The Little Prince - A Celebration of My Dad's Life

My dad loved words.  He loved words because words strung together become a story.  And my dad loved stories and story-telling in all of its different forms.  He loved books and music and theater and movies and letter-writing.  Because all of them are ways to tell a story.  And so I am going to do my best to tell you a story about my dad using one of his favorite stories and some of his own words.

One of my father’s favorite books was The Little Prince.  This is a story that he used to read to Sarah and me before bedtime.  It is a book that he encouraged me to read again when I was a teenager.  I can vividly see his copy in my mind because it lasted throughout my entire childhood.  When Alex and Allie were born, he gave them each a copy.  Inside he wrote, “When you’ve learned the magic of reading, you’ll find The Little Prince has much wisdom to offer.”   After my dad died, I decided to read The Little Prince again.  This time through a much different lens than before.  This time I read it to hear his voice.  To connect again with my father and his wisdom.

The Little Prince is a story told by an aviator who crash lands in the desert and meets a Little Prince who came from another planet.  The aviator and The Little Prince spend a year together and over the course of that year the aviator learns a lot about The Little Prince and about life and love.  The Little Prince tells the aviator about his life on the star from which he came.  That he owned a flower.  A flower that he cared for everyday by shielding it from the wind and protecting it from caterpillars and every night by placing a glass bell over it to shield it from the cold.  The Little Prince told the aviator about a fox he encountered when he landed in the desert.  The fox wanted The Little Prince to tame him but The Little Prince didn’t know what that meant.  The fox explained that “to tame” meant to establish ties.  He said, “If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world.  To you, I shall be in unique in all the world.”

By that definition, my father tamed almost everyone he’s ever met.  He was very intentional about establishing unique ties with the people in his life.  As a father, he worked hard to know Sarah and me as people, not just as his children.  Because we went to high school 30 minutes from our house and most of our friends lived as far, we spent a lot of time in the car with my dad.  We would talk the whole time.  He didn’t just want to know what we were doing or what we liked or what we wanted.  He wanted to know what we were thinking.  And why we were was thinking it.  In a letter he wrote to me in my mid-twenties, he said, “I love you.  Beyond love I like you.  One of the great joys of being a parent is seeing a tiny, crying infant blossoming through childhood and adolescence, to become a happy, healthy adult.  One’s child will always be one’s child.  But it is the idea of having an adult relationship with one’s child that brings a sense of fulfillment to a parent.  As you were growing up, we were not only father-daughter, we were friends.  I think we always enjoyed being together and doing things together.  And I want that to continue through your adult life and as I grow old and crotchety. 

And he brought to grand-parenting the same need and desire to establish unique ties with each of his grandchildren.   My father poured himself into his grandchildren.  He wasn’t the typical grandparent who spoils his grandchildren with gifts and treats (though there were no shortage of those).  He was a grandfather who spent much time having meaningful conversations with his grandchildren.  Each year he scheduled a special day out with them. These trips included visits to The Museum of Natural History, The Nutcracker Ballet, the Liberty Science Center, Bowcraft Amusement Park and The Treetops Adventure Course at the Turtle Back Zoo.  He invested his time and love in supporting their hobbies and interests by eagerly and proudly attending their piano recitals, baseball and basketball and soccer games, and attending all of their school concerts and graduations.  He cooked for them and with them.  He visited them when they were sick.  He joked with them.  He loved them with every ounce of his being.  In fact, it was his pure love for them that helped him muster the energy while he lay in the ICU with stage IV cancer, a broken hip, pneumonia, blood clots in both lungs and tubes in his nose and all over his body to lift his head up, open his eyes wide and put a smile on his face to have one last and personal conversation with each of his grandchildren.  He asked Allie how many more times she planned on reading the Harry Potter books.  He asked Emma to write a song about the two of them with the lyrics “I love my Poppy and my Poppy loves me.” He congratulated Alex on sinking a basket at his game the day before and discussed his play practice and busy schedule.  He comforted Will and told him not to remember him like this.  To remember him cooking and driving him around and being fun poppy.  Watching these conversations happen was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.  Because it was watching sheer love between a man and his grandchildren.

Like The Little Prince cared for and treasured his rose, my father cared for and treasured his family.  And not a day went by that he didn’t tell my mother how much he loved her.  Although most of us in this room, myself included, saw him as a near flawless man, the truth is that he grew a lot because of my mother.  My father was NOT perfect.  And from what I hear he made a lot of bad decisions in his younger years.  My mother shared a letter with Sarah and me after he died that my father had written to her after they had had what seemed to be a pretty serious fight.  In the letter my father thanks my mother for having faith in him, for having faith in his dreams and for having faith in his potential.  He told her that he needs her in his life.  He needs her to be with him to achieve their shared vision in life.  The letter was probably about ten pages long.  The final line of the letter read, “I love you.  My life is dedicated to you.”  And though there were certainly bumps along the way, and undoubtedly times when that dedication was tested, he lived up to his promise.  My father’s dedication to my mother and to his family became the very essence of who he is.

One of the most famous lines from The Little Prince is “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  When we were growing up on the second floor of a two family house in North Bergen, we didn’t have a washing machine or dryer.  So on Saturday mornings, my dad would bring us to the laundromat with him.  While he would do the laundry we would go to the arcade next door and have lunch at Burger King.  But we would always help him fold the laundry.  Sometimes, for lunch we would get deli sandwiches and eat together as a family in the living room while watching American Gladiator on TV. On Friday nights, we would rent movies from Blockbuster and order pizza.  We didn’t do a lot of extravagant things.  To many they probably seemed ordinary.  But my dad loved that family time.  It was his most cherished possession. 

One of MY favorite lines from The Little Prince is when the rose says to The Little Prince, “I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”  This reminds me so much of what my dad told Allie and Alex in each of their last conversations. He told them, “In life, good things and bad things will happen.  But it’s important to always focus on the good things.”  My father was an optimist.  He loved life.  He loved his family.  And he loved that we loved him.  There is no doubt that every single person who loves him is going to miss him – his corny jokes, his delicious cooking, his reliability, and his honest love.  But as The Little Prince said to the aviator before he left, “when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrow) you will be content that you have known me.  You will always be my friend.”

Inspiration & Connection

Often people ask me why I post so many inspirational quotes on my social media accounts.  Occasionally, people poke fun at me for doing so.  I usually pay no mind to their teasing or judgment.  But I decided that today is the perfect day to respond to those who don't understand me.
Today is National Suicide Prevention Day.  While I have never been directly impacted by the suicide of a loved one, I have family members, friends and acquaintances who have been.  The truth is that life is hard.  Life is so very, very hard.  And although life can be filled with amazing experiences and wonderful people and unconditional love, it can also feel very lonely and can be extremely difficult to navigate.  People struggle on a daily basis with relationships, finances, body image, career choices, physical illness, mental illness, loss, and on and on.  Unfortunately, the pressure we experience to be productive and successful and to have it altogether has made us feel as though perfection rather than being human is mandatory.  And so many times we hide our struggles out of fear of being judged or mocked or criticized or rejected.  And so we feel lonely.  Feeling lonely is heartbreaking.  It can be so overwhelming and consuming that it can paralyze us.  It can lead us to dark places within ourselves where we can become lost. And we can become lost without anyone ever realizing it because we force a smile, we fight through the day, and we pretend.  And the more lost we feel and the more we pretend, the deeper we sink.

This is why I post so many "inspirational" quotes.  I prefer to call them "connection" quotes.  I may see a post by someone else that resonates with me.  And when that happens I feel a connection.  I feel a connection because often times these quotes are admissions that not everything is perfect in their life.  And I feel a connection because these quotes are also filled with hope and faith and love.  I believe that with hope and faith and love we can battle through hard times.  It is how I live my life - with the belief that although things may not be perfect, although things at times may feel bleak, there is always hope.  And so I share quotes and images that may fill others with the same sense of connection and hope and faith and love.  So that they know that they are not alone.

I am not suggesting that sharing quotes on social media is a way to prevent someone from taking their own life, it is simply one way that we can acknowledge to each other that life is hard.  That we are all in this together.  That we need to act with kindness and compassion and love.  We have no idea what others are struggling with.  So we need to be gentle with one another.  We need to be forgiving and understanding.  We need to have patience.  We need to stop judging.  Life is hard enough already.  Let's not make it harder on each other.

Constants and Variables

The only constant in our lives is ourselves.  The only thing that we can control is who we are, who we want to be, and what we want to put out into this world.  Everything else in this world is a variable.  They are the things, people and circumstances that are constantly changing and of which none of us has any control over.  The only thing that we can control is how we react or respond to the variables in our lives.  This is why it is so important to have a very strong sense of self - to know exactly who we are and to remember, on a daily basis, what we want to put out into the world.  Knowing who we are and what we want to put out need to be very intentional.  Being in touch with ourselves has got to be a daily practice.  So many of us fall in to the trap of defining ourselves by certain variables in our lives and we plan our lives by trying to achieve certain variables without taking time to really and truly know who we are and what we want to put out into the world.


For example, my life has been, and was intentionally planned to be, achieving different milestones over time: go to college, start a career, excel in said career, meet a man, get married, buy a house, have children.  I will call that my "Roadmap for Living".  We all need a roadmap for living, especially in a society that places many expectations on people.  However, the problem is that many people mistake their roadmap for living with their roadmap to happiness.  They are both essential tools to have with you on life's journey but they are very different and they are definitely not interchangeable.  The "Roadmap to Happiness" is our constant while the "Roadmap for Living" is a collection of variables.   I believe that most people try to achieve happiness by setting goals to achieve certain variables for themselves.  We treat life like a checklist and assume that checking off all the boxes on the list will make us happy.  In reality, this checklist, this "Roadmap for Living", is just that -  a plan for how we will make a living, how we plan to spend the days of our lives and who we plan to spend them with.  Its really like a life long time management tool.  While it may have some bearing on the joy and satisfaction we experience from day to day, there is ultimately no correlation between a successfully checked off list and a person's actual happiness. We need only to look at people who have faced serious struggles in their lives to know that this true. 


I am certain that we have all met someone or have heard stories of people who, despite facing major unexpected and unwelcome obstacles in their lives, have become an inspiration to someone, or in some cases to thousands of people.  Perhaps we have heard stories of an athlete who lost their legs to a vicious infection and went on to win gold at the Paralympics and become a motivational speaker.  Or the single mother who works several jobs to send her children to college and never resents or feels bitter.  Or the parents whose child requires constant medical attention but who are the first to lend a helping hand to friends in need.  There are countless examples of people whose human spirits have carried them through challenging and painful circumstances.  I truly believe that these people, these individuals who have a seemingly unbreakable human spirit, all have one thing in common.  They know who they are and they know what they want to put out into the world.  They know that happiness is a choice.  They know that how they respond to the variables that they encounter will ultimately determine how happily and fully they live their lives.  This remains constant.  Their human spirit remains constant.  They have control over who they currently are, who they want to be and what they put out into the world.  They have chosen to be positive and strong and dedicated and persistent.  They have decided that rather than putting bitterness and anger and desperation and sadness into the world that they want to put love and compassion and joy and optimism into the world. Yes they are human beings, and I am sure that they experience moments of anger and bitterness and desperation and sadness.  But they don't linger in those feelings because it is not true to who they really are and who they want to be.  That is not their constant. 


It is tempting to get caught up in the notion that if "this thing" happens, then I will be so much happier.  If I get this new job.  If my house was nicer.  If I was thinner.  If my husband was more romantic.  These things are all variables.  Unless we can truly get know who we are and what we want to put out into the world we will spend our days feeling defined by our variables rather than feeling in control of who we are and how we want to respond to the variables in order to remain true to ourselves.  Unless we make a choice everyday to be who we want to be and to have our actions follow suit, then we are simply going through the motions of living and waiting for happiness rather than creating it on our own.

Today's Kids are NOT "screwed"!!

I have grown extremely tired of reading articles and blogs that criticize how our current generation parents and how our current generation  of children are being raised.  Every single day I read something, somewhere, that insists that we are ruining our children because we hover too much and reward them for insignificant achievements and don't encourage creative play.  And following these articles and blog posts are countless comments applauding the author for their observations and nodding in such agreement that I can almost hear it.  Comments like "I couldn't have said it better myself" or "Love this post!" or "I wish I could like this a million times" flow freely off the fingertips of parents who seemingly agree that American society, in general, has collectively screwed our children and any shot they have of being a normal functioning adult.  These comments are usually qualified by some subsequent statements about what they expect from their children and how their parent-styling is far more laid back and that they expect their children to occupy themselves, etc.  So apparently the people who write these articles, read them and/ or comment on them are not a part of "the problem".

I used to read these articles, agree with some of the points and disagree with others and then move on with my day.  But lately I have become so sick of it all.  I am so sick of the judgment.  I am sick of people looking at this generation of children and not being optimistic about them.  Because the young people who I know make me feel hopeful.  In my work as a sorority advisor, I watched as 18-22 year-old women grew tired of the old "traditions" of hazing and worked extremely hard to change those traditions into traditions of service, leadership and excellence.  They sacrificed friendships, sleep and fun, at times, to take a stand against people who refused to change and who became bullies to them.  Despite their youth and lack of life experience, I saw them make really difficult decisions for the greater good of the organization.  In my work as a Girl Scout leader, I see Girl Scout troops in my community working together to support one another, to provide service to the community and to learn about the world around them.  These are girls who are kind to one another, who think about the consequences of their actions and who have aspirations to make a difference in the world in which we live.  As an active member of the PTA, I am often in school and witness the students working together on projects to help promote kindness and respect in school and to make sure that no student is bullied.  These children are kind. They are innocent.  And, not to sound cliche, they ARE the future.

So ultimately I guess my response to the authors of these accusatory articles and blogs and their supporters is this: You are not responsible for an entire future generation of adults.  You are not responsible for how our entire generation parents.  You are responsible for how you raise your own children.  You are responsible for the things you say to your children, for how you treat your children and for the lessons you teach your children.  If you come in contact with other children in your community, you are responsible for the things that you say to them, for how you treat them, and for the lessons that you teach them.  Can you say with confidence and truthfulness that you are doing your best as a parent to teach your child to be kind to others, to  make a positive contribution to society, to value service to others, and to not judge others?  Because those are the lessons that really matter.  And while parenting styles to teach those lessons may differ from person to person, that the lessons are taught and that they stick is really what is important here.  If you continue to preach the message that our children are screwed because we suck as parents, then it is likely that that is the message that you are teaching to your kids.  It is likely that the message your kids are hearing is that it is okay to judge other people.  Because let's be honest, most people aren't going to change the opinions or behaviors of an entire generation through a blog post.  The only behaviors they have any chance on impacting is that of their own children and maybe the children who they coach or advise or teach, etc.  If everyone does their best to teach their own children kindness and respect and acceptance and love, then the future will be a pretty great place.

"When you judge others, you don't define them, you define yourself!" - Wayne Dyer

Letting Go of Judgment

Everyone thinks that they are a good person.  Everyone believes that they are doing their best to contribute positively to society and to make the lives of the people they love better and easier.  Typically, when people face conflict with another they feel that the other person is being unfair or ignorant or selfish or dismissive or even immoral.  It is hard for many people to see the other person's perspective as being valid.  People generally feel that they are good and right and fair and impartial and enlightened.  People often feel this way while completely neglecting the fact that while they are justifying and validating their own feelings and points of view, they are judging others for their feelings and points of view.

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter illuminate the fact that people are prone to judgment.  Scroll through your news feed right now and count the number of posts that are actually a form of judgment on other people or groups of people.  As of this writing, my news feed is filled with posts that are passing judgement on people for the way they parent, how they look, how much they exercise or don't exercise, that they lip-synced the national anthem, that they are failing in their elected office, that they support gun control, that they don't support gun control, etc.  I stopped scrolling but I am sure that I could add several to the list.

People want to feel validated in their feelings, opinions, and ways of life.  One of the easiest ways to do this, whether consciously or not, is to judge or criticize others.  Whether by gossiping with a group of friends, posting in online in the form of a Facebook or blog post, being directly judgmental, or quietly criticizing, most of us are guilty of this type of self-validating behavior.  But one will never seek happiness by passing judgment on others.  

In the words of the the Dalai Lama XIV, "I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives."  When we free ourselves from the need to be right and feel accepted and validated by others, we no longer feel the need to disprove them or criticize them.  We open ourselves to a different way of seeing them which doesn't spring from the need for self-serving motives but rather from the desire for peace and love.  We don't need to agree with others all of the time, but we can certainly disagree without making them wrong.  And when we disagree peacefully and without judgment, we will not resent the other person for their choices and for how their decisions turn out.  Practicing compassion rather than judgment will help to remove the burden of negativity, resentment, and even jealousy from our own lives.

I love the quote below.  When I read it, it really struck a chord with me.  Today will be the day.  

“How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.” ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

And yet. . .

I've never been to Newtown, CT.  I'd never heard of Sandy Hook Elementary School before Friday.  I've never met any of the beautiful children and teachers whose lives were stolen from them on what was just an ordinary school day.

And yet. . .

I can smell the sweetness of their freshly washed hair.  I can feel the softness of their smooth, young skin.  I can feel the wiggle of their first loose tooth.  I can see their beds filled with stuffed animals.  I can see their artwork hanging on their kitchen walls.  I can hear them singing silly songs in the backseats of their cars.  I can see their excitement when their favorite football player scores a touchdown.  I can remember their tears when they fell and scraped their knee or lost a favorite toy.  I can see them in their Daisy Scout tunics and tee ball t-shirts giggling with friends when they should be paying attention. I can see their classroom with the alphabet above the smart board, the Christmas tree that they and their classmates decorated with their teachers.  I can hear their teachers praising them for a job well done, placing a sticker on a perfect test, listening with loving patience as their students tell them stories of their families and pets and soccer games.  I can smell the school hallways as the scents from the cafeteria and the day's lunch offerings waft through the air. I can see the working parents kiss their kids goodbye before they leave for work grateful that its Friday and they will have a weekend to spend with them.  And the stay-at-home parents who are thankful for the couple hours they have that day to squeeze in some holiday shopping for their children.

As parents we sacrifice so much of who we once were to become who our children need us to be.  And while parenting is hard and can sometimes feel overwhelming, the gifts of experiencing life as a parent far surpass any hardship that it might occasionally bring.  The gift of being so deeply needed and so deeply loved by a human being is transformative.  Our children  become our light.  They become our direction.  They have shaped us into a new, better version of ourselves.  Our lives have become intertwined with theirs in a way that we never understood until we became parents.  And everything that we do for our children we do out of ferocious love for them and the unrelenting desire to keep them happy and healthy and safe.  It is this love and desire that comes to define who we are.

Like many people, I spent the weekend drifting between deep, profound grief and intense rage.  Feelings of peace are brief and fleeting.  Because although what happened on Friday may have happened at a school in a town two hours from where I live, what happened is personal.  Because those children are just like my children.  Because those teachers are just like my children's teachers.  Because those parents are just like me.  Because the love that they feel for their children is the most powerful feeling that they have ever experienced and now they are left to cope with a gaping hole in their hearts and their lives from which they will probably never recover.  And it is so unfair and infuriating and depressing and painful and surreal.

And yet. . . 

When Robbie Parker, the father of sweet Emilie, spoke about losing his daughter he said that he isn't angry.  He prayed for the shooter's family showing them genuine compassion in a time when everyone would understand if he couldn't.  He expressed thanks for having been given the opportunity to be a father to a little girl who he described as beautiful and always smiling - that the world was a better place for having had her in it.  I was so moved by his grace in that moment.  The love and compassion  that he displayed in that brief interview was probably the most beautiful tribute to his precious daughter's short yet meaningful life that could be given.  I felt my faith restored by Robbie Parker because of his loving, gentle, peaceful words.   

Each day I will pay tribute to the children and teachers who were killed in that school by being a source of love and kindness to all people.  By being a a source of hope to the hopeless.  By being a source of joy for the sad.  By being a source of light for those who feel surrounded by darkness.  This is my solemn promise to them.  Because love will overcome all evil.

"And now these three things remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love." 1 Cor. 13:13

Standing Upside Down

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:11

This morning was a very rare one in my house.  I woke up earlier than usual and my children slept later than usual.  It was nice to have two hours to myself to relax for a bit and to do some household chores without being summoned to fetch something for someone or to mediate a argument.  When the girls finally woke up I had already accomplished a lot.  And since we don't have plans until much later today I was able to spend some time just playing and being silly with my girls.  This entailed a lot of tickling and hugging and laughing.  And somehow we found ourselves lying on the floor with our legs bent up on the couch.  We laid  there for several minutes just looking back and forth at each other and laughing until Allie declared that she wanted french toast. Off I was to the kitchen to whip up a batch of french toast.  While the girls ate their french toast in the family room, I headed back to the kitchen to clean up and was feeling really happy.  Not just happy. . . carefree.  As I  stood in the kitchen this incredible urge to do a handstand came over me.  Right there and then in the middle of the kitchen I reached down to the ground and scissor-kicked my legs up and down.  I didn't really achieve a full handstand but when I stood back up, after acknowledging that what I had done was somewhat insane, I realized that I felt energized.  And I REALLY wanted to do a full handstand.  So I went into my living room, placed my hands on the floor, and kicked my legs up against our coat closet door.  And there I was, a 35-year-old mother of two, doing a handstand for the first time in 20 years.  I brought my legs back down, stood up and then bent down to do it again.  In fact, I did it over and over again.  It felt amazing.  The rush of blood to my head, the lengthening of my back, the engagement of my shoulder and back muscles.  I Googled the benefits of handstands afterwards. I know that there are many inverted Yoga poses and I wanted to read about them and find out their benefits, as well.  I texted my sister to let her know that I had just done a handstand.  I thought that she would find it amusing especially since she is the person who I handstood with the most throughout the course of my childhood.  She, ever being the big sister, asked me if Google had anything to say about the benefits of doing handstands for a person with a history of lower back problems.  But it actually made my lower back feel great!!  There were actually several articles that listed the benefits of handstands.  Here is one of them: http://www.livestrong.com/article/178371-the-benefits-of-handstands-for-the-body/.  Several of them stated that handstands are a way to calm yourself and that many people will do handstands before starting their meditation practice.  I find that fascinating!  Especially since as children we just naturally felt inclined to stand upside down. . . just for the fun of it!!  And it made me think about children.  So much of the time we are telling them what to do or what not to do. We want to keep them safe.  We want them to be happy.  We want to teach them ways to stay safe and be happy.  But we seldom stop to think about the lessons we can learn from our children.  My husband often jokes about the fact that children primarily use running as their way to get from point A to point B.  We laugh together at the thought of adults racing each other to the conference room or to a table in a restaurant.  But so much of what kids do naturally are the things that we should all be doing.  Kids find joy in things that make our bodies healthy. They run, skip, climb, balance, hang, and stand upside down.  Just for fun.  And are building healthy bodies while doing it.  Perhaps it is time for us to learn a lesson from our children and resort to some of our chidish ways and just stand upside down once in a while.