Italian Dinner

What do you call a whole bunch of dark haired people eating a four foot sub, and two twenty-four-slice deep dish pizzas at about two in the afternoon? Around here, you just call it, dinner with family. Today we celebrate what would have been my Grandpa's 90th birthday. THis year no cake and no birthday boy. But we have everything else in spades.

The kids (everyone my age and under) get together, watch the tube and laugh, as we should. We give eachother a hard time, as we should. We sit and discuss the Tigers and the Lions, as we should. We lament the recent performance of Brandon Inge, we condemn the continued reign of Matt Millan and we trade tips on fantasy football.

We discuss work and future plans and recomend various movies and youtubes to eachother. And far less frequently than before, we pause and remenisce and pause again. Just before eating we pray together and Grandma speaks directly to my late Grandpa, addressing him as she always would infront of everyone else, never by his first name. "Dad, we miss you," she says after everyones "amen" and leaves it at that. And that is as it should be. Without a doubt we miss him. He is not there to blow out the candles, to comment on the Tigers and to take eveyones picture. There is an empty spot on the mantle where he would set down his camera. He was always documtning familial gatherings, and now we have a lot to look at. But for today, here's looking at you, kid.