"Good night dad...I love you dad!"

Today being Valentine's Day, I find it fitting to write a post related to the that sweet nectar that is typically abound when we nurture beautiful relationships with life partners, family members, friends, animals, and even the occasional stranger that manages to touch our heart with a kind smile or thoughtful gesture.  To me, out of all the possible experienced emotions, love stands on its own with probably the most powerful influence in my life.  Books, poetry, songs, letters, movies, plays, speeches, paintings, sculptures and many more have all been utilized over and over again to create some kind of permanent repository for this singular emotion throughout history.  Even the scientific community has dug in deep in efforts to make headway and try to understand the underlying mechanisms that take place in the human body when we experience the various flavors of love.  If you have a few minutes to spare today, take a pause for the cause and go ahead, do a quick online search for "neurology of love" or "language of love" and get ready to discover everything from scientific research, to sexual education, to marital counseling.  The information out there is boundless and fascinating to say the least.

Even more fascinating though is how one single word, love, can conjure so many images in my mind and still prove to be so incredibly hard to describe.  I am not alone though, even most dictionaries are all over the place when they try to pin down a single definition for this incredibly complicated emotion.  However, I can somehow instantly perceive when I am genuinely being loved.  Is that not amazing?  To me, love is by far the most powerful tool that I can use to bring out greatness in someone else.  When I love someone, I reach beyond my own needs and wants to find ways to bring happiness to them.  Is this the same way others feel too?  Or am I speaking a unique language taught to me by my parents since the day I was born?  Obviously I did not always know how to love in this way, otherwise I would of never hurt so many people on my way to becoming a mature adult.

I share these thoughts with you because I think it is crucial that parents realize that as we raise our children, we are inadvertently teaching them a language that will probably be the most important form of expression in their adult lives.  If I am unable to teach them how to show their love or give their love in productive and healthy ways, eventually they might not be able to do the same for their children either.  Worse, my children and their children will find themselves gravitating towards other sources of what might seem as love, but in reality not be love at all.  This particular scenario typically plays itself out in codependent and hurtful relationships that block their progress and ability to grow as individuals in a healthy way.

It was already past ten at night and I was ready to unwind and turn myself in for bed.  My oldest son had two friends with him and they were sitting in the family room playing some video game with the volume turned all the way down.  As I approached the adjacent kitchen area to make sure there were no dishes left to clean or put away, all I could hear were their own silly comments about the characters that each one of them were playing in some frantic battle on his XBOX game console.  Fingers pressing buttons and gyrating thumbs created a spectacle on the large screen television that could easily give an ill child an epileptic seizure.  As I walked away I thought my "goodnight guys!" farewell statement had been lost in the middle of their obviously hyperactive game play behavior.  As I was just one step away from entering my own room at the other end of our home I heard the unmistakable and beautiful expression coming out of my now 19 year old son, "Good night dad...I love you dad!"  This my beloved readers was the most beautiful thing I had heard all day long.  He is without a shadow of a doubt, his father's son!

Dad

What is time?

If you feel up to it and are ready to tackle one of the most difficult to understand concepts tied to human consciousness, I recommend that you dig into the written literature and read all about the various definitions of "what is time?"  Go ahead and start with the basic summary contained within the Wikipedia explanation and if after reading it you are still motivated you are most welcome to take it up a notch and continue on with the various scientific, philosophical, and even religious explanations that have been documented throughout history.  A few years back I found myself investing a great deal of my neurons to this subject and am happy to report that I survived the journey in one piece.  The fact that fascinated me the most was that our entire lives are fundamentally based on the mental perception of experiencing our existence through the apparent physical dimensions of space and time, yet we are dumbfounded when faced with our inability to define such a basic concept.  Even though I was able to gain a great deal of insight to the different views that govern mankind's concept of time, in the end I actually found myself divided between my own scientifically prejudiced mind that wants to find a physical relationship between time and the universe around me, and the probability that such a relationship might all be a convenient construct of my mind in order to experience the reality of my existence.  In other words, either I exist inside of time, or I am time in itself.

Don't worry if you don't get it, the truth is that understanding what is time is probably not as important as realizing that what truly matters is that everything that you experience is happening in the present moment.  I live the moment and once it is experienced it instantly becomes part of the past which can only be re-experienced as a memory in the present moment all over again.  The same happens with the future.  Even though I have not experienced a future event in itself, my concern about a potential future event allows it to exist in the present too.  Ironically, the simple minded comment that I so often hear as the cliche "live in the moment" is apparently all that I can actually do.

Then why is it that I am so persistently obsessed about the future?  If I have no ability to exist in any time other than now, why do I compulsively guide my entire life based on ideas or fantasies about tomorrow?  I seem to live mostly within the illusions of how my tomorrow will turn out to be, rather than focus on how my existence is happening right now.  This all seems to me as being a bit counterproductive and wasteful.  Instead, would it not be much more productive if I simply took care of what is going on in my life in the present moment?  I think so.  Why obsess on moments that are not real yet?  Living in the past is almost as wasteful too since it was only real while it was happening, and in the present it is just a memory which I have no ability to modify.  The most I should get out of the past are lessons to guide me in my path to avoid having a painful present.

As a parent I find it most challenging to apply my own advice with respect to living life in the present.  I have found myself constantly extrapolating all of the possible outcomes and consequences to the challenging behaviors that I experience with my children.  "What if" has become more of my reality than "what is," making it a lot harder for me to enjoy the moment.  I can only imagine how frustrating my own conduct must be to those that surround me.  "What if he makes this or that mistake?  What if he doesn't get better?  What if he hurts himself or somebody else?"  Those are all examples of the constant barrage of future queries my mind selects to focus on top of my present reality pushing me away from the actual moment that I am experiencing.  I have learned to accept the past and rarely dwell on it during the present.  However, I am now forcing myself to learn to accept the fact that I am in very little control over the future and that obsessing on negative outcomes is a wasteful use of the present moment.  In fact, if I am to apply this process of trying to live as much as possible in the present, then the choice is actually simple when I inadvertantly find myself spending any time thinking about the future.  It then makes perfect sense to imagine a great future full of positive outcomes and beautiful moments, which in turn then makes my preset much more pleasant and enjoyable.  With this realization I come full circle to discover that I am mostly in control over my own happiness.  If at this juncture I add the benefits of my faith in God, I am now more empowered than ever with the present belief that He has all sorts of beautiful promises working their way into my life during every single moment of my existence.

Dad

"Don't sleep with that window open over your head!"

We've all heard stories from our parents describing why it is that we should not expose ourselves to bad weather without the proper attire to avoid becoming ill.  "Don't walk barefoot around the cold floor of the house...cover your head from the rain...wear a sweater when going in and out of the house at nights...don't stand in front of that fan...take off those wet clothes..." are all among the many bits of wisdom we all tend to ignore in our youth and figure are hocus pocus elderly advice.  All it takes is a one time incident of getting sick after not following their advice to begin to integrate their voodoo wisdom into our own fundamental logic to hand down to our own children.  I for one am not really sure which one of the rules I broke this time that has led me to get bronchitis in one lung and pneumonia in the other, but I am sure that if I trace it back I probably did something I had been warned by my mother a million times not to do in the past.  Today, after a week of a constant fever between 101 and 103, a miserable cough, shortness of breath, and a good amount of pain in my chest, I find myself pondering how not breaking one of the dozens of rules that I was taught as a child could of saved me from all this misery.  See, even as an adult I still manage to not listen to what's good for me!

The story goes that my great grandparents after migrating from the Spanish Canary Islands had acquired a great deal of land in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico.  In those days it was customary for brothers and sisters to own adjacent properties, and with large size families this meant hundreds of acres needed to be crossed before you could leave a family name behind in order to cross the boundaries of other islanders that were not related to you.  Most of the wealth was measured on how much land and animals you owned and very little value was given to cash at hand.  When the need for money became real, the sale of land was the typical outcome to solve the shortage.  Times were tough and owning land to cultivate or raise animals was a major source of income that typically separated social classes, plus it had the added benefit of being able to feed your own family too.  There was no electricity, plumbing was non-existent forcing the young and able to make multiple daily trips to water wells, and sanitation was all about outhouses at the time.  In those days, becoming ill was an ordeal of great magnitude to contend with since hospitals were not in abundance and it was all about having to make arrangements for a doctor to come to your home on horse to treat whomever was ill.  Medical supplies were scarce and treatments were extremely costly.  Dysentery, tuberculosis, and pneumonia were the three major culprits in life expectancy being so low for the families of those times.  My maternal great grandmother caught pneumonia and every effort was made to heal her and bring her back to health.  Land was sold to pay for medical attention and her medications and just a few weeks after fully recovering, one night she stepped up to close an open window so the rain would not come inside their home, and this single exposure to the inclement weather caused a relapse on her recovery provoking a double pneumonia that lead to her eventual death shortly after.

This is just one of the tales from my mother's side of the family that instantly changed the behavior of every single descendant from there on to never approach an open window during the night without making sure adequate clothing was worn for such a trivial task.  It stuck and it made an impact so deep in my family tree that I can guarantee that at least up to my branch, every descendant has been properly briefed on the correct protocol of window closing during the night when it's raining.  This all sounds simple enough, yet I know as well as you do that our family culture is a great influence in not just our belief system, but also some of the most trivial decisions we make day to day.  The way we greet our elders asking for their blessings, the pause we make before answering simple questions while our brains evaluate the most adequate response for the occassion, even the level of eye contact that we project when casually conversing with other people are all part of our heritage.  The truth is that I believe that very little is truly random and that the majority of our day to day interactions and behavior are a sweet mix of our culture, family values, and inherited personalities.  Tone of voice, volume, expressive demeanor are just a few of those traits that can probably be traced back through our family tree.  Yet is it not also true that each one of us are so very different from our brothers and sisters too?  Some quiet and shy, others loud, expressive and outspoken.  Beautiful, is it not, the apparently random texture that covers our children and also the common river of our genes that run deep inside them?

Most of all I like being aware of all of this that I write about above.  It warms my heart when I am able to remember the tales of my ancestors in order for me to pass them down to my own kids.  It humbles me when I get sick after doing something dumb like sleeping with the window open above my head during a cold night, even though I must of heard my parents warn me so many times to not do this when I was a child.  It amazes me when I hear a friend tell me how much alike my oldest son looks like me, even though when I peek at his pictures I am freaked out not to be able to see the resemblance myself.  All of these things force me into a quiet contemplation of trying to figure out "why" this is all so, but I eventually discover that the real answer behind it all is a beauitful thing called "life."

Dad

Love, not time, heals all wounds...

I would find it hard to count the number of times when I have shared a story with regards to something hurtful in my life in which the listener's ultimate advice is to allow time to transpire in order for the wound caused by the painful event to heal.  We've all heard it before, "time heals all wounds."  Truth be told, time does seem to make things better but is it because of healing, or is it because other life events start to pile over the previous ones masking our wounds?  Is it not true that if my final work of art is painted over two or three previous attempts it really doesn't erase the originals but merely covers them up?  I believe the same is so for those moments in my life that have in some way or another emotionally scarred me.  Other moments keep piling themselves over the originally painful ones to the point that eventually it takes some digging in order for me to remember what it was that actually caused me to be so hurt in the first place.  Yet there are also wounds that no matter how old they are require very little effort on my part for them to surface and take my mood into a dark or sad place.

I have learned with time that the one true emotion that is able to heal my sorrow is love.  Whether I am the one applying the gooey ointment of love on my own wounds, or somebody else makes the generous effort to alleviate my pain makes a great deal of difference.  Even though I can "talk" myself into feeling better about things that did not go right by digging deep into my emotional bucket and finding all the right reasons to love the culprit of my heart ache, nothing truly works as well as an outside source making an attempt to neutralize my pain with their own source of love.

Everybody makes mistakes and life is full of moments in which we are challenged with choices that aren't really clear enough to get it right the first time around.  If I energize myself and give an outrageous amount of attention to my kids when they make the wrong choices in their lives, I am basically teaching them that making the wrong choices is the best way to get my attention which could inadvertently translate to them as my love.  After all, the reason that I go ballistic when they mess up is because I love them and don't want to see them get hurt by making the same mistake over and over again.  A few years back someone very close to my heart and whom I consider to be an excellent parent told me that when she was having a heart to heart conversation with three of her four kids she asked them what it was that she could do to be a better parent.  Interestingly enough, all three of them unanimously agreed that she should be more strict, which ironically is the same characteristic that they typically would complain about her during challenging moments, the fact that she was too strict.  This to me was a sign that her children correlated how much she loved them with how much attention they would get when they were causing trouble.  Love does come in many flavors, including the parental reprimand that is truly intended to keep our children out of harms way.  However, would it not be smarter to focus our out pour of attention, praise, and love when our children are getting it right?  Would that not be a healthier correlation for them to make about love?

The next time you find yourself hurting because of an old wound, take a little time to uncover the true reason that you are still feeling the pain.  When you discover the real reason for your sorrow find a way to give that emotion a dose of true love so that it can start to heal appropriately.  The next time you are the cause of somebody's sadness, don't expect it to get better on its own with the tic toc of the clock, instead pause and consider taking a humble pill and asking the victim to forgive you from the softest spot in your heart.  Finally, take every opportunity that you find, even if it means creating the opportunities yourself, to teach your children that love is readily and available in abundance from you all the time.  Help them make the connection between their greatness in all the little things that they are capable of doing right, and don't wait to teach them positive lessons only when they mess up instead.  Healing starts when the flow of love washes away any and all of our wounds.

Dad

Tumbleweeds...

As I walked into work early in the morning I noticed that the previous day's strong Santa Ana winds had managed to drag into the walkway and path towards my building several huge tumbleweeds.  When I am driving and see one of these dried out bushes rushing towards my car, I already know from previous experience that it is not worth trying to avoid hitting them since the mass of the vehicle is so out of proportion to that of the tumbleweed that they typically disintegrate on impact.  I'm sure it can't be good for the car's paint job, but neither would it be to run into another vehicle while trying to avoid something so benign.  On closer inspection and while walking past three of these no longer rolling menaces that have found themselves wedged in a corner and blocking half of the outdoor stairs that allow access to the final approach of my nine hour a day place of work, I am suddenly able to appreciate the simplicity on which nature has built such a bizarre plant.  Somehow evolution has managed to ensure that the growth of the plant takes form in a cylindrical shape enhancing the plants ability to roll away from its weak root connection and travel long distances while releasing its seeds during its voyage and later on at its final destination too.

As I continued my quick stepped approach to work because of the cold morning air seeping through my simple wind breaker, I could not help but wonder how the tumbleweeds made it into the highly fenced and secured space of our work compound.  A quick scan of the area revealed that just a couple of hundred feet away, the greener version siblings of the now trapped tumbleweeds grew content and healthy on a vacant area close to the perimeter fence.  Apparently other tumbleweeds had through time and in similar windy circumstances rushed all the way and crashed against the fence most likely releasing their seeds in the wind which traveled and landed on the opposite side of the fence where they eventually germinated and grew into the now visible healthy plants.  In less than 15 seconds as I finally entered the tightly controlled access of my workspace I had already come to the conclusion that whenever nature wants to get its way, there is very little that we can do to stop it.  Life on this beautiful blue marble is full of will and it takes an extraordinary effort on our part to control it.

I know it might sound totally unrelated at first, but believe it or not, the unsightly tumbleweeds quickly brought to mind how hard it is for me to control any of the influences that tumble into the lives of my children.  Many times I have questioned myself where in the world have some of the influences in my kid's lives come from. 
They have been surrounded by a constant stream of love, caring, and parental involvement that has purposely tried to shield them from negative outside influences, yet it almost defies logic how quickly and easily the seeds of trouble manage to sneak in between our parental chain link fence and plant themselves inside their minds causing all sorts of eventual havoc.  The question that I find myself asking is whether or not I could of done something differently to prevent the tumbleweeds from hitting the fence in the first place?  Once the seeds are in, what could I have then done to prevent them from growing?

The advantage of having two kids instead of one is how quickly it allows me to understand that much of what I have done to protect my boys was effective at least fifty percent of the time.  Which leads me to believe that the individuality and personality of each child plays a major role on what parental influences are effective.  In other words, what works for one does not necessarily mean it will work for the other.  I suppose this is the reason so many of the recommendations that have been given to me by friends rarely work with my oldest son even though they were totally effective with their own children.  This can be so frustrating for me as a parent and I can only imagine how incredibly difficult it must be to my son too.  I just try to visualize someone trying to influence my life and me not being able to relate and understand what they are trying to tell me.  I don't have a choice but to put myself in his shoes many times in order to try to find the missing connection, but the success rate of doing this effectively is very low.  How do I as a parent flip off my logical switch in order to let go of my own prejudice and protective instincts?

In my quest to find ways to be a better father I discovered that out of the too many to mention methods and approaches that I have researched and tried, a single one stands alone as being truly effective and useful when dealing with my oldest son.  It is unfortunate that it took me so long to discover this approach, as now my son is already 19 year of age and so much has transpired in his life that the level of influence on my end is quickly becoming negligible.  Howard Glasser is the designer of The Nurtured Heart Approach and author of Transforming the Difficult Child.  There is no way I could do justice to even try to explain in any kind of detail the techniques that Glasser has proven to be effective to transform a difficult child.  I will, however, tell you that I have listened to his almost three hour seminar which I bought on CD over 20 times in the last 12 months and found it to be a masterful and incredibly enlightening.  He has by far earned my respect, admiration, and most of all attention for his amazing contribution to not just finding answers on how to deal with my son, but also bringing hope to a cause that in most cases feels as impossible to improve.  My advice is that any parent, educator, or therapist that wants to truly be effective in transforming a difficult child take the time to learn Howard Glasser's techniques and take them to heart on a daily basis.  Even though I discovered this approach after falling so far down the rabbit hole to actually be able so see the light in my parental influence with my oldest son, I for one have seen noticeable improvement, something that was completely absent until now.  I truly wish I would of found this resource earlier, as I believe that it would of taken a lot less tweaking from my part to be able to make it work in our lives.

I need to find better ways to ensure that what grows inside the minds and hearts of my children is not the result of the improper influence of tumbleweed seeds of adversity.  I also need to foster and not stifle the creativity, intensity, and passion which my kids bring with them to our lives.  I need to learn how to nurture the heart of my kids regardless of their age with the goal of allowing them to be succeed in life.

Dad

You are beautiful...

I sat at my office desk today during my lunch break writing a short note to a dear friend that is currently going through a bit of a rough time.  In the midst of reading her previous message I could easily sense much of her emotional state mostly because we have both been served some exquisite wine out of the same bottle which we have reluctantly sipped during our lives.  Just as love has no boundaries and is able to transcend space and time, sadness also has a way of reaching far and beyond the constraints of our complicated lives into some of the people that bring us meaning.

If you have had an opportunity to read through this blog I am sure you can easily notice that nothing has impacted me more emotionally in the last two years than my relationship with my children.  The common thread that weaves through most of my posts is essentially made of my desire to be able to understand and contribute to the well being of my kids regardless of any of our household circumstances.  I have learned to search for what might seem as the most insignificant details in our interactions in order to make sense of our challenges and find whatever common ground we can in order to overcome our difficulties together.  When faced with some of the behavior of my children I have had to learn to take it all in strides and patiently find a way to stack the odds in our favor so that we can not just survive, but also prevail.

As I sat here writing to my friend I did what I always do when I sense that maybe I was sharing too much...I found hope in some of the images that surround my cubicle office space.  Pictures of my children in all stages of their lives surround me together with many others of family and friends.  Almost without exception each of the moments in time that are captured say something amazing about the individuals that are contained within the minuscule dots of millions of colors of ink and sometimes even billions of silver halides that create their photographs.  The delight of both my children posing inside of a giant Easter Egg without a care in the world of how hard their lives would eventually become as they grew older forces me to dig deep into my brain and find the exact moment in time that we all went to have that picture taken.  A four year old Superman, an effortless gigantic laugh from my son while posing next to a live orangutan at the zoo, and my proud younger brother wearing a tuxedo minutes away from celebrating one of the greatest accomplishments of his life when becoming a doctor, all reveal themselves to me with the same intense grip on my heart as the one caused by the black and white image of my father when he was a child.  I can honestly say that all of these people that at one moment or another have touched my life and now reside on my walls have a heck of a lot in common.  For one, they are all beautiful to me regardless of how much they might of changed during the years that have gone by.  They are beautiful to me because at that very moment that they either stood next to me posing for these images or in front of me waiting for the light to bounce off their essence and record itself in a camera, at that exact moment they allowed their memory to be a part of my life.

I've said it before and I will say it again, I am a very lucky man indeed.  Without all of these people that have touched me in one way or another, there would be no way I would be able to appreciate the extent of my blessings.  Love has surrounded me from the instant my parents knew I was on my way into their lives.  Even in my darkest moments, when my knees have hit the ground to beg my Maker to spare me from some of the incredibly painful events of my life, still I have felt that I am loved.  It is this message that I wish I could teach to my children most of all.  They need to know that love has and will always surround them so that they can live their lives without ever doubting how important and amazing it is to love and to be loved.  They need to know that they are beautiful because of what is inside of them.  After all, it is what makes them different that impresses me the most and not the other way around.

Dad

A place to rest my body, mind, and heart.

Writing to you is a double edge sword which with one side cuts through time and space to bring the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of my life while with the other it opens deep wounds that might of already been closed or healed by time.  It has been over seven months since I have written anything in these pages.  On several occasions I have logged in and written entire posts with the full intent of eventually publishing them, but without exception, every time I've read them a day or two afterwards, I cannot find it in me to make them public.  I guess what I am trying to say is that some things are too hard to share when they are still squeezing my heart so tight.  For this I apologize and the most I can offer is, maybe later?

So much can happen so quickly that in retrospect it becomes almost impossible to make total sense of it all.  I always thought that the longer I would wait, the clearer things would become and the easier it would be for me to put it all into words.  Interestingly enough, this is not always true.  Time moves on and piles on top of the past additional moments that simply complicate the view even more.  However, one view stays clear, being a dad.  It's not like I have much of a choice, right?  It's one of those things that you "are" or your "not" and clearly I "am."  I've seen this many times in the past, including my mom taking care of us kids while my dad was in Vietnam, and while he was mostly at work, or mostly in school, and finally dead at age 44.  It's not like she ever said "Today I'm not going to be a mom, instead I'll be somebody else!"  Nope, once she defined herself as being our mom, she simply aways "was."  In fact, even now that we are all adults, my mom still takes her maternal role in full strength setting and example for all of us of how endless that duty truly is regardless of your children's ages.

This morning on my drive to work I called mom as I usually do to do some catching up and sharing.  I vented a bit about a few things, she quickly allowed me to let it all out and in less than 20 minutes I felt much better knowing that regardless of my eventual decisions, the outcome of my actions, and the consequences of my turbulent life, I still have my mother's unconditional love.  As simple a statement as this last sentence might be, it is to me the root and foundation to keeping your sanity as a parent.  Notice that what I cherished the most is not that my mother would come to the rescue and solve my problems, not at all.  What I value the most is the fact that when I needed to vent she listened, allowed me to vent, gave me her time, and most of all gave me her love.  On her end, if she is able to pick up the phone, listen, encourage, and love, without taking on my burden, then her job can be done without the consequence of unnecessary entanglement.

There are obvious reasons as to why as adults we need to learn not to totally rely on our parents as our physical, mental, and emotional resting place of choice.  For one, at some point in our lives we should find ways to alleviate any emotional stress we might be imposing on our elders that could be affecting the quality of their lives.  Another reason could be if you see signs of unhealthy codependent behavior or abuse.  Change is not always easy, and many times not necessary since in many cases the bond between parent and child is so strong and even if we wanted or tried we would probably not be able to change a thing.  It is typical however that many times children get married or find a life partner or friend that fulfills this role to a certain extent, especially if the parent child relationship was lacking in the first place.

We all need a place to rest our bodies, minds, and hearts in our lives.  Children are no exception, which is why it is so important that as parents we make ourselves available to them and not make it too hard for them to find us when they need us.  When your child is physically tired it is easy to notice and simple to provide them with a  resting place.  What about when their minds and hearts are weary and tired too?  What is it that you and I can do to provide our children with what they need when their minds are exhausted from all the crazy stuff that goes on in their lives?  If I remember one thing clearly enough it was how confused I was always feeling about "love" and "relationships" when I was growing up.  What can I do as a father to provide a parking spot for my child's heart to rest in between the battle of emotions and the surge of hormones that rage within his body?  There is comfort in listening.  Sometimes we just say too much.  Shut up and listen to them give in to their true thoughts and emotions, it really does not take that long if you poke around the few cues that they give when they are emotionally and mentally tired.  Most of the time they can only express themselves by sharing a song, or watching a movie that they've recently watched alone and truly enjoyed.  If you are going to interject, make it something that is not judgmental, and instead provide a real short emotional snippet of your own life.  The only reason to make it long is if it is REALLY funny, which then becomes engraved in their mind as a positive feedback.  Finally, never leave a feel good moment scene without planting a seed of love with the right gesture and word.  A hug, a kiss, and a "You know I love you, right?" goes a really long way to making the moment repeat itself again in the future.

Fixing my door...

In the midst of my daily routine, I have suddenly found myself reconsidering the true value of the commodity of patience.  Patience is not something that I can go shopping and acquire a booster, reload, or cart full at any local establishment.  In fact, to me, just learning how to access this behavior from within the ocean of other types of responses stored in my habitual personality is a daunting task that I confess to be extremely challenging.  Yet so many of you that are close to me keep telling me that I am one of the most patient individuals you know and cannot believe how much I am able to put up with before I literally blow a fuse and resort to other measures and behavior.  I was not always this way, in fact I remember being much more inpatient than patient throughout the pages that I am able to recollect of my life.  Something deep inside me has changed; the core storage of my instant replies and the impulsive actions that follow their release have been altered and somehow tamed.  Personally, when hurtful and frustrating moments knock on my door and push their way in regardless of my efforts to keep them outside of my life I still feel an incredible urge to grab them by their hypothetical necks, tighten my grip, and defuse their powerful effects.  However, something else inside me pulls my hands down and brings me to an almost complete halt instead.  Is this good or is this not so good in the end?  I won't lie, the jury is still out on my own assessment to the real value of these changes in my own behavior.

It could be that I have become more of a victim; a survivor if you will.  I read about it all the time with the life stories of those which have been handed incredible difficult or painful moments which in the end numb their responsive behavior to the point of allowing the negative effects to simply perpetuate themselves through time.  Another alternative could be that I have lowered my parental expectations so low that at the current level it makes very little sense to take aggressive action in order to achieve any true change.  Or could is just be that I have in some sense lost the sense of hope that is required for other kinds of responses to want to come out and play? 

The choices are many and even though I have just given you a taste of how some of them can be very unappealing, there are other possible reasons that could also describe why it is that so much has changed and given me a larger supply of that enviable patience response.  One explanation that immediately comes to mind is rooted on the basic principles of human learning behavior.  Learning, in its fundamental mechanics requires me to substitute old information with newer and more updated information in order for it to be effective.  How many times to I have to embark in an ineffective particular type of behavioral response before I decide to stop applying it?  Sooner or later, the lack of success in one type of action typically will lead me to either try something different, or in some cases nothing at all.  For example, I the last two and a half years in which my oldest son has lived with me 100 percent of the time, he has broken into my room to many times to count searching for something when I was not there to grant him physical access.  I've learned that threats, angered responses from my end, consequences, and punishments don't make any difference in the end.  Once the next moment in which his impulsive personality finds itself needing something that might be stored in my room and I am again not there to grant physical access, everything that I did in response to the previous incident of invasion of my privacy simply goes out the window without any rhyme or reason, and much less fear or remorse.  This kind of behavior I understand is tied to his differently wired mind.  I have learned that since I do not have the power, ability, or resources to make any changes to his twisted mental wiring, me going down a path of anger simply affects my own physical and mental health and very rarely if at all affects him.  In fact there is actually very little motivation on my part to even fix the physical damage he has caused over time to the side door of my room since I already know that it will happen again.  He has broken the door while I am on travel for some of the dumbest reasons.  For example, when asked why he's broken my door to get in his response has been: "...because I needed soap...because I needed shaving cream...because I needed batteries...because I needed a charger for something...because I needed shaving blades...because I needed some medication...because I needed money...etc."  I've tried pretty much every trick in my book to convince him to please wait or ask his mother while I am not there for whatever it is that he suddenly needs from my room, but in the end it simply happens again.  As I have said before, he never lies about his behavior and actions when confronted or asked.  So the superficial reasons are always easy to learn.  It is the root of his behavior and actions that are so hard to understand.

When I got home yesterday my privacy had been invaded again with his intrusion into my room, this time needing money.  Interestingly, I rarely ever say no to him when he asks me for cash, as long as the amount and his request is done so in a reasonable manner.  "Dad, can I have some money for food...for clothes...for something I need?"  And my typical response is "sure."  I actually don't feel abused when he asks, since he typically does so in a good way and truly not that often.  I did feel extremely hurt when I discovered that he had taken a cup full of about twenty dollars of change from my closet shelf without asking while I was not home.  My blood raged, my pulse increased, and instinctively I got into my car and drove to his mother's place where they were having Thanksgiving dinner to confront him, probably not a good sign of parental self control.  As I walked in I found the three of them at the dinner table and even though every bone in my body told me to walk away and not say anything, I somehow could not resist the urge to open my mouth and say a few words.  "It really upsets me that you would steal from me...I rarely ever deny you of anything you ask me, especially money...it really hurts that you would do such a thing," I said with a calm, low volume, and none aggressive tone.  "How much did you take?" I asked, to which he replied "Twenty dollars in quarters."  Then I simply apologized for having brought it up during their dinner, told him that this made me very sad, and just walked away.

I am sure you understand that this is not about the money.  Most people can probably read the above and recognize that this is all about trust, respect, and maintain a certain degree of dignity with your own flesh and blood.  Later on that same afternoon I walked into the house to get my jacket that I had accidentally left behind on my previous entry and as I walked into my home he simply walked towards me, gave me a hug, and walked away.  Honestly I am not even sure if that was an apology or just our common greeting, but either way it did do some good somewhere inside me because afterwards some of my resentment went away.

I have spent much of the past 30 months of my life praying for both my son's and my own healing.  In fact, the word "much" truly does not do justice to the amount of time I have lifted my words and heart to God during these difficult times in my life, which brings me to my final assessment as to why it is that maybe I have found so much patience in my daily responses and actions lately.  It could be that the reality of my behavior is more likely tied to the psychobabble I mentioned earlier in this post.  However, not being an expert in psychological behavior gives me the luxury to instead give God credit for my deep well of love.  So again I pray...

"Dear God, please fill my heart with what it is that I need to keep going.  I so often feel empty and with so little hope with regards to my son's behavior.  I do trust that You have a plan, and that this plan is well on its way to being obvious.  In fact, thank you for what it is You are doing to heal us both even though I cannot see it yet.  Amen."

Dad

Boo!!!

Once again, as so many other times in the past 25 years, I was unfortunately not home for Halloween.  Many of you might think and even say "what's the big deal...it's not like Halloween is a holiday."  The statement holds true to just about anyone that does not have a child.  However, for most of us that have kids we understand that the gory night of ghosts and ghouls is much more than just a freaky day for children to go out and dress up in their favorite costume and ask for candy.  Halloween is the day that once a year we get to experience the curious world of fear, fun, and silliness all mixed up in one, regardless of age, gender, and our social status.  If you are curious about how creative and original a bunch of nerdy engineers can truly be, invite a bunch of them to a costume Halloween party and be ready to laugh your head off all night long.  The same is probably true for so many other careers that so many of us have in which seriousness takes the lead on a daily behavioral basis.  As a parent, I can't remember a day of the year that made me smile more intensely than when I would hold my boys by the hand walking down the street in our neighborhood as they would tighten their grip when we would walk by a scary house.  Interestingly though, regardless of the fear of the moment I can't remember a time in which the choice was ever made to not go in and get some candy.

Today my children are already 15 and 18 years old respectively, yet I would of given anything to be able to still be with them yesterday night instead of out here at sea doing my tedious job.  A few weeks earlier my youngest son made his typical request, "dad, are you going to be able to help me make my costume this year?"  We've kind of gotten into the habit of "making" things instead of buying them.  To be totally honest, the last thing on my mind on the week just before having to get on a airplane and land on an aircraft carrier and then catch a helicopter ride to another ship was having to spend a good ten to twelve hours making a Halloween costume.  The though crossed my mind more than once of how great it would be if he would simply ask me to take him to the costume store to buy an outfit this year.  However, once I started making the costume with my youngest son it all came back to me, the reason I do what I do even though my older man's body is constantly telling me to stop doing it, is quite simple.  It is during those moments when we look at what we are doing together and both find ourselves respecting each other more than ever.  This is something that is hard to put into words.  He probably sees in me the reliable old man that gives into his quirky request to make the most awkward looking costume imaginable, and I see in him the loving boy that even though today he has already grown a full beard, inside he is still a child.  He respects my sense of not backing off from a promise, I respect his sense of giving me enough credit to think I can pull it off once again.  Last year the costume was Pyramid Head from Silent Hill.  This year it was The Butcher, again from Silent Hill.  The names of these characters do not do justice on how complicated making their costumes can be, but go online and do a picture search and maybe you'll understand what I am talking about.  Finding the right kind of  material to build the props is a project on itself.  Building them is definitely an adventure.

I started searching for materials at least two weeks ago which was definitely not enough time, but in the end we still got most of what we needed.  Cutting, gluing, painting, filling, sanding, taping, screwing, and detailing took a good twelve hours which from the processes just mentioned you can probably understand why they cannot all be done consecutively even if you wanted to.  On two occasions we took off in my car looking for a hard hat, an apron, spray paint, and a few other materials that eventually all came together to help complete the project.  I opened up the garage and we got to work cutting cardboard, gluing things, sawing the hard hat in half, painting, and on and on I can go into excruciating details since now I am an expert at building the most esoteric helmet I have ever seen.  It fits on half of the individuals face exposing only one eye and is made to look as if it was made out of rusted iron.  Every once in a while he would tell me that he needed to go finish some homework and I would stay on the task knowing that if I waited for him to be 100 percent available I would not be able to finish it before having to leave on my work trip.  Diligently he would come back almost every half hour to see if I needed help holding things while I glued parts together and also taking pictures with his phone to later post on his own blog some of the steps of our creation.  More importantly, while we worked together we talked, shared, and bonded immensely.  I'm glad we did this together, most of all because I was not going to be able to be home on the spooky night to come.

I know it goes without saying, but I wanted to share with you this short moment in my life as an example of the things I sometimes do to be able to connect with my kids.  They might look like men, but deep inside they are still children seeking for answers in their lives that sometimes come in the form of simple acts of sharing.  Doing things with your kids is a powerful tool to stay in touch with them.  It takes effort on my part even if I make it sound easy.  I have to drag my tired butt out of bed and get up earlier than I really want to during the weekends in order to find the time to do these things.  Lately I have found myself going on hikes when I am not feeling so well, or am more tired than I care to admit to my oldest son.  However, I also confess that I have no regrets because in the end I feel rewarded by that short moment that we connect and are able to see eye to eye.  If you find yourself disconnected with your teenage kids, maybe it's time you take a closer look at how you pick your moments to connect.  It is not always when it feels right, and much less when I feel ready, but for sure I've learned to take it when I can get it...that is how spooky love can be!

Dad

A simple moment of prayer...

"God, I understand that my job is not to worry, but to dream about all the blessings you have in store for me in my life.  It is obvious that my limited eyes are not able to always see the answers, yet in my heart I truly believe that you are doing everything that needs to be done for everything to be not just ok, but truly great.  Nobody understands this path I have walked with my children better than you, so today I pray to give you thanks and praise for taking care of us.  Every single day I eagerly wait for each one of your blessings knowing that they are constantly on their way into my life.  Thank you Lord!"

Words...

It took my brain less than a faction of a second to realize that the words leaving my lips would haunt me for the rest of my life.  In anger, sometimes I have said things that I have come to deeply regret.  Being a nerd at heart, I envision a time in the future where moments like this can be avoided by implanting in my brain a "don't be a dumb ass" filter that is automatically activated when my anger rises above a certain level...that would be so cool!  Unfortunately, in the meantime I must create a semi-effective filter myself utilizing the tough lessons I have learned in my life by the consequences of my words.  You would think that at my not so tender age, and taking into account the so many times that I have screwed up, that by now my self created filter would be amazingly effective, yet I am here to testify that I am very much still work in progress.

One thing led to another and as his anger increased, so did mine.  A simple question about whether he had done his homework or not, somehow eventually led to screaming on both sides, and unfortunately in the end turned into a physical confrontation.  He had just started high school at the time, and because of my separation I took advantage of not being able to purchase a home yet to rent a place in a more desirable school district.  A better school or environment does not necessarily mean that your children are in the "right" place, but that was still a lesson I was starting to learn at the time.  It only took a few weeks before the novelty of the new school wore off, and the reality of not feeling that he was in the right place kicked in.  I can see now, in retrospect, how ignorant I was to think that he could adapt to this drastic change when in reality "adapting to change" had always been his greatest challenge.  Top it all off with his parents, me and my now ex-wife, going through the motion of a divorce, and you can probably see the impending train crash clearer than I could at the time.

My parenting instincts took over during the challenging moment, and my reaction to his defiant behavior was to take away something that he cared about in order to gain some leverage.  I walked over and demanded he hand over his iPod as a punishment, to which I was immediatelly confronted with physical opposition.  It was at that moment that I escalated the situation by trying to take it by force.  Soon I found myself in a physical struggle, and even though I overpowered him and was able to win the battle, the war was far but over.  The rage in his eyes was obvious and for the first time as a parent I felt fear.  The verbal abuse from his side grew exponentially hurtful and obviously out of control.  He ran to the kitchen of the two bedroom apartment, open a drawer, and reached for a knife.  My adrenaline raised to never before expected levels while arguing with my son and I lunged at him and took him down by overpowering him, removing the weapon from his hands and then pinning him on the floor while keeping an obviously painful grip on his hair.  He threatened some more while being overpowered by me...I threatened to defend myself and also call the police if he would not stop instantly...and when I finally let go thinking it was all over, he raised himself from the floor reached for a dining room chair, tilted it over and brought his entire body weight on top of its fragile legs tearing it into many pieces.  In retrospect, considering the level of anger and danger of the moment, we were blessed that nothing more than a chair and some headphones were destroyed in the process.

I take pride of thinking that both my son and I are intelligent individuals, yet it took more than just a few of these terrible incidents for me to realize that we both needed professional help to be able to avoid these kinds of encounters.  At the moment, as much as I had already learned that my son had issues that made him very different from other kids, I still wanted to believe that if I was a tough dad, an enforcer, and did not give into his out of control behavior, that sooner or later I could fix what was broken.  What I did not realize at the time was that much of my own behavior factored in significantly as a trigger to his anger and outbursts.  If I sat down and described every one of the times in which we went down this scary path, I think I would need to take a sedative first, since just the memories of these painful moments trigger in me levels of anxiety that I do not wish to experience again.  I can only imagine how they must feel for my son too.  Sooner or later we are going to have to deal with these memories and try to find a way to turn the lessons to our advantage without the second hand effect of their emotional triggers.  I actually look forward to doing this since I believe it will bring us both a great deal of peace.

Violence comes in more flavors than one.  Somehow I am cursed with the ability to trigger a cornucopia of violent behavior in my son.  Interestingly, he does the same to me, making me reach deep inside my basic survival instincts and say and do things that I would never consider saying or doing under normal circumstances.  This obviously is a sign that it is not just my son that has anger issues, but I myself am most definitely work in progress keeping my demons at bay.  To know me as a friend might be extremely deceptive, since unless the right buttons are pushed, I am simply not an aggressive individual.  For example, cutting me off on the freeway would never trigger an angry response on my part.  In fact, I am not one to yell at a stranger, maybe because I don't see the point of it.  However, if I find myself being hurt at an emotional and personal level, many times I have found myself lashing out in return even though in a much less physical manner than my teenage son.  Words, though, can be just as hurtful as knives, even if I do not yell them out.  It is almost as if I could compare showing a knife in an angry gesture to saying something mean and hurtful.  Even though I might not lunge at my opponent with a sharp weapon, the fact that I reveal it is threatening enough.  Certain things that I might say in anger happen to have the same effect, turning the moment into one much worse than it has to be in the first place.

Even though in those days we set out to deal with my son's confrontational issues based on a weak diagnosis of my son having a condition called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, the outcome eventually benefited us both immensely.  Forcing ourselves to accept the fact that we needed to learn to control the level to which we could allow ourselves to be angry by avoiding certain triggers, made us realize that we both could do so much more on each other's ends to bring us to a better place.  Even though it took us a while to get significantly better at this task, the results are outstandingly impressive and effective.  Unfortunately we both are probably going to need to re-visit some of the words that were said during our difficult times in order to heal some of the wounds caused by our verbal attacks.  I say unfortunately because I truly wish it was just as simple as saying that it is all water under the bridge, but I know better to assume that his love for me as a son could ever be as powerful as my love to him as a father.  I care for him so much, that I am easily self-convinced that at his age those mistakes can all be washed away with love.  However, my mistakes are an entirely different beast.  At some point he really will need to know that I am truly sorry for some of the things that were said on my part in anger.  I should of been the bigger man, the adult, the good example.  This is why it is crucial for me to eventually find the proper moment in his life to bring with me a bucket of humility to try to wash away some of damage I might of caused.  It is not about giving in, or being weak, and much less about relinquishing parental authority.  In fact, not once should I do any of the above if I ever want to retain his respect.  However, there is a great lesson to be learned by my son from him hearing me say that some of the words that I once said were only words in anger and not the reality of my heart.  The lesson would be that a good father makes sure his kids know that he can be a better man.  After all, if I am trying to set a good example, what better example than picking the right words to say I am sorry.

Dad

Above all, your real job is to never give up!

It takes being a parent to totally grasp what parenting is all about.  In fact, I have learned that one has to be at this selfless job for more than just a few years to totally come to grips with how incredibly ignorant we were about parenting in the first place.  To those who play golf I would give them the analogy of how simple the game seemed before they ever played a game.  Come on, how hard could it be to hit a little ball down a beautiful green field and put it into a hole?  In fact, the first time anyone plays golf they are typically amazed at how quickly they can learn to hit the ball straight with just a few tips from a friend.  But then they go and invest in a set of golf clubs, some dorky looking shoes, maybe even take a few lessons, and when they return to play the game truly thinking that they will be so much better at it, they find themselves losing more balls than they did when they knew absolutely nothing about golf in the first place.  Funny how that goes, the more you practice, the harder the game becomes even if you get better at it.  Well, that is a bit like what parenting is in real life.  The longer we are parents, the harder the job becomes and then we realize how simpler it was in the beginning.  This is why we find so many grandparents telling their children how important it is for them to enjoy their kids while they are little.  Grandparents also tend to give the advice to younger parents to not be so hard on our kids when they are young, knowing well that in time there will be plenty of things for the parents to take immensely seriously when they grow older.  My mother's youngest brother and parent of two boys, one of my uncles, has told me many times that "as your kids get older, the problems always get larger, prepare yourself..." as a warning of things to come.  Even though I tend to agree with my dear uncle, I also believe that you should not live life waiting for the dark moments.  Since dark moments have a way of showing up uninvited regardless, I am one to try to keep a more positive perspective and not be the one that triggers their invitation in the first place.  I rather deal with those moments as they show up, than live my life waiting in fear for them to reveal themselves.

All this been said though, I barely have any time to spend second guessing myself with regards to the decisions I have made parenting my children.  I believe that this is the same for other parents too.  From the moment we bring home our little bundles of joy, until the day they flee the nest to begin their independent lives, we as parents invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and not to mention money taking in our new roles as caretakers, enforcers, guides, and counselors.  Very few times during those irreversible years do we ever have an opportunity to once again breath the air of peace and solitude that we once so easily took for granted and later were so eager to give up in exchange of having children.  In fact, at every stage of their lives we seem to live as if constantly throwing pennies into a wishing well hoping that what is next to come will be somewhat better than the days we just went through.  Maybe when he is potty trained things will be so much easier than constantly cleaning his poopy butt.  Maybe when he starts to talk I'll be able to tell what it is that he cries so much about.  Maybe when he is finally in school, all the pre-school nonsense and headaches will go away.  Maybe when he finally has some real friends it will be easier to get him involved in some sports or special activities.  I bet that as soon as he starts liking girls he'll begin brushing his teeth and wearing deodorant without me having to tell him to do so every morning.  Our fantasies go on and on with respect to how we visualize improvement in the future without realizing that at every stage a new and more difficult challenge creeps up its head to make the past look trivial in retrospect.  Oh how I wish that my biggest problem would be the burden of having to buy diapers by the truck load!  It is no wonder that so many mothers become depressed soon after giving birth to a child.  Not only do their environmental, physiological, and emotional worlds change without warning, but to top it off they are no longer just responsible for their singular life, but also the entire life of the new born creature.  It must feel as if at every corner someone is judging their ability to be a good mother, while at the same time almost no one is willing to do anything to lessen the weight of it all.

You will almost never find a parent referring to caring for their children as it being a burden.  Rarely will you hear those words reveal themselves from the lips of a mother or father that loves their kids.  Yet deep inside we all know that there are very few words to describe the enormous amount of responsibility and hard work that it takes to be a good parent.  The job is without a doubt the hardest task anyone will ever have to complete without a good set of instructions or procedures manual.  I might sound cold and harsh by talking about raising children in these terms.  However, all it takes is to be a parent for a few years to realize that there are very few other ways to describe the weight that is brought upon caring for a child, let alone more than one at a time.  Top it off with the fact that in most circumstances being a good parent also means being the bad guy, and soon you come to realize how great your own parents were in the first place.

I write this post today to give you a rare opportunity to reconsider some of the judgements that you might of made towards your own parents in the past.  Most of the time we are so self involved in our personal lives that we rarely take a moment to go back in time and understand the reason, the circumstances, and much less the reality under which our own parents behaved and acted under certain circumstances towards us as parents.  It seems so much easier to criticize their actions and decisions that it is to truly understand their reasons and motives.  I for one feel blessed for having such dedicated parents that cared enough to give it their all in order to be good parents.  What they did right or what they did wrong truly matters very little in comparison with what they accomplished in the end.  If you are reading this post chances are that you learned enough to recognize that in order for you to be a good parent, you must listen to others, learn from others, and most of all understand that nobody is perfect as a parent.  In fact, in my humble opinion, if you feel that you are a perfect parent, then you are well on your way to being a terrible parent in the end.  Nothing screams louder "bad parenting" than an individual that thinks that they know it all, and that the only right answer is "their answer".  I believe that the most important rule in good parenting is recognizing that we all make mistakes and that sometimes we need to make amends with what we've done wrong in the past in order to get it right in the present.

I can without a shadow of a doubt tell you that if you care enough to take the time to learn from your mistakes that sooner or later you will be well on your way to becoming a good parent.  The trick is to never let it all go to your head.  Don't ever make the mistake to think that you already know everything you need to know to be a good parent.  As long as you keep the door open to allow yourself to continue to learn, chances are that you are on the right track.  Even when you think that you have nothing else to give or nothing else to learn that might change your immediate circumstances, you cannot give in to failure.  The truth is that behind every failure there is a lesson that guides your steps towards eventual success.  If you keep learning, sooner or later you will succeed.  Above all, your real job is to never give up!

Dad

You can teach an old dog new tricks!

My mom keeps reminding me to buy her one of those cat scratch pads or posts.  Somehow I just keep forgetting every time I am out doing any shopping.  Probably because my head is full of other stuff and the needs of this fuzzy friend just rank one notch below the available "Post-It" space in my brain.  A bit over two years ago one of my son's was walking back from school when this little ball of joy that could not weigh more than a pound followed him home.  We spent several afternoons unsuccessfully canvasing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, hoping that we could find the original home and owners to the almost instantly named "Seaham" kitty.  You know you are in trouble once your kids name the creature.  It is almost like the first step in an emotional adoption process.  I myself am totally a dog person, so as adorable as it might as seemed at the moment, all I could think of was finding the animal it's real owners.  Eventually we gave up after in more than one occasion somebody told us that they thought the little thing was left behind by a individual that had lost their home to a foreclosure.  All I could think of at the moment was "I hope this cat is not as much trouble as the one I had for a short while in college!"  Her name was Baby Jane, and she was more than a handful!

Immediately I scheduled the earliest appointment to have her spayed, which was at least four months down the road.  The procedure could not have been more timely, since just a few weeks prior, our back yard had already become the main center of attraction for some very scary big fat black cat that had it in his mind to become a daddy if our adorable Seaham would let him.  You could almost see it in her tiny little face how scared she was of the impending prospect of the bad kitty mounting her!  I bought her a litter box and tried to keep her indoors as much as possible until the date of her operation, which soon turned several sections of my almost new home carpet into a scratch pad, hence my mother's advice to buy the creature the cat version to keep her from doing more damage.  It always amazes me how much can go wrong in such a short amount of time when you are caring for kitties and puppies.  I have seen these little troublemakers eat shoes, remote controls, couches, cabinets, and even outdoor sprinkler systems in a backyard.  There is no end to how much chaos they can cause when left to their own supervision.

I have been pleasantly surprised with how much my two sons have bonded with Seaham.  Interestingly, soon after she became a part of our household, the boys nicknamed her Sam, which in my opinion, shorter is better when naming pets.  In the last two years she has become what I call "a very grateful cat."  She never hisses at any of us, spends most of her day in the backyard chasing bugs, lizards, mice, and the occasional bird, which she typically brings some body part to us as gifts of appreciation for our attention and caring of her.  She'll drop to the floor on her side instantly if she thinks that we are going to pet her, exposing her furry belly and allowing us to scratch her as if she was a dog.  I had never experienced this kind of behavior with a cat, then again, I only had a cat for a few months before her.  Still, the scratching on stuff can be very annoying, so every time she starts I usually yell "no!" and take her outside.  Interestingly, she has taken to understand that if she scratches on something that I will then open the door.  So now days, all she does when she wants to go outside is make the gesture that she is about to start scratching on our recliner in the family room and then immediately she looks towards the door expecting one of us to open it for her.  In other words, the cat has trained "us" to know what to do when she wants out!

Sam is now 90% an outdoor cat.  As soon as she sees me doing any dishes in the morning through the window just above the kitchen sink, she then rushes to the sliding door just a few feet away expecting her well trained grandpa to open the door so she can come in and eat her food.  A few minutes later she'll just lift her paw against the corner of the family room recliner and look at the sliding door again, expecting the old man to once again let her out.  This process is basically a daily ritual which in her mind probably keeps me trained to know how to take good care of her.  In return she will occasionally bring me the severed head of a bird or reptile and leave it in front of the door to reward me for my good behavior.  I can almost hear what she is thinking..."good boy...good boy!"  What can I say other than you can teach an old dog new tricks!

Dad

The gift of hope.

As I entered his office I noticed a picture of a beautiful Gretsch White Falcon electric guitar on the top portion of his wall calendar.  I have always had a secret fascination with musical instruments which typically forces me to hold on to music store catalogs that come in the mail until I have had an opportunity to calmly drool over its pages before I am able to throw them in the trash.  I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind I must be a musician at heart.  At the age of 7 I started taking piano lessons after one of my sisters received a console piano as a Christmas present from Santa Claus.  For almost 10 years I continued taking lessons until one day my teenage interests switched to other age appropriate things and I was able to convince my mom that I needed a break.  Still, for years to come, as soon as I walked into a room with a piano my mind wandered to the ivory keys with a sudden rush inside me driving me to want to play again.  The drive has always been strong, so much that while I went to college in Mississippi I remember sneaking into an empty large room in the Student Union building and sitting before a beautiful grand piano and trying to play from memory some of my favorite George Winston's compositions.  Other times I would walk into the Music building and wait until a music student would be leaving from one of the small practice rooms to reach for the door before it would lock itself behind him or her so that I could sneak in and play a little.  As an adult I have learned to hold back my impulses, so now days when I walk into a room that has a piano I just look and almost never touch.  However, I am sure that if at that very moment I was hooked up to some anxiety meter the needle would probably tilt off scale since my heart rate and many more of my vital signs are obviously affected by this sudden internal rush.

"Wow, that is a beautiful guitar" I told my co-worker and friend as I stared at the image on the wall.  He then proceeded with a chuckle and a comment on how expensive and desirable that particular instrument was to many people.  One thing led to another and in less than two minutes I was sharing with him how proud I was that my oldest son had learned to play guitar on his own so marvelously beautiful.  He then went on to tell me how driven he too had been as a teenager to learn to play the guitar and how later on in life circumstances had forced him to stop playing for almost 17 years.  Another co-worker one day enticed him to try again after revealing to him how so much had changed in the amplifier technology and that almost anyone now has access to a great deal of this and other music technology at a fraction of the cost from the past.  After we shared some more on the subject I was bold in making a comment where as I reflected on all of the admirable qualities that I had learned to admire from my dear friend I could not ever imagine being able to compare him with my son.  I said, "My son is good at so many difficult things because of the compulsions that drive him to impulsively learn whatever it is that motivates him at the moment...I would however, not dare to compare him to you since I am sure you were probably nothing like him as a teenager...this boy is truly a handful...sometimes so wild and scary at the same time that I am terrified of all the possible outcomes...between his way of thinking and his alcohol and drug abuse, I am sure such a level headed individual like you was a much different child."  Instantly he started to laugh and as he looked at me he leaned back in his chair and started to share with me a great deal of stories of his wild teenage years.  Sure enough, my dear friend had also been a handful to say the least to his parents.  One by one he accounted for how one mistake after another eventually taught him enough about himself to want to make the changes that make him who he is today.  As my mind processed his words my heart felt lifted, relieved, and in a very special way blessed.  Without him knowing that he was doing so, every account, every tale, and every word suddenly became a gift of hope about my son.  Not once did he say, "don't worry...your son will be OK."  However, everything he shared in those ten or fifteen minutes that I was in his office brought a great sense of hope to me.  I would probably be betraying a great deal of his confidence if I wrote here his stories without first asking, so I defer to your imagination to fill in the blanks.

I hope that this does not sound too righteous or religious, but I have to share my thoughts on this gift given to me by a good friend.  I remember over 13 months ago when I started to write this blog how desperately hopeless I felt about my parenting of my difficult teenage son.  If you read from the bottom up it is not hard to notice a transformation taking place in my thought process.  I began sharing with you at a moment in which things were terribly confusing and I desperately needed to make sense of it all.  One post after the other gave me the opportunity to not only share my story, but also to take the time to re-think what had gone on in the earlier years, and re-process the events that led to me writing these stories in the first place.  Amazingly, some of the things that seemed so frustrating and difficult to understand at the moment that they were happening, became much more clearer as I recounted and shared them with you.  What began as my own personal way of venting, sorting, and sharing, eventually became my own personal way of understanding, accepting, and healing.  I do however do something much more often than I share with you here.  Even though I am admittedly very much a man of science, I am conflictingly also a man of faith.  You need to know that this realization comes even more difficultly to me than it does to you since I am constantly seeing the world with a great deal of scepticism.  However, if there is something that I am certain of and can give testimony to, that would be the fact that God has always blessed me with whatever I  need in order to be able to go on trying to be a good parent.  I find very little coincidence that a musical instrument calendar hanging on the wall of a fellow engineer which has year after year shared with me every discovery in quantum physics that he has read about, suddenly serves as the prelude for him to open up to me and starts to tell me his wild teenage life story.  I know in my heart that these moments of refueling are God's gift to me when I am in need of hope.  To a non-believer these moments are just coincidences, happenstances, and moments with very little special meaning.  To me, it is God's way of lifting up my spirits when I am lonely and dragging my feet.  So in my own simple way I am here sharing this story with you while I quietly whisper "Thank you God," and type away.

Dad

Little rides...

As I travel back in time in my mind I am always fascinated by how complimentary my mom and dad's relationship seemed at any given moment.  For example, my dad used to love to drive, while my mom was extremely content to be sitting on the passenger side for hours on end.  At any given instant I can close my eyes and visualize in my head the image of my mom's left had reaching over my dad's right shoulder touching the back of his head as he took us all on a "little drive" which typically meant several hundred miles of sightseeing.  Many times we would start at noon and usually not get back home until dark.  When I was just seven years old and the household finances would allow it, we would get started on a Saturday morning around 5:00 a.m. and drive in my father's Chevy Malibu all the way from Phoenix Arizona to Southern California.  Typically we would arrive just within minutes of our destination opening its doors and would not start heading back to our home the same night until Disneyland, Universal Studios, or Sea World was closing their doors for the night.  One by one we would all fall asleep, except for one of my sisters that typically kept dad company awake most of the way back home.  I can only assume that with my father's Air Force salary and my mother's private school income, the budget only allowed for one day of fun at a time without the extra added expense of lodging.  Incredibly though, I never once heard my father complain about being too tired to take us out on these "little rides."  Every time we would go out as a family we truly had a great time regardless of our financial limitations.

The first time we went to Universal Studios Hollywood I remember being so impressed with all the special effects and secrets the movie industry used to make movies.  My most vivid memory is of us posing for a Kodak moment next to a giant rotary phone and some enormous sized scissors that were used as a prop in the creation of episodes for the show "Land of the Giants."  The show was not a great hit, in fact it was cancelled after only two seasons, yet the memories of being exposed to the magic of Hollywood in the creation of this show remain solid and fixed in my mind.  One by one my childhood experiences create a scrapbook or memories that I am now able to easily flip through its pages and enjoy at will.  Of course not everything is a good memory since in between the great times there were also hard times.  For example, my father had his first heart attack at the age of 33 sealing with that event a great deal of insecurities and worries in all of our minds.  It was bad enough that he had been gone for almost a year serving on a tour of war in Vietnam when he was suddenly brought back home to attend his father's funeral, but then about a year after this he found himself holding on to dear life himself.  In an instant the joy of having our family finally back together again was ripped away with the preoccupation of my father being ill and close to death.  Of course both him and my mother tried to trivialize their new reality in order to not have us children freak out, but the truth is that we all knew that our lives had changed and one way or the other we all needed to adapt.

"Let's go for a little ride..." my mother would say after attending church while pulling out a map of the state of Arizona that we kept in the family car.  In less than a minute my father would find a road that we had never taken before and steer us in the right direction for another day of family time.  If the road would furnish us with some obscure little Indian reservation museum or shop, immediately the car would come to a full stop, we would all get out to stretch our legs and check it out.  One weekend after the other we visited pretty much everything that there was to see in Arizona including the border towns to Mexico.  A lot changed after my father had his first cardiac arrest, but a lot stayed the same too.  Family time remained pretty much intact with the exception that it really took a lot more out of my father to do so many of the things he was used to doing and had taken for granted.  Walking up hill looking for the perfect Christmas tree to cut in Flagstaff Arizona was a much different experience that year.

Eventually my father was forced to retire from his military career much earlier than he really wanted to.  On our last summer before permanently moving back to Puerto Rico he took us all for a three month "little ride" all the way down from Arizona to Acapulco, then back up to Arizona again to pick up our dog and all the way across to Florida, and finally back up to South Carolina where we took a standby military aircraft ride back to our beloved island.  I've written a previous post detailing most of this trip that included a new car, a squeaky and leaking windshield, a new transmission, three adults, three kids, a dog, and towing a uHaul trailer with our luggage for almost 90 days.  As you can see from the highlights, it really was an adventure!

Eventually and finally we made it back to Puerto Rico.  School had already started by then, so us kids basically had to get ourselves back into the groove of learning without hesitation, and our mother went back to teaching again but now in a totally different language.  I guess the hardest one hit with our move back home was probably my dad because he had to adapt to the idea of not doing what he loved to do at such a young age.  Retiring in his early 30's was by far not ideal and had probably never crossed his mind.  At different stages he tried different things including going back to college, but in the end nothing was as fulfilling as his job in the U.S. Air Force.  One thing though never changed, even though we were back living in a small island, we all still packed ourselves into the car to take our little rides as a family.  Sometimes we'd get in the car with no destination in mind and eventually end up on the south side of the island visiting relatives or just driving around taking in the sites.  Typically we'd head out in the early afternoon and not make it back home until at least midnight or even later.

The little rides were not all saved just for weekends only.  During the week, when it was almost bedtime, many times my mom would ask my dad to take us for a little ride.  These midweek little ride requests meant just driving from our home in the countryside until we reached downtown, taking a few different roads to get there, buying milk and some fresh baked bread or treats from one of the local bakeries, and finally coming back home to dunk the still warm fresh bread covered in butter in a cup of hot coffee or chocolate.  Many times, if it was early enough, instead of coming back home after the drive we would take our warm bread bounty over to my grandparents home and eat it there instead.  Both my mom and dad loved visiting her parents and two sisters that lived in the farm house that was just five minutes away from our home.  As we'd drive into the narrow road entering my grandparents farm my father would slowly and carefully navigate his huge Chevrolet Impala between the branches of bushes and trees that would reach out and make their mark on our car if not done correctly.  In the early years the road was not paved, which also meant making sure that you knew where the potholes full of water from the typical earlier rain where located.  As we would pull our car in total darkness in front of my grandparents home, someone would peek through the one of the windows and instantly turn on the porch light as a welcoming gesture of hospitality and love.  Stepping up the steps into their home my mom and dad would typically lead asking my mother's parents to give them their blessings.  Originally a protestant, and before marriage converting to Catholic, my grandparents had become my father's godparents at that time.  I never heard him call them anything other than "padrino" and "madrina", and these titles where always preceded by a "bendición," which translates to "bless me godmother or bless me godfather."  This genuine and whole hearted gesture became a beautiful example of respect and love that I still admire from both my parents.  All of us kids learned to do the same and from the moment we were able to speak we always walked into my grandparents home asking for their blessings and greeting them with a hug and a kiss.

If I consider that my own kids were already talking full sentences by the age of 3, I can assume that for the last 45 years of my life I have been asking either my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and parents for their blessings every day.  This means that as a minimum I have been blessed at least 16,425 times.  In fact, if I extrapolate the thousand of times that I have requested blessings from my loved ones I can probably safely assume that I have easily been blessed more than 30,000 times in my lifetime.  That my dear readers is a lot of blessings!!!  The point that I am trying to make here is that thanks to what my parents taught me at such a young age, I am a very blessed man!

Recently my oldest son has curved his impulses and obsessions towards becoming more independent.  The same powerful forces that drive him to do scary things is currently at work to better himself.  Being sober and wanting to have more control over his own life have brought out of him a great deal of the tenderness that I had not seen a very long time.  I have always hugged, kissed, and given him my blessing regardless of how difficult a moment we might be going through.  Not an easy task if you ask me, but I have always felt it important to be this way.  Since I came back from my absence due to my job out at sea, everyday he has been the one to approach me with a hug when we greet first thing in the morning, or later when I get back home in the afternoon.  I am amazed of how powerful this beautiful habit of showing a loving gesture consistently since he was a child truly has become at this age.  I feel it genuinely, from his heart, and not imitated or forced.  To me it is an amazing indicator of how love can surpass some of the most difficult challenges in an individual's life.  We went hiking just the two of us on Saturday, then with his brother on Sunday.  Later on Sunday night we all got into the jacuzzi together and spent something like 90 minutes sharing stories and jokes.  To me, all of these moments are like those moments in which we would all get into my dad's car for a little ride.  One by one they create pages in the scrapbook of my children's lives so that they can later on, when they are older, go back and see how much they were loved by their father too.

Dad

Catching my breath...

It always feels so good when I finally make it home after being gone on work related travel.  My longest absence in my 25 years of working for the Department of Defense was 6 weeks.  At the time I was still single and without any parenting responsibilities, so even though it felt like a really long time to be gone, it was not as bad as it might seem.  Now days, when I am gone anywhere from one to three weeks at a time, it truly feels like a really long time regardless of what the calendar might say.  This last trip was almost three weeks long, which is on the borderline of being too long.  Just a few minutes after arriving at my home, my ex-wife brought my youngest son over and as I approached to give him a hug and kiss I found myself looking into his Adam's apple.  "My goodness, when did you suddenly grow another inch?" I asked while feeling so short standing in front of him.  I went into the garage, grabbed a measuring tape and made him stand against to wall to mark and measure how tall he had become during his summer vacation.  The almost 15 year old young man had grown a full inch during those short months, making him now five feet and 10 inches tall.  He grinned as I said out loud his new height, knowing that he was now an inch taller than his older brother which just a few years ago would constantly torture him by telling him he was "short."

That same day, while catching up with my oldest son on how he had managed during my three week absence, he surprised me with a request for me to take him hiking the next day.  This sudden request was like music to my ears knowing that being able to spend some time with him outdoors typically brings out of both of us some very enlightening conversations.  I quickly agreed and offered to head up a local mountain the next day.  We invited my younger son to accompany us, but he had already invited some friends over for that day and thought it would be rude to cancel.  So there we went each carrying a small water bottle in one of our hands with a very small and conservative goal of just doing 4 miles that day.  On our way up we started simply sharing generic information about movies we watched during our summer vacation, books we've read, and other simple pleasantries.  However, it was not very long before we started opening up with regards to more personal issues.  To get things going I inquired about what were the different motivations for people to turn vegetarian, all along knowing that he had done so several months back.  In his typical bright mind style he summarized for me all the different vegetarian categories which served me well to inquire about his own personal reasons.  To that question he replied by saying "I just like being in control over certain things in my life."  I thought that was extremely insightful while he continued to explain that it was only temporary and anytime soon he would be treating himself to a plate of his favorite buffalo wings to commemorate his achievement of losing weight from a high in the 190's all the way down to 140 pounds.

As the hike continued, a little bit at a time I found different ways to bring up a lot of unanswered questions that I had been waiting to find answers for several months by now.  I told him, "I've noticed that none of your friends have been coming over anymore and that you have locked to gate on the side of the house, what's going on?"  He answered the question telling me that he had graduated from high school a year early and that he thought it to be important to start being more independent.  "They are all hanging out and doing the same thing every day, in and out...all they do is play beer pong, and if I go there I am going to want to play too, which means I am going to get drunk, and I've discovered that when I get drunk I eventually pass out and then cannot remember what happened the day before while I was drunk...the next day everyone is telling me all the stupid things I did and said and I find myself having to apologize for things I can't even remember saying and doing in the first place."  At that very moment my heart skipped a beat because I knew he was, as he usually is, being truthful and honest and what parent does not want to hear that their wild child has grown another inch in his personal life.  It felt just like I felt when I reached into the garage looking for the measuring tape to see how tall my youngest boy had become during summer vacation.  Again I wanted to reach out and find anything in my toolbox that could tell me the true measure of his personal growth.

I then asked him how he was doing with his sleeping problem.  To this he answered that he was having major problems with anxiety at nights.  He said that when he closes his eyes to go to sleep he finds himself realizing that he is about to turn 18 in two months and that he still does not have his act together.  He said that he wants to be independent and not have to be asking me and his mother for money and things so he was already trying to find a part-time job to fill in the hours between the classes that he wanted to take at the local Community College.  I tried to give him some perspective and told him that I thought it was great that he was taking responsibility for himself, but that he should give himself realistic goals and not put too much pressure so that he could curve some of the anxiety it was all causing him.  I told him that the important thing was that he was aiming in the right direction, which I thought was a true sign of maturity and growing up.

I took advantage of the moment of clarity between us and offered several recommendations and advice.  We also talked about being sober and how different the world seems when you look at it with a clear mind.  By the time our hike was done, in one day I had learned more about his current state of mind than I had been able to during the last six months.  It was a very hot triple digit day and I was not in great shape so by the time we reached the peak I was totally out of breath.  Amazingly, he looked pretty much the same as he did when we started our hike.  Just a few months ago I had taken a good look at my son as he dragged himself staggering into our home drunk and out of control and all I could see was ugliness.  His appearance was that of a young man that had suddenly turned into an old beaten individual with wild eyes, totally out of control behavior, and such a scary demeanor that I had no other choice but to lock my bedroom doors at nights in fear.  Suddenly, just as I have been praying and asking God for a miracle to open his eyes, heart, and soul, the miracle seems to be happening right before my eyes.  I am not ignorant to the reality that he will fall again, we all fall again.  However, these moments of lucidity, of brilliant behavior, or amazing self control are nothing short of God's way of telling me to hang in there a little longer because this child is blessed.  I cannot describe how good it feels to have peace in our home, to be able to sleep without locking my bedroom door.

A week later we did it again, this time we coerced my youngest son to go with a promise to buy him the biggest size fresh squeeze orange juice from Jamba Juice after the hike.  I took a step back and watched and listened as both my teenage sons walked just a few feet in front of me sharing and endless supply of good humor between themselves.  Both of them so beautiful in my eyes, so talented, so incredibly loving.  As we hiked up the mountain I was remembering how just two years earlier the oldest boy would be calling his brother "short" in almost every sentence spoken out of his mouth, yet now he was an inch shorter himself.  Without saying a word I just smiled to myself understanding quite well how this process of growing up takes time.  I am still amazed how well they get along even while there is a three year difference between each other, so just imagine how amazing it is that an old man like me can still get along with two teenage boys too.  It was easier to share on the way down since in an effort to stay by their side I had to step up my pace and pretend that I was not having a heart attack on the way up.  The subject matter was much more light hearted on our second hike, but still just as enlightening because of their willingness to answer any question I would ask them.  I love that about my kids, I can ask anything and regardless of how terrifying the answer might be they never lie to me.  I have learned to censor myself at the moment and become a good listener in order to give them the freedom to speak their minds.  I don't intervene during the moment of sharing, but I do eventually find a place and time to plant my seeds of warning.  Telling a child not to do something is almost like begging them to do it in the first place.  I have learned that if I want them to stay away from something, it has to seem like it is their idea to stay clear of whatever it is they should not be doing in the first place.  So I typically try to steer the topic into a reasoning process, but not at the moment of the confession, later on.

Today I pray with more motivation and faith than ever, thanking God for his intervention and allowing me to have a moment to recharge my mind and heart with what I need to stay true in my parenting path.  I am blessed with two amazingly beautiful children that are on their way to become great men.

Dad