It’s interesting to realize how much our lives revolve around water.  By “our” I mean my family’s, but presumably “our” could cover all of us — humans, now and before, probably all living things, now and before, on this planet.  Ever. 

But that’s a little too high-minded for a Friday morning.  So let me just stick with my family.

We’re fresh back from our annual east coast summer vacation.  The first half we spent on Lake Otsego outside Cooperstown for our elder son’s travel baseball tournament.  (I could digress here, and give in to an equally interesting — to me — observation about how our lives revolve around baseball.  But I won’t digress, other than to share the below photo taken during a memorable Giants game the boys and I attended yesterday afternoon.)

So back to Lake Otsego  Although I grew up only about 90 minutes away, I had never heard of this place.  We rented a very cool but 70% likely to be haunted old home on Otsego’s shores.  We spent as much time in that lake as we possibly could — hunting for crayfish, paddling in $2.99 inflatables from the local Topps Market, fishing (not “catching”), deploying dark ops after the kids hit the sack, and making my cranky right shoulder sore with some open water swimming.  The point is, our reptilian brains were positively drawn to the water; we had a helluva time breaking our grip when it was time to move on.  Not easy to leave this behind —

But leave it behind we did.  On our way to the next phase of our trip on Cape Cod, we toured a boarding school for our soon-to-be-high schooler to gather some data points.  The place was literally on the ocean, and the ocean and being on and in the ocean is a huge part of the curriculum and the entire experience there.  They even have a 1914 schooner on which the students crew and sail to far off places. 

Whether Max will end up spending 4 years of his life there, I don’t know.  But sitting and typing now, I can’t help but wrinkle my brow over, once again, the central theme of water.  Running through everything in our lives.

We spent a week on the Cape, and it goes without saying that we were in, on, or around the water — fresh, estuarian and sea — nearly every waking moment.

It was a remarkable trip.  Always is.  It’s hard to leave and come back home to San Francisco every year.  This year a bit more so due to Sunday’s major earthquake.  A reminder of our fragile existence out here.  But then once we get back home, we see this —

Our kids’ playground.  From the Atlantic now into the Pacific (technically, a mix of the Pacific and fresh water run-off).  I hope we’re managing to instill in them our own love of the water. Judging by their faces, I think we’re doing OK in that department.

Thanks for reading.