Perchance To Dream

 I have a very visceral memory of carrying my newborn son around the house in the middle of the night when he could not, would not, go to sleep. I showed him the darkness in every corner. We looked out the windows and I told him that all those people out there were asleep because it was time to be asleep. We sometimes went out in the back yard where I showed him that even the birds had closed their eyes to get some rest before a new day began. 

All of this was mostly performative since what I was truly after was a few extra hours of shuteye for myself. The sun would be coming up soon and I had no vested interest in greeting it. In the big picture, it wasn't long before he was sleeping through the night, and not long after that he became a special project to wake up when it was time to face the world of middle school. 

It was during this time of transition that my own sleep schedule started slipping back as my morning responsibilities at school began to require earlier rising. As days grew shorter, I began to need a light on my bike to find my way depending on how much daylight was being saved. This has necessitated me climbing into bed shortly after the sun has gone down in order to find that elusive and somewhat arbitrary eight hours. 

The thought of "getting enough sleep" seems like something that I can aspire to once I have actually become a retired person. Now that my son is all grown up and discovering his own circadian rhythms I try not to let on that since I am more than twice his age and I have yet to unlock the secret to "a good night's sleep," I am just pleased as punch to face the day feeling somewhat refreshed. 

It pains me just a little when I consider that the guy who once sang a song called "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," is no longer among the living. 

I can always take a little walk into the back yard to listen to those snoring birds. 

On The Timeline

 In this spot twenty-one years ago, I wrote about The Worst Sunburn I Ever Had. If you have a penchant for remembering such tales, then you probably recall how I went out to a baseball game while my wife waded through those last hours of labor. The sunburn of song and story came as a result to sitting my lily-white thighs out in the California sun as I spent the last few hours of being a child before having one. 

Now that baby is all grown up and facing his own transition to adulthood. This has included becoming ever more responsible and buying himself a second motorcycle. When I turned twenty-nine I had begun to believe that relationships were things other people had, and I was going to spend my golden years visiting friends who had gotten married and had their own kids. I would be Uncle Dave to the world, and I was on my way to unconditional surrender to this idea. 

Then I fell in love. And got married. And my dad died. And there was a parking spot in the world's lot available. My wife and I decided we could test our own freshly minted adult skills by growing an incipient grown up all on our own. 

We needn't have worried. The support we received from those around us was instantaneous and amazing. When I say "we" I mean my wife who is primarily the one that seeks out and creates community. Left to my own devices, I might have stopped instructing our little boy after I instilled in him an appreciation for Bachman Turner Overdrive. When he was less than a year old. 

These days, I am happy that I didn't stop trying to give him life lessons. That mild commitment has had the slingshot effect of having him return the favor. I know what a hemi powered drone is. And the secrets of mustard-fried burgers at In 'n' Out. 

Every so often, my son broaches the subject of becoming a father himself. This fills me with pride and sends me into flights of speculation, imagining what adventures await him and his progeny. I look forward to hearing the story of the worst sunburn he ever had. 

Happy Birthday, son. 

Wheels

 I am glad my son got to ride a Big Wheel at his preschool. As a matter of fact, Big Wheels were such a big deal at my son's preschool that eventually the T-shirts they sold for fundraising came with a picture of one emblazoned on the back. Anyone who spent any amount of time there knew the routine: all the various cycles and scooters would be rolled out to the top of the hill behind the school, where kids would take turns rolling at what seemed like incredible speeds for the toddlers and the parents charged with watching them via the co-op management program. But the bottom line, literally, was that if you rode a Big Wheel all the way down the hill, you would of course roll it back up to the top. 

This was the world into which my son grew. A co-op preschool that honored both speed and personal responsibility. It is where I first gathered in the expression, "Use your words." This admonition has served me well in my elementary education career, as well as a great many of my adult relationships. It was okay to be mad. It was okay to be sad. It was okay to share those feelings. It was not okay to take those feelings out on others. 

Our son, an only child, was gifted with an immediate sea of friends, some of whom remain close to him even as they approach middle age. 

Imagining a world where the philosophy of those formative years could be shared with every child in the city of Oakland, the state of California, the United States. A world full of humans who learned to share, to cope with disappointment, to belong to a community. It gives me pause and it makes me happy to remember that we gave this to our son all those years ago. 

Life got so much more complicated once he landed in kindergarten. He missed those rides down the hill on a Big Wheel. It's probably what brought him eventually to the purchase of a motorcycle of his own. He knows that if he gets all the way to the bottom of the hill it's his job to get it back to the top again. 

And to be properly insured. 

Church

 "Your flag flyin' over the courthouse

Means certain things are set in stone.

Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"

It was this moment that I looked over at my son, taking in Bruce Springsteen singing "The Long Walk Home" for us and a few thousand of our new closest friends, imparting the words of a father to a son. I had made peace with the fact that he might spend a little time peering at his phone, but not at this moment. He was staring directly down at the stage where that beacon of hope and dreams was giving us his all.

There were tears in his eyes. 

And I felt so lucky to be there with him. 

After the show, walking with his mother and I, he explained his phone distraction. "I was looking up the songs on Wikipedia. I wanted to remember them and what they were about." 

And I felt so lucky to be there with him. 

Like those moments when we walk under the trestle in Disneyland, stepping out onto Main Street, and looking over to see his smile. In these moments, I can see our bond. I used to worry about dragging my family out to see Bruce Springsteen each time he would come around on tour. 

I'm not worried anymore. All the magic that is carried in those songs, in those words, they have been passed along. They live on in his heart and his soul. 

In the row in front of us, a younger version of the father and son dynamic was taking place. Dad was up, singing and dancing, then sitting down briefly to cajole his son into the music of this night. I silently wished them the same success I have had. 

We have had. It's gonna be a long walk home, but at least I know we'll be going there together. 

Refrain

 I'm definitely getting old. I yet to fully embrace my father's weepiness. He used to cry every time he heard Stars and Stripes Forever. Or Amazing Grace. Or a car horn. 

Okay, that last one might be stretching it a bit, but as I grew up in that shadow, I was sometimes embarrassed by those displays of emotion and later I found that I could relate to them quite well. John Philip Sousa doesn't do it for me, but I do get a lump in my throat when I hear The Dropkick Muphys' version of Amazing Grace, and whenever I sing along with Mister Springsteen's Badlands I've got tears in my eyes at the end. 

"It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive."

My wife made a little framed bit of calligraphy that hangs over my desk reminding me of this sentiment. 

Because that's what all of that compressed joy is about. Feeling all the feels and holding on until it bubbles up to the surface. The wife that made me that nice memento will cry at just about any wedding. Reruns of Friends or The Big Bang Theory, it doesn't matter if she's seen them dozens of times before. Have a tissue ready for her. And you'll need a whole box if she goes to the nuptials of a friend or family in person. 

I will also admit that as I fill up with my own memories of fatherhood and domestic bliss, I feel that dam behind my own eyes tested. Looking back and remembering the way we were, or imagining how things might turn our for my son and his posse. They've started to marry off. And have kids of their own. 

In just a few weeks I will be going to see Bruce Springsteen in concert for the (checks notes) kerjillionth time. I will make a point of standing between my wife and my son who will be there with me. In my heart I know that my father will be getting all misty as he watches me sing along with the Boss. 

It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive. 

Reaching Out

 This May my son will celebrate his twenty-ninth birthday. I expect that his mother and I will have something to to with that mark in his book. He will be three hundred forty-eight months old, so we may have to add a few pages to his baby book. 

Or not.

Over the past decade we have spent less time together on those actual dates of his entrée into this sphere. He has a life of his own, after all. 

But why twenty-nine, and why months ahead of the actual nativity? 

Glad you asked. I was out running around the city streets where so much of those earlier years prior to his twenties were spent. A mile or two to the east where he went to preschool. Up the hill to elementary school. Down the street to middle school. Over another hill across town to high school.  By the time he was in high school he graduated from taking the bus to driving his own car. On a line, those institutions could be visited in six miles. Returning to my running brain, I noted a vanity license plate on the back of a shiny black SUV. EKKA20. A birthday gift, perhaps. A prize for completing undergrad studies early. 

We helped our son buy his first car. Since then, he has bought, traded and swapped titles for any number of vehicles via his own wiles and automotive knowledge. I can say without fear of reprisal that I had nothing to do with those. Swapping cars with a neighbor for a weekend makes me nervous. My son has learned to negotiate and navigate the Department of Motor Vehicles, an entity I consciously avoid. 

So as our little boy rounds out his first three decades, I wonder what is left for me to give him. On trips to Target his mother and I still send him pictures of Hot Wheels and Nerf guns that we think he might like. He takes this all in with good humor and aplomb, as he charts his own course into the adult world that includes things like health insurance and appliances that just stop working. It is his parents who are now calling him for help. We try to make it sound better for us by reminding him to eat more vegetables or wear a raincoat. 

He's got this, but every so often the phone rings and my son will ask me for the tiniest bit of advice. I try not to spend too much time going on and on about how glad I am he called to ask me about whatever minor inconvenience has him stuck. I am the boy's father, after all. Why shouldn't I be impressed with the job his mother and I did getting him this far? 

Even if we didn't get him that Black SUV. With vanity plates. 

Death Of An Unpopular Poet

After watching her appearance describing the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by her ICE goons, I wondered if Kristi "ICE Queen" Noem had children of her own.

She does. Two daughters and a son: Kassidy, Kennedy and Booker. 

I wondered how she might describe any event that resulted in the injury or death of one of her kids. I'm not guessing that she would immediately point the finger of blame at them and call it "domestic terrorism." 

That's how the ICE Queen referred to the death of Renee Nicole Good who was shot and killed by an unidentified ICE Goon just blocks from her house.  Ms. Good's mother described her: “Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

Renee had a son whose father died two years ago. That six year old now has no mother or father. The ICE goon who shot Renee is somebody's son. His father insists  his son as a “tremendous” person of whom he is deeply proud. Which I suppose is what parents ought to say, even if that parent's son just shot someone through the head. 

I'm not exactly clear on how we define "domestic terrorism" these days, but it seems that this loss of life should be considered a civilian casualty in the Trumpreich's attempt to weed out what they have decided is the scourge of Somalian immigrants in Minneapolis. 

Ms. Good was not a Somali. She was a poet, an avid movie lover, and former resident of Colorado. I can relate to that bio. 

I cannot relate to the continued resolve by Kristi and her goons to use unnecessary force to do a job that no one asked them to do. 

No one in their right minds, that is. Just the guy who screamed "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs..." He's the one who ended up in the White House. He's got kids too. 

But he's definitely not a poet. 

Meditation

 When I grew up, I played with guns. 

Toy guns. Plastic replicas of all the weapons I watched the good guys shoot on movie and TV screens. 

At this time, there were the faint rumblings of what would eventually become a torrent of screams about violence on television and on film. There was concern being raised that having the Vietnam War piped into our living rooms on a daily basis with accompanying body counts and the sounds of helicopters and machine gun fire could have an affect on the young minds of a country trying to find its way out of a seemingly endless conflict in Southeast Asia. 

Somewhere in there, the war ended, as did the compulsory military draft for young men in the United States. Not surpsingly, right about this same time Hasbro Toy Company shifted their focus on GI Joes being war heroes to being Action Team heroes. They were no longer taking up arms against foreign nations, suddenly they were rescuing one another from giant rubber snakes and floating down the Amazon in tiny inflatable rafts. Another very noticeable change: these dolls, pardon me, action figures were no longer clean shaven. They came with a full head of hair, beard and mustache and their hands were no longer forever molded into a cupped left for supporting a rifle barrel and a pointed right finger for resting on a trigger. These little fellas came with Kung Fu grip, all the better for hand to hand combat with the aforementioned giant rubber snake. 

I grew up in the middle of this new wave of thinking, and though I was already too old by just a couple of years I can remember the appearance of the Joey Stivic doll. This was the first anatomically correct male baby doll mass marketed to a new generation of girls and boys to help them grapple with their nurturing side. I never owned one, but I can remember having impassioned discussions around our dinner table about why the likeness of Archie Bunker's grandson, the son of All In The Family's Meathad Michael Stivic, was a toy that should be honored and delivered to a new generation of more sensitive kids. 

Ours was quite the liberal household. This did not keep me from building model planes and ships used in war, nor did it keep me from growing up and having a very similar discussion with my wife about the guns we might allow our son to play with as he began to discover what his preschool teacher referred to as "power extenders." I felt trapped in a world that didn't want to force my son to play with dolls or to forbid him to play with guns. Guns that shot water. Or foam rubber darts. I wanted to have that elusive quality called "an open mind." 

I also wanted him to have "life-like hair" and Kung Fu grip. His room was full of Legos and action figures of all manner of super heroes. And a very substantial armory of Nerf weapons. The mock battles he simulated with his friends were not against foreign invaders but of armies of the living dead. He and his buddies created what they believed was their Zombie Apocalypse Plan. Even as a war raged on in the Middle East, he was less concerned about regime change than he was with having his brains eaten. 

There are still toy guns out there. I flinch every time I see a student of mine point his finger at one of his classmates and makes a slobbery sound like an AK-47. I try and dissuade them from killing one another, even in play, but I know that it's hardwired. They live in a world with unimaginable firepower generated via videogames. Their virtual world is far better armed than ours was running around the woods with sticks for rifles. These are the future drone operators for the next big invasion. 

I'm not sure if Kung Fu grip will make it easier to handle the controls. 

Unchaperoned

 I did not drop my son off at a lot of high school dances. I didn't get to pick him up from parties at his friends' homes. By the time his social circle and commensurate activities had evolved to anything resembling that level of interaction, he had begun driving his own car and took himself places and saw the people he wanted to see. Whenever he wanted. 

Which wasn't all that often. 

In  this way, he was similar to his father whose own high school tribe was primarily found in his parents' basement until such time as we all had our own drivers licenses and vehicles that allowed us to take the party on the road. 

This is what made it so very interesting for me to have the chance to drop my all-grown-up little boy off at a nearby church where he was attending a friend's wedding. The night before we shared dinner and a conversation about social anxiety, and I was struck once again by the similarities between dad and lad. He said that he was concerned about all the possible interactions that could take place at such an potentially emotionally charged event. I was a little curious, since just two weeks prior he had enjoyed the bacchanalia of a bachelor's party that eventually merged with the bachelorette party featuring most of the cast of characters that would be attending the actual nuptials. 

This was the part that would require a good deal more sober, reflective moments before the drinking. I could relate. I spent a good portion of my twenties being "that guy" at weddings and birthday parties and christenings and other occasions where the "open bar" was an invitation to relieve all that pent-up uneasiness. Suddenly, talking to someone's cousin from Idaho became a much easier gauntlet through which I could pass with a couple beers in me. 

And all these years later, I know that the moment that I started showing up as my authentic self, I became "the marrying kind." I know this because the woman I married told me so. She just happens to be my son's mother. 

Nice how that all worked out. 

I hope it works out just as well for my little boy. 

Connective Tissue

 My wife and I attended the graduation party for the youngest son of our friends. Our friends who came into our lives when our own son was three years old. That was the beginning of an arrangement that found us sharing a childcare that would lead us to a co-op preschool that created an even larger village of children and parents that we grew to know and care for at different times and places. It was born out of convenience, but these friends became the friends of our son and the arrangement that began out of quiet necessity became a brotherhood of sorts. 

This was our son's first group of friends. Through elementary school, into middle school and high school, their paths crossed again and again. Sometimes out of that convenience mentioned earlier, but mostly out of the comfort of knowing someone all of their lives. 

That's where my wife and I landed this past Saturday night. The house full of guests milled about, introducing themselves and their affiliation to the graduate. I could honestly say that I had known this young man since before he was born. I could remember the ceremony we attended in another back yard that welcomed him into the world. His older brothers and our son played together while we passed the new baby around. 

Now this baby is heading out into the world to begin what he hopes is a career in journalism, even as my own career begins its final act. I was accutely aware of all the gatherings that we had enjoyed with this family, the birthdays and Halloweens and Christmases and yearly trips up to the snow. I could not count them all. 

Over the course of all those years, our connection bent and slipped. Once our kids began to forge their own relationships and paths, our social circles shifted. But that evening as we applauded yet another commencement, I was aware of our position in the Venn diagram of our collective lives. 

Right near the center. 

It felt good. It felt right. 

Prep Work

 When my son was in high school, he and a group of friends began formulating their Zombie Apocalypse Plan. This afforded a group of young nerds the opportunity to try and regulate the unprecedented times in which they were living. They came of age during September 11, Katrina and a war in the Middle East that never quite ended. It is through this lens that my son and his gang of nerds set about preparing for ZAP. 

Among the features of his all-encompassing survival system was the need to be prepared at any moment to fight off a surging mass of undead. At a movie theater. In his back yard. On vacation. All of these contingencies were considered and variables such as available cover and weaponry became codified as they were written down. 

It is only now as my son crests the hill into adulthood that I realize how important these exercises were. This is the guy who has insisted to me time and again how much he would rather be living in precedented times. His parents are painfully aware of just how much heavy lifting we have left him and his generation. I believe the deep emotional scars we have gifted him thanks to climate change, global pandemics and the failure of democracy will generate an evolutionary change.

He and his buddies may never get a chance to hole up in an abandoned shopping center, or wander the wastelands searching for other survivors. That is fine. He will be able to stare down the ugly realities of his very real timeline. He has lived through a time when active shooter drills became as commonplace as fire drills and daily attendance in the schools he attended. 

As it turns out, his childhood fears of spending nights away from home were probably partly inspired by his genetic connection to his father who never managed to get that comfortable anywhere but the house he grew up in, but also because he was already considering how to be safe when the monsters showed up. 

The monsters didn't turn out to be the shambling, decayed corpses looking for brains to consume, but a series of horrible mistakes made by the world in which he found himself living. The legendary Marvel Comic book Howard the Duck was introduced with the line, "Trapped in a world he never made!" That pretty much sums up what I believe my son's motto might be. 

Except he probably kept the one he had when he was seventeen: "Don't be a snack."

Car Guy

 What do you get for the man who has everything?

A new car? 

Well, in the case of my son who is turning twenty-eight years young today, that would be a lot like bringing coals to Newcastle. In case you're not familiar with that expression, there is a town in northern England where mining coal is the chief industry, so importing that particular resource would be a wasted endeavor. 

My son already has a lot of cars. The number fluxuates, but for some time now it has rarely dipped below four and has at times exceeded six. He has several roommates, but he has one side of the driveway and the garage all to himself. For this he willingly accepted the small bedroom next to he kitchen. A bedroom that includes a number of pictures of cars as well as dozens of Hot Wheels, mint in box, stuck to the walls. 

Which is probably his parents' fault, since we did nothing to discourage his fascination with wheeled things from the time he was an infant and tipped his stroller over so he could play with the spinning disks that continue to fascinate him to this day. The mild relief to this saga may come in the revelation that initially he was fixated on trains, and maintaining a private railroad outside of the rare game of Monopoly is much less likely than keeping a fleet of automobiles in various states of repair in front of his house. 

Eventually, my appreciation for this "hobby" stems from the fact that keeping one car running at a time was sometimes too much for me when I was his age. Not only does he manage to stay on top of his automotive purchases, he actively seeks out opportunities to procure cars for his friends and family. Having a gearhead in the family has made my own fear of broken car bits less of a worry and more of an opportunity. 

For him. 

As yet, his parents have not misused this superpower. We try not to complain or ask too often, instead we try to slip naturally things like, "So, what does it mean when the Prius makes a ticking sound after it starts up?" into a conversation about his welfare. Which today is all about having a birthday. 

That ticking sound the Prius makes after it starts up can wait. 

But for how long? 

The 'Hood

 Sure I miss my old stomping grounds, but the "hood" to which I refer is not where my neighbors lived, but rather the esteemed Hood of the Mother. 

I have not participated actively in this institution, having been relegated by convention to the Hood of the Father, but I have definitely observed and appreciated all that goes on across the fence. 

On this, the second Day of the Mother I am experiencing as an orphan, I am feeling sad and out of sorts. As mentioned here on many occasions, I took great stock in the conversations I had with my mother over the course of the years we spent together. I fully expect that we might have gone right on into eternity talking about things important and trivial had we not been interrupted.

Which is where I find myself currently wondering how I can make this apology: In my line of work, I see my share of distraught mothers. Disappointed primary caregivers who cannot fathom how their children have come to the choices and paths for which they have been called into school. Voices are raised. Tears flow. And the question remains. "How could this have happened?"

I made my mother cry. On more than one occasion. Several, in fact. These were primarily in my teens and early twenties when I felt compelled to strain against the reins that existed primarily in my own mind, not in the authority held by my parents. I was a teenager, and therefore I felt the need to stir things up around the house. As if it were my job. 

I reached the end of the rope when I took advantage of my mother's kind offer of a trip to Phoenix after the video store I managed closed around me. Instead of using the opportunity to relax and visit a friend, I turned it into a Lost Weekend that found me flirting with the frayed ends of my mother's patience with me. 

The good news is that somewhere just before impact, I was able to pull up and keep from destroying the airship of our relationship, but defining the moment of just before all the air escaped. 

My mother forgave me. She lived long enough to see me turn my life around. She was there to hold her newborn grandson. We stayed in touch well enough for those on the outside looking in to wonder if I wasn't showering my mother with too much attention. 

Too much? 

Never enough. And yes, I am sensitive to the fact that it was Norman Bates who said, "A boy's best friend is his mother." 

My mother would have laughed at that. 

Veinte

 You'll have to pardon all the confetti and streamers. We're having a celebration here. 

As mentioned here perhaps far too many times, this is an accounting of the things that cross my mind. Mostly in the mornings. I began taking up this clickable spot on Al Gore's Internet more than twenty years ago, starting with a Friday afternoon musing about my Career Path. This came as a response to a friend who suggested that writing a blog might be a good use of my need to leave some sort of mark on the world, utilizing the skills and impulses I have. It turns out he was right. 

I can say "more than twenty years" because once that weekend was over way back when, I started to crank out one of these little ditties a day. 

For twenty years. 

I've been married longer than that. I have a son who will soon turn twenty-eight years old, which is just about equal to the time I have spent teaching in this same elementary school. To be nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you have to have at least twenty-five years between that moment and your initial commercial release. 

Twenty years? I'm just a baby.

A baby with a blog that is two decades old. 

Today. And lucky you are here to see it.

I understand that to a large extent I am pausing in this moment to fill space with a tab, a marker to which I can return and will someday wonder why I didn't have something more profound to say on this occasion. This is especially true for my son, who has insisted that he will be using this blog as the story of his father's life once the old man has shuffled off his mortal coil. Sorry, son. This one is mostly just your dad patting himself on the his metaphorical back for having the persistence to stick with something for this long. 

I confess that more than once I considered making this the last one. Bidding you all a fond adieu and turning my attention to anything or everything else in the world. "That's enough," said the little voice in side my head. But I have grown accustomed to arguing with that little voice. Tomorrow there will be more things to comment on. Tomorrow there will be more thoughts and opinions. Tomorrow there will be another opportunity to come up with one terrific sentence to be surrounded by a bunch of others that aren't quite up to that high standard. 

So I continue on. Tomorrow will be a new day. A new blog. Another opportunity for us to spend some quality time together. 

At least for that one sentence, anyway. 

Lost Boys

 There was a time when Christmas centered on the happiness of children. Not just the one who was then living under our roof, but the crew of kids with whom he grew up. This was a herd of boys that all attended the same preschool at roughly the same time. Ours was the only child among the group, so he was gifted with a room full of brothers. We joined forces with the parents of this band of boys and began a series of playdates that escalated into family gatherings that culminated in a yearly trip to what snow could be found in the mountains above Tahoe. 

It's been quite some time since we made that annual trek. Boys have a way of growing up. Priorities shift and nests have a way of emptying. What was once a close circle of friends became a group of names on a Christmas card list. These boys are young men now with lives of their own. They no longer need the orchestrated push from moms and dads to connect. Our son stays in touch with those with those he was closest through social media. It's hard to imagine what ubiquitous cell phone use might have looked like when we were trying to hold all those little minds' attention back in the day. There was a time when screen time was a thing that all those parents believed they could control. 

The good news is that these were all good boys. Herding them from one activity to another was made easier by the skills we all learned together at their co-op preschool. We were all teachers back then, and we were gifted with a number of prized students. Sure, there were tears and hurt feelings, but the underlying message of all of this was that they were all friends. We never mentioned that this was coincidental and convenient for the grownups. It was simply how we moved through those pre-teen years. 

Eventually, of course, all these boys grew up and out of the structures created by their parents. The found their own friends and with the advent of drivers licenses, they all became able to pick and choose their own tribes. Some of them hung around longer than others. Whenever we run into members of that group in the grocery store or coming out of a movie theater, we chat briefly about the times we used to have. 

Then we're off to discover our own path, grateful that we had that starting place. We were gifted with a group of peers for launching that new generation. The one we lovingly referred to as The Spicy Tacos. 

Sleep Spending

 It was a pretty straightforward dream:

My son, who loves all things cars, had come into a considerable amount of cash. Apparently he had not only received a solid promotion at work, but he had also been saving money straight along, leaving him with a substantial chunk to spend. Stimulating the economy, and all that. 

His mother and I went with him to the Ferrari showroom where initially he was treated with mild disdain because he did not, in his T-shirt and jeans, look like the person who would normally be browsing the Italian supercar line. 

And yet, there he was, bankroll in hand, ready to throw down hundreds of thousands of dollars on a fine performance machine. His parents stood by in joy and admiration as he talked to the sales representative in ways that showed that he wasn't jut there to spend, he was there to invest. 

Once the deal was made, lattes were sipped, contracts signed and all those bills counted, the shiny gray vehicle was lowered down to the ground floor of the facility where he took ownership. His proud parents waited on the curb to see if they would be offered a ride. 

Eventually, we were. 

I don't remember much about the back seat, but I knew my son was happy. It was only when I woke up that it occurred to me that I probably should have made some dad move like suggesting that he spend far less on a new car of a more sensible variety. He could put the rest of the money away for a rainy day. He could be more responsible. 

Because that's what dads do. And moms. In spite of all the chaos that our family bank accounts have experienced over the years, being adults we somehow feel that we know best. About spending money anyway. 

But maybe not about how to be happy. 

I'm glad that in my dream I managed to be a better parent. 

A Tale Of Two Cities

 We went to San Francisco last Friday night. To be more precise, we went to San Francisco's baseball stadium, also known as Oracle Park. Formerly known as Pac Bell Park, SBC Park, and AT&T Park, this was the venue our family went to see local punk heroes, Green Day. We have a history of making this trip, with the most recent being just two years ago. Before that, we have attended shows of theirs in many and varied sports arenas around the Bay Area. Green Day is something we can all agree on, even though my wife has on occasion expressed mild frustration with being hectored by Billie Joe to get her hands up in the air. Nevertheless, our fandom is a family affair, and we rocked into the night and stayed up way past the parents' bedtime. 

Somewhere along the way, the lead singers of one of the opening bands who also hail from 'round these parts, Tim Armstrong of Rancid, noticed a banner hanging from the stands that expressed displeasure with the pending move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas. It was a pretty straightforward punk expletive directed at John Fisher, the owner of the baseball franchise directly across the bay. Not to be outdone, Billie Joe Armstrong included similar sentiments as he shared his feelings about coming home to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of his band's major label debut and the twentieth anniversary of their epoch defining rock opera, American Idiot. Billie was happy to be home, but very unhappy about the A's moving away. 

As it happens, my family of three also had tickets to go see one of the last ever home games of those same Oakland A's the following night. We piled into our son's car and drove down to the Oakland/Alameda Coliseum, formerly known as Ricky Henderson Field as well as any number of corporate shills willing to pay for the privilege of having their name stapled to the scoreboard for a limited amount of time. We went to the ball game for a chance to see our team, the one with whom our son had grown up, one last time. For many years we had made a practice of attending at least one home game, my son and I, usually around Father's Day. It was always a treat to sit in the stands and wile away a day, having a hot dog and shelling some peanuts. And in all those years, we compiled a solid streak of attending games that the A's won. This isn't to suggest that we were lucky charms or anything, but in sports we know it's best not to mess with a streak. 

That streak came to a crushing end as we watched the Yankees dominate the home team ten to one. It was hard to get a full accounting of the attendance, but in a fairly full stadium, the Yankee fans seemed to outnumber those of us in our green and gold. It wasn't like in the olden days. It wasn't like with Brad Pitt and Moneyball. It wasn't like when the Oakland A's twenty game winning streak back in 2002. It was almost as if the ownership was trying to make it easy to just slink out of town unnoticed. 

We noticed. It brought tears to my son's eyes. It was the only baseball he's ever known. As we were invited down to the field with the rest of the faithful to watch the postgame drone and firework show, we tried to console him. This place would always be part of him, part of his story. Just like the music of Green Day. Just like the hills that rise up behind the stadium. Just like the bay around which we live. 

Welcome home. 

Movin' In

 Not long ago, just a week or so, our house was all aflutter because my wife's niece was heading out to the east coast to college. The opposite side of the world. Or the continent anyway. Much fuss was made about getting all those things that were important and necessary to life on the right side of the country packed up and stuffed into suitcases and cardboard boxes for the purposes of survival in an inhospitable land. A land without hair care products. A land without microwaves. A land without a Target within a quarter mile. 

It's an exercise in which I have participated a few times. Both as a mover and a movee. The significance of this ritual dawned upon me at the celebration of my graduation from high school. A family friend gave me luggage to mark the occasion. The message was pretty clear: You will be leaving. You may not be coming back. 

At least until Thanksgiving. 

Which was, for me at the time, untenable. I was not prepared to make the jump to hyperspace. As a result, all those boxes of my stuff that were so carefully packed and brought to the college that accepted me were loaded back into the family station wagon along with the brand new luggage that was never fully unpacked. 

Which is why I am certain that my parents probably had a running bet about the following year when I unplugged my stereo and put all those same objects back into the car for the trip to the college that accepted me for my second attempt at moving away. This one stuck, at least from the standpoint of my sticking around campus for five days at a time. I spent most every weekend back home with the mild excuse of coming back for laundry. And a visit to the girlfriend. And as a consequence I missed out on a chunk of what it might truly mean to be a freshman in college. 

When my son was ready to make his statement move to higher education, there was a part of me that wondered if he would break the surly bonds that had held him so tightly to his home. The place his mother and I made for him. We put his things in boxes. He stuffed some clothes in the bag we loaned him. Perhaps it was an act of mild doubt that did not provide him with actual luggage on my part, but once he was gone, he was gone. We made several trips to Target and nearby stores to fill out the dorm room he would be sharing with his friend from high school. When all was said and done, my wife and I returned to the Empty Nest of song and story. 

Over the past couple weeks, families across the country, nay the world, have been preparing for this syndrome. Buying towels. Opening and closing boxes. Beginning the journeys that will take that next generation to new places, meeting new faces and fitting their stuff in different spaces. My suggestion: Don't panic. It all works out. Eventually. 

Talking To

 I have been without a mother and a father now for a couple years, and one of the things that I confess that I miss is getting a good old parental talking to. I have spent my life quietly replaying those words of mild correction, encouragement, and reminder over in my head to keep my feet on a path that would lead me on the straight and narrow. 

Obviously, sometimes I strayed. Which is exactly when those words came most handy. I could have turned to other sources, but those personally delivered hand-selected phrases made the most impact. Now they appear in monologues I share with my son, and with the students I teach. 

I was jogged into the memory of those speeches as I watched the Obamas take the stage at the Democratic Convention on Tuesday night. It made me remember a time when Hope and Change were not just words on a poster. They were tangible things. They were there for the taking, but they did not come simply for the asking. They required effort. "We" was the pronoun, and for a relatively short time, we had both. 

Then came the inevitable swing back. When my mother was alive, she was always good for a reality check. When Trump was installed in the White House, she reminded me that things could still get worse. 

And they did. 

It was that same sort of world-weariness that Michelle and Barack brought to Chicago on Tuesday night that reminded all who listened that the youthful idealism of "when they go low, we go high" may not be enough in the current environment. The assumption made way back then was that "they" had another gear besides "low." Nearly a decade later, we have seen how good MAGA can be at the limbo. The former first lady reminded us of the words Kamala Harris' mother heard from her mother: “Don’t sit around and complain about things — do something!” In much the same fashion, when her husband mentioned the red-capped opposition, the crowd jeered in response. "Don't Boo," he reminded us, "Vote."

The Obamas talked about mourning the passing of an era they helped ring in. Then they reminded us all that it is our responsibility to bring it back. The time has come to get back to work. 

It's time, as a mother once said, to do something. 

Safe

 Went for a walk in the neighborhood on Easter.

Not our neighborhood. 

Our son's neighborhood. 

We took a stroll around the blocks that he calls home. He showed us houses that he admired. The ones he wished, in another phase in his life, that he might like to own. He pointed out to us the places where trees had fallen in the last storm. We saw streets that had been blocked by falling branches and debris. He pointed out a patch of land that had a story to go with it. Amid a sea of upscale McMansions, this one seemed to be falling into disrepair. Maybe it was haunted?

So we continued to wander, coming upon a house with a driveway full and overflowing with BMWs. Our son, ever the car enthusiast, spotted a guy coming out of the house preparing to get into one of the upscale autos. "Nice 328," he called out to the owner. The guy stopped, nodded and replied: "Thanks."

And suddenly I was ten years old again. Once more I was hostage to an interaction with a stranger about something I knew nothing about. My father, my son's namesake, was gifted with the ability to chat up unknown visitors that his grandfather used for decades in sales and being an overall bon vivant. I stood on plenty of curbs and in a lot of hallways as my dad connected with people he could add to his internal rolodex. 

My son was networking with the car enthusiasts in his neck of the woods. The conversation meandered into more model numbers and engine sizes and at some point my eyes began to glaze over as I shifted my weight from one leg to another, very conscious of the fact that I had an urge to pull on the hand that I was holding. Which was my wife's. When I was a kid, I would have tugged on my father's arm in hopes of dislodging him and breaking the spell of this encounter. 

We waited patiently for the young men to shake hands with assurances of connecting up at some point later to talk even more cars. When it was over, I felt relief wash over me as my stomach unclenched. I was an adult again. My son led us down a few more lanes and eventually back to his house where he made us some pasta and we relaxed and ate dinner on his couch. 

Safe at home.