Loads of Pink

It was the Tuesday after President's Day.  School was out because the New York City school board thought a week of vacation in the middle of February would do everybody a lot of good.  So my wife had taken two of our younger daughters and our son to a get together with some other out-of-school kids.  Our oldest daughter was taking advantage of the opportunity to read in peace and quiet and our youngest daughter was asleep in her crib. So I did what all father's naturally do in that situation:  I decided to do the laundry.  

Now I know that might seem like a rather magnanimous and gentlemanly thing for me to do--and it was--but in addition to my magnanimousness and gentlemanliness, I was also tired of seeing our slightly stinky pile of laundry sit in our entryway.  Living in an apartment building, we have the distinct privilege of carting our laundry to the basement to the communal washers and dryers found there.  So after a few calls to my wife to locate the detergent and the quarters, I was on my way.  The only warning she gave me was to not fill anyone of the machines too full or the clothes would not get clean.  I could handle that.  Once we hung up I'm sure she was casually mentioning to the other mom's that I was home taking care of the laundry.  I'm sure I had scored some points.

Now, my mama raised me right, so I knew you divided the lights from the darks and washed them separately.  I knew that if you didn't, you ran the risk of turning all the whites pink.  Trust me, as a kid, I'd seen what my sisters red sweater could do to my tighty whiteys, and it wasn't pretty.  Well, actually it kind of was, and that was the problem.

So I was now in the basement and my neighbor had just transferred her load to one of the industrial sized dryers, so all three washing machines were available.  Perfect.  I started to unpack the laundry and quickly realized that my wife (or kids, perhaps?  they must take after their father in helpfulness!) had already sorted the laundry into lights and darks.  Being pretty quick at mental math I knew that a load of darks and a load of whites would leave one washer empty.  Plus I wanted to be sure I didn't fill them up too much.  I had been warned.  The darks were on top so I started to divvy them up:  anything really dark went into it's own washer, things that were sort of dark went into the other.  The whites went into their own machine.  

As I proceeded to the bottom of the cart something began to dawn on me:  we have four daughters.  This was not news to me.  I had been there at each of their births (and I knew all about Miley Cyrus, Polly Pockets and Hello Kitty.)  But I had never seen it in such a symbolic and stereotypically gender specific way.  It wasn't that there was clothing my daughters or wife would have been embarrassed for me to see, nor were there piles of dresses, skirts and blouses.  It was just jeans, t-shirts, pajamas, underwear, socks, onesies, etc, but as the washers filled up, I realized that they were filling up into three evenly divided loads:  lights, darks and pinks.  

I put in the detergent and quarters, set the whites to hot, the darks to cold and the pinks to…well honestly I don't remember, but the point was, they were in a class by themselves.  And that's how I feel about my girls.  I'm sure my mama would agree.  And since they were on vacation, they'd have plenty of time to fold everything.  That's how magnanimous I am.

She's not my mama, but for a real laundry expert visit:  www.mahalo.com

When I Grow Up...

I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up:  

awesome

yeah.

The Money Makers

Daytime hours, the pressure's up.

Money, money, money.

Make enough to make it last

And then be free to choose.

When evening comes the lights go dim.

The money makers sleep.

To rise again and make their way

And collect or hell to pay.

Between wake and sleep

Between pay and paid

Lies choice, hope and peace.

Some things come and some things go

And some you get to keep.

Down Pillows

I was pulling on my pants and shirt, having just gotten out of the shower.  Torpedo, my three year old son, burrowed in and out of the down stuffed linens on my wife's and my bed.  "I found you!" he smiled, his cobalt eyes peering out between the creme colored comforter and one of the mismatched white pillows.  

He quickly disappeared again under the layers of coziness.  Then he popped up again, "I found you!" he repeated.  I couldn't resist.  I threw myself into the puffy fray, rubbed his fuzzy blond hair (he was growing out a buzz cut) and we play-wrestled.

There's nothing quite as luxurious as play-wrestling in a small, bed-sized pond of down with a smiling, squealing child.

After a few minutes I pulled him across my chest and just held him, his small boy chest laying on mine.  Inhaling.  Exhaling.  I stared out the window at the gloomy rain and snow turning to slush.  I thought how important it is to hold those we care about, and how lucky we are when they let us.

Torpedo is a rowdy boy and loathe to be still for too long, so I just lay there and thought, "This is a moment worth remembering."

Blue Ocean / Happy Task

a poem

by Harold Bono Gandhi

So what is this blue ocean and how do I sail it?
How do I ride upon these waters of greatness?
How do I explore the depths of this vast Mediterranean, this subterranean of my heart and mind?
How do I push past the insistent, conscious obligations that fix themselves like barnacles to my eyes and ears, that cover my smell and taste, and see through to sense the possible?

How do I clear the way, the path, to a life infused with enthusiasm?

Is it possible to find this answer, this treasure?
To discover what you don't know you don’t know, but would want to if you only knew it was there?

This requires a revelation, a god-vision,
A seeing from a place still mysterious to another place also mysterious.

The joy, the work, the glory,
Is when work brings joy and the work brings glory,
When the work is play and the play is work and confusing the two is a happy task.

That is it: the happy task. That is the blue ocean.

'Blue Ocean Strategy' by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne is a book I admire a great deal.

A Trip to the Alps

It was Monday afternoon and I was sitting at my desk in our fourth floor New York City apartment. I would be heading downtown soon, but in the meantime I had mail to open, papers to file and other really important things to do. Fortunately, my desk has a nice corner view of the park across the street and the view was particularly appealing this day. It had snowed over the weekend, but the storm had blown through leaving a clear sunshiny day with wispy clouds and a bright blue sky.

My wife came in to get something off the desk and my three year old son, Indy, followed her wearing his coat but no shoes. "Go get your shoes on," I said. He had to be dressed before my wife could take him outside. If he got his shoes on that would speed up the process and get him out of my hair quicker.

I continued working. It was Monday afternoon. I had a lot of important things to take care of.

A few minutes later my wife called from the living room, "Okay, he has his shoes on."

What? I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at.

"Now you can take him outside..." she explained.

"Oh. No. That wasn't what I--" I started to think in my head.

"That's why you told him to put his shoes on, right?"

"No, I thought you were going to take him outside," I thought, but didn't dare say out loud. But even so, it looked nice enough out there and I had just gotten to a good stopping point with my work. So I made a quick decision:

"Okay, I'll take him," I announced.  "Besides, I can do some writing while he plays."  I knew I was going to win major points for my paternal benevolence, so I figured this would all be worth it in the end.  I got my coat and boots and grabbed my notebook.  I was kind of looking forward to it.

"I want to go too!" one of our younger daughters, SJ, piped up.  Hmmm. Two kids? I wasn't so sure.

"Sure why not," I said. I was just as surprised as they were by my response. I must have been thinking about more "points." I didn't catch the look on my wife's face, but I'm sure she was at least a little stunned.  After all, I love to keep busy and work hard just as much as the next dad trying to provide for his family.

More coats. More boots. And we were all set. Out the door, down the elevator, across the street and into the park. But first, I made one very important stop: the mini-van. I'd just reparked it on the right side of the street for street cleaning and it happened to be right by the entrance to the park. Perfect.

Plus we'd decided a few years ago to keep our two beach chairs in the back of the mini-van. That way we'd always be prepared for a quick beach get-away should the occasion ever arise (like that was ever going to happen), plus our apartment was really crowded (the real reason). Nevertheless, it worked out perfectly for my little expedition with two of our kids. I pulled out one chair, grabbed two light blankets out of the kids bench seat and headed into the park with my son and daughter.

I went straight to the sunniest spot at the top of the slanted meadow where kids and grown-ups sled whenever there's snow. Tall, leafless trees framed the scene. I planted my beach chair in the snow, wrapped my legs in the blankets I'd brought, cinched the flaps on my hat down around my ears and pulled out my notebook and pen. Ahh! Bliss. The sun reflected up off the snow and warmed my face. It was perfect.

Indy ran around with two toys clutched in his hands; some sort of armored robot and a small red car, but mostly he ended up puttering around inspecting stray branches lying on the ground, watching squirrels scurry up tree trunks and listening to the snow crunch under his feet. SJ scampered around finding logs and sticks and laid plans to build some kind of survivor-esque shelter. Every now and then she would call from where she was and say, "Hey, Dad, look at this," and then come show me something she'd found.

So there I sat, warm, comfortable and peaceful, my kids running around and playing while I had a chance to be still and put some my thoughts down on paper.  The buses growling past on Broadway were muted by the snow and I could even hear the birds sing from high up on the brittle, bare branches.  I felt as though my twenty dollar Costco chair was a vintage Adirondack and I was sitting on some sun-drenched patio built out on a ski resort ledge in the Alps with a blanket from the lodge taking the edge off the cold as I scribbled notes and thought things through.

And then it occurred to me: simple things can make us happy…if we let them.

I can't remember the last time I'd felt so contented. Yet it was so easy and so unexpected. But when was the last time I just said, "Sure I'll take the kids outside," even though I wasn't planning to.  I had important things to do.  Someday I do plan to make my way to the Alps and perhaps sit on a patio with a blanket and a notepad in a big wooden chair with the Matterhorn in the distance. But until then, I'm grateful for the park across the street, my lawnchair stowed in the back of my mini-van and my kids.

Maybe they could learn how to yodel.

How I Learned to Sail (Part I)

A true story about fear, and overcoming it (sort of ).

Sailing has always been a bit of a romantic dream for me. Ever since I was a paperboy delivering the Washington Post and watching the constellations move through their seasons in the early morning darkness, I’ve thought about what a timeless experience it would be to sail and navigate by the stars. So perhaps it should have been no surprise to me when—twenty years later— I decided sailing around the world, or at least some large body of water, was something that interested me. I shared this idea recently with my wife and she agreed it sounded adventurous and exciting, as did our kids. The only trouble was I had only been sailing once (it was an intestinal disaster), my wife had never sailed ever and I don't think our kids even knew people still even sailed. Stumped. So I stowed this dream, tucked it away and every time I was out at night and could see the stars I would gently be reminded of this notion of sailing.

Perhaps a little back story could shed some light on the matter. I have two sailing influences in my life: one, my grandfather (who never actually sailed) and, two, my uncle who sailed with the merchant marines.



My uncle first. His name is Heikki Pietella. A good Finnish name. My mother is from Finland. As a child we would visit him and my grandmother in their two bedroom apartment north of Helsinki. When I was two years old Heikki was a merchant marine: one of those guys that drive massive cargo ships around the world carrying the imports and exports of various nations. So one day, while on one of these massive cargo ships, a large anchor was being pulled up by it's massive chain.  As the chain pulled up the anchor the chain gathered around a large spool on the deck of the ship. To this day I still don’t know why or how (Heikki doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Finnish),  but his leg got caught in between the chain and the spool.  Apparently the pain was so great that he went into shock and didn’t actually feel much of anything. But when he woke up from the surgery he had lost his leg above the knee. 

So fast forward a few years. Heikki has a prosthetic leg and can walk with a cane. My older sister and I, being the loving neice and nephew that we are, would amuse ourselves during our summer visits by hiding his fake leg and making him look for it. We thought this was great fun. Heikki would return the favor by allowing us—once he found it—to watch him put on his leg. This usually involved him wiping down the end of his leg-stump with a wet wipe and then wriggling it in such a way as to totally gross us out and send us away squealing. That always gave him a good laugh.

So that’s one sailor in my life. The other, my grandfather, was actually more of a shipbuilder. He was actually a fine art painter who worked as a municipal fireman (also in Finland) to pay the bills and then had free time to paint. Once he retired from the city fire department, he had a modest pension on which he could live inexpensively in the dairy barn he’d purchased out in the country and converted into a painting studio. He had a kitchen on one end with a hand pump for water, his bedroom on the other end and the entire mid section was a painting studio complete with sky lights over head to let in more natural light. So where does the sailor part come in? That was out in the yard. 

When we would visit in the summers, one of my favorite pass times was to play pirates on the ship my grandfather was building in the field next to his barn. It had a steel hull about forty feet long and stood about eighteen feet tall with a large cabin on top. The back part of the cabin was made from a cut down bread truck and was welded to the front part which was a Volkswagen bus. The whole project, of course, was set-up in a field with the nearest ocean over 100 kilometers away.

The big picture plan was to sail the boat to the southern coast of Spain, where he hoped to spend winters painting as he got older. And, of course, he always added that he would see what he could do to sail across the Atlantic so he could visit us in the U.S. We were flattered.

This ultimately never happened. I don’t pretend to know all the reasons why, although, maybe the whole land-locked thing had something to do with it. But what I do know is that my sisters and I spent hours and hours playing pirates on that rusting mutt of a ship having the time of our lives. And I also know that, although my grandfather never did sail there on his ship, he died in Spain where he was able to happily paint and paint well into the sunset years of his life.

So that is the background on my sailing influences: my one legged merchant marine uncle and my “if you build it they will come” ship building grandfather. (It has just occurred to me that, if we’d given Heikki a peg leg, an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder and stood on the bow of his dad’s boat in the middle of the field, we’d have a pretty rockin’ pirate ship photo op.  And I’m sure Heikki would have been totally game.) But enough of that for now. I think you get the idea that, despite coming from a very checkered lineage of nautical prowess, I consider myself to be a pretty run of the mill guy who, despite having some Scandinavian heritage, has no claim to any substantial maritime privilege. 

Now fast forward twenty years. I’m married, Emily and I have five kids and we live a humble life on the northern end of Manhattan. All of a sudden dad—me—is saying, “Hey, kids, what do you think about sailing around the world?” Blank stares and silence. Okay. At this particular time I happen to be working at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, which comes with great views of the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor and the North Cove Marina. It’s all very posh: mega-yachts with mini-helicopters and jet skis loaded on the back, classic tall ships brought in from Annapolis and Cape Cod for corporate events and charters and stripped down World Cup racing boats rearing for another record setting trans-Atlantic crossing. Wedged in between all this poshness is the cool, but not quite as posh Manhattan Sailing School with two dozen or so twenty-four foot single hull boats and a floating house boat for a classroom and office.

We’ve lived in New York for almost ten years now, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen the stars with any regularity, but each afternoon when I head outside for a break and a bite to eat, I see this small fleet of twenty-four foot boats flailing, careening and occassionaly cruising back and forth in the Hudson River. It’s all so beautiful: full white sails, fresh blue skies and vibrant red hulls all combining to create some idyllic picture out of a Land's End catalogue. Working in the financial district, but not necessarily being one of the big-buck-earning financial guys, I’m a bit intimidated by the whole thing.  But I’m still drawn to it. (I want to be in a Land’s End catalogue too!)  So I get up enough courage and gumption to visit the website I see painted on the house boat floating in the marina that is – The Manhattan Sailing School. I check it out. Pretty interesting. Beginning lessons are either five evenings or a Friday night and all day Saturday and Sunday. Up to four people per boat. About $600 per person if you have a group of four. Not cheap, but you don’t have to be an investment banker to do it. Okay.
A couple more afternoons of boat-envy and I now have the nerve to go out onto said house-boat and ask the crucial question for the next step in my journey toward seamanship: “Do you have a brochure I could look at?”

“Sure. Here.”

“Thanks.”

“See you later.”

I’d done it! I’d set foot on the house boat, spoken to somebody wearing the official red polo shirt and white shorts and now had in my hand an official sailing school brochure. After careful examiniation I concluded that it contained the exact same information as the website. I felt very validated. My due diligence was paying off. My confidence was growing.

I discussed it with my wife and we decided that—if we were really going to sail around the world as a family—that it was probably most important for me and her to know how to sail. The kids would have to wait. (All ships have a pecking order.) So with that decision made, the next challenge became scheduling. I worked 4pm to midnight and my weekends were already booked with other obligations, so the currently scheduled classes were not going to work. Great! I was going to have to stick my neck out even further to make my timeless, universal sailing dream happen. A quick email to the school confirmed my worst fear. The response read, “If you can get a group of four together, we can schedule a special session for you. Best, Dockmaster.”

“Dockmaster”? Wow. That sounded official. Plus all the obstacles I thought would prevent me from realizing my ludicrous dream of sailing around the world were falling like flies. Poshness, cost, scheduling...all surmountable? Great! I might actually have to go through with this. I was learning that it can actually be hard to get what you want.

To complicate matters further, a few months earlier I’d just been hired by a previous employer to do some contract work at their mid-town office, so my days were now busy in midtown and evenings I was busy downtown. (I did have a wife and five kids to house, clothe and feed, so I did it.) That said, it would help pay for the sailing class tuition. However, the only time now available for a sailing class was Friday from 12pm-3pm. (I'd left myself some breathing room on Mondays and Fridays.)  How was I supposed to find two more people that would want to sail from 12-3pm on Fridays? Whomever we found wold not just have to be available (I have plenty of out-of-work actor friends I could call) but they also had to be able to pay the tution. The more people the lower the tuition, so I was motivated. I asked my co-workers. No dice. I asked friends (working friends). Nope. I didn’t have the guts to recruit strangers from Craig’s list. (If I was going to get sea sick and make a fool of myself, it was going to be in front of people who would never let me forget it, so strangers were out.)  Who else?.. Then it occurred to me. Our kids. It would cost more since I would be paying tuition for all of us, but we’d still get the group discount and we’d be much closer to having a trained crew for our transorbital voyage. Were they game? Yes, they were. How did I know? Because they said so.

"Kids, do you want to take sailing lessons?"

"Yes."

Dang it!  Everything was falling into place.

We were all lined up: time, place, people. All I had to do was type in my credit card number and hit “submit” on the Sailing School’s website, and we’d be all set. Why was this step so hard? Was it because it was well over two grand for sailing lessons? Yep. On top of that we’d have to pay for babysitting for our younger three kids. That wasn’t going to make it any cheaper. But how was I ever going to sail like the Egyptians, the Vikings and the European explorers if I didn’t take this step? How was I ever going to learn to harness the wind, traverse the watery world’s expanse and cause the celestial stars to lead me home if I didn’t cross this threshold? I’d come so far: the internet, the house boat, the brochure, the emails, the scheduling, the recruiting. Now here I was, on the fulcrum of choice. I could cower and fall away, never knowing what it would mean to be a man of the sea, or I could “submit” and take the next step. I clicked the button. The deed was done. My ship had launched.

To be continued...

My sailing alma mater:  www.sailmanhattan.com