Dear Friends and Family,
It is the day after Christmas and our house, with open door policy in affect, is intermittently full of boys ages 6-11 running in and out bragging about who got what cool gift: iPOD shuffles, PS2 w/ secret invincibility codes, air hockey tables, retro 70’s athletic warm up clothes, heelys (shoes – skates really – w/ wheels in the sole) and debating the existence of Santa. J This gang of about a dozen boys go to school together, play baseball together, battle evil forces on Xbox and PS and have one sleep over after another - together. The good news for parents is that eventually an evening with no kids will arrive at someone’s house.
Again this past Spring our boys played baseball in the not-so-rainy Spring season, but not soccer which takes place in Autumn when the NW gets torrential sideways rain for weeks on end. Soccer Moms here do duty in the mud, wind and rain. L The Spring baseball season saw Mint change his pitching release a bit from previous successful years resulting in elevation issues that decreased his accuracy to 50-60%. His lateral control still spot on meant that he, unlike his mates, never hit a batter. Nice if you are a batter, but the sound and sight of his pitches slamming into the wooden backstop –THWACK! – and the disappointment on his face afterward is etched in my mind. Despite lots of advice he just never sorted it out. Fortunately for his ego, he did a great job as catcher throwing out kids at third, first and even home with deft tosses back to the pitcher. He remains a pretty cool character under pressure. This was born out when he calmly called out to me from the toilet one day after a game “Dad – there’s red stuff coming out when I pee. Is it blood?” “Yikes, I think – blood? that can’t be good!” A look over his shoulder confirms it. “Not to worry”, I say. “Probably from that hit you took today in the game. We’ll go see the doctor tomorrow.” However, after a regular ultrasound, an ultrasound with catheterization by cute nurses to deliver a bladder imaging chemical via the urethra and an MRI, we discovered only that one kidney is 25% the size of the other. None of this helped resolve the blood in urine mystery and none of the doc’s thought it came from the game whacking he took stealing second. However, it did help us decide that, even though he loves playing front yard football with his mates, he should probably not play organized football when he goes to 6th grade and middle school next year
Graham - at 9 and true to Dad’s genes - is not exactly the consummate athlete, but we encourage him to play some sort of team sport for the experience of friendships it offers. So he once again started baseball season unable to throw the long ball without spinning to the ground in a malformed pirouette. This was quite a funny site making us all crack up in laughter, but also frustrating for him when older brother does it so easily. By seasons’s end though his coaches, Mother, Father and brother had helped him improve drastically. He was no longer falling down and could catch 60% of the throws to him. He even got to pitch once in a game although he admitted afterward that it had looked easier when someone else was doing it. In his first year of kid pitch he took a ball in the left kidney and was adamant that this year he was not going to play because “that really hurt!” So we gave him the option of playing soccer. Fortunately, rather than have his parents stand in the cold rain of soccer season, he decided on baseball and the possibility that he might take a stinging hardball in the back.
This Fall Graham started piano lessons and Mint went back to drum lessons. As with baseball Mint is just more talented. In spite of rhythmic and tonal challenges, Graham really enjoyed playing the piano and with a metronome his notes turned into sweet single finger music which thoroughly pleased him and me. On the trap set Mint continues to quickly figure out syncopated rhythms. Like Graham watching other kids pitch the drumming doesn’t look that difficult to me, but no matter how often I try I cannot play those limb challenging syncopations. In mathematics Graham maintains bragging rights over his older brother, but is still challenged with phonetics and reading. Undaunted by his parent’s hang-ups with his reading he took up the Tolken “Lord of The Rings” series. He also is a much better runner than Mint completing a 5k this year in hare-like fashion: run ahead, rest, repeat.
Donna worked hard again this past year on an auction to raise funds for homeless shelters and as chair of Trustees at church where she oversaw painting of our 6000 sq ft, 3 story high Sanctuary. I’d say the politics of all of this literally wore her out. In general repairing “sacred” religious structures and helping the “undesirable” homeless types brings out weird and irrational passions from both sponsors and folk who hate religion and the homeless. Still a successful tenure provided her opportunity to retire for a few years, but the same politics of church business emboldened her to continue joking about being Mayor when we retire of
The boys again spent time on the farm with their grandparents and we joined for a few weeks. Of note was a backpack trip with my Dad to the Hike Inn in
I had another great year at work, but the praise band I played in for the past four years at church finally folded and I went back to singing tenor in the choir. Not quite as challenging, but still a nice artistic release and different enough from science to relax. At work six of us from the lab spent a couple of weeks in
Complaining more than once in past years to my Dad about the neo-conservatives running DC, he wisely reminded me “The American People will decide when things need changing”. It seems they were recently so inclined and in part perhaps because people like Colin Powell among other ex-W cabinet members with moral authority finally began to speak out against a President who over spent his much ballyhoo’d “political capital”. As a former general, sworn to protect the constitution, this must have been pretty difficult for him and likely why it took he and others so long. Thankfully though, the country now seems to be re-centering. If Congress can really work together, then there is some chance that more of our tax $ will be spent for “homeland” projects like the bill to protect our ports that recently passed which, though imperfect, will spawn technological innovation and jobs. I’ll end on this positive note of hope for country and world that our politicians will talk with and not at each other!
Wishing you a Prosperous New Year from Seattle - Dave, Donna, Mint and Ham.
