Toby Goodshank Original Art 2025

Life with Chicken and Broccoli

Category: Musings

  • Father’s Day 2025

    Father’s Day 2025

    I asked my kids for a parade around me while I sat and drank my coffee. My son was quick to oblige, and my daughter was slower to follow after several prompts and me saying I needed to see some of those multi-thousand-dollar dance moves we’ve been paying for over the last 12-plus years.

    After a few rotations around the couch with various high steps, hand waves, and general silliness, the children came to a stop. Then I asked them for their rendition of the Von Trapp Family’s good night song and the light-hearted and fast Lonely Goat marionette show. We had a great laugh and reveled in the silliness of the moment.

    I love this time, and I love being their father.

    We then had to complete the Daily Stoic, a tradition now in our home, reading one of Ryan Holiday’s carefully curated stoic quotes, followed by his interpretation. We’ve done this consistently for several years. We do fall behind on the day-to-day reading and end up with these longer catch-up sessions on the weekend. This particular Father’s Day included over a week’s worth.

    I’m never impatient or in a rush during this time. I love reading the wisdom of these old sages and trying to find ways to connect it to my kids’ lives. Even reading this book now for the fourth time through, there is always new meaning to divine as we grow, mature, and age through life. Also just taking time to talk about things, to hear what they think, and be there together.

    I know that for the kids, sometimes it feels like a chore, maybe more than sometimes. I can see it when they lose focus or drift off into their own thoughts. Today, my son decided to stand up and move over to the mantle to pick up a baseball, which he immediately dropped. I rebuked him:
    “Can’t you just sit still for a few minutes while we do these?”

    It was all quickly forgotten. There was no punishment. We returned to the book.

    Today on Father’s Day, I get to officially be in charge, so we went slow and we took our time.

    We took turns reading the lessons, day by day. They’re both fantastic readers, and if one reads, I’ll ask the other what they thought it was about or how they’d apply it. Most days, to push through, they’ve become masters of repackaging, paraphrasing, and just regurgitating it back to me.

    After so many years, the base principle is the same:
    We focus on what is in our control and let go of what is not.

    I know, for myself and for them, that this is truly useful, practical, and meaningful information. It can and should be used in all parts of life. But I also know that only through daily and consistent repetition do the lessons and ideas really take root.

    I wait for that one glorious moment when they step back in a stressful situation, analyze it clearly, and make that cardinally guided decision; to be the good people I know them to be.

    I hope they will continue to find this wisdom meaningful as they grow, and that one day, they will pass it on to their own children. I know that when I’m a grandfather, I’ll still be doing this with their kids. I hope we’ll do it together whenever we can and that we’ll make the time.

    I think about my father’s consistent lessons, the things Dad would say, how he worked hard to be a good role model. He’d often say he was “constantly instructing,” providing constant vigilance against the dark arts. I’m especially reminded of him this first Father’s Day since he passed. His ways, his sayings, the phrases I knew him by and I can still hear them in my head.

    I remember when I would ask, “Dad, if you could talk to anyone from history, anyone at all, who would it be?”
    His answer was simple: “My dad.”
    I never could understand the answer. With all the amazing historical people, why he chose his father.

    I’m reminded of an exchange student party I attended at UConn. There was a priest there for some reason who described life as the tapestry of our lives, woven together by the people we love and who love us in return. The things they say and the places they hold inside of us remain, blending into this eternal tapestry we’re all a part of, stretching back to the beginning.

    It felt heavy at the time, surrounded by a nighttime fire and strangers all sharing in the moment, and it has stuck with me.

    Now slightly more than halfway through the average life, you reminisce, ponder, and travel around different paths. The midlife crisis of achieving the goals of society only to find out that most of them carry no weight. The greatness you never achieved. Dreams you never chased. The what-ifs you question. I move to the end and see my entire life.

    I know and have always known that being a father is the greatest gift. To be a great father is greatness.  It’s my vocation and the thing I take the most pride in. I’m grateful, thankful, and appreciative every day for the souls God chose me to be a father to, and I try in earnest not to take that for granted.

    Every day, I look to honor this gift by continuing to show up and be the example of a “good man” that my father was.  That’s what Father’s Day is. A thread pulled from the tapestry, handed down and tied with care.

    I don’t need a big celebration or the perfect day. I just want the time, the laughs, the moments that stack into something lasting.

    That’s enough.
    That’s greatness.
    That’s everything.

  • Where the Wild Things Are

    Where the Wild Things Are

    Sitting out on my back porch, I hear CCR playing in my mind: “Got to sit down, take a rest on the porch.” The lyrics feel right, but the melody is too fast-paced for this early June morning. The weather shifted from spring to summer like one of those old cartoons, where the seasons spin on a giant wheel and suddenly land on summer. The big, beautiful sun shows up without warning and says, “Good morning.”

    Last year, and the year before that, I hardly spent any time outside. Just enough to set up the tables, chairs, and umbrellas one day, only to take them down at the end of the season. We had the Fourth of July outside. It was the last outdoor barbecue my father would attend before he passed at the end of the month. In many ways, he was already gone. The strong man I had known was whittled away by worry, age, and the final blow of losing his wife. Five years her senior, he had always feared he’d go first. He was the one with the more obvious health issues, and the one we all worried about.

    When I looked at him then, he always seemed so far away. Already gone. Caught between the living and where he longed to be. By her side.

    The air is warm and dewy. My deck faces west, so the morning sun hasn’t made its appearance yet. I walk outside with my decaf coffee, filled with the latest YouTube podcaster health elixirs. I sit down in my reclining deck chair with the footrest extended, take a deep breath, and let it fill my lungs. I’m so glad I chose to come outside instead of staying in. It feels like a vacation. The trees sway gently in the breeze, and the morning animals, birds and insects have already started their day. Buzzing. Flying.

    I think of the Sermon on the Mount and the Bible verse:
    “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

    The verse reminds me to be calm and present. It helps quiet that part of my mind always trying to worry, work, or plan for tomorrow. In this moment, I have everything I need. I am at peace.

    I lean further back in my chair and look up. Each day we’re given the most magnificent, glorious sky, yet how rarely I remember to look up or give thanks. I hear the birds chirping, each with their own song, their own language. They gather things for their nests or food for themselves. They call out to their friends and family. And they pay nothing for a cellular phone plan.

    A kamikaze bug decides to land on me, only to be swatted away or crushed as my attention snaps into focus like a laser. I had been drifting for a moment, and it was that not-so-gentle reminder to stay. Stay present.

    Still, I can’t help but lean back again, thinking fondly of other times spent outside. The only thing that could make this moment more complete would be sharing it with the people I love. It seems strange that we don’t take more advantage of mornings like this, that we allow them to slip by. I would have liked to share this one with my father. Before everything weighed him down, he loved the simple things. A good chair by the fire. A patch of sun. The sound of birds. The city kid who used to wander into the woods with his cowboy hat.

    I return to the moment as I take the last sip of my coffee and think how little the birds ask for, and how much they seem to receive. The birds don’t check calendars. The trees don’t rush. The sun rises whether we’re looking or not; greeting all of us with another opportunity, another chance to notice.

    And maybe that’s the point.
    Life is always offering itself, waiting for you to finally see. We just have to step outside.

  • Who is Chicken and Broccoli?

    Who is Chicken and Broccoli?

    Chicken and Broccoli is a playful nickname I use for my wife. It’s a moniker that conveys consistency, dependability, and reliability; a known quantity. It’s not haughty or pretentious.

    To be a great Chicken and Broccoli means being made of simple ingredients, prepared with love, tried and true. After a long week, it’s a dish you just want to sit on the couch with to relax and enjoy your favorite show. It’s something you can enjoy for a lifetime, without agita or complaint.

    We’ve been together for over 20 years now, and my wife has almost always ordered Chicken and Broccoli whenever we’ve had Chinese food. It’s become part of how I know her. When we were younger, I’d challenge her on it: “Don’t you want to try anything else? I can’t believe you just want the same thing!”

    But now, I get it. I appreciate the order. I appreciate knowing her, really knowing her and all the little things that make her unique. These small, steady preferences mark your soulmate from another as we stitch our own story on this cosmic quilt of life.

    Lately, I’ve been thinking more deeply: what else does it say about her?

    She doesn’t chase after fancy new dishes. She’s never soared with the Phoenix and Dragon. She’s not looking for the heat of the Sichuan region or going toe-to-toe with General Tso. She’s not dabbling with mung bean scrubs, and she’d like your Happy Family to keep it down. Even with the broccoli, she’s not mixing things up; no shrimp, no beef, no pork. Just chicken, thank you very much.

    As our friend Han says, “Thank you for the waitings!”

    Now, if your wife or girlfriend is Chinese menu curious, be warned: you might want to prepare for the other shoe to drop. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she might be cheating on you. Be warned that your spring roll may get swapped out for an egg roll. There’s a chance she’s wrapped up with triads or smoking opium in one of Newtown’s many hollowed-out dream factories full of stretch-pant mommies.

    But if your wife can stick with the same dish for a lifetime?

    That’s a great sign she can stick with you.