A Year In Mill Valley

I went to bed at 9:30 last night — it was a big day at work, and I could barely keep my eyes awake after reading to Nathaniel (we’re on book eight, “These Happy Golden Years”, of the Little House on the Prairie series). Rachel and I were going to watch a video which I’d picked up on the way home, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes open long enough to brush my teeth and fall into bed.

The boys woke us early this morning, excited about Nathaniel’s first soccer game later this afternoon. They wanted to go to Toast (in Mill Valley) for breakfast, so the boys and I headed to breakfast while Rachel headed to the gym.

We got there early enough that we had a table in the front next to the windows (definitely the nicest place to sit). We all had our usuals…Mickey Mouse pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon for the boys, scrambled eggs, fruit and bacon for me.

While we were waiting, Nathaniel drew one of his little cartoon characters. It’s a pretty cute little guy, and I asked whether he could draw a comic strip around him. We talked about what kinds of things make up a comic strip, things like funny or goofy characters, unexpected situations, silly endings. After a little bit he added a surfboard and some waves. We tried to come up with a name, Stermon was the best we could do (the syllables of Monster reversed), and then I asked him what was happening. “Well, he just got thrown off a ship and landed safely on a surfboard.” “What would make it funny?” I asked. “What if there was a shark in the water in front of him, while he was looking back at the ship?”, said Nathaniel. And there you have it, the very first Stermon cartoon strip.

After breakfast we wandered down to the Depot to see if there was anyone we knew. The fog was in, and it was cold, so we didn’t stay long. On the walk back up the hill Nathaniel said to me “Dad, I really like my life!”. I was going to ask him why, but watching Sebastian skip up the hill ahead of us, looking at Nathaniel on his heelies next to me, passing a giant redwood tree, and breathing the early morning air in Mill Valley, I knew exactly what he meant.

A good friend of mine from Intel days — way back in the early 80’s — invited us up to Lake Tahoe for the weekend. We debated about whether we should go this year, as Rachel and the boys were just recently back from the UK (and they’d been a little teary when we first mentioned it, worrying that Rosie and Kitty would miss them if they went away again). But realizing that we wouldn’t have the chance to get away again until after the soccer season, we found a house sitter, packed up the car, and started off on Saturday morning.

The drive up was easy — we left at 9:30 and made it to this side of Donner Summit in just under 3 1/2 hours (including a 1/2 hour supermarket stop in Davis).

There were four families there, Steve and Wendy plus their two, Tara and Michael and their two, Aaron and Julia and their two, and the four of us (I see a pattern here…). The kids ranged from Sebastian at 4 to Marcus at 11, with a lot of overlap in between. (They got along pretty well, though there was a little too much playing pool and watching TV around dinner time. It’s a tough balancing act though, with so many other children, each of whom has different rules around TV and video games — how strict should you be, how much do you insist on imposing your own values on other kids and parents — all those interesting parental questions.)

We had a really nice time. We spent most of the time at Serene Lakes, with kayaks, canoes and various inner tubes. We put life jackets on the kids, and they paddled around the lake, in pairs, or at times all tied together. The wind came up at one point and a teenager in a kayak had to rescue them, paddling them upwind for a 1/4 mile or so…nothing worrisome (we did have a canoe we could have gotten them with), but after it happened they stopped asking why they couldn’t go out any further than the diving platform.

Sunday morning Steve, Aaron and I went for a 2 1/2 hour mountain bike ride, off-road in and around Royal Gorge(*) cross-country ski area. Unfortunately I didn’t take my camera with me, because the views were stunning. We met the wives and kids at the lake at noon time, and the gals spent the afternoon hiking up the ridge.

Dinners were fun. We fed the kids first, had cocktails while the kids watched a movie, put them to all to bed, and then shared food, cooking and cleanup.

The only slightly-less-than-fantastic experience we had was a fishing trip on Sunday afternoon. Aaron had promised Marcus that he would take him fishing, and of course all the other kids shouted “me!” when asked who else wanted to go. I’ve never been much of a fisherman — when I was a kid and we’d go fishing I’d always ask if I could drive the boat instead of fish — but at 4 o’clock on Sunday afternoon fishing I joined the other Dads in bundling 8 kids into 2 cars, and heading for Jackson Meadow Reservoir. Not knowing where the good fishing places were, Aaron had called the local Ace Hardware store for a recommendation. I have no idea if the guy he spoke with was trying to send us on a wild goose chase, or really thought that he was making a good recommendation, but you the reader should learn from our mistake. The water level was at least 50 feet down, the shores were very rocky, the kids kept snagging their lines on the bottom (I don’t know how many hooks, bobbers and weights we lost), and it took almost an hour to get there. We stuck it out for an hour — though if we got 20 minutes of fishing in I’d be surprised — then herded everyone back in the car and headed home. Looking back we should have tried to find something a little closer to home…heck, the Truckee River had enough water to make it interesting for the kids, and with a 5 minute drive we would have been waaaay ahead. Oh well, live and learn.

We left mid-morning on Monday, and played “which cars have been at Burning Man”, all the way back as we passed cars, trucks, campers and buses coated with dust, loaded with bicycles, piled with tents, and stuffed with furniture. Hey, maybe we’ll try that next year!

We stopped once near Vacaville for lunch, and pulled into our driveway before 2 o’clock. It was a very fun trip. Thanks Steve and Wendy!

(* Royal Gorge has been purchased by Foster-Syme (that’s Foster as in Foster City), who are trying to get permission to build 3000(!) units. If you ski there, you might want to get involved with the Save Donner Summit group.)

I was paying bills online tonight, and went to pay my credit card bill— usually a quick and, except for the amount, painless experience. Tonight though I was greeted with this screen. I called them right away to see what the problem was. They said a store had had their credit card database stolen. I asked for the name of the store…they said they couldn’t tell me because it was still under investigation.

Now that I think about it I should have insisted because if it was an online store I need to know if I’ve used that login and password anywhere else that might be obvious. I’m calling them back right now.

What a pain in the ass.

12:30 AM: called Citibank and asked which store had been compromised. They wouldn’t tell me…two different people said they didn’t have the information and I’d have to call MasterCard (1-800-826-2181) to find out. I called Mastercard. The guy there said he couldn’t see anything about my account and I’d have to talk to Citibank. I asked to speak with a supervisor. He said there were only four people on the floor and there was no supervisor. Aaarrrggghhh.

Rachel called at 11:45, “I’m going by Cafe Trieste, see you in 3 minutes.” “Ok” I said, “I’ll be outside.”

Rachel stopped in front of work, and dropped off Sebastian for me to take care of while she went to the dentist. I opened the door, helped Sebastian out of the car, took the bag with her computer and a Stuart Little movie, and slid the door shut. I stuck my head in the front window to chat, and she laughed, “You know, I haven’t been away from the two of them, and by myself for over a month!”. “I know” I replied. “Sad really, when I have to go to the dentist to have my teeth drilled to get a little time by myself.”

“Right” I smiled, “enjoy it while you got it! See you in an hour and a half.”

You know those times when you look at each other and say “Oh my God, we have to remember that!”, well, Sebastian is still at that age where we look at each other and laugh several times a week (or sometimes several times a day). The times it happens though are getting fewer and farther between now that his teeth have pretty much corrected themselves (he had a binky until about a year ago, which pushed his teeth out a bit, meaning more space for his tongue, which gave him a bit of a lisp…really cute, but thankfully correctable), and so to remember some of our favorite Sebastianisms, we dedicate this blog entry.

Two of our favorites he still says — “Oat Meal Park” and “Boiled Park” — for two of the parks Rachel takes him to on a regular basis (real names are Old Mill Park and Boyle Park).

Here’s a list that we wrote down a year or so ago…and thank God we did because they’re so easy to forget. I suppose someday I’ll go through the video we have and find other examples…but until then, enjoy:

I picked Rachel and the boys up at SFO (San Francisco Airport) on Friday mid-afternoon, after they landed from London via Chicago.

Sebastian, as he is wont to do, fell asleep in the car, and we carefully carried him into his bedroom — he was out for the night. Nathaniel, amazingly enough, stayed up until 8pm, almost 24 hours after getting up at 4:30am in London to catch a cab to the airport.

The three of us had a quiet dinner that night, and we talked a lot about how hard it had been on all of us to be apart for so long. Both boys had missed Rosie (the dog), Geronimo (the cat), the house, their stuff, and their friends, but they missed me most of all. Sebastian is at an age where he’s closest to mummy (Rachel), but Nathaniel’s reached a point where he has separated a bit from Rachel, and is transferring a lot of his bonding/growing-up energy to me. We talked almost every day by cell phone, and found that calling before dinner time was easier than calling right before they went to bed (somehow it seemed sadder when I called just before bed time, so I got into a habit of talking with them right after I got up in the morning).

I asked Nathaniel whether he had found the flight to be very long. “No” he said, “and it seemed to get faster after Chicago.” “Really” I said, “I would have thought that would have been the hardest part.” “Oh no” he replied, “it seemed like there was a big rubber band around the plane that kept us moving faster and faster to home.” Tell me more I said. “Well, it seemed like the whole time we were in England there was this big rubber band around the family, and it was stretched really really far, all the way to here, and when we got on the airplane it felt like it was pulling us home, faster.”

What a nice thought. A big rubber band around the family, stretching, moving, protecting us, keeping us together no matter how far away we are.

One of the things I’ve come to realize about community is that someone has to do the work. Someone needs to plant the flowers. Someone has to pick up the trash. Someone needs to schedule the concerts. And someone has to keep the kids programs running.

Like so many of these activities it’s the unsung volunteers who make great things happen, and here in Mill Valley it’s no exception. We have a wealth of talent, both parental and kid talent, and the youth sports activities are second to none. Nathaniel has played baseball the last two years — I was assistant coach the first year, and coach last year. Last year he played soccer for the first time, and for some reason I didn’t coach (though looking back I’m not quite sure why).

This year I have a 20 minute bike commute instead of my previous 1 hour car commute, and it’s relatively easy to get home for an afternoon practice. And so I volunteered to be an assistant soccer coach.

You have to understand, growing up in Connecticut and Massachusetts my sports were track, cross-country, ice-hockey and sailing, not baseball or soccer. Ok, I played one year of soccer, in 7th grade, but as neither of my parents played (or were particularly sporty except for tennis and sailing), I was completely clueless about how the game worked, until the last game of the season when I got a goal near the end of the game.

Therefore I hesitated for a second when Urban called and asked if I would step up and take over the coaching position (at the last minute the previous year’s coach couldn’t do it again). But I figured that at this age it’s mostly about getting the kids to understand about positions, about keeping the ball out of their goal, getting it down the field to the other end, and being aggressive enough to actually kick it into the other team’s goal — I mean how hard can it be? And so I said yes.

Another Dad, Greg Bernier, who just moved his family from Michigan, agreed to be assistant coach. The two of us went to the coaches meeting at the middle school at 11AM. There were about 200 other fathers and mothers there, and as I listened to the head of the organization talk about this year’s program, I looked around and realized what a gift it is to live here in Mill Valley where there are so many people willing to volunteer to make something amazing happen for their children. (I also realized how much I have to learn about soccer).

As I was scrolling through iPhoto looking for a photo to add to this entry I came across this photo from Nathaniel’s team last season. He had a great time, and a large part of that was due to his coaches Bong and Tom. So thanks Bong. And thanks Tom. Thanks again for giving Nathaniel one of the greatest gifts of all, your time.

I find the hardest part of writing a blog to be the process of starting it.  

First there’s all the technical stuff that has to be done to make it work…create dns entries, install the blog software, choose a theme, modify the theme, decide what to do about photos, etc. Then there’s the larger question of can I actually write something interesting to anyone but myself, like, say, my wife and children.   

But two things happened recently to make me reconsider my two years of non-blogging. First, Rachel and the boys went off to the UK for 3 1/2 weeks, and second, while they were away I re-read a couple of the pieces I’d written in my A Year In Cornwall blog.

We started our summer vacation this year in Cape Cod, where my family has a beach house, and I have been going since I was four years old. We stopped there for a week, at the same time as my brother and sister and their families, after which Rachel and the boys continued on to London while I flew back to Mill Valley (I started a new job recently and taking a month off after I’d only been there for two months wasn’t really in the cards).

Having them away for that long was interesting. I don’t think Rachel and I have been apart for more than a week since we’ve had the boys, and their being away made me realize not only how much I missed them, but how empty the house and several great parts of my life are without them. They’re at that age — Nathaniel’s 8, and Sebastian’s 4 — where I still call them my “scrunchy munchy men”. They really are that, and more. They’re fun to be around. They want to hang out with Mom and Dad. They’re learning new stuff by leaps and bounds. And not seeing them for 3 1/2 weeks seemed like an awfully long time (never mind the fact that they seemed to have each grown an inch while I wasn’t looking).

While they were away I re-read a couple of pieces from A Year In Cornwall, and what struck me was how quickly the emotions of that time returned. Reading about taking Sebastian to see the doctor for a gunky eye, taking Nathaniel to see the bees at Portreath, or visiting Port Isaac for the first time. All those experiences are there for me to recall, and savor, and remember.

So with a renewed interest in writing about the boys before they get any older, I have decided to keep a diary of this, our third year back in the States. As with my last blog, I want to match words with photos, and this time maybe even with sound and video. While I was scrolling back through photos from the Cape, I kept coming back to a series of photographs of Sebastian and Elizabeth diving into the lake, over and over and over again. I particularly love this photograph, where he is literally throwing himself into the air with every inch of his being. Like him, I want to throw myself into this blog…here’s to hoping it makes a most pleasing splash.