California Stars

Last August, difficult circumstances and unfortunate coincidence caused me to have to take the kids on a family vacation by myself. It was only 24 hours before we were all to leave together that it became apparent that my wife wouldn't be going and that I'd be doing it solo. I was somewhat overwhelmed at the idea, but I managed to pull it off.  While a week's vacation with the kids isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, having done that made me pretty confident that I could do this single-dad-on-the-go thing when it later became necessary for me to do so.

Maybe too confident. Because this year I got it in my head that I'd take the kids to California.

Last year's vacation was a car ride up to Lake Michigan and a condo stocked with all of the comforts of home. This time it would be a two-leg cross-country flight and a hotel where every little extra thing cost $24.

Of course I figured that the logistical difficulties would be balanced out by how easily impressed they are.

"How big is the Pacific Ocean?" Carlo asked.
"Pretty big."
"Can you see the other side?"
"Nope."
"Whoa."


And so on.


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I briefed them on air travel weeks ahead of time. They quickly understood that they could take their backpacks stuffed with books and video games and anything else they could carry with them on the plane, but that they could not take water because someone once tried to blow up a plane with liquid explosives.  They further understood that they could put anything that would fit in the suitcase this side of atomic weapons, but that they had to take their shoes off at security because someone once tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb. They never asked why anyone would want to blow up a plane and never exhibited any anxiety about it. They'll never think that stuff is weird.

On the first leg of the flight we sat in the seventh row, which is the first row in coach. Anna saw the people in first class getting drinks and food and asked me what was so special about those people.

"They're in first class. They pay extra to get bigger seats and more legroom and food and stuff," I told her.
"How much extra?"
"Hundreds of dollars, I guess."
"The food can't be that good," she said.

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We landed in San Diego at 1:30. By 3 P.M. we were in the ocean. By 3:17 P.M. we were in the pool. By 3:46 P.M. we were in the ocean again. It's possible they were a bit overwhelmed. My brother arrived at the hotel a little after 4pm and began throwing them -- literally throwing them -- all over the pool. This did not calm them down at first but contributed to them passing out later, so thank you, Curt.

Thanks to the pool fun and the time difference the kids were almost unconscious by 6:30 P.M. We had to keep them awake, however, because (a) we had arranged for a bonfire and s'mores on the beach at 8; and (b) I didn't want them waking up at 4 A.M. the next morning due to jet lag. The only way to beat the lag is to stay awake, so we did so by taking them to the Coronado Police Station where Curt's girlfriend Kim works as a dispatcher. A nice police officer gave the kids a tour. She showed them booking and let them sit in the back of a police car. She also put Curt and Carlo in the drunk tank.

They looked a little too natural in there, frankly.

The police station gave them enough of a second wind to make it to the bonfire.  We sat in little chairs on the beach next to a roaring fire, made s'mores, watched the stars come out and felt the cool Pacific breezes. We had the setup ourselves for an hour and a half. The kids lasted approximately 27 minutes before crashing. It was the best/worst $100 I ever spent.

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For the next two days we woke up, ate a fantastic breakfast each morning, spent almost all day alternating between the pool, the hot tub and the beach and having a nice dinner someplace. Curt would show up after waking up, throw the kids around the pool more and give me an extra set of eyes so that I could take a kid back to the room if they needed it without having to make the other one come too. Really, that's the most difficult thing about taking your kids on vacation by yourself. Not the travel, not the sleeping arrangements, not the carrying things. It's all about having to make both kids do the same thing at the same time because you can't leave one alone. Did I mention that having Curt around for this was a godsend?

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On Monday night Curt and I took the kids to their first major league baseball game. It was the Rangers vs. the Padres at Petco Park. Jason Marquis started for San Diego and, thanks to a huge park, a Josh Hamilton-free Rangers lineup, cool, heavy marine air socking in the place after sundown and a stiff breeze blowing in from the outfield, the Rangers hitters were fairly helpless against him after the first inning. He somehow struck out ten guys. Carlo now thinks Jason Marquis is a great pitcher. One day I'm going to have to sit him down and tell him the truth about it. May be the hardest thing I'll ever have to do.

The Rangers won 2-1. The kids somehow made it through all nine innings and were into it the whole time, yelling "let's go Padres!" and voicing their annoyance at the umpires at the appropriate times. They also consumed a soft pretzel, a hot dog and a soda each and split most of a bag of peanuts. Carlo added soft serve ice cream in a helmet. Anna wanted the helmet but not the ice cream so Curt ate one and gave her the helmet. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't believe the kids ate a vegetable or a piece of fresh fruit all week. I'm the best dad ever.

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It was 11 PM when we got back from the ballgame. Outside the window of our hotel room we saw little green lights bounding up and down the rocks along the beach and heard men yelling. After a few minutes we figured it out: Navy SEALS training. Hell week. Dozens of soaking wet, freezing cold, totally exhausted SEAL trainees carrying heavy logs and rubber boats above their heads while being run to near death as the guests watch, drinks in hand, from the verandas and balconies of one of the most cushy and luxurious hotels in the country. God bless America.

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Tuesday was the San Diego Zoo. The zoo trip itself was a joy and a success. There was one notable failure, however: I left the sunscreen in the hotel room, which required me to purchase some at the zoo. Ounce per ounce it was only slightly cheaper than weapons-grade plutonium.

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Some time on Tuesday afternoon the kids discovered that the nice lady with the tray would bring them whatever they wanted while they lounge in chairs poolside. The peanut butter and jelly and Capri Sun was not as expensive as the zoo sunscreen, but it wasn't cheap either. Of course, given that I was drinking $8 beers, I didn't have standing to argue. Instead, I took the time to think about how at this rate next year's vacation is going to be someplace more reasonably priced. Like, say, the Maldives, Dubai or on the moon.

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Anna and I were looking out at the ocean on our last morning.

"I don't want to go, Dad."

"I don't either, honey. But that's how you know it was a good vacation," I told her. "It's always better to leave a day too early than a day too late."

"How about we just not leave at all. Why don't we just move here?"

"Thinking like that is another way you know it was a good vacation."


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I spent more on this vacation than I really needed to spend. And yes, I could have made life easier for myself by taking them up to the lake again. But at some point, I reasoned, Anna and Carlo were going to look back at 2012 as the year their parents got divorced and I wouldn't mind them having something they could look back to from around this time that didn't suck. An over-compensation vacation? Yeah, there was probably an element of that at work.

But as we sat in the airport waiting for our flight home on Wednesday afternoon, I asked them about what they liked and what they'll remember from the trip. They went on for nearly an hour:

• They talked about how fun it was to fly on airplanes;
• They talked about palm trees;
• About the smell of the ocean and how great it was to fall asleep listening to the crashing waves;
• About how nice an 82 degree pool is on a sunny 69 degree day;
• About how it probably wouldn't be fun to spend a night in the drunk tank, even in a fancy little town like Coronado;
• About how avocados and freshly squeezed orange juice make every breakfast better (OK, they had a little fruit);
• About how big and beautiful and exciting a major league baseball game is even when it's a 2-1 game and all of the runs were scored in the first inning;
• About pandas at the zoo;
• About In-N-Out Burger and how all shakes should be Neapolitan and all food should be made "animal style;"
• About how freeways are referred to with a definite article ("the 5," "the 163");
• About looking down at aircraft carriers from Point Loma and looking out from the hotel room and hearing the Navy SEALS who -- after my explanation of who they are and what they do -- the kids roughly equate to The Avengers;
• About seeing their Uncle Curt on his home turf and having more than a day in my living room during some brief visit back east to play with him;
• About this strange and exotic land called California which they'd heard of but had never really grokked before now. 

They've only had a few vacations in their life, but they say this was the best one they've ever had.  I've had a lot of vacations in my life, and I know that it was the best one I've ever had.

The Middle

Carlo called to me from his room.  It was about 9pm.  He had been in there since 8:30, but hadn’t fallen asleep yet.  Sometimes he wants water.  Sometimes he wants me to open or close his window.  Tonight, because it was the first night back at my house after five nights at his mom's place, he needed a hug and some assurance.

It’s become a pretty predictable pattern.  He has trouble adjusting back to life in this house after extended time at hers.  I presume it works the same way when he goes back to her place.  It’s anxiety.  A generalized insecurity and discomfort with his surroundings that a sensitive boy who is a creature of habit and who hates change will inevitably experience.  It passes after a day but it always happens.  He’s not able to articulate what it is that’s bothering him exactly, but I have a sense of it.  He’s lost something in between his time at his mom’s and his time here.  He feels in between and uprooted in that middle period and, because he and his sister are the only consistent presences between homes, he feels like they're on their own in some important way.  It’s going on eight months now but shows no signs of stopping.  And every single time it happens it breaks my heart.

Anna is better at dealing with this but she has her own in between too.  Rather than a time and space in which she feels anxiety, she has a time and space in which she can hold on to secrets and experiences for an extra day or two before she feels she has to share them with me.  The details of her time at her mother's place seep out slowly, days after they occur.  In the interim she keeps things to herself, often savoring good things, often mulling things that trouble her, but always having this middle space where she is essentially on her own, mentally speaking.  This is less heartbreaking.  Unlike Carlo, I feel like what Anna is experiencing is more or less typical.  An independence which all kids eventually experience.  The only difference is that she’s getting it earlier than most kids do, it having been imposed on her rather than sought, even if she does find it welcome in some respects.

Eventually everyone has to face the world alone.  Eventually everyone carves out their own bits of autonomy.  It’s part of growing up.  And I know they're loved, cared for and protected wherever they are.

But 6 and 8 feels way too young for that.  When I become aware of them floating in this middle space I feel less like they’re growing autonomous and more like they’ve been left to fend for themselves in some important way, however briefly.

Lunch

Lunchtime. About forty-five minutes ago. Anna and I are at the kitchen table. Carlo is ... well, that's a good question, but he always comes back, usually dirty and sweaty and happy, but that's not important right now.

Anna: Daddy?

Me: What, Anna?

Anna: Would you die if someone chopped you in half?

Me: Almost certainly. Why would you ask me that?

Anna: Just wanted to know.

Me: No one is going to chop you in half, Anna.

Anna: I know. Just wondered ... Maybe if they got really mad at you they would.

Me: No one you know could ever be that mad at you that they would chop you in half.

Anna: Carlo gets mad at me sometimes. Like, really, really mad.

Me: I'm not going to let Carlo chop you in half. Promise.  And I don't think he'd do that anyway. He doesn't get that mad at you.

Anna and I eat our lunch.

Anna: Would you die if someone chopped off the top of your head?

Me: Like, just the top?  How far down from the top are we talking, here?

Anna: [holds her hand at eyebrow level]

Me: Yes, you'd die then because your brain would be gone.

Anna: Yeah, I guess you couldn't live without your brain.

Me: Anna, no one is going to chop the top of your head off.

Anna: I know. I was just wondering.

Anna:  You need your heart and your brain. Have to have both of those, right?

Me: Yes. But I guess you could get a heart transplant or an artificial heart. You have to have some sort of heart, but you can live without the one you have now if you have to if everything goes just right.

Anna: Yeah.

Anna and I eat our lunch. Ryan Adams' Ashes and Fire plays in the background.

Anna: What do people mean when they say you have a "broken heart?"

Me: [thinks about how to answer this].  Well, when people are in love, they say that they can feel it in their heart.  And when that love goes away for some reason, people say that they can feel the pain there too. As if their heart is ... broken.

Anna: [thinks about the answer for a bit]

Anna:  Daddy? Have you ever had a broken heart?

Me: [silently crumbles, silently dies]

Me: Done with lunch, honey?

Anna's PowerPoint Part II

First she did a baseball PowerPoint. Now she has gone after my second obsession: Batman.

I'm starting to get the sense that my own daughter enjoys fucking with me.

Anna's PowerPoint

Anna is learning how to use PowerPoint in school. I told her that I never learned how to use PowerPoint. Which is true. I used to just tell a secretary or a paralegal that I needed a PowerPoint that said blah, blah, blah and it just appeared. Ah, those were the days.

Anna thought this was sad, so she said she would make me a presentation. I had no idea what it was going to be until she was done with it. This is it:

Ain't gonna lie. Kinda proud.

UPDATE: Oh good, there's a second one.

Goin' to California

Place matters a lot to me. I think less about time than I do of places. The years 1995-98 don't always cause something to spring to mind, but Washington D.C. does, and that's how I define those years. Maybe the best year of my youth was 1985, and when I think of it, I think of the weird city block I lived on in Parkersburg, West Virginia that summer more than I think about the things that actually occurred.

I've written before about certain places representing unhappiness for me. Florida, which had always seemed to hold ghosts for me. Interstate 71, which holds dread.  But there are good places too. California is a good place. It always has been.  I haven't spent a lot of time there. Six trips across 15 years or so. But all of them stick with me.

My first trip there was in 1997. My brother was at the end of his second enlistment in the Navy and had been stationed in San Diego. My two best friends from college, Ethan and Todd, had, in the previous two years, moved to San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. We visited all of them and, unwittingly, had pretty much the quintessential California vacation experience: beaches, Hollywood, wine country, San Francisco, strange grad students in Berkeley, the works. Touristy and cliche? Sure. But I fell in love with the place.

In 1998 I was there for a wedding. My love of San Francisco weather hit home on that trip, as I traded muggy gross late-summer Ohio for the cool foggy Bay. Whenever I'm uncomfortable in the summer here, I think about falling asleep in the attic bedroom of the old house in which we were staying in the Berkeley hills, window open, cool breeze coming in, pulling a blanket up to keep the chill off and wishing it could always be that way.

I was back in 1999 for a ski trip. I flew into San Francisco and rode with friends to Lake Tahoe, sharing a car with a guy whose tech company had just gone public. He was a millionaire on paper and spent the entire drive trying to wrap his brain around it all. Looking back, it was such an on-the-nose portrayal of the dotcom bubble days that I sometimes wonder if it was all put on for my benefit.

In 2003 The Great Road Trip wound its way through the Golden State. Some of the most pivotal and meaningful moments of my life and the lives of my friends occurred at that time. Or were in the process of occurring, even if we weren't then aware of it. I learned that I was going to be a father in Los Angeles. I had what may have been the closest thing I've ever had to a real breakdown in a hotel room in Berkeley, but it was followed up immediately with one of the few moments of catharsis I have ever known. I also had two of the handful of moments of pure bliss I've ever had in my life, the first sitting by the San Francisco Bay in Sausalito and the second while laying in the middle of the highway in Death Valley. It's taken me years to unpack all that went down in the two weeks or so I spent in California during that trip, and I still don't think I've unpacked it all.

I was back in 2007 for a short L.A.-San Diego trek, centered around my then recently renewed passion for baseball. Dodgers and Angels games with Todd, Padres games with my brother. Grasping for the first time that maybe, maybe, that could somehow be my life.

The last trip there was 2009. Another wedding. I was filled with optimism at the time. I was deep into negotiations to leave the law and write full time and knew it was only a matter of weeks before that would happen. For the first time we had left our children for more than a day or two -- giving us precious time away together -- and it was going great. One afternoon on that trip, as she took a nap, I sat in a cafe in Calistoga marveling at how well everything was going, thrilled that all of my dreams involving my work, my family and my marriage were within my grasp.

Obviously all of that didn't come to pass. But the fact that I can think of that trip with my ex-wife -- and the particular moment of thought I had in that cafe -- without any hint of sorrow when I still can't think of other times I had with her without a sense of loss and waste says a lot for where I was at the time and how uniquely powerful the place in which I felt those things is to me.

I'm going back on Thursday. To Los Angeles. It's another wedding but, more importantly, it's a weekend with Allison, who I haven't seen in six weeks and who I miss dearly. And it's in California, where everything has always felt right to me, and where I have always felt peace.

Craig Fan Fiction? Sure, why not?

So last August a reader of mine started writing comments over at HardballTalk in which he humorously imagined me pondering the great baseball problems of the day thusly:

I have this image of Craig sitting in a high chair in a front of a fireplace, smoking a pipe (not really, the pipe is expelling bubbles) and the man is dressed in a Braves bathrobe thinking intently in front of Chess set with baseball players as figurines (Braves vs Nationals). Caption: “Why do thee always vex me so?”

Soon after that he expanded the idea into one in which I sit in my "lair," which is some mix between the Bat Cave and the headquarters of a Bond supervillain, smoking that bubble pipe and monitoring the entirety of the baseball world via a huge video monitor and, somehow, controlling things and people and stuff.  Oh, and I had a sidekick: my HBT Daily video host Tiffany, about whom I've written before.

Yes, a little strange, I'll grant you that.  Even stranger when he moved the operation out of my comments section and created an entire "Craig's Lair" blog out of it.  Complete with background facts and stuff. And  the"Craig Signal," pictured above.

I can't say that I fully understand the motivation behind it, but the author, Francisco Colemenares, is harmless enough and the posts haven't gotten creepy or anything (I'll admit that when Tiffany was introduced I worried that it would turn ... weird).  Indeed, they often operate as pretty good satire and kind, subtle mockery of the things I write about over at the blog. And they often make me laugh.

This isn't strange, is it? I sort of think it might be strange. But I guess it's OK too.

Old Business

It's an exaggeration to say that drafting legal documents is all copying and pasting, but not that much of one. At least if you sort of know what you're doing. Make sure you know what you're trying to accomplish, find a good form and pay attention to the local court rules and you're most of the way home.  After substituting "Craig Calcaterra" and "Petitioner" for "State of Ohio" and "Plaintiff," I was on my way to turning my last legal brief -- written in 2009 -- into my divorce petition.

I had been putting it off for a while. For logical reasons mostly. I wanted to have everything settled between us prior to filing rather than make the court have to weigh in, and those negotiations took a little time.

But there was part of me that was procrastinating due to the unpleasantness of the task.  To reducing 16 years of marriage to a pleading, two contracts and a handful of affidavits. Given my complicated relationship with the legal system, doing such a thing seemed like an even greater insult to the memory of my marriage than did its ignominious end.

But I got through it. To be honest, it was easier than I thought it would be. For as much as I disliked it when I was practicing, there is a certain calming ritual to legal writing. To formatting the page just so. To inserting just enough terms of art to make the document accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish without making it unintelligible and jargony. To going back and making sure that your editing didn't cause the numbered paragraphs to be non-sequential. To make sure your Exhibit A is, in fact, what you said it would be in the body of the document.  After a little while I was able to forget that I was drafting the documents that would put an end to my marriage and just think of it as a necessary task.

Married: July 1, 1995 at Beckley, West Virginia ... Residents of Franklin County, Ohio since May 20, 1998 ... two children were born of this marriage ... Petitioners are separated, and have been living apart since October 21, 2011 ... the residence shall remain in the possession of The Husband ... a Shared Parenting Agreement has been entered into ...

After a while the words become secondary to the form and it all washes over you.

When I was done I secured the necessary signatures -- mine, hers, the notary and the witnesses -- and made the necessary copies.  I was left with a neat stack of white paper, properly bound and ready for the clerk's stamp. I put them in my messenger bag and, for the first time in over two years, went to the courthouse.

In some ways it was more emotionally daunting to walk through those courthouse doors. I had a nice bit of catharsis upon my marriage ending and I'm moving on in healthy directions now.  I still feel like I have unfinished business with the law, however. Maybe because I left it instead of the other way around. Whatever the case, I found the few brief minutes I spent there Monday morning mildly unsettling.

As the clerk took the documents and stamped each one, I was waiting for her to give them back and to tell me that they weren't in proper order. To tell me that the local rule I had followed in preparing them had been amended recently and that I needed three more copies, two more signatures and a different kind of fastener because staples were no longer sufficient.  It dawned on me as I was waiting that the two biggest anxieties of my life -- my difficult legal career, complete with all of the little rules that always seemed to vex me, and the deterioration and ultimate failure of my marriage -- had joined forces. I stood there terrified that I'd have to redo the documents and prolong this unpleasant process.

But it all checked out OK.  The clerk handed me back my copies and gave me a slight smile and nod, which is probably as close to a "have a nice day" a person who processes divorce and child custody documents all day can muster.  I took the elevator back down to the lobby and walked out onto the sidewalk.  It was cold, but clear and the air felt clean. I took a deep breath and exhaled, feeling lighter than I had in a long while.

The final hearing is set for March 20. After that, there will be no reason to look backward instead of forward anymore.  And what has so far been a pleasant new morning can grow in to a bright new day, unimpeded by old business.

New Morning

One day last October I wrote something raw and personal. She read it. She sent me a message saying "hey, I know you're gonna be OK, but hit me up if you ever want to talk." So we talked.

I didn't know her that well. We had been vague Internet acquaintances for some time, but not close in any way. But I needed to talk to someone like her.  I had friends helping me deal with what I was going though. I needed those friends to help me recover from the past year and make sense of my new life. I still need them.

But I also needed a friendly voice and ear who wasn't immersed in all of that. Someone with whom I could talk about the present and the future, not the past.  Someone with whom I could, however temporarily, forget about all that was troubling me. Someone with whom I could be myself, whatever that had become.  She quickly became that person.  But as the small talk grew larger, it became clear that something else was going on.

The random coincidences piled up. We shared the same interests. The same humor. The same temperament. So much of the same past. We didn't, as the old cliche goes, complete each other's sentences. We spoke them as the other formed the very thought.  It was all light and casual and friendly on the surface, but I found myself talking to her all night and into the early morning. I found myself thinking about her more and more.

Then one night:

Am I allowed to wonder aloud what's going on here? Or does that ruin it?

I'm glad she said it before I did. It was so soon after my life spun out of control that I didn't know if I trusted myself or my feelings. I didn't know if I was misreading it all.  It turns out I wasn't. And her wondering aloud didn't ruin it. It ignited it.

We spent four days together in Dallas in December. I just got back from spending five days with her in San Antonio. Every time I go away someplace I get a feeling of relief when I come back home. Happy to be back in my own space and in my own bed. For the first time ever I've not felt that same relief upon returning home. Being with her was so comfortable. So natural. I felt at home.

I know all of the objections those who care about me will raise. I'm not ignoring them. I know all of the obstacles we face. I'm not denying them. All that matters to me is that she brought me happiness and joy at a time when I figured I'd never feel those things again and that those feelings have outlasted the initial euphoria that often accompanies something new.

And all I know is that last week, at 6:30 in the morning, I woke up and for a moment and I didn't know where I was. Then she stirred. She wrapped her arm around me and kissed me softly. And nothing ever felt so right.

Shyster: Epilogue

Here ends the little writing project. There were eleven installments before this. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 ,Part 6, Part 7 , Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

I started writing this series for very personal reasons. A lot has happened in my life over the past couple of months. Some terrible. Some -- which I'll be getting to in future posts -- wonderful. I needed a project in which I could immerse myself. I needed to get down in writing what had been floating around my head for a few years. Other events in my life were going to eclipse it and I didn't want it to slip away.

But a funny thing happened as I gazed at my navel: a lot more people have been reading it than I ever thought would. And, apparently, a lot more people are going through the same career angst I went through over the past decade or so.  In the last month I've received several dozen emails from people offering me encouraging words. Thanking me for writing it. Congratulating me on finding my way out of darkness and into light.

Most common, however, are people asking me if I have any advice for them. But even now I can't quite say why it worked out the way it did. I can't, as I am so often asked to do, give anyone any pointers. While it unfolded in somewhat orderly fashion in these posts I wrote over the past month or so, it felt like anything but orderly as it was happening. All I can say is that a writer writes, as the old expression goes, and I made a point to keep writing.

The key, though, is that at a couple of times in that process I stumbled over some good luck.  Better writers than I never get a chance to make a living writing and it's not for lack of skill or lack of effort. It's just for lack of the good fortune I happened upon. Maybe it's silly, but I occasionally have something akin to survivor's guilt over the fact that I've been able to make this my career while those better writers did not or, as of yet, have not.

I also sometimes wonder if I have cost myself something for going so hard after what I wanted.

As I wrote a couple of months ago, my marriage is ending. I'm not going to suggest that my writing is the cause of that. Anyone who knows what actually happened with my marriage knows that's not the case.  But at the same time, every action has a reaction. People are creatures of habit and routine.  Who's to say that my refusal to be content with my professional life as a lawyer didn't upset the expectations of others? Who's to say that in doing what I did with my life, I didn't throw off my marriage's equilibrium, even if that equilibrium was ultimately unhealthy and unsustainable? Maybe my soon-to-be-ex-wife had settled on a world view in which I would go downtown and fight with other lawyers all day for the next 30 years, and my short-circuiting that was something she simply couldn't deal with anymore.  Maybe my search for meaning and fulfillment spurred a corresponding one on her part and it simply wasn't compatible with us staying together.  I have no idea. You have to ask her, I suppose.

The point of all of this is that, even though I laid all of this out as the straightforward narrative of a boy who made his childhood dream come true, nothing in life is so simple.  There are no definitive paths. There are no definitive beginnings. There are no definitive ends until the day we die. I'm doing this now. I wasn't doing it before. I may be doing something else later. As all of that happens, other things happen. People come into your life and then leave. Others come into your life after that and, hopefully, stay. Those dreams you had once no longer hold currency. New ones crop up. No clear narrative of anyone's life can be written until they're dead and gone.

But what I've written over these past couple of months captures a chunk of it. An important chunk of it and one that will always be with me. And no matter where else life takes me, I will be able to draw on these experiences. To look back and say:

You once dreamed something big and made it happen.  You once had big problems and overcame them.  You once took risks that seemed unreasonable, but survived them.  There is nothing you put your mind to that, with time, effort, perseverance and a little luck, you can't accomplish. And even if that luck doesn't come, you will be able to look yourself in the mirror with pride for having made the effort.

Thanks for hanging around for all of this. Now forward ho.