Men of a Stand-up Age

When my lovely wife texted me some pictures from the disco party she was at, I smiled. Not just because they included her, who I missed, but because of the picture of our oldest daughter Beatrice and one of her best friends for many years since grade school. Now high school teens, the picture was cute and fun, a refreshing sweetness to see while I was away. This being just one friendship of many she maintains.

Our younger daughter, Bryce, is officially a teen herself, and like her sister, has her own established close friendships. Both girls hang out more with their friends after school and on weekends, spending less time at home than ever before. 

While these changes are bittersweet, our kids no longer kids, it brings an even bigger smile to my face when I see them with their friends. Their relationships are new, honest, and fragile; a multiverse of emotion and inside jokes and laughter, each of them grappling with the overwhelming adolescent changes that become the DNA of their adulthood. Only time will tell if they remain friends over the decades, but there's always that chance. 

For anyone who's had friends for decades, it certainly is a blessing, especially for men who tend to not fare as well as women in the long-term friendship department. In 7th grade I met Robby, a tall and thin boy who befriended me and gave me a cassette tape of two Cheap Trick albums (Heaven Tonight and Live at Budokan), recorded on a discount-bin Thrifty Drug Store cassette mind you, and our rock and roll best friendship was born. I'd love to say I still have that cassette tape, but alas, I don't, just the wonderful memory of when our friendship began.

Then in high school came many new (mutual) friendships, including Jeff, Rob, Greg, Charles, Craig, and many others. And then after right high school came Craig (connected to Robby and other high school friends) and Troy (meet in college). Not all the friendships I've had over the years have withstood the test that time and circumstance bring, but thankfully there are those that have. 

We do get together when we can each year, sometimes together and sometimes one-on-one, and this last time was a wonderful visit, complete with decades of inside jokes and comedy clips (SNL, etc.), lots of laughter, and yes, even serious banter about our lives. It's been decades of friendship. The stereotype of straight male friends isn't lost on us, which is why we thought the Saturday Night Live Straight Male Friend commercial skit was so funny (but a little edgy, so beware if you watch it). Thankfully we're not exactly that (and yet, sometimes we are). 

As I wrote last year in Men of a Vulnerable Age, men can go longer periods of time without talking or seeing each other, and don't necessarily thrive on intimacy and emotional connection as much as women do. But my friends and I have shared quite a bit of our lives (intimately and emotionally) with each other over the years. The good, the bad, the ugly, the meh -- and a whole lot of comedy and tears of laughter. 

Our relationships are a multiverse of life experience, love, and inside jokes. None of us are safe from each other. We relentlessly tease and "bust each other's chops" as the saying goes, and we bust our own chops as well. We're like veteran stand-up comedians heckling an audience of us. It may be perceived as a little harsh and over-the-top at times, and it's especially awkward when we're in mixed company and we see the reaction of others. But for us, it's at times raw, real, retrospective, and always full of love. We're men of a stand-up age, and we've stood by one another for 40+ years. I hope my daughters are as blessed today with their teen friends as I have been. 

Other past posts about and related to these friends of mine:

• Men of a Vulnerable Age
• Endless Possibilities Actually
• Able-Bodied Grateful
• Men of Our Present Age
• The #MeToo Guys
• Men of a Women's Age
• Men of a Consequential Age
• Grown Men Friends and Fathers
• Like Men Knowingly Bound to Their Future
• Because That's How It Works With The Guys That Work
• Big Heart Love to My Class of 1984
• Men of An Unremarkable Age
• Being What Happens Next
• Daddy Day in Monterey

Like Night And Day

It was probably the last time for who knows how long, but it doesn't mean we won't ever go again. Oh, we'll go again, either just my wife Amy and I, or our kids will join us again, but the annual family treks may be over (for now at least). 

We love Disney. When Amy and I went to Disneyland as part of our honeymoon back in 2003, we had a fabulous time. I remember all the families around us with babies and very young children, and we said out loud, "Why would you bring such young ones there?"

But that was four years before we changed our own minds about having our own kids, and five years before we actually had our first daughter Beatrice in 2008. Less than two years later, our other daughter Bryce was born. 

After our kids turned three and five years old, we ate our own words and decided to take them to Disneyland in January of 2014. And we had a blast. Thank goodness for single-rider rides so Mom and me could ride the big-kid rides. Ever since, we've gone nearly every year, except for 2020 and early 2021 due to the pandemic, having many family adventures with related reflections along the way in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, and now this year in 2024. If we lived closer to LA, then we would've had season passes, but alas, it's a six-hour drive for us. 

It's always a super-fun marathon for us. This year in the last few days of the kids' school winter break, we trekked in and around the Disneyland and California Adventure parks over eight miles a day for four days, staying up late (for us) for the fireworks and the water light show, traversing the crowds (there are always crowds), and having to listen to Christmas/holiday music over and over again two weeks after Christmas (ugh). The walking and standing were brutal on Mom and Dad's legs, hips, backs, and butts, but we still made it farther and longer than our own kids, who took the late afternoons off to hang out in hotel room. 

Our teens still enjoyed Disneyland this year, but because they wanted to take afternoon breaks, it was clear that the Disney magic had rusted over a bit for them, more for Beatrice than Bryce. Both their interests have changed and they're on their way to young adulthood now. Bittersweet for us; they'll always be our little ones ready to embrace Mickey, Minnie, and friends. We're so grateful we've been able to take them for all these years. 

But they're not our little ones anymore, something I'm obviously grappling with. When I look at this year's castle picture compared to the first one in 2014, it's like night and day, with the common horizon line being our family love of togetherness and fun. Will we ever go together again? Of course we will. The magic may be rusty, but it will always shine.

Sweet Miracles

 "Oh, sweet miracle, love's sweet miracle of life..."

—Rush, Sweet Miracle

One of my dear friends usually teases me when I post them. My regular posts about my beach workout on Natural Bridges State Beach I do throughout the year (sometimes my wife Amy joins me now). One that I've been doing for many years now. He teases me because it's seemingly the same picture of the remaining Natural Bridge. 

But it's really not the same picture each time. The geological changes may be imperceptible to us humans in the near team, but in the long term, these rock formations have been changing for decades. Hundreds of years. Thousands of years. Hundreds of thousands of years. Millions of years. Mercy me. 

Back in 2015, it didn't look much different than today.

But take a look at it in 1970. The bridge extended from what's left now to the main rock cliff. 

And now there's a new bridge forming to the left of the current one. 

These incremental changes can be nearly unnoticeable, until they're seen. When I'm on the Natural Bridges beach, I'm very mindful one moment, then daydreaming the next, working through things in my head as I listen to my music and do my workout. Not running anymore, just hiking across the sand and up and down the small hill to the upper parking lot and back down again. I'm very aware of how I'm feeling, physically and emotionally, and very aware of my surroundings. I may not see the continuous Natural Bridge erosion from sea and weather, and from humans too, except for the new bridge that's now forming, but I do see the sea and weather changes that impact the beach itself.

We usually don't put value judgements on geological erosion over time; it is what it is, and was. But for our own human erosion, we do. The life weathering we experience can be good, bad, or indifferent. It can beat us down or lift us up, constantly changing us physically and psychologically and spiritually. From our own childhood, to adolescence, to young adulthood, Amy and I survived and were transformed, and then we met one day at the beach. We were so much younger when we met, and now we're not. Our own kids were kids for years, and now they're not. Every day they inspire us to be better; we inspire each other to be better. 

And it's these little bits of breakthrough better that are the best, our BhivePower. These are the sweet miracles that transform us into what we become next, and there's nowhere on earth I'd rather be right now than right here. When you embrace what you live, it really can be as easy as 123123.

Blessings and Happy New Year. 

There's Nothing To It

"If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it..."

–Pure Imagination, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

It was magical. I cried. I always cry when something moves me, whether in movies or writing or music or art. Always crying. 

"I cried a little," I said to my wife Amy when the new movie Wonka was over. 

"I know, Sweetie," Amy said, "You always do. Love you."

Yes, I do. It was magical, transporting me back to the first time I saw Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder and Jack Albertson back in the early 1970's. I almost didn't want to see the newest movie about Willie Wonka, but we went, and I'm glad.

Our kids, Beatrice and Bryce, didn't go with us, though. They wanted to see another matinee, The Boy and the Heron, which they really liked. Bryce loved it, too, and cried. They're totally like me that way. 

It was the day before Christmas Eve. While Amy and I finished Wonka, our kids went shopping for last-minute Mom and Dad gifts. It's weird to write that our kids, now teens, are more autonomous than ever. That they're doing their own things more and more, and yet, we still always come back together and do things together as a family. Every parent reminisces when their kids were little, keeping them in tow, hand in hand, never letting them out of our sight. 

Beatrice and Bryce will always be our babies no matter what, but those days of being little are over, and that's okay. We're so proud and grateful of the young adults they're becoming. Of their future fiercely independent selves we're starting to see. Of their unique and creative styles and sensibilities. Of their kind and loving hearts. Of their caring inclusiveness that this world so desperately needs. 

Want to change the world? There's nothing to it. Our kids remind us of that nearly every day. We're grateful that the magic of Christmas is aglow in our hearts throughout the year, not just the end of it. The magic of love and light abounds in BhivePower.

However you celebrate this holiday season, blessings to you all. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Snack Prescient

Through all the fiery evangelical rhetoric, there were snacks. My sister and I would sit impatiently on the pew next to my grandparents, our little tummies grumbling and looking forward to the post-church lunchtime at Bob's Big Boy, and then our grandmother would reach deep into her purse to pull out some candy. Usually mints, or sometimes Lifesavers (literally and figuratively), or other random candies, or gum, that probably had been in her purse for months. I realize that you don't eat gum, or are not supposed to, (and we were told if we did, it wouldn't digest for seven years, which wasn't true because you just pass it in your poop), but if that's all that Grandma had, we'd take it. Any of these snacks were a pleasant distraction from the endless hour spent in church each Sunday.

And then there was our mother, one who took "snacks on hand" to the next level. Case in point -- going to the movies. Mom had this magic bag, one that was seemingly bottomless that she'd fill with ziplocks full of popcorn, candy like M&Ms and Red Vines, and plastic bottles of soda and water. For like up to 10 people, including her grandchildren. In my experience, local theaters used to frown a lot more on patrons bringing in their own food and drink, because they wanted you to purchase their overpriced theater snacks, and my mom was super bold bringing in this overly stuffed bag of goodies. We'd roll our eyes and cringe, worried that we'd be ejected from the theater as soon as we purchased our movie tickets, but from what I remember, she usually pulled it off. And of course we were grateful to have all the yummies during the movie.

And then there's my wife Amy, mother to our children, Beatrice and Bryce, a snack visionary who I never really appreciated until recently. Raising children isn't easy, and Amy and I have done our best over the years. But Amy knew early on that kids get hungry and cranky, or "hangry", and so even tiny bags of oyster crackers saved from restaurants when we'd go out to eat clam chowder were lifesavers. Today, I always harp on my family now to never leave the house without your phone or your keys, but Amy argues to never leave the house without snacks or water. And just like my mother, Amy's bags over the years have also been seemingly bottomless, full of her own stuff like her wallet and phone and keys, snacks for the kids (and us), water for all of us, and lots and lots of love. 

And what about me? Well, I haven't been very good about having snacks at the ready over the years. There's been many times when I've picked our kids up from school or elsewhere and they've been hungry and/or thirsty, and I had brought none of those things with me. I'm sure there are dads that have done a much better job than me, dads who are prescient enough to cut off the hangries before they happen. 

Thankfully I've got Amy. We divide a conquer many things in our household, but hangry attacks are hers to preemptively strike with snacks. Plus, other than having hangry and moody teens in our house, we now have a new cat. A kitten to be exact named Winston that is Bryce's cat. And unlike our dog Jenny, who doesn't jump on our table, our kitchen counters, and other high shelves, Winston the cat does. Cats are wily adventurers that let nothing get in their way, even if that means knocking things off tables, counters, and shelves along the way. After researching cat behavior modification, spray bottles weren't recommended (although we use it strategically -- on the cat, not the kids), but positive reinforcement with clicks and treats were. So, Amy is now our resident B.F. Skinner protégé, carrying a little plastic container full of cat treats, positively reinforcing Winston to stay off where he doesn't belong. Also, by animal envy default, Jenny gets some of those treats, too. And I thought I spoiled Jenny too much. 

Snacks on hand can definitely help to curb negative behavior, and satiate the hangries, and that's why Amy follows in a long line of snack prescient Mamas and Nanas (and Daddies more prepared than me). And just in time for the holidays, where snacks abound. Amen. 

The Love And The Light

"So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you had fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young..."

–Happy Xmas (War Is Over), John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir

At first it was comical -- all of us trying to figure out the bike riding to a local state park for a holiday faire. Our oldest daughter Beatrice wanted to ride my e-bike that I never ride, which was fine. But then when our youngest daughter Bryce got on the new bike we bought for her, one she'd already ridden to school, she lost her balance and fell over. She scratched her knee and was okay otherwise, but she broke the basket for the front of the bike, the one she puts her backpack in to and from school. Fortunately it still attaches to the handlebars. 

I was going to concede to ride Amy's old Schwinn, but even after raising the seat, I still felt like a circus bear riding a tricycle. Then Bryce wanted to ride Amy's newer Huffy, which was broken recently until we got fixed, so Bryce rode that one, I rode the new bike that was supposed to be for Bryce (with handlebars that needed tightening and brakes that needed adjusting), Amy rode the old Schwinn, and Bea rode my e-bike. All that took about 20 minutes to sort out. 

No matter how many times we've tried over the years, we've just never been a bike family. But, we have had some lovely bike rides together, and this time was no exception. It was a lovely December early afternoon riding along the bike path, with hazy cloud streaks muting the blue sky that met the sea. It was cool out, but not cold, and the bike ride to Wilder Ranch State Park was pleasant. The old-fashioned holiday faire was smaller than it usually was pre-covid, with still many families making candles, wreaths, ornaments, potpourri bags, and drinking cider and hot chocolate. 

Riding back home I was grateful we were able to do this as a family, that the worst thing we had to worry about was who was riding what bike. That's when I thought about families who have a lot more to worry about. Poverty, illness, war, violence, and death. 

My family doesn't have to worry about those things, at least, not directly like the families living them today. Indirectly, anything can happen at any time, but I don't dwell on that like I used to. I'm grateful for the now. For being able to live comfortably today without illness, war, violence, or God forbid, death. 

And speaking of God, when I was a child, I really wanted to believe that little baby Jesus would save the world, especially during Christmastime. That's when I was always the most hopeful about the world. But then I came to learn that it was always on us to save the world from the dark things. 

And save the world we still can. At least I want to believe that for me and my family. And yours, too. I'm a hopelessly sentimental and hopeful human. Even in the darkest moments of my past, or the world's, I've been that way, always believing that ultimately there is only love and light, that we can see it that way, and make it that way.

As we neared home on our bikes, I looked at the sea one more time before we lost sight of it, and all I saw was the love and the light. 

However you celebrate the holidays, blessings to you and yours. You may never be as hopelessly sentimental as me, but believe it or not, being hopeful and making a daily difference is easier than you think. 

"So this is Christmas, and what have you done?"

Stay Kid-Heart Strong

They're so little, until they're not. And while they'll always be our "kids", they most certainly aren't anymore. They're not quite adults yet, no, but mercy me, they're on their way.

Case in point -- privacy. Now that our girls are teens, they are clear about their privacy boundaries. This includes what I write and post about, and the family pictures I post on social media. I ask for their permission each time. Except for the times I haven't, and they've reiterated to me how unhappy that makes them. 

And I do want to ask for their permission. Both Mom and I really do. We want to respect their privacy, just like we want them to respect ours, to not discuss family things we don't want discussed. Now, the only exception to that rule for all of us is when something is a safety problem -- a social, emotional, or physical safety problem. If that happens, then we're responsible for addressing them and helping them. As one of the many Kidpower mantras states, "Problems should not have to be secrets." If that's the case, we take appropriate actions.

One day (soon) they might read good ol' Dad's blog posts, and no matter how much I don't reveal and/or generalize, I'm sure I'll get some "Dad, why did you write that?!?" I'll then ask for forgiveness and tell them I love them. I'll remind them I've been writing about our family since before Beatrice (the oldest) was born, to share with others the ups and downs of fatherhood, parenting, local community issues, and personal leadership. And maybe some of those others can relate, commiserate, and/or celebrate.

Our kids are also looking older than ever, and we can now see what their young adulthood presence may look like -- and the future looks bright for sure. Not only what they do look like and will look like physically, but also what their hearts look like now and in the future. Two loving and kind, strong and independent, teen girls on their way to adulting. 

Which was why I was bummed that I thought I was going to miss their excitement at the local holiday parade. I've been on our local school board for a year now and was just at my school board conference in San Francisco. Fortunately this time I got to come back early enough since we were closer to home and I made it to our downtown holiday parade. Last year I missed it because the conference was in San Diego. 

But unlike holiday parades and Christmastimes of old, this time both kids took off to hang out with friends, making me a little wistful for childhood past. So, Mom and I hung out and cheered on the local organizations and schools as they passed us by on the street. Such a heart-warming community event each and every year. I felt blessed to be there again. 

Blessed and bittersweet actually. From privacy to personal growth, our kids aren't really kids anymore. I mean, kind of, yes, but mostly no, even if they stay kid-heart strong like their Mom and me do. I think they will, too, considering how much Christmastime magic still bubbles up inside them, even if I can't always write about how they feel and why. Sigh.