What Would You Do For Your Kids?

As a parent or grandparent we want to be supportive of our offspring. Most people we know are this way. I mean, when we hear they've done well in school or achieved in the athletic arena we're first to send kudos. That's the way it's supposed to be.

This November at our children's grade school they'll have Grandparents Day in Scottsdale. Arizona. Basically, because it's a Catholic School, we'll attend Mass with them, go to their classrooms afterward and view a picture they've drawn then have lunch. All this for the price of airfare and motels. But, in the long run it's worth it.

Last Saturday our 9th grade grandson had a soccer meet in Cincinnati. It started at 4 pm and went until 6 pm. Since it interfered with Charley's eating schedule we had to take our 'son' with us for the two hour drive. Also, since the school doesn't allow dogs on the inside we were required to sit on a hillside outside the field. My eyesight isn't all that remarkable and trying to sort out which kid on the field belonged to me was like trying to find a hut in Austria from a mountain top in Switzerland. After the game The Queen said, "It's too bad Oscar got hurt and had to come out". I said, "He what"? So much for watching the kid play soccer.

This kind of reminds me of the time when my daughter wanted me to come to Las Angeles to watch she and her husband run in the LA Marathon. She wanted me to give them my support so I went.

I bought a round trip air ticket for $500(Cha-ching) and booked a room at the Ambassador Hotel for $200(Cha-ching). This was in 2002 so I can only imagine the cost today. After leaving the airport I hailed a cab. There was a lady sitting next to me in the back seat and what happened next is a scene out of Seinfeld. There was the most horrendous smell in the cab. I looked at the lady and she looked at me. Certain that the odor was NOT coming from us we knew it was from the cabbie. The BO was killing and we literally opened our windows and held our heads out of the cab for the entire journey. There are smell sensors in the nose called Nissl Bodies. They're supposed  to kill the smell after a certain amount of time. In our cases they didn't work.

That evening we met my daughter and son-in-law for dinner then I went to my room. The next morning I looked out of my 14th floor window and saw 25,000 human bodies below waiting to take off. I knew, somewhere in that group, were my kids. And that was it. I spent the rest of the day touring LA, you know, Hollywood and Vine and all that jazz.

Parents are required to do certain things in life. Sometimes we do them reluctantly like watching a 5 year old play soccer. But it's important to them and should be to us.

The best part of the day in Cincinnati: My ten year old grandson came up to me, gave me a hug and said, "I love you Grandpa".