Time flies

Last Fri­day evening was a sig­nif­i­cant occa­sion for our fam­ily. Our old­est son Jay, a senior, was voted “Mr. Eagle” at a big high school event. He beat 11 other con­tes­tants. (His class has roughly 500 kids.)

It was thrilling to hear them announce the new Mr. Eagle, in a room of more than 700 scream­ing kids. Well, a few were adults, though I’m not sure how many of those were scream­ing. Heather and I screamed along with the rest.

Look­ing back, I remem­bered one of the events that shaped who Jay is today. We moved to Kenya, Africa in 2005, for a two year work assign­ment. Shortly after we arrived, Heather enrolled both Jay and Ben in Ligi Ndogo (“small league”) — a soc­cer club for boys. They were the only white kids in the whole league. They learned to relate to kids of another cul­ture and to speak a lit­tle Swahili. They didn’t want to go every Sat­ur­day, but we basi­cally forced them to take part. “Eat your spinach, it’s good for you!”

The Mr. Eagle evening included answer­ing ques­tions that the con­tes­tants were not pre­pared for. Jay’s ques­tion: “What one thing would you do dif­fer­ently, if you could live your life over?” He paused and said he wished he had been able to spend more time in Africa.

How pure are you?

cigaretteWhen you put money into a retire­ment fund, do you check if that fund sup­ports the tobacco industry?

If you buy baby for­mula, do you check if that com­pany mar­kets their for­mula aggres­sively to new moth­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries — at the expense of their children’s health?

It’s hard to be pure in this world. Most deci­sions end up being the best of the mix we can find. Or we may not exam­ine all the fac­tors that go into a decision.

I’m often too lazy to exam­ine my deci­sions. And some­times I know the poten­tial down­sides to a deci­sion, but I make it anyway.

My friend Tim Gier, a vegan, makes most of his deci­sions with a very focused approach. I admire that.

What’s a deci­sion you made that you later regretted?

Men are different from women

Photos of outfitsYou know that men are dif­fer­ent from women. I know that too.

I’ve been mar­ried to Heather for more than 20 years. I love her and am always amazed that after all these years, we are still dis­cov­er­ing new things about each other.

She started a new con­tract job recently at a large com­pany that has a fairly for­mal cor­po­rate cul­ture. She has to “dress up” to go to work. Some morn­ings involve a cloth­ing cri­sis before the right out­fit is found.

Now this is partly a per­son­al­ity thing, but it takes me about 5 sec­onds to choose what I’ll wear to an event or a work sit­u­a­tion. Heather delib­er­ates till she finds the per­fect out­fit. Since she has really good taste, she scores. (I don’t always score, but she often will warn me of impend­ing mistakes.)

So I came up with an idea to save her time in the morn­ing. What if I took pho­tos of each of her out­fit com­bi­na­tions and she could just flip through the set of pho­tos to choose the out­fit for a par­tic­u­lar day?

No. She didn’t like that idea. Why? “You just wouldn’t under­stand.” (True.)

Taking Time

Loveland Pass TrailThis is the very first guest post by Heather, my wife. Yay! (She wrote it back in August.)

It’s 100 degrees this August day in Den­ver. The school year has started at a time that feels way too early. Our family’s get­ting cheated out of beau­ti­ful days in the moun­tains, and togeth­er­ness around camp­fires. Sum­mer is not over yet! The nar­row win­dow of warm sum­mer moun­tain days has not closed.

Busy” has started for every­one but me, and I am alone. What a rare place to find myself. I head rebel­liously to the moun­tains for a hike. I want to see the exotic col­ors of “the best show of wild­flow­ers in years.” I’m pulled in, deter­mined to soak in the beauty, alone or not. I park and start walk­ing. A short dis­tance later, I leave the for­est and the car­pet of wild­flow­ers behind and trudge along alpine tun­dra, pass­ing lit­tle springs flow­ing from melt­ing snow­fields. The sun flashes sil­ver and sparkly on an emer­ald alpine lake. Mas­sive, intim­i­dat­ing and stun­ningly beau­ti­ful peaks sur­round me on all sides.

I am small in the vast silence. I see how big God is. I speak, but no human hears. My voice and foot­steps fall like a tiny drop of rain in the ocean, but the sound reas­sures me. I’m a lit­tle scared. I sit, read, and think, let­ting a fresh breeze blow away the stale and the stuck in my mind. The sun has moved, the clouds are gath­er­ing. It’s time to go back down. Things look dif­fer­ent going this direc­tion. I feel invig­o­rated and happy. This heart-pumping day has changed me. Life among moun­tains always does.

Recapturing that lost childhood

Matchbox Mustang No. 8Dur­ing the sum­mer, I saw an amaz­ing toy car col­lec­tion worth thou­sands of dol­lars. It was not in a museum — but in a home office. Few peo­ple beyond the col­lec­tor, his wife and daugh­ter ever see these cars.

So why would he invest so many hours and and so much money in that? (One small set alone is worth about $1,000.) My the­ory is that he is try­ing to recap­ture some of his lost child­hood. He remem­bers when he saved up and bought those cars when he was a kid. As a pro­por­tion of his income, the lit­tle cars might be sim­i­lar in what they cost him today, maybe.

I col­lect lit­tle cars (in spite of my pri­mary empha­sis on col­lect­ing dig­i­tally). I don’t pay very much for them. I don’t col­lect very many. But to any­one who vis­its my home office, they will see prob­a­bly 6 or 7 lit­tle cars lined up, look­ing at me. Am I try­ing to recap­ture some of my lost child­hood? Maybe. Mostly I just like cars and it’s fun to see those lit­tle cars every day.

What’s the dif­fer­ence between the pre­vi­ously men­tioned col­lec­tor and me? He goes to great lengths to find spe­cific mod­els. He’s will­ing to pay a ton when he finds the pearl of great price. I just ran­domly pick up a Tra­bant when I see it at Wal­greens. Or a friend will give me a Mini.

By the way, the model shown is from the amaz­ing col­lec­tion. (He very kindly let me take sev­eral pic­tures — which are in now my dig­i­tal col­lec­tion.) That Mus­tang is one that I owned when I was a boy. Today on eBay with the box it costs $100. Sadly it won’t regain a place of honor in my collection.

Listen to that advice

Flooded basementA year ago, our friend Jack said our water heater was prob­a­bly going to break soon — and he rec­om­mended get­ting it replaced.

We though, “Why spend the money today? It prob­a­bly has 2–3 years left, and we’ll get a new one when we feel like we can afford it more.”

So Sat­ur­day morn­ing, it broke and flooded our base­ment. Thank­fully, recov­er­ing from the flood cost no more than a Sat­ur­day after­noon and a sore back. But I would have avoided both if I had lis­tened to Jack’s advice.

So my advice to you is this: please lis­ten to your plumber, your doc­tor or your car mechanic when they say it’s time to get that work done. They prob­a­bly know more about the prob­lem than you do. And it may cost you more than a Sat­ur­day and a sore back to fix that disaster.

How do you stay healthy?

BicyclingThat’s a ques­tion. I’d love to hear what you do to stay healthy. Please leave a com­ment at the end of this post. Why? Your healthy activ­i­ties and inter­ests might inspire me and other read­ers in new and inter­est­ing directions.

Here’s what I do:

- Ride my bike. I try to ride it places instead of dri­ving. This takes some plan­ning. And it’s rarely pos­si­ble with the whole fam­ily. (Those rides are usu­ally for leisure.)

- Exer­cise my arms and shoul­ders. Last Octo­ber, I pinched a nerve in my neck. A great phys­i­cal ther­a­pist gave me a set of sev­eral exer­cises that have kept that pain away. I do this 3 to 5 morn­ings a week, using a very sim­ple stretch device.

- Eat din­ner with my whole fam­ily. With two teenage sons and a ten-year-old daugh­ter, this is not easy, but we do man­age to share our evening meal­time about five days a week. This allows us to stay closer and keep up with what we are all doing.

- Read the Bible. This keeps me focused on what’s impor­tant. (If you’d like to explore this one, start with the book of Mark or Luke.)

Don’t go there

Today I’m guest post­ing over at Eliz­a­beth Howard’s Let­ters from a Small State. And I do want you to go there!

Enjoy. (And don’t get hit by the death ray.)

Deathray

We saved for a long time

French restaurant receiptIt was going to be our great extrav­a­gant din­ner to end all din­ners. The atmos­phere was nice. Very French cafe. Very authentic.

We had saved all year long, putting the money toward one great event. (Yes, even the kids made sac­ri­fices.) We decided to have an ele­gant French din­ner. Heather had been inspired by a book writ­ten by Julia Child, describ­ing her years in Paris.

Huge dis­ap­point­ment. No baguette and but­ter as a warm-up. Ben’s entrée was the most expen­sive — and the worst. (I won’t even describe it.) The dessert was far less tasty than what we had at the pâtis­serie just down the street from where we stayed.

Alas.

Moral of the story? Don’t put all your hopes in one bas­ket. You may be dis­ap­pointed. And, be sure to read those guide books before you make a commitment.

And don’t worry, I gave them a really bad writeup on Google Maps.

The Giving Tree, Redux

This is a guest post by Eliz­a­beth Howard. Read more about her at the end.

A giving tree, by Elizabeth HowardRemem­ber that book — The Giv­ing Tree — we all read it, or lis­tened to it when we were kids?  About the boy who kept tak­ing and tak­ing from the beau­ti­ful, old tree until all that was left was a stump?

Why are we sup­posed to love this book? Other than it teaches us to FEEL sad, which I sup­pose isn’t such an awful life les­son to learn.

A Giv­ing Lesson

Lately, I’ve been think­ing a great deal more about giv­ing, and what it takes to carve out (par­don the pun) time in each day to do some­thing thought­ful for some­one else.

I’ve been think­ing about this because in the last two years, I’ve been a liv­ing, breath­ing sponge.

We took in four kids at our house and we needed a LOT of help. We asked and asked for it (that’s what you are sup­posed to do, right?) and peo­ple helped. Of course.

This is not to say I haven’t been putting out. I am a mother after all. I put out all day long, all the time, for the beau­ti­ful lit­tle needy ones that I am obliged to make full, make happy, make cook­ies. And most days I do end the day feel­ing like that generally-happy, but used-up stump.

But I think I am exhausted because I haven’t been giv­ing ENOUGH back. I haven’t spent ENOUGH time doing those lit­tle things that take weight off the shoul­ders of friends, and stangers.

The not doing is what is mak­ing me tired.

So I think that Shel Sil­ver­stein didn’t quite get The Giv­ing Tree right. It wasn’t the giv­ing up and giv­ing away that made the tree old, used up, and made us read­ers bummed.

It was know­ing what the boy missed out on: not plant­ing another tree for com­pany, not sprin­kling his friend with water, or plant­ing the earth around her with bulbs to make her beau­ti­ful in the spring.

It’s the giv­ing back that’s missing.

At Let­ters from a Small State, writer Eliz­a­beth Howard exam­ines how we sur­vive and occa­sion­ally thrive in Amer­ica, through the lens of our small­est details. A writer and poet liv­ing in Con­necti­cut with her new fam­ily, she works daily in her own sliv­ers of cre­ative space and time. She also took the pho­to­graph.