Addendum-Boston

RIIINNNNGGG RIIIINNNNNGGG RIIIIINNNNNGG. I woke up and slammed the old alarm clock by my bed off. It was six AM, and I had to get up for work. Kelly lay beside me, her 35 year old body still sexy, on our four-poster bed. She was in beautiful shape, but she didn’t have to get up for a bit yet- her first class was at ten, and she didn’t need to feed Lucy for a little while longer. It was my turn to get the kids ready for school.

I turned and cracked and creaked the aching joints of my aging 52 year old body. Age had finally really caught up on me. Age is defined, I think, as aches and pains in your body. I had a lot of those nowadays, so I was officially old. I think I had been lucky managing to avoid those, though. It was beginning to catch up with me now, though.

I showered at night. The kids all showered in the morning and it was already like a production, so I kept myself out of the cue to use the one shower-equipped bathroom in the old house. I got out of bed, buttoned up my plaid fleece flannel shirt, and pulled on my overalls. I might be part of civilized society, but that is not going to ever mean wearing pants. Torture devices. Besides, it was my store. I could wear what I wanted to wear.

There was a reason the kids loved the weekends; they all got their own rooms when we were out on the farm. We really should have gotten them a bigger house. There were plans in the works to turn the attic into an additional pair of bedrooms, but it had been slow going, besides, I think it fostered them getting along in an environment a little less close then the one that had existed out on the farm.

I padded out of the room and into the bathroom. I had learned to trim my beard more regularly in married life. It was still distinctly a beard though, and it was, like the rest of my hair, a light silver. I splashed some water on my face, and combed my hair back and my beard down. I needed to look reasonably respectable. I was a customer-facing business owner now.

I now had my hardest job of the day. Four of our five kids needed to be woken up. Josh had an early morning class at North Dakota State; he was working on getting a business degree so he could take over our Fargo business. The kid already had a head for figures and numbers, and he would be a natural for running it and keeping the books.

I went into the boys’ room. Josh had his iPhone thingy beeping him awake, taking on responsibilities befitting an 18 year old, although still needing a helping hand. Leonard- well, we call him Lenny, on the other hand needed a fire cracker lit under his nine-year-old ass to get him up. I grabbed the spray bottle off the shelf and gave him a few squirts.

“Rise and shine, Lenny,” I said, “I’ll let you cook the bacon if you get downstairs quickly!”

“Really, dad?” he asked.

“Really, really,” I smiled.

He bounced out of bed with the enthusiasm of ... a nine year old boy. I wish I could have the energy contained in one of them. The energy crisis of our world could be solved if we could simply harness the energy of children. It makes nuclear fusion look like a gerbil running on a wheel in comparison. He literally went flying into the bathroom.

“I’ll wake up the girls, dad,” Josh told me.

“Ok,” I said, and went out in the hall to hear Lenny in the shower already.

I went into the room still partially used as a study, and looked in on Lucy. She was ... a little over a year now. Kelly wanted her, I’m not sure why. I mean, she’s beautiful, truly. I loved her very dearly. But I’m 52. By the time she graduates college, I’ll be almost 75. I’m not made of the same stuff my dad is. I had lead a hard life. My mother was only 77 when she died. And even my dad, who just turned 90, is clearly getting aged, Cheryl was getting very worried.

He lived out at the farm with her kids. Actually, they shared the same bedroom, had for most of the time Kelly and I had been married, almost ten years. They didn’t have a sex life, Cheryl swore to me. But they slept together, I guess they kept each other comfortable. She was getting on herself, being 62. But she was still in rude health, for the most part. She was out there helping in the fields most days.

We moved the kids that weren’t hers to Fargo during the week when we finally figured out who Johnnyboy and Sally’s significant others were. The way the family had been brought up together and raised, I guess it was inevitable that things would turn out that way. What I mean to say is, they were each other’s. They were trying to keep it hidden because they were scared there would be objection.

There was, sort of. Biologically it was not a good idea. Johnnyboy got himself snipped because of that. But who else were they going to find? They spent their whole lives together, from day one. They never went to school, never went to socials, never met other kids their age. They had largely similar personalities, and they fell in love. Cheryl accepted their love for each other; of course she did. We realized we had to socialize the kids better, and we’ve been endeavoring to do that since.

My other son John Jr. Sorenson (that was Jenny’s last name) had moved to Hillsboro with Kimmy. I had just fully accepted that one. They were a good match for each other. Jenny went into a fit about it, and John Jr. flew out here to get away from her. I ended up on the train to Reno, and spent a good long time talking to Jenny about estranged families and the dangers of them. She accepted it, begrudgingly at best, and they got married when he graduated from law school, in 2015. He’s been managing the legal affairs of Mahoney & Harris Farm Products, Inc. ever since.

They had a kid, Mark, who was born suspiciously early in 2016. He was adorable, as many babies are. They were close enough to the farm in Hillsboro, and had not decided whether to send Mark to public school, or to have Cheryl and Samantha home school him. In addition, Kimmy was six months pregnant with their second kid, who they suspected would be a girl.

Anyway, Cheryl and me were more than on the same page about the improper branching of our family tree. We were endeavoring to fix that by having the younger generation all go to public school where they could meet more people and have a more normal social life. Jason and Samantha disagreed with us entirely on that, and continued to home school their children- Jared (19), Violet (10), Kevin (5), and Serena (2).

Jared was not a bookie type, and as soon as it was decided that he was done with needed schooling, he just started working on the farm. The farm needed to support an ever growing family of people, another problem we would have to solve some time in the future.

Megan was with, and engaged to, one of the people who had worked in my store, a very nice black guy named Frank Williams. He had also been a hobo, and I had hired him about three years back, and they fell in love. After a while, he went to live over on the Farm with Megan, and started working on our farm. Plans were apace for a wedding sometime in the near future. I wished them well.

Jimmy married Mary Ann in 2012, and they lived in another new house built by on the farm. So far they have not had children. Personally it is my opinion that perhaps we have enough children in our family. I have nine blood children, six adopted children, and five grandchildren, and I expect some out of Jimmy & Mary Ann, Frank & Megan and John & Kimmy. And I’m not even thinking of all the kids who aren’t old enough yet. I’m sorta kidding. You can’t have too many children.

Jeffery had started cooking when he was a little kid, and soon surpassed Cheryl as the family cook. He was cooking big meals for family parties by the time he was 13, and with even more produce coming out of the farm, we had decided to start a restaurant using as much farm products as possible.

We started a restaurant for him when he was 16 in West Fargo, with Kimmy and Johnnyboy helping him out with it, but now Josh helped him with it, but he ran it mostly himself. It was really his baby, and he lived in a small apartment above it. He was involved with one of the waitresses, a girl seven years his senior named Sarah Kruger.

The saddest part was Susan Sorenson, my other kid with Jenny. I had gotten Jenny to accept her son’s relationship with my adopted daughter Kimmy, but she became absolutely paranoid that Susan would end up getting involved with another member of the family. I didn’t particularly blame her. Jenny didn’t object to me coming to see Susan in Reno, but she didn’t want her to come out to Fargo.

With the various monies coming in, Josh had explained to us- when he was only 15, mind you- that we needed to expand the farm. We bought out several farms around us and now controlled almost 2200 acres of farmland. I don’t remember exactly what is grown out there, I leave that up to Jason and Samantha, who know all about that kind of stuff.

My dad’s moving into the farm was complete. The house in Hornell was put on the market just after the wedding. Some furniture was shipped to Cheryl’s and Kelly’s houses, but not all that much. My dad even made the decision to exhume my mother’s remains and re-bury them on a plot of land we set aside for graves on the farm. She was the first one buried there.

Besides his arrangement with Cheryl, my dad had been greatly enjoying his life in North Dakota. When he first got here, he had enjoyed working in the workshop building toys and stuff for his grandchildren, but now he had trouble using the tools and sitting on the bench for extended periods. He loved being part of family dinners, and he had fun working with me on a project to build a new dining room onto Cheryl’s house, a U-table arrangement designed to seat 30 people.

Under the new arrangement, each family ate dinner in their own houses’ during the weekdays, and then we all came to the farm on weekends and holidays. Meals were eaten together, the kids played together, there were fun activities, and a party every Saturday night. We wanted the kids to be friends, we just didn’t want them all living in each other’s pockets, and only in each other’s pockets.

I went back by the girls’ room to see Josh kissing Little Rachel. On the lips. My head spun a little bit. I mean Josh had been ten and Little Rachel nine when we started splitting up the families a bit. Maybe we had been too late with them. But I needed to discourage this.

I was about to discourage this when the candlestick phone in the foyer rang.

I ran down the stairs as quick as I could and, and grabbed the earpiece off the phone, and then picked up the mouthpiece.

“Good morning,” I said, “Harris residence, Johnny speaking.”

I heard a whimpering over the other end of the line.

“Cheryl?” I responded, a worried feeling sinking in my gut.

“Its yor ... its yor dad,” Cheryl whimpered, “‘e’s... ‘e’s dead.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous.

“‘e went ter sleep last noit,” she cried, “And ‘e din’t wake up. ‘e’s not breathin’, Johnny.”

I was silent. I was having a hard time taking this in. We had developed a very close relationship over the past ten years. We were practically friends.

“Yer alroit?” Cheryl asked me.

“I’m still trying to absorb what you’re telling me,’ I admitted, “We’ll be over as soon as I get everyone up.”

“Yer don’t ‘ave ter come-”

“The hell I don’t,” I replied, “This is a time for the family to be together, Cheryl. Everyone should be there.”

“I’ll spot yer wen yer cop ‘ere, roit, then.”

I slowly managed to pull myself up the stairs, and back to our bedroom. I shook Kelly awake, and she turned onto her back, her sparkly blue eyes half opened. She threw her arms around me and pulled me down to her in a kiss. She was often horny in the morning, one of the reason I got out of bed and dressed before waking her on workdays.

Our life together hasn’t been completely picture perfect. Of course it hasn’t. No relationship is. But we largely believed in the same things. We wanted the same things from our family, for the most part. She was willing to travel far and wide with me during her time off. We had settled down into a comfortable world together. My attachment and love for her has only grown in the years we have been together.

Our biggest argument had been about child raising, actually. She had grown up under the system Cheryl had used. She thought it was perfect. She wasn’t fond of interbreeding particularly, but she felt it was a small price to pay for what she saw as the benefit. I thought it was dangerous, and would tend to result in family insular neurosis. I felt they had to be socialized and learn to exist in the outside world. Cheryl sided with me, which is why we changed the arrangements around.

Kelly wasn’t particularly psychotic. The only truly weird thing she ever did was marry me. I had a severe case of insular neurosis, and I had known it. I’d been working for the past ten years to fix it. Insular Neurosis is when you create an entire different world of beliefs from that of society based upon the insular and separated environment you live in. E.G. thinking its perfectly alright to marry your half-sibling, or thinking it is perfectly ok to go around killing people who you don’t think are adequately beneficial to society. You essentially create an us (your group) and them (the whole rest of society) attitude to a distinctly extreme level. But I digress.

This morning I didn’t feel like a loving kiss, or sexual play, or any of that. I gently, but firmly, disentangled myself from her embrace.

“What the fuck,” Kelly said.

“I just got a call from Cheryl,” I said, “Dad died in his sleep last night, we are all going to the farm as soon as you guys can get up.”

“Oh god,” she said, “Ok, I’m up, go take care of the kids.”

“Feed Lucy before you come downstairs with her,” I reminded her.

I went to the boys’ room, and saw Josh and Lenny both dressed for school.

“You’re not going to school today,” I told them, “Grandpa died last night.”

“Why?” Lenny asked.

“He was an old man,” I said, “We don’t know exactly why.”

I went over to the girls’ room; Josh could figure out how to explain life to Lenny.

“We need you all to get ready quickly,” I told them, “We are off to the farm today. Grandpa died last night, so you aren’t going to school.”

I went down to the phone in the foyer. We had decided that would be the only phone in the house a long time ago. Josh and Rachel both had iPhones, but I wasn’t a cellphone guy. I lifted the earpiece off the phone, and dialed the high school, and told them Rachel wouldn’t be coming in today, due to a death in the family, and then called the elementary school and told them the same thing for Lenny.

I then called Jeffery, and told him that I would be picking him up in about 30 minutes.

I went out to the two-car garage, and pulled the baby seat out of Kelly’s car. Her E320 CDi had given up the ghost a few months ago. It was 14 years old, and had been driven back and forth to the Farm numerous times a week, a 150-mile round trip. She had almost 400k miles on it, some rust, and a variety of little things. When the injectors started gumming up from “black death”, it was just the last straw.

She had just been promoted to president of North Dakota State, so we just bought her another new Mercedes. It was a black 2019 E450 Wagon with the luxury appearance packages, mocha leather, and pretty well loaded. $80k out the door is a lot of money but ... they do last. It was a really nice car, though, and befitting her status in the area.

The other garage bay was taken up by my mom’s 1968 Mercedes-Benz 200D which I had meticulously restored over the years I had been living here. It was now in better-than-new condition, it would have been concours eligible if they had such things in North Dakota.

I looked at my watch; 7:02. We were making good time. My Seiko SKX007 had been a disappointment; it had lasted less than two years before it succumbed to a bad shock and, according to the watchmaker, broke its balance staff. I was disappointed; at the time it was the cheapest mechanical dive watch I could find in Aruba. I decided to do some research and stumbled on a better alternative: the Vostok Amphibia, or Востoк Амфибия, as they write it in its country.

Vostok means East, and Amphibia means ... amphibian. The name may be pedantic but the watch has some fascinating qualities. It uses a totally in-house 31-jewel automatic movement that operates at a high-torque, low-frequency nature that makes it extremely rugged and shock resistant. The case is what really makes it special though.

Most water resistant watches use a thin rubber gasket on screw in crowns and backs, and a precision machined crystal, fighting water pressure. It’s called the Oyster system because it debuted on the Rolex Oyster, but practically everyone uses it. This has disadvantages, especially shear-stretch of the gaskets when they are screwed in, and the eventual drying out of the gasket over time.

The Amphibia system is different. It uses a wide, sintered rubber gasket for the case back, and the crown. The crown stem presses against the whole gasket, sealing it, and the water pressure on the crown only increases the seal. The case back seal also uses a wide sintered rubber gasket, and the caseback is two pieces; a back that slots into two key ways and presses into the gasket, and a metal retaining ring screw that screws into the back and secures it.

The sintered rubber does not dry out, the case back does not sheer the rubber gasket, and the water pressure acting on the watch presses the case back harder into gasket, so the water resistance increases as the watch’s depth increases. The crystal likewise is a curved piece of acrylic that flattens and laterally expands as depth increases, sealing the crystal better to the case. Vostok certifies the watch “Water Proof” to 200 meters, and tests the watch to a pressure of 50 atmospheres- the equivalent of 500 meters.

The watch was designed in the Soviet Union by Vostok in Chistopol, Tartarstan, Russia, in 1967 for use by military divers. The watch remains in production in the original factory. Low cost Russian labor and the simplicity of the design make for its greatest feature- they start as low as $60. Weird, effective, and inexpensive. It’s got my name all over it.

Since it was only a two car garage, I stored my van outside. Actually, I had three vehicles. Until a couple of years ago I had a 2009 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500 low-roof, short-wheelbase, passenger model. I used it both for transporting the kids and for business use. But it had gotten way too small, and the business had grown so much, so I replaced it with two vans: a used 2015 Sprinter 3500 Extended Reefer model, and a blue 2018 Mercedes-Benz Metris (AKA Vito) passenger, with the only options being power mirrors, the eighth seat and the cold weather package (a must for North Dakota). I got it for $34k out the door. But I kept the Sprinter at the store, and I only used it to drive out to the farm and pick up stuff for the store and restaurant.

I installed the baby seat next to the child seat in the second row, at which point the kids were all out in the garage. Rachel and Josh sat next to each other in the back row, Lucy went in the baby seat, Mary in the child seat, and Lenny sat next to them on the passenger side of the second row. Kelly and I got in to the front, and we set out for the restaurant.

Jeffery came out with a bag of breakfast sandwiches for everyone, and Lenny let him into the back seat. We then headed north out of the city towards the farm. It was cold for early October, but the heater in the Metris was more than adequate for the job of keeping the inside of the van comfortable.

I thought back a little less than ten years ago, to my and Kelly’s honeymoon to Boston...

Of course we had sex on our wedding night. It was wonderful, and there was a certain feeling of additional pleasure knowing that she would be mine forever. The kids had stayed on the farm, of course, to allow us some privacy. I suspect it was that night that our next child was conceived, based on timing.

A lot of people think that relationships change when you get married. Mine did, but I think the change had more to do with the fact that my entire life changed when we got married. Before we got married we had agreed that I was allowed to travel by myself with a week’s notice; it was a policy that never got used. I had a few trips by myself, to visit Suzie and Jenny, but the rest of them were planned well in advance and involved at least Kelly, if not all the kids.

But of course the morning after the wedding was Christmas Day, and Cheryl held a 12:30 reception brunch in the house for those who wanted to come. It was intended to be a brunch, but Kelly and I wanted to get there first thing that morning. It was Christmas, and we wanted to be there for when the rest of the family got up and started opening presents.

We threw on our clothes and booked it, leaving at barely six in the morning. It was snowing outside, of course. The main roads were fine, but once we got past Hillsboro and off the main roads, the going was a little more treacherous. But of course Kelly had grown up driving on treacherous North Dakota winter roads; it took about 15 minutes longer than it would on a good day. Which meant we arrived there about 7:30, a bit later than intended given how the kids could be.

I was in for quite a shock when I saw the kids sitting in the living room. Because one of them was John Jr. I hadn’t missed a Christmas morning at that house in many years, so Cheryl had been expecting me. Perhaps John was not.

“What the heck are you doing here, John?” I asked.

“There were a fight between ‘im and ‘is mum,” Cheryl said, “Yer didn’t notice it, eh?”

“He was three sheets to the wind,” Kelly said, “He was hard to make love to, even.”

I blushed.

“What was the fight about?” I asked,

“She got very angry that he kissed me,” Kimmy simpered.

“Define ‘kiss’.”

“Kiss, verb, touch lips in a sign of love or affection,” replied Kimmy.

“It was pretty passionate,” Samantha said, also smirking.

John was blushing. I looked at the two of them.

“I thought you were seeing someone back in University,” I sighed.

“I am. Or rather, was,” said John.

“You just met,” I said, exasperated.

“So did we,” Cheryl said.

“You can’t mean...”

Both Kimmy and John were beet red. Apparently she did mean.

“Please don’t be mad, Johnny,” John Jr. said.

“What happened to ‘Dad’?” I asked him, “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Cheryl when she told me that Samantha and Jason had fallen in love. You aren’t related by blood, you aren’t technically related by anything at all, actually. In my life, I’ve been deeply in love with three people, one of whom was a perfectly normal teenage girl; the second is Kelly who was raised by a stunningly sexy and sweet woman who-”

“Yer can roit skip the bloomin’ flattery,” Cheryl laughed, “Were raised by me who ‘e ‘as kids wiv.”

“And the third was a certified nutcase who I miss every single day of my life, who went around the country maiming and killing people she thought bad,” I said, “And I loved her so much I sometimes helped her with same. If you and Kimmy love each other, truly love each other, you have something special, and worth keeping.”

“You’re not upset?” John asked.

“I’m not upset,” I said, “Your mother will have a cow, however. I would suggest that for her sakes you slept in separate beds last night. And you work out how you plan on explaining this to her very carefully. Have we started presents yet?”