Children

Some of my neighbors watch me walk around in short sleeves and ask if I am ok.

“It is 35 degrees outside and you are from California. Aren’t you cold?”

I smile and tell them I grew up in the Valley and that 35 is familiar to me.

Sometimes one will argue with me because they have spent way too much time watching television/movies and think the temperature never drops below 75.

They are the same people who don’t know enough about LA to know you can’t drive two blocks from downtown/Westside/Valley and stumble upon the beach.

Twenty some odd years ago if it was the weekend you might have been able to do that ride in 15-20 minutes but it isn’t like that any more.

Not that it matters for me, I am landlocked now and my spur of the moment trips to Malibu or Santa Monica are…limited.

Generations- Cub Fans Avoid Winter Of Discontent

Familiarity doesn’t always lend itself to comfort or complacency which is a fancy way of saying I am not particularly fond of cold.

I deal with it when needed and if I had to become accustomed to something more severe I would.

Hell, when an arctic front blew through here and we got some snow and temperatures in the twenties I still went outside and walked around.

Part of me wondered if perhaps I was blessed with sort of generational DNA something or other that made it easier.

Did the ghosts of generations of Chicagoans whose lineage I share pass along a resistance to the cold or was it just my way of saying mom and dad did it so I can too.

It is not really a question and the answer doesn’t necessarily matter, it is just one of those things a man thinks about when he is stuck on hold listening to awful hold music.

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Kind of funny to me to think about how my kids don’t think about Chicago like I do because they didn’t grow up hearing stories about it and wonder if half the city was related to them.

Thanks to the magic of Facebook and the fact long distance telephone calls are no longer prohibitively expensive I talk to a bunch of those Chicago relatives.

More than a few are Cub fans who are still riding the high from their championship and eagerly awaiting the coming season.

Won’t be long before we start seeing them start singing Go! Cubs! Go!

Generational Differences

Speaking of baseball I still find it surreal to realize many people wouldn’t pick it as our national pastime.

Feels strange to realize it might be a decade since I played in a softball game and longer since I played real baseball.

I didn’t walk away from the game or make an active decision to stop playing.

Much has to do with time and accessibility. It was easier to go play some pickup hoop at the gym.

Didn’t need as many people and the weather never affected our ability to play.

But that doesn’t make the little boy that lives inside feel better or forget how much he loved to play.

He still dreams of making the Dodgers and still thinks that given the chance he could have been a player.

Never cared as much about being the greatest as he did about just being a part of The Show.

Well, that is not entirely true because that little boy can watch the clip below and he will always smile and dream of being that guy.

Final Thoughts

It is a dozen years or so ago and I am a kid’s birthday party.

A bunch of the dads are standing in the back talking while we keep half an eye on the kids who are running, climbing and jumping on, over and around each other.

One of the moms walks over and tells us it would be nice if we stood closer to the kids because you never know when one will get hurt and need help.

Her husband tells her to relax and we try not to start laughing when she gives him a look.

She walks away and he starts getting grief.

“Better buy her some flowers or you won’t get any for a week.”

“You are an idiot, he has three kids, he hasn’t gotten any in three years.”

“Ignore them Jim, just wear your jersey and it will be like you two are back in high school.”

Jim offers his retorts and then says it is time to accept we’re not 18 anymore and that our playing days are behind us.

I look at him and tell him I’ll be able to hit major league pitching until I am 76 or maybe 78.

The guys look at me like I am insane and give me their reasons for why it will not and cannot happen.

I just smile and say that a man who doesn’t dream is dead and that I’ll never stop dreaming.

And I won’t.

It is some time in the early or mid-seventies and we are running around the neighborhood and schoolyards talking about or singing School House Rock Songs.

We hear our parents talking about the Vietnam War, Watergate and how the Kennedy’s were shot and killed.

Sometimes they tell us about Dr. King’s Assasination and talk about how we should treat others.

I hear stories about who used to be a hippy and who still is as well as who never was.

It never occurs to me that decades later I’ll think about my own magical childhood and wonder how my children will look back upon theirs.

James Bond Comes To Life

Some friends ask how often I talk to my kids and when they are moving out.

I tell them my daughter Facetimes and Snapchats me daily and that my son and I communicate via text or phone.

“It is funny to think about how we used to dream about this stuff. We wanted to get the same cool things as James Bond or Dick Tracy and wondered how long it would take.”

My buddy laughs and asks me if my daughter preps and primps before she Facetimes.

I tell him I am not sure and then mention there have been times I didn’t Skype or Facetime with some people because I was wearing boxers and a t-shirt and didn’t want to put more clothes on.

“Truth is I probably don’t care if most of those people saw me that way, but I don’t want them to be uncomfortable and you never know who else is on the other side.”

He laughs and tells me to prepare for when my daughter really gets interested in boys.

“My girl is a little older than yours and let me tell you, at 17 she will not allow any boy to Facetime with her unless she has fixed herself up.”

We go back and forth a little bit and I tell him sometimes I wish our kids didn’t have access to tech the way they do now.

“I look around and I see a lot of kids who are a little chunky. I don’t see them running around the neighborhood like we did. I don’t see them singing I am Just a Bill while they ride their bikes.”

He tells me I am a cranky old man and I say he is right, but I am not wrong either.

“Maybe we ought to build our own wall away from Trump and create our own safe enclave to raise our kids in.”

We both laugh and then I sigh deeply and tell him I have to go, “it is almost midnight and I am beat.”

Safe Enclaves

I lay down in bed and grab my Kindle to do some reading before I drift off to sleep.

I do like tech but it took me a while to break down and buy a Kindle because I prefer the feel of a book in my hands.

But there is something nice about bringing a library with me wherever I go and so I compromised. I have the Kindle and I still have real books that I read too.

Under the covers I read the words on the screen and think about safe enclaves.

I am not sure they truly exist and when I think about my childhood it is easy for me to wonder about some things.

It truly was magical and I loved it but if you look at it from a different perspective it can seem like a very scary time in some ways.

I was born in ’69 and there is no doubt the sixties were a pretty turbulent time.

If all we could talk about was the assassination of a president and then a few years later his younger brother, a senator, we would have lot.

But we have the civil rights moment and the murder of Dr. King in there too, not to mention Vietnam.

Some of that turbulence from the sixties rolled into the seventies as we dealt with Nixon and Watergate, the end of the war and a host of other issues.

The point is that as a father I sometimes I have to remind myself how easy it is to forget how some of the best times for us may have felt uncertain and imbalanced for others.

Life never stops moving and we are stuck on the giant wheel that means that we get to repeat certain events.

They may not be identical, but they are close enough and while I could let that depress and disappoint me, I choose not to.

We’ll manage the current crisis and challenges too and hopefully with a minimal amount of chaos.

But what I really hope is that when my kids look back they think of their childhood as having been magical too.