We have lots of friends in our family. One of those is a young woman from Tennessee. She's been visiting our city for many years now. Tonight, she came once again.
-30-
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Young Friends
We have lots of friends in our family. One of those is a young woman from Tennessee. She's been visiting our city for many years now. Tonight, she came once again.
-30-
Friday, July 29, 2011
Boys, Girls, Men, Women, Old Times, New Times...
Back from a 2.5 hour commute getting the boys to their sleepover out in Marin. Fog drapes over this city; now I get to relax a bit and watch the Giants game, which is an extra-inning affair back in Cincinnati.
Lunch here and there all over the city with the boys this week -- Noe Valley, the Mission, the Haight -- as we ate Thai, American, and Chinese.
Meanwhile, an everyday mid-day pickup of three 12-year-old girls at the rock-climbing facility near my house. Yesterday, I brought along somebody special from my daughter's past -- our friend J, visiting from New Orleans.
My youngest remembers how this friend helped her gain confidence as a beginning reader back when she was in first grade and having trouble. J bought her several books that were perfect for a kid at that stage of development, and it worked.
Ever since, she has been a big reader and a very good student as well.
My kids all are a lot like me in one respect. None of us ever forgets the key details of the people who enter our lives, even long after they leave us. We remember -- and appreciate -- what they add into this big robust family of ours.
J looks great. Long-time, early readers will recall the seminal role my relationship with her played in the origin of this blog. In many ways, she has turned out to be the most constant, truthful and caring friend anyone could have had these past seven years.
As I write these words, the Giants remain locked in one of those strange extra-inning baseball games that only true fans can appreciate. It's like a soccer game or a hockey game in sudden-death overtime.
Stressful but somehow, for the true athlete and the true fan, quite satisfying indeed, no matter how it turns out. Just like relationships; they're never completely over until they are over, and in a just world, not even then, because they never do really end, they just move into what we call the sweetness of memory.
The place where stories get told.
-30-
Lunch here and there all over the city with the boys this week -- Noe Valley, the Mission, the Haight -- as we ate Thai, American, and Chinese.
Meanwhile, an everyday mid-day pickup of three 12-year-old girls at the rock-climbing facility near my house. Yesterday, I brought along somebody special from my daughter's past -- our friend J, visiting from New Orleans.
My youngest remembers how this friend helped her gain confidence as a beginning reader back when she was in first grade and having trouble. J bought her several books that were perfect for a kid at that stage of development, and it worked.
Ever since, she has been a big reader and a very good student as well.
My kids all are a lot like me in one respect. None of us ever forgets the key details of the people who enter our lives, even long after they leave us. We remember -- and appreciate -- what they add into this big robust family of ours.
J looks great. Long-time, early readers will recall the seminal role my relationship with her played in the origin of this blog. In many ways, she has turned out to be the most constant, truthful and caring friend anyone could have had these past seven years.
As I write these words, the Giants remain locked in one of those strange extra-inning baseball games that only true fans can appreciate. It's like a soccer game or a hockey game in sudden-death overtime.
Stressful but somehow, for the true athlete and the true fan, quite satisfying indeed, no matter how it turns out. Just like relationships; they're never completely over until they are over, and in a just world, not even then, because they never do really end, they just move into what we call the sweetness of memory.
The place where stories get told.
-30-
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Welcome Gates
At SFO, his "little" brother and I welcomed our soccer player home from his 16-day European adventure, where he and his teammates enjoyed great successes, along with defeats, frustrations, miscues, and teenager mischief, among many other things. Overshadowing some of his joy at returning was his knowledge of the awful mass murder that shook a neighboring country, Norway, just as he was leaving Sweden to return home.
He said a Swedish boy had talked to him about the incident, before he had heard any news reports, and he assumed he was speaking about a tragedy in the distant past. The boy seemed disoriented.
Then, on one of his long plane rides during the 24-hour trip home, he read a news report and put it all together. "This is their 9/11," he told me. "They weren't ready for something like this, I don't know. They're just nicer than what we're used to here in America. More innocent."
As he was recounting this to me, I thought back to ten years ago, when as a little boy he silently entered the room as I watched the second jet crash into the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001.
Maybe that's when he lost some his own innocence; maybe that's why this weekend's shocking assault in Norway affected him the way he did.
Anyway, having him home safe is yet another reminder how precious each and every life truly is, how fragile we all are, and how powerful is the love that binds families and friends together.
There is also the matter of the medal he wears around his neck. He is, not just in his family's eyes now, a champion. He and his teammates have earned that label.
-30-
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)