Just Us, in Newport

Thanksgiving night until Saturday mid-day. Just the two of us, spent mostly in Newport, Rhode Island. Talking. Lots and lots of talking. Re-connecting. Reading. Exercising. Going to the movies to see Arrival. Writing. Not needing to tend to anyone's needs, wants, wishes, or demands -- no kids coming in in the middle-of-the-night, or resisting bedtime, or waking us up early. 

We watched most of the movie Stand by Me one morning. We had the B&B to ourselves, which was fortuitous since our bedroom was separated from the dining room by two doors that you pulled together to close off the rooms. We didn't need that happening while that was happening.

This get-away was long overdue. Our last vacation just the two of us had been just over three years earlier, when Becky and I drove to the Berkshires. You can bet that we won't let another three years pass by before we go on a little excursion, just the two of us, again.

Here is my beautiful wife, at an Irish pub, for lunch on Friday. The quiet and the chance to re-connect as a couple were priceless. I guess when it is a luxury, because the routine of our life right now is so not quiet, you soak it up. You don't waste time on trivialities. I think we were able to really be focused on us, on each other, and dream about some things that we want for us and for our family in this new stage of life, over the next decade of our forties.   

Thanksgiving 1996

Twenty years ago, I was a junior in college and celebrating Thanksgiving away from my family, and outside of the U.S., for the first time in my life. I lived in an international student dorm in Freiburg im Breisgau, in a region of that beautiful little city called Sundgauallee. My floor had students from India, Greece, Japan, Italy, Germany, Poland, South Korea, and the U.S. living on it. I loved that diversity then. I love it now, and wish for it again.

The Americans on my floor and I decided to throw as close to an authentic American Thanksgiving as we could for our floor mates. We hit up a Costco-like German chain store for a turkey. If I remember correctly, gravy was one of the most difficult food items to find. Potatoes were easy to procure, as were drinks. I'm not sure if we had stuffing. But what I do remember is that our entire floor turned out for the party, a rarity given our university schedules and our different circles of friends. This floor party was one of the best moments of my entire year abroad.

The photos I have of this Thanksgiving fete aren't terrific, but the memories of the people and the party are. I got too caught up in putting together the trappings of the festivities that I had forgotten to leave plenty of time to unfreeze our turkey!

Mere hours before the party was to start, my floor mate Matthew Meyer (also from UMass-Amherst, though we hadn't known or even seen each other on campus back in the States and met when he moved in in September 1996) and I took turns dousing the bird with scalding hot water while the other peeled potatoes. It's a wonder none of us got sick from eating the improperly unfrozen turkey. 

The simplistic sign on my Oktoberfest touristy hat read Plymouth 1620. My international floor mates thought it was mildly interesting that I had grown up about 15 miles from Plymouth but that I wasn't impressed by the actual Plymouth Rock. These days, I could pull up photos of the rock on my smart phone, but in 1996 they could only take my word for it that the rock is nothing to write home about size-wise. A French woman named Marie Dumasy, whose friend Celine Bignebat lived on my floor just for the summer of 1996, told me that summer that she thought all American school children dressed in knock-off Pilgrim attire for school around Thanksgiving. Yet another fallacy of American culture that I had to clarify for my foreign friends.    

Friends in the above photo: Matthew Meyer (in flannel shirt), Aditi Goenka, Gerald Kangelaris, Francesca de Simone, Andy Rohrwasser, Volker Wagner, Andreas Weitzer (with the eyeglasses), and Masataka Furosho. In the photo below, there's all of us, plus the young woman in the white shirt is Kirsten Neudoerffer.

The only thing I remember anyone saying at this party was my beer-fueled mis-pronouncement in German that "In America, Thanksgiving takes place once every day!" I meant to say "every year." I remember Andy Rohrwasser enthusiastically pounding his fist into the wooden tabletop, thrilled to know that such a feast is an erroneously regular part of American society. 

Out of all of these floor mates, I keep in very sporadic touch with only Volker. I can find some but not all of the others online in a matter of seconds, so it is fun to briefly see what they are up to in their careers. I wouldn't reach out to them now, given that so much time has passed and we didn't keep in touch after this magical year -- including this memorable night -- came to an end about eight months after our Thanksgiving party. But what I wouldn't give to go back to this evening and to see these people again! 

U2 at the End of the 1980s

I've turned to quotes from Bono and U2 songs before in blog posts. To me, they are modern-day scriptures at times. For example, in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, Bono said, "If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there's a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in 'straw poverty.' I.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me...As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It's so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me."

Much more recently - as in, just two days ago - my mind thought back to a much earlier quote from Bono. These words resonated with me and some part of my life that I have been working toward, only to see it not pan out and to be humbly taught by God that He has other plans for me and my family. In addition to the counsel I've personally felt from on high, these words give me faith and hope:

Late December 1989. U2 played a series of concerts in their native Dublin. They had grappled with meteoric stardom in the wake of 1987's The Joshua Tree success, but had faced a much different, more hostile and skeptical crowd with their next offering, Rattle and Hum. Bono told an audience at one of these concerts: "This is just the end of something for U2...It's no big deal, it's just, we just need to go away and...dream it all up again."

Maybe someday I'll be able to articulate this event on the blog. But right now, it's all too raw. Don't worry: My family is fine. My marriage is solid. Becky is terrific. We have a house, and all of the basics (and more) of life. We have faith. We can't see the future, but I have seen the words in my head:

Something better is coming soon.

I don't know the details (when, how, where, why). That's where my faith and works come in. But I believe the message, and I trust its source.

The Puzzle Boy

While Grouse's grandparents were in town in early October, he got to show them his mad puzzle skills. He has been into puzzles since the end of summer. It may be something to do now that his brother and sisters are in school each weekday, a way to pass some time and have fun. I feel a pang of regret that he doesn't have a buddy to play with for hours on end, but I'm comforted to know that Becky keeps him (and herself) busy with play dates, time together, errands, the YMCA, and other activities. 

In early October, Grouse was just starting to click when it came to assembling an entire puzzle by himself. In the photos above, he was working on an alphabet puzzle of 24 (not, oddly, 26) pieces, with Grandpa looking on. I came home from work one day during their visit, and Grandpa excitedly told me, "Grouse did it! He got the whole puzzle together, all by himself!" In the photos above, he is standing there analyzing the big picture, in his Paw Patrol light-up sneakers.

Goofin' Off at Walden Pond

I love the many shades of the color blue in these photos. I love the looks on their faces, their big smiles (nearly as wide as Walden Pond itself!), the laughs, the happiness. I love that we were at a beautiful place outdoors, with Becky's mom and dad in town, and that, despite the chilly morning, we all strolled around the entire pond. 

But mostly, I love the people in these two photos, and the ones not captured in these pictures. We were all together, outside, with no other distractions, for a magical, relaxing few hours. It was one of the most delicious slices of life I've had in a long time.

Mouse's Baptism

One day after her eighth birthday, Our Little Mouse got baptized in our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In our church, children get baptized at the age of eight years old, because that is the age when we believe they start being accountable for their behavior and sins. 

Mouse has been working toward this momentous occasion for a long time, and we were so proud of her. We were fortunate to have both sets of grandparents in town for this milestone, too, plus lots of friends from church, our wonderful neighbors, and a strong show of support from our friends who attend different churches. 

Mouse right after her baptism, beaming while standing next to her celebratory cake, which our friend Arianna made for the post-baptism party. 

Mouse with some of her friends at the post-baptism party. We had a hard time wrangling all of the kids in the room, prying them away from their plates of snacks and junk food, or from running around the hallways at our chapel. 

Mouse kindly posed with us on the afternoon of her baptism for what, to her, must have felt like an eternity of photos. Her grandparents and parents each took turns snapping shots of Our Little Mouse. She braved the chilly, rainy afternoon to humor us as we posed on a neighbor's porch to escape the showers on her baptism afternoon. 

At the actual baptism, with Mouse and I standing in the warm water at our chapel in front of our guests, I misspoke one word in the standard baptism prayer before proceeding to tilt my second daughter gently backward into the water so that she'd be fully immersed. I raised her out of the water, was instructed that I had misspoke, and had to say the prayer and do the ordinance again...and Mouse loved the re-do! Why?

Because she got to be the center of attention again, for a few more seconds, in front of all her friends, family, and others. It was a wonderful, stirring time for Mouse and our family. She looked beautiful, she was so happy, and we felt so supported by many people close to us. 

Temple Square, Salt Lake City

Becky and our three oldest kids just got back from a 4-day trip to Utah. The main reason for their visit was to attend Becky's brother John's wedding, but also to just generally have cousin-time and Utah-time. Yours Truly stayed back in Boston with Our Magnetic Grouse, who spent two days with babysitters while I worked, and then two full weekdays and a Saturday with me as well. 

They had incredibly warm weather for early November. I'm not sure if this was their first day in Utah or their second day, but Becky took our kids to Temple Square to see the sights and to pay a visit to Grandma and Grandpa, who volunteer a few days a week in the Church Office Building right in Temple Square. How cool!

As you can tell, these kids had a really fun time basking in the spirit and the sunshine. I wish Grouse and I had been able to join them! 

Stormtroopers

It's a wonderful time to be a Star Wars fan. Even in my galaxy far, far away-obsessed childhood, there was not the wide array of books, cartoons, action figures, clothing, movies, product tie-ins, and storylines that Moose and his generation now have access to. 

There is a re-birth and an exciting series of sequels and stand-alone movies coming out over the next few years. I'm so looking forward to taking him (and maybe his sisters, who are not really into Star Wars) to see these movies. Watching Moose and his friends be excited to role-play their favorite Star Wars heroes and villains is a very cool thing. Case in point: our congregation's annual Halloween festival... 

I saw one older kid pestering Moose for his home-made blaster gun (a piece of wood that we wrapped black electrical tape around). Moose kept walking away from this kid at the festival, after a few playful hand-slaps did not deter this other kid from going for the blaster. The kid stopped following Moose, who marched away. Then, Moose stopped in his tracks, spun around, raised his blaster, and fired at his foe, who like a great sport dropped to the ground. 

It was the closest thing to fatherly pride that I could feel as a vehement anti-NRA person.

Bus Stop Pick-Up

One day during my annual October vacation, I left our house to walk to the nearby bus stop to pick my son Moose up from school. These are the little things in life that I enjoy doing, being an active dad to my kids while supporting our family by working full-time. So yes, this is how I choose to spend much of my vacation-time: doing the small things to show that I'm invested in my family. I don't think they're actually that small, in the long run.

This pick-up time, I had some very cute company. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no it was not my hot wife! It was our almost three-year-old, Our Baby Grouse. Come January 2017, he will need a new-ish nickname for our blog, because "Baby" does not represent him any more.

And Grouse insisted on bringing his suitcase. Which was empty. Which we've had for about eight years. Which Becky found at a thrift store. Which has made numerous cross-country trips. Which Grouse struggled to get up the slight incline of our sidewalk. Which nearly made us late to the bus stop!

Voted

Stunned. On this first day after the bruising, ugly, does-anyone-really-win-in-this-terrible-election came to a shocking end late last night, I want to post a photo of me and my daughters taken a week earlier. I voted early in my town, during my vacation week. As I wrote on Facebook, "I was excited to bring my 2 daughters! They wore white headbands, a nod to the suffragists of almost a century ago who were white in their quest for the right to vote." 

The election's outcome did not go as I had expected or wanted. I wanted my daughters to see a female president of the United States. I'm hopeful they will see one in their lifetimes, and it may be all the sweeter when that happens once my daughters (and their friends) are old enough to vote. 

Alright, I'll admit it: I loved my phrasing in the Facebook post about my daughters' white headbanded-nod to the suffragists. My eyes misted at this thought and this homage. Friends told me that it made them tear up, too. I had this purely selfish image of my daughters being greeted by those suffragists a long time in the future, in another place, and the suffragists thanking them for their tribute when my girls were young. 

As Time magazine put it in its post-election issue: "Much is made of the message this will send to our daughters. At the end of the day, the message is this: In the United States of America, a woman can be the most qualified presidential candidate in history, according to the current President, and still lose to a man who calls women 'dogs,' has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault," and edit,edit,edit. 

I hope that my daughters see their value in this world, and that they are as capable as boys and men for any role in life. It's one of my biggest jobs to help them know their self-worth and to feel respected, embraced, and encouraged for who they are and what they can do.  

Election Night

This is where Our Baby Grouse and I had dinner on Election Night 2016: our local McDonald's! I despise this place now, regretful that I spent so much of my money and health on its food for the first 30 years of my life. My family goes to McDonald's at most six times a year, and for some stretches of our time as a family, year-over-year we ignored this place. I am no foodie by any means, but I'm also trying to give our kids a wider moat around their castle of health, and not going to McDonald's is one way I can do that.

But tonight was special: It's just me and Grouse from Tuesday morning through Saturday afternoon. Becky, Mouse, Moose, and Moose woke up at 4:30 this morning to get to the airport in time for a 6:20 a.m. flight to Utah. They will be out there for Becky's brother's wedding. Grouse had a long day with a babysitter, and I felt a little neglectful, so I thought that getting him chicken nuggets and French fries would go some ways (for him and me) to soothe him. 

He loved it, I grumbled through it, and then we came home for books, stories, and bedtime. I nestled in to watch the early voting returns from various states in the presidential election. By about 10 p.m., I was literally and figuratively sick to my stomach: literally from the McDonald's gorge-fest, and figuratively because I could not believe what the returns were showing across the country. How is this possible? 

A Gift from Back in Time

For her 8th birthday, Our Little Mouse asked for a type writer. She is a lover of books, writing, pens, notepads, and other 20th century (and earlier) forms of written communication. Sure, she does like our iPad and my laptop. But Mouse has a strong liking for the old ways, the quieter ways, the slower ways, and our neighbors' typewriter hits all of those marks. 

Like almost all of the gifts our kids receive, the type writer was a huge hit for a few days. Mouse's older sister Goose and her younger brother Moose were transfixed by how this worked. They all loved putting on and taking off the blue hard-plastic cover. The type writer now resides in our girls' bedroom. Mouse has written a handful of super-short stories on her type writer, mostly involving imaginary young kids and a school.  

It has been really enjoyable for Becky and me to sit back and watch Mouse use this way-back machine. I'm hoping that we can carve out some time in my attic office for her to write during the upcoming Christmas break! 

Prague, 20 Years Ago

Twenty years ago last month, I went on a trip while studying in Germany that took me further east than I had ever been in my life up to that point. The girl on the left was my friend Ola, whom I had met two summers earlier when she arrived in the U.S. from Poland to study at the college in my hometown. We hit it off that summer before college began for the both of us, even though her aunt and uncle forbade us from hanging out. I think they (and perhaps Ola's parents) were concerned about hard partying, one-track-mind American boys. So we sneaked around the college campus in the summer of 1994 to hang out. Nothing happened beyond us talking. 

And that may have been the end of our friendship, once college started. But we kept in touch through letters and e-mail. We kept in touch after Ola returned to Poland after one semester in the U.S. As my junior year abroad approached, I was excited to share updates with Ola, and we made tentative plans to meet up sometime, somewhere, while I was in Germany. 

Ola called me in my cramped Freiburg dorm room in August 1996, the night before I left for a weekend in Amsterdam. I was admittedly homesick at the time, weeks into my year's stay in a foreign country. But her call cheered me up. When I returned, we e-mailed a few times a week. We talked on the phone. Things looked up, and we made plans to meet again, after two years, in Prague in October 1996. As the reunion approached, we admitted on the phone that we were both having trouble sleeping, feeling so excited at the prospect of hanging out again. Okay, yes, I had become smitten. And then, weeks before our Prague visit, Ola met a guy, and she told me nonchalantly that he had become her boyfriend. Still, Prague was on.

Ola was nervous about traveling to a different country alone, so she brought her friend Magda. I invited my friend Dan, another American; he wasn't someone I was super-close to, but he was up for the adventure and was a good sport. He later met and became attached to a girl from Hungary, and what happened to him after that, I don't know. 

I'll never forget waiting late in the evening on a freezing night in Prague's Hlavni Nadrazi (main railway) train station. I loved learning the country-of-origin terms for places like central square, train station, airport, etc. Earlier that day, before Ola and Magda arrived, Dan and I had explored Prague a bit. We spoke rudimentary German, and most Czechs did not care to converse with us in German; English was only slightly more preferable. Drawing on my extremely limited knowledge of Polish words, I actually was able to figure out a bus timetable, reading one column correctly as the bus's Saturday schedule, since "Saturday" looked similar in Polish and Czech. Dan was impressed, so he bought me a beer. 

Anyhow, Ola and Magda's train from Krakow, Poland, chugged into the station. They dis-embarked and walked toward us. I remember Ola starting to laugh when she saw me, and hiding behind Magda. She told me when we finally met up something along the lines of, "I was so nervous to see you again. It was nervous laughs." 

We spent the next three or four days and nights exploring Prague. We realized that our different cultures impacted how we got along. For example, going out to eat. Ola told us, "In Poland, when guys hang out with girls, the guys decide where to eat, and we all go there. But you and Dan keep wanting to go to the same type of bars. We don't want that. So we are making our own choice, and that's different for us." I didn't know whether this was true, or a cover. 

Early on, Dan had worn out his welcome with our female traveling companions. And yeah, I was probably annoying, too. Try spending a few days with anyone in a new city together! And then throw in a language barrier, plus only Ola and I knew each other well enough; otherwise, we were strangers to each other. 

I was dejected that what had promised to be a very cool, exciting chance to reconnect with a friend in an awesome new city had turned into a series of guys going one way, girls going the other, meeting up for drinks at night and maybe some strained hours touring central Prague in damp weather if we were all especially bored.

One night, Ola informed us that she and Magda were going to a bar where "if they hear you speak English, they will punch you." Okay, see you later! I had so badly wanted this trip to be wonderful and cool, especially given the gap in time since Ola and I had last seen each other. Maybe my expectations were too high? It was not a dreadful experience, but it could have been better. A lot better. 

Still, the most important point of this trip, for me, was that it kept my friendship with Ola going. We had written about meeting up in Poland or Germany, for a one-time visit, but this Prague trip, coming early enough into my year in Germany, meant that we still had time for that bigger Poland or Germany meet-up too, later in the year. And that meet-up, in Poland in May 1997, was one of the best experiences of my year abroad. 

But you'll have to wait until the 20th anniversary, in May 1997, to read about it.     
  

  

The Tiger Bike!

Tah dah! For months, Moose wanted us to reconfigure his sister Moose's bike to look less like a girl's bike. We talked about spray-painting it all silver, or all black, with reflective stripes on it. He felt stymied by our lack of jump-right-into-it attitude, as if we don't have 50 other things to do each day and evening! 

But in mid-October, Mommy came up with an idea: turn the bike into a Tiger Bike! She spray-painted the bike orange, left it in our backyard to dry off, and then cut up black electrical tape into tiger stripes. She, Moose, and his siblings then affixed the stripes to his bike, transforming it into a fierce jungle ride. He was mighty pleased and proud of the result! And I am left, yet again, to positively marvel at my awesome wife's ability to make magic in our home and in our family's life.

Billowing

I bought this bright-red t-shirt at my dad's alma mater and place of employment (for over 45 years) as a tribute to Bumpa. That's what my four kids call their grandfather. I grew up with Bridgewater State visibly from almost every window in my parents' house, and just on the other side of my big back yard. Its proximity was the single biggest reason why I chose to not even apply to the college as an undergrad. But I have many great memories of my life on and around its beautiful campus. The school has been a university since 2009, though it still feels weird to call it Bridgewater State University. I've enjoyed bringing my kids around the campus and telling them stories. 

So when I bought this t-shirt, Moose begged me to let him wear it. I relented, even though it was hot off the press discount rack. In late October, we had to start turning our home's furnace on, and Moose quickly discovered (as Marilyn Monroe did over 60 years ago) the joy of standing over a billowing grate. 

College is a long way's off for Our Mighty Moose. He is barely halfway through Kindergarten, after all. But maybe he'll join his Bumpa in studying here? I'll be sure to pose him in a grown-up t-shirt and do a side-by-side comparison when the time comes! 

The Dragon, the Monkey, and the Tiger

Our two-year-old tornado tried on many costumes this Halloween season. He settled on being a dragon for Halloween, including wearing it to my office (that's the back of my building) for a kids' trick-or-treating on Halloween afternoon. He was a hit of the party, let me tell you! Twenty-something young women loved his little voice, his slightly unsteady walk in the bulky costume, and his insistence on getting yet more candy. 

Oh, and he was also terrified of being in an elevator, especially once it started moving. Turns out that dragons can be frightened and frightening!