A Family Moment




Here they are, Schprockie’s Angels. Starting on the left in the flaming pink mohawk is Daughter Number 2 (aka “Pumpkin”), followed by the missus (aka “La Jefa”), and ending with Daughter Number 1 (aka “Princess”). DN2 plays the bass guitar and has more artistic talent than her old man ever had; the missus is the brains of the outfit and always, always gets what she wants; and DN1 is a college sophomore majoring in political science who has a great singing voice and too many guys chasing after her.

As many of you may know, the northeast has gotten whacked with roughly 5 billion inches of rain (for our European friends, that’s approximately 10 trillion centimeters). In Boston, we haven’t seen the sun for about two weeks now. Yesterday, the police caught a bearded guy in a robe attempting to load pairs of animals, male and female, into a stolen waterfront booze cruise boat. This morning I gave up pedaling into work and started rowing. Motorists can’t tell where Storrow Drive ends and the Charles River begins. And Darwin would love this place: half the city’s residents have reported growing gills. Hell, I’m finding it difficult typing this with these darn webs that have sprung up between my fingers.

On Sunday our basement flooded — in some spots, the water stood at about an inch or more. We didn’t have a pump at the time (I’ve since purchased one) and you could tell it would take more than a mop to clean the mess up. In the end, we all pitched in. It turns out a month or so ago the missus purchased a couple of extra-super-scoopy plastic snow shovels on sale at her Mecca, the Christmas Tree Shop. These shovels were ideal for scooping up the water and throwing into a large-capacity plastic tub we had hanging around. As the missus and I poured scoop after scoop of water into the tub, DN1 and DN2 filled pails from it and carried them up the stairs and out of the house to spill at the end of our driveway. We did this for about an hour or so until it was time to switch over to the mops. Sure it was a pain, but, in my mind, the whole process amounted to a wonderful family moment. The girls didn’t complain and we all functioned like a team, very effectively bailing out the basement. I don’t know about you, but I prize moments like these ten times more than any staged, elaborately planned first communion or graduation or wedding or bar mitzvah or what have you. Maybe it’s the spontaneity or the esprit de corps — I don’t know for sure. But it felt good, I can tell you that.