Once, Two Paths Diverged...

Close readers of this personal blog may have noticed my most loyal comment poster of late has been my cousin, Dan. It seems to be difficult for Dan and I to agree about anything much, but our mutual respect remains high.

Growing up, we were arguably each other's favorite cousins. We are the same age, and our parents' first post-war babies. We have always shared a wacky sense of humor, and a penchant for self-education. We both grew up with loving parents. (Mine are gone, but his are my only surviving uncle and aunt.) We both had older and younger siblings, but his were males and mine were females (which just might be a clue to how differently we have turned out.) He lost his little brother Gordon last year.

Back to our parallel lives, we both served our country, Dan in his way (military) and I in mine (Peace Corps.) We're both Dads; we've both suffered broken marriages. Now we are reaching the age of reflection, looking back on our choices, our accomplishments and mistakes, not to mention our regrets, always the hardest things to process as we age.

Recently, I proposed to Dan that we coauthor a book, as representatives of our broken generation. Whether we took Dan's path or mine, we Boomers remain in a state of unresolved regret, and yet in an endless state of hope.

As our generation retires, and dies, the urgency of documenting this dichotomy intensifies. What do you think? Please let me know, either privately or in Comments (below). Thank you.

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Heat and Fog

As the land heats up in California, the cooler air gets pulled in from the Pacific, creating the waves of fog this place is famous for.



Along with the shift in temperature comes a change in the lighting. Everything grows softer as the fog approaches, replacing the dry glare of our hot west=coast sun.



Finally, as night falls, the breezes carrying the wind tend to fall, freezing the oncoming white wave over twin peaks, while here in the Mission it's still clear overhead.

Lights on inside, seen from the outside, all is well.

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The Calvary Shows Up

Whenever I join a new company, my kids want to visit the office. For as long as I can remember, I've taken them in, at least occasionally, to our mutual benefit.

Why mutual? Well, the main reasons I work for other people include the desire to support my rather large family. The children invariably view these companies from a different angle that I do...and they always seem to put their stamp of approval on the places I work.



Yesterday was the first time that any of my kids visited Predictify, and they definitely were impressed. Driving north towards home afterwards, Dylan said to Julia, "On a scale of one to ten, Predictify is 4.2 billion!"

Julia responded in kind, "Yeah, 4.3 billion!"

Standard deviants only is our company's mathematically-based slogan. I think I've got several youngsters who qualify...

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The Swimmer and the Jumper

At nine, she can swim lap after lap up and down the pool, something I never was able to do s a child or an adult. I hadn't seen her swimming seriously in a year or so, and I couldn't remember which swimming program she'd attended when little.

"None," she explained. "I taught myself."



We had Olympic swimmers in the Wishart line of our Scottish family. Maybe she's inherited some of that skill.



Meanwhile, her 12-year-old brother loves the water but in a different way. He likes to jump in, over and over and over.



He never really swims much, so they found the perfect way to play together. He'd push her, she'd go in and swim around. He'd jump in too.



Life can seem incredibly simple a times, when you're with your kids on a road trip.



A brother, a sister, a pool, some sunshine, a Dad with his camera, and enough time for all of those elements to come together.

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Road Tripsters

It's summer vacation, so the kids and I hit the road. We didn't have to go very far north to escape any sense of the city.



The kids love this hotel. They've traveled a lot, but they are not jaded. The big room with comfortable beds and flat-screen TV are a big upgrade, naturally, over our home base.

We are well-armed; the boys brought mammoth nerf machine guns they somehow acquired with their mother recently. If any nerf aliens show up, they'll be in deep trouble.



The outdoor pool is also an attraction. We had dinner at a nearby restaurant, part of a national chain where the kids remember visiting for the very first time with their Grandma (my mother) in Michigan a few months before she died. It's a distant memory now, for them, one of their oldest, but still fresh for me.

There have been a lot of road trips over the years in my extended family. One thing remains a constant. Me sitting in the shade watching the kids swim in the pool. For reasons that I cannot explain, these kinds of moments are among the most precious...