Sing with me for peace and to save the planet.
Then it happened.
The makeup came, and the look, the walk, and then there she was on stage singing into a microphone with five classmates. My eldest daughter is nine years old and growing up.
I watched starry-eyed. And blue. I had both feelings at the same time watching her and her friends in the fourth grade singing at the year-end school party with lipstick and mascara, and the lyrics of a pop song I don’t know emanating from their mouths.
I watched and thought how far we’ve come, how far she’s come from a tike to what seems to be a budding teenager. She’s told me how to get to outer space. And how to get to heaven and back. She’s lugged a bucket of sand to our house in the city from the beach in Pinamar, where we lived for two years in our pine tree paradise. She said, “It’s for you, Daddy. So that won’t miss the beach so much.” She’s explained to me a wicked way to declutter our house and her bloody sure methods to make some extra cash. She’s beguiled me with stories of spooks and surprised me with her platform for the presidency, and, as importantly, she has taught me how to simply chill out, let the wind blow through my hair and enjoy today. [continue reading…]
Yeah, you heard us right. ‘Panza llena, corazon contento. Full belly, happy heart.’
It’s hard to slow down as a parent with three children under the age of 10. There are meals to make, homework to help out with and after-school activities. Food to buy, birthday parties, sports and so on.
The day starts with the alarm clock and races without pause until the dishes are washed and put away, the dog is walked and you’re in bed at last.
Through all this, you’ve got to make some cash to keep the machine in motion and, oh, to go out and enjoy yourself, have a beer, play a game of soccer, go surfing, sit down with a book or, as of late, to watch all those movies and series that made a splash unbeknownst to us while we were having babies and changing nappies.
Is there another way?
My first thought is: publish a book and make a mint so I can throw in the day job and slow down.
I’ll give it a shot. But what about in the meantime? [continue reading…]
Man, it’s not easy to get a free lunch anymore!
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, money wasn’t flush in my family. We weren’t bad off but we didn’t have what it takes to be flash.
For a kid, this meant that treats were not always forthcoming. Certainly they came, but with five children my parents kept their spending on candies and stuff rather tame. My mother would take my two brothers and me to the beach by bus (she didn’t drive) and we’d have a blast and eat our home-prepared lunch on the hot sand, first, of course, running to the ocean to wash the sand off our hands. Then we’d bolt back and bolt down our sandwiches and crackers and fruit before bolting back to the ocean, or trying to at least after heeding our mother’s warning that you have to wait 30 minutes for the food to settle before going into the ocean. I think she let us wiggle away after we whined for 10 minutes straight.
On occasion she’d treat us to a cake at a café in Santa Monica, dividing in half the bus journey home to Brentwood.
They are memories we still savor. [continue reading…]
