Tag: memories

Having It All

I sat at my desk, struggling to stay awake.

It was just past lunchtime. The early morning adrenaline had worn off. The food I’d consumed had yet to digest.

My eyelids felt heavy, and I was tempted to let them fall. But I couldn’t.

For I was on the clock. There was work to be done and meetings to attend. A snooze wasn’t in the cards.

I thought back – way back – to my days in Pre-K. Right around this time of day, the teachers would set up mats on the ground. I’d lie on a mat until a wave of drowsiness came over me. Then I’d descend into a peaceful slumber.

I really had it all back then, I thought.

But that statement was nothing more than a delusion.

In the late 1980s, audiences went wild for a movie called Big.

In the film, a 12-year-old named Josh ambles up to a fortune teller machine at an amusement park. Josh makes a solitary wish. He asks the machine if he could be big.

Josh wakes up the next day appearing like an adult, even though he is still a boy. This disconnect leads to a series of adventures tailor-made for Hollywood.

Many people consider Big to be an iconic movie. And I am one of them.

Although though I first encountered the film years after its release, I still found it resonant. Particularly the scene with the fortune teller machine.

You see, I remembered a similar moment in my own childhood. Only mine didn’t appear at an amusement park. It came during naptime.

Yes, each day, as I lay down on a mat in my Pre-K classroom, I had but one thought.

I can’t wait until I don’t have to do this anymore.

I was through with being patronized.

I wanted to ride in the passenger seat of the car. I wanted to be able to drink a beer. I wanted to be able to sit on the back patio, talking with houseguests late into the evening.

These were all things I saw my parents do. But I they were off limits to me.

I was stuck in the car seat buckled into the back row. I was stuck drinking Coca-Cola – if my parents let me have a soda at all. I was stuck with that 8 PM bedtime.

And I was separated from my parents for most hours of the day. Sequestered in a Pre-K classroom, with a mandatory afternoon nap.

I knew deep down that this arrangement wasn’t eternal. Someday, it would all be different.

But I was sick of waiting for someday to come. So, each afternoon, I spent naptime longing for my future.

Yes, my wish was the same as Josh’s in Big. But the results were far less instantaneous.

My mind was still deep in my past when my head bumped softly against the desk. Despite my best efforts, the urge to nap was winning.

I felt a stiffness in my neck and a strain in my lower back. I couldn’t even rest these days without risking injury.

My desire to pile into Doc Brown’s DeLorean was never stronger. I wanted to go back in time and shake my 4-year-old self into submission.

You fool! Stop complaining! Some of us would dream of being you!

But that would be disingenuous.

Truth be told, some of what the younger me yearned for was worth the wait. Finding my way to the passenger seat of the car was enthralling during my pre-teen and early adolescent years. Staying up late and drinking beer were exhilarating during my first years on my own in the real world. (Although I kicked both habits not long after that.)

And adulthood, for all its flaws, has proven to be a worthwhile destination. I cherish the freedom and control I now possess. It’s everything a young boy dreamed of, and more.

So why was I now yearning to go backward with the same fervor that my earlier self yearned to go forward? Did I miss the turn for utopia somewhere between then and now? Or was that destination never even on the map?

The second explanation seems more likely.

I never really had it all. Not in the way I imagined.

How could I?

I’ve been in flux for all my decades on this earth. My body has evolved. My mind has expanded. My priorities have shifted.

The world has also shifted over time. Trends have come and gone. Opportunities have opened and closed. Possibilities have appeared and vanished.

To have it all, I’d need to hit a moving target – all while I was myself in motion. That would be a tough feat to manage, let alone sustain.

I need to give myself some more grace for missing the mark. More than that, I should be grateful for such an outcome.

So must we all.

In 2005, Tom Brady sat down for an interview on 60 Minutes.

Brady had a lot going for him at the time. He was in his late 20s, he was dating a Hollywood actress, and he had already won three Super Bowl championships as the New England Patriots quarterback.

Some would say that Tom Brady had it all. But he wasn’t saying that.

When the interviewer asked which championship ring was his favorite, Brady calmly stated The next one.

Yes, despite all his accomplishments, Tom Brady was on a mission. A mission to get more out of himself and his team. A mission to expand his excellence.

The results of that mission are now legendary. Brady played 18 more seasons after that interview. He broke the National Football League’s all-time passing yards record. He won the league’s Most Valuable Player award three times. And he appeared in seven more Super Bowls, winning four of them.

If Brady had stopped and smelled the roses, would he have become the greatest American football player of all time? Maybe. But I doubt it.

That continual quest for the missing piece was what made Tom Brady Tom Brady. It gave him the motivation and discipline to doggedly pursue excellence – even as he started to line up against defenders half his age.

Brady refused to let time or circumstance define him. He was the one taking control of the narrative.

It’s a lesson we’d all be wise to follow.

For while might not spend our days evading 250-pound linebackers, we will undoubtedly contend with the disruptive forces of life. What it gives us and what it takes from us along our journey.

If we try to solely corral what’s been given to us, we’re condemned to disappointment. We’re bound to be bitter about the sins of our past, the barrenness of our present, or the hopelessness of tomorrow. Maybe even all three.

But if we stop searching for utopia – if we let go of the illusion of having it all – we just might make the most of the duality in our midst. We just might roll with the punches and bring continual improvement to our lives – no matter the circumstances.

This is a path worth following. This is a destination worth pursuing. It’s on us to take the first step.

We never had it all. And thank God for that.

Faded Glory

It was so much better back then.

This is the great lament. The pang of regret, of longing, of melancholy nostalgia that eats at many of us from time to time.

When the present seems uncertain or uncomfortable, it’s all too natural to look backward. To rewind to a moment that seems more familiar and less scary. To gaze upon the shiny glow of that moment and believe in its superiority.

But as the saying goes, All that glitters is not gold.

When I look at the world around me, I tend to take the long view.

After all, the structures around us are built to last. Highways, homes and infrastructure have been designed to stand the test of time. And the average life expectancy in the developed world is going up too.

Yes, there are notable exceptions to these standard measures. But on the whole, things seem to be designed for the long-haul. And so, I focus on how we can continue to better ourselves over an extended time period.

But even as I stare toward the horizon, I’m keenly aware of what lies 6 inches from my nose. The short-term might not be my main focus, but it still matters.

In recent times, that fact has been more evident than ever.

A dangerous virus has forced us to upend our patterns of social interaction. A recession has left millions without an income. And longstanding tensions from race relations and political divisiveness have threatened to boil over.

The sun may still be shining in America. But it’s been hard to feel the warm glow.

As I’ve watched the short-term outlook deteriorate, I’ve found myself yearning for better days. Not in the uncertain future. But in the distant past.

I’ve found myself nostalgic for the 1990s.

The 1990s. What a time it was.

I was only a kid back then, but I recall things being harmonious. There didn’t seem to be as imminent threats out there. And there didn’t appear to be as much division and despair as what’s commonplace these days.

We could just live back then. At least that’s the way I remember it.

But take a wider view, and it’s clear that my rosy memories of that era are incomplete.

For one thing, there was still plenty of division. It was just underground. The Internet as we know it was in its nascent stages. And with no social media channels or smartphones, it was all but impossible for the divisive bickering of that era to reach today’s levels of public consciousness.

For another thing, there was plenty of despair to be found. While the United States government was running a budget surplus, unemployment numbers were often still above 5 percent. Plenty of people were poor, hungry and without a path to a better tomorrow. The angst that bands like Nirvana channeled in their music those days was real.

But these facts weren’t hitting me in the face at that time. For I was in a middle-class household under the care of  attentive parents. I was insulated from the darkness of those days.

Well, mostly.

My family did get the print version of the New York Times. And on my way to scanning the sports section, I would see the front page headlines.

The partisan bitterness during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Instances of racial profiling amongst the New Jersey state troopers. The horrific murder of James Byrd, who was chained to a pickup truck by racists in rural Texas and dragged for nearly three miles.

I would look at these stories in horror. But after a day or two, the routine of life would kick in — school, homework, family dinner — and I would forget all about the ugliness that lurked all around me.

There is no blissful ignorance. Not anymore.

Recent events have laid bare the disharmony of life. The gulf of distrust between us. The presence of vile hatred in pockets of society. And the inequality of opportunity.

In the past several years, we’ve been asked to part with our rooted assumptions. To change our behavior in order to promote equity and ensure safety.

We should be up for the challenge. After all, this task has been asked of us for the entirety of the millennium. Or at least since the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

And yet, we’d still rather escape to a rosy memory than tackle the beast in our midst.

Even as that rosy memory remains illustrative fiction.

Hindsight may be 20-20. But the benefit of clarity comes at the cost of context.

It may be easy to look back on a previous era and call it friendlier. But if we could hop in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and travel back there, the situation on the ground would look much different.

I may be look happily on the 1990s now. But truth be told, I wasn’t all that happy back then. I was saddled with anxiety and battling depression. My joyful memories help hide the acute pain I felt in that moment.

And I wasn’t alone. Plenty of people with more life experience than me were also miserable. And they yearned for an era that had passed them by. Even in the afterglow of the Iron Curtain’s collapse, many didn’t feel the present was a step forward.

This pattern has continued to perpetuate. In the social media age, people like to brand each year the Worst Year Ever. This branding stuck in 2009, when Michael Jackson died unexpectedly and a recession decimated the economy. But such a moniker also stuck in 2010, 2011, 2012, and so on.

In the fog of the moment, we are incapable of finding the right does of perspective. And that can become a major problem.

The moment now facing us is unprecedented.

It’s uncomfortable to have to abandon such hallmarks as social interaction or in-person entertainment. It’s disconcerting to think that a trip to a grocery store could ultimately kill us. And it’s excruciating to stumble through the mist with no idea when this moment will be over.

Just about no one is looking at this era with a smile on their face.

But we can do better than seeking an escape.

We can search for the silver linings. We can build for a brighter future. We can focus on our actions and mute our laments.

We can reshape our situation in a manner we can be proud of for years to come.

Nothing’s stopping us from doing this. Nothing but ourselves.

So, let’s break free of the hamster wheel.

The past might be comforting. But the present is still being written. And the future is up for grabs.

Let’s seize the moment.

On To China

When I was 10 years old, my parents did something crazy.

They took our family on a month-long trip to China.

Now, on the face of it, this might not sound so outlandish. People go on exotic vacations all the time. And China is an emergent tourist destination, filled with the capitalist façade of the western world — particularly in the years since it hosted the 2008 Olympics.

But this was in 1998. And it was the first trip outside the United States for both me and my sister, who was 7 at the time.

So, yeah. It was pretty crazy.

The unusual decision my parents made becomes more sensible with context.

When I was six months old, my parents hosted a young woman from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, who had emigrated to the U.S. with a Green Card. She became an integral part of our family, quickly gaining the honorary title of “Chinese sister.” She served as my babysitter initially, and later attended college in Vermont.

After graduation, she landed a position with JP Morgan in Hong Kong. Yet, she would make the long trek back to New York at least once a year to visit us.

After a few years, she approached my parents with a novel proposal. What it we all rendezvoused in China?

Hong Kong had been transferred from British to Chinese rule by then, enabling easier travel between the mainland and the territory. So, our Chinese sister could travel with us on much of our journey. She also offered to cover the round-trip plane tickets for my sister and myself — which was no small feat.

The plan was set. It was on to China.

In the weeks before our journey to the Far East, I felt anxious. I had only ventured outside of the Northeast twice, and one of those trips happened when I was too young to remember it. I had only been on an airplane a handful of times, and never for more than 6 hours. And I knew nothing of life outside of the U.S., aside from what I’d seen in a few movies.

My father tried to reassure me, but he was also brutally honest about what to expect. He said that instead of toilets, some Chinese restrooms just had holes in the ground to squat over. (This turned out to be true, but not on a wide scale.) He said that not everyone in China would understand English. (This was a massive understatement.) And he said many restaurants would not have forks. (This also turned out to be true, so we brought a reusable plastic silverware kit with us.)

All of this only exacerbated my anxiety, so I tried not to think about the trip until I was en route. That was probably for the best, because I had no idea what I was in for.

The journey started with a cross-country flight to San Francisco. After a day venturing around the City by the Bay, we got on a 2 AM flight to South Korea.

The Transpacific flight felt like an eternity. I stayed awake the entire time, watching the GPS tracker on the overhead TV screens and looking down at the clouds and the ocean below. By the time we landed in Seoul, I was exhausted. Yet, the morning sun was blinding, so I forced myself to stay awake after our subsequent flight to Beijing took off.

After a couple more hours of staring out an airplane window at the sea and sky, I heard an announcement from the captain asking us to prepare for landing. I was confused, because all I saw around us was a giant cloud. Surely, we couldn’t be about to land. Could we?

We descended through the cloud, and I heard the landing gear deploy. At the last second, the clouds cleared and I saw the runway come into view. We touched down safely and the plane taxied over to a dilapidated airport terminal.

Welcome to China.

I would soon learn that the cloud the airplane had descended through was no cloud at all. It was actually haze from China’s rampant pollution.

That haze never really subsided. During our week in Beijing, there was sunshine in the forecast on all but one day (when it rained). But I never saw blue skies. It just looked dreary and overcast.

I had never seen such thick pollution before. And I’ve yet to see it since.

But the haze was only the tip of the iceberg. After we got to the hotel from the airport, my sister and I took a nap. Suddenly, our mother woke us up, insisting that we go for an afternoon walk to adjust to the time change. It was on this walk that I noticed how different things looked.

There were no glass skyscrapers in our midst. The city buildings looked old and uniform. So did the vehicles roaming the massive boulevards, which were six lanes in each direction.

Crossing the street was an adventure, as drivers seemed to ignore traffic laws at will. We had to join a throng of people to cross some streets, and use underground pedestrian walkways to cross others.

I got the keen sense that we had not only traveled to a new land, but had also traveled back in time. There was a very 1950s feel about 1990s Beijing.

The subsequent days were full of misadventures. We took a Chinese tour bus for a day trip — even though no one on the bus spoke English, and none of us spoke Mandarin. I passed out from dehydration while climbing the Great Wall in the nearly 100 degree heat. And my father argued with a cab driver who didn’t start the meter on his taxi. It turns out the restaurant we were heading to was around the corner, and the taxi driver didn’t want to charge us what amounted to a 5 cent fare.

But ultimately, the strangest thing for me was posing for pictures with strangers. Many people in Beijing had not ever seen an American kid before. One by one, they asked my sister and I to pose for pictures with their children — some in broken English, others through the form of vehement gesturing that transcends language barriers. After a day of this, I felt like Mickey Mouse.

Beijing was an eye-opening experience for me. But there were plenty more surprises to come.

I have no idea what the typical tourist trail was in China in 1998, but I imagine it would include visits to Beijing, Shanghai and the Great Wall.

Our itinerary was different, for two main reasons.

First, we were obliged to travel to Inner Mongolia to meet our Chinese sister’s family.

Second, we had all grown fond of the Sesame Street movie Big Bird In China, in which the iconic bird with the obnoxious voice travels off the beaten path to explore China’s hidden beauty.

So, with these objectives in mind, we broke from the standard tourist script. Instead of boarding a flight to Shanghai, we took an overnight train to Inner Mongolia’s capital, Hohhot.

Hohhot was a prairie outpost compared to Beijing. Yet, in a nation of more than a billion people, even the smaller cities loomed large. Broad boulevards stretched for miles on end, the bike lanes as wide as the main lanes. And apartment buildings stretched as far as the eye could see.

Our Chinese sister’s parents lived in a modest apartment 15 minutes from the center of town. The apartment’s bathroom didn’t have a dedicated shower in the bathroom — just a shower head near the ceiling and a drain in the floor. So, we had to plan out when we were washing up, and when we were taking care of other business.

Sometimes, neither option was available. There were rolling power and water outages; electricity and water pressure were rarely functioning at the same time.

Some of these outages might have come from Hohhot’s daily afternoon thunderstorms, but I believe poor infrastructure played a role as well. After all, the preferred way to remove garbage in Hohhot was to put it in a neighbor’s backyard. That neighbor would then move it to another neighbor’s yard, and so on.

Behind the apartment, contractors worked day and night to build a massive new complex. In the week we were in Hohhot, these workers completed an entire floor. This amount of progress would be seemingly unthinkable back in the U.S., where construction projects seemed to languish for months in the 1990s.

Aside from these tidbits, my most vivid memory from our time in Inner Mongolia was our trip to the grasslands. We took a two-hour car ride into the most remote scenery I’ve ever encountered. Rolling, grassy pastures stretched out to the horizon in every direction, and there was nary a tree in sight. Puffy clouds dropped small shadows on parts of the landscape. Shadows that danced and drifted as the clouds moved across the sky.

We set up in a Yurt — a fortified Mongolian tent with an open roof — and then went on a long horseback ride across the grasslands. Unfortunately, I got heatstroke on the ride, and had to return to the Yurt to recuperate. I slept for 12 hours, missing the spectacle that evening when my father got drunk on a potent barley liquor.

I had never seen my father drunk before, so I was quite confused when I woke up the next morning and noticed he was not acting like himself. My mother alternated between taking care of him and tending to me. I was still feeling the effects of dehydration, so the car ride back to Hohhot was harrowing. But once we got back to the city, we found our form in short order.

Just in time, too. We had a train to catch.

Our next stop on our China tour was Datong. Home to iconic attractions, such as a cave filled with chiseled Buddha statues and a monastery suspended from a cliff, Datong was nonetheless the most backwater city we visited. The streets were barren of the shopping malls I’d seen in Beijing and Hohhot. There weren’t many restaurants. And our hotel was horrid.

Datong was very much a coal town. Dump trucks would barrel by me on the street, covering me in soot. It also seemed quite poor. Homeless people wearing soiled rags begged for change outside the train station, and some of the homeless were women with young children. I had never seen this level of poverty before. It was jarring.

After a few days in Datong, we took an overnight train to Xian. Home to the Terra Cotta warriors — a massive phalanx of porcelain soldiers an ancient emperor commissioned to protect him in the afterlife — Xian was the place where I discovered the phenomenon that is KFC in China. We paid the Colonel a visit so my sister and I could get a taste of home. But we quickly learned that finding a seat in the restaurant would be a difficult proposition. It was strange to see a fast-food joint so packed, but it was also refreshing to see how there was some food the Chinese and I both enjoyed.

Upon leaving Xian, we flew to Guilin in the southern part of the country. Guilin was perched along the winding Li River, surrounded by rice paddies in the shadow of scenic mountains with rounded tops. Big Bird had once visited this area. Now, we were seeing it with our own eyes.

As we cruised in a boat down the Li River to the village of Yangshao, I couldn’t help but think that the scenery was even more beautiful in person than it was on a VHS tape. For the first time in three weeks of travels, I felt comfortable and relaxed in the Far East.

Those happy vibes went away by dinnertime, however. As we sat at a sidewalk restaurant in Yangshao, I noticed that dog and snake were on the menu. I thought it might have been a bad translation to English at first. But then I noticed a caricature of a snake next to the snake dish, and a picture of Snoopy next to the dog item. This was no accident.

I had heard before that people in other countries eat dogs, but seeing it listed on the menu still rattled me. Frankly, it still does today.

Yet, aside from that issue, Guilin and Yangshao were among the more memorable segments of the trip for me. It was the point in the journey where I finally found some inner peace.

The final stop in our journey was Hong Kong. It was refreshing to hear English again, and to see a modern skyline. The weather was hot and steamy, but the city was picturesque, with skyscrapers and a mountain peak rising up from the harbor.

Since the elevation on Hong Kong Island changed so drastically, many people took a series of outdoor escalators from the high-rise apartments up the mountain to the Central Business District. We were staying in our Chinese sister’s apartment on the mountainside, so we rode the escalators right along with the natives when we went sightseeing.

Our time in Hong Kong was jam-packed with activities. We took a speedboat to the then-Portuguese colony of Macau for a day, had dinner on a floating restaurant on a boat anchored offshore, and made an ill-fated trip to an amusement park on a 102 degree day, among other things. All in all, it was the perfect way to end the trip.

As we took the long train ride back to the Hong Kong airport, I was filled with dread. I had come to enjoy my time in China, and was not looking forward to 18 more hours on a plane. Truthfully, I was no longer sure what was real and what was not anymore. Did my life before our trip to China exist? Or was it a figment of my imagination?

After a short flight to Seoul and a much longer flight to New York, I was back in America. The humid summer night air felt hauntingly familiar, everything looked the same as it did before we left. The skyline, the cars, our house, they were all the same as it had been a month before. If not for the pile of New York Times sports sections I’d asked my grandparents to collect for me while I was gone, there would be no sign I’d even left.

I was elated, overwhelmed and confused. I broke down and cried.

I have traveled abroad plenty in the years since our China trip, although I haven’t had my passport stamped for more than a decade now.

I’ve been to Europe and the Middle East. I’ve been to three countries in South America. And I’ve crossed the border to Canada and Mexico.

Yet, I have not returned to the Far East since that seminal journey in 1998.

I know China is far a different place now than it was then. South Korea and Japan, as well. Heading to Asia now would be an entirely different journey than it was before.

Maybe that’s why I have little desire to go.

You see, the trip to China impacted me in ways I can’t fully explain.

I recognized that the moment I came back home and started sobbing. The world hadn’t changed, but my understanding of it certainly had.

Despite all my anxiety about traveling, despite my refusal to eat many of the strange meals , despite my bouts with heatstroke and dehydration, the experience had been invaluable.

Seeing a starkly different place — one filled with poverty, polluted with coal dust and saddled with poor infrastructure — made me recognize just how fortunate I was to enjoy the trappings of American life. Even if those trappings were a blue sky overhead and an electric grid that worked 24-7.

The China of today isn’t saddled with many of the issues it once was. So my experience was as much one of time as it was of place.

I am keenly aware of this fact. And I am appreciative of the time I spent on the other side of the Pacific.

I wouldn’t have done what my parents did. If I were a parent in the 1990s, I wouldn’t have taken my kids to China for their maiden international voyage.

But looking back, I sure am glad they did.

The Ballpark Odyssey

I recently completed a journey to visit every operating Major League Baseball stadium.

It was quite an undertaking — one I’ve dubbed the Ballpark Odyssey. My travels took me to 37 ballparks over 18 years — including all 30 current Major League ballparks.

This odyssey allowed me to experience the timeless wonder of Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field. It introduced me to the modern gems that are Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Baltimore’s Camden Yards. It took me from Seattle to Miami, San Diego to Detroit and everywhere in between. Heck, it even led me north of the border to Toronto.

I did far more than watch baseball along the way. Indeed, I got to sample regional ballpark cuisine at nearly every stop. I got to sing Roll Out the Barrel with the hometown fans in Milwaukee and clap along to Deep in the Heart of Texas between innings here at home. Most of all, I got to enjoy the American summer tradition of going to a Major League Baseball game in every venue that offers the experience.

As I reflect back on this achievement, I think of all I’ve learned along the way. I started out as a kid who loved to watch baseball and ended up as a man who loves all that America has to offer. Getting to experience all of our nation’s great cities and meet some of the people who call them home has been a tremendous blessing, one that has helped me understand our nation far better than I once did.

I also think of everyone I shared these ballpark experiences with. For while I did go to a couple of ballparks solo, I was generally accompanied by family and friends. In particular, I think of my father, who inspired me to go on this journey in the first place and frequently joined me on mini-trips to “cross some ballparks off the list.”

But most of all, I think of the memories that I made as I got ever closer to achieving my goal. Memories such as:

  • The blustery Sunday afternoon I spent with my sister and a close friend in the last row of Wrigley Field. It was a bit too chilly to enjoy my Old Style beer, but that was one of the best days of my life.
  • The game at Detroit’s Comerica Park where a man in our section convinced my dad to get a Coney Island and then taught him the proper way to eat it.
  • The time my mother insisted on getting club level seats at Camden Yards, simply because it had an air-conditioned concourse.
  • The evening when my cousin and I got upgraded from the upper deck to third row seats at San Diego’s Petco Park. (Thanks again for that, Travis!)
  • The fateful night when the Yankees and Mariners got into a benches-clearing brawl at Seattle’s Safeco Field.

I don’t remember the scores of all the ballgames I went to, but I’ll never forget these experiences.

That’s what it’s all about. And it’s why my now-completed Ballpark Odyssey is something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.

The Grill Brigade

Describe an accomplishment you’re proudest of.

I’ve come across this statement several times — often in a professional setting.

Having held positions at three different companies throughout my adult life, I’ve become adept at answering this question in a manner that conveys my passion and devotion to my career.

The accomplishments I’ve described — either on an application form or in an interview — have helped open doors to new opportunities. And they are things I’m immensely proud of.

But not proudest of.

You see, if I were to answer this question with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (so help me God), it would do nothing for me professionally.

That’s because the accomplishment I’m proudest of is the weekly football tailgate I organized in college.

***

Football season is back. As crisp fall days make their triumphant return, so many of us are thinking about gridiron traditions — rivalry games, packed stadiums and miles of tailgaters filling the air with smoke from charcoal and propane grills.

As much as I love the game of football itself, those tailgating scenes are what captivate me like nothing else.

There’s something about the smell of burgers and brats in the air, something about the sight of thousands of people cooking out in a parking lot, that just gets me, every time. It doesn’t matter if I head to the game on a full stomach — that scene never ceases to make me hungry.

At first, these tailgating scenes were torture. My family didn’t have a strong football-watching tradition growing up, and when I went to NFL games with my father in high school, we didn’t bring a grill with us. My father couldn’t justify doing all that preparation and cooking just for two people, and his reasoning was sound. But the smell of grills throughout the long walk to the stadium was like a siren song, leaving me feeling empty and jealous.

“Someday, I’ll have my own tailgate,” I told myself.

***

When the University of Miami announced its football team would be moving to the Miami Dolphins’ stadium for my junior year of college, I saw an opportunity.

While so many fellow Hurricanes fans were (justifiably) lamenting the loss of the historic Orange Bowl — hallowed grounds for so many moments in The U’s dynasty years, including a college-record 58 game home winning streak — I was focused on what surrounded the team’s new home. Namely, a sea of parking.

While driving to the OB was nearly impossible, driving to Dolphin Stadium (as it was called then) was nearly inevitable. Since I had a car and an off-campus house at the time of the move, I knew the time was right to fulfill my tailgating destiny. I bought a student parking pass, spread the word about the tailgates to my friends and got ready to grill out.

There was only one problem: while most tailgaters haul their wares on gameday in a Ford F-150, I had a meager Saturn SL-1. Fitting a grill, chairs, a table, food, drinks and condiments — plus 4 passengers — in my compact car was going to be a challenge.

Undeterred, I bought an accordion folding table, some canvas chairs and a camping grill. Then for the first Saturday home game, I packed the truck tightly. Real tightly.

There was so much ambiguity in my mind. Will everything fit? Did I get too much food? Will my friends even show up? Will the grill light properly? What if I undercook the burgers? Will I have enough time to pull this off and make it to the game? But ultimately, the tailgate was a success — so much so that the ensuing game was a blur.

***

I became addicted to tailgating that day, and it instantly became a regular staple of my football experience. Each week I would try and get more people to join in (and chip in). I grilled in the rain and the muggy Florida heat. On weeks where the Canes had an early kickoff, I pivoted to breakfast food.

The following season, I took my show on the road — grilling in a drive-through banking lane that had been converted into a parking lot Miami-Florida State showdown. And for one home game, I ran a tailgate party with my parents and 10 of my friends — a feat that left my father in awe.

But nothing lasts forever. After I totaled the Saturn in a highway wreck during my senior year, I was left without a vehicle for 2 weeks. A friend graciously helped me pull off the final tailgate of the year using her vehicle, but my tailgating days were done. I brought the grill and table with me to West Texas, but I only used them for cookouts at my apartment. When it came time to move to Dallas, the grill only made it as far as the dumpster.

***

As I reminisce my tailgating days, I’m filled more with pride than sadness. I’m proud because I lived a dream beyond my wildest imagination. I went from being seduced by the smell of smoke in the air to cooking out for up to a dozen people each week. Unlike most college students, I found my own tailgates to be my favorite parties.

But I accomplished so much more through these tailgates. For the first time in my life, I undertook the burden of true leadership. I also overcame countless obstacles and learned how to communicate with others productively. These traits have all come in handy as I’ve forged my path in adulthood.

So yes, my time organizing a weekly football tailgate has been my proudest accomplishment so far. After all, it’s been so much more than just grilling out.

The Art of Letting Go

Keep it or throw it out?

It’s not quite Shakespearean prose, but I reckon I’ve heard it more often than any line from Hamlet — from the voice in my head alone.

This time, the words were my mother’s. My parents are in the putting their house on the market, and part of that process includes cleaning out 26 years of assorted items. Even though I left the nest more than a decade ago, plenty of mementos from my childhood and adolescence stayed behind— which is why I got daily “Keep It or Chuck It” messages as my parents sorted through everything this summer.

With a few notable exceptions, the answer has always been the same:

Get rid of it.

***

It hasn’t always been this way. In fact, it rarely has.

Long before hoarders were immortalized on TV shows, I was on a mission — a mission to keep anything and everything. But I didn’t want to make a mess, so I would stuff cabinets, closets and out-of-sight storage spaces with piles of things I wanted to hold on to.

There were two reasons I obsessive took this approach. First, I wanted to preserve memories in a visible way. Second, I loathed the mental image of anything I’d bought or created wasting away in a landfill.

These sentiments are fine on a small scale — this is how scrapbooking and recycling came to be. The problem was that I felt this way about everything.

It started with physical items, but my mission quickly degraded my relationships with family and friends. I was constantly adding on, saving memories, maintaining everything I had accumulated.

I was afraid of letting go. And I was suffering because of it.

***

Letting go is an undervalued part of life. It’s something we all must do — after all, we don’t live forever — but it’s also something we try and avoid in our everyday lives. Breaking up is brutal, losing touch is unbecoming, and getting fired indicates failure. Our memories are the only part of the past we take with us to the present; those we share those memories with serve as the bridge between the two worlds.

So we hold on, incessantly. We become sentimental. We fixate on the past.

We cling to every detail of How It Was, so it can serve as the foundation for How It Is.

But all we’re really building is a burden. A bigger footprint, more items to keep track of, more meaningless details to weigh down our mind.

We must stop this madness.

***

If the past informs the present, and the present informs the future, we must move on from anything that doesn’t move us forward. We must master the art of letting go.

We must rid ourselves of the static. Let go of all the memories that leave us lost in Yesterday without a ticket back to the Here and Now.

We must move on from the mementos that don’t tell a story, or those we can’t tell a story from; they alone tell us nothing.

For growth guides us down the current of life; we can’t afford to be anchored in place by a fear of letting go. We must free ourselves and live unburdened.

Darkness In The Light

“I’m going to die.”

The thought raced through my head, over and over like the words on an electronic marquee board, as I sat on the gym floor. I stared blankly out the windows illuminated by bright sunshine, resigned to my fate. All around me, my classmates stared intently, as the faculty leaders told us that we were safe.

“That’s bullshit,” I thought. “Stop lying to us.”

Still, I stayed silent. It wasn’t my place to say a word; even if it were, what would I say?

Soon, it was back to the school day. I wandered to my next class, my body climbing the staircase but my soul halfway to the other side. Moments later, my teacher told us to call our parents and tell them that we were okay.

Still in a daze, I turned on my phone and called my mother. On the second ring, she answered, sounding worried. I told her what I had just heard, but didn’t believe — that I was alright and we were all safe. My mother told me she was glad to hear that, the palpable emotion in her voice knocking me back into reality.

As the shock wore off, I was hit with an avalanche of emotions I’d never experienced before, feelings that I’ll never be able to adequately put into words. At the age of 13, my life had changed; I was broken, and would never be whole again.

The date was September 11th, 2001.

***

It started as a normal Tuesday. It had rained the night before, but as I started my hour-long journey from the New York suburbs to my middle school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — a trek that included a bus and two trains — the skies were clear and the air was warm. It was the kind of day that made a teenager long for the recently departed summer break; one you wanted to hold on to before the biting chill of fall set in.

As I sat in my history class an hour or so later, I was momentarily distracted by the sound of an airplane overhead — an unusual, but not unheard of occurrence. A few minutes later, it was on to a Physical Education class, and we headed out to Central Park to play soccer in the beautiful weather. As far as school days went, this one didn’t seem so bad.

But as we left the park, I could tell something was wrong. The streets were nearly empty; only a few people were on the move. A woman approached our gym teacher, who was nearly twice her height. The teacher leaned over as she whispered something to him; when he turned away he looked pale. I knew this teacher relatively well; he was also one of my baseball coaches and a pillar of positive energy. I’d never seen him so shaken.

That’s when I learned the horrifying news: The plane I’d heard flying over the school an hour earlier had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, just 7 miles south of where I was standing. Moments later, I learned that another plane had hit the south tower. It was apparent that the city was under attack, and doomsday scenarios sprung into the forefront of my mind; even with so much still unknown, I was convinced whoever was responsible wouldn’t stop until they burned down the entire city. There was nothing I could do to avoid the inevitable.

As the entire school gathered in the gym for an impromptu assembly, I was convinced this day would be my last on Earth.

***

After I got off the phone with my mother, and returned to my English class, I gained some clarity. We learned that terrorists had hijacked commercial airliners and intentionally flew the planes into New York’s tallest buildings. Other terrorists had flown a plane into the Pentagon, and there were a few reports of a plane crash in rural Pennsylvania. New York’s public transit system shut down, and the National Guard quickly blocked all the bridges and tunnels around Manhattan. I had nowhere else to go.

Two hours later, my father picked me up. He was teaching at another school a few blocks away at the time of the attacks, but he had to stay there until the parents of his students came to collect their kids.

When my father showed up at my school, I didn’t want to leave. I had finally realized that I was indeed safe at school. Who knew what would happen if I left? But there I was, moments later, walking down empty Manhattan sidewalks, hardly saying a word. Soon, my father and I were heading back to the suburbs in a car driven by his colleague’s mother.

As the car approached a toll bridge at the top of Manhattan, a heavily armed National Guardsman stood by the tollbooth. “Go on,” he said. “Get out of here.” It seemed like something out of a movie, and it gave me chills.

Around 1:30 that afternoon, my father and I met up with my mother and sister in the Bronx, at what would later be my high school. We took the short drive home and turned on CNN. For hours, I watched Aaron Brown give the latest developments on America’s darkest day, his voice weighted by somberness and mounting exhaustion. Eventually, my parents and sister went to bed. I stayed awake, worried that I wouldn’t wake up the next morning — and worried about what would happen if I did. Eventually, exhaustion took over; I shut off the TV and crawled into bed.

***

September 12th, 2001

I awoke confused, angry, disturbed and hurt. School was cancelled for the day, giving me plenty of time to think. So much was unknown, but one thing was abundantly clear: My life would never be the same again.

***

September 21st, 2001

Within a week of the attacks, the authorities reopened some of the sidewalks of Lower Manhattan. My father and I wanted to get a firsthand sense of what had happened, so we took a train to Chinatown (where the police barricades were) and walked a mile down Broadway to Ground Zero.

There was no way to prepare for what we saw next. A plume of debris filled the air, and the wreckage was six stories high. My father touched a scaffold three blocks from the World Trade Center and discovered the dust stuck to it was an inch thick. It looked like a war zone.

Soon, horror gave way to disgust. As we made our way down Broadway, I saw Don King standing on the other side of the police barricade. He was wearing an expensive jacket adorned with the Statue of Liberty and promoting his next fight. It was selfish, callous and rude for King to use a national tragedy as his promotional stage, but there he was just the same; I’ll never forgive Don King for that, as long as I live.

***

Time heals wounds, but some are just too darned big.

As the days and months passed, I returned to my normal routine at school. But everything felt different. I knew the immense pain I was feeling would take time to heal, but it seemed like things were only getting tougher.

I thought about what happened on September 11th, and all that was lost, each day. But in the first few years after the tragedy, my thoughts would quickly turn to questions:

  • What can bring closure after a catastrophic tragedy?
  • Can you get PTSD from watching people jump out of buildings and get buried by debris, even if you only see it on television?
  • When will we truly be able to feel safe again?
  • Will those responsible for turning our world upside down ever fully pay for what they’ve done?

Answers were fleeting, and the pain never subsided.

***

Eventually, I came to a sobering truth.

There is no closure for a tragedy like this, and there never will be one.

I don’t know when exactly I discovered this, but it marked a significant turning point. I had to live with the fact that my life would forever be changed, that I would forever have a hole in my heart. A part of me was stolen on September 11th; instead of letting it go, I had been wasting years trying to get it back.

A strange thing happened when I came to this revelation — I found solace in it. The pain of the memories was raw as ever, but my soul was no longer in a constant state of restlessness. Somewhere along the line I found God, and faith has been a significant part of my life ever since.

***

May 2nd, 2011

I was sitting in my apartment in Midland, Texas, on a Sunday night, winding down before another stressful and exhausting week as a producer at KMID Big 2 News when my cell phone rang. It was KMID’s weekend anchor on the other end of the line.

“Dylan, our troops killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I’m trying to get more information on this for the newscast, but can you update the station’s website?”

I thought I’d misheard something, but she assured me that yes, Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Soon, I was watching ABC News and writing a detailed recap for the KMID website — from my couch. Journalism at its finest.

Once the story was up and the breaking news rush was over, I took a moment to think about what had just happened. I didn’t even know Bin Laden was still alive at the time, but I felt his death at the hands of our forces provided a bit of relief. Although this might sound vengeful and immoral, I felt that the killing of Bin Laden was justified (and ironically, I was watching an episode of Justified when I got the call about it). A man who brought so much suffering to our world, who ruined so many lives — that man deserved to have that suffering turned on him.

I thought about all this. Then, I thought about the events of September 11th. I prayed about it, went to bed, and slept better than I had in 10 years.

***

November 22nd, 2011

My plane touched down at LaGuardia Airport on a gloomy November day. I was up in New York from Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday. When my parents picked me up at the airport, they sprung a surprise on me: I wasn’t heading to their house.

My mother dropped my father and I off at a subway station; we rode the train to Lower Manhattan and headed toward the newly unveiled 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site. Where the towers once stood now lay two square reflecting pools, surrounded by waterfalls and the names of those who perished in or around each tower. Quite fittingly, it was raining as we walked around the site.

My father and I hardly said a word as we looked at the water rushing into the memorial, both from the sky and the waterfalls. The silence wasn’t unusual; as a teacher, my father had to explain the unexplainable to a group of frightened sixth graders on September 11th, 2001, and the subject had been mostly taboo for him in the 10 years after that.

At one point, I kneeled by the memorial to think about the victims, and pray for their loved ones. As I stood back up, my father surprised me by asking for a hug. Suddenly, we were talking about what had been off-limits for so long — the events of that fateful day, our intertwined memories of the aftermath, the emotions we had to deal with in the years afterward and our separate quests for closure. After a few more moments, I asked if he was ready to go. “Not yet,” he said. We hugged a second time, each choking back tears. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life.

***

December 26th, 2014

As the late afternoon sunshine slowly faded away from the 9/11 Memorial site, and my father and I made our way into the newly-opened museum on the grounds. While I’m not often a museumgoer, it was important to me to get some new perspective on the tragedy that has so deeply affected my life.

I knew visiting the museum would bring back some gut-wrenching memories, but I had no idea how raw those emotions would be. Archive news footage, police dispatcher recordings — they all brought back feelings from half my life ago, the most harrowing and traumatic memories of September 11th, which I’d long since buried. When I came upon recordings of cell phone conversations between passengers on the hijacked planes and their loved ones — calls to say goodbye — I found myself paralyzed by grief.

Visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum was one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my life. I left nearly as broken as I felt in the days after the attacks; I essentially dragged myself up the escalator and out the door when it was time to leave.

But I wouldn’t have traded any of that for a second. If you don’t have a full understanding of all that’s been lost, you can never be truly found.

***

November 27, 2015

The last remnants of the morning fog lifted over New York Harbor and Jamaica Bay as I watched through glass windows more than 1500 feet above the street. It was as if the veil of the past was being lifted to show the future.

As I explored the One World Observatory — atop the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, now towering over the World Trade Center site — I felt many different emotions. Fear was not one of them.

Those that took so much from myself — and so many others — 14 years prior had still failed in their ultimate quest. My very presence, high above the ground at the very site they had once targeted was proof of both our collective resilience and the totality of their failure.

But even with my symbolic journey of resilience and recovery now seemingly complete, one thought permeated in my mind:

Although the view is stunning, this building shouldn’t be here. The Twin Towers should.

All we’ve gained doesn’t wipe out all we’ve lost; it simply reinforces it.

***

“Mama said you gotta put the past behind you so you can move forward.”

Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies of all-time, filled with wisdom I use in my everyday life. But this is not one of them.

I will never put September 11th behind me. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the events of that fateful day. For more than 5,000 days, these reflections have made me both stronger and weaker. The hole in my heart is ever present, the emotions still raw, and the events of that fateful day never forgotten.

But more than that, I don’t think I’d ever want to put September 11th behind me. The past has helped me move forward, as the events of that day have transformed my life ever since. I don’t take a single day for granted, and I strive to treat others with grace and kindness whenever possible. While I lost all traces of childish innocence forever on September 11th, the actions I’ve taken moving forward have helped shape me into the man I am today.

Coping with the memories of that day hasn’t gotten easier. I will carry the burden for the rest of my life. But while I will never be whole again, I am finally at peace.