Toby Goodshank Original Art 2025

Life with Chicken and Broccoli

Tag: writing

  • The Drop Off

    The Drop Off

    And just like that, after 17 years, my daughter is off and away at college. It seems strange how “just like that” can account for 17 years.

    Seventeen years of raising one of the two most important people in my life on this little blue planet. You try desperately to figure out how the hell all this time went by. So much is lost and forgotten. Pangs of midlife memory failure cause anxiety. Then you go back and look at pictures and remember, or as they now say, recreate the past.

    The little girl who sang with me in her car seat as we drove back and forth from my parents’ house. All the small transitions and big moments that the kids forget but were made for you. All these amazing little gifts that come with raising your own kids.

    The days were often long, filled with a frantic rush to get through them and finally relax watching TV. I’m not saying I want them back, but I could use them once in a while on a slow weekend. I could use a good dose of Sesame Street and a bowl of cereal. Some Elmo and Abby Cadabby floating around the screen.

    It all seems surreal, and I feel so many things all the time, swirling around my head.

    There are different feelings you have as a dad versus a mom. My job is to pack the car tightly, making sure all the necessary, and completely unnecessary, things make it to the dorm room. We had to take two cars, and for me that is never a problem.

    James, my son and little best friend, rides with me. Olivia, Mom, and Aunt Mandy are in car two.

    I stay busy with dad’s work, the Tetris car packing and lifting the heavier objects into the car. What a difference from when I was a kid. There are no TVs, no heavy-ass CRT monitors, stereo systems, or heavy tower computers.

    Just lots of extra clothes and outfits that may work one day if the moon is just right.

    Also, cleaning supplies?

    I never brought or had one cleaning supply of any kind in my dorm room. It made me laugh to think about how different girls and boys can be.

    My wife deserves all her flowers because she has been planning, buying, and figuring out everything Olivia would need for months. She has quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, felt the weight of this transition more than anyone. Through all of it, she has been absolutely amazing and continues to be the best wife and mother anyone could hope for.

    People would ask me if I was going to miss her, if I was sad, or how I felt about the transition.

    I do miss her dearly.

    She was always in her room doing her own thing, but there was proximity, and that was enough. I could periodically go to her door and knock, of course, check in, and see what she was doing. She would be pretending to read or do work while quickly hiding her phone as she texted her friends.

    She is still so very much my little girl, who has been sheltered at home and away from so many of life’s storms. There is this constant tension between keeping them safe and allowing them to grow up without a care, and then one day dropping them off in a strange new world.

    The day went smoothly. We got her all set up and ready to conquer the next chapter of her life, and then just like that, you are off and back home.

    The transition has been difficult, and she misses us dearly. It is such a large adjustment, with so many changes all at once. Today my wife is going back up to the school. It’s hard to be surrounded by so many people and still feel all alone. I remember different times when I first went away to school and felt that way, especially when the friends I had made went back home on the weekends to work.

    A new room with a roommate, new people, new routines, new expectations. The fear of the unknown. No familiar bedroom down the hall. No kitchen to wander into. No little check-ins throughout the day. All the things that seemed so ordinary suddenly become the things you miss the most.

    It is good that we are all so close and that we communicate. I know she will navigate this transition with the same grace she has shown in everything else in her life. It may take some time, and that is okay. There is no rule that says you have to feel at home the moment you arrive somewhere new.

    So more than missing her, I am optimistically happy, grateful, and excited for her. For all the new things she will experience, the people she has not met yet, the friendships that will become lifelong, the mistakes she will make and learn from, and the confidence that will come from figuring things out without us standing right beside her.

    I know she will come home different. Not unrecognizable and not less ours, just a little more herself. Maybe that is the hardest and best part of raising kids. You spend all those years building a home around them, keeping them safe, feeding them, driving them everywhere, worrying about them, laughing with them, getting annoyed with them, and loving them more than you knew was possible.

    And then one day, if you did your job right, they leave. You pack the car, carry the boxes, make the bed, give the hugs, and walk back to the car.

    Somehow 17 years fits inside that one drive home.

    I miss her, but more than that, I am proud of her. I cannot wait to see who comes walking back through our door.

  • The Fire Pit at the Residence Inn

    The Fire Pit at the Residence Inn

    Back to work and thinking about this weekend, what will I write about?

    Scoops and Tugs
    No hits before 10, 14U Rangers Black
    Who is going to pitch?
    Peer pressure and Bud Heavy, the Kevin W. Story
    Fire Side Chats with Prosecco-Fueled Moms
    Stephanie M. “America’s Sweetheart”
    Tim and James Go on a Date
    How Gay Is a Veggie Burger?
    Martine’s New Outfit
    “You Know Where I Stand”: Dan T. Hot Takes on Youth Baseball
    Why Did Tom H. Cross the Road?
    Steph Learns How to Pronounce Kara
    Coach Goodie’s Uncomfortable Pretzel Talk
    Willie McBride’s and His Toothless Bride
    Duke Cleans Off the Wine Flutes
    Rich M. Gets Fed on His Anniversary
    Gap to Gap Moms Are the Friendliest

    I was really hoping to write about how we persevered through two seasons and finally came through in season two with a big weekend tournament win. It was our last tournament of the summer 14U baseball season, and we were in upper New Jersey at Diamond Nation.

    We were a team still taking shape, but there were plenty of reasons to be hopeful. We had finally filled some of the spots that had been weak and always seemed just one step away from putting it all together. We are still a work in progress, but it will happen. I have it on good inside information.

    The weekends and trips have become just as much fun for the parents as they are for the kids. We are a stone-cold pack of weirdos, to paraphrase Bridesmaids, and that is how we like it.

    Thinking about all the funny little things that happened this weekend, none comes more quickly to mind than the female equivalent of Don Rickles, the uncompromising Steph M., rarely burdened by a kind word for anyone.

    Steph has always spoken her mind and given us such catchphrases as, “Throw strikes,” and, “Get it up, Joe!” This weekend, she let all the filters go. I can only imagine what instructions Rich receives behind closed bedroom doors.

    Still, it would not be the same without her. She is loved. I appreciate all the uniqueness of our very own America’s Sweetheart.

    The kids battled hard during our second game, but we ended up in the dreaded consolation circle. The final game still felt like our own championship, and we wanted the win. It was a good game, and we were all happy that they finished the weekend hitting and on a high note. That always makes the ride home more enjoyable.

    I am always surprised and thankful for the fun we have. Life takes you down all these winding roads, and somehow you end up at a Residence Inn fire pit with people who were once strangers. Somewhere along the way, a team becomes a family.

    We drank our drinks: seltzers, Prosecco, Bud Heavy, Truly, Michelob Ultra, IPAs, rosé, White Claws, and Sip of Sunshine.

    There were professionally prepared charcuterie boards from Jen, Amanda serving as the s’mores grill safety officer, and her Ranger’s chocolate-covered pretzel sticks.

    There were so many inside jokes and stupid stories as we sat around enjoying our time together. Most would make no sense to anyone who was not there, and some barely made sense to those of us who were.

    This was the last tournament of the summer, with an uncertain future as the boys grow and the team changes. Of course, we wanted the big win and the social media post.

    Instead, we left with a consolation win, a hundred new jokes, and another weekend together.

    Maybe that was enough.

    These seasons feel like they will last forever while we are living them. There is always another practice, another game, another long drive, and another hotel. Then suddenly the boys are taller, their voices are deeper, and you realize these weekends are not endless after all.

    One day, the bats will be put away, the uniforms will no longer fit, and the fire pits will be empty. We will miss the noise, the wet-towel snapping, the bad calls, the inside jokes, and even the games that did not go our way.

    The trophy would have been nice.

    But years from now, I do not think I will remember the score.

    I will remember the boys growing up together, the parents becoming friends, and all of us sitting around that fire, laughing and wondering who farted in that group photo.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Review: Duff Beer Garden, Universal Studios Florida

    Review: Duff Beer Garden, Universal Studios Florida

    Tucked along the side of the road as you meander through the Simpsons area of Universal Studios Florida, Duff Beer Garden feels like a little oasis in the middle of the park. It is not fancy, and it is not trying to be. It is a simple place to stop, cool down, have a drink, and take in the strange joy of being inside a real life version of Springfield.

    Growing up with The Simpsons, I watched Homer drink Duff Beer for years. Somewhere deep inside, probably at the subconscious level, it made me want to drink Duff Beer too. Then, finally, I got my chance.

    They have Duff Regular and Duff Light, and in the fall they usually have Duff Oktoberfest. I normally get the Light, and it is a nice draft beer. Without all the fanfare and Simpsons nostalgia, you probably would not think twice about it, but that is also part of the fun. You are standing in Springfield, drinking a Duff Beer, watching old Simpsons clips, and for a few minutes it just works.

    But what makes this place special for us is not really the beer. It is the bartender we met a few trips back, named Demar.

    I love watching a well run business, and before we even spoke to him, I noticed how well Demar worked. He was the superlative of a bartender. The bar usually has about three bartenders, and it gets busy quickly with people coming over for a cold beer. They also sell pretzels and corn dogs, although I do not think I have actually seen anyone eat one.

    What stood out to me was Demar’s speed, consistency, and command of the bar. He knew every combination of every order and exactly what it cost, including the tax. At one point, the other two bartenders went on break, and he had the whole bar to himself. That would be daunting for anyone, especially outside in the hot Florida weather, but he just kept moving. He had a knee brace on at the time and still kept cranking along, explaining the differences between the beers, ringing people up, calling out exact totals, and doing it all with almost robotic, lightning fast efficiency.

    But the impressive part was that he was not just fast. He was kind, friendly, and completely present with people. That is not easy to do when there is a line, the sun is beating down, and everyone wants something at the same time. He made it look easy.

    After a few trips, he remembered us, and that changed the whole feel of the place. It stopped feeling like we were just walking up to a theme park bar and started feeling like we were visiting someone we were genuinely happy to see. As my family sat around and hung out, we began to talk with him, and over time we developed a friendship.

    We had a lot of similar interests, and there was something almost reminiscent of Tom Cruise in Cocktail about him. He had ideas, investments, big dreams, and plans for where he wanted to go in life. That is one of the things I really respect about him. He was not just standing behind the bar pouring drinks. He was working hard, thinking ahead, and building toward something bigger.

    Now, part of the retirement plan at Universal is getting a fully loaded jacketed baked potato and making our way over to Duff Beer Garden for an excellent mixed drink or the occasional Duff Light. We sit there, let the gentle breeze carry the day away, rewatch old Simpsons cartoons, and hang out with our friend.

    That is what makes places like this special. It is not always the menu, the theming, or even the drink in your hand. Sometimes it is the people you meet along the way who become part of the tradition. Duff Beer Garden could have just been a quick stop for a cold beer in Springfield. Because of Demar, it became one of our favorite places to return to.

    Review Score: 9.5 out of 10
    Rating: Duff Worthy