2015 Newsletter

Holiday greetings from the Gentile Family!

I suppose like every year, 2015 had its ups and downs. Two very sad moments came early in the year. First, when my mom, Ann, died on January 4, mere hours before her 85^th birthday. And we lost Tom’s mother, Madeline, just a month later. In fact, her funeral on February 7 marked Tom’s fifth anniversary. They are all certainly loved, and truly never forgotten.

The kids are thriving this year. A sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, David is loving his academic life, including this semester stage managing a production of Marie Antoinette as the project for one of his classes. His very sweet girlfriend, Hannah, shares his interest in theatre production but is at SLC for premed. Hallelujah with a side of cowbell, she’s also teaching David how to drive. She’s in line for a lifetime supply of homemade cookies or maybe even some cold hard cash if she can actually get him a pretty little driver’s license all his own.  She’s a bit of a Renaissance woman.  Speaking of which, how picky is spellcheck at spelling “Renaissance?” There’s 5 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

 Geof has had a pretty eventful year. Becoming the athlete of the family a couple of years ago (You may recall previous newsletter references to track and lacrosse. Or maybe you don’t because let’s be honest. This is the Christmas newsletter. Who reads them? Never mind who actually remembers them from this year to next? No one. That’s who.) this year, his senior year,  he took on football, wearing number 82 as defensive back and wide receiver for the Arlington Catholic Cougars. After visiting Old Dominion in Norfolk, VA over the summer Geof was beginning to envision his college life there and was even talking about starting ROTC once there. But the military bug bit a little stronger than anyone expected, and he spoke with a local Army recruiter around the start of the school year. He passed his physical and his ASVAB a few weeks ago and took his Oath of Enlistment on November 17. He ships out for basic training at Fort Benning, GA in August, 2016.

I am still at Dana Farber a day or two a week, and have also done some volunteering at the Greater Boston Food bank. Every now and then I think about gainful employment. Then I think about all the new people I’d have to meet, and all my weirdo quirks and foibles I’d have to explain or hide and I sigh and shrug my shoulders and go back to my rainbow hair and my knitting.  I’m putting the finishing touches on the blanket I’m knitting for Geof. David got his blanket in time for freshman year at SLC, but Geof certainly won’t be taking his to basic training, so I want him to have it before he goes.

I spend a remarkable amount of time cleaning up cat poop and dog pee. Or dog poop and cat pee. I don’t keep track. All I know is the clock is ticking on these animals and every time I clean up one mess or another, every time the contents of the kitchen trash can get spread across the entire first floor of my house, every time I choke on animal fur free floating in the air, I remind them that extraordinary life-sustaining measures become less and less likely. Still, Zoet does her doggie things, and the Scruffy, Pixel, and Momo do their kitty things and all stays balanced in the world.

So, that’s it from us this year.  We all hope you have a safe and wonderful rest of this year, and a happy and healthy 2016.

linda.gentile@ymail.com                  dc.gentile18@gmail.com                   geof.gentile@gmail.com

http://twoboysfourcatsnodogsyet.blogspot.com

Family Weekend, or ...

I've been excited for weeks to join 96 at Sarah Lawrence for Parents Weekend. Technically, it was Family Weekend but I made an agreement with 98 that if he had no missed homework and no failed grades this term he could stay home by himself. So Parent Weekend it was.

I get there and 96 and I go to register. They wanted thirty five dollars (THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS!) so I could sit through a welcome message from President Karen Lawrence (no relation), followed by the keynote speaker who was an SLC parent, then "lunch under the tent" which I'm sure was lovely, and finally an afternoon of panel presentations-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z. No thank you.

If I'm driving four hours to my son's school, I want to hang with my kid. He's an actual human being now. Civilized and everything! So we spent the day in The City instead.

After arriving at Grand Central Station our first stop was the 9/11 memorial. It was a humbling experience, and I felt very, very small compared to the enormity of what happened that day. We were still on Kwaj at the time, but Tom's New York roots ran deep.

Someone needs to invent a word that means taller than tall to describe the new building. It is in fact the biggest building I have ever seen. I liked the view up from the very base of the building. And Rahm Emanuel can bite it if he thinks that's "just" an antenna on top and shouldn't be included in the measurement. It's not. The end.

We wound our way through The City and ended up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we were meeting up with another SLC family with the same boredom threshold as us, who also spent Parent Day in the city. The cafeteria was inside the museum, and to get there we needed to pay admission. $25 each, according to the sign over the cashier.

Record scratch.

My son, the city slicker, informed me that those admission rates museums charge are really just "suggestions" and we didn't actually need to pay $25 per person to walk back to the cafeteria. Fully expecting to be laughed at, or at least trashed on Facebook as that cheap-o Bostonian who refused to pay admission, I explained that we were only going to the cafeteria and so here's a dollar. The ticket person could not have been nicer about it, and gave us our lapel stickers identifying us as full fledged museum visitors and we were on our way. Expecting to pass a broom closet, an electrical box, and the service elevator en route to the cafeteria, imagine my surprise when we actually had to wander through the Middle Ages armor and weaponry exhibit to get to our destination.

Mortified that I had only paid a buck (for the two of us! Not even a dollar each! A dollar total!) for the experience, I thought maybe I shield my eyes as I walked past. But I couldn't resist a peek. The cafeteria assuaged my guilt somewhat by charging me $15.25 for two oj's and a cupcake.

Hunting Knive Combined with Wheellock Pistol, 
etched with a calendar for the years 1529-34.
World's first Swiss Army  knife

               

H and 96

So the plan is another weekend in New York with a daylong visit to the Met in my future, at which time I promise to gladly and enthusiastically pay full freight.