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.

The Pioneer Cabin Tree fell this weekend.  Hollowed out in the 1880s,  the still-living giant sequoia succumbed to the heavy storms currently pounding California.  According to the Chicago Tribune, generations of visitors etched their names on the tree’s hide over the past 137 or so years.  So that means that someone’s great grandfather’s hand-carved initials splintered and fell, too.  Family memories uprooted and toppled. Lying shattered now on the soaked forest floor.  

I stumbled on this news item in my morning Twitter feed, and it felt like a punch to the gut. (Actually, it felt like the latest in a series of punches to the gut delivered over the course of 2016’s entirety.  Only it’s 2017 now, and 2016 is supposed to be fading in the distance of our collective rear view mirror.  Right?)

It’s the type of unexpected gut punch that results from taking something or someone special for granted.  That sin is compounded when that something or someone special is irreplaceable, invaluable, and seemingly just going to be there forever. I’m guilty of presuming the permanence of many things and many people. Every day I do this.  It’s a constant struggle not to fall victim to this lazy, mind-numbing habit. I wish that a 150-foot tall tree likely alive during Lincoln’s presidency didn’t need to meet its end in order for me to wake up.  But it did.  And now I’m awake.  So today I’ll plan to make a couple long-overdue phone calls, hug my two sons a little longer whether they like it or not, look deeply into my wife’s eyes, and walk my dog in the pungent woods — taking a moment to see and appreciate the trees along the way. 

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  I think so.  Pretty sure I heard it. I hope you did too. 

Thanks for reading.  

No doubt I’m “over my skis” on this one.  But I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been over my skis, in truth.  So here goes:  I’ve resolved to write and publish a book in 2017.  The writing part seems pretty easy, surprisingly.  As for the publishing part, well, we’ll have to wait and see about that.  

A book about what? Looking back, I’ve put together nearly 200 blog posts since starting The Lemonade Chronicles three years ago this month. So, plenty of fodder.  I suspect there’s at least one book lying dormant in there. Waiting for me to tease it out, prop it up, press down a cowlick or two, give it some shape and an unwelcome shove in the low back, arriving unceremoniously on some bookshelf somewhere.  I do in fact have an inkling as to a reasonably plausible theme —

Baseball.

Likely something to do with my experiences over the past 10 years coaching Little League baseball here in San Francisco.  And probably reaching back much earlier, since baseball, as it turns out, has been an important thread of my life for as long as I can remember.  I vividly recall the knee-patched bluejeans (dungarees?), stiff red t-shirt, and “Southside American” Little League trucker cap that comprised my first Opening Day uniform.  

That’s me in the left foreground, with the Shaun Cassidy locks and $5 K-Mart glove. Ready–whether I knew it or not at the time–to let baseball have its way with me over the next 40-plus years. To deliver seared memories of walk-off wins.  And more hotly-seared memories of still-painful losses.  A line drive straight into, and promptly out of, my glove at second base as the winning (losing) run sprinted ecstatically across the plate.  And the kind words and hand on my back offered by my New York State Hall of Fame high school coach during the long team bus ride home.  

Merely holding a worn baseball in my palm triggers a flood of recollections and a weak effort at holding back tears. The day 35 years ago when my father begged off from playing catch with me, realizing I threw harder than he.  This introduced new dangers of broken hands, bruised eyes and egos.  I am beginning to glimpse a flicker of those same dangers now when throwing with my own 15 year-old son.  The dozens of unforgettable moments I’ve experienced over the past decade with a couple hundred earnest Little Leaguers on baseball diamonds sprawled all over San Francisco.  The profound experience of raising my family in a baseball-crazed town featuring 3 World Series titles in the last few years. It’s one thing to listen to the games on the local AM radio station or to sit cheering in the seats with 40,000 other souls.  It’s another to smile watching your son exchange high fives with a Giants pitcher working as a guest barista at a local coffee shop one random morning. Baseball keeps on creating new memories across generations. 

I have zero business taking on this book project, by the way.  I know that.  I’m embarking on a new business venture, helping to raise my kids and dog and all that involves, and still learning what it means to be a good husband to my wife.  Oh, and my 13th season of Little League starts in 59 days, 14 hours, and 40 minutes.  So I will need to create some time where there isn’t any.  Because I think I have something to say.  Wish me luck. 

Thanks for reading. 

We received our first official Holiday Party invite late last night. This moment is always a huge relief, since I’ve given any number of perfectly legitimate reasons to party hosts not to extend me such invitations throughout the past year. And every year, for that matter. 

I imagine these smiling hosts quickly scrolling down through past guest lists, freezing on my email address printed right there and getting caught on it like a hand knit holiday sweater catching a shard of errant fingernail. “Hon, do we really want to invite that jackass to our party again this year?” Hon sighs aloud, but ultimately gives in to his or her sense of holiday empathy, and my email address squeaks its way on to the “to” list. 

Phew. 

So, in light of the fact that I am painfully aware of this kitchen table dynamic playing out across a half-dozen Bay Area households this time of year, one would think I would have learned my lesson by now. If one thought that, I think that thought makes a lot of sense. Really, I do. Alas, I am me. And me’s gonna me. Hon sighs again. 

The most virtuous holiday party invite must be of the digital variety. Saves trees and thereby the planet, too. Demonstrates technological savvy. Allows one (could even be the same “one” from earlier) to scratch a graphic design itch. And very easy for the invite’s recipient to integrate the invited-to event onto the invitee’s digital life. Forwarding said invite to his or her spouse, for example. And adding the party to his or her digital calendar with the flick of a finger on iPhone screen. 

But this last intended-to-be-friction-free feature, it turns out, is fraught with danger. 

You see, last night’s Paperless Post populated my iPhone’s calendar as only 15-minute event. A 15 minute party, if you will. 

Sweet Jesus, that’s a lot of pressure. I will need to think carefully through my party strategy. 

Let’s see. I will begin the evening by kicking down the front door at precisely 7pm. Storm straight past my hosts posing for reasonably expected hugs, and beeline it straight for the punch bowl. Skip the formality of ladling into a crystal cup. No time to waste valuable seconds with that sort of time-sucking propriety. The ladle goes straight into my mouth. Then again. And again. By now, other guests and our gracious hosts have taken notice. Making a mental note not to invite me to the next one. Scrub my email address from any digital or analog guest lists of any kind. Immediately, if not sooner. Probably also making a mental note to subtly inquire about the guest list at other parties to which they are invited in the future. So I feign an appropriate level of “I don’t know what got into me” self-consciousness, wipe the nog from my chin on my red sweater’s inner forearm, and stutterstep fiendishly along to the next objective. 

Finger food. The bigger and heavier the better. I completely skip the Crudités. I mean, honestly, who would invest time in Crudités under these circumstances? Let’s face it, Crudités is for suckers. I spin around the passed tray of Crudités and launch headlong for the nutrient-dense stuff. Both to help absorb the Captain Morgan’s sloshing in my belly and to provide me adequate sustenance to survive the inevitable chilly night on the living room couch tonight. 

You see, I saw that familiar look in my wife’s eye as I pushed to the head of the front door queue at 6:55 pm. So I am under no illusions as to where I will be sleeping this evening. It’s me and the hodgepodge of afghans, my ice cold feet sticking out for the long haul. And I’m fine with that. I’m certainly not going to dedicate precious minutes in the here and now in a likely vain attempt to argue my way back into my own bedroom. The waning minutes are better spent fattening myself up with these Swedish meatballs. And now that I’m caught in a vicious cycle — every additional handful tossed into my mouth is roughly equivalent to 1.5 nights spent sleeping on the aforementioned couch with the aforementioned poorly-designed afghans — I just keep shoveling. I’m in survival mode now, people. 

And I’m not above jamming a few fistfuls into jacket pockets and other hiding places. My jacket pockets. My wife’s clutch that she likes to bring to parties like this (maybe her proper party behavior will dilute my antics?). And while she’s distractedly cursing at me and trying to clean out her clutch from my meatballs, I stuff 8 more of those bad boys right into her overcoat’s low-hanging pockets. Note to self: Remember to recover the meatballs within the next 12 to 24 hours or else they will be of no use to me. 

Like I said, I have no idea why I don’t get invited to more Holiday parties.

Thanks for reading. 

Nope, I haven’t suddenly chosen a new genre. At least not yet. Instead, I’m smitten of late with animal collective nouns. (That there is the sound of dozens of blog post readers rushing for the exit.)

“Murder of cousins” as in “congregation of alligators,” “shrewdness of apes,” and “culture of bacteria.” Oh, and “murder of crows,” lest I let linger the misimpression that I’m advocating parricide. I’m not; I’m just playing with words again. Sort of. Let’s see where this ends up. 

We’ve just returned from a week-long trip to the chilly east coast. Thanksgiving with family. Two of my sons’ male cousins are roughly the same age as my sons. So that means four boys between 10 and 16. Right in the throes of it. The belly of the beast. Basically a 6-day cage match. And unlike the WWF circa George “The Animal” Steele, eye gouging and hair pulling are allowed. Encouraged, in fact. Like the obligatory appetizer on a prix fixe menu. Followed by a plate-filling entree of elbows to the ribs and head butts. 

I was an only child until my sister was born. So I had 14 years during which no one who shared my DNA actively strove to choke me out. More, really, since I’d like to think I couldn’t be sucker-punched by a poopy-diapered infant. This means that, just as I missed an apparently critical day of 5th grade when the mysteries of fractions were revealed, my childhood was completely bereft of family members beating the bejesus out of one another. Whatever the equivalent of tone deaf or color blind is for the (in)ability accurately to perceive and evaluate physical altercations among close-in-age relatives, I suffer from it. 

Whenever I hear the familiar sound of nylon-on-nylon and slaps to bare skin in the car’s back seat, I have to ask my wife whether my boys are genuinely trying to kill eachother, or is this just “normal sibling roughhousing.” I simply can’t distinguish one from the other. Even days after an incident, still uncertain, I try to make sense of things by searching for bruises or bite marks or loose teeth. Clear indicators, I think, of boundaries crossed. One of the few ways I can differentiate a flicked ear lobe from a superhero karate kick to the sternum triggering a somersault down a set of stairs. 

So if I’m dumb to the murderous intentions (or lack thereof) of my own offspring, imagine how woefully inept my judgment when we throw cousins into the mix. “Go on downstairs to play with your cousins, son. That ‘Knee Hockey’ game will either enrich your life as the sweetest of childhood memories, or leave physical and emotional scars that will be addressed on a therapist’s couch 20 years hence. I’ve absolutely no idea which.” 

So down he goes. Followed by the sounds of thumping, crashing and blood curdling screams. For hours on end. These are the noises one would expect from a flange of baboons, an obstinancy of buffalo, or a bloat of hippopotamuses, even. But among blood relatives?

In the end, my sons (and their cousins) appear to have survived the Murder of Cousins, as far as I can tell. Or maybe the bruises just haven’t shown themselves as of yet. I haven’t the slightest idea. 

Thanks for reading. 

OK, OK, I get it: No one reads blog posts titled in Latin. No one. Nobody. Nadie. Nemo. I can take a hint. To the nine, count ’em, nine human life forms who managed to overcome the rough title of my last post, a thousand thank yous. Gratias tibi. More like 6 or 7 legit blog readers, in actuality. Presumably WordPress’ analytics counted me as one. And probably a non-human ‘bot or two in the mix. And I really shouldn’t count Svetlana from Czechoslovakia. Pretty sure she is trying to sell me something, or hack my emails, or steal my identity. Well at least ‘Lana has class, man. She reads Latin!

That makes one of us. I didn’t study it. Spanish and French (and English, too, I suppose), but no Latin. In any event, lesson learned: No more Latin. Ever. Numquam did Numquam!

(Somebody please get that last joke there.)

So the unicorn image above is a close up from a photo of President-elect Trump’s meeting yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. This one —

I’ll spare you a time-sucking “Where’s Waldo” search. You ain’t got time for that. The gilded unicorn is actually not in the photo at all. At least I don’t think so. But it could be, right? The fact that you probably didn’t dismiss out of hand the plausibility of such a thing, well, that speaks volumes. 

In reality, the gold-dipped equine is a blowup image of Ivanka’s necklace pendant. Look closely….

Got you again, didn’t I? Got myself, truth be told. I just squinted mine own eyes at Ivanka’s porcelain neck. Nope. No Pegasus. No dice. Note to readers: That’s “dice” as in the gambling kind. Not “dice” as in the Latin word for “learn.” See? I’m keeping my promise, like I said, no more Latin. 

I captured the golden unicorn at a recent art dealer event in San Francisco. More accurately I took a photo of it with my iPhone camera. I didn’t actually capture anything.  The piece just kinda struck me. In a Fonzie-Jumping-the-Shark sort of way. Big proviso here, by the way: I am in no way demeaning or maligning the art dealer or the artist. The thing is sort of neat. But it wasn’t enough to just create a plaster horse bust, maybe as social commentary about the usual, arguably grisly wall installations of this genre? We had to put a horn on there? And then while we’re at it, what the hell, let’s paint it gold. The whole thing. Gold. Not just the spiraled horn gold — which, I vaguely recall (and Google confirms), is actually consistent with some fairy tale or other —

Nope. The whole thing gold. The whole sh-bang. Correctomundo. 

It’s a little…much. And yet, we can easily imagine the glittery damned thing in Trump’s living room. Or over Trump’s extravagantly-appointed loo, startling poor Shinzo in a vulnerable moment. Or dangling from Ivanka’s neck. Therefore, if we apply the associative property, this indisputably proves that Trump is…a bit much. 

OK, so maybe it’s the transitive property or the distributive property. I never studied Latin, and whatever branch of mathematics is at play here, well I didn’t study that either. But you don’t need any fancy learning to know the Pegasus when you see it. 

Thanks for reading, and Happy Friday, good people. 

Times like these, you’ve gotta grab your moments of bliss wherever and whenever you can. For example, take this lovely image above. Clearly something captured at the precise moment of perfect light, after hunching on haunches in the increasingly dewy grass, with high-end camera and proper lens, for hours. The National Geographic adventure photographer sporting obligatory khaki vest and dusty brown boots, training priceless lens on the elusive Serengeti antelope. I suspect there’s no such thing as “Serengeti antelope,” but you get the idea. Just go with it. 

Nah. 

Instead, it’s just me, paused awkwardly in the Prius, trying to avoid swerving into the bumper of a parked car, annoyed commuters honking behind me, illegally and one-handedly fumbling for my iPhone’s camera app while effectively ghost riding up Broderick. Probably late to the bus stop pickup, to boot. And then of course the filters applied at the next stop light around the corner (also illegal). Because God forbid I post something exactly as it is. Who would ever show the world in its authentically imperfect state? Apparently, not I. 

In my defense, I’m a sucker for San Francisco sunsets. And the Palace of Fine Arts is indeed purdy in the evening, sunset or no. Still, it ain’t exactly reality. 

Or is it?

And so, I’ll take it. A much-deserved, albeit arguably inauthentic moment of bliss. In an ongoing mélange of, well, the opposite of bliss. Maybe we should just call that what it is — “reality.”

And “reality” at the moment is melancholia and orthodontia. Or to apply yet another filter so as to portray things a little better-sounding than they actually are: Melancholia et Orthodontia. Insert an erudite-looking crest here. Yeah. Hammered in marble. Yeah yeah. Throw in a few wreaths, maybe an eagle with oversized talons. Uh huh. Perhaps a gargoyle or two. And voilá! I have my very own Trump University! Now accepting applications! Step right up, folks!

But I digress. (Seems that’s pretty much all I do: I digress.)

I’ll be making my 6th or 7th recent trip to the Orthodontist today. Yet another component of one of my kids’ Medieval teeth torture contraptions has shit the bed. Tempting though it may be to reach for my rusty needle nose pliers, this is better left to the professionals. Their needle nose pliers are probably more sterile and hygienic than the ones I used most recently to reconnect the toilet flusher mechanism in the toilet reservoir. Reservoir?

So this morning will feature receptionist phonetag and my inability to honor the busted thingamajig by identifying its proper medical name: “I dunno, gosh, it’s the little tiny piece that sits on top of or sort of in front of the other little things there over there on the side….” And this afternoon I will slide into my usual seat in the waiting room, boning up on whether exactly Brad and Angelina are truly, and finally, forevermore, kaput. 

But maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll capture a moment where everything at least, looks, perfect. 

Thanks for reading.