The world through his eyes...

Different cultures celebrate different holidays in many different ways. If you ever have the opportunity to experience Christmas time in Puerto Rico, don't hesitate in doing so. Our culture is full of traditions that range from culinary delights that are only enjoyed during these festive days, to music and parties that lighten the heart of just about anyone involved. We need no excuse to have a good time during any time of the year, but during Christmas we have learned to drag it out as long as possible. I hear that things have changed significantly since I used to live in my dear Borinquen 28 years ago, but this has happened all over the world too. My heart tells me that the changes might of tamed the amount of celebrations, but not their wonderful flavor. During the days I lived on the island, Christmas celebrations began during the second week of December and ended eight days after Three Kings Day on the 14th of January. I can only speak from my own experience, but in my culture as in many others, Christmas is a great season to spend time with family, loved ones, and friends. There is something about hanging around together to share the holidays that makes you want to be closer than ever.


Two years ago the part of my family that lives in Puerto Rico planned to spend the holidays at my sister's place in Texas. It had been a long time since I spent this festive time of year with my mom, brother, and sisters, so I decided that this was a great opportunity to make it happen. As soon as I told my two boys that I wanted to spend this time with them and the rest of my family, they eagerly rallied in favor of the trip. Airfare from California to Texas is very reasonable, but in my mind I had images of my boys and I making the trip by car in order to spend more time bonding. You might think this would of been a terrible choice given the distance to travel was in excess of 1,400 miles, and the passengers were a mix of ages including 12, 15, and 45 years old. However, just as I thought, somehow we managed to keep it fun, civilized, and all three of us had a great time getting to my sister's place in two days.

The first thing we realized after we had been on the road for less than an hour was that we had forgotten to bring the camera. What kind of trip would it be if we did not have images to document our adventure? We immediately entered "Costco" into our GPS Navigator search and found one just within a few miles from where we were at. It took us less than thirty minutes to detour and buy a digital camera and off we went heading east bound on Interstate 10. We all voted and selected my oldest son as the official trip photographer, a title he gladly accepted just to have the chance to play with the new purchased toy. One of the first things that I discovered was that this young man took his job seriously. We probably have over 300 photographs from cactus, to sunsets, to road signs, and even some of the restroom facilities we stopped on the way. Nothing was exempt from his sharp eyes and afterwards the results were astonishing. At first, while we drove for endless hours I noticed how tireless he was in the quest to find interesting and beautiful things to photographs. However, it was not until I finally downloaded the images on to my computer that I realized the extent of his talent. Somehow he managed to bring life to some of the most basic artifacts that he photographed. The angles, the composition, and the use of light and shadows was what I would describe as intense. He had brought with him his Ibanez Gem electric guitar and at some point took a picture of it that made me wonder why it was that he was able to not only see it in the perspective in which he took the picture, but also reveal it to the rest of us.

What could of been a stressful time of driving long hours with two teenagers in my car turned out to be the best time we have shared in years. I knew it could go either way and I could find myself in the proverbial wagon surrounded by hair scalping Apaches, but in fact it was all the contrary. I am not sure what it was that triggered this wonderful behaviour, but I have been searching for this moment ever since. No less than two months later, to contrast I was sitting on the opposite side of an angry and full of rage young man that could not be controlled without professional intervention.

I am aware of what resides in my home. It is a mix of genius and what I fear might be an uncontrollable mind. I sometimes hesitate to tell him what I see in him because of fears of inflating his already enormous ego, but he is in fact gifted beyond words. How many rainbows have we seen in our lifetime? Yet every so often a drop of water crosses that singular beam of light that turns into a spectacle of colors, and we seem to always be in awe when it happens. What if you were told that this rare event would not happen ever again? Would you not question the madness of whomever brought you such news? I refuse to give into the ugliness from which we have created some very scary moments together. I want to believe that at some moment in time God will lift the fog and allow his beautiful mind to exist in the company of us all.

Dad

Run Forest, run!

As you have already probably discovered, not all of my posts are directly related to just me and my two teenage sons. There is a method to my madness which I would like to share with you as a reader so that you may get more out of reading than just the stories I might tell. A few years back my mom had a surgical procedure done to her back that was not a complete success to say the least. From being a dynamic all the time on the go woman, she found herself having to retire from a 45 year teaching career much sooner than she truly anticipated because of much physical pain. At the time, I thought I might be doing her a favor by switching to a cellular phone plan to include a lot more minutes in order for me to call her more frequently and help keep her mind busy with my long distance company. My typical commute to work in the mornings is approximately 25 to 30 minutes long. So every weekday as I pull out of my driveway I put on a headset connected to a phone and call mom. Little did I know that these daily short conversations would turn out to be more therapeutic to me than they probably are to her. You have to understand that the majority of my parental crisis happens in the mornings trying to convince my oldest son to get up and go to school. So in fact, it is usually after a hell of a morning that I am finally getting in my car to get my nerdy butt to work, and so there she is, my rock, my mom, not just willing to listen, but also amazingly grateful that I called. You tell me, how many people do you know that are willing to hear over and over again the same song about my life being full of so many complications? Very few indeed.

One thing that I have noticed though is that sometimes I am just too angry or frustrated to even talk about it. Most of the time when this happens I call mom and just like a radar picking up the elusive UFO, she locks on to my distress signal and gets me to reveal my sorrow. If this is not therapy, what is? Unfortunately, I sometimes feel extremely guilty for dumping all this baggage on her, so every once in a while instead of going down that road I change the subject and tell her a funny story of something that might of happened sometime earlier during my week. It is like placing a funny commercial in the middle of a really scary movie. This allows me to recover from my frustration before I go on telling her what really happened during the morning. I must confess that sometimes I am so upset, sad, or troubled that I cannot find it in my heart to even call her in fears of burdening her beautiful soul with more pain. After all, she is my mom, and no matter what, she feels everything I am feeling probably twice as hard because of her inability to be able to do anything about it.

This is similar to what happens when I bring you a story of my past that has very little to do with my kids. Here, I too am afraid of sometimes dumping too much of my baggage at the same time. After all, some of the readers are very dear to me and I would not want to bring you into my closet and lock the door behind...that would be way too scary. Instead, when I am not sure how to face some of the monsters in my closet I simply take a step outside, shut the door behind me, and tell you a story about something else. This gives me a bit of time to process what is happening in my life, and hopefully allows you a break and might even make you laugh. I promise you that when it makes enough sense for me to be able to write about it, I will, even if I don't completely understand it. On that note here is something to lighten the mood and hopefully make you smile...

While my dad was in Vietnam I was only in Kindergarten. Amazing the things you can still remember after so many years. The home that he had designed was not completely built before he had to leave, so we moved in with my maternal grandparents. My grandfather had been all his life a dairy farmer, my grandmother had the task of doing just about everything else including raising 9 children. It was a wondrous world living in the farm. Everybody had something that needed to be done, my task usually had to do with feeding chickens and stealing their eggs for breakfast. The job was not as easy as it sounds because of the suspicious nature of the animal in the first place. Go ahead, try to catch one in an open field and you'll see what I am talking about. They are quick two legged creatures with the ability to turn on a dime while you plow your head into the grass. The trick to getting their eggs is to somehow distract them, hence the other part of my task, to feed them. As soon as they hear your high pitch call announcing that you are going to throw the wonder corn around, they all fly and run from every place they have been nesting or visiting to come and enjoy the feast. This is when you take the initiative to crawl under the house, find their nests, and fill the Export Soda Cracker can with their warm eggs. The problem is that not all chickens were created equal, and there is bound to be a hearing impaired one in the bunch. I remember being face to face with some of the meanest, angriest, and plain old psycho hens in the world. Just imagine my skinny butt running as fast as I could all crouched under the house while the crazy hen fearlessly defended her eggs from the scary chicknapper. In the meantime, anyone that had paid for front row seats were crawling on the floor laughing at the show I was giving with my infamous chicken run. I can only compare this now to the scene on Forest Gump when he is running away from the bullies...Run, Forest, run! Most of the times my adrenaline levels would be so high that I would definitely win the race. However, at least once I admit being pecked by the angry momma hen. If she only knew how little respect she was going to get from those chicks once they became teenagers!!!

Dad

Aurora Digital Imaging Studio

They say that you should never go into business with a family member. The reasoning behind this comment is based on how hard it is to make intelligent decisions if you put too much heart into them. For example, if you hire a family member to work in your business and they start missing work frequently, it is so much harder to let them go if you have a personal relationship with them. Matters of money should not be mixed with matters of the heart...so they say.

My experience was totally opposite. A while back I took an 18 month leave of absence (I quit my job) to start my own business. As a couple, me and my now ex-spouse had always talked about doing this but found it extremely hard to put on hold our engineering careers in order to take the entrepreneurial step of owning our own business. After some intense soul searching and an awful experience of having to supervise people during a huge budget cut, I took the scary step of quitting my job and giving it a try. As much as I imagined that I had thought it through with enough scrutiny, soon I learned that planning a business and doing a business are two completely different beasts. The good news was that my heart was really into it and I found in myself a lot of resilience I did not even know I possessed to charge forward. The even better news was that one of my two sisters was living here at the time in California and she accepted my offer to basically work for almost nothing in exchange of the learning experience of a lifetime.

In less than two hard working months we had built reception cabinets, assembled all of the office furniture, had signs made and installed, and purchased every bit of equipment we would need to open a digital imaging studio. The place looked great and now all we needed was customers. We placed ads in the Yellow Pages and a few local magazines to make it known that we were in business, plus we took our services in person to other local photography shops that could use our talents and services. At the time very few of these types of businesses existed in California, much less in the area in which we established our store front. The world needed us to alter their photographs and images, and we needed the world to make money doing it. My sister being the smart cookie that she is learned everything there was about my business in record time and soon we opened our doors to the public. Aurora Digital Imaging Studio, read the beautifully crafted sign on the side of the building we had occupied.

Nope, not once did I regret having my sister by my side running this business adventure. In fact, I think that I would of never gotten it off the ground if she would of not been there for me in so many different ways. Our relationship was completely symbiotic in a way that words cannot describe it. We ran the place like it belonged to both of us, and it showed. Soon we were doing photographic restorations and image manipulations for customers all over the state and even a few from Nevada and Hawaii. The city came to us to help them with one of their festivals, the University of California came to us to help them with specialized graphics, lawyers with images from ATMs, other business owners with products for their catalogs, and an endless stream of friends with old photographs that needed to be restored before they completely disappeared into dull pieces of paper consumed by time.

Business was good, but not good enough to generate enough income for both of us, much less justify the loss of my income as an engineer. Eighteen months into the adventure I made the choice of returning to work for the government in order to secure the income necessary to feed another baby that was on its way. My sister was kind enough to stay running the business for almost another six months so that we could meet our responsibilities, and while the lease term for the location expired.

Just one month before we closed down the local newspaper came to profile our business and an article on our business and the magical work that we did within. It was a full page and a half beautifully written presentation with many of our manipulated images in full color to show off our skills. Ironically, this made our business pick up many more clients which if I was not already engaged in returning to work for the government might of been our business salvation. My sister and I must of worked on over a thousand images and every single one of them seemed special in one way or another. Most memorable was a series of images that a widower was bringing to us to retain the memory of his late wife and his dogs. This wonderfully pleasant man would walk in and sit for hours telling us story after story of his life, his children, his wife, and his dogs. The contrast of his demeanor would show vividly when some people would come in with pictures in which they wanted to remove someone that was no longer important in their lives from an old wedding, family event, or other moment in their lives. Even after death he was still in love with his beautiful bride.

In a span of only two years I had the opportunity to peek into so many stranger's closets. Occasionally there would be the angry driven individual that wanted nothing more to do with someone from their past, but more often than not, the majority of the images we restored or manipulated had love as their main theme. An amazing perk to this kind of business was that in all of the financial transactions just one single person ever bounced a check on me. The man was a good man, he meant to have it covered by the time we would deliver to goods, but apparently we found ourselves being a bit too efficient for his wallet. Needless to say he apologized and made full restoration of the money he owed immediately. Another time we found ourselves working endless hours restoring an image in which much of the face had been literally destroyed of a picture brought in by a daughter of her mother. By the time we were done, the image was very good but obviously not perfect because of the poor condition the original image had arrived into our able hands. When the customer arrived we could tell that even though she was pleased, she apparently wanted more done. Later we discovered by her absence at the time to review the final product for a second time, that what was happening was that she did not have the means to cover the cost of the work done. My sister and I talked about it and decided to send her a letter letting her know that we were willing to settle the account for what was a ridiculously low price. The truth is we just wanted her to have her picture back, nobody should be without their mother's picture because of a financial burden. That felt good!

Over and over the theme would repeat itself. "This is the only picture I have of my dad ... mom... sister... brother... uncle ... son ... daughter ... grandfather... grandmother ... etc." Would say the customer as they would proudly show us their image. We would notice how some had a difficult time leaving the image in our strange hands, yet walking away in hopes that our work would bring back to life that which had been once precious to them and now was almost vanishing. Each image was considered a treasure, probably one of the most valuable possessions of the person who brought it into our establishment. We wore white silk gloves and treated them with the respect that they deserved.

It was a wonderful experience to be able to run this business, and an even greater joy to have the opportunity to do it with my sister. At lunch time, unless a customer had called saying they were coming, we would put our "Be Right Back" sign on the door and go out for a quick lunch together. Sometimes we were just exhausted from long hours at home or work and we would turn off the lights in one of our office spaces and lay back and take a small nap. Leaving this adventure was a very hard thing for me to do. I had invested a lot of money and the short two years were not enough to recover the investment I had made from personal finances. Yet now I look back and have zero regrets. If only for the time that I was able to spend with my sister, it was money well spent.

Dad

What's in your toolbox?

One of the most typical attitudes that most teenagers share is based on their perception that their parents do not possess the ability to understand what they are going through at a particular stage in their lives. Once the child begins to believe that their relationship with their parents is unsympathetic, a barrier is built and raised one brick at a time until eventually neither one is able to look into each other's side of the fence to be able to reach any understanding on some of the most simplistic day to day situations. It does not help that this perception is so common among teenagers that between themselves it becomes part of the bond that reinforces itself daily making the wall between parent and child even harder to breach.

I hear it all the time, "you cannot understand what I am going through," my oldest son will say when I ask him to explain what he is feeling. Is he denying my request to learn how he is feeling because he truly does not think I can understand him? Could it be that he, himself does not understand what he is feeling and is not able to explain it? Maybe he simply uses those words to find a way to avoid having to share his emotions at that particular moment. These are questions that probably need to be answered in order for me as a parent to be able to find the common ground needed to bridge our communication gap.

Interestingly enough, as I have mentioned in several other posts, it is not that he does not want to tell me the truth. This has become more evident over and over again when I have challenged him to tell me something that I really want to know about his use of drugs. Repeatedly he has given me much more information than I ever thought him capable of sharing when I make the request in a non threatening manner. However, the answers to my inquiries are so complete and many times complicated, that I find myself having very little to say in rebuttal of what I have found to be some very dangerous behaviour of his part. This is not to say that I simply shut up and don't try to impart some parental wisdom. On the contrary, what happens is that I then find myself having to dig deep into my mind and find as much reasonable information to share with him that might at some point end up being the only seed that could grow in the overgrown forest of his mind. If I were to try to describe to you with a mental picture what it is like to share with my son when he opens up to answer my questions, this is what I would say:

It is like opening the sliding door of my home and walking outside to my not perfect but beautiful in its own way back yard. I can hear my son's voice coming from one of the neighbors side talking to me, so I find an appropriate size ladder to be able to reach the rim of our common fence and look over. As I take that final step and lean on the block wall I stare in wonder at his back yard. First I am not able to see him, the reason being because the place even though amazingly beautiful is overcrowded with so many bushes and trees that it is hard to find the voice that is calling out for me. My mind has peeked in here before and I know that I have only been successful in finding him on the other side when I systematically scan the place a little bit at a time. A quick scan would probably prove fruitless because he has become like a chameleon and everything there blends itself around him. Like a Where's Waldo child book, I decide to try to remember what he typically wears in order to eliminate much of the background noise that makes him so hard to find. Finally, as my already fatigued eyes are getting to the end of their searching process, I make the connection between voice and body and find him. Amazingly, once I have found him it becomes so obvious where he is at that I find it hard to believe it took me so long to find him. Beautiful black long hair, thick eyebrows, dark brown eyes, and so many more wonderful qualities are contained in his person. But the message he is delivering is confusing. It is almost like watching a dubbed over Godzilla movie where the voices most of the time don't match the lips of the actors. I choose to then close my eyes and just listen to the words instead, this way I might find some sense or logic behind the statements that my mind refuses to connect with my son. There, most of the time it is in this moment that I realize that what makes the whole interaction so confusing is that the words in themselves mean absolutely nothing. It is the tone, the emotion that these words contain from where I am able to find meaning. Anger, frustration, pain, and a great deal of confusion are the words that describe best the message that is filling the empty spaces in his beautiful yet overgrown back yard. I reach into my tool belt and find the appropriate gadget and start my descent into his side of the fence in hopes that I might be able to get closer and truly help the child man. Unfortunately, once I am on the ground I realize that only from above am I able to see the whole picture and locate him to be able to interact. The closer I try to get, the more distant his voice becomes as if I was actually walking in the opposite direction to his true location. It is obvious that I have to return to my side of the fence, only there as a parent am I truly able to maintain a clear picture of where he is at.

I honestly have no choice but to ignore so much of what he tells me because otherwise I would live in a constant state of being hurt. Instead, as I tried to describe to you above, I pick and choose what I need to hear in order to communicate with him. As parents throughout the years we all have built a parenting toolbox to deal with our children. It is common though that some of the tools are so specialized that they only fit one child and not any other. In other words, what works on one child sometimes has the opposite effect on another. One of the most powerful tools I have in my parenting box is a huge ass adjustable wrench of love. Depending on the circumstances I carefully take it out and adjust it's power to accommodate the most sensitive aspects of our relationship. I have learned that if I use it incorrectly I am taken advantage of, so I am careful to apply it's magic to each circumstance based on its need and merit. Like stripping a screw's head by using the wrong size screwdriver, I find myself making sure that I am careful on how I apply it to every situation I encounter with my son in order to not make things worse. This is obviously just one of many tools, but under the right conditions, I have been much more successful with it than with any other of my tools. I would like to encourage all of you to please share any tool that you have found to work well for you so that we can all benefit from your knowledge.

Dad

Day 1...

Both kids started school today. I lucked out and it was what I call my freaky Friday. I work a compressed work week of 9 hours every day so that I am able to take every other Friday off. In reality most of the time either work or personal family matters mess up my week much sooner than I am able to complete my total 80 hours for two weeks, so I usually end up either having to come in for a couple of hours, and sometimes the whole day. Not today, today was an official, by the book, freaky Friday for me.

Anxiety did it's job and when God knows what woke me up at 4:00 a.m., I was never able to get back to sleep. I hate it when this happens because I later find myself dragging my body all day long. Today was not so bad because I did not have to go to work. Instead, I finished doing some laundry and caught up paying some of my bills online. In no time at all it was already time to hit the shower and start the early morning school routine. By 6:00 a.m. I had already made breakfast for my oldest son that had apparently pulled off an all nighter in order to be able to meet with a friend in the morning and walk to the bus stop. This is a rare event, and just as precious as an Aztec Indian gazing at the wonder of a solar eclipse, I too gazed at my glary eyed son as he walked into the kitchen proclaiming he was starving. You too would be starving if you would of partaken of whatever funny smell was coming out of his room at bedtime. I knew something fishy was going on, but I also knew that if I came down strong as I tend to, the consequence would of been that neither one of us would of gotten any sleep in argument, and eventually he would of gone to bed at the exact same moment that he was supposed to go to school. I did what my heart told me not to do but my mind insisted on me doing, I pretended nothing was going on. Knowing that he had a friend coming over to drag him to school I made egg sandwiches for both of them, and some migraine avoidance coffee for me. All went well and the two young lads departed in haste surely trying to guarantee some prior boarding time to get a few puffs of their favorite brand of tobacco.

My other son did not have to be at school until an hour later so I sat for a few moments in contemplation of my definitely not boring life and drank my cup of java while debating what to do with the untouched egg sandwich that the guest refused to consume...I ate it. The other child woke up on his own and readily showed up to the kitchen wondering what smelled so good. I offered, he accepted, consumed, and was ready for school with half an hour to spare. I got the final dryer load out and folded killing time to take my promising scholar to his first day of 8th grade. The distance to his school is close enough to walk, but I like taking him whenever I am around just to spend a few more minutes with him. I really enjoy his company, mostly because he makes me feel like a normal dad, with a normal life, and a normal child. We have the route figured out so that when I drop him off he does not have to cross the street. This is not my anal behaviour, it is on his request because he says that some of the parents are terrible drivers and more than once he has felt like he might get hit. As I drop him off we exchange information relative to the good chance of me picking him up in the afternoon so that he does not have to go up the steep hill in the middle of what was predicted to be a 108 degree Fahrenheit day. We trade I love you's, and the boy exits the car while I stare for just a few seconds more and think of how good God has been to me by giving me this wonderful kid.

Now it's time to go back home and face the reality of what might of been happening the night before in my oldest son's room. No need to be a CSI to find all of the traces. I grab a garbage bag and start the task of cleaning up the mess that only took three days to evolve. Something here, something there...eventually I clear a path and remember that today is the day I should take advantage of and remove the glass window that one of his friends broke while eagerly trying to wake him up a few days back. Typically I do a sniff test of some of the garments scattered around the room to determine which one needs washing and which one is just parked there because of laziness. Not today, I figure my senses have already taken a beating with what the entire room smells like and decide to simply wash it all.

Window pane removed, I search through the previously entered GPS Navigator addresses on my phone and find the glass repair place I had used just a few months earlier to repair another broken window and find it. This place has two things going for it, price and a cute receptionist. Load in washer I lock up the house and depart to take the broken window to its glass doctor. This time I am there too early so the owner, an old man with what I recognize as an Army Airborne tattoo is kind enough to get me going on my fix job. He seems to see some of my pain, I must be obvious this early in the morning, and one of the first things out of his mouth is "I have seven." I laugh and he laughs too. We both know that what he is referring to is the number of times we decided to forgo the use of contraception and accept the lottery of conception. The older man is so eager to share with me that he drops the order paperwork on the counter and simply starts to talk. "Yep, they never leave...one of my boys left for a year, now he is back...the other left for two, back too...my youngest daughter got married and it never occurred to her to find a place of their own, no, they both moved in with us...I should of never built such a big house!" Said the man without even asking me how many I had of my own. "What they need to do is join the Army...that will make a man out of anyone" he said, and continued to share more of his military career.

As much as it sometimes seem like it, I am not alone. The drama that once seemed so unique and complicated, now starts to reveal itself as simply chapters in my book, but there are so many more books out there. If so many people have gone through so much hardship while raising their children, then why is it that I find so little information on how to fix the damn problems in the first place? Maybe now, today is the time to get it done. Technology is finally reachable to many of us so that we are able to share our lessons. I am sure you already have figured this out, I am very willing to share for the sake of knowledge and enlightenment.

I do as promised and park in the swelling heat for at least ten minutes waiting for my youngest son to get out and saving him from the torture of dragging his skinny butt all the way home. You can tell as he boards the Dad mobile that he is tired, but happy. He says that all of his teachers are great and that if only he could make a change to his schedule to switch P.E. from 2nd to 6th period, then life would be perfect. As we drive home I make pizza promises to his hungry teenage tummy and he happily accepts the offer.

Less than ten minutes after we arrive at home my oldest son calls with a Taxi request. He has been hanging with a few friends close to the supermarket and was hoping I was home and would pick them up and spare them the uphill walk home. This is one of the easy requests to fulfill, so I grab my keys and drive down the street to pick up my fare. "Do you mind if we go into the supermarket and get something cold to drink first?" asked my son while surprising me by not asking for money. Ten minutes later the four future leaders of our country exit the establishment and board my vehicle. One after the other each complained at what a drag it was to have to go back to school again. By the time we arrived at my driveway, the consensus was that everyone at school, with the exception of them four, is an idiot. Teachers are dumb, other students are dumb, specially anyone that might show a sign of wanting to learn something, and in fact all of society is dumb because there is no good reason for anybody to waste their time going to school! Awe!!! How quickly they have all become the smartest young men alive!

Yes my dear readers, I sit here in awe wondering why I wasted so much money going to college, when in fact all I needed to know to be successful I could of learned from the three teenage young men that eagerly accepted my free offer for transportation in my hard earned money purchased vehicle. As hard as I try, I don't remember ever being this dumb. Ignorance is bliss, and as far as I can tell, these three are blisser (if that is a word) than the average bear.

I just wanted to share with you what Day 1 was like today. Relatively speaking, you need to believe me when I tell you that this was a wonderful day. I laughed as I typed those words because I am not being sarcastic, not really. I laughed because it really was a great day. Nobody got kicked out of school, nobody is suspended, and yes, you might of guessed it too, tonight, because it is Friday and there is no school tomorrow, I will sleep like a baby!

Dad

What is that snoring sound coming out of the library?

There is nothing more intense in life than the loss of someone that is dear to us. We spend years developing relationships with parents, our children, our spouses, other family members, and friends. At that moment in which life plays the ironic and mostly sad trick of taking one of these already emotionally attached individuals from our side, the walls seem to collapse around us and we find ourselves in complete failure to understand why it happened.

At the young age of 33 my father had his first heart attack. Life was just beginning for him in every sense of the word. Fortunately for him, a second chance was give and he survived the medical trauma that almost took his life in minutes. He had become a diabetic since the early age of 21, plus the fact that he was a smoker did not help to worsen his chances of becoming another statistic in the tally of middle aged men suffering from heart disease. The event was life changing. Once a man full of life, energy, and spunk, suddenly he found himself having to limit himself on almost all types of physical activities that until then basically came natural and effortlessly. You would think that this "wake up call" would of been enough to encourage him to stop smoking, pay much more attention to his diet, and become more assertive on his efforts to take care of his overall health. In a sense it did, for a while the impact of the moment took away the desire to smoke, but it was not much long after that he started again anyway.

Throughout his life my father made several attempts to stop smoking, but on every single one of them he eventually failed miserably. The same thing happened on his efforts to eat the right types of food that would not aggravate his diabetes. Eventually, even though he seemed to be stable, after three other heart attacks spaced out in a ten year span of time, the final stroke that took his life arrived at only 44 years of age. The experience was devastating for all of us that loved him. Even though we knew that he was far from being in perfect health, it never occurred to us that he would go away at such an early age.

I had been attending college at the Arecibo Regional College, which was a satellite branch of the University of Puerto Rico. My father in an effort to keep himself busy had also enrolled at the same university taking some computer programming classes. We were good with each other as father and son. Finding a good parking spot is always hard on campus, but because of his medical condition they had given him special parking privileges which worked out great when we would go to school together in the mornings. Day in and day out we would carpool and share stories on our way to college and back home about things that at the time seemed important to us. The man was amazingly intelligent and a social butterfly anywhere he arrived at. By the time I was already on my second year of college he had probably made at least twice the amount of friends that I had in less than a year. Everybody on campus knew the man, and many would come up to me and ask me all sorts of questions about him. I remember getting out of class and heading to the library to catch up with him so that we could head home. It was many times when I would find him asleep at some table snoring his not so healthy heart away. Funny thing is, I never thought of it being embarrassing because of how much everyone that surrounded him liked him.

Apparently he was much worse in health than his physical appearance would reveal. It was a Friday, and I was in the middle of my Chemistry mid-term exam, when a cousin of my mother that worked at the university walked down the steps of the auditorium in which I was taking my test and asked me to leave my paper there and head to the hospital because my father was very ill. I would like to say that I remember it as if it was yesterday, but in fact, the method of transportation in which I arrived to the hospital had eluded me until recently when another cousin told me that she had been the one to take me there. The fear in my heart was so intense that anything that happened between getting the news of his illness and arriving at the hospital was never recorded in my mind. I must of been thinking millions of terrible and scary thoughts, but for the life of me, I just cannot remember them. What I do remember is every single instant afterwards. Walking into the hospital that just hours earlier he had arrived into for a routine small wound cleaning because of his diabetes. The family doctor stepping out into the hall and giving my mother the news that he had not been able to save him. Watching my mother collapse on to the floor in agonizing heart breaking horror of the news she had just been given. Then realizing that only one of us could fall apart at a time and that I needed to be strong for her and not allow myself to feel that most dreadful emotion that is brought about the loss of someone that you love so much.

One of my sisters was out of state at the University of Detroit, the other one was out of town where she attended college. This intense moment of pain and despair was only compounded by the fact that I had to be strong and not let myself fall apart. I remember heading to the funeral home to pick the coffin that I was going to lay my father's body in to rest. What an unbearable process this making funeral arrangements can be to anyone that is already in the middle of such incredible sorrow. Eventually my older sister arrived and in the middle of her own emotional crisis found the strength to take over what I had already started. Thank you my sweet Jane and Queen of the Jungle.

Death is so final. Very few words are encompassing enough to reveal the true meaning of death. It is not until we approach what was once alive and find so very little of its original essence in front of us, that we actually are able to taste what is death. Before this experience I had been to other family funerals, but none had touched so deep into my soul as to rip out my own will to breath. It is a good thing that breathing is an autonomous body function, because I am sure that anyone of you that has had to experience the loss of someone that you loved this much would probably have very little left inside you after the event to make your own lungs take another breath of precious air.

Just hours earlier he had been joking around and teasing a group of us who had gathered at my home to study all night for our mid-term exam about our last minute diligence. Several times that night he walked out to check up on us, make sure we were doing OK. I for one had not even thought twice about his repeated appearances that night, which always brought some element of laughter into the room in which we were cramming. I've always wished I would of made a parenthesis that night to give him the usual hug we almost always shared before going to bed. In fact, it is from my parents that I have learned to be a loving father. Between all of the years that we have shared, there has never been a moment in which we could not find the time to express our love to each other one way or another. Sure we have been mad at each other, but being angry was never a reason to stop loving. Deep in our hearts no matter how much we would hurt for any temporary offense, love reigned high in our hearts, mind, and soul.

The pain was real, more real than any other emotion I had ever had to deal with in my life. We tried to make ourselves feel better by telling each other that even though he had only lived to be 44, he had lived a full life. These were words that only made sense if we could be able to accept his loss, and no matter how hard we tried to do this, his death made no sense at all. I have never been big about reaching into a coffin and touching a dead body. When I was a child I had attended a family member's funeral when somebody standing next to me while I prayed next to the coffin, reached in screaming, grabbed the body and started to scream that she was alive. In the commotion I was tangled into the event and to this day I can still feel the cold skin of the corpse unwillingly touching me and seriously freaking me out. This was different, this was my father, my dad, my old man. That day, as I said goodbye to him in between tears and prayers, I reached in and kissed my father's lips to remind myself that no man was greater than the man that raised me.

The hollow echo of his body reaching the bottom of his grave will never leave my mind. The emptiness left by his absence will never be filled again by anyone else. Twenty eight years have gone by and to this day I still cry, just as I do right now at the thought of having lost someone so important to me in my life. As I grew up I have missed him immensely and have wished that he still be part of my life. When someone tells me that he is here in spirit, that he is always with me, I not only believe their words of consolation, I actually am able to feel his presence all around me. Just as I feel the presence of many other family members that were extremely dear to me and have already passed away. It is not a ghostly kind of presence, it is a love all around me kind of effect. I profess to all of you that everything in life is temporary except for one thing...love. True love is the essence of what makes life worth while living. This is why I strongly believe that
life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

Dad

Cabo San Lucas here we come!

It was somewhere in the month of April and I had just gotten off a U.S. Navy ship after two weeks of sea duty. Only those who have gone through this kind of experience can actually attest to the level of wear and tear that this kind of job does to you. When I go out to sea, this is not the typical cruise ship fun and games kind of travel. I typically start my days at around 5:00 a.m. and don't get to lay down my weary head until at least 1:00 a.m. the next morning. Generally I get less than four hours of sleep a day every time I am out to sea doing my job for an average of ten to fourteen days in a row. As a young lad, this was not such a bad thing since my body and mind had the energy and stamina to deal with the long hours and I recovered relatively easy afterwards. Now days it wreaks havoc on my system. To the point that I have had to seek medical help to make sure that when I am finally back home I can somehow adjust to the regular hours of sleep and get back to my normal routine.

A few years after I started to do long hikes as a fun weekend physical challenge, I found myself looking for a good doctor that would take care of my every once and a while pulled or strained muscle. A the Loma Linda University Medical Center I discovered a wonderful sports medicine doctor that not only had the right know how, but also had skinny enough fingers that when the time came to have to dreaded prostate exams I did not have to take muscle relaxers. Eventually we found a good balance, she would tell me how to make things better without telling me to stop doing them, instead she was very encouraging about my climbing, hiking, and anything else that had to do with physical fitness. Later through the years she pretty much convinced me that I did not have any choice but to take hypertension medication unless I was willing to start buying cemetery plots at an early age, so I am grateful to her for her wonderful and caring ways.

There was one particular year that I started doing my two week ship rides in November and by the month of February I had worn myself out with three of these trips. When I would get back from two weeks of sleeping less than four hours a day, it would take me weeks sometimes to adjust to my normal sleeping habits. The lack of good rest made me sick. By February a silly cough that started in November had turned into a serious bronchitis that was one step away from pneumonia. At this point my doctor recommended that once I got back from my trips I should take Ambien for a couple of days to force myself to sleep the regular 8 or 9 hours a day to re-regulate my sleeping pattern. To my surprise this little magical pill did wonders for me and actually did what she suggested in a very effective manner. The only problem with the magical pills was that you really had to go to bed once you took them because if you didn't, well let's say that things had a way of going weird while you thought you were awake but really were not.

One night sometime in April that year I had just gotten back from one of my two week out at sea 4 hours of sleep a night work duties when my uncle called me. I had just taken one of the magical Ambien pills and gone to bed when probably less than an hour later the phone rang and I answered it. In the next hour or so I had a full conversation with my uncle, booked flights for me and my two sons, hotel reservations, and then went back to bed. The next day I got a phone call from my dear uncle asking me if I had booked the flights and my answer was "Flights, what flights?" When I got home after work I went to my home office desk and found reservation numbers and every detail needed to take a boys only trip with my two kids, my uncle and his two sons to Cabo San Lucas. Amazing huh? I had zero recollection of having done all of this planning and booking the night before.

What a great way to bond with your kids. We spent time at the pool, rented ski jets, and hired a boat to go deep sea fishing for marlin. By the end of the long weekend I can safely say that it was worth every penny I spent making this special time happen. Not all went perfect, by the last day there was some frustration setting in from some typical childhood demands that I found to be too annoying to ignore, but all and all the trip was a success by any measure you can think of. My kids have many times begged me to do this again, which I intend to do when finances allow me to take such a luxury.

Back to the subject about Ambien, what a powerful and scary experience. I truly have absolutely no memory of planning this trip. This medication that had taken care of my sleeping disorder had also shown me that under special circumstances I could do things and not remember them afterwards. Apparently the trick is to never get out of bed during the sleeping cycle if you take the pill because one of the side effects is that you will do things and then not remember having done them. I personally know of a male friend of mine who is very close and dear to me that was also woken up in the middle of the sleep cycle while taking this pill to a phone call from another male friend. This individual has absolutely no recollection of having made a series of sexual passes to his male friend in which he graphically described how he would perform all kinds of male to female pleasurable acts. Not only did he propose to do all of this, in no way shape or form did he realize that he was talking to a person of the same sex. Needless to say, his friend was very confused that night and suggested he would never take the magical Ambien pill again.

When faced with the choice of taking medication to try to help my son's condition, he has refused over and over again on the grounds that the few medications that he has tried make him feel that he is not himself. My son describes his opposition as not wanting to be someone else because of the pills prescribed. Can you blame him? I for one would not want to feel like someone else simply because I have taken some medication that is supposed to make me better. Yet there is a possibility that even though those medications make him feel like another person, that is the person that he is supposed to be in the first place.

Tricky this business of altering the personality of an individual, isn't it? On one end we might be able to make the individual fit into the conformity of the rest of society. On the other end me might be making them lose their personal identity, what makes them who they really are. I have seen it in some of the children of my friends. I once invited a friend of my youngest son to go with us on a short hike up Mount Roubidoux in Riverside, CA. He was full of energy and kept running ahead of the rest of us and coming back and forth during the outing. At the peak, when we were all worn out from walking up the steep route and ready to rest, he kept asking me if he was allowed to run to the other side where the huge cross was planted probably one hundred meters away. Over and over he ran and came back and made the same request at least five times. Finally we decided to head back down and he was just as full of energy as he had been less than an hour ago when we started our quest. Once we got back to my car his mother called him on his cell phone and reminded him to take his medication. One minute he was climbing the walls because he had forgotten to take his medication in the morning, the next he was what almost seemed catatonic. The boy was not longer the kid full of energy and joyfulness. In fact, by the time we got back home he was ready to call his mother to return with his family.

This is not an exception to the rule. Most children that are put on medications that alter their behaviour are caught in this dilemma. They are either altered enough to conform to what society has decreed to be good enough behaviour to function adequately in school and around their piers, or they are out of control. For years we dealt with this by making adjustments at home to accommodate my son's unusual personality and behaviour. Some times it was trying and hard to deal with, but for the most part it was good. Unfortunately "some times" is not good enough for the educational system in which once you are one millimeter out of the tolerance that is considered "normal" then you are a problem to those that have to deal with you.

Consider this...when we were growing up, how many of your friends did you know had ADHD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, or some other kind of personality disorder? Yet we all went to school, most of us learned what we needed to learn, and eventually became useful participants in our society. In fact, recently I remember attending one of my high school class reunions and meeting with what I remember to be one of the bullies of my class. Guess what this what seemed out of control child grew up to be? He is a psychiatrist. Another one of my childhood friends was considered to be the class clown. He was hyperactive and had so many discipline problems that his parents had to remove him from our school and send him to some military type institution. Now this same amazing young man became a well known physician that has attained some of the most recognized levels of achievement in his career such as Assistant Secretary of Health for the United States of America. What might of happened if we would of pumped up this child with drugs from an early age and not allowed him to use his own drive to become the man he is today? There is much to say about what has happened in our society that has created the low tolerance level for what might be a bit out of "normal" in a classroom. The job of teaching has become more about numbers than it is about individuals.

I know for a fact that my mother, a teacher of 45 years of experience, can remember having to deal with all of the above I just described because we have talked about it. Yet she says that she always felt that her job was not only to teach those who were great kids, but to teach all of the kids. One way or another she found ways of gaining the trust and respect of the ones that seemed sometimes out of control. Could it be that once she made it clear that she really cared about these children too, the doors of respect suddenly opened both ways? I know that it is not easy to deal with these children that are not perfect but that should actually be part of the job description. To teach them what they need to know to become part of what makes our humanity so wonderful, that they can be part of the solution to our future challenges, and not just part of the problem.

Dad

It's the third house on the right...

So much about us is hard wired into our person. The debate is always at foot with respect to how much of our personality is learned versus inherited behaviour. In fact, even though a great deal of research has been conducted and volumes of articles have been written addressing this particular subject, the door is still wide open on the decision of whether many mental illnesses are caused by the subjects upbringing or not. Not that it really matters, but to me, as for many others, the answer is probably in between a combination of both nature and nurture.

I don't ever remember my father volunteering to stop the car and ask for directions when he was lost. On the other hand, I do remember my mother insisting that he do so. The male inability or unwillingness to stop in the middle of his journey to ask for directions is most definitely one of the most common complaints from the opposite sex. I for one am no exception to the rule. In fact, I am probably worse than most as this does not only carry into my vehicle wandering mode, but it also enters my behaviour while shopping. I find myself many times going aisle by aisle searching for something while sometimes even walking past a store employee without asking where the location of the elusive product might be, and in the meantime covering the entire square footage of the store. I am not an extremist, if the employee is cute, I'll probably stop and ask just to hear what the tone of her voice sounds like, another typical male quirk. With time and age I have gotten a little better in my unwillingness to stop and ask for help, but if I was to quantify it I would probably give myself less than a five percent improvement. Obviously, this behaviour is much worse when I am all alone and can get away with it without being challenged by anyone else.

Leave it to most of us men and I promise you that talking would be a thing of the past. Most of us are terrible at communicating. If it were not because we have to get to know you in order to be able to get in bed with you, our longest sentence would probably be "What's for dinner?" So I give ninety percent of the credit for most men's ability to speak to the opposite gender, mostly because you possess things that are extremely dear to us and have learned the power of negotiation for us to get them. I say "most" men because there is, as their will always be, in every situation exceptions to every rule. So men, please do not send me a comment saying that you do not fit this stereotype, yes, we all know how perfect "you" are...hahaha! And to the beautiful ladies that might be reading, don't for one second imagine that we are not aware of your mystical powers to get what you want from us, in fact, we are counting on them. If it were not because there might be something that you need or want from us, we would have such a small chance to probably even get to know you. OK, so that we are all clear, this is not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

I am not big on re-sending emails that at the bottom tell you that you're probably going to be bald in the next 24 hours if you do not forward what you just read. In fact, no offense to any of my readers that throughout the past have included me in their list of chain replies emails because you need to know that I do read most of them. If the message is not so long that it will take me half a day to read it, I will read it. However, unless by the end of all the reading I am squirming on my chair in laughter (which might be more common than you think), or I have emptied a box of Kleenex (much less common than you think), I simply delete the message. So no, this does not mean that I don't especially love you, all it means is that I don't see the point in returning it to you because you obviously already read it!

My favorite non personal emails are the ones that either make fun of my own culture, or my own or opposite gender. I love the ones that remind me of silly words we say in Puerto Rico that mean absolutely nothing to anyone else in the world. I also love the ones that have to do with men and women interacting in a humorous way. Maybe in one of my posts I will dig to see if I can find a few of my favorites and I will share them with you, but most likely you have already heard them anyway. I think that it is wonderful that we are able to laugh at each other and ourselves. I consider myself to be a fairly smart person, yet I do so many dumb things throughout the day that most of the time I just can't help but laugh at myself.

Recently I noticed that my mature brain is having a bit of difficulty getting the right words out through speech. I find myself thinking of something, but then saying it all mixed up with something else that I obviously have filed deep in my head. For example, instead of saying "Facebook", I will say something dumb like "Spacebook", which is obviously a combination of Facebook and MySpace. This is truly not on purpose and sometimes even embarrassing depending to whom I am talking to. I need to start writing them down to share with you because it is happening almost everyday, and it is hilarious. It might stop being hilarious the day I can't say a complete sentence without doing this mental jigsaw puzzle of words, but until then I will simply laugh it off.

OK, I admit, this post has lost it's original purpose so I will try to get a little bit back on track. What I have been reading more about and researching on my own is what might gender have to do with some of the behaviour of my son. How much of it is learned behaviour, which I probably have a chance to influence, and how much of it might be genetics, to which I most likely have very little influence at all. I know and understand that the only reason that I am more of a neat freak is because my mother's influence in my upbringing with respect to cleanliness. I was not always this orderly, so outside influences have made me this way. Does this mean that I might have some kind of positive influence on my son's apparent disorderly behaviour?

Something that is very interesting to me is that when I took my oldest son to have a Neurological Evaluation performed at the age of 13 by the Loma Linda University Children's Hospital, the results were enlightening yet confusing. A battery of testing was conducted throughout a period of two months. All of these tests were eventually scored on what is described as a percentile scale, in which the value that you obtain shows where the individual tested scored in comparison with other individuals that have taken the same test. In other words, a score of 97th percentile does not mean that the individual got 97 percent of the answers write, instead what it means is that on average the individual scored 97 percent higher than the other individuals that took the same test. It was obvious to me when the final report was given to us that this process at least told me two very clear thing about my son, that he has an amazing mind, and that whenever he scored low, it must mean something important. Of a list of 39 tests conducted the following is a summary of results:

• 11 tests scored above the 90th percentile
• 9 tests scored between the 80th and 89th precentile range
• 7 tests scored between the 70th and 79th percentile range
• 4 tests scored between the 60th and 69th percentile range
• 6 tests scored between the 50th and 59th percentile range
• 1 test scored at 16th percentile
• 1 test scored at 5th percentile

It should be obvious to just about anyone that the bottom two scores have to mean something important. On the Processing Speed Index Test my son scored 85, which placed him on the 16th percentile range and it also means that out of every 100 other children that have taken this test, at least 84 of them scored higher than him. This particular test determines the speed in which an individual can mentally process simple or routine information without making errors. Even though my son is able to process very complex information at very fast speeds, his mind basically slows down to a crawl when he does the opposite of processing simple and routine information.

A total of four subtests were conducted in a battery of tests called Color-Word Interface Test. On three of the four subtests my son scored between the 50th and 63rd percentile. However, on the subtest called Inhibition Switching Test, my son scored 5, which placed him on the 5th percentile. The comment attached to this score read "In every day life, this may lead him to have difficulty adapting to changing situations and may say things impulsively without considering consequences." A major understatement in my humble opinion considering the current situation with my son.

The total assessment made some of what I interpreted as "light recommendations" at the end of the report. They suggested a sleep study because of his history of insomnia, family therapy because of our divorce in progress, and individual therapy to help him cope with both the divorce and his academic demands. They also suggested that we allow him to not have to change between households too frequently, and try to maintain consistency in his living arrangements, and that we use consistent discipline strategies so that he would be clear about boundaries.

Not once did this 60 day process try to understand the why of any of the results. Why is my son's processing speed of simple and routine information so much slower than 84% of most other kids? Why is his inhibition switching ability only comparable to 5% of the rest of the children population? To me this is obviously about how he is wired. Can anything be done to improve the parts of his brain that slows down so dramatically when it comes time to adapt to changing situations and control his impulsivity? Why is it that so little is known and that the experts in these areas are so unwilling to find real solutions to some extremely real problems. At the time of the testing only a few of the consequences for these deficiencies where noticeable. Today it is written all over everything he does, he says, and most likely thinks. These dramatic changes in his personality and behaviour, are they an indication that things are going to get worse, or that eventually they will improve?

More than anything I would love to know if there is anything that I, as a parent, as his father, his male figure, can do to help him improve and get better? Is there any power on my end to influence the outcome of his mental development? At this moment, I fear that even though we are sometimes able to communicate, share, and still learn from each other, the dominance of the effects of taking certain drugs might be out of my reach to compete against. We all know that at his age we did not value so much the opinion of our parents, mostly because we knew they would probably tell us to stop and decease our desire to taste life, and the taste was so good! Is there a way to taste it without damaging ourselves? Most of us survived it. Me, being more of a nerdy type, it was a given I would survive it all. However, not all survived, some went down deep into places that they were never able to come out of. What a shame, there is so much more to life than tasting what seems so important in those early days. I pray that God will show me the way to be part of his healing process and allow me the chance to see him through it all.

Dad

Let's go get a Barney tattoo!

School starts on Friday. You would think that such an innocent statement would not make much of an impact on anyone other than the student affected by the event. Not even close to being true. In fact, teachers are scrambling to get themselves, their classrooms, and desk plans ready. School administrators are juggling classroom assignments, class schedules, bus itineraries, and many other last minute fine tuning adjustments to every bit of complication that arrives on their desk. Students are trying to squeeze the last few days of freedom and recreational liberty before the weight of school work and getting up early in the morning again comes back into their lives. Finally, there is the guardians or parents responsible for the students. These are the unsung heroes that day in and out have to juggle their entire lives around every minute detail, request, and event that is shot in their direction from all of the above teachers, administrators, and students. Even those without children might be re-thinking their drive to work route now that suddenly traffic in some school zones will be jammed with parents taking their not so eager beavers to their cages for the training process. I can also imagine some cops rearranging their routes to accommodate for the endless duty of enforcing traffic rules around the morning and afternoon circus of vehicles in school zones.

School starts on Friday. There must be a reason for which this particular date was selected instead of next Monday, but to us parents it will probably never be revealed. New clothes, shoes, backpacks, lunchboxes, notebooks, pencils, colored pencils, mechanical pencils, supply pouches, college rule paper, wide rule paper, construction paper, pens, colored pens, markers, highlighters, pencil sharpeners, crayons, rulers, erasers, protractors, compass, scientific calculator, clue sticks, and the never able to find and elusive three inch binder are just some of the paraphernalia that a parent will purchase throughout the child's life on that first week of school.

School starts on Friday. What time does the sweetheart about to turn Carrie start school in the morning and get out in the afternoon? OK, dig through the papers that were sent a month ago to get the bell schedule. Who is getting the knowledge sponge there and back? OK, coordinate and negotiate with your spouse, ex-spouse, friends, other family members. Where is the bus stop and at what time do they have to be there in order not to miss the big yellow carriage? OK, dig again and see if this information was sent in the school package or do you have to make some phone calls or search the Internet to find out. How safe is the bus stop? OK, take a drive at that time in the morning and afternoon to see what the location looks like. What will happen when it is raining or snowing? OK, add an umbrella, raincoat, warm coat, scarf, gloves, and special shoes to the list of essentials that might never, ever, be used. What about extracurricular activities, sports, and more? OK, take a deep breath, and please don't forget to exhale!

As you can see, school starts on Friday is not really just a statement, it is a reminder that life as we've known it during summer vacation is over. To most, the above is probably pretty close to their reality, add or subtract based on parent's and student's ages, gender, financial situation, marital status, geographic location, and in some cases special needs too. Special needs can mean a lot of different things, from physical and mental disabilities to a gifted child or some illness in the family. It is in these special situations that the school system finds itself many times lacking in its ability to accommodate or be effective at its responsibility to educate our kids. Parents are many times left to find solutions on their own and deal with their special circumstances with limited resources and very little help from the system. In fact, one of the things that I have learned is that if you are rich, then you can throw some money at the problem and find places that are willing and wanting to help. If you are poor, the government has several programs in place that might be of use. However, if you are middle class, you are stuck as the term implies right in the middle and not being able to afford high end professional help, and not qualifying for government funded support either.

For some of you this post is more of a historical description of what you have already been through during many years past. For others, this might serve as a crystal ball of things that will come to pass sooner or later. For a few others, all of the above is actually just a reminder of what a typical and probably normal life is like if we did not have complications. Already several of you have shared with me via emails how difficult your own situations have been while raising some of your own children. I owe you a great debt of gratitude because until recently I naively felt that the situation I am constantly dealing with my oldest son was more unique than you have opened my eyes to see. Thank you for sharing, you have all made an impact on my ability to see the future a lot less dimmer. Of course, I have also learned that no one's particular life is the same as the other, but many of us share many of the same experiences to different levels and degrees. According to many of you, light seems to start creeping into the end of our tunnel somewhere when the child's age is in the range of 24 and 26 years of age. My son is currently about to celebrate his 17 years of age in October. This means that I might be writing here on this blog for a very long time before I can bring you good news. Recently a friend just wrote to me telling me that she was "cautiously" saying that her now 24 year old son was doing much, much better. Her "cautiously" inferring that it was still a bit too soon to tell. By the way, thank you for sharing your real life stories with me, believe it or not, it is of much use to me. I feel much less lonely and with much more hope about my personal situation with my son.

Before I end this post it is only fair that I leave you with something to think about on a personal note. The next time you find yourself wondering what to tell your child when they ask to permanently alter their appearance consider this...

For many years my oldest son as most typical children would wear whatever clothing I would buy for him. As long as the shirts were of a material that did not aggravate his Sensory Integration Disorder, I usually could not go wrong. His eyeglasses were fit in looks for his age, as was his haircut. I would of never been so naive to think that this would be the case forever, and in fact I have always been pretty much OK with him changing his appearance allowing himself to fit in with whatever temporary style of life he chose throughout time. One place I have tried very hard to draw the line is on any sort of permanent disfiguring requests. What seems cool today might just be very uncool in just a year or two. For this reason, even though I am not opposed to adults getting tattoos, I am most definitely not in agreement with kids doing so. Every once in a while my oldest son gets it into his head that he wants to have a tattoo done, so in search for some clever way of convincing him to back off on his request, I enlisted the wisdom of a very good friend of mine. Mind you, my son is not asking for the little sun on the side of his arm or something that could be easily concealed when the time to go job hunting arrives. Of course not, what he has always wanted is some horrendously looking "tree man" that would absorb about 95% of the skin between his shoulder and elbow. When I asked my dear friend what he would do, he immediately told me that when one of his sons came home with this same request of having a tattoo done, his very clever response was "Yes, but I get to pick the tattoo image." He said that child listened attentively while he offered to have an image of Barney, the purple childhood dinosaur, tattooed on his son's arm. "Barney?" asked the confused child. My friend simply replied, "Well, it was only six years ago when you thought that Barney was very cool and you were completely into him, so it seems fit. In six years, anything that you permanently engrave into your skin today will probably seem just as dumb as tattooing Barney on your arm right now." I tried this on my son and even though he immediately came up with some clever counter argument, I still think I might of won this round. YES!!!

Dad

Want to go for a hike?

I have been working for the Department of Defense for a grand total of 24 years. Almost all of my work has always been tied to the U.S. Navy, once in a while to the U.S. Marines, and just a few times with the U.S. Army. Throughout the years I have moved around a little, some times seeking greener pastures for promotions, some times for a change of pace to learn something new, and other times just running away from a job that eventually turned into more than I wanted to handle at that particular moment in life. My experience has been that who you work with is much more important than what you do, but of course, a healthy dosage of both is usually the best of all worlds.

I spent my first three years of my government career reading contracts and making sure that our nation was getting their money's worth from the builders of the guidance system of the most advanced ballistic missile in the world. I made some truly great friends during those three years, but there seemed to be too many other people ahead of me in line to be promoted so I changed gears and moved to another job that seemed more promising for my career. I was right, it did not take more than eleven months after my move when I was promoted again, and this time to a much desired level in my field. The new job was exciting and to my surprise the then unknown new people which I now worked with were amazingly nice, competent, and very supportive. The change was a true success in any measure I could calculate.

It was here that I met a nice group of people that enjoyed doing a lot of outdoor kind of activities. Soon I found myself whitewater rafting, climbing, and hiking almost every local mountain peak and even some not so local ones too. Even though I have always enjoyed playing sports, I was never that great at any one of them. This whole getting to the top of mountain peaks was not just fun, it was exhilarating.

Soon I found myself hiking more and more often, to the point in which it started to become harder to find someone that would want to accompany me on some of my outings. In a way I do not blame them, hiking for 8 to 16 hours in one single day can be grueling and what I find fun could also easily be described as torturing to someone else. So if hiking is such a arduous adventure, why you may ask yourself do I enjoy it so much? The truth is that I have discovered so many things about myself and some of the people I have hiked with during our long hours of ascending and descending mountains, which in my eyes makes it all worth while.

I have climbed many peaks with many friends, but some of the most memorable are with some of my family. Once, my oldest sister was visiting and had wanted to go on a hike with me and we had ventured to reach the peak of Mount San Jacinto at 10,834 feet. We took the challenge with one more hiker friend, but departed a bit too late and found ourselves coming down the mountain in the dark and without a flashlight. The bad news was that there was still a lot of snow on the mountain so it was getting pretty chilly on the way back. The good news was that because there was snow, other hikers had already made a muddy trail that was easier to follow by the only source of light, the moon. Not once did my first time sister panic at the idea that we could be get lost in the vast wilderness, not once did she even complain about the cold. I have always been incredibly impressed with her trust in me that long and cold night. That night I discovered that when life gets scary, it is much less so if you are with someone you trust and love.

On another occasion I took my other sister to climb the peak of Mount Baldy at 10,064 feet. At the time of the hike, my sister had overcome some considerable physical challenges in order to get in shape to do this, which in itself was pretty amazing. On this occasion several friends joined including my youngest uncle and a dear friend of my sister too. All the way up and down the mountain we shared so many memorable stories of our childhood. One of the themes of the day was to remember all the different puertorrican expressions that we use that make absolutely no sense to anyone else but us. Soon we were at the peak and as we looked down we all stood in awe at God's ability to impress us with what surrounded us and even ourselves. While on our way down we discovered that my sister's friend suffered from vertigo which made her grab on to my arm for a 45 minute stretch of the hike like a cat on a scratch post, as we descended through a narrow path that had a spectacular drop on one end. On this hike I learned that even if you are not one hundred percent fit for the occasion, the support of others can get you through the difficult paths and you can still make it.

There was one particular year that was extremely special to me. My brother came to visit and stayed with me for the most part of summer. We took advantage of his long stay to both get in shape by climbing Mount Baldy, Mount San Jacinto, and Mount San Gorgonio. Eventually we headed north to find our most difficult challenge, Mount Whitney, the highest summit in the contiguous United States at 14,505 feet of altitude.

The first time I climbed Mount Whitney I did so with a group of eleven other hikers. We did the climb in three days. The first day we drove and camped at the base of the mountain allowing ourselves to adjust to the altitude of 8,360 feet. The second day we hiked with our backpacks and set camp at Trail Camp at 12,000 feet. Finally the third day we ascended to the peak just carrying water and snacks, and then returning all the way back down to Whitney Portal at the base of the mountain.

This time, with my brother, it would be the third time I would intend to climb the giant in a single day, bringing my personal tally to four total ascents. We had carefully planned it so that we could start our hike on a clear full moon at around 4:30 a.m. The hike is 22 miles round trip, making a total ascent and descent of 6,145 feet each way in less than 14.5 hours total, an amazing challenge. Up we went telling stories, and endlessly chatting about so many things that we never ran out of subjects to share. We had done some incredible time and so we paused to grab some lunch from our packs near the lake at 12,000 feet after already passing half point and with less than 2,505 feet to go. Soon with our belly's content we rejoined the goal and started to hike up the final stretch which is full of switchbacks, ice, and some very cold wind. We were probably half way up this almost final part of our hike when my brother's complexion started to change colors. I had seen this before on the face of many other hikers, including the most expert one I knew at the time, my boss. He had been the one that had motivated me to start hiking in the first place, and truth be told, most of the times during our hikes together, the most I saw of him was the back of his boots while he whizzed right past me. He was and still was an extremely skilled and fit man for this kind of activity. As far as I can tell, there is not much you can do when you start to suffer from altitude sickness, other than turn yourself around and start to descend. My brother was wearing a green windbreaker that my sister had given each of us one as a gift. As I continued my hike, little by little I could see the green dot of his body laying over a huge boulder getting smaller and smaller. An older couple were on their way down and as they passed me I asked them if they would pass down my car keys to my brother in case he decided to go all the way down without me at least he would have a place to rest comfortably. They not only gave him the keys, but also hydrated him with Gatorade and words of encouragement. By the time I reached Trail Crest at 13,600 feet, the only thing I could distinguish of my brother was that of a small green speck at the bottom of the arduous switchback trail.

I stood there for less than one minute taking in the beauty of it all. Remembering how close I was to the top from the experience of having been there three times before. Then it all stopped making any sense. The reason to reach the peak was no longer there. What I wanted was to be there with my brother, not all alone. So I turned my soar ass around and started to go back down without reaching the peak in order to be with my brother. Going down used to be easier than going up, so I reached him fairly quickly. Nowadays it hurts both ways, age has taken its toll on my knees. The rest of the way down with my brother was even more fun than what we had already shared on the way up. The lower we went, the better he felt, and the easier it was to enjoy the view and our conversation. On this hike I learned more than on any other hike I have ever done. I learned that to succeed, you don't always have to make it to the top. I learned that what you do on the way up is actually more important than getting there. Some strangers deliver more than just keys, they also deliver hope, encouragement, caring, and oh, Gatorade. I suppose that the most important thing that I learned was that my brother means much more to me than any of my personal goals.

Dad

Come on over, we're having a picnic...

Just yesterday I was invited over to a family and friends gathering to celebrate a teenagers birthday party. Even though I am a very social individual that truly likes fun conversation, throughout the years I have little by little become a bit less inclined to attend these gatherings for some personal reasons that might become obvious during this post. Not to be a party pooper and with no good excuse to get me out of the invite, the wheels of social interaction where in motion and I followed through and went. To my pleasant surprise, even though I knew very few of the attendees, I found myself extremely comfortable in a very short amount of time. The host was gracious and easy going, so was her husband, friends, and other family members that one by one trickled in to introduce themselves and grab a new beer. After just a little while I was already feeling like part of the crowd and having a nice time.

The host, as well as several other of the guests where teachers. These are people I can easily relate to since my mom worked in the same field for over 45 years. It did not take very long when the conversation turned into the subject of teenagers and their habits and behaviour. One by one each of the guest brought stories of themselves during their childhood, and how they either got better or worse throughout those early years of life. How their parents dealt with chores, school, good and not so good habits, and discipline. I always learn something when I take the time to listen to others share their colorful stories of dad's yanking phones off the wall, windows being nailed shut and sometimes even sealed plastered over. At this point of our personal exchanges I found it easy to add little bits of my own experiences as a child in order to stay focused with the moments theme.

Of course eventually the conversation geared itself away from the self assessments on to that of their own children. Again, one by one of the guests brought up stories describing how they dealt with a variety of different scenarios in which their kids would not stay true to their personal philosophy of life. Subjects such as how they played good cop bad cop among the parents when the time came to give in to some teenage request, penalties for not following rules, and a lot more about the different ways they had found be able to achieve success in keeping their kids in line. I listened attentively, not only with my eyes and ears wide open to all of the wisdom that was being shared, but also with my mind in case a drop would spill over into my thirsty cup of knowledge. It is here, at this juncture during these types of events in which I find myself in pure and simple amazement that some people actually have normal lives. It is also here, at this point of the personal exchanges that I find myself lost in my mind with so little to offer based on my own day to day experiences with my oldest son. Of course, I could just pretend that he does not exist and share the fifty percent of normalcy that I have with my other child, but if I do that, I then feel like I am cheating by not telling all of the truth. Instead I stay silent and within myself, hoping that the subject will change soon enough to some other theme in which I am able to not feel so uncomfortable about. This is one of the primary reasons I don't always accept the cordial invitation to the fun filled family picnics.

Some of you need to hear this that I am about to share with you. Not because there is anything wrong with your lives, but because you need to know how blessed you are when your life is normal. Some times I feel that my life is so far from normal that by you just looking at me you should be able to tell. Then I realize what a silly feeling that is in itself. How could you know by looking at me what my life has become? It is ignorant of me to expect you to see, feel, or maybe even understand this day to day struggle that I deal with on a daily basis. They say that the eyes are the window to someones soul. If that is true, can you look into my eyes and see the sadness that devours my heart because of the knowledge that I have of so much that is wrong with my child? I don't think so.

I can understand how difficult it would be to sometimes even be sympathetic to some of us parents that have this burden of dealing with kids with problems. At first glance it even seems obvious to me that discipline or the lack of it is the reason for so much drama. Yet, just like I am not able to instantly transform myself into you and understand so much of your pain, I can see how difficult it would be for anyone to walk in my own shoes either. Tell me, how many times have you found yourself having to dig extremely deep into your heart and mind in order to find the right words to say to someone when they lose their son, daughter, mother, or father? In fact, my father died at age 44, three years younger than my present age. At the time of his death the most beautiful gesture that my friends had to offer were not their words, it was their companionship and love. Even then, one of my best friends had not so long ago lost his own mother, and yet again, even though he had experienced so much sadness in his own life, he also knew that there were no words that could make me feel better.

I've always wondered why it is that some people aim so high in life. Don't get me wrong, given the opportunity to become rich and famous, I doubt that I would push the offer away. They say money can't buy everything, but it sure does buy a hell of a lot. What I meant about aiming high is not with respect to their goals. Instead, I meant aiming high in life in search for happiness. I hear it all the time, the songs of souls seeking happiness by awaiting extraordinary events to happen in their lives. I for one am in no need of any extraordinary event to announce itself in my life. Believe me, it is not a matter of being complacent, not at all. It is a matter or knowing how precious having a normal life would be for me. I don't need amazing, extraordinary, fantastic, or even wondrous in my life. What I need is good, sane, and normal.

So whenever you find yourself hopping on the bucket in the well of your soul and falling deep inside in search of the right thing to say to me after you have read this blog. Don't worry, the truth is that by just reading it, sharing my story, and being here for me, that is truly good enough. However, if while you are down there you find the lucky coin you tossed a very long time ago, do me one small favor. This time toss it for me. Close your beautiful eyes and make a soft wish that my life will soon find itself back to being a lot closer to normal.

Dad

"Click!...You are on my wall."

My desk area is surrounded by pictures. I have worked for the Federal Government as an Engineer for a bit under 24 years. Time has taken it's toll on my once good taste for decorating my office. I remember days in which since I worked for the Department of Defense, my office was filled with colorful pictures of missiles, and ships, and airplanes of all sorts. Not today, not anymore. Instead of the cornucopia of technological wonders that once graced my walls, now I have pictures of you. Yes, trust me, of you. On one wall of my office space I can count 78 images containing what is now the images of what I truly hold of value in my life. I have more on the opposing wall which probably brings in total more than 100 pictures of family, friends, and all that I believe is important to me.

There are picture of you when you visited me, or when we shared special moments together. Some of the images are just reminders that we will all eventually exit this theater we call life, but even without our corporal presence our deeds will remain in the hearts of all of those affected. I have a wonderful image of my father when he was just a boy, and right next to it another one in which he is holding me as a child, and then above there is one of me with my arms around my own children. What a wonderful way for me to remind myself that life goes on regardless of the complications in which we get ourselves wrapped around on a daily basis. My children are posted in all of the different stages of their lives until present day. Halloween costumes, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas day family gatherings, birthday celebrations, trips to the zoo, and of course the current transformation into rock band stars wannabees.

One of the pictures on the wall only has meaning to me. Anyone who looks at it might even wonder why I would hang an image in which I am sitting next to my kids with a tired, sweaty, yet content expression on my face. Well this one is a reminder that not all scary moments end badly. On that day we had met with some friends to go visit together the new J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. This is a wonderful experience in itself full of beautiful antiquities, drawings, manuscripts, paintings, photographs, and sculptures which will amaze anyone who visits. The place is so wondrous that most of the time you must make a reservation in order to access the facilities due to the immense demand by visitors from all over the world. Upon arrival you take a short shuttle ride from the admittance building at the bottom of a steep hill up to where all of the exhibits are located. We had already spent half our day in awe when our appetites took us to the center court where some of the food services are located to buy something to eat. In less than a few seconds we suddenly found ourselves with the terrible realization that our youngest son whom at the time was less than four years old was missing. For any parent this is as close to a horrifying experience as you can ever be in. I immediately ran to where the shuttles were staged for departure of the visitors exiting the facility and return to their vehicles. I demanded that they would not allow a single shuttle to depart without verification that my son was not on board. Security scrambled throughout the whole compound searching for the young boy that was missing. I ran back and forth through as much as the compound as I possibly could questioning guests if they had seen my son and giving a description in case he was found to please bring him to us. Ten minutes went by, then fifteen, twenty, and thirty. By the time forty five minutes had gone by my heart was past panic and already entering into terror mode. Suddenly an elderly lady walks out of one of the museum buildings with my son by her hand. He had left our side, walked into the building, gone up to the second floor, and was admiring the art exposition when she asked him what he was doing there all alone. He replied the typical "I don't know" of a three and a half year old child, so she proceeded to find his parents. The picture on my wall was taken just five minutes after the whole ordeal resolved itself and we were all sitting down in front of untouched hot dogs and sodas. Our faces were smiling, but the perspiration of my forehead told a whole different story of that moment. I must peek at that photo at least once a day while at work to remind myself once again that things are not always what they seem.

All of these images have meaning in the collage of experiences that have formed the many different moments of my life. With each one of them I am able travel in time to my childhood, grade school, high school, college, and many beautiful moments I've had since then. I really have had a wonderful life. I have very little regrets because even the things that I did wrong in the past have made me the man I am today, and really, I am happy with the man that I am today. Of course there are so many things that I could of done differently, mistakes I could of avoided, different paths I could of taken. But who would I be if I would of not messed up so much. This person I would be instead would hold very little resemblance to who I am today.

I think about this because it is one of the things that gets me through the day when I am preoccupied with some of the choices that I see my oldest son making in his life. I suppose that for him to become the man that he needs to be in his future, he probably has to make a decent amount of mistakes today too. This does not take away any of the worries I have about him because I am grounded on today. I am living this moment and I try to not spend too much time worrying constantly about tomorrow, and today is not going necessarily as I think it should. Of course I am worried that he will not be able to get up when he falls and I might not be there to give him a helping hand. But as much as I would like to, I cannot prevent him from falling.

I meant it when I said that you are on my wall. I wish I could show you, share with you the images that I have carefully glued to different boards and then hung on my wall. So many beautiful friends and family members. So many moments of true happiness, joy, and sometimes even fear. Once in a while one of my co-workers will walk in and ask me to tell them what story might be behind one of your smiles, and I proudly go about explaining what meaning you have in my life. Not once has anyone ever questioned the value of your image because I know that they can tell with what I share with them how much you mean to me.

I can say that without a doubt I am most definitely a lucky man indeed. I have been fortunate enough to have shared my life with some of the most loving, caring, and beautiful people to grace this earth. I just think you all needed to know this. Thank you for being in my life.

Dad