Dear John,

Ave!

I finally have the opportunity to reply to your kind, thoughtful, optimistic, and impossibly joyful e-mail.

How could you dismiss my mischievous rantings with such gleeful finesse, and completely ignore all the bait I tossed in your path? Good for you, you clever Jesuit.

I was pleased that you thought my letter to you was terrifying. I have been trying to terrify my children for years, and all I get is laughter. Even my cats seem to laugh at me when I threaten them with severe punishment. No respect.

My wife of 32 years, Manya, and I, are flying over the Atlantic as I write this for a week’s holiday in Paris. We leave behind three glorious, grown children in various stages of college and life experience.

My youngest, Rachel, is a crack student-athlete at Swarthmore College. She doesn’t stop asking questions, and insists that she will change the world, starting with the Middle East. She would make an excellent Jesuit. You guys should think about it. My middle son, Nico, is at Loyola College in Baltimore. Beats me. I think he thought it was a party school, but he was misinformed. Boys are weird. He’s a so-so student, very gregarious, and all the little kids follow him around, shouting “Nico, Nico”. I don’t get it. Very charismatic. He is destined to become a lawyer in his quest to bend all the rules. Alec, my oldest, is my clone. He spent a year at Sarah Lawrence College (very intense, small liberal arts college, with teacher:student ratio of 6:1); decided that academics was not for him: and is now creating himself as a metalworker, woodworker, sculptor, plumber, electrician, autobody worker, auto repairer, builder of motorcycles, etc. He does all this with my connivance and support. But his list of manual and analytical skills goes on. Where do these kids get this stuff? I mean, he builds complicated machinery from scratch!

Now, if he could only figure out how to make a living…

Meanwhile, I owe all of these blessings to my wife, whose love, encouragement and support have made all these creations possible. Without her, I would never have become whole. Amazing. And she doesn’t stop giving, like the fountain in Brideshead Revisited. Every morning, she smiles into my face and tells me she loves me. What did I do to deserve this?

As for me, I went for every degree I could think of: a BA at Yale; worked for a while: an MBA at Columbia; worked for a while: a PhD in economics from Princeton; taught at Princeton ; worked for a while. I have no idea where I was going with all that until one day Manya took my hand and said, “Come with me.” And I went. We moved to Connecticut, bought a 1752 Colonial house, and proceeded to breed like rabbits: Three separate children in 27 months. I’m still working on the restoration of the old colonial, and have almost finished with the care and feeding of my family, except with Manya, of course. I will never be finished with her.

Now, I’m looking for things to do with myself. I’ve started a film production company (in name only!), am working on a variety of screenplays that I would like to film with my kids. I still like to putter with econometric models of financial economics for investing in the stock market. I still do woodworking on the house. I forgot tennis: I absolutely love to play tennis. I’m totally busy from morning till night, when I fall into bed completely exhausted and completely at peace.

I lead a fiercely unexamined life; I hide from God in case she should spot me, and decide to take away my good fortune. I figure I’ll get by if I stay out of the hound’s way. Nice doggie.

No, of course, it was not all always that way, but that is all I want to convey to you. The rest doesn’t matter. As though the bad stuff didn’t even exist, even Father Henry, may he rest in peace.  Rot.

Well, I guess that’s about it: not much, but enough. More than enough. I haven’t yet felt the twitch upon the thread. Sorry.

I wish you well on your journey.  Thank you for asking about me.

Love, JP

P.S. It is thrilling to learn that you are teaching.

P.P.S. Do you have a pseudonymn? I can’t find your murder mysteries anywhere. Father Brown maybe?