hawk : up close and personal

As I started my run this morning, I saw a hawk fly in front of me and then landed in a tall pine tree next to the road. At the end of my run I went back the same way and the same hawk was resting on the top of the street sign and remained there as I ran by. When I got home I looked it up in our bird book since I got such a close view from 20 feet away and it was a Red-tailed Hawk. We have heard a hawk flying around the back of our house for weeks now, but last weekend we heard him no more. As my wife and I walked in the neighborhood across from our house, we heard that same distinct noise of the hawking yelling. I think it must be the same hawk, but that is hard to know for sure. It sure is a thing of beauty.

wish list

Some people called it a to-do list, others a wish list, still others a bucket list and then of course there is a honey-do list. So many different lists we can keep. I like to keep lists so I can sleep at night and not worry the next day on what I have forgotten to do at home or at work. I often write down on a post-it note at the office every thing I have left to do and did not finish, before leaving to go home. I am not talking about that kind of list. The honey-do list does not get used much around our home as I know when my honey wife tells me something needs to be done, then I need to do it instead of waiting until later or another day. I am talking about a list of things you wish you could do in your life time. It may be lack of money or time that prevents you from checking things off that list. Maybe you don't even have such a list. I was reminded of this as we watched the movie The Bucket List last night. It is right up there with Secondhand Lions as our favorites. I feel extremely fortunate as I used to keep a mental list of stuff I wanted to do in my life time. I have done them all. Now there are some I would like to repeat, like living in India and visiting the Himalayas. Some of the big things I wanted to do and have done are: visit the Grand Canyon, see beautiful mosques in Turkey, look around Europe, go to the Himalayas, see the Taj Mahal and work in the Middle East. There are related things I would still like to do, like raft down the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon, go on a long trek in the Himalayas and really go all out and see Mt. Everest from Base Camp. If I died today, then I would have no regrets as I have seen many things that I never thought were possible as I was growing up.

Life for me was very simple growing up in the foot hills of the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia. My world was the valley in which I lived and I never thought of life beyond Virginia. Our adopted grandparents next door were born, raised and never left the valley. It was just how life was lived. We had a small farm with cows, chickens, sometimes sheep, a horse, a pony and a couple of dogs. I heard one time that a neighbor's son lived in Saudi Arabia, but that seemed so dream like to me as I could not imagine what that meant. I spent hours in the garden, mowing yards for neighbors and playing basketball. That was my life. I would get lonely and hope that someone would stop by and play basketball with me in our drive way, but often it was just me shooting alone. I never ever thought of any other life. Not until I got to high school that is. Then I just wanted to get out of the valley and go somewhere else, anywhere else. My adopted grandfather who I called Bob-boo, had been to France in World War II and had only talked to me about it once and cried the whole time he spoke of it. That was really my only exposure to life outside of Virginia. Sure we took many trips to see Civil War battlefields throughout the south, but I never thought of living anywhere else. Bob-boo also graduated in one of the first classes at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1903, which is now called VaTech. That was where I wanted to go, but Bob-boo died before I attended the first year out of high school. His wife felt the need to pay for most of my schooling since it meant so much to him that I go there. That was the beginning of the adventure for me as once I left the valley I have been a pilgrim all over the world since then. Not bad for a rural small time farm kid from a town of 500 people. I could never have imagined it would turn out this way.

no go

So we learned yesterday that our oldest son will not be joining the military after all. His three alcohol related traffic tickets were too overwhelming for the Navy and Air Force. This means a major change of plans are in order for him. He can no longer depend on the military to help pay for his future schooling nor give him something to do until he gets his license back as a Christmas present at the end of this year. Now he has to get a job locally somewhere and try to start all over with his life. Just when we thought a change was in order, it will be hard for him not to revert back to the same old life he led before. He was hoping the military would help point him on a new path, but now he has to take the hard way and do it himself.

Our next to oldest son is attempting to go to Expression College for Digital Arts in the beginning of August. He went for an orientation session in the beginning of July and really liked it. The amazing thing is that he arranged the whole thing, but of course I had to pay for the airplane ticket and the hotel stay! He is trying to get financial aid so he can actually attend, so he is motivated to do it quickly as August is almost here. He has been approved for housing, which is really subsidized furnished apartments near the school. He keeps mentioning that he wants to drive all of the way from North Carolina to San Francisco, California as a major road trip. We keep trying to suggest that is probably not a good idea; however, he keeps insisting. We will see how it all pans out shortly...

We are still playing tennis daily, which is a still a shock to me. It is fun as the oldest and youngest son are definitely improving slowly as they learn how to hit and server the ball. It has been such a long time since I played so much tennis. It is a fun sport to learn.

Our daughter has been away at grandma's house all week long. She is learning how to do cross stitch and crocheting. I taught her how to start cross stitch as my mother taught me when I was just a young thing. No one in the family believes I know how, as everyone thinks only women and girls know how to do such things, so I guess I am a victim of reverse prejudice. My wife's sister is an expert at crochet so the extended stay is a reason to learn yet another new thing. Hopefully when our daughter returns she will not suffer boredom and complain as she will have many projects to complete and to keep her busy. We are about half way through the summer school break, so we don't want boredom problems affecting the family this soon.

Teens, Tennis and Texas Hold 'em

Today marks the one week anniversary of no bad news in the family, which is quite remarkable for us. I don't remember when a whole week went by without one of the kids failing to think before they did something stupid. Sad but true. This week was very different. Maybe it was the one month span since they got out of school for the summer. Maybe they are bored and need attention. It is just shocking that after so many years that they actually want to hang out with their parents. For example now in the evenings my middle son always wants to play cards with out fake poker chips. He has been watching TV where they show world class poker players. They typically play Texas Hold 'em, which is a new game for me, but very easy to learn. In just a week my son has learned how to maintain a poker face, whereas at the start you could obviously tell when he had a good hand as he got excited about it. The nice thing about playing cards is that you talk about life in general since it is not that mentally challenging. The other event I have already mentioned in previous postings, where my oldest and youngest son want to play tennis with me as soon as I get home.

I remember when I was a young teenager and found tennis the greatest thing ever. We would play every day after school for a couple of hours. We rotated which courts we played on just to keep life exciting but normally which ever one we could find that was free. I took tennis quite seriously until I was a sophomore in high school and ended up breaking my right wrist right at the start of tennis season. I wish I could say it was from diving for a tennis ball on match point or some other brave event. However, it actually happened in our high school gym when it was raining outside and we were practicing tennis indoors in the gym. I was only 5'7" and a couple people told me there was no way I could even touch the basketball rim, so of course I had to show them. I took a tennis ball in my hand and ran from half court and dunked the tennis ball to everyone's amazement. The only problem was on my way down I got my hand caught in the basketball net and lost my balance and fell back on my arm. That ended my tennis career. I kind of fell out of sports in general and started a bad life on the wild side. It was not until I got married that I took up the sport again as my wife and I played a couple of hours every day until our oldest son was born. In between high school and my marriage, I grew 6" my freshman year in college so took up basketball which was originally my favorite sport. I lost interest in basketball in high school since I was took short for the team. Even though clearly I was never professional quality at any sport, I certainly enjoyed playing team sports regularly until I turned 40 and decided to retire while I was completely healthy.

The one thing I have done consistently since the seventh grade is run. I ran on the high school cross county team and was the youngest person to ever get a varsity letter at our school as I was a ninth grader. I loved to run on county dirt roads typically 8-10 miles a day. Back then it was important how quickly I ran each mile. I ran to keep in great condition for basketball and tennis. Now I am still running 30 years later as I enjoy it, but don't even care how long it takes me to run each mile. My only goal now is to be running when I turn 50 years old.

silsila vs vivah

This weekend we watched two very different Indian movies.

The first, Silsila was made in 1981 but had pretty shocking subject matter for it's time. The main character's brother had premarital sex and his girl friend became pregnant, which was revealed at his premature death. His brother had a choice to marry his brother's wife or to follow his heart's desire to marry his girl friend. He choose his duty of taking his brother's pregnant wife to cover up her pregnancy. He regretted it and finally had a long term adulterous relationship with his girl friend. Quite shocking subject matter indeed for an Indian movie even today.

The second, Vivah was a complete contrast. It is about the prefect premarital engagement process. Long drawn out and shows how traditional marriages are arranged and work themselves out. I found the movie very entertaining as for me, this is the "real" India that I saw when I lived there.

On a complete different subject, this weekend was a long 4th of July holiday and it seems like we have changed as a family all of the sudden. And I don't mean that the kids started watching Indian movies with us. The kids all went outside and we played frisbee together on Friday, which was the first day of the long weekend. That set the tone for the weekend. As I have mentioned previously, we typically only get together during vacations, but we got together several times this weekend. Eating together, playing cards together, talking together was enough to send me into a state of shock. I even took two of the kids to play tennis with me. We repeated that again today, so at the moment life is very good in our household, which I cannot always says was the case. I am going to keep it all positive and now regress in time to contrast to our current situation.

The sickness

Sometimes it just does not pay to get out of bed. As our beach vacation ended, everyone started getting sick. Our daughter got sick right before our vacation started and slowly it spread to the whole family. Every one but the two left handers in the family. This certainly is an odd illness that only affects right handed people! What is even more strange is that the disease affects every one differently. My wife got tonsillitis, which I thought only young kids got. In fact for her she got it quite often as a child and had not had it since. Also both my wife and daughter got really bad sores all over their tongues. My middle son who was the first to get it from my daughter never had a sore throat but had a cough and felt really run down. Our oldest son had the symptoms the longest and after the initial sore throat had a cough that lasted two weeks. For me I had a sore throat for over a week and then cough and then a sinus infection and now may have bronchitis. Recently any time I get a viral or bacteria infection it always spreads to my sinuses. Now can one illness spread by my daughter have so many different manifestations? I think someone has come up with a biologic weapon than finds the weakness in the person affected and takes advantage of it. The only problem with this theory is we are not important as a family for someone to try it out on us. The sickness mystery will have to remain unsolved - I just hope we get well soon.

Almost perfect vacation

As the kids get older, we seldom take vacations together. For the past two years we have made a weekly trip to the beach right after the kids got out of school. Last year we went to Surf City, NC and this year we were a couple of miles down the coast at Topsail Beach, NC. This small strip of NC beaches is almost all beach houses with very few hotels or condominiums. It forces us to relax, enjoy the beach and the kids. It is so interesting to watch the kids change how they interact with each other while on vacation together. At home, they all separate into their rooms and seldom interact. While at the beach, the play around in the surf together, play games in the rented beach house and talk to each other while taking a break to watch TV together. It is worth it to take a vacation just to see them talk to each other! For me, a vacation means no computer, no work and no thinking about work and spending time with my wife. In that regard this year was a perfect vacation.

Well I should say almost perfect as we all got sick except for my next to oldest son, who somehow avoided it. My daughter picked up some nasty virus the weekend before from her friend's family. She had a temperature of 104 last Thursday, right before we left on Saturday for the beach. Then our middle son got sick on Wednesday, but in desperation still made it to the beach each day as he had been waiting for a very long time to learn how to surf. Then our oldest son got sick on Thursday. Finally on Friday my wife got sick and today I am not feeling to well either. It starts with a sore throat, then a high temperature, then fever chills and finally after a couple of days it is over. That is pretty amazing that we could still say we had a great family vacation in spite of us getting sick, but it was that good. It may be our final family vacation together like this as our oldest son is joining the Navy soon and our next to oldest is talking of attending a recording studio school far, far away. This may be a year of major change ahead for us.

I must get back to the beach vacation to end on a positive note. My wife and I walked both morning and evening on the beach sand. We had a couple of thunderstorms but it did not really affect us as the kids normally spent a couple hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon fighting the pounding waves and loving every minute. Even though my wife's parents live at the beach in Wilmington, NC just having a week of continuous beach activity makes them become immersed in it and enjoy it much more than a couple of hours during a weekend visit. The older boys all learning to surf to some degree and that kept them busy trying to conquer a new thing. We also did the ritual sand burying ceremony a couple of times to take a break. One night was especially nice as the full moon appeared in a yellow tint and the moon light reflecting on the water was really special as we could see it from our top floor balcony. Nearly every day we saw black dolphins swimming near the shore when we were in the water playing around. Normally we only see them in Wilmington in the winter, so that was nice.

One final thought on beaches. As a family we have stayed on all of the North Carolina beaches (except Cape Hatteras as it takes a very long time to get there) and all of the Texas beaches and the Gulf Shores in Alabama and Florida. The Texas beaches are not very nice, but were convenient when we lived in Houston and Austin. The drive to Gulf Shores was an all day event but worth it as that is one beautiful beach with white crystalline sand. All of the NC beaches are nice, with some nicer than others and some way more expensive than others. For now I must say that the memory of this last week was really special as it was more than just a beach trip but a true family vacation.

What was amazing to me was the vacation transformation quickly reverted back to normal life in our house as within 30 minutes of arriving, my daughter was on the phone talking to her friends, my next to oldest son took off in his car to see his friends and the other ones were on the computers - all back into their individual worlds as if they never left.