I’m sandwiched between one kid who won’t grow up and another who’s flying the coop

Our younger daughter broke into the house again the other day, the way wayward children will. When she moved to Cincinnati not too long ago, I’d ordered her to stay away.

As with most things I say, that worked in reverse, and she is home again for her second visit in three months. She kicked in the front door, blasted the air horn she carries around for effect: “Hooooooooonk! I’m hooooooooome!” she roared, and did the little Irish jig I taught her when she turned 3.

Which leaves me not knowing whether I should be direct and say what I mean – “Don’t go! Please, don’t ever go!” -- or whether I should remain ironic – “Please, don’t ever come back.”

When irony works so well, it becomes difficult to be literal. As a father, I use subterfuge as refuge… double-speak as the language of pure adoration.

In any case, our daughter returns just in time for her little brother’s bar mitzvah. If you missed last week’s installment, we’d decided to bar mitzvah the little guy, hasten his entry to manhood after it appeared he might never grow up.

In particular, his mother kept insisting he not dribble his basketball in the house. Of further concern, we discovered that our son, now 13, still had no clue about how to make a sandwich.

“We are the best parents ever!” I told my wife, reverting to double-speak.

I’m not talking about elaborate sandwiches either. I’m talking two pieces of bread around some other mildly edible substance. We didn’t care. Find two pieces of bread and stuff an ace of spades in the middle. If he were able to do that, he’d pass the sandwich test and we could move on to other things. Like pouring water. Or suppressing giant hiccups in restaurants.

Turns out, the little guy is also still afraid of spiders, nature’s most-beautiful creatures. Seriously, a thistle is more dangerous than most spiders. A Lego piece left in the middle of the floor can do more permanent damage.

“Do they shed?” the little guy asked the other day, fixated on the daddy long legs on the ceiling.

“They barely breathe,” I assured him. “They’re almost plants.”

No one should be afraid of a creature like that, let alone a 13-year-old boy. Or his mother, who reacts to spiders the way you would react to finding a puma on your favorite pillow.

So, his sister arrives home, drops her bags in the middle of the living room and discovers we’re about to bar mitzvah him.

“The sooner, the better,” I tell her. “Maybe in the next hour.”

“We’re not Jewish, Dad,” she said.

“We’re not?”

That seems a small technicality. I’m looking into it some more. My buddy Kessler tells me that all three of his sons were bar mitzvahed, and since two of them were twins, they held what is called a b’nai mitzvah (a bar mitzvah for more than one person).

“Seriously, this is all very new to me,” I told my daughter.

“Oy,” she said and walked away.

“Don’t ever come home again!” I yelled after her.

I’ve got this whole thing planned out. Once we are done with the bar mitzvah, we might hold onto the rental tables an extra day and throw a surprise quinceañera for my wife. At 56, Posh still really rocks a tiara. Plus, she still seems so young to me, so why shouldn’t she also share in such a wonderful celebration of budding femaleness? If the budget allows, I plan to hire world-renowned contortionists.

Hope I don’t cry.

I’ll admit being very emotional lately. Graduations. Bar mitzvahs. Quinceañeras. All these are piling up for us. Meanwhile, many of my friends are turning 60, and though I have a long way to go till I reach that particular benchmark (six months), witnessing so many milestones at once can really take a toll on a fella.

“You’re turning 60?” I always tell my friends. “That’s just so great!!!”

To stay emotionally upright, I’ll keep busy prepping the backyard, stringing lights, clearing it of spiders, in preparation for the bar mitzvah and the quinceañera.

In fact, as I was sweeping the trellis of spiderwebs yesterday, I thought to myself: “Everyone talks about black widows, but no one ever mentions their husbands.”

One friend suggested that that’s because black widows eat their mates, cutting short their lives before they can achieve true manhood, take up golf and make their marks on the world.

Turns out, that’s not always true.

“Males can sometimes even live in the web of a female for a while without being harmed in any way,” one website explained.

Yeah. Not that I’ve seen.

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Twitter: @erskinetimes