Dalai Lama

Last week I went to see the 14th Dalai Lama at San Diego State University where he spoke about compassion. He specifically talked about compassion toward our children in that it is more important for our children to be happy than sad. It is better for our children to laugh than to cry. This might spin obvious, but when it was stated in this way, I began to think about it a lot. I began to be more mindful of my actions toward the kids, and I came to realize that it is more difficult than one might imagine because there are so many things that complicate a day. One small incident at work can completely change my attitude toward everything, including my children. When that happens, it is important to be mindful of making my children happy. It can be a real test to take both kids into a grocery store and walk out just as relaxed as when we walked in. Parents know what I'm saying. It is difficult to be mindfully happy and compassionate. The old man with the smart words has given me something honest to work toward: making my children more happy. And that task is more difficult in practice than it seems on paper.

Bad husband

I hate it when I feel like a bad husband, and I feel like one now. I don't even know what I did wrong, but apparently it isn't any good.

Snow

Being up here in Big Bear with the snow coming down so gently, but relentlessly, forces me to remember my early childhood in Wisconsin. I remember the excitement of the first snow. When I was in the first grade at some nameless school, I remember going out to recess on a clear, crisp morning. I stood in the son, playing tether ball. My hands stung like everyone else's, but it was freezing cold and I just knew the first snow was about to come. It was probably October of 1977, but no matter how hard I try I cannot remember the first snow. I remember cold. I remember slushy, grey days. I remember arguments and violence. I remember clear, cold days where the puddles on the playground were sheathed with a thin coat of ice. The sunlight playing upon the irregularities of water puddles unexpectedly frozen overnight, and the next morning, school children would run across the asphalt without so much as a tiny recognition of the change in seasons. Not me, though. I saw how everything was able to change in a instant. I didn't have the words to express my newfound understanding, but I knew. I knew that the air turned cold and that winter was on its way. I knew that the beautiful snow would cover the ground; that my mom's hands would grow cold and hurt; that we would move (like always did); that the snow would come; that I, too, would grow cold.
So now I stand here, as a man, looking at the snow ; taking pictures of the snow that I send to my father as a personal revelation that I now accept that I was once a child who lived I. A snow-driven land thousands of miles from the place I rediscovered the truth about snow for the first time.

Old house

You meet a lot of ghosts when you return to an old house

The kids have been waking up at normal time for two weeks. Now that school has started, they decide to sleep in. "I'm tired," they say. Really, your mother and I have been tired since vacation started, and now you decide to sleep in. Hmmm.

In the grand scheme of things, we really must recognize even the smallest pieces of good fortune. It's not that I was stuck babysitting my kids this morning. It isn't babysitting if they are my kids. I was watching them, for part of the time, at least. I was hanging out with them for part of the time. I was playing with them for part of the time. And that is where the wonderful piece happens. If I wouldn't have had s great morning with Julian, then I might have been really, really annoyed when he became stuck toward the top of a rock climbing wall. Of course I shouldn't be annoyed at that, but he's climbed rock walls a few times before without ant problem, but today wasn't that day. Today, he woke up before 5:30 ant grandma and papa's house. He chased the cats. He didn't really eat breakfast. We went for a cruise around Madera , which isn't very big, and finally ended up at Walmart and Starbucks all before 10:30. Now Madera is home away from home, but it's not home. It's where my wife grew up, but even she has been gone so long that many things have changed. Anyway, Julian got stuck up about two-thirds up the rock climbing wall, and without giving it a second thought, I just asked to go up and help get him down. I have Nieves been on a rock climbing wall, but it was okay. Ilittle by little he came down. He moved his hand from the blue rock to the red rock, just like I showed him. I looked into his eyes and saw fear. I saw the worst thing a parent can see when your child has to actually move his hand from the blue rock to the red rock himself. That paralyzingly fear is beyond anything we ever want to deal with. That moment when your child says," I can't do it," is alarming. Fortunately, I was able to climb the wall and help Julian down. An hour later when Maya freaked out and got stuck on the bumper boats, there was almost nothing we could do. She was on her own and so afraid that she almost jumped into the water to get away, but she didn't. Her cousin Jenna helped push her to safety. At least when we could do very little, she has someone nearby to make the seemingly impossible an actual reality..

Something that really irks me is when people hide behind false representations of open-mindedness, and later use ignorance to sway others because it is easy.