Hats Off To The Park Service

Regular readers of this space are well aware of my negative opinion where government spending is concerned, specifically, that much of it is either tragically stupid or eaten through with malfeasance. So when someone like me stumbles upon an example of government spending which is at once wise and beneficial, fairness dictates that I give credit where it is due.

The last couple of days found Pam and me celebrating our anniversary at a delightful Inn just outside of Lexington, Virginia called House Mountain. We had discovered this place 12 years ago when it had just opened, and this time, we hardly recognized the place. The years have been good to this family owned luxury destination. 

So, when I was researching things to do while we were here I noticed that Natural Bridge was only thirty minutes away. It is a profound embarrassment for me to have to admit that despite being a Virginian by birth and a lifelong resident of the Commonwealth, I have never visited the place about which Thomas Jefferson said... “Natural bridge, the most sublime of Nature’s works ... so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable!” Although once surveyed by a young George Washington and later bought by Thomas Jefferson, the site is currently a State Park, efficiently administered and impeccably maintained by the State of Virginia. A labyrinth of hiking trails ribbon through the park, each meticulously groomed to accommodate everyone from toddlers to octogenarians. There’s a living history exhibit of a Monocan Indian village, manned by ancestors of that tribe. The visitor’s center and all other structures of the park are beautiful, white columned structures in the Federal style. The staff are friendly and helpful, the facilities, everything from the bathrooms to the gift shop are first rate. For one twenty dollar ticket, I got access to the park and a tour of the caverns, a half a mile up the road. The Natural Bridge caverns, while not as stunning or famous as the caverns up the road at Luray, were an amazing site to see, especially since our tour guide was a delightfully smart and hilarious young woman who combined meticulous knowledge of her subject with a stream of one liners that had us all laughing out loud.

Most things in this world are done better in the private sector. This is an opinion forged from a lifetime of bitter experience. But, as we made our way through this gorgeous property, I couldn’t help thinking what an incredible job the park service has done here, and how horrible it would be if the rights to this natural wonder had fallen into the hands of, say...Amazon or Google. I spent several hours here and nobody tried to sell me anything. I was left alone to marvel at the beauty and majesty of creation on artfully constructed trails. Every so often along the way, signposts were there to provide explanation or background. This place belongs to all Virginians, and the park system sees to it that it stays that way. There will be no development here, no future hotels or casinos, no time shares or other ghastly commercial projects. Thank God in Heaven.

I may not always approve of the things that my taxes finance. But, when it comes to places like this...I’m happy to pay and very proud of the results. 

Actually, Division of Labor IS Romantic!

Over the years people have often asked me to explain my successful marriage to them. What’s the secret to staying with someone happily for so long, they will ask. I’ve never been good at supplying an answer, partly because I don’t want to jinx the thing, but mostly because it’s not just one thing. There is no silver bullet, and if there were, I would have misplaced it along with my car keys years ago! The other thing is, I’m not even sure I completely understand why Pam and I have gotten along so well for these 34 years. Maybe it’s all just dumb, blind luck. But, I suppose if I had to come up with a working theory, I would have to say that the same thing that makes a prosperous economy work is exactly what makes us work...the equitable and efficient division of labor. I know what you’re thinking...how romantic!! Hold on, hear me out...

If you wished to construct a number 2 Pencil, as has been famously illustrated, you would need several laborers all doing specialized tasks. To ask one single person to construct a pencil would be next to impossible. In a marriage there are two laborers, (except during childbirth when there is only one person doing any laboring). I believe that in order to have a happy marriage, each couple has to discover who is good at what and divide the labor accordingly. In the early years this is very much a trial and error proposition, but after awhile individual strengths and weaknesses become more clear. After 34 years, for example, I would never make the mistake of asking Pam to muck about under the house to change the crawl space lightbulb. She, on the other hand, knows better than to ask me to plan an English Tea bridal shower for our future daughter-in-law. That’s just crazy talk. 

So, what follows is a break down of how the jobs are split up around here. Now, lest anyone get the wrong impression, this list of job assignments, while very reliable, is not fool-proof. Just because I’m supposed to be the one who takes out the trash doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes forget. But, most of the time what follows is accurate. If it isn’t, I’m sure that Pam will vigorously object. If there is a dispute, the tie always goes to the wife...

My Jobs

In 34 years, Pam has never once mowed the lawn. Essentially, everything that happens outside the house involving living things is my domain. I mulch, cut the grass, trim the hedges, get up the leaves, de-poopify the yard when needed...which is all the time, organize and execute the wholesale murder of squirrels, and clean up after storms.

I plan vacations. I’m in charge of working out the details of all of our Maine trips, and also planning getaway weekends for just the two of us. It’s not that Pam wouldn’t be entirely capable of doing this, I just prefer to do it myself because I think it’s fun. Also, I think it’s my job to take the lead in planning adventures.

Generally speaking, I do most of the vacuuming. This isn’t an absolute, sometimes I catch her doing it, but I’m better at it and actually kinda enjoy vacuuming for some odd reason.

I clean up the dishes and load up the dishwasher after dinner. Again, this isn’t absolute either, but probably 90% of the time, I do it. True, often Pam will come behind me and rearrange dishes I have placed into the dishwasher incorrectly, but basically, I clean up the kitchen after dinner. 

I empty the dishwasher first thing every morning while waiting for my coffee to brew.

I clean the bathrooms. Sometimes, when all that is needed is a touch up, she will do it, but most of the time when a full elbow-grease fueled effort is required, I clean the bathrooms. 

I take care of all the car maintenance. I’m no car guy, but my wife wouldn’t know an alternator from a gas cap, so I’m in charge of seeing to it that the cars are properly inspected, the oil gets changed, they are full of gas, and are clean inside and out.

I make 95% of the money that gets made. The first five years of our marriage, Pam was a full time teacher in the Henrico County Schools and all of our benefits were provided by her employer. But once Patrick was born she became a full time, unpaid mother of two, leaving all economic support up to me. 

I pay all the bills.

Pam’s Jobs

Literally, everything else.

She plans the menus, buys the groceries and cooks all of our meals, with the exception of Wednesday night dinner when she may as well have cooked it herself, after laying out step by step instructions for me to follow...her cooking for dummies tutorials are epic!

She is responsible for all the interior decorating that gets done around here.

She makes herself available to both of our grown children at all hours for whatever thing they happen to need, whenever the heck they happen to need it.

She has done literally every single load of laundry that has ever been done in our home for 34 years. It is actually quite embarrassing for me to admit that I am a 60 year old human being who has never done his own laundry...never even once. Although, I should add that I do iron my own clothes.

Anything that needs meticulous planning and cunning persistence falls to Pam. Whether it be keeping up with doctor’s appointments, overseeing home improvement projects or planning family celebrations and dinners, without Pam’s eye for detail, this household would be adrift. She sweats all the details, especially the ones I’m not even aware of.

Pam does 90% of the Christmas shopping/planning. Ditto, birthdays, etc.

Ok, so there you have it. Keep in mind that this is just one theory of what makes for a good marriage. Obviously, there’s a lot more to it, like knowing when to keep your mouth shut, and when you do speak, using kind words. But, the division of labor is a big deal. If all or even most of the work falls on only one person, nothing good happens. 

34 Years

Watching the Royal Wedding with my wife. It’s nice enough. Sunny day. Pretty people. Thirty four years ago on this day, Pam and I got married. It was not royal. There were some pretty people, and it was also a sunny day. Of course, we didn’t have a gospel choir in the back of the church, or celebrities lining the aisles. Our getaway car wasn’t exactly a spotlessly buffed Ascot Landous carriage...more like a three year old 1981 VW Scirocco. But, there wasn’t a single gaudy hat in the entire crowd. 

Still, the single best decision I have ever made, marrying this woman.

Thank God For Spell Check

Hardly a day goes by when I’m not made aware of my limitations as a writer. I enjoy writing about as much as anything in this world. I do a lot of it, not only on this rather prolific blog, but also the occasional story that pops into my head. But no matter what it is that I’m writing, I bump up against my shortcomings.

In terms of this blog, it’s my poor punctuation and grammar skills. What punctuation and grammar problems, you ask? Well, the reason you don’t notice that many is because my wife corrects all of them for me. It usually goes like this...

Pam: On this morning’s blog...don’t use a comma here, a semi colon works better. And, this particular phrase sounds clunky. Oh...and this participle is dangling.

Me: (after corrections are made)...How’s this?

Pam: Better.

The problem goes back to high school and my abysmal academic record. Whenever it was time for my English teacher to cover grammar, I would zone out. My body might have been in class, but my mind was a million miles away, God knows where. The only subjects that could hold my attention in school were history and literature. Everything else was a blur. Pam thinks that grammar was particularly difficult for me because at my core I rebelled against the very concept... I hate rules and having to follow them. Whatever the reason, I obviously didn’t learn anything. 

When it comes to writing stories, my problems are more complicated. An idea for a story will pop into my head out of nowhere. I will sit down and start typing, almost continuously for an hour or two, sentences tumbling out fully formed, organizing themselves into paragraphs right before my eyes. This will go on for days and takes very little effort or organization on my part. It just happens. Before I know it, there are 10,000 words and five or six chapters in the document, a precise, discernible and consistent plot containing a half dozen characters. Then, I think..where did that come from?? But then, suddenly, everything stops. Whatever river of imagination that produced this universe of characters and plots dries up, and they sit there flat on the page, waiting for me to tell them what to do. It’s like the literary version of suspended animation. Days go by, then weeks...nothing. Sometimes I will re-read the thing from the beginning hoping to find the spark. Nothing. Then, I’ll be in the middle of cutting the grass or a set of sit-ups at the gym when the flash of an idea will come...and it all starts up again. This ridiculous writing style has produced one complete novel, two half baked ones and a trove of short stories along with a couple dozen aborted attempts. It is also the reason I don’t write for a living. 

So, I’ll publish this blog and wait for Pam to alert me to some grammatical infraction or another, and thank my lucky stars for spell check.

Complaining About The Weather?

It is 6am in the city of my birth and the humidity sits at 98%. My handy WWBT weather app informs me that for the next three days I can expect a 90% chance of thunder storms with locally heavy downpours. The first sunshine emoji I see in the ten day forecast is next Wednesday, and even that one is half covered with emoji clouds. It would be quite easy to fall into despair at such a prediction. The prospect of unrelenting rain and thick humidity isn’t the sort of thing that puts a bounce in your step. However, upon further reflection...things could be a lot worse.

Suppose the forecast for the next ten days called for blistering sunshine and highs in the upper 90’s? How about if the temperatures were forecasted to be in the upper 50’s, a record breaking cold snap for the month of May? We could be mired in a ten day tornado watch, or bracing for the earliest hurricane to ever threaten landfall on the Mid-Atlantic States.

The thing about weather is that it always is pissing somebody off. As much as I hate the current forecast, people with gardens love it. As much as I hate upper 90’s, there’s some heat worshipper out there who is thrilled to death. 

The cool thing about Virginia though...we get it all. Every kind of forecast you can imagine eventually becomes operational. Blistering heat? We got that. Stifling humidity? Check. Sub-zero freezing cold? We’ll have a few of those this winter. You want snow? Wait for January and February. Want delightful cool temperatures and fall colors? Yep. Want a few weeks of verdant green, soft breezes and pastel colored sunsets? That would be April. 

You people out in San Diego have year round delightfulness and all, but after a while don’t you just get tired of the monotonous sunny skies? You guys in the Arizona desert, does fall even happen to you? And my poor Maine brothers and sisters, what must it be like to endure six months of winter, then three months of Garden of Eden perfection separated by three months of...mud?

So, no...I will not be complaining about my weather forecast. This is Virginia, the land of free range weather, and the blessing of endless variety. That’s worth celebrating if you ask me.

Life Changer

Had a fascinating conversation with a younger friend of mine the other day. He’s in his mid-forties and on the cusp of a sizable promotion at work. He was trying to decide whether it would be worth it to uproot his family and move away in pursuit of this new position which offered both much more money and greater respect and prestige in his profession. The opportunity to build greater wealth had a lot of appeal for him, since it might allow him to retire earlier than he had thought possible. Still, the upheaval it would bring to his family dynamic and quality of life was a concern. 

As I listened to him it occurred to me that when I was in my mid-forties, something happened to me that forever changed my perspective on the entire money/prestige thing. Emergency open heart surgery will do that to a person, I suppose.

I never had some dramatic, Hollywood-style epiphany. In the weeks of recovery afterwards I was too busy trying to put one foot in front of the other to bother myself with deep existential thoughts about the universe and my place in it. But once I returned to work, something had changed. My business is an intensely competitive enterprise which runs on the twin engines of money and growth. One thing always suggests the other. You are either getting bigger and wealthier or you are shrinking and dying...or so says the conventional wisdom. However, I discovered that there is nothing quite so clarifying of thought than the prospect of eminent death. Suddenly, I started examining everything in business through the prism of, is this really as critical as I think it is? It didn’t take long for me to realize that when it came to the old paradigm of growth and more and more...my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. 

So, I started making changes. I replaced income goals with vacation goals. My primary driver would no longer be exponential growth, but sustainable, manageable growth. I would trade in an increasingly more complex future for a much slower pace. Each year on January 1, the question became, how much time off will I take this year? And since I work for myself and there is no such thing as vacation pay, that meant that I had to be willing to accept less money. In the fifteen years that have gone by since I lay in that cold room counting backwards for the nice Asian anesthesiologist, I suppose I have forfeited quite a bit of money. On the other hand, I’ve never missed a single moment that mattered with my family. I’ve had time to read a thousand books, write a million words...and I have taken some incredible vacations! 

Owning your own business makes all of this possible. I am grateful to be where I am. I’m aware that for people who work for someone else, these decisions can’t be made as easily. My work has placed me in the enviable position of having a measure of control over my schedule and my income. The freedom that comes from such ownership is the single greatest benefit of my life’s work. But, getting off the big, bigger, biggest treadmill was the best decision I ever made, which means that having open heart surgery at age 45 was one of the best things that ever happened to me. 

How weird is that?

Making The Trains Run On Time

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Ever since my Mom passed away, it’s been the occasion of many fond memories, but also a bit of sadness. I suppose that this is a natural thing and as it should be and will be for the remainder of my life. At present there are but two mothers in my life, my mother-in-law and my wife. My mother-in-law’s claim to fame will forever be bringing my wife into this world and raising her so well. My wife, on the other hand, has been and continues to be a legendary mother. A few examples...

To say that the two of us had different parenting styles would be a world class understatement. But, it’s one of the things I believe helped produce two pretty amazing kids. We had different jobs. While their mother was busy demonstrating the cardinal virtues in word and deed in front of our children, I was busy teaching them how to field grounders and break up a double play. While Pam labored to instill a love of books and reading in them, I was upstairs giving them their baths and teaching them how to execute a proper armpit fart. Pam spent countless hours cultivating an appreciation of the arts in our kids, teaching them about what it is to love and cherish fine things. I spent countless hours perfecting the tickle-monster bedtime routine, complete with ethnic diversity twists like the dreaded Chinese tickle-monster....don’t ask. But, it’s not like I taught them nothing of lasting value...the wrestling skills they retain to this day? All me!

But, in our house it was always Mom who made the trains run on time. She’s the one who packed their lunches every day for 12 years, never failing to include a hand written note of encouragement, or an occasional corny joke. It was Mom who always filled out the endless paperwork of childhood, the bureaucratic paper trail of American adolescence. It was Mom who made sure their teeth were straight, their clothes were clean and that everything matched. Mom was the one who scheduled their doctor’s appointments, made sure they showed up everywhere on time. It was Mom who always was there when they returned from school, with a snack, demanding a full report on the day’s adventures. It was Mom who would not tolerate a bad attitude or an uncharitable remark. It was Mom who taught them the crucial importance of manners, an old school term which essentially means...respect. And it was always Mom who did all the worrying. While I always reminded her that...the kids will be fine...she put in a lifetime of 18 hour days making sure they would be. 

Watching my wife with our kids all these years has convinced me that motherhood is more art than science. There is nothing accidental about it. Being a mother, it seems to me, is an eternal commitment to the hard details of life. It is a relentless pursuit, a tireless advocacy campaign, whereby anything or anyone who gets between your children and their best interests is in for an existential fight to the finish. If you were dumb enough to pose a threat to our kids, there would be hell to pay. But, having said all of this, what made Pam so incredible as a mother was the fact that she steadfastly resisted the urge to hover over them. She wasn’t one of those insufferable helicopter moms who think it their job to insure that junior never skins a knee. Pam made sure our kids were prepared for everything, but success or failure was their job. Pam was willing to allow them to fail. 

I had my moments as a dad. Even though I was responsible for financing my family’s adventures, I never became one of those guys who was always too busy making money to show up at the game or the concert. My kids always knew that Dad would be there..at everything. But it is not a case of false modesty to say that in our house there was always only one indispensable person...Mom. The kids knew it. I knew it. Even Mom knew it, and she never buckled under the weight of the job.

What a woman...