Part 1 of this story is here

The new girl and the question were unexpected, so it took me a moment to realize what she was asking about, but when I did, I had a moment of panic. 

TROY
Oh. That over there? You saw that?

CAR GIRL
Yes. I was driving home from work and saw the two of you on the corner. I couldn’t figure out what was ...

Alex recently came to Marty and asked if she was ok. She was and said as much. He asked again, seemingly not believing her first answer. She repeated she was fine and asked why he was asking. He said that he noticed that she had not made dinner on two of the three nights this week. Marty took a moment to recall the week, and yes, because of some atypical evening events, we did not have our usual f...

PART 4 - Saved

It turns out Marty's apprehension about starting a new semester online was wrong—it turned out far worse than she imagined. While many teachers did lots of preparation for day one, everyone knew there would be bumps. Some you could predict. Others you could not. Marty's institution got double-hit by a decision made the previous year before the word co...

PART 4 - bella saves the day
after the front-porch moment, i told the family that even though keisha and baker weren't turning out the way we hoped they might, they did think of our home as their home and we shouldn't give up on them just yet. i sensed the others in the family weren't as moved by keisha's voluntary return as i was, even after my dramatic re-telling of the morn...

bella merits one more shout-out this week. earlier i had talked about bella reaching one of her high school goals but there were a few more i didn't mention. shortly after starting her freshman year, bella learned that at her school there were a few service awards presented every year to the senior class. she immediately pointed to the s ...

the other day i was leaving the kitchen and bella called me back. when i stuck my head through the doorway she said:

BELLA
you forget something?

TROY
uhh. no. i just came down for my coffee.

BELLA
you didn't say i love you.

TROY
oh. yes. sorry. love you.

BELLA
love you too. hope you have a great day. do good. make it happen. View in Gallery >>>

at the tail-end the holiday break marty was woken up in the middle of the night by someone coming up the stairs. our kids are now old enough that we no longer have to participate in their bedtime rituals. that said, marty will still often do rounds of cuddles at bedtime but that tends to only happen on school nights because on the weekends and holidays the kids way outlast us, me especially as i t ...

i can't wait to see dad in a hairnet.

this is one of the first things i heard after waking. one of my kids said it to another one of my kids. the first thing i thought was, why am i going to be wearing a hairnet?

then i remembered our evening plans included an outing to some world food bank where we would be prepping boxes of food to be sent overseas. this would be my family's se...

this year when parent-teacher conferences swung around, marty announced that she would miss dinner the next night. i followed up by asking the kids what we should do since we wouldn't have the dead weight around. bella immediately piped up asking what i meant because i was going to be gone too. i asked where i was going and bella said i was going to be meeting with her teachers because as mother announced it was parent-teacher conferences. mildly confused and glancing at marty for support i told bella that having a parent at your child's school (marty teaches where bella attends) carries the awesome perk of me not having to go to those meetings because we've got a for-real boots-on-the-ground resource in the building. bella's body sagged to one side and after a beat or two she said, "i work hard in my classes. that is my job. your job, a few times a year, is to go hear about how hard i'm working in my classes. that is how it works."

so i'm at parent-teacher conferences, my first ever at the high school and i spied marty doing her thing. over the years i have always felt for her on these evenings because they are wicked long days and i always hear about the salty and pissy parents as like with the students themselves, they are the ones that stick on your brain's wall like neon post-it notes. but when i saw it live i got the sense they held the event for marty. it was like a talking-gala where you got to wear a pretty dress for a rotating cast of strangers and talk all night. marty's dreamscape. worst possible environment imaginable to me. so now i feel no kinda sadness for marty who looked like true royalty and whose dance card was blurringly deep.

for me, i shouldered my core objective—hearing my daughter's teachers lavish her with praise and laughingly comment on her perpetual need to knit. one guy leaned in to me and said in a hushed voice, "i honestly think bella has done more good in the world by fifteen than i have in my whole life. i mean seriously. one day i asked her what she was knitting and she said 'hats for premature babies' and i was like 'hats for premature babies' are you kidding me.".

inbetween those gush-fests, i took in the tumultuous event and studied the organization of it all. my biggest question was why are some teachers so busy and others standing patiently by their clipboards amidst a sea of people. those teachers-in-waiting looked pretty exactly like me at every high school social event i ever attended. did that imply they were a good teacher or a bad teacher? i obviously didn't know the players well enough to do a proper assessment but it didn't curb my fascination in it all. and if i can use the only inside-baseball info i have, marty's table was hoppin' so i imagine there is at least one path that makes the good teachers a little more booked than others. i can kinda hear kids saying to their follks, "and you totally have to talk to mrs. walters because she is crazy ... and wears wild stockings ... and will say ANYTHING!".

marty told me about one of her last meetings of the night. the lady was reasonably miffed as she had to wait over an hour for her turn to speak with marty. thus the conversation began on the cool side. but marty, ever the pro, went about her task. in time the sleight seemed forgotten and their business was done. marty shook her hand, apologized for the wait and went to call her next name.

the following morning marty found a message in her inbox from this lady with a subject line of "conferences last night". marty saw that the school principal had been cc'd. minutes into this new day that followed a fourteen hour workday and not enough sleep, marty drew a breath and clicked on the message. there are so many hidden gems in the world. professions you love. life-long friendships that keep unfolding. hope-inspiring children. new tantalizing experiences. unexpected kindnesses paid by strangers. these precious gems are everywhere really. they can be given and gotten with unreasonable frequency. this life can be just endlessly wondrous.

i called my friend matthew. we needed to talk. as i began he started eating something, something that sounded like a mixture of apples, cheetos and ice. i kept pausing at the height of his chewing. picking up on this, matthew stopped his masticating long enough to say:

MATTHEW
sorry. i was just on an hour long call with these morons from work and was starving.

TROY
well ...

bella and i were on our first distance ride of the year. we were on a new route and found ourselves riding through a neighborhood that had some for-real mansions. we rode slowly and quietly taking in the size and makeup of each home.

TROY
it's so quiet out here. it's such a beautiful day and there's not a soul anywhere to be seen. it's almost like they're abandoned.

BELLA
they're probably busy yelling at their maids.

TROY
ha. good one. oh my god. look at that one.

BELLA
i hope they run an orphanage out of there.

when i was young and saw big houses like that, i remember wanting to one day live in one. i don't know why i thought that way. i also don't know why bella looks on these homes with the derision that she does. aside from exposing her healthier expectations and social sense, these monster homes also make the girl say the funniest things.

bella's school held its second dance of the year and instead of engaging in that awkward, premature pairing off, bella and a group of six friends went as a collective. before hand they all got gussied up and went to a group diner at a local pizza place. at school they discussed their plans to marty. she suggested they make a reservation given the weekend night and they might not be the only students from the school with the particular place in mind. they agreed that that was a great idea and looked the phone number up immediately (on one of their phones). then just before dialing, one of them asked, what do you say when you want to make a reservation. i am forever intrigued by watching people feel their way through what, to us old folks, are elementary tasks we routinely and effortlessly perform, i love the innocence of it. and i'm not saying i didn't fumble my way through many a life lesson because i did. you just forget about them in time and having kids lets you walk those steps again. and that is what marty did here, walked them through the act and language. then the boy called and got hit with a "oh, sorry we don't take reservations" which then exposes these elementary tasks as not so basic after all.

after getting that sorted out they started asking how much money they each should bring. when you're talking about young people who don't work yet, it's hard to casually tell them to just bring 20-30 dollars as not everyone has open access to money whenever they want. and, the last thing you want is six to eight fourteen year olds sitting at a table on a restaurants busiest night without enough money to cover a check let alone tip. marty and i talked this predicament over and she came up with the idea of stealthily covering the meal for the kids so that when they went to settle the bill, the waitress got to say, this has already been taken care of. marty managed to pull this off but when the waitress passed on the news, the kids with their small fistfuls of proudly acquired fives and tens, were not elated but instead a little dismayed. it turns out they were very excited to be covering their largish restaurant bill, their first largish restaurant bill, on their own. what is it they say about best laid plans?

but, here is where things take a turn and why marty and i really like this particular set of friends bella has recently started running with. after the waitress delivered the news and walked off, instead of stewing on the disappointment and letting it sour their night in any way, one of them said, "well, we can't buy OUR meal but that doesn't mean we can't buy A meal." so they looked around the busy restaurant and picked out a table they would buy a meal for. in the end they selected a woman eating alone with her two young children. when they waitress came back they pointed her out and said they wanted to buy her dinner but that the waitress/hosttess wasn't to tell the woman who did it.

and that is what they did. i won't get into how i would have reacted in a like situation but i can promise you that a fourteen year old troy would not have been buying some stranger dinner with what would have been perfectly good-arcade money.

speaking of random acts of kindness.

we have some new neighbors. they moved in about a year ago and have a young girl who just turned two. the little girl is quite awesome, in part because she thinks i'm about the coolest cat on the block and lights up a big smile every time she sees me. being a young family just getting on their feet, marty and i usually offer them kid-related things we have outgrown and are giving away. one thing we gave them shortly after they moved in was the changing table we used for all three of our kids as our humans had finally (thankfully!!!) outgrown the need for it.

a few days after christmas, marty answered a knock on the door. she opened it to find neighbor jeff there holding a cutting board. after exchanging the usual pleasantries, jeff held the cutting board forward, offering it to marty. before she could say anything he said he would like to return the changing table we gave them. taking the cutting board, marty asked what he meant. he said the drawers in the cabinet broke and while he was breaking it down he noticed the top board was a really nice block of maple, so he cut it down and made an end-grain cutting board for us using the wood from the piece of furniture all three of our children came up on.

i'm not willing to say bella's act of kindness spurred this karma on but i would be comfortable asserting that my neighbor is probably way cooler and more awesome than your neighbor.

bella believes in random acts of kindness. so much so that she occasionally, based on some regimen she follows, schedules a random act of kindness. over the christmas break this kindness was to bake a from-scratch apple pie to give to someone. she gave marty her shopping list and then with the proper ingredients in hand, bella made her pie. once done and somewhat cooled, bella donned her shoes and ...

every other sunday my family goes to church. granted we arrive in jean shorts, t-shirts that have seen four days of wear, ourselves wholly unshowered. and when we walk in, instead of turning right towards the talkin' place we take a left and head to the basement. then for the next hour or two we make sandwiches for homeless shelters.

depending on how many other folks show up the work norm...

when bella first shriekingly announced to the house (and zip code) that her public speaking hero, shane kyozcan, was making his first american tour (he resides in canada) i sat down with her to look at the dates and locations. i'm not sure what you call the tone parents get when they have to tell their kids that they can't get them something they'd like to get them but it just isn't practical. wha ...

i recently bought amazon's most recent technology offering--echo. it is very similar to iPhone's siri but instead of being carried around in your pocket, it sits somewhere in your home. i situated ours on a window shelf in the kitchen. it's a fun sort of toy that can play 80's music (my preference) while you cook, make note of things you need from the store, tell you jokes (anthony's favorite) or ...

notes from a toastmaster's talk i gave titled MY FINEST HOUR.

the boys were each in an after school program. anthony was in a mad-science session and alex was at his robotics club. in coming back from the bathroom alex found anthony sitting on the floor outside the mad-science room. he stopped and asked if he was ok. anthony said that there was a bully in the session today and he didn't want to be in there. alex suggested he just ignore him so he didn't have to miss the class (as both the boys always love the mad science curriculums). anthony told alex that's what he usually did but today he didn't have the energy or patience for it so was just going to sit in the hall instead. if you forget or are wondering, anthony is in second grade.

after returning to his own classroom alex explained his brother's situation to his club leader and asked if anthony could come sit in their room. the leader said of course and anthony was invited to the fifth graders space. they set him up with some drawing gear and anthony spent the remainder of the time drawing and coloring pictures.

in hearing the re-tellings of this tale from the various parties, i'm not sure which of my boys i'm more impressed with. my eight year old for having the sense to remove himself from a toxic and un-winnable situation or my eleven year old for supporting his brother both as a counselor and protector. for as great as all the laughs and cuddles and tickle-wars with your kids are, seeing moments of empathy and compassion and maturity from them warms the heart more than one might be prepared for.

a full week after this event when dropping the boys off at school a classmate walked by waving at anthony. once he had passed i asked anthony if that was the bully. he looked his way and said, "him? no. he's not a bully. he's just a liar."

marty had parent teacher conferences so i was solo with the kids. whenever a parent is gone, the family drops into team effort mode. i left work early to pick up the boys. bella put the finishing touches on the dinner marty got going in the crockpot that morning.

the dinner table is also a very different affair when we're down a human. most surprisingly, conversation seems much more effo...

another noteworthy detail about this year's ms150 rides. for two riders to ride in two events, we needed to raise a total of $800. last year for our one event, a twelve year-old bella raised her $200 in a couple of hours by walking the neighborhood. i fell well short of my fundraising goal and when it was all over, the organization charged my credit card for the owed balance. marty was thoroughly non-plussed by this. when i asked marty if she really wanted her middle-aged husband going door to door beggin' money so he could share this experience with our daughter she replied, cooly, that if it would get that charge off her credit card, yes, that is what she wants. when marty learned the fundraising goal this year was $800 she pounced telling me i better get my butt our there and start begging for money. bella quickly came to my defense saying she would raise all the money ... and she did. well almost all of it. a co-worker who has a sibling with MS donated $20 to my cause. bella raised the other $780. and this time she had to go out more than once to hit the mark. this year took her three trips out.

i considered the inequity of it but in the end deemed it ok as i was going to a lot of trouble with the planning and room reservations and such so it seemed fair to leave philanthropic-work, which bella enjoys and is good at, to bella--the whole divide and conquer bit. plus i figured no one knew what a slacker i was, that is until bella and i got interviewed at one of the rest stops by a woman with a microphone that got amplified to the whole rest stop. the lady asked bella how she went about her fundraising and asked how much she raised. the woman, and surrounding crowd, were most impressed with the young girl's accomplishment. the woman then turned to me, saying she was excited to see how much the father of such a spirited young lady raised. there was an almost audible trombone sounding "wah wah waaah" after the words "twenty dollars" left my lips.

for school, bella (13) was asked to write an essay about a family member. this was her response. it's crazy how much she knows about my/our past. at her age, i was never that plugged into my parents, or anyone who wasn't me for that matter. i find her curiosity and empathy both impressive and humbling. if i'm ever in need of a biographer, i for sure know who i'm tapping.

while sitting in the car the other day waiting for the boys to get in, i noticed our neighbors had a walk-out deck above a first floor sunroom they had. the porch had a brick wall surrounding it that came up between the knee and thigh. the weather this particular day was crazy-lovely and i was thinking how neat it would be to have a setup like that where on nice weather nights, you could sleep outside in the night air and looking up at the night sky through gently swaying tree branches (akin to this experience). when the boys got in the car they noted my reverie.

ALEX (11)
whatcha lookin' at dad?

TROY
that porch. see over there. look above that room. you can walk out on there. do you see it?

THE BOYS
yeah.

TROY
i was thinking on nice days like today, you could pull a sleeping bag out there and sleep outside. because you're high up no one could see or mess with you. doesn't that seem like it would be cool?

ALEX
yeah it does.

TROY
i would sleep out there all the time if we had one of those.

ALEX
you should have one built on the back of our house.

TROY
yeah. i was kinda studying that thinking if we could.

ANTHONY (8)
but dad. if you did that, that would be like a thousand cuddles.

TROY
what?

ALEX
if you and mom built one of those on the back of the house, we would lose a thousand cuddles because you'd be busy.

TROY
you know anthony. i think you're right. that does look to be about a thousand cuddle project.

in giving this some thought i don't think we have nearly enough CUDDLE-ACCOUNTING in our society or personal lives as we maybe should. every life commitment (e.g. home improvement, continuing education, job change, home upgrade) should have a new line item added to the ledger sheet that reads LOST CUDDLES.

for those wondering about the back story with the last gallery posting, it is this.

it was the day of bella's annual save the children carnival, her third. she did her recruiting. she completed her planning. she hung her flyers. on the morning of, when we pulled into the lot where the carnival happens, there were three large construction dumpsters on the blacktop of her space, consuming more than a third of the lot and blocking the spaces reserved for half of her booths. upon seeing this i turned to her. her unblinking face was frozen in disbelief at what she was seeing. then, her face began to soften. it continued to sag until tears were seconds away. i put my hand on her knee and said it would be ok. we still had lots of space and would adjust. predictably, she said space or not it was still ruined with these giant, ugly things right in the space. her sound logic continued as she quickly adding strong observations like "who wants their children playing on a construction site" or "they're taking all the shady spots".

after stopping the car, we walked to the dumpsters to see what was in them. after climbing up and peering over the edge we were greeted by this (see photo). the carnival was on the day before father's day and that cardboard box was front and center. i nudged bella with my elbow, pointed at the box and said, "you're all good. grandma nyla has your back."

i could see bella, still rather flummoxed at the luck, dismissed my comment. as we hopped down from the dumpsters i stopped her and said: i don't know if she ever believed me or not but things did go just fine.

you may not believe me either. if so, how many people have you met in your life named nyla?

last year bella and i rode in missouri's ms150 charity ride. at that event bella learned that there are ms150 rides all over the nation. excitedly she said we should try to ride one in every state. always up for some time on the bike i easily agreed. i should have given an ounce more thought of who i was talking to. longish story short, bella and i are riding in not one but two rides this year. the first one is in nebraska and then a week later in kansas.

she picked those states for the relative flatness as she doesn't feel ready for a ton of miles on a ton of hills.

she picked two states because she said i won't live long enough for us to do it one state at a time. watching her do the math in front of me was most lovely. you have to love a math equation that begins with the phrase, "so dad, you are, well, well there's just no nice way to say it, you are really old so if we are going to do this we're going to have to work a little harder."

she also took my pledge sheet and hit the streets. i got in trouble last year because i didn't make my minimum pledge amount and just wrote a check out of the family account for the balance. marty was non-plussed about my pilfering cash from the family coffers. bella was non-plussed at my lack of initiative. so in gratitude to her mother for letting her take time off school for the rides and to show her decrepit father how it is done bella canvassed our neighborhood with both of our pledge sheets and collected $500 of the needed $800 in three days. i will confess she does make it look rather trivial.

so if you'd like to come cheer us on, or ride along, we'll be in nebraska the weekend of september 6th and in kansas the week of september 13th.