Here’s a non-chronological inaccurate account of the last few months while central Texas went from winter storm to summer with a quick stop at a few blue bonnets along the way. If you blinked this year you missed the wildflowers and spring.

Evan celebrated his birthday with a sleepover. Vivian and her friends got invited back to her alumni school gala. Jo went to Jordan on a whim and did all kinds on adventure travel things like camping in the desert and hiking up a river along with the more mundane stuff like walking around Petra and swimming in the Dead sea. We went to New Braunfels with Nicolle’s family and Greta on a very warm afternoon for Pride celebrations and the kids and I saw our very first drag show – a very interesting and unexpectedly not smutty event. Devyn made sure that my presence was memorialized on the banner. Jen visited for a weekend at Becky’s mother’s lake house and Jo and Ouiser made it clear that they didn’t like speeding around Lake LJB in a boat which Becky drove like she drives her minivan – very very nonchalantly fast. We sorta felt like the pandemic finished again and then almost everyone got Covid but mostly the garden variety.

Zeus got chunky and decided she’ll only sleep on top of one of us. Ouiser and I walked most mornings at St. Edward’s park or Turkey Creek. She’d jump in the creek for a swim and later my car would smell like wet swamp dog.

Summer vacation finally got here. Everyone survived another year of school. Vivian made some good new friends at her new high school and kept a few old ones. They changed pronouns, created art, had fun, and would have won the award for Freshman Who Made Honor Roll With The Least Work if only that award existed. Vivian went off to Chestertown with their friend and their family for Memorial Day weekend. Evan came to terms with being a science nerd and that he doesn’t hate math. He told his humanities teacher that “emotions are for the weak” during a class discussion and we were notified, just in case he’s a nutcase. He was (momentarily) the tallest and fasted kid on the soccer team and his team finished another championship season. When not asleep, he’d rather be playing Minecraft with is friends, Hollow Knight by himself, or watching YouTube videos of others playing Minecraft or Hollow Knight. He went to an obligatory video game designing camp and Vivian to mural painting camp so we can say the kids did something cerebral during the summer break.

Then we went to see Aaron become Colonel Clark, USAF, Ret., at a lovely ceremony at Langley AFB in Virginia, during which time Ouiser stayed with June and Elizabeth in Austin. Jo and the kids stayed on and visited with Jen in Fredericksburg and Jo’s Wash Coll friends in Chestertown. I returned to Austin and Ouiser and I spent a quiet week at home during a part of which Jen came and stayed with us while she was in Austin for business. Then I dropped Ouiser off at Grandma’s in Dawson for the rest of summer and and left Zeus in Ava and Sofia’s care and met Alu in New York for a fun day at the Consulate General of India. In one of those small-world moments we met up with Mayura, Hansa, and her husband in New York for lunch. I go back to Wakefield with Alu and the rest of my crew will meet us and Michelle there during the 4th of July weekend. Can’t wait to get a bowl of Brickley’s ice cream and a walk on Narrangasett beach.

Meanwhile it’s a 105 in Austin. Stay cool, y’all.

A very belated Happy Birthday, kiddo. This was the year you became the second tallest member of the family (which isn’t saying much). You grew a shadow of a stache. Your voice dropped. You thought you got pretty good at playing central defender. You got interested in good grades. You had a date and took her a rose for the middle school dance. You played a lifetime of Hollow Knight and Minecraft. Your humor is as quirky as you are. You are maddeningly obstinate but you don’t hold a grudge. You are brazenly transparent when you need something. But you seem to need very little.

Twelve years into this project you are still our adorable thought slightly less cuddly baby you were. Love you to Jupiter’s moons and back.

We have developed a very bad habit of running into schools and shooting kids when we are having a bad day. It has to stop. It is unlikely that we will all stop having bad days. So it needs to be a lot harder to shoot other people’s kids. Whether you believe guns kill people or people kill people or people kill guns – it is undeniable that if there were no guns no one would be killed by guns (yes, psychos would write Nazi manifestos and then hurl rocks at elementary school kids till the History teacher shooed them away). The opposite isn’t true. Work logically forward from here. This isn’t fucking rocket science.

A certain reading of the strangely worded 2nd Amendment by the Supreme Court in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case protected the right of individuals to keep and bear “Arms” for the first time in America’s history. So we have a system of laws where the Robb Elementary school shooter legally bought an assault rifle but would not be able to buy a beer. There is no defensible wisdom to that. Either we are reading the Constitution wrong or the Constitution is wrong. The Constitution has been wrong before. There wouldn’t be amendments otherwise. The justices of the Supreme Court recently decided that the law regarding abortions has been wrong for the last 50 years. People, even long dead colonial slave owners blubbering on about freedom and equality, make mistakes sometimes. They could not have predicted everything they needed to know about our world today to help us lead meaningful safe predictable lives.

To quote (or misquote – I haven’t verified this) Mike Tyson, “everyone’s got a plan until they are punched in the mouth”. An elementary school shooting is a massive punch in the mouth. We didn’t have a plan the first time it happened. But for fuck’s sake, it’s been 10 years since Sandy Hook Elementary. Our inability to stop elementary school shootings as a people and a nation is shocking. It is a failure so massive that it is the defining American exceptionalism of the day. We are killing our children while the world watches with shock and amusement.

We live in our Tower of Babel. A third of the country believes that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. If we voted today, we wouldn’t be able to decide if 2+2 is 5. The once mighty American mind no longer has the will or the ability to solve difficult problems. Fixing our gun problem would be hard in the best of times. Today we have both hands and a third of our brains tied behind our backs. We are structurally and systemically fucked.

I was in a school board meeting in Austin the morning after Robb Elementary. The chairperson’s voice cracked as she asked us to remember the families in Uvalde. I looked around the room at my fellow board members. The overwhelming emotion was one of helplessness. It could have been our kids. It could have been this school. There is a terrible randomness to school shootings, like being struck by lightening. But we keep making and selling more powerful semi automatic lightening bolts. We keep arguing over why everyone needs as many assault lightening bolts as we can carry. We keep talking about mental health every time more elementary school kids are struck down by lightening. Our mental health is to blame – we are fucking insane.

In 2012, three months before Sandy Hook, I wrote a post about why gun control doesn’t work (here’s a Venn diagram from back then). The two sets – those who will pass background checks, and those who will shoot up an elementary school – are not disjoint. There is an overlap unfortunately. Background checks let enough crazy killers through. Likewise, raising the age for buying assault style rifles from 18 to 21 helps but only sometimes. The 20-year old Sandy Hook shooter didn’t have to go out and buy a gun – he borrowed one of his mother’s many guns and shot and killed her earlier that day. But it would have precluded the Robb Elementary shooter for legally buying his guns. Gun control built on background checks and age limits is a leaky sieve.

After their mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996, the Australian federal government outlawed semi-automatic weapons and bought back and destroyed hundreds of thousands of guns. After a Scottish mass shooting at a primary school, also in 1996, UK enacted similar buybacks and very strict gun laws. But we don’t have it in us to be able to enact that level of change. In fact, Texas loosened gun laws in the first legislative session after the El Paso Walmart shooting where 30 people were killed. The Supreme Court will most likely *expand* gun rights soon when it rules on a New York state gun control case. It is possible that state legislated assault weapon bans and age limits on buying guns will be deemed unconstitutional.

The Australians and Scottish live in countries and cultures not that different from America – law abiding developed rich economies with high levels of education and low poverty. Their need to constantly defend their families and homes from invading criminals and government overreach is fairly low – much like yours and mine, unless you imagine a monster or a conspiracy behind every door. There is no data or reason to believe that the mental health of Americans is a few orders of magnitude worse than that of Australians or the Scottish people. But we have let the emotions of an unhinged minority decide how all of us live, and sometimes die. So we will collectively continue to stick our heads in the sand and stockpile assault guns, high capacity magazines, and thoughts and prayers for other people’s kids. We are fucking morons.

Depending on the order in which you read, this the first or the last of an unending Marvel-like sequence of spring break posts. So steel yourself for the journey or be thankful you’re at the end. Vicky and Brett and the kids spent a few days in Austin in the very thick of SWSX country – at the Austin Motel (with their famous accidental giant dick and balls sign) in the heart of SoCo. I never got my schedule coordinated with Jo’s properly so I missed out on most of that but I did walk up with Ouiser one afternoon and we spent a couple of entertaining hours with them at the outdoor patio of Gueros Taco Bar. Here are a couple of photos of Ouiser on the way there and back. The Pride+ flag is courtesy of the Austin Motel.

Ouiser was so tired that evening from walking and from the cumulative non-stop celebration of spring break that she literally tumbled on to my lap and feel into a deep deep sleep.

Speaking of deep sleep, our esteemed Fuckernor Abbott followed up his pervious abortion banning greatness with a precious act against families of trans children. Some weekend during spring break (I have clearly lost track), Vivian joined her friend and her friend’s dad to protest the exec order at the State Capitol.

A journalist from a much admired local publication of the highest standards got a great photo of Vivian’s friend’s dad and outed him as a member of the dreaded Pro-Trans Kids Mafia, y’all. It turns out yet again that when they need it, the conservatives crave a spot of big government. And no, all you CRT hating parents, you don’t know what is better for your kids. Let’s have the Fuckernor decide.

Segueing violently, I have two lovely pictures of Evan. He is changing so quickly, I’d like to put them down somewhere, even if right after the photo of the dreaded Pro-Trans Kids Mafia. And that’s all for now, folks.

Brett, Vicky, and their kids came down for spring break. We spent a couple of days in idlic Wimberley on the banks of the Blanco. I wonder if the owners of this property would be willing to switch for five acres of prime hilltop with a home that needs love and care. I can’t see why not.

We chatted, cooked, drank, sat in the hot tub, went strolling and stand up paddling, and had a good time. By the last day, the kids were almost communicating with each other too. Vivian and Lily are friends, but getting any other combination to chat isn’t easy – I’ve included a photo of Evan and Anna sitting down for dinner….

We somehow missed Anna in both the group selfies, but I promise she was there the whole time.

Nicolle and Michelle celebrated getting hitched 20 years ago – back when it was illegal for two women to marry each other in Texas. Their marriage has exemplified courage, conviction, love, and family. We had a rollicking great time around a giant bonfire meeting people we met 20 years ago and making new friends. Uncle Tom, Aunt Anna, Kim, and Wayde came down from Nebraska. Unfortunately the only photographic proof I have of the entire weekend’s activities is a slightly blurry picture of Ouiser schmoozing her way up on to the couch and resting her head on Uncle Tom’s lap. But it’s a keeper.

Congratulations, Nicolle and Michelle. Your love for each other, and for doing the right thing is a beacon of light.

Vivian and I made the most of our time in San Francisco. We visited with FT and Kochhi and their families. We fleetingly thought of going to museums and visiting a couple of colleges but neither of those happened. We went to Monterey and walked along the beach, and drove to Healdsburg for a glass of Pinot and dinner. We walked from the Tenderloin up Nob Hill, through China Town, along Columbus Avenue to Washington Square and then carried on to Fisherman’s Wharf. We chatted, chilled, read, (I worked), and relaxed. We got boba tea at By Me Boba, fucking amazing crab at R & G lounge, and freshly made onigiri at Onigilly. We met one Uber driver who essentially told us the entire contents of his master’s thesis, and met another one who is a retired female police officer from Nepal. We meant to not do much and we did that admirably. As my friend George would say, Mission Accomplished.

Last month we heard that Alexandra’s drug trial at Stanford wasn’t going well. A year into her cancer diagnosis she was running out of options. Vanessa and Grant needed an extra hand to bring Alexandra back to Austin. That Friday evening I stepped out of my Uber in California and was greeted by Grant. I didn’t know what to expect. How do you help two people drive their dying child back home?

Early next morning Grant and I drove into town and returned with a big ass RV. The plan was to keep Alexandra as comfortable as possible. I made up the bed for her where the dining table drops down in the main cabin and padded it with pillows. Vanessa brought in armloads of Alexandra’s favorite soft toys including George, the three foot tall giraffe. It took hours to pack the RV – a wheelchair, a walker, medical equipment, special food, and then everything else from them living in California for months. Grant carried Alexandra into the RV and we got on the road. Over the next five days we drove to Austin. We stopped at friends’ homes along the way who greeted Alexandra with welcoming hugs and love and carefully prepared meals and then bade a cheerful good bye next morning, holding back tears.

Alexandra started strong and alert and ended the trip tired and ready to be in her own bed in her own home. She made it feel like just another road trip as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Along the way I walked Keisha’s dog on Venice Beach, hiked up the red rock bluff next to Camelback Mountain in Phoenix with Nic, had a cup of the best coffee in Las Cruces made by Bernie in his kitchen, drank more of Trapper’s bourbon in Sonora than was good for me, and was made to feel at home with love and affection that overflowed from Grant and Vanessa. When faced with darkness and pain, they radiated light and hope and made it a trip of a lifetime.

Grant and I took turns driving. The RV was comfortable and spacious. Though it felt like a giant cardboard box on an F-450 chassis, you could coax it up to about 75 mph. Vanessa sat across from Alexandra and chatted away with her and kept us together.

I vividly remember the day Grant called many years ago. They had just found out that the adoption was going to go through. Grant was at a boat show in Annapolis. He called and said “I’m going to be a Daddy”. He was so happy. When they got Alexandra, Grant took a picture of her laying next to two iPhones end to end. She was about that long. That was 13 years ago. As Alexandra grew up I’d hear her voice on my phone occasionally. If Grant called and it rolled over to message, Grant would ask her to say “pick up the phone, poopyhead!”.

While we were driving across the southwest, back at home Evan was having a busy weekend. He had his first school dance Friday night. Evan went black tie and looked very dapper. I didn’t get the details, but I think the 6th graders treated it like an extended recess and didn’t really do the romantic dance thing. He also had two soccer matches (one on a freezing early morning in San Antonio), a birthday party, and an airsoft party (where you shoot airsoft pellets at each other instead of paintballs). Vivian escaped the weekend madness with a sleepover at Julia’s. Jo and I have worked hard to be fungible parents, and we replace each other pretty well.

So Grant and Vanessa are divorced. There were stretches before Alexandra’s diagnosis when things between them weren’t pretty. That didn’t matter now. The four of us were a team. We were a good team. We engaged in banal everyday things, but the air around us was charged with urgency. We were acutely aware of life. I had this weird feeling that if we kept driving everything would be alright. Don’t stop. Just keep on going. In this little bubble we are okay.

But increasingly Alexandra was hardly able to eat. She was getting weaker, communicated less, and was frustrated that she couldn’t eat. Still, her eyes were sharp and she hung in there with amazing courage and grace.

The girl at whose home Vivian slept over on Saturday is Julia. Julia’s mother is like a second mother to Alexandra and is a very close friend of Vanessa’s. I was in this RV because Tavia had called me. In another small world moment, it turns out that Julia’s grandfather was a professor at Jo’s alma mater, Washington College. But Vivian and Julia, without knowing any of this, found each other at high school and became fast friends.

Tavia had offered to fly to El Paso and relieve me and drive the last third. I would fly home back to my family and work. But I couldn’t do that. I selfishly felt I had to keep the bubble intact as long as I could. So we drove on through El Paso and west Texas and that night we stayed at Tavia’s brother’s in Sonora. It was our last night on the road. The next morning we drove in to Austin. Jo and Tavia met us at Vanessa’s. Grant carried Alexandra up and Vanessa made her comfortable. I set George the giraffe up in his place next to her. I kissed Alexandra on top of her head and Jo and I drove home just in time for my Thursday 1pm zoom call. The trip was over like that.

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ps. Friday was a blur of work and laundry. On Saturday, right after Evan’s soccer match, Vivian and I got dropped off at the airport to board a flight to San Francisco. It was the start of her spring break and we had planned to spend a few days there while Jo stayed with Evan who still had a week of school to go before his break.

When we landed in California there was a message on my phone from Vanessa. It simply said that there was one more star in the sky. I read it over and over a dozen times till the airplane finally stopped. Vivian and I walked down the ramp into the cool California afternoon.

Vivian and Alexandra knew each other tangentially. They spent a week at a time together in sailboats in the British Virgin islands and in French Polynesia when they were little. As they grew up they didn’t hang out. Then they both ended up at the same school for a couple of years. Vivian was two grades older. I’d see Alexandra when I’d come to pick Vivian up and she would shyly wave back. Since Alexandra’s cancer diagnosis a year ago Vivian was acutely aware of Alexandra. When she had to pick a topic for a biology research paper last Fall, she chose to write about DIPG, the kind of cancer that Alexandra had.

I steered Vivian to an empty corner of the airport and broke the news. We stood there for a long time in our masks, tightly holding on to each other, tears streaming down our faces.

We knew what was coming for a year, but we had still hoped. We are dying from the moment we are born. But the way we live our lives gives it meaning. Without that, there is only absurdity. Alexandra’s life burned short and bright. It is hard to believe that she is gone.

Happy birthday, Vivian.

You hang flowers from your ceiling by their toes. You keep us on our toes. Every day I learn to see the world through your eyes – sometimes reluctantly, usually slowly, but always in a fascinating new ways. When you were little you wanted a quinceañera at 15. You wanted a party and a poofy dress. Things change, fortunately. Boy, do they change. Last month your hair was blue. Then black. Then short. Then buzzed. Then buzzed and blond and blue. And here you are, asleep on the flight to San Francisco, looking like an alien assassin (that took me three attempts to type – I hadn’t realized that you’ve got to write ass twice to spell assassin).

Looking at you makes me happy. Thank you for that. Wish you a very happy birthday, our dear first born whatever : -)

Another new year is upon us. We ended last year on a positive note. Vivian tested positive for Covid. Now that’s positive!

She got over it without any symptoms. The rest of us tested negative. Some combination of quarantining, vaxxing, and plain-dumb-luck worked in our favor. Happy to report we are all good. Around us Omicron continues to whirl through friends and families near and far, but so far, with mild consequences. We spent a quiet NYE’s on our back deck with champaign and party things that Becky thoughtfully sent us because we had to cancel the little party that we had planned.

Last weekend, on a lark, Nina invited us to camp at Inks Lake with them and we did. On Saturday evening, we went out for a sunset hike and then a meandering longer walk on Sunday morning. The girls – Jo, Vivian, and Ouiser, drove back home after dinner on Saturday. Without electronic devices, Evan, Nora, and Felix devised interesting games to keep themselves occupied. I often forget how convenient and relaxing a trip to Inks Lake can be.

School is back. Vivian’s school is taking a break from in-person classes for a few days – which she loves. She can hop out of bed at the very last moment and into her armchair for a class. Evan’s soccer season starts back this week, so there go our evenings and weekends. My work is keeping me busy. It is rewarding to spend hours disentangling real or imaginary problems with a bunch of bright people.

The first anniversary of the beginning of the end of democracy in the US came and went. While the poor brainwashed masses are ending up in jail slowly, the master idiots behind the plot remain at large, still poisoning the well that we all drink from. Over fifty percent of a major political party in a fairly advanced country have bought into an extremely destabilizing lie. I am not a pessimist by anyone’s definition, but it is possible that the 2020 elections was the last truly fair elections in the US for a while.

The other morning Jo tearfully said that Betty White had died. I said I was sorry and I truly was. But then in a small voice I asked her who Betty White was. She explained. We had ourselves a good chuckle. After all, she made so many people laugh over her almost 100 year lifetime. Later that week, in our little drinking group with a philosophy problem, we contemplated reality and the absurdity of our existence which brought me back to thinking about Betty White and life and death. And then a few days later, Evan’s teacher sent us a note. She had been discussing the role of emotions in persuasive writing with the 6th graders. They had talked about Aristotle’s triangle of Pathos, Logos and Ethos. In my world view, Logos leads, Ethos follows, and Pathos could be somewhere back there for all we care. An argument without logic or ethics isn’t one. So in class, with or without first raising his hand, Evan apparently said “Emotions are a sign of weakness”. Which led to the teacher’s note. And a discussion at the kitchen table that evening about the importance, even if not on the virtues, of Pathos. Life goes on. Ob-la-di.