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Parker's First Day

Great Parker Video

This one speaks for itself.

Gray Beach

Examplary

What elements of our lifestyle do we pass on to our children? Already imbued with our genetic makeup, what part of how we live our lives gets imprinted on them too? When I look at my own parents, I see nothing but dissimilarity between what makes them tick, they’re interests and drives, and my own. I could just as easily have been into baseball, or romance novels with illustrated pictures of Fabio (that would be hard to explain to my wife), or the military or Warren Kimble artwork, but instead I have developed interests wholly foreign to those I mentioned.

Sunday, I spent the day working the registration table at a local mountain bike race, where the participants ranged from children as young as 10, to men as old as 62. The range of ages astounded me, not because of the higher end of the scale but because of the younger children that were involved. What drove them to mountain biking? America has the tendency to drown its youth with available sports activities. There are more options for kids as they enter the sports world than any other civilized nation. Mountain biking doesn't rank among the top 5 most popular, I am sure.

I spoke to some of the other volunteers, one whose sons were among the participants, and another whose children were just about to enter the pantheon of the sports world. When I asked them how they influenced or planned to influence their children in regards to sports, they both were apprehensive, but for different reasons. The man whose children were riding in the race put it best:

"I never thought either of them would pick up a bike and ride. One day, I went for a ride and my oldest asked if he could come too. Soon, we were buying him bikes too."

The other volunteer was concerned about a more recent phenomena: children inclined to inactivity.

"I always have the lingering fear that my kids will just want to sit around and play video games; that will drive me insane."

I think that we can want our children to do the things we do and that is a natural feeling; the joy we get from being active is something we want them to feel for themselves. But kids will do what they want to do. Giving them an example of activity, whether it be baseball, badminton, running or rugby, ensures that at least they are exposed to it, and then the choice is theirs to make.

If you want it, get it.

It's already been a full week since I returned from New Orleans, and it wasn't until last night that I really came to some sort of personal evaluation of what I came away from the experience with. The more I search for meanings or seek reactions from within me relating to accomplishments or moments in life, the less the meaning or reaction wants to come forth. Its reluctance could be termed some sort of emotional stage fright, where I am analyzing every detail of what I might be feeling, comparing it to what I expected to be feeling, and then trying to really get a read on what I am actually emoting.

Until last night, nothing was emerging. As usual, it was Jennifer that called it out.

The images that we all took back with us from New Orleans are a mixed bag of exhilarations and depressions, of awe and inspiration at the work we accomplished coupled with the shock and confusion at the level of despair still evident seven months after the storm and the flooding. Each of us, in turn, took pictures of the same houses torn in half and dragged across the street. We took pictures of cars twisted into likenesses of muddy modern art. We stopped moments when we could to capture the profound nature of the human spirit at work helping others who are unable to help themselves. In the end, I believe what changed was not who we are, but how we view ourselves and that city. For me, I expected New Orleans to do that, but as I sat leaning on my couch last night talking to my wife, I realized that the expectations I had put on the trip's affect on me were unrealistic.

All change worthwhile in my life has originated from within me. Even in the most obvious situations that called for it, if internally I felt stagnant and resistant to fixing the problems, they stayed the same. When we want something badly enough, we go after it. I looked at the trip as something that would be so overwhelming that it would immediately alter how I viewed the world, and in essence, how I would approach changing it. I felt that I would return and see my family in fresh light, that I would take action on things that I had lain dormant.

Well, maybe I will. That's not what I came home with, though. I came home with the realization that when change is going to happen, I am the catalyst. Outside forces, whether natural disaster, political corruption, or government malaise, are insufficient reasons for me to surrender control. They happen. What I can control is how I adapt to these things in my life that force me to react. That is the impetus for change: the overwhelming desire to re-route my course. If then, I want to see my family in new light, or if I want to resurrect something that I have put aside, I will do it regardless of what I have seen or experienced.

In New Orleans, as far as I saw and reacted to, that lesson is not taught, but rather a more depressing one supplants it. That lesson is one of learned dependency. Most of us have read or heard of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, where he espouses what might have happened had he chosen the other path. In that debate there is something that in the neighborhoods I worked in and toured, is inherently missing: choice. Frost chose, and that made all the difference. We chose to help and will continue to choose to do so. New Orleans must choose now too. It must choose to rebuild itself, one citizen at a time.

The Extraordinary Within

Last night, Jenny and I traveled back in time to that place when we first met; we went out and, for lack of a better word, rocked. One of our friends, Steve Coleman, and his band, Gabriel's Hold, played at a bar near where we live. We took the opportunity to go and splurge, to indulge in something that secretly we both harbor as one of our fondest pre-marriage pastimes.

Steve and his band were just what we needed in a lot of ways. Both of us overtly talk about all the time we used to spend in bars or clubs listening to live music, and as much as it is a tiring endeavor to do on a regular basis (Jennifer used to date a drummer, and I used to work in bars), the occasional dose is more than invigorating--it's jolting.

To see the uninhibited expression on our faces must have been priceless, the stuff only reserved for weddings and family parties where, regardless of the degree of our embarrassing behavior, the people are stuck with us. Steve's music carries an infectious groove that moves you regardless of your rhythmic inclinations. But the most precious part of the evening was that for a time, in a public sphere, we were uninhibited. All was as it should have been.