Christmas Wishes

Things have been pretty eventful since our idyllic weekend on the Eastern Shore in mid-November. Donna's dad has been having some health issues and her mom fell and broke her knee cap. My dad fell the week before Thanksgiving and is still recuperating from a broken vertebra just above his tailbone and a number of complications. It's true what they say about getting old--it's not for sissies.

I started to write that the declining health of our parents has tempered our excitement this holiday season. And while on one level that is true, I think it has also intensified the already strong bonds we as a family share. Our parents' injuries and illnesses--and the unspeakable recent violence visited on innocent children and their teachers in Connecticut--are powerful reminders of the importance of cherishing family, and expressing our love for one another, at every opportunity.

To you, we wish you a Christmas season filled with love, peace and joy that lasts through the new year.

Comments

Jack and Erin's Wedding!

This past weekend Jack married Erin Breslin in Santa Barbara. Erin is smart, sassy, strong, funny, and beautiful. She and Jack are nearly inseparable, and when they are together, they talk and laugh nonstop like two school kids. As Donna noted in her beautiful, heartfelt remarks at the rehearsal dinner, it's hard to know what they have left to talk about after carrying on this continual conversation for more than three years. It is obvious to anyone who sees them that they are head over heels in love. Donna and I had met Erin's parents last December in Philadelphia. We immediately became friends and found that we shared a lot of common values -- particularly the importance of family. It was great to see them again in Santa Barbara and to meet their son Gerard and many of their siblings and in-laws. It also was great to meet some of Jack's fellow YouTubers. There's a culture of camaraderie in the industry, and many of them were eager to help Jack when he was g...

Paris In the Spring

Donna and I just returned from a week in Paris – and it was spectacular. France hadn’t been on my bucket list. First off, there’s the whole foreign language thing. Not my forte, in the same range that brain surgery isn’t my forte. Then there's the reputation of French inhospitableness, particularly toward Americans. If I’m not wanted, don’t worry, I’ll stay away. Finally, I imagined it as a snooty, glitzy, high-end-fashion kind of place – you know, movie stars, swimming pools – out of my comfort zone. We ended up going to fulfill a dream of Donna’s: Not so much of seeing Paris (she had done so years ago on a high-school trip), but of seeing Yundi Li, a 40-year-old Chinese pianist, give a performance there. The language barrier turned out to be manageable. Donna took eight years of French in school and was using Pimsleur to bone up. I started using the online app too – though at the introductory level. In real life, I could have gotten by without Donna’s near fluency because mos...

My Childhood Paradise

When I was five our family moved to a neighborhood in Rockville that would become a Paradise for me. Our new home was on Leverton Road, the southernmost street in Hungerford, a suburban tract development of modest single-family houses. 800 Leverton Rd. Two attributes made my childhood home special: One was that the sprawling neighborhood of a few hundred homes was built all at once and filled with families, like ours, with kids, so I instantly had playmates by the dozen. The second advantage was that within walking distance were my elementary school and a rec center with a ball field; a community pool and a fantastic park that were built a few years later; and, best of all, dense woods on three sides of us and winding, long trails throughout them. We spent as much time outdoors as possible . Nobody I knew stayed inside much unless they were sick or being punished. We found plenty of things to do. We were among the first people to move in, so ther...

What's in Dave's Head

Search This Blog