Are We There Yet? vol. 167
My boys have recently taken up the sport of golf. My wife, Jen, and I are very happy seeing them practicing together in our backyard. But they are teenagers, after all. The other day, one of them was swinging a club wildly to make our dog bark when he somehow let go of the club. The next thing he knew, the club was flying high over our house toward the road where there were many cars parked. He was worried about the club but mostly, he was worried that I was going to be very angry with him. Luckily, for him and me, I wasn’t home. He enlisted his brother and Jen in search of the club. Ultimately, they saw it stuck in a tree about 50 feet off the ground.
While his brother and Jen donned bicycle helmets and held a large blanket, he used a soccer ball to dislodge the club which fell into the blanket similar to the way firefighters might rescue someone from a burning building. I can only imagine what our neighbors were thinking as they watched this spectacle.
Our family had many laughs talking about how the golf club got into a low earth orbit in the first place and then how they were able to retrieve it. However, the fact that my son’s biggest fear when it happened was that I would be angry made me think about how I sometimes react. From a rational perspective, my son made a mistake because he was being silly. Unless the club had actually hit someone, it was not a big deal, but I can see where I might overreact albeit briefly. I don’t want my kids first thoughts when they make a mistake to be about my anger and it’s probably not healthy for me to overreact. This realization will help me to temper (or at least try to temper) my initial reactions in circumstances like this one. I also realized that even from a ridiculous situation like this one, I can learn something about myself and have a good laugh at the same time.
Take care and stay safe.
BOOK:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.