Nat

It’s easy to complain about the cold (we’ve been down to -18F in Chicago today). But, I just read in the New York Times that the canals have frozen in the Netherlands for the first time in 12 years. This is a very big deal for the Dutch, who think of skating, according to the story, as “part of our soul.”

I’m thrilled for the Dutch, who have rushed out by the hundreds of thousands to skate on the canals, an old national tradition. Older Dutch are euphoric to relive their childhood memories. For many children, of course, this is a new experience. I imagine how happy, how full of wonder and surprise they must be to see their parents and their grandparents bursting with childlike excitement. How great to learn to be a child from your elders.

Just this morning I told friends that I have never really minded the bitter cold, at least on a sunny day, but that I don’t love it as much since I stopped having the chance to skate outside. And now I’m reading about a country able to skate outside, in spite of water pollution, in spite of global warming.

Can’t you imagine it, the wind pushing freezing tears from the corners of your eyes, your skates ripping into the hard, rough ice, the warmth returning to your feet in your skates as you work your legs and arms. If you are lucky, you hold a small child in front of you with both hands, feeling him feel the ice, the startling lack of friction and weight, as you glide untethered away from shore.

God bless winter.

There is probably a word for what I experienced last night. It is similar to an epiphany, the word that James Joyce revived to describe a transformational moment, in which you suddenly experience a profound insight about yourself and your life. It can hit you unexpectedly and without warning.

Last night, after my wife cooked a delicious dinner for a small group at her parents’ house, we came home to wrap presents. The three of us each took a room, Nina in her bedroom, Sarah in her study, and I in the living room with the Christmas tree. I turned on a CD of Diana Krall singing Christmas carols, plugged in the lights on the tree, and sat on the floor to wrap stocking gifts.

When I had finished wrapping, I put away the paper, ribbons, and tape in the attic and returned to the living room to sit in a chair and listen to the music. We live on a quiet street without street lights, and the neighbors at the back were away, so outside was silent except for the steady rain.

I sat right in front of the tree and gazed from one ornament to another, lingering mostly on the hand-painted, ceramic figures that my stepdaughter’s great-grandmother sent to her, every year at Christmas, and also at the hand-made ornaments that Nina herself brought home from school as a small child.

Christmas tree ornaments have a special, evocative power over me. They appear every year for a week or two and recall other Christmas Eves and Christmas mornings, first in your own childhood and then in your children’s. They are celebratory and colorful, and the best of them are simple. These favorites of mine are tiny reminders of our family’s joy and love.

The word I am looking for describes a brief, personal experience that allows you a sweet, simple appreciation that you are who you are, that there is nothing you would change.

You might call it a blessing.

More and more often, I’m finding that a good day includes successes in more than one area of my life. Today there are four areas to feel great about.

1. Job. I had to pull together a group of 7 people on very short notice to take a meeting with some people who had traveled half way across the country to meet with our company. Many of my colleagues pushed back their own priorities to accommodate the visit. I was grateful, and the company that traveled to meet us was grateful. There is nothing like a spirit of cooperation to make a group of people feel great.

2. Writing. Michael and I spent the late afternoon and evening working on a writing project that we have underway. Michael is great at organizing us, and he put together a chapter schedule for us a few weeks ago. Tonight we realized that we are a few weeks ahead of schedule. So far so good. Both of us have a sense of progress, and I have the satisfaction of not being a source of frustration over lateness. Another double win. I like getting the project done, and I like living up to Michael’s expectations.

3. Christmas cards. I may write an entire blog post on Christmas card writing. It’s often a two-month-long ordeal for me to get all of my cards written. In fact, it’s been 3 years since I finished an entire set. Last year I didn’t write any, though I did leave the stack of cards I received sitting on the floor of my study for 11 months, in case I was inspired to answer them. The great news is that I finally realized I could answer them by starting early on this year’s cards. So starting November 30, I’ve been writing two cards per night, before bedtime, and mailing them in the morning. Tonight I’ll write two more. At this rate, I will have made a good bite out of them by Christmas. Not only will I feel good about reaching out; I will also feel good about cleaning the pile off my floor for the first time since January.

4. Finances. Thanks to my wife, we had some good financial news today. She works hard and is very clever with money. She is always taking the pressure off us with her hard work. So often, I find myself thinking, my wife makes my life so easy and so pleasant.

Oh, and there was actually a 5th great thing. Last night, an old, dear friend of my found me on Facebook. I had been trying to think for a couple of years how to track her down and catch up with her. Last night, lo and behold, there she was in the Friend Requests. I was thrilled and have already swapped notes back and forth with her.

The good news snowballs. I love that any time, and especially this time of year when the days are short, and we’re starting to gear up for winter.

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.

Since my father died a year ago, I have become messier than ever before. The disorder I create around me reflects my inability to place everything where it belongs. Looking at the piles of papers, books, and clothes strewn around my desk, I realize that, for the moment, I know how to start things but not how to finish them. I could analyze this tendency, analyze myself, and conclude that I am shying away from endings. Maybe it is that simple.

I don’t really want to turn the page. Dropping items wherever I am lets me avoid finality of any kind.

But it’s also a nuisance. When I was very young, I looked around my bedroom one day and decided that I didn’t want to live in the middle of a mess. From that point until I married twenty-two years later, I carefully put everything away: clothes, papers, pens, books. I’ve lost that habit, lost it long before I lost my father. It’s just that I am more likely to look around at the mess I’ve made now and think, “I will never be able to clean this up.”

At the same time, there does come a point at which you say to yourself, “Enough.” There are other people who are bearing up under much more tormenting circumstances. Who am I really to let everything go?

My wife always tells me that the way you clean up a mess is to pick up one thing at a time. I have always known she was right about that. The trick is to go ahead and start.

Last night my mother and aunt hosted a dinner party to honor my grandmother, in lieu of a memorial service. In addition to my mother and aunt, we had two families who had been friends of my grandmother’s for decades, friendships that had started with the parents and grandparents of those present.

It was a really nice occasion on every level and especially entertaining because my grandmother’s lawyer, Pete, told a handful of amusing stories about my grandmother’s sense of what was proper and improper about his business attire when he visited her. Pete was the third generation of lawyers in his family who had served my grandmother, and he drew the hardest duty in being the last. Not only did he manage all of her finances for the last 3 years, but he also managed her health care appointments because all of us in the family live 3,000 miles away.

The man is a saint, patient, good natured, philosophical about the extent of his duties, right down to waiting with the body while the funeral home came to the apartment. We were all extremely fortunate that he was willing to shoulder the responsibility.

My grandmother was demanding and particular, but she was also grateful and gracious towards those who assisted her. She lived long enough to appreciate those on whom she had to depend.

The other family included the surviving son of my grandmother’s best friend and his wife. They are very busy people, with substantial business and philanthropic responsibilities, and they are leaving tomorrow for a Hawaiian vacation. In some sense, this dinner was a duty, but they all performed it with lighthearted grace and kindness.

It was a wonderful tribute to my grandmother, to her indomitability and character that these friends have remained faithful for 50-70 years. It was also a tribute to their constancy to her and to us, the kind of support that we can’t ever repay.

Today I did some work cleaning up my grandmother’s apartment. She passed away in January. She had an amazing life, living almost to 100 and remaining in her own apartment to the very end. It was a good life for her, I think.

Cleaning up the apartment was bittersweet. Because she kept such an orderly home and because she kept to a tight routine in her later years, her apartment looked as if she had just stepped out to run an errand, except only for the plants, which hadn’t been watered in three weeks. I tried my best to revive the seven African violets, which lined the window in her study.

Mainly I looked for keys, threw away dead plants and food from the freezer, and visited with my memories as I dusted and opened drawers. As hard as it is to visit a loved one’s home after the owner is gone, there is a ready barrage of reminders of what we shared.

What really struck me, though, were the conversations I had with the manager and superintendent of my grandmother’s apartment building. When I thanked them for all they had done to help my grandmother continue to live in their building at the end of her life, they both told me how much they loved her and how difficult it was to have her gone.

That is the great lesson from today, and the abiding joy: there are kind people in this world, and they will go out of their way to help you do what you couldn’t do on your own. Love is quite a legacy.

For the last two days, my family and I have played tennis on vacation with several strangers, and the experience has been great. Players of all ages and skill levels have been polite, encouraging, and friendly to all of us. It has made the games great fun, while still providing a competitive outlet.

I’ve been saying friends whom I’ve called on the phone, that it is easy to be happy and friendly on vacation, but the point is that meeting friendly people always makes me feel good about my life and about humanity in general.

One lesson my parents taught me over and over when I was young was that it’s always smart to make it easy for people to be nice to you. They reminded me that good manners, helpfulness, and sociability combine to make a likable person, and they demonstrated by their own behavior that making an effort to be friendly all of the time made our home and their workplaces better.

Our family vacation this week is teaching the same lesson to my stepdaughter, but she has known it for years. I was proud yesterday when an older gentleman complimented my stepdaughter on how pleasant she was to play with.