Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

In an airport, once again, traveling between friends and family, family and friends. Sadly, I’m on my own for these couple of legs. This “sandwich generation” stuff is getting harder by the day. MCO to BOS this morning as I travel from the funeral of my best friend’s Dad to what looks like an abridged version of the annual White Family Cape Cod adventure. We are down one parent, too, and the next generation is in the early stages of careers and families of their own which makes it difficult to get away for a week on the beach. My journey is solo as Mrs. bingo awaits the arrival of the Man Cub’s little sister who begins her own journey any day now.

In the middle of the sandwich, where we welcome babies into the family as we say goodbye to parents who leave, we hopefully share this stage with at least one good friend, and hopefully for our longevity three or more (turns out that’s a magic number). In addition to a brother with whom I cannot be closer and my darling bride with whom I could not be more in love, my journey has been blessed with a best friend who has ridden shotgun or been my driver for 40 years now. We have taken turns carrying each other whenever one of us needed the lift. Mostly we’ve just walked side by side, as friends do..

Friendship is on my mind quite often. I ponder it as I think about friends old and new. My 35th college reunion was a month or so ago, and I am pleasantly surprised at the number of old friends and friendly acquaintances who are emerging from the mists of my past. Misplaced, lost, or cast aside, the skeletons of friendships past walk with me, still.

We are blessed, fortunate beyond measure, if we can count among the masses a single friend. One to whom we can always turn, from whom we withhold nothing, who will give to us everything. To have more than one friend such as this is to have a kind of wealth that beggars description. My parents gave one in 1961; Rob, the friend who just lost his Dad, showed up in 1978, and Bill came along in 1982.

If we are lucky enough to have such friends they are joined in the garden of our lives by that next best thing, friendly acquaintances, and these in turn are surrounded by acquaintances. The entire garden is encircled by farmland that lies, for the moment at least, unexplored. The enterprising gardener is always on alert for new seedlings out there to plant in that garden of friendship.

The garden analogy is an apt one for friendship. A garden requires tending and so, too, does a friendship. Left untended, left to chance, it is certainly possible for a garden to flourish. All too often both gardens and friendships ignored too long have a beauty that is but a cherished memory, seen only with the mind’s eye.

Friendship, like a garden, grows best when exposed to both sun AND rain, albeit for different reasons. A friendship that has known only sunny days may weather that first storm; a friendship that has known both sun and rain is steeled against any and all weather, especially if we gardeners were active in the tending despite the elements. So it has been for my friends and me.

Who is your friend? Who is there for you in both sunshine and rain? From whom do you wish only friendship, and who asks only the same from you? Have you done your part? Have you tended your garden in both sunshine AND rain?

I am in an airport, leaving my friend and headed toward my brother. It’s raining; we are all missing our Dad. But we have tended these gardens for decades. The sun will come out soon enough.

A couple of weeks ago Beth and I were invited to spend a little time with the VP of Development for the health sciences departments at the university where Beth got a BsRN and I got my MD. “Development” is a coy term that non-profits of all types use to describe asking people to donate money to whatever the cause may be. Mark, the VP who invited us out, is a delightful guy only slightly younger than we are. We danced around his core purpose for “discovering” that the unofficial class agent for the Class of ’86 lived 40 minutes from where he and his partner were visiting friends, and enjoyed a very nice couple of hours sitting at the bar of one of our favorite restaurants.

After a short time exchanging standard issue “elevator” origin stories Mark asked if I’d been the student speaker at my graduation ceremony. Mind you, my graduation from med school was 40 years ago, but I’m pretty sure that no one from my class spoke, and that we weren’t addressed by anyone other than a dean or two at graduation. No invited speaker, no University or department luminary, and certainly neither I nor any of my classmates were handed a microphone and a spot on stage. At some time over the years graduation has come to include not only speakers at the university-wide ceremony, but also at the smaller ceremonies for specialty programs such as medicine. Those invited typically have a connection to the school, and are often alums.

I am in love with the sound of my own voice, and so I immediately told Mark that I would jump at the chance to give the graduation speech at the University of Vermont Lerner College of Medicine.

To be sure, this is an entirely fanciful proposition. Not that I don’t have anything worth saying, or worth hearing by any college or grad school graduating class, it’s just that in the big old world in which we all live I am honestly and truly exactly who and how I have long described myself, a C-list celebrity with B-list aspirations. There are literally thousands of “known” entities higher on every university’s list of potential speakers, hundreds and hundreds on whatever list UVM might have, of folks with even the most tenuous thread of a connection than yours truly. I’m kinda like the guy in “Spill the Wine” by War singing about his unlikely casting in a movie, overfed long-haired leaping gnome, now skinny-fat and earthbound. Calling this a long-shot is exaggerating the possibility.

And yet, I really have something to say to a class of graduating doctors, or for that matter a class of graduating college seniors. I am, after all, a doctor; we are in many ways little more than paid observers (HT: WJP). I have willed myself to be a writer, an interpreter of what it is that I have observed. Now and again it all spontaneously distills itself into a package that occupies a little corner of the “restless mind” and like the rest of my random thoughts, seeks a way out into the world.

Herewith, then, is my graduation speech, this version tailored to my med school alma mater, that I will likely never give there, or anywhere else:

Dean Page, esteemed faculty, friends and family members, and my newest colleagues and fellow alums of the Lerner College of Medicine, thank you for this wonderful invitation. It’s been 40 years since I last graced this stage. A short walk that begin a long and wonderful journey. You know, I honestly don’t remember any speakers at our graduation ceremony in 1986. Certainly none from our class. What a cool thing, to be elected to speak to your classmates, the 140 or so folks who’ve walked the same walk and talked the same talk as you have. Maybe Dean Luginbuhl spoke. Honestly, I can’t really remember. The highlight was seeing my classmate Mike Philips receive his diploma from his Mom, the chairperson of pediatrics, while his Dad sat on stage with the rest of the faculty.

That was cool.

So what have I done to merit this invitation? What’s so interesting, unique, or special about my career or my life that makes me someone who would show up on a list of characters who get invited to address a graduating class of doctors? Honestly? Nothing, really. I grew up, went to school and made my childhood dream of becoming a doctor a reality. Like the majority of my classmates I have been a clinician in the community, in my case as an ophthalmologist in private practice just outside a mid-sized city in middle America. Back in the day UVM was known as a school that created the doctors who left school and training and headed off to a lifetime of taking care of patients. Again, nothing unique or special.

If anything has brought me here today it’s probably the stuff that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with medicine, but rather what I’ve learned from the other thing that I’ve become over my lifetime, a writer. I have willed myself to become a writer, albeit one with only the tiniest of followings, none of which are likely represented here today. My classmate and close friend Bill Petraiuolo describes doctors as paid observers. Writers take this one step further and seek to find the larger themes that tie together those things we have observed. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, those observations and the interpretations we make crystalize into little nuggets of useful, actionable advice. One could think of them as wisdom I suppose.

Could be that I’m just getting old though!

Ah well; old or wise, in the end I’ve come up with three nuggets. The first: Talk to strangers. I know, your Mom always told you never to talk to strangers, and that’s really good advice when you’re a kid and just starting out. But as you grow up, go to school and start a career in pretty much anything, NOT talking to strangers handicaps in ways you might not realize. I mean, unless you’re a pathologist or radiologist, every day at work means talking to strangers, right? Patients and their families mostly. You can’t escape them. With all that practice at the office or in the hospital, why not take advantage of this necessary skill and bring it out into the “civilian” world?

Contrary to what your Mom was trying to protect you from, the overwhelming majority of our fellow travelers are really quite friendly and nice. Most are interesting, and many have stories they are happy to share. If I never talked to strangers I never would have met that really smart business consultant who designed partnerships for small, boutique service companies like specialty law and accounting firms. There was the marketing consultant I stood in line with at a Chipotle who described how the culture behind the counter was what really set the brand apart. Or the genius engineer I sat next to on a flight who described micro-marketing targeted to an individual identified by armchair-mounted screens with iris scanning to ID a patient so that you could show them educational information about the very reason they had come to the office.

All of those chats occurred in the early 2000’s; parts of all three became part of the DNA of my practice, SkyVision. I would have missed all of it if I didn’t go out of my way to talk to strangers.

Always ask for the job. Wayne Gretzky once said something to the effect that you never score on the shots you didn’t take. One of my sons, all full of himself after making Dean’s list first semester in law school, marched into the business school’s office at the university where he was studying law and declared something to the effect that they should accept him into their next class. Tickled and intrigued that he simply asked for the gig the dean told him to take the GMATs, that she would see if he was serious when she saw his results. The kid’s a pretty good test taker; she gave him the job. My other son traveled the world after asking for an internship in what was then known as CrossFit Kids. At age 18 he was teaching full-grown adults how to safely and effectively teach fitness to kids. My daughter, a behavioral therapist, built and ran two ABA clinics from scratch. When she learned that her company needed someone to do it, she asked for the jog.

Last, but definitely not least, don’t forget to sing when you win. Friendly strangers and the perfect next job both out there for the asking notwithstanding, this can be a hard world. Victories are there to be had but they don’t come easily. You can go a very long time between even the tiniest wins, so you need to rejoice each time you get one. You are all doctors, and I’m sorry to say that the hardest days of your medical career lie in front of you, not behind in the classroom or the lab or the clinics through which you rotated.

And so I ask you to be sure to celebrate every win. This might be the most important of my three little nuggets. Big or small, sing your victory song. You get that kid off the ward in time to graduate from kindergarten? Don’t forget to sing. That guy who showed up asystolic in the ER who you stayed with all night in the CICU? Yah, he just walked his daughter down the aisle. Don’t forget to sing. You went into psych and a desperate and depressed high school student came to your clinic, battered and beaten by what our modern world can do to us. Ready to be done with all of it, forever, but you saw them every day for a month. Gave them your phone number. A last desperate call before giving up and you took them to the ER. Now married, almost finished their Ph.D. You won! Don’t forget to sing.

Me? Well, talking to strangers helped me to create a culture-driven practice that rests upon a foundation that places caring for each other in the office and the OR first. We give better care for those who come to us because we care about each other. I am here today mostly because I asked Mark for the job! The last thing he heard from me as my wife Beth and I were turning to leave was to remember me for the gig. What a win! I’ll be singing as soon as I step off the stage.

And you? You’re about to be handed a fancy bit of paper that says you are officially a doctor!

Don’t forget to sing!

I’m back from the graduation I will never attend and the speech I will never give, and I’ll see the rest of you next week…

Beth and I have been on an adventure cruise, a quest of sorts. We’ve been exploring the wonders of the classic cocktail. Today as we welcome dinner guest and watch for a bald eagle flyover will be no different. Equal parts alchemy and indulgence, our trip has been more exciting (as all adventures are) because of the little bit of risk involved. What if we find one (or two, or…) we really like? Like many pleasures to drink is to willingly hold the proverbial double-edged sword in your hand; in this case the sword just happens to look like a martini glass.

Alcohol as both a substance and a subject is complex and rife with controversy. It’s legal, but only to a point. It’s beneficial, but with a caveat–people who drink just enough live longer than those who drink more, or not at all. Or maybe not. No one knows. As a chemical it’s a depressant, and yet in many circumstances it imbues joy in those who imbibe. It all comes down to a fine and delicate balance, not unlike a perfectly aged wine or single malt scotch.

The matter of regulation intrudes on the pleasure. Knowing the existence of the second edge and maintaining an awareness of its cut is both necessary and nettlesome. If you find this lurking behind every glass it may rob you of the joy; if you careen from joy to joy you will inevitably suffer its cut and bleed. Temperance, then, is the essential ingredient, the co-pilot who must be ever present on this particular trip. Ah, but temperance, willful self-control, can feel like a 50 MPH governor on a Ferrari, especially if you make the Indiana Jones-like cocktail discoveries we’ve made. It might be so difficult and so distasteful that you decide to roll your dice on the “not at all” line. “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” Samuel Johnson.

Indeed, temperance is so often fueled by the wraith “guilt.” I was raised by a deeply devout Catholic mother who secretly wished she was Jewish; I suffer double guilt. There’s joy and pleasure to be had, but what if there’s too much? Ah, guilt. In the classic children’s book “The Little Prince”, one of the characters is known simply as The Drunkard. He explains to the Little Prince that he drinks to forget that he’s ashamed of drinking. How very sad, that.

It’s all so complicated, not unlike the math involved in the archaic elixirs we’ve been experiencing. So very hard sometimes to ease off the throttle without the aid of the governor. If the “Gizmo”, the “Sideswiped”, and the various versions of The Spritz” be guilty pleasures we might ask the socialite turned fashion entrepreneur Charlotte Stockdale what she thinks of such things. “I don’t have a guilty pleasure. I don’t really feel guilty about anything. What’s the point?” As you listen there it is. Out of the corner of your eye you can just see it, the shadow of the double-edged sword. One edge Samuel, the other Charlotte.

[Tips glass] Slainte

1. Munsingwear. Watching the Scottish and British Opens and noting the return of the penguin logo on a few of the golfers shirts. Once ubiquitous (didn’t Arnie start off wearing Munsingwear before launching his own umbrella logo’d line) the penguin seemed to be extinct.

Seems you just can’t kill a great logo.

2. Nike. Simultaneously watching the Wimbledon men’s finals (gotta love that “last”, as in channel, button on the remote) and noting that both Alcatraz and Sinner are sponsored by Nike and are wearing shirts festooned with the same rather pretentious logo on their left breast. Seems that Nike has succumbed to the pretentiousness of the venue. A bit of a surprise, at least for me.

I just can’t think of a better logo in sports than that plain, unadorned swoosh, especially on a plain white tee shirt.

3. Billboard. If I was a bit more ambitious I would make an effort to find and watch the Tour de France, too. With the Sunday papers taking up residence in my lap I just ran out of brainspace. Shame, because I always enjoy the blatant commercialization of the wearable real estate on the riders. Seriously, perhaps only race car drivers (and their vehicles) can lay claim to making more productive use of the marketability of being on air. Golfers have only their bag, hat, and shirts; tennis players shirts and hats. Only recently have other sports (NBA, MLB) started to fill their mobile billboards.

I think my favorites might actually be those bikers. Might have to surf over to France and check ’em out.

4. Reading. I love to read. Almost all kinds of reading. I prefer what one might call legacy reading. You know, books and magazines and newspapers printed on paper. Sure, if the timing is right I’m quite content to read stuff on a computer or a tablet, but the whole read it on a phone thing just never grabbed me.

Except social media.

Last night I had some trouble falling asleep. Worked out pretty well for Beth, at least in the beginning of the night because she was able to fall asleep before I started snoring. Despite the presence of a book I am enjoying right their on my nightstand (“How I Won the Nobel Prize”) I picked up my phone and started surfing Twitter and Facebook. Every now and again I will come across something worthwhile doing this, but not last night. No interesting or challenging lines of thought. Nothing to do further research on. Not even anything that I might like to buy.

Bupkis.

To be sure I achieved my ultimate goal of becoming tired enough to quickly fall asleep, but it was just a silly waste of time. Do I need to be on any of these sites? Nah. Not really. Sure, some folks have found my little bits of written drivel there, and I have to admit that it’s more than a little bit of fun to have folks read and comment. But I can accomplish all of that without spending time looking at fake stories about benevolent pachyderms hosing down overheated infant ungulates. Once or twice a day on a laptop, business focus engaged, is all I really need.

Time to clear up some memory and screen real estate on my phone.

5. Pro. As in going pro. Two brilliant athletes in their early 20’s have concluded this year’s Wimbledon. A couple of PGA tournament winners are barely out of college. Sitting in second place in the British Open is a golfer who turned pro at age 15. Countless youngsters barely weeks removed from their senior prom sat with their families hoping to hear their names called in last Sunday’s Major League Baseball draft. The newspaper brought the story of JoJo and Jacob Parker, fraternal twins who were both expected to be selected in the early rounds the draft. They are the sons of a father who was by all accounts an extraordinary, pro-caliber athlete whose entire life was turned upside down by an injury on the football field that left him paralyzed from the neck down but did not keep him from coaching his gifted sons (more in a moment).

And of course all of the “one and done’s” in the recent NBA draft, rising college sophomores who will leave college behind led by Maine native Cooper Flagg.

What’s got me thinking about these boys is how very few kids actually go on to play a sport beyond high school. I’ve thought and written about this before, that time in response to a slew of articles one weekend about parents (and youth coaches) pushing children to specialize in a single sport as early as 5 years of age. Rather than playing sports for the love of the games and the healthy interactions with neighborhood friends, kids compete to play for regional “travel teams” or are recruited away from their local schools to play for “power” schools. While this usually actually happens at the junior high school/high school transition year it still means that adults are making decisions for kids which are often based on the notion that putting all of your athletic eggs in one basket is going to result in either a college scholarship or a pro contract.

In reality the odds of sustaining an over-use injury due to the concentration on a single set of repetitive movements is actually dramatically higher than the likelihood of playing a sport beyond high school. Recent data for baseball players shows that ~30% of high school baseball pitchers undergo ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) or Tommy John surgery over their career; 8.1% will go on to play college baseball at any level, 2% in Division 1. 18% of high school girls soccer players will suffer an ACL tear over their soccer career, 82% of which will be a complete tear; 7.9% will play soccer in college, again roughly 2% in Division 1 (data via ChatGPTo4). Overall, 7.5% of high school athletes go on to play a sport in college at any level, and less than 2% will receive any scholarship money to play in Division 1.

More likely to have surgery for a sport-related injury than to play in college.

And yet parents continue to find the Siren song of college scholarships and pro contracts sung by youth coaches, if only they will commit their child to 12 months of playing and training for a single sport. To have their kids play with other gifted athletes on elite regional teams or for schools far away from home where they are told the kids will get “better competition”. Do they, indeed, get better at their sport if they do so? Almost certainly, yes. Does it matter? Again, <2% will get a scholarship, and less than 1% will play a single minute in any professional event. 0.05% of high school baseball players will get the proverbial “cup of coffee” in the majors.

To be sure, if we add back in non-scholarship schools such as the Ivies and highly selective Division 3 schools such as those in the NESCAC conference in the Northeast, historically all of which place an emphasis on high caliber athletes in the admission office, some kids will parlay a level of athletic skill into a step up the collegiate reputational ladder. The boy who played baseball for his hometown high school and is not quite good enough to start at Vanderbilt may be just what they are looking for at Yale, even though his grades and scores place him in the lower half of accepted students. Or the girl with above average grades and scores who was a second team All-State field hockey player, not quite good enough to get a scholarship from North Carolina but gets into Middlebury and has a stellar 4-year career as a starter on a perennial D3 power team. Some kids do leverage sports in non-financial ways.

My kids are all in their 30’s, each a talented athlete in their own way. Megan, the equestrian, played her sport in college. My nephews and nieces are in their late 20’s and early 30’s. Many of them played sports in college, two of them in D1, one on scholarship. All of them played at home, for their local high school or local parochial school (3 did a PG year before college). Whether or not they played in college, each one played their sports (often more than one) with the kids they grew up with (the hockey players were often on travel teams during the “off-season”). So many of the kids here in NE Ohio who would be legit stars at their home town schools leave them to play a sport in one of the larger regional powerhouse schools, only to find themselves mired on the bench or peaking on a JV team. At home they would have shined, perhaps in more than one sport, and gotten to do so with their neighborhood buddies.

Everybody loses a little bit when that happens.

Cooper Flagg and his twin brother are examples of the good that can come from following the Sirens. After a stellar freshman year at Nokomis Regional High school is his Maine hometown in which he was named Gatorade player of the year in Maine, Cooper and his twin brother Ace decamped to national powerhouse Montverde Academy in Florida. Cooper was the number 1 pick in the NBA draft, taken by the Dallas Mavericks, and Ace accepted a scholarship to play basketball at the University of Maine.

How about our other set of twins, the Parker boys Jojo and Jacob? They stayed home and played baseball for their hometown school, Purvis High School in Purvis, Mississippi. They pulled up their high stirrups and laced up their cleats next to the same kids with whom they played Little League ball and went to school with since kindergarten. Drafted 8th in the first round by the Toronto Blue Jays JoJo will begin his pro career this summer, while Jacob (19th round by Arizona) will accept a scholarship offer to play at Mississippi State. You CAN play for your hometown school and go on to play at a higher level.

Like all of the athletes in the next generation of my extended family, neither Ace Flagg nor Jacob Parker are likely to sign a professional contract to play their sports for a living. All of the family’s parents in my generation at one point or another echoed what my brother told his boys, multi-sport athletes in both high school and college, about their footwear in future employment opportunities: don’t plan on wearing sneakers, cleats, or skates; you will be wearing leather soles or heels to whatever job you take. Early sport specialization, especially if it involves leaving your childhood friends in order to pursue the Siren song of pay to play, costs much more in what is lost from childhood than is likely gained, even without injuries.

For all but the very, very few, what remains at the end are the memories, and those memories always seem to me to shine more brightly if they were made together, at home, with the friends you grew up with.

I’ll see you next week…

1. H2O. Once again, like so many Sundays before and hopefully many Sundays to come, I sit before my muse, my inland ocean, and peer within, trying to capture the random thoughts that fly inside my head like so many molecules in a vacuum.

I never really know what I’ll catch.

2. Spotify. I’m not really sure when I started writing with music on in the background. Certainly not before we moved to Casa Blanco in late 2013. In many ways my writing music has evolved along the same lines as my music in the OR. For nearly 10 years the majority of the music played in my OR’s was instrumental only. You know, lest I start to tap my feet or sing along. The first is obviously a problem because I control my instrument and microscope with foot pedals.

Singing risks sparking a mutiny in the rest of the OR “crew”.

Where once I was dependent on, and limited by my collection of CD’s, the era of music streaming has brought me music from every era of my life. Top 40 in Jr. High? Hello “Stairway to Heaven”, the most awkward slow dance song ever written. High school and college funk? I see you Earth, Wind, and Fire. David Sanborne, Chuck Mangione and their peers played background to my early career, giving way to all things Eric Clapton. “Clapton Unplugged” accompanied me as I caught up on last week’s newspapers yesterday. Ozzie Osborn said farewell yesterday in an epic 10 hour concert in Birmingham. Through the wonder of Spotify and its competitors I will be able to sample the concert’s fare.

Just not in the OR.

3. Independence. Friday was Independence Day, the Fourth of July, edition 249. On Saturday the United States began “turning 250”. Long-time readers (both of you) will get the reference to one of my better pieces from yesteryear “The Hard Turn at Mile Marker 49”. I struggled mightily with the whole “turning 50” thing over what turned out to be a rather trivial, buried aspiration first verbalized in my early 40’s. Still, with the perception of a fraught world, or at least a fraught U.S., I do wonder if 250 might be kinda like my 50.

But with the help of social media, Twitter/X in particular, I went back and took a look at what was going on hereabouts in 1975-6, the Bicentennial year when the country turned 200. As an aside, although I’ve read it dozens of times, I simply can’t remember the proper word for 250 year anniversary. No matter. The point, of course, is that the American society was aflame back then, too. So much so that you didn’t need SM to hear about it. Riots. Occupation of buildings in colleges and universities. The “Sexual Revolution” was in full swing (sorry). Unbeknownst to most everyone, the most important man in government was soon to be confirmed as the head of the Federal Reserve and would battle crazy inflation.

Deja vu all over again, eh?

My response? I’m gonna re-read the Declaration of Independence along with an academic treatise on its writers and its creation courtesy of my College email thread buddy Mayday, who spent his career under cover in the service of country and countrymen. I will endeavor to seek the good in every person I encounter, and I will offer them whatever there is in me that is good. Citizenship one-on-one and one-by-one.

It’s the least any of us can do.

4. Power. How do you take your water sports? Specifically when it comes to powering your movements on the water. Each year around this time Beth and I are reminded that we aren’t really boaters, despite the fact that we own a perfectly functional antique Boston Whaler. In fact it is this very same Whaler, christened “Jet Ski” by Beth to win a discussion about the possible acquisition of Jet Skis for the grandchildren (“There. Now we have a Jet Ski!”) that does the reminding. Every boat takes a certain amount of care and feeding to remain seaworthy.

Each year we find ourselves struggling to get an unsinkable boat afloat.

This is perhaps because we are both at heart “self-powered” water people both raised with a healthy dose of the Atlantic Ocean sans outboard assistance. For years now we have primarily played in all manner of water with toys that require people-powered propulsion. Paddle-boards, kayaks, and boogie boards to harness the surf. Accompanied by one of our growing families we spent 4 1/2 hours in our liquid playground, moving about using ourselves as the power plant. For sure you can do all kinds of stuff to tire out a gaggle of family members with a boat and stuff that floats, but there seems to be a different kind of satisfaction that comes with the exhaustion earned through a paddle.

I do confess to a deep curiosity about wind, though.

5. Upbringing. Is it nature or is it nurture? The hardware you received at conception or the software that was downloaded by your parents, other family members, friends, and others? The answer has to be “yes” of course. My daughter is a behavioral therapist with a special interest in very young children with various degrees of autism. When she is introduced and this comes up she is often queried about parenting and raising children. Megan is kind and gracious and by all accounts she maneuvers through these minefields as one would expect from such a lovely person.

I was casually eavesdropping while Megan and Beth were chatting about one of these conversations. A couple of hours later Beth and I got to talking about parenting, a very long conversation that we have been having for at least 30 years. If you know us at all you are now doing some math and discovering that our first born, Dan, was born 30-SEVEN years ago, and indeed, it was during those first 7 years of his young life that we discovered just how different our parents approached the child raising thing, as evidenced by how we instinctually reacted so differently to various scenarios and challenges.

For all of the differences between our families there are some very significant things or hardware both families have in common. For example, both of our Moms are the children of parents who both went to college, while our Dads were the first members of their families to do so. Our Dads both went on to get advanced degrees. Each marriage lasted for their entire lives, and both couples lived to see their children graduate from college, marry, and raise children of their own. The hardware seems fairly similar, and one might think that “nature” might prevail.

If we dig deeper, though, we discover that our families grew up with a very significant, fundamental difference in how parenting was carried out. There were rules in my family that were followed because they were the rules. Not unlike your favorite board game or if you favor a bit more intellectual example, chess. You wouldn’t dream of moving your castle along a diagonal in chess or fail to pay your “rent” on Boardwalk in Monopoly because, you know, rules.

There were certainly rules in Beth’s house growing up. My perception is that they likely had a similar number of rules as we did, certainly when it came to safety and “proper” social behavior. What seemed different as it became obvious to us as young parents that we were coming at the nuts and bolts of parenting from almost different poles, is that my parents were content to disclose the rules while Beth’s parents were interested in their three kids understanding the “why” behind most rules (don’t push your sister down the stairs really didn’t need an answer to “why”).

While listening to Beth and Megan I heard a word that I have to admit has been a little slippery for me; I’ve not really grasped how “validation” works in parenting until yesterday, but in a nutshell it explains the difference between how Beth and I were raised. In context, validation seems to mean that a parent acknowledges unhappiness in a child who must follow a rule or an order, accepts their unhappiness on its face, and nonetheless follows through with that rule while perhaps explaining a “why”. As a young parent I simply could not have been more of a “them’s the rules” guy. Watching Beth parent our kids and offer guidance to our grandchildren is to see a master’s class in validation.

So I guess I’m in the “nurture” camp on this one. Absent conscious premeditation and purposeful work prior to being handed that first baby, how you were raised is likely the default setting for your initial parenting style. It is certainly not destiny. Like a software update or new operating system installation it is possible to take the better parts of how you were raised and add in what you learn as you are in the act of parenting your own. Like a pitcher learning a new way to throw a fastball I can now identify feelings that come to the surface when a rule has to be followed, acknowledge them in a way that makes it clear that I am hearing the feelings, and to explain that sometimes we just have to follow the rules even if we are unhappy. Perhaps it’s simple: you have to take a shower because you were in the lake all day.

Sometimes it’s a little more complex and the “feels” are a lot bigger: I know you are unhappy about “this” but no, you can’t run away from home. Everybody there loves you.

I’ll see you next week…

1. Froideur. Coolness or reserve between people. Not a very happy space.

2. Notes. “Music is the space between the notes.” Claude Debussy. The French composer was famous for compositions that emphasized the power of silence.

See also: Davis, Miles. “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you DON’T play.”

3. Teen. Adolescence can be described as that time when you establish the space between who you’ve been growing up, and who you will be when you are out in the world on your own.

It need not be occupied alone. It need not mean leaving all that brought you to that place on the other side of the space behind.

4. Empty nester. Likewise, the empty nesters move on from the crowded space of the growing family to something new. Or perhaps to a new version of something old.

Like looking at your spouse and realizing that your boyfriend or your girlfriend is back and sharing your space again.

5. Clearing. I really don’t know that much about Melinda French Gates, ex-wife of arguably the most successful Harvard drop-out in history. Whereas I thought the author Maya Angelo was kinda soft, a position I was forced to abandon after I saw a couple of interviews, Ms. French Gates was a blank slate until I read an interview in which she spoke about her recent memoir “The Next Day”. Honestly, with the exception of the folks at her foundations and a group of close friends with whom she raised her kids, I don’t know if anyone has really had a ton of understanding about what her life must have been like and what it felt like to occupy her spaces before and after.

Maybe Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos.

In a WSJ “My Monday Morning” interview Ms. French Gates offers up a very nice way to think about a later in life change. Indeed, I think it is actually a lovely and actionable way to approach life’s changes no matter when they occur. At the core of her approach and her advice when it comes to navigating life’s changes, whether they be standard stage of life fare or an unexpected disruption, is quite simple: don’t rush through them.

“In that time between when you’re leaving something and you’re starting the next thing, there’s a space. I call it a clearing. There is an enormous amount to learn when you’re sitting in that clearing.”

That’s some pretty good stuff. Good on a par with Maya Angelo and the “when someone tells you who they are” good. The chicks have fledged and you sit before 15 or 20 years of productive life without the need to ensure that your offspring are lodged and fed? That bears some time in space if you are privileged to be allowed to tarry (sadly, experience has shown that this is not a universal privilege). Your years of productive employment are nearing their end and it’s time to decide what your third act will look like? Ditto. Who among us hasn’t known someone who just jumped out of the plane and pulled the ripcord without having first surveyed the landing zone?

The space between isn’t always a comfortable place, but if you sit for a moment you will likely agree with Ms. French Gates that you actually have more time there than you might think. There is likely more space that would be recognizable to Debussy or Davis. Less froideur and more hearth of the heart. Of course there are times when one must move smartly along, but I think it is more like Ms. French Gates proposes, and we are more likely to land comfortably if we assume that our flight plan will flow slowly and smoothly toward a welcoming runway.

So bring a flint and a bit of lint. Gather some kindling and a bundle of firewood. Get comfortable in the space between. Hang on and hang out until you see a clear path out of the clearing.

I’ll see you next week…

1. Summer. After the longest, coldest, grayest spring I can recall in my 34 years here on the North coast, summer arrived on Friday. The whole package landed late Thursday complete with thunderstorms and tornadoes, all smothered in a heat dome due to last a week or so.

‘Bout time.

2. Italy. I am a week into my reentry at home after a 10 day trip to Italy to celebrate our 40th wedding Anniversary (which is in September) along with our dear friends from med school Bill and Nancy. If memory serves the four of us have now celebrated our 10th, 15th, 25th, 35th, and 40th Anniversaries together. It’s awfully nice to have friends who travel together as well as we four do. As an aside, Beth and I will attempt to pull off a smaller celebratory trip with Dave and Suzi, friends we met on the first day of our honeymoons.

Beth is on a plane home from France; I headed home to work last weekend and she jetted off to Paris to join a bunch of her friends for an equestrian adventure. As I sit here and gaze at the armada of pleasure boats heading who knows where on Lake Erie, thinking about the water taxis and other working boats whose comings and goings so fascinated me from my balcony in Positano, I am still a bit overwhelmed by our good fortune.

The orioles are singing to me; I am just so very, very grateful.

3. Middle Age. Gotta be honest here, I’m not really sure what constitutes middle age any more. Can’t figure out when it started, and more importantly I have no idea when it’s over and you slide over into something else. What comes after middle age, anyway? If you’re done being middle-aged does that mean that you are now old?! Or could it be that there are more phases, more levels that just don’t have a catchy name?

It brings me back to my conversations with my sadly long lost CrossFit friend Hari, whose wisdom was so on point when I was turning 40. His take: the first 40 or so years of your life are all about preparation. Preparing yourself to be an adult. Preparing your children to fledge the nest and go out into the world on their own. Those years between 40 and 60 or so are the years when you likely enjoy the best balance between your physical and intellectual selves. You continue to gather wisdom and maturity, the emotional growth hopefully balancing the inevitable physical decline we all begin to notice around that 40th birthday. Come to think of it, that’s probably as good a description and definition of middle age as I’ve heard: the mid-life years where growth in wisdom matches any physical decline.

So what does that mean for us? Are Beth and I, and for that matter our like-minded friends, still middle-aged? It’s likely that you never really know when you cross the threshold where middle-aged balance becomes a net decline, especially if you have continued to do the work to maintain your physical, intellectual, and emotional vigor. It’s unlikely that there is a bright line, and it’s probably healthier not to look to hard for it even if there is.

I’ll bet Hari has given this some thought, too.

4. 94. Yesterday would have been my Dad’s 94th birthday. I left my computer home, and honestly after a day or two in Italy I had no idea what day of the week it was. Tough to stick the landing for a weekly whatever when every day is Saturday. I was traveling on Father’s Day, a 20 hour journey, but did get a chance to watch the U.S. Open “with” my brother while killing time in the saddest airport bar I’ve ever been in. Still, it’s how Father’s Day is supposed to come to a close for me.

10 years ago I went to Rhode Island to be with my Dad for his birthday and Father’s Day. Unaware that we would lose him in 4 short months, I was blessed with a brief moment of clarity. A tiny gift of time my Dad and I got to share, memorialized in “A Brief Father’s Day Visit From My Dad”. Here it is, again, 10 years later.

“My siblings and I only need to remember one weekend each year when it comes to celebrating my Dad. His birthday almost always falls within a day or two of Father’s Day. So it was that I found myself in Rhode Island the past couple of days, in the company of my Mom and a guy masquerading as my Dad, a guy who was very curious about the new fella who’d dropped by for a visit.

Getting old is not for sissies, my friends.

Somewhere inside, deep inside, there’s still some of my Dad in the jumbled up connections of his mind, carried by the body that failed him in such spectacular fashion 2 ½ years ago. Dad is extremely intelligent, the only family member in his generation to have gone to college. Quite the athlete, he used football and the GI Bill to pay for school. Like so many in his generation he then worked, raised a family, and put himself through grad school. He won his club championship in golf twice at the ages of 50 and 60. No typo. Beat the reigning RI State Amateur champ on his home course for the first one.

As we sat on the porch of his house overlooking the 14th hole, I had an ever so brief visit from that guy. From my Dad. Like a citizen of Brigadoon he came slowly through the mist of his mind to join me for a bit. We’d always bonded over golf. My brother and I never turned down an invitation to join him on the course, either as partners or as caddies for him and his buddies. It was quite a privilege to do either; my Dad’s most elemental essence was expressed on the golf course.

A light breeze was blowing through the forest in the back yard just beyond the rough. We chuckled at the golfers who failed to take the wind into consideration, sheepishly trying to sneak into the yard to retrieve their out-of-bounds second shot. Dad talked about caddying as a kid in the Depression. We both noted the absence of caddies as the foursomes passed in and out of view. It was really very nice.

I quite like the Dad of my adulthood. Quick to smile, slow to anger, unfailingly loyal and kind. It’s hard to imagine how distant he was when I was a boy, his friendship as an adult is so easy. I’m not sure how long we sat there to be honest, nor when I noticed that he was slipping away. As surely as the village of Brigadoon disappears, the mist had returned to claim him. I got up, walked over to his chair, held his hand and gave him a kiss. I wished him a Happy Birthday and a Happy Father’s Day, hoping that I’d made it on time. That he was still there. That he knew it was me, Darrell, his oldest child. I told him I loved him.

He smiled and gave my hand a little pat as he disappeared into the mist.”

I sure miss my Dad. I’ll see you next week…

1. Home, alone, accompanied by sleeping dogs. I am letting them lie.

2. Newman. “You have to learn to be yourself.” “Fast Eddie” Falcon, The Color of Money.

Some of us get here pretty quickly. At least learning the core part of yourself. For me it came early, in junior high school. While I was like pretty much everyone else, wanting to fit in, or at least not stand out (like the proverbial nail in the Japanese saying about getting hammered for standing out), I discovered that my normal “fit in” desires had limits. I’ve probably told the story before so I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that the basic framework was up early, and I learned to fill in the spaces over time.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Purportedly Mark Twain.

This is the harder part of the process, at least in the earlier years of your “education”. How does one determine what “yourself” means without looking outward at others? Maybe trying on a little bit of, I dunno, your grandfather, the local football star or your family doctor? Still, at some point, once you have learned who it is that you believe you are, then it’s time to simply go about the business of being just that.

After that, without trying very hard at all, anyone who matters will come to know the same you that you’ve come to know.

3. Mulligan is a golf term. Essentially a “do-over”. While not to be found anywhere in the rules of golf (and therefore not allowed in competition), one not infrequently comes across the Mulligan in friendly rounds. It is especially common on the first tee, particularly if it was not possible to hit the driving range to warm up. See also: breakfast ball.

Beth and I watched a fun little movie a month or so ago; I might have mentioned it here. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. “About Time” tells the story of a family in which the men can go back in time and essentially get a Mulligan on a moment. It takes some care, of course, because anything that they change will remain changed when they return to the present. The moments when the son learns this is quite striking: he goes back in time to fix a mistake, but goes back prior to the birth of his beloved daughter. When he returns she was never born. This being fantasy he has unlimited Mulligans at his disposal, allowing him to both fix his mistake and do so without erasing his daughter’s timeline.

It’s really a lovely little story, with two of the sweetest father/son scenes I’ve ever encountered in a book or a movie. In both of the scenes father and son come together alone, and each is quick to realize that they are in time travel mode. They are careful–so very careful–not to alter anything around them, lest they erase the downstream lives of everyone and everything that brought them together, back in time. It’s not clear to me exactly where in time they’d left to go back. What they were, and what they were to each other in that present time. Only that each of them chose to go back to a time when all they knew of each other was love.

We never see them together again when we return to the story in the present. The father has died, and with his death his timeline is no longer there to be visited. We slowly realize that father and son had traveled back to that time of love to say their goodbyes. No one else was changed, but one is left to wonder if, in the choosing to experience that love again, so tender with one another in knowing what was to come, if they themselves were changed.

Alas, there is no time travel for the men or the women of any family, however careful those who might possess this power might be. Still, there are Mulligans to be had. Every new day is a kind of Mulligan. Each dawn the gift-wrap for a breakfast ball. We cannot return to an earlier time, but each day brings us a chance to return, again and again to how we felt in that time. To choose that. And if we are lucky, to choose that together.

Until one day, like the father and son in “About Time”, we run out of Mulligans, and only the memories remain.

I’ll see you next week…

Sunday musings (Memorial Day version)…

It’s the stories. The stories matter. Whether they died in the heat of battle or in the cold of infirmity, the warriors all have stories. The stories are all important.

It’s remarkable how difficult it is to get at those stories, though. The ones that were the most formative, the ones that turned that one soldier or that one sailor into who s/he became, they tend to be slow in coming, if they come at all. Yet those are the ones that matter most.

The warriors among us tend toward silence. It’s not so much a secret thing (although there is a small group who simply mustn’t tell their stories) I don’t think, as it is a continuation of the protector role our airmen, sailors, soldiers and marines assume. They don’t so much keep the stories secret as they shield us from the effects of the stories, so powerful were those effects on them when they happened. Yet again, to understand those who remain, and to try to know those who have departed, the stories matter.

I drive by a cemetery filled with the graves of those who fought, some who died while fighting, and I try to conjure their stories. It’s pure folly. Dead men tell no tales, eh? Humanity learns of conflict and war from the stories told about both, and humans learn about each other the same way. Asking to hear the stories is an act of respect. Listening to the stories can be an act of love. Telling the stories is a little of both.

The stories of the men and women who have fought our wars are important.

A friend from my youth, a coach not too very much older than I once broke down and cried over his story. A very junior officer, his story of leadership and loss comes to me every year on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. I know him so much better, understand who his is so much better because I heard his story. So, too, is my knowledge of the men and women younger than I who have served and fought and graced me with their stories.

Life is long unless you are unlucky, but even the lucky run out of time. We have no Civil War survivors, no one from WWI to tell their stories. Those few from WWII still here are reticent, and time grows short. Even Korea fades ever quickly to time’s passage. My Dad is marooned by his illness somewhere between 1947 and 1974; much of his “time” seems to be spent in Korea at the moment. The smallest of consolations for us, his progeny, is that we may learn his story.

This Memorial Day let us all remember not only those who served and those who died in that service, but let us all remember their stories as well. Let us ponder the lessons those stories teach about not only humanity but also about the warrior, the person we remember. Let us encourage those who still walk among us, especially those whose journeys have been long and must be soon ending, to tell us their stories while they still can. Let us listen to those who know the stories behind each headstone as we gather in their honor. We have much to learn from the stories, about war and conflict, about the people who fight, about ourselves.

The stories matter.

1. 64. Happy 64th Birthday to my brother Randall who is almost certainly on the upper deck of his home away from home, sipping coffee and dreaming avian dreams of glory.

2. Orioles. One of the wonders of our home here on the North Coast of the U.S. is the annual arrival of a flock of Baltimore Orioles, a real bird, not just a perpetually underperforming baseball team. This year our early summer visitors seem to be channeling their MLB brethren: they have failed to show up for the game.

“Where are my Orioles?” Beth and several of her birding friends have been lamenting the absence of our colorful friends. We’ve not been able to discern the reason, though we all surmise that it may be due to our unseasonably cold and wet spring. Perhaps they are channeling the “snowbirds” of NE Ohio, the smart ones at least who looked at the weather and stayed down south.

Plates of grape jelly sit unattended as we await their return.

3. Sprezzatura? Beth and I are prepping for our next great adventure, this one a trip to Italy with our great friends Bill and Nancy. We four were married a month apart almost 40 years ago. Bill has been after us to visit Italy, the country of his ancestors, for some time now. An experienced visitor to Italy, Bill has assembled an itinerary presented in a Powerpoint and outlining our agenda. Historic sites, restaurants, wine tastings, accommodations and logistics, all there.

In Italian!

Why “sprezzatura” (nonchalant, convention-flouting)? Bill is also an experienced packer when it comes to Italy. Conscious of the space limitations of the cars he will drive as he squires us around the “mid-south” of the country, Bill has reached out no fewer than 3 times to ask about our luggage status. He also had some “helpful” advice for me regarding appropriate garb for an elderly-adjacent American tourist in Italy. While very practical (“it’s gonna be hot in southern Italy in June”), his advice is hardly sprezzatura (“men don’t wear shorts”).

There’s a strong sense of deja vu in all of this. When Beth took me along for her grand Portugal riding adventure I was very concerned about looking like an American tourist. 57 years old at the time I made a bunch of purchases, many towards the effort to look like a “native”. Now, at 65 and facing the Italian summer? I don’t know if I will be able to describe my style for the trip as particularly sprezzatura, but I say for sure it’s gonna be practical.

Shorts take up less room in the suitcase, too.

4. Durable. My longstanding interest in health and activity monitors has flared once again, this time in a fairly comical way as has been my wont. When my Biostrap became non-functional–the company has decided that it is a research endeavor now, no longer interested in the individual customer–I found myself adrift. Honestly, as silly as that sounds, that’s really how I felt. I’ve come to really enjoy waking up and checking on some of the hidden aspects of stuff like HRV and basal HR, PO2 and sleep stages, and comparing them with how I feel upon awakening, and I without my Biostrap I kinda missed that.

This is not in any way a new phenomenon. Beginning with my beloved Nike Fuel band more than a decade ago, I’ve been deeply interested in not only the area in general, but also in the fairly meaningless minutiae about the differences between the devices themselves. For those not so afflicted, what matters is not so much the actual readings that one obtains from your tracker, but rather trends that you uncover and track to other parts of your Healthspan plan (diet, alcohol, exercise, stress, etc.). All you really need is a device that is unobtrusive enough to ignore, and the willingness to wear it.

Nevertheless, off I went on yet another “journey” into the weeds of tracker land. This time I had the dubious advantage of all things internet and search. Dubious, of course, because there is so much more opinion out there than anything that could be described as solid fact. I did manage to find a couple of reasonably knowledgeable folks who were close enough to me philosophically to be helpful and to save me a little bit of time. Fitbits and Apple watches and Whoops and Ouras, all mixed in with smaller niche players.

In the end it boiled down to Whoop vs. Oura. Wrist strap or ring. I promised myself just one. Honest. Really tried. But just like the reviews, all of which said basically the same thing (Whoop for activity, Oura for sleep), I found that just one wasn’t going to really replace the Biostrap. I started out with a Whoop, felt I needed more granular night time information, and ordered an Oura. Just in time to learn that the latest version of the Whoop would be out 3 days after my ring was delivered and would probably handle everything.

Foiled, despite my good intentions.

I have no idea how it’s gonna play out. For the moment I am parsing the differences in the information I’m getting from each and hoping that one or the other will be sufficient. Honestly, it’s still one part true intent as part of my Healthspan project, and one part pure hobby. I’ll keep you posted.

5. Friendship. Last week’s family wedding in the Low Country was all the more fun because it brought together bunches of friends, men and women, who got to enjoy the festivities together. If you’ve been reading my drivel over the years you know that friendship is one of my pet topics. I find reason to return to it again and again. I am very fortunate in that my siblings and their spouses are also my friends, so the wedding and surrounding activities brought together not just family but also friends.

Watching, I was reminded of some of the differences between male and female friendships. We’ve covered this before, but it’s always interesting how this particular truth bears up under the test of time: men and women enact their friendships very differently. In a nutshell, women tend to anchor their friendships around shared feelings. When you watch a group of female friends they spend most of their time interacting face-to-face. While close proximity always makes for stronger friendships and better interactions, the ability to share feelings over the phone, by text, and through any number of social outlets seems to make facilitating friendships a little easier.

Men, on the other hand, form friendships and bond over shared experiences. Yes, for sure as we age and (presumably) mature, we too solidify our friendships through the sharing of feelings, however sparingly. But it is in these shared experiences that our friendships blossom and grow. Indeed, if you watch men in the act of friendship, after the handshake or bro hug of greeting, we can most often be found standing shoulder to shoulder rather than face to face. Long stretches of silence are interspersed with breaks of high energy interaction. Watch us; it’s just like that.

This rather fundamental difference in both the orientation and “activity” of “doing” friendship is often put forth as the reason women are typically so much better at making friends as adults of any age. Once we’ve left the structured environments of our youth, the locker rooms and barracks and training grounds, we lose the easy access to experiences for us to share. This is one of the reasons that CrossFit found so much success with men (and women to be sure) of pretty much any and all ages: the shared experience of (mild) suffering in pursuit of a common goal, all occurring at the same time and place. Men and women worked out side by side (it helps us make friends with women, too!), and then we all talked about it. (IYKYK)

This week’s Sunday Times Magazine has a story about a man who has many guy friends, but wonders why they don’t hang out together. He takes an incredibly circuitous route to the conclusion that anybody paying the least bit of attention over the years comes to as soon as they think about it: he, we, put way too little emphasis and assign way too little importance on the blocking and tackling of friendships already made. It was so easy when we were younger. It just was. Everyone was there, all the time, doing the same stuff as you were, right there. We had school and class, sports or clubs, silly kid jobs which felt kinda like school or sports or clubs.

Real jobs with real responsibilities could be an obstacle for sure, and work friendships have all kinds of booby traps (hiring and firing, corporate hierarchy, etc.). Looking back, the stuff we all tended to blame, getting married and having kids, was actually really more of the same; we were just sharing a different space with the other men in and around our lives. We went to games and concerts and plays, they just weren’t OUR games and and concerts and plays. But we were still there, standing side by side, being friends.

It’s what happens next, after the kids have graduated, after you’ve become an empty nester that it really becomes an issue. No longer is there an institutional shoulder to shoulder experience. The garden analogy is an apt one for friendship. A garden requires tending and so, too, does a friendship. Left untended, left to chance, it is certainly possible for a garden to flourish. All too often both gardens and friendships ignored too long have a beauty that is but a cherished memory, seen only with the mind’s eye.

For all of my literary legerdemain when addressing the ongoing challenges of friendship in advanced adulthood, my prose can hardly be described as actionable advice. Today’s NYT column authored by Sam Graham-Felsen, is quite the opposite. Adrift and lonely despite a very happy home life with spouse and child, Sam enlists the help of a couple of podcasters, Aaron Karo and Matt Ritter, who provide a very practical “how to water your friendships” guide they call TCS: text weekly, call monthly, see quarterly. The hack as described by Karo is to create a regular event that happens automatically. It doesn’t matter what that event is, only that it happens on schedule.

I really like everything about this. The garden analogy is one I have used often when discussing friendship. An ongoing need to work on friendships no matter how old or young they may be. All three of the available contact methods engaged: text, call, see. It probably doesn’t matter what intervals you choose (they go weekly, monthly, quarterly), only that you set up a general schedule and keep to it. Especially the “see” part, scheduled in ink in everyone’s calendar. I like that very much.

We men are still lousy at making new friends in adulthood unless we are somehow thrown together in a way that we can have those shared experiences. The women in our lives still crush us in this endeavor. For sure we should take advantage of any and all opportunities to make a new friend if one arises. You can never have enough friends. But we DO have friends. We have a lifetime’s worth of friends to call upon, many of whom are just as ready as we are to get back in and tend to the garden of those friendships. It’s not that we don’t need new friends, it’s that we cannot really say that we don’t HAVE any friends.

We all have a lifetime’s worth of friends. We just need to pick up that watering can and get to work.

I’ll see you next week…