Welcome Home

It's nearing 1:00 a.m. here on the east coast, and I've just checked the Korean Air website to see that the Princeling's flight is in the air and has been for a few hours. After nearly 14 hours aloft in the atmosphere, he'll touch down in New York, where I, his devoted mother will be waiting to welcome home. Little does he know that I've spent his vacation mucking out his cage. And I do not use the term "mucking" lightly. As a teenager, I was enrolled in riding school. When you learn to ride horses, you also learn to take care of them. I mucked out plenty of stalls, and there really was no difference between mucking those horse stalls or mucking out the monkey cage.
There are now two large trash bags on the curb full of cage muckings. A good deal of this was candy wrappers, old socks, tests from ninth grade, and bits and pieces of pencils, crayons and erasers. His mattress has been turned (not an easy task on a double sized loft bed), and bedding is in the washing machine. Earlier in the week I raked up the dirty clothes left on the floor, washed and folded them, and then wrestled the clean items into drawers. The poor clean clothing items were frightened by the dark recesses of the bureau drawers since they had never been inside. Shoes danced happily with mates long lost to the deadly clutter. Dust mites and spiders ran for the windows at the sound of the vacuum. It was amazing.
I'm sure none of this will be appreciated by the Princeling. I will have to listen to a rant about invasion of privacy. Even Kong asked if I should be in the Princeling's room. I just smiled and asked him, "Did you send in the mortgage check for this month?" It's OUR room after all. He just lives here. Rent free. And now, after great risk to my own personal health, the monkey cage is passable. I could have continued to the point of immaculate cleanliness, but I couldn't. My skin was breaking out in rashes and my eyes were tearing. I will have to call in a toxic waste removal team to finish the job.

Back to School

Yes, the school year has just ended, and so the title of today's entry may be just a little confusing. But it's simple enough to understand. I spent Saturday morning at Temple University, my fair alma mater. As it happens, Kong is also a Temple alumnus. Baby Monkey is just beginning his college search, and the Temple University General Alumni Association hosted it's first-ever recruiting program for the children of Temple alumni on Saturday. Kong and I thought this would be a great thing to do early on a Saturday morning. Why not show Baby Monkey the place that is so near and dear to his parents; the very place where we first met! Let's spend the morning dragging Baby Monkey around campus while walking down memory lane. Surely, he'll love it! The Princeling, too, is interested in Temple. Kong and I are happy to hope for a Temple family in the future.
Because Kong is anal about arriving on time, we left home way too early and were nearly the first to arrive for the event. The event organizers were ready and waiting. I could tell they were nervous about this first-time gathering. As we entered the beautiful new Tech Center, the two enthusiastic hosts greeted us as though we were the guests of honor. I'm sure they were happy to see someone show up. "Hello! Welcome back to Temple University! Which parent is the alum?"
"We both are," I said, rolling my eyes slightly as I looked toward Kong to show her that I wouldn't have dragged Mr. Cranky Morning with me unless he had been a Temple graduate, too.
"Oh, wow! You BOTH went to Temple! Did you meet here?"
"Uh, huh." It was really early, and the last time I had been on campus at 8:00 a.m. was in 1984. In those days, I was definitely a morning person. Twenty-two years has taken it's toll on my morning moods.
"Wow! I wonder how many people from Temple married each other?" our hostess mused. I wondered if she was always that silly, or was it just too early in the morning for her, too? Temple University is a BIG place. There were close to 40,000 students at Temple when I attended, and it's pretty much the same these days. With a nod to those statistics classes I took my senior year, I'd have to say that given the size of the student population, it's statistically probable that more than a few alumni found each other and married. Surely, she had met married alumni before. But, she seemed not to have, and begged for the story.
Since there was no one else to talk to at the moment, I related my unromantic first meeting with Kong. On my very first day of my freshman year I ended up in the student activity center, and there he was, sitting in a corner surrounded by very animated people. They were laughing and talking, but he was completely disconnected from the group. He had a transistor radio with an earplug, and he was waiting for an announcement about ticket sales for an upcoming Led Zeppelin tour. I went on to tell her that the tour never happened because Robert Plant's son drowned in a horrible pool accident, and the tour was cancelled. Her eyes glazed over. I think I lost her at "transistor radio". She was about 25 years old. She had no clue what a transistor radio was. She said she knew Led Zeppelin. But I could tell she didn't know who Robert Plant was, and certainly didn't know about his tragic loss. I decided not to tell her about John Bonham. That could be too much for her.
Now, I should stop for a moment, because my more alert audience will notice that I mentioned I was on campus back in 1984. Some of you may have gone back to the first paragraph to check. Now you're thinking: Did she say 1984 and now she's talking about transistor radios? Yeah. Kong was never one to keep up on technology. Even if you give him some leeway and take the story back four years to 1980, my freshman year, we're still about 20 years past the heyday of the transistor radio. But he had one in 1980. All I can say is, he's a man of classic taste.
The shorter version of this story is that Kong did not strike me as anything special for three years. He was a senior who wore really bad polyester suits to on-campus interviews while looking for a job as an accountant. He wasn't quite my idea of excitement. And as if that weren't enough, he was a member of the Temple University track team -- a middle distance runner. He stood 6'3" tall and weighed all of 155 pounds. He looked like he had just escaped from Auschwitz. I didn't pay him any serious attention until 1982. I occasionally saw him at parties of mutual friends, and finally, one night he called me for a "safe" date. He needed someone to go with him to his high school reunion. He didn't want to go alone. I said, sure, I'll go, what the heck. He asked me nearly three months before the actual reunion. Yep. That's him, always planning ahead. After he asked me to go to the reunion, he then asked me to go to a party with him about two months before the reunion. Again, I thought, sure, why not? I'm not the planning type. I'm more a spur of the moment kinda gal. But, it's a good thing he lined up the second date before he asked me on the first date, because that first date was the worst first date I had ever had. I was bored to tears. He barely spoke at all. Had I not committed to go to the reunion with him, I would never have gone on another date with him.
Obviously, we got past all of that. We dated for three years, and then one evening he asked me to meet him after a class I had up at the Ambler campus. He proposed, and in my last semester at Temple, I became an engaged woman. I graduated a few months later and went to work for the husband of a Ph.D. student I knew through my on-campus job. My first real job after college was a good one, and on the day we married, I actually made more money than Kong. Because we started out with a decent financial situation, Kong and I were able to buy the house where we still live, where our degrees hang side-by-side on our living room wall, and where we've raised our children -- the children who want to go to Temple University. Ahhh! The circle of life!

3 - 2 = how many?

On Monday, I put the Monkey Prince and the Middle Monkey on a big ole' jet plane bound for South Korea. Middle Monkey spends some of his summer vacation visiting with his parents there, and this year, the Princeling went with him for a two-week visit. It's a graduation present from Kong and me. We all thought it was a great present. Afterall, travel is education, especially when one gets to go to a place so very different from what one is used to. For the Princeling, it's even more valuable. He's living with the Middle One's family for two weeks, so he gets to really live in the culture. Add to it that the Princeling has a great interest in ancient Asian history, and you have one happy Princeling.
So that leaves me wth just one of the three monkeys at home. To add to the equation (or do I subtract?), the day after the Princeline returns, he leaves for his job at a summer camp, where he'll live for the rest of the summer. I have only the Baby Monkey here, and he's loving his time as an "only child". Only, he's not only.
On the very day after the Monkey Prince and the Middle One left for Korea, there were six teenagers in my house. I surveyed the situation in my family room which was crammed full of teenagers, one of whom was the Princeling's girlfriend. They were consuming all the soda and snacks left from the Princeling's graduation party while alternately playing video games and watching "Pirates of the Caribbean". It was noisy. It was messy. It was fun.
The mother of one of the extra children stopped by to pick up her son. At the door she smiled and asked, "Are you enjoying having an only child?" I just led her to the family room. We even sat down amidst the chaos and had a conversation.
I'm not sure how the math works here. I sent two of my kids away for an entire summer, but I still ended up with more than I started with. I think I might call the guys at M.I.T. to ask if they're doing research on this particular mathematical equation.