Aloha Kugs

As another year ends...Reflections from Aloha Kugs

2011-12-31T09:03:00.000-10:00

Well, 2011 has been a year. Some of it good. Some of it not, but say whatever else you want about it, 2011 has been a year.

And along comes another. I’ve not posted as much in this space as I had hoped this year, but hope that what I’ve posted has been worth your time to read. Thank you as always for your kind support and indulgence.

So what has this year been all about? In no particular order, I share the following observations on the year:

Starting it off with an anger management lesson courtesy of a broken hand was pretty rough as far as beginnings go. This summer’s “unpleasant incident” that led to a nifty ride in an ambulance was another banner moment, but we have persevered. Therapy helps.

We started the year not understanding what our Asperger’s child’s issues were (Our first theory was hypoglycemia-what a difference a year makes…). We end it with a far more understanding and sensitivity. I’ll touch on this more shortly.

I started the year with huge aspirations of selling my novel, of which I remain quite proud, and end it having shelved it and all other publishing dreams, save of course this ‘lil blog. Lucky us, I know…

My Phillies, Flyers, Eagles, and Buckeyes failed to win championships.

The twins have done Taekwondo for a year. Broke a few boards along the way too. They’ve played two seasons of soccer and the Boyo played Rugby. They do well at school. The Boyo is among the top readers in first grade and the Girl was called “A dream child” by her teacher. They have both been featured in the school art gallery.

The Bear played T-ball, more or less, and has turned into a seriously good artist. She does well in school and gives excellent full speed hugs. When she’s not screaming her head off, she’s a genuinely fun and funny kid. Baby Ruff-Ruff has had a year filled with adventures as well.

The Muppets came back! Now bring back “The Muppet Show!”

I single-handedly did two plumbing repairs that would have likely cost us about $200 each to have a pro complete. And to date, they appear to be working.

CM Punk and Daniel Bryan (“American Dragon” Brian Danielson) are both World Champions.

I lost weight and chopped off my long hair. Then I gained some back and my hair is long again. Both will be addressed in the New Year.

My Emmy-award winning sister just won another award. She’d want me to mention that.

REM broke up.

My wife still likes me.

Clarence Clemons, Patrice O’Neal, Hubert Sumlin, Bill Keane, Joe Frazier, Randy Savage, and Pinetop Perkins all died. Other people did too. Clarence and Patrice passing were particularly disheartening.

I believe I saw seven movies in an actual movie theater. Best of them was Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” Great movie. Honorable mention goes to “The Muppets,” “The Descendants,” and the final installment of the “Harry Potter” series.

We watched a lot of DVD’s, as we have children and are old, and that’s what you’re supposed to do since you can’t ever leave the house. Off the top of my head I remember enjoying Woo classmate Duncan Jones’ “Source Code” and “Horrible Bosses” had a few yucks.

Was a very solid year for TV in the Aloha Kugs home. HBO’s “Game of Thrones” was an answer to prayer. I also enjoyed “Boardwalk Empire.” AMC’s “Walking Dead” was great as well, and I’m not really a zombie guy. FX series “Louie,” “Wilfred,” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” were tremendous, and I’m excited that there is a network out there that is allowing creative people to be funny. I haven’t seen “Breaking Bad” yet, so don’t yell at me… Doctor Who and Merlin get a nod as well from the BBC.

I read a ton this year. Notable highlights: “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. Although it’s not a new book, “World War Z” by Max Brooks was transcendently good. I also enjoyed Martin’s “A Dance with Dragons” (took you long enough George…), and Rothfuss’ “The Wise Man’s Fear.” I inhaled the “Hunger Games” series and made headway towards finally finishing the History of the Yuengling family.

Didn’t buy a ton of music this year, as it costs money, but The Decemberists “The King is Dead” is probably my favorite for the year. Honorable mention to the new Coldplay and last year’s Mumford & Sons, which I was late getting to. Have an ITunes card burning a hole in my pocket though…

So, in all, it’s been a year. What does 2012 have to offer? Hell if I know, but I imagine we will face many of the same challenges and questions we faced this year. We will learn more about Asperger’s and apply it to making the life of our family more positive and productive. I won’t discuss the incident from Thanksgiving here, because I don’t want to, but it was rough and resulted in a 7 hour drive home in the middle of the night. We survived and continue to learn how to cope.

Will I go to work? I don’t know. I don’t really want to wait tables again, though I think I could bartend in the right circumstance. I may look into those tutoring places. A little extra cash is always helpful, but not sure what I’ll be able to do before the Bear starts Kindergarten in the fall. I think I’ve covered this question pretty well here this year, but it will likely continue to be a topic for discussion in the future.

I have a whole pile of unfinished columns for this space that I shelved for a variety of reasons. Some were too personal involving members of my extended family. Some of them just stopped being interesting as I wrote them. Others just stunk. I may revisit some of them but my hope is to have new and interesting things to say in 2012.

In the end, it has been a year and I enter 2012 much as I entered 2011: uncertain what the future holds for us, but hopeful just the same. In that spirit, I wish you and yours a Hau’oli Makahiki Hou with much Aloha.

I made the right choice

2011-11-19T09:51:00.003-10:00

It is now four years since I left my career in education. Prior to that, I had spent nearly thirteen years as a pro, not counting my three years in the minors as a student teacher and undergraduate. During my tenure, a term I use with rather purposeful irony, I have taught: English, History, Language Arts, Spanish, Music, Theater: Performance, Theater: Technical Arts, Jazz History, ESL, Public Speaking, Literature, and Creative Writing.

By way of full disclosure, I should note that I have also served administratively as: Artistic Director of the Theater Program, Assistant Dean of Students, Associate Dean of Students, Dean of Students, Assistant Principal, Director of Athletics, and Head Dorm Parent.

I have served in many ways, though to be frank; most of those titles were earned by simply showing up, clearly giving a damn about the students, and not being a real obvious asshole. What happened after the shine faded is a matter for history to decide. I maintain that I held onto my idealism and genuine belief in education, including the fact that schools should serve the needs of the students and their families. If I had a dollar for every time that one of my bosses told me that I was too idealistic, and that I’d last longer in the business if I learned to “go along” and “let go of the ‘change the world crap,’” then I would have been able to leave the educational industry with far more financial security that I actually did, as it happens.

I have no real complaints about my career as a teacher. I was appropriately awful when I first started out as a young teacher. Deeply inspired by “Dead Poets Society,” Alice Burnett, and my dead father, I spent years imitating and pretending, accomplishing little until I eventually figured out how to I was meant to teach. I learned a lot at SKS, where I was blessed with a group of students who had no problem telling me when my bullshit didn’t work. They were a tough audience, but a fair one. They forced me to give them something that mattered, and I still look back on my years there as among the better years I’ve had as an educator. My students at SKS made me a better teacher. The two years I then had at PJ, which I still consider the greatest teaching I have ever done, were only possible because of the four years I completed at SKS.

PJ was about the happiest time I ever knew as a teacher. I was valued and given freedom to teach the books I wanted to teach in the manner I wanted to teach them. It was really exciting for me as a teacher to be asked, “What do you want to do?” There are many things I miss about my life as an educator, and each school I have left behind has a place in that lexicon, but to date there is nothing that stirs me in the same way as remembering that moment when Fitz told me, “Well, it’s your class…do what you feel called to do. We believe in you.” I would go back there and teach tomorrow if I could.

But, as life happened, I left PJ as I left SKS, and that other place before it. I became an assistant principal in the Boro, and then finally in the Grove. There were a lot of very positive moments during my time there and I felt like I made a difference at times. But I was never really able to shake that sense of dedication to the students and in turn, the families and staff members that genuinely supported them. I still believed that schools were in place to serve students and their families. But as I rather painfully learned, over and over again; schools, just like any other enterprise, will only serve others as far as their leadership will allow them. Leaders, despite our hopes and dreams, sometimes don’t think of others first. So many of the people I “worked for” had lost sight of what a school was really for.

So, Headmasters sometimes think of money before campus peace and personal morality; Superintendents think of their political aspirations before they think of their constituency; Principals sometimes think of themselves before they think of the people who paved the way for them; Some teachers think of their pensions before they think twice about passing a student who truly believes that Delaware is the capital of New Jersey and Hillary Clinton was the Vice President for George W. Bush. Sometimes an elected Board of Education will persecute a teacher who has had a positive impact on her students, simply because that teacher is a graduate of their districts arch-rival. And sometimes they call an educator “uppity” when they don’t think anyone is listening.

All of those things happened. I know this because I saw them happen.

When I left PG, I did so for two reasons-the most important of which is that my wife was receiving an amazing promotion and chance for advancement in her career, which gave our family an amazing opportunity to have an adventure on Oahu. But, the second reason, which I’ve never spoken of in this space, is that I was in my tenure year at PG as the Assistant Principal and the Athletic Director, and while I feel I had done well and felt like I had some support from the staff, kids, and community, and that the programs were doing well overall, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that my renewal in the position beyond the tenure year was very much “undecided and up for debate.” I was told, very directly, that despite my performance, my tenure in the coming year was dependent on the decision of the Superintendent, who after hiring me enthusiastically, had soured on me after I chose to respect and admire my direct supervisor, the Principal at PGHS. I was told “you picked the wrong side.” In retrospect, I know in my heart, and in all other manners that I made the right choices for myself during my time there. There were good people that I worked with there in PG and there are good people there now. I wish them nothing but the best.

But, I didn’t trust the Superintendent, or the Board, with the kind of power that they were capable of exerting on my life. As it was, I was working a minimum of six days a week, nearly twelve hours a day, and driving at least 100 miles a day for events and meetings. I was leaving my home before my children awoke and returning after they had gone to sleep. Most of those days, I didn’t see them. If I was lucky, I would come home just in time for bedtime.

I remember vividly a night I came home on the earlier side due to rainouts. As I walked in, the kids saw me, and cheered, “Daddy’s home, it’s bedtime!” and they ran upstairs to their room. They had learned to equate my arrival with bedtime. I remember more nights than I can count where I drove home only to see the lights in their rooms off. The worst of them all would be seeing the lights on as I pulled up only to see them turn off as they had clearly just been put to bed and I had just missed it, by only a moment. That happened a lot. Countless bedtimes missed.

And so, I’m left with my own reflection now on the fact that four years ago, I left my job to stay home with the kids. At the time, the twins were three and the Bear was one. I left my job, gleefully (and providentially perhaps) as it happened, and arrived in Hawaii with absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing.

The Bear just turned five and the twins turn seven on Sunday. I’ve been home with them for most of their lives. And now I feel like I finally get it.

I made the right choice back in 2007. I left my career behind and while I truly don’t know what would have transpired back then had I played things out, I cannot imagine in any way that it would end up being more significant than the life I have chosen. I took a beating from a lot of people in my life back in 2007 when I left my job and chose to stay home. Hell, I still get grief from certain pockets of my family about being a stay-at-home dad. There are those who still don’t understand me. But, I made the right choice and I know it now. The last four years with my children has been amazing in ways that I fall regrettably short of having the talent to describe. I still get grief for “not working” and yet, I somehow manage to have more to do than I ever did when I “worked for a living.”

I made the right choice. I won’t go so far as to say that I am done with education, as I have found myself feeling the itch to teach again, now and then. I think it is safe to say that education, at least as it manifested itself in the old days of my career, may itself be done with me. I’m not who I was then. I have good memories, and I’m quite content to leave those memories alone.

But, as Vonnegut would have said, “So it goes,” and so it does. I have never felt more strongly that my choice to be home with my children was the right one. I had an amazing adventure in Hawaii with them and then another one here in Northern Virginia. My youngest, who I’ve been hanging out with for almost 4 years now, is heading to Kindergarten next year. I can’t believe how quickly it has gone. She and I have been together for her whole life, at least most of the time. While the twins have been at school a year or so now, and readers of this space will know that they have some challenges as well, we have spent a lot of time with one another and worked hard to maintain a sense of togetherness.

The way I see it, had I stayed at PG, I would likely have had to go in front of the board to fight for my job. I truly believe it would have come to that. I honestly feel like I would have been incapable of kissing the amount of asses it would have taken to have avoided that showdown, and in truth, despite it all, I would likely have lost. Without tenure, I served at the pleasure of the Board and the Superintendent. I liked it there, but it was made clear to me that my tenure was a pawn on a rather insidious chess board. I was never so glad to take my piece off the board. I miss the staff and the kids. I could have been happy there for a long time. But it was made clear that I was not going to be welcome, as I had a shelf life in PG. They told me so. It made me sad. I would like to have stayed. But I was not wanted, and so when the chance to move on to be home with my kids arose, I took it. I used to feel guilty that I left during the year, which I know is difficult for a school. I don’t feel that way anymore. I just saved them the trouble of having to watch me fight for my job, which I would have done. I would have fought them. And I would have lost. So, I don’t regret it. My choices have been discussed in this space for nearly four years, and whatever can be said, I will say this: I am imperfect, as I have always been, but I am good at what I do.

Maybe I don’t get paid, now. Maybe I don’t get the prestige of a “title” and the honor of a “business card.” Perhaps I may not be anyone’s idea of an impressive adult, but I truly and finally have come to the point in my life that I really don’t give a turkey. I am a man, and my children are my life. I’ve been with them constantly over the last four years. That is time that I would never have been able to get back. So, I am grateful.

I am grateful for my life. For every district I worked for or wanted to work for that rejected me; I am grateful.

If any of you thought I was worth hiring or keeping, I wouldn’t have had the last four years flying solo with my kids. And I wouldn’t trade that for all anything, including that offered stay at the Waldorf-Astoria.

I chose a different path, and I'll admit that I've struggled with that choice at times over the years. But I know now that it was the right one for me and my family and I'm thankful each day with my wife and children.

I had the chance to make a choice about my life and I made one, as Steve would say, 'way outside my comfort zone.'

I suppose, and that, as Frost said, “Has made all the difference.”

Well said, dude. Aloha.

Waking up to an Asperger’s World

2011-10-26T18:03:00.000-10:00

Readers of this space will know that I’ve always guarded the privacy of my family. They will also know that I recently went through a rather difficult ordeal working to obtain services for my child at their public school here in Northern Virginia. While I will continue to guard the privacy of my family, I think it is safe to reveal something that I and my family have known for some time now, though the clinical diagnosis is more recent than the one of the heart. I have a child with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m fine with it. I love my kids. That said, I hope you will excuse my occasionally ‘more awkward than usual’ prose as I figure out how to navigate the line between productive and unproductive sharing. I thank all of you for your comments on the last post, most of which were sent directly to me. Your thoughtfulness is appreciated. Moving on…

The more I read about Asperger’s Syndrome, the more I find myself disappointed that my dad is not here. Since he’s been dead over 21 years, there have been a lot of moments along the way where I have been disappointed that he’s not around.

My dad had a Master’s in Education from SHU, and I followed him so diligently that I got one from there too. He, however, dedicated his career and focused his attention on adapting the principles of physical education for kids with special needs. He was never happier than when he was teaching the most challenged students, both physically and developmentally, in his district. When he was developing his program back in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, there was debate as to whether it was prudent or appropriate to attempt to offer PE to special needs students. Dad felt that it was not only appropriate, but vital and necessary for the health and development of all kids, regardless of disability or challenge. I feel that history has proven him right on this point.

Dad didn’t talk about school all that much with me, which saddens me a bit in retrospect. I wish he had been more emotive about the great passion of his career and about his frustrations, which would so later perfectly mirror my own frustrations in my own career: I became disillusioned when the people in power forgot about reaching kids, just as he did. But, I was a kid then, and dad was always one to separate home and work very clearly. I wish I hadn’t had to hear stories about his work almost exclusively from other people, but I suppose I am grateful that I heard them at all. He was good at what he did and worked with each child individually to find a way to push them and reach measured goals. He taught them to enjoy sports and exercise and to accomplish things that most people not only said they could not do, but things they would never have dreamed possible for them. I’ve often told the story of the blind girl that he trained to run the 50-yard dash-something I assure you she was exempted from in her IEP. She wanted to do it and he wanted her to as well-and so she did. My favorite part of that story was always how they got started, which involved all the other kids in the class spreading out and lining the lane on the track to help steer her straight if she drifted. Heck of a teachable moment for an entire class. I wasn’t there and I get chills telling the story-I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be part of that moment.

Dad was inducted into the Hall of Fame for his North Jersey school district. Posthumously, of course, but I remember it as a nice event. It was an honor he would likely have rolled his eyes at privately, yet accepted with grace and humility. I know I was very proud that day and somewhat inspired, already a few years into my own educational career at the time.

Outside of all that, though, I do find that I mourn, just a little the fact that he’s not here to interact with my children, one of whom was recently diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. There have been a lot of moments that I’ve felt like Dad and that child in particular would have gotten along really well. Heck, there are times, now that I know more about Asperger’s that I wonder if my dad may have been on the spectrum himself. Not sure it’s that far off to say so. As a grandparent who might have been uniquely positioned to be of help to us now, to provide assistance and help from a career spent working with challenging kids and his own innate talent, I miss him. I regret that dad can’t help us, and I imagine he would have done so enthusiastically, as it is right up his alley. He was not a perfect parent, just as I am not. There were times that I felt he could be quite closed off and distant when I was a kid. That said, I know that he would have stepped up for his grandchildren and I wonder at times what he might have said about them.

As that voice remains silent as it has since 1990, I and mine will do as we’ve always done. We will do our best and make it work. The family and friends who are in the trenches with us now are invaluable and life would be far more difficult without them.

I have learned a lot recently and have found some strategies that started helping immediately. The “When/then” thing I read about sounds so simple: Presenting requests and orders as “When you do this, then this will happen,” etc. It seems so simple, but once I started using it, the results were dramatic. I’ve used it to explain things as well. Just yesterday they were on the computer and my Asperger’s child was getting a little pushy while a sibling was having their turn. I said, “When it’s someone else’s turn at the computer, then they get to choose what they do.” The reply? “Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” and everything settled down and they had a delightful time. I almost fell out of my chair, as in the past, such moments would lead to a meltdown or at the very least an occurrence of the “Boo-boo face” as I like to call it. This time, there was understanding and acceptance and we all moved on.

Another tactic I read about that I have had success with is delineating choices very clearly. I can’t ask, “What do you want for dinner?” That’s too broad a question and simply can’t be answered by my Asperger’s kid in a way that’s effective. So, I give three choices. We haven’t argued about food in days.

One of my other favorites is what I’m calling the “Five second blackout.” If something I’ve asked to be done isn’t getting done, or if something minor has occurred that isn’t really helpful, I’ll say “OK, I don’t like what’s just happened, and I’m going to close my eyes for five seconds, and I’ll bet that when I open them, you’ll have figured out how to make it right.” And so I close my eyes and count to five. And it works. We’ve had a really good series of days.

We are admittedly only at the beginning of this journey and, as great as these tactics might be, they may not work forever. Heck, they may not work when they all get home from school today. But it’s clearly shown me that I can adapt and change and that there are strategies that can help us all navigate the world around us in a more comforting and peaceful way. While I do believe my dad would have had some good ideas and I would very much welcome his insight, I know that there are a lot of parents and children dealing with the very same things our family is facing. The wife and I will do our best and learn everything we can learn from other parents and the copious amount of books and websites dedicated to the topic of Asperger’s and Autism Spectrum disorders.

There will be great days and there will be rough days, and we will face them all as a family. Whatever comes we will manage it, and while I wish I could tell you that I will always do so with grace and overwhelming calm, I think that’s unrealistic. But we’ll face it together.

And I’m again reminded that I have to try and stay healthy as I’d prefer to not have my kids forced to have to write drivel like this about their own lives someday. That said, I am learning to navigate a whole new world and a whole new perspective. And I’m embracing my role as stay-at-home dad with a renewed passion. My other aspirations may return at some point in the future, but for now, nothing matters more than my children and my wife and the life we are making together. There’s a lot to learn, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be outworked on this one. And I love my family. That helps a lot, too.

I can't do it all: why I'm no longer an aspiring novelist

2011-10-19T05:10:00.000-10:00

I can’t do it all. Of course, no one can, but I can really only speak for myself right now. My family and I have been through a pretty challenging time of late in dealing with a medical/learning issue with one of the children. I’m not going to get into specifics here, as it’s personal to my child and not appropriate for this space. Feel free to ask me privately if you wish. In the interest of understanding, we are seeking an IEP for one of them, and the process of getting to this point has been at times exceedingly difficult, including a very difficult meeting yesterday at the school. But we are where we need to be at the moment.

In preparing for the meeting yesterday, I called on every bit of experience and knowledge I have from my former career in education. I spent hours doing research and practiced many of the things I was to say out loud and in my head in the days leading up. It was a difficult meeting but the school agreed to begin the process with us, and it would seem that our hard work as a family, through copious amounts of testing and medical appointments, occupational therapy, and all of my preparation for the actual meeting, had paid off.

And it did. But it almost didn’t. It was a fight, tooth and nail, the whole way. I almost failed, and that would have really been unfortunate. So, the extra time I put into preparation was worth it, especially the three hours I spent in the library yesterday morning researching and further organizing my materials. It was time well spent. When I entered the meeting, I felt ready. I was ready. When it was over and I left, I felt like I had been in a 90 minute fistfight. I most certainly got my dander up and fought like hell for my kid. I would do nothing less for my family.

But it almost wasn’t enough. Fortunately, at this point it was, but this is by no means the last meeting of this kind we will have. There will be more and some of them have the potential to be contentious as well. I am grateful to the school for the support they have shown and hope it continues. But I almost wasn’t good enough.

And that leads me to a real reflection and accounting of my life as it is right now. I am a full time parent and caretaker of our home and family. I am now also moving into the role of full-time advocate for the specialized needs of one of my children. Truth be told, one of the other ones may end up needing the same level of advocacy in the coming years, but thinking about that hurts my head right now. So, between full-time parenting and housekeeping and advocacy, and trying to exercise and take care of myself so I’m around to advocate and care for them, I’m realizing that something has to give. And that will be my aspirations to become a published writer.

I imagine no great gnashing of teeth, but it’s a small loss for me nonetheless. While it has long been a dream of mine to write a good novel and share it with the world, and to be interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR, and so forth, I think it’s time to shelve that dream. Maybe I’ll write for fun on occasion, but I think the time has come for me to abandon this aspiration, of acting like a working writer, and realize that my talents and abilities are needed on other things. My attention needs to be on my family. If I had spent yesterday morning hammering out the rough draft of chapter two, I would have failed my child. I would not have been ready. Fortunately, my head and heart were focused.

Being a good father has long been my greatest aspiration. I’m not exactly where I thought I would be at this point in my life, but I’m in a good place. Perhaps I’ll get back to trying to write novels when they are older. But I simply can’t do it and meet the needs of my family and of my own health. There aren’t enough hours and something has to give.

I think I’ll always write and in turn, perhaps putting the fiction away may open me up to write in this space more again. Perhaps that’s a good thing, I don’t know. Not sure it’s all that important right now, but we will see. In the end, my aspirations were mine and they are mine to put aside, so I’m going to stop pretending I’m a writer waiting to happen. Perhaps someday, but not today. Today, I’m going to be a Dad who gets things done and cares for my family.

And perhaps I’ll get back to the gym too. I’m going to need to have my game face on for the foreseeable future.

So, what’s next?

2011-06-29T11:25:00.001-10:00

Aloha again from the wilds of Northern Virginia. While I’ve had an awful lot to say over the last few months since my last column, none of it has really been suitable for this space. All are as well as can be expected here despite recent bouts with Lyme disease, school ending, and a myriad of kid issues both common and uncommon. But this is not really a column about the kids. This one is about me, your host here at Aloha Kugs. Sort of.

Next year, the twins will enter first grade and the Bear will be in preschool five days a week for three hours a day. It will be the first time that all three of them will be at school at the same time, albeit for about 2.5 hours each day. Despite this dramatic influx of “kid-free time,” it looks very much like my day-to-day life is unlikely to change all that much next year. I have plenty of responsibilities and tasks at home that will likely eat away at that time pretty regularly. I imagine I’ll be able to get my chores done more effectively without someone, who shall remain nameless, constantly yanking the vacuum cord out of the wall while I’m cleaning. I will probably also be able to help out with more at the kids schools than I have previously, but in the end, I imagine that this year will be very similar to years past in terms of what I’m able to accomplish on a daily basis.

I am hopeful that I will be able to carve out time to write both next year and this summer, as I have two projects going right now that are fighting for my attention. The truth is that my writing has taken a back seat to other issues over the last few months. I have moved on from the completed novel, although I did learn recently that a sample I submitted to a small independent publisher back in February is currently under active consideration. It was nice to hear, but I’m not holding my breath, nor am I actively sending it out anymore. I am also not pursing self-publishing at this time on that one either. (Update: the novel was declined by the publisher before I completed this column)

So, while my life is unlikely to change a ton next school year, I still find myself thinking about the future. That and the question I keep getting from every corner of my life including family, friends, and random strangers at the library and Safeway is: What are you going to do once the kids are in school? Are you going back to work? What’s next? An interesting question for which I have no real answer.

It seems a strange question to ask at my advancing age. What am I going to do next with my life once my current position is rendered less significant by full-day schooling starting in fall 2012?

I suppose that it may very well depend on what the needs of my family are, but if I had my choice, I’d love to be a wildly successful full-time professional writer by that point. That would be quite nice, thank you, though the lack of time to write makes it somewhat less likely, as does the rather precarious state of publishing these days. But, to say I will be making as much of a go at it as I can in the coming year would be an understatement.

Should that not happen, then what? How long can I justify staying home and working to be a writer if it doesn’t happen? At what point do I need to find something else to do with my life? What can I do? What do I want to do?

Truth is, I don’t really know. I’ve been out of the Education business for nearly four years now. I hadn’t stepped foot onto a high school campus since 2007 before this morning, when I dropped the kids off at soccer camp. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t get a little charge when I walked into the stadium this morning. I definitely had a few flashback moments as I entered the facility and came out onto the track, the gleaming stands to my right, a sea of kids and coaches getting ready to train. It felt like it could have been just last week that I was right smack in the middle of all that business back in Jersey.

Except that it wasn’t. It was four years ago and four years is a very long time to be away from any industry, especially one as dynamic as education. Although it was definitely a good feeling to step onto a campus again, I don’t know if I even have it in me still to do that work. I don’t know that I want to dive back into the pressure cooker that working in a school can be, should anyone even really want me down here, after I jump through the VA Certification hoops. While I have some very good memories of my thirteen years in both public and private education, there were reasons I walked away, and I don’t imagine they have changed that much in four years.

I suppose I could go back to restaurant work. I was a pretty good server/bartender in my day. That’s an option, isn’t it? Again, it’s not one I really feel called to do, but it’s something I’ve done.

So, what’s next? I really don’t know. I suppose for the moment it’s not really a question that I have to have an answer for, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it quite a bit. I can’t be the only person in the world who’s faced/is facing it, so, what’s your story?

Moving forward, and yes, I was overthinking it...

2011-03-30T10:24:00.006-10:00

I appreciate all of the feedback I received after my last posting. The general consensus was that I needed to get a grip about my writing about family issues. Some family and a friend, both in Europe, in particular really brought the issue home for me.

In a nutshell, I need to relax and remember that this column was supposed to be a fun outlet. Also, if a situation that I'm writing about won't be helped by writing about it, I probably shouldn't publish on it. So, going forward I hope to still write about important things in our lives, but will likely keep a few things in house, despite how important they may be to my life and family.

And if this space stops being fun, it will be time to move on from it. I don't think that time is here yet...

I thought in that vein I would revisit a column from the old days where I discussed things I've actually said recently as it relates to my days as a full time stay at home dad, which I am pleased to say I have been doing now for going on four years.

1) "Nobody needs to see your bottom!"

Said in response to all three of my children at different times, circumstances, and regrettably, locations during the last month. That might be worth its own column.

2) "I don't want to hear one more poopie buttbutt fart poop bottom diaper stupidhead comment come out of you mouths!"

See comments for #1 unfortunately.

3) "Well, I actually do have a job..."

My reply to an inquisitive kindergartener who lives in my house. He wondered why I don't have a job like Mom. I explained that I had chosen to stay home and take care of them. Not sure what he thought of it, but his sister happily chimed in that she was glad I was home. That was cool.

4) "I am NOT a pogo stick!"

The Bear, my youngest, was treating my foot like one. It was unpleasant.

5) "Well, for my money, Trader Joes is far superior to Wegmans."

Said in discssion with a few of my colleagues last week. Was a point of contention with a few but was amicably debated. I'm right though, and not just because of "three buck chuck."

6) "Is there any chance you will stop treating my foot like playground equipment?"

Said a minute ago as I write this. The Bear is being persnickety today.

7) "I'll give you a dollar and a Dora if you take a nap."

Me to the Bear, yesterday. She respectfully declined my offer. Tougher than the NFL labor crisis...

8) "Yes you do!"

My reply to the Bear who claimed she didn't want to play tball as she does not in fact like it. She respectfully disagreed at the top of her lungs through the fourth inning.

I may post more later but Karate class is over and I've got to get back to work. Until then, thank you for reading.

Perhaps I'm overthinking it? Privacy vs. Truth in Blogging.

2011-03-10T04:02:00.002-10:00

I have enjoyed writing in this space over the last three years. When I first started Aloha Kugs back in December 2007, I planned for this blog to be a place to share my family’s experiences in Hawaii with those on the mainland. It has moved away from that over the years to the point where I see it more now as a medium through which I can comment on not only what has been happening with my children and our family, but also the world in general. I’ve written about sports, music, wrestling, and whatever else has moved me. The focus of the blog remains the family and I’ve always tried to be honest in my writing and interesting at the same time.

As I review the 87 entries that I’ve shared over the years, I see in many ways how our lives as a family have played out. 2008 in particular was a prolific year and I’m rather proud of the work I did in chronicling that first year on Oahu. While the number of posts declined, I like to think that I chose my topics more carefully and thoughtfully over the subsequent years, and in general I am glad to have had this space in which to share my thoughts and words.

But, the truth is that I’ve been holding back. I have always taken very seriously the thin veil of privacy that exists here and have never used the real names of any of my friends or family, as I felt it was unnecessary in getting my point across. None of us are famous people, so real names never seemed to matter. In all honesty, there are a number of columns that I’ve written that will never be posted here because, well in some cases they just stunk-- Full disclosure on that point. Beyond that, the truth is that I’ve been unable to share a lot of the more urgent issues in my life due to the fact that I’ve tried to respect the privacy of my family and friends. There have been some monumental problems and moments of real personal crisis over the last years and I have not shared that in this space, although I truly wish I had been able to. To have done so would have in some cases ended a relationship, or at the very least complicated it dramatically. It simply wasn’t worth being seen as “airing dirty laundry” in this space, so I kept my thoughts to myself. This seems to have been a prudent choice, as last year, when I shared what I saw as a positive experience with my extended family in a column, an unfortunate misunderstanding of a single word led to a world of hard feelings, the end of one family relationship, and the straining of several more.

So, I’ve kept a lot of my thoughts and feelings about the things that have been most pressing in my life to myself and away from this space. I bring this up because, upon reflection, I feel as though there was a real problem with my last blog.

I got some wonderful responses both public and private to my last post where I discussed my broken hand and my currently stalled efforts to get the novel published before focusing on the awesome way that my children connect and the amazing ability they seem to have to create and explore together. I truly appreciate the comments. While every word of that blog still rings true to me, it is not the whole of the story. In truth, things have been really challenging for us over the last several months, and when I re-read that last column, it seems a bit hollow to me.

Yes, my kids are amazing, but what makes the way they played together in inspiring the column all the more outstanding to me was that it came on the heels of a series of very difficult and challenging days with the kids. Again, I am hesitant to share too openly here, as the issue affects all of us in our house and one child in particular. We are working with an Occupational therapist now in an effort to improve things and are having some success. In the end, the issue we are facing is not life-threatening, nor is it without treatable options, but if I put this out there about my specific child, then it’s out there forever on the internet. What if he/she wants to run for office someday and dear old Dad’s blog pops up? I know that’s overly dramatic, but I do wonder how they will feel if I write about our challenges in this way? I’m less worried about how they will feel about the funny stories and the good memories, though I suppose the kids could resent that as young adults. The potty training stories alone might get me in trouble someday, but I’m not afraid of that, though perhaps I should be. The line is a little less clear for me and I am struggling to balance my desire to process both the great and the difficult through sharing my writing, while at the same time allowing the people I’m both directly and indirectly writing about to not feel targeted. Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but I feel hamstrung by the fact that I want to be fair to the people in my life who have not chosen to write an online column about their thoughts and feelings while at the same time, telling the whole story of the life I am living. So, I’m debating the future of the blog again. I’ve enjoyed writing it, but unless I can find a way to tell the whole of the story that is our lives right now, I fear the columns will become more and more trivial, and that is not what I want it to be.

I want to be able to write about my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly as well, but I want also to respect the privacy of my wife and children, and my extended friends and family who might occasionally be a part of the story I want to tell.

I really do want and in some ways need to keep writing in this space so I likely will, regardless. But, if nothing else I guess I just wanted you to know that it’s not all Christmas trees, awesome and creative play, and the occasional sports story that exists in our lives these days. I hope I can find a way to make it work so I can keep writing like this, as it’s helped me both in my life and with my fiction projects. But, perhaps again I am overthinking, as I was recently told: “you are no John Steinbeck.” Perhaps it’s a moot point.

So how do I write about my family without violating their privacy? I’ve got some ideas, but should you have any suggestions, I’m game for hearing them.

A broken hand, publishing dreams, but more so: the magic of my children

2011-02-04T08:03:00.003-10:00

It seems the longer I go without a post, the more difficult it is to get motivated to catch up. So, as the twins are off to school and the Bear is apparently playing nicely upstairs, I will try to catch up on a few topics I’ve wished to discuss including my own stupidity, the status of my publishing aspirations, and the awesome way in which my kids (usually) relate to one another.

I broke my right hand New Year’s Day. While I wish there were a grand and exciting story as to how it happened, something involving Ninjas would have been cool-hell, I’d settle for one of drunken revelry that was at least a humorous cautionary tale of new year’s debauchery-but the truth is I broke my hand as I unleashed a great deal of pent-up anger and frustration at a great many things, in the form of a single punch directly to the floor on which I was sitting.

Floor won. I was in a cast for four weeks. It just came off this past Tuesday, and while I’m glad to have it gone, it’s still very sore and a constant reminder of the fact that I am a royal idiot.

The truth is I, like everyone else in the world, gets angry. But, as you may have surmised, I probably could manage it a bit better than I do. I like to think of myself as a generally peaceful person, not overquick to anger. I’m not certain that’s true, but I like to think it. I let some things fester to the point that I lost control for that brief moment-three seconds in all-and am paying for it now. I haven’t lost my temper since, so I guess that’s growth. I hurt myself so bad the wife didn’t even give me grief. But I know that going forward I need to deal with my irritation and anger in a more proactive and positive way, and not to let it fester until it boils over. I’ve been re-reading THE TAO OF POOH with the Boyo, and that’s helped gain some perspective as well.

As far as my publishing aspirations, after a very educational and productive Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC last month, where I pitched THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOME to five agents who all asked for partials, I have heard back from two who do not feel it is for them, and have heard nothing yet from the other three. I have also queried six others who were part of the conference that I felt might be interested. To date, I’ve not yet heard from them either, but that’s not unexpected, and if I get to March and that’s still the case, I can assume they are passing and I will move on.

Move on to what? Well, I will likely enter the novel in a few contests and may query a few other agents. If at that point there’s still nothing happening, then the book will be shelved. I am not interested in self-publishing it, as I do not really have the time, money, or inclination to take that on. For me, that would really be a more pride-driven endeavor than anything else. Perhaps it isn’t ready for publication or perhaps it simply isn’t good enough, but regardless, I have other things I want to work on, and have come to accept the fact that while I believe in the novel, I am not going to sacrifice future projects and my other responsibilities in an effort to see it in print. That said, I’m hopeful one of the remaining nine agents will be interested in it. But I’ve prepared myself either way.

I’m currently having a lot of fun storymapping and writing a preliminary draft of my next book. All I’ll say here is that the main character is named Freddy Pinkerton and the majority of the action is set in Morristown, NJ. The early and frantically creative days are often the most exciting for me and it’s been fun to start losing myself in Freddy’s world. I’ve been stuck in GEOGRAPHY for a very long time. It feels good to start something new, and it’s definitely taken my mind off of waiting to hear back from the other nine agents.

My primary responsibility and career continues to flourish in the arena of domestic engineering. The twins are enjoying half day Kindergarten and the Bear is loving preschool. The transition to cold weather has been a bumpy one, as our county seems to close school if five snowflakes fall. We had a series of days off last week that were unexpected, but we managed them well, creating a series of sled trails in the yard and did our best to channel our inner Shaun White. We’ve visited Mount Vernon quite a bit, and it is truly a wonderful site in the snow. They do an amazing job there and the kids have yet to tire of it, which is a real bonus. We’ve been busy with the library reading program, Tae Kwon do classes, and dance classes, and Daisy Scouts, and playgroups, and other activities, but what I wanted to touch on in closing here today is how awesome my kids play together.

As the twins go to school in the afternoon and the bear in the morning three days a week, they generally have a decent amount of time together. I'm driving a lot, but in general, there's a decent amount of time where they are able to be together. While they have their disagreements and difficulties, and we’ve faced some behavior challenges we’ve been dealing with lately, I am constantly amazed at the worlds and games and characters they create together. It is a real pleasure to watch them interact with their animals, or cars, or the recent discovered “Sports ball family” and witness just how much joy there is for them in being together. With the twins off to full time first grade next year and the Bear headed to five mornings a week at preschool, I wonder if some of that magic could be lost as they grow older. I worry that their relationships could change, especially the twins as they inevitably have different teachers and make different friends. My hope is obviously that they grow to be good and happy people, but also that they always retain some sense of the magic and the closeness that they have now, as kids. They are still with me most of the day, and while, trust me, there are days I pray for the bus to come early, I hope that I too never lose sight of the incredible gift that I’ve had these last years being home with them. Being able to greet several days a week with, “OK-what would you like to do today?” has been a real pleasure, and one that is easily lost sight of when one is focused on other things, like the budget, the schedule, and yes, the writing.

I need to remember that whatever may happen with my other interests, the job I’ve most wanted to excel at is stay at home dad. I hope I’ve done well. I also hope that as they invariably grow up, they never forget the magic they shared at play with one another. I know I’ve never seen anything quite like it and I’ll carry it with me forever. Especially if I feel my temper rising. Much better to focus on them than hitting the floor. And, it is still seven months until first grade. I think we can create a lot of magic between now and then.

I think the three of them will always maintain a sense of closeness, I really do. I know they’ll have their rows too, but I think when you share something as they so clearly do; it finds a way to thrive. And I’ll enjoy watching them grow. Not too fast though.

Day Two: Writer's Digest Conference, NYC

2011-01-22T18:19:00.002-10:00

I am exhausted. It has been a very long day.

But it has been a good day. I had the chance today at the "pitch slam" event to present myself and my novel to five agents, all of whom liked me enough to request a formal submission of text. I'd never done a pitch before, and although I will admit I had some nerves, once I got started, I felt like this was something I could really do.

So, today was a real success for me. Now, the agents I met with today may look at my work and decide it's not for them, but for me, stepping ever so carefully into the publishing world, one that I freely admit I am new to, was the real goal here, and I feel like, even if these agents don't turn into partners for me now, I've shown that I can represent myself and my work in a positive way. And maybe there's a place for me.

After the pitches were over, a large contingent of us discovered the hotel bar and did our best to stimulate the economy. A group of us ended up going to dinner and then to some other hotel with a good view before we all went our separeate ways. It was a lot of fun just allowing the social gravity of it all to move us into an adventurous evening, and I hope to be able to describe it better tomorrow, but for now, I'm too tired to emote.

I'm pau. But, regardless of the next step in the process, it was a good, very good, and significant day.

Day one, part two, Writer's Digest Conference, NYC

2011-01-21T14:21:00.002-10:00

Well, the first sessions were generally very good, although I felt bad for the gentleman that passed out and fell down. I understand he's OK, which is of course very good news.

At the very beginning, day one at the conference felt a little like that first day of high school when you walk into the lunch room and aren't sure where to sit, and you stand there with your tray in your hands, and your brow and milk carton start to sweat as you try to figure out where to sit...

And, in fact, I started off with a poor choice. I sat by myself off to the far side of the ballroom. I realized my mistake almost immediately, but because I'm a little dim, I sat there alone trying to look interesting while everyone else was talking and networking.

So, after a few minutes, I called a do-over and left the room, re-entering and heading left instead of right, eyed a table of people who looked interesting, and asked to join them. As it turns out, it was a great selection. Soon we were playing business card poker and chatting away. Linda, Carol, Fifi, BJ, and Lloyd were a neat group and I look forward to seeing them in the morning. It seemed as though we all shared the same level of quirk, and got along very well.

The first session, led by Richard Curtis was very informative. He talked a great deal about the digital influence on publishing and about the soon to be everywhere "publishing on demand" phase of the industry. I took it to mean essentially there will be a "Red Box" for books as there is for movies these days. He illustrated some aspects of self-publishing that I hadn't thought of before. He made me think of self-publishing as of course, a mixed bag, but also somewhat akin to the "Napster Revolution." I think with time, energy, and resources, self-pub could be an interesting option for people in the dynamic world of books these days.

Chuck Sambuchino, who writes at http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/index.asp was tremendous. He broke down the process that most of us will go through tomorrow during the "Pitch Slam" and really, for me at least, demystified it. I've got a decent amount of work to do to feel like I'm ready to nail it, but he was beyond helpful and encouraging. Two brave souls got up and tried their pitch in front of the entire conference, and he was really very cool. I hope I get a chance to speak with him tomorrow, but regardless, I feel like I've got even more of a road map towards representing myself well tomorrow.

Off to dinner with Pelf! More to come. Thanks as always for supporting me!

Day one, part one: Writer's Digest Conference, NYC

2011-01-21T09:24:00.003-10:00

I am in New York for the first time in at least 4-5 years. Registration at the conference starts in about 30 minutes.

There are over 400 attendees and somewhere near 50 agents expected. In all honest, I'm not certain what to expect. The topics are all interesting to me and the chance to pitch the novel to working agents is a real special one.

Having never done it before, there are moments of uncertainty as I prepare to do so. I've read every blog I could find on the subject of pitching to an agent, most of which were genuinely helpful. But, the truth is I've never done it.

But then, the one common theme I've discovered in reading up on this process and industry is that, in the end, it's about developing a relationship. I'm selling two things this weekend-the novel of course, but myself just as much.

I have a lot to learn about this industry. That I will know more in a few days is for certain. What it thinks of me is as yet unknown.

So, game face on. More to come. Aloha.

En route to NYC

2011-01-21T01:24:00.003-10:00

I am on a train. It's very dark and very cold out but I am encouraged to learn that I can post to the blog from my phone.

Will have more later today. Despite the early hour I am excited to see what the conference brings. Stay tuned.

The State of Aloha Kugs, kinda.

2010-11-15T09:20:00.001-10:00

It has been a while since my last column. I’ve been off the grid for a bit dealing with a number of things. That is not to say that I didn’t have things to write about, rather, that I’m not able to write about them in this space and format, for a variety of personal and semi-professional reasons. Suffice it to say that things have been equal measures of aloha and angst. I’m sure Steinbeck could put it better, but I never liked him that much anyway.

So, I thought we could play a little catch-up. These items are in no particular order. Enjoy the stream of consciousness.

-The kids are doing well. The twins are in Kindergarten and enjoying it a great deal. They’ve acclimated to their new school and love their new teachers. They are excelling in the classroom and making friends. They both played soccer this fall, their first team sport experience. They both had a lot of fun, and even scored some goals. Some of those were even in the correct goal and on purpose. They will turn six on Saturday, but I will touch on that in more detail in my next column, hopefully.

-The bear just turned four. She’s in preschool three days a week and loving it. She’s made a lot of friends in class and continues to be, as someone’s Irish grandmother once said, “Entirely herself, to be certain.” She’s a riot most of the time. She and her sister still share a room in the new house and most nights it has been fine, though last night they were up for about 3 hours after bedtime playing “Dragons” and flying around their room in the dark.

-The kids-and my wife and I-are cold. We’ve clearly not yet acclimated to the temperature differential between Virginia and Oahu. It’s only November… the bear started wearing her winter coat in September. I myself was recently shopping for colder weather clothes, and spent 20 minutes staring at the racks in a store trying to remember what I used to wear in cold weather. I just had to put away my shorts and T-shirts. My only real pair of shoes is my Crocs. But, I found a sweater the other day that survived the great purge of 2007, so that’s something I guess. We have a fireplace that has gotten a tremendous workout already this season and, while I do rather enjoy the cooler weather, it is definitely an adjustment.

-I have some edits to make of a few newer re-writes, but outside of that, the novel is as done as I can make it. When the edits are complete, I will likely print and bind a few copies and then set about the tedious job of trying to find a literary agent or a publisher or both. In addition, I’ll likely enter it in some “first novel” contests that I’ve learned about. With that project waning, I am revisiting a short story project that I shelved when I started the novel in addition to returning to work on the children’s picture book I wrote-I’m going to try and learn to draw…that should be interesting. Stay tuned on that front. That said, I feel some accomplishment regarding the novel project, and while I have notes and some chapters written on a follow-up to that story and its characters, I’ve decided to shelve it for now, possibly for ever. Time will tell on that one.

-The wife is doing remarkably well in her work and is enjoying it quite a lot. She exudes awesomeness in all she does, but as she’s a big-time DC muckity-muck now, that’s about alls I can say ‘bout that.

-The Phillies failed to advance to the World Series. Blech.

-Football and hockey continue to be a consistent source of both joy and pain.

-We’ve all had strep throat at least twice since we moved. Add in a few ear and sinus infections and all told, mainland germs are having a field day with the lot of us.

-Mount Vernon, the Smithsonian Air and Space, American History, and Natural history museums are great. We’ve enjoyed them a lot. The Air-Space annex out near us is perhaps even better than the one in DC, and not just because of the R2D2 mailbox.

Beyond that, there’s not a lot to report. I realize this is not the thought-provoking column that I usually aim for, but I figured I should catch up before I write another one, which I am planning to do this weekend regarding the kids birthdays. I was going to write that today but wanted to revisit earlier topics and journals on the topic before writing. So hopefully I’ll have something more substantive in this space this weekend.

The lack of a more substantial column now is not due to a lack of things to say about the events and activity of the last few months. It is due more to the fact that this space is, regrettably I think, not at this time suitable for some of the issues I’d like to comment on. It doesn’t mean I’m not writing about it. It just means I can’t share it here, yet.

So, with that, Aloha. Check back soon.

The Power of Choice

2010-09-19T04:50:00.003-10:00

Whether we want to be or not, we are all part of a family. Whether that family embraces us, rejects us, or is indifferent to us, we are a part of it, like it or not. If that family is loving or harsh, heartening or spiteful, they are related to us, regardless of our wishes.

We all come from somewhere, and while that may be a place, in the geographic sense, it is in in fact far more than that. We all come from a crucible fraught with people, places, and experiences that permeate the fabric of our lives for the entirety of our lives. This occurs whether we want it to or not.

Resistance it futile. Is it? Really?

I’m not certain, but what I am certain of is that the crucible in which we are mixed, the family and the places and the people who shape us, while they are significant, vital even to who we may become, they hold nothing to bear on the power of our choices.

We kinda-but-not-really-buried my Grandmother today. Gram was in her late 80’s and had not been well for some time. The last few visits I shared with her were pleasant in the manner of, “here’s a nice young man doting on me,” but there was little of the fire and energy that I always expected from her. She was a good lady and I will miss her tremendously. The hope had been to bury her in the plot that her mother and father had shared since they passed. Gram told everyone involved that, after she died, she wanted to be with her parents. Her wishes were documented--she didn’t want to be alone in the end and in the end, none of us wanted her to be alone either. We all gathered to make that happen for her, but it didn’t happen.

At the risk of airing my own personal dirty laundry, which is something that this space has never been about for me, there was a party in the family who apparently had a legal right to an opinion, and he disagreed strongly with that plan. He exercised his right, vehemently and with dramatic effect, and my Grandmother was denied her wish for her final rest. His motives are still somewhat unclear to me, but his ridiculously selfish act is the culmination of a complicated and often tenuously confrontational relationship with the family as a whole.

The family that was able and willing to honor my grandmother gathered this morning. We held a service at the graveside and laid copious amounts of flowers on the graves of several generations of the family, including both my father and sister. It was the last time that any grouping of my family had gathered in that place and number since we buried my father, which felt like a very long time ago. My hair was different then to be sure.

In the end, the day was a surprisingly positive one, for a variety of reasons. Our little service, with my wife at the helm, was very nice. We shared stories about Gram and did our best to lean on one another. A father and son, who have been apart way too long had the chance to reconnect with one another. Their meeting was one of the most amazing family moments I have ever seen and I hope they make it work. I know I would give almost anything for the chance to embrace my father again. I placed flowers upon his grave, as did my sister, my mother, and my wife. It was the first time my wife had the chance to “meet” my father.

The remains of the day were very much like those of other days I’ve gathered with the family. But, the entire family was not there. There are those who remain so full of anger and misunderstanding that they refused to participate. They made a choice. They need to live with theirs as much as I will with mine. I think that, the choice, is a large part of what being part of a family really means. We are born into a family, but we have to choose to either embrace it or run away from it. I’m certain that most of us could make arguments either way, but in the end, if we are connected to our family, however we truly define it, it is because we have chosen to connect ourselves to them. We choose to be there.

My father died very young and as I grow older, our ages grow ever closer. I had a sister die as a child. The fragility and immediacy of life and death have always been themes in my life, whether I wanted them to be or not. As I now have children, for whom I would love to move the world, I have become very focused on them becoming persons who value not only themselves, but one another, and our family as a whole. My kids get along great when they aren’t tackling one another. Actually, sometimes those are the moments they are getting along at their best. But my hope is that as they grow older, they will choose to remain close and connected. I want family to matter to my children and I pray exhaustively that I will be able to teach them that one lesson, if nothing else. I can’t imagine a world where they would be so far apart from one another that they could not come together and face the challenges that my family has faced together this week. I can’t imagine being so angry with my own sister that we could not come together over the body of our parent.

This is perhaps more personal that I have written over the years, but I think what I want to say right now is that while life and circumstance might make a family, we are truly only connected to one another when we choose to be connected to one another. I have uncles, aunts, and cousins, all of whom I’ve had fun with at one time or another. But are we there when it matters? Do we choose to be present in the times when life is more awkward and difficult?

I know that the friends in my life are people who, over the years, I’ve chosen to be with. They are people with whom I’ve grown and fought and become the man I am now. They are a small group who do not ask for, nor do they require, an explanation of my quirks or occasional idiocy. (For the most part)

The family in my life and I imagine, in the lives of most people, is truly far more complicated. We are all thrust together by genetic circumstances, and we either like one another or we don’t. We interact well or we don’t, but, we have no choice in that we are family. One way or another there is a forever in our makeup as a family that is irrefutable, and, when it’s good, it’s great. When it becomes an obligation or something that “used to matter,” it’s a problem, but only if that is someone’s choice, sad as it may seem.

In my family, which gathered this weekend to almost but not really bury my grandmother, there was a time when we all liked one another and enjoyed being together. That changed, for some, and then it changed again, for others. A father and son talked this this weekend--that mattered a lot to me. Choices will be made in the coming days that will show if that will have been a fleeting moment or a significant moment in the life of both men.

I wrote earlier that I have uncles, and aunts, and cousins, and I do, and I should take more time and energy to connect with all of them. I should and hope that I will and that it will matter. Gram was always the center of this side of the family, but we don’t have her anymore, so any relationship we have as a family going forward will be one that we choose to have. Or not have.

Family is family. I miss my father and missed the chance to know my oldest sister. I miss my grandmother too. She was a real strong lady. Her family came first all the time. Even when they were difficult and the choices were painful, she chose family. I hope I live to be the grandparent she was for me.
Every time. Every single time. She chose family.

While it may not be a choice to be a family, it very much feels like it is a choice to stay a family. We’re hoping to stay.

Aloha au iā 'oe, Grandma. A hui hou... E ho'omaha me ka maluhia. In Hawaiian, that translates to “I love you, Grandma, until we meet again, rest in peace.”

The Missing of Oahu. Or: Reflections of a New Jersey Haole, now living in Northern Virginia.

2010-07-21T12:07:00.001-10:00

96 days ago, my family and I left our home in Ewa and moved into a hotel in Waikiki.

76 days ago, we returned to the mainland from Oahu, moving into another hotel.

64 days ago, we moved into our house in Virginia.

When I did the math for the above opening, I really did not expect it to affect me as it has. It’s barely been two and a half months since we left Hawaii, but it seems as though it was another lifetime ago. Perhaps that’s a little bit true.

While I’ve fought it thus far, the truth is, I really miss Hawaii. I know--it sounds shocking, but to be honest, I’m somewhat surprised. As wonderful as Hawaii was, it was not without reason that we pursued a return to the mainland. But now that we are here, I’m finding myself nostalgic for our old life, and for the island. The Ahi, the Musibi, our friends that are still there, the kids school, the pools, the Bishop Museum, the ocean, the weather. Ah yes, the weather. Holy guacamole, Virginia is HOT! I mean, come on--I spent almost three years living on a tropical island, and I didn’t sweat like this. I’ll admit, I forgot about the humidity, too. More than once, I lamented the lack of diversity in the weather while we lived on Oahu. Oops. My bad. It was lovely and I miss it whole-heartedly. I could go for a trade wind right about now. Actually, any kind of wind would suffice.

I imagine that a big chunk of what I’ve been feeling lately is the normal “We just uprooted our lives and are still adjusting to our new situation,” but I’d be remiss if I didn’t legitimately have a few (perhaps more than a few) moments of late where I wondered, “why did we move again?” Of course, during any move there were frustrations. Between the movers mislabeling every single box in Hawaii, to the guys on this end dumping boxes out in the middle of my son’s room and calling it, “helping you unpack,” we’ve had some hiccups along the way. Don’t get me started on the company who transported our car. I will freely admit I showed their agents and supervisors absolutely no Aloha spirit, whatsoever. But, we did finally get our car. Got new plates too. The new VA plates are full of Aloha, but I’ll admit, I got a little misty taking the Hawaii plates off the car. Not just because of the looks we got while driving on the highways, though that was fun to observe. Expressions ranged from, “Cool-I won license plate bingo!” to, “He doesn’t look Hawaiian.” But, I digress. Yes, there were difficulties with our move. In addition, living in a hotel can be irritating. That said, I’ll admit freely that there have been moments when I wonder if we made the right choice. There’s been a least one moment when I genuinely wanted to just “go home.”

So, was it a moment of weakness? When I expressed that, what was I really wanting to return to?

As I’ve discussed, it was not without reason that we looked to leave the island. Long term, the educational prospects for the kids were not as excellent as I would have liked. Also, there were occasional very strong feelings of isolation--from friends and family back home, but also, at times, from the people around us on the Island. While we had friends, many had moved away, and we’d not really been able to make new ones after the initial relationships we’d made early on. (We’re in the process now of instituting a “Arrange your own replacement policy” should any of our friends move away in the future. Take note ;) Plus, there was that land-locked feeling that would creep up from time to time. Not having the opportunity to, for example, just pick up and drive out for my niece’s birthday, or to do a long weekend in Wildwood, did wear on our own feelings and relationships. There were a lot of events and celebrations that we missed due to our incredible distance from pretty much anything. Plus, the wife’s career, which is truly the “straw that stirs the drink,” had rather peaked there, and the opportunity to become, as I like to say, “a big Washington muckity-muck” was too much to pass up, so we took a chance and scored. When we decided to leave Jersey for Hawaii in the first place, we knew that it was unlikely to be forever, so, logically speaking, there was always an expiration date on our time there. Heck, in the months before we heard if she’d been selected for the promotion, we genuinely anxious about it and were ecstatic when she got the call telling us we were headed back to the mainland.

So, why, now that we are here, do I feel as though Hawaii is but a distant memory? And why do I miss it as I do? It could be that we are still navigating our way around here and finding a place for ourselves. Or maybe it is just that I’m missing the normalcy of what our life, despite its challenges, had become on Oahu. Perhaps it’s that the pace of life here, or the humidity, or the lack of drive-thru sushi, that’s getting to me.

It might be that we’ve had a hard time making friends here thus far. I’m perhaps more of an oddity here in Northern Virginia as a stay-at-home dad (at least one that doesn’t then work a full or part-time job while ‘staying at home with the kids’) than I was in Hawaii. Several of the stay at home moms that I’ve met work a job in their off hours, or even during their time with their children. The other stay at home moms that I’ve met have tended to be very “focused” on the programs their children are doing at pretty much all hours of the day, ensuring there is no free time whatsoever. I overheard one parent recently (I say overheard, as despite efforts to engage most of the parents I’ve met recently, I’ve met with little success) who described her seven-year-olds day as: Swim lessons, playgroup, lunch, afternoon park program, soccer program, dinner, tutoring, bed. Now, if that’s what works for their family, God bless. It doesn’t work for mine. My children do activities too, and we go places, and we do things, but I learned a long while back that my kids need time to just “do whatever.” Thus far, that too has somewhat set us apart from the other families that we’ve tried to engage.

I didn’t expect my gender to be as big an issue here as it was in Hawaii. It is, of course, but I didn’t expect it, which has made things more awkward for me at family events we‘ve attended. The glares I’ve been getting would give any Oahu “stink-eye” a run for their therapist’s couch. I even got a “oh great, what is ‘he’ doing here?” at a recent library function. Now, if this were someone who knew me, I think it’s safe to say that’s a reasonable question. That said, I’d never met any of these women before, so unless she was talking about my son, I thought the conclusion was clear. Perhaps I’m over thinking it, but I have been through this before. I didn’t like it then either, but I’m doing my best to embrace my inner Aloha and radiate positive goodness. Didn’t really work in 2007 either, but it’s still worth a try. In the end, at least as far as people’s reactions to me went, the only thing that ended up making a difference for be back on Oahu was time, which is why I pulled out my calendars and took a look at how long we’ve been here. Not long at all. So, I’ll have to give it time.

The weather here, the normal “just moved” menagerie of adjustments everyone experiences, and the “sort-of isolation” we are feeling as newcomers/outsiders here in Virginia may in fact have a something to do with the way that I’ve been missing our life in Hawaii. That said, I don’t think it is really the whole story.

I think that Hawaii is really an amazing place. Its beauty is legendary. It’s overwhelming in fact, so much so that, after a while, you get used to it to some extent. The rainbows are always lovely, and the ocean is always beautiful, and the mountains are always breathtaking, and the temperature is always warm, and winds are always cool, and when it rains, it rarely lasts too long. The crystal blue water of Kailua is different some the more pedestrian family beaches of Ewa, which are far more “local” than the lagoons at Ko Olina, which has yet to get a wave that would be called a wave up on Waimea Bay. Diamondhead seems like it’s always there--just about the only place you would miss it’s gentle arch is if you were standing atop it, gazing out at the Waikiki shoreline and miles and miles of Pacific Ocean. The plumeria flowers simply fall of the trees like rain, free for anyone to pick up and give to a pretty girl. My lime tree never did give me a lime, but it tried, and it smelled good, as did the pineapples we planted in the yard. You could just cut the top off of one from the store, and toss it in the ground. The mountains and cliffs near Pali Lookout are lush and green in parts, and the trail is dark and spooky. Pu U’alakea is breathtaking. The mountains on the Leeward side, while not as lush were a fine companion as you drove to the North Shore, until the stopped, and your car seems to be driving directly into both heaven and the ocean until the road drops down toward the Earth. Don’t get me started on the Big Island. I could go on, but the point is, somehow, someway, one gets used to this incredible visual and sensory paradise. It becomes normal. It becomes everyday life. While I know that I appreciated it then, I feel it now as a loss in its absence. It’s as though you’ve been in the Technicolor land of Oz for almost three years, and then return to the black and white of Kansas.

It’s as though the world is just different now. It is of course, as we’ve again moved halfway across the world, but I think that the island gets under your skin, and perhaps that’s as much to blame for my nostalgia and mood as anything else. You experience life in Hawaii, perhaps in a way that is different than any life I’ve experienced life before. It was all, the good and the bad, displayed in living Technicolor, and I miss the way that I felt in that life. Feels like without all that “Hawaii-ness” that there’s a small hole unfilled within. I wonder if that will change.

But, it’ll take time and effort to make a life here, just like it did there. And, time, because of the move, we have now, all of us, and that is a good thing.

But, I miss Hawaii. Way, way more than I thought I would.

For the love of Soccer; or my Children are my World Cup

2010-06-25T21:24:00.002-10:00

I have neglected this space of late for a variety of reasons. On one hand, there has been so much happening since we moved that in all honesty, it would take a far greater writer than relate it all. So I’m not going to.

Perhaps I’ll deal with some of it all in my third novel, since the first one, and its incessant need for tweaking has demanded attention as well. All in all, we are here and doing well, doing our best to bring the Aloha spirit to Northern Virginia.

Right now, I want to talk about Soccer.

I played one season of organized soccer for the “Junior Capital Chargers” back in way too long ago, when I think I was 7. I was big for my age and appropriately uncoordinated as a result. I could do nothing of substance with the ball, so I played a lot of defense, with my instructions being, “get in front of the ball.” Now, gentle reader, I was not the goalie. Not coordinated enough for that either at the time, regrettably, so my role was to attack the ball when it got near the goal. I remember being pelted with shot after shot, and doing relatively well in terms of hurling myself at the ball (and other players) with reckless abandon. I recall once accidentally tacking a future NYC newscaster quite unceremoniously, as he happened to have the ball, and I didn’t know what else to do but dive at him. We laughed about it years later. But, it was clear at the end of the season that Soccer was not my calling as a youngster. There were other sports and activities I garnered more success in, but that is another story entirely.

Soccer was not a big part of my life much after that year with the Chargers, except the one night I got to go see the old New York Cosmos, and had the chance to see the great Giorgio Chinaglia play in Giants Stadium when Paul’s dad took us to the game. I was maybe 8 at the time and it was my first stadium experience, and it was tremendous. (I filed that one away for future reference, and felt I‘d come full circle somewhat when I took the Boyo to see Beckham play in Aloha Stadium in ‘08.)

The next time in my life that I remember soccer mattering at all was my 8th grade year at SPS. During the spring of that year, my classmates and I had turned to soccer during the after-lunch recess, and we used to play epic games with the wall to the school being one goal, and the fence to the Maintenance area (that ran parallel to the cemetery) as the other. The PE teachers gave us two cones for each goal, and a ball. If the ball hit the wall, it was a goal.

I don’t remember how we picked teams, but we did, and they were our squads for what seemed like months. We had epic battles, dynamic games with as much action as you can garner wearing a Catholic School uniform and playing on blacktop. I think there may have even been trades and so forth, but I don’t recall those details, as I simply played “Big guy” goalie against the brick wall, and got pretty good at it, I think. I remember one game I made a save, and just as a goof I threw the ball across the parking lot at the other goal, and the other goalie, Danny, who happened to be looking elsewhere, ducked at the last second as it thwacked the fence behind him. Score for me… It was carefree fun, though we all kept track of our stats. Oddly enough, I don’t remember ever having a bad time, and don’t know that anyone really worried about who won. It was among the best times I remember during that last year at SPS. Just playing a game for fun. It seems very much like a halcyon memory for me.

I had friends who played soccer in High School, and I followed and supported them, but it wasn’t a major part of my life then. I played some intramural soccer in college and was an avid fan of my college team, but it was not until I started my life as a professional educator that I really recaptured the pure fun that the game had offered me on the playground in junior high.

My first job after college was at a small private school outside of Philadelphia. I was excited and motivated to teach and to get involved in the life of my new school. Through an interesting series of events, I became an assistant coach with the soccer team there, which was co-ed, and played in a conference of private schools in that area. The team was full of characters, and had some talent. I listened a lot to the head coach early on, and learned a ton about how to be a coach, and to be a part of a school community, and even more about the game at its core. It was the highlight of a very challenging year that I spent at that school. Team-wise, it was highlighted by two incidents.

Early in the season, we were on our way back from an away game that we’d lost and played poorly in. There were two vans, one of which I was driving. As young people, boys in particular, are prone to do, they got goofy on the bus on the way home, and a trio of young men chose to moon a tool-booth attendant as we passed though on Route 76, I think. A state trooper happened to be nearby, and seeing the entire exchange, pulled us over, and dragged the offending parties off the van and into his cruiser, to be brought to the station. The trooper was around my age and seemed motivated to make an impression on these three boys, which I can assure you, he most certainly did.

I won’t go too deep into the details of the remainder of the evening except to say that I volunteered to stay with the three, and the rest of the team went home with the head coach. The boys were not charged, but scared to death at the state troopers barracks. When they finally let me take them home, it was the most silent drive I can recall in my life, as each of the boys, after spending a few minutes relating the details of their experiences, realized that I was driving them home to their parents, who would have a whole new series of opinions on what had occurred that evening.

I remember pulling into the parking lot with the boys well after 10 PM on a school night, the van feeling very spacious with only the four of us, and the only cars in the lot being my own 91 Mercury Tracer, “Bullseye” and those of the boys parents. This was well before the cell phone days we have now where everything would have been figured out and discussed over and over before we all met, so the meeting in the parking lot was of real importance to these parents, who had been told only that their children were being spoken to by the Pennsylvania State Police, and that the Assistant Coach, me, a newbie to the school, was with them.

The parents all, almost in unison jumped out of their cars as we pulled the school van into the lot. Under the faint illumination of the single parking lot lamp, I told them the story, and they took their children home, all thanking me for my efforts. As it happened, the boys were never charged with anything, though it took several hours. I will say only this about my role in the boy’s fate. I told the police that I could pretty much guarantee that their parents and the school would punish them far more effectively than they could, and that if their intent was to scare the boys, that they had done it, and scared the rest of the team as well. The next day at school meeting, which was the start to every day at this school, all 12 grades assembled, the boys all stood up and apologized to the school for their behavior and the disrespect that their conduct had shown to the school. One player went so far as to say that he would dedicate the remainder of his senior year to “making up for this.” And he wept. It was an incredibly moving moment and one that has stayed with me over the years.

The team muddled through the remainder of the season until the league tournament. We had lost a few games we should not have and won a few we had no business winning. So, going into the tourney, we felt like it would all depend on the first game, which we won handily. As it was a small league, that put us in the semifinals. One more win, and we’d play for the league championship. And it was a epic doozy.

We were playing a better team. We had two goalies, one of whom was a good goalie who could also play great at midfield, and the other of whom, Eddie, didn’t have the same talent most of the time, but had more heart than anyone on the team. So, we started Eddie in goal, and let him fire the team up. And he did. We played two halves and a few overtimes of 0-0 ball in the pouring rain, and were about a minute away from a shootout when a goal trickled into our net, but I can tell you it was one of the damndest games I ever stood on the sidelines for, as it was really the culmination of a season of ups and downs. For me, it was my first time as a coach in any real capacity, and to end our season a breath away from the league title was nice, but it was far more gratifying to see every one of our players, all of whom saw time in the game, smiling on the bus on the way home. The team went out onto the field as a team and left the same way, despite some challenges. For me, as a young teacher and coach, living on my own for the first time, it was a lifesaver in a number of ways. That was a difficult year, but it got lived anyway.

At the end of the year sports banquet, the Soccer captains called me up and in front of their families and the entire athletic department, they thanked me for “helping us not get arrested.” It was a humorous moment in the evening, but was one that was sincere, and in the end, hooked me once again on the power of sports to bring people together to do awesome things.

When I left that school and moved on to SKS, I again caught on as an Assistant with the Soccer team. That experience, two years as assistant, and another two as head coach in truth generated enough material for a novel or two on its own. Actually, as I think of it, those years could be an entire mini-series on MTV or FX or something. Those were some times indeed. No one got arrested during those years, although there might have been a few arrests (or international issues) if we hadn’t gotten off the field before the police arrived that afternoon in Connecticut, but, I’ll leave it at that. The stories there are far too much to tell, but those that lived them will recall. Perhaps they will make it into one of the novels someday. And, don’t get me started on the time I spent as assistant Lacrosse coach. (If not for Scurvy, we might have…)

But my years with the SKS soccer program only fueled my love of the game. We qualified for the big tournament a few times, and won a league title once, and in general had a lot of fun. We wore ridiculous socks on purpose, told outrageous stories and sang offensive songs on the van rides to schools all over the Hudson Valley and beyond. But some of the best memories I have of the teams I worked with were the afternoons on that beautiful field on our Mountain campus, playing a game, having fun as a team. Those moments when it was all simple and just a scrimmage between teammates and genuinely fun-that is what I remember most fondly, and I think that is what has made soccer so much fun for me in my life: that even when we were playing tournament games in the New England Championship, or playing a big rival, or even when we played for the league title, it was all rooted, for me at least, in a sense of fun. Perhaps it is because I came to soccer later in life. Or perhaps it is because I was really never any good at it myself, that I was able to coach it differently. I don’t know, but I do know that it has meant a lot to me, and I have loved the game a great deal for years.

When I became an Athletic Director, I would like to think I did well by those programs. They mattered a lot to me, and one of the proudest days I had on the job at PG was when we had generated the numbers to do a Varsity and JV game at the same time. Despite all the accolades other programs earned while I was there, I was really proud of seeing those JV games materialize. It was a sign of healthy growth for the program, and it meant a lot to me.

But, the other day, when Landon Donovan calmly plunked the game winning goal into the net in the 91st minute of the USA-Algeria match, I enjoyed one of the finest moments of my life as a sports fan, a soccer fan, and perhaps, as a father.

The children and I had experienced a rather difficult morning where no one was listening or following directions to the point that a return trip to the National Zoo was canceled. It turned out to be brutally hot that day anyway, so all was well in that regard, but the morning was quite an ordeal. After putting out the laundry (for some reason, we seem to be the only people in Virginia with a clothesline…) I came in, and as I’d been watching the USA-Algeria on the computer by myself earlier, and everyone was grumpy, I decided to put it on the TV where everyone could see it. So, the game went on. It was the second half, and there was about 25 minutes to play. The twins are signed up for soccer in the fall, and we’ve worked with them on the basic skills and watched some training films, and a few earlier World Cup matches, so I hoped they’d be interested. And they were.

They sauntered over to the couch, and sat there with me as the US toiled to score. Chance after failed chance, they lamented the missed opportunities. At one point, the girl said, as I had explained to them that if the US were unable to win, they would be out of the tournament, “Ohhhhh….I don’t want them to be out…like the Eagles were….” I was very proud and yet…well, Philly fans will understand.

But, they chanted “USA” with me, and we were all sitting together on the couch, watching the match unfold. As the time ticked away, the twins were increasingly engaged. “I want them to win, Daddy!” “I think they should score now…then they’ll have one more than the other team.”

I tried to temper them a bit, as, being a lifelong Philadelphia Sports fan, I am used to negativity and expected the team to come up short, I mean, two goals disallowed earlier in the tournament, etc… But, the twins did not want to hear all that, and each time the USA pressed the ball, they got excited. And each time they saw the Algerians move the ball, they got frustrated. They were right there with me for end, and then Algeria had their chance on goal, and Howard tossed the ball near midfield in transition, I sat up, and the kids all sat up too, even the little bear, who up until then had been building a house for Baby Ruff-Ruff on the other side of the room, and I said, “they’ve got numbers on them…”

To which one child said, “huh?” and the other said “Shhh….” and when Donovan sent the ball into the box, and well, the rest is history. I’d post a clip, but FIFA pulled them all down from Youtube. When Donovan scored, there was much rejoicing in my home. I’ll admit, I was more surprised than anything-but it was a tremendous moment. The kids were all excited, though once the game was over, they did ask when it might be time for a “Dinosaur Train” episode.

For me, it was a great moment. One of the greatest moments in American sport, in my opinion, and if it is the goal that spurs them on to a greater achievement for American soccer, than I’ll remember it even more fondly. I’m not certain if this will be my children’s generation’s version of “Do you believe in Miracles? YES!” But, I suppose time will tell. I know I still have a poster of the Lake Placid Olympics, 1980, on my wall, from the year an American team shocked the world. It hangs on the wall about three feet from where I write this.

For me, after a lifetime of having soccer permeating my existence at some of the most interesting, unexpected, and at times, challenging moments in my life, it was really something to share that flash of pure and unadulterated joy with them. My kids know how to cheer for the Eagles, and Phillies, and Flyers, and Buckeyes (and may learn perhaps how to do so for the Sixers if they can finally remove their heads from their tuckuses.) They got an early training on how to cheer for the USA during the Winter Olympics. (They loved Shaun White and US Hockey-I was so proud.) They are getting a whole new lesson on how to cheer now, and I hope they get the chance to cheer for a few more weeks.

I don’t know that they will remember any of this as the grow older, but for now, for me, it was a fun moment, all three of my kids and me, watching the USA win a big game in the World Cup, snuggled under my big quilt, which was there not for warmth but just for comfort. We all cheered, and we all leaned on one another at the same time, without forethought or pretense-just the fun of being together.

I hope for a few more moments like that from this World Cup as a fan of soccer and what it has meant for my life. And I’ll continue to work for such moments with my children far beyond such things as a game in soccer or in any sport.

They already are my World.

Quick update

2010-06-05T04:25:00.002-10:00

Just a quick update-we are moved into our new house. Getting there was quite an ordeal, as everyone got sick. That said, we are there, and are seetling in.

I hope to have a new column in the next week or so. At this point, there's a lot to cover, and I'm debating whether or not to try and recap the whole trip or start fresh.

Also, I have finished the novel, printed and bound my first copy, and am doing a last proof while I consider an agent/publisher. Suggestions welcome.

Thanks for all your support-check back here soon for more Aloha goodness.

Aloha Means Goodbye: the Leaving of Oahu, Part II

2010-05-04T10:30:00.001-10:00

Aloha means Goodbye

Sunday May 2: I spent a while earlier today rereading my columns from earlier in our time here, thinking that I would cull interesting comments from the past and riff on them. After a while though, I realized that I was wasting my time. As I read through several of the early columns, especially those chronicling our first six months, I felt a measure of ickiness that I would liken to how one looks at their reminiscences of Junior Prom.

I’m not the same writer, nor am I the same man that I was back in December of 2007, so I decided to change direction with this column, my final installment from the island of Oahu, at least from this adventure.

Hawaii is a very unique place in which to live. I leave here in two days, and I do so with a myriad of emotions.

I am on one hand very excited. My wife has been given an amazing opportunity to bring her brand of awesomeness to the National level. I’m very proud of her accomplishments and of what she is going to have the chance to do in her new job.

I am excited too to return to the East coast. I’ve missed some things about living on there. I have missed the seasons, at least I think I have. Hard to say when the weather has been pleasant 99% of the days that I’ve lived on Oahu. It will be great to be closer to family and friends, and to not have to hop on a plane to enjoy something as simple as Irish Weekend in Wildwood, the HHS Alumni Picnic at Etra, or Oktoberfest in Berea. Proximity to my sports teams will be a major bonus too. I’ve got family and friends in the VA/DC/MD area that I am very excited to connect with and spend time with. It’s a good fit for our family at this time. Add in the chance to really nurture some of the kids interests though the magic of the Smithsonian, and it is very much like Morrissey once sang, like a “hand in glove.”

On the other, ungloved hand, I am sad inside to leave Oahu. It was not a simple choice to come out here, nor was it a simple process to have done so. Everything about our life changed when we left Jersey. It doesn’t feel quite the same way this time. This move seems less dramatic in some ways, and yet more so in others. When we left Jersey, the Twins were little, and the Bear was a baby, really. There was not the sense of place and time spent with them that we worried would be irreplaceable in the next place. Most of their regularities were based in the home, and we were moving our home. This time, we are changing the kids school, looking to start the Bear in Preschool, the wife is now going to be, as we say back home, a “big time muckety-muck.” A lot of things are changing, and while we are definitely going to a place that seems good for us all in a lot of ways, there is always the trepidation of change.

But, that is not really it. While I will admit, I feel like it is time for our family to move on from Oahu, as the actual end of our time has approached, I’ve felt less sure about it in moments.

Hawaii was not an easy place to live, at first. I chronicled some of my early difficulties on the site here, and now that I understand the life and culture of this place better, I look back on some of my early reflections with a little embarrassment. There wasn’t a manual available at the time, so we did our best, and I learned that time was what it took to make it work here. Once it became clear that we lived here, and worked here, things got better. But, after we seemed to pass through that Maginot line of culture and angst, Oahu became something that I had not planned it to be, which was home. The ‘not wearing’ of socks, ties, and long pants and other uncomfortable conventions of my old life not withstanding, the home and the life we have made here have more than become those things to me: Life, and Home. And Hawaii was where it has been, and when it came time to start getting ready to leave, I will unabashedly admit that I had and still have some trepidation as to whether moving to back to the fast-paced East Coast is not the best choice for us. In all honesty, I think it’s more a measure of “Things are working here, why frack it all up by leaving?“ but, when I think clearly, I do see that this move is a good one for us and our family. But I will miss our life here, I think.

It is a place of ridiculous beauty, so much so that I’m certain I’ve become somewhat numb to it. These days, when it’s rainy or cloudy, as it has been these last few days, I find myself thinking, “it still does that?” For me to even spend a moment thinking about what the weather is going to be like is completely out of order. There will be a rude awakening as we settle back into mainland life in that regard. And the thing about the beauty here, is that it is everywhere. The sewage treatment plant on the way to Kapolei stinks a little, but it’s surrounded by hibiscus and there are mountains in the distance. But, there is more to life than beauty, and the best view I have known here is the one I have enjoyed looking across the room at my family. So it goes.

Tuesday, May 4: this column got away from me a bit. We get on a plane in a few hours, and truth be told, we are all excited. I’m certain I will be miss Hawaii, but I think I’m not really certain of how just yet. Perhaps it’s the kind of thing that will really just take time to figure out. The last few months have been very hectic, and stressful, and good too, but it has been a long haul to get to this point, and right now, I find myself feeling very hopeful about the future, more so than I feel trepidation or sadness at leaving.

Perhaps that will change, and perhaps I’ll have more poignant things to say in a week, but right now, I am cranked up to start our new life in Virginia. After all, the best parts of my life are coming with me, and they were always the best part of the island anyway.

So, perhaps too soon, I bid you Aloha for now. Another day, another segue…

The Leaving of Oahu, Part I

2010-05-02T13:09:00.001-10:00

When I last posted a column after our first night in Virginia last March, my plan had been to update the page regularly, perhaps even daily about the trip and reflections on the process, etc.

Well, that clearly didn’t happen. I’ve made several starts since then, none of which have amounted to much.

I write today from the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. Our house here on Oahu has sold, and just this morning, we closed on our new home in Virginia via the magic of Fed Ex and the best Notary Public I’ve ever seen.

It has been quite a few months. In the end, we are well. There have been some difficulties. We lost three buyers just before their deadlines in quick succession for excuses ranging from fear of our satellite dish to cancer. In the end, there was a fourth buyer, and they have held up. I’ve had some heath concerns, an old ailment that has popped up again, that while unpleasant, is getting better. Until yesterday, we were driving the twins almost an hour each morning so they could finish the month of April at school. It’s been a lot of driving, but was good for the twins. In the end, all the house stuff has fallen into place, and we’ve been very blessed with great realtors on both sides of the world working on our behalf. They took our car today, and so now we are hunkered down at the Village. I can see the ocean from our room. It kinda doesn’t suck.

Now, with but a few days left on the island, I think the best way for me to reflect on the last few weeks is to go old school “American Studies write after the fact” Journal style. (That’s a little inside…ask if you’re curious.) Hope you enjoy.

Late March-April 4: Things were a whirlwind. We were showing the house a lot. We visited the North shore for the last time, visiting a bunch of our favorite spots. The beauty and calm of the North shore, and how different it feels from the remainder of Oahu continue to astound me. I know very well why those who care want to “Keep the country COUNTRY.” I get it. We went to the Honolulu car show this week, and had a very nice time. After the show, we had lunch at the Hard Rock Café, which was extra fun as we got to watch NJ’s own “The Gaslight Anthem” perform their song “The ‘59 Sound” with Bruce on the in-house TV. Choice performance. Youtube it. We went to ride the Ewa Beach Historical train on Easter Sunday. Was very fun, and put 2/3 of our children asleep, which in and of itself was worth the price. The North Shore trip we knew would be the last time, and was a little bittersweet to drive away. It’s definitely a place a recommend spending some time in should you have cause to be on Oahu. The train was nice too.

April 15: This was the day the movers came and packed up our house. Was the first real concrete event that brought home how soon it really is that we were moving. These guys didn’t play around, either. I blinked, and lost every pair of shoes I own except for the Crocs that I was wearing. They weren’t the most conversational of gentlemen, as evidenced by the blank stares we got when we noticed that the Bear’s most treasured “Baby Ruff-ruff” had been packed up accidentally. This was in fact a potential crisis of epic proportions. We were able to redirect the Bear to a few other toys, including “Fluffy the three headed Dog,” and the promise that Ruff-ruff would in fact have a pretty grand adventure on the way to Virginia. She seemed to buy it. That Ruff-ruff will be waiting for us has come up regularly since then. Can’t wait to see her, but the Bear is holding strong.

The kids really dug the hotel right away. The twins are sharing a room, each with their own double bed. We had started the girls sharing a bed, but quickly moved the little bear into the pullout in the living room, where she’s not only been happier, but allowed the twins to sleep in some measure of peace. That was particularly important as we decided that the twins should finish the month of April in school, back in Ewa Beach, which, it turned out, takes about an hour to get to in the morning rush.

April 27: Took the Bear to Pearl Harbor today. We weren’t in time to make the last boat to the Arizona, but we were able to see the new exhibits and the visitors center that they’ve built recently. The new site is really very nicely conceived.

I’ve always been very drawn to Pearl Harbor. To drive by it virtually every day, seeing the gentle curves of the Arizona Memorial in the distance has always been a source of inspiration to me. We’ve gone to Pearl a lot, and my kids have had the chance to shake the hands of Pearl Harbor veterans, and talk with them. I’ve had the same chance, and a cherish the memories of those interactions, including the remarks of a Pearl Harbor veteran I met last year on December 7. I shook his hand, and thanked his for his service, as did the Bear. I then mentioned that my grandfather had served with Patton in Europe, to which he, with a gleam of humor in his eye retorted, “Yeah, we fought the real war out here…” and he laughed and shook my hand. It was a real moment that meant something to me. I hope in a very personal way that the kids, whatever they take from their time here are able to remember and someday reflect personally on having had the opportunity to not only visit Pearl Harbor so frequently, but to have also had the chance to meet the veterans, and live in the culture that developed here on Oahu since then. I know that living in the DC area will come with its awesome monuments, all of which I’ve seen and appreciated, but Pearl Harbor, and the Arizona will always have a special place in my heart.

April 28: Took the family to the Bishop Museum for the last time. We became members last winter during the awesome Dinosaurs exhibit. We probably went to that show alone 10 times. It was great, and the permanent exhibits are great too. Between the giant volcano, life size blue whale cross-section, and the Royal Hawaiian Kahili, it’s always a good time. The kids love it, and they’ve been exposed to a lot of very interesting exhibits. We spent a load in the gift shop this time, buying some very nice Hawaiian art stuff, including a great print of the great Duke Kahanamoku holding his huge wooden board, with Diamondhead in the background. It’s a great shot, and I actually took a picture of the Boyo in front of another of Duke’s boards that is on display on level three at the museum. Might frame them up together.

It was a great day, and walking across the courtyard, while the kids ran around, I was once again very grateful to have had the time to frequent museums and other activities with them over the last three years. They are very excited for the museums that the DC area has to offer, as am I, but I will miss the Bishop. Especially as I just learned that the Dinosaurs are coming back in a few months… Alas. The Smithsonian will have to do. We had dinner at the Kona Brewing Company, and spent a decent amount in their gift shop too. Our home in Virginia will be bursting with Aloha, I can tell you that.

April 29: Twins last day of school. While on the one hand, it would be a relief to not have to make the drive to Ewa anymore, and find something for the Bear and I to do while the kids were at school, I knew it would be a big day for them, and it was. I didn’t sleep at all the night before, and woke up feeling like dreck, but we managed to get there. After spending two hours of at my final doctor visit, where the Bear was introduced to “The Price is Right” on the waiting room TV, and a fascinating food processor through the magic of infomercial, we picked up the twins cupcakes to share with their classmates at the end of the day. The teachers have been putting their work together for me to pack up, and have given me the things they will work on during May so I can work on it with them after we move. Most impressive to me was reviewing their journals for the year. The kids have a journal notebook with half lined paper and half blank, so they draw a picture, either from a prompt, or from their own imagination, and they then right about it.

In reviewing their work over the year, I was blown away at their progress. When they started the year, the Boyo could barely write his name. His most recent journal entry was a story about how we had pretended to be Elephants the afternoon before on the way to the car. He wrote it out, spelling everything correct, and drew a picture of an elephant to go along with it, and it was awesome. He started the year not interested in writing, drawing or coloring at all, and he loves it all now. And, he’s a little scary good at math. The girl was more motivated to draw and such when the year started, but was less interested in letters, and now also writes whole stories about her adventures either with our family, at school, or from her imagination. She enjoys singing, and has enjoyed singing the songs she does in music class pretty much on request. “Mele Kalikimaka” and the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a song are among her favorites. (It’s the state fish of Hawaii.)

Their classmates each gave them a hug or a handshake, and enjoyed their cupcakes, and gave them a hearty Aloha on their last day. They’ve grown up a lot during the year, and their work has improved so greatly. They’ve become very social kids, and I got a little emotional as I thought about how much they’ve changed and learned and developed over the year, and how much their teacher and the school have meant to our entire family over the year. I’ve spent a lot of time on campus, as has the Bear. She’s as well known there as the twins, and I have very much felt like we could have spent six years with the kids in that school and been satisfied with the education they would receive. That’s not always given with schools here, and I can only hope that the twins do as well in their next school, where because of their age, they will do Kindergarten again. They’ve asked to be together next year. The bear will start Pre-school, three days a week I believe.

In the end, I realized as we were leaving how quickly their school became a major focus of our time and energy, and I was sad to leave it.

Present Day:
It’s Sunday, May 2 now, and it’s regrettably rainy and cloudy today, so we are having a patented Aloha Kugs BDI (Big Day in) today. They took our car on Friday, so we’ve been grounded to life here at the Hilton Hawaiian Village since then. We also closed on the house Friday, and all went well with that, so we are now owners of a home that is about 5,567 miles away from where I signed the papers. What a time to be alive.

Other that that, we’ve really just tried to relax and have fun in our last few days on Oahu. The kids have watched a few extra movies, and I’ve caught a few Phillies and Flyers games, which has been very nice. Nothing like watching hockey while you can see the ocean outside the window. We’ve gone to the pool, which has water slides, and we’ve gone to the beach, that does not, but is still good. The water in the Kahanmoku Lagoon is choice, and makes simple floating and staring at the sky a very simple and relaxing process. We had some friends visit us here yesterday and had a very nice time with them. The wife works today, and tomorrow, and then we fly on Tuesday. And then, at least for now, our adventure on Oahu will be done.

I’m going to post this now. More to come shortly.

Aloha Kugs Goes to Washington: Day one

2010-03-08T19:33:00.003-10:00

Aloha from the East Coast. Here's the latest story:

As it happened, the flights to get to DC were fine, however, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I have one phobia of note as relates to our journey.

I get claustrophobic to the point of panic attacks with the mere thought of sitting anywhere other than the aisle on an airplane. I’m not really certain why. It seems that it’s always been that way, at least as an adult. With the exception of the one time I got to fly first class back in 2007 on the way to Vegas for a wedding, I’ve always felt uncomfortable on planes in general, but I’ve always managed to get an aisle seat.

Fast forward to our flight here, which was arranged for us by the nice people at the home office, and at first, the wife and I weren’t even sitting together, and they had us both in middle seats. We tried to adjust online, but were unable, so it was with some serious trepidation that we arrived at the airport the other night for an 11pm red-eye flight to Denver and then DC, I was somewhat irritated until we got it all hammered out, and we fixed the seating there. There was a flat tire on the bridge thingy that we use to walk onto the plane, so that delayed us almost an hour, although they made up the time in the air, and the delay turned out to be good overall as they had serious fog as we were landing in Colorado, so we ended up landing only about 30 minutes after we were scheduled to have done so anyway.

I do wonder sometimes, if they are so easily able to "make up time" in the air, why aren't all flights just shorter? Perhaps they pad the times? Perhaps its a fuel efficiency thingy? I don't know, but I'll be glad when they invent the teleporter. Although, as comedian bill Burr once said, which I paraphrase here, "If you're in a plane, in the air, doing anything at all, be it drinking a diet coke or drooling on yourself, the first thing you should think is-wow-I'm flying through the air, doing ___________!" Bill always knows how to bring it home...flight is amazing, truly, but jeez, it is uncomfortable, especially for the rather tall, like me. I digress.

We flew over the Rocky Mountains as the sun was coming up. I’ve never seen them before, and as most of the plane was asleep as they became visible, and I wasn’t sure that I was really seeing them, I crept to the back and asked one of the flight attendants, who confirmed that they were the Rockies. So, ok, Holy crap what a sight! I mean, Mauna Kea on the Big Island is big, but it’s one major formation. It seemed like we were flying over the Rockies for an hour, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that long. It was amazing, and I’ll admit I totally marked out for them. I was blown away by how gigantic and impressive they were, even from the air, and I leaned over the wife looking out the window that I can’t sit near, enjoying every minute.

We got into DC with little ado, and got our car and settled into the hotel. Watched the Oscars, lamenting somewhat how few of the movies we’d actually seen. I’ve seen “Inglorious Bastards” (Well done to Christoph Waltz-he was amazing in the film) and “Up,” but outside of that, we are well behind the curve in terms of these films. It was fun to watch, though we were researching real estate and such as well as watching, to be honest. Don’t know much more about the movies nominated, but we will catch up at some point.

We started our house search with our VA realtor today, who is indeed a force of nature. I can say categorically that while we may not have found the new “Kugs Homestead” today, we learned a ton, got a few possibilities, and had more fun with less stress than we have ever had looking for a house, and as you may know, this is not Ma Kugs and I’s first rodeo… It was a good day, and I feel like I know a lot more than I did yesterday. We looked at Alexandria today, and will do Springfield tomorrow. That’s the plan, and then I imagine, barring finding something offer-worthy, we will regroup on Wednesday. We saw two good ones today, but they will both need something to make them better to be right for us long term, and a few things short term. Such is life in this market...

On another note, I have to speak on this point. We saw seven properties today, but there was one that was so awful that I have to complain. Don’t get me wrong-the house structurally was likely very good, but this was clearly a family that was not interested in really selling. The house smelled of mildew and cat, the beds were as made as a bedspread thrown on the floor can be. While the fireplace was nice, the couch with the dirty sheet and pillow on it that shared the room was somewhat not genuinely indicative of a desire to impress. The dirty dishes in the sink, the burnt pot with food in it (also burnt) on the ancient stove, the basketball rim in the middle of the back porch, the garbage in the driveway, and of course, the broken sliding door to the muddy and Mordor-like backyard, really did give me the indication that this person wanted to sell and do so now. Ok, I’m being sarcastic, but this house was an abject mess and an example of how not to present your home for sale. HGTV should do a show on this place, honestly. “How NOT to sell.” I’d watch, at least once. The house has been on the market for a long time, they had over 5 hours notice we were coming, and the place was an offensive mess. And, they are asking top dollar. Go figure.

Outside of that, it was a good day in that regard. After the search, we went to dinner at Murphy’s Irish Pub on King Street. Food and beverage were great, and who should we end up next to in the “seat yourself” pub? A Buckeyes fan from Columbus, Ohio, and a retired Marine Officer from Kaneohe, Hawaii. Only in an Irish Bar. Much fun had by all.

The kids are doing well at home with their grandparents, who graciously agreed to come to Oahu and take care of them, school and all, while the wife and I do this search. I find that I miss them more than I thought I would, as I always do. I get so used to being with them almost all the time, and now being apart from them, I do find that it gets to me a bit. But, we will be home soon, and we are after all, trying to find that “forever” house for our family. Motivation is high.

Tomorrow we see Springfield, and my cousins for dinner. Looking forward to that.

We are also looking forward to moving back to the mainland, but already see that we are going to need to work very hard to hang on to our Aloha here. The pace is definitely faster and the weather and seasons far more variable than we are used to. There have been moments that I’ve felt like I’m moving in slow motion compared to people I’ve had to deal with here so far, and I can live with that…just gotta maintain the speed, I think. I can afford to take my time, now. Especially now.

Stay tuned for more, you know, if you want to.

Going Home?

2010-03-03T23:36:00.001-10:00

My apologies for the length of time since my last column. Be rest assured, gentle reader, that during my long absence, I have honestly had nothing of substance to say in this space. I have been working diligently on draft two of the novel, and it nears completion. My goal is to have it done by St. Pat’s, and to have a copy ready for submission before we move.

Oh, yeah, we’re moving.

Sorry I didn’t tell you, but the wife put in for a huge (huge) promotion to the home office in Washington, DC a month or so back, and we really didn’t tell anyone about it. It felt like a long shot, as it is a rather large leap up in grade and work from where she is now, and so we kept it close to the vest.

But, as my friends on ESPN have said about my wife, and I am not one to argue with them, “You can’t stop Ma Kugs. You can only HOPE to contain her…”

She got the job. We’re moving. To where, don’t know. Leaning today is Northern Virginia. But, we are coming back to the mainland. Back to the East Coast. A bit South of where we started, but we are coming back. Everyone here is excited, and while it is a whirlwind of a process to sell a home here and buy another there and all the bells and whistles that go along with it, we are feeling ready to roll. This move is hopefully the last one, as her career is doing well and I don’t imagine we will have to relocate again for her to get promoted, should she even decide to down the line. So, we are on our way to the next adventure.

But, I wonder, are we going home?

I’ve tackled this issue, the nature of “home” in the blog more than once, so I do rather hope that you will indulge me again, as it’s a topic that matters to me a great deal right now.

I’ve never lived in Virginia, nor Maryland, so any home we are headed towards is one that we have not created yet, as a family. Just like when we moved here. But there is a major difference with this move.

Nobody is fighting me this time. There is not a single person on the planet, at least to date, that thinks our return to the mainland, Mid-Atlantic region in particular, is a bad idea. That is a genuine and categorical shift from what I experienced when we decided to move to Oahu. When we announced our intention to move to Hawaii, the people in my life, in general, did not take it well. Among other things, I was: cursed at, screamed at, had projectiles thrown at me (once-she missed gratefully, as it was a book), told I was crazy, told I was selfish, told I was destroying my children’s lives by moving so far away, and perhaps my favorite comment was that I was “punishing my children because I couldn’t keep a job.”

I can actually, even after over two years, still catch an echo of the feelings that those comments inspired in me. I don’t like it at all, and wonder how to reconcile it with the man I am now, in contrast to the person I was then, in the Fall of 2007.

Truth be told, if I had continued in the job that I had held at that time, at that pace, in that place in time, I truly believe that at best, I’d be a survivor of a heart attack. I was working 10-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. I don’t blame my employer for that: I worked it the way I felt I had to, and felt I achieved some modest level of success. But the pace I was working I know now would likely have killed me either through a heart attack via stress, or from a vehicle accident brought about by exhaustion. The rumble strips and I on I-295 got to know one another well. Almost as well as I got to know the tellers at the Wawa Markets up 295, where I was getting large coffees several times a day, not to mention the occasional bagel sandwich with pork roll. I remember one morning I bought a huge tankard of Irish Cream Coffee at a 295 Wawa, and the kid said to me, “Hey dude, I’m on a double today, so I’ll see you on your way home.”

And he was right.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Kugs loves his Wawa Market, and I’m looking forward to moving back East for a number of reasons.

But I will simply not allow the time that I have spent in Hawaii to be categorized as anything other than, for me, and amazing lesson in life and a categorical success. We moved here for a lot of reasons, which I’ve documented to the point of nausea in this space. But at its heart, the reasons we came here was to focus on our family. My wife, and I, and our children. It was an equation that was not functioning as we thought it should and could when we last lived in Jersey, and when the chance came to jump out here, we jumped, which at the time, was very unlike us.

We had followed the path for years, and lived the expected life as best we could, and there were years that it was difficult. But there was always love in our house. It’s just that more often that not, either I, or my wife, were not in the house, or at least not at the same time.

We got the opportunity to go to Oahu, where my sister-in-law and her husband had lived for years, and we’d visited them, and damned if the wife and I just didn’t step out on faith and strive for a new adventure.

While there were protests aplenty, in the end we went. And we’ve thrived here. It was the right decision. I’m sorry if you are reading this and that angers you, but it was the best thing in the world for my wife and children to come here and experience this life. It has been challenging at times, and there have been moments that I’ve screamed, “I want to go home.” But, those sort of histrionics are long in the past. They are “Pau.” No need worry about that no more.

But, there’s that word again. Home. What does it mean? Back in June of 2008, after a rather awkward trip back to the mainland, I wrote that home was:

“where my wife and kids are. It’s where my stuff is. It’s where I reside, but more than that, it’s where my family and I have chosen to make our life at this time. So, bada-bing: it’s home.”

And, while I took some heat for that comment from some, in the end, I stand by it. This house, on Oahu, has sheltered my family, and our time here has been magnificent. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve been able to forge a relationship with my children that I would never have had the chance to do back in Jersey. My kids, their teachers, their friends and classmates, and their parents, the people at the library, and everywhere else we have gone, know what my job is and they respect it.

I’m a stay at home dad, and plan to stay to stay one on our move back, in addition to my writing, that hopefully will matter someday. My hope is that we’ll be able to bring the positive things we’ve learned about how to live here, and incorporate it into our lives in the next place. There is drama awaiting us when we return, but in the end, we are moving into the space that we hope to occupy for like, ever and stuff.

So, are we going home? I think we are, in as much as home to me is my wife, my son, and my daughters. Will it be nice to be closer to our extended family? I hope. Will it be nice to be closer to my Philadelphia teams? Absolutely. Will it be delightful to be able to purchase decent pizza, bagels, and Yuengling Lager? True dat yo. Will it be pleasant to be able drive more than 40 miles in one direction without turning around? Yep, it will.

I will write on this more fully at some point, I promise, but there is a lot about our life here that I will miss. The weather does grow on you, despite its lack of seasons. Waking up to a bright sunrise and copious rainbows and flowers every day does in fact affect one’s outlook. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t gotten used to the serial pleasantness of the place in that regard. Losing the ability to get fresh Ahi from the counter at Foodland on a whim is a serious blow. I am not certain I will ever get over that loss, though the chance to have Crabs again might be enough to ease the pain. I can get sushi at the Genki Drive-thru window now… Alas…

The pace of things is slower here, and the Aloha spirit, when I’m able to tap into it really does allow for a person to simply live, and to live simply, as my man Thoreau used to talk about. I think he would have dug this place. I think he, like my pal Shane Victorino, would have liked the Spam Musubi too, like the rest of my family.

It will be a big change for all of us. The Bear has lived the majority of her life here on Oahu. The twins have done almost a full year of Kindergarten here, where they would never have been able to have that experience on the mainland. Say what you will about schools here, and there is a lot to be said in general, we found a good school, they let us in via the Geographical Exemption, and they’ve had an amazing experience, and made friends and academic and intellectual strides that I am amazed by, and I used to be an educator. They both made a “Cat in the Hat” Hat today. So, that’s cool. They also both got a tasty piece of Mochi because it was “Girl’s Day.“ The Bear loves the Mochi Ice Cream they sell at “Beard Papa’s” I don’t care for them.

Most assuredly, my children have not, in my opinion, had their “lives ruined” or their “futures mortgaged” by living here, as some had speculated. Rather, I think they will remember their time here, which when you’re considering five year old twins and a three year old, is saying something. How much do you remember about your life before you were five and under?

In the end, our time here has been good for my family. For my home. That family and that home are moving back East now, and my hope is that we can bring all that we’ve learned and all that we are to wherever we land. I pray that we will not get swept up into the pace that others set, and the problems that others wish to hand us. My hope is that we can not only continue to have fun together, and learn together, and play together, but also to simply be together as a family. There has always been love in our house, and in the end, even if we disagree about something, there has been over these past years on Oahu a generous measure of magic, fun, and creativity, and my kids have an amazing curiosity, creativity, and intellectualism that impresses me.

I think that in the quiet of our life here, we’ve all managed to make something happen. The wife did an amazing job, and got a huge promotion. The kids have done well in school, swimming lessons, and have a ridiculous command of the science of Dinosaurs and Space. The Bear knows the difference between a Triceratops and a Styracosaurus, on sight. To her, that’s an easy one.

Personally, I feel that I’ve become at the least a respectable stay-at-home parent. I’ve made real progress on the novel, which makes me happy. My wife and kids have thrived and are well fed by my hand. I take pride in that.

My next job is to get our family moved to our next place, which should be the last move. Get this house sold, get another bought, and leave this beautiful island with the kind of aloha inertia that will carry us through, perhaps for the rest of our lives.

But, it is really not about the house. It’s about what resides within. It is about the way the boyo places his animals on his bed, and the way he wants the pictures he draws displayed about the house. It is about the way the girl creates stories in her drawings and builds houses for her animals out of books. She gleefully plays in our home. She’s asked for a pink room and a big backyard in the next house.

But the Bear, she who has lived here most of her life, demonstrates way more personality than her brother and sister did at her age, to tell the truth. She eats Ahi and Musibi and Kimchee Mussels like, as the tellers at Foodland call her now, “a local girl” And she is. The Bear is game for anything, and fearless. She’s been the epitome of the Aloha spirit, both in her approach to life in general, and her willingness to bestow her opinion on something she’s less than enthused about. She is a strong one, and while there are times that her strength of will is difficult to manage, I cannot fail to respect it in her.

In the end, our time here on Oahu was exactly what my family needed. We grew closer and have had the chance to be wrapped up in the arms of one another, and have that be normal. We have lived in very close quarters and lived well. We have had our share of moments, and they have been of all varieties. But we have managed them all, the great and the difficult, the rough and the sweet. We have lived together, as a family, and we’ve found a way to make it work.

So, we’re putting the show on the road. My family is moving, and we are bringing our sense of aloha, and home, and love, and balance, and everything else we have strived to create here, along with us.

And so I am not afraid. I am traveling with the most important entourage that exists, and I’m going to once again create a home with them. It’s not their first rodeo, nor is it mine.

We will make it work. That’s what families do. We will find a house, and a town, and a school, and it will be fine. The only people that I need to make happy with that choice are stuck to one hand. The rest will either believe or they won’t.

My wife and my children and I will be fine. We will find a new place to live and flood it with the experience and aloha we have brought to the moment.

We will be fine, no matter where we are. Even after all of the drama, such as it was, we will be fine. Wherever we end up. that, to me will be home, over and over and over again.

So, for now, ALOHA! Stay tuned.

The State of Kug: more or less

2009-12-21T00:19:00.001-10:00

A regular reader of this space chastised me recently for not posting a new column in a while. I admit, it is a longer break than is customary for me, but things have been on the busy side with the kids in school, and the holidays, and family visiting, and working on the novel. (I am well into the second draft now…stay tuned)

But, it is a quiet Sunday evening, where the kids have gone to bed with aloha. And, the Eagles won, and although it was a little chilly earlier (dropped to about 72 degrees overnight) the weather has been ok overall. Perhaps I can take some time to write in this space.

Things have been good. The twins are thriving at school and have made amazing strides in the things that they can do.

The Boyo is still deeply fascinated by Dinosaurs, and his informational recall and critical thought and reasoning about them would be scary if I didn‘t already know that he was smart. He remembers stuff that I try to remember but cannot. He nods politely at me when he has to correct me, like the other day when he explained to me that Troodon meant “wounding tooth” and not “terrible claw” which is what Deinonychus means. His sister rolled her eyes at me when I got it wrong.

And yes, those were his words. Really. It’s happened more than once.

His Twin sister entered a photograph in the recent PTA Juried art show, with the theme “Beauty is…” that won an Honorable Mention, and may be headed to the regional exhibition. Her response was, essentially, “well, that’s nice. Whatever. It’s not my best work…” She was far more interested in playing with the Glitter glue that the wife bought than dwelling on an old work. She was far more gracious than I, who bragged about it all week…and just did now.

The Bear is doing well, and just received her first glasses, which look very cute when she wears them. She also served as the “Christmas Elf” for Santa’s “Representative” (because Santa was very busy getting ready for Christmas Eve) at the YMCA Playmorning program last week. Man, that beard itched, and the boots were way too small. She is really ready for preschool, and we are planning on her going in the fall.

It has been two years that we have lived here now. In all honesty, I had originally thought that we might be on our way off the island by now, and while that is always a possibility, it is really only in the last few weeks that I have honestly and truly accepted the fact that we really do live here, and that the life we have is a good one. We’ve done everything we set out to do with this move, and, in all honesty, probably more.

There have been some surprises along the way, both professional and personal, and some relationships that did not survive our move, which while disappointing, perhaps says more about their strength to begin with than anything else. I’m over it, mostly.

But, it is the holiday season, and I should touch on that. One of our more recent holiday favorites has been the film “Love Actually” which is really only tolerable because it was made by the British.

There’s a scene where the dude who is in love with Kiera Knightly, who happens to married to his best friend, and as such, somewhat unavailable, tells her how he feels, and though he says that he expects nothing says, “It’s Christmas, and at Christmas you tell the truth…”

So, I’ve decided to try that, and see how it works out. Here are some things, that, however benign, are true in our life here, and are in order as they occurred to me to write and are not a hierarchy:

1) While I miss Yuengling, pizza, and bagels, the Ahi, Edamame, and Musubi are not horrible by way of substitute. For now. I miss Scrapple too.

2) I have gained a far deeper respect for the men and women that serve in the Military. I interact very closely with a number of military spouses, and to see the sacrifice that they make on a daily basis is very humbling. I know very clearly how difficult it is taking care of my kids with my wife here and working, and to think of being home with all three of mine with a spouse on deployment is downright scary to me. Having to be on point as the only caregiver for 24/7 for every day, six months to two years at a clip, as some of my friends have had to be, is overwhelming to think of. It scares the daylights out of me. I’m in therapy already.

But, they do it. They manage, and sometimes their families help out, but in the end, Military families face a great number of challenges that perhaps some people don’t consider. I know I for one understand and respect that sacrifice all the more now that I’ve lived here on Oahu where a large portion of the population is Military, and as I have had a member of my family spend several months on deployment in the Middle East recently as well. Plus, I’ve taken the kids to Pearl Harbor on December 7th the last two years, and had them meet and thank the Veterans from those attacks, which are very much a part of the culture here. In the end, deployment is tough on the soldiers, and tough on the families, and they do it anyway. Whatever your politics are, respect is due to them all. That’s far more political than I usually get in this space, but deal with it.

3) We’ve put up all the artwork. Up until about a month ago, there were still a few paintings that we’d not yet hung on the wall. But, it’s become clear of late that this is our home, and all of the artwork, from Daddy Pop’s painting of “Anchor Street” to my signed Andrew Wyeth print, it’s all on the walls now. We live here. And you know what? It doesn’t suck. I still don’t know that I want to live here forever, but damned if this place isn’t home because we chose to make it so. My kids are happy here, and we’ve made a life here. While the Northeast was under a blizzard, I was at the park. laying on my back with my kids discussing whether the wispy cloud above looked like a Pteranadon or a Pegasus-pony. So it goes…

4) I barely remember working for a living. I can’t be more honest than that. I last used my Masters Degree in Educational Administration and Supervision from SHU over two years ago, and truth be told, I don’t think there is much I miss. That’s not to say that I don’t have some very fond memories of my time at PGHS, SKS, or the other places I worked that I won’t bother to mention, but in the end, I can’t think of that many days at work that compare favorably with the stuff I get to do on a daily basis while being home with my kids. Add to that the chance to make a home for my family, cook the bejesus out of pretty much anything I want to, plus the chance to write a novel, and man, why would I ever go back?

Don’t get me wrong-there are a lot of good memories from my career. There were moments of value, that I believe mattered, I really do. But they are moments of the past. There were periods of closeness in a number of schools where I served, where we were on the cusp of genuine educational and community awesomeness. But they never really happened in the end, and I left both disillusioned and a little more empty. I think I’m too old to go searching for that again.

While I can, I’d rather write, and teach and raise my kids. But I remember my best classes as a teacher-that last year at SKS was good. My final year as a teacher at PJHS was the greatest experience I ever had as a teacher. I don’t know that I could ever come close. I miss the kids I taught that year…they were my ultimate swan song and I will always hold them very dear to my heart for the amazing year they gave me. Should I ever land back in North Jersey, I would go back and teach at PJ in a heartbeat, if they would have me. That might be the only exit I ever made that had any grace…

Not long after moving to administration, despite initial enthusiasm, I became disillusioned with the process. I got into administration at SKS, a private school, and I did so because I thought I could do a better job than the people above me. In fact, when I interviewed for my first administrative position at SKS, I said, “I can do this job better, and I want to be here, so hire me.” I got the job. But, over time it became clear that the upper administration and I believed in different things. And I moved on.

I spent two years in North Jersey going to graduate school at SHU and teaching and coaching and bartending at the Pub, and being married to the wife and dancing to Belafonte with the our dog, Gracie.

Then I moved on to being an Assistant Principal. I think I’ve covered my time in that position pretty well in this space, but feel free to write me if you want more detail. Be rest assured though, gentle reader, I would likely be dead today, or at least infirm from a heart attack had I kept up the pace that my last job at PGHS demanded of me.

I don’t blame PGHS for that. That was the job, and I took it. There are apparently three people that now do the job that I used to do. I wish them well.

I didn’t leave because I was unhappy. I left because I could, and I wanted to do other things, and so I did.

I had some great moments in each of the schools where I served. Moments that I will never forget, and cherish very dearly. I would like to think that I did some good.

But, at least now, I don’t miss it and don’t want to go back. If I don’t have to, I won’t. Obviously, if my family needed me to, I would, as Pete Rose once said, “walk through hell in a gasoline suit” to provide for my family. And I would. But, that’s not what they need of me now. And, I think I’m getting pretty good at my current job.

5) I would never be able to live the life that I do if my wife were not simply the most amazing woman on Earth.

This one is easy. I’ve been with her since 1992. We’ve been married since 1999. There are a number of people in my life currently that look at these facts with amazement. I think they are amazed mostly that someone would choose to tolerate me that long.

In my experience, there is no real explanation for love and devotion, and so looking at the life we have, where the only forever I’ve ever needed has been perfunctory, I am continually not surprised by where we end up. It always seems very much like where we are supposed to be. She’s exceptional at her job, and provides for us. I can deal with that, but that is now. I know quite clearly that I was not of that mindset two years ago when we moved here. But I am now.

I am not where I thought I would be. Just yesterday, a pair of local kids were running far beyond the boundaries that their mother had given them in the open park we took the kids to. She was calling to them, but they couldn’t hear her. I was in between them, and after several attempts, I found myself calling out loud enough where I knew they could hear me: “Oi! Your Mama, she call you yah?” and waved my arm at him to come in. Which they did, and ran back to her, saying “thanks Uncle” on the way back.

My life is nowhere near what I thought it would be at this point, but, it’s a damned good life. My kids are so awesome that I’m forced to take a deep breath at times to handle it more often than not, especially when they aren’t throwing things at one another.

I’m deep into the creation of a novel that I would never have had the chance to do in the old days. But I can now. And it’s going to be good. It won’t be an easy one for some people to deal with, but it will happen, and some folks will simply have to accept it as a work of fiction, which it what it shall be.

But I remember the way that things used to be. I remember the nights I didn’t get to put my kids to bed when I was working 14 hours at school, and I remember the days I didn’t get to see them at all. That was not alright with me. Every missed bedtime was a loss to me.

For my whole life, it seems, I remember every moment, every stupid detail of everything, about everything. It’s who I am.

No one ever gave me a road map, which is just fine. I feel very much alright with where I have ended up.

Aloha.

A Really Good Day

2009-11-13T23:42:00.001-10:00

I’ve had a lot of good days. For years, I’ve called them, perhaps in deference to my love of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” my “Top 10 Days.” There isn’t a formal list, and I’m not really even sure how many of them there are, but I know that I could probably make a list, and I know what would be on it were I to do so.

On Veteran’s Day, we all went to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu to visit the new “Dinosaurs Unleashed!” exhibit, as part of the Boyo’s birthday celebration. Although the twin’s birthday is not for another week, we’ve been trying to give the kids each a day to themselves. The Girl had hers over a week ago, and the Bear had her day last Friday, but this was the Boyo’s big day. We scheduled it on Veteran’s Day as the Wife would be off of work and we’d have the chance to go an include some of our friends. And so it was with great enthusiasm that we all descended on the Museum and their gigantic animatronic Dinosaurs, and their very nicely put together exhibits,

We chose this as the Boyo’s activity because of his natural, passionate and vital interest in Dinosaurs. He is an incredibly curious kid, and has shown a voracious appetite for learning about animals over the years, and Dinosaurs over the last six months or so. It is certainly an obsession that I not only remember from my own youth, but encourage in him, as Dinosaurs are just freaking cool. I got him the BBC “Walking with Dinosaurs” documentary last week from the library, and he enjoyed that as much if not more than the usual “kid stuff” I usually get for them. Sitting on the couch with him leaning against me and watching the Ornithocheirus and the family of baby Diplodocus’s fight for survival was good stuff. When his sisters got scared, they covered their eyes, but the Boyo stood strong, watching it all with the wonder of a child and the slightly narrowed eyes of a scientist gathering evidence. I’m enjoying this phase, as I’m still that same kid sitting on the edge of the couch, at least as it relates to Dinosaurs.

Walking around with him and his sisters and our friends, I really got a sense of the genuine joy that he garners from learning. We went through the exhibit, which was incredible, with life-size Dinosaurs, including a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Triceratops and child, a Parasaurolophous, and a variety of other creatures, some of which we could control robotically, and others that we could touch, and a variety of actual fossils that we could study.

He was excited as we went through, eyes wide the whole time. As we walked in, he rushed towards the first fossilized display. A very nice Local woman who works at the Museum, “Grandma Rose” her badge read, said to me, seeing the look in the Boyo’s eyes, “You’re gonna have a great time, yeah…” And she was right.

The exhibit was perhaps less vast in size than visitors to the Natural History Museum in NYC (where another of my best days took place) might expect, but each corner provided absolute fascination and wonder for my son. He was very much in his element, walking among these Dinosaurs, none of whom seemed to phase him, even those who were robotically designed to roar when we were least expecting it… He seemed to look at their roars with almost Scientific curiosity.

He basically led a clinic while we walked about. As I asked him questions about what we were seeing, he not only knew the answers, but also expanded on them, where appropriate, including:

“This one is a herbivore, Daddy. It has small teeth that grind up plants. The carnivore teeth are longer for ripping meat.”

Or, when answering my question about what Stegosaurus’ plates were for, he tapped his finger on the side of his head in thought, and replied, “For cooling off, showing off, and to scare off other dinosaurs.”

When I asked him why the Parasaurolophus species moved around in large herds, he replied, “For protection. And to be a family.”

He’s just four, at least until next week.

We enjoyed the entire museum and ended up purchasing a membership before we left. They have a volcano, and a Hawaiian and Polynesian hall that includes a life-size Blue whale model, cross-sectioned to show what it’s insides look like, and an entire hall dedicated to the Royal Hawaiian Kahili feather standards. I recommend checking out their site: http://www.bishopmuseum.org/ to learn more.

In the end, I had a lot of fun with him and with his sisters and our friends. After seeing the Volcano and the Dinosaurs and walking around and dropping a not unexpectedly large amount of money in the gift shop, we sat down for lunch in the courtyard. After about ten minutes of some eating and far more playing with the new dinosaur things, the Boyo came over and sat on my lap. I asked him if he was having fun, and he nodded, his mouth full of pizza. I asked him if he liked the Dinosaurs, and he nodded again.

And then, his chewing completed, he said something I loved.

“Daddy, I want to go see the Dinosaurs again with just you.”

And so we did, just the boys, and it was even better the second time.

There are a lot of times he knows just what to say. He’s an amazing kid, as all of my kids are, but they are very much all amazing in their own ways. He’s so inquisitive and has a mind that seems to recall everything. He’s funny and can at times be incredibly sweet to his sisters, when they are not bothering him. He shares with others without reservation, most of the time. And he’s more often than not the one who shares a moment with me when his sisters are throwing tantrums. He’ll just meet my eyes as he calmly reads a book or plays with ‘Blue doggie’ or builds his track-cities, or studies his Dinosaurs, and his look will say very clearly, “It’s ok Dad…I know.”

He’s the one who, should I raise my voice, will ask me, “Daddy, why are you yelling?” And he’s usually right, and I have to check myself. He’s the one who, when he’s tired, says, “Can I go to bed now?” He’s the one who, lately more than ever, will go out of his way to share something with his little sister without it being suggested for him to do so. He has such a sweet disposition and is really growing since he started school.

Our day at the Museum was a great one. All three of the kids had a good time, and since it was the Boyo’s special day, the girls thanked him for including them, which was very sweet of them. It was one of those days that you look at and you just know that it has potential to be one of those things that the kids remember later on. They are after all still very young, but I know that I will remember it and I’m pretty sure the Boyo will too.

Kid’s mind is like a sponge. And it was after all, a really, really good day.

Nineteen years after.

2009-10-11T11:47:00.002-10:00

I was seventeen years old on the day my father died, nineteen years ago this week. I was a young man, very young. As it happened, I talked, prayed, screamed, argued, fought, cried, dismissed, and accepted a great many things about myself during the time that my Father was dying, and in the time after.

It was a tremendously significant time in my life. Anyone who knew me then or knew me well after could likely tell you a story about that time. I won’t speculate as to what anyone else would say about how I handled things, as I really don’t care anymore. The death of my Father colored every relationship and major choice I made for at least ten years after he died.

My Father and I had a relationship that was very much in development: I know with unerring certainty that my Father and I were just starting to understand one another as he got sick, and I won’t deny the fact that there are a lot of days that I feel cheated out of the relationship with him that I would have had, had he lived.

Dad was diagnosed with Cancer around Memorial Day, 1990. He died October 9, 1990. The months therein were among the most difficult times in my life. Beyond the issues with Dad’s health, I was a teenager. I had a serious girlfriend who was my best friend, and then I did not. I had friends that genuinely tried hard to be there for me, but I was too damaged to let them, and alienated myself from many of them. I made some new friends that were amazing, and they tried too, but in the end, I was lost. I was a mess, and truth be told, I would remain a mess in one way or another for a long time.

The journal that Burnett made me keep as part of my Junior and Senior years in the American Studies program at HHS has, over the years, proved invaluable in my life, so much so that back in the old days when I was teaching English, I made my kids do the same thing. I always told them what Alice told us when we asked why we had to keep a journal: “because it’s a grade, and you’ll thank me later.”

And I do. I have several notebooks of my reflections to look back on what was an interesting period of years, to be sure. Thanks, Alice.

So in remembering my Dad this week, I am revisiting these journals formally for the first time in a long time. I am not quoting the entries in their entirety, and will omit and truncate names as needed. I was sixteen when these entries start.

June 5, 1990:
“Tonight was the PIPA Dinner (the Drama club end of year function). I sang “Imagine” by John Lennon and “Your Song” by Elton John…Dad came home yesterday-it’s definite, he has Cancer. I shudder just writing the word-WHY HIM? I know a search for the answer will prove fruitless but I can’t help but wonder. It’s scary-the doctor says he has a lot going for him-perfect health, us, the best doctor (him) in the world. He’s got good chances but it’s a new field…but he has a low number of platelets or something. There’s just no answers. I don’t like it.”

June 14, 1990:
“I know I’m not going to be a coward. I love my family and I’m going to be here, make life easier. That’s why I’m here!”

September 6, 1990:
“It feels like I haven’t been gone at all-what a summer--Firstly, I spent hell of a lot of time in Princeton Hospital. My Father is very ill. Last night he went into Intensive Care with Pneumonia. What a way to start school…I’m scared.”

“Band camp starts tomorrow, and I’m not sure what to do. I called “Pelf” and asked her advice about whether to go or not and I’ve decided to go to Beemerville with the band-I really hope nothing happens at home-Dad is very sick.”

September 7, 1990:
“Today was the first day of Band Camp-it was a lot of fun-it’s really beautiful up here. I feel very at ease and very relaxed…I’ve called home a few times just to make sure all is ok-it seems pretty good-I’m beginning to think I’ve made a good choice by coming-it’s good to get away-I’m having a wonderful time. “Sweetchuck” and A.O are my roommates, and we busted into the best room here--we woke everyone up with “Tequila” this morning. Dad improved a little-at least nothing bad happened.”

The band returned form Beemerville on Sunday the 9th of September. I went back to school on Monday, and my Dad was still in the ICU. No one was sure if he would ever come out of it. While I did not write this down back then, I remember the following moment with a clarity that speaks to me of the sheer joy and significance of the moment. I’ve never written about this before, but it happened I believe on September 11, 1990. It was a Tuesday. I had Honors Physics with Grover every other day for periods 7/8 down by Shally house. I was a genuinely/sarcastically enthusiastic student of Physics, but had weaseled my way out of class that day to stop by office of the Shally House, which was around the corner from Grover’s room. The Shally House secretary, who’s name I deeply regret not remembering, once again allowed me use the phone to call the hospital to check on my dad, who was in ICU at the time and unresponsive. I called the all-too-familiar number and reached my mom, who told me that my Dad was back, and awake. As though he had simply had a long nap and woken up, he seemed to have sat up and asked about what was going on…it was a huge relief to all of us, and I remember heading back to class and running into KS, and not only hugging her out of nowhere, but twirling her around in the air.

It was the first time I had felt hopeful in along time, and the weeks that followed were significant. I can’t recall a moment after that, for a long time, where I was so enthusiastically hopeful, or perhaps hopeful at all. One of the best hugs I ever got.

After this point, my journal went into after-the-fact retelling-mode, as I hadn’t written in the journal until three weeks after my Dad had died. Much as I do now, I kept notes in my calendar about the things that were going on in my life, and wrote the following narrative with that in hand. This is what I wrote in late October 1990, as it pertained to the last few weeks of my Father‘s life and the first few weeks of my life without him. I have edited for content, clearly, as my thoughts on the HHS football team, and other such trivia are not quite as relevant to this topic, nor are my thoughts on my romantic relationships at the time. In addition, I am omitting from this column a variety of stories including that of an epic canoe ride, a drive to pick up storm windows, my debut as a solo artist at the short-lived “HHS Club,” the delivery of a Renoir poster, seeing “Flatliners” at the Mercer Mall, “The Foreigner,” Hancock Field, and my first rehearsals as part of the 1990 NJ All State Chorus. I was verbose, even then, but I am trying to focus there. It was fun to re-read all of that stuff though.

September 16:
"Was a special day-we sprang Dad from the hospital for a few hours. We took him to the church picnic and had a wonderful time. Just for him to be out among friends was wonderful. He is so charismatic with people-everyone loves him-as do I”

September 18, 1990:
"Dad got to come home-it was so wonderful to have him back home. He slept in my parents bed for the first time in weeks and said he slept great! It’s really wonderful to have him here-I hope it lasts for a while.”

September 21, 1990:
“I had a little party-just some friends came over and we played music loud and ate and danced and talked and watched movies and stuff-it was nice to have people in my house-some of my best friends have never been here. Now they have”

The gap in time here covers a lot of the stories I mentioned above. I remember that time at home being very busy for me personally, with a pretty heavy course load, a role in the Fall play (until they fired me), rehearsals for All State Chorus, the band, Church, and the other social rigors of being a 17 year old boy with an ‘85 Sentra to cruise in. A romance had ended in my life, and another was beginning. I was pretty much every other thing I would have been at 17, except my Father was dying. Life at home, as I recall, was very pleasant. It was decided that it was important that I try to maintain as normal a life as possible and I did. Although, to be frank, I probably was not as honest with the people in my life about how bad things were with Dad’s health. I remember some of my friends being legitimately shocked that my Dad was as sick as he turned out to be.

October 6, 1990:
“The band had our first competition-what a night it turned out to be. As I marched on the field, I felt very confident. Dad at this point is very sick and I’m scared-Later, as I marched off the field, I realized that I had just played and performed well, and that my daddy wasn’t there to see it, and he may never be. He may never see his children get married or his son perform an original composition. I cried. I cried as I’ve never cried before, with TS and RA I wanted my Father back as he always had been. I guess I kinda knew.”

October 7, 1990:
“Was the last time I saw my Father. I went to the hospital alone and spent a few hours with him. I told him how I admired him for all he is and how I loved him. How much that is a part of me came from him. He was out of it and pretty unresponsive, but he held my hand and I held his. He didn’t really respond, but somehow, he must have heard me. He squeezed me hand and he knew I was there. Somehow, I know he heard me.”

Monday, October 8, 1990:
“Somehow, I had this desire to call the hospital and see how he was. I called from the Band Room phone during fifth period. My Mom was with him and she put the phone up to his ear I told him I loved him and he said ‘I Love you.” With an oxygen mask on and feeling so weak, slowly losing it, he managed to tell me he loved me! That is the last time I talked to my Father.”

October 9, 1990:
“My Father Died. I was awakened at 6:30 am by a phone call from the nurse who spent the night with him and said ‘He’s having a little more trouble breathing this morning, tell your mother.’ Mom had asked to be notified in the event of any change. By this point, Dad had developed the Pneumonia again that had put him in Intensive care and mom had decided not to treat him with Intensive Care. He made it back once and it was a miracle-a wonderful miracle. Mom didn’t want him to suffer in ICU forever. Mom left for the hospital. By the time she arrived, Dad had died. At the age of 50. She called me and said ‘It’s not looking good, don’t go to school.’ She didn’t tell me he had died until she came home. I knew though. After I got off the phone with her, I walked to my backdoor. It was such a beautiful morning and there was this breeze-a warm, loving and tender breeze. I went outside and walked around my backyard. It was very beautiful, the sky was a pale dark blue, free of clouds and the Sun made all the world so colorful. The dew had not yet dried and the birds were singing in my backyard that morning. That breeze lasted for 5 days. On the 5th day, I knew my Father was in heaven.

Jean, the Rector of our Church came home with my Mom. I had by now circled round to my side yard and saw them pull up. I knew. She told me. I held her in my arms. We planned the services that morning.

The first place I wanted to go was school. I did so-to get my books and to tell a few of my friends was had happened. I had Pelf and RA paged to the office and when they came, I took them outside and told them. We must have spent an hour outside talking. Pelf let the band know and helped organize people to come to the service. She is one of the best friends I’ve ever had…"

October 11-12, 1990:
“On the 11th, we held a prayer vigil at my church for Dad. It was great…the service was on the 12th. I went into school for 3 periods (just for Pre-Calculus and American Studies) and it was nice. I can’t wait to go back Monday. I feel so at ease at school. All my friends are there. My Grandma and my Uncles came Wednesday night. Some friends came over too. BP, JG, RA, TS, CR, and Pelf. I had told them before he died that when what happened happens, I would not want to be avoided or treated with kid gloves. They know me well. They are here.

The Funeral was Beautiful. We had a nice sized pickup choir, incense, banners, bombastic music. It was not dull at all. It was a beautiful service-so many people. I made a speech there. It was very well accepted by the people. (Note: The eulogy I wrote, in Annie’s purple pen, is taped into the journal here. I later used my words that day as the basis for my College essay )
My sister’s friends from Ohio drove here for the service, 12 hours in the car, stayed for a few hours and went back that night for GRE’s the next day. It’s great to know she has such great friends.

Almost everybody came to the services-there were some surprises also. RL organized a whole bunch of SPS people to come, many of whom I haven’t seen since graduation. I was just overwhelmed at the amount of support…I don’t know where I’d be without this band, I’ve been involved with it for years but this it the first year I’ve officially taken it as a class…"

Late October, 1990:
"…I miss my Father. I’ve realized it’s pointless to ask why this had to happen to us. We really had and exceptional family situation. I used to come home from school and go to the kitchen and Dad would be at the table…the radio on and Mom would be cooking and I’d tell them what I’d done, etc, all day. Now I come home from school and he’s not there. On Monday night, the football game’s not on. Every time I would go down to the playroom, all my life, he’d be there reading or watching TV and I’d watch with him for a bit in between homework…I miss him. I want him to be here for my All State concert and to see me march in competition and sing and play with the Jazz Ensemble and play with the concert band. I want him to hear the music I write and meet his grandchildren and travel the world with Mom when they retire. I want him here. Somehow, I think he can see me…This is not how it was supposed to be but they say life gives no guarantees…

From where I stand, the sun is still shining. I look to the sky, but I ask no questions. I know it will not answer the questions I have…There is a breeze that reminds me that I am loved.”

The journal continues beyond this point, but I had lost steam with journaling after that and was working more with expressing myself through awful poetry and later, into songs, starting with such non-hits as “The Road Not Far Behind” and “The Beach Song.” For the bulk of the next decade, that became my medium of expression. I wrote a lot of songs, and I remember reading the lyrics to one of my more mediocre lyrical efforts at Dad’s gravesite in Ohio, nearly two years after he had died.

In the end, I think that while I miss him-his humor, his nature and his presence, what I miss the most is what might have been, and the relationship that I might have had with him. I was a dumb 16 year old kid when he got sick. I was never the same, and my own inability and refusal to deal with the challenges of my life and those of others around me at that time clouded every relationship I had for nearly a decade following his death. I was a mess for years, and I didn’t know it, and it was my wife that pulled me back from the edge, though that is another story.

But, when all this went down, I was a kid. I often wonder about the relationship Dad and I would have today had he either lived through his cancer, or had he not had cancer at all. Both are fantasies, and I don’t indulge them often anymore, but I do wonder at times.

We all have a history. That was a significant time in my life. While it’s fun to look back, I do find myself looking back with less frequency. The past doesn’t change much, and there is an awful lot happening in the now and in the future that matter an awful lot.

So, 19 years have passed since Dad died. I was 17 when it happened. I know very few things about anything, but I do know this: My Dad would have loved my wife. He’d have gone nuts for my kids. He was a good man.

That’s what I think. I don’t know what he would think of me as a man or as a Father. Nor can I speculate on what he would think of the choices that I made by leaving my career and walking away from education, which was his love. I don’t know, and in the end, I don’t know that it matters. He was my Father, and I loved him. His death and the manner in which I handled it, affected me deeply for many years, but I got better. I do wonder sometimes what he would think of my life now, but I wonder it less than I used to. I’m happy with it.

October 9 has always been a date of note on my calendar, but I have noticed that as the years go by, it means different things. I’m glad that I revisited my journals of the time, and am grateful to Burnett for making me write them. I found it interesting to revisit the kid I was then, as I am someone very different today.

Day is Done: God Speed, Mary.

2009-09-16T23:43:00.002-10:00

I grew up in a house full of music, most of it coming from my Dad’s old Sears Silvertone Turntable, which I’ve written about previously in this space. My childhood was filled with music ranging from Prokofiev to Mahler, Sam Cooke to Elvis, and from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to Yes. We had the Original Broadway cast recordings of West Side Story and Music Man on heavy rotation as well, and I remember then all well and can’t hear them today without remembering my childhood.

Peter, Paul and Mary always meant something different to me, and I was sad to read that Mary Travers died today, at the age of 72 after a long bout with leukemia. In a year fraught with celebrity deaths, hers loss and her impact on music and culture will likely be far less heralded than that of Michael Jackson, or Les Paul, or John Hughes. But she, and her group, mattered a great deal to her generation, her fans, and to me.

Peter, Paul and Mary were among the first groups to popularize the work of Bob Dylan, and were steadfast in their support of peace, justice, and civil rights, and performed Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke famously about a variety of topics, and said a great many things, including, “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.”

For some reason, on revisiting the 1963 speech, that line struck me.

But I remember listening to their music as a kid, and as I grew older, I remember watching a PBS concert with my parents, as we didn’t have cable, and it was on, and my homework was done for a change, and I liked music, so I watched it.

(here is a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DPyqg59TA )

Now, like most young guys who are into music, I had a beat up acoustic guitar I’d bought from some guy for $5 in my closet, and didn’t let the fact that I didn’t have a clue as to how to play it stop me from trying to impress girls. And I certainly didn’t let lessons or actual study get in my way of playing that old guitar. But I remember watching this Peter, Paul and Mary concert on PBS and staring at the hands of both Peter and Paul, and noticing that they seemed to play very fluidly and very calmly and very much similar chords on a lot of their songs. So, I figured, if I learned to play a few of their songs, I’d be on my way to not only actually sounding like something other than a tortured feline while playing, but maybe learning enough chords to do something interesting.

So, on days when I got home from school early enough, before my Dad was home to catch me, I’d pop on the old VHS, as we had of course recorded the concert, so we could fast-forward through the copious pledge breaks, and sounded out the chords. The G, the D, the C chords came easy. That seemed to cover a lot of the vintage folk tunes. Once that sophomore dude with the long hair taught me A minor and E Minor, I was pretty much convinced I now had the tools with which to set the world on fire.

So, for the most part, Peter, Paul and Mary taught me to play guitar. And for better and for worse, that has become a very significant part of my life to date. Now, I don’t play as much as I used to, but there was a time I played a lot. I subjected audiences in Princeton, Wooster, Philly, and a few clubs in NYC, not far from The Bitter End, where Mary Travers once sang for the first time with Peter and Paul, to my brand of music to varying results. I like to say that I have “retired” from such performances…but that’s a bit of an overstatement.

Beyond that, I remember a very early date at my parents’ house with a high school girlfriend where I’d had to secure permission to have her have dinner with us with the understanding being that she really wanted to watch the PBS concert on video. We did watch it, with our portions of popcorn strategically placed in separate bowls by my parents, so as to keep our hands from touching…

I had a chance to see them live in Jersey with one of my best friends back in the early 90’s, and was blown away by their ability to move the crowd. I got to meet Peter after the show, as she and I both pretended to be part of a group of exchange students from Russia…but that is another story altogether…perhaps in the next novel…

They made music together for over 40 years, and along the way championed some interesting ideas like equality, peace, justice and overwhelming humanity. I admire that.

I played one of their records (yes, on vinyl) tonight for the kids, and they really grooved on it. The danced around, and the girls really liked Mary’s voice. The boyo liked the song about the horse (“Stewball”) and joined his sisters in bopping around to the songs. I talked to them about why the group was important and referenced the Dylan songs they did, as the kids know Dylan, so it was a reasonable teaching point. I actually found myself getting a little emotional during “Puff the Magic Dragon” while looking at my son, as he was at that moment lounging on the couch in his post-homework relaxation, listening to the words and thinking about him growing up. The moment was particularly poignant in the light of some of the challenges and adjustments that we’ve been managing of late.

In the end, the kids liked the record and want to hear it again. That works for me.

I don’t know what they’ll say about me after I’m gone, and I won’t speculate on how they will categorize me as a parent, but I’ll say this: I hope they always feel like there was music in their lives and that they value it. There were times in my life that the music was most assuredly vital to the life I have led. There were times that it was in fact the only thing I felt I had not only to give, but also to hold onto.

I recall Mary Travers saying of Peter and Paul, late in their career together something akin to “If I’d have found either one of them attractive, we wouldn’t be here…” That still makes me laugh.

In the end, I’m not sure I would ever have bothered to try to teach myself guitar without them, and for that I am grateful. I won’t speak for my audiences over the years, but I was immeasurably changed by the door to performance being opened by their graceful performance and by her soaring vocals.

So, God Speed Mary Travers. Your day is done… Seems only appropriate to share that song too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U9bKhXyNGg

Aloha, for now.

The Power of Redemption.

2009-08-15T09:01:00.003-10:00

I had not planned to write about this. Truth be told, I was surprised by the number of people in my life that seemed to want me to weigh in on this topic, and that more than anything has driven me to write this column. Rest assured readers that the twins did awesome at their first week of Kindergarten, and everyone has done well with the transition. I’ll get back to that story, but at the request of a surprising number of readers, here is what I have to say about Michael Vick.

Regular readers of this space know that I am a Philadelphia sports fan. I love my teams, and that never wavers. My teams are a part of my heart, and matter to me more than most people would find palpable.

The Philadelphia Eagles signed Michael Vick this week, and he will start training with the team today, Saturday August 15. His signing was shocking to me as an Eagles fan. They have typically shied away from pretty much anything that is controversial in the years that the Lurie family has owned the team.

But they have signed him. He has said many of the right things, and the team has said many of the right things. But the debate continues.

I have a friend that recently told me that she thinks it is “Disgraceful” that the Eagles signed him, and that Vick “should never be allowed to work again.” There are a lot of Eagles fans that are being critical of the move for reasons ranging from “It could create a quarterback controversy” to “what happens when he screws up?” I don’t know what will happen in regards to all that. I don’t know if Michael Vick will matter to the Eagles as a player, nor do I know if he will matter as a person. Time alone will tell.

But I do have something to say about this situation:

I believe in the power of redemption and I believe in second chances. I’m less committed on third chances, truth be told. Just wanted to put that out there.

I truly believe that the Eagles stepped way out of their comfort zone, something I have become intimately familiar with over the last two years, to make Michael Vick a part of their team for two reasons: one-they feel he can contribute to the team, but more so, two-they feel that he is not only ready for a chance at redemption, but ready to be an agent for positive change.

My wife has worked for years in the prison system, so I am most assuredly biased towards the power of redemption. Vick spent almost two years in Leavenworth, and I can tell you without hyperbole that he did hard time. Leavenworth is no joke at all. Trust that.

He is in a position to do what we always want our fallen icons to do. We always want them to rise from the ashes after they have fallen. Don’t get me wrong-I thought he was overrated as a player when he was with the Falcons, and got a great deal of pleasure out of watching him get beat up by the Eagles when they played, especially in the NFC Championship that led them to the Super Bowl in ‘04. But, if Elvis hadn’t died on the toilet, wouldn’t he have made a great spokesman for the evils of drugs? Or Layne Staley? Or Kurt Cobain? Wouldn’t they have had the chance at redemption?

And in the end, I could go on, and list other sports figures and other celebrities that have screwed up and gotten another chance. Ted Kennedy? Chappaquiddick? He’s now seen by many as the pillar of the Democratic Party.

Whatever. What Michael Vick did to the dogs he was responsible for, and what he did not do to protect them was criminal. The manner in which he conducted himself during much of the investigation was criminal also. And the caught him on it. And he went to prison. Leavenworth. A real prison.

Regular readers of this space will know that I had a dog, and loved her with all of my heart. I miss her every day, and what Vick was a part of is extremely distasteful to me. I’ve watched the interviews with him over the past 24 hours, and have observed the same seemingly contrite and remorseful young man that many of you have. I hope for his sake and that of my team that he is indeed that young man who is ready to become an agent of change. I really do.

I’m reminded of my favorite parable in the Bible, and I’ve taken some heat from some friends for referencing this as part of the Vick story: In the Gospel of John, there is the story of a woman who is accused of adultery and the religious leaders of the time bring her before Jesus in the temple to force him into a situation where he will be forced to either allow her to be stoned according to “the law” or defy the law of Moses. Jesus ignored them for a while, and then he tells that that “he who is without sin shall cast the first stone.” And they all leave. Jesus is then left alone with the woman, to whom he asks, “Is there no one here to condemn you?”

She replies, “No one, Sir.”

And Jesus answers, “Neither to I condemn you--Do not sin again.”

That passage has always been very much at the heart of how I feel as a spiritual person. It was that simple for Jesus to forgive the woman-who am I to make it more complicated? I am not a perfect person, and I am more than ready to give someone a second chance when they are truly asking for one. I don’t know Michael Vick, but I hope he is genuine in his request, as myself, and

I would imagine the mass of Eagle fans will toss him to the curb as fast as week-old Scrapple if he fracks this up. It’s up to him.

I think that the people who are saying he should never be allowed to hold a job again should take a look at their lives and decide for themselves where the anger generates from.

If forgiveness is within one’s power, who are we to deny it when truly and genuinely sought? Whether or not Vick turns out to have been worth the chance the Eagles have taken with him is for time to decide. But he deserves the chance at redemption, just like you and I would. That's what I think anyway.

What he does with this chance is up to him.

On the first day of Kindergarten...

2009-08-10T21:36:00.002-10:00

The alarm at 6am was as unpleasant as I expected it to be, yet not as horrible as I might have thought possible. Just one more thing to get used to,

The twins were awake and smiling within ten minutes, and wheels were up a few minutes after 7am, with all three kids and the wife in the van. We made it to school with plenty of time to spare, which allowed for a quick visit to the potty (our old nemesis) and a chance to view the cafeteria, which the Boyo was curious about.

Copious amounts of photographs later, the kids were on their way to their classrooms, which are right next to one another, and their teachers, both of whom were happy to see them.

There were no tears from the kids, and none from me. I’ll leave it there.

The wife and the little bear and I stopped by the PTA’s “Boo-hoo Breakfast” which they hold for the Kindergarten parents. It’s really just a chance to introduce the parents to the PTA and the volunteer coordinator, and the counselors and the vice Principal, etc, but it was very nice. The invitation read “Whether you’re shedding tears of sorrow or tears of joy, you’re welcome at the boo-hoo Breakfast.” Bear liked all the food, and let everyone know with a series of spectacular belches that would make her Godfathers proud.

Upon leaving campus, the wife and I did something I don’t believe we’ve ever done: we took the bear to a park together by herself. We had the run of the place, and she was in her glory-having both of us and a playground all to herself…it was fun.

I went back to school to help out with the Kindergarten lunch period, which was fun, and watching my twins walk to the cafeteria in a line, single file, with their classmates, and smiling, was quite enough to reinforce to me that we made the right decision in sending them to Kindergarten. Lunch for them was a delightful medley of chicken fingers, brown rice, a roll, canned peaches, and a small salad. Choice of chocolate or regular milk. Portions of it were eaten and enjoyed. The twins sat together.

They had a brief time on the playground after lunch, too brief by the boyo’s estimation, but he did get on line with his classmates to go back to class, and my time helping out was done for the day.

When I got home, the wife and bear were doing fine. So, I took a nap. It was spectacular.

When I picked the twins up from their classrooms, they had made a large paper schoolhouse. The girl had a photo of herself pasted inside, and a picture she had drawn of herself and her little sister. The boyo drew a picture of “the monkey bars” and had written his name. It was pretty impressive stuff.

They’d made some new friends. The girl said that she played with one kid during the day, and when I asked “What was her name?” she replied, “It was a boy, Daddy…and I don’t remember his name.” The boyo has a nice young man who sits next to him, and apparently they got along very well as well. I saw them both play nicely with one another and other kids on the playground.

Good reports from both teachers. They are excited to go back.

When we got home we settled into the inaugural edition of “Homework Time” with mixed results. The girl was excited about it and completed both Monday and Tuesday’s homework. Her brother did the first part of Monday fine but was less interested in part two, so it took a little work. The wife worked with him on it, after I took the girls upstairs, as they were distracting him, and he got it done.

Dinner, bath, books, bed by 6:30. It was a really good first day. And so it begins.

‘Twas the Night before Kindergarten…

2009-08-09T20:06:00.000-10:00

The kids are all in bed now and a 6am wake-up call is in the cards for all of us. Time it was the twins had to be at preschool by 8:30 am, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tomorrow starts a whole new routine as we all step into a slightly larger world.

I’ve very rarely had to wake any of the kids up in the morning. Typically, the twins get up and play in their rooms or with each other for a while, and then we all kind of meander down to breakfast. This summer in particular, we’ve been very flexible in the mornings, and it has been really nice. We had some structured activities this summer: a lot of time at the library, the summer movie series at the Cannery, the Zoo, the Discovery Center, the Water Park, the Pool, the Parks, Vacation Bible School, playgroups, etc. We had a lot of fun all summer, but once we decided to enroll the kids in Junior Kindergarten, the end of the “Summer break” loomed for me in a way that it never has before.

I wrote extensively about the decision to send the kids to Kindergarten and some of the emotions involved in the last column, so I won’t rehash it all here. I’ve come to some peace about it all, and realize that I can’t keep them to myself anymore. But the coming change is really the most dramatic one that we as a family have faced since we moved here to Oahu almost two years ago.

All three kids are excited. We got to visit the school and meet their teachers on Wednesday of last week. The teachers met individually with each child and tried to get a grasp of who they are and what they know, so as to help tailor their experiences in the coming year. They got to sit at their desks and both kids had a blast. Little Bear is excited for them, and of course wants to go too, but she and I will be embarking on a series of “Adventures” once the twins settle into their new routine. I’ve never really had the chance to walk around with just one kid before. Should be interesting as I’ve had pretty limited time one on one with her in the last 2 years. I really can’t imagine what that will be like, but I’m looking forward to it a great deal.

The twins are ready, much more so than the wife and I were at first. I know that they will face challenges along the way, but who among us didn’t in school? My own challenges in school were quite notable, especially from Kindergarten through Grade eight. I hope they do better than I did, to say the least.

Everyone keeps asking me what I’m going to do with all of my new “free time.” I just don’t see how I’m going to have any-I mean, the twins already have homework and the first day is tomorrow. I got the email tonight from the boyo’s teacher with his assignments for the week. As a retired teacher myself…I totally popped on that. Remind me of all the summer reading papers I used to make my kids do. Miss those days…

But I digress. I wanted to post this in anticipation of another column in the next day or so regarding their first day at school and how it all went. It’s been over a month since my last post, but we’ve been a little busy. We’ve gone a lot of places and done a lot of things, but more than that, we’ve just spent time together as a family. “Pinky Dog” has had at least 15 Birthday Parties. “Baby Ruff-Ruff” has had several sleepovers and picnics with pretty much everyone. The kids went on a huge Dr. Seuss kick. The boyo has built a series of transit systems with his tracks, cars, and trains that would be a grand improvement over the trafficy mess they have here on Oahu. They played together a lot and I think they will continue to do so once school starts. I was worried about that for a while, that they wouldn’t want to as much. While I’m certain there will be adjustments over the coming months and years, I think at least for now, all three of them just have too much fun together for that to change overnight.

So, the sun is down in Oahu and my kids are asleep. It’s a big day tomorrow and they are excited. I knew then wouldn’t stay little forever, and I’m really grateful for the last two years where I’ve been able to be with them as I have. Of course, I imagine I’ll still be seeing quite a bit of them even at school: as a newly minted member of the PTA, as well as a registered volunteer for the school, I’m pretty sure our paths will cross. I’m looking forward to being on the other side of the school-parent relationship after the years as a teacher and administrator.

I consider it a promotion.

I hope to post an update in the next few days. Thanks as always for your readership and for your comments both public and private.

And away we go…

Trepidation vs. Blubbering: Kindergarten Twins

2009-07-01T20:39:00.002-10:00

It’s been a long time since my last column. Things have been very busy here of late, and there has been some drama both within my immediate circle and without. I will leave it at that, but the weeks that have passed since my last post have been equal portions good and challenging.

During this passed June, the twins finished their preschool year, the wife visited the mainland with the bear, we’ve visited the Water Park, Waimea Falls, celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary with a night in Waikiki, enjoyed the library summer reading program, celebrated Father’s Day…it has been an eventful month, and truth be told, I started several different columns over the month, but either lost interest in the topic, or in one case, decided that upon reflection that the column was perhaps not appropriate for this space.

As I said, it’s been a month. Quite a month.

But moving forward, there are some major changes and transitions underway, the most pressing of which is, the twins are going to kindergarten.

Well, it’s really “Junior Kindergarten” but the concept is about the same. In Hawaii, if your child turns 5 before August 1, they must go to Kindergarten, however, if they turn 5 between August 2 and the end of the year, as mine do, you can enroll them in “Junior Kindergarten.” They follow the same basic curriculum, and at the end of the year, the parent works with the teacher to determine if the child should move on to 1st grade or remain in Kindergarten for another year.

So, after much deliberation, exhaustive research, and paperwork, we have obtained spaces for them at a very good elementary school in our town-not the one we were zoned for, but Hawaii has slightly different rules than NJ did, so, long story shorter-we chose a school we liked and were able to get them spots in Kindergarten.

So, August 3, that’s where I’ll be: dropping them off for their first day of school. Five days a week-full day. Big Change.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that although I am excited for this new challenge for the twins, and they too are excited, it was not without some level of trepidation, or, as my wife would (did, rather) say, “Blubbering” on my part as we got closer to the decision. I prefer my verbiage.

The kindergarten discussion was brought about by a variety of factors, and while I won’t go into them all here, suffice it to say that we weighed every factor involved in either sending them back to preschool, looking for a new preschool, moving forward to kindergarten, or keeping them home. We kicked them all around. As it happened, the kindergarten choice began to look like the best one, and as I thought about my twins moving into a five day school life, I, um…well, I had some feelings about it.

I started thinking about how awesome the twins are together when they are just goofing off together at home. The worlds they create in their play are so tremendous, and they honestly can go for hours just playing together, and with their sister. The imagination and the creativity they display I wrote about in the “Toy” column a few months back, but I started to think about the fact that right now, they have the time to simply goof off. They were only in school two times a week this year for three hours each session. While we did other things when they were out of school, this new schedule will be a major overhaul in the infrastructure that is the life we’ve built for ourselves here. There will be less time for, “Ok-whatever,” and I started to feel that loss very much over this past weekend.

I started to fear for the change in them as kids: who they would become and how their relationship with one another would change. When they aren’t beating the daylights out of one another, they are truly very cute together, and I know they miss one another when they are apart, which has not happened very often. When they are apart, they are always happy to see one another. When they argue or spat, they are quicker to forgive than anyone I’ve ever known.
There has been more than one incident that I wasn’t done policing as the parent, and they were ready to move on. Would that connection continue?

I think so, and I hope so, as they share something very special being twins. They always seem to fall right back into the same banter and rhythm that they always have had, no matter what happens. They watch out for each other. I hope that although they will inevitably make new friends, and will certainly grow and change over the years, that the wife and I continue to create a home for them that is full of love.

I worried that I would lose the amazing chance that I’ve had to bear witness to their innocence and magic. I guess I realized that it was time to share them with the world, and I didn’t want to. So, I had some trepidation. (Still like my description better than that of my wife.)

I’ve spent going on two years now as a full-time-stay-at-home dad. I’ve experienced life in a way that I really never expected to and to do so, I had to move way, way away from my comfort zone. In the process, I suppose I’ve built a new comfort zone, with me and the kids palling around doing our thing, or not doing a thing at all if the mood strikes us. As hard as being a stay-at-home-parent has been at times, when it hit me that that might all be about to change, and they would take yet another step away from me, I, well, alright, full disclosure: I kind of lost it.

I got fixated on who they are now and was worried if I’d done enough to get them ready, I worried about their relationship to each other and to the rest of us, I worried about how they would do, and I worried how I would do. What would I do? Have I been a good parent? Will they be good at school? How long until they don’t want me to tuck them in and read to them, or heaven forbid, sing Bon Jovi, Springsteen, and Sam Cooke songs to them?

So it has been kind of emotional, but I’ve gotten some good thoughts and advice from some friends, including, “Well, they need to learn how to be that amazing with other people too.” That was a good one. Others were encouraging, and I got a lot of, “Oh, they’ll be fine…” type of comments, which I found of varying degrees of comfort depending on the source. In the end, it was something the wife said:

“They can’t be little forever.”

And they can’t do that. Despite our best efforts, life only seems to go in one direction. And though it has in fact been extremely challenging over the past few years, in the end, I think that the twins have done exactly what we wanted them to do: they’ve grown into good kids with loads of personality, loads of imagination, and a ton of spirit.

So in the end, I’ve got to let them go. Granted, their new school is only 7 minutes away, but I won’t be there all the time. Life is once again telling me that my comfort zone has grown too comfortable I suppose.

The kids are excited. We did one of our Investigations, this time focusing on Kindergarten, and we found this short film, which we watched together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCNsAX1JNQo

It was cute to watch them get excited about different things: “Wow-we get to eat lunch AT SCHOOL?” and “Ooooo, BLOCKS!” and “Cool-naptime?”

They had to watch it twice. I think they are ready. I just know that I wasn’t, but I think I am now.

After some trepidation, anyway.　

Memorial Day: Remembering Pat Roy, United States Navy

2009-05-25T11:28:00.005-10:00

I’ve never written about this before. To be honest, I think about it almost every day, though it’s never something I’ve written about, and being Memorial Day, I think that it’s time.

October 12, 2000. The United States Navy Destroyer USS Cole was attacked by suicide bombers while in port at the Port of Aden, in Yemen. It was a Thursday.

When I first heard that the attack had happened on the news, I was of course sad to hear about it. But something bothered me, on the very edges of my mind that I had no explanation for until the wife and I got home from a night out.

I had left the boarding school, (SKS) and was now teaching at a day school (PJHS) and going to Graduate School at Seton Hall, so I had fallen out of the loop a bit, but I remember the last time I had talked to Pat. He visited SKS in his uniform and to me, didn’t look much different, except for the uniform. I already thought he was a pretty solid young man by that point. I had been the Dean of Students for his graduating class, and remember really taking pride in that.

There are days that I wish I had stayed on in that role. But I didn’t. I remember shaking his hand as he prepared to leave, and telling him to take care, and to keep in touch.

The wife and I came home on that Friday evening from dinner at the Dublin Pub in Morristown, NJ, and a movie that I don’t recall, to find a message on our machine from Billy. I remember it like it happened this evening…

I was just walking into the room scratching the ears of our dog, Gracie, as the wife hit the message button after having seen the blinking light.

“Kugs…I don’t know if you’ve heard, but, that ship that got hit out there, well, I don’t know how to say this, but Pat was on it. It looks like they can’t find him…call me.”

I remember leaning forward and just catching the edge of our bed, and managing to find a way to be seated. Gracie came up and laid her head on my lap, and I scratched her head. I remember saying “I just knew…” and then I cried a lot.

Pat Roy was the kind of student that makes me miss teaching. He was not a spectacular student, but a good one, truth be told. He worked very hard, and he gave me some of the best teaching moments I’ve ever had.

He was also the kind of athlete that makes me miss coaching. He was not an amazing athlete, truth be told, but he worked hard there too, and he loved lacrosse and did things on the field that to me were personally amazing. He was a coaches kind of player. I remember hearing the Head coach remark once: “Man, Kugs…give me a team full of kids like Pat. That would be a fun team.”

Pat became a student of the game, throwing himself into Lacrosse. I remember well the times that he simply willed our team on to victory or times when simply had a better idea than everyone else. There were also times that he simply threw himself in front of the ball as it was shot towards the goaltender. I remember he asked me early in one season to track that sort of thing for him, as I kept the game stats. I did, though I remember telling him he could easily track it himself with the bruises on his legs…but he grooved on making the play, so I tracked his blocked shots for him. I was glad to, since Pat had asked.

Pat made some mistakes early in his time with us, including an incident where my car was shaving-creamed and the air was let out of all the tires.

I was much younger and less mature then, and I was pissed off at what had been done to my car.

I was living in the dorm then, which lends itself to hard feelings and small worlds in which to express them.

I was wicked pissed off. No one else from the offending group stepped up, except Pat. He was sorry, and he made that clear. So, as a result, I was able to write the whole thing off as a goof.

Because of Pat. He looked me in the eye, and as no real damage had been done, we all moved on.

There were other times during his time at school where I saw him stand up in a manner that was way beyond his years…but they are not stories for this space. Those are stories that belong to those who lived them.

But there are some others I can share: I was trying to teach Hamlet to a group of seniors that had little interest and less motivation to study Shakespeare. Pat was in the class, as we were trying to read aloud the “Folger Library’s” excellent translation.

It was not going well. At all.

After a tremendously unsuccessful class, Pat happened to stay behind a moment, I believe because the young lady he was dating was in my next class, but as I was the assistant Lacrosse coach, and he was our Coaches Captain, he seemed quite comfortable telling me:

“Kugs…this reading aloud thing is not gonna work for everybody.”

He was right. I was trying to teach a play in a dead and overly artistic language to students who came from such disparate academic backgrounds, that everyone was so uncomfortable, that it was a waste of time to show up and read.

So I asked him, as I too knew it wasn’t working, “Well, you got any ideas?”

And he did. He always seemed to.

He thought that the class would be able to get it if they were able to follow along in their Folger editions as they watched it onscreen. I remember his saying: “If everyone can see what’s happening, I think they’d get it.”

And he was right. I never taught Shakespeare the same way again.

Pat forced me to think differently as a teacher, and I did for the rest of my career. Remembering the way his class changed after I took his advice makes me miss teaching, as it was among the most satisfying experiences I ever had as a teacher. That was a fun group.

I think my favorite memory of Pat might be the words he spoke at halftime of the Championship match of his senior year, which was held at the Harvey School. The team was not playing well, and was starting to get down on itself as it was losing somewhat dramatically for the first time all year.

It was a crisp and clear day, and I can still see Pat in my mind, leaning on his longstick, as the Coach asked him if he had anything to add. I remember it much like this, as he said “Guys, I’m going to be on a ship somewhere in a year, and I don’t think they’ll let me bring my stick, so this is like my last game ever, and I’d rather remember going out there with my friends and having fun playing lacrosse, and leaving it all out there on the field.”

And they did. I think we lost that game, but I know I remember the second half being genuinely satisfying. And I remember Pat smiling at least a little on the way home on the bus.

There was another time when a group of students had pulled some kind of prank on me, which again was not uncommon in those days. I reacted badly, which I’m embarrassed now to say was also not that uncommon in those days. I was younger then. Anyway, I decided who was at fault, and pretty much lashed out at the group. They lashed back, and it was an uncomfortable few days as these were young men in my classes, and in my dorm, and some on my team. It was Pat that sought me out, and told me, “Kugs-I’m not going to tell you who pulled that on you, but I will tell you that it wasn’t the guys you flipped out on.”

And I believed him, because it was Pat. I found those guys and apologized. They were less than enthusiastic about my efforts and actually got kind of snarfy about my even approaching them. It was Pat, again, who said, “Let it go guys-he stepped up and said he was wrong. Let it go.”

And we all kind of let it go. Because of Pat.

Yes, I may have been the adult here, but those lines get very blurred in a boarding school environment like SKS was. I was young and impulsive and so were most of the kids I dealt with. It made for some interesting times and interesting relationships.

When Pat was killed, I remember feeling that my life as a teacher had just grown less magical. I’d never lost a student before, much less one that I thought as highly of as Pat Roy. I remember showing up at PJ that next Monday, and I had missed a morning department meeting. My boss at the time found me just before classes started, and voiced her displeasure at my absence. I had only been there a few months, and didn’t really know anyone that well, but I remember standing in the hall just outside my classroom, thinking, there was no way I was going to get through the day, and told her so. I said, “I just lost one of the best I ever taught…”

They held a memorial service for Pat sometime in the next few weeks, and I went up and spent the weekend on campus. It was a very strange weekend, as I was definitely an outsider returning. The staff had changed, and the kids had changed too. The weekend went by in a bit of a blur, but I remember standing on the field where they planted a Tree for him. This was the field that Pat had roamed as a defenseman and even run balls for me when I coached the soccer team. It was a beautiful day, and a lot of the old crew returned to campus to honor him. Pat’s family was there and I recall being genuinely moved by their grace and humility.

I took a picture that day of the tree they planted, which looked out on the field and the Hudson Valley. I kept it in my classroom, and then my office, and when I left education, I brought it home, where it sits on my desk today.

Now and then, I would look at that picture, seeing that little yellow tree, and it would be just the right message at just the right time. Perhaps I was dealing with a really tough discipline problem, and seeing Pat’s tree would remind me to be fair and hear the whole story.

I remember other times when the students were driving me out of my mind, and looking at that tree would remind me that whatever my current crop of students were doing, it would pale in comparison to some of the stuff Pat and his pals pulled, and that would make me laugh every time.

And other times, I would see it, and it would make me sad for the loss of a beautiful young life, so full of promise and talent and humor, to such a senseless act of violence. No parent should have to bury their child. And I am sad to think of his family, his younger brother in particular, that lost far more than I did, having to move on without him. I still have an image of Pat coming into my office at the end of his Senior year with his little brother on his shoulders, saying, “Kugs-this is my little brother,” and flashing a proud smile. It was one of the happiest I’d ever seen him. And it makes my heart hurt.

And then, I think of Pat, and something he said to me as I, in one of my heavier stages, running laps with the team. I’m sure I looked somewhat winded, and I can still hear him laugh, and call out, “Suck it up, Kugs!”

And that makes me smile, and even now, nearly eight years later, I think of Pat Roy. So, on Memorial Day, I’m remembering Pat and all of those who have died in service to our country, and those they have left behind.

Love is Never Uncertain: The Magical World of Toys and Play.

2009-05-22T03:46:00.003-10:00

When I was a kid, I was convinced that everything had meaning and was not only worth saving, but it was imperative to do so. Every test, every card ever letter or note from a girl. Every wrapping paper from a special gift. Every magazine, every comic book, every comic strip that my Grandmother sent me. Every T-shirt, tie, shoe, picture, notebook, textbook, blanket, safety pin, nail, coin and every toy.

I could not let go of any of it, regardless of anyone else’s perceived triviality, and regardless of the fact that my room, then basement, then apartment, then house became stuffed with matter- that for some reason had to matter. I believed that discarding it, whatever it was, would be the end, the termination of whatever it was that had made that item unique or special. I felt responsible for its survival. While on the surface, that might sound like an endearing concept, in reality it became somewhat ridiculous.

I remember going out to the trash late one Christmas day, when I was like 9, to retrieve a sample of gold wrapping paper that had been used at every Christmas I could remember.

Someone had commented while we were opening gifts that, “Well, that’s the end of that roll…”
I remember feeling terrified that something could be lost forever if discarded. So, I took some of the goldenrod paper which for some reason celebrated the 49ers of San Francisco: folded it up tight, and slid it into my piggy bank, where, to be honest, I think they remain to this day. I may have to check on that. That would mark the only time something from San Francisco held any such sway in our house.

I’ve grown older since then, and I’d like to think that I’ve made some strides in handling such things as I’ve aged. I had to trim down my property after several moves, in particular the move to Oahu. It was not until we were planning to move here that I really was able to take stock of the sheer volume of matter I had accumulated since childhood, but also the ludicrousness of some of the things to which I had assigned value.

Please know that I am not disputing the fact that the things that we possess have true value. I am just illustrating that it took me years to embrace the difference between “Cherished-ness” of the blanket my Great Aunt made me as a baby and the pieces of wrapping paper I snuck out to get so it would not be “lost forever.” As a child, I never wanted to let go of things and truth be told, I have trouble with it as a “grown-up” at times.

As it happens, I have a soft spot for toys, especially these days. I am grateful that my mother saved some of the toys and things that I enjoyed as a child to share with my children. My son, and his little sister both love the bright yellow vintage Tonka dump truck. Their older sister loves sitting at her little table that was once both mine and my sisters and having tea parties, or reading her books, or just playing with her animals. Actually, as of late, the kids have taken to using that table and its chairs to climb into the upper reaches of their closets to generate messes of enormous proportion. But that is another tale. The Little Bear enjoys the kitchen set that was my sisters, and the dishes that came along with it. These things all get used and are played with well.

My soft spot for toys has been very much brought to the surface as I spend the majority of my days with my children and the worlds they create almost spontaneously in their imaginations.
I see on a daily basis the magical and absolutely pure pleasure they derive from their toys. The worlds they create out of genuine imagination and fun are both breathtaking and melancholy to me. Having two 4-four year olds and a 2-year old, all in the house at once together has essentially turned my home into a perpetual world of play, and everything is a toy. Everything.

This is not to say that they don’t have moments of conflict. If we make it to lunch without a “he pushed me” or “she pinched me” it would call for a press release. But they are quicker to forgive and move on then anyone I’ve ever known and they tend to do it better if I’m not involved.

My children are comfortable doing thing together while at other times they very much want to play by themselves. The Little Bear in particular has relished some of the days that the twins were at school and she could play in their rooms, with their stuff, with impunity. She likes to run from room to room with “Baby Ruff-Ruff” playing with her brothers trains and her sisters “Pinky Dog” and not have anyone bother her for doing so. Just this morning, after she and I got home from dropping the twins off at school, as soon as we walked into the house, she took off like a shot upstairs. I heard about 21 thuds as she bounded up the stairs and then sprinted the distance from the top of the stairs to her brothers’ room, where I then heard the door slam. I checked on her a bit later, and she looked at me with a huge smile, holding up a train, saying, “It’s Gordon, daddy!” And I also noted that “Baby Ruff-Ruff” was serving as the driver for Gordon’s friend Thomas the Tank Engine.

I should explain that, much like the characters in “The Velveteen Rabbit,” and “Toy Story,” there is of course, a hierarchy of the toys in the pantheon of our home life. There is a family of Doggies that live in my home. The Boys’ most treasured is his “Blue Doggie.” His Daddy is “Daddy Blue Doggie” who is a larger version of Blue. “Blue Doggie’s” sister is “Pinky Dog,” who is the Girls’ most treasured. Somehow, it was decided that Pinky’s mother was “Pink Dinosaur.” “Baby Ruff-Ruff” is a smaller version of Pinky and is the most treasured of the Little Bear, and as far as I can tell, plays the role of younger sister to the other Doggies.

The adventures that these Doggies have, with their supporting cast of characters: Buck the Tiger, Puppet Buck (the other Tiger), Mama Tubby and Baby Tubby (they are hippos), Panda Bear, Koala Bear, Cow-ey, Bear-ey, Giraffey, and of course, both “Pink Dinosaur” and “Red Dinosaur” are beyond belief at times. The intricate worlds that my kids create with their menagerie are genuinely beyond my ability to describe, but they make my heart ache with how amazing they are.

It makes me sad to think that there will ever come a time when they will want for more than to play with their toys. It makes me sad to think there might ever be a time when my son won’t want his Blue Doggie around, or his sisters won’t want theirs. I don’t know that that will ever occur but the thought of it makes me feel heavy in the heart.

I know that there is still a place for the treasures of my childhood in the life I lead now. I still have a great many things that have meaning. I may not have that bottle of Raspberry Soho from that date in April of 1989 anymore, but it was recycled. Look at me going green 18 years later. I still have some toys that mattered to me, some of which the kids are enjoying, and others that are for the moment “off display” in my personal collection. I still have a lot of Boardwalk-related memorabilia, most from Wildwood, but some from Seaside, and some from Atlantic City.

I suppose it comes back to what the “Velveteen Rabbit” has to teach us about the magic of toys, which is that only when they have basically been loved into submission do they become real, and only then are they as magical as a child’s imagination. It’s as though that moment levels the playing field, and maybe that’s a part of what it means to grow.

But I know that I for one, don’t plan to ever live in a world without those Doggies. They’ve earned a spot in the permanent collection.

But beyond that, I suppose I see the joy that they get from their treasured toys as a parallel to the joy that they give me. Being a stay-at-home parent is hard at times, and sometimes it is really, really hard, but in the end, when I can remember it, all I have to do to make them laugh is puff out my cheeks and make a fart noise. Or I lay on the floor and become a jungle gym. Or I give them a “Honu-ride” (Hawaiian for turtle). Or we read a book. Or, we’ll do one of our songs. The Girl is all about Sam Cooke, and her sister grooves on Bon Joni and Bruce. I am proud to say I once got her to sleep on a tough night by giving her the entire first side of “New Jersey.” Acoustically of course, but I know Jon would be cool with that. My son can name the entire E-Street Band, and knows that Sinatra was from Hoboken.

Alright-I’m done showing off.

Sometimes it feels like work to tuck them back into bed for the fourth or fifth time. I wish I could say that I cheerfully perform all these things regardless of the lateness of the hour. But I try to, as I am realizing that the days are not far away when I just might not be able to make it all right by reading the “Cars” book one more time, or by making up a story about the Bear and Ruff-Ruff’s adventures looking for Honus.

In the end, I’ve been trying very hard to embrace the fact that it is not things that we cling to but the value we assign to them. I continue to be amazed by the magic that my kids create on their own. I am proud of myself for keeping myself to a lesson that I learned hard-way soon after we moved here. Regular readers of this space might remember the column I wrote some time ago about how I had over-programmed the kids, and we all went a bit batty as a result. I learned then that the kids, and the wife and I for that matter, needed time to just play. No boundaries. No lessons. Just play.

As the late George Carlin once said during a delightful rant about the rearing of children, “Just leave ‘em alone…”

So I’ve tried to do that. We have activities and school and other things but I’ve been really trying at times to just let them go play. And they do.

They play with their toys, and their books, and their furniture, and my kitchen tools, the couch cushions, the laundry, in the sink and on more than one occasion things that I’d rather they not play with, but they play. Although there are times I’m tempted to pull them away from their play to teach them more advanced skills such as how to read or to say turtle in Spanish, I’ve really done well with refraining as there will be time for that.

As a recovering pack-rat, I am a memory/moment collector of uber-proportions. I still have things I won’t discard though I am learning that it is moments as opposed to things that is essential. You can’t believe some of the stuff I held onto before the move. Really, you can’t.

The moments take up less space in a shipping container anyway, and in the end, it’s the moments I remember. Even with that scrap of wrapping paper. It was the moment shared with my parents and sister that was important, and though the paper was a reminder of that, I don’t know that the moment needed it. I remembered anyway.

I know that the laughter that all three of my children shared as they wrestled with me this afternoon is something I will hold onto. Before I left education, I worked almost exclusively with teenagers, so I know something about what they may face as they grow older and how they may change.

My hope is that, like the moments, like the cherished treasures, and like the joy of just playing, my children are able to hold on to the love that is here in our home, as it is never uncertain. It is never, ever uncertain.

I know I need to spend as much time in their world now as I can.

As a stay-at-home-full-time-parent, I don’t get a bi-annual evaluation, and my kids don’t get the same from me. My success or failure as their primary caregiver will be years in the determining.

In the end, I know that I cannot wish happiness on my children nor can I wish success on them. While I want those things for them, and pray for such, I can only provide them with the tools with which to become Good people. And I hope that they will be.

So, as the days sprint by faster than I want them to, I grow more and more assured that my children will be good people, based on the way they play, and the way that they love and by the magic that they instill in nearly everything they touch; especially their toys.

They are magic.

It’s Time To Play Catch Up

2009-05-06T00:40:00.001-10:00

I was halfway through writing a hard copy of what I thought was going to be my next column in this space, dealing with, as recently promised, the “Life of toys,” in which I was going to talk about the amazing way my kids relate to their toys, and other things.

I’m certain it may be an interesting read should I revisit it.

But, the morning after I had started the column, Harry Kalas died.

As such, my most recent column dealt with Harry, and with my thoughts on his impact on me and the world that is Philadelphia sports. My column that day was somewhat impromptu and was an emotional one for me to write. I just re-read it, and even now several weeks later, I feel genuine emotion listening to Harry’s voice and connecting with my own thoughts at the time.

I very much appreciate that thunderclap of a response I have received both in this space, through Facebook, and through the magic of email. As it turns out, the column I wrote about Harry is the most read column in this space to date, edging out the “Stegosaurus,” the “Albums” and the “Big Island” columns.

Thank you for that. I am both humbled and motivated by your responses.

So, before I move on, I thought it would be worthwhile to wrap up some questions that I have received over the past few months, in preparation for moving forward with other topics. I thank you as always for your reply’s and even more so for your questions. The following are the three most asked questions from either on site reply’s, emails responses, or messages via the magic of Facebook. Enjoy.

1) What is the state of the kids potty training?

Although I’ve not written about this topic in a while, I get a lot of questions on it. As it stands, I have bought my last pull-up. They are doing great overall. The twins are in general going all night, though we get them up on occasion to go at night. The little bear is doing way better than her brother and sister did at her age, (2) and while we put her in a re-usable cloth pant at night, she does very well during the day. I am really proud of the kids, and while I will admit to cleaning up the occasional accident, I know we have turned the corner.

But in short, dealing with the Potty training process sucks. It’s no fun. But, then it was over. Kinda. I still say “John and Kate Plus 8” are full of crap.
　
2) Who won the music poll?

The recent album/music poll, that was somewhat interrupted on site by the death of Harry Kalas proved a resounding win for Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” In what amounted to a surprise to me, Paul Simon’s “Graceland” came in second, over Bruce Springsteen. I received perhaps my most detailed responses to date over email to that column, and ironically enough, much of it dealt with my writing about U2, who received no votes in our little poll, but generated the most enthusiastic email reply’s.

It was an interesting topic, and it is one that I will revisit. That one was fun to write.

What was even cooler though was that I got a ton of recommendations of new music to listen to. A lot of it I liked. Weeks before this column, my friend Kathy and I started a music exchange, which has been awesome to do, and I think is really important as I get older. I read “Rolling Stone” every other week, but I love the fact that friends like Kathy and my cousin Kel can recommend a band that they love that I’ve never heard of, and then I hear them, and then I know what they were talking about all along.

To me, that is the real power of music, and the joy of shared art. I used to be really good at the “Mix tape” back in the day, and I think there is room for that spirit in the MP3 world of today. But, thanks to Kathy and Kel, I am now totally grooving on The Fratellis, Colbie Callat, and Brett Dennen, and I know that I have turned others onto New Jersey’s own The Gaslight Anthem, TV on the Radio, Vienna Teng, and Gilkicker.

The album column was a really satisfying one to write, and I got a lot out of it, so thanks. Keep it coming.

3) You’re writing a novel?

This has come mostly as a question on Facebook, but, yes I am. And I’m making a lot of progress on it. If I’m absent from the blog in the coming months, that is why. I am hoping to have the first full draft completed before the end of the year. With three little kids, it is always hard to find the time, but my wife, who is doing exceptionally well in her career, has been truly helping me find both the motivation and time to plug out the work. I don’t know if it will ever amount to anything, but I think it’s a good project.

I have been genuinely touched by the positive feedback I’ve gotten from many of you. You should know that such things matter, a whole lot.

I can tell you all quite sincerely that there was a night this year when I was up late, trying to work on a chapter, and grew genuinely discouraged. I checked my email and had just received one in response to one of the columns I had posted here, and it really motivated me.

That email got me back on track, and that chapter got done. Thank you, for that, and you know exactly who you are.
　
With that, I bid you aloha for now.

And so the World Becomes a Little Less Magical. Remembering Harry Kalas

2009-04-13T12:19:00.004-10:00

Last night, I checked on the score of the Phillies-Rockies game before bed, and read where Matt Stairs had hit a game-winning home run in the 9th inning. I went to the Phillies website, hoping to see the clip and hear Harry’s call. They had a clip of the hit, but it was the Rockies broadcasters making the call. I shook my head, hoping that they would have changed it by the time I woke up this morning. I really felt like I needed a dose of Harry. Living in Hawaii has it’s pleasures, but proximity to local Philadelphia telecasts and radio signals aren’t among them.

I got the news this morning when I logged onto my computer just seconds before my phone rang with confirmation of the news. At once, a very significant aspect of my life as a Philadelphia sports fan was forever changed.

Harry Kalas has died.

I am certain that in the coming days, writers of far greater skill than I will remember him and memorialize him. I am certain that the Philadelphia Phillies, for whom he was not only the voice, but in many ways the heart, will honor him appropriately. His family and friends will mourn and celebrate him. His fans will tell stories about where they were when they heard him call the 1980 World Series, or the 1993 National League Championship, or Mike Schmidt’s 500th Home Run, or even the Phillies winning the World Series this past year. They might even recall the night that the Phillies and Padres played until almost 5am, and the pitcher Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams had the game winning hit, as there were no players left to hit for him. They’ll remember how they felt when Harry’s longtime broadcast partner Richie Ashburn passed away, and now he and “Whitey” can watch the team from the best seats in the house. They’ll talk about how Harry died at work, getting ready to call today’s game with the Washington Nationals. Some might even say that his final call was a Phils win in which the team staged a 9th inning comeback, and how that is fitting.

But we will all do it in a world that is a little less magical than it was yesterday.

If you are not a sports fan, you may not understand. If you are not a Philadelphia fan, you may not understand. Harry Kalas was Philadelphia baseball to pretty much everyone to whom such things matter. Beyond that, of course, he was a husband, a father, a friend. But to millions of rabid sports fans, to whom the every minute detail of their teams is vital, Harry was the voice. He was the great constant of my life as a baseball fan, which much like the team we both loved, had some ups and downs.

The Phillies had some horrible seasons during my life as a fan. I’ve written in this space before about the joy in my house when the team won the World Championship in 1980. Along the way, through both the highs, like the 1983 and 1993 World Series teams, and of course last years Series win, and the lows, like finishing the season under .500 for the six years leading up to ‘93, twice coming within inches of loosing 100 games in a season…those were bad years. One might have been tempted to turn the game off.

But you didn’t. Because of Harry Kalas. It would have seemed rude to turn the radio off on a hot July day while Harry and Whitey were talking. They tried their best to make dreadful teams interesting during most of the 80’s and much of the 90’s. And we listened. And we watched. And we relished moments of success all the more when we heard how Harry called it. It was as though the moments weren’t real until we heard Harry tell us how it happened. That voice, now silent, permeated the malaise of whatever dreck was on the field. He was in the room with you, and a friend. Even during those drowsy summer afternoons, when the Phils were playing the Cubs, and it was the 7th inning of a 10-3 drubbing, Harry’s voice had the power to wake you up out of a sound sleep when you heard the crack of a bat, followed by “It’s a long drive, deep to left field…that ball is ‘outta here!”

You got jealous when you heard his voice calling NFL games during the Winter. Harry was our voice, and it just didn’t sound right to hear him calling a Lions-Seahawks game in December. But, you could allow him his small indiscretion, as you knew that once Spring Training started, it was just a matter of time until you’d have a chance to hear him again. He was our guy, no matter how many NFL Films shows he narrated.

The voice of Harry Kalas was Summer at the Jersey shore. It was sitting on the big orange couch with my dad, and dozing off in between innings, though we both pretended we weren’t. It was mowing the lawn with headphones on, and doing the last bit real slow so you didn’t have to go inside until the game was over. It was at times, the only reason to pay attention to the often dreadful Philadelphia Phillies. To hear him get caught up in the emotion of a moment, whether it be a title win, a dramatic homerun, or an amazing performance by a pitcher, it was simply all so genuine because he was not just an announcer. He was a fan. He was a friend. He was a Hall of Famer.

He was Philadelphia.

Take a look at this clip if you’d like to see him in one of his best moments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBk3wTs-t2A&feature=player_embedded

I’m sure there is more I could say, but I’m no Harry Kalas. I’ve found this column difficult to write.

My little girl gave me a hug this morning right after I found out. She saw I was sad, and asked me why. When I told her that I was sad because Harry had died, she said that she wanted to draw an angel. And so she did, and I included the picture here. Suitable for framing...

The Phillies won today 9-8 in Washington. God Speed, Harry.

Ten Albums that changed the World. At least my world...

2009-03-30T21:59:00.003-10:00

I had originally envisioned this column as an answer to some Facebook friends who were listing albums that were significant to them. Then, like most of my ideas, the project took on a life of it’s own.

Music has always been a vital part of my life, and the chance to really write about this topic-albums that mattered and/or made for some change in my life was a fun challenge. I hope you enjoy it. These are not in any substantive order. They are in order as I thought to write about them and are not meant to be in any sort of rank. I simply numbered them for ease. There are ten listed and a few honorable mention. Truthfully, there are probably another 30 albums I could do this with, but it is late and I can’t guarantee the kids will stay asleep, so, here we go…

Below are albums that changed the way that I think about music, life, myself, and everything else. I hope you enjoy it and as always welcome your comments both on the page and to me via the magic of email.

1) Marvin Gaye: What’s Going on?
This is among the greatest albums ever made. I’d listened to him sing for years-I loved his Motown stuff solo and with Tammy Tyrelle. I still remember laying on my bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1984, listening to WPST 97.5 FM, out of Princeton, NJ, and hearing the news of his death. He had been making a comeback, and as I had grown to love his earlier work, and was very into his return. I was very saddened by his death. Although, at that point, being not yet 11...I hadn’t really embraced his genius. That came later, and the album did, and continues to, shred me every time I hear it. It is a musical open door into what Marvin wished the listener to see which was a world filled with both challenges and hope. It is among the most pure and unadulterated musical statements I’ve ever been subject to. The way one song flows into another and the layering of sounds that is commonplace today was far more complicated and deliberate with the technology Marvin had on hand during production. It is pure and inspired genius.

I spent a ton of money buying a vintage vinyl copy of this a few years back that was sealed and had never been played. Despite the protestations of the seller, and other vinyl collectors…The moment I had it in my hands, I ripped that sucker open and played it.

It has been said that Marvin felt that God was speaking through him as he worked on this album. I for one, choose not to argue with Marvin. Or God for that matter. If you’ve not heard it, write me. I’ll fix that. It’s that great.

2) Nirvana: Nevermind
It was the Fall of 1991, and I was on a van on the way from Wooster to the Cleveland Airport for break. They had the Cleveland Rock station on the radio, which I believe was 97.5 “The Hawk” or something of that nature. No one was really listening to the radio much, but Guns ’N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” was just ending. I heard the station bumper, and then that guitar lick at the start of “Smells like Teen Spirit” kicked in and the van got quiet. Everyone stopped talking to listen to this song, as it was unlike anything we had heard before. When it ended, someone asked, “What was that?” Someone responded, “what that GNR?” “It couldn’t have been-they were the song right before…”

Popular music at that point was a lot of hair bands, C and C Music Factory, and Janet Jackson, you might recall. So the sound of “Here we are now…entertain us!” and the energy that whole album generated was a game changer. They burned fast and hot. By the time we all got back from break, we all knew who Nirvana was. And that album changed everything. It went from Poison and Paula Abdul on the radio, to Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, and later on STP. It was awesome to witness such a dramatic shift.

Nirvana’s Unplugged album was excellent too. I would be sad we never got to see what that band could have gone on to do, had I expected them to last. I didn’t, and they didn’t. But that moment was one that reinforced in me the power of what one genuine artistic moment can make happen not only to music, but to a culture in general. Pretty sure I never wore my “Z Cavaricci” pants again…

3) Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Grouping together Miles Davis with Bill Evans, Jimmy Cobb, John Coltrane, and Cannonball Adderley would have likely generated a great group of recordings anyway. What Davis did on this album is again, another game changer. He gave his group a broad idea what he was looking for, and then just played. The album stands up, and should be listened to on vinyl, and with very little light, at night, with a fine beverage in hand, preferably with a companion.

I was always into Jazz growing up-my parents littered out musical library with a large Big Band collection, and some really nice vintage Ellington’s and Basie’s, but also some real nice Dave Brubeck. I came to Davis and the “Cool” era of Jazz a little later, as part of a Jazz course I took in college. And once I heard it, I listened to it again. It got to the point that I would listen to it regularly, and try to follow a different player each time. One time, I’d follow Miles, another Cannonball. Then I’d follow Coltrane.

This was another one that I bought on Vinyl, and paid a lot, and have never regretted it. It just sounds better in that medium. It was simply unlike anything before or since and redefined what an album could be.

4) Paul Simon: Graceland
I listened to this constantly in 1986. I had listened to Simon and Garfunkel constantly growing up, and remember being so blown away by the rich texture of sounds and ideas that seemed packed into each song. I remember sitting in my room listening to that one over and over, and only getting up to flip the cassette. It was simply a great album that introduced me not only to “Ladysmith Black Mambazo” but also “Los Lobos” which was a nice bonus.

Honestly, the world just felt like a much smaller place to me after diving into this album. Perhaps that’s just idealistic teenage attitude coming back to me on echo through the years, but that’s what I remember thinking.

5) Kool & The Gang: Spin Their Top Hits
I was in sixth grade and totally into Kool and The Gang. They were form Jersey, which was always a bonus for me. I played their “In the Heart” album, and “Emergency” to destruction in those years, and each time they had a big hit, like “Fresh,” “Cherish,” and “Misled,” I felt like it was vindication of my fandom. Everyone else was grooving on what I already knew was cool.

I was in the old Jamesway on Route 130 wasting time on a Saturday, having already dumped my quarters into the “Donkey Kong” machine they had there, and I was looking at cassettes in the discount bin. A lot of junk, but then, I saw this album. As I looked at the cover, I saw that it had a photo of a huge brass section, a gigantic percussion array, and what looked like a choir, all on stage, under funky lights and fog effects. It was surreal, but I made plans to come back the next Saturday, after I’d made a few bucks mowing lawns that week, and buy it. To make sure no one got it first, I hid it in the classical section, turned around, so I’d know where to find it. Which, thankfully I did, the next Saturday. It hadn’t moved, and with great excitement, I rode my bike home, through the trailer park, cutting across that guys yard and into the woods that no longer exist, and right into the back corner of the Manor. I plopped it into my dual cassette deck…way cool I know…it even had high speed dubbing….and as I did so, the opening track, “Open Sesame” started with a weird and freaky sound that I’d never really heard before. I was being encouraged to “Get down with the Genie” who repeatedly shouted “Shazam!” over seriously righteous horns.

There was no James “JT” Taylor croons: This was not The Kool & The Gang I was used to, and at first, I was very upset by it, and reached for the stop button. As my finger poised above the button, I heard the leader cry out, “Abracadabra…get on your camel and ride” and the brass section answered him with a hammering response. Even listening to it now, I can feel my eyebrow raises with memory of the sheer audacity. I gently backed away from the stop button, and instead hit the volume, falling onto my bed and choosing to take the ride. The album includes famous tunes like “Jungle Boogie” and “Hollywood Swinging” which were hits, and would later gain even more notice in movies and as samples for other hip hop artists. The album showed me that it was always worthwhile to explore an artists' full catalog-a practice I still continue. In the end, I still feel like Kool & The Gang are kind of a personal preference, and when they come on, I feel like I’m in on something that no one else is. But truth be told, The album, and most of what they did in the '70's, still rocks. I’m not sure that “In the Heart” does…but it changed my thinking about looking at a group or a performer and allowing them room to grow and adapt, a lesson that would serve me well when Album #7 on this list came out.

6) RUN DMC: Raising Hell
I was a huge fan of rap in the 80’s. I remember as a kid in the Manor, we used to congregate up at the side street near Roscoe’s house, and we would spread out the cardboard and breakdance to the music that Roscoe was into that week. I remember Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, early LL Cool J, UTFO, and even some Afrika Bambaata.

But in the end, it was RUN DMC that the guys and I rapped word for word on the way to SPS. I know that our bus driver at the time raised an eyebrow or two when we reached the album’s last track, “Proud to be Black.” That notwithstanding, “Peter Piper” is pure and simple awesomeness that has been copied way more than anyone could possibly count. The guitars show up on “It’s Tricky” and by the time you get to “You Be ‘Illin” you are deep into a whole new type of album-there is rap, of course, but there is serious callbacks to ‘70’s funk and rock, and the whole conglomeration was just unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I think I was one of the first kids in my class to bring their “King of Rock” tape to parties, but the “Raising Hell” album changed everything, making Rap mainstream, and revitalizing Aerosmith’s career. Everyone had it and everyone listened to it.

Run-DMC created a whole new genre with this album. And yes, I asked for a pair of Adidas. I didn’t get them. Alas. But I did get a pair of Fat shoelaces. Once my parents saw how Foley strung them for me, with the shoes wide open and laces fluffed up, they were immediately confiscated and never seen again. So it went.

7) U2: Achtung Baby
OK, I was into U2 pretty much from the moment that I heard the guitar opening of “I Will Follow” from a tape Reid brought on the bus one day in middle school. I liked “War” and of course, there is no Junior High memory that does not in some way feel like “The Joshua Tree” was playing in the background. I liked them. The first Compact Discs I ever bought after getting my CD player (Complete with dual cassette deck as well…) for making honor roll all year in ninth grade was “Rattle and Hum,” and I played the daylights out of that thing. That was 1988. I played it a lot over the coming years, but truth be told, I was tiring of it by the time I left for college in the Fall of 1991. As I discussed earlier, there were other bands doing some new and interesting things-Nirvana, G’NR, Pearl Jam, and other bands were making noise that year, and driving the radio in a harder direction, which, despite my affection for Bobby Brown, (“Don’t Be Cruel” might have made this list were it much longer…) was a change that I welcomed.

And, then, the Winter of ‘91 came around, and U2’s “Achtung Baby” was released, and I was nervous the first time I had the chance to hear it. A girl on the swim team gave me one of her headphones and we listened to it together on a bus trip to somewhere. I was afraid I wouldn’t like it-I’d heard it was different, and weird and any number of other things. But, to me, The Edge’s first guitar lick on the opening song, “Zoo Station” was like call back to the way that he opened “I Will Follow” and I sat there feeling like I was in for a treat-and I was. There are some songs on the album that I’m not crazy about, but what the album showed me once again was that a band of genuine musicianship can grow and adapt and change and be relevant as long as they want to. Plus, it rocks. With “Achtung Baby” U2 became one of those bands that I will get every new record they put out. And that list, especially in this economy, is growing smaller.

8) Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live 1975-85
“Screen door slams…Mary’s dress sways…” I first heard this line at a party during eight grade, probably someone’s birthday or something in early December. All I know is that I had to have it for Christmas that year, which was 1986. Fortunately, I got it, and I spent almost all of the Winter Break from SPS listening to it and reading the huge book that came with it. Reading the lyrics as he sang them was a pretty cool thing, as even back then, I had aspirations of writing. Although I am retired from the singer/songwriter thing now, I know that hearing lines like, “Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk,” and “You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain/Make crosses for your lovers, throw roses in the rain/Waste your summer praying in vain for a saviour to rise from these streets,” were powerful motivators for me then as well as now. I always found it interesting that he spelled "Saviour" in that manner.

The five and a half minute story that he tells about him and his father before a gut-busting version of “The River” still tenses me up, waiting for that harmonica wail. Gets me every time. By the time I arrived at the end of the marathon recording (Five LP's. Only 3 Casettes) with his trademark version of “Jersey Girl,” which for some reason, Tom Waits actually wrote, I felt like anything was possible. Not just artistically, but in general.

It’s still heady stuff, and when I thought about how young he was when he was writing this stuff, it gave me the sense that maybe something I had to say, either through music or other writing, was worth saying.

The second half of my eighth grade year was much better than the first half. I won’t go so far as to say the album is responsible, but Bruce is from Jersey…so one never knows. We do look out for our own...

9) Def Leppard: Pyromania
It was 1983. The closest thing to Heavy Metal in my home growing up would have been “The Canadian Brass Orchestra’s Holiday Album” that someone got from an old Getty station for filling up a certain number of times.

The guys down the street listened to Ozzy, and Judas Priest, and AC/DC, all of whom I would fall in love with later, but they had long hair and got detentions at school. So, at that time, that "type of music" was verboten in our house.

We had a family beach trip that Summer, to Island Beach State Park. My sister had a cute friend who joined us that day, and she brought a few tapes along for her walkman and being genuinely nice, she let her friend’s little brother listen to them.

I don’t remember what else she brought, but I know she brought “Pyromania,” as it simply blew my 9 year old little mind away. The sheer power of the guitars, led of course by the late Steve “Steamin’” Clark and Phil Collen were unlike pretty much anything I had heard before. By the time I reached “Too Late for Love,” I knew that this album was something special-I mean, it’s a ballad, and the lead singer is screaming over blazing guitars. How was this possible? Joe Elliot’s effortless high notes were both polished and gritty. I knew that I had to listen to whatever he had to say, but it was really the overall force of the band as a whole that had me back at Jamesway the next weekend buying this one on vinyl. I listened to it constantly and exclusively when my parents were not home.

Not only did it open a whole new world of music to me, it gave me something to talk about with her friend, who as I said was cute, and always really nice to me. I was still nine, and absolutely and in no way any cooler than I was before I owned a copy of the coolest album of 1983...but I felt cooler. That, and I realized that there was more stuff out there that I had never heard before…

10) The Smiths: Louder than Bombs
I came to The Smiths late in high school when Jason and Brian and Mike made me listen to them, and I liked them. I went to Princeton Record Exchange around 89-90 and bought this one on vinyl, as it was a double album, so I figured I could catch up fast. I brought it home and listened to it on my parents stereo before they got home, sitting in the big orange chair that we used to have in the living room. I was blown away by the musicianship. The songs were tight and Johnny Marr was such a powerful force he didn’t have to play loud. Morrissey was Morrissey.

The next day I went back to the Exchange and bought “Rank” “Meat is Murder” and pretty much every other one I could find. The Smiths were one of those bands that I missed at first, but was glad to have someone smarten me up. Morrissey’s writing had a genuine impact on the writing that I did at the time, and I am still glad for it.

Honorable Mentions:
---Violent Femmes: Add it Up
We used to sing every single song on this album during shows at HHS. Every word. Every line. It sounded like nothing that I had ever heard before. Still does. The music that these guys played was like an accidental finger-full of lemon juice on a paper cut. And it rocked.
Fun aside. I wrote and performed the music at a friends wedding a while back. It was all planned out by the note. Over a year of composition. And the day of the wedding, the minister asks if I can play something for the candle ceremony. Having mere seconds to come up with something, I move into a very “arpeggio-laden” version of “Good Feeling” from this album. I hoped it would come off as pretty, and I recall later that the bride’s mother commented on how ‘pretty that was” and the bride herself commented, smilingly, as I recall: “Did you just play Violent Femmes at my wedding?” It was a good, good day, as I recall.

--The Hooters: Nervous Night
This was junior high in South Jersey. This was the album that you had to have if you were having a party at your house. If you were lucky, that girl you liked might dance with you when “Where do the Children go?” slipped in on side two. I have some particularly fond memories of this album from the summer after grade 8, but that is another story entirely. In the end, they were a really good Philly band that not only made good, they opened Live Aid in 1985. I can’t hear “And We Danced” today without remembering all the times I did just that to that song both in the SPS basement and a variety of junior high parties. It was just such good standard fare for living in Jersey in the mid 1980’s.

Albums I might write about if I do a part two to this series include:
--Frank Sinatra: In the Wee Small Hours.
--Duke Ellington: Ellington at Newport
--Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young: Déjà vu
--Suddenly Tammy!: We Get There When We Do
--Muddy Waters: Folk Singer

This column kind of got away from me. Sorry about that, but music does that to me I suppose.

I am currently working on two more columns. The first is tentatively titled: “The Secret and Magical Life of Toys.” The second is my now annual look at why I won’t be purchasing Wrestlemania this year. Thank you as always for your support…Aloha!

St. Patrick’s Day: Daddy Pop, Engagement Rings, and Choosing Joy.

2009-03-17T16:35:00.002-10:00

I don’t recall St. Patrick’s Day being a huge deal in my house growing up. I know we’d have Corned Beef and Cabbage, and cooked carrots and Potatoes, but to be honest, we’d have that several times a year whenever the mood struck to make it and Shop Rite would comply by putting Corned Beef on sale.

Though I’m not Catholic, I went to a Catholic school for grades 1-8, and we had a St. Pat’s dance every year. I didn’t get to go during sixth grade as J.C. and I were goofing off in the hallway, and Sister “She Hate Me” made me sit in the stairwell for the rest of the day. J.C. got to go, but I didn’t. But that is another story, though a good one, as that day really hurt. I had finally worked up the nerve to ask that 8th grade girl to dance, and I missed my chance. Perhaps I’ll tell that one day.

But I digress. St. Pat’s was a holiday that I embraced later in life-after college really. I’d always been interested in my family history-still am in fact. Through the work my great-grandfather did, along with my Uncle and his mother, and myself to a lesser degree, we’ve traced both my paternal and maternal grandmother’s families back to Ireland and Germany, among other places. My paternal grandfather was an orphan, and we know very little about his family except that his father was from Austria and I believe his mother was Liverpuddlian.

My paternal grandmother was a Buchanan. Her Grandparents were from Gort and Raphoe. Her father worked quite diligently to record our family genealogy, by some accounts to prove he was related to former President James Buchanan, who by nearly all accounts was among the worst Presidents in the brief history of our nation. His family tree is extensive, and goes back nearly 12 generations from my children, but perhaps his greatest accomplishment was that he was able to reconnect with the family still living “across the pond.” I’m pleased to say that we are still in contact with them.

I had some fun St. Patrick’s days after college, though most of them didn’t have a ton to do with exploring my heritage. I actually spent one St. Pat’s day in Switzerland, though it was not what I would call widely celebrated there. I was able to procure a few Guinness. That was a fun trip as I recall.

But why does the day matter to me? Certainly one could say that I’m embracing my cultural heritage and roots, but one could say the same thing about why I love Oktoberfest with my friends every year. I will freely admit to enjoying parades and corned beef (I’ve made 4 in the last week…) and beer. But that, I think is oversimplifying things.
I think there’s more to it than that.

Perhaps I love St. Patrick’s day for all those reasons, but I think I love it most as it’s taken on more meaning for me, and my family since St. Patrick’s Day, 1998.

Maybe that’s the place to start.

The wife wasn’t my wife then, though we had been together since 1992. We were clearly moving towards marriage but we hadn’t gotten there yet. Some would say I was taking too long. In fact many did. Loudly. I shant go too deep into that, except to say that though I always knew we’d get married, I didn’t feel ready to be married until the year before we got engaged. And then I had to raise money to buy a ring. And so forth.

Needless to say, when it finally happened, there was a great sigh of “It’s about damned time” from several circles in our lives. But I had a plan all along. Sorta. Here’s the story behind the first of many great St. Patrick’s Days.

We had been together since 1992, when we met at College in Ohio of all places. 1998 would find me working at a school in NY and her working at a Church in North Jersey.

If you knew me then, you’ll know that I was not what one would call the most fiscally responsible of young men. I tended to spend it before I had it, and while I have since learned much better, I had a damned good time at the time. So, the prospect of saving for an engagement ring was a daunting one. Even with promises from family friends that they could get me a deal, to say that I was starting the process already in the hole would have been an understatement. I was 24, living on a school campus where I paid almost no bills and had three meals a day most of the time, and traveling to see my girlfriend pretty much every weekend and taking her out whether I could pay for it or not.

So, I wasn’t making a lot, but I was spending more.

So, when I finally felt I was ready to get engaged, I did so with the rather daunting task of having to make some money, outside of my normal salary.

So, I became the “Nighttime Security Dean” on the campus where I worked. I basically took over for the Dean when he or she went to bed, and walked around with the emergency pager. I did this 3-4 nights a week from about 9pm until 6am. The emergency pager went off a total of zero times during my run at night, which would have made things more interesting.

I’ll admit, I tried to take a few naps in the office in between rounds of aimlessly meandering around the campus. I went so far once as to lay down on the couch in lobby of the administration building. I was tired, but guilt and devotion to service got the better of me. I could usually catch a nap from 6am-9am when my first class started, and then get a little more in the afternoon before lacrosse practice or whatever else I had to get done. And I was young, so I managed. It was tiring though.

But it was also paying off. After a couple of months, I had enough stocked away to start seriously planning out what I was going to get her. I knew exactly what I wanted and I had an idea what I could get it for from the friend of our friend. I opened a passbook savings account at my bank, which seems like an antiquated concept these days. I remember opening the account and they asked me if I wanted an ATM card so I could access the money, and I sent the septuagenarian bank manager out of her chair when I perhaps too loudly replied, “God no! Don’t let me touch it!” After apologizing for the disruption, I explained that the account was to buy my girl a ring, and that I wasn’t to touch it until I hit my magic number. And I didn’t, I’m proud to say.

My nights as the Nighttime Dean were relatively dull in general, so I started writing what in many ways might have been the Grandfather of this column. “Nocturnal Emotings” was basically my nighttime report to the Dean about the events of the evening. Since very little actually happened, I chose to either discuss other matters of life at the school, or simply choose to be a sleepy smart-ass about how exciting things were. While very few of these columns survive, the audience, who consisted of the Dean and his assistant, seemed to enjoy them. I would like to think I’ve improved since then.

But, I again digress. I eventually earned enough money to start a serious conversation about a ring. I kept my extra job a secret from my future fiancé, which was difficult at times. The student body alone was 150 strong, not to mention 30-40 faculty members who had to keep the secret whenever she came to visit. But, the secret held, and I soon had a ring in hand: round stone, Cathedral setting. Very nice. Part one of my plan was over.

Part two involved the way in which to pop the question. I debated a number of ideas before settling on St. Patrick’s Day in New York City.

Now, I have always been more of a South Jersey-Philadelphia kind of guy. But at the time, I was living in New York, She was living in North Jersey, and the spectacle that is the parade in Manhattan was an intoxicating one. Plus, I figured, it might be the kind of thing that masks my true aim for the trip.

It was important to me to surprise her. I knew that she knew it was coming, and found out later that she had suspected my intentions for St. Pat’s for some time indeed. I had asked her to get the day off about a month in advance, which was more forethought than I was known for at the time. But we’d enjoyed a number of Guinness toast Functions and the Irish bar in her town over the years she’d lived there, so it was not a stretch to think ‘we could have fun at the parade.’ I later learned that she initially had a hard time with her boss getting the day until she kinda flipped on him saying “I think he’s going to propose, so can I just take the stinking day off?!” He relented, and plans were set.

As we got closer to the day, there was excitement. I wasn’t nervous at all-we’d been together a long time. Long enough to know it was the right time and place. I had planned out pretty much every detail except one. I knew where we’d watch the parade. I knew where we’d have lunch and cocktails. I knew we’d somehow “Find ourselves” near the Natural History Museum, which just “happened” to be holding an exhibition on “The Nature of Diamonds,” which if you’re interested you can read about here: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/diamonds/ And we would enjoy that. Well, I knew I would. I knew that she would likely be thinking about the ring case in my pocket all day, wondering when I was going to pop the question. And I was going to wait until she stopped wondering.

So, we went to the parade. We drank a few Guinness at McSorley’s. We had lunch at Maggie’s Place. If you are in Manhattan, you have to try Maggie’s Place: http://www.maggiesnyc.com/ It’s awesome, and would have made a great backdrop for our engagement. But it didn’t. If you click on the photo section of their website, the fourth one down has a picture of the room we ate in. Booth on the left-all the way at the top. Ah, memories…

We walked through Central Park. That too might have been good, but it wasn’t quite right, yet.
The museum appeared on the horizon just where it was supposed to. Under the auspices of needing to visit the restroom, we ducked in. I then suggested that we check out the exhibits-we were there after all…

So we did. We both promptly fell asleep during the “Titanic” documentary. We then walked about and meandered our way into the Diamond exhibit. Her pace quickened a bit, thinking I imagine that this might be it. Perhaps I’d worked our ring into the exhibit? Yeah, that would have been cool, but even Kugs didn’t have that kind of pull back in the day.

But I was dragging it out. It was a nice exhibit, and I actually found that I knew a great deal about Diamonds, having done a ridiculous amount of research on them before I bought one. Hey-I might have been spendthrift back then, but even I don’t drop that kind of cash without doing my homework. I had a lovely time, in fact at one point engaging in a very interesting discussion with one of the curators regarding their exhibit on Clarity. I could feel the eyes of my soon to be fiancé rolling behind me, and I knew that the time was nigh…

And we left the Museum. That might have been a nice spot for the ring to come out. But it didn’t.
So we walked out into the cold NYC afternoon. I noticed her flexing her hands a bit, as though she was trying to remind them not to smack me. And I knew the time was close. We walked back towards the park, and next to me I heard a sigh. A short one, to be certain, but it was just the kind of sigh I was looking for. We crossed Central Park West and walked a bit before pulling up at a small pond. She looked dazed and confused, so, I knew it was, as 'Ol Mandelbaum would have said, “Go Time.”

“Did you like the exhibit?” I asked.

“It was fine.”

And after surreptitiously working through the five layers of “ring security” I was wearing and pulling it out, I asked,

“Well, you saw all those other diamonds…I wonder what you think of this one?”

She looked over, my future wife and mother of my children, truly never more than in that moment the love of my life, and said…I can hear it like it was yesterday, blowing in on, as Rhode Island’s own Jeffery Osborne might have sung, “on the wings of love,” as she said,

“Huh?”

Yep. That’s really what she said. Un-panicked, I followed up with, what I thought was a very “Han-Solo-in ‘Empire Strikes Back’ banter-with-Leia-like” response of, “Well, are you going to marry me or what?”

She recovered, and countered with, “Well, are you going to marry me?”

To which I replied, “Well, I asked you first!”

And so it went. Ring went on. We went home. We later got married and stuff too.

St. Patrick’s day then had added meaning for us as a family. Over the next years, we would spend some together and some apart. I actually worked several when I was working at an Irish place in North Jersey. Those were always a good time. We spent that one in Switzerland. We actually started celebrating the “Halfway to St. Pat’s Irish Weekend” in Wildwood for several years. Any excuse to celebrate, I suppose. We spent out honeymoon in Ireland as well, doing among other things, visiting with my Irish relatives in Donegal, and seeing parts of the Island where my ancestors lived. It was a very cool visit, one which I probably should write about on its own at some point.

Last year, we went into Honolulu and got dinner and walked around the block party that the two main Irish places in the city run. It was ok, but nothing spectacular. We skipped that this year, and had a party at our house with friends over the weekend, and will be celebrating today with a simple family dinner.

In the end, I think I’ve always had an affinity to my Irish heritage and St. Pat’s for a variety of reasons. My family tree is extensive on the island, and it has been a tantalizing subject to research and explore. I’ve always had an affinity for the Irish Pub, and can’t ever recall a day where I had a bad time in one. I’ve enjoyed learning about the general history of Ireland. I like to travel, but usually feel like I’m ready to go when it’s time to go. I didn’t feel that way when we left, and seriously thought about staying longer as one of my Irish cousins was getting married the week after we left.

I remember saying when we drove through the countryside, and the cities, and seeing “Inch Level,” which was a coastal area that my ancestors retired to, not only in a painting on my cousins wall, but in person when he told me as I was admiring his painting, “Oh, that’s just down the street.” I remember feeling like I could live there, and felt very much at peace.
Ironically, the only other place I ever really felt like that was Hawaii. I never really thought about the irony until just now.

I love the genealogy and the history, and remembering my family, but those things are not limited to one day. Neither is my love for my wife. They coincide with that day, but they are as timeless as, well, as timeless as my Great Grandfather, “Daddy Pop” I suppose.

“Daddy Pop” was a genuine character who I remember only a little, but heard about constantly as I grew up. He did everything. He built stuff, and painted stuff, and had cat named Fred, and I used to take his cane and run away from him when I was little. He was seated or course. Apparently he used to get a kick out of that.

But as I was writing this, my mother reminded me of something he used to say: "The Top of the day to ye; and the Rest of the Day To Me’self.” I had forgotten about that, but it made me laugh out loud.

His picture hangs in my dining room. We named my youngest daughter for him. He was a character of the highest order, and as I remember him, he was someone who just seemed to get joy from things.

I think I’ve embraced St. Patrick’s Day for a genuinely simple reason: I chose to. I like it. It’s fun. It brings joy. So, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Embrace the joy. Turns out she liked the diamond just fine, by the way.

What does a Stegosaurus Sound like? A tribute to the "Little Bear"

2009-02-18T09:53:00.004-10:00

First off, I would very much like to thank you for reading. My last column in this space set a new record for the site, and I am both grateful and humbled by your support. This column is now being read in 11 countries, and I am moved by that in a manner that I do not have the words to express.

So, I will simply say both Thank you, and Mahalo, as they say here on Oahu. I hope to continue to be worthy of your attention.

For those of you who are new readers, and again, thank you for that, my current situation is that I am a retired educational administrator from New Jersey. I retired from a career as a high school administrator in order to be a stay-at-home-dad for my three kids, and to support the career and ministry of my wife, who works for the government.

I have two pieces I’ve been working on, and while I had considered combining them both for this entry, I decided to focus solely on revisiting a theme from last October, when I wrote “This is what I do now. And my kids are cool,” which you can peruse in the archive by clicking here: http://alohakugs.blogspot.com/2008/10/this-is-what-i-do-now-and-my-kids-are.html

We started calling our youngest “Bear” when she was really little, mostly due to the fact that she seemed to growl like I imagine a snuggly teddy bear would growl, were it inclined to do so. She rarely seemed agitated when she made the noise-we all just figured that she’d chosen that noise to utilize as a stopgap until she’d learned the language. I suppose there were moments that she sounded like a Pirate, but that doesn’t make nearly as amiable a nickname for a little girl.

So, she’s been the Bear for longer than we have lived here. It stuck, and it seems to work.

But she’s growing and learning, and has genuine conversations now. She uses complete sentences and is a real chatterbox of late. She still growls on occasion, but it’s mostly when she’s holding a Dinosaur Chicken Nugget, especially the ones shaped like a Stegosaurus. She growls then in imitation of what she imagines the Stegosaurus would sound like. She likes that one, since it’s Mommy’s favorite Dinosaur.

I don’t know what a Stegosaurus would sound like. I’m certain though that they would appreciate her tribute, being extinct and all.

But, besides the occasional growl, she is really very verbal now, and turning into a big kid right before my eyes. She told me the other day that she “actually like nuggets.”

Yeah, she went there. I think she was imitating her brother, but I wasn’t ready for her to use “actually.”

Now, when her brother and sister got big, it was my first time seeing the kids get bigger, and this was back in Jersey when I was working full time, so I missed quite a bit. And, seeing the kids age for first time, I don’t know that I caught as much as I do now, with the mantle of experience and the stay-at-home-dad life change thing having occurred. I’m seeing it all now. Every new word and new trick. I catch it all these days.

And it still seems at times like I’m moving in slow motion and the kids are on fast forward. Someone once told me that being a stay-at-home-parent meant that the days were long, but the years were short. I think that’s true. The days are really long sometimes, and they are challenging a lot. I can tell you exactly how many days of the last year I prayed for patience: 366. I added the extra day just in case…

But the Bear is really a person now. She likes to go to the store with just me and ride in the cart and has to make sure that we have strapped her in with the “buckles.” She likes to be strapped in until she doesn’t. Then, she really doesn’t want to be strapped in…

She has all sorts of adventures with “Baby Ruff-Ruff.” Ruff-Ruff is a little pink doggie. She, and the Boyo’s “Blue Doggie,” and the Girl’s “Pinky Dog,” have a whole adventuring family of their own. I wish I had their daily imaginations to work with. The way that they make magic happen with these doggies is truly an inspirational study of the joy and power of pure unadulterated love. If I could capture a tenth of what they come up with their dogs, and their other toys and animals, I’d be all set as a writer, I think.

Thursdays I take her to the library, and while she’s often not long for the Storytime, she does well with looking for books for her siblings-she picks them out, and sometimes she gets them movies too. Then we go to one of the two drive-thru Starbucks on the Island and get “Madeline” cookies for her brother and sister after we get them from school. She’s very thoughtful that way. She’s more thoughtful after she’s had her cookie though.

But, in addition to her ongoing case of “I-wanna-be-a-big-kid-it is” she’s really growing to be a very clever and thoughtful kid. And sometimes, she’s just a freakin’ riot.

Like today-we were dropping off the twins at school, and for some reason she fixated on the big Palm Tree outside the classroom. She walked up to the tree, and hugged it, and started singing “shakity-shake…shake the tree…”

It should be noted that she really likes the Disney Channel’s “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” and in a favorite episode of the aforementioned Bear watched “Darby,” who is the little girl essentially playing a modern-day “Christopher Robin” it would seem, has to solve a mystery all by herself, without the other “Super Sleuths.” So, she and her trusty Doggie “Buster” go off to do some “Sleuth-erin,” as Tigger says.

One of her tasks on this case is to collect fresh lemons for Kanga’s “Cure-a-Cold” remedy, as everyone seems to be sick, and she finds the Lemon tree, and figures out that she has to shake the tree to get the Lemons to fall.

So she sings….and Buster helps.

And so the Bear, out of the blue today starts shaking a palm tree outside of the twins school, that, mind you, she’s walked past all year… and asking,

“Where Lemons, Daddy? Where’s Buster?”

I didn’t have an answer, so she shook the tree again…It was really something to see. She did it again when we picked the twins up at the end of school, only at this point, the twins were looking for lemons too. And Buster. It was genuinely funny.

She’s taken to playing a new game with rather simple but effective rules that she made up all herself. I’m assuming that she calls the game “I Got You!” as that’s what she calls out every time she sneaks up behind me and either grabs my leg or jumps up on my back. She’s undefeated so far, despite my best efforts to “Get” her right back. She’s genuinely crafty, and picks her spots well, when I’m least expecting it. This game is not to be confused with “Hi there” which while it can also break out at any time without warning, tends to be more of a playground game. She’s a grand Champion in both though.

She has a new affection for the Honu (turtles) and as they are a very popular local symbol here, she sees them all the time, taking great pleasure in calling out to them. “Honu, Daddy! Lookit! Hi Honu!” She has a similar reaction to Fishies, Girrafies, and of course, Ruff-Ruffs. She likes her animals.

That, and she’s subtly letting me know that she wants to go to school. Whenever we drop the twins off, it’s another edition of the “I come too!” monologue. I know she wants to go, and we could conceivably try to get her ready for pre-school in the fall, but I’m not sure that she’ll be ready. And I’m even less sure that I’ll be ready. Once she gets to school, as it was with the twins, it will be the first of a series of steps away…and I’m not sure I’m quite done playing with the Bear yet.

Of course, as I typed that last line, I heard a crash of monumental proportions from her room. Apparently Baby Ruff-Ruff couldn’t find her glasses, and pulled out a drawer from the dresser, which then crashed to the floor. The glasses were found. Actually, they aren’t glasses-it is the strap of her brother’s bike helmet, which Ruff-Ruff is riding in. You can see the whole apparatus in the picture above.

As I said, quite the adventures these kids go on with their doggies. When the time comes for the Bear to go to school, I suppose I should be comforted by the fact that it will give me some quality time with the twins, as they will likely go on different days at the start. It’s strange to think of this house being quiet. Kind of eerie actually… Not sure I’m ready for that yet.

As I’ve said in this space before, I blinked and the twins were four. Bear will be three this winter. The days are indeed long, but the years are going by fast. Too fast.

The Surprising Circle of Memory. Or; The Big Island begets thoughts of Thoreau, Moving, and moments from Hurricane Island

2009-01-31T01:02:00.004-10:00

The family took a trip to the “Big Island” of Hawai'i recently, and it was a very interesting experience on a lot of levels. It’s nearly three weeks later now, and I’m going through some of my writing while I was over there.

In general, I found Hawai'i which is its proper name, a great deal more peaceful than Oahu. Part of that was most certainly the far diminished air traffic. The lack of Military traffic alone made the ambient silence almost unsettling at first. I am finding it is very true what they say about people being able to get used to anything. Between the commercial planes, and the fighter jets and the huge cargo planes, the noise on Oahu is quite substantial at times, but I suppose I had stopped hearing most of it, until it was absent. In general, I found the people we interacted with even more laid back than those on Oahu, if that is possible. There was a mellowness to them that was very genuine, and while there are areas of the island that were rather commercial, it was nothing like being in Waikiki. Waikiki seems more like Las Vegas at times. I found the climate a bit cooler and breezier than what were are used to as well.

You can’t believe the sheer size of the Mountains. Our first few days, we couldn’t even see the general shape of them-just a huge slope upward ending in clouds and vog. Now, I’ve never seen the Rockies, and the Blue Ridge down South and the Kittatiny’s of Jersey are quaint and all, but holy cow, once the clouds cleared about day three, it was like we were on another planet. Between the lava fields on the side of the two-lane highway, the jagged and black appearance of some of the coastlines, and the sheer size of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, I thought I had arrived on Mars. It was truly breathtaking.

Also, it was much darker on Hawai'i. The breakthrough light from Waikiki alone is quite bright, but it is even more noticeable when one travels a scant 170 miles West to Kona on the Big Island. The Island is home to the Mauna Kea Observatory, and from what I could tell, they chose a swell spot for looking at them there stars up there. Truth be told, I don’t feel I see them well on Oahu. I was nice to see the stars again in such an abundance, and if the moon were full as opposed to ¾ full during our visit, I would likely have been able to write by it. The night sky was crisp and black.

In all, it was a dramatic visual change from Oahu, and very much made me want to visit the other Islands.

It also made me think about the decision that we made to move all the way out here. There were a lot of reasons behind our decision and a year later, I stand by them even more. While there have been definite bumps in the road-some expected and some surprising, we have accomplished a great deal of what we came here to do as a family. We have simplified our life professionally, economically, environmentally, and personally. The wife’s career has done very well. We’ve challenged ourselves to move way outside our comfort zone.

I was reminded of a line from Thoreau’s Walden, recently.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Thoreau has always been a favorite of mine. When I came across this line, I thought that at its core, our choice to move to Oahu, while nowhere near as grandiose an experiment as Henry’s, was born of some similar motivations. We wanted to make choices about the kind of life we were living. I wanted the chance to be a full time Father to my kids. We wanted time to focus on our family. I no longer wanted to work the way I was working back home. I didn’t want to discover that “When I came to die” I had spent more time at work than I had with my own children and my wife. They, are my “essential facts of life,” so to speak.

Perhaps I am stretching the parallel to Thoreau, but, if I ever meet him and he asks me about it, I’ll just tell him I “heard a different drummer” and we’ll have a laugh about it and go have a beer with Hawthorne.

I think the newness of the Big Island really inspired me to think back on our move, as in all honestly, after we first moved here, Oahu felt like another planet as well, compared to New Jersey. It was somewhat humbling to see how things can change in a year.

As I sat on the balcony of our Big Island hotel one evening after the wife and kids had zonked out, looking at the stars that, for a change, were bright and twinkling as they should, I was reminded, and I’m not entirely certain why, of my time at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound in Maine.

I’ve never written about this trip before. It took place during May of my Senior year of High School, and was essentially a Senior Trip. It was the culmination of a series of courses we had to take to prepare during the year. Rock-climbing, ropes courses, that sort of thing. It had been a bad year for me. My Dad had died in October, and while I thought I was fine, I was a thorough mess in a lot of ways. It would take me a number of years to realize that, which of course is, another story entirely. But, suffice it to say that when I got on the bus to go to Maine, despite the fact that the SAT’s, the AP tests, the College decision, the Prom decision, all of the major choices of that time were made and paid for, I was a mess. I just didn’t always know it. I also didn’t know how to handle it at all.

I wrote in my journal during the bus trip North from Jersey that: “I just feel so alone here-I don’t know why, I just do. On a bus full of friends, I feel alone. Go figure.” We were somewhere in Connecticut, and it was dark and late, and I was writing in pencil for some reason, so there’s a lot of stuff I’m still trying to decipher, but I got that one out pretty clear.

Early on in the trip, our group did some rock climbing, and then moved on to a repelling area. Hurricane Island is off the coast of Maine, so our cliff faced out on the Atlantic Ocean. I can’t tell you how beautiful it was. I don’t know that I took any pictures, but my journal is non-stop about the beauty of the place.

I remember stopping about halfway down on the climb, and I tugged myself off and braced my feet. I then turned away from the rock wall and looked out at the sea. Hanging in midair, I remember feeling very small, and watching the sun move down towards the horizon, I remember exhaling, and feeling like it had been the first time in a long time that I had done so. It was just me, and the sun, and the ocean, and it felt in some ways like a reckoning.

A voice from above told me to put it in gear, and I finished my repel, and rejoined the group. There was a moment there where I felt like I could have made some peace.

The course continued, and I had a number of interesting experiences after that. The water and boat initiatives were fun for me, and I felt like I was really beginning to be part of the group.

I’m not proud of the fact that I was an emotional mess at this point in my life, but I will not apologize for where I was at the time. I was a kid. I was faced with a pretty serious challenge. I didn’t have the life experience or the stones to yet weather what it was I had to manage. I’m not proud of the fact that it took me a good 6-7 years more to get myself together. And even then, there were moments.

And that too is no ones fault: it was simply the way of things.

But there was a moment, on Bald Island, about 3-4 days into the course, when I knew, and felt deeply, that I was going to be alright. Someday. It’s a moment that would end up meaning a great deal, and had I been smart enough to cling to it, might have saved me some grief.

Bald Island was a stone quarry back in the early 1900’s. They took pretty much everything of value from the island, and as it stood when I was there, it was Bald by pretty much every estimation. It was kind of like a group of rocks just decided to live together in the middle of the Ocean.

Our group leaders dropped us there as out “solo” group activity. We were allowed to take five items, and our group settled on four sleeping bags, and a loaf of bread. Obviously we had our watch book and our med kit, but as memory serves, we later wished we had opted for that fifth sleeping bag. We managed though, some of us better than others. But that is another story.

As the sun went down, there was not a lot to do, and we had been at sea all day, so most of the group was winding down. The island was bald in every possible way, and there were clear ruts in the rock from where the rail system had run. It was such an empty space.

I was really drawn to this place, and I walked off by myself for a while, just down to the shore. The sun was rapidly descending. I walked out on the shoreline, my beloved “Duck Boots” giving me confidence on the rocky spots that were becoming the only thing to stand on, as the tide came in.

I walked out on the rocky shoreline and I looked around. If I tilted my head just right, I felt like I was standing on the water. There were other islands, and some high areas in the distance, but as I stood there on the rock that later became its own island, in the North Atlantic, I was alone, all out there, by myself, with nothing between me and the rest of it all but words and inclination.
I stood there a long time, and I remember the very moment that the sky turned red, and then, inexplicably, it turned purple, and as the tide had come in somewhat, I found myself standing on a small stone in the ocean, and the shoreline was several feet behind me.

And I looked to the left, and I saw a deep purple sky, where the sun had dropped down below a nearby and somewhat hilly island. I looked to the right and saw a gentle darkness.

In a moment that would become something of a "signpost" moment for me, I leaned back, spread out my arms to the sky and just breathed. I remember feeling in that moment like I just might make it through this whole mess I had found myself in. That I might be this broken now, but somehow, this moment would be the start of something.

I don’t know that anyone noticed me or my ocean moment, but as I jumped back, stone to stone to reach the shore, I came back to the group and immediately asked for the “group journal/log book.” My journal was stuck on the boat, as it was not one of our five items, and so I had to write in the log.

This is what I wrote in the moments after I walked back to the shore of Bald Island.

Mountains of Majestic Royal Stand before me
Defying the flight of a Prism sun.
Lucid Ice created a blanket around me, and I exist.

For but a moment, it seems the Mountains of Majestic Royal,
The Prism Sun, the Lucid Ice, and
The Conglomerate Sky,
Come Together. As one.

A Unified Force of Compassionate comprehension, and yet:
A diversified troupe of players.
Marionettes of our control? Or,

Independent agents of a universal appeal for a
personal understanding Of what truly is to be:

Beautiful;
Or Together;
Or Real?

This is real.

I don’t have any journal entries of narrative note after that one for the remainder of the trip. I will never claim to have been much a poet any more than I will claim to be a good writer. But, in terms of pure moments, that was one that I can point to in my life as a snapshot moment of where I was at a specific time and place. Perhaps I might even go so far as to say that I really knew who I was in that moment, and even briefly, I felt released from the pain and the insecurity that had been the hallmarks of my year to that point. Regrettably, that pain and insecurity would continue to be problematic for a long time after my moment on Bald Island. It would be a moment I revisited in my mind a lot over the coming years, and I remember some time later thinking to myself, if I can get back to some sense of that peace that I had in that moment, It would be a good thing.

I remember feeling at ease for the first time in a long time after Bald Island. There were a lot of long nights and hurt hearts to come in the next years, but I know now, looking back that my first steps towards a more whole heart were taken in that time and place.

The rest of the trip in Maine went well, and I’d like to think that I did well by my group for the remainder. I know that we had to write a song to get back on the boat the next morning…And I know very well that I slept badly next to another who slept badly for similar reasons at the time. But that is another story entirely.

When the course ended, our group gathered on the shore, and we talked about what we had learned. Most of our group talked about how they had discovered themselves, and how they had learned to trust and know themselves in a new way. These things were true and real and felt in the heart, and they mattered. I’m sure they still do in fact.

I was scared about what I would say when it came to be my turn. I remember it vividly. I said, when Wendy asked me what I had learned about myself on this trip…I said:

“I learned that I knew myself pretty well when I came here.”

To this day, I’ve wondered how that came off. I worried that it came off conceited. While I can’t speak to what the other members of the Cormorant group thought, I knew, very clearly, that I was a complete mess when I came to Maine, and I was still going to be a mess when I got home, but that now, just maybe, I would have the stones to fight it.

That it took me years to rediscover that peace that I felt on Bald Island is not consequential, in the long run. That it took me years to even start working on repairing the damage I had done to myself and to my relationships is even less consequential now. It happened.

What matters to me in this reflection is that Hurricane Island gave me a chance to reboot. I was able to face some hard truths out in the ocean and it allowed me the opportunity to have my ass kicked by its grandeur and simplicity. And, the course allowed me to be a part of a group that in a variety of subtle and quiet ways, put me on the path to normalcy.

Those three moments, mostly the one at Bald Island, were very much in my thoughts as we visited the Big Island. I think it was the quiet. The peace.

The Real.

It was there with me in Maine, and I know I felt it again while sitting on the balcony on Hawai'i.

Guess it was a good trip. Still have those duck boots, too. It was nice to have time with the family, and nice also to have some time, and space to breathe and listen. It's amazing what memory gives us to work with at times. It's really surprising how it all comes full circle when we have the time, space, and inclination to catch it.

I remember a lot of stuff, some of it at times seems silly. I mean, do I really need Harry Truman's hat size memorized? Perhaps not, but then again, who knows? Someday I just might.

At this point, I'm inclined to think that we remember nothing on accident.

Preview of coming attractions, and, Expanding on an idea from Facebook

2009-01-23T23:41:00.003-10:00

Our entire family has been quite ill with a nasty stomach bug the last week, and things have been very busy in the weeks prior to this one, with a trip to the Big Island, and kid ballet, karate, and preschool classes getting started after the New Year, that I've not had much time to write.

I have some good stuff I wrote old-school style (read: in a notebook) while on the Big Island, including two pieces that I've not yet finished editing. One explores the interesting experience of seeing another Hawaiian island. The other is actually a piece that really surprised me. For some reason, I was inspired to write about two experiences that I had while a student at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School back in 1991. I'm excited about the latter one, in particular.

But, those aren't ready, yet. So, I'm stealing an idea that many of my friends on Facebook have been doing. It's essentially publishing a list regarding "25 things you didn't know about me."

It's an interesting exercise on Facebook in particular, as I have reconnected with people as far back as grade school there, while I also use it regularly to communicate and share information with people we socialize with here on the island.

For those unfamiliar, Facebook is essentially a social networking website where you make a profile, and have the chance to connect with others as you wish.

I've enjoyed those "25 lists" that others have written, and thought I'd join in. Perhaps you know these things, or perhaps not, which I suppose is kind of the point. I've expanded and edited this version a bit from the one I posted there, but I hope the Spirit remains the same. I enjoyed writing it, and hope you enjoy reading it as well. I hope to have some of the above mentioned columns ready in the coming week. Thanks as always for your support and feedback.

25 things you don't know about me:

1) I have a really nice record collection. Vinyl. Old School stuff. A lot if was my Dad's, but as I grew older, I grew to seek it out myself, and have a collection I am growing proud of. A few items missing though...

2) My Paternal Grandfather was an orphan.

3) I was a Black Studies major in college.

4) I still have every card and every letter that was sent to me after my Father died.

5) During 6th grade until about the middle of 8th grade, I was considered by my school principal a "serious discipline problem." I kinda grew up a little around the middle of the year. Played the Angel Gabriel in the Christmas Pageant that year. Must have been that.

6) When called by said principal during school one day following an incident in Religion class (I was right, that time...) my Mother hung up on her, having had enough calls from her of late, and said, "Call his Father." She did. That is another story though. A good one...may have to write that one here someday...

7) I have boxes of "stuff" from friends and relationships from Junior High all through College, and can still tell you the story of it.

8) I seriously thought about studying to be an Astronomer.

9) I once worked as a garbageman.

10) I planted a Lime Tree in our yard here in Hawaii. (No limes yet)

11) According to our family tree, I am related to one former President and one former First Lady.

12) I watch Wrestling. Professional. Have for years.

13) I once bought a loft at College that my roommate hated, just because I had a crush on the girl I bought it from, and it was a way to spend time with her.

14) I have teared up every time I have seen the scene in "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," where The Battle of Helms Deep is close to ending and King Theoden rides out assuming to his doom, only to find Gandalf, Eomer and the Rhohyrrm, at the top of the hill, poised to charge, and Gandalf says:

"Theoden King stands alone"
And Eomer rides closer, charging replies, "Not alone...TO THE KING!" and they all charge down the hill. Gets me every time.

15) I got an A on the American Studies "Grapes of Wrath" exam, having not read the book, and a D on the "The Great Gatsby" exam, having read it twice and loved it. I went on to teach English. I loved telling my students that story. Some of them got the point.

16) I went through a "scarf" phase in High School, where I wore a different scarf to school, every day, for months, even if it wasn't cold out. I wore the scarf to class, and pretty much all day. It was my trademark.

17) I went on to coach a Championship Soccer team, and be assistant coach for 2 Championship Lacrosse teams, though I never played soccer beyond grade three, and never played organized lacrosse.

18) Once, in a snowstorm, driving a van, I skidded off the road on a long hill. The van was undamaged, but I was stuck. I tried a bunch of times to get out, but I was stuck. I stopped, prayed harder than I ever have in my life, made some specific deals with the Almighty, tried one more time, and got out and home safely. He held up his end, and I have held up mine.

19) I am one of two Dads in the MOMS Club.

20) During summers at the Jersey shore, I sometimes pretended to be English while trying to meet girls while playing pickup basketball games at the old Pacific Avenue Courts. It didn't work.

21) As a kid, I practiced my Grammy Award, Tony Award, and Academy Award acceptance speeches in front of the mirror. Regularly.

22) These days, I imagine my interview with Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" about my debut novel. I don't practice it in front of the mirror though. At least not until I finish it. OK, maybe once.

23) I have a collection of signed/rare books, including an autographed "To Kill a Mockingbird."

24) My wife and I had our first date at Wendy's. Classy, I know.

25) I still remember the phone number of the first girl who ever gave me her phone number.

So, these were the few that popped into my head while the twins were watching a show and the Bear was napping. Hope you liked it.

How many of them did you know?

There is a haze over Leeward, Oahu. Oh, and Happy New Year

2009-01-01T23:56:00.002-10:00

The Fireworks started weeks ago. But now that New Years Eve has arrived here in Hawaii, I see that everything up to this point was but a prelude.

A year ago today, I wrote about our experience in the apartment in Waikiki, which is beginning to shape up much like this evening. The kids are asleep. The wife is asleep on the couch, and I am outside on the porch writing, powered by candlelight and Andre Champagne. It is 10:39pm, Hawaii time, and the fireworks have been constant since 5pm.

While there has been rain tonight, the sky cleared up briefly. Both the smell and fog of powder fill the air in a way that is only overshadowed by the noise. In our small neighborhood, there are probably 120 homes. By my estimate, I would guess that 117 have purchased copious amounts of fireworks, which were on clearance at Foodland tonight.

Back home in Jersey, Fireworks were an event. One had to travel to see them-it was a big deal, and often, watching them on TV was a more amenable prospect. Here, they are constant. I’ve seen more fireworks in the last few days that I’ve seen geckos, rainbows, and children riding unsecured in the back of a pickup truck combined.

This year is very different that last year. I remember sitting on that balcony and watching what I thought were different towns lighting off their community fireworks, but as it turns out, every display I saw last year, and there were many, was one person shooting off their New Year’s Cheer. As I sit here on my porch, which faces the South Shore of Ewa, I see fireworks from every possible angle. My neighbors both up and down the street have taken turns shooting things off, some of which have been as impressive as anything we’d see in NY or Philly.

They take this stuff seriously. I’ve had people tell me, that yeah, we might have gone slower on Christmas, but you don’t cheap out on New Years in Hawaii.

The funny thing is, as the smoke builds up, I can’t see and appreciate the good ones. I can see the streams and the colors from the Beach that I like to go write at, but the colors are all blurry with the smoke. But the noise…that’s for real.

There’s a family down the block that strung their part of the street with firecrackers. They went for about 20 minutes until they just stopped, but if the hollering I heard is any indication, the fire went out, and they are re-gearing it…yup-there they go. Crack after crack, followed by ¼ stick… wow.

I just spent the last half hour talking with the guy next door. New Years Eve seems to a time in our little neighborhood where people walk around in broad darkness and talk to one another. It was cool.

You can’t believe the noise. I heard a ½ sick of dynamite go off a while back, and fully credit the miscreants I grew up with for my ability to discern the difference between an m80 and a ½ stick. I’ve actually impressed my neighbors with that knowledge.

The firecrackers have been constant, although there was a lull of all noise at 11:30 PM Hawaii time. I think everyone was reloading.

It’s been constant for the last, and the constant bombardment of sound has been intense. From every side there are celebratory flares both percussive and visual. The guy on the other side of us seems to really like the m80s.

Time Shift: I’m finishing this after the fact, On New Year‘s day actually. Happy New Year.

I was outside for the actual turn of the year, and there was no grand countdown…no ball, and no Rockin’ Eve. Just all of a sudden, everyone lit off their best stuff at once. There’s a guy around the corner that built a scaffold, and set off what he claims was 2009 firecrackers, all in a row. It sounded like more than that in execution. What I really liked was that he and his crew went through the wreckage and pulled out any that did not go off, and then set them off, to make certain that they had all been fired. The attention to detail was impressive.

I walked around the neighborhood a bit more, and what was most surprising was as loud as both the build up and blow-off to the New Year actually were, what was most impressive was the absolute silence that followed. Once the fireworks were done, they were done. People swept up the street, and went to bed. The next day was eerily quiet, like I’ve never seen our street before. It was like the entire neighborhood was asleep when they wouldn’t normally be. It was quite a turn of events. There was a light rain overnight, so the smoke and grime have been washed from the street, and you'd never know anything had occurred last night.

So-that was New Year’s in Hawaii. A lot of noise. A lot of lights. A lot of smoke…and then, quiet.

Like a wave, so to speak.

Tales of a man and his Clothesline. Also, thoughts on the Holidays.

2008-12-30T20:28:00.002-10:00

I know it’s New Years, and Christmas just passed, but right now, I am in love with my clothesline. I’ll have some thoughts on the holidays at the end.

But I love my new clothesline. I’ve been thinking about having one for a while-it’s hot here. It’s windy here. Kinda makes sense. Our friends down the street have a fancy European one that retracts into its own spool. I had clothesline envy for a while, and I tried to find one like that here, but alas, was unable to do so.

So, I lost interest for a while, and continued using our electric dryer.

But it was irritating me. It makes the garage hot, doesn’t always finish when I need it to be done, and I have to turn it off if we have to leave the house, as we certainly don’t want a fire, but moreover, it just wasn‘t getting the job done, and costs money to run, as we do a lot of laundry.

So, about a week ago, I had alls I could stand, and I couldn’t stands no more…

I found a long covered cable and another rope in the garage. I used my extensive knot-tying training from my time as a student at Hurricane Island Outward Bound, and rigged me an old fashioned clothesline on the back porch, what the locals call a “Lanai,” but I call a porch.

I found myself some pins, and up that first load went. I felt great satisfaction as my Philadelphia Eagles Jersey (they made the playoffs! Woot!) gently swayed in the breeze. The combination of the wind and heat had the job done in less than an hour. I was hooked, and went looking for more laundry to do so I could dry it on my new clothesline.

Walking past the dryer over the last week, I feel like I’m walking by that girl who broke up with me for that dude with the hair, only now, I have a hot new clothesline, or rather, girlfriend, as the metaphor poorly indicates. I’m sure the dryer, had it feelings, would feel rejected, and that would be appropriate. I’m done with that thing. It costs money, and like I said, makes the garage hot, and despite this being Hawaii, I still don’t enjoy being unnecessarily hot if I have some say in the matter.

In all honesty, I have learned the following about how my new clothesline is better than the dumb dryer in the garage:
1) My clothesline uses no electricity, and was essentially free, since I made it from stuff we already owned.
2) I can leave laundry on the line if we have to go out.
3) My clothesline doesn’t get cranky and start banging against the washer when it feels too full.
4) My clothesline doesn’t need its lint trap cleaned.
5) My clothesline is so easy to use, the kids can help me. It takes longer when they do, but it’s an easy way to fill up 30 minutes or so in-between playgroups and such.

And those are just off the top of my head. I’m sure it’s considered “going green,” but that’s just gravy. For some reason, beyond the top five above, I have to admit, that I have found a sense of inner peace when I’m putting clothes on the line.

Unless the kids are clamoring about, there is something about just being a man outside on the porch, with my clothesline and the gentle Leeward Oahu breeze, that is centering and spiritually uplifting. I feel at one with our washables. Perhaps there is a sense of balance to be found in the process. More research is clearly warranted. Stay tuned for the next load…

Couple of notes on Christmas: thanks again to all who’ve written me of late regarding the blog. Your comments and suggestions are always appreciated. Hope your holidays were great.

In the days leading up to Christmas, the kids spent their time at home wrapping “presents” in a dishtowel and giving it to one another to “practice” opening presents. They’d take turns opening and being surprised and saying, “OHHHHHHHH! It’s a Pooh Movie!!!!” or “OHHHHHHHH! It’s a Princess something!” and so forth. They entertained one another like this for hours.
It was great-I got a lot of laundry done, and as such, got to spend time with my clothesline.

Christmas day, we opened some presents with family on the mainland via the magic of the Logitech Webcam. It was nice, and the girl in particular reveled in the joy of each present. Wanting one after the other in quick succession, enjoying them all tremendously.

Her Twin brother on the other hand, opened one, loved it, and ran up to his room to play with it by himself. He came down a little later and opened more, and then went back up to the cave to play undisturbed. He’s a smart boyo.

The little bear loved her presents, and everyone else’s, and the boxes, and packaging, and especially the paper, that soon covered every inch of the house in small, torn-up squares. Felt like we’d been in a ticker-tape parade…

The fireworks here started about two weeks ago. As you can buy them as an impulse item while checking out at Foodland and Walmart, to say they are easy to come by here, is like saying the Eagles barely beat the Cowboys this past week. (They won 44-6. Go Eagles) The lead up to New Years in Hawaii is bombastic. I have a friend who spent time in Iraq. He says that our town on New Years Eve is louder than anything he saw over there.

And for those of you who asked, yes we were affected by the blackout, but it was really not a big deal for us. Lit some candles, made sure there were no clothes on the clothesline (I love my clothesline), and read a book. No big whoop. Our side of the island was without power from 7pm-3am. We got ours back before the “Windward” or “snotty” side of the island. So there Kailua! (I still love Kailua. Not as much as my clothesline though.)

Oh, and one final note. I’m not sure this fits into the theme of this column, but I had to mention it as it happened this evening and was really cool. I got some Itunes gift cards, and have downloaded a lot of new stuff that I’ve been wanting to get for months. Included in that is a great young band from New Brunswick, New Jersey named “The Gaslight Anthem.” You can check them out here: http://gaslightanthem.com/ They clearly have prayed at the alter of Springsteen…

Anyway, we were listening to new stuff, and the kids were grooving on it, and as we finished dinner, the boyo says:

“Dad, do we have a sad song?”
And I said, “Well, we have lots of sad songs I guess-what do you mean?”
“Dad…can we take a sad song and make it better?”

For those of you playing along at home, that is, of course a lyric from “Hey Jude” by the Beatles. And while the kids have heard that version, I knew the one he wanted to listen to was the Wilson Pickett version featuring the late and still great Duane Allman on lead guitar. We hadn’t heard it for a while.

I asked him, “You mean, ‘Hey Jude?’”
And he said, “Yeah, Dad. That’s the one.”

He’s four. That was cool.

Hopefully, I will have an actually entertaining column regarding New Years in the coming week. Last year’s ‘Eve was pretty exciting. We shall see. Until then, thanks for reading. Tell a friend…Aloha!

By Popular Demand: The Great Tree-Knocking-Over incident of 2008

2008-12-24T00:08:00.002-10:00

We had a little tree for Christmas last year when were stuck in that truly craptacular apartment in Waikiki. We had arrived on the Island December 10, and our house wasn’t ready for us. So, we lived there and muddled through as best a family of five can in a two-bedroom apartment. That is poorly, at least for me. I got a total of zero nights of decent sleep in the 29 days we lived in that place.

But, I digress. We had a little tree, no more than 24 inches at its best. We put the Snoopy tree blanket around it as it sat on the glass table. That glass table…that mother of toddler facial bruises that it was…was the worst, but it was home to last year’s Christmas tree. Our first Hawaiian Christmas.

It was weak at best. But it sufficed. We had the tree, and watched the Grinch and “Charlie Brown Christmas” on Youtube on the old laptop, and we made it through.

This year, I had hoped that we could do better. After all, we were in our house, and have been here almost a year. It’s become our home, and our kids, as one of their Godfather’s once said, “Dude, they are old enough to remember this stuff now…make with a tree!”

And so, with that in mind, all three kids and I made a sojourn to the Waikele K-Mart. I’ll admit I didn’t even consider a live tree, although they were available at K-Mart, and elsewhere. They cost way too damn much here, and there’s nowhere to plant it after the fact, and in this economy, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay that much for something that’s going to die and leave needles all over that I have to vacuum up, not to mention the fact that I was still unsure if the kids would be able to handle having the tree out and about.

I am certain that there are families that have children in a variety of quantities and ages who manage to enjoy having their Christmas Tree out and about in various states of repose. I’m sure “John and Kate Plus Eight” have a tree in everyone’s room, and everyone behaves, as they fear, quite rightly I would think, that Kate might actually bite their heads off both figuratively, and perhaps, well, I‘ll leave it there...

But, I was concerned as it relates to my children’s ability to co-exist with a large fake tree adorned with cool things under which at some point presents would appear.

Call me crazy.

You see, my children are an interesting amalgamation of personages: the twins are four now. Their little sister is two. They can communicate across the board now and work together on any number of missions, both productive and destructive.

The kids and I put the tree together in the foyer of our upstairs area, which is a common area in between everyone’s bedrooms. While I shall avoid, out of good taste the opportunity to rail against the term “Easy to Install,” I am pleased to say that we got it done in something less than two hours. There is only one piece of furniture in the landing area, and that is the Wife’s Grandfather’s old Leather Easy chair. It is more often than not an open area that they bring their toys into and have a variety of adventures and so forth. The tree made it through the first night, and the kids were promised a tree-trimming with Mommy and Daddy a few nights later as work schedules allowed.

While the tree was an object of interest the first few days before the ornaments went up, it was a casual one at best. There was interest when we put it up and I added lights, but without the ornaments, it was a bit dull to their sensibilities. They left it alone, and that, I am sorry to say, gave me the false sense of security that would later prove problematic.

The tree survived, and was left very much to its own devices for the first few days of its time with us. It had a place of prominence in the main foyer upstairs, abreast the largest window in our home. It was a prominent feature in our daily lives those days, those all too brief days…as we awoke in the morning, it was among the first things we saw.

Those were good days. Those four days that the tree lasted.

As I said, the first two, it was just a tree with lights. Then we did the ornaments…and all Snoop broke loose. Once the tree was adorned with Snoopy, and colorful balls, birdies, and angels, and lacrosse sticks, and toy soldiers, and, man, I fear to say it as the kids might wake up and run down here and tackle the computer….once S-A-N-T-A showed up on the tree, the sheer enthusiasm alone was nearly enough to blow a hole in the kid-waiting-for-present-time-continuum….

And the event was fraught with Holiday albums: Johnny Mathis, Charlie Brown, and Sinatra, along with John Denver and The Muppets, carried us though an evening of Pizza, Spicy Ahi, and Egg Nog. That everyone’s stomachs were off the next day is irrelevant. Mele Kalikimaka…

So we trimmed the tree and it was good. And the children were told that the tree was to look at, and not to play with. The more delicate ornaments were either put high atop our glorious six-foot artificial tree from K-Mart, or they were tucked away for safe keeping. We talked about where some of the ornaments were from, and each of the kids clearly had their favorites. Little Bear loved the Snoopy ornaments. Much like her Mother, which explains the bevy of them on the tree. The Girl liked Snoopy too, but she enjoyed far more the ones that had pictures on them: some of her and her twin brother, and another that was a wedding favor at her Aunt and Uncle’s wedding.

I took that picture that they used. Took the ones of the twins too.

The boyo liked the ones that looked like “houses” but are actually replicas of old-school ornaments of church houses. He liked the one that looked like Gracie too. I like that one too.

And the tree was very welcome in our home. The weather here, which rarely wavers, did in fact just that, and there was a period of heavy rain so hard that the twins pre-school was cancelled. It was one of those time that I really understood that I am still an East Coast guy, as I said, “What, people can’t drive in this? C’mon…” Much like people from Minnesota ride people from Ohio for their small amounts of snow, and people from Buffalo ridicule people from New Jersey (at their peril…) and people from Maryland laugh out loud at people from Georgia who cancel school when it snows 1 inch. It’s all relative I suppose.

But the storms were pretty severe, and I saw some serious lightning and there were flash floods all over the Islands. This relates to our story in the manner in which it meant we were homebound a bit more, and as Daddy is not one to throw extra TV at the problem, we were upstairs a bit more, and the tree was right there…and it had all this cool stuff on it.

I should have known it was short for the house when school was cancelled. It was midmorning when I heard the crash. I had already been upstairs several times, and I had give a few timeouts for messing with the tree, though truth be told, I knew it was only a matter of time. I had gone downstairs to start on lunch, when I heard it.

Oddly, if not for the twins reaction, I might not have thought anything of the slight shuffling and crunchy noise I heard. But, alas, I heard the thunderous thuderousness of the boyo hopping down the steps…and felt a sense of dread as he reached the bottom step, calling out:

“Um, Daaad?”

To which I replied: “What is it Boyo?”

“Um, Dad, Did you hear that crash?”

And I looked over, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, his face scrunched up in thought. And as I flew to the stair well, and bounded up the stairs, I knew halfway up that this tree was not long for our house.

And there it lay, our first genuine Tree, all six-feet of it, fully knocked over on its right side, the little bear standing on her great-grandfather’s leather chair, truly resplendent in her joy at having reached the ornament of Snoopy kicking a soccer ball.

I sighed. And then, I picked the whole tree up, and moved it into our bedroom, moved Grandpa’s Chair, and gave the tree a new home.

The kids would later earn visitation rights, which became far more popular once gifts started collecting beneath the tree. Truth be told, it has turned out to be a blessing: the tree has survived, and I’ve enjoyed having the chance to sleep in a room with a Christmas tree.

In addition, I wrote in my last column about “Grandpa’s Radio Time.” That might never have occurred had not the tree been there. That first Sunday, when I gathered around the radio with the kids before bed was motivated by a number of things, one of which was the kids desire to visit their Christmas Tree.

And as I wrote last time-it has been the beginning of something really cool for me and the kids.
The kids consistently ask for “radio time” during the week now. We had one last night, and caught the end of a cool broadcast of Tchaikovsky. The kids enjoyed it, and I asked them if they liked the radio time just because of the tree…and the presents...

The girl told me, when I asked her “No Daddy…” and then proceeded to dance around the room, at least in the moment oblivious of the tree.

I hope it continues.

Happy holidays, and thank you for reading.

Grandpa's Radio

2008-12-17T11:53:00.002-10:00

It’s a Silvertone, with Sears Integrated Circuits, Model # 8072 in Colonial Style Cabinet. It was a gift from his parents when he graduated college in 1961. Growing up, until I was in the eighth grade, it was the center of many of our evenings.

It plays both AM/FM stereo and played records until recently, when the needle and cartridge succumbed to the age of the unit. It is quite fixable, so if anyone knows where I could find Cartridge #57-88930 and Needle #5788119 for the Silvertone, vintage 1961, I would totally love you for ever and ever. Honest.

Music was a huge part of my life in my parents house, and continues to be in my own home. As a kid, I remember very fondly listening to “Friday’s With Frank Sinatra” hosted by our old friend and Philadelphia legend, Sid Mark. We followed Sid from Friday’s with Frank, to “Saturdays with Sinatra,” and later Sundays. Sid is still making it happen: www.soundsofsinatra.com/ Good for you Sid. I remember fondly learning at Dad’s left hand at the dining room table the difference between the Dorsey Era-Sinatra, and his later work with Percy Faith and Nelson Riddle.

When Frank wasn’t on the radio, it was likely be Philly’s favorite Oldies station, WOGL, with Hy-Lit, or one of the other score of vintage DJ’s they carried. Dad would quiz us on Artist names and song titles. I still find myself playing this game in m y head whenever there is music on, and have taken to torturing my children, co-workers, family members, and occasionally complete strangers with what they must surely see as trivial information. Alas, all that info is locked in my brain, never to be removed, and always feeling somehow important. I mean, who can anticipate when I might be called upon to tell someone if that is Ben E. King or Clyde McFatter leading The Drifters on a particular song? Perhaps someday I’ll be called upon to settle an argument of international significance by clearing up a dispute over whether “Big Mama” Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog” was better than Elvis’ version. (It was)

When the radio wasn’t on, it was records. Vinyl. Yeah, the good old stuff. I’ve always been a vinyl fan, in many reasons because 8-tracks always sucked, I didn’t get a cassette player until I was ten, and CD’s weren’t even widely available until I was in Junior High. So, we listened to records. And we listened to them on the Silvertone. The favorite records were kept in the small storage space beneath the turntable. On any given evening, I might find myself sitting in front of the speaker and listening to Elvis, or Sam Cooke, or Simon and Garfunkel, or Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and sometimes Young), but we would be just as likely to have the Soundtrack to West Side Story, Oklahoma, Pirates of Penzance, and the whole Gilbert and Sullivan lexicon.

Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was a popular play, but only the version with the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Sir Georg Solti. This was a departure for Dad, as he typically preferred the conducting of Eugene Ormandy and the local Philadelphia Orchestra, and that of Leonard Bernstein, both of whom had conducted the 9th. I know this, as they were also part of Dad’s record collection. But, he swore by the Solti one, and to be honest, I think it holds up the best, and it is the only version of the piece on my Ipod. Still have the vinyl though…

I remember one Winter Saturday in particular, when for some reason, Mom and my sister were out of the house, and Dad baked bread, and we listened to Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” conducted by Leopold Stokowski, with Basil Rathbone as the storyteller. It is an album, playable on at 78 speed, which most modern turntables don‘t even offer. I remember looking at the picture on the cover, and was confused at first, thinking it was a story record, like the “Star Wars” story record and the “Gingerbread Man” story record I used to listen to in my room on my “Popeye” record player. Yes, I know how cool that makes me. I also had a .45 of The Monkees “Last Train the Clarksville,” so maybe it’s a wash?

I once told a student about my .45 record collection, and, aghast, she cried, “YOU own a gun?!” But I digress…

“Peter and the Wolf” was neat, but I was confused because the story was mostly music. He explained to me that I had to imagine what the music was describing. It was weird at first, but by the time it ended, I understood, and remember feeling like my brain suddenly had access to a whole new kind of music. Bread was pretty good too.

Between general yearly use, and it’s increased use around the Holidays, I remember vividly the day he taught me how to use the turntable on his Silvertone, and got authority to change sides. I was also given clearance to adjust the player when it got to that skip in Johnny Mathis’s “Blue Christmas.” I still can’t hear that song without hearing “I’ll have a bluuuuu, a bluuuuu, a bluuuu, a bluuuuu….”

To have earned permission to use and handle the unit was very much a coming of age in our house, as until the great “Christmas CD player and stereo system purchase of 1986,” Dad’s radio was in many ways the centerpiece of Family dinners, and general evenings at home. Seems like there was always something playing.

After the Christmas of ‘86, The Silvertone was the old boy in the neighborhood, having been replaced by a brand new “Realistic” cabinet system with huge speakers and a graphic equalizer. The Radio Shack up in the Jamesway shopping center saw my Dad coming a block away, and sold him the system by pulling on his need for better sound with which to conduct the tympani player of the Chicago Orchestra. “It’ll feel like you’re there at the concert! That’s what the man said!” And while the sound was immeasurably better, and liking new technology as much as the next guy in 8th grade, I found it to be pretty darn cool, I was sad a little too for the Silvertone.

Once the dust settled, I asked if I could have the old stereo to use in my sanctuary, that of course, being New Jersey in the 80’s was the basement. I already had a recycled black and white TV down there, and a couch, and a weight bench. Now, I could have some tunes, Maaan!

I know, like something right out of “Visionquest.” The momentum carried me. Sorry about that.

And so it spent the next 20 years or so in my half of the basement. It got a lot of use. I played the hell out of that thing; the radio didn’t get a lot of stations way down in the basement, and by the time I was in high school, I had a stereo in my room. I fell in love with vinyl, partly because it just seemed cool, but the sound was good, and, more vital as I got older and was a broke high school student, and then a broker college student, I could get records pretty cheap. So, I started collecting every record of every artist I liked. I remember vividly when I was introduced to “The Smiths” around 11th grade. One CD of theirs was nearly $25 at Sam Goody, and was about the same at Jamesway. So, I hit the Record Exchange, and bought pretty much their whole catalog on Vinyl, including “Louder than Bombs” and a great Import Pressing of “Rank” for $20.

Stuff I really liked, I would transfer to cassette on the soon to be obsolete, yet once new "Realistic" stero, for playing in my fancy new AM/FM stereo AND cassette player that Mom and Dad got me for my 17th birthday, and had installed in the old Nissan after I got my license.

Ironically I suppose, it was the last gift my parents gave me before Dad died. The car is long gone, but I still have that stereo in a box in the garage.

Still have the records too.

And I still have the Silvertone. It’s in our bedroom upstairs. And it gets regular use, especially on Sunday nights, which are now “Grandpa’s Radio time.” It happened almost on accident a few weeks ago, but the kids really dug it, and it’s turning into a regular activity.

The wife works late on Sundays and they tend to be very busy days: between church, Football, and the copious amounts of birthday parties, fairs, special events, and other kinds of things there are to do here on Sundays. I usually aim for them to be in bed between 6:30 and 7:30pm these days, as they really have lost the regular nap. And they wake up around the same time every morning, so I aim for that as their bedtime, and it’s been pretty standard.

Hawaii Public Radio, 89.3 FM, has “Sinatra, the man and his music” on from 5-6 pm, and we listen to that during dinner, and then I’d been listening to “Prairie Home Companion” at 6pm. I usually only got to hear a few minutes though, as it got to be bedtime. So every weekend, I’d have that as a target, but then the night would get away from me. I’ve always liked the show, but never had a chance to listen regularly.

So, it was time for a shift. We got ready for bed early a few weeks ago. We ate dinner, and then went upstairs to Mommy and Daddy’s room, and plugged in the Christmas tree (where it was moved after the great tree-knocking over incident) and put the show on. They sat on the bed, or on my Dad’s old recliner, and looked at the tree, and listened to Garrison Kielor start the show on Grandpa’s Radio. The sound is remarkably good for a unit of its age, and the kids played with some ornaments, and listened to the songs, and the silly stories, and asked about people in the pictures that sit atop the unit. After about 45 minutes, we moved to bed, and they went. It was a lot of fun, and we’ve repeated it every Sunday since. Week two, when the “Guy Noir” story started, they asked if “Mr. Wiggles” or the "Snake" were in this one, as he had been a prominent character the week before. I explained that it would be a new story, but was impressed with their recall.

They ask about it during the week, and when someone mentioned Sunday to the twins the other day, they replied, “That’s Grandpa’s Radio Day!” They’ve asked to hear it during the week too.
The kids never knew my Dad, and this activity has given me a chance to connect with him in some way. What’s cool for me, is that this has given me a chance to remember the times when the whole family would be centered around that radio, and those are times I remember fondly.

When I grew up, there always seemed to be music on, and that I believe helped me learn to love, appreciate and gain joy from it for my whole life. One of the things that was elementary to me when the kids were born, was that I wanted to do the same. They’ve been exposed to everything I can give them. My Mom played stuff for them. My sister has played stuff for them. And my kids have heard it all.

So, while they’ve been listening all their lives, it’s been fun to reconnect with Dad’s Silvertone now. It’s a beautiful piece visually, and has outlasted any radio that I’ve ever had. Giving my kids a regular chance to connect with the Grandfather they’ve never known through the music of his radio is as pleasant as it is to do so myself.

I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m going to enjoy it while it does. Thus far, it’s been really fun. And at least I get to hear some of “Prairie Home Companion.” And they get to bed on time too. Gotta check the rest of the week’s radio schedule…

Music and story are powerful mediums, especially when provided by a vintage, 1961 Sears Silvertone, with stereo and Integrated Circuits.

I’ve spent the morning writing this, and the kids have been really excellent. They’ve played nicely all morning, with of course, Daddy’s Ipod playing on shuffle mode. As I was proofreading this to publish, I let them watch one Thomas and Friends episode, during which they saw a Christmas tree. The boyo said, “We have a Christmas tree, but not until Sunday with Grandpa’s Radio.” I told him we could listen and see the tree some other times too, if he wanted to. And smiled and said, “Ok, Dad!”

Well said boyo. Ok, Dad. Enjoy the show.

Well, that's enough of that

2008-12-11T13:30:00.002-10:00

Writing in general has always been something that I enjoy. My posting of yesterday not withstanding, I have found, for the most part, that the blog has been a positive experience for me, and has taken me in some interesting directions.

Last nights post was born of simple frustration, and I thank you all for your comments and feedback, both in public and in private. In addition to the blog, I have been working on a novel and some other projects. The blog does take a great deal of time to do, and I grew frustrated yesterday while working on it, realizing that I've neglected those other projects. As I was writing about our trip of last year, I suddenly felt like I was repeating myself, and where it would have been more professional to simply walk away and come back to it later, I instead put that frustration into the column, and published it. If you were offended by my tone, I apologize.

I considered deleting it, but have decided not to, as warts and all, it is reflective of what I was feeling in that moment. And, for better or worse, that's what this space was created for. I plan to keep writing here, and do hope you will keep reading.

One year in...shall I continue?

2008-12-10T21:54:00.000-10:00

One year ago…

It was a rainy morning, and having been up seriously late the night before making sure everything was ready, the weather kind of matched my mood. My sleep during the last night in our old house was somewhat indicative of what the next month’s worth of sleeping would hold, though I didn’t know that at the time.

The gigantic van pulled up and we loaded the car seats and all the stuff we could muster on board, and we drove off to the Philadelphia Airport. It was an uneventful trip until my Mother-in-law phoned to let us know that we had not left her our house keys. She was at our home to oversee the pickup of all of out stuff…

And so we turned around. We gave the keys, and managed to make the plane on time, despite an overzealous security agent thinking that the boyo might have been hiding Al Queda in his “Incredibles” jacket.

And then we just carried on. The flight was a bit rough, and I’ve written about that in this space, and American Airlines made good on my complaints, so I’ll leave it there.

We landed, and the wife’s colleague met us at the airport, and we went to the McDonald’s drive thru, as there was no food on our flights…and then we went directly on to our temporary housing in Waikiki.

We spent the next 4 hours making the apartment, complete with its balcony, and two bedrooms, a kid proof home for our five person family.

It was a difficult transition, but we managed. I remember getting off the plane last year and feeling hot.

And beyond that, we adjusted. It’s been said in this space, and in all honesty, I am considering terminating this column.

The readership is not what I had hoped, and while I appreciate those of you who have read, I do not believe that this space will be greatly missed should it be terminated.

So, if you wish to hear more, please comment.

50th post: Thanksgivings on a year

2008-11-27T22:17:00.002-10:00

This is my 50th post in this space.

I have gone through a great deal of changes in the past year. I left my career in education. I moved my family about as far away from New Jersey as you can go. I chose to be a stay at home parent. I moved way outside what was my comfort zone. It’s been quite an eventful year.

Reflecting on a year is a daunting task. A year ago today, I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner for our family, while working with the wife to manage our impending move, and attending the PG/PHS Annual Football game, as was my responsibility as AD/AP of PGHS. It was my final official function. It was fun to do, and there are days that I miss that connection to the kids and their lives. That PG is in the State finals is wonderful, and I’m happy for the kids and school.

I received a nice send-off from the school and staff. While there are days I miss it, it seems very much like it was another life ago, or even like it was someone else’s life entirely. With a year under my belt now, I realize that my life has changed so much…no-that’s not it. I have changed. I feel like I could go back to that work, and that I could be good at it and feel rewarded by it. Maybe someday I will. I just don’t know that I want to.

I’ve lamented at times both in this space and elsewhere, about the transition to living here in Hawaii. It was a very difficult time when we first arrived-living in that windblown apartment in Waikiki was a mess: Five people living in a two bedroom apartment for a month was not good. But we managed.

Our first few months in our new house were challenging too. Many of our neighbors did not speak to us, and some still don’t. But we’ve made enough friends here that we make it work, and don’t feel as isolated as we did when we first arrived. I don’t get the “stink eye” anymore at the store, or about town. Seems like we are pretty much taken as residents in most cases now. We've come to some level of peace about being here. It's odd now to think back to the fact that I almost got into a fistfight in the Honolulu Library.

I still want a piece of that guy though...but that was another post.

As I look at it though, the biggest change for me has clearly been the life I now have with my children. I’m with them all the time, and although being a “stay at home dad” has proven to be far more of a challenge than I had initially anticipated, I now have the chance to have a relationship with them that I simply did not and would not have ever had the chance to have back home.

In light of that, I thought I would share some moments that I’ve had with them of late. These are moments that I know would never have happened in our life before.

-I took the kids to Chili’s for a birthday lunch last week. As you may know, I do a few shifts a week there as a server, and so they are very familiar with the cuisine and the people. We always get the Chips and Salsa, as everyone likes it. While we were there, the Boy picks up two chips and presses them together, handing them to me, saying, “Here Daddy-I know your favorite is when they stick together.” He’s right of course.

-Driving home from school the other day, the twins were talking about octagons and hexagons and pentagons, and the Little Bear, looking at a stop sign said, “Octagon Daddy!”

-All three of them just this morning took all of the cushions off of the couch, and put them one after another in a line. It was then a train, and they took turns moving from one cushion to the next calling out “chugga-chugga-choo-choo.”

-At the Zoo last week, the twins were able to discuss the fact that the Hippos are herbivores and the Komodo Dragon is a Carnivore. And of course, they reiterated the fact that a “Prehensile tail” means it can grab onto stuff.

-As we drove past the Ala Moana Mall last week, the kids all were pleased to see the Gigantic Santa atop the main building. When I said, “Hey kids, it’s Santa…” they replied… “No Daddy…it’s Santa CLAUS….” and I could actually hear the rolling of the eyes.

-I took the boy to the ER today. Bonked his head and ended up needed two stitches. No big whoop. But he was amazing in how he handled everything. He’s a very different kid when he’s flying solo. Until I had to hold him down so they could stitch him up, a privilege I’ve enjoyed with all three kids now, he and I were having a lot of fun just hanging out. He was pretty upset with me after he got stitched up, but a timely purchased bag of Oahu’s own “Famous Amos’ Chocolate Chip Cookies” from the vending machine managed to stave off a more dramatic tantrum. Mahalo Wally!

-All three of the kids have done great in their swimming lessons.

-They can name the members of the E Street Band.

-They know that Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Blues Traveler are all from New Jersey.

-I’ve learned that there is a whole world that operates outside the confines of the school calendar and clock. It’s really something to be at home with my kids at 9:30 am on a Wednesday and talk to them about what they want to do. I remember a time in my life when 9:30 am simply meant a change in classes.

-When I asked them today what they were thankful for, being Thanksgiving and all, I received the following litany of blessings: The Girl is thankful for Lights, stars, trees, her Pinky Dog, Mommy and her brother and sister, and for, as she said verbatim “I am thankful for everything, Daddy.” The Boy was thankful for many of the same, but also his Blue Doggie, Spider Man, and for his shadow. The Bear was too busy running back and forth and all over to reply in a serviceable manner.

What’s more, and this may be the point I’m somewhat driving at, is that I know my children now. I suppose I knew them back when I was working full time in some manner, but not in the way I do now. I don’t say any of this to say that one cannot be a good parent and still work-my wife manages it, so I know it’s possible. I just know that I was spending a great deal of my heart and soul in my work in education, and that there was no way I could have kept doing what I was doing and still have the connection to my children that I now enjoy.

I don’t know, honestly, how good of a stay-at-home parent I really am. There’s no annual review, no online quiz, no immediate feedback available. Who would have thought that I’d miss my annual evaluations…

My performance will be judged in many ways by the kind of kids they turn into, and that judgment is to be years in the making. I do hope though that the choices that I’ve made, to be with them, turn out well. I’ve seen way too many amazing things from my children to think that this was not the right thing for me. I hope that it turns out to be the right thing for them as well.

Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you for reading. Feedback is always welcome.

Mining the journals in celebration of a month of anniversaries

2008-11-17T08:32:00.002-10:00

The little bear just turned two.

The twins turn four this week.

The wife has a birthday coming up. I’ll leave that one alone…

At the end of this month, it will be a year since I retired from education to become a stay at home parent.

Next month, it will be a year since we moved to Oahu, and a year since I started writing in this space.

I thought it might be interesting to revisit some things I’ve written in past journals, as they relate to the events that are upcoming.

Thinking back on the twins birth, it was a chilly day in South Jersey, where we were living, and in Philadelphia where they were born. Heidi had spent the night before in the hospital, and I went home to care for our dog, Gracie. The doctors told us they would likely induce in the morning.

So I went home for a bit, and woke up about 4am to drive back into Philly. The twins were born at 1:57 and 2:00 PM respectively. The following is from a journal I kept at the time, slightly edited for readability:

1:05 PM. Been here since about 5am. I spent a long time here last night and she spent the night. Her parents are now at our house.

The Ohio State vs. Michigan game is on-Touchdown Buckeyes just as I write this.

I know this is happening, and I’m excited, but I keep wondering how I’m going to feel when the babies come out. Wife’s been a trooper through this all. Thirty-seven weeks today, and what a journey this has been--a year ago we were struggling with getting pregnant, and today we are hours away from parenthood. What a dramatic turnaround.

I imagine the wife and I will feel different after they get here, but I wonder other things too-who will they be? What will they become? Will they like us? What kind of parents will we be?

I already know I love them, but who will Heidi and I become once they are here? Will we be good at teaching them about the world? Will they be happy?

The wife has been really something-she’s going to be a great mom-she’s worked so hard to get our world ready for them.

I’m still a little nervous about everyone’s health. Everyone says they are perfect, but I probably won’t feel totally OK until everyone is settled and OK. I know I tend to harbor a bit of fear about medical stuff, and this time is no different. It’s just who I am-as excited as I am, I am a bit nervous as well. Part of having lived the life I have I suppose.

These residents at the hospital are just so anxious to do stuff. It’s cute.

I’m excited, but I’ll feel better when they are here and they are OK and so is the wife.

The twins arrived shortly after I finished that last sentence. Upon reflection, there’s nothing ground-breaking there I know-typical first time parent jitters I suppose, but to think about who I was then, and who I am now gives me a great deal of pause. Just reflecting on the young man who sat in that chair makes me smile a bit, as he had no idea what was in for him.

That the twins will be four is incredibly exciting and somewhat humbling. For that much time to pass that fast is mind-boggling. It really might as well have been yesterday that I was falling asleep with my head precariously balanced on the top of their crib watching them sleep because I was afraid they might roll over and need help.

The wife and I were so nervous about them eating enough and pooping enough that we kept a daily flow chart to track these things.

I remember the first time I left the house with them in the stroller, I called the wife at work from the corner, a good 100 feet from our house saying, “I made it to the corner! Should I keep going?”

We were afraid of everything that first go-round, which I suppose is not that uncommon. It certainly set the stage for the Bear, who celebrated her second birthday this week, and had promptly decided that there are certain times of the day when it is unacceptable to wear pants.

Regardless of where we are…She’s benefited from our experience, in that we developed a clear “walk it off” policy just in time for her to start running into things. She’s learning new words every day, knows many of her colors, numbers and letters, and has decided that her favorite thing to do, outside of occasionally running full speed into random walls, is to give hugs, some of which get a running start.

I’m a big fan of this. The hugs I mean. The running into walls things is, um, well, it’s pretty damned funny. She likes to dance with her sister and plays nicely with the twins in a variety of ways.

In thinking about the end of my career, I revisited the journal that I kept during our house-hunting trip in October ‘07. Heidi and I stayed in Waikiki for a week looking for a home and setting up temporary housing for when we arrived in December. I write the following while sitting at the bar at “Da Big Kahuna Bar and Grill,” after a very pleasant conversation with a member of the United States Air Force, who happened to be from Philadelphia, of all places. This is again slightly edited for readability:

My career will take a hit, that’s without a doubt. But I don’t know what I want it any more anyway as although I’ve had loads of fun and I’ve been blessed to know a lot of great kids and people, I don’t know what I can point to any time where I was genuinely happy.

Just because I’ve had some success at something does not mean that I should do it. I suppose it’s possible that I’m not that good at it at all, but who’s to say?

I’d like to think my Dad would have been supportive of all this, but this month marks seventeen years since he died. I’ve spent as much time with him in my life as without him. I am not my Dad-not even a little. Did I go into education because of him? Was there somewhere else I was supposed to go?

I’ll never know what he would think-he never deviated from the Philly/New Jersey area his whole life. Don’t know that I can argue with that, except to say that we have made a new choice.
It was right at the Anniversary of his death that I wrote that, so I’m not surprised that I was thinking of him in the context of the move and my career. Truth be told, I don’t miss it anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back.

In terms of becoming a stay-at-home dad, I pull again from the House-hunting trip journals, and share with you, gentle reader, this chestnut that I wrote while making a pilgrimage to “Don Ho’s Island Grill,” God rest his Groovy soul. The entry references a hike I did earlier that day at Diamondhead Crater.

I really got excited at Diamondhead, on the way down. I get to raise my kids! I get to take all the energy and focus and TIME that I’ve been giving to school after ungrateful school all these years and focus on our family. I get to be my kids’ teacher. I get to see them grow up and I am going to help them have a lot of fun doing it. All of my creativity can go into feeding and teaching and loving my family.

Now, we may get here and just not do well-I suppose it’s possible, but I think that as long as we are together, we will be alright. And, as I’ve said, unless we fall in love with life here, this, although beautiful, is temporary if we want it to be.

I’m really glad I found this section, as truth be told, I need to remind myself of the above-that we have a tremendous opportunity as a family to be together and it’s an opportunity I did not have when I was working. The wife’s job gave us the chance to come here, and one year later, though there have been bumps in the road, some of them pretty hefty (I may reflect on those bumps next month…stay tuned), I am glad we came here. I have worked harder than I ever have in my life as a stay-at-home parent. In all honesty, that surprised me. I knew it would be a challenge, but I was probably a little cavalier about it at the start.

And truth be told, I’ve occasionally fallen into some of the patterns that made life more difficult when I was working full time--too much caffeine, not enough sleep, taking on more than I can handle…Last July, I wrote a column about falling into the “Perilous Patterns” that lead to stress and anxiety and overwork, and the like. I’m still waiting on Brett Favre’s response to that one, by the way. I reference it here as a reminder to myself if nothing else to continue to reflect on the challenges and how one copes with them.

So here, on the cusp of all these birthdays and all these anniversaries, I need to remind myself of not only what I walked away from and why I was ready to do so, but also what I chose to walk towards, which is this family, in this place.

Guess that’s the funny thing about birthdays and anniversaries: they always seem to put it all back in focus on the things that mattered, because they have always mattered. And will do so year after year.

But what will you do? Thoughts for the President-Elect, by way of Trinity Church, sorta.

2008-11-05T11:13:00.003-10:00

Jean was a pillar of our church as I was growing up. She was the Lay Reader Emeritus, so to speak, and she was that because she was simply the best and cared the most about that particular ministry. She was an extraordinary woman who I was fortunate to know.

Earlier in her life, she had been a Broadway performer, and had worked with Ray Bolger, if memory serves. She later was married to a gentleman of significant means and influence. I once visited the New Jersey Governor’s mansion on a class trip, and saw a clock there, with a plaque saying it had been donated by her. That was wicked cool.

I know that she received regular correspondence from the Queen Mother. For real. I visited her home, and she shared it with me. Amazing penmanship that Queen Mother.

I’m thinking of her today, and I’m thinking very much of the last time that I saw her. My mother and I visited her in her home. She was elderly at this point, but my father had died, and she had adored him. She had not been well enough to attend his services.

My dad had been head acolyte at church, while she was in charge of Lay Readers, and he treated her with the deference that only my dad could. She thought he was “timeless” and I’ll never forget the way she said that when she described him.

I still think of Jean every Christmas, and Easter, and every other major holiday in the Church Calendar, as those were the events that Jean would read the lessons herself. The last Christmas my father had was one of our best: He was the Crucifer for the clergy, which meant he led them in carrying the cross. I was the Crucifer for the Choir, and at one moment, on Christmas Eve, after I had led the choir in, in front of a packed Midnight Mass audience, as the choir had been seated, and I was to step aside for the clergy to enter the sanctuary, it was just him and I, both dressed in full crucifer robes, which I’m happy to say were pretty kick-ass, standing in front of one another. I dipped my cross to him, and he dipped his back, and we were all business. We’d done it before, and we would do it again in the months before he got sick, but that moment on Christmas Eve stands out to me as a moment that he and I shared in a place and a time that will always matter to me. It was Christmas Eve 1989. It was the last one I would have with my dad, and it was a really amazing moment that he and I never spoke of.

And John played “Silent Night” on the bells in the tower, and it reminded us all of the fact that he had been doing it for years, including the December that he lost his youngest son a few weeks before Christmas. These were the things that mattered, and they mattered because we all shared in them.

And Jean read that night. She was the voice of that congregation, and to be honest, I listen for her in every Lay Reader that I am subjected to, and likely will continue to do so. She was a special lady, and I’ll leave it there, lest I get further a field of what I’m actually trying to talk about.

We went to visit Jean a few months after my Dad died. She was dressed to the nines-it was after New Years, so she had her Holiday Cards on the gigantic Grand Piano in her parlor. The cards included some from current President Bush, former President Reagan, the Queen, Her mother, and others, before she snapped at me to come over and talk to her.

I’d not had a lot of solo interaction with Jean, accept the one time I was a participant in the Passion reading around Easter, which she directed. As I recall, she asked that I “not speak as though I’m chewing marbles,” and “Say it five times MORE than you think you should say it.” So, as I sat with her, and my mother in her sitting room, which as I recall looked out on an expanse of trees and fields that I was not aware existed in central New Jersey. And we chatted for a while, and then, clearly having decided pleasantry was done, looked to my mother and said, regarding my father’s death:

“What Happened?”

I remember being surprised by the emotion that carried her words. She seemed genuinely upset. I was still just a kid, and still myself only a few months away from having just eulogized him in front of the congregation he so loved, as did Jean.

My mother explained that he had developed a cancer that turned out to not be treatable, and while he had fought it, he died. My mother seemed to know that a simple and direct answer was the way to go, and Jean listened, and then sat for what felt like to teenage-me an eternity. She looked away, off into the parlor of her home, and then nodded her head, as though she had processed and accepted the story for the first time, and yet projected a dignity that was palpable. She nodded again and then looked at me.

She titled her head at me. She was an older woman by this point, but you could tell that she had been even more beautiful in her day, and not just because of the myriad of photos of her with famous people that were copiously sprinkled throughout the house. I felt like her eyes were piercing me as she looked at me, the son of a man she genuinely respected through our church, and she narrowed her eyes, as though looking at me for the first time.

“And what about you then?” she asked. “What about you?”

As I remember that moment, I remember feeling caught off guard, but at the same time I felt some relief that someone had asked something about me and been direct about it, as opposed to talking about me as though I weren't in the room, which happened a lot back then. My initial response was not memorable…

“Um…well…” and that was my reply to this great woman…

“Um…oh dear. We know you are handsome dear…” she said, while she not only patted my arm gently, but also rolled her eyes, but only a little;

“But, I wonder what will you do?”

What will you do?

That meeting, which was the last time I saw her alive, has been in my mind a great deal of late, and was in my mind almost daily when I was working in education.

The answer I gave her, after a long stretch, was that I thought I might teach, or do music, or act or something, but that I was going to go to school and figure that out.

I remember telling her that my dad was a teacher, and that my mom and uncle and grandmother had taught, so that seemed like a good place to start, and she seemed pleased by that. I made a comment that I thought that, with “all that in my family history, maybe I could be good at it, or at something.”

She listened and nodded again, and then looked me dead in the eye, and said;

“See that you do, young man. See that you do.”

While there was some chitchat, that was essentially the end of our meeting.

I’ve tried to do what she told me, and truth me told, I can’t think of her without thinking of that last Christmas Eve with my Dad.

Between my time in public and private education, I honestly feel like I’ve done some good work. I’ve had some amazing students. I’ve had students who’ve disappointed me, and some who’ve shocked me with their creativity. I’ve had some that I know I’ve reached, and others that I knew would never get what I was telling them. I’ve taught some lessons that were fun, and others that were absolutely horrendous to participate in. I’ve had some students who have died in service of this country. And I’ve helped memorialize them. I’ve been hailed both publicly and privately as the best thing to ever happen to the students of X,Y and Z. And, I’ve been told I’m useless as well. So it goes, as Uncle Kurt would say…

But at the end of all of this, I’m doing something different now. And there have been times that I have wondered what my dad and Jean would think of it.

What I do now, put real simple is: I raise my kids and try to create a positive environment for my family. When I get free time I write on this blog, and when I get more free time I work on a novel and I work on a children’s picture-story book; in addition, I serve as “Class Mom” to my kids Pre-school, and I clean the house. A work a few shifts a week at a restaurant/bar, as much to get out of the house as for what it brings in. I am now a “stay at home dad” but I don’t stay at home…I make it go. My kids know what “Prehensile” means…And I’m damned proud of it.

I think of this as I look at our latest Presidential election. Barack Obama is our President-Elect. I voted for him. I am glad he was elected.

But I am not a nineteen year-old kid, cheering on Clinton while in college. I supported him mightily and worked on that campaign. I remember screaming out my dorm window when the election returns came in. I thought he was to be it-the start of a new American Idealism.

And while there was good from that administration, I will admit, it did not live up to what I had hoped. The years since have not been politically pleasant for me either. But I’ll gloss that over like a Clarence Clemmons Saxophone solo, to groove back into my actual point…

Barack Obama becomes President at a time where, in my opinion, our nation is at a crossroads both domestically and internationally. The world at large, as I see it has been waiting this one out. They want an American Nation that will engage the rest of the world. People way smarter than I are comparing the crisis of these times to those facing the nation when Lincoln and FDR were elected. That’s pretty heady stuff.

Watching the returns come in, and seeing the crowds gathering in cities all over the world, and their excitement has been inspiring. I can’t recall ever seeing that type of excitement outside of a Philadelphia Phillies World Championship Parade.

Yeah, I had to toss that Phils reference in.

My hope, and I have no reason not to do so, other than a natural East-coast born penchant for expectant failure, is that Obama will be who he says he is. He was born here in Hawaii, not 15 miles from where I write this now. He says a lot about hope and change, and he is seen here very much as a man who has been shaped by the Hawaiian culture. I mean that as a complement.

I believe in hope, and I believe in change, especially after the last eight years of the current administration. I still can’t believe that the nation was ever in a place that they elected that guy twice…but…I digress.

This is not a column about politics. This is a column about Hope. Obama has spoken about it a great deal. So, I ask of him, the President-Elect, the same question that Jean asked me all those years ago, “What will you do?”

You have ascended to the office. You have a majority in Congress. You have called on America to serve and sacrifice. They have listened.

So-What will you do?

I hope it is good. The World will be watching.

As they say here on Oahu, Maika’i pomaika’i, Mr. President-Elect.

The Math that Matters.

2008-10-31T22:40:00.003-10:00

This will likely be my last sports-related column for a while. But, I had to write it. I will get back to talking about the family and the kids soon, and in fact have a column that is halfway completed regarding the kids and their recent independent-streak…stay tuned.

As you may have heard, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies, are, as Harry Kalas would say, the World Champions, of baseball. I’ve followed this team a long time, and have written about sports in this space before. Here are some of my thoughts of late. Thank you as always for your indulgence…

The way that I spoke to my father in many ways was through sports. The hard part was that for the most part, during our time together, our teams, on a regrettable and consistent manner, sucked ass.

While I remember the Phillies 1980 World Series win very well, I was more interested in the Sixers in 1983 than Dad was. It was not something we shared.

What remained was a double decade of awfulness. Dad died in 1990. While I know he would have loved, as I did, the 93 Phillies, I’ve written here more than once about that season.

Over those years, the Eagles, and Flyers, and even the Sixers, though I never cared for the Iverson teams… they all gave us a few potential title runs, and came close, I only now realize that this Phillies championship is what would have made my dad the happiest of all.

Dad was a ballplayer. He taught me the game, and that was the game I played growing up. I wasn’t given the chance to play football, but in addition to swimming, I was allowed to play baseball. He taught me a few pitches, and I made them work while I still played. If I could have hit a curve ball, perhaps I would have played longer. But, once they started throwing those, I knew it was time to focus on swimming and music.

While I was old enough to care, the Eagles and Phillies were both horrible, and then we had the Buddy Ryan years. I don’t remember Dad being overly interested, not in the manner in which I was, and by that, I mean that manner in which I got into fights with the front running-fair-weather-cockroach Dallas fans, or on occasion the Giants fans. Like many young sports fans, I learned how to calculate a batting average long before I understood Algebra. It may have kept me from honor roll a few times, but it mattered far more to me that I could understand ERA and Yards per carry, so I could read football and baseball box scores than it mattered that I understood the “order of Operations” and PEMDAS. There was math that mattered to my life, and well, then there was Algebra.

The math that mattered was far more interesting. Still is.

I remember my dad telling me once that his mom kept scorebooks on the Phillies. Reams of them. I started doing it too, but regrettably, I was keeping score during the forgettable Lance Parrish and Dickie Thon years of Phillies baseball. Those were lean, lean years, and my interest in that pursuit waned a bit.

But Dad loved baseball. He would watch the World Series every year, even if he didn’t care much about either team. As the Phillies were so bad during the late 1980’s, my interest waned, but he always seemed to find a way to get my sister and I to watch some of the series. So I remember the Earthquake during the 1989 Oakland-San Francisco series. I remember the Kirk Gibson Home Run in Game one of the 1988 Dodgers vs. Athletics series. I remember Dad was happy that the Dodgers won, as I think he still begrudged the A’s for leaving Philadelphia. Can’t blame him. I remember the 86 Mets-Red Sox series really well, and I remember him telling me not to go to bed yet…it wasn’t over, and then the ball went through Buckner’s legs, and the Mets won. I didn’t much care for the Mets, and I thoroughly hate them now…but at the time, I knew it was a pretty major moment.

My interest dropped a bit after he died. Whereas he and I and my sister could make even a Von “Five for one” Hayes Phillies team interesting, removing him from that equation, and her as well after she moved out, made for a somewhat less engaging experience. I figure, subtract my family, and any semblance of decent play or a chance to win, and that math added up to me paying attention to other things. The Phils were just awful in those years. And, there was music to learn to dance badly to, Star Trek to watch, girls to flirt with and be rejected by and bad jokes to tell over and over.

But, going into 1993, when reading the Trenton Times, noteably Mark Eckel, and the paper's coverage of the team and it’s new acquisitions, and their personalities, I got hooked all over again. I went to a lot of games that year, and it was a wild ride that I’ve written of here before. While I’d always cared, that team brought the joy of the game back to me.

But now, after 28 years, the Phillies won a World Championship. I think Dad would have been most happy about this. More so than the Flyers two Stanley cups in the 70’s. More so than the 1980 series win. More so than the…well, the Eagles have their own road to travel there, but as they last won an NFL Championship in 1960, and have never won a Super Bowl, they seem like the odd one out here… But overall, I think Dad would have liked this won most of all, as it was of course a fun season, but my sister and I are both old enough, and have truly demonstrated symptoms of the disease that is Philly Sports Fever. I think we could have shared this one in a really fun way. Factor in the addition of my unwitting children to this equation, and one is left with a very satisfying result, were Dad around to enjoy it.

So, what’s odd about this experience for me, is that while I am certifiably excited and happy that the Championship drought of 25 years is over, I’m finding myself feeling two distinct things:

The first is relief. I got way too geeked up for some of these games, to the point that if they had lost, I very likely would have caused great harm to the walls of my home. Just being honest. The décor is intact.

The second though, is an even deeper desire than I had before for my teams to win. I thought I would feel satisfaction, but now that I’ve tasted it…I want more. More….More. I’m not satisfied. I want the teams to care as much as the fans do. I want more parades. I don't want to see teams let up, now that the "curse" is over.

My kids are now, as I’ve taught them, referring to the Phils as the “World Champion Phillies.” My daughter is in love with the Phanatic. My son wants to watch Hockey, but loved the series, and as the final outs were recorded, I held on to whichever one happened to get close enough for me to hug, in turn. I don’t know that they’ll remember it, but I’ll see that they hear about it. Over and over again. They are part of the Math now.

The twins will be four next month, and the Bear will be two. They’ve lived to experience one Eagles Super Bowl (loss), and a Phillies world championship. That’s two chances for a World Championship and one title in just under four years.

By the time I was four, I had lived through the following: two Flyers Stanley Cup wins in three consecutive trips to the NHL finals; The Sixers went to the NBA Finals one time and lost to Portland. That’s four chances and two titles in the first four years of my life.

I for one, hope that the twins averages hold or improve, as mine did neither: the next 30 some years of my life yielded only a Sixers title, and now a second Phillies title.

I want this to be the start of something great, rather than the start of another 28 year wait.

Here's hoping the Math adds up.

Until the next one. Hope I can make that Parade. Go Philly.

Being a Philadelphia sports fan is very much like living through a Russian novel.

2008-10-15T09:55:00.002-10:00

People who know nothing of fact make a lot of comments about the “city of Brotherly love” Often, such comments are limited to ignorant sports commentators। But now and then, the “Philadelphia attitude” becomes newsworthy.

And it has in some ways this week। And I don’t know where to start।

OK-that’s not true। I’d be an even worse writer than I am if I sat down to plunk away at this without any idea what I wanted to say…

Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin dropped the puck at the opening game for my beloved Philadelphia Flyers earlier this week। They lost। She received what I would call a ‘respectful boo” though it was by no means overwhelming. She was received as well as one would hope from a crowd in south Philly that was very likely divided almost down the middle politically. But that has not stopped the media, in their ‘wisdom’ from taking the chance to beat up on the Philly fans. I saw one “reporter” say, “They booed Santa-how will Sarah Palin fare?” Again with this nonsense…

Ohhhh…they booed Santa Claus…।know what? Damn right they did. They booed the hell out of that guy, but do any of you know why?

It was Halftime of a game against the Minnesota Vikings, December 15, 1968. The fans who were not utilizing the time to get more beer or use the facilities, and were actually watching the halftime show, heartily booed a young man in a Santa Claus suit, who had been enlisted from the stands, due to the fact that the guy scheduled to appear as Santa had been snowed in down in Wildwood, of all places.

They pelted him with snowballs, and they booed him heartily…because he made an ass of himself. As my friends from Boston might say, “that guy was wicked hammered...”

The guy embarrassed himself. And he was rightly booed. The fact that sports reporters cling to it even today, nearly 30 years later strikes me as pure laziness. Yeah, cheering Michael Irvin when he got hurt was a little wrong, but that guy tore us up for years. I, for one never threw a battery at J.D. Drew, nor did I throw a snowball at Jimmy Johnson, though I know some who did. Overall, the Flyer’s fans did what they do-expressed their opinion: some booed. Some stood and cheered. And then it was done. Regrettably they lost, as they have all three of their games to start this season, which I assure you, gentle reader, is all that mattered to the fans when the horn sounded.

Philly fans are passionate, they are interactive with the product, they do their homework, and in general, live and breathe the ups and downs of their teams. That said, they probably care more about winning than the owners do, and that has led to generations of disappointment. Many are convinced that the jersey they wear or the bar stool they inhabit makes a genuine difference in whether or not the team wins. I once saw at guy in a bar sent to his car by his buddies to change his shirt after a particularly bad first quarter for the Eagles. He did as he was ordered without argument. I’ve done the mid-game jersey switch myself, as recently as this past Sunday when the Eagles were lucky to get past a pretty weak 49ers team…I’m not proud, but nor am I apologetic. As Pennsylvania native DJ Wiz Khalifa sings, “It’s all in the blood…” But I digress.

Being a Philadelphia sports fan is very much like living through a Russian novel. There are ups and downs, and inexplicable turns of fate. There are characters that come from nowhere and make a demonstrative difference, and there are plotlines that start months away, and culminate 562 pages in in a manner that makes the reader jump out of their seat. And the denouement is so spectacularly tragic, that, while you were glad to have been there to see it, you know you will walk away viscerally changed. Even if you arrive at the conclusion you’d hoped for, you may feel challenged by how you got there. Nothing insignificant ever happens. It all ends up mattering somehow, and the result is usually somewhat melancholy.

In my life, I remember the Phillies 1980 World Series win. To date, it is the only championship for the franchise.

I remember the Sixers 1983 title win, and Moses, and Doc, and Mo Cheeks. I was really into basketball in those years, but I didn’t get to see many of those games on TV. But I loved Moses and Doc. We used to fight on the playground about who got to be Doctor J during our pickup games.

And that was the last championship. I’ve talked about the 93 Phillies here and about the Eagles Super Bowl teams. The Flyers have had their chances, and I’ve written of them in this space too.
I watched the Eagles play in the Super Bowl with my sister back at Ott’s in South Jersey, and up until they lost, it was one of the best nights I’ve had.

I know where I was when Joe Carter hit his homerun and sent Lenny Dykstra, who would have been MVP of that series but for one pitch, into his own version of Philadelphia lore. I was sitting in my dorm room in Ohio, and my girlfriend, who later turned into the wife later on, was dressed to the nines. It was the Fall Formal Dance, and if memory serves, the Artie Shaw Orchestra was playing. Still went to the dance, but Artie’s music never sounded worse.

I’d gone to at least 20 games that summer. I listened to Harry Kalas on the radio on a daily basis. All of those games…I was there for them all, even the one that ended at like 4am and was won by Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams making the game-winning hit, while, as I recall, his Dad was sleeping in Mitch’s Truck. I remember all that, and I remember the names of every player and knew every story. I even got to meet Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn. Well, I accidentally bumped into him, but it was cool. '93 was a fun season, and I don’t think I remember it any less fondly because they lost in the series. Be nice to know what it feels like to have a championship though.

Philly sports fans are a different breed to be sure. I’ve witnessed fights in the 700 level of the Vet, and in the parking lot. I’ve seen a grown man dressed up as “Baby New Year,” diaper and all during a cold winter Eagles playoff game. One time, in the restroom, I saw a guy look at the long line for the urinal and just shrugged his shoulders, and took a leak in the sink. Washed his hands there too.

But, we are nothing if not loyal, and perhaps to a fault. I’ve been very frustrated with my teams, and more than once, I’ve said to myself, there’s GOT to be more to life than this! I’ve tried turning off games that are going poorly-like this weekend’s Eagles and Phils and Flyers games. I try to say that I don’t care, and I say I don’t need to watch. I try to act as though it’s really not important, and that I don’t need to see it all unfold. I can walk away, turn away, is what I tell myself.

But I’m a liar. I always end up turning the game back on, and sometimes, like this weekend, I’m rewarded with the Eagles pulling it out. And sometimes, it goes from bad to worse. I still end up feeling mad, and saying I’ve got to find other things to do with my time and emotional energy, but I can’t stop. I’m hooked. It’s in the blood.

And what’s worse, I’m teaching this to my children. I have passed it on, and while they are all under four years old at this writing, I am passing it on to them. They will toil with me, and while they don’t yet understand what they are in for, I’m comforted by the fact that at least I can pass this affliction on to others. If I do a good job, at least I’ll have the opportunity to suffer with my children.

But in the meantime, the media needs to come up with some new ammunition. The Santa Claus thing is old news, and almost everyone who references it doesn’t know a thing about that day, nor do they understand the people they are lambasting. So, go do some homework. Pure laziness. Do Philadephia fans boo? Yep. Do they boo and cheer sometimes in the same minute. Yep. We cheer what’s good and boo what’s not. Deal with it.

Whether they like it or not, I am actively indoctrinating my children with this mania that more often than not brings me more heartache than joy. At least so far, but I mean, I never had a choice, why should they?

And maybe, one day, they’ll know what it’s like to celebrate a championship. Maybe I will too. I mean, I was 10 last time.

It’s all in the blood, and that doesn’t change.

This is what I do now. And my kids are cool.

2008-10-04T03:09:00.002-10:00

My kids rule. I’ve always thought that, and have always felt that, even in the time in their lives when I wasn’t spending as much time with them as I am now.

I’ve made some critical comments about living in Hawaii since we’ve come here, and while it has been an interesting challenge living here at times, I want to make clear that this move was made for a variety of reasons; the wife’s career may have been the genesis, but it was not the only factor. The move here gave me a chance to walk away from the Educational industry that, to be honest, was continuing to disappoint me. In addition, it gave me a chance to focus on the only job
I’ve ever wanted to be good at-parent. Our family has time together now, and I am spending more time with my kids than ever, and it is truly time that I will never get back, so I am glad to have it. It is also, quite simply time that I would never have been able to have with them back in Jersey, things being as they were. The move here made this possible, and I am grateful for it.

And I always will be, and for a great many reasons. However this all will play out in the coming years, the move to Oahu was the right one for us as a family. Period.

It was just a year ago that the wife and I came over here to look for a home. This December it will have been a year that we’ve lived here. It’s somewhat hard to recall that it has truly been that short of a time, as life in this place has very much been intense in a way that I did not expect.

There are times that the distance from friends and family is difficult in a palpable manner. There are times that time difference alone feels absurd. Having to get up at 7am to see my beloved Eagles play on a Sunday is simply an exercise in ridiculousness. Of course, I’ll do it, but while it may be 7am, my heart is telling me ‘hot cider, chili, wings, Yuengling, and a relaxing Sunday afternoon,’ while my clock is telling me, um, ‘good morning.’ One might see this as trivial, but then, if you do, you are clearly not a Philadelphia sports fan. Or perhaps not a sports fan at all, as I imagine that the “bandwagon-jumping-on-and-off” Dallas fans might have a similar reaction, but only if their team was good that year. They hide like the Mongooses of Hawaii when their team is bad. But, I digress. Cowboys suck by the way.

There are times, that, as unsavory as it is for me to say after the joy with which I walked away from my professional life, that I miss aspects of that life. I did good work then, and I got a lot of satisfaction from the connections that I had with the staff, and with parents and colleagues, but mostly with the kids. Truthfully, there are days, if I’m honest, that I feel some guilt for leaving behind some of the students that I had worked with and for. But they have moved on, and I hope they have done well.

In the end, I could have kept on at all that, but I had the chance to do something else, and I took it. And that something else was my kids.

And, man, they are really something these days. The stuff that they come up with is great, and every day they are giving me something new. Sometimes, I don’t know how I can keep up with their minds and imaginations.

The little bear has entered the ‘I’m learning 10 new words a day now Daddy, so you’ve got to keep up with what I’m asking you, if you don’t mind’ phase. It’s been a real whirlwind. She knows what she’s saying, and means it quite vehemently, and pity on me if I don’t get it right away. Fortunately, she has her older brother and sister to help me get it, which they did very nicely the other day as we were getting ready for bed.

The bear was very clearly saying to me, “Do-da shoo!” and I thought, no, honestly, I had no bloody idea what she was talking about. I tried every stuffed animal in her room, and books, and non of it seemed to make any difference, so I just said to her, all of 22 months that she is, “Bear…I don’t know what you are asking for.”

And so, the Girl, who had been in the room with us, with her “I’m almost four years old-AND, I’m 3 minutes older than my twin brother” senior analysis offered the following:

“Daddy…she wants her Dora shoes.”

There was no physical eye roll, but I felt it deep within. It was all so simple to the Big Sister.

The aforementioned shoes were collected from the next room, and placed where they apparently were supposed to go during nighttime, and the Bear was quite happy. Not so happy that she went to bed in her new “big kid bed” without hollering, but we’ve rather covered that here. It was a big help.

The Girl, in addition to providing insight on her sister, has taken to providing her collection of stuffed animals with their own “big kids” beds since she is now in one. As I have put her to bed over the last few evenings, what I have seen is truly a remarkable achievement in event planning and nocturnal research. Those “Sleep Number” people ought to take notice. The arrangements included the following:

-Panda Bear had her bed on the little chair, with a small book as her pillow. The night before, Panda Bear slept on the floor near the closet, with the little beach rug as her blanket.

-Dinosaur had her bed in her suitcase.

-Tubby the Hippo had a very cozy bed in the Tinkerbell shoebox with Pinky-Dog’s blankie. This was a very nice concession of Pinky to share, which is of course in her nature. Pinky was the first and is still the favorite.

-Happy Bear slept on the other little chair, and had one of the Girl’s drawings as a blanket. Oh, the power of art…

-Pajama Bear and Pinky both had cozy spots in the big Princess box.

-Koala Bear was on a lovely shelf in the bookcase, not far from Pinky, and Pajama Bear.

It was meticulous the manner in which she had laid them all out. Every animal had a spot, and was cared for. She’d read books to them, and tucked them all in, and made sure they were comfy.

And then she went to bed. I’ve checked on her the last few nights just to see where everyone was, and man, the meticulous manner with which she’s made this whole thing happen is impressive. It’s the kind of thing I probably would have missed seeing, but would have heard about later maybe back when I was in Jersey.

The Boy on the other hand has always been meticulous. His toys, and particularly his animals are usually pretty organized, although it rarely looks like it. He is particular in the way that he’ll line up his toys, and books. This is not to say that he won’t simply make a mess just to make one…all of them excel at that, which I find encouraging. He will be quite content to line up his trains, or his cars, and spend hours having them interact. He’s really very fun that way.

The Boy of late, much to my great delight, has become interested in Dinosaurs. In particular, he’s popped on two book that my parents gave me when I was a kid, and was interested in Dinosaurs. He can identify a Tyrannosaur, and Oviraptor, which he knows means, “Egg Stealer,” as does his sister. He likes the Stegosaurus, and knows that it is a plant eater. He also likes the Triceratops, with its three horns. He says it looks like the Rhinoceros form the Zoo, but with more horns. He can also identify the Diplodocus, and the Brachiosaurus, both of whom eat plants.
And, all of my kids, including the Bear, know what “prehensile” means. That may seem a small thing, but to me, right now, and the fact that I was able to spend that time with them in the reptile house at the Honolulu Zoo explaining it to them, and the fact that they remember it verbatim after repeated visits matters to me.

All of my kids, can sing the Philadelphia Eagles fight song. It was their first lullaby, so I would expect no less.

The twins can name the members of the E. Street Band. We are working on Bon Jovi, but they know that they are from Sayreville.

They are great, and they are doing new things every day, and I’m here to see it, and that, my friends, is cool. No matter what else this time in Hawaii may turn out to be, the fact that I’m here living this life with my family is pretty damned cool, and that is really the state of things.

Yeah-it's hard sometimes. I've forced myself to count to ten, and I've walked into the garage and forced myself to breathe...it's not an easy job.

But it's the only one I need to be good at. I'm not where I thought I'd be, but I'm exactly where I'm called to be, and that, despite the challenges, is truly satisfying.

Plus, the prehensile thing is pretty impressive isn't it?

My day at the beach.

2008-09-24T01:17:00.002-10:00

We don’t go to the beach all that much, although it’s really only just down the street from our house. And it’s Hawaii. It’s odd, as we were very excited about being this close to the ocean, and truth be told, we’ve been there less than ten times since we arrived last December. The same sort of thing happened when we lived in Wildwood.

But, I like to go the beach down the street, that most would consider a “local” beach, and I have in fact been told by some that I should be careful going there as being a “Haole,” I might not be welcome. But that has not been the case to date. I have had no problems at this beach, and have gotten more work done there than anywhere else on the island.

In case you are wondering…“Haole” is a word that the locals use to describe that which is not native, or in its indigenous definition means “outsider.” Typically, it is used to refer to Caucasians, and it is not seen by most as a derisive term. Not every Haole likes it, but so it goes.

When I get a break from things at home, and am able to leave the house by myself to write, I go down to the beach, and I park the car, and I sit in the lot that is 30 yards from the water, and I work. I have always been productive there, and as the beach plays a role in the novel, it has always seemed like the right place to go. It is quiet, and despite my Haole-ness, no one has ever once bothered me. Most people there are surfing, or gathering among themselves.

So I went there today to write, the wife giving me a break in gracious fashion, and I made a real breakthrough on a chapter that I’ve been hung up on for some time. I was doing some productive work, and then it was time to go. So, I backed out and was set to head home, but I noticed that the higher ridge was empty. There’s an area right on the shore that is always occupied, and no one was there tonight, so I figured I’d drive through and check the view.

So I did. Driving the Honda Odyssey. You will note of course that, the Odyssey is not a sport utility vehicle. This would have been a truly delightful realization for me to have had before. I got stuck that is. I had driven only forty some feet when I knew I had made a huge mistake.

The Minivan was stuck in the sand. I thought perhaps I could back out of it, and much to my chagrin, I was no longer driving my beloved Subaru Outback…I was driving a Mini Van. And I was stuck.

So, I tried to dig out. There was no one anywhere near me at the time, so I figured I could just dig out and be gone.

I was wrong and it was clear that I was in a situation similar to the one that the wife and I found ourselves in back during our honeymoon in Ireland, so....

Using the Patented “Way-Back” Machine, I’ll share this one:
The back passenger tire or our small and economical rental car, which we picked up at the Shannon Airport, blew a tire in the middle of the Irish countryside, and then the cheap-ass jack from the rental car broke as I was trying to fix it. I looked to the left…grass and sheep. I looked to the right, grass and sheep. The occasional tour bus blew by us, and more than one sheep bleeted at me in what I would translate to be an unpleasant manner.

And then there was nothing. For quite some time, we were alone in the Irish countryside, with nothing save my own irritation and the dulcet sounds of the radio, which for some reason was playing “I Want it that Way” by the Backstreet Boys, and “That Don’t Impress me Much” by Shania Twain thrice an hour, while they played local bands like Travis, and Robbie Williams, who’s music did much more for me, far less, but consistently. I digress, but I still think Travis is a good band.

Long was it that we sat there by the side of that road with no one to call. My Irish family was a good 250 miles away, and we’d not yet met them.

So, we sat, for a long time. Then an older man pulled up in a Ford Pickup, a Step-side, which I remember driving when I worked at the Monmouth Battlefield Park. It was at the time an odd remembrance, but as we were potentially late for our check-in at out first honeymoon suite, I welcomed his slow-down.

He got out of his truck and walked to me, asking me, what I assume was “Do you need help?” in perfect Gaelic, which I speak less of now than I did then. After several moments of confusing conversation, it became clear that he could understand me, but I could not do the same for him. I was embarrassed, but felt better when he smiled and pulled a gigantic Jack-lift out of the bed of his truck. I didn’t see jacks like this when I worked with the Garbage truck or the postal service, so I knew this man could help me.

And he did. Long story less long, he helped me change the tire out, and the wife and I were on our way, which is another story entirely.

But, this man, that I could not even thank properly had stopped and helped me, just because he could. I’ve never forgotten that, and I think of him now and then.

Honestly, I think of him a lot of late. There is a bumper sticker that is very popular here in Hawaii. I saw it for the first time while I was sitting at Don Ho’s Island Grill, and we were looking for a house here back in October. It was plastered to the bar, so I asked the bartender about it, as all it said was “Eddie Would Go.”

It turns out that those three words carried an awful lot of weight here in Hawaii. They refer to a man named Eddie Aikau, who’s amazing life I could not do justice in this space (though you can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Aikau )

The short version, is that Eddie is a legend here as both a lifeguard on the North Shore and as a surfer. As a lifeguard on the perilous North Shore, he became known as the guy who would go to help someone when no one else would. He died as part of an expedition seeking to recreate the migratory route between Hawaii and Tahitian Islands via double-hulled canoes. When one of the vessels began to leak, Eddie volunteered to go-to use his surfboard to paddle towards the Island of Lanai.

He was never seen again, but his spirit of selflessness is something that is celebrated here very openly. And why shouldn’t it be? I think that at our best most of us hope to be strong enough to sacrifice for others, and selfless enough to at the very least, help others from time to time.
So, my man in Ireland, and Eddie Aikau were in my mind this evening as I was inexorably stuck in the sand at the beach because I am a dumbass and got the Mini Van stuck in the sand.
And as I start digging, I’m still hoping, like that high school kid who has broken something in his parents home that he knows he can’t fix, but yet he tries, over and over.

I knew right away that I would not get out of this pit without help. The van is only front-wheel drive, and I had buried them both in pretty good. That didn’t stop me from trying, nor did it stop me from telling the wife that she did not need to call our friends to come out and help me.
That was selfish on my part, but as I look back on it, the idea of having my wife call one of our friends to have the husband of that couple come out to bail out my dumbass, was waaaay in my mind to try to avoid. I’m already a stay-at-home dad to them…

So, I told her I was working on it. And I was, as I lolled about in the sand, trying to give the wheels some kind of traction.

It didn’t work. Other people started

to show up at the beach. Most of them laughed at me, unrepentantly. There I was, chest deep in sand, digging out my car. A lot of locals slowed down to laugh at me. A group parked near me, within fifteen feet, and set up their luau right next me.

They were all women, one of whom turned out to be pregnant, but they spent the next half hour mocking me tremendously.

And so I dug. And dug. And Failed. I was going to need help, and I thought about my Irish friend, and about Eddie in that moment, as I also thought about my earlier column about the NJ Attitude vs. the Aloha Spirit. In my mind, if I'm being honest, I started thinking about how the "Aloha Spirit" was dead. I've been missing Jersey anyway...so it fit my mindset.

I had a lot of time to dig. I covered a lot of ground. The ladies next door had a great time watching me. Several cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters. And bicycles, wove their way past me without a word. A lot of them laughed once they got a loot at me.
And then, I heard a truck stop, and a young man and his Dad stepped out.

“Do you need help, yeah?” he asked.

Screw Pride-I was fracked, so I said, “yeah, I really do.”
And so it went that I met Keith and Jesse. Father and son. I still don’t know what they were doing on this beach at this time, but they were there, and after they helped me, they went home, without staying.

So I’m not sure why they were there. They asked me if I had rope, which regrettably I did not. Clearly not my only shortcoming today, so then they drove back to their home, to get rope.
I started to dig again as they drove off, and the kid called out, “We’ll be back, yeah.”
I was hopeful that they would return, but not sure. At that point I did not know their names, nor did I know anything about them. It turns out, as they did return, that Jesse’s dad, a union man according to his bumper sticker, had gotten stuck similarly a while back.
And so they stopped. They helped. They got rope and came back and I tied the car up and with their help, and the help of the Marine and his brother that showed up at the moment of the last push, the van was free.

Once the van was free, I got to talk with them, and Keith and his son Jesse, in that moment were very much akin to the man in Ireland, and to Eddie, at least in my estimation.
While people were driving by, and laughing at my Haole-self trying in vain to dig myself out of a dummass jam, there was help on the way.

In all honestly, I was driving deep into my own cynicism before they stopped to help. I was waiting to be disappointed and was writing a blog in my head about how the Aloha Spirit is dead.
And then, Keith and Jesse stopped the truck.

Once I was out they asked what I was doing there, and I told them that I came here to write.
The kid asked what kind of things I wrote, and I told him I was working on a novel, and that I’d include them in it. He seemed to pop on that, and I think that all things considered, I won't have a genuine problem honoring that.

It’s just too a good a story to have been an accident.