I sat on the couch with the remote in hand, the menu screen up, but Lauren sat at the kitchen table, within view but not paying attention to the TV.
“I was thinking we could watch The Wire,” I said.
“I’m just working on the Christmas cards,” she said.
“Noted,” I said. “But if you brought them in here, we could have an assembly line and do them together while also watching The Wire.“
“I think Lu has dinner almost ready but maybe after dinner?”
I set the remote aside and went to the kitchen table where I found Lauren hand-writing addresses on to envelopes while staring at printed addresses on a regular sheet of paper, but formatted as though they were labels.
“You’re hand-writing the addresses?” I said.
I sat next to her, opened an addressed envelope, tucked into it the glossy card and the printed letter I had written a week before, and set it aside before grabbing another envelope.
“Yeah,” she said.
“If only we had label printing technology. Oh look, you actually used it, but on regular paper and not labels. Why didn’t you just print labels?”
“A lot of them are wrong. So I’m just checking each one, then hand-writing them on the envelopes.”
“That makes literally no sense,” I said.
“Well, it’s how I’m doing it,” she said.
By now, I had stuffed three envelopes. I shut my mouth and kept stuffing the envelopes. We worked in that fashion for ten minutes before dinner was served. Lucia had made us a 13 x 9 dish of chicken divan, which we polished off quickly with Graham leading the way. As we finished, I said, “Okay, kids. I’ve stuffed a bunch of the envelopes, but we need them sealed and the return address stamped on. So you all can take those jobs while I keep stuffing the rest. We can move all this into the front room, so we can watch The Wire.“
“So I’m all in favor of this plan,” said Lauren, “except that I would like to go upstairs and change into my pajamas first.”
“Really, you just never want to get to watching The Wire tonight, do you?” I said.
“It won’t take long, I promise.”
“Of course it will take long,” I said.
But all to no avail. Off she went, and Lucia, Graham, and I assumed our positions on the assembly line. My job involved opening an empty envelope, tucking in the card, folding the printed letter twice, and stuffing that in. Lu had a small bowl of water and a tiny sponge—she dipped the sponge, wiped it on the envelope paste, and sealed the letters. Graham had the return address stamp that he had to press hard onto the upper left corner. I had built up a backlog of probably twenty to thirty stuffed envelopes, so we all got busy, but it became apparent quickly that my tasks took longer than those of the other two.
Suddenly, Graham affected an English accent: “I say, who’s holding up that line?”
“Definitely Dad,” said Lucia.
“I have two tasks to do with complex movements. You all have one task apiece with simple movements.”
English accent again: “Might take that whole lot and run them out of here if they can’t keep up.”
Lucia now, in accent. “Please, sir, it’s not my brother and I. It’s the ole man, you see, sir.”
Graham: “Right. Take the whole line and tie up their feet. We’ll dip them upside down in boiling water. That will show them.”
“Listen, you two goons, I’m doing the hard part.”
“The boiling water will be if we’re lucky,” said Graham. “If we can get out of here with only some minor steam burns and our day’s wages, we’ll have done great. We’ll be lucky if you don’t get us all sent to the workhouse.”
Lucia: “Sad that we have to have such old men in the factory. But we can’t really let ’em slow us down, can we? Shall we punish you ourselves?”
“Hit him with a wooden spoon, says I,” said Graham. “It’s a mite better than the boiling water.”
I rolled my eyes. “How about you fold some of the letters for me, Lu, and then it will shorten my task.”
“Did you ‘ear that?” Lu said. “That ole man is right full o’ shite. He wants me to do ‘is work for ‘im. Crack ‘im over the head with me spoon, I will.”
She started folding envelopes, as she and Graham giggled.
“Where the heck is Mom?” Lu said.
“Is that even a question?” I said.
“True,” said Lu.
“Cuz it’s never just ‘change into my pajamas,'” I said. When we imitate Lauren, we always use a fake valley girl accent. “There’s always, ‘I had to go to the restroom, and there was laundry to fold, and I needed to change my glucose sensor because it was bad, and there were a lot of messages to respond to on Facebook.'”
As I said this, my phone began lighting up with Messenger notifications—Lauren was responding to a group chat we are part of.
“She did have a basket of laundry in one arm when she went up,” Lu said.
“Not that any of this matters,” said Graham, “because the old guy is so slow at stuffing that we haven’t even caught up to Mom’s progress yet.”
“Dude, I told you, I’m doing like four times the steps that you all are doing, meathead.”
“DAAAD! If this were 1820s England, you’d get us all kicked out and stuck in a textile factory in Newcastle.”
“Shut your face, man. There weren’t textile factories in the early nineteenth century. That was the Industrial Revolution-era.”
“Oh no,” said Lu. “You’re not about to argue history with Graham, are you, Dad?”
“The Industrial Revolution was more like the 1850s to the 1920s,” I said.
“Well, DAAAAD,” said Graham, “the spinning jenny was invented in the 1760s, and the textile manufacturers needed room for them, so they made bigger buildings that became factories, and shippers sent their cotton and wool to the factories where it could be spun into cloth.”
“Thanks, dingus,” I said. “I know how a factory works. But that was later.”
“Graham is always right about history, Dad,” said Lu.
“But the Industrial Revolution wasn’t until the 1850s when you had a boom in all sorts of factories.”
“Well, DAAAAD,” said Graham, “then why did Adam Smith write The Wealth of Nations in 1776 and talk all about land, labor, and capital? Because there was already labor working in factories.”
Lucia smirked. “You’ve been ‘well, dad-ed’ twice now.”
In the middle of all this, I got a text from Lauren: Having intestinal issues.
I showed the message to Lu. “Is anyone surprised by this?”
“Of course not,” said Lu.
“No one but mom wanted to do Christmas cards, and somehow, she got us to do all the work.”
We finished the full backlog just as Lauren finally came down the stairs in her pajamas.
“Oh wow,” she said. “They’re all done. Now we just need you to go to the post office tomorrow, Lu, for stamps, and we’ll be all set.”
“See how she did that, Dad?” said Lu. “I have to go to the post office for her.“
“I have to work, Lu,” said Lauren.
“No, you just hate the post office.”
“It’s true,” Lauren said. “It crushes my soul. You don’t want me to lose my soul, right?”
The next day, Lu did indeed go to the post office. And while she did, I looked up a few facts. When Lu and I met up over lunch in the kitchen, I said, “I have sad news to report.”
“What’s that?” Lu said.
“Everything Graham said last night was right. He was dead on about the Industrial Revolution. The time period I was thinking about is known as the Second Industrial Revolution—when steel and iron creation for large-scale transportation drove the development of more modern factories. But he was absolutely right about spinning jennies and textile manufacturing.”
“I don’t know why you would ever argue with Graham about history,” said Lu. “You’re never gonna win that battle.”
“You know how tough it was for me to admit this, right?”
“Oh yeah, I know.”
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His Smile Lit Up a Room and Other Things to Say at My Funeral 