A Father's Day To Remember

I got my wish for Father's Day. At least most of it.

We got to visit with our son and daughter-in-law at their new home in Arlington, Va. We celebrated Father's day together and had a wonder meal along with the other set of in-laws.

(A perfect Father's Day would have my daughter and her husband in attendance also, but at least I got to talk with her by phone a couple of times.)

As I said, everything turned out wonderfully. We love their new place: it's conveniently located, landscaped with shade and a back patio, decorated nicely and it's very cozy for a young couple. But, visits by relatives are, of course, not without concern.

The Va. In-laws were getting ready to go the beach and sending a son to New York 9while the airline lost his bag); the daughter-in-law was worried about her in-laws visiting (that's us) and what they would think of the place (as I said, we loved it); and the visiting family curse had struck.

What curse?

It seems that every time one of us visits the other something extraordinarily bad or weird happens:

· Last summer when both children and their significant others visited; my mother was in the hospital.

· In the fall, all four were back and a squirrel decided to get stuck and die in the attic, stinking up the upper floor.

· A couple of months ago, Peter was visiting and his mother was rushed to the hospital.

· It extends to the Arizona side of the family – as we arrived for our niece's wedding a few years ago, so did the need of the services of the Roto-Rooter man while my sister-in-law tried to make candy while fighting pneumonia. (But that's their own curse, far worse than ours.)

So it wasn't a surprise to learn that the lights and power in the young couple's condo bathrooms had gone out and in trying to fix the problem, they had also lost power to their air conditioner.

We brought flashlights for the facilities and opened the windows while the home warranty repairman was summoned. The problem was easy to fix, just push the circuit breaker past "on" to reset it.

It took some effort to find out what had happened. As the repairman explained: "If I tell you how to fix it next time it happens, how will I earn a living?"

The power was fixed, the dinner was great, the visit was wonderful and the curse was averted. Till next time.