful china when you have nowhere or any other way to hold onto it: evicted or foreclosed upon; life goes on... They begin your rent for this tiny space at around $100.00 per month, depending on the zipcode, and just a few years later, you’re paying at least double. As always, if successful, a larger, and growing conglomerate will buy the location and absorb it into their own organization and charge yet more. This would not happen unless they were very, very successful in the first place. It’s no different really than the interest a bank charges you on the balance of a credit card, rent you pay someone with a far greater fortune than yours, or the enormous student loan which may never amount to anything. ...So many ways we are taken advantage of these days.

But I digress: As a matter of course, left behind over a thousand miles away from home, in what had become our then ridiculously expensive storage unit, were still these boxes of hundreds and hundreds of family photos – which incidentally, now reside out in our own storage building about twenty yards away. During the process of emptying it, greater sadness ensued as much of our lives as well as theirs had to be retrieved from this unit while we stayed in a crappy hotel in this city over a period of two or three days. We had to try and remain stoic throughout this ordeal, as Chip & Bernie’s personal effects for the most part, were left there for the wife and I to sift though. Needless to say, upon first opening it, we had found all items of any particular real financial value had naturally been taken and I would assume sold off. What remained was what they did not want or have use for, or did not feel they could benefit from financially. Quoting Vonnegut,“And so it goes,”

It is only natural that we have no photographs of our children & Bernie’s children on the walls and shelves of our own home. These too remain only locked out in our outbuilding. Our looking upon them results in only sadness at this point. As well, when asked by friends and neighbors answers will vary. “We don’t hear from them anymore,” “We haven’t seen them in some time,” “We haven’t seen the grandchildren since they were babies...” all only bring up more questions that only become more difficult to answer. We simply deny ever having any. It’s easier to not go there.

Many memories I have, and I imagine my wife too, are of course not so pleasing. I will yet again preserve the details from anyone who may ever read this. Or, maybe one day I will divulge more, but I think details of their behavior as children and teenagers need not be laid-out here as they would only cause them embarrassment, which is totally unnecessary and serve no purpose. They may see now that they were children and teenagers driven by God-knows-what inclination or hormone, but in their youth they would have been unaware. How we as their parents were and are presented to others I’m sure is much more telling due to the nature of their needing to justify “cutting us off” in the manner they have. I am not comfortable even using the term cutting us off, but I have become tired of the banal and di riguere “No Contact” in use by the insipid these days. So, I’ll use that term just this once. I imagine from their point of view, and again I can only imagine, their standard use of the common terms of toxic, controlling, emotionally abusive and so on. I don’t exactly know, but these seem to have been the most frequently used terms I recall seeing in the multitude of other children’s justifications in their blogs and posts which the wayward youth may be following to this day. Google any of these terms and you will see. Being Facebookless, and having little other interaction with Social Media, I only have as much knowledge as having previously delved into. The latest trends ad nauseum I am not aware of.

There was a line in a movie: “Our lives are dictated by the choices we make.” I write this, because if quoted to them by my wife, the children’s hatred of it was all-too obvious. Truly however, this is the case on all sides of the equation. Our lives too were dictated by our decisions, as were theirs, and their decisions effecting ours etc. No one is immune.

Another memory: Once, in the last five years maybe, as the relationship between my wife and Bernie’s was becoming strained to the breaking point yet again for perhaps the fifteenth time, I remember my wife joking and telling the daughter on her cellphone that she had been removed from our Will and everything was going to charity. I’d like to point out, as silly as the girl was then, she probably took this to heart, when it in fact is not the case. Her children, despite anything they may have been fed by their birth father and she, are essentially blameless. However in the event of our demise, untimely or otherwise, their collecting anything could be complicated due to time and distance. But the Will I guess would still in effect. It too may be out in the storage building.

We have moved since and they have. Our phone numbers we lost when we moved out into the countryside where our previous carrier wasn’t available. It was a very frustrating ordeal. As I am aware the two can still contact us by our emails. The world has become so crowded, but smaller.

Along these lines and before I end this drudgery, I must point out with the above, “....choices we make...” that things do tend to happen for a reason. We have been shown by their behavior they have no respect or use for all of this stuff. The wake left behind is the proof I have only recently come to grips with. And, as well, I have to admit to myself the only interest of the soulless is the dollar value.

For now:

I would like to put this thing to bed now and move on. If the internet is to be trusted, Bernie appears to live in a University town that was once in the midst of the land of tornadoes, where tribes of Native Americans were ousted yet again. Life happened I suppose. That family she fell in with may have gone with her divorce. I do not know. An Instagram appeared afterward, with her name spelled differently. It disappeared soon after, as did the videos he or someone posted on another, very telling spanking website under her absurd pseudonym with the DDLG & submissive subject matter in which she wrote. They too were pulled down. I looked no further, and haven’t since.

And according to his Linkedin, Chip is far in the deep south among the kudzu. They, and their families are so far gone from us they have just become random people of the billions inhabiting the planet with us.

As I have wondered what they dream, my sentimental side has to wonder what they see? I believe this will never be gone from me. It is awful and strange to me there is but this one room in our home in which I write that has anything identifiable to our previous life. But still absent are the memories of the two children we bore into this world.

We were once urban dwellers, and tiring of this after so many years we now reside in the rolling hills with giant trees an hour out into the countryside. Sometimes, I still wonder.

The dawn

Yesterday afternoon, in search of Vet records for the puppies living with us, I became curious of the contents of a very old email I’ve been harboring since almost the beginning of the internet age. I switched it from newest to oldest to show the oldest at the top of the list. Now, though I’ve had this email since the early 1990s (no, not AOL), it only went back to 2006 as, at some point, I had just gone in and erased everything prior to and started over. But in it was an email from the wife that was very, very saddening from seventeen years ago that I had kept. I can only guess that I was on a trip for my employer and out of town, the reason for the email.

Bernie was thirteen years of age when this email was “written.” After having read it, I spent the rest of yesterday day in a funk. Thirteen years of age was not the beginning of her troubles. It was more like eleven, when the hormone-drip began. As I recall, she then saw one of a number of therapists. These stretched out for a number of years. She upon reaching puberty became supremely unhappy for some reason, as though she was railing against the world and life itself. The email from 2008 was heartbreaking. It was not cathartic at all. It was painful to read, and reminded me how absolutely amazing it is, improbable even, that my wife and I are still together. In this email then, she – my wonderful bride – questioned how we were going to survive, that Bernie would break up the entire family.

Bernie at that point in her life, thirteen years of age by the date of the email, had become condescending and nasty to everyone around her: Chip, her mother, teachers, the principal, people at school a truly Angelic foreign exchange student that was staying with us, no one was immune. Then, it was obvious she had a penchant for taking out her frustration on anyone who meant little to her. I didn’t see it. Reading the email, the struggles and feelings from those days were vividly brought back to life. It was heartbreaking, this email. My poor wife was at her wits-end, and I wasn’t even there. I couldn’t help. In it she pointed out Bernie’s behavior was caustic whenever I was not around; that the only person it seemed that could temper Bernie’s obstinance, anger, even hatred, was myself.

It had been foretold. The struggle to keep Bernie at bay and try to appease whatever troubles she was dealing with continued another thirteen years.

I just cannot believe the strife looking back. I wish I had not kept that email. I wish I had not read. The memories of that place and time need to fade back to where they were buried before yesterday when I came across it. All I can do is say I’m sorry. I am a fixer, a facilitator by nature. If something is needed it has been my point in life to try and attain it. But this, I could not fix. It is all tattered remains.... thirteen years.

Of course it wasn’t all sweetness and light. It never is. “In sickness and in health,” and all that.

Life, the Universe and Everything

Artificial Intelligence is going to, at some point in the very near future, have more knowledge than all of the Human race combined. That is, as of this date... as I have written before, it will have been aware that I wrote this, as non-influential as this writing is. But the beginning of the end for the human race is not or was not AI. The beginning of the end was the Internet, and the information-age back in the 1990s and even before when people adopted the use of the computer to do math for us. Remember Texas Instruments? The TI55? Probably not.

Now, I don’t have anything against AI.

I guess at some point the damned things may come to my judgment. I wrote recently that I couldn’t scratch my butt without my phone/the internet/AI being aware, sanctioning, nuzzling my tea bags, giving me the false impression that everything is going as planned. But it is not, I tell you.

Yes. The title of this chapter was borrowed from Douglas Adams. From the UK, he was the Author of one of the greatest, most influential works from the previous two millennia, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Including this Chapter’s pilfered title, other subsequent works to the series were, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish. A movie was produced that combined all of the titles. I mean, it was “okay.” But for the full experience, the books should be read while we as a people still have the ability to read. You’ll not learn anything really, but we should all have some fun before we become extinct.

Mister Adam’s Hitchiker’s Guides were even perhaps perused by a man wearing, currently as I write, the title of whom is or was at one point the richest man in the world. Driven by a dummy, and indeed not himself, Mister Musk sent a Tesla Roadster out into the void of space a few years ago with an onboard Starlink, and on the dashboard of this car was the reminder, “Don’t Panic;” words which were undoubtedly borrowed from the esteemed Douglas Adams as well. Sadly, Mr. Adam’s life was cut short as were many talented notables of the twentieth Century. I like to think he still lives on in some form or fashion out there somewhere...

Mister Musk, who is still among the living today, endeavors to relocate to Mars, yes our distant red neighbor. His company has launched in grand fashion a plethora of monstrously huge exploding rockets in an effort to reach this goal. In fact yesterday, May 27th, 2025. His company launched yet another gigantic rocket, the ninth in the series. We’re talking really big. You can even ask AI just how big these bottle rockets are, but my guess without is they are the size of a forty-story building. Mr. Douglas Adams would have had a blast with that.

Another memory just came to mind. I was looking for the title track to the movie Electric Dreams. While I’m on the subject of the Internet, Bernie’s favorite Pornstar, she announced, was James Deen. I recall Bernie’s Mom, myself and Bernie having this conversation. I saw an image of James Dean, spelled with an “a” vs the “e.” He was an actor back in the 50′s (the Nineteen-fifties) and as so many have gone, took himself out in a car wreck, and this reminded me: I can’t place the year this conversation happened with our sweet daughter about the attributes of James Deen, the Pornstar. Just that it did. And no, don’t attribute anything particularly lude. I think she must have been at least seventeen(?)

And, speaking of James Dean, the Actor: We die. Artificial Intelligence won’t.

When Bernie was eighteen – just turned eighteen – she struck up a relationship with a boy from Portugal. He was not only from Portugal, he was in Portugal... across the pond. How she had “met” this young man, I do not know. No doubt it was via the internet, as it certainly wasn’t a High School Social. This would have been circa 2013. we lived in an apartment in the City. No one was visiting our home in the mountains much other than myself on the weekends.

This Portuguese boy was coming to town. He seemed a nice enough kid when we did meet him. Bernie worked down the street, and was becoming quite independent. Very independent for that matter, as I believe she admitted she had bought the plane ticket for this boy. She informed us he was coming, and there was nothing we could do about it. Everything was happening very fast in those days. I remember I noticed the screens were removed from her bedroom windows. The windows overlooked a deck in the back of the apartment – an intended escape route for the boy maybe.

Immediately we knew this latest episode could result in disaster. We didn’t know anything about this boy. He was a complete surprise. He could have been a serial killer. I think we had less than a week’s notice he even existed, much less that he was flying in that weekend. “Where is he going to stay?” We asked. Bernie was capable of thinking up some pretty bizarre ideas you see. Another question we asked had she worked out: “How is he getting here from the airport?” These things it seemed she had not thought of. She was only eighteen, thinking she was an adult.

At first, we felt like he was the instigator, crashing into her and our lives. It turned out she invited him in, and may have even orchestrated the entire outlandish scheme. Bernie’s mom elected to drive her to the airport to pick up this kid. Again, we did not condone any of this, and were blind-sided. But this was going to happen, Bernie assured us ...somehow, it would happen, whatever it was. I wasn’t going to let her mom do this herself. So I drove. Bernie’s mom was in the passenger seat. Bernie sat in the back, stoic.

I remember clearly, as we sat in the terminal at the the airport, the wife and I, while Bernie was situated some hundred feet away by herself waiting for him to come out of customs. He did not know we would even be there. Bernie had cooked this up as though she was a grown-up, which technically she was. But she had no car, and no place for him to stay. I recall his surprise when she brought him over and introduced him to us.

His flight was late in the evening, and he wasn’t staying at our apartment. There was no room. So, she booked a room for him at a Hotel a few miles away. It wasn’t a nice place at all. I don’t know who paid for it (probably she). Then she took him in our car, and she and he stayed the night at this place together. The following morning she returned. I don’t remember if it was with the boy or not. Her mom had been frantically calling and texting all morning, so we finally drove over to this hovel in our back-up car. Evidently they were getting ready, showering or something, and would be over later. I don’t think things worked out the way she had in mind. In fact I can guess. This was not Bernie’s way of life, and her idea of lodging was far different than the dump they were staying in.

But this day was when we were able to finally have a conversation with him. He seemed nice enough. A good-looking pleasant boy, he was maybe the tall, dark and handsome type in Bernie’s mind.

That next night he was to sleep on our couch. Her mom woke to find him sleeping with Bernie in her bed. I’m guessing this was part of the sordid plan all along. Naturally, the screens had been placed back in the bedroom windows, and he could not escape.

The sad thing is her forcing the situation on her mother and I came to nothing. Bernie was going to fly over to Portugal and live with he and his family. It appeared this was to be forced on his parents over there as well. Now, we are a quite traditional people. Bernie had been raised Catholic, and attended a private Catholic school prior to this. But our traditional way of thinking and doing things may have paled in comparison to a Portuguese family’s. The idea was eventually nixxed by someone involved. It just didn’t happen, and Bernie didn’t even seem to mind. She’d had her way.

Things went smoothly for awhile, but one could not overlook the obvious: These were the lengths Bernie was willing to go. And this was to us the amount of calculated effort she was willing to go to distance herself from her mother and I.

Faith

Mid summer 2025: Away from home, we carry out our routines – the wife and I – the same as if we were not six states away. This one is a pleasurable road-trip, our first in many, many years. I cannot even remember the last. Yet, less than a month ago, we had left our beloved home for another country, and would return also.

Recall I had written we moved around too much. This time, we do not intend to relocate. We’re just visiting. Interestingly, the accent in this city has long since been aggrandized and emulated. However, thus far in the locals I have not heard this heralded accent at all. My guess is folklore and the advent of television and radio brought the differences in our accents to light, But now in the digital age the world has become that much smaller. The distinctions in ourselves and communities are gone. Picture a small borough in Tennessee seventy five years ago only having an a.m. radio station. Isolated, they would rarely hear a dialect other than their own. Music would be only their local fare etc. I myself think we made better people in those days. To technology, we’ve lost our identity as well as our humanity.

Meanwhile, we are on a mission today. And we start back to our little home in the woods tomorrow. The routine I mentioned being, having this coffee, and writing this Chronicle whilst the wife and her dogs still sleep in the next room, just like home. I have to mention, two unusual, but expected, changes of our mindset have occurred from these two travels. The first being, after having spent a fair amount of time in another country, our view of the world has changed. Our’s, back home seemed so simplified and narrow. And having now stepped away for awhile from the home we learned to love again these last few weeks, and in a progressive city many states away, speaking for myself only, I am ready to get back to our home, and that simple home-life again.

Having pulled up anchor, losing the dead weight of the past, has resulted in an astounding outcome. Now, just as when I was younger things were not clear to me, keep in mind there is so much that I do not yet know and my thinking even this morning could be teeming with error still.

It occurred to me in a very distinct manner that we were meant to take that trip abroad. We were meant to be here. We were meant to be in that place out in the countryside we call home. But just why all of this occurred, of course I do not know, just as what will happen next. The only thing I can say with any confidence is that if it is supposed to happen it will.

There has been a lot of another theory recently about manifesting. That is, if you imagine it, it will come. I don’t know, some Tom Hanks movie. I don’t even want to touch it. So much is misunderstood. As I was tested so often by Bernie even uttering the word “discipline,” another I remember is “faith.” There is so much behind this thought, it is no wonder.

The trip abroad we were supposed to take, and this one as well, had all the underpinnings that they were supposed to happen. I had the sensation that we couldn’t have missed that flight if we wanted to. It honestly felt like it had purpose. It was part of our journey – this journey. We, as now, had an open return. There was a flight back, and likewise we couldn’t have missed it had we tried to. This is where faith comes in to play, and it’s got nothing to do with falling to your knees, or it may, what have you. But, the faith I speak of is in the process, the power, the source, because I have little doubt there is one.

“Our Fathers,” and “Hail Marys,” by the way, do present me with some calm. I recite these in my mind many, many times every day in most every idle moment, and I do pray. When you consider it in this manner, you can realize you don’t know where you are going next, and don’t even try to question your path. Just trust, and have faith. … And I have to have faith as well – the events of the past, the separation from the “children” – happened just as it was meant.

Cruel intentions

My initial thought when I saw it was, “We don’t know what we want at all.” This morning, I had came across an image of a home by the sea someone had posted. Below was written, The house of my dreams. I surmised from the idyllic setting, it looked to be maybe on the Mediterranean. It was a small, white, adobe cottage. Flower pots full of beautiful flora surrounded it. A peaceful table setting and some chaise lounges overlooked the expanse of azure blue water that was lapping below the bright patio maybe only six inches below.

Photographs and images these days are hard to discern from one another whether authentic or not. It may not have even been real. But that is not even the point. The point being, we are presented in our young ages of what life is supposed to be like, how we would like to live, and the things we’d like around us – and there’s nothing at all wrong with that. We should all have goals, and assuming we attain that life we dreamed of when we were younger, we should be happy upon reaching that place. Sadly, I must profess, time and experience will sour us. And this not really being my point either however, the house would not remain white-washed and pristine and at only six inches above, it would eventually flood either due to tsunami, a yacht passing by at such a rate of speed to cause a wake, or a young, spirited Italian on a jet-ski doing an endo through your front door.

The point being then once we get there, we have to be prepared for reality. That lovely little spot in the image where a home faced the Mediterranean Sea would have been fine had you come across it and sat on the isolated rock that was once in place. This is where happiness should exist for us. But it doesn’t. We idealize.

**

Bernie, had found a husband. This is the poetic version, mind you. After the incident with the boy from Lisbon, a job opening was available in the resort town in the mountains where our home still stood empty most of the time. She was eighteen, technically an adult, and there was the spare automobile... what could possibly go wrong? I believe I had even encouraged her to apply. It was a golden opportunity for her. She had not achieved a High School degree. Her caustic behavior had bled into the classrooms, and we were getting calls and notes from the Principal’s office. Home schooling/virtual classroom was attempted and I suppose her gap-year came early. Edit: She told us at one point she did later accomplish her GED.

There came that ill-fated day where she moved out on her own to her parent’s place with her parent’s support, and would work toward that life of her own, however she envisioned it. Seriously, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Any eighteen year old should be so fortunate to have an opportunity such as this laid at their feet like the blue azure of the Mediterranean Sea. I don’t recall the day actually. It should have been a momentous, happy occasion with a send-off, but I’m guessing it wasn’t. It simply just happened.

In either event, and again, I guess we should have learned from the previous similar attempt with Chip, “distance did not make the heart grow fonder.” Since a young teen, Bernie had the propensity to appear parent-less in every way possible. If she could have erased the navel and denied she was raised at all she would have. I see that now. I saw it then, but I accounted for it as a silly, teen-aged angst, not an actual defining part of her character. From whence it came, you see, I still have no idea. I remember once when she was around ten years old referring to her being approached by a “man”on the playground at school. As she told it, he professed his love for her and wanted to marry her. We were horrified and ready to call the police. After some serious probing and questioning, she admitted this “man” was a classmate. He too was ten.

Nonetheless, the experience once she left our tumultuous nest was not entirely wasted on her. She was actually very good in her position, very adult-like, and independent-like and found herself a husband. ...or he found her. This would result in even greater distance and reliance from her tedious parents and the under-pinning’s of life and reality – the reality being, that love is stupid, and things don’t always turn out as they seem.

For some months, and months being the key, her wedding was arranged entirely without the involvement of her mother. Those days of choosing between wedding dresses, looking at bridal magazines – the stuff a girl’s and their mom’s dreams are supposed to be made of were excluded from her mother and I. Her mother was tortured by this stage. Bernie’s cruelty, we had come to accept, had no bounds. Basketball games and swim meets with her obvious disdain of her parents even being present could not compare to being rubbed out of her life in these magical moments. Once Bernie was pushed into including her mother in one shopping decision in a nearby town, the surrogate mother, the future mother-in-law, was present also. This is where we had to come to the conclusion that there was no telling what kinds of stories others were told to substantiate their – Chip and Bernie’s – exclusion, distance and treatment by us, their parents. The mother-in-law we barely knew treated us with a wary caution. Strangely, she and Bernie both did now that I think back. You would think a battle on the floor of a Michael’s hobby store was feared would take place.

However, in every occasion such as this, which were exceeding few, we would take the high road thinking as my mom used to say, “The truth will out.” As of this writing almost a decade later, that I am aware of, it hasn’t, and possibly never will unless I share.

I still have no idea what was concocted. I often felt like a tedious requirement, a tag-along, from some point years earlier anyway. This only assured my sensation that her mother and I were only a necessity, a jumping-off place so to speak. This is coming from their father. I can’t speak for their mother, but I can imagine it was by far much worse for her and by far more painful. Little doubt, it’s easier for we fathers. It is not borne on emotion.

Since long ago, the month of May has been difficult for their mother. In this month is the birthday of her mother - Bernie’s & Chip’s Grandmother they never knew, as she passed very young before they were even born – which was a year or two after we were married. In each Month of May comes the day when she passed away as well, keeping in mind this was when my wife was a young twenty-two years of age, and pregnant with her first child. As well, in the month of May comes Mother’s day. So, you can imagine it’s just always been a very sucky month. With Mother’s day going by with no calls, no cards, no acknowledgment whatsoever for so many years, I find I have become very protective of her, my wife. Of course it has been a few years with no acknowledgment of Father’s Day, but I have become so fiercely protective of my wife that Father’s Day goes by with hardly even a thought. The other day, by the way, was Bernie’s first child’s birthday, the wife announced (I believe I already wrote about this).

It’s odd looking back, considering days. Bernie’s children’s birthdays, I should have committed to memory, but I don’t. As our relationship with Bernie was touch and go for so long it is hard to distinguish. In my own mind there is place for the bad memories, and there is a place for the good ones. Sadly, and I hate to admit this, but that place in my mind with the good family memories is so very small and neglected in comparison.

And it was some time ago that I came to think of days as something of which we have possibly so few remaining, why should we be made to suffer through them? Yes, I have become this protective of us.

Bernie’s wedding day came early in the month of January – the very small wedding in which we had almost no part whatsoever. The distance – not a physical one – being so great, I recall being surprised we received an invitation at all. These days blend you have to understand. When I look back on days in our relationship with Bernie in her adult life, there were so many ups-and-downs, hills and valleys, that I have to pull them from those two places: good or bad, hot or cold. And again there are so many, and I can’t remember why or what we might have done – why that falling out – that I can only categorize them in this manner. Also, my wife and I rarely talk of it, much less of them, due to their absence. I have nothing to assist my memory other than an old address book where the grandchildren’s birthdays are written.

Bernie wanted her wedding to be held on the shore of this serene mountain lake near our/her home. There were but few images shared with us that very cold day in January. It was frigid, very windy and un-serene, with snow blowing across the lake, and the temperature was somewhere right around freezing. But the wedding happened. It was quickly presided over by her soon-to-be husband’s brother, and I believe we briefly attended a reception at the new in-law’s around the corner. Out in the box, in the storage, there is no photo. But in some file on a computer there may be an image of me giving her away. It was my sole purpose. It was not a happy day.

After Bernie gave birth to her son, the first of her two children, her mother and I, were called upon to come to our/her home to babysit while she was at work only a few miles away. I do not know why the mother-in-law was not called upon, as their home also was maybe less than a mile away by foot. If there was an underlying reason she was inadequate for this lofty purpose I was never made aware. I had come to accept that Bernie and Chip have always been that transactional. In any case, despite there being a nanny-cam, her mother and I happily agreed to the hour-plus drive every day to and from to watch our first grandchild. These days I can draw from as happy for their mother and I.

He was our first grandchild: blameless, flawless and without judgment. This is how I would like to continue to perceive Bernie’s two children. He and she. Beautiful babies both.

January 2026:

Mid-October of this year, it will have been five years since I’ve heard from Bernie. Of Chip (of course not his real name either), it will have been close to fifteen.

Earlier I wrote about questioning my ability to forgive. And, I am sorrowful for the years in between naturally, although admittedly having taken the extraordinary drama of deception, lies, and abandonment I have to admit there has been much more peace. And who doesn’t deserve that?

Certainly, we were not perfect. In the event you feel you were, congratulations. I wouldn’t have any way of telling there was such a thing.

All we have are the banal cookie-cutter accusations of strangers to strangers, courtesy of FB and Social Media groups as though repeatedly cut and pasted.

Point being, I am getting old. The mom and dad sailing around in Southern California w/ “Bernie” is now coming up on seven years ago. I have often asked if this is how we are suppose to live the rest of our lives? Every day is one less. So...

“Simplify; do away with the things you don’t need; discard the excess baggage; in essence; scrape off those that don’t need you, de-clutter;” all the way down to my core I am beginning more and more to believe I must do these things.

There was a time when I would be elated if she, and whomever she is with these days, just showed up at what would be our quite unfamiliar front door – Chip, due to his ministrations, not so much.

Today, it would be easy enough to find our address, and again, we have the same email from day one. But this is not a movie, or the Internet. This is how we are spending the few good remaining years of our lives.

My wife was one of those unlucky, rare few who had a severe reaction to the Covid vaccines, and this Bernie was aware of. The complications almost killed her, and they would have, had it not been for Johns Hopkins, and a team of Doctors who were finally able to treat her with the proper medications. But this was of no matter, no concern. Bernie could have lost her mother then, and now we are coming to the point when she could lose either of us at any time. It’s difficult to explain how this resonates. We just have learned to accept this.

We have our friends. It doesn’t take any explanation about our having been tossed aside. We didn’t have to be untruthful. The truth being, we simply do not have any children.

**

And, all the pictures and personal items in the storage I’ve written of, they are beginning to just take up space. It soon will be time to de-clutter.

Take care, JB

And so it begins:

Author’s note Apr 16, 2025:

There is a perfection in the human race, and that is that none of us are perfect. The tip of the iceberg in each of us is all that we try very hard to show to others. What is below the surface is entirely something else. Our private lives and our secrets are our own. They are not spoken of, unless someone else is found to be discrete enough that we can have the confidence to share a few of them with, but still not even all.

And there is something else. These are the seeds planted, the ones we were born with. They remain a part of our being and are deeply instilled, mostly hidden far beneath the surface; our desires, sexuality, lust, likes & dislikes, as well as those less desirable, but still part of our being simply human; meanness, jealousy, vengefulness.

And we are social. People are not as they appear, or their friends and their families. Our little family certainly wasn’t. I imagine by all appearances we were as normal as any from someone comparing us to their own. But of course, we weren’t really.

Hurt feelings clause: I would like to point out, before any individual reading this has hurt feelings, know I respect your sensitivities, of which I’m hoping there are not a great many.

Onward.

Gone Girl & Boy

Let’s just say... This that I write will remain in perpetuity; my testament that will last forever.

But then, and in a minute you will see where I am going with this: “Besides, no one will read,” when something actually is, and it is at this point the best we can tell, inhuman. I’d like to put out there that one of my less than lame ideas was stolen at the beginning of the Internet, and turned into some very successful movies. Perhaps I’ll share more about this later.

Sunday a.m. I’m sitting in my tiny, dark compartment, having my second cup of coffee when this observation comes to me. The look of this room is very much like the image of the book “cover” I borrowed. I should take an actual photograph and use it instead. Besides it’s not stealing. It is borrowing.

BTW, AI does not yet know the satisfaction of a good cup of coffee. It may never will. It can spew all the info it does know, ie: “It can be rich, aromatic, creamy, delicious, European-style or American.” AI can tell you how it is prepared and all the yumminess, but sadly, it may never know what the hell it is talking about. However, much like our Internet connected devices all the way down to my smart TV and car listen in on our conversations and goings-on, it too is reading this as I write. It may take until I hit send or upload or whatever, but it will catalog this too among pentatrillionzillion other things. But it will not know coffee. It will only know of it.

This morning, the sun is coming up and it is really, really cold. 11 degrees Fahrenheit I believe I saw. And many people are freaking out because there is a Winter Storm coming by God, with ice and snow and... And, the part I do not get is why this is even news. It is winter isn’t it? A lunatic just drove into a crowd in New Orleans and killed so many souls for the sake of Religious beliefs again. A billionaire-designed, very ugly, truck was detonated in front of a Trump Tower in Las Vegas for a similar reason - their God vs someone else’s God. It’s like European football fanaticism. But, headlines are, “Weather.” More on this later too, as I’m straying from point.

As my second cup was brewing this thought came to me: My daughter, Bernadette (Bernie), had asked for images from her childhood a number of times. It was as though it never happened and she needed proof. The revelation this morning, as the Keurig did it’s wondrous work was, there is a chance in her mind it hadn’t actually (her childhood). Her youth, her upbringing, the horse riding lessons, soccer, basketball, travels to Peru and Paris, roller blading, swimming lessons, trips to the beach etc, all came before this damned Internet. I have a son, Chip, who is a few years older than she who is even farther removed, or should I say “reduced” from my memory. It is for the same reason, I gather.

This is how different our worlds are. I have, in an outbuilding, a cardboard box full of photographs. They’re on paper. As well, I save laptops. As technology has advanced, I have with it also, and I scanned hundreds of these photos into files. I uploaded a number of these for the youngest child via Google Drive and intended to give her access. I still have the photographs boxed-up, and if I wished to toddle off and brave the winter weather, I could pull the box down from the shelf, open it, and take these images in my hands and look upon them.

I haven’t.

The box of photographs, Bernie, the youngest had requested, and many of the relics from our kid’s childhood are up there in the loft. Would she have even been satisfied with the digital memories via what is now the Cloud?

Before there was this technology, a photograph was a physical object and something you could touch and see with your own eyes. In this day, and since the advent of the Internet, when there is so little anyone can trust, could she even believe what is real?

Reality left in the mid 1990s as the Internet came into being, and this was their upbringing. We, from the previous, tangible world adapted, although not knowing our version of reality would be far distant from our own children’s. Bernie had essentially asked for memories, and foolishly I was going to provide her with digital copies.

The box was never sent. Shortly after my compiling it all together -- those remaining after a flood destroyed much of it -- she went what is now trending as no contact. The electronic copies as well, due to a very confusing, misaligned misunderstanding were never shared. Our son, Chip by the way, had bailed quite a few years before.

So now, the Internet knows somewhere, in its tiny recesses that I have saved all I could of our family’s tangible memories - the stuff that really did happen. It is still here (January 4th, 2026).

Cake by the Sea

Their mother and I were sexual people. It is just so difficult to have children without it.

One would expect that children, knowing their parents enjoyed each other often, would instill the same respect for it in their own lives as they reached adulthood. I fear, however, this may not have been the case.

Bernie hardly read at all until she located her mother’s romance novels. There was no pornography in the house, not even HBO or Showtime. Other than the novels, there was only Sex and the City DVDs that I recall. Otherwise, there was just their mother and I.

Bernie, as a young teen, she would steal away to her room for hours with books adorned with the muscled garden boys and innocent maidens brimming with lust under veil. This did not concern me as I hoped it would cement in her mind the expectation of how she should be treated and adored in her adult life. Social media had already become a thing and the online mistreatment, you see. I could only imagine all the teenaged boy’s brash behaviors and the facades they would create for themselves in their fake realities.

Never in the children’s presence did we make love. It was private, but possibly sometimes noisy -- such as in the bathroom of a Paris Hotel. And there may have been a time or two when we christened other hotel rooms thinking the kids were asleep in the next-door bed. ...I seem to recall once on the balcony overlooking the beach; again, thinking the kids were asleep.

So, their mother and I would sometimes steal off to the bedroom in the middle of the day. This didn’t feel wrong. This is how the children came to be after all.

They too, grew to become sexual people as well, and I learned a great deal even from them. Myself, I was raised in what I now consider an unusual environment. I never got “the talk.” I never needed it. My own father was of the generation that had magazines, and the things I knew were from reading these -- what I did read of them that is. As a young teen, I came across a book in his library on the bottom shelf that was entitled The Photographic Marriage Manual. It was a hardback volume like you would find on a coffee-table. Upon opening it, I was surprised and elated to find images of couples in all manner of lovemaking. It was essentially the Kama Sutra in glossy black and white and color photographs. Beside each was a description of how the multiple positions were best accomplished, even how to taste her, or she, him.

I learned much, but I had not yet learned, even in dating in high school, girls, women, were fraught with desire the same as I. Somehow this escaped me. For years I had the belief the good girls I dated were only allowing me each small step forward. Even when making out with a girlfriend who had the unrelenting need of resting her full weight on my thigh, straddling, squeezing and grinding as we made out. Ours was a tacit, wordless understanding. She would quietly make herself come over and over. We never spoke of it. Still, somehow, it did not enter my mind that she was driven the same way by desire as I.

And, admittedly, there were not very many of these girls and women before Bernie & Chip’s mother...