Happy New Year!!!

New Year's Eve brings back a collage of memories of fun times with friends and family during almost every phase of my life. Most of these memories are happy in nature, and then of course there is always one or two that bring back a bit of sadness for reasons I will not get into in an effort of maintaining a positive attitude on the upcoming occasion. To me, nothing can top celebrating this festive night in the company of all the people that I love, an arrangement that is almost always impossible because of life's incessant effect on my destiny. The moment that I set in motion my choices of attending school out of state and later taking a job here in California, the chances of sharing special occasions with those that I left behind decreased immensely. In fact, it has been so long ago that I was in Puerto Rico during the Christmas holidays that I am actually having trouble narrowing down the last time I did so. At least eight or nine years have gone by and just when I thought that this year would be no different, suddenly I received a Christmas present from my mom and older sister in the form of an airplane ticket to go and celebrate New Year's Eve and a few more days with them in Puerto Rico. Nothing can wipe away a sudden and permanent smile that has invaded my face since I got this wonderful news and I started to get ready for this trip. Tonight I am departing on a late flight leaving Los Angeles and won't make it to San Juan until past two in the afternoon tomorrow. I am so excited that this morning I woke up at four in the morning and I was never able to get back to sleep again.

As a family tradition New Year's Eve is always celebrated at my mother's home in Puerto Rico and a great deal of family members and friends will be attending as usual. This festive night brings back memories of delicious treats, delightful conversations, and a healthy dose of wonderful music, dancing, and drinking. By the time the New Year comes in with the sounds of firecrackers, laughter, and dozens of hugs and kisses, what then remains is the task of sobering up the crowd with a wonderfully steaming hot "asopao." Nobody leaves without eating first! I'll be doing a lot of catching up with my family starting this wonderful night of fun, and I am pretty sure some very entertaining post will flow from this great experience. A bonus to my trip back home will come in the form of getting back together to see some friends which have been absent from my life ranging from 20 to 30 years. I am so excited to be able to at least spend a few hours with my early college friends.

I wonder why it is that my heart beats faster when I just thing about the prospect of landing on my beautiful Puerto Rico? Inside my mind there must be some amazing neuro assosiation to my childhood and teenage life that trigger a great deal of physiological reactions in my body. I can compare this to an experience that I have that is annoying and funny at the same time. While I was growing up and living at home our next door neighbor had geese in their yard that served more as an alarm and security system than anything else. These white long necked bastards would scare the living heck out of me when I was asked to go over to their house for any particular reason. As soon as I would stand in front of their gate, no matter how far away the feathered beasts would come extending their necks and screaming right at me. I never did get bitten, but just the basic fear of the possibility of it happening was enough to give me instant "goose bumps" on my skin and all over my body. They seemed vicious and out of control, and I dreaded ever having to enter their territory unless they had been locked up. Why do I tell you this story, you may ask? Well, the plot thickens because for the last almost 25 years I have worked on a military base that is also a wilderness refuge. The place is very beautiful and includes a man made lake that is typically full of all sorts of birds including, you guessed it, geese. Mind you, not one or two fine feathered friends, but hundreds of these huge creatures have made that land their home. So on my way from the parking lot to my work building I typically encounter at least ten of these animals a day, many times more. I have tried for years to figure out why it is that every time I walk by what to me seems like alligators to others, I cannot control the rush of adrenaline and my skin curls up and I get goose bumps. The closer I have to walk by them, the less of an ability I posses to control this annoying physiological reaction. Even though I have practiced, and concentrated, and focused on trying to keep it from happening, nine out of ten times I am not able to do so. This is what I compare my heart racing when I start to think about coming back home to spend time with my family. I hold very little control over my inability to stop smiling too.

This will most certainly be my last post for the year 2009. I am actually kind of excited about 2010, for some reason I get a warm feeling that this will be a good year to me, and I hope it will be as well for all of you. I want to thank you for reading and sharing with me. I want to wish you a wonderful rest of the year and a safe and fun time too. I wish I could be close enough to each and every one of you to give you a great big New Year's hug and kiss. I am on my way to finish packing for my trip and getting ready to get my dosage of Puerto Rico, family, and dear friends. Almost 100 posts on this blog are witness to my desires of sharing my life and experiences with all of you from the bottom of my heart. My gift to you is the knowledge that I am in a much better place because of what we have learned here together, so feel proud of your role in this sharing exercise. If you have a moment, a parenthesis if you will, during these last hours before the end of the year, I would really appreciate your good thoughts, prayers, and of course as always, anything you would like to share with the rest of the class.

Dad

Now you see it...now you don't!

I spent all my morning yesterday working together with an old friend whom I had not seen in over five years. We became good friends while we were doing our jobs on board the USS Peleliu. On that particular occasion, we both suffered from the same unfortunate casualty of having to sleep in the infirmary of the ship since all other berthing quarters were occupied to capacity during our two weeks on board. Sleeping in the infirmary meant not having an inch of privacy or any space to store our belongings while we were out at sea. The room in itself was an enormous space with a few hundred two inch thick mattresses suspended in mid air by wired frames and stacked three occupants high. I cannot remember exactly what the actual numbers were, but I am pretty sure that the entire space was also occupied with at least 200 U.S. Marines with which we all had to share the same six toilets, sinks, and showers daily. On that particular occasion, instead of filling our cups with frustration, we decided to make the best of it regardless of our circumstances. We did our jobs fully aware that at least by the end of the two weeks, we would both be heading back to the comfort of our own homes while the rest of the crew were going to have to live in those conditions for the duration of their six month tour of duty out in the middle of the Persian Gulf. During this particular trip I learned that putting things in perspective definitely had the power to change my outlook in life.

During that particular temporary duty out at sea the job was all consuming for at least twelve hours a day which then left me with twelve hours of personal time in which eating, exercising, bathing, reading, socializing, and then eventually sleeping occupied the rest. During the socializing time of my two week trip I managed to learned a great deal about my new friend's life. He had two teenage kids from a previous marriage that ended in a divorce with a very complicated custody arrangement mostly because his ex-wife moved to a completely different state after the divorce. Some years later he met a really nice woman while he was still on active duty in Spain, they fell in love and he re-married. They both wanted to have a family and adopted a baby which currently is around six years old. Every time I have ever heard him talk about his new bride and child, all that comes out of his mouth are wonderful stories and comments. As bad as his first marriage had turned out, with that same intensity his second marriage has fallen into the wonderful side of the spectrum. In other words, he is happy as can be and loving every minute of his new life.

As we caught up with what had transpired in the last five years while we had not been in contact, stories of an extremely talented child that started to play the drums at the age of two came to life with so much joy that I could easily see his eyes glitter with pride. By the time he left my office several hours later, we both walked to his car and he was gracious enough to share with me a few amazing videos of his son performing for the hand held camera on his phone. I am extremely happy for my friend, mostly because I can tell that at this moment his life is bringing some pretty good experiences for him to enjoy and in all fairness, that had not been the case during his previous marriage. As I sit here today reviewing all that was shared between us in those four morning hours, I realize that even though he told me some very personal and intimate details of his life, not once did I take the time to bring him up to speed with regards to my own. I have justified my unbalanced interaction due to the fact that I had very little privacy in my office while we were working together yesterday, so opening up and telling him some of my life also meant telling everyone else that surrounds my work space this information. However, in my heart I know very well that this justification is not entirely accurate since I could of stepped outside with him for a little while in order to gain privacy and share. The last time we had been together I remember clearly sharing plenty of the drama in which my life was entangled at that moment. Yet for some interesting reason I did not find it adequate for me to be fair in the information exchange we were having yesterday. Instead, when he asked about my personal situation I simply answered, "things are OK." Nothing more, nothing less.

So why is it that I did not open up to sharing? It should be obvious to you as a reader of this blog that I am not one to hold much back in the form of expressing myself and my willingness to share some extremely personal parts of my life. At first sight it almost seemed as if I might not be telling the truth when such a complicated question as "how are things going with your kids?" is asked of me and I simply replied "things are OK." However, if I wanted to accurately answer that question with hopes of not losing the attention of the individual which asked in the first place, a great deal of effort and time would be required from both myself and hopefully an extremely focused listener. As I commented in one of my previous posts, by finding a collage of a dozen or more short answers to the reason for which I did not share more information with my friend, I was probably not being entirely truthful. As hard it may seem for me to try to narrow down my answer to a single reply I am very much inclined to do so for the sake of being honest to you and myself too.

I honestly believe that this blog has given me a platform to voice my thoughts which interestingly enough I have discovered relieves me of a lot of the stress that typically motivated me to share my worries during friendly conversations in the past. Currently I sit, think about my current situation and challenges, I write them down in the form of a post, and then somehow at least half the mental weight that they were imposing on me feels as if it simply disappears. The remaining half becomes manageable and easier to cope with on a day to day basis. I am no expert on this process which has effectively given me so much emotional relief, so unfortunately I am not able to reveal to you what are all of the mechanics involved that make this process so successful. All I can say is that in my particular situation it works very well. However, this is not to say that I do not need to share on a more personal level with those that are close to me. On the contrary, the act of writing down my thoughts has also given me a way to think through my challenges, obtain advice and comments from a larger pool of individuals, and then share a more balanced view of my concerns with those that I love and are very close to me. I feel as if this process takes out a lot of the emotional frustration that typically used to overwhelm me while sharing my problems with others. After all, I am no different than anyone else in the fact that sometimes it is hard for me to see the difference between loving advice and criticism. In essence, writing about my life desensitizes me enough to be a lot more receptive to other people's opinion.

I have only been posting on this blog since August 10th of this year. During these four months I have benefited in so many ways from this sharing exercise that I am strongly inclined to recommend other parents to do the same when faced with challenges that might seem far and above their personal ability to handle. On the other hand I feel obligated to also say that I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert on any of the subjects that I have shared here in writing, much less with respect to the possible benefits or shortfalls of utilizing such a public format as an online blog. However, I can tell you this, either by the benefit of your prayers, the advice and comments that you have shared with me, or the simple nature of the act of me venting in my posts, I have seen a significant improvement in my ability to cope with the challenges in my life. I am not totally sure how much you as a reader have gained from this experience, but I can safely say that I have gained plenty to be thankful about.

In the past, when I was exposed to the marvel of watching a video of a five year old child playing the drums with a degree of talent that obviously exceeds many other five year old kids, my first instinct would of been to utilize every ounce I posses of mental restrain in order to avoid asking the parent "what else is wrong with your child?" It might sound cruel to you that my first inclination while seeing such a talent would drive me to believe that in order for the child to have this ability he must be damaged in other ways, but if you have read my blog since August, I am sure you can understand how my life experiences might drive me to such a conclusion. My own parenting background has taught me that exceptional abilities in children are typically tied to kids that are wired differently and tend to reveal themselves as a lot of challenging behavior for their parents to deal with at many levels. However, in the process of me sharing my own child's special abilities with you, I also learned to embrace him for who he is, and not expect him to be anyone else but himself. Nothing has changed in the degree of difficulty that is tied to raising my oldest son because of me sharing our lives with you here, so why is it that I have found it easier to manage his challenging personality since I started writing on this blog? In fact, just as a chef might kick everyone out of the kitchen while he or she is preparing some splendid treat, I too have also learned not to reveal everything that is on the burner until I am able to find it's true meaning and make sense of it. In other words, while our lives are cooking on the stove, I mostly take the time to share with you yesterday's delight. I do this in order to offer me and my children a certain degree of privacy which I feel we are definitely entitled to. Yesterday I watched the video of my friend's son, I still understood that special abilities meant a lot of challenges for his parents, but I also understood that this is just part of life and to focus on the challenges only makes it that much harder for the parent in the long run. Instead, I discovered being able to find within myself words of encouragement so that my friend could also start walking a path of true love with his son regardless of what the future might bring his way. With respect to this new found perspective within, I find it to be so much more productive, helpful, and effective than the old "WARNING ALERT" that might of come out in the past.

Parenting is not a skill that I can learn from a set of rules that anyone else might of written because of their extensive educational background in child behavior. In fact, as far as I have been able to discover, every single rule has not just one but many exceptions, and every single child is just as I know that I am, a completely different world of their own. Even though I strongly encourage myself to read as much material I can get my hands on and attend as many educational events geared for the sake of good parenting, I can safely tell you that most of the tools I will need to be an effective parent will come from my own experiences. I have very little choice on the matter and will have to walk the unique path that my own children make in their lives in order to learn what I need to be a good parent. The best advice I can give is to be willing to set aside the book of rules that we have aggregated during our lives and open not just our mind, but also our heart to each individual situation we encounter with our children. Just because a technique or rule worked with me or anyone else as a child does not mean it will work with my own children. What would be the point in enforcing something that is of no true benefit to their growth? Also, as a parent in the process of learning how to deal with all the challenges that will come my way, it will be imperative that I learn to accept my mistakes as soon as possible in order to focus on not making them again. There is very little chance that I will get it right the first time, not matter how wonderfully talented I might think I am, so the sooner I accept this reality, the better my chances are of being an effective parent. In my path I will find myself many times saying "I wish I would of known..." and trust me when I tell you that this is totally normal. My goal is not to be perfect, that would be unachievable. My goal is to learn from my mistakes as quickly as possible in order not to allow myself to make things worse by perpetuating my erroneous behavior.

How many times have you watched a talented magician perform something that seems completely unreal? In their illusion we find ourselves pondering how on earth they were able to fool our eyes. Obviously we all know that behind it all there is some kind of trick that makes it possible for us to be fooled. I know of nobody that truly believes in magical powers. The same is true about parenting. Even though the apparent impeccable behavior of some children might lead me to believe that their parents have an amazing talent towards parenting, I am fully aware that behind every perfectly behaved child hides an illusion to be discovered by the expertly trained eye. In fact, this typical social behavior of concealing skeletons in our household closets is probably one of the most significant reasons that most parents dealing with challenging situations at home feel so inadequate and sometimes even hopeless in their efforts to be good parents. Maybe it is time to make a bit of a paradigm change in our culture for the sake of our children. After all, who is it that pays the price when the reality of parenting is hidden behind so many closed doors? I am here to tell you that the process I have set forward to share with you via this blog has given me a great deal of information which for the longest time seemed totally hidden from my search efforts. In fact, some times the smallest comments you have made to me via your emails, phone conversations, and your own posts after reading my blog have given me to greatest reward in my quest for being a good father. I have learned from your kind words that even though you might posses the magical powers to conceal your own challenges, you have made the wonderful choice of letting me in on the trick to your magic and allowed me to learn from your wisdom instead. I must admit that this is all very cool. Instead of playing the "Now you see it...now you don't!" trick, here we are sharing and learning from each other. Thank you.

Dad

The answer is "Yes!"

They say that you can typically tell if someone is lying by the number of excuses they give you when you challenge them on any particular incident. If the individual being challenged gives you a simple answer and then stops, chances are that they are telling you the truth. If on the other hand the individual goes on giving you a multitude of answers to the same question, then chances are that the truth is safely hidden behind a wall of lies. I could tell you that the reason I have not posted as often lately is because my computer crashed during a Windows update and getting back online has been an ordeal, then I could add that my hands have been occupied trying to fix a leaky roof that during the recent rains flooded my living room with over 55 gallons of water. Also, I could tell you that I have not been feeling so well because I have been sick with the flu and its aftermath of coughing for four weeks in a row now, and finally I could add that getting ready for the impending holidays are consuming every spare moment of my days. However, even though none of the above are lies, the real reason I have not posted as much recently is actually tied to a much simpler answer. I have not posted as much lately because things are much better, calmer, and I am truly enjoying what started as the eye of the storm, and has slowly become a simpler tropical depression. Nothing is ever perfect, I could not claim such a degree of fortune, but things are under control and working themselves out with the passage of time. There are impending challenges that will probably create enough stress when the time of facing them is at hand, but in the meantime I have decided not to work myself up into a frenzy and worry about them constantly. I suggest that you as a faithful reader also take advantage of these calmer times and come into my blog at least once or twice a week to catch up with my more recent posts so that we can all share some of the better times of parenting my teenage boys.

Traditions are a wonderful thing, especially during holiday times. For Christians all over the world, the birth of Jesus Christ is celebrated interestingly enough four months earlier than when it was more accurately recorded in history. For me, Christmas is much more than a time to celebrate the birth of the King of all kings. During this special season of the year, cultural and family traditions bring a special kind of glue into my life that helps bond my family and friendship relationships. Even if I simply stay at home, snuggling under a warm cozy blanket sipping on a drink and watching silly old movies, Christmas is always a good time to add special moments into my busy life for later access by my mind and heart. I don't think that I can have an easier recollection of special moments in my life than that of those that occurred during my childhood during the Christmas holidays. So many special memories are recorded of my family being together doing everything from cutting our own Christmas tree, decorating inside and outside the house, attending family gatherings, the food, drinks, and of course, the all consuming childhood anxiety of waiting to open our presents on Christmas morning. There has to be a reason why these moments, out of the billions of moments that I have lived throughout my life are so much more clear in my mind than the rest. I am sure that someone much more clever than me has the answer, however, I am content with my own ignorance due to the fact that all that matters to me is that these memories are mostly good and still bring joy to my life.

Times have changed significantly as to how Christmas is celebrated in Puerto Rico. During my parent's childhood there was no such thing as Santa Claus. Instead, children eagerly awaited some kind of present brought to them by the Three Wise Men that in religious history had brought gifts to baby Jesus after his birth. Instead of a big fat jolly old man riding on a magical sled with flying reindeer propulsion, the three magical kings arrived riding on their camels. Just as milk and cookies were a prerequisite to keep the fat guy going from house to house, a good handful of long blades of green grass tied up with a string or ribbon, and some water was left by our beds to ensure the mystical camels had the strength to get through the busy night of delivering presents to children all over the world. It was told that only those children that put the grass and water at the foot of their beds would be rewarded with some kind of gift, so what was there to lose by getting out of bed and hunting for the "good" grass to guarantee that the Wise Men's camels would know where to stop to recharge. In my own times, this tradition remained alive and well, so I too did the deed of showing my gratitude to the camels even though Santa had already gone out of his way to bring me gifts a few weeks earlier. Sure enough, it never failed, the morning after I too had something special placed at the foot of my bed by my loving "Wise Parents" holding on to our cultural traditions.

I must of been around six years old and my cousin was even younger than me. I remember that a few nights before the traditional arrival of the "Three Magical Kings" we laid flat on the ground in front of my grandparents home staring at the night sky full of stars. We were both searching for the three stars (Orion's belt) that had been assigned in the night sky to represent the Wise Men and their camels. In awe we pondered how it was that these icons could travel from so far away and know exactly at which house to stop by to bring presents. For at least an hour we laid there just looking up and fantasizing about their powers. Not once, not a single time did I doubt this tradition to be a farce or a lie. In my mind and in my heart I had absolutely no place for anything else other than belief. In fact, even after years later I was told the truth of the whole matter, I spent at least one more year in doubt that the confessor might still be lying. Looking back at this stage of my life I now realize that the eventual realization that Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men were not real was probably the most transforming realization of my entire childhood. The innocence that magically wrapped and bonded my mind and heart as a child was completely tied to my knowledge of this all consuming truth. My parents were truly wise in never admitting that they had been the givers all along. Instead they bribed us with the challenge that any child that did not believe in Santa or the Three Wise Men were at the disadvantage of not getting any presents. So of course I played along and pretended to believe for many more years in order to get my presents too. In essence, I believe that the actual moment in which I acknowledged that these were childhood fantasies and not reality, that was the exact moment in which I made a separation of heart and mind. The magical bond was virtually broken.

To all of this I have a serious confession to make to my readers. As an adult when questioned by my mother whether or not I believe in Santa or the Three Wise Men, the answer is always a resounding "YES!" Even though my mind might acknowledge that they are not real, my heart remains faithful to how real they were during my childhood. We both laugh because she obviously questions my belief in an effort to bribe me to say what she wants to hear me say. Remember, if I say no, that means I am too old to get a present. However, I am extremely surprised how quick and easy it is for me to answer her in an affirmative gesture. Contrary to the consensus that when someone is lying they typically give multiple answers to the question, I have but one single answer to her query, and that again is simply "Yes!" No more, no less. Could it be that I am actually telling the truth? I think so. If not in my mind, at least in my heart I believe that my answer is real. I believe that my parents loved me so much that they are and will always be the collection of what I most desired while I was a child. They are my "Three Wise Men" and they are my "Santa Claus" and I believe in them more than in anyone else in the world because of their infinite ability to love me regardless of anything else. After all, it is my heart that is answering without a doubt that question. In my ability to feel their love I find absolutely no reason to lie, so the answer is a resounding "Yes!"

Dad

Nostalgia...it is your emotional waltz.

Inter weaved in what my mind perceives as space, another dimension is tied like a seamless fabric called time. My brain collects every event of my life and allows me to experience each one of them in the now and then, while also instantly and constantly archiving them into an enormous vault of memories for later retrieval as a record of my past. Each of my senses has the ability to somehow connect with the universe that surrounds me and pass along to my mind the necessary information to experience life as it takes its irreversible journey. Captured by chemical reactions in my brain that somehow encode themselves to become memories, each instant of my existence is given an amazing degree of care to be stored and utilized again for what seems to be an infinite number of different reasons. Nothing that man has discovered in our universe is as complicated as it is amazing as our minds. Every time I consider this fact I find myself considering how wondrous we are and what a privilege it is to be a sentient human being. Up to date, out of the all of the living organisms we have discovered, no other creature on our planet holds this gift of self awareness.

Even though it is safe to say that there should be no significant variation to the metrics that can be applied to space and time locally, somehow my perception of the passage of time is that it seems faster than it should be forcing me to constantly make the comment that "time passes too fast." To me it feels as if one day I was holding my child on my lap playing peek a boo, and then suddenly the next day I found myself wondering if those same eyes were still pretending to not see me as they swiftly passed by on their way out the door to face the world on their own. I can only assume that this strange perception of the passage of time is tied to much more than my internal biological clock and its conceptual view of sunrises and sunsets. All of those aforementioned events that have been stored in my mind somehow have been distorted making me perceive that life is too quick, too unforgiving with the passage of time if you ask me. When my children were born it seemed as if they had so much time to grow up, yet here I am 14 and 17 years later and it feels as if it all went in a blink of an eye. This swift motion of time is completely obvious when I start looking at old photographs and compare my kids from when they were just little boys to their now teenage appearance. Worst of all is taking a peek at my own childhood pictures and watching my hair slowly turn white with the passage of each season. I definitely don't feel as old as my bathroom mirror reflection insists on turning me into when I dare to look at myself in the mornings. Inside me, a tireless child still begs to laugh at the most inconsequential events of my day, yet a little bit at a time I hear me doing it less often. Remember the days in which the same dumb joke would make you laugh just as hard the tenth time you heard it as you did the first?

I am at a stage in my life in which I refuse to let go of the simple things in fear of never getting them back. Watching my children turn into young men is harder than I ever thought. Don't misunderstand me, I still love watching them as teenagers as much as I did as toddlers. In fact, sometimes I head to the kitchen to do dishes just so that I can peek out the window to see my oldest son interacting with his friends. They are in a constant state of silliness which is totally appropriate for their age, and it warms my heart to be able to see him behaving the same as everyone else. To watch him in the middle of this social interaction is a blessing, since he could easily be depressed and non interactive giving me much more to worry about instead. The same holds true with my younger son, which I am constantly thankful that he spends time with some friends too doing their thing. However, the images of early childhood happy moments keep creeping out of storage to emotionally challenge my ability to conceal a sense of sorrow because they are never to be repeated in their original context again. This emotional act does not seem to originate from a sense of regret, but rather much more from a feeling of nostalgia. So in essence, this is not about living in the past, wishing I would of done anything any different than I originally did instead. This is about not wanting to let go of the moments in my life that brought me to where I am today.

How much more can I, as a man, ask for than to have a collection of memories that can instantly make me smile no matter how sad a moment I might be going through in my life? I have discovered that in the closet of my mind I have an unlimited supply of beautiful moments to tap into when I am in need of an emotional booster. These instants that have been skillfully linked by my neurons have the most unmeasurable value of all. Within each and every one of the laughs, tender instants, passionate moments, and even tears that have been safely stored in my mind, an entire wealth of healing power is contained. So if you find yourself all tangled up while dancing the emotional waltz of nostalgia, take a moment to appreciate how lucky you are because of the gift that has been given to you with the ability to be aware of it all. Inside your own closet, you too also have what you need to heal and be OK. Tap into those wonderful memories that nobody else has but yourself and walk on to the stage of your life and dance! I promise you it feels really good once you learn the right moves.

Dad

Bottoms up!

I am honored to be able to announce that this blog has been visited now over 2,300 times. Not once when I began typing away did I consider that what I was sharing here with you would be read by so many in such a short amount of time. I originally set my self a goal of coming in as many times as possible during the week, write my thoughts, and then save them to be published at a rate of only twice a week so that I could have a backlog of posts to publish when I would be to busy to write. However, I quickly came to realized that I have very little self control over my ability to hold on to anything I write to share with you. Instead, as quickly as I am able to write something I find myself clicking on the "PUBLISH POST" button, many times even before proof reading it for grammatical errors. I apologize if sometimes you start reading and find yourself having to correct either my word spelling or composition in order to make sense of my writing. Being candid I confess that English is most definitely my second language and I can only imagine how horrified a good editor would be if he or she would read all of this. However, I never imagined that so many individuals would be interested in what I am sharing here with you today, so my goal has never been to create a literary masterpiece, instead I am just writing pretty much with the same words that I would be speaking to you in person. All this been said, thank all of you for reading, and many thanks to those of you who have sent me advice, words of encouragement, and your own thoughts to contribute to the subjects I have brought forth in my posts.

Many of the individuals reading my posts are friends and some are family members. However, with so many visitors to these pages it is obvious to me that many of the individuals reading have never met or shared with me via any other means of communication. Even though we have never met, I consider you to fall into the category of "new friends" and most definitely not "strangers." After all, you do know a great deal about me from what I have shared in this blog, and trust me when I tell you that I am not accustomed to sharing this much personal information with strangers. It is also obvious that you know much more about me than I know about you since most of the exchange, with the exception of comments left behind by some of you, has been what can be considered a one way street of me writing and you reading. To those who know me it should be more obvious why it is that I am in many ways pouring my heart out by sharing so much of my private life on this blog, but to my new friends it might still be a bit of a mystery. Let me quickly shed some light on the matter so that all of my readers can have a better picture of what I am trying to accomplish.

First of all, I do not mention this often enough but if you are a new reader to these pages it would be of great advantage that you scroll down to the bottom of these posts and start reading from the first one I published and work yourself up a little bit at a time. The reason I recommend you doing so is because at the moment in which I started writing I shared a great deal of information with respect to my background, my children, and all of the events that have transpired through my life and theirs which led me to start posting on this blog. I promise you that reading from the bottom up will bring to you a much better mental picture of the challenges I am dealing with on a daily basis with my children. This could significantly affect the benefits you could gain from much of what I write about. Think of it as learning an advanced math subject such as Calculus. There is very little chance you will be able to understand the middle chapters of a Calculus text book if you have not read those published in the front of the book. Another way of looking at it is to compare how much more you will enjoy reading this blog as to what happens when you miss the first fifteen minutes of a movie because the popcorn line was too long at the concession stand. By missing the introduction it almost always guarantees that you will not understand the twist at the end. Even worse, imagine reading a book backwards or watching a movie with all the characters moving in reverse. Again, trust me when I tell you that starting at the bottom and working your way up will definitely bring to you a much better picture of what I am now writing about in my new posts.

This all been said, back to motives and goals. While dealing with what seems to me as a very complicated situation with my now teenage son throughout his entire life, I have made certain discoveries that I am very much compelled to share with others. I have learned quite a bit about him, myself, and how to deal with a myriad of parental challenges for which I have discovered very little useful documented help elsewhere. I am by no means an expert in neither mental health nor parenting. However, like it or not I have been thrown into an incredible foreign world of challenges that because of my strong desire to help and my deeply ingrained sense of love and responsibility has placed me in a unique position to learn how to deal with it all. In this cocktail that I am constantly having to mix and drink called "my life," an amazing amount of ingredients keep its flavor in a swirl of aromas and tastes that even though they are dangerously intoxicating, I am like and addict that has very little choice in the final outcome once I take my daily sip of reality. I cannot delegate this job to anyone else because in essence, this is my life. All I am able to do is live it, do my best to affect its outcome in a positive manner, and go on one day at a time. From this life I feel compelled to share with others so many of the lessons that I have learned. In sharing I have discovered an amazing therapeutic side effect that enables me to catch my breath in the middle of what many times feels as a storm of emotions and consequences. I also write because in doing so I re-teach myself the lessons that I need to know and use in order to not only survive, but also to be a good friend, partner, ex-husband, and more importantly, father.

You need to know as you read my posts that even though sometimes the words might sound sad and even lonely, I am in every sense of the word not a sad or lonely individual. On the contrary, I am surrounded by beautiful people that love me, and I love them very much too. Most of the time you will find that I am very optimistic, full of hope, and I will smile my way into your life regardless of my circumstances. To me loneliness is a just a byproduct of my efforts and struggles of raising two teenage boys that are not always wired like the rest. These challenges that I face with their mental and emotional health and behavior are many times all consuming and far from easy to deal with on a daily basis. However, what parent has not felt this way too? I want so badly for my children to be happy, centered, and grow up to be good men that at times I lose myself in my efforts to be an effective parent and contribute to their well being. Just as everyone else that I have shared with and learned about their struggles with their children, I too am a card carrying member of this nameless and unrewarded club of individuals. I strongly suggest that if after reading a post you find yourself relating to the subject matter, take a few minutes to leave a comment so that all the other readers are able to learn from you too. In fact, your words mean a great deal to me since they typically shed light on situations that I am struggling with and am not even sure how to solve.

Finally, don't be surprised to find yourself included in my posts. I would not dare say your name, or compromise anything you have personally shared with me. However, if your presence, words, or actions have touched me, taught me, or made an impact in my life, chances are that you will one way or another be included sooner or later. After all, none of us were raised in a bubble exempt from the influence of others. As I have said before, I will say it again, I am a lucky man because of all of you!

Dad

It's a catch 22 situation...

Mood, according to the dictionary it is defined as "a state or quality of feeling at a particular time." Another definition is "a distinctive emotional quality or character." Also, "a prevailing emotional tone or general attitude," and "a frame of mind disposed or receptive, as to the activity or thing," and finally, "a state of sullenness, gloom, or bad temper." My general attitude is constantly fluctuating based on the experiences I am exposed to from moment to moment in my life. I might wake up in a great mood because of a good night sleep and the realization that my pending daily events are promising and positive, or I might just wake up on the wrong side of the bed due to a sleepless night tied to constant worries about the day or days to come. So in essence, the emotional tone or general attitude in which I start my day is significantly tied to how I foresee my future. Another reason for me to start my day in a state of sullenness, gloom, or with a bad temper can also be tied to the events I experienced on days past. In other words, I might allow my frame of mind to be overtaken by an overall negative tone simply based on my past life experiences. Both of these mood controllers, one based on past experiences and the other on future ones, seem to be the key to my overall state of mind and overall sense of emotional well being. In a sense I must admit that it seems pretty scary to me the conclusion that my typical mood is grounded on the two parts of my life for which I have very little if not any control overall.

When I sit down to evaluate the above statements I am forced to realize that if I live my life upset about past events or worried about future ones, I will never be happy. The past is totally unchangeable and out of my hands. There is very little I can do, short of building a time machine and traveling back in time, for me to change my past. The only thing from my past which I have any control over is the degree in which I allow any previous event to make a contribution to my mood. I am in control over what I decide to dwell on, and what not. However, it is obvious that dwelling will not change the past, so in essence it would be wise of me to only dwell on things long enough to learn from my mistakes so that the past does not repeat itself unnecessarily.

Living in fear, preoccupied, or on a constant state of worry about future events is also a futile act. These negative emotions cannot in any way save the day and change the facts of how my life will run its course. I am not saying that I should not look both ways before I cross the street to avoid being trampled, not at all. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that it is probably good enough to look just before crossing and not throughout my entire day before I even reach the street. Can you see the difference? On the unhealthy side I would spend my day in fear about crossing the street, or worse, not even think about it when the moment arrives to do the crossing. The healthier way would be to not give much thought about it until the right moment comes, then carefully look in all directions, and finally cross the road. I can imagine that this effort should be good enough, and based on the different situations I will encounter during my day I should then take the healthiest action at the right time.

Overall I should be able to live my life with a much healthier distinctive emotional quality if I choose to mostly live in the present. I have quite a bit of control over the now and then since it is I that am living it. In fact, some of that control is how I decide to allow the past or future to affect my mood. I will admit that as simple as this concept might seem for me as a parent, it is one of the toughest lessons I have had to learn. In many ways I was wired with a perfectionist personality that drives me to always be concerned about getting things right in my life. The well being of my children has always held such a high priority that many times my own well being has been compromised in ways that now seem a bit needless. I have no regrets for my past decisions, but just because I was able to survive them does not instantly make them the correct ones. So instead I have learned to assimilate these lessons and try not to repeat the same mistakes, however, I see no effective use for me to dwell on them.

I have mentioned in previous posts how I strongly believe that maintaining a healthy emotional state requires me to be centered. Any extreme behaviour, attitude, even belief, have all contributed for me to lose that critical emotionally centered place that keeps me out of harm's way. The good news is that my self awareness has allowed me to recognize this unhealthy behavior and slowly but steady I am learning to avoid tilting my life's scale to either side. As soon as I am reminded by anyone or my own reflection that I am moving to any extreme, I have learned to recognize the signs and I either seek help, or I help myself to a dose of memories that remind me of the consequences of my acts. I think that as most people, the older I get, the easier it is to recognize what I might be doing wrong. This aging awareness gives me much food for thought on what my expectations should be regarding my children and their own self correcting behavioral abilities. As I look at my childhood I recognize that at an early age I was a very happy individual, mostly because as I described above my mood was based on mainly living in the present. As I look around me I see a lot of this same attitude with my own children. Then, why is it that I tend to be so worried about making sure that they are always watching out for the effects of their actions to their future? Good parenting seems to require that I turn my children into worriers about past actions and future consequences, when in fact I now realize that this is the exact behaviour that turns an individual into an unhappy person. Sadly this is the exact same behavior that later on as adults we are required to unlearn in order to not be in a constant bad mood. So what happened to "live in the now and then?" How do I ensure that my children learn to be responsible young adults without imposing the burden of becoming constantly depressed about previous unhealthy behaviour, or worriers about future consequences? In my mind this all has the flavor or a paradoxical problem, or in more common terms, a catch 22.

As far as I can tell, the "don't worry be happy" attitude that seems to lead adults into a healthier mood is the same behavior that I am constantly trying to refrain my teenage children from taking as they walk into adulthood. I confess feeling like a hypocrite, since I discovered this dilemma. I cannot count the times I have tried to teach my children that living life day to day without worrying about the consequences of their actions is wrong. Yet here I am confessing to you that in order for me to be happier in my life I need to stop kicking myself for my mistakes and worrying so much about a future that is not yet written. As I said before, I'll say it again, at least for me the answer is mostly about being centered. I feel as if extremes are typically dangerous places which I should avoid while living my life in order to be a happy individual. However, I must confess that I am not entirely sure that the blandness or dullness of living life in an emotional middle ground is the right answer either. Who does not want to experience the extreme of feeling madly in love, heads over heals, goo goo gaa gaa, in their lives? On the other hand, how can you blame anyone that has been hurt in the past for wanting to feel safe by not giving in entirely their emotional self to someone else? Where do you draw the line in your life to either protect yourself from harm, or allow yourself to live and experience life to its fullest in order to feel completely alive? These are extremely personal yet critical questions we all need to know the answer in order to not only exist, but to also truly be alive.

As strange as you may think this sounds, maybe the answer to this catch 22 situation is contained more in a mathematical, rather than a word solution. The nerd in me feels compelled to remind you that not everything in life is linear. In other words, even though the shortest distance between to points is a straight line, that might not be the safest of healthiest route when we take into account human behaviour and our learning abilities. If you see fire between you and a delicious muffin still in the oven, I am pretty sure that as an adult you will grab some utensils to take it out. However, as a child that has never experienced the painful sensation of being burned, it is likely that you might reach bare handed to get to the wonderfully smelling delight. This is a good indication that at different stages in our lives we need more guidance and warnings than at others. As a parent I would be neglectful in my duties if I simply told a two year old to go get the muffin from the oven instead of doing it myself. At the proper age I should teach the child to use the proper tool too. Much later in life I would not even consider giving any warning since I might assume that the individual is now knowledgeable enough to see the danger signs of a hot oven. I am pretty sure that close to two thirds of my life has already been executed, so in essence, I am compelled to allow myself the luxury of taking whatever risks I see necessary based on my learned experiences and what I am looking for in life to be happy. On the other hand, anyone in the first third of their life might need more guidance and warning. How much warning and guidance is the tricky part, since as parents we should endeavor to not be constantly interfering with your children's lives and allow them to also learn from their own mistakes. If I throw my child into my pool while he does not yet know how to swim and neglect to keep an eye on him, chances are he will have an accident and might even lose his life. If I am constantly carrying him on my back when he is in the pool, or if I spend all my time scaring him about the dangers that might be in the water, chances are that he will go through his entire life being afraid of water and never learn to swim, which is a skill that could someday save his life. At some point I need to be a part of what allows him to learn and grow on his own, but selecting the proper moment is what is so hard for me as a parent.

Indeed, the road to happiness is not a straight line either. From one experience in life I cannot learn all there is to know, so allowing myself to take different paths is most likely a healthier route. The trick is hidden in my ability to learn without having to punish myself over and over again for any mistakes I made during my past. Once I have lived long enough I should be smart enough to make the better choices on my own. Also, at some point I need to feel safe in my ability to make good choices so that regardless of their eventual outcome I am not constantly worrying about what is going to happen. Yes, I guess I need to live in the present as close to a centered life as possible without losing my ability to take certain risks with that carry the potential to make me smile from within. As a father, I need to be able to measure how much guidance my children truly need from me and not spend too much time focusing on the things that they need to learn on their own. My job is not to predict their future based on their actions. My job is to teach them from my own experiences the different paths that are available to them regardless of their mistakes. Hope goes a very long way on the road to adulthood.

Dad

Comfort...it is like honey for the soul...

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. In other words, make the best you can with what you've got, right? Applying this cliche is not that simple when it comes to raising my children and so many of my self imposed parental expectations. I suppose this is most likely a common denominator with many other parents too, although I have not done any kind of survey to validate my assumption. I was raised in such a manner that my own programming, if you will, was encoded with achieving higher than average goals in my life. Mediocrity was not an option, much less the concept of aiming any lower than my abilities. To try to do anything other than my best was never a choice and if you want my humble opinion, this mentality has served me well throughout my entire life. So how do I negotiate this conflicting mental process with an entire generation gap that has found a way to avoid making any effort to assimilate the values of their predecessors? Is it worth my own effort to constantly try to infuse what I know in my heart to be good lessons to my children regardless of how dim their perception and reception might seem at the time?

Good parenting gives me a drive to keep plugging into my children every positive and apparently successful influence that my own parents offered me. The question is really not about how effective this might be at some point in their lives since the verdict is still out and will be out to be witnessed much later in their lives. The question is what this constant influx of personal conditioning does to us parents in the end? In other words, what do I personally gain or lose from my relentless efforts to influence my children with lessons that almost seem like dust in the wind to their eyes? I am not going to do any grand standing and profess to be able to keep it up on an every day basis, this would be as big a lie as telling you that there really is a Santa Claus. In fact, what I will tell you is that every once in a while I just lift up my hands and say "uncle," and I let go for a while realizing that my persistence is many times futile and I have to take time to recharge in order to have the energy to do it again later on.

I many times feel like my kids actually think that on one end I am Superman, and nothing affects me enough to damage me in any significant way. On the other end sometimes I feel like my kids think that I am Forest Gump, full of weaknesses and disabilities that make me unsuited to teach them anything at all. How can anyone spend any reasonable amount of time feeling the imposition of both of these persona's without it making a dent on their emotional well being? Parenting is not for the weak, no sir, not at all. The level of self motivation for good parenting must be proportional to the level of self healing of the parent's emotional shield. To be effective in any significant way I must be able to recharge myself emotionally in the middle of what almost seems a battle of wills. No wonder so many mothers suffer emotional breakdowns after having expended so much of themselves giving birth. It seems reasonable to assume that any significant imbalance in a mother's hormonal state would wreak havoc on her mental ability to recover quickly enough to take on so many of the expected tasks in her role as a mother. I believe that regardless of gender, there is no simple solution to improving the odds of parental recovery when it all comes to blows between parents and kids. I am sure that even though complete shelves have probably been written on volumes with regard to improving your emotional well being, the reality of how the new generations have evolved is probably too new to allow any author to give one hundred percent valid and effective advice. So what do we do? How do we find the answer to this complicated and risky business of effective parenting of the current generation of children that are already here?

If you are reading and cannot relate to the above, chances are that your children are either already past the age in which their demands are beyond your parental responsibility, or they are too young for you to have tasted this reality. Don't get me wrong, some kids will walk through their parent's life with very little effect in the way of serious parental concern. However, some of us are not so fortunate and are facing a great deal of challenges on a daily basis that is most definitely not the fault of poor parenting. If you are reading and can truly feel a connection with my words, then you need to know that you are not alone. In the past few years I have learned to appreciate how fortunate I am even within my parental struggles, since it is always apparent by sharing with many other parents that things can always get a lot worse. This might feel hard to believe, but it is very true indeed. It is not as much that "misery loves company," it is more like "welcome to the club."

I have struggled throughout the years to find not only answers to the challenges I have faced while parenting my boys, but also to keep my sanity while in the middle of the toughest moments. If you have been reading my blog you probably have already picked up a lot of hints that I have left in my posts that give you a pretty good idea as to how I have been able to survive and slowly make progress towards either fixing or accepting some of those challenges. In retrospect I feel blessed that I have family and friends that constantly contribute to nourishing my sense of emotional well being. This, I believe is probably the key that keeps my insanity option locked away. Without the clever advice of some, and the wonderful love of others, I would most likely be a permanent occupant of some padded room in a mental facility. You might think I exaggerate, but I am not sure that there truly is any hyperbola in my self assessment equation. In fact, this is today's word of wisdom...Take the time to share your parental challenges with the people that care and love you...inside them you will find what it is that you need to stay sane. There is no magic pill, no all inclusive book of advice, and definitely no totally right answers. What you should be able to find to stay on track during the hard times is comfort. We all need comfort when we are losing our will and energy to keep being good parents. It might seem trivial, but kind words are like honey for the soul. It soothes our soar and itchy lives in ways that nothing else can.

If you are past the most challenging parts of your parenting life, find it in yourself to bring some comforting words to those around you that might not be there yet. If you are in the middle of it all, make an effort to connect with those that are around you that can help because it is a lot easier to deal with the hard times when we are not doing it all alone. If you are beginning your journey of parenting and still have not found it hard enough, trust me, this is the time for you to make good friends, keep yourself connected to family members that love you, and pave the road for good relations and open communication with them all in case your road gets a lot bumpier later on. I have yet to find anything more useful to deal with my parenting challenges than the comfort and advice of those that truly care for my well being. The more friendly bees you have in your life, the more soothing honey you will have access to for your soul. Trust me, I know what I am talking about.

Dad

Where is the stamp?

I arrived at Oxford Mississippi in the month of August of the year 1981. A close friend of mine had already graduated with a bachelor degree in chemistry and decided to tag along to see if he could learn enough English during my first semester attending the University of Mississippi to then apply and be admitted into their chemistry graduate program. He had two friends which also decided to join the adventure, both also held undergraduate degrees in chemistry. In a sense, at my young age of 19 years old, I almost felt responsible for these three older guys that had suddenly decided to embark in the strange path of leaving Puerto Rico in hopes of all obtaining higher degrees in their fields, not because I was any more mature than they were, but instead because of the four of us I was the only one that had ever lived outside of our beautiful island for any significant amount of time.

From Puerto Rico to the United States is not that great of a cultural shock since our island has become so Americanized with its associated state of government. However, for some strange reason, to them almost everything seemed foreign. From the food and language to the customs and weather, all three of them were trying to adjust to what for me was a thing of habit since my father had been in the U.S. Air Force for 18 years and my family and I had already lived in so many different places that change came much easier. After only a few weeks in this new strange land it became obvious to me that each one of these older than me guys needed me a heck of a lot more than I needed them. The good news was that the cards were definitely stacked in their favor since all three of them were extremely bright young men with an incredible desire to learn and get ahead in life. By the time I graduated with an engineering degree three years later, one of them had returned back home to start working in his field, one had moved on to Boston to get married and finish his graduate school studies there, and the remaining guy had moved his wife and two children with him and obtained a fellowship at the University of Mississippi teaching in his field while completing his graduate studies. Amazing, to think that just three years earlier his English was so poor and broken that I remember the totally confused face on the local pharmacy cashier as he eagerly questioned her in his typically loud voice asking "where is the stamp?" while pounding his right thumb on the palm of his left hand trying to communicate to her that he needed a postal stamp to send a letter to his wife.

The first semester was probably the toughest. Between all four of us we rented an apartment which was located off campus about two and a half miles distance from the nearest classroom for which I would be attending school. We did not have a car, so originally we all walked everywhere we needed to go. In the mornings, the most dedicated of the other three and the only one to eventually enroll at the University of Mississippi would walk with me on my way to my first class. On our way, he would anxiously ask me to translate words for him that he figured that he would need to learn as soon as possible in order to establish first contact with the natives. One day after another he would every day learn more words until eventually we progressed into making sentences with the basic words he had learned. I would say a few words, he would have the job of creating a sentence with them. What I found fascinating was the two sided paradox contained in this process, since I could not understand how it was that this immensely bright young man had managed to graduate with a bachelor's degree in chemistry with a 4.0 grade point average, and not have learned enough English to communicate verbally while most of the books he had to study from where obviously all published in English in the first place! One thing was for sure, the guy was persistent in his will to learn and get ahead, so it never did surprise me when he was admitted into the graduate program the next semester.

Getting in was not really that easy. In an interview the admittance personnel had challenged his ability to succeed in such an advanced program with so little grasp of the English language, and requested he take the foreign student language proficiency test in order for him to be admitted. The problem was that being from Puerto Rico he was not really a foreign student, so the university had no grounds to force him to take the test, which he would of most definitely not passed at the time. I remember translating a letter he had written to the university where he eloquently explained in his native tongue how important it was for him to be able to continue his studies and bring his family with him. Amazingly he was given the chance to prove himself, which he obviously did by getting the highest scores of his class on every test he took that semester. In fact, the next semester they offered him a fellowship and he started torturing his own students with his broken English by teaching chemistry labs. Soon he was doing research and on his way to achieving his dreams.

Oh, I guess I have not mentioned some of the things that have inspired me to write about my dear friend today. He came from a very poor and huge family and by the time he was born they could not afford him so his parents had given him up to an orphanage as a little boy. A renowned person from his hometown in the island, Isabel La Negra and the proprietor of what was a then a brothel, adopted him and raised him. During our first semester in Oxford and while we lived in the apartment with the other two chemists, I taught him how to swim, since he had never had a chance to learn as a boy. He also had never ridden a bicycle, so this too I tried to teach him before I headed home for the Christmas holidays. Unfortunately, by the time I got back from my family gathering I found him wearing a cast because he had fallen off the bike and broken an arm.

This was no ordinary man, and in fact we came to know each other so well that I can safely say that weaved in between all of his challenges, limitations, accomplishments, and failures too, exists an amazing individual. I cannot remember the exact number of brothers and sisters he once told me he had, but the number was somewhere above 14 which always left me dumbfounded as I tried to grasp the image of any parent deciding to have one more child while living in poverty and then giving it up. To the naked eye it could be interpreted that life was never perfect for my college friend, not in his childhood, not during college, and certainly not afterwards during his divorce. Yet as I now reflect on our experiences together and I look at him from my eyes as an adult, a much different image begins to come into focus in my mind. Some say that a man is measured by what he does with his life, what he accomplishes, and the legacy that he leaves behind. I have learned with all that I have experienced so far that very few people have the right to measure any man at all. To do so would be futile since a man's life is only lived by himself and the measures are unique to his own existence. The units on my ruler are pretty much like a foreign language to most other people. What might seem confusing to you as a strange little man loudly demanding "where is the stamp?" at the counter of the local drugstore, to him it is just a desperate attempt to get you to see his need to send a letter back home to his loving bride.

Dad

Very little splash in the entry...

It has been over a week since I caught the flu, and to any of you that have gotten this bug I send my deepest sympathy. This has been one of the most miserable weeks I have had in a long time. I hope you have not been too disappointed with me not being able to get on the computer and write, I apologize and beg for your patience as I am barely getting back to work today. I cannot really say if the worst is over since DayQuil, NightQuil, Tylenol Cold, and Actifed are all taking turns in nursing and masking many of the symptoms that seem to drag on for too many days to count. Still, I will make an effort to write a few words and share a bit while my mind is willing even if my body is begging me to go back to rest.

A co-worker and old friend of mine walked into my office this morning to share a bit of his previous Thanksgiving week even though I warned him to stay at a discrete distance to avoid getting infected with the flu. As he sat at least eight feet away he began whispering a bit of the frustration he encountered with relatives that had come to visit for the holiday feast that he and his wife had prepared as they typically had done for the last eleven years. All was apparently well until his father in law suggested that my friend take some time to talk to his nephew which at age 16 seemed to be involved in some kind of drug use. The conversation turned into a discussion, which eventually turned into a bit of a loud confrontation, and all because my dear friend's instant assessment of the teenager's behaviour did not conform to his father in law's own perspective. As he described the discussion, mean words were exchanged and even though a cooling off period was wisely enforced, eventually a simple comment on his end provoked another spree of discontent which led for some of the attendees to prematurely depart the gathering in a fit of anger.

I can safely tell you that with the little that I learned from the one sided conversation with my old friend, neither side was truly equipped to deal with the controversial subject of teenage drug use in a productive manner. On one end I can only imagine the other side of the family trying to elicit help from other male figures in the family and discovering that sometimes opinion about these kind of problems tend to block most productive conversations. On my friend's end it was easy to see how lack of experience, since my dear friend is just now starting to deal with teenage issues from one of his two daughters, has not given him any tools to equip himself on such dreadful real life situations. I for one would love to be on the side of blissful ignorance, but of course, if you have read any of my blog you already know that this is not the reality of my life. I intend to take the time at a later date, when my eyeballs are not burning from the back side because of the flu, to have this conversation again with my friend and try to enlighten him a bit on the subject. Even though he has been a good friend for over 20 years and we have shared a lot of times some of our family situations, our work relationship has kept me from offering the link to this blog in fear of what I might reveal that could backfire at times in which work might come before friendship. It did not really surprise me to hear his short version and opinion on what had happened since the truth is that until I found myself having to deal with such dilemmas, I too had a very different view of what it was like to negotiate decisions between my mind, heart, and sense of ethics.

If I have learned something that I can share with certainty with all of you, it is the fact and realization that nothing in life is as it seems to be in its entirety unless you are the individual that is having the experience first hand. Just as in so many other places in life, it is definitely not the same to be a first hand participant than it is to be a spectator. How many times have we watched the World Olympics and found ourselves having a hard time accepting the simple one step forward dismount error that is so common in gymnastic events? The performance is flawless and then at the end comes that little "hop" that we wish the athlete would get under control to be able to achieve a perfect score. Several days into the events, as spectators we feel as if we are almost experts in the judging criteria that is enforced to score a diver as he or she produces a little or a lot of splash when the finally enter the pool water. Even though we might be inclined to feel a sense of expertise after watching events from the outside seat as a spectator, the truth is that we are no match to the trained eye of the individuals that have been the main characters of these events for a very long time.

I see real life experiences in the same way. My opinion is really just that, and opinion, unless I have first hand knowledge and experience in the matter at hand. I have learned to take much more time asking questions and learning from the individuals that are tangled up in life's issues, than giving my opinion. If I interject too soon, I typically miss out on a great deal of the essential information that is really needed to understand what is truly going on. No matter how similar my situation might seem to someone else, I have learned that the dynamics at play that surround other people's lives are many times completely different than the ones in my own. When I attend group counseling with my son, I hear stories that as they begin to unfold the similarities are amazingly similar to mine. However, eventually more information fills in the blanks and it is inside of those blanks that most of the true differences really reveal themselves to project a much different set of circumstances in other people's lives. So in essence, my story is the same as everyone else story until I truly pay attention to the little things that come out if I stay quite and listen attentively. This does not really surprise me, the fact that my story and so many others are incredibly unique in their own way. In fact, I now am of the idea that even though we are all able to learn from each other's experiences in life, there is very little we can do to prevent much of the eventual outcome due to our uniqueness and individuality. What I have mostly learned from others is how to sharpen my skills as a parent, what to look for in the way of signs to be able to recognize where I am at in my life with my children, and of course, what I might need to focus on in order to survive the more difficult times. The truth is that in real life there is only one gold medal per event, but the fact that my life is full of little "hops" or a little bit of splash at the end of some pretty amazing events does not make them any less beautiful.

Dad

Jump off at your own risk...

I've had the flu since Sunday night. This is no fun since the few pills that allow me to feel better are the same ones that make me want to curl up in bed and sleep it all away. If only that was possible maybe I would get better quicker, but so far the only day I've taken off for this dreadful illness was Monday. At midnight on Sunday I started to cough and eventually dragged myself out of bed to find my keys and unlock the safe in which I now hide any medications from my impulsive older son. In fact, in the safe I found some cough syrup I had confiscated from his room several months ago and I consumed the recommended dosage. Nothing, one hour later I was still coughing in what seemed like a constant bark from a dog behind a fence being teased by a conceited cat that knows he is unreachable. Once again I dragged my now even more tired body out of bed in search for some quick remedy to stop my incessant cough. This time I went for the sure kill and took two Benadryl. I figured if I could dry out the post nasal dripping and fall asleep in the same effort, my prayers would be answered. Sure enough, by 3:00 a.m. I was out like a log. When my alarm went off three hours later reminding me that it was time to get ready for work, my body was too over medicated to care enough to do anything other than press the snooze button over and over again until it was obvious that I was not going to get up. One extremely short email to my boss saying "Sending you a note to let you know that I am sick and won't be able to come in to work today..." and I slipped under the covers shivering for the next eight hours because of a fever that partnered up with my soar throat to make sure I could recognize the symptoms of truly being sick.

The next day my throat still hurt just as bad, but at least the fever seemed to stay at bay while the four hour effects of the Tylenol Cold pills consumed did their job, so I went to work. The good thing about coming to work while I am still sick is that nobody wants to catch my cooties, so they don't come into my office with too many requests. The bad thing about coming to work while I am sick is that all day I am constantly looking up at the clock on my wall wondering how much longer I plan on torturing myself in my office. The no dumb requests meant that I was able to get a lot of work done even while feeling like crap, so I decided to torture myself again today and come back in so that I could catch up with a few other things that needed to be finished this week. Tomorrow is "Fat Bird Day" or Thanksgiving, so I already asked for Friday off so that I can give myself a real chance to get better from the flu. There is nothing less rewarding than finally having a holiday off from work and not really being able to enjoy it at its fullest because of being sick. OK, enough of this talk, let's get into the true reason for this post, an update on what is going on with me and my sons.

The results of the California High School Proficiency Examination taken by my oldest son a bit over a month ago came in. As I suspected, he passed without any problems and has now earned the legal equivalent of a high school diploma in the state of California. I guess I should be happy for him since this means that even though he has had some shaky times while attending high school, at least now he will be able to apply to some local colleges and continue his higher education. How I should feel and how I really feel are two very different emotions. The reasonable and rational side of my brain appears to be in conflict with the emotional side. My mind is in conflict because even though this achievement is most definitely an indication of his advanced intelligence, I feel as if he is cheating life by not allowing himself to experience all that there is to learn from attending high school at the same pace as his piers. Interestingly, even though he did drop out of school when he took this test, all of his friends are constantly coming over to our home after school to socialize. In effect he has managed to cut out the academic experience without breaking the social link.

When I was in high school, I too took an accelerated pace in getting out and heading towards college. After taking classes for several summers I advanced enough in credits in order for me to graduate a year early. I have always regretted that decision since even though at the time I did not feel the need to participate in a senior year of high school, later in life I found myself wishing that I would of done so. For me college was a wonderful experience and I loved every minute of the time I spent getting a higher education. However, I believe that the final year of high school had lessons that I needed to learn which I cheated myself out of because of my rush to get into college. Of course college offered me a great deal of exciting challenges so at the time I could not truly appreciate what I had missed by rushing into it so quickly, but later on I did find myself wondering why I was in such a hurry to grow up.

In the midst of it all I see my oldest son making so many of the same mistakes that I made, yet no matter how hard I try to communicate with him what I have learned, he seems just as I did at his age convinced that he knows what is best for him. I have written about this in a previous post, and I know that I have to allow him to make his own path regardless of my ability to predict or anticipate the consequences of his mistakes. There really is no way around this reality since growing into a good man is much like making a battle worthy sword. In order to make a strong sword that will not break while in battle, the sword maker needs to expose the metal alloy to extreme temperatures until it glows dangerously red. He then uses a heavy hammer to pound it with great skill and force against an anvil slowly creating the desired shape. In between heating and hammering he also dips it in cold water forging the metal so that it retains its strength. Over and over again this process is repeated until the correct shape and strength for the sword is obtained. Still, at this point the weapon is both dull in luster and sharpness, so the task remains for the creator to masterfully grind the edge against a stone to turn it into an effective weapon and later spend hours on end polishing it to make it shine beautifully. Skipping any of these steps will not give the same results in the end. Not allowing the metal to be exposed to extremes only results in the creation of a weak weapon. Without sharpening the sword is much less effective. If the sword is not polished, it still has the same value in battle, but the warrior might not carry it with as much pride.

Only time will tell if the path taken and the lessons learned by my sons will be enough to make good men out of them both. Every once in a while I catch myself wanting to spare them some of the struggles that I can clearly see them walking right into in their lives. Because of my love for them I hate the idea of them getting hurt, so I am constantly on guard making myself available in case they need my assistance. As their father I feel obligated to set rules and boundaries so that they don't fall off the side of life's healthy boat. Yet it almost always seems out of my hands when they decide to jump ship and try to swim on their own to a shore that is just too far out for their abilities. What I have learned is to stop trying to prevent that from happening because it becomes increasingly frustrating and not doable. Instead I've chosen to navigate my life around theirs paying close attention to when their head drops under water for too long so that I can reach in and give them a hand to stay afloat. However, at this point in their lives the most important lesson I am trying to teach them is that I cannot be there to keep an eye on them 24 hours a day. If they jump off and swim to far away from my life's boat, they might find themselves all on their own.

Dad

It's a pretty big playground!

Over 35 years have passed since I was in 6th grade, yet still so many memories of those days are vivid in my mind as if they happened just a week ago. How does the process of archiving some memories from my life and deleting others work? What is the selection criteria that generates a special place for some faces, yet allows others to fade away almost instantly. I attended a Catholic School, and to my recollection most grades were always divided into three classrooms in which there was rarely more than 30 students in each. I cannot remember the exact number but at the most we never had more than 90 students enrolled per grade. A while back I took the time to see how many names of my childhood classmates I could remember. Of the probable 90 faces I could only remember the names of 60, which included my own. From this I might concluded that my mind is no more than 66 percent effective at archiving and later retrieving memories from this part of my life. There is a probable 34 percent content which is either lost, heavily guarded, or never got filed in my head in the first place. I am sure that if I went to my mother's home and pulled out one of my yearbooks, my immediate response would be "oh yeah, I remember him or her!" Interesting how my mind does this magical trick of hiding previously relevant information as easily as laying a dark blanket over my memories.

I extended the experiment by trying to account for how many of their faces I could remember while reading their names from the list I had previously made. However, I soon realized that this was not a challenge since as soon as I would say their names a quick visual image would pop up in my head to match. Apparently, if I am able to remember their names, then I have a 100 percent ability to remember what they looked like too. I am curious to discover if the same holds true if someone would mention a name which I had originally not remembered on my own. Will I still have the same visual experience of remembering their face too? After all, it is kind of embarrassing when I have attended a class reunion and one of my childhood friends walks straight up to me and asks "remember me?" just to find myself digging deep into my head and discover I did not file their name or image anywhere for instant access at the time. In all fairness, those "Hello My Name Is" sticky tags should go accompanied by a picture of the individual when they were younger because people can change a lot in 30 years!

I got an email yesterday from a childhood friend that I had not heard from in over 30 years. As I read her note, instantly my mind flew back in time and her super cute face popped up as a reminder of someone I not only was close to, but also had a boyish crush on for a while. This might not mean a lot since I think I might of had a boyish crush on almost every single girl in my class at one point or another. However, her memory is more special to me than just that of a crush. With the image of her beautiful face and long dark hair I also filed a memory of someone that was kind, real, and very nice to me. God only knows how many times I might of annoyed the life out of her for reasons that I now cannot even remember, but on my end, in my mind, she holds clear in my memories as someone with a great heart, a beautiful personality, and all the makings of a lovely human being. After I finished reading her email, my mental conclusions from one single note were that I had accurately filed away the precise description of this person. That to me my dear friends is amazing! How in the world was my young, immature, and mostly ignorant mind able to file such a precise collection of attributes for so long?

I think I might have an answer to the above question. I want to be fair and quickly make the statement that every rule has its exceptions, so what I am about to say does not apply 100 percent of the time. I have learned with time that who we are as children, and who we will become as adults could be much different in the end. Boys and girls have a chance to grow up and make of themselves better or worse individuals than their childhood persona. I for one would like to think that my days of pulling hair and making silly faces are no longer part of my once childish rituals to get the attention from the opposite sex. Equally, I sure hope that my caring more about me than others phase is also a thing of the past. However, I also have learned that deep rooted into our persona we have certain qualities that stay true with us throughout our entire life. In essence, a good heart is a good heart. Youth in itself does have a special kind of innocence that seems to fade away with life experiences, but the sentiment, the emotional goodness of an individual keeps well as they age. I feel strong about this concept on the positive side, yet I am not totally convinced it is true on the negative end of the emotional spectrum. I say this because what might seem like a bad, cruel, or mean hearted child could simply be a reflection of their immaturity and lack of life experiences at the time. If this is true, then these other children that might not project a wealth of emotional goodness could actually mature and eventually find a much more centered personality as they grow up.

These are some of the things that I reflect upon when I am given the opportunity to play catch up with dear childhood friends. In a simple email I sometimes am able to find hours of reflection. The way people write, the things they say, and how they respond to your own inquiries, it all adds up to so much more than words and sentences and answers. In almost everything that we do there is usually something meaningful to think about. As a father, I love being able to rediscover childhood friends and memories because they sometimes serve me as a guide into a lot of my own children's personalities. My life alone is not enough, it does not have all of the clues and the key that I need to be able to find and unlock the vault that contains the answer to figuring out my children. There is a lot more to it than just me and them because the degrees of freedom that affect human behavior are much greater than what resides in my own home. As I have heard before, the world itself is a very large playground. It makes absolutely no sense to stay indoors instead of coming out to play.

Dad

The angel in my closet...

I have been blessed with so much in my life that it would be totally ignorant of me not to recognize that fact. Regardless of my present situation, when I pause to take a look back at almost any instant in time during my past, I am always able to find something very good in my life that overwhelmingly outweighs anything bad. It is as if my life in itself is fueled by amazing moments of love, caring, and understanding that always tip the balance on the side of my well being. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, which is completely normal and to be expected, since death, heartbreaks, and the ever so frequent bad day do make their way into my life like it does for everyone else. However, if I was able to create a point system which gave positive values for good moments, and negative values for the not so good ones, by the time I added them all up surely I would have a healthy jar of positive values as the total balance.

In the midst of a bit of self reflection I wrote a post last Friday that obviously opened the door of my closet allowing those interested to walk in to take a peek at how I was feeling on that particular day. I tend to discover a lot about myself and my emotions when I write this particular kind of post. In fact, it is very frequent that by the time I finish typing away what is in my mind, a sort of invisible weight is lifted off my chest granting me a great deal of peace which is apparently hidden underneath what at that moment might of been consuming me. It is surprisingly therapeutic to take the time to put into words what otherwise might of remained deep inside me as just feelings. I confess that I sometimes have my doubts that maybe I have said too much, revealing some of the most intimate and personal thoughts and emotions I have inside of me. However, the alternative of keeping it all bottled up inside me is what I have discovered to be a very unhealthy habit which has the tendency to erode the foundation of my overall well being.

In response to the above mentioned post, a dear and caring friend sent me a lovely email with several interesting comments that have given me a lot to reflect on. In my post I make reference to how I have kept the living room space of my home mostly vacant since I moved in almost 18 months ago. If you have not read the post, it might help to do so in order to have the full context from which she makes her comments. This is what she writes:

"Perhaps in your subconscious mind you are wanting to save that room to be filled with the special person in your life that will need a place for some of her things! I can tell you from experience, it really doesn't matter what you have going on in your life when the 'right' person comes along. If the person is the right person for you, they will accept and want to be a part of your life in the good times and the bad. They will embrace your children as theirs and support you in difficult times and rejoice with you in happy times."

How does someone acquire such vast knowledge in order to enlighten my mind and heart in just four sentences? This my dear readers is true wisdom. I am not saying that her reasoning is flawless, since in a sense the room might just be empty because currently I simply lack the financial means to purchase what I wish to fill it up with. Or maybe I might just be waiting for my son's to grow up from their habits that tend to make anything nice turn old and ugly in no time at all. In other words, I cannot profess that the room is empty because it awaits for a partner to fill it with her stuff, even though the idea is not a bad one either. However, the "right" person concept is amazingly real and accurate. Is that not what the definition of the "right" person should be? I find it impossible to improve on her simple yet brutally truthful comment. Having the most challenging, yet important part of my life "embraced" while having the "support" while things are not perfect, brings to mind the image of a God sent angel. Still, as she describes it with such eloquence my mind, heart, and soul feel teased with the prospect of such a creature being alive. To be loved with such devotion that all of what is good and bad about me and my life is not only tolerated, but also accepted...indeed, only two words could describe this soul, my angel.

Throughout my life I have had the opportunity to walk into other people's closets. I too have had to make choices about unconditional love and acceptance. I would be lying to you if I would say that I ever possessed any ability whatsoever to grow wings. I do hope though that time, maturity, and the experiences that I have collected inside my own life might somehow bring me closer to possessing the qualities that my dear friend describes for me to become the "right" person myself. What good would it do for me to have the "right" person in my life if I am not able to be the "right" person in theirs.

Dad

Five ways to not get the door slammed in your face...

Because of a comment a friend made over the phone, I am in the middle of having to think about a part of my life which I rarely take the time to think about. As many parents do, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is the right thing to do when it comes to my children, their lives, and my involvement in it. My parental role feels so important to me that apparently sometimes I neglect other parts of my life as a consequence of this notion. I find myself so deeply focused on making their lives better, that in the process I neglect my own. My clothes start to get old while I try to be a good financial provider to their needs, my health issues take a back seat to theirs, and most of my spare time is lost in the midst of their personal wants instead of my own. The more I think about my dear friend's advice, the harder it is for me to ignore that she really has a valid point which I should do a bit more than just consider it. I need to do something about it. Those that are closest to me have pointed this out several times throughout the past few years, but as most of us typically do to the advice of the ones that love us the most, I too file it away thinking that it is just a defensive reaction based on their caring perception of my life from their end. Why is it so hard to accept guidance, counseling, and advice from those that are closest to me?

An honest look at my behavior tells me that I become defensive and reactive to the gentle words of advice that are thrown my way by those closest to me. If a stranger gives me the same advice I listen attentively and take much more time to accept or dismiss it's value. On the other hand, if a loved one approaches me with the exact same advice, it is as if I feel judged and the words get twisted around in my head. I suddenly find myself interpreting their good will as criticism instead of caring advice. This is all very frustrating not just to me, but obviously to the other side of the dilemma because they eventually start to feel as if they are walking on eggshells every time they try to give me their words of wisdom. Sooner or later my illogical reaction then causes them to be afraid of sharing their thoughts because of the possibility of me being upset or taking their advice too personal. Apparently the problem is that in my mind it is very personal indeed. I sometimes spend hours on end trying to resolve parental issues, and in my mind I easily forget that those that are close to me are not as invested as I am so they are not just coming to me with ideas, but also with their own questions to understand how to be able to help me. How are they supposed to be able to feel useful if I don't allow them complete access to my decision process? Many times I have opted to not share what is cooking on the front burner because I too am afraid that my own reaction will inflict a painful third degree burn on others. I do confess though that I have been learning to deal with this personality issue for a while and that this is not really as bad as it used to be years back.

Interestingly though, the same dynamics that play a role in my above described personal behaviour also are manifested in my older son's personality. By learning how to deal with my own flaws, I have had a front seat view and understanding of my son's apathy to listening to my advice to him. I think it is very much the same what he feels when I try to communicate with him giving advice, comments, or guidance. Apparently, no matter how smart, real, or worthy my counseling might be, in his mind I too triggers a sense of being critiqued instead of being advised. So how do I reach him in order to be able to make a contribution to his well being without triggering contempt, anger, and such emotions? I suppose I need to find out what has been effective when those around me have been successful at reaching me too. These are a few things that I have learned:

1. Timing...

Timing is probably a critical component to all effective social interactions. If I try to bring my two cents when my son is in the middle of a completely emotional moment in his life, chances are that I am going to get the famous "do not disturb" sign at his door. I do this too when I am preoccupied about something that in my mind seems much more important, everything else gets put on hold or ignore status. So in essence I need to find the right moment to share my concern, my advice, or my guidance if I want it to reach the right place in his mind. This is not as easy as it may sound since teenagers seem to be more and more unreachable at this stage of their lives. Patience is critical to the timing component. No matter how eager I am to bring up a subject which I feel needs to be addressed, I have learned to wait until the right moment so that the entire interaction does not backfire and turn into a conflict between us instead.

2. How I say things...
Choosing the right way to say things is another critical component to be utilized in effective social interactions. Sometimes how I say things is much more important that what I am saying in the first place. For example, it is not the same to say "your current behaviour is destructive," than it is to say "have you noticed how things tend to fall apart in your life when you behave this way?" Another example is to say "you need to stop doing this!," is entirely different than it is to say "why do you think you should stop doing this?" Statement of facts and demands tend to sound confrontational, while thought provoking inquiries have a way of leaving the individual on the other end with the responsibility to have to think about a good answer. I rather be asked what I think it is that I am doing wrong, because it gives me a chance to make my own assessment of my behavior and its consequences. The tone of our voice, the expression in our faces, and even my body language plays a role in how my son reads me.

3. One issue at a time...
Nothing is more frustrating than having someone throw at me a dozen issues at the same time when they are trying to help me. I personally feel bombarded by this approach and am left with very little space in my mind to deal with solutions. I believe that singling out the most important issue is always critical in order to effectively keep the communication doors open during an exchange of ideas. Once one side feels that the issue at hand is too complex, very few times does a good idea on how to deal with it arises from the exchange. I try to stay focused on one issue at a time. I want to make whatever progress is possible with dealing with a single challenge so that this success in itself can serve as the momentum necessary to later deal with other issues too. I try to focus on what truly matters, and of course, what I perceive as actually having a chance to be improved. also, if I make the main issue something that cannot be changed, I am just opening the door of frustration which is truly a waste of time.

4. Don't be too serious...

Just because an issue is of a very serious nature, that does not mean that I always need to address it without humor. On the contrary, when I tell my son something important in a funny way, more than likely he stays perceptive and open for the duration of our conversation. The lighter I make the subject matter perceived, the less confrontational I seem in his eyes. Instead of bringing out the big guns about all of the terrible consequences that a particular behavior might induce, I find it much more effective to make fun of how some of the consequences could be totally undesirable. Learn to laugh at the dark side even if it is just for the opening of a serious conversation. Once we are both committed to the subject in a light hearted way, chances are that the conversation will last longer, giving me an opportunity to be much more effective in my goal of providing advice.

5. Listen...
Finally, the most important part of communicating effectively with my son is directly tied to my ability to listen. Being lectured has a way of shutting down my desires to listen, and I am sure it does the same to him. Effective listening is a lot harder than most of us think it is. Most of the time, when we are involved in a personal exchange of ideas, we tend to spend a lot of the time in which we should be listening to the other side planning our response and what to say next. In a friendly and neutral social exchange this behavior might have very little negative consequences, but in an emotional personal exchange the effects are typically bad. When my son is pouring his heart out telling me how he feels is definitely not the time for me to be mentally setting up a return volley. Instead I need to listen, and not just to his words, but also to his entire concept, idea, and demeanor. While I am listening my facial expression and my entire body language needs to be synchronization with his words, talking back to him without words what he needs to hear inside his mind that says that I am interested and willing to understand him. If I am not able to do this, the act of sitting down and taking in his words has no more effect than it would if he was talking to our cat. The way I have learned to get better at this by practicing on the little things first, issues that are of very little consequence and have a smaller emotional impact on our exchange. I guess this is why I have learned to care about so much and not just the big issues. By learning to listen to the small things I have found doors that I did not know where there to be opened in the first place.

OK, now I have to take some time to consider the advice my dear friend gave me this morning. It was actually very good and well thought advice. Even though we had not had a chance to talk in a very long time, immediately she picked up where we had left before because she is an excellent listener. "Make a list of some of the things that you have put on hold in your life because of the situation you have with your son. Then go talk to him and share some of it with him. don't be confrontational. Ask him if he thinks that there is something he can change on his end that would allow you to reach some of your goals. Tell him how his life is just beginning, but yours is already half way gone, and that putting your life on hold means having much less time to do these things. Maybe if he is able to see how he impacts your life, he will then be more receptive to the consequences of how he behaves." I am not really sure how to do all of this, even as easy as it may sound. However, that does not mean that it is not good advice, so I truly have to consider it an find how it applies to my life. Thank you dear friend.

Dad