Geoff Herbach

Why?  You could throw us in a ditch and we’d have a good time.  We could be stuck in a heavy rain, in a big dank puddle, wearing leather sandals and we’d have a good time.

I like watching her make dinner.  I like her watching me wash dishes.  I like going to the grocery store with her.  I like the mall.  I like the gas station.  I like the doctors office.  I like the DMV.

I like it when she picks me up from class.  I like dropping her off at her class.  I like eating Chinese food with her, even if it’s from the basement of the student union in Mankato.  I like Thanksgiving with her, even with all the poor kids going stir crazy after four days of too much pumpkin pie, fantastic sing-alongs, video game anxieties, big-time football, large wolf spiders in the damn shower, broken picture frames and food mushed into the floor — our kids are hilarious and we had a great time.

I like airports with her (early in the morning, late at night).  I like parking lots with her (big ones in the city, little cold ones covered in ice).  I like going to the bank, going to the post office, climbing through the crawlspace with a mousetrap, terrified of what I might find… it’s still good.  I like everything more with Steph.

When I give my kids advice about how you know if it’s right, I’ll say this: is it better when he/she is around?  Is regular life better better?  Is the good better?  The bad better?  The bored off your ass better?

Everything is better.

And now Steph and I are married.  Yes.  Thankful.

Even freaking Perkins is better.

Thus ends 2011 Thanks.  It’s the end of the semester and I will begin my bitching.

I’m a little like a Jewish mother with the bragging, but that’s what I got. Of course, this is the time of year to be thankful.  In February, during my winter festival of bitching, I’ll reveal all of the stuff that’s crap.  Today, however, I give thanks again.

My son, Leo, is almost 14.  In a lot of ways, he’s like me.  We like the same stuff: football, music, movies (when visiting New York last summer, we went to a bunch of indie movie theaters and saw film after film, day after day).  In many ways we’re not alike at all.  When I was thirteen, I watched a lot of TV in the basement.  Leo practices piano, drums, ukelele, accordion.  He is getting very good at all of them.  When I was thirteen, I rode a BMX bike around and around, looking for garbage cans to knock over.  Leo films and edits increasingly crisp narratives (funny, goofy-ass stuff).  When I was thirteen, I had to stay after school for breakdancing in class.  Leo has a doofus streak, but he seems to understand where to use and where to not, which is a fantastic skill. I wonder what was wrong with me?  I always did well enough in school, but I always felt on the edge of out of control, like a small, back wheel drive car on a curving gravel road.  I can’t tell you how happy I am to have a self-possessed child.

Yes, I am very thankful for all of this.

Leo

Every year around this time I think, I’m going to take this business seriously. I’m going to get all thankful all over it.  Usually I post something or other about being filled with gratitude and then I’m done because other crap gets in the way  and I miss mentioning about a thousand things I’d like to mention and then Minnesota winter sets in and I stop feeling good about anything, because it’s hard to stay alive out here on the frozen savannah.

I need to remember the good stuff through the winter. I’m going to pop them out fast and furious so they are documented before the big snows…

1. Mira. My daughter. She’s hilarious and smart and dramatic and I’m very thankful that she is still huggy.  She still likes sitting next to me on the couch. I imagine, as the winter of her early teens approaches, that she will stop liking me so much pretty soon. I am extremely thankful for Mira.  She is in fifth grade and she is excellent right now.  Right this very second.

Mira