From zero to forty in, well, forty. Years, that is. Miss Modo turns 40 today.

[DFW]

So, what IS a Modo, you might ask? When our daughter was born, forty years ago today, her head was very large, and it sometimes hung down her neck. My wife called her “kleine Quasimodo,” or “little Quasimodo,” after the Hunchback of Notre Dame. At this time, a joke (long, I won’t repeat it here) was making the rounds of Washington. It involved Quasimodo, with him being addressed by the local constabulary as “Mr. Modo.” Well, if Quasimodo was Mister Modo, then our daughter had to be Miss Modo. It stuck. It is not wise to remind her of that today if you are not wearing body armor.

On the way in late 1981, not quite “finished” yet:


Shortly after her appearance on the world stage: Miss Modo!! It took her a few weeks to figure out that my shoulder wasn’t anywhere near as tasty as what my wife’s breast had to offer.


“Next one to tell a ‘dead baby’ joke gets his face re-arranged!”


Soon enough, taking care of her little sister:


“I’m going to be as pretty as my Mama when I grow up!”


She liked to party, of course:


But she took her schoolwork seriously, all the same (“what is a valedictorian, and why do I have to give a speech?” ):


She moved to the USA, but you can’t take the German half out of a half German, so, at Oktoberfest in München:


Her sister now lives back in Germany, but sisters forever:


Also fond of her half-Japanese cousins:


She got to hang with some interesting people along the way:




She took a long time to wait for the right man to come along, but she finally found him:


Together with my wife and me, and her "little" sister at our 70th birthday/40th anniversary last year near Waikoloa:


And now she has a little one of her own, with #2 expected next month:


At age 40, my wife and I had no idea of all the wild stuff that was to come. We hope that Miss Modo has at least as much to look forward to. By the way, it is STILL not wise to call her that any more unless you are one of her parents, something I am fairly confident most of you aren't.

[DFW]

2. Equal time, so to speak.....

I think she had more fun with Stan Lee than with either of the Clintons, but don't tell anyone.........

[DFW]

5. It's not like we had an instruction manual.

We just did what we could by trial and error, like most parents, I suspect, and hoped for the best.

Stan liked to wisecrack and joke around, but he really had a heart of gold. He was a wonderful guy to know.
He once sent me an email telling me to say hi to my "fabulous females." He knew.

[DFW]

9. Oh, and by the way

Refer to my wife as "sophisticated," and she'll laugh you out of the room. She had her first pizza at 16, her first TV at 18, and never had Chinese, Japanese or Thai food until she met me at age 22. She grew up in the flat farm country of northwestern Germany, where a "refrigerator" was cold storage area dug into the ground below the house. The only reason her dad did not continue to be a farmer beyond his youth is that he was drafted into the army at age 17 as cannon fodder for Stalingrad. He came back minus a leg, and so couldn't do farm work any more. He took courses to learn how to work in a bank, and spent the rest of his life in a rural bank helping out other farmers stay financially above water. Her first experience living in a "big city" was in Münster in Westfalia, a town most of Germany mocks as a provincial backwater. When we met, she thought of America as the dark side of the moon--a place she'd heard of, but would never see.

Fortunately for me, she was open-minded enough to change her perspectives, and we tried to give our daughters that same perspective--there's nothing you can't do, there's no place you can't go, there is no closed door that you can't open. They followed their own paths (at times, with some serious nudging from us), and did just that.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. What a wonderful photo journal.

[DFW]

6. Thanks! It's very incomplete, of course.

But I wanted to mark the occasion in my own little way.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. What a lovely family you have there, DFW!

The years do sneak up on us.

[DFW]

8. Do they ever!

One day, you wake up, and realize you're 40, and think, wow, that was it. Is there anything left?

Then suddenly, you're 70, and WHOA, how did THAT happen?

[Fla Dem]

10. Time does fly doesn't it! You have a beautiful family

[DFW]

11. Fate did smile on me in that respect.

Makes up for a lot of other crap I choose to overlook!

[highplainsdem]

12. Beautiful photos, family and memories, DFW! Thanks for

sharing!

And happy birthday to your daughter!

[DFW]

13. Humble thanks, Highplainsdem!

Memories, memories. One day, they'll be all we have left.

We called her in New York, but she was all in a rush to get the baby ready for the sitter, and then zip off to work. Like me, she doesn't get days "off."

[CaliforniaPeggy]

14. What a grand trip down Memory Lane, my dear DFW! Beautiful photos!

You're such a good story-teller, too. I enjoyed every tidbit!

Her son is beyond cute! I hope all goes well with child #2.

Thanks for sharing!

[DFW]

15. Thanks Peggy! We're heading over to the USA at the end of the month for #2

We don’t know when yet. Most of the “reasonable” hotels, a relative term at best, when talking about New York City, already seem to be booked solid, and we had a bad experience last time with Airbnb. But we want to be there one way or the other, just like we were there last time for Il Bambino. Hopefully her crazy Russian mom-in-law won’t try to crash the delivery room like she did last time. She is a little nuts, to put it mildly!

[7wo7rees]

16. Beautiful montage/tribute. Happy BD, Jenny.

Beautiful young lady. Very lucky to have you two for mom and dad.

Good luck in NYC, it just must go better than last time!!

Much love to you and yours. And yes, you are blessed DFW!


Ms7wo7rees

[DFW]

17. I think most delivery rooms are prepared to some degree to tell the grandparents to wait outside

I doubt most of them are prepared for a strong (former Soviet Olympic swimmer) and strong-willed woman with a thick Russian accent to let her in for reasons her English isn’t good enough to articulate, and wouldn’t be valid even if it were.

Other than her, it went fairly well last time, and il bambino seems to have turned out to be a good kid so far.

Blessed may be going a little far, but I know that fortune has smiled on me with respect to my family. Thanks for the kind words!