Tag Archives: simple pleasures

Us, in a rear-view mirror

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I am sitting in a restaurant and there are nine loud girls and one guy celebrating one of the girls’ birthday. Rachel is her name. They are impossibly young, loud and full of energy.  They are maybe two years out of college. I am transported back 22 years when a bunch of us lived in NYC post-college and we were  similarly impossibly young, loud and full of energy. Instead of being annoyed, I am comforted by this scene. In my mind’s eye, I see OUR group of friends with mid-80s hairdos (one with especially puffy hair) and outfits (shoulder pads a la the TV Show, Dynasty).

I wouldn’t trade places with them for a second.  The life I imagined for me back then bears no resemblance to the actual course of my life so far and I am happy for the difference.

And their possibilities are limited only by the passage of time and that is a hard and heart-breaking lesson. If I had one thing to tell these girls it would be : freeze your eggs (assuming the technology gets better) or freeze embryos.  Time waits for no one.  That’s years and years away and, yet, it goes so fast.

It seems like yesterday that I was 22 or 23. I still act about 12, which still makes me more mature than my 7 year-old but barely.

Life is beautiful. It just goes so fast.

Have fun, girls, and remember what I said.

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The simple pleasures

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Today, I got to play with my son before work.  Tonight, a former colleague is coming to dinner on a week night.  In the go-go days, these things would never have happened.

On Saturday night, my partner and I have a dinner date with another couple.  It is hard (and expensive) to find a Saturday night babysitter in August.  So, my sister, brother-in-law and father are coming over to have pizza with our son and hang with him and put him to bed.  Our son is so excited, and so is Grandpa.  We save money on a babysitter and our son gets to play with his favorite aunt and uncle, and his grandpa.

Forget the green shoots in the economy.  Look at the silver lining of the down turn.

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Happy birthday, Mr. President

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May all your wishes come true.   And let me help you itemize them:

  1.  a little GOP cooperation.
  2. a country back on track within two years.
  3. a visit from my family at the White House (we would like NOT to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom because it has gotten too much use over the years, a little like a Motel 6).  Let’s pick some dates and firm up with our wives.
  4. a tattoo that says “Made in the USA” so that the conspiracy theorists might go away.
  5. a situation room that looks like Wolf Blitzer’s
  6. getting a free pass once a month on something you say in front of the press.
  7. a date with your wife that isn’t a political free-for-all on the 24-hour news re-cycle.
  8. one day without a full-blown crisis at the office.

And many, many more returns of the day, Mr. President.

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A lovely thing happened on the way to work today

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It could have been a regular day on the road to Utopia for me.  Nothing other than angst awaited me in the office.  I had a fitful night’s sleep.  More gray in my hair than yesterday. It was the crack of ten a.m. and I was just leaving for the office.

Funny what a difference a little thing can make.

I was stopped at a crosswalk on my way to the train station, bracing myself for the hot-like-Africa-hot subterranean urban jungle that is our transit system.  A little girl with haphazard braids danced along in that way that little girls do and held her grandmother’s hand (I think she is the grandmother).  They stopped on the other side of the crosswalk for the light and the grandmother bent over to the little girl and may have said something or kissed her head, I couldn’t tell.  Anyway the light changed and, as I passed them, the little girl was telling her grandmother a story in that sing-song way the little kids do and the grandmother  had a big smile on her face.  Made me happy all day.

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