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What We Can Read While Washing our Hands

Philip and I arrived two hours early in Oxford Hills for a Sunday evening admissions presentation by Ingram University, which was quickly becoming Philip’s first choice and long-shot school. I had brought a book; Philip had brought Ingram’s large glossy brochure as well as an SAT Preparation guide. We ate a fast food dinner and then Philip asked if there was somewhere more comfortable we could wait. I selected the Oxford Inn which was just three miles from the upcoming presentation.

Post #135: This Blog is Growing Up with my Family

Just under a year ago, I posted my one hundredth blog entry and celebrated the accomplishment with a summary description of what this blog has been about and what I intended the blog to be about going forward. For forty-four months including this month, I have been committed to delivering three posts each month. They chronicled the most interesting things I observed as a parent and the kinds of things I was thinking about as a parent. Three posts per month worked for a long time. But I have come to the conclusion that time has ended.

Selecting and Targeting the College Long-Shot

Less than two weeks remain of Philip’s junior year at Hermes High School. We now have the scores from his first attempt at the SATs and finals will quickly establish his grades and grade point average going into any early notification college application process.

While Philip is correctly focused on the home stretch of his junior year, I have been quietly compiling data on colleges. Amelia and I are pleased to see that Philip’s SAT scores came in high enough that he can be reasonably certain about getting into Sierra State University, so long as he does not screw up and delivers a well-assembled application early in the admissions cycle.

The Angry Divorced Father

In the Lacrosse Semi-Finals, Hermes faced Conquistador at the Cabrillo High School Stadium. Volunteers at the gate ensured there was a price for admission to keep up funding for the best high school stadium in the County.

I’m already looking forward to seeing Hermes face Conquistador next year. The team has a fantastic new coach as well as several great players who I once coached when they were tweens. Lastly, Philip’s friend Carson (who wasn’t eligible to play this season) will be back in gear as one of Conquistador’s top players. With this year’s game, we knew Hermes would slaughter Conquistador. Next year—with more than two thirds of the top players from Hermes graduating in a few weeks—will be a very different match-up.

Talk or Leave Them Alone?

Adolescence is the time for kids to develop their independence. It is messy. In the ideal world parents would correctly identify how their adolescents should be independent over time, grant them that independence and be done with it. Usually the adolescents have other ideas.

Two Very Different Honor Students

It was Philip’s first college fair. The Honors Advisor at Hermes High School had encouraged the Honor students in the Junior Class to attend. I took Philip and volunteered to give other students a ride. In the end, Philip was joined by just one of his peers: Evan.

I met Evan and his mother at Hermes High School the morning of the college fair. The contrast between Philip and Evan was immediate in their appearance alone. Philip was handsomely dressed in a new pair of jeans, an ironed but un-tucked button-up grey shirt and a semi-formal black jacket. He had showered with shampoo and conditioner plus and had combed his hair to perfection. Philip completed his look with a pair of dark plastic sunglasses. Meanwhile, Evan’s pewter-brown hair looked like it was washed only rarely with hand soap. His black t-shirt and tan cargo pants contrasted. His socks matched each other but not anything else in his attire. Philip’s clothing shocked Evan. “Oh … my dad told me I just had to wear something clean.”

Getting off to a Bad Start

Normally, boring adults like me only get to witness such things by watching teen dramas on television. But I guess it makes sense that volunteering to chaperon an end-of-summer teen dance sponsored by the Hermes High School Cheer Squad put me right where all that might be gossip-worthy would appear. Only three adults witnessed the “event of the evening” and I was one. And since one of the three was Liana’s mother, it was really only two adults who were privileged to witness Liana’s crowning act in making a foolish spectacle of herself.

The Simple Joy of Family Television Time

The television is often portrayed as the enemy of family life and the relationship between parents and children in particular. It is “the boob tube” or “the one-eyed babysitter” when criticized in this manner. But recently, I have come to a different conclusion in my own mind.

An Extended Family Visit

Joelle is the oldest daughter of my wife Ameila’s cousin Tom. Growing up, Amelia and Tom were close, though they saw each other much less once the college years began. Joelle is just fourteen months older than Chloe. Tom, Joelle and their family live a long airplane flight away, but Tom has made it a point to visit our family whenever he has had an extended business visit to our part of the country.

This is Post One Hundred

Thirty-two months ago today, I published my first blog post. A little over a year into my writing I was honored to have the “Life Reflected” blog included as one of the now thirty-five blogs listed in the “Best of the Web” directory of blogs on the topic of parenting. With the arrival of this hundredth post, I have decided to make this a ten year blog with three posts each month until 2018 shortly after Chloe departs for college. I began writing for many reasons that were compelling to me then and remain compelling to me now.

Sometimes I’m Just a Big Kid

There are so many aspects to good parenting. The goal is ensure my kids become competent, successful adults. But I want the process to be fun and to include many great memories for them and for me. So there is a side benefit for me as a parent. I can partially re-enjoy things that make one’s formative years so enjoyable. Most of it is vicarious. But some of it involves simply being a big kid. With Philip or Chloe, I will watch youth-targeted television and movies, practice sports and sometimes even play games: both group and individual games. More recently, I’ve been playing two computer games. One is Silent Hunter and the other is Navy Field. Both mimic naval battles from World War II. I am particularly fond of submarine movies and my all time favorite movie is Das Boot. In both games, I have put myself in command of a German U-boat.

In Silent Hunter, I have no choice but to skipper a submarine. I end up sinking scores of Allied ships before I need to start over. My computer assumes the role of the not-very-well skippered Allied ships I manage to sink over the course of half an hour of play time. At this point, I know the game well enough that it is really just a shooting gallery with some excellent graphics. Rarely am I in danger of being sunk, even when facing four or more fresh Destroyers or Battleships.

In Navy Field, every ship is commanded by a real person somewhere in the world. The game includes small Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Aircraft Carriers, Battleships and Submarines. As players become more experienced, Navy Field permits them to skipper progressively more powerful and diverse ships, and to fire progressively more powerful weapons with progressively more accuracy. A typical Navy Field battle involves twenty to thirty-five ships on each team and lasts ten to fifteen minutes. Normally, only five to ten ships survive a battle. There is a special rush associated with sneaking up on an enemy ship, firing off a torpedo, hopefully sinking or at least severely damaging the enemy and then scurrying off before depth charges take me out, or lack of air forces me to the surface in close range to angry enemy canons. There is a special thrill in advancing to qualify for a better submarine, better torpedoes or a better deck gun and then using the new item for the first time in mock combat. There is likewise a feeling of trepidation as I dive trying to avoid enemy fire or surface to unknown threats after diving. And there is a brief regret when my submarine is sunk and a sense of brief victory when I survive an entire battle. If I am not careful, I can let a lot of time pass while playing submarine commander on the computer.

But perhaps the best part of playing these games is sharing the experience with Philip. Philip does not play computer games nearly as much as his peers. And he greatly prefers shooting at virtual zombies or soldiers over battling virtual maritime vessels. But he has his own Navy Field account and borrows mine from time to time. He’ll even play Silent Hunter from time to time but he is not motivated to get good enough to survive an entire campaign. Sometimes he will simply watch me play. He always seems to enjoy having me recount a new or unusual experience I have on the virtual battlefield.

In contrast, Philip tends not to like me asking him about school, his homework, what he did with his friends or anything about his private world. For those things, he comes to me or we don’t talk about them at all. He’d rather hear about my day at work than answer my questions about his day at school.

But there is more to the submarine games and other things I do outside my age. I like stepping into Philip’s world. I like doing things that I would be doing if I were a teenager today rather than three decades ago. I like listening to the music Philip and Chloe like, as much as I like listening to the music from my teen years. Both allow me to revisit the formative years. I like being a fan of the Hermes High School sports teams, and I like reading the news of how my former high school’s sports teams are doing today. And more recently, I like playing submarine commander. Sometimes I’m just a big kid and every parent deserves to be a big kid from time to time.

How Kids Are Resilient

For the past few months our family has been volunteering at a local family shelter. Over the next two years, Philip will be journaling about his experiences and interactions there to meet one of the requirements for his honors program at Hermes High School. Today we spent about ninety minutes at the shelter decorating cookies with kids between the ages of four and nine. Like Philip, I volunteered at a family shelter when I was in high school. It gave me a view of life I would not otherwise have seen. Some thirty years later, I am viewing life at a family shelter with an older set of eyes.

What strikes me the most about the family shelter is how much fun the kids seem to have and how happy the kids seem to be. There is a large common playground and a large common kitchen and dining hall. A cork board displays a calendar of activities for the kids, including both weekly and one-time events. At the three events we have helped with so far, the kids seem not only happy but committed to one another’s happiness. One seven-year-old girl Tracy takes particular interest in the younger children. While I sat outside repairing bikes one day, a pair of boys wanted to sit close to me and watch. Tracy helped the boys overcome their hesitations and explained everything I was doing. She also made sure the boys didn’t touch anything that might hurt them. When we managed the Easter Egg Hunt, all the older children took it upon themselves to make sure each of the younger children filled their baskets. There was not the slightest evidence of bullying.

The adults at the family shelter are a different story. Whether they are there as a result of bad fortune, bad choices or some combination thereof, living at a family shelter rather than in a more common living situation is frustrating and embarrassing. I have never seen an adult overtly take out that frustration on a child. In fact, the parents at the shelter seem to be going the extra mile with their kids. But I can see the weight of their situation on each adult’s face. The men seem to take it the hardest.

Recently, my wife Amelia read Farewell to Manzanar, the memoir of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston who spent a window of her childhood living at one of the internment camps established for Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Despite the unfair treatment, economic challenges and restrictions on freedom, the years at the internment camp proved to be this woman’s happiest childhood memories. There was something special about the closeness and the effort to band together. It was a sense of community she wanted to find a way to recreate for her own children but never fully succeeded in her own mind.

Kids enjoy going to the playground, making quick and possibly short-lived friendships and simply playing, especially in large groups. They love being on sports teams together. Even the ones with less athletic prowess love being part of sports teams. Events with lots of kids like birthday parties, beach trips, camping trips and barbeques are thrilling for kids.

As adulthood approaches and takes hold, the desire for autonomy becomes progressively stronger. Philip now spends hours inside his bedroom with the door closed. While young adults are comfortable sharing apartments in cramped quarters, older adults do not merely want their own home, they want a house: ideally a house with lots of square-footage and lots of acreage.

As I look at Tracy and the other kids living at the family shelter, I expect they are forming great memories. But I also think they are burying various forms of stress to process later in life. No matter how much parents want to protect their kids from adult troubles, some always manages to penetrate. But at manageable levels, the buried stress does not need to emerge in the form of unhealthy behavior. And when offset by the joys and benefits of community, Tracy and her peers are probably much better off spending a few months at the family shelter than most would expect. I’m looking forward to future interactions at the family shelter and also to reading Philip’s thoughts as he journals these experiences.

Popular Teens: How Do They Gain and Maintain Their Status?

Now that my formal education is long since over, works published in academic journals do not normally catch my attention. The February 2011 issue of the American Sociological Review proved a very interesting exception. In it Professors Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee of UC Davis empirically verified something we generally know about popular teenagers but also discovered some things we do not generally know.

Is anyone surprised to learn that popular teenagers are mean toward other teenagers? If we have somehow forgotten our own teen years, the entertainment industry is there to remind us with movies like Mean Girls, American Pie, The Clique and Odd Girl Out as well as television series like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, and Degrassi.

Faris and Felmlee use the word Aggression to describe three types of behaviors that increase among teens as they become progressively popular: physical aggression, direct verbal aggression and indirect verbal aggression (spreading gossip). These findings stand in sharp contrast to psychological research that attributes aggressive behavior to teens who are social outsiders, not social insiders. And then there is one finding that shatters the stereotype completely. Their research shows teens at the zenith of popularity (roughly the top 2%) are not mean or aggressive at all. If we think back hard to our own teen years, perhaps many of us can remember these kinder, gentler highly popular teens and anecdotally confirm what has only been recently documented empirically. I certainly can.

While I have not conducted any kind of study that would qualify as viable research, I believe my anecdotal observations can explain some of these findings, fill in some gaps, and paint a more complete picture. Most importantly, since being more popular in and of itself is desirable and as long as a teen does not attain his or her increased popularity through acts of cruelty or leverage his or her popularity for destructive ends, its pursuit should be encouraged.

While I agree that popular teens behave aggressively toward other teenagers according to the pattern Faris and Felmlee outline, it is not the first thing I have noticed about their social behavior. Instead what is most noticeable is how much effort they put into validating other teenagers. As teenagers become more popular, acts of validation become almost an obsession. They want to pair themselves off with nearly everyone in photographs. They post all kinds of warm, friendly messages to others on social networking sites like Facebook and Formspring. And regarding the school sports teams, they are the ones who provide constant praise to the high performers and constant encouragement to the under performers as both teammates and fans on the sidelines. When Philip’s birthday rolled around, the first two people to wish him “happy birthday” on Facebook were Noah (the most popular guy is his class) and Erica (the most popular girl in his class). Their posts both appeared before seven in the morning and were followed by scores of other birthday notes, most of which were from other very popular students. On the other side of the spectrum, when a man in the community died in a motorcycle accident, it was the popular kids like Noah who led the charge in showering his son (a junior at Hermes High School) with words and acts of love, kindness and support and who actively urged others to do likewise.

There are many factors that play into the equation to determine teenage popularity and obviously these differ between boys and girls. These include extroversion, mature youthful features, stature, muscular development, humor, friendliness, personal grooming, intelligence (but not actual academic performance), confidence, speaking skills, financial resources, athletic prowess, social ambition, and (perhaps not last) an adeptness at using aggressive behavior shrewdly.

Here in my mind is the difference between the aggressiveness popular teens exhibit and the aggressiveness marginal teens exhibit, and why Faris and Felmlee’s findings differ so radically from the findings of most psychological research. Put yourself in the shoes of an average teenager and ask yourself who’s aggression would make you feel more victimized: the crazy kid with no friends or the starting quarterback with a beautiful adoring girlfriend? A small public cutting remark from the quarterback would have far more impact than a tirade from the crazy kid.

In my observation, popular teens tend to use aggression with deliberate ends in mind more than they exhibit impulsive acts of aggression, though I have certainly observed the latter quite often. These deliberate ends include testing, self-defense, assertiveness, maintaining the social hierarchy, and (admittedly) entertainment. Here is one example of this kind of deliberateness that I observed from the bleachers. The Hermes lacrosse team was taking a water break. Philip had just finished drinking and was putting his gloves back on. A short distance from Philip, Conrad was holding one of those water bottles that let him squirt water into his mouth without needing to remove his helmet. After drinking up, Conrad aimed a quick squirt of water at Philip. Philip looked up, saw Conrad’s beaming confident smile, and gave Conrad a warm smile and quick laugh in response. Then Conrad squirted Philip a second time. Philip stared back at Conrad with an annoyed look of disapproval while Conrad continued to smile like the Cheshire Cat, and then squirted Philip a third time. Without hesitation, Philip used his lacrosse stick to knock the water bottle out of Conrad’s hand and deliver a few punishing jabs before Conrad got hold of his own stick and was able to successfully parry Philip’s stick-thrusts. Conrad made one attempt to jab Philip back and his attempt was likewise deflected before both smiled and halted their altercation.

It was a very telling exchange. Both Conrad and Philip are popular. Conrad is perhaps half a notch above Philip in the social hierarchy. Conrad’s initial actions served multiple purposes. They were a test, a way to maintain his social position relative to Philip’s and a means of entertainment. Philip’s initial self-restraint and subsequent aggression first validated Conrad and then asserted Philip’s own social position. By the end of the exchange both Conrad and Philip looked impressive to all observers and perhaps their joint status within the overall social order had increased.

Teenagers have varying social ambitions and varying means to achieve their social ambitions. While some things (like height) are completely out of their control, other things (like behavior) are very much within their control to the degree that their maturity can override their impulsiveness. The best steps a parent can take to help their children enjoy the social aspects of their teen years are encouraging their teens to be friendly and validating of others while simultaneously teaching their teens to be shrewdly assertive. Both will normally take effort because most teens are socially cautious by nature. But the effort will be well worth it.

Inspired to Connect the Past to the Present

Back in September, I started a new job with a new company. I went from primarily working out of my home office in Hermes to working at my new company’s regional office in Riverdale. It is a fifty minute commute. The office building is walking distance from the shops and restaurants in historic downtown Riverdale and even closer to an office building where I worked for six years when Philip was a small child.

The other day I walked past that old office building during my lunch break. There was my former office’s window looking down at me: Second floor, second window from the left. I could see the shade was lowered about one third of the way. My former company had been sold to a larger corporation and operations had been scattered to other locations. Someone I probably did not even know now occupied my former abode. The art work that once occupied the walls inside that office was now hanging from the wall of my home office in Hermes. Still, the second window from the left on the second floor looked virtually unchanged. It was enough to fill me with a flood of memories from that time.

The old company had relocated me and my family from another state to San Geraldo in order for me to work there. That six year job stint took me from the days when Philip couldn’t even pronounce his own name to the first half of his second grade year of elementary school. It included Chloe’s birth and the first three years of her life as well as our move from San Geraldo to Hermes. So much had been packed into a little more than half a decade.

It is funny what memories take hold for us to cherish. For me, one such memory dates back to Philip’s early days in preschool. I had taken the train to work that day. Young Philip loved trains. “Twain – twain,” he would say pointing whenever he spotted one. Amelia had plans to have dinner with a friend in Oxford Hills. We decided she would take Philip to my office for me to bring home. It would be his first chance to actually ride on a train.

Philip and Amelia arrived in the late afternoon. The train home would arrive forty minutes later. I wanted to make Philip’s rare visits to my office special. On that day I began two rituals which I would repeat each time he visited my office for the rest of the time he was in preschool. First, I took him to the office kitchen for a can of root beer from the refrigerator. Going forward, “Rooph Beer” was all he would get to drink in my office and we refrained from serving it to him in any other venue. The other ritual was drawing a picture. With my green highlighter pen and copy paper, I would draw “Dexter the Dragon” which was a children’s ride at the San Geraldo Zoo. Those rituals played out on perhaps twenty visits to my office over the next two years, always at Philip’s request. During some of those visits, Philip would get to ride the twain again.

Walking through downtown Riverdale the other day was an experience somewhere between stepping through a time portal and getting a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. Some things looked exactly the same. There was still the hair salon run by an extended Vietnamese family that provided a fantastic men’s haircut for a fantastic price. Two coffee shops, two Irish pubs, two Thai restaurants and an upscale deli were still thriving businesses. Other things had changed. The Microbrew had changed its name and ownership. My Hungarian tailor had retired and a tanning salon had replaced his little shop. My favorite Mexican restaurant had gone. And the Armenian shoe repair shop had expanded business to include luggage repair. A lot is the same and a lot has changed in some eight years. What can be said about downtown Riverdale can also be said about my family.

Tonight, our whole family along with Chloe’s friend Patty will spend the evening enjoying a New Year’s Eve Ball. Guys will be wearing blazers and ladies will be wearing dresses. Amelia and I plan to watch from a distance as Philip dances with one elegantly dressed, lovely teenage girl after another while Chloe and Patty share dances with younger boys. On Sunday, Philip will take part in a lacrosse scrimmage under the lights at Cabrillo High School involving the area’s high school and college players. I plan to plant myself in the bleachers and soak in the pleasure of watching Philip holding his own against MCLA lacrosse players.

So much time has gone by. The adolescent Philip who ballroom dances and plays varsity lacrosse seems so different from the little boy who drank rooph beer and wanted to see another highlighter drawing of Dexter the Dragon before riding home on the twain. But every so often, something as simple as the sight of a second story window brings all those great memories back and connects them to the great memories that are being formed in the present.

When Life’s Consequences Overtake Parental Punishment

I like to watch television shows on DVD with each of my kids. So does Amelia. Right now I am watching Season 1 of Glee with Chloe. The show has just about every high school subplot, stereotype and neo-stereotype the authors could squeeze into a single television season of forty-three minute episodes of what Philip calls High School Musical: The Series. Chloe loves it. I enjoy it. And most importantly it launches us into important daddy-daughter conversations.

A Friend from Another Generation

I had not spoken with Raul in over a year. But suddenly he was standing next to me saying, “Hey Coach.”

Raul was Philip’s first friend in Hermes. In 2002, before moving from San Geraldo to Hermes, we signed up Philip for Little League Baseball in Hermes. We figured Philip would meet a bunch of kids on the team, and that one of them would almost certainly be in the same first grade class on Philip’s first day at a new school more than half way through the school year. When Philip started at his new elementary school in Hermes, he found Raul there waving him into the same class. The two shared a great season of Little League. For second grade and third grade, I coached the soccer teams on which Philip and Raul played together. To the degree that an adult and a child from different families can be friends, Raul and I have been friends for many years now.

This Fall, Philip has been practicing lacrosse twice a week at Hermes with the other players who are not presently absorbed by football. The off-season lacrosse players have a small patch of fenced-in artificial turf for two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays while the Freshman, JV and Varsity football teams dominate the wide open athletic fields on the Hermes High School campus for the entire week. I arrived on campus from my now fifty minute commute home about fifteen minutes before the lacrosse coach ended practice.

To keep the locker room from being over-crowded, the football coaches release the teams in reverse order of seniority half an hour apart. Raul has been playing on the JV squad this year. While the rest of the sophomore and junior players on the JV team walked by the artificial turf without even slowing to watch, Raul took the opportunity to catch up with me. Like Philip, Raul is lean and now taller than me. I asked him about football and told him I intended to see at least part of the upcoming JV game. He asked about Philip’s lacrosse team and for help identifying Philip from behind the helmets and light body armor. When I asked him how his younger sister was adjusting to high school, he sounded like his father. “She’s adjusting well. If anything, she’s adjusting a little too well in my opinion.” The conversation lasted a little over five minutes.

Like Philip, Raul looked ever so close to adulthood. Our conversation was not far from what would be said between two adults watching the scrimmage at the end of a high school lacrosse practice. I was proud of the boy I had coached and had under my home on multiple occasions. And I was proud of the young man he was today. Raul was healthy and confident. And he was completely comfortable engaging an adult as an equal.

Among Philip’s peers, some have always stood out as special to me. Many of these were ones I had coached along the way. Raul has always been one of the special ones. Coaches, family friends, teachers and others who work with youth in extracurricular activities get to play a minor role in a child’s upbringing for a brief window of life. There is a special satisfaction at the time. There is a special satisfaction that endures. And that enduring satisfaction comes to the surface whenever I get to speak with a kid I had once coached. For the special ones like Raul, the feeling of satisfaction is particularly enjoyable.

The last of the JV players walked just after I told Raul I was planning to catch at least part of his game. He smiled and said, “That would be great.” He then seemed to notice he was going to be the last into the locker room. “I should go get changed so I my dad doesn’t have to wait.” He turned and disappeared into the small current of JV football practice jerseys. And I couldn’t help smiling as I turned my attention back to the lacrosse scrimmage.

Some day Raul will be a full adult. If he and I still live in Hermes ten years from now, I suspect Raul and I will still be friends, and we will enjoy the kind of friendships older adults share with younger adults who are not from the same family.

Sustaining the Connection

For me, my sophomore year in high school was the turning point. Suddenly, I could feel adulthood looming on the horizon. Now nearly thirty years later, Philip is a sophomore in high school and I suddenly sense the ticking calendar. He loves me. But he needs me less than he has ever needed me. At the same time, he craves autonomy more than ever before. At unexpected times, Philip wants to fully engage. Most of the time, however, he prefers to be alone in his room with just the computer and his own musings to keep him company. But there are two exceptions to his unpredictable willingness to interact.

The first exception is the television. Philip’s tastes range from action and science fiction to documentaries. During the school year, our family rule is that the television goes off at 4:30pm on weekday school nights. That leaves only the weekend for me to share watching television with Philip. We have found a number of television shows available on DVD to watch over time. On many weekend nights, it is the last thing Philip and I do before we each head off to bed. But occasionally I get lucky. At the end of a show, when his mother and sister have often gone to bed, Philip will sometimes leverage these private times to talk to me about what is on his mind.
The other exception is sports and exercise. Philip is very willing to include me when I can help. In this new school year, it has meant signing him up for off-season indoor lacrosse in San Geraldo and regularly serving as the driver for him and other players from the area playing on his team

Philip’s intense interest in exercise went to an even higher level some time in the summer. We had expected him to sleep as late as possible each morning. But instead Philip set his alarm to go off before the first signs of light. He began doing push-ups and various abdominal exercises. Philip’s morning exercise routine has given me the opportunity to take him on multiple shopping trips to the local sporting goods stores. We’ve purchased athletic shoes, dumbbells and ankle weights. Now, half an hour before my own alarm is scheduled to play a local radio station, I hear the siren of Philip’s alarm clock. It is followed by the sound of him climbing out of his bunk bed and then either the stomp of his lunges or the clink of his dumbbells.

On an outing to the grocery store, I took Philip alone and encouraged him to browse the men's magazines. He took no interest in the publications that focused on body-building, gaming, cars or fashion. But the more broad-based publication, Men's Health, appealed to him, so I added the five dollar newsstand price to that day's grocery bill. After Philip devoured the August issue, I invested around twenty dollars to get him an annual subscription. Now every so often, he emerges from his room to show me a new exercise he read about and wanted to try.

For a while, all of Philip's dawn exercises were a private affair. But he wanted to start running. I volunteered to manage his stopwatch while he worked to improve his time on a neighborhood run of roughly seven hundred meters. Now when I hear the alarm go off, I get out of bed myself. I throw on shorts, a tank top and a sweatshirt. I knock on his door and tell him to get me when he is ready to run. Five to twenty-five minutes go by while I cat nap. If my own alarm goes off, I know Philip won't be running. But normally he chooses to run. I leap up and join him downstairs. We lace our athletic shoes together and head outside. Philip may stretch or do some quick warm-ups, but he is normally ready to go almost immediately.

With Philip at the edge of our driveway, leaning forward ready to launch into a sprint, I speak a crisp "Ready … set … go!" He disappears into the darkness down the street. I turn the opposite direction and briskly walk to our meeting point at a nearby intersection. In the quiet of the morning, I never fully lose the sound of his feet slamming into the pavement with a rhythmic beat from somewhere in the neighborhood. Shortly after I arrive at our meeting point, the rhythm starts to get louder. He picks up the pace for the final stretch of his morning run. Soon he passes the finish mark and I tell him how much time elapsed. The sound of Philip's fast, heavy breathing replaces the first rhythm with a new one. Together we enjoy the short walk back to our house.

Over the past few weeks Philip's morning sprint has become a ritual that helps me relish what is left of the time I have with Philip under my roof. But whether it is the rhythm of his running or the rhythm of his breathing, it is still the sound of the ticking calendar to me.

Family Summer Fun during the Great Recession

The national debt is climbing, unemployment is excessively high and every neighborhood has at least one foreclosed home sitting empty. Contractors are competing for substantially fewer bids and revenues at small businesses are down significantly. Even for those who are working traditional jobs, commissions, bonuses, raises and overtime are in short supply while pink slips, pay cuts and layoffs constantly loom.

Despite the problems in the economy in general and personal financial challenges in specific, our family has made an effort to have fun together but on a tighter budget. As summer rolls into its final month, I cannot say we have indulged in only what is free, but we have found some very good low-cost values.

Our first low-cost pleasure has been free concerts on the beach. The sun sets and the summer heat melts away in favor of warmth radiating from the sand and a cool breeze blowing in from the water. Upper body layering becomes essential: A shirt, a sweater or sweatshirt and a pullover are ideal. But one can always be barefoot. Chart-topping bands from the 60s, 70s and 80s leverage their faded stardom to attract baby boomers, gen-Xers and their families. Parking rates are high close to the beach, but for those of us who are willing to walk there are less expensive and even free alternatives.

When Independence Day came around, a larger crowd than usual watched the fireworks from a distance on a piece of open green space in our neighborhood rather than paying the pricey admission to see the fireworks up close from the celebration in the town’s largest park. We invited friends to join us beforehand for a potluck barbeque. Rita brought her son and daughter over. We also had Joshua, Debbie and Abby along with their parents, plus Kevin and Katie join us. The teens and tweens went into the back yard, played music and jumped on our trampoline until it was time to watch the fireworks. Philip and I left briefly for Philip to play in an exhibition lacrosse game at the town’s largest park that included players from the youth, high school and adult teams promoting the sport to the community.

When we thought about summer camp for Chloe, we found a great alternative in youth theater. For the cost of just one week of traditional camp, Chloe joined roughly fifty other kids ranging from ages eight to seventeen and had six weeks of three hour evening practices. She has been singing, dancing and memorizing lines. She built a small wardrobe of various costume changes. A t-shirt and a few other items will be fun clothes for the new school year and perhaps her most flamboyant costume will be what she wears this coming Halloween. Chloe has made one new friend, strengthened one old friendship, been mentored by outgoing teenagers and been looked up to by adoring pre-tweens. Production was scheduled for the final days of July. As we took Chloe to the theater two hours early on opening night, she was beaming with excitement, anticipation and confidence. The play was beautiful and Chloe is now looking forward to the cast party as well as future get-togethers with her new friend.

Our least expensive piece of family fun has been arguably our most favorite. We are reading a novel out loud to one another in the evenings before bedtime. Picture a story that combines various elements that made Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, The Da Vinci Code and Twilight popular and enjoyable reads. It may be an oversimplification, but that is what our family has found in a lesser-known novel titled Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. The thick novel spins a multi-generational tale of secrets, conspiracies, cover-ups, other-worldly beings, supernatural powers, great hidden libraries and remote caverns, good versus evil, romances and adventures. We curl up comfortably in our pajamas sinking into the soft family room furniture and wrap ourselves in blankets. We allow just enough electric light to read comfortably and augment the ambiance with candles, popcorn and hot cocoa.

As I drift off to sleep each evening, I wonder how we will remember this summer. Will we mainly remember the hardships? Or will our memories mainly include our low-cost indulgences? My guess is we will remember both, but what we will mainly remember is sharing life with each other during this particular window in the kids’ development. Fun and great memories can be had in tough times. And love can endure and flourish even in the toughest times, including the Great Recession.

Glitter on the Floor and Grinding at the Hips

The club’s rules were enforced to the letter. Club Avalanche’s trained security staff ensured no drugs, alcohol, weapons, or anyone out of dress code or outside the age window of fourteen to eighteen made it through the door. Throughout the evening the security staff remained an ever-vigilant presence inside the club to swiftly expel anyone looking for a fight. These strict rules made me as a parent feel good about Philip attending one of their events.

Over the course of four high school dances during his freshman year, Philip had come to like dancing. While the kind of dancing Philip’s generation practiced at Hermes High School was racier than what I had experienced in my generation, Philip seemed to have found a set of boundaries that worked for him and as such I was comfortable as a parent. After reading all of the Club Avalanche marketing material, I encouraged Philip to check out one of their events. But Philip was only guardedly interested.* He decided to check one out. But he specifically wanted to check it out without bringing a friend along, and he specifically wanted to check it out at their event in Oxford Hills, a thirty-five minute drive from Hermes. In short, Philip didn’t want to see anyone he knew when he went to his first Club Avalanche event.

The evening began with a long wait in line outside the club. The doors did not even open until ten minutes after the event was supposed to begin. I promised not to leave Oxford Hills until Philip had sent me a text message from inside the club. I took the opportunity to enjoy a stroll in downtown Oxford Hills. Half an hour before the event was supposed to begin, Philip sent me a text commenting on his discomfort with the crowd waiting outside the club. Most of the teens in line were displaying a tough exterior, and nobody was using the opportunity to meet new people. Philip did not see anyone else who was alone. He saw groups of guys and he saw large groups of girls with just one or two token guys in tow. He was still only guardedly interested when he finally made it inside.

Colored lights waved. Strobe lights flashed. A DJ played all of the most popular dance songs. Philip was immediately disappointed with how loud the DJ was playing the music. It was impossible for two people to hear one another talking. Philip scanned the room before taking any kind of action. And then he saw it. Over half of the kids were grinding while they danced. There were no rules against grinding or any other sensual behavior at Club Avalanche, although the dress code meant everyone kept their clothes on. There were no drugs, alcohol, weapons or threatening behavior inside the club. But any other rules that one might infer were not enforced at all. There were no parents, no teachers, no school administrators, no coaches and no other rules. If it was consensual and could happen without putting someone out of dress code, it was happening in multiple places inside those four walls.

After assessing the overall mood and climate in the room, Philip started dancing to the loud, fast hip-hop beat. He worked his way behind a girl close to his age dancing without a partner. He had learned to approach cautiously, giving the girl ample opportunity to give him a subtle signal of rejection. At Club Avalanche, he found he was more likely to be rejected than was the case at a Hermes High School dance. But he had expected as much, given he was a stranger to everyone there. Some girls simply didn’t dance with strangers and it wasn’t always apparent who would dance with strangers and who would not. If the girl in question leaned back into his chest, Philip would share the rest of the song with her.

From the proximity of the dance floor, Philip saw the grinding live and up close. Some of it was overt and explicit. But much of it merely involved taking the contact he considered to be normal and extending that contact lower. And so Philip decided to try out the less explicit grind dancing. He began dancing up to a slightly older girl he had already seen grinding with more than one guy. As he got progressively closer, she continued to welcome his advances. With his hands firmly on both her hips, he cautiously moved his hip forward until it was firmly pressed against her buttock. The move was welcome, so he slowly turned to press both his hips against her from behind while she leaned her full body back into him and continued dancing. She seemed both satisfied and distant. His mouth was just a few inches from her ear, but he knew that the music was far too loud for her to hear anything he might say.

The song ended quickly and Philip saw his first grinding partner move on to someone else. He continued the pattern of dancing up to a girl, first securing her acceptance to dance in close proximity and then securing her acceptance to grind. Not all girls who leaned back into him agreed to the grinding, but many still did. With the end of each song, a new dance partner needed to be found. Dancing among the grinders, Philip experienced a surreal, high-energy, wordless cross between speed dating and hookup culture. Eventually, he took a break and visited the men’s room. When the door closed behind him, the music volume suddenly dropped. He felt a numb buzzing sensation in his ears. Then over the music and the buzzing, he began to hear a small group of guys talking about the girls they had been with so far that evening. Their misogynistic attitude annoyed Philip. And yet, without the ability to talk, girls and guys who had not met before were reduced to objects of consensual play out on the dance floor. This is just stupid, he thought.

Philip left the men’s room and returned to the edge of the dance floor. He scanned the room with a newly focused set of intentions. This time, he was looking to identify the girls who were not grinding. He picked up that the girls who were younger and avoiding the center of the dance floor were generally non-grinders. Although members is this segment of the population were the least likely to welcome him to dance in his regular fashion, these younger, more cautious girls were the ones on whom he focused his attentions for the rest of the evening.

At his request, I picked up Philip outside the club about half an hour before the evening’s event officially ended. He didn’t have much to say, except to tell me he was not planning on attending another one of their dance events any time soon. A couple weeks later, he told me he had no intention of ever returning. And as time passed, Philip slowly disclosed the full story of the grinding culture and his brief experiment with it. He had no interest in grinding, especially with complete strangers. And he really hated that fact that he could not even talk to his dance partners over the loud music.

While Philip was embarrassed to disclose the specifics of his experience, it was hard not to be impressed with his depth. His morals and ethics did not grow out of a “do and don’t” list imposed from the outside. Instead, he merely values relationships. And there were no relationships—not even casual friendships—to be found on the Club Avalanche dance floor: just glitter.

* See my comment on this post for an important explanation for those of you who read this blog regularly.