In between, and announcing Scout

All right people, Let's Go!, as the kids are saying these days.

It's 3:00 AM, 9 June 2022, and I am making use of my first night of jetlag to post this newest blog entry. I write the date "9 June", by the way, because we are now in Germany, where, apparently with all the rest of Europe, they write the date day-first. Yep, Berlin, Germany, Europe--this is where we will be living, day-first to be certain, for the next 14 months at least.

(--Suzy has her heart set on two years. I am not sure we'll make it through the summer...). The DeStefano triplets Scout, Charlie and Kiefer are 12 years old now, and they are only all the more the constituting purpose of this blog--and of everything else--12 years old going on Infinity! How wondrous they are...

Suzy and I, contrarily, are old, graying things, who feel like we just aged another 12 years in the last 12 days. Yes, we are in the grip of something indeed, securely between "We made it!" and "What the hell are we doing?!"--you know, our MO...

I don't mean to suggest that I identify with globe-trotting. I don't. We don't. The roots we grow, and have grown, and hope will withstand this newest displacement, do genuinely and greedily pierce deep into the soil of each of our defining worlds. We only take this leap from our comfortable bubble with a notion that it will be good, ultimately, for all of us--the kids following our lead. Of course it will be good, but I mean more good than not. Right, we are presently each struggling in our own way to imagine one day feeling at least as grateful to you for letting us go--for helping us go as it is hard to say goodbye... Oh, do we miss you. It's way too soon to evaluate the worth of all this, but we are greatly heartened by your own faith in life--your graciousness of spirit--your well-wishes and clear sacrifice on our behalf. Seriously, what favor have we not asked in the runup to this chance? I am thinking of Sammy, and Grandma Martha, and the Drakos, in particular, and of the Williams, who are even now bending over backwards to help make our transition as smooth as possible. Here's the three with their cousin Leopold, who was a BIG part of our welcoming committee:

But each and all of you, in more and less subliminal ways, provide me such clear examples of beauty as I hope with my pen (and with this blog) never to fail to appreciate. As always, I'd have every syllable here ring of gratitude. But life is change--that's all I mean. Marcus Aurelias says it, and I am inclined to believe it. In fact, I see something not at all unlike what we are doing each way I look, in each of your own different stages of life. Aren't we all in between? Isn't change the MO of us all? Actually, I see what we are doing refracted in every aspect of our own present beings. You might think we moved to Germany. I think moving to Germany is now the dream-like distillment of both pubescence and the ever-growing doubtfulness of parenting.

I mean, tell me forcing a sedative down the throat of a moaning cat halfway through a ten-hour flight doesn't resonate in like forty million ways... Oh yea, did I forget to mention that: We brought our cat Larry on this adventure (--a teenager in cat years). A sure sign of decrepitude, no question, or maybe the cause of it. Yea, I'm even thinking of centering the whole blog on him--like Steinbeck does with his poodle, except I'll call it "Travels with Larry." Here, Charlie is on the floor in near the Berlin baggage claim, checking to see that the Larry made it.

Fortunately, though, the new Larry blog is not the change I jumped out of bed to announce this morning. No, the change is one well worth jumping out of bed to announce: I am handing this blog over to my daughter Scout. As you will soon see, she can write, and I am hoping her brothers will help her do it, too. (I had always conceived of the blog, at least in part, as an eventual gift to my children, but I did not realize until this morning, in this relatively strange circumstance, how much more of a gift it can be--not from me to them; but from them to themselves, through you.) Now, tell me that's not worth dallying with jetlag. I suspect every now and again I will drop a word or two, but from here on out, you are in far abler hands... Scout, have at it my lady...