Although news, podcasts, blogs, and conversations with friends, family, and coworkers have led me to believe the country is at a breaking point through our divisions, distrust, and uncertainty, I see the tiniest hints of hope when I watch the world through the eyes of my fourteen-year-old and listen to the words he uses to […]
Hey Dad, So much has happened since we last spoke in January 2017. Your grandson has doubled in age since then; he’s now 14. With each milestone of his, I think back to when I was that age and what we might have been doing together. The same goes for the little setbacks. How did
After our son was born I called friends who already had kids and apologized to them for not being more excited for them when they became parents. I didn’t know until I saw our own son how awesome it was. How could I? I did the same after my father passed. I called friends who
I have the luxury of working weekends and being able to pick up our son from school most weekdays. I watch with joy as he bounces down the steps from his school happy to tell me all about the things he did during the day. Rarely does he come out upset. Never has he
I recently read Auto Biography by Earl Swift in which he retraces all the owners of a ’57 Chevy and it’s had me thinking about my first car. It was a 1969 Plymouth Barracuda. I unwrapped it in the Fall of 1990. Twenty one years after it rolled off the assembly line. It was a cool
How amazing it must be to have no concept of time? How liberating. Plotting our sons growth alongside the chart of mankind’s evolution, he is close to understanding that as the sun settles near the horizon it’s time to get back to the cave. Walking upright? Check. Simple cave drawings? Check. Charting the
“Father?” Said the almost five year old. “Listen, there is something I’ve been thinking about. You and I have been watching a lot of classic television programing lately. Shows like Tom and Jerry and Dumbo and I’ve noticed that in them, often a Stork drops off a baby to Moms and Dads.” “Yes?” I answer
The meetings are held in the basement of a church near an all-night donut shop. Although both are helpful, the location is more about the donuts than the man upstairs. The chairs are arranged in a circle. The donuts are placed on an end table in the middle. They are a focal point. The embers
For the first time in his life he has come up with something funny. Months later he still calls back to it. And it is funny.He’s had funny moments before. He’s pulled some physical gags and laughed at himself and then asked if it was silly. But this is his first joke. Sometime late summer
Every memorable event in my life that happened before the spring of 2010 is filed away in my brain with a five-year buffer. My mental calendar from the era before I had a child is ordered in half-decade increments.When did I graduate college? “I was done wearing flannel shirts by that time… mid to late
I was on vacation during the month of July. I ceased all work related activities. I also didn’t… It was a blissful month away from the airport. I return to the cockpit tomorrow. I just hope they didn’t move any of the buttons around.
How different his world is in 2014 than mine was when I was his age in 1978. This is the blessing of the late blooming father. Had I begun the child rearing phase of my life a decade or more ago things would be different. We could enjoy the Hunger Games together, we could both
I fear my son will think I don’t read… or listen to music… or vacuum since that task has been assigned to the robot. It’s been years since I bought a physical book and I can count the number of physical CD’s I’ve purchased in the last decade. I have neither of these things lying
It’s been twenty years since I was a college student, and I returned this past weekend as an alumnus to preach the airline life. These kids on campus now are just that—kids! Many were born after I started college. Not only could I be their father, but I could also be the father to their
My Nana passed away on February 13th, surrounded by her family, after being diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks before. She passed very peacefully and kept her wit until the very end. Hours before, when people were coming in and out of her room, I said to her, “I think you, Susan, and I
Several times between now and the era of the stage 2 Huggie overnight diapers, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of sleep deprivation, awakening in the land of disproportionate proportions with oversized talking caterpillars, four-key colorful pianos, and airplanes whose propellers spin with a psychedelic glow not too far off from the St. Elmo’s fire
The boy is almost nine months old, and since I’ve been back to work after paternity leave, I’ve been flying weekends. Although airport Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday, it is nice to work weekends and steal the Sunday NY Times from sleepers in the airport. I play a game of whack-a-mole where I rotate newspapers.
My job as a pilot is made much easier by checklists and routines. I do the same thing – the same way – every time. Checklists are written in a way that is intended to flow logically as we set up the cockpit for each phase of flight. It’s the times when something upsets that
I started using Google Voice months back on my G1 Android phone to transcribe my voicemails. When you leave me a message, I get an email containing the text version of that message. While I can still listen to the voicemail, most of the time the email is enough to give me the gist of
After college, or maybe it was during, I had a job for about a year as an overnight DJ at an adult contemporary AM radio station in Southern Virginia. Actually, it wasn’t just an AM station. It was, and still is, AM stereo, which, at the time, had been struggling to gain a foothold ever
I was driving home today and saw a dog running around the neighborhood a few blocks from my house. Being the good neighbor and dog owner that I am, I figured it best to try and find the little fella’s owner before his nose got too cold, he got lost, or had a run-in with
I showed up in DC at an hour usually reserved for raccoons and regret—5:30 a.m.—for a flight to Kansas City, which was only the beginning of this majestic loop-de-loop across the middle bits of America. From Kansas City, I hopped a flight to Milwaukee where a 3.5-hour layover waited for me like a bored TSA
This was our third leg for the day. We began in Omaha around 2 PM, flew from Omaha to Milwaukee, and then off to Boston. On the return from Boston to Milwaukee, we ended up holding over Grand Rapids for 30 minutes before we made the decision to divert to Indianapolis for more fuel. Holding
I once quit a job without giving two weeks’ notice. I quit after my lunch break. The boss wasn’t surprised at all. I think she even wondered why it took so long like it was a bet amongst the bosses. Each day that went by with me still on the line was another nickel in
I called to check on room availabilities at a few hotels in Towson for my parents’ visit next month. Google, of course, gave me a few pushpins just a few miles up the road, so I started calling. What’s amazing is that with each call to the front desks, I was redirected to a call
On Woensdag (Wednesday), we left Amsterdam for Reno. Well, we attempted to leave Amsterdam for Reno. The daily Usairways flight from AMS to PHL was full and rather than roll the dice on one flight we figured a safer bet would be to roll the dice on two relatively full flights out of Frankfurt. And
In grade school, we wore navy blue pants and white dress shirts. The boys had triangular collars, while the girls wore the rounded ones that little Catholic school girls wear. There was an unfortunate era when my sister and I wore the same size shirt even though we were two years apart. And, of course,
With her off for the summer, I ‘bid’ to have some weeks off with her. I was awarded six weeks from the end of June through early August. Eager to kick the summer off, I asked for—and was granted—a drop of a trip at the end of June that leads up to my vacation. Now,
As friends make the jump from windows to mac – I often get asked what mac apps to use? Where are some good places to get software? What’s in your dock? Here is what is currently in my dock… some programs I use often – others I recently downloaded and need them visable so I
