Summer 2009 – the summer of warm weather, days at the beach, rocking in a hammock, walks on the shore of a nearby lake, evening dances and ice cream cones. It’s a time of love, convertible tops, drives with friends up the coast for a fire in a ring on the sand and s’mores.  It’s a time of lemonade, home made ice cream, Slurpees, and dancing ‘till midnight on the beach at Daytona.

Summer is Key West in the morning, Waikiki at sunset, rowing the Colorado River and hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Summer is a day in Julian, sleeping under the stars in a quiet forest in the San Bernardino Mountains and roasting corn in a pit.  Summer is mimosas and shaved ice, bathing suits, hiking boots, sun screen, and back packs. Summer is a backyard barbecue, a picnic, a spontaneous get together with old friends.

But summer is more than dreamy visions.  During this summer of Over-the-Line weekends, trips across the Golden Gate and looking for space at Ocean Beach, 6,480 plants and animals went extinct according to Science Daily.  While 15 million moms and dads, sisters and brothers visited Disney World, one billion, 400 million moms and dads, sisters and brothers had no access to safe drinking water. Close to 300,000 would die from malaria and 750,000 would die from water-related deaths.  For some, summer 2009 will be the high-point of their lives, for others it will be a warm, fuzzy glow when recalled 60 years later. For many it will be the last summer they experience. For others it will be a summer of captivity, degradation and hunger.

Summer is a time of growth – for wild animals and for crops. But global warming and severe shortages of water in many areas are making that growth ever-more tenuous.  Rain forests shrink from our need for bare land; slash and burn land clearing gives open land but takes away oxygen, possible medicines, and the habitat of so many creatures.

Labor Day is drawing closer and we’ve begun to notice that summer is slowly coming to an end. With the start of school so drifts off another summer like so much smoke on a breezy day.  But while our social clocks may say an end to summer, our physical clock – the one that has governed us for millennia – doesn’t say that at all. Our internal seasonal clock says, “Okay, change is afoot, but summer is not over yet for me.”

Perhaps we should pay closer attention to our inner self that is screaming for attention. Perhaps we should go out and flip some proverbial coins. Do just one more thing. I want to do just one more thing this summer that doesn’t require writing a check, scanning a credit card, entering a code word.  Of course money is important but time is so much more important; your hands are more important; your mind is more important; your words are more important. Your presence is so much more important.

Find your contentment wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. And remember that’s it’s only from discontent that anything ever gets accomplished. When we’re contented we’re not very motivated to do anything.  It was discontent that drove Thomas Edison, Mother Theresa, and Martin Luther King.  Revel in your discontent, be glad for it and then do something with it.

Summer 2009 draws to a close and Fall and Winter are approaching.  When you look back on this summer what will you remember? The good (there was some) or the bad (and yep, there was some).  You can’t pick your memories but you can choose how you respond to them and what you ultimately do with them.  What will you do with yours?

Okay, yes, I get it. I do know something about aging. I’m traveling the road myself, have had enough classes on aging to give me at least a glimmer of comprehension, and have worked on enough elderly and aging issuses to be able to at least hold a decent enough conversation about it over drinks – or sit on a commission or two.  But understanding and compassion and knowledge sometimes seem to fall a bit short. Sometimes emotion just will not be displaced by knowledge and understanding. Sometimes you just want your father back…even if he hasn’t gone anywhere.

My dad has always been an energetic, free-thinking, explore the world kind of guy. He made it through WWII, he made money during the real estate boom after that war and has had a pretty damn good life ever since.  While still working and managing investments, he didn’t have to go into an office from the time I was 10 years old.  He had real estate offices, he built houses, he managed properties and he had fun. He went on a photo safari to Africa, he drove from  Los Angeles to the southern tip of South America. He has sailed around the world, piloted his own plane, and golfed on some of the great courses of the world.  And through it all he had time for his wife and my sister and me.

But now my father is in his late eighties.  He can’t see, can’t hear very well, is unsteady when he walks, and is generally fighting with the physical demons that come with being that age.  And he talks about nothing else. 

This hurts, that hurts, he can’t see, he can’t hear (and of course he’s gone to the best doctors on the planet, wears hearing aids, and on and on).  We get it. But he has become so fixated on his ailments that he can talk about nothing else. From the moment I see him until the moment I leave it’s just how bad this is, that is, how terrible it is.  

I realize that his life isn’t comingto a conclusion the way he wanted it to.  But he still lives in a nice house, his wife and son are there to help him and take him anywhere he wants to go; he has the best medical care there is, doesn’t want for money or anything else, and is surrounded by friends. But that’s just not enough, is never enough.  All there seems to be is one complaint, one grand whine after another.  He makes it difficult to be around him.  Yes, he is still here, yes I still get to see him.  But…

But I still miss my father.

San Diego, darkening skies (both from sundown and gathering clouds – wouldn’t it be nice if rain was at least a bit involved?) and my new external hard drive (known around here as the keeper of the flame). It quietly sits, monitors, saves, and protects. What’s the motto of the San Diego Police Dept – “To Serve and Protect?” – well they don’t hold a candle to my glowing little hard drive. I’m enthralled, at peace, and have one more little thing to check off the to-do-immediately-at-any-cost-more-or-less list. It’s crossed off and now I’ve got the list down to 487 items. I’m on a roll here – don’t get in the way

Hi and welcome to ye ol’ blog (perhaps too many Sponge Bob Square Pants with my daughter?).  Lot’s of stuff to talk about, lots of stuff going on, and lots more stuff to ignore. Which shall we do first?