early morning swim
The smell of damp newspaper on a muggy day in early August after a passing rainstorm, mixed with fresh coffee steaming off a white cup. My father sips as he silently turns the pages of The New York Times. He is sitting on a chaise lounge — metal with a slick vinyl cushion. He peers at me occasionally from behind the paper. In later years, over half-moon reading glasses.
In early years, a Kent king sits in a clam shell ashtray alive and smoking next to his stubbed-out brothers.
It is morning at the Sea Girt house and we are sitting together on the side porch, enveloped in the damp sea air. I am fiddling quietly with a GI Joe action figure, swiveling his arms and examining the detail of his black asasult rifle and heavy pack and equipment –held to his body by a plastic peg inserted into a hole in his back.
We are waiting for the rain to make up it’s mind. It will burn off and the sun will cook the sidewalk. We will grab salt corroded beach chairs and walk three blocks down the baking, stony sidewalks of New York Avenue. Or, the rain will persist and we will sit in a cold and crowded movie theater and have lunch in an equally crowded Andy’s Pizzeria. We will come home and I will watch CHiPs reruns until dinner.
Our suits are on — still damp from the previous day. We are prepared. He turns to me, “screw it. Let’s go.” And we go out, walking toward the ocean with our towels thrown over our shoulders. It is still drizzling, the drops making rings in sidewalk puddles.
I am in barefeet and I pause to float one foot in the clear warm water of a puddle.
We step across the boardwalk gingerly to avoid splinters and down the steps past the badge checker setting up her signboard. She’s written, “AM showers. High tide: 10:38 AM”
New Year’s Resolution? Meh, Not So Much
January is supposed to be the time for new beginnings — the time when you make big resolutions to get your shit, lose weight and set the world on fire. It’s the one time of year when you can literally turn the page, feel like you can actually improve your life and do something new and different.
In year’s past I’ve reveled in this myth like David Allen was the second coming of Santa Claus. I’ve opened up a Backpack account and entered everything I want to do for the year — from “exercise three days a week” to “read one book a month.” I’ve read Allen’s Getting Things Done, determined to become an email Zen master. I’ve vowed up and down that “this is the year I get serious about publishing my novel,” only to have it sit on the shelf collecting dust another 365 days.
In other words, despite all my good intentions on January 1, my life just doesn’t seem to change all that dramatically from year to year.
Why can’t I stick to a New Year’s resolution? Well, for one thing my life is fairly busy. But more importantly, I’m pretty content with the way things are right now. So why change?
Could I stand to lose 10 pounds? Hell yes. Am I so overweight that it hinders my daily life or makes me less happy? Not really. Would I feel more fulfilled and intellectually stimulated if I was reading more books, writing more fiction and a published author? Of course. But I also really like reading Macworld, watching Lost and 24 and — unlike most people I know — I really like my job.
At the end of the day, I have lots of ideas about how I can improve my life, but little motivation to act on many of them. Why? Because my life is pretty damn good.
This year, rather than come up with a complicated program or read 300 pages on a new program (full disclosure: I still might explore The Kaizen Way), I’ve decided to try and work around the edges by looking at how I’m using my time and trying to carve out at least an hour every night to do something for myself — whether it’s writing, tinkering with my blog roll, adding some new software to the Mac, or working on getting that novel published.
No pressure to accomplish some big goal, just an hour a night to try and keep myself sane (and, hopefully, producing more blog posts).
(I’ve also carved out 45 minutes to try to get my body moving again, because I am starting to feel like a lard ass.)
But that’s it, 1 hour and 45 minutes to make a good life just a little bit better.
it’s a boy
Notes on Sleep
Between the ages of 10 and 14, my father and I; and my friend Brian and his father would take yearly father/son trips to rural Ohio to hang out on Brian’s family farm in the middle of Amish country. For three or four days we would ride dirt bikes around the lake, play poker at night, eat hamburgers and drink Vernors and Coors into the night.
One year, Brian’s Dad brought along The Book of Questions, which was pretty popular around that time. You probably remember it. It was full of questions like, “Would you take only two days of vacation every year if it meant a 30 percent increase in your salary?” It was meant, I’m sure, as a way to start conversations at dinner parties after a couple bottles of wine.
The book was generally beyond, Brian and I, but our Dad’s seemed to dig it, so one night we found ourselves sitting around the table after dinner thumbing through the questions.
Honestly, I only remember one of them. It went something like this: “If you could take a pill that allowed you to function on one hour of sleep in the same way you now function on 8 hours, would seek a prescription?”
Here’s what I remember about this: Brian’s dad — a successful oral surgeon with his own practice — immediately said yes. My dad — a vice president at a mid-sized grocery store chain — thought about it for a couple of seconds and said yes. Brian and I — who liked to sleep until noon and ride motor bikes until well after dusk — didn’t even understand the question.
To this day, I remember thinking, “Why would anyone not want to sleep as much as the world would let them?” Of course, at the time I had zero responsibilities. Intellectually I was somewhere between Revenge of the Nerds and JD Salinger and emotionally I was somewhere between GI Joe and Tawny Kitaen.
Sleep was a luxury and an essential experience. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to give that up.
But for our fathers, sleep was an undue burden — six-to-eight hours of downtime when they could be seeing patients, writing business plans, reading, writing, and doing things for themselves instead of for their bosses, customers, wives and kids.
From that moment, I’ve monitored my relationship with sleep as it devolved from a luxury to an increasing burden. Today, as slivers of time are peeled away by increased responsibilities and expanding possibilities, I find myself staying up later, trying to wake up earlier, doing more and dreaming less.
Today, if a drug existed that would allow me to safely function on 1 hour of sleep in the same way I do on eight hours, I would not only seek a prescription, I’d buy it off the street if I had to.
Thoughts on Last Night
… are still not fully formed — and may never be. But this is from an email I sent my sister this morning that starts to get at what I’m thinking:
I was always cautiously optimistic about last night, but also aware of the powerful influences of fear, doubt and prejudice. I never expected this to be a landslide and I had real fears of what might happen in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That Obama was able to carry all of these states is a testiment to his superior executive acumen, and the deep, deep trouble this country is in.
I don’t think things will be rosy — one look at today’s market activity will tell us that — but we have at least elected a president and vice president who understand the challenges we face and can call on a newly inspired nation to make the sacrafices necessary to right the ship. Things are going to get worse before they get better, but for one day at least, things feel pretty damn good.
On a related note, my niece, who lives in a red county of a blue state, went to middle school today and endured racial slurs for her family’s support of our new President. At the same time, my parents mass emailed their friends and family — many of them die hard Republicans who had sent them “Obama is a Muslim” emails throughout the campaign — expressing their joy for last night’s results. They may well lose a few friends over that email, but as my Dad says, “What kind of friends were they anyway?”
These stories actually temper my joy a bit — there’s still a lot of hate out there — but I take comfort in knowing that my family is on the right side of history.
Technorati Tags: barackobama electionnight 2008presidentialelection reaction
Ground Game: A Personal Story
My parents are in their mid-60s, recently retired and living in a small, conservative rust-belt Pennsylvania town. They twice voted for George Bush, Sr., despised Bill Clinton and couldn’t stomach a vote for Al Gore — casting a protest vote for Ralph Nadar instead. (A vote, they regret to this day.)
My father served two tours in Vietnam as a United States Marine, earning Captain’s bars and a case of malaria for his trouble. He proudly wears an Eagle, Globe and Anchor on his suit jacket but eschews the false patriotism of the flag lapel pin.
They raised four children, found a way to send them all to the college of their choice and ran their own business for over a decade.
My parents have always had a keen interest in politics, but to my knowledge they have never been directly involved in a political campaign — until last week.
Last week, my mother, at the age of 67, canvassed for Barack Obama. She did this in a part of the state where, frankly, he doesn’t stand a chance of winning. She and two other women knocked on doors of Republicans, Independents and Democrats. They had doors slammed in their face. They were chased by dogs. They spoke to voters who were either for the McCain-Palin ticket or undecided. They handed our their literature and tallied their GOTV sheets dutifully.
I’d love to say this is one of those inspiring Obama canvassing stories where they turned out more voters than they expected, changed some minds or met some inspiring or surprising supporters. The fact is, most of the folks they met were either indifferent or downright hostile to their message. But despite this — despite the truly discouraging results — my mother is heading out their again on Tuesday and she’s bringing my father, a man with two synthetic knees, with her.
They are going door-to-door for Senator Obama in a place where the struggle for votes is monumental. They are retirees in not-so-great health who could be doing just about anything they want with their time and what they have chosen to do is walk the streets at dusk during a cold Pennsylvania October for Barack Obama.
I asked my mother tonight why she is doing this. Her answer was simple: “I believe in his campaign. I just pray he can win.”
With folks like my parents out there, the Obama ground game is secure — and unbeatable.
and we shed what was left of our summer skin
I spent the last two weeks of August on vacation — one week in Duck, North Carolina with my wife’s family (see above) and one week (more or less) with my brother and his girlfriend, who I only get to see once or twice a year due to their overseas location. So here’s a quick rundown of the last two weeks of August:
Obama made a safe, sensible and intelligent choice, while McCain may very well have committed political suicide. The Democratic National Convention featured several game changing speeches, while the RNC suffered a rain delay and a power outage. Science continued to prove that climate change is a bigger disaster than most will admit, while Republicans stubbornly denied its existence. Google took another step toward world domination and Apple (potentially) pissed off a bunch of people who just bought iPods. DC United muddled through mediocrity, while the US National Team continued its inevitable march to the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Ollie Goes For Goal
In honor of Euro2008.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
He approaches the ball, pivots around the defense, lines up the shot, lets it fly and GOOOOOAAAALLLL!! A gorgeous strike!