Three of my kids, if I hadn’t made it clear in the previous posts here, are not in my house for the summer.  In order for me to work for a living through the summer, someone has to watch my children so my parents, without my even having to ask, take them to their home for the summer.  It’s a lot of work, time, effort, and I’m incredibly blessed that they want to do it for me.

Doobie Brothers in Lincoln, CA

This weekend was a pretty spectacular one, as weekend adventures go, though.  It started with a concert in the small suburb of Lincoln.  Saw the Doobie Brothers, 43 years into their career, and they sounded better than I saw them more than 20 years ago.

Then I went to the local chapter of television Emmy awards.

Then came Sunday.

After I got home from San Francisco, where the awards were held, my oldest daughter, Abbi, was waiting at home with baited breath for me.  She had a present she’d been holding for weeks to give me.  I got home, after my fun weekend, and inside was a new phone case and a coffee cup (I live on caffeine) with all the kids’ pictures on them.  I know that may seem like a typical Father’s Day gift, but it had special meaning for me since it came from my kids without any parental influence to give it to me.

I then spent the afternoon having an insanely unhealthy and delicious hamburger for dinner and then went and saw the new Superman movie.  All of it came from my daughter, who refused to let me pay and used money from her own paycheck to foot the bill.  I was more proud than you can possibly imagine.  It’s hard, as a parent, as a Dad, to let your kids do something for you.  But I remember trying to do it for my own father and how uncomfortable he was allowing me to pay for an expensive dinner.  That in turn made me uncomfortable.  It wasn’t either of our faults, that’s just how we’re wired, we take care of the kids, not the other way around.  I wasn’t going to let Abbi feel that way, so I took the day with great pleasure.  It was a good meal, good conversation, and a great movie.

With Abbi

Father’s Day had far more adventures I won’t chronicle here, as did the weekend.  Still…I am both thankful and – in a word I don’t often use – blessed to be surrounded by such amazing people that let it all happen.

Little Abbi

When she was little . . . and I do mean tiny, little, toddler of a kid, my daughter Abbi was all there was in the house.  We lived in a tiny little place, an old Craftsman home on 50th street in Omaha, Nebraska.  You may have no idea what a Craftsman home is, but the name actually does give it all away.  Craftsman is a Sears brand.  It’s more well-known now for being maker of unbelievably good tools with a lifetime warranty.  That wasn’t always the case, though.

Craftsman homes were just that: homes you could buy out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog.  There were usually a few different styles, a few different sizes, and you ordered it.  The lumber, blueprints, and instructions arrived on the train and you picked up the pieces of your home like a giant’s box of Tinkertoys.  Our home was one such, a small 2-bedroom place that we knew was a Craftsman because it had markings on the floor joists, visible from the basement.

At this time I worked for the NBC station in Omaha and had a screwy schedule that had some nights and every Saturday.  My days off were Sunday and Monday.  Even when they made me a photographer/producer and I was putting stories together and writing them they wouldn’t shift me from that weekend shift.  I complained, I moaned, but in secret I didn’t really try that hard to get off the shift.

Mondays, you see, were Abbi/Daddy day.  Every Monday was an adventure, just for the two of us.  Abbi and I would do something, usually nothing big, but to a little tiny girl of 2 and 3 and 4 . . . that was adventure.  We went to Omaha’s Memorial Park and flew a kite.  We walked to the park – not the one by our house but a bigger one farther away.  We visited her mother, while on rotations, at the pharmacy in the old, classy Dundee area of town.  We went to Leahy Mall and fed the ducks on the pond and went down the big, permanent slides installed there.

Inevitably we ended up at what is no longer the amazing ice-cream parlor in Omaha’s Old Market call Ted and Wally’s.  Abbi would get vanilla ice-cream in a cone…I would get malted milk flavor or butterscotch or something rich and delightful.  They made their waffle cones by hand and you could see the waffle irons and smell them cooking in the building as you walked in.  It was amazing and we went there almost every Monday.  It was our routine.

Today my other 3 kids left the house to spend summer in Nebraska with my folks.  It’s a necessary migration as I have to work over the summer and cannot do so with nobody to watch the kids.  I wish they didn’t have to but they do and it’s an amazingly kind thing of my parents to do.  Watching 3 kids after you’ve already raised 3 of your own is no small gift and they’ve done it with no complaints and assumed the mantle of duty like it’s part of daily life.  I got updates via text all day about where they ate; the salt devils (rather than dust devils) spouting up from the winds on the salt flats; and where they stopped for the night.  It was a long day and my kids got out and ran outside the motel over and over and over again to burn off energy they were storing up in the car.

That left Abbi and I in the house, alone, tonight.  I got home, and though I hadn’t planned it . . . we went to eat, just the two of us . . . like an Abbi/Daddy day all over again.  We had spaghetti; we drank iced-tea; we had long conversations – more mature, sure, than the ones when she was 4, but you know what?  I always thought the conversations that tiny little girl had with me were amazing.  She saw the world in such wondrous ways and thought the things around her were amazing.  She asked a million questions.

When we walked or drove in the car or did anything, Abbi would sing.  She always had a tune in her head.  She sang, hummed, babbled, all of it on-key and all of it brilliant.  Her grandfather on her mother’s side used to go nuts because Abbi would always sing.  Her teachers would chastise her because she’d sing as she took a test…unaware she was doing it.

Abbi as a baby

Tonight we ate, drove home, had amazing little cupcakes for dessert and watched How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn in it.  On the way up the stairs to go to bed I heard it: Abbi was singing again…an old Doobie Brothers song, just like when she was little.  People marveled at how she sang Black Water from their ’70s record at the age of 4, but she did it.  Tonight I was smiling, knowing that part of me was a bit sad the other kids were gone, but loving every minute of one of my last Abbi/Daddy days like a blast from the past.

I don’t mean the migration of birds from North to South.  I don’t mean the 17-year phenomenon of cicadas popping out of the ground on the East Coast, either.

No, the migration I’m speaking of is my children migrating East for the summer.

The migration is actually something that’s happened since I moved, about eight years ago, to California.  My parents always wanted to see the kids for a period over the summer so the girls, initially, would stay with my folks for a period of weeks.  Usually 2-3 weeks.

The kids in the leaves

During those initial years here in California I looked forward to the migration.  I wanted to take the opportunity to get work done, the house kept up, things fixed.  I also always wanted to take the time to do things with my wife and re-kindle some of the missing pieces of our relationship that slipped away when four kids were running around the house.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t enjoy herself.  Having the kids away just tore her up and she wouldn’t take the time, go out, visit places…all the things I do now she wouldn’t do then.

At that time the longest amount of time we spent away from the kids was a month and that was too long, in Andrea’s opinion.

Two years ago, though, Andrea passed away.  She died in March and by May the kids were out of school.  I had taken a new job in order to have fewer hours and a flexible schedule to care for the kids when they needed it.  However, with a new job comes no vacation time and little flexibility for time off at first.  The result was the fact that my kids traveled to Nebraska with my folks for the entire summer.  I visited, and we spoke every night.  Sort of an electronic tucking-in.

That’s been the pattern.  This will mark the 3rd summer my kids leave the home . . . except this year my oldest, Abbi, is staying to prep for college.  It’s a major change in a year of change.

My girls…Hannah on the left, Abbi on the right

I’ll put it this way: the 2nd year for us without Andrea was a testament to how strong we are together.  My grandmother, whom the girls knew and loved, passed away first.  Then Andrea’s father, who became totally and unexpectedly ill, passed away from aggressive cancer. That was January and February.

Now my oldest is a high school graduate while her sister graduated 8th grade.  My boys are moving schools due to the loss of Abbi as a driver for the afternoon.  It also was a necessity to save money by leaving the Catholic school, I just didn’t have the cash to continue.

So tomorrow morning, at 5am, my kids will jump in the van with my folks . . . and drive many, many states to Nebraska and spend the next two months in Nebraska.  I envy them to one degree, as I loved growing up there . . . and I’m melancholy because in a year of change it’s going to be hard without them.  As they’ve grown older, their company has become more incredible.  Their humor, their intelligence, their interests . . . it’s like little new pieces of mindful interest swirling around.  It’s pretty amazing.  I’ll miss that stimulation.

So I go to sleep now, exhaustion overwhelming me, and plan on getting up insanely early to take in what time I can.  The trip is a necessity as it allows me to work, and I envy the experiences and fun the kids will have.

But part of me will miss having the fun with them, too.

The upside . . . I still have my daughter, Abbi, to share the summer.

The mailman, in the 106 degree heat, hand-delivered the box labelled “vinyl record, fragile” to the door.

“Who’s the record collector,” the mailman asked my visiting mother?  ”My son,” she told him, “he has a lot.”
“Me, too,” said the mailman, who said he used to work for a distributor in the days when vinyl was king.  Now he delivers them to the proud few who listen to the needle and groove in the mail.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I still listen to and have vinyl in my household.  But I don’t do it because of the reasons so many people do.  It’s not because vinyl is so much more vivid and dynamic than an iPod.  (That’s true, though, by the way)  It’s not because vinyl has a richer tone and many of the old albums were mixed for vinyl, not iPod or CD.  (That’s true, too, by the way, and also why so many sound odd on CD or iPod)  It’s not even because it’s the cool, hipster vibe that gets people to cringe at you when you arrive with your massive bushy beard reminiscent of a member of the 5th infantry division of the US Cavalry displayed in a Ken Burns Civil War episode.  No, I don’t do it for shock value or crazy indignant ego.  

Vinyl is an experience.

I put it that way because it, too, is true.

Years ago, before my oldest daughter was born, a mere twenty-odd years ago, there was a record by Tom Petty called “Full Moon Fever” that was released.  If you bought the album on CD there was a weird sort of no-man’s-land in-between tracks where Petty, in a joking, snarky comment, says “ATTENTION CD LISTENERS!  We’ve reached the point in Full Moon Fever where listeners who were enjoying on a record or cassette would have to get up, go across the room and then flip over to listen to side to of said record or cassette.  Out of respect for them we give them a few moments to do so.”  The CD then sits, weird background noise ringing for a bit, and then “now side 2 of Full Moon Fever.”

This gives you part of what music on records was and is for me.  It’s not a record, it’s part of your life, it’s an experience.  Vinyl isn’t just vinyl…it’s part of your life, and experience you lived.  I remember saving up money and going to the store to flip through the new releases, looking for that one record, that one musical experience, that I’d been dying to hear.

As a little boy my Dad worked in a chain store much like Target or what have you.  He’d get first crack as the LP’s came out, I guess, because he came home with new music a lot.  When I was little I remember going to a store in a larger town and buying an entire stereo system that we then took home and hooked up.  After that, my father bought new records as they came out.

I remember the day he brought home Fly Like an Eagle by the Steve Miller Band.  We put it on the turntable and listened to it.  I spent weeks walking around singing “tick, tock, tick doo doo doo doo!”  I stared at the photo of Miller, face invisible, covered by hair, playing a left-handed Fender Stratocaster.  I was enamored.

When Hotel California came out we took it out and put it on the turntable.  The opening salvo of the twelve-string guitar filled the room.  It had a gate-fold album cover with an atypical Los Angeles scene, a hotel on the cover, and the neon sign you only pictured as a little kid must be what LA looks like.

A new record was an experience from the beginning.  You went to the alphabetical bins filled with records.  You flipped through the albums there, looking for bands you knew.  You made it to the one you wanted, bought it, got home, and couldn’t wait to tear the cellophane off and see the artwork and the label.

When I was a teenager STYX had a record called Paradise Theater that had an amazing artistic representation of what the same said theater looked like in the heyday and what it looked like, decrepit, dying, just before it was torn down.  Inside you got the lyrics and screamed along with Tommy Shaw as he said he had “too much time on my hands.”  But the capper: the laser-inscribed cherubs that bordered the edges of the actual vinyl…rainbow shadows enhanced by the light, the only things decorating one side of the vinyl.  For effect, they removed the record label from that side so it was all-black but for the laser etching.  The other side had the listings of the songs for both sides of the LP.

My favorite, though . . . was by the Alan Parsons Project.  The album is universally ignored, not critically well-received, and I loved it.  It’s very ’80s, it’s very keyboard-centric, and it’s an odd high-concept album.  But the album artwork . . . it’s AH-MAY-ZING!  If you were lucky enough, as I was, to get a copy of one of the first pressings it was an album that was encased in a PVC cover that was then wrapped in cellophane.  Take off the plastic and the PVC was blue on the front . . . red on the back.  All the front said, in seemingly green letters, was “The Alan Parsons Project” on the top and “Stereotomy” on the bottom.  The back had an odd, crystalline design and nothing else.  Open the flap and take out the album cover, though, and the front is gibberish with a larger design in red and blue.  The back showed the actual track listings.  The album used the old 3D glasses effect to erase portions so you could only see them with the PVC cover on.  It was radical, had to be expensive, and just…so…cool!

This is the experience.  The act of taking the vinyl out, flipping it over and over again in your hands, and putting the center hole onto the spindle of the turntable.  You smelled the vinyl and the cardboard on the records.  You read the liner notes as the record started to play.  After all that, even, you played the record and you were cognizant of the music flowing through your room.  When it stopped, you got up, moved across the room, and moved flipped the record.  You cleaned it to remove the dust and grime, pulled over the needle. . . and you listened to the other side.

I have most of my record collection at home.  I have more new vinyl I’ve purchased.  I’m no throwback, I have an iPhone.  I listen to music in the car, on the iPod, I use it when I exercise in the mornings.  But music is meant to be experienced.  To that end…my kids tend to pick vinyl over CDs or the iPod when we choose music for the evening.  They look at the album covers.  The latest one by Rush has each side of each record is a clock…showing the album side from 1 to 4 by showing the time on a clock…for the album Clockwork Angels.  Others have clear or colored vinyl.  I have jazz…a Dave Brubeck small microgroove LP from Record Store Day that is all red see-through vinyl.  The music is amazing and the vinyl looks like a clear old 78rpm record.  It’s meant to tell a story before you ever put the needle on the groove and hear the first notes: this is a history lesson to what music was, can be, and should be.  It’s from the ’78 era but re-thought by Brubeck for the then 20th century.

We are missing the experience today.  Kids, sure, listen to music and go to concerts.  Still, in an era where auto-tune is the norm and perfection is the preference, isn’t it amazing that four kids in a California household will listen – voluntarily – to a vinyl record.  There are pops, hisses, the occasional skip and none of it is auto-tuned.  I have new acts, like the Black Keys and OK Go along with my old Brubeck, Miles Davis, Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and Allman Brothers.  Tedeschi Trucks mixed a version for vinyl and then added free digital download of the “mixed for iTunes” version.  It’s brilliant.

As Jimi Hendrix so aptly asked . . . “but first, are you ex…perienced?”  I have to ask you, before you call me a fuddy-duddy, or old, or grumpy or just too set in my ways…have you ever been experienced?  Well…I have.

By upside-down, I mean not just for me or that there’s a ton of work, it’s that my kids go to their version of summer camp.  Difference is, it lasts all summer long and I get more benefit out of it than the kids, I think.

Our new house, after we moved in.

Beginning in 2011, out of necessity, my folks picked up all four of my kids and drove them to Nebraska – where I grew up – for the summer.  Now, before you criticize, if you had planned on it, bear in mind that this was not a punishment.  It wasn’t something that was a foregone conclusion, either.  Just over two years ago I was in a frenzy of trying to figure out what I was going to do for the summer.  My oldest daughter, Abbi, was only 16.  My twin sons, Noah and Sam, had just turned 8.  My middle child, Hannah, was 11.

The bigger issue was the fact that those four kids had just lost their mother.  The entire structure, the basic molecular bond of our family was broken.  While she wasn’t the only glue holding together our atoms it didn’t change the fact that somehow they’d been split anyway.  it would have been very easy for our whole family to blow in a burst of energy equivalent to a blast on some Bikini Island atoll.

Instead, thanks to the structure, help, and encouragement of my parents, we got through the first few months.  Eventually summer came, my folks needed to get home to their own lives, and we all came to the realization that I still needed to work.  I was forced to change jobs, lost my house, moved into a rental home and was working out getting my oldest daughter into a different school.  I had no vacation time and my home life was nothing like it had been.

Change.  Lots and lots of radical, unintended change and consequences.  That’s what we faced.

In Nebraska last year. By Hunny Bee Photography’s Amy Renz-Manoucheri

But the change was a good change.  Well…not all of it.  I wouldn’t, two years ago, have considered losing my wife a good change.  But the major difficulties we had to face after losing her . . . those ended up being far more positive than we expected.

The kids, in need of structure, routine, and a calm environment got it that first year.  My Mom is the epitome of structure and routine.  That first year the kids and I needed routine.  So for the summer, and last summer as well, my kids got to spend the summer months in a small town.  As a little kid that’s amazing.  They spent tons of time outside.  My Mom had a blow-up pool and bicycles and 3 acres of land to run around in.  They did projects, went to the county museum, and played cowboys and indians outside in the acres of land free of cars, people or rattlesnakes.

It’s brilliant and part of me is a bit jealous they get to do it.  Still, I get to continue working without the minute-by-minute worry the kids are home alone.  It also kept my oldest, Abbi, from having to grow up too soon and act like she is their mother-figure at the age of 16.  That was priceless.

So this year only 3 of the 4 go to Nebraska.  Abbi is working to make some more money for college.  I am working because I took most my time off.  I get to have a couple months with my oldest, like when she was the only child in the house.

Some may criticize and ask how I can let my children go for so long without seeing them.  The difference is, this works for us.  Without doing this, what damage could I be doing to them?  Would they feel alone?  Abandoned? Left to fend for themselves?  I don’t know.  The reality is technology is amazing.  Apple’s FaceTime app lets me see them and tuck them in every night.  Text messages, emails, Facebook, IM . . . all that helps to stay connected.  Is it the physical presence?  No.  Is it worth it to make sure they’re well adjusted?

Yes.

And it works for us.

Hannah at her graduation

My two daughters, one 18, one 13, had graduations on the same day.  One was 8th grade, the other was high school.  Where the 8th grade seemed to have a ceremony that rivaled some of the weddings I’ve attended, my oldest seemed to get a bit short shrift in the process.

The reason for this is the fact that we couldn’t have people come over to celebrate her graduation before the ceremony because her sister had an 8th grade graduation that was nearly as long as a high school one.  A salutatorian; a valedictorian; awards; honors; the longest of the process was the fact there was a full Catholic mass before it all.  I had relatives inform me their college graduations weren’t as elaborate.

But no . . . as Hannah, my 13-year-old’s graduation ended, we had to race to the house.  My late wife’s mother, who is quite ill, wanted desperately to attend both graduations.  Unfortunately, her health and condition are so frail that one was all we knew we could muster for her, and since her daughter now cares for her, it was likely all she could muster, too.  I sent them to the house prior to the ceremony ending so that Abbi, my 18-year-old, could get pictures in her robe and hat with her grandma.

These are the decisions, steps, and consequences you have to face in these situations.

I had to tell my middle daughter, as well as the parents around me, that while I was very proud of Hannah and the fact she’d accomplished moving to high school . . . it really was just her 8th grade graduation.  That wasn’t easy for some to hear, including Hannah.

But I look at what her sister endured as well.  I moved Abbi to another school 2 years into high school.  New school, new friends, new classes, new way of doing things, and a co-ed environment for the first time in her hormonal teenage years.  Not just a move to a new school, either, but a huge new school.  Hard as it was, she managed to get through without killing anyone or me.  That seemed a major accomplishment to me.

So you prep…I got stuff for sandwiches.  I got beer, wine, pop, and a nice cake.  All of it . . . in the hopes that the day wasn’t too insane.  The reality was, if I hadn’t prepared for it all we’d have had a house full of people and no food or place for them to sit.  In the end, though, it was in the low 90s for temperature.  I had to sit with Hannah and her brother in the heat.  Apparently parents, in an effort to get seats, started camping at the gate to the stadium in the morning before they opened.  We couldn’t have done that, we had an 8th grade graduation to attend.  In the end, I had 3 open seats.  Hannah, Sam (one of the 10-year-old twins) and I sat and I had to send Abbi’s grandparents and Noah (the other twin) home.  There was no place for them to sit.

Here’s where I look at the next steps.  Abbi is really one of the most amazing young women I know – and it’s not simply because she’s my daughter.  At her graduation everybody seemed to get a speech.  Some were decent.  One was fantastic.  Most the speeches by the graduating kids, though, went along the lines of “remember that time, when we were at the volleyball game and (insert name here) told everyone he was (insert crazy antic here)?!”  I wanted to get up and shout “NO!  Because 99% of us either didn’t go to the volleyball game or hang out with 18-year-olds!”

See, my daughter’s already looking to college.  She’s a little sad because she’s leaving home, and in the last two years we’ve become an even stronger family.  Doesn’t matter that the family is one short of what it was two years ago. Maybe it’s because she wasn’t part of the 4-year-transition into adulthood many of them were.  Maybe it’s because she’s not from California.  Or maybe, just maybe, she’s seeing this for what it is: not a reason to look back with sadness but forward with anticipation.

So many wanted to re-live events that only a handful of people experienced anyway.  But the ones who look to what’s coming; the ones who want to learn about things, not just memorize them or read them are the ones who are soaring to the front of the line.  Abbi’s already thinking about the next step.

And to get there, we have all that stuff to deal with, too.  No, I’m not as sad as some think I should be.  Part of that is because Abbi’s here for a couple more months.  Part of that, too, is that there’s still so much to do.  We have to have towels, mirror, sheets, pillows, laundry baskets, books, computer, and such.  She’s already looked at and filled out the housing information for her school.  We’ve looked at whether she’ll need a car.

This weekend I also looked at the holidays she’ll be able to come home.

You have to understand, graduation was more than looking at what happened and shouting, screaming, and wailing “oh, it’s all gone!”  I feel like we’re doing too much of that too early, anyway.  Hannah’s getting the message that 8th grade – which to a person in my family and sphere of influence none of the people around me even remember 8th grade or if they got a graduation – is the same caliber of transition as high school to college.  It’s not.  Hannah is still the hormonal, grumpy, tomboyish 13-year-old that she’ll be in two months.  I have to set her up for high school, too, but this isn’t the next major step for her.

Hannah has me here to help her and to catch her when she falls.  For her older sister, though, it’s different.  Abbi’s literally 1 year younger than I was when I met my wife.  That both excites and scares me.  I met and married too young, I think, even though I was happy for the most part.

Hannah gets her father’s arms to hold and catch her, immediately, when things go wrong for the next four years.  She may not want them, but they’ll be here anyway.  Just because she will.  Abbi will always have me . . . but she’ll be living on her own, more or less, from August onward, and that’s a major transition.

The bright side is, having seen what’s happened and how she’s dealt with these last two years . . . she’s ready for the next step.  That eases the blow of watching her grow up so quickly.

The Graduate

The one thing I hadn’t remembered, either, was how much has to be done in order to get to graduation.  I thank the heavens above that my graduation was on a Sunday – usually Mother’s Day.  Family can attend that way.  The day is centered around it, sure, and my Mom didn’t get a Mother’s Day, but still…it was a weekend.  My two daughters, on the other hand, graduate on a Friday.  This Friday.  Add to that the fact that Hannah’s middle school graduation is at three in the afternoon and I am burning vacation days I need for summer and for taking my high-school graduate, Abbi to college in August.

But the necessities: there’s a cake.  There’s food for the guests.  There’s fire wood for the outside fire pit in case a lot of people show up or just want to go outside.  There’s pop…there’s beer and wine…there’s food.  Fruit plates and sandwich trays . . . all of that have to be completed.

That’s just for the day of.

Then there’s the whole cleaning the house thing.  That would be a much easier accomplishment if the four people in said house actually helped to clean up the house.  Instead what I found when I got home was a pile of clothes on my bed – the same bed I’m trying to strip and clean so my parents can sleep there.  I still cannot get into Hannah’s (my 13-year-old) room due to the crap she’s scattered everywhere.  That I need to do tomorrow so I can put the bunk bed back on the top of her bed set so Abbi has a place to sleep.

Then there’s the cleaning.

My threat to Hannah, my middle, has been that if she couldn’t clean up her bathroom and I mean really clean it, I’m cutting off her hair.  Instead, I spent more than a half hour just cleaning the toilet.  That’s right.  The toilet.

Now, I get the fact that her two brothers share the bathroom with her.  I also get that little boys aren’t always the best at aiming for the bowl when they should.

But the boys don’t have certain other bodily fluids that seem to coat the underside of the toilet lid, either.  (That’s right, I went there.  I could have been far more graphic, so deal with it!)  I also found her hair . . . tons and tons of it . . . on the floor, pasted to the toilet, in the tub, clogging the drain, and just everywhere.  She cleaned off her hair brush and threw the hairball on the floor next to the tub.  (Why she would do that instead of near the mirror in the other room is beyond me.)  I found panty liner wrappers on the floor . . . 6 inches away from the waste basket.

So I cleaned, for an hour, the bathroom there because it was late and I needed it clean for my parents coming in.  I came downstairs and there are pans from dinner . . . everywhere.  Never mind that the dishwasher was already dirty.  Abbi used a cooler for some pot luck in her school and left it . . . open and drying . . . on the kitchen table.

So yeah . . . I’m burned out, exhausted, living on caffeine, and just plain aggravated at the four knuckleheads that live in my home.

Then I look at the next few months: bed sheets, towels, mirror, books, computer, clothes, laundry basket, dorm costs, food costs . . . and the overwhelming sensation takes over again.

So I look to my two and say “get graduating already,” and realize that the work’s far from over even after that.

Then I go back upstairs and get out the vacuum, because I’m not even at Friday yet . . . and I still can’t get the sheets off my bed.

My frustration with this comes at the end of the week.  My two daughters, you see, are graduating.  One graduates high school itself, a major accomplishment, a touchstone of life that you set in the roadway as a mile marker in your life.  Abbi, my 18-year-old, has had a rough high school life.  At her mother’s insistence, we put her in St. Francis High School, a private, all-girls school in Sacramento.  The idea at the time was that her mother would take on some extra work from a project at one of the universities to pay for the tuition.  Since Andrea was not working 40 hours a week at the time, we’d be able to swing that.

But then Andrea never took on the extra work.  That in and of itself was hard enough.  The bigger issue came when Andrea became ill and had to go on short term disability until we could get her liver surgery finished.

Then, two years ago, Andrea passed away.

Abbi at her baccalaureate mass

Abbi wanted to stay with her friends in the small, private school.  However, with tuition rivaling that of the out-of-state fees that some major universities charge, I was unable to make that happen.  We had to take her out and put her in the public school.  In the age of social media and constant-connection, Abbi couldn’t let that break be a clean one.  She was constantly getting texts and emails and Facebook and Twitter messages about how hard it was without her.  She saw pictures of the friends moving on without her.  Eventually – and it took an entire semester – she had to make a clean break or she was going to lose it.

Moving to a new school as a junior where people have already made their social connections and friendships is difficult at best.  Some days it was nigh impossible.  She got through the two years and it was difficult.  At the end of the day, though, moving out of the school that had so many memories and lessons from her Mom allowed Abbi to become who she wanted, not the Abbi her Mom thought she should be.  If Andrea were alive she’d be having heart failure due to the fact Abbi was going into the arts and not medicine – something that made money over happiness.

So this is a major accomplishment for Abbi, to get through four years at two different schools.  Her high school sets the date for their graduation and their ceremony time years – literally years – in advance.

So imagine my consternation when my middle daughter, Hannah, is graduating 8th grade on the exact same day.  Where I graduated on a weekend so family and friends could attend . . . my kids’ is on a Friday.  Hannah’s in the middle of the afternoon.  Abbi’s at 7pm, but you have to be there early to get a seat.  It’s back again to the planning . . . Abbi’s school had their date set for more than a year.  Still…Hannah’s set theirs the exact…same…day.  Now instead of attending one and then the other – so that their families and even Andrea’s mom, who is very ill, can go to both – now they have to choose.

I understand you can’t settle every date and make everyone happy.  But now I have to scramble to run from graduation to graduation.  My 8th grade grad?  I had a mass at the Catholic school I attended.  We had a few people over and then we ate dinner and I went to bed.  Hannah’s?  It’s an event with a photo booth and seating charts.  It’s more involved than her sister’s – which is an actual high school graduation.

I felt bad when I had to tell Hannah she couldn’t go to the dinner/celebration/event because – and this sounds cold, I know – it’s simply and 8th grade graduation.  I wasn’t going to ignore her sister’s 12 year accomplishment to celebrate Hannah going from awkward teenage years in middle school to . . . more awkward teenage years in high school.  I honestly remember very little of my middle school years.  I do remember a lot about high school.

So double trouble has hit.  We’re celebrating both kids – at our home – after the second one graduates that evening.  In the end, it’s probably best anyway.

What and who matter most are our family . . . and we’re stronger together than when we’re apart.  And we’ll all be there.

In the summer of 2008, just three years before my wife, Andrea, passed away, I jumped head first into a series of military stories.  In fact, consequences be damned, I embedded with an Air Medical Wing out of Travis Air Force Base that flying into a war zone.  My wife was beside herself.  I’d done this kind of thing once before, by the way.  Over New Year’s in 2002, I flew to Israel to report on a country that deals with terrorism every day.  Again, I had no thought to the consequences or damage to my family this would do, I just did it.

But let me be perfectly clear here.  I was never in any danger.  Not really.  In Israel there was an armistice between the Palestinians and the Israelis over the New Year.  I had even set up stories in Gaza City (which we never did get to shoot – long story) and were set up to safely head in there.

But the trip out of Travis . . . that was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and not because of any combat.  I saw no combat, never even came close.  It was amazing because of the types of people I met through the entire trip.

The initial stages of the trip were set to take us overseas and into Baghdad.  At the last minute the trip was changed to Bagram Air Field.

I felt like I needed to go on this trip because, at the time, no one had told this story.  Every week – to this day, I believe – a crew of six Air Force Reservists get on a plane for an exhausting six-day mission into whatever theater is active.  In 2008 we had two active military operations going on, one in Iraq, and the one where we were headed, Afghanistan.

The six-day mission that they fly is to go overseas and pick up wounded soldiers.  That’s what these people do.  They start at the air base here in the US and get equipment together.  We flew in a C-17 and stopped first on the East Coast.  Getting off the plane you notice you’re parked adjacent to Air Force 1 and 2 – planes that are reserved for the President and Vice President.  They spend one night there in base housing and then, early in the morning, the plane takes off with gear loaded on for Landstuhl, Germany.  The US Air Base there houses one of the greatest hospitals the military has in service and all the service men, unless in dire, horrible need, will end up there if wounded.

We landed and rather than sleep, the men and women immediately began unloading equipment from the plane for the medical personnel and the base in Germany.  We began shooting interviews.

I met a man who said if it weren’t for the hospital and the personnel there he wouldn’t have made it.  He was humble, he was happy, and he was thankful to the people at the hospital.  This man had just been wounded a couple weeks prior, had months of rehab in front of him, and he was calling the people who flew him out of Baghdad heroes.

Inside the hospital I met doctors and nurses.  One nurse told me how they do whatever they can to help the men and women coming into their hospital because they’re heroes.  They fought for their country and were injured in the line of duty.  One man lost his legs and was heavily sedated.  He woke up maybe a dozen times and each time she had to tell him, all over again, that he’d lost his legs.  Each time the soldier had a different reaction and the nurse cried – a lot – that day.

When we flew into Bagram the pilots all but did a nosedive, in the dark, no lights on in order to avoid the possibility of insurgents firing at the plane.  We landed more comfortably than any flight I’ve had on an airline.  The men and women on the base volunteered, like an honor guard, to pull the wounded soldiers off the bus and gently put them onto the plane.  The C-17 on which we rode had been converted into a flying hospital, the equivalent of an ICU at each bed.

We left the war zone after being on the ground two hours.  That’s it.  Two hours, on base, never going outside Bagram.  I was safe, these men and women had obviously been in combat zones.  One man had to have a piece of his skull removed to relieve pressure and the doctors sewed it into his abdominal cavity in order to preserve it so they could place it back on his head.  One man told a story of a sergeant he’d met in the US before deployment, a big old farm boy.  He joked “when I get hit on the battlefield I want you to carry me off.”  When the man was injured…that sergeant was there and literally carried him out of harm’s way.  He was taken via blackhawk to Bagram.  We were on the plane taking him to Germany.

The military credits these missions – the midnight flight into the air base; the quick response and flight back to Germany – as the reason so many men and women have survived this current war.

But the amazing thing to me is the fact that, to a person, not a soldier, not a combat veteran, not a nurse, load master, pilot or mechanic would take the title of “hero”.  The soldiers called the medics and doctors heroes.  The doctors and nurses blushed and refused that saying the men and women risking their lives were heroes.

To me, they all are.  I was a slouch stumbling around their work getting pictures.  They were doing actual work, and it was amazing.

As exhausting as the trip was, there’s no doubt it’s more so for the soldiers and airmen who go on this mission.  Even more impressive . . . they all say they’re honored when they see they are on this rotation.

So even though it’s been five years . . . I still send along my honor and pleasure for having been able to tell their story.  It’s Memorial Day, and these are the heroes we should all honor today.

Then this song came up, between the typically played ones.

Bear in mind…this is Floyd, a normally dark, insanity-laden group with great writing, deep lyrics.  Much of their stuff has a tinge of sorrow and longing in it.  This song is no different.

But it seemed strangely apt for me.

Where were you…when I was burned and broken.
While the days slip by, from my window watching
Where were you, when I was hurt and I was helpless
Because the things you do and the things you say surround me
While you were hanging yourself on someone else’s words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the rising sun.

It’s not a very subtle metaphor for you here, I get that.  Still…subtlety isn’t always the best policy.  I think it’s good I didn’t hear this song when I was at my worst, in the peak of sadness and grief.  Most people have never lost someone this way and I truly don’t wish that on anyone.  The thing is . . . I can’t even tell my kids that I understand what they’re going through.  Their grandparents can.  Their Aunt can, to a degree.  But my loss is different.  We can relate in loss but we can’t dwell in the same space.  They lost their mother, and that’s cold, hard, and difficult.  The warmth, the softness, the silly, smiling truth that a Mom, a woman can bring has left.  I cannot give them the motherly embrace they desire.  I can only embrace them and give them the best I can.

But for me . . . I lost something different.  In the days, weeks, and now years after losing the woman I lived with things changed, a lot, almost with a strange, off-beat rhythm.  In the beginning I could easily have shouted those first two lines – I was burned and broken.  I was hurt and helpless.  The person I normally turned to when things went totally bonkers, haywire and crazy was gone.  She often took the word of others ahead of those who loved her.  I know that’s human nature, but it doesn’t help anyway.  When doctors said she was weak, there were times I wondered if she gave up.

In the first few months I was blinded, staring straight into the shining sun.

Then last year, without even realizing or noticing what was happening, there was a shift.

I don’t know when it happened, but I started going to bed and hadn’t noticed the lack of the shift in weight from the other side of the bed.  I didn’t notice the warmth that emanated from my right side was gone.  I didn’t feel the press of her shape against me any more.

At some point, without realizing it, I stopped telling Andrea goodnight.

I reached a point where I did the final things.  The grave has a stone.  The picture on my dresser of her was gone.  I changed the mail and email so that her name wasn’t there any more.  It’s not a cold thing to remove those imprints, they had faded already.

Don’t take growth for coldness, though.  There is a tear in my soul that will be there forever.  You don’t heal it, though.  The tear changes you, like a hole in the universe, pieces of your past and future swirling into it.  Sometimes the best things are all that come to the front of the tear…and you forget the horrible things that the person may have said or done to you in a moment of fear or weakness.  Sometimes the horrible things are all you can feel.

But just about a year ago I felt the change in how I dealt with that tear.  It was no longer the worst part of me, it was part of me forever.  That was a good thing.  The tear brings in the best and worst part of more than twenty years of life.  You can’t ignore it or sew it shut, you embrace it and ride the waves of emotion that it brings.  A smell of pizza from the Italian restaurant in Omaha reminds you of meeting her sister.  A certain wine reminds you of a horrible fight you had on your 30th birthday.  A movie makes you laugh out loud not because of the movie’s humor but because of how it tickled her one day.

A song still makes you tear up a little.

I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life

Coming back to life.  I feel like the last half year to a year has been the seeds of life growing again.  I’ve felt all of us start to come back to life.  We weren’t zombies or comatose creatures wandering through the mist.  We were dormant, waiting for the time when we could feel the warmth above us again.  We were waiting for the touch, feel, and love of each other and those around us.

You see . . . the tear in my soul was there, swirling, light going in and out of it.  For so long I avoided and feared it because I thought it was like a black hole, taking the memories one at a time and plucking them from my mind and dragging them into obscurity.

But it wasn’t a black hole I was looking toward.

I was staring straight into the shining sun.