Last week, I wrote down a friend’s name. The mere thought of him brought a smile to my face – the byproduct of a thousand good times together.
A few days later, I watched my daughter perform in her high school’s joyous production of Mamma Mia. I smiled through the whole first act and most of the second. At various times, I looked over at my wife and other two daughters – often exchanging knowing smiles.…
My wife and I have been watching the show, The Pitt lately. Each episode covers one hour of a twelve hour shift in an emergency room in a Pittsburgh hospital. The show is tremendous in every way; full of humanity and dignity.
One storyline focused on a pair of siblings trying to do what’s right by their father who is dying. At some point to help them cope with this incredibly difficult situation, the doctor introduces them to the Hawaiian concept of Ho’oponopono.…
With the celebrations and conventions of Valentine’s Day behind us, a few words on love.
It is interesting to note that although I have written these notes every week for almost ten years, I’ve never written one exclusively focused on what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the “most durable power in the world.” It is a surprising omission. After all, what could possibly help us move up in life more than love?…
“I know what it feels like to be a parent now,” my oldest daughter told me after watching her youngest sister deliver a chorus solo during the school’s winter concert. “I was so nervous,” she added.
Anxiety, nervousness and fear are three of the most nerve-wracking aspects of parenting – if not life in general. If we’re lucky they exist in a low hum in the background as we move about our days.…
I don’t know where it comes from and it can be overwhelming.
I wear many, many hats. With each one of them comes a certain amount of joy and responsibility. At any given time, I feel as if I am likely failing in one capacity or another, sometimes more.
This potential failure is a threat to my ego. My sense of self as someone who is high achieving or “can do it all.”…
The vacation itself was a splurge, partially offset by frequent flier miles. Three Hawaiian islands over the course of two weeks. While there we splurged on a few excursions; a luau, a snorkeling trip and swimming with dolphins. The latter of which has been on my bucket list since I was a little boy.
To splurge is to knowingly indulge yourself – often with a cost that you know or feel is extravagant.…
The familiar picture frame stopped me in my tracks. Reading, “#1 Dad” it was in an exhibit called “Many Voices, One Nation” at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It sat there with a collection of other items including a toothbrush, comb and glass case. All united by the fact they were found in the desert, forgotten on someone’s journey north from Mexico into America.
I wonder how many father’s over the course of our two-hundred forty-eight year history felt like a #1 Dad for taking extraordinary chances and journeys in the hopes of providing a better life for their family.…
I spent the 248th anniversary of our country’s birth eating a hotdog at a baseball game. Doesn’t get any more American than that does it?
Actually, it does. The extent to which I spent any time reflecting on the importance of our nation’s founding was the three minutes it took for a soldier to perform our national anthem. Perhaps our country deserved a little more from me on July 4th.…
The history of Father’s Day is pretty fascinating. Confirming the belief of some that dads get short shrift, it took almost 60 years after Mother’s Day was recognized as a national holiday for it to become the same.
It was initially met with skepticism “as one florist explained, ‘fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.’”
This I believe has certainly changed over the years, at least in the home of this softie.…
By the time you read this, I will have attended three very different parties over the course of a week.
The first was a celebration of life for a dear friend who died way too young. Friends from her college days and early New York years gathered to remember a life so bright that to simply say her name would bring a smile to your face.…
While reading this New York Times article last week, a turn of phrase caught my attention “one sad nod and head shake after another.” While it was referring to the book, The Age of Grievance, I found it ironic in that it perfectly captured my experience having just read the paper. Every story was one piece of sad or bad news after another. Even the Arts section, which I save for last, so I might end on a positive or inspiring note, was riddled with critics tearing apart various movies and plays.…
To give birth – whether to a person or an idea – is to bring something new into existence. Its origin is from the Old Norse word meaning “bear.” My assumption is that this was an early acknowledgment of the intense labor that is intrinsic to the act of giving birth.
When we give birth to anything it brings with it a combination of immediate joy, hope, anxiety and fear.…
Like many families, every year we create a calendar. Around December, I begin by looking through all the pictures our family has taken over the last year. We then select somewhere between three and twelve to put with each month. In total that means around fifty to sixty photos end up representing our year at a glance. A small number curated from almost a thousand.
While I’m sure the family members who receive this gift appreciate it; the act of creating provides me with the greatest present.…
As part of my season of giving, I asked the waitress if she could add the bill from the two police officers sitting in the adjacent booth to my tab.
Smiling, she told me that the couple by the window had already made this anonymous gesture. In turn, I asked the waitress if I could pay for that couple’s meal. That too, she said, had been taken care of.…
As the saying goes, this is the season for giving. Yet for some, including myself, the giving is often focussed on just a few days.
For the rest of the month of December, we’re running around frantically trying to wrap things up – not just the presents we’ve purchased but various end-of-year projects – both work and personal – that have piled up the previous months.…
Last week, my entire family sat down to dinner on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights. On Wednesday my wife and I went out for dinner for a date night, just the two of us, after friends had to cancel due to illness.
Since starting a family, dinners together have been a priority. As they get older, with more after school activities and a natural desire to hang out with friends, family dinners can happen a little less regularly.…
In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Ed Sheeran described his work process. Every weekday, he goes to his studio to write and produce songs from 10:00am-5:00pm. By his own admission, most of what he produces is rubbish – but his goal is to only get one good song finished each month. By the end of the year, this means he’ll have twelve songs – enough for an album.…
It is heart wrenching to see what humanity is capable of doing to one another.
How can any person or group of people be capable of murdering innocent children?
It is an unfathomable thought for most.
A difficult but more accessible question is to ask ourselves: What lengths would a parent or group go to protect their own children?
For those of us who have children, we can imagine ourselves being capable of almost anything.…
In the movie The Intern, Anne Hathaway plays the founder of a tech/fashion startup and Robert DeNiro is her unlikely “senior intern.” At the company’s open layout office, there is a tradition where a bell is rung to celebrate an achievement. You can ring the bell to announce that you’ve done something noteworthy or in recognition of someone else’s efforts or accomplishments. When the bell is rung, everyone stops what they’re doing for a moment to cheer or clap, before going right back to what they were doing.…
The first recorded labor strike in world history occurred in Egypt in the 12th century. Workers charged with building the Pharaoh’s burial tomb stopped working on several occasions because they were not given sufficient rations of food and water.
Let that sink in.
In 2023, so far there have been 200 hundred labor strikes affecting over 320,000 workers. That is triple the number in 2022 and ten times as many as there were in 2021.…
I was having a conversation last week with my daughter about phone usage. She was forcefully advocating for Snapchat while we were on the fence. In the course of the conversation, I discovered that in addition to your phone providing statistics on screen time (both in total and for individual apps) it also recorded the number of times you picked up your phone and which app you were picking it up to use.…
Years ago I dropped one of my AirPods onto a train track. After the train passed, I stupidly jumped down to fetch it, not realizing how far down the track was relative to the platform. To get back to the platform, I had to pull myself up. It quickly became apparent that I could not do it. Fortunately two people on the platform were able to give me a hand before an ensuing train came along.…
On a good day, I find it difficult to sleep on a red-eye flight. Recently, as my family and I embarked on our summer vacation to France, it was impossible. In addition to the standard two to three babies who intermittently scream, we were surrounded on our packed flight by a large pack of college students. There seemed like there were a hundred of them. Talking incessantly.…
The world has never been hotter. While statistics like Phoenix experiencing over twenty consecutive days of temperatures above 110 degrees are eye-popping, we don’t need numbers to tell us things are getting hot up here. We only need to walk outside.
Long before this latest and perhaps most obvious manifestation of climate change, my youngest daughter has been turning up the heat in our household for years.…
The Oscar nominated short documentary “How Do You Measure a Year?” is a film based entirely on a ritual. Each year, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt asks his daughter to sit in the same spot on their couch and answer the same set of questions. The ritual begins on Ella’s second birthday and extends to her 18th. After not watching any of the footage during those seventeen years, Rosenblatt edits these sessions down to a crisp and moving twenty-nine minute time machine.…
