Buried. I’m more than a little embarrassed to admit that I think I may have hit my breaking point.  Chagrined about it, really.  A nice little dollop of shame in there, too. Because I know damned well that many people have it way worse.  They have been wallowing in the vicinity of their own breaking point — feeling buried — for days, weeks, months, years, maybe even generations.  And only now I have the nerve to hop on the bus to Overwhelmed City? The bus is jammed already.  Standing room only.  So let’s say that I’m shoulder to shoulder with gaggles of fellow suffering travelers, being jostled about by one pothole after another. Fighting back nausea.  I am not at all prone to motion sickness, so this feeling is new.  

I want off.

There’s just too much going on.  All at once.  And it isn’t letting up. So my personal water table simply cannot return to some semblance of equilibrium. I’m full up.  Emotionally flooded.  This blog helps, though cataloguing my own parade of horribles seems both self-defeating and self-centered.  Still, I write.  

Let’s start with the macro — world affairs.  I’m getting pummeled by a nonstop barrage of the ridiculous and irrational words and actions of our new President.  It’s like a mad, insane sprint in tight circles spiraling around and down the toilet bowl.  I can’t handle the accelerating g-forces. I can’t stay on top of the latest nonsense, so that I might formulate intelligent opinions and competently explain things to my inquisitive kids. Try to help them makes sense of this new world order. I am reduced to cranky grunts and curse words, particularly if my morning coffee hasn’t yet taken root. I am at a loss.  

As for the micro: Our little neighborhood bubble of safety suddenly feels not so safe.  My outdoor Nest camera footage suggests that maybe the bubble never was safe:  Seemingly  upstanding citizens walking briskly down my block, then veering towards my flat’s stoop. Then rifling through my short stack of mail in the middle of the day. Presumably hoping for something good to steal. Post-midnight sketchy visitors, peering into my parked family car’s interior, aided in their search by the throw of my my so-called security spotlights.  And the hyperlocal criminal goings on reported to me daily by the NextDoor app — it feels like I’m suddenly raising my family in a war zone. 

My kids’ school situations are less-than-ideal.  Maybe that’s the new norm, and just the way it is.  But I only have the two sons, so “ideal” is what I’m shooting for.  Not in a helicopter parent way, mind you.  The opposite.  I want to trust that my kids are in safe, nurturing environments when out of my sight. Let the enlightened and ambitious educators and administrators do their thing. This is my default setting.  But alas, that is not always how things have worked out.  And it’s not always the schools’ fault.  I fear that mean or unkind kids are begotten of mean or unkind or long-ago-gave-up parents are begotten of a world that is moving too fast and rattling loose too many moral compasses. “True North” may actually be scattershot.  Imaginary.  Mythical. We’re all pointing in different directions.  I’d like to think I know where True North is, but with so many others’ fingers extended, jabbing all over the place, how can I be sure?

And then there’s the getting older thing.  I’m pushing towards 50, and honestly, way more serious about taking care of myself than my 21 year-old self would ever have anticipated.  I exercise a ton, eat right.  Sleep for 8 or 9 hours every night. I meditate.  I meditate about exercising, eating and sleeping.  I meditate about meditating. Yet now I find out that my LDL cholesterol is high enough to warrant artery scraping drugs.  Pills of Drano, more or less. Really? Maybe I should have been gorging on deep fried Twinkies all those years. Why not?

More broadly, all families, it seems, face the ugliness of things like cancer.  Our extended family is no different, though it feels like a singular experience.  And just recently, some of my oldest and dearest friends and their families have suddenly been forced to grapple with the fleeting nature of their own health and mortality. Given all this, who the hell am I to gripe about the prospect of taking a pill to lower my cholesterol? What the hell is wrong with me that I have been taking for granted my own family, as well as my friends and their families, for so long? How dare I obsess so much about my own situation in the face of others’ who are climbing mountains far steeper than mine?

So what’s the answer?  What to do?  What can I do in the face of all this?

I am uncertain.  I can’t seem to conjure up any of the usual guiding principles that can be counted on to lift my spirits as I typically approach this concluding section of my blog posts. Having a bit of a hard time finding the bright side, quite honestly.  

But I suspect there may be something to the iPhone photo at the top, captured quickly in Lake Tahoe a couple days back:  I think I’m just gonna pick up this here shovel and dig.  It feels like something I can control, though I recognize no actual progress may be made.  And hopefully I will be strong enough to push through the back aches and heart aches. (No guarantees with these awesome LDL numbers of mine, by the way.)  But I’m just gonna keep digging. 

Thanks for reading. 

Gotta be a silver lining in there somewhere. But saturated as I am in this morning’s live coverage of Donald Trump’s inauguration, I’m having a great deal of trouble finding it.  I am squinting with great intensity at this image.  Not squinting of the fake variety, as if I were trying to manufacture a “this is my serious face” face.  Looks to me like someone was practicing his best Clint Eastwood grimace in a full length mirror at the Blair House last night.  Not me.  I gratuitously popped a NyQuil gelatinous pill.  What my wife and I euphemistically call “a vacation.” But I’m not sick, mind you.  I just wanted a little extra help sleeping through the night. 

This is a very hard day, there is just no way around it.  

This is a hard day to be a friend.  Today would feel a heavy one to me, even if someone’s hand other than Trump’s had found its way to holding that bible opposite Chief Justice Roberts’ hand. I learned last night that a dear college buddy of mine has recently been given a very challenging diagnosis.  He and is family will wake up this morning and find themselves in the midst of a genuine fight.  They are up for it. His wide circle of friends will be up to it, as well.  This development makes what I’m seeing on the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn feel both far less important and far more important. 

This is a hard day to be a son. Lately, the first text message I see in the morning lets me know how many inches of snow fell during the night at a couple Tahoe ski resorts.  This morning’s first text reported precipitation of a different physical state and salinity.  My mom told me she found herself in tears dealing with the gravity of this morning’s proceedings. No doubt hundreds of thousands of gallons of tears will be shed this morning by millions of troubled souls. My mother’s tears, though, bring a particular sting.  They stung when I was 10 years old, sitting helplessly on our living room couch as she cried in pain for hours on the evening after a root canal operation.  And they sting now, as I sit in my own living room 3,000 miles away from her. I am that helpless 10 year-old once again. 

This is a hard day to be a husband. I vividly recall seeing my wife stumble into our living room on the morning of 9/11, the two of us making eye contact for the first time since the Twin Towers were struck.  Her grief was so raw, and my inability to say or do something in that moment to console her remains a painful memory.  I couldn’t protect my family from the hatred that led to 9/11; that is a gargantuan challenge.  But I couldn’t even assuage my wife’s acute feelings of loss standing in our pajamas all alone.  Helpless.  November 8 and 9 brought vaguely reminiscent emotions to the fore in our household.  And this morning’s inauguration came storming into our bedroom on our flatscreen TV.  Hilary’s face bore a thread of resemblance to her look on 9/11.  I found myself useless again, unable to make her pain go away in that moment. 

This is a hard day to be a dad.  If witnessing NBC News’ coverage standing by myself, in a vacuum, I would give George Carlin’s 7 dirty words some serious currency. Probably invent some new ones.  Switch up the order.  Get really into it, spittle flying, some wildly gesticulating arms that tested the integrity of my rotator cuffs.  But I’m not alone, of course.  Instead, I have to bite back that bile, and solemnly bear witness to the TV screen with my 5th grader, sending him off to school with, “well, buddy, this is going to be a tough day.” I think I told him I love him before he went off to the bus stop.  I hope I did. As for my 10th grader, I agreed to drive him to school today.  Beyond distracted while listening to NPR’s coverage on our local radio, I’m not sure I properly observed any traffic rules.  I do know that I managed somehow neither to betray my anger nor my angst.  I didn’t have that luxury.  Because attempting to fill the driver’s awkward silence, and stirred by the NPR commentary, Max announced, “He’s going to intern jews.” So I found myself suddenly and uncomfortably thrown in the position of being a Trump defender. And I tried to screw Max’s head on more tightly, before I dumped him into a sea of jelly-headed high schoolers. “The things Trump has said and done, and likely will say and do, are bad enough standing on their own.  Let’s not help him out by exaggerating things.  Try to keep it together today.” I probably should have added an “everything will be OK.” But I didn’t, on purpose, because I can’t control that particular outcome.  

I can, however, control my love.  How I dole it out.  To whom, and when.  And today I will make sure I leave no “I love you’s” unsaid or unwritten.  I love you, buddy, hang in there, I’m here for you.  I love you, mom, and I’m sorry this election didn’t turn out the way you hoped. I love you, Hilary,  I share and honor your emotions.  I love you, Max and Everett, and I hope you can find a way to rise above this nonsense as you make your way in this world.  

Gotta be a silver lining in there somewhere, good people.  There always is.  

Thanks for reading. 

It must be nice to look at the world unconstrained by 48 years of experiences, conscious and sub-conscious biases, and with senses yet-to-be dulled by the slow march of neural degeneration. Take this iPhone photo above, for example, which I grabbed at the top of an unexpectedly rigorous Marin Headlands hike this past weekend.  In that moment, I assumed without even acknowledging the assumption that my 11 year-old son Everett was looking at what I was looking at, and saw it the exact same way.  But writing now, I have to admit there is just no way. 

I’m sure he could see bluer blues and a more vivid outline of Sutro Tower.  I struggle to decipher ingredient lists on food packaging. Manipulating the relevant variables: Distance between words and eyes, degree of squinting both eyes then one eye then the other eye, distance between words and nearby light source, color of light source, and so on.  I harassed my wife as recently as Saturday night for breaking out her iPhone flashlight to examine a dimly-lit restaurant’s menu.  The truth is, I’m not far off. 

I’m also sure that, although he complained vociferously about the poor snack choices available, Everett can taste that gooey granola bar in a way that I can’t.  Anything without tabasco, cayenne pepper flakes, wasabi, or Sriracha rarely makes it within my maw’s orbit.   According to the medical literature, my taste buds began dying off and shrinking five years ago. So I will soon be headed to Ghostpepper Ville, I fear. 

No doubt, too, Ev standing at that vista can hear soaring birds of prey, ocean breezes whipping through invasive scrub brush, overhead waves crashing off Ocean Beach in the distance, and probably even the annoyed accusations whispered by the young woman standing nearby concerned her boyfriend chose the wrong trail spur. My own slow decent to hard-hearing is like slowly drowning over the course of a few decades.  Realizing only when it’s too late that you’re underwater, and everyone else around you is speaking but no words come out.  Or maybe if you’re lucky, Charlie Brown’s teacher’s wah-wah-wah words are what you can still glean. For now, Ev will occasionally cup his ears in pain while crossing a neighborhood intersection, howling about “the squealing breaks on that car.” “What car?” I say.  I can no longer pick up those frequencies, apparently.

But most importantly, Everett can still enjoy the freedom of playing around with words with abandon. Approaching them without judgment.  Withholding his respect for them, even, unless and until they earn it.  Not intimidated in the least by Hammurabi’s Code’s bona fides, let alone cowed by Noah Webster’s dictionaries.  

Last night, Everett pronounced from the living room couch, “‘Extraordinary’ should mean very very normal, like super boring, not better than ordinary. I think people are using that word improperly.”  I’d like to think he’s both right, and wrong.  That way, I could say that we are both experiencing the world in our own extraordinary ways. Even if my “extraordinary” is the super boring one. 

Thanks for reading. 

“Man I’m gonna miss this guy.”  This was the overwhelming thought dominating my sleep-deprived brain at 2:16 am this morning. But it goes deeper.

Normally and historically, I consider myself a healthy sleeper.  I can usually be counted on for 8 hours or more, no problema. But that bedrock trait apparently experienced a seismic jolt somewhere in the after midnight hours of November 8.  With unpleasant and unwelcome regularity, I now find myself perusing news sites bathed in the flicker of my iPhone’s screen.  Stretched out on the living room couch. Wrapped in a hodgepodge of whatever undersized throw blankets my sons have not smuggled off to their bedrooms for the evening. Shaping and pounding the couch pillows that are not made for sleeping into something more closely approximating pillows that are made for sleeping.  And there I lie, calm and with a heart rate in the mid 40s.  Burning through one after another well-written article published in credible and long-standing news media outlets.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for while ensconced in these strange, lonely hours.  Information, to be sure.  Turns out my brain craves it, and turns sclerotic without a steady flow of it.  But I suspect I search for something more.  Something meaningful.  Something on which I can seize to regain my equilibrium.  To hoist above my head with both hands as a means of clinging to what I hope is a healthy perspective.  Something that will justify an authentic show of optimism to my sons in the morning about the state of the world.  Something that makes me not sound like (or write like) a fool when I posit, “Things are going to be OK.” 

So in the three-hour Witching Hour of last night/this morning, I gobbled the latest information from the usual suspects.  Somewhat guiltily nibbled on a couple op-ed pieces (I always do so with a grain of salt, even if said pieces are preaching to the choir in which I stand nodding vigorously). And then I stumbled on the photo above, depicting President Obama reading “Where the Wild Things Are” to school children a few years back.  The image struck me.  I brought my finger-scrolling and all other voluntary bodily movements to an abrupt halt.  To study the image, let its comforting familiarity wash over me. Feel it sink in and take hold.  

I know this book.  Our firstborn son is named Max, and the book’s author unknowingly bequeathed us with a gift by naming his main character, “Max.”  Our copy was gifted to us by close family friends when our Max was born. They penned a thoughtful inscription to our day-old baby on the inside cover.  I can’t even begin to guess how many times my wife and I held open these pages for our Max in our lap, reading the narrative aloud and absolutely reveling in it. Contorting our faces, stretching our voices, and sprinkling in scene-appropriate hand gestures here and there.  And making that exact same face, with that exact same claw hand, as President Obama evidently conjures up in his own rendition.  Pretty simple, yet pretty profound, this newfound, very human connection. 

Mr. Sendak’s book has sold something like 20 million copies. That’s a lot of people reading and overacting to a lot of children half-asleep on a lot of laps.  I wonder whether any of them felt the same visceral reaction as I when they saw this image published in The New York Times. A gut feeling that somehow, some way, everything is going to be, in fact, OK.

Well then, let the wild rumpus start!

Thanks for reading. (And thanks, Frank and Noel — and Mason — for the gift 15 years ago).

Last night marked the beginning of an auspicious new chapter in my 11 year-old son’s life: Day One on my, I mean his, journey to becoming a rockstar. (Note to self: Remember to tag this blog post with #helicopterparenting.) After years of dinner table cajoling and backseat threats, I finally pulled the trigger and signed Everett up for piano lessons. It’s ridiculous that this has taken so long to come to fruition.  The music school is well-respected in these parts, and we know many families who swear by it.  More importantly, a 5-minute walk from our house delivers the student right into the studio.  Maybe less than 5 minutes, actually.

Though the walk felt more like an hour last night.  Because I spent the entire time engaged in an exhausting mental wrestling match with Everett as he struggled to shake free of this new obligation.  I had successfully entrapped him into agreeing to the lessons months earlier; the result of a sophisticated plan, at the end of which I basically had him painted into a corner. While wearing a straightjacket.  And blinders.  And a neck brace, nay, one of those halos affixed to the skulls of accident victims.  My point?  There was no getting out of this one — a realization with which Everett suddenly came to grips during our .3 mile walk. I half-expected him to mumble, “walkin’ the (third of a) mile, walkin’ the green (third of a) mile, walkin’ the (third of a) mile…”

It’s one of my principal regrets, as I approach the half century mark:  I rue the day when, as a jelly-headed high school senior, I impulsively elected to bail on band.  Early morning practice was just too early, I decided, and not worth the hour of sacrificed sleep.  So dumb. I had played trumpet for years, was actually pretty good, and experienced some success with it.  I still hold a tiny grudge against my mother for going along with this ill-informed decision.  I think a swift kick in the ass was in order rather than acquiescence.  (I am compounding things now, as my mom is my most loyal “Lemonade Chronicles” reader. So I sure hope my throwing her under the bus here does not mean my readership will conspicuously drop by one.  Hi mom.)

Therefore, some 30 years later, I pulled a well-used page from The Book of Helicopter Parenting, and essentially forced Everett to do something in order to fulfill my own unfulfilled aspirations. I admit it.  Of course I would never admit this to Everett. Zero indication of my own burning internal conflict over this decision.  Certainly not during our stroll down the Third of a Green Mile. 

The story does end well, however, at least as far as this particular first chapter goes. But, as is seemingly the case with everything else in life, not the way one might expect.  I had expended so much mental energy just getting Everett to “agree” once and for all to take a lesson, that I screwed up the scheduled time of the lesson.  I proudly presented myself at the front desk at 5:30pm with a self-satisfied smile.  Well, the lesson time was actually 5:00pm. I had practically dragged a dead-legged Everett along the sidewalk, scuffing his sneaker soles down to the nub on the concrete.  All for nothing. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.  Even had to pay a fee for showing up late.  Probably should have been assessed yet another fee for “blatant and unforgivable helicopter parenting.”  Then again, that fee is called “adolescent psychotherapy” — a bill to be karmically incurred downstream, no doubt.

Everett, of course, was as elated as I deflated. Slump-shouldered, I salvaged my attempt to stimulate the part of his brain associated with artsy stuff and creativity by making an unscheduled stop at a nearby art supplies store. Ev practically waltzed around the aisles on his tiptoes, still euphoric over his near-death experience, professing his newfound love for everyone and everything. And somehow, a sketchpad and pack of felt-tipped markers caught Everett’s attention and ultimately made their way with us to the local burger joint. That’s where my helicopter parented son with greasy fingers managed to exercise his frontal and parietal regions without my forcing him to do so.  And that neat little patterned illustration at the top of this blog post was the result.

No rain, no rainbows.

Thanks for reading.