Choose Your Future
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”-- E.L. Hartley One particular moment from the past has replayed in my mind over and over in recent months. Thirty years ago, I was a junior staffer for California Lieutenant Governor Leo T. McCarthy. The former Speaker of the Assembly was a throwback even back then, an old-school idealist with old-world manners who relished weighty policy discussions almost as much as he did chatting up short order cooks, doormen, cops, and nurses, a family man who went home to San Francisco every night that he possibly could. His belief...
Read MoreEverything Is Heavier Right Now
The hardest part of the moment we’re living through isn’t the wait—it’s the weight. What a short time ago were the simplest everyday decisions now feel heavy with risk. Do I go into that store? Do I walk on that popular path? Do I visit with others who may calculate risk differently than I do? Do I wipe down that half gallon of milk before it goes in fridge, if it helps me sleep at night? Even as we second-guess a thousand daily micro decisions that we took for granted in what our son now calls “the before times,” the...
Read MoreWhat I’ve Learned (So Far)
Many years ago Esquire magazine launched a series called What I’ve Learned, featuring famous people reflecting on their experiences and the lessons gained from them. In my previous job, we used that same story frame for alumni profiles in our school’s biannual magazine. I never imagined turning the tables on myself, but here we are, being quite literally homeschooled by the changes the current pandemic has brought. Here are a few things I’ve learned since Karen and I began self-isolating nearly seven weeks ago: I don’t need as much stuff as I thought I did. We are living more simply...
Read MoreA Different Time
Last weekend—March 7th and 8th, 2020, just a week ago—suddenly feels like a different time. On Saturday our son brought our grandson and granddaughter over so he could take a long bike ride, and we fed them lunch and played with them until our daughter-in-law came by to bring them home. On Sunday we did a little shopping, in stores with full shelves, smiling staff, and chatty neighbors. Tuesday morning our son and daughter-in-law and the grandkids flew to Phoenix to visit her grandmother, parents, and sister. By the time they get home the day after tomorrow, the world will...
Read MoreMove Me
As readers of My Heart Sings the Harmony know, I really only have one set-in-stone requirement for any music that I’m going to choose to make part of my life: move me. Make me feel something. The reason this came to mind this week is a concert that I went to the other night, that I didn’t review, and really couldn’t have, since I don’t know the artist’s body of work all that well. What I did know was his reputation as a top-flight guitarist whose skills are admired by many fellow musicians. That reputation attracts a certain kind of...
Read MoreA Hanukkah Story
We’ve talked about karma before. I tend to be a pretty grounded person from day to day, but as I’ve written elsewhere, I also find that sometimes the only reasonable thing to do is to give in to wonder. And so it was last night. My father was Jewish. But I was raised by my mother, who for much of her life was a member of the Episcopal Church. My concept and experience of Jewish tradition came mostly from books and movies. Karen and I tried lighting Hanukkah candles with our kids a handful of times, but it didn’t really...
Read MoreA Series of Moments
Life is a series of moments. The moment you took your first step. The moment you fell and split your chin open. The moment you landed a job that filled you with purpose and confidence. The moment you had to say goodbye to someone you loved. That defining moment when you pushed yourself to do the very difficult thing that your heart was telling you was right. Life is made up of moments like these, and I’ve lived a lot of them this year. The year began with Karen and I finishing the final clean-out of the house my mother...
Read MoreLegacy
“We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us, and make us kinder. You always have the choice.” – the Dalai Lama My father passed away yesterday, slipping free of his body in the early evening of a day that had begun with Karen and I and Dad’s faithful caregiver Hilda gathered around his bed, telling stories, sharing laughter through our tears as he slept peacefully between us. Dad was 95 and lived a remarkable life, from military service in World War II and...
Read MoreThe Box
The box has sat on the bottom shelf of one of four tall bookshelves in my office at work for almost exactly 10 years now. It’s a standard-issue banker’s box, white with black lettering and holes at either end for handles, a bit worn in places, nothing remarkable about it other than its simple presence in a space that’s otherwise filled with the tools of my trade: institutional publications, books on writing, and promotional collateral talking up the academic programs of the graduate school that has been my professional home for over a decade now. The box is empty. I've...
Read MoreOhana
In the Hawaiian tradition, ohana is a word that straddles and blurs the line between family and community. Your ohana is your intentional family, the people gathered around you who love and support you, whether connected by blood or chosen bonds of trust and affection. Last week on the side of a mountain on Hawaii’s Big Island, several of us toiled to finish the job of cleaning out my mother’s house for the final time, preparing it to be handed over to its new owners. The job was substantial—Mom had lived there 35 years—and inevitably bittersweet. It was time, and...
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