OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

I want to tell you about a perfect day. No, it isn't the day I got married, or the day either of my children was born, or the day that I graduated from any of the schools I attended. All such events had plenty of tension and stress, and I can't count any day with those two culprits as perfect.

This is one of those rare days when everything is right in the world, when no disagreements mar the landscape, when it's just easy to be alive. They don't happen often, the world being the way it is, and they never come announced, never are planned, they just happen. But first, some background.

My oldest son moved out at about 17, while still in high school. His brother, although two years younger, followed not long after, and I've always been sad about the years I've missed with them. They spent ten years on the streets, learning life's lessons in what I considered the hard way. Sometimes months would go by before I'd hear from them. At one time I moved and they had no idea where I was. Soon they were in other parts of the country.

But they returned. And it was none of my doing. They came back to where I was, and I count it because they wanted to be around me because that's what makes me feel good. I know my life would be immeasurably lessened if they were still "out there" somewhere, doing their own thing, separate from me.

Anyway, sometimes my wife goes out of town to visit her son. Ironic thing, he said in an aside. All the problems I had with my sons and they both end up cozied under my skirts like baby chicks (how's that for a mixed metaphor or something like that). My wife, so totally into family and being together - all three of her sons live across the country (and sometimes across the world).

I don't know whether she was in Germany or New Mexico, but she was out of town, and as was my practice, I decided to have a "guy's day." In the early days of this tradition I might invite a dozen guys (about all I know), but I believe there might have been only about 3 other guys the time I'm referring to.

My older son was there, but I don't think my younger was. He is the more "out-of-pocket" son, probably because he didn't have a driver's license and had to depend on the generosity of his wife to cart him places. And, as usual, our first business was the making of my son's famous recipe for the best chili which ever existed on this planet. No, really.

But first we had to go to the store to get the ingredients (we make a double batch so those ingredients run about $50, so you can see, this chili is no watery soup). My son was on time, an almost unheard of feat at that time, so by about eleven, we're roaming through the store, joking and cracking wise, catching up on our lives. And my son's in charge, directing his old dad around, one of those rare time when a parent with grown kids can step down from being the parent for a short while.

Now I'm not much of one to want to be in the kitchen, and definitely not one to want to be helping out there, but one of the best parts of chili day is participating in its making. Even with just two of us in our small kitchen, it can be bedlam as the multitude of ingredients are pulled together. All done while sharing the knowledge that we're getting my wive's kitchen, her CLEAN place, stacked with all kinds of dirty pots, pans, and utensils. The sink is overflowing, chili components are splattered here and there, and it's giggles and guffaws thinking of her reaction if she had been able to see it.

The sixteen jalepeno peppers and 2 large onions get chopped, the three pounds of ground chuck and the three pounds of stew meat get browned, the cayenne pepper, chili powder, garlic and all the other ingredients get mixed. The stewed tomatoes are squeezed (the younger son would get that job if he was there) to eliminate excess juice and added to the mixture and the chili is left to "cook" for about two hours. Just before we pronounce it "done," we add a few kidney beans, let it go for a few more minutes to let them blend in. Our mouths are watering, noses flaring to catch all the smells pouring into the living room, taste buds aquiver.

This chili is the kind that makes you sweat, I mean water pouring down your forehead sweat, working in the hot August sun breaking concrete sweat. As your mouth is eaten out, your tongue shriveled, you wonder why you subject yourself to such atrocities. But it tastes so good! You can't wait to take the next bite, savoring the taste of the last one through the fire and destruction.

I always make cornbread to go with the chili, it seems to be the only thing that helps the burning. I think it must soak some of the more active ingredients up and convey them directly to the stomach without scrapping the sides of your mouth so much. After the chili is sitting comfortably (believe it or not) in our stomachs, we turn to our day's adventure. I phrase it this way deliberately. Nowadays, we usually turn to movies, guy movies, but on that day we turned, truly, to adventure.

One adventure in particular, one named "Jigsaw." At the time everyone there was into computer games called text adventures. Several had brought laptops, I had even brought one home from work. Even then there were the beginnings of multi-player games, but text adventures were not of that type. So, how could we all play the same game, together?

The object of text adventures is to have an "adventure," to go places within the virtual world created (all in text, mind you, no graphics), to discover things, take them, get killed, etc. "Jigsaw" was a game where you have to use a time machine to go back to different important periods of time (like aboard the Titanic), and "correct" changes (by solving different kinds of puzzles) which some nefarious villain has brought about in history. You had to make things happen the way they were supposed to happen.

An example, the villian has gone back in time and prevented Archduke Ferdinand from being killed, thus preventing WWI. He did this by shooting the man who shot the Archduke before he could accomplish his purpose. We tried and tried and tried to prevent him from shooting the assassin, but the game, mindful of its task, always threw some obstacle in our way that prevented us from succeeding. How did we solve the puzzle? I'll tell you later.

So you had this group of guys (shall we call them nerds, girls?), each on their own computer, playing the same game. And we play it "together" by sharing knowledge and cooperating, rather than competing, on the solving of the puzzles. "Okay, I'll go east from here and then let you know whether there's any reason for you to go, you go west and do the same thing." "Whoa, don't go east, you'll die." "Really, let's see, maybe there's some way to avoid getting killed and go further." And pretty soon you had everyone working on one puzzle or another, separately or together, trying everything that the collective mind can try.

"Just batter down the door." "No, we need to find a key." "I found a key in a pot in the garden." "Yeah, me too, but it's the wrong key for this door." "Try it anyway." "Already have, doesn't work." "JUST batter it down." "Right, a solid iron door, using what?" "Can we go around it?" "Okay, 'Examine door'"

And we gradually progressed through the game. Now the games are only good for one playing because once you've solved the puzzles they don't change, the game is static. So, the designers count on complexity, difficulty, and just sheer time-consuming interest to make the player want to play. It can sometimes take weeks of time for an individual to work his way all the way through, some puzzles chewing up twenty or thirty HOURS of time if you're being particularly dense.

So, we start playing at about 2 in the afternoon, gradually different people have to leave for one reason or another, so by 2 in the morning there's just me and my son left, deep in the bowels of some missile silo, trying to prevent it carrying its deadly nuclear cargo across the world and starting WWIII. We're having about our twelfth bowl of chili (it isn't quite the treat early in the morning as it was yesterday afternoon, but we're manly men, don't you know).

My son looks at me with a touch of tiredness in his eyes, wondering how long the old man can keep scarfing down such food and keep going. Me, I've lost touch with reality long ago, scarcely aware of how long ago it was when we first started playing, killing off the Archduke Ferdinand outselves. By silent understanding we know we're not going to quit until we finish this game. And we played on.

As our analytical skills began to fade, we started resorting to some subtle forms of "cheating," trying to break into the code, and other shady maneuvers. But, by six in the morning, we realized that a blizzard raged outside and my son, having been delivered at my house by his wife, I think, had to be taken home by me. Suddenly reality was back with a vengeance. If you've ever had to drive through a blizzard in Minnesota, you know what I mean. Thoughts of finishing the game disappeared as we prepared to brave the elements.

Anyway, I did get him home, and I did get back home myself, fell into bed and slept most of the day. But, after I got up, after I spent an hour cleaning the kitchen, after I put what chili remained into kool-whip bowls and stacked them in the freezer for enjoyment on another day, I returned to that game. It took me another 6 to 8 hours, but I finished it about ten o'clock on Sunday night. I reigned triumphant on that, one of my perfect days.

There might not be ANYTHING about my day (actually about 36 hours), that you find perfect. But, looking back, it was the first time that my son and I were just people, friends, equals (he would say he solved more of the puzzles so maybe equals is not the right word to use, but I LET him solve them first). We were together, as men are together, separate, sometimes not speaking for an hour, but together and it was, for me, perfect.