United We Stand

I'm proud to be an American.

Just like Lee Greenwood.

I believe in life.

Liberty.

And the pursuit of happiness.

All three.

I love our country.

I relish our freedom.

And I support our President.

What a concept.

It doesn't matter who he is.

Or someday, who she is.

I think that many of us take for granted what we have here.

I know I do.

Today is Veterans Day.

A day to think about sacrifice.

For many, that sacrifice is the bank or post office being closed.

For others, the sacrifice is a lot more significant.

This is a day to honor the brave men and women who have fought for this country.

To celebrate the life.

And in many cases, the death.

Of the people who were willing to give up everything for the good of this land.

I wasn't one of those people.

I never enlisted.

Never really considered it.

I don't think that makes me wrong.

I don't think that makes me right.

But it was not for me.

My dad didn't really have a choice.

He was part of the Navy during WWII.

Stationed in Japan.

We never really talked much about it.

I wish we would've.

When I was really young, I do remember asking him what rank he was.

He told me Admiral.

I never questioned him.

Years later, I finally figured out that he was lying to me.

He did tell me that he wanted to be a fighter pilot.

But his eyesight stopped that from happening.

When he died a few years ago, I went rummaging through his old boxes.

And I found this letter.

A letter he wrote to his mom.

From Japan.

During the war.

It didn't really say much.

Other than hi.

How are you?

And say hello to Uncle Morris.

But in 1940 something, I'm sure that letter was worth a million bucks.

Thankfully these days, there are much better ways to communicate.

Like Skype.

This morning at my kids' school there was a Veterans Day assembly.

And at that assembly, the principal of the school brought his son.

From Afghanistan.

On Skype.

The picture wasn't great.

The sound wasn't great.

But the fact that there was a picture.

And sound.

At all.

Is truly unbelievable.

There must've been 500 people at this assembly.

Maybe more.

And the school did a very nice job of paying tribute.

It started with the old standards.

The presenting of the colors.

The pledge of allegiance.

The national anthem.

Then the heavy stuff kicked in.

One of the third graders was called to the front of the room.

She had prepared a speech.

A two-page speech.

To talk about what it was like for her dad to be gone.

For four months.

In Iraq.

She admitted that when she first heard he was going to Iraq.

She had no idea where that was.

She then told us how much she missed him while he was gone.

Missed reading with him.

And eating with him.

And talking with him.

And seeing him.

By this point, the assembly was being sponsored by Kleenex.

When she finished, her father was called to the stage.

In his uniform.

Then the mom.

Then her brother.

Feel free to call me soft.

A sap.

Whatever you want.

But I was in tears.

Just like the rest of the gymnasium.

The program ran almost 90 minutes.

Twice as long as expected.

But nobody was complaining.

Each class sang the theme song from a different branch of the military.

And of course there were speakers.

One gentleman – a Captain in the Marine Corps – prepared a slide show.

During that slide show he played an audio clip.

An audio clip from June of 1972.

The announcement was an official sounding voice saying that an American plane had been shot down over Vietnam.

And that there was no sign of the two on board.

He then passed along his condolences to the families of the pilots.

Thankfully there was one problem with that announcement.

And that problem was that one of the pilots was still alive.

Captured, but alive.

In fact, that pilot was standing right in front of us.

Speaking at our assembly.

He spoke about spending 290 days at the “Hanoi Hilton”.

Otherwise known as Hoa Lo Prison.

That's where many of the POWs spent time.

Including John McCain.

And another man he showed us a picture of.

A man who spent 3113 days at this Horrible Hilton.

He spoke of the conditions.

And the treatment.

And the torture.

I'm not really sure how much the students really understood.

Which might be a good thing.

But the fact that he made it through to the other side is what we were there to celebrate.

Unfortunately the same can't be said for his flying mate.

Still considered Missing in Action.

39 years later.

At the end of his speech, the Captain opened it up for questions.

From the far right a girl raised her hand.

And when she was called on she said:

“Did you know my daddy was born in 1973?”

The room laughed.

Cute.

I suppose.

But clearly these kids didn't get it.

Maybe that's not such a good thing.

HRU, LOL, KIT & HAND

Let the games begin.

Our house is officially on the market.

I found that out a few days ago when my 13-year old daughter texted me a picture of the brand new “For Sale” sign now planted in our front lawn.

She titled it OMG.

My daughter has become quite good at texting.

And quite good at abbreviations too.

It is the spelling that has me concerned.

Luv.  U.  Ur.  Sez.  Thx.  L8.  Wut r u up 2?

Oh boy.

Somewhere Webster is burning his dictionary.

The world of text slang has become quite the rage.

And some of it can be wkewl, I mean way cool. 

When I did a search for a list, I found literally hundreds of ways to misspell words.

And a different acronym for every day of the yr. 

For example...

*$=Starbucks

d/c=disconnected

w’s^=what’s up

404 means I haven’t a clue.    

Which is perfect, because I haven’t a clue how you get I haven’t a clue out of 404.

Someday you may get a text that says TYCLO.

That means its time to Turn Your CAPS LOCK Off.

And who could live without PITMEMBOAM.

Any guesses?

Well the correct answer is, Peace In the Middle East My Brother Of Another Mother.

Seriously.  

If texting becomes an Olympic sport, my family may just have a medalist.

In both speed and quantity.

My daughter texts so much... 

...we got her the unlimited plan and she still went over.

That was E123.  Easy as 1, 2, 3.

But we really did get her the unlimited plan.

She and her friends text every day and I’m thrilled to say that I am still one of them.

It may sound impersonal or a good way to become d/c, but I think of it the opposite way.

Ultimate optimist that I am.

The way I look at it, between Skype and email and texting and dare I say, calling, we have four chances to stay in touch.

The reality is as much as I would like to speak with them every day, that’s just not realistic.

But texting, now that’s another story.

My goal is to have one line of communication with them every day, any type of communication.

And so far so good.

But sometimes its still not enough.

With each day that passes, I miss them more and it sounds like they are missing me as well.

This is what the text exchange between my daughter and I looked like yesterday:

Her:  How have you been?

Me:    I miss you A LOT, but I am doing fine.   How are you?

Her:   I miss u 2.  we r doing well.  (My brother) was sick yesterday but he is better now, (my sister) starts soccer 2morrow & i have my first dance competition in 7 weeks.  (My sister) is doin her state report on new york.  it has been tough w/o u here, but we r hangin on.

Me:   Hang in there the best you can.  This is the hardest part, but I am counting the minutes until I see you.   You are going to love it here.

I learned a few things from this latest exchange.

I learned that my punctuation is better than hers.

I learned that my grammar is better than hers.

I learned that my spelling is better than hers.

But I also learned that we are both hurting.

Actually I already knew it, but this was another reminder.

It was also a reminder of all the things that I am missing.

Our exchange seemed so basic at first, but when I went back and read the texts again, as I always do, the part where she said they are “hangin on” hit me hard.

Made me sad, actually.

I realize this is a temporary moment in our life and they realize it too.

And we both know that me getting a job was the best thing that we ever could’ve hoped for.

No matter where it was.

But after being at home for as long as I was, and getting to know each other as well as we did, being apart really sucks.

Whoever came up with this whole thing about absence making the heart grow fonder probably didn’t live thousands of miles away from their wife and kids.

Then again, they probably didn’t have Skype.

Or a cell phone.

Or unlimited texting.

Now Leaving Paradise City

It had to end sometime.

This ride in the clouds I’ve been living for the last few weeks has been incredible.

Especially when you consider where my life was taking me just before that.

Here I am with a new job, a new city and a new outlook.

Well if it sounds like I am setting this up for a big negative bombshell, I am not.

This is a no bombshell zone.

My life is still good and I am still in a great place -- physically and emotionally.

But I am definitely not in the same place I was just a few days ago.

Approaching the end of my second week, my job is becoming... a job.

Life in my little bachelor pad has gone from cool... to empty.

And yesterday, thanks to a broken elevator, I had to walk up to the 17th floor of a building.

Ok, that last part, while very true, was only temporary.

But the piece of this puzzle that is probably hitting me the hardest is the reality that my family is not here.

And they won’t be anytime soon.

Sure, we still skype.  

In fact, I just got off the computer with them.

But even that had a different tone tonight.

I started off with my 13-year old daughter, but after a few quick minutes, she had to go to do homework, shower and get to bed.

By my calculations, that would place me no better than 4th on her to do list.

Then came my six-year old daughter.

We talked about her upcoming soccer season and her new adventure with a local choir.

Then she was telling me about how things are going in school when all of a sudden...

... she started crying.

Full crocodile tears.

Midway through a sentence.

For no apparent reason.

“I miss you dad.”

I’m not sure exactly what set her emotions in motion, but those emotions represented exactly what I’ve been feeling.

“I miss you too,” I said, somehow holding back my tears.

Here’s where it had a chance to go downhill very quickly.

But fortunately I remembered an old yiddish adage just in the nick of time:

• when you are skyping with your six-year old child and they start crying uncontrollably because their father is on the other side of the country trying to restart his life and give his family a better one, the father needs to start making funny faces and funny noises as quickly as possible to distract the child from the reason that they are crying.

It’s a lot funnier in yiddish.

But for at least this night, it worked.

I put my face as close to the camera as possible, which ignited her giggling.

That, plus a loud burp (or two) and we were good to go.

Just at that time, my wife came in and sent the six-year old to bed.

I’m guessing this will not be the end of her sadness, but the good news is I have a lot more burps still left in me.

Now it was time for my son, the 11-year old boy living in a house full of females.

Even the dog is a girl.

Well normally he would come on the skype line and we’d talk about boy things.

Like the baseball season.   And football season.   And basketball season.

And burping.

And if we had thirty seconds left, we could talk about school too.

Well, this time my son didn’t come on the line.

That’s because he’s not there.

He left today on a three-day trip with his sixth grade class.

The same type of trip I’ve gone on for the last two years with my daughter’s class.

Before this little job thing popped up, I was scheduled to be there with him too.

But that all changed.

Bright and early this morning, I called my son to wish him a great trip.

He sounded excited.  Almost very excited.

But I could tell from his voice (and my wife’s first hand observation) that he was a little scared.

And disappointed.

This was going to be his big trip with dad.

Just like his sister had.

Twice.

But dad is not there anymore.

And now my son is flying solo.   

And he doesn’t like it.

And neither do I.

I’m sure by the time that school bus got to its destination, he’ll be plenty nauseous and he’ll forget all about me.

And that’s what I’m scared of.

Out of sight, out of mind. 

We knew this was going to be the hard part.

And this is just week two.

What makes me sad is knowing that I am making them sad.

And that's enough to make any grown man cry.

Can You See Me Now?

There have been some amazing inventions in my lifetime.

Microwave popcorn.

Fantasy Baseball.

The iPod.

But face it, if it wasn’t for Al Gore and his little internet invention, our life would be incomplete.

I’m on it at least 26 hours a day.

Tonight I went to dinner with a friend.

I used mapquest to find the restaurant, Yelp to find a place for dessert and espn.com to find out how bad my fantasy baseball team performed today.

Just imagine if I had to wait until tomorrow morning to read those box scores.

Been there, done that.

Honestly, the world wide web gets more amazing every day.

There is a website for EVERYTHING.

You want to keep up on the first male pregnancy.   

•   malepregnancy.com

If you want to see what pets would look like in a uniform.

•   petsinuniform.com

If you have a mullet and you’d like to have it rated.

•   ratemymullet.com

Really.

I’m proud to say I had never visited any of those sites until five minutes ago and honestly, I don’t plan on going back.

But one place I do visit almost daily now is called skype.

Most of you have probably used it or seen it or heard of it.

It is a site where you can make video phone calls from one computer to another.

FOR FREE.

All you need is a webcam and it takes less than five minutes to sign up and download the software.

And then, you can see them and they can see you.

It’s skype-tastic.

If this sounds like an ad, it is.

Well, they are not paying me, but this product is incredible.

Especially if you and your family live on opposite sides of the country and you want to see what each other looks like a couple of times a week.

It is as simple as...

text -- hey dad, can you skype?

text -- yes.

Logon.  Open Skype.  Click call.   Click Video.  

Have conversation.

Amazing.

Through the first week of our separation, my wife and kids and I have skyped almost every day.

(Is skyped really a word?)

I know what it has done for me and I can see what it has done for them.

Really, I can actually see it.

Not that I am anything special to look at, but being able to see me and know that I am still there, has actually made them happier.

I can see it in their eyes.

Thanks to skype.

It certainly doesn’t replace being able to hold them or hug them or yell at them for having a dirty room, but it does remind them that I still exist.

Most of our conversations have gone at least 30 minutes, where a normal phone call is over in five.

This week, my six-year old auditioned for a local choir.

For the audition, she had to learn “My Country, ‘tis of thee".

So the night before the audition, we sang it over and over... and over again until she got the rhythm.

I could see that she was nervous and as stiff as she was bored.

So I asked her to sing “Baby” by Justin Bieber.

She did, every word, including the rap part.

She was smiling throughout.

So I encouraged her to do "My Country" that same way, with the same energy.    Which she did. 

I may have been across the country, but for our rehearsal, it was like I was there.

She loves singing.   And I love listening.

If you want to see her rendition of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me”, click here.

The girl can sing.

And fortunately the choir agreed.  She made the team.

She skyped to tell me.

Is skyped a word?