Mama, mama, mama!

Catherine making friends with a goat.

Mama, mama, mama, is all the boys seem to say these days.  Daddy is second fiddle by two miles (3.2 km for my Canadian friends) at our home on Milwaukee Street. With good reason, yes sir. Kelly, Rhys and Beckett's devoted mother and my beloved wife, Catherine Delaney, is the most remarkably loving, genuinely friendly and infinitely caring creature on our blue-green orb. With complete strangers, the Queen of England, or our cleaning crew, Catherine treats and greets everyone the same with her beaming, toothy smile, kind hazel eyes, and a radiating warmth that can soften the soul of even the most harden old shisters (Dick Chaney, etc).

On our recent week-long sailing trip around the Grenadine Islands, while I relaxed, joyously ploughing through four books and generally avoiding all human contact other than persons employed in the food service industry, Catherine transformed herself into the de facto US ambassador to the Lesser Antilles and the Miami-Dade Airport.  We logged over ten hours in concourse D of Dade during our mechanical migration to and from the islands, giving Catherine plenty of time to troll for travelers in need of a friend, if only for an hour or two minutes.  She must have brightly exclaimed, "Andrew, meet my new friends!" seven times before we even set sail from Bequia Island. 

Catherine waving hidy-ho to her islander chums.

By the time we left our layover hotel in Barbados, my bride had befriended the entire pool side bar and restaurant staff of native islanders, giving them all a hug, receiving line style, upon our departure.  When we returned a week later to the same hotel before flying home, after a round of reunion hugs and "Hey, girlfriends" with the staff, Catherine was granted a room upgrade by doing nothing more than flashing her dental work (Ocean View, King room with a kitchenette), and she was supplied a cocktail on the house from her BFF waitress pal.

And it goes without saying the cheeky crew of our catamaran, Captain Jack and First Mate Jamie, are coming to Denver for an extended visit sometime soon, if Catherine has any say in the matter. Catherine and the crew bonded over her ipod playlists and, graciously, after just the first night's festivities, she decided to bestow them the device, of course. She'd give an ipod to new friends and the shirt off her back to, well, anyone.  Speaking of which...

So, the last night of the our vacation we're back at port and we have one more big night out on the town.  One more night to pretend we don't have a sackful of tiny kids waiting for us in Denver or self-important, do-gooder careers saving the children and such.  The group cabbed it over hill and dale, to the Firefly, a small boutique hotel sprouting from a fruit plantation on the quite side of the island.  Someone in our group said the rustic hotel perched on a hill could have been a Hemingway hideout.

We had drinks and drinks and diner and more drinks.  Before you know it Catherine had convinced, cajoled and, in a few cases, shamed 17 normally rational adults, now buzzed and stuffed with seafood curry, into skinny dipping in the hotel pool (a private out of the way pool with more light fixtures than ideal for some of our party).  A few minutes after I did my award-winning, signature naked cannonball, Catherine hopped out and, naked, rounded up a load of towels and passed them out, mostly naked, so we all could make a more modest escape than she.

K, R, B are lucky to share a mommy with the capacity for so much love.  I can't blame them for vying  for every ounce of her boundless adoration.

Click here for fun photos of our trip! 

Mommy with Beckett in his recycled Halloween costume (Kelly the Tiger, 2007)