Nat

I used to dread heading home from vacation. The pressures of daily life just seemed far too heavy to enjoy. But I’m ready to go home today, and not only because we will be back in Palm Desert in February for a week. We just packed in so many great experiences to the last 6 days that it will be fun to head home and share them with our family and friends.

My stepdaughter’s hockey team played really well and nearly won their tournament pool. More importantly, though, they worked well together and treated each other and the parents on the trip really well. They were friendly and upbeat and sociable.

Thanksgiving dinner for 1,000 hockey players and their families, in the massive ballroom at the J. W. Marriott was a highlight. All of the girls dressed up, and for those of us used to being home with families, it made the even seem special.

The parents were terrific too. They appreciated the planning that went into selecting a hotel. All helped drive girls to meals, and the conversation was friendly and easy.

In all, it was great fun to spend the holiday with a group of determined young people and the parents who love them. More things for which to be grateful.

I love Thanksgiving. It was my father’s favorite holiday, and it is mine. I think he liked it so much because it combined family, food, and church. It’s a great mix.

Yesterday, I thought about him virtually everywhere I went. We are in California for a field hockey tournament in which our child is playing with her club team. All games are played on perfectly groomed grass fields on the grounds of the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. They have 25 full-size fields, with games happening on all of them at once starting at 7:00 in the morning.

From the fields, which are ringed with palm trees, you see the Santa Rosa mountains in a full arc on three sides. Yesterday, during a rare day time rain storm, we saw a full rainbow and part of a double rainbow arced over the fields.

The level of play, from some of the best high school players in the country, was consistently astonishing. My father loved to watch his children play sports, and he loved to travel. He would have loved every minute.

I took a break in the middle of the morning to attend church, which was full of happy people. The children from the Sunday school acted as ushers and welcomed us all as we came through the doors. I thought of the years that dad taught the 3-year old class at our church, getting them to act out Noah loading the ark or the Nativity scene.

And my father loved to sing, how he loved it, hymns and church music especially, so when an 11-year old girl stepped forward to sing a solo, I could just feel how moved and delighted he would have been.

My dad has been gone a year and a half, but he felt close to me all day. I am very grateful.

We arrived in Palm Desert, California, yesterday for the Thanksgiving long weekend. Our daughter is playing in a field hockey tournament. I’ve written before that I love life on vacation, probably most of us do. Something about discovering new people and experiences gives me a shift in perspective that reminds me to be on the lookout for experiences to appreciate.

One of the best things about it is that my wife and I travel exceptionally well together. On the road, I have a better sense of how to accommodate her and make her life easier. Here, as always, she also encourages me to strike out on my own and enjoy myself.

This morning I walked up the street to a hotel where we ate last night. I had seen they had a nice fitness center, and I hoped to buy a day pass. When I got there at 6:00 this morning, the attendant at the fitness center, a really nice woman from the Indian reservation on which the hotel sits, apologized and told me that they only allow hotel guests. So I asked her whether there was another gym close by, and she told me there was a really nice one just a short drive away.

I walked back to the hotel, took the car, and drove to the new 24 Hour Fitness in Indio, California. It was the nicest gym I can remember using. It’s only been open 3 weeks, so it is state of the art and super clean. The staff there were exceptionally helpful, and I had a tremendous workout. I’ve felt great all day.

Last night was just the same. Some of the team parents, the coach of the club, and half the girls went to the hotel buffet next door. There were 18 of us, and we had an all you can eat dinner. Not only was the food outstanding, shockingly great, but the head chef came to the table when he heard there was a high school team in the restaurant. He thanked them personally for coming to the restaurant, and he wished them good luck in the tournament. When we left, he waited for us at the door and thanked us again.

The entire team and I have been thrilled with how well we have been treated by everyone. It is just great how friendliness begets more friendliness. It is already a marvelous Thanksgiving.

I’m at the airport, waiting for a delayed flight home from Chicago. It snowed here, today, very light flurries, and it made me wonder why I always love the first snow of winter with a full, childlike heart and then come to hate it by mid-winter. This year, I will try to love it for its beauty and take the inconvenience as only a temporary nuisance.

I’m exhausted. True to form, I stayed up past midnight last night working on PowerPoint slides for a customer meeting this morning. Then I got up early to finish them before a planning breakfast with colleagues. Less than an hour before we needed to take a taxi to the client’s headquarters, I had a file mishap and lost quite a bit of my work.

We looked at one another in horror, wondered out loud for three minutes what had happened, and then spread out to fix the problem as quickly as we could. It sounds like a small thing, but when we had regrouped and replaced 4 hours of work in 50 minutes, we all felt a little giddy. Effective collaboration has a way of doing that for me. It is just thrilling to be reminded whom you can count on when you hit a major setback.

The meeting went well, we had lunch and completed our meeting debrief, and then everyone scattered, leaving me alone to catch up on email and some projects I owed to people before heading to the airport.

To my surprise and delight, I finished quickly enough that I had time to swim in the hotel pool. If any of you are ever looking for a great place to stay in Chicago, the Intercontinental Hotel on Michigan Avenue has the most beautiful indoor pool I’ve ever seen at a city hotel. The pool itself is tiled with tiny, mosaic squares. The deep end is nearly 15-feet deep, the room in which it sits is decorated like a modern-day roman bath, and the pool itself is 25-yards long, large enough that a workout feels like a workout.

I swam a little more than half a mile and sat in the sauna for a few minutes before dressing and heading to Midway airport. To make matters even better, Midway’s Southwest terminal has Harry Cary’s restaurant where I ate pork chops, steamed broccoli, and a side of pasta with a basil-fragrant tomato sauce. Absolutely delicious.

So I have to say that the day rewarded me for my patience and hopefulness. My work friends were wonderful this morning, bringing me coffee, offering encouragement, and doing everything they could to help. It was an inspiring way to start the day, and the swim was a refreshing way to end it.

I feel blessed.

It’s eight days since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Usually I won’t blog on politics here, because I want to encourage a wide audience, but I am thrilled by the number of Republican observers who seem as awestruck as I by the historical significance of our finally looking past race in the election of a President.

It too me several months to recognize how inspiring Obama is as a leader, and when I did, I wondered that I didn’t see it all along. Maybe I have finally put down my skepticism of professional politicians and campaigns long enough to appreciate that hope has triumphed. I know that millions of people hoped for President Bush to win election, twice. What is different is that President-elect Obama somehow knew all along, for two years, that there were millions of Americans who wanted to believe in a brighter future, one in which large challenges can be tackled with large ideas.

Mostly, though, I have spent this past week gobbling up every scrap I could find about people who look at Obama and see the answer to their hopes: finally, an African-American; finally, a Hawaiian; finally, a man who grew up abroad; finally, a great orator; finally, a son of a single mother. He carries himself well, with dignity and sensitivity and intelligence.

And also with purpose. Much has been said about the high expectations for his presidency. We need so much right now. I am not troubled by the high expectations. One of President-elect Obama’s gifts is to inspire people to ask what they can do to help. It feels to me, at last, as if we are in this together. That is what I have wanted to believe.

I keep waking up happy.