Father ' s Day, and some milestone birthdays

My son Sean and his wife Michelle reached me Sunday via Skype and gave me the Father's Day present of watching my grandson Jack in real time while he was a thousand miles away in Los Angeles. Jack has learned to reach out and "tickle" via Skype. Sean and Michelle both act and write and do improv and it's already clear that Jack, not yet two, will be joining the troupe. You know I use Skype to broadcast live from home on Tannya Joaquin's 5 p.m. newscast, but it was installed for me and Sunday was the first time I knew the picture could be enlarged to fill the screen. Usually I'm fixated on the dot that is the camera as I try to explain stuff to you. My own father, who called me before I could call him, confirmed he is flying into Honolulu for a weeklong visit that will be, in his own words, "my last hurrah." After visiting Bernadette and me, he will fly to San Francisco, rent a car, and drive home to Maryland cross-country. On March 31 my dad turned 90. He's hard of hearing and talks louder than some people would like, and he has a variety of medical conditions -- "Old age isn't for sissies," he says -- but he's still got all his marbles and actually feels better at 90 than he did at 80 because his doctor changed a couple of drugs that weren't good for him. I'll bet you know a senior or two with that complaint. Dad turning 90 is just one of three milestone birthdays in my mainland family this year. Sean turns 40 on July 4, and my daughter Leina'ala turns 30 on October 15. Bernadette's two daughters Lauren and Vanessa and son David are younger. Their milestone birthdays are still to come. One birthday I left out is my own. On Friday of this week I will turn 56. Even with my leg still healing from the infection that ravaged it in March, I feel a lot younger than 56. This doesn't surprise me since Dad feels younger than 90. Choose your parents wisely. Reaching "middle age" while still young can be confusing from time to time. For example, I work with several people who are younger than my daughter, but Leina'ala is still my little girl while the others are my colleagues. Sometimes I feel like the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," who lives his life out of order. The only practical significance of being older is having more experience, but what experience? I can tell Steve and Grace how things work on Capitol Hill and how to find your way back to San Marco in Venice if you get lost, but I've never surfed or golfed or been to Alabama, and there are a thousand other experiences that they have but I don't. Most days, being "senior" to my colleagues has little effect except that my age is one more things to make jokes about (they never do, which is kind, but I do, since I make jokes about everything) and sometimes I get some freedom to act as see fit that might not be extended to me otherwise. That's fun. I pity people who, by the time they get that respect, are too dessicated to enjoy it. Dad and Sean and I all enjoy life as it comes, understanding you need to live in the moment AND look forward to the future AND seek out the happiness we have saved from the past. I know Jack will. I hope you do, too.

Comments

[j.k.]

Hear, hear. Happy Early Birthday!

[Judy Guffey]

I wish you hau'oli la hanau.....and thank you for brightening my morning each weekday...now I must remember to listen to your music show on NPR on Saturday mornings.

Aloha.

[Paulette]

Hau`oli la hanau - have a great day and weekend on the Big Island!
Keep up the good writing -- absolutely love your blog...and your work with KGMB9.