Family
Friday, January 6, 2023
This is the most difficult thing I've ever written. I’m sharing this partly because I hope that releasing these words will provide some catharsis from the excruciating pain I have carried around these last months. Perhaps the sentiments I’ve conveyed here can be a small comfort to someone who has experienced a similar tragedy. I also know that people are worried about us, about me. Consider this an abbreviated journal of our past one hundred days. Unlike anything else I’ve written, this one contains no epiphany, enlightenment, or happy ending. This one is mired in the messy middle of heartbreak and loss.
On the night of September 27th, our son Connor died in a motorcycle accident in Colorado Springs. A car pulled out in front of him on a busy street a half mile from his apartment. He was killed instantly in the crash. He was riding a motorcycle he had owned for just one day. He was twenty years old.
I mentally replay the call we received from the coroner’s office in the wee hours of September 28th over and over and over again, my mind trying to push this all away, to wake up from the darkest, longest nightmare of my life.
Continue reading →
Thursday, December 30, 2021
As I walked through the throng of travelers at LAX recently on my way to a flight that would be canceled the minute I got to the gate, I reflected on how change is the only real constant in life. In less than a week, I found myself hurrying through crowded airports in Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles (fun fact: these three airports accounted for 60% of all holiday flight cancelations). From Denver, I drove 1,200 miles to Los Angeles in a Jeep with Connor and his ten-month-old puppy, listening to baseball podcasts (yes, that's a thing) through Colorado and New Mexico. The music changed to hip hop in Arizona, and I felt nostalgic for the podcasts. I paid nearly $7 per gallon for gas in California and felt nostalgic for Arizona. We survived freeway driving in the rain as we neared Los Angeles with Connor relying on his 19-year-old reflexes -- or the Force -- to weave in and out of 80-mph traffic.
Continue reading →
Thursday, September 2, 2021
In my office, I keep an old photograph of the Buckaroo Tavern in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont. The photo truly captured the character of the place: two chrome-festooned Harley Davidson motorcycles parked up on the sidewalk out front, bright orbs from the lights hung over the pool tables, and an outstretched arm and pool cue of a patron poised in mid-shot. I spent many nights at this dive bar as a young man. My eyes burned from the cigarette smoke, and the rough-looking biker crowd that congregated at the bar would often chuckle over their beers at this clean-cut accountant toting a pool cue case, but I loved the place. I had the photograph framed when we first moved to Vashon Island. It hangs between a picture of Mark Twain standing before a pool table considering his next shot and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey in his famous boxing stance. But, it’s the tavern picture that has caught my attention lately as I think back on that long ago life before kids.
Continue reading →
Wednesday, August 19, 2020 →
We said goodbye to this young man this morning and have started our drive back home - 1,400 miles away. Every parent must face this, but holy smokes this was hard. Felt like a punch in the gut to walk out of that dorm room. It’s a new chapter for all of us and I know I should be excited, but I’m going to need these miles ahead to wrap my brain and heart around all this. But, you know what? Connor is going to absolutely kill it here. So proud.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
I'm told I say it every year, but today was certainly the best Father's Day ever. Being spoiled by my two children, and seeing how they've become wonderful adults has put me in a thankful, reflective mood. I'm sure every generation thinks this, but I believe what it means to be a father has changed a lot over the past thirty years. I had the benefit of having two dads as I grew up, first one and then the other. I loved them both, but I looked for other role models when I became a father myself.
Continue reading →
Sunday, June 21, 2020 →
What an amazing Father’s Day present! MV Indiscretion at anchor captured by the amazing artist (and my niece!) Sara Breen. Whoa!
Saturday, May 23, 2020 →
These two. My pride and joy. What amazing adults they have become, right before my eyes. In the midst of this pandemic with the whole world out of balance, they are both set to achieve big milestones in their lives without the fanfare they deserve. Connor, a high school graduate bound for the University of Colorado in the fall. Mallory, a UW college graduate in accounting, just the third member of my side of the family to graduate with a four-year college degree. What a grand party we would throw in normal times … my heart aches for this disappointment, but I know we will find other ways to celebrate their achievements. I am reminded of what John Wooden once said: “Things turn out the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” I know this is true for these two. I am such a proud papa!
Monday, April 6, 2020 →
With all our usual park trails now off limits, Franklin and I have taken to the backroads of Vashon for our daily constitutional. I am reminded that most of this island could be considered one giant park, andI feel especially thankful to call this our home in times like these. On today’s five mile loop past the lighthouse and wonderful Luana Beach road, we found the road mostly deserted. One deer, one rider on horseback, a few fellow walkers. Lots of people out in their gardens or simply basking in the sunshine in their yards. Counting small blessings today.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
So many worries. Our future unknown and uncertain. Quarantine and isolation. And yet … these are the days we’ll remember for a generation: those dark times when we persevered and grew stronger as a person, as a family, and as a community. We made sacrifices, experienced heartfelt loss, and yet took comfort in the small things: our family suddenly reassembled from far-flung places, a dog’s warmth by our side, and maybe the music we played for each other to cheer and inspire …
Continue reading →
Sunday, January 15, 2017 →
I’ve been playing baseball with Connor since he was five years old. First tossing baseballs underhanded into a tiny red mitt, later playing catch out in the yard, most every night in the summer. A couple years ago we started a Sunday routine of taking a bucket of baseballs up to the high school for batting practice. I would pitch from the mound, ball after ball, while Connor swung for the fences.
Two years ago, he started complaining that I wasn’t throwing as hard as pitchers he was facing in games. Last year he connected with his first home run, the ball sailing out into the woods over the left field fence, Connor whooping and hollering. Both father and son did a victory run around the bases that day.
Connor is now a freshman in high school and will try out for the high school baseball team this spring. The big leagues. He and a few of his freshman teammates have been going off island, twice a week, to work on their skills at really nice baseball training facility in Tacoma. Here they’re getting helped by some amazing coaches, most former professional baseball players themselves. This weekly practice in the offseason, along with their fast growing frames, is going to give them a nice leg up in high school.
It’s been a wet fall and winter, so our Sunday batting practices have gotten rained out a lot these past few months. We found ourselves out on the field on a Sunday in November, and for the first time as as baseball dad, I started to get nervous about my precarious position on the pitcher’s mound. My best pitches were being clobbered, many in the form of hard line drives sailing past my ears. My reflexes aren’t as quick anymore, and it was more luck than skill when I caught a bullet aimed right at my forehead. I was happy to get off the field in one piece.
So imagine my delight on Christmas morning with my gift from Connor - an “L Fence” for batting practice. This contraption acts as a shield for coaches to pitch behind without having to fear their teeth getting knocked out. We tried this out for the first time today and Connor has gotten even stronger as a hitter. He had fun smacking line drives off my protective shield, laughing at my curses as I got used to my newfound sanctuary. I got a little cocky on the third bucket of balls, beginning to think myself invincible, when a ball whizzed by, inches from my left ear. I had failed to lean far enough behind the fence after my delivery. Even 60 feet away, I could read the gleam in Connor’s eyes.
Chaulk off another waypoint passing astern.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Back in my early thirties, my uncle Jim died unexpectedly. He had a lifelong passion of sailing, particularly the sell-everything-and-sail-off-across the-horizon variety. He had years and years of Cruising World magazines stacked up next to the toilet in his bathroom. I remember him waxing on about his plans to cast off, the destinations he’d visit, the freedom he would feel. He bought a sailboat, a very seaworthy vessel, capable of sailing anywhere in the world, and spent years in the boatyard getting her ready for sea. The conversations changed from if he would go, to when. And then, out of the blue, he passed away. To my knowledge, her keel never floated while Jim lived. He never achieved his dream of casting off and chasing the horizon.
Continue reading →
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
I’ve always been a big reader and dreamed of having my own private library for as long as I can remember. One of the things that drew me to our house here on Vashon was the book-lined room with views out to the water. We’ve expanded the shelves over the years and now have all my books in easy reach from two antique leather wingback chairs. I’ve spent many a quiet evening reading from one of these chairs in perfect peace, feeling very fortunate to have such a sanctuary.
And then … we got a puppy.
Continue reading →
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
When I was a boy, younger than twelve-year-old Connor is now, I believed all the stories my dear Pop told me. He sailed across oceans, traveled down the Nile, jumped out of planes in the 82nd Airborne, drank with Hemingway, conspired with Castro, along with many other misdeeds and adventures. While my kids are constant skeptics of any tales I tell, even the true ones, I didn’t question the stories I was told. Pop was a great story teller. He would get this gleam in his eye while he drew you in and threw in such vivid details of the surroundings and the things that happened to him that you couldn’t help but believe.
Continue reading →