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  • Good Times

    Good Times

    We drove down to Rehoboth Beach for James’s baseball tournament, two cars, because that is just how we do it now. We had been to Rehoboth before, but I had apparently forgotten the whole place, including the long strip of stores, restaurants, hotels, and traffic that greets you on the way in. By the time we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express & Suites, a few of the baseball families were already camped out in the lobby. That lobby would become our unofficial clubhouse for the weekend.

    Thursday was our beach day, and after a week of forecasts threatening otherwise, we lucked into perfect weather. We arrived early and set up right in front until the lifeguards paid us two visits. First, they made us take down our tent. Then they confirmed that no, we could not fly a kite either. It was Stephanie’s birthday, though, and we were not about to let a few town ordinances ruin the day. We tried to leave enough room around us for the families who would arrive later. The strangers who set up camp around us did not get that memo.

    Then the tournament started.

    We won one game and lost one. The loss was a game we could have won, though I am fairly sure every baseball parent says that after every loss. A double play ended our comeback and took the wind out of us. Charging us $20 to park after we had already driven four hours felt like a personal insult, but that is travel baseball.

    Saturday was our day. We beat the top team in the tournament, then handled the next one easily, which moved us into fifth place and the winners’ bracket. At the time, every pitch felt important, every at-bat like it might decide the whole weekend. A few days later, I could barely remember most of it.

    What I remember now is everything that happened between the games. Families spread across the hotel lobby. The group growing as siblings and extended family arrived for the weekend. Parents trying, and mostly failing, to keep the boys from sprinting down the hallways. We lost a couple of kids at the beach and then found them again. Some boys overate, some got sunburned, and one or two took too many waves to the head and paid for it later. Mysterious feminine hygiene products surfaced from the sand. The bathrooms were too far away, so everyone made their way into the ocean and pretended it was only for a swim.

    There were nightly walks to Rita’s, where we learned Tim is a vanilla connoisseur. There was a fiercely competitive round of cornhole and the total dominance of Casey and James on the boards. There was a mysterious blue vase, so out of place in the hotel lobby that someone eventually removed it from the premises and gave it a loving new home in Connecticut. There was my service buddy Duke, a rescue dog and my new favorite beach friend. There was the Crooked Hammock Brewery, the humidity finally breaking, and a sunset appearing through the clouds at just the right time.

    And there were the moms who organized the entire weekend so the rest of us could show up, complain about parking, and enjoy ourselves. I am always grateful for that, even when I forget to say it.

    Not the counts. Not the innings. Not who was up with two outs.

    The lobby. The beach. The laughter. The nonsense.

    By Sunday morning, we were still alive in the winners’ bracket, ranked fifth and facing the sixth-ranked CNS All-Stars, a team that had scored more runs than anyone else in the tournament. Our pitching was great, but two balls found the third-base line. I did not get a clean look at the first one. The second was one of those line-hugging shots that curves away into no man’s land just when you think it is going foul. Those two plays cost us four runs.

    We rallied anyway, pulled within one, gave everyone one final dose of hope, and could not finish it. After all the pacing, anxiety, and hoping, we were sent packing around 10:30 Sunday morning. We later found out the team that beat us went on to win the whole tournament. I still cannot decide whether that is supposed to make it hurt less or more.

    That is the agony of being a baseball parent. Every missed chance feels enormous. Every mistake feels like a small tragedy because, for a few hours, their hopes become your hopes too.

    But they are still kids. Everyone needs to take a breath.

    They are caught somewhere between following instructions and disappearing into their own worlds, wanting their coaches’ approval, their teammates’ respect, and their parents’ pride. They almost certainly do not want their fathers talking baseball at them for four hours on the ride home.

    There is a line from The Office I have always loved: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

    I think about that line more than I would like to admit.

    The baseball will fade. I will forget the score, the missed chances, and probably even the names of the teams we played. What I will keep is the hotel lobby, the beach, the blue vase, Rita’s, Duke, the cornhole games, and the boys laughing together into the night.

    As we were leaving, I saw a father in the batting cage with his young son, feeding him pitches while the two of them were completely lost in it. I remembered when James was that small. For a moment, I could see the whole circle of baseball life right in front of me.

    The tournament gave us a reason to go. The time between the games was the reason it mattered.

    I already miss it.

    These are the good times.

  • My Favorite Color is Blue

    My Favorite Color is Blue

    When your parents pass, everything they were becomes magnified by the loss. All the little things that once meant nothing become weights on your soul.

    I don’t remember my father’s favorite color, and it bothered me. It was an ongoing thorn. Hopefully, like an oyster making a pearl from irritation, something beautiful can come from the pain of the soul.

    This poem is for my kids when I’m gone, just in case they can’t remember.

    My Favorite Color is Blue

    Words on the page
    Before there were none
    And then suddenly you came
    You appeared

    My favorite color is Blue
    And now two years later
    I’m not sure what yours was

    I must have known
    And I feel like I asked

    It doesn’t mean
    That I loved you any less

    But I just wanted to share
    In case you should wonder
    And I know that you always loved me

    So if it causes you pain
    I don’t want you to fret

    Just a small reminder

    When I’m gone
    In case you don’t remember
    I’m not really gone
    I’m just around the corner

    I had to go so you could grow
    There were unknown spaces
    You couldn’t explore
    While Dad’s still around

    This is the way
    It has always been done

    So you have to face
    This long walk
    This final level
    This final boss
    Without me by your side

    But I’m here in your heart
    On your mind

    The thoughts you think
    Are parts of me
    I hope you take the best

    And can feel that love
    That I poured
    My hourglass of time
    I would have given you it all

    Just to make you laugh
    For one more hug
    For just one more smile

    So think of me
    Fondly
    Like I think of my parents
    With gentleness and reverie
    With silliness and cheer

    I have always loved you
    And I always will

  • High School Graduation

    High School Graduation

    It has been said before, and it will be said until the end of time, but I cannot believe how quickly it all went by. So here we are. My daughter, my little girl, my baby, is graduating from high school.

    We were instructed not to cheer and to hold our applause until the end, but the moment the names began to be read, the stands erupted like ravaging hordes at the Colosseum. Every family shouted for their person. Our family was spread across the field and throughout the stands, and when your name was read, I roared as loudly as I could. I shouted your name from somewhere deep inside my body and actually hurt my lower back.

    What a treat and a blessing it is to grow old.

    We watched you walk forward with confidence and poise, with the perfect posture of an elegant young lady receiving her diploma. You were draped in the cords of your academic achievements, proudly displayed for everyone to see, and our hearts were filled with joy and love for you.

    Watching you brought me back to my own graduation from Newtown High School. Sometimes I joke that I have not made much progress because I am still living in the same town where I grew up, but watching you walk forward made me see it differently. Staying here was a choice, not a punishment. It has been a blessing to give you the same small-town upbringing that helped shape me. How incredibly fortunate we are to call this place home.

    I wasted a lot of my time here when I was young. I did not always appreciate what was around me, and I did not always make the most of what I had.

    You did.

    You lived here. You worked hard, participated, showed up, and made something of your time. There is an old saying that things are what you make of them, and you made something beautiful out of these years.

    When I graduated, the ceremony was held in the auditorium, and I honestly do not remember much of anything. I do not remember who I sat next to. I could probably guess by thinking about which other last names beginning with G were near mine. I do not remember the speeches, who gave them, or what they said. I do not even remember whether they pronounced our last name correctly, although they probably did not.

    I remember that I received my diploma.

    I hope you remember more than I did. I hope you remember who spoke, what was said, who sat beside you, and what it felt like to hear your name. I hope you let it sink deeply into your mind and become a happy memory that you can carry with you.

    But if one day the details begin to fade, that is okay too. You are still a kid, and there is so much life waiting to live. Even if you forget some of the details, you will still be you.

    And if you ever come back and read this, I want you to know what it looked like from our side of the stands.

    Your parents loved you. We poured our hearts into you, along with our hopes and dreams. Your Mima, aunts and uncle were there, excited and screaming your name. Everyone was watching you with pride. We were celebrating you, hats and everything.

    You were our person, and you will always be our person.

    I am so proud of the way you have begun your journey and of the strong footing you have created for yourself. So many of the pitfalls I created in my own life, you have swung neatly over. You will never have to know some of the struggles I created for myself, and that may be one of the greatest gifts a parent can receive.

    You are not following my path. You are beginning your own.

    You have taken everything we gave you and made it better. That is how it is supposed to work. Each generation takes the family story a little farther down the road of life, and now it is your turn to carry ours forward.

    I do not know exactly where the road will take you, but I know how you are stepping onto it. You are walking forward with the confidence, grace, and poise of a lifelong dancer, the same qualities that carried you across that field.

    We will continue to watch with eager anticipation as you move on to college. I am so excited for you and for all the new experiences, challenges, and people waiting for you there. We get to watch the beautiful tapestry of your life being stitched together in real time.

    We will always be there. I will always be there, loving you to the moon and back.

  • Before He Spoke His First Word

    Before He Spoke His First Word

    James gave his middle school graduation closing remarks last night. His topic was “Being the Change You Want to See.”

    I thought he was going to be the only student speaker, but there were two others, the president and vice president of the Student Council. The president is also the class valedictorian and has many other accolades. She gave a very good speech. The vice president followed with a speech about kindness, which was very similar to my son’s.

    Fortunately, there was some time between their speeches and James’s because my wife and I were poking and nudging each other every time we heard another similarity.

    To begin, I was proud of my son before he spoke his first word.

    He had to sit on the dais in front of the entire school, his classmates, and all the parents seated along the wings. It would have been daunting for anyone, and I felt every bit of it for him. It was as though I had to give the speech myself. My stomach was a jelly roll of chum being tossed around at high tide.

    He also had to wait until nearly the end of the ceremony to deliver his remarks. Our family sat in anxious anticipation, eagerly following each part of the program until we finally reached his speech.

    James stood up before he was even introduced and walked to the podium. His principal announced him and his topic. James stepped back for a moment, looked over toward us, and gave us a big smile. We gave him a loud round of applause before he had even spoken, and then quietly sank into our stadium seats.

    He began, and it was smooth and effortless.

    He did all the little things I remembered learning in my college public-speaking class. He took his time, spoke slowly, enunciated clearly, looked up and made eye contact, emphasized the key points, and delivered his speech with the confidence and poise of a true leader.

    As I watched him, I was overwhelmed with love and pride. It was overflowing out of me. I had to quickly turn my thoughts toward almost anything else just to control the flood of emotion and keep the tears from streaming down my face.

    It all felt surreal. For a moment, it no longer felt as though I was watching my son give an eighth-grade speech. It felt more like I was watching a statesman deliver a campaign address. I know that sounds like the rambling of a delusional father who is hopelessly lost in admiration for his own son, but I am sorry to report that I am not exaggerating. 😊

    The speech was only about two minutes and forty-five seconds long, but we hung on every word.

    When he finished, he left the stage to thunderous applause, especially from his family cheering section. I was relieved for him that it was over, but more than anything, I could not wait to hug and squeeze him afterward and tell him that he had exceeded every expectation we had and that we were beyond proud of him.

    His speech was about being the change you want to see. What he may not realize yet is that, by having the courage to stand in front of that crowd and speak from his heart, he was already living out his own message.

    I was proud of him before he ever spoke his first word. Last night, I was simply fortunate enough to hear the young man he has become speak them.

  • The Greek Experience, Danbury, CT

    The Greek Experience, Danbury, CT

    According to 23andMe, I am around 14 percent Greek. I’m from a small fishing village, like my cousin Balki. The number keeps changing as more and more people spit into tubes and send them away.

    Growing up, my father’s side was Greek. It was also the only side of the family that really made it over here, so we were Greek in a big way. Greek culture is family and food, and there is no real separation between the two. It was my inherited and adopted nationality, besides being first and always a proud American.

    Since my parents passed, I have been one giant bag of feelings, sentiment, emotion, and nostalgia.

    My father kindly accepted my mother’s Lutheran religion, and that was how their boys were brought up. To be fair, there wasn’t a Greek Orthodox church in the area when we were growing up. My parents were also always on the late side. We were lucky to make the Sunday service in Newtown. There is no way my mother would have handled the tour de force of Orthodox Christianity—hours of standing and prayer, a good deal of it in Greek.

    But after attending the funerals of my Yia Yia and my Aunt Mary, my mother became convinced that the Greek Orthodox Church was for her.

    She wanted to be known. She wanted her eulogy to be given by someone who knew her and cared about her. Father Peter was her man, whether he knew it or not.

    My father was very happy to be going back home.

    I can only imagine the questions and questions my mother asked Father Peter as she went through the catechumenate and was finally chrismated into the faith. He literally needed the patience of a saint.

    I think of 1 Corinthians 13:12:

    “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

    That verse has taken on a new meaning for me as a father, looking back while my daughter is graduating from high school and my son is graduating from middle school.

    The love that pours out of a father for his son and daughter is almost impossible to explain. Recently, I found myself thinking about how differently that love is experienced on each side. A parent carries the whole history—the years, the worry, the sacrifices, the ordinary days that somehow become sacred when you look back on them. A child is simply living inside it.

    For a moment, that realization made me melancholy. Not because the love was not returned, but because it could never be fully understood in the same way. They could not see it from where I was standing, just as I could not fully see the love of my own parents while they were still here.

    Then I thought again about the verse and realized that we are never going to be fully known down here. We can’t be. Maybe it is a mistake to expect another person to understand every part of the love we carry for them.

    But the desire itself is true. We want to be fully loved. We want to be known and loved in all the strange and particular ways that each individual person needs love.

    It became another lightbulb moment about God. Maybe the question is not simply whether we love God, but whether we will allow ourselves to be loved by Him. Jesus asks the crippled man if he wants to be healed. Love does not force itself upon us. It asks to be accepted.

    I am extremely grateful to Father Peter and Father Nikolas for their love and kindness when my parents passed. They took the time to know them, and that gave me peace. In those moments, the garments of the Christian faith began to mean something different to me. Worn honestly, they represented men trying to place their trust in love and allow it to guide them.

    All of this, and what about the Greek Experience?

    To understand the festival, I think you have to understand the Greek instinct to work together, feed everyone, support the church, and somehow enjoy the chaos of doing all four at the same time.

    And then there is the food.

    The food is pretty amazing. How could it not be when you have all the Greeks who run the diners and food businesses in the area working together.

    I know the McDonald brothers and Ray Kroc developed the modern quick-service restaurant model, but I have no doubt they were divinely inspired after watching Greeks run a church festival somewhere in California.

    That is what my father loved about it. Not just the gyros and all the great food, although he certainly loved the gyros. He loved the work, the organization, and the people stepping in wherever they were needed. To him, faith was not only something spoken about on Sunday morning. It was something built, cooked, served, cleaned up, and then done all over again the next year.

    For me, the festival is impossible to separate from my parents. It reminds me of my father being proud of his Greekness, my mother asking Father Peter enough questions to test the patience of heaven, and all the strange ways that funerals, faith, food, and laughter become tied together. It also reminds me of all the people we loved who are no longer standing beside us in line.

    So I sat there eating a gyro, looking at the icons, watching everyone work, and thinking about my father.

    For a little while, he did not feel very far away.

    That is a pretty amazing experience for someone who is 14 percent Greek.

  • What if I had never met you?

    What if I had never met you?

    You have told me so many times
    but I didn’t listen
    I didn’t hear you
    I didn’t see
    I was blind and deaf

    I was looking for myself
    for a way of being
    and found something greater

    After twenty years
    I finally found you

    What if I had never met you
    Where would we both be now

    All the small miracles
    that made this right

    And the great ones
    so obvious
    shining brighter
    than any light

    Today I heard you
    Today my heart listened

    To be blind and see
    To be deaf and hear

    The joy overwhelmed
    my whole being
    and I wept
    as you spoke

    To be loved
    the way you love me

    To be seen
    and understood

    To stand with you

    Holding hands

    To find peace

    To know
    that you have loved me
    Always

  • The Final Recital

    The Final Recital

    Spotlight Dance Conservatory sounds almost like an academic endeavor of celestial bodies moving in the heavens. Before it was Spotlight, it was Dance Etc., and to me, it will always be Dance Etc.

    For 14 years, Olivia has been moving through that little universe of music, lights, costumes, practice, nerves, friendships, disappointments, applause, and growth. I watched one of her classmates receive a 15-year pin, something Olivia did not quite reach. But what she did accomplish may be even more important. She accomplished steadiness, grit, and the quiet and difficult act of not giving up.

    I am so proud of her, especially after this last year. I am proud because when I was her age, I quit too easily. If I didn’t feel like doing something, I walked away, and later in life I had to pay for those decisions. So my heart relaxes a little knowing that she may not have to learn that lesson the same way I did.

    For all these years, I have watched the showcases and recitals. I have watched the costumes, the lights, the music, and the little girl who kept growing up on stage right in front of us.

    My wife deserves as much credit for this accomplishment as my daughter. She poured her heart and soul into these years. The driving, the dresses, the costumes, the arguments, the late nights, the overnight stays, the emotions, all of it. She carried so much of it with Olivia, and I know Olivia will remember.

    Maybe not all of it right away. Maybe not all at once. But in the different seasons of her life, that love will keep revealing itself. Hopefully one day, if Olivia has a daughter of her own, she will understand even more deeply what her mother gave her.

    These things we do for our children often feel like hardship in the moment, but they are really the essence of a life well lived. The friction, the sacrifice, the repetition, the showing up again and again. That is where love becomes real. That is where the lasting bond between a mother and daughter is formed.

    I am also grateful for our family, who has always shown up to support her. My family-in-law, who bring their hearts and show up because that is simply who they are.

    And then there are the people I still look for in the crowd.

    I have to look away sometimes when I watch Olivia dance because I get overwhelmed thinking about my mother. I think about how much she would have wanted to be there for all of this, especially the final recital. I think about how proud she would have been. As I hold back tears, I remind myself that she is there in some way, watching with my father from above, just as proud as two grandparents could possibly be.

    There were hard parts too. I know there were times Olivia felt excluded, and I know how deeply that can hurt, especially when you are young and simply want to belong. I do not know every side of every story, but I know what it felt like watching my daughter carry that pain and keep showing up anyway.

    There is a quiet strength in that. Not the kind that never hurts, but the kind that keeps going even when it does. Olivia has learned, in her own way, that not everyone will see you, include you, or understand you. But that does not mean you are unloved. Sometimes the love that matters most is not found in the approval we were chasing, but in the people who were there all along.

    Then I watched the end of the recital. I watched the younger dancers run up to Olivia on stage, crying, grabbing onto her, sad that she was leaving. I had never heard about that part. I had never really seen that part. And there it was, this unexpected gift of love and affection being poured out on her.

    I also watched the previous owner of the studio make a loving appearance with beautiful poster boards of all the girls, filled with years of recital memories, costumes, and empowering quotes. It was such a thoughtful tribute to who they were, who they had been, and who they were becoming.

    What an incredible thing to witness.

    Maybe that is the lesson. The people who love us, and the people we love, are where our attention should go. Not toward the people who overlooked us. Not toward the ones who made us feel small. Not toward the endless desire to be admired by everyone.

    As I sat there, full of admiration for everything she had done, I felt the weight of all those years that had passed so quickly. I panicked a little because I cannot hold on to any of it. Not the toddler. Not the little girl. Not the young dancer. Not the version of her who still seemed like she would be with us forever.

    She is leaving in the fall. The little dancing girl has grown up. She is ready to take on the world. Maybe that is what all of this was really preparing us for. Not just the final bow. Not just the last recital. Not just the end of 14 years at Dance Etc. and Spotlight Dance Conservatory, but the moment when we have to let her step forward into her own life with courage, tenderness, discipline, and strength.

    The stage lights will go down. The music will stop. The costumes will be put away. But something greater remains. Fourteen years ago, a little girl walked into a dance studio. Now a young woman walks out.

    And all I can say is thank you.

  • The Miracles I Can Hold

    The Miracles I Can Hold

    Feeling pretty amazing the other day, I was reading my Bible outside in the setting sun. It was an amazing late spring day. The weather was practically perfect for reading, for being outside, for just sitting still for a little while. I lit my small propane fire pit and took breaks from reading to look around.

    I watched the trees sway in the wind and thought about how absolutely beautiful any place on earth can be. My backyard is not perfectly manicured. There are oddball trees with diseases and vines, survivors of so many little storms. Some are hunched over in different directions from strong winds and microbursts. Yet it was still all beautiful. It still filled me with reverence and awe.

    I looked up to the sky, and it was even more beautiful. The clouds were spread across the sky as the wind rolled them forward, almost like an old television toy where the screen moved by turning a knob in the back. The moon was already present, adding another layer of wonder.

    Then, like Icarus, I asked for more.

    Feeling good, feeling grateful, I wanted something more. I asked God for a miracle in the clouds. I wanted to be able to see heaven, to see something beyond what was already in front of me. I wanted to see my parents, to know for certain that they were waiting for me. Just a little something. Something that should not be there.

    I stared for a long time, hoping and waiting for a sign, for an angel gleaming in the clouds, for some clear answer from above.

    And for a moment, I was disappointed when nothing happened. It almost tilted my faith on the scale, like an added weight that pulled my soul downward. I took a long, deep breath and returned to my reading.

    Then the next day, I was reminded of something that is never far from my mind. I already have so many amazing miracles. The health of my body. The health of my mind. My beautiful wife, our love, and my family. My children, my daughter and my son, who have my whole heart.

    After all the meandering, all the what ifs, all the wondering about which way life could have gone, I look at them and remember that this was always the right path. Somehow, God blessed me with more than I deserved. He placed these amazing souls in my care, and that alone is more miracle than I can fully understand.

    Maybe that is the grace of Jesus, being handed a life so beautiful that you know you could never have earned it on your own.

    Later that day, I put on YouTube and watched a video about Padre Pio, a blessed saint who had constant miracles happening to him and around him. When I saw what he had to endure, and the depth of faith that was required of him, I felt something I did not expect.

    I felt relieved that I did not see anything in the clouds.

    I was relieved that my journey is not his journey. I am not ready for those kinds of miracles. I am not ready for that kind of burden. And maybe that was the answer. God, in His mercy, gave me exactly what I needed by not giving me what I asked for.

    I asked to see heaven in the clouds, but maybe heaven was already there in the quiet. In the trees. In the fire. In the breeze. In the moon hanging above me before night had fully arrived. In my wife. In my children. In the ordinary life I sometimes forget is overflowing with mercy and love.

    So I am thankful. Thankful for the miracles I can hold. Thankful for the ones I can live with. Thankful for the quiet answers God gives, even when I am still learning how to see them clearly.