My Beautiful Nieces

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We went to my niece Nicole's graduation party last weekend.

She's a beautiful girl.

Just like her sister, Andrea.

And the party was great as our cousins came out and a lot of friends gathered to wish Nicole well as she moves off into a promising life, and what got me about it was that while she was moving around the gathering I thought of something her father had written in a graduation card he handed me all those years ago.

"You got the world by the ass. Don't screw it up!" He wrote in the card he handed me as I graduated from college.

I still have that card in the box filled with stuff that I've saved through the years. Cards and notes like that are important to me, and I saved it because it meant a lot coming from him.

We all played a little volleyball during the party. I used to really love that sport. My cousin Tony was on my team and he was in the middle, the setting position.

"Set me up!" I called from the front row.

I wanted to spike the ball on my brother Jim who was across the net from me.

Tony did it perfectly. A well-placed ball that was right where it needed to be. I eye-balled it the whole way and started my leap.

It was all I could do to get the ball over the net. Jim had also half-jumped on his side of the net. He was a couple of feet short of stuffing it back at me. The ball ended up somewhere else.

No spike.

No block.

Wow, how time goes.

Just about the same time I saw Nicole and Andrea walk by.

Just crazy.

Wonderful, beautiful, well-adjusted women.

My brother had the world by the ass too.

And he didn't screw it up.

Now if only we could still jump a little.

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