I don't know of any grief that can be flung at a man greater than a layoff. You can enter a job (and leave it, too, as Clark Kerr said 20 years ago) "fired with enthusiasm," but you will always be surprised by the indignity of being severed for no other reason than economic. What could be more natural than losing a job over your employer's money problems? And yet, for a young man at least, the last of your problems is the money. You can do even better elsewhere.

I woke up crying this morning from the memory of my October 1980 surprise. Actually, I only dreamed that I was crying; there were no tears upon awakening. It was a doozy of a dream, filled as usual with surrogates for the journalistic types I had rubbed shoulders with. This time, though, there was one character from real life, and I hope that naming the late Guy Richardson at this point will not seem fatuous. He wasn't wearing suspenders, but otherwise it was Guy.

And at this point in my posting, my four-year-old has woken up and shown up looking for me. I could keep writing with a dozing child in my lap, but my life has changed in the last 29 years and the point must be made by my stopping here.

For the second time in a day, I found myself using a simple tool (knife blade, tweezers) to reach inside an electronic gadget that the owner (father in law, daughter) could not fix alone. I was reminded once again of the anecdote in which Robert Benchley is on a movie set, suspended in a tangle of wires between two telephone poles. Waiting for the next shot to be set up, Benchley famously called down to his wife Gertrude, "Remember how good at Latin I was in school?" "Yes," she said. "Well," Benchley said, "Look where it got me."

I also was good in several high school subjects, and maybe being good enough in high school is good enough for marriage and parentage. I certainly hope so, because the gadgets keep on being made and purchased for the use of those who do not well understand them. If my aging relatives and my own children are not electrocuted, it will be because I am well enough trained in the humanities to take that risk myself.

The death of my late father's second oldest brother, at 93, ends the run of the John and Ada Crawford family. While my uncle left a daunting number of children (5), and grandchildren and great grandchildren in the dozens, it is the loss to his wife Vida that will be the most significant. They had been married almost 63 years. Ada, Vida: names from an American immigrant past.

His obituary in the Reno paper sports his nom de plume, Shorty Muldoon. This was not a name behind which he hid -- rather it was an alter ego, which I always assumed was intended to suggest a wiry Irish buckaroo. His literal genealogy, however, was Scots, as he always boasted.

What does it mean to choose an imaginary variant on the Celtic theme which I admire for its stubborn sameness through many travels? Maybe this meaning, in my uncle's case, will remain hidden. I will have to add to these thoughts, however, because I find that my own attraction to Celtic music has nothing to do with varieties. It all seems to stir my blood equally, for the same irrational reasons. There is an ur-Celt, if you will, which looms large and awkward behind some Americans in the unhealthful mists of time, some man whose destiny is burial in a bog.

My uncle's burial will be in the granular, alkaline earth of Nevada. May his memories be for a blessing, but may his passing be celebrated with an Irish wake.

There is no more fleeting pleasure than thinking that, at the moment or for the moment, my children return my love. It doesn't stand to reason, because love in general is unrequited, but children are so capable of affection that it is easy to skip to the conclusion that they are precocious at love. Love is a kind of skill, and while such a skill can be acquired in childhood, love tends to develop spasmodically and to decline with age. This is why the song "I Remember Loving You" seems as good to me now as when I first heard it 30 years ago, and it will probably seem as good 30 years from now when all love -- except for the love of my immediate family -- is just a memory.