The Things They Don't Want

      I have a beautiful old clock sitting in the garage. I bought it for $200 back in 1973. Last time I had it fixed, a few years ago, the guy told me, "This is a museum piece!" He said it was worth thousands. But my wife won't even let it in the house. And leave it to my kids? Hah. There's a joke. They think it's an old piece of junk.

     My wife has an old icebox. It's a beautiful piece of furniture, made of oak, and it weighs a ton. Somebody ought to prize this piece of furniture, too. But no one does, except us. 

My antique clock

      We have a friend who recently downsized from their huge old farmhouse into an 1800-square-foot, one-story house. Their old barn -- now owned by their son -- is full of their discarded furniture. The son doesn't want any of it. He wants the barn cleared out so he can use the space for his equipment. None of their other kids wants it either. So they are agonizing over what to do with the stuff. Sell it? Give it away? A lot of it will undoubtedly end up in the junk yard.

     It's a shame, but there's a lot of stuff our kids don't want.

     And it's not just our old furniture. There was a news item last week in our local paper. Marvin Frederick, 81, has spent a lifetime running his butcher shop in a local farmers market. He wants to retire. He has two grown sons, but neither one wants to take over the shop. And the man can't sell the shop either. He's asking $850,000 for the business, which includes all equipment, recipes, his customer list -- and he's willing to provide one month free training. But so far, no takers. "It's hard work," he admits. "You've got to be someone who isn't afraid to work."

     The kids don't want your business, they don't want your precious antiques, they probably don't even want your property. The house -- especially if it's a second home -- can cause all kinds of headaches, especially if there are a lot of expenses and maintenance issues involved. Arguments and hurt feelings could cause serious divisions if the property is being split among several family members. Time-shares just compound the problem since getting out of a time-share can be difficult and time consuming.

     The only lesson to be learned, I think, is that we should use our things, and not worry about "saving them for the kids." So don't worry if a piece of precious furniture gets scratched, or if you break a cup or saucer and no longer have a full set of dishes. You're enjoying these things, appreciating them for what they are and what pleasure they bring to your life. Then, if the kids don't want those things, at least you've enjoyed them -- which is the reason you acquired them in the first place.

     Leaving our children an inheritance can be a blessing -- something they will continue to cherish in the future as we have in the past. But that's only if they truly want it. Do we really think our kids want our old boat, or an antique car, or the china set we inherited from Aunt Alice? And for goodness sake, do not leave them a storage unit full of old furniture, clothes and sports equipment. 

My coin collection

     Our kids will surely not object to inheriting money. But even an IRA or 401K can cause difficulties. These assets aren't necessarily easy to transfer. The rules are complicated, and there may be emotional issues involved. If it's a substantial amount of money, it's worth the effort; but otherwise it may cause nothing but trouble.

     The best thing to leave our heirs is cash, or financial assets that are as close to cash as possible -- publicly traded stocks or bonds, CDs or bank accounts. Or, go ahead and make an exception for the storage locker . . . but only if that old piece of furniture is stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.

     So, I don't know. Do you think my kids will want my old coin collection that's been shoved into the closet in the guest room? After all, it is cash!

Does Our Spirit Carry On?

     I recently read a novel called Bewilderment by Richard Powers. The author, a professor at Stanford University, has an impressive resume, so maybe he knows something we don't.

     He has studied both physics and English literature. He has written a dozen books. He was awarded a MacArthur genius fellow, won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and is, according to Oprah Winfrey, "one of our country's greatest living writers."

     Bewilderment follows the story of Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin who lost his wife in a car accident and now takes care of his son Robin who is “on the spectrum.” Science comes to the rescue, as the boy takes part in an experimental program that allows him to feel his deceased mother’s emotions. Unfortunately, political pressures intervene and shut down the program, leading the boy to . . . well, I won't give away the story.

     The book is strictly secular. It's ridiculous to think, according to the author, that there's a God who has given us a special place in the universe, who watches over us, planning rewards and punishments for our actions on Earth. The universe is too large, the possibilities for other life -- even intelligent life -- are too great, and it's just an act of narcissism to think there is anything unique or special about us humans.

     Yet a fellow scientist at the university has developed this computer system that captures the emotions of Theo's dead wife, and allows Robin to connect with his mother. The boy begins to feel what his mother feels, to understand how she loves him and what she wants for him. This in turn brings the troubled boy a measure of relief. It calms him down, dissipates his anger, gives him perspective, and offers the boy an almost normal life.

     The story made me realize what some religious conservatives mean when they claim that science is another religion all in itself. After all, science seeks to discover how we got here, why we are here, and what happens to us after we're gone. Isn't that what religion is all about?

     So even in the Powers non-religious world, we're not completely gone when we die. Science has a way to keep us around -- not just in photos and films and recordings, but in our emotional and aspirational essence, so we can communicate with people we've left behind and help guide the lives of our loved ones.

     I guess all of us hope that there is some form of life after death, however murky our view of it may be. No one wants to believe that death is the bitter, final end.

     There are many songs and speeches, prayers and poems to inspire us to believe in some kind of afterlife. You likely have your own favorites. Here is an unlikely one from the rock band Dream Theater called Our Spirit Carries On. It gives me chills every time I hear it. I hope it does something for you, too.

Scare in the Night

     I heard about this incident when I was in Florida in January. It happened to someone I've known for years. I don't see them much anymore, but we still keep in touch.

     They have a 30-year-old son who still lives at home. He had some learning disabilities growing up, but nevertheless managed to graduate from high school. He went to community college, took some photography courses, culinary courses, health classes. Meanwhile he worked on and off, mostly at restaurants.

     Last year he started to exhibit some mental-health issues. At one point, he got into an argument with some other young men -- nothing physical, just verbal -- and he decided that these guys were coming after him for revenge. Whenever a car came down the street he would peer out the windows, wondering if someone was casing out the house.

     At first his parents were wary, on the lookout. But nothing happened. There was nobody. So the parents tried to downplay the whole thing. But the son couldn't let it go and seemed to be getting more paranoid as time went on. He stayed at home more and more, afraid to go out, because he thought people were following him.

     His parents arranged for him to get some therapy. He was prescribed some medications. He took them most of the time, but complained they made him sleepy and lethargic, so he occasionally skipped his doses.

     Then one day, he woke up in the middle of the night. He thought he heard noises somewhere in the kitchen or living room. He convinced himself that someone had broken into the house. He panicked. He thought intruders had come to attack his family; but he was too afraid to go out of his room. Then he decided they were after him, going to kill him. So he decided to do it first.

     He had some kind of knife in his room, and he started to cut himself on his arms. He bloodied himself but didn't do any major damage. Then he stopped. He smoked a cigarette in an attempt to calm himself down.

     Next thing he knew, his mattress was smoking. Apparently, he had dropped his lit cigarette on the bed. And now it was on fire.

     His dad woke up -- maybe from the noise his son was making, maybe from smelling the smoke. He got out of bed, quickly checked around the house. It was dark and empty. There were no intruders. Then he saw the smoke coming out of his son's room.

     The dad got his son out, along with the rest of the family. He called 911. The fire department showed up in a few minutes. The fire was mostly contained in the son's bedroom, but between the fire damage, the smoke damage and the water damage, the house was a complete mess.

     The family suffered some smoke inhalation, and some emotional trauma. But no one was burned; everyone's okay. But they had to find someplace else to stay for the time being, and wait for the insurance company to assess the damage and then begin the long process of repairing the house.

     The son was sent to a mental-health facility where he spent a few weeks undergoing more intensive therapy. He understood what he had done, and was remorseful, but also knew that he couldn't always control himself.

     Now he's back out, living not with his family but in an apartment in a home. He is still under the care of a psychologist, with more careful monitoring. The family is in the process of putting their lives back together, which has only been delayed by the Covid-19 epidemic. But the prognosis is good, for both the young man and the larger family.

     Fortunately, there was no gun in the house. What do you suppose might have happened if there was?

Naming the Grandchildren

     We have some grandchildren coming along in our family. One of them is a girl, expected by my niece, and so when I was talking to my sister, I couldn't help myself, I mentioned a few lighthearted possibilities for naming the child. My sister offered some strained laughter. But I could tell, my suggestions were not appreciated.

     After I got off the phone, I saw B standing at the door of my office. "What are you doing?" she challenged.

     "Oh, just having some fun, suggesting some names for my niece's baby."

     B rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh, signaling just how stupid she thinks I am. Then she warned me that you never try to suggest names for someone else's baby. The parents don't need our advice, don't want our advice, and will just resent anything we might offer. And for heaven's sake, I should keep my mouth shut when it comes to our own kids.

     Okay, okay, maybe she has a point. I dunno. Have you ever had the temerity to suggest a name for your grandchild?

     I remember when my wife and I were having our first child. We knew it was going to be a girl. My dad suggested we name her Penelope. Needless to say, we didn't name her Penelope.

     Still, I am dying to suggest some names for these babies. And B is too, she just won't admit it. Let's face it, we know more about pretty much everything than our children and our nieces and nephews do, including the naming of babies, so they could use some help. But, reluctantly, I have to agree that it would only cause trouble, so instead of offering names to our children, I will suggest a few here ... kind of like writing secrets in your diary.

     The names we are familiar with are now out of fashion. In the 1950s the most popular names for baby boys were: John, James, Robert, Michael. And for girls they were: Mary, Linda, Deborah, Patricia.

     We can't suggest any of those. We're not that square.

     Today the most popular boy names are Jackson, Liam, Noah, Aiden. And for girls: Sophie, Olivia, Emma, Ava. We can't suggest any of those. The kids will have already seen the lists. We don't want to be that predictable. And besides, Sophie is the name of our dog.

     So we have a nephew who is very hip and cool. He and his wife named their kid August. If August is cool, why not Septima for a girl, or Septimus for a boy. Or if we're going classical, how about Octavia or Octavius. These names are unique, yet there's precedence. Septima Clark was a famous civil-rights leader. Octavia Spencer is a famous movie actress.

     Or, if they don't like August, Septima or Octavia, how about another month of the year? April, May and June are all legitimate names, even if they're a little old-fashioned. How about January? As in January Jones, the actress from Mad Men.

     But a lot of people these days want a name that's unique. So if naming the kid after a month of the year is not unique enough, maybe Joaquin or Dexter, or Axel or Orion, for a boy. Or Paige or Piper, or Colette or Catalina, for a girl.

     But my nephew chose August, not Augustus or Augusta, because it's gender neutral. So how about a gender-neutral name like Blake or Chris or Dana or Leslie? Or some people name their kid after a hometown or favorite place. Brooklyn Decker is a famous model. I had a friend named Dallas when I was a kid. In college I had a girlfriend (briefly) named Cleveland. So maybe we'll end up with grandchildren named Phoenix or Portland, or Newark or Nashville. These work for either a boy or a girl.

     If you remember the TV show "Seinfeld" George wanted to name his (non-existent) kid Seven. "It's a beautiful name, for a boy or a girl ... especially a girl, or a boy."

     I don't know. This is a tricky business. I guess we'll just have to tell the kids . . . go with Penelope.

What Do We Lie About?

     B had cataract surgery the other day. She's fine. But I think she's still suffering a little bit from the sedative they gave her. And I have a cold, so I'm a little disoriented not only from the bugs running around in my body, but also from the DayQuil, NyQuil, cough drops, vitamin C, echinacea and other pills and potions I'm consuming.

     So we're both a little loopy. Other than that, I don't know how the topic came up, but over dinner we were trying to list the things that people lie about the most.

     My top three were:

     How much sex you have (and how good it was). Well, you can lie to your friends, but you can't lie to your spouse, at least not about the quantity.

     How much money you win at gambling. More on that in a minute.

     And how long your commute really is. I had several different jobs during my career, but the one I held the longest involved an eight-minute commute. I didn't have to lie about my commute. But when I took the train to the city, involving a 39-minute ride on the express train, everyone in town said their commute was, oh, 40 or 45 minutes. But you have to get to the train, wait for the train, and then get to the office after you get off the train. Believe me, it took at least an hour. And that doesn't count the times you missed the express and had to take the local, or the train was late due to weather, mechanical problems or just plain incompetency in the ranks of conductors, engineers or paper pushers. And don't even get me started on people who drive to work and the traffic problems they encounter but fail to account for. Everyone believes that their commute to work is shorter than it really is.

     Now I remember how the topic came up. We were at a wedding and meeting up with a lot of old friends, catching up on what they are doing. But we didn't find out what her son's friend Robbie is doing. Later, however, B talked to her son, and found out that what he is doing is ... day trading.

     Trying to make a living day trading? Otherwise known as gambling? Was he kidding?

     But my brother-in-law also does some day trading. He's been doing it for years. According to him, he just does small-time stuff. Acts on a tip now and then. And he makes, "Oh, I dunno, maybe a few thousand dollars a year."

     I once asked his wife, my sister, about this. Her response? Yeah, he loses about five thousand dollars a year. But I don't let it worry me. It gives him something to do, keeps him out of trouble, and it costs less than taking a two-week vacation, which we hardly ever do anymore.

     Which reminded me of the time I went to the track with some friends. One of the guys professed to be an expert in betting at the track. He knew the horses, he knew the odds, he knew how the whole thing worked.

     So everyone in our party gave him $50. He would be in charge of the betting. We saw maybe four or five races, I forget exactly. I believe one of our horses came in, but most of them were in the back of the pack. At the end of the day our friend gave us each $28. "See," he said. "We each won twenty eight dollars!"

     I don't know if he was lying to us, or if he was lying to himself. Or if he was just kidding. But see what I mean about the lying?

     Meanwhile, B's top three lies were:

     How much money you spent at the mall. This may be lying to your spouse to avoid an argument. Or, it could be lying to yourself, so you don't feel so bad.

     How great a time you had on vacation. Especially with facebook, nobody will admit, even to themselves, that they've just spent a fortune going to Europe or Hawaii or the beach or the mountains and didn't have good time. They remember the sunny days and the gorgeous sights, but not the delays at the airport, the overheated hotel room, the strange stomach bug they picked up, or the time they got ripped off by a vendor.

     How cute your grandchildren are. Every grandparent thinks their grandchild is the cutest. They can't all be right, can they?

     Although I remember when I had my own daughter. The nurse brought me to the nursery to show me my little girl -- this was back in the days when they did it that way. There were eight or ten babies in the nursery. But the nurse didn't have to tell me which one was mine -- because I could see that my little girl was the cutest baby in the nursery.

     Later, I saw my wife, and she asked me if I'd seen the baby. And I told her, yes, I'd seen her and she was the cutest, the prettiest baby in the nursery, and probably the smartest too. There was a different nurse in the room at the time, and I heard her chuckle and mumble under her breath, "Yeah, all the dads say that."

     I heard her, and so I looked over at the nurse and then at my wife, lying there in bed with a big grin on her face, and I said to the woman, "You're correct. All the dads do say that. But, you know, one of those dads is right. And I'm the dad who is right -- our daughter is the cutest baby in the nursery."

     Lies? What lies?

Should Our Kids Blame Us?

     The other night B and I flipped on amazon prime and found The Florida Project, starring Willem Dafoe as Bobby and Bria Vinaite as Halley. Dafoe, as the manager of a welfare motel outside of Disneyworld, garnered an Oscar nomination last year for Best Supporting Actor. Vinaite plays a poor single mother, with a bratty daughter, who is free-spirited and well-meaning, but completely irresponsible and inadequate to deal with the realities of life.

     It's an ambitious movie that succeeds on many levels, although it's slow-going at times and offers (to our minds anyway) a bizarre ending. But I wonder, aside from anything else, is Halley a symbol for the Baby Boom generation? Like her, are boomers idealistic, unrealistic, self-centered, and ultimately unable or unwilling to face the realities of life?

     That might be stretching it. It's just a thought. But if you've seen the movie, does that make any sense to you?

     As Baby Boomers we've heard a lot about the plight of the Millennials who are, after all, our children, and so we should be worried about them. They entered the job market at the height or in the aftermath of the Great Recession, loaded with debt from higher education, laboring in a world where incomes have not risen for 40 years. Their pensions have been taken away and paid out instead to shareholders and upper management. And now Millennials can only look forward to a pensionless retirement even as the Social Security and Medicare systems are projected to be totally broke.

     Is this our fault? Because, like Halley, we are self-centered and irresponsible? Or is this even true?

     A survey from Axios and Survey Monkey says it is. A majority of Millennials blame Baby Boomers for "making things worse," while only 13 percent said their parents have made things better. Meanwhile, boomers themselves are split on the matter -- 32 percent of us give us credit for supporting policies that made things better while 30 percent admitted that we have "made things worse."

     What say you? Remember the Cold War, which was bequeathed to us by our parents? At least our children didn't have to hide under their desks to practice air-raid drills. But, arguably, it was Reagan and the elder Bush who ended the Cold War -- neither one of them boomers. Instead, the two boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush the younger, brought us the anti-West Muslim fundamentalist movement, as well as two major recessions in 2000 - 2002 and 2007 - 2010.

     As for the rest of us, have we boomers improved the economy over the years, in any way, or were we greedy and self-centered, abandoning our youthful ideals to join the establishment and, now, sucking up government resources to pay for our Social Security and Medicare benefits?

    Can boomers take credit for expanding rights for women and minorities? For making the American workplace more humane, and family life more flexible? Or were we neglectful parents, going off to pursue our personal dreams but leaving behind latchkey kids? Or were we instead helicopter parents overprotecting our kids and not allowing them to experience the lessons of hard work, frustration and defeat?

     I do know that very often, we do what's expected of us. My father was one of six children. In his family, back in the 1920s and 1930s, the boys went to college, and the girls got married. But my daughter, his granddaughter, is pursuing a Ph.D. I don't know if she ever felt that was expected of her. But certainly, because of the changing times, the route for that career path was cleared for her. And yet, adjusted for inflation, she doesn't make as much money as I did at her age, even though I had less education.

     Neither does my son, who has a good job in New York City, and works 50 or 60 hours a week, but can barely pay his astronomical rent.

     I don't know what will happen to my kids, after I'm gone. I don't know how much they feel "entitled" simply because they grew up in the relatively affluent 1980s and '90s.

     Much less B's new grandson. Imagine the world he'll be living in 30 years from now. Will he be working as a lackey for the Chinese government, struggling to support one child, unable to afford to take his kid to the doctor or to send him to college? Or will he have all kinds of opportunities we can't even dream of?

On Marriage

     So as I mentioned, my daughter is getting married in the fall. And even though she's 34 years old and knows her own mind, I feel as if I should be giving her some advice . . . the benefit of my experience and perhaps my vision of the hopes I hold for her.

     Her mother and I are divorced. Her fiance's parents are divorced as well. (Maybe that's why it's taking so long for my daughter to get married?) But I want her to understand that even though our marriage fell apart at the end -- the marriage failed as some people put it -- in my mind the marriage was a solid success. After all, my wife and I were together for 30 years (who keeps a job that long these days?). We owned a home, raised a family; we were contributing members of our community. And we produced two wonderful children.

     We offered them happy childhoods, making sure to live in a good school system, ferrying them to baseball, tennis and swimming practices, loving them the best way we could. And now that they are adults we support their choices (even though, to us, they sometimes seem like questionable ones); and as their parents we do not argue or fight; in fact, we get along reasonably well and might even be considered friends.

     B wants to tell my daughter that the clock is ticking if she wants to have a baby. My daughter was pretty good at math, though, so I think she knows the numbers. However . . . I hope she's marrying this man because she loves hm and gets along with him, and not just because at age 34 she thinks it's "time" she got married. But I don't know if I could raise the subject without sounding like I was cross-examining her, without immediately putting her on the defensive and shutting down any true communication.

     Who has any experience with this? Do you have any advice for me?

     Perhaps the person I want to talk to is not my daughter at all, but her husband-to-be. We have a saying in golf. You hit the ball up toward the hole. You think you have a good shot, certainly on the green and maybe even near the cup, but you're too far away, or behind some trees, and so you can't see where the ball actually came to rest. You walk up to the hole expecting to see the ball sitting on the green -- instead, it's off to the side, maybe in the rough or in a sand trap. This shot is jokingly called a "son-in-law" . . . meaning, it's not what you expected.

     My daughter's fiance is not someone I would have expected. He has his positive points -- a good job; he doesn't party or run around . . . he instead spends his spare time fixing up old cars or old bikes or else tinkering with technology (which means he has old cars in the driveway and old bikes in their living room). But he can be a little . . . I'm not quite sure, but he doesn't always sit quite right. With me anyway. Maybe the problem is just that he's in his 30s. But anyway, what I think doesn't matter. What matters is what my daughter thinks of him, what she sees in him that isn't apparent to the elders in the family.

     I guess I just want to make sure this young man treats my daughter well -- that he thinks of her before he thinks of himself. That he supports her emotionally, builds up her self-confidence, encourages her ambitions, and doesn't (like many men do) tear someone down in order to build himself up.

     I also wonder: I have a son, and our relationship is pretty well defined. What will it be like to have another male in the family? I do not want to have to compete with him for my daughter's affections.

     Marriage. It doesn't seem like a big thing when someone else is doing it. But now I know it's a scary proposition, and seems even scarier when you're going through it with your daughter than when you go through it yourself.

Love, Love, Love

     B and I made the trip into New York City over the weekend to see Love, Love, Love, billed as an "intricate, funny and deeply intelligent play." I'm not sure I quite agree with that, but anyway, it's a play about Baby Boomers, taking its name from the opening line of The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love."

     And it brings up the question: Do Baby Boomers love themselves, at the expense of everyone else?

     Act one takes place in the summer of 1967. Kenneth is a freewheeling college student spending the summer loafing around his older brother's apartment in London. The earnest older brother, Henry, has a job, his own flat, and is hoping to have a girlfriend in Sandra, who is coming over to his place tonight.

     Henry is trying to get rid of Kenneth, but Kenneth outwits his dour brother at every turn. Sandra arrives and soon falls for Kenneth, throwing over Henry for his more playful younger brother. She excuses her move, saying everyone needs to be free, to follow their own desires -- "Young people, our age, we're in the moment," she coos -- and besides, Henry will get over it soon enough.

     In act two it is 20 years later and the two kids who believed in free love have now grown up. Sandra and Kenneth are married with two teenage children of their own -- who they evidently neglect in pursuit of their own dreams. It's the daughter's birthday. But Kenneth doesn't even know how old she is, and Sandra, with her high-powered job in London, is too busy to attend her daughter's violin concert. Nevertheless, Sandra insists that everyone have birthday cake, whether they want it or not.

     In act three it's 2010 and the daughter, now 37, bitterly complains that she has nothing in her life -- no career, no boyfriend, no home -- and blames it all on her parents. I won't tell you anymore, in case you ever want to go see the play. Suffice it to say that things work out just fine for Kenneth and Sandra. Not so much for everyone else.

     Of course, B and I thought the play presented a pretty broad indictment of Baby Boomers as selfish, narcissistic people who don't care who they hurt so long as they fulfill their own desires. Boomers are bad parents who were lucky to enjoy an economic boom, and who don't care, or even acknowledge, that their children are struggling to even approach their parents' lavish standard of living.

     Afterward, B and I decided that we, as Baby Boomers, actually sacrificed more for our children than our parents ever did for us. We paid more attention, spent more money, did more for them. Our parents just told us to go outside and play. We signed up our kids for piano lessons and swimming lessons, for summer camp and SAT courses. But . . . maybe we're just fooling ourselves? Or, maybe that's part of problem?

     Today CNN reported that in international student rankings, Americans scored 22nd in reading skills, and 39th in math, the lowest in years.

     And an article in the New York Times "The American Dream, Quantified at Last" cited a report from Stanford showing that the chances of someone earning as much as their parents have been declining for over half a century -- from 92% for people born in 1940 to 79% for people born in 1950 to barely 50% for those born in 1980.

     In other words, achieving the so-called American Dream, of doing better than our parents, was virtually guaranteed for those of us lucky enough to be born in the 1940s. But for our children, born in the 1980s, the road to prosperity has been filled with many more potholes.

     Of course, so much depends on the individual children, and the parents. But a rising tide lifts all boats, and presumably we enjoyed a rising tide, while our children do not. Or . . . maybe we should have just told our children to go outside and play?

Why Is College So Expensive?

     It's back-to-school-time, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to bring up the sometimes-painful subject of college tuition -- an experience that, personally, gouged a significant chunk out of my retirement savings when I was writing those blood-chilling checks back in 2001 - 2008.

     I ran across this article featured on a blog done by a friend of mine, Jeremy Kisner, of Surevest Wealth Management in Phoenix, AZ. The piece was written by Peter Bos, a summer intern at his firm and a sophomore at the University of Michigan. It's a well-reasoned analysis of the problem that at least shows this young man is getting a good education -- and provides some evidence that we are getting a decent return on our outsized investments in these institutions of higher learning.

     
Over the last 40 years, the cost of tuition has really skyrocketed, rising at an average yearly rate of 6% above inflation. This has led to tuition increases of 284% for public schools and 210% for private schools.

You know it’s bad when costs have increased at twice the rate of medical care, as seen below.

This substantial increase in tuition has led to an explosion of borrowing through college loan programs. Students and families are borrowing an average of $100 billion a year to pay for college, with total student debt outstanding now over $1.2 trillion. This is more than the aggregate amount of credit card debt or car loans.

The proportion of college students graduating with debt has increased to 59%, a record high. They owe an average of $35,000 upon graduation (up $4,000 in the last two years). Even the great recession did not temper the willingness to take on more student loans (see below).

The increase in debt per graduate means that:

• Graduates are much less likely to pursue entrepreneurial ventures.
   
• They are less willing to make risky investments, keeping their money in savings accounts rather than investing in stocks and bonds.
   
• They are less likely to buy homes and more likely to rent (reflected in home ownership rates now at a 48-year low).
   
• They begin saving for retirement much later.

Is College Worth It?

Many families are questioning whether college is worth the cost. Enrollment peaked in 2009 and has since been decreasing. Yet there is plenty of evidence that college is still worth the cost. 

College graduates make almost double the weekly wage with half the unemployment rate compared to high school graduates (see graphic below). However, many people have concluded that you have to be more selective about the type of degree and type of school you choose in order to make sure your investment in education will pay off.

Why Is College So Expensive?

The main reasons for the increase in tuition are the increase in spending on amenities to attract more desirable students, colleges hiring more teachers to decrease the student to faculty ratios, colleges wanting more control over financial aid and scholarships (usually to attract more competitive applicants), and colleges receiving less financial support from the states.

Tuition has increased as a percentage of total school revenue from 17% to 25%, whereas funding from the states has decreased from 32% to 23% over the past ten years. If the cost of tuition continues to increase at the current rate, by the year 2030 the typical tuition will rise from some $20,000 a year to $41,000 a year for public schools, and $44,000 to $91,000 a year for private schools.

Have you personally been affected by rising tuition? Do you think college is too expensive? Do you think it's worth the cost?

Finding the right college at a reasonable cost for your children or grandchildren may seem like an overwhelming task. But a whole cottage industry of college planning consultants has emerged to help prospective students. Check out college planning sites such as Stratagee or College Planning Consultants to learn more.

Also, take a look at a lendedu report which ranks U. S. colleges and universities in each state by the amount of debt the average student owes upon graduation. The site also offers tutorials on scholarships and other aspects of financial aid to help students finance their educational dreams, without going broke in the process. 

Meeting My Daughter in Petersburg

     Anyone who read my March 28 post No Wonder I'm Broke! knows that we've been doing some spring cleaning at our house. My main job has been to pack up all my daughter's old stuff from the basement and clear it out.

     I consulted her about it by phone and email. I was authorized to throw some of it away. Then I loaded up the car with the rest of it -- about 8,000 pounds of books and boxes, shoes and shirts, papers and other paraphernalia -- and set off down I95 to bring it to her.

This fortification was overrun by Union forces

     My daughter lives in North Carolina, and we arranged to meet in Petersburg, Va., to make the dropoff. We both have also recently developed an interest in the Civil War, inspired by an online course by Yale University Professor David Blight called History 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845 - 1877. If you've got 20-some hours to devote to learning about the Civil War, I highly recommend the lecture. Blight captures the excitement, the sweep and the significance of history, and he even inspired me to go on to read a couple of books including Uncle Tom's Cabin which somehow I'd never read in school.

     I had never been to a Civil War site, and neither had my daughter. She was coming with her boyfriend, and we were staying overnight, but first we decided to meet at the national park in Petersburg and spend the afternoon immersing ourselves in Civil War history.

     In 1864, Lee was retreating through Virginia as Grant tried to encircle his forces and cut them off from the rest of the Confederacy. The two armies fought the Battle of the Wilderness, then they clashed in Spotsylvania and again in Cold Harbor. Each battle was bloody, both sides losing thousands of men, but each time Lee's dwindling forces fought off the Union attack.

The entrance to the tunnel

     The Union army arrived at Petersburg and might have taken the city if it had not hesitated in the face of lightly-manned fortifications. Then, after weeks of stalemate, some mining engineers from Pennsylvania came up with the idea of digging a tunnel under enemy lines, then blowing up tons of dynamite to create a hole in rebel defenses.

     The explosion was set off on July 30, 1864, and blew a crater hundreds of feet wide. Union forces rushed into the breach, but the Confederates regrouped. They slaughtered hundreds of Union soldiers and re-established their lines.

     That set the stage for the siege of Petersburg, as Grant slowly strangled the enemy, until the Union finally took Petersburg on April 2, and then chased Lee to Appomattox where he surrendered on April 9, 1865.

Grant's headquarters

     My daughter, her boyfriend and I spent the afternoon roaming over the battle site, then we drove out to see Grant's headquarters on the James River. Later, we found a barbecue restaurant in the city of Petersburg, now suffering not from the aftermath of the Civil War but from the aftermath of industrial decline. Petersburg has a small historic downtown amidst its urban decay ... and at least one very good barbecue place.

     And then came the denouement to my trip. In the hotel parking lot, we unloaded my car, set the stuff out on the pavement, and then repacked all the boxes, bags, loose books and stuffed animals into her car. We stayed overnight. And then in the morning we waved goodbye -- my daughter to her new house in Raleigh, NC., and me back to B, and our now-less-crowded home in New York.

    

No Wonder I'm Broke!

     We've been doing some spring cleaning around here, and my job has been to focus particularly on the basement where our kids are still storing a lot of their old stuff.

     I don't think this needs a lot of explanation . . . just to say that as I was tossing old papers and notebooks in the trash and boxing up books and artwork and other memorabilia, it suddenly dawned on me that at some point along the way, I paid for all this stuff. No wonder why I'm broke!

     Here's just a small sampling of the sports equipment they used when they were growing up -- and which they haven't touched in years. All that money down the drain, spent on ski equipment, lacrosse, golf, baseball, hockey, soccer.

     You see the baseball mitt? My son played Little League. But when baseball started to conflict with the tennis season, he decided to go all in on tennis. He didn't know or care that tennis costs more than baseball. A lot more. The lessons, the court time, the travel to tournaments. Then, he was good enough to get recruited by a college in Pennsylvania . . . good enough to be accepted and play on the team, but (of course!) not so good that he received an athletic scholarship.

     But as we all know, girls cost more than boys. And I also had a daughter. My investment in shoes alone was probably bigger than the gross national product of an average country in Europe.

     And don't think that box of shoes covers even the half of it. She had a pair of shoes for every pair of socks, and as you can see that drawer holds at least a hundred pairs of socks Then there were the old dolls, the stuffed animals, the art supplies, boxes of books and trophies and clothes. It's no wonder my paycheck disappeared faster than I could say, "IRA," much less actually open an account!

    
     I don't even know what these things are . . . some kind of ceramic animals. Hundreds of them, at probably eight or ten bucks a piece.

     And I knew you'd want to see a few stuffed animals. They are cute. And I'm not complaining. I keep telling myself, if you don't spend your money on your kids, why then, it'll probably just go to waste!

Tootle on Down

     It happened last weekend, when we had another couple over for dinner. B's 20-something son decided to join us because his girlfriend, who's studying to become an accountant, was working all weekend, which accountants apparently do at this time of year.

     We were sitting around enjoying a fire in the fireplace and talking about random things. B told us about a project she had going at work, and then said she had to tootle on down to the library the next day to do ... something, I forget.

     The conversation proceeded for a few more moments, until we all realized B's son was sitting there, hunched over, his face getting red, desperately trying to suppress his laughter, until he finally erupted in a sudden and loud guffaw. He kept trying to hold it in, but he couldn't, and soon he was laughing so hard he was practically falling out of his chair.

     The rest of us smiled, and we looked around at one another. We were a little puzzled.

     "What?" said his mother.

     "Tootle?" he said. More bursts of laughter. "Tootle! When does anyone actually use the work tootle?"

Maybe she'd seen this book?

     Soon he had the rest of laughing as well. While the word had just washed over us, because it was familiar -- even though none of us had probably heard it used in normal conversation in, oh, two or three decades. But now that he had mentioned it, it was pretty funny.

     As the laughter subsided -- from all except her son who still couldn't control himself -- B admitted it was a word she'd probably heard from her grandmother. And she admitted that, yes, it had probably gone out of the standard English lexicon sometime around the 1950s.

     Although I remember my mother used to used the term occasionally, probably as late as the 1970s. But actually, my mother more often said, "Toodle loo," when bidding goodbye to someone. You don't hear that one anymore, either. I looked it up. It's defined as an archaic way to say goodbye, derived from the French a tout a l'heure. I never realized my mother was so classy!

     The next morning, as B and I reviewed the previous evening, we agreed everyone had had a good time. But as you might imagine, the word tootle came up again. After all, it brought the biggest laugh of the evening. By far. And we couldn't help but wonder: what other words did we use, or at least hear, when we were younger, but are words that today would mark us as an old fogey.

     And in case you are about to argue how we older people are not old fogeys -- take it from B's son, using the word tootle does mark you as an old fogey.

     Tizzy. If you're all in a tizzy ... are you an old fogey? You're all excited and perhaps a little confused. You're in a dither ... another archaic word.

     Actually, I think old fogey is itself an archaic term, a slightly derogatory label for an elderly person who is not up on current fashions.

     How about curmudgeon or crank? Maybe Bernie Sanders has brought a little hipness back to those two terms.

Maybe she'd seen this movie?

     Scalawag. I recall my mother using the term to refer to some unsavory characters, way back when. I thought it must have some kind of nautical connection. Maybe a scalawag was a pirate? Actually it comes from the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. A scalawag was a derogatory term in the South for a white person who had Union sympathies. Kind of like a carpetbagger. Only worse, because a carpetbagger came from the North, while a scalawag was a Southerner who had become a traitor to the cause. I don't know where my mother came up with the term. She was not a Southerner, unless you count New Jersey as part of the South.

     How about jalopy, a word I sometimes use to describe my car, or Landsakes! which I've heard B's mother utter once or twice in surprise, or how about beseech or betwixt?

     I don't know what conclusion to draw from all this -- except perhaps, language does evolve, and sometimes we old fogeys have to struggle to keep up.
    

Dressed for the Occasion

     Jerry Seinfeld has a comedy bit about how men wear the same clothes for most of their lives. Whatever they were wearing when they were in their 30s -- that's the style they wear for the rest of their lives.

     It was certainly true of my dad. He started his career in the late 1930s. He worked in an office. By the time I came along he was wearing his 1940s-style suit with wide lapels. He had a white shirt, oxford shoes and fedora hat.

     I remember he used to pay me 10 cents to shine his shoes. I would watch him shave in the morning, using a shaving brush and a mug of shaving soap. In the winter he wore a vest, complete with a pocket watch, with a thin chain draped across his stomach. And this was his style, right up until the day he retired in the mid-1980s.

     You can see the kind of clothes he wore if you watch a black-and-white movie from the 1940s. Or, maybe featured on Mad Men, which was channeling the 1950s, although I'm sure the Mad Men suits were cut with a little more style.

Standard fashion

     Then, after he retired to Florida in the mid-1980s, my dad adopted the leisure wear look that had been popular in the 1950s -- the Polo shirt, casual Polyester slacks and loud sports jacket. He never went so far as to wear the white shoes. Too flashy. But he did sometimes don a straw hat -- the kind Dick Van Dyke wore in Mary Poppins.

     My mother was marginally more up-to-date . . . but not by much. She never wore slacks, only a dress or skirt. And I remember she wore a hat in church. It was a big day (whenever that happened, sometime in the 1960s) when the ladies were no longer required to wear a hat in church. Horrors! But you'd never catch my mother in church with a bare head.

     I make fun of my parents, but in truth, I'm no different. As I confessed a few blog posts ago, I'm a man of the 1990s. I still wear my Dockers, my polo shirt -- my corporate casual dress shirt when I go out to a restaurant. For special occasions I still wear the navy blue blazer that I bought in the 1990s  (although B made me buy a new suit for her son's wedding last spring). And dress shoes for me? Penny loafers.

Fashion of the future

     At least I'm better than my friend Mike. He's recently retired, but when he was working he went to a lot of meetings, conferences, conventions and golf outings. His style of dress? Whatever they gave him for free at one of his meetings 10 or 20 years ago. Hats, shirts, jackets, umbrellas. He's a walking advertisement for corporate and government meetings from the last decade.

     But what has me worried is my son. He wears a black cap emblazoned with the word "Devil" across the front. He sports a hipster's short beard. He invariably dresses in skinny jeans and a black t-shirt with the name of a rock band on it --  "Bad Breeding," "Fight Like Apes," "Warm Brew," "Rat Fist," "Night Riots."

     Now, to be fair, my son is not quite 30 yet, and he is in the music business. Still, is he going to be wearing a "No Brain" or "Karma Killers" t-shirt 40 years from now when he goes in for his Medicare checkup?

    

Getting Married

     B and I have four children between us. Tomorrow, the first of them, her younger son, is getting married. At age 23, he is the youngest of the four.

     That seems a little young to me, in this day and age, but he and his bride seem mature for their age, and well suited for one another. They grew up together, went to the same high school, and started going out together when they were freshmen in college. She transferred after her freshman year, in order to be closer to him, and now they've been living together for almost two years.

     Some people balk at the idea of two people living together before they get married. But B and I are hardly ones to object, since we have been living together for eight years without benefit of marriage.

     But, for us, there is no benefit of marriage. At least not financially. Neither one of us needs to piggyback on the other's medical insurance; and we'd have to pay more in taxes if we got married. We won't be having any more kids; so we don't need to make it official for that reason. In fact, if we were to get married it might just complicate things for our kids.

     But B and I might get married anyway . . . eventually. Even though we're not raising a family, there's still something appealing about marriage, making the relationship official, for all the world to see.

    Anyway, we're going off to watch our little boy (well, not my little boy, but I've known him since he was in 8th grade) march down the aisle.

     They're doing it up pretty big -- with a minister, at a fancy wedding venue, expensive rings, with a rehearsal and rehearsal dinner and roughly 150 friends and family at the wedding. Flowers, professional photographer, gift bags, bachelor and bachelorette parties. All the women in the wedding bought a new dress for the occasion, and they are going together to get their nails, hair and makeup done.

     It seems a bit over the top to me. But then, I got married in 1973 in a little church in the country with about 15 guests, and my bride wore flowers in her hair and we all went out to lunch afterwards. We were together for 28 years, raised two great kids, and had a pretty good run.

     So if that simple little ceremony was good for 28 years, then B's son and his bride will be married forever.

Are You as Smart as a 5th Grader?

     While everyone else is reading The Girl on the Train (billed as the next Gone Girl) and The Boys in the Boat (about the Univ. of Washington oarsmen who rowed for the U. S. in the 1936 Berlin Olympics), I've been reading something entirely different.

     As anyone who visits this blog knows, my beloved B, aka Bridge, is a librarian. She spends her days in the children's room reading to kids, helping them find books, and creating all kinds of programs to engage their interest, enrich their minds, and . . . well, to be truthful, keep them out of their parents' hair for an hour or two.

     So last summer, and again this summer, B is involved in The Battle of the Books, a competition that involves kids from our library facing off against kids from five other local libraries. There are two levels, based on age. So our library has a 4th and 5th grade team, and a 6th and 7th grade team. They will meet the other teams sometime in July for the actual contest. In the meantime the kids are reading the books, studying them, going over practice questions.

     Each group has five books they will be asked questions about. I'm not sure exactly how the competition works; but basically, the team that gets the most questions right, or makes the fewest mistakes, will win some kind of prize.

     In the meantime, someone has to select the five books for the battle. And the librarians running the program have to read the books and come up with questions for the kids to answer.

     So B has asked me to help her out with the 4th and 5th grade team by reading one of the books, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein. I have to generate 60 questions based on the book. Many of the questions are about the plot or the characters. For example: How old is Kyle, the main character?

     But other questions involve general information that gets woven into the story in one way or another. So, go ahead, take this test . . . and see if you're as smart as a 5th grader.

     1. What's a fancy word for library?

     2. What's the shortest distance between two points?

     3. What two coins add up to 30 cents -- but one of them can't be a nickel?

     4. What US Navy ship was once captured by the North Koreans?

     5. What did Apollo 8 accomplish that had never been done before?

     6. What's the nickname of the state of Indiana?

     7. Who wrote Around the World in Eighty Days?

     8. 0 +27 + 0.4 = ???? (but don't use math)

     9. What was the name of the gleaming white elf-horse that carried Frodo Bagins across the River Bruinen?

     10. Who said, "Knowledge not shared remains unknown."


Answers, according to Chris Grabenstein:

     1) Athenaeum; 2) A straight line; 3) A quarter and a nickel (one of them is not a nickel); 4) USS Pueblo; 5) It was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon; 6) Hoosier State; 7) Jules Verne; 8) 027.4, the Dewey decimal no. for library information; 9) Asfaloth, from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; 10) Why . . .  Mr. Lemoncello of course!

Does Your Sibling Know You Best?

     Last weekend on our way to Pennsylvania, B and I listened to a podcast of interviews with Philip Galanes, who writes the Social Q's column for the New York Times. Since we were going to visit B's family, we focused on the interview about siblings.

     The questions involved adult siblings with various problems -- what's your obligation to help out a brother who can't keep a job; how to deal with a sister who doesn't get along with her brother's wife; how does a younger brother stand up to to his older brother who's always bossing him around.

     Galanes gives common sense advice, sometimes with a dash of humor, for sometimes awkward but otherwise fairly ordinary problems. He makes a point of saying we should all try to get along with our siblings, because they are our oldest friends, and they know us better than anyone else, right down to our roots.

     At that point, B and I looked at each other. Bridge comes from a large family. Her oldest sister is ten years older than she is; her youngest brother is ten years younger. And as she pointed out, she barely knows either one of them. (Her older brother doesn't try to tell her what to do; but he does try to boss the youngest brother around.) She is close to one sister, who is two years older than she is. But the rest of the family -- seven kids in all -- just seemed like a crowd of people to her. They don't know her down to her roots; they know her in only the most superficial ways.

     I grew up in a family of four kids -- two older sisters, and an older brother who died when I was in 10th grade. I barely knew my brother. He was five years older, and while I looked up to him, and thought he was just about the coolest kid in town, I didn't really know much about him.

     I didn't know my older sister at all. She's six years older. She says she used to babysit for me when I was a toddler. Maybe she did -- I don't remember. She claims I "was a handful" (but I'm sure she's exaggerating!). She went away to school starting in 11th grade, and so she was out of the house by the time I was entering 5th grade. I only knew her as the slightly rebellious older sister who couldn't wait to get away from home and go out into the world.

     I didn't see my older sister more than a few times for the next 30 years. We weren't estranged; we just had no reason to keep in touch. Now we see each other once or twice a year, mostly because she lives in Florida, and I stop by her house for a couple of days when I take my winter break in Florida, as I've been doing for the past ten years. I play golf with her husband; we catch up on news of cousins and nieces and nephews. But it's definitely an opportunistic, long-distance relationship. 

     I was much closer to my other sister, only two years older than I am. We did hang out together as kids. We went to the swimming pool together in the summer; we went on vacation with our parents; we were the two kids still around after my brother died and my older sister went off to college.

     But how much does she know me now? Yes, she would recognize my computer passwords -- the name of my first dog, the street address of our house; our telephone number back when we were kids. But other than that, she doesn't know a whole lot about me either. After all, she went off to college; got married; moved out west, and now lives 2000 miles away.

     We see each other a few times a year. She's a lawyer who's still working part time, and she occasionally has to fly back east for a job, and then she'll come visit for a few days. We get along; we're still friends, in a way, and we will occasionally get on the phone and share worries about our kids, tell stories about our vacations, or talk a little bit about financial matters or retirement plans.

    But the point is, both Bridge and I disagree with Galanes. Sure, if we still live in the same town where we grew up, and so do our siblings, then he's probably right. But who does that anymore? My family is spread out from New York to Florida to Arizona. B's family spans the country from Boston to Seattle. Our siblings know what we were like 40 years ago; but that doesn't have much to do with who we are today.

     Maybe you know your siblings down to your roots if you're all involved in a family business, or you still live in the same neighborhood. But for most of us, I think, the people who know us best are not our siblings, but our spouse, our children, our friends. Don't you agree?

Listen to Me, Will Ya!

     I was the youngest of four children. I remember sitting around the dinner table when I was a kid, and everyone would listen to my dad, of course, because he was the father. And everyone would listen to my oldest sister, because she was supposed to be the "smart one." And my older brother, because he was . . . the older brother.

     And I remember trying to get a word in edgewise, trying to get people in the family to take me seriously. I tried my best, sometimes making a joke, or being disruptive, or just making pain out of myself. Sometimes I succeeded; but mostly, people ignored me.

     By the time I got to college, I had a strategy. I would wait for a couple of people to speak up in class, offering their disparate opinions, and then I'd step in and voice my own interpretation. People noticed that I spoke after the others, and it lent my opinion a greater air of authority -- as though other students were too anxious to talk, or had spoken without thinking, while it seemed as though I was judging the situation.

     There was one exception to my approach. If a teacher asked for comments, and everyone sat around awkwardly with no one daring to speak up, then I would jump in -- making it look as though the other students were afraid to speak, and I was the brave one to offer an opinion.

     The strategy didn't work all the time; but it worked more often than not and got me through a lot of literature classes, as well as history, philosophy, economics and sociology.

     Later, as an adult, I used to joke that the reason I finally decided to have kids was because it would mean I'd get extra helpings at dinner. I'd noticed, whether at home or a restaurant, that the kids never finished their meal, and it was almost always the dad who was picking food off the kids' plates.

     But that wasn't the real reason I wanted kids. The real reason was because I wanted someone to listen to me. If no one else would pay attention to me, then I'd breed my own listeners.

     Well, as anyone who has kids probably knows, that one backfired on me. Big time. Kids thrive on not listening to their parents; they make their name and reputation by how often, how long and how blatantly they ignore their parents' advice. (And to be honest, they listened to my wife more than they listened to me, anyway.)

     Actually, my daughter was a little different. She would make a big issue about how we shouldn't try to tell her what to do, or give her advice ("Oh, Dad, that's so obvious!"). She'd ignore what we said, or argue about it, or make fun of it. But, I noticed as the years went by, that actually, she rarely ignored my advice. She just didn't want to acknowledge that she was following our instructions. So she would ignore us for a suitable period of time, just to show that she wasn't doing what we said, and then when no one was looking she would go ahead and do her homework, or clean her room, or do her chores.

     My son. He was a different story. He marched to the beat of his own drum (literally . . . in middle school and high school he not only played the drums but also the saxophone, the guitar, piano, and anything else that made a lot of noise). He did listen to his mother occasionally -- and maybe he soaked up a little of our moral and ethical approach to life, just by living in our home and listening to us talk -- and in the final analysis he made the whole high school and college experience work for him. And now (much to my surprise!) he is gainfully employed and has his own apartment.

     Anyway . . . maybe that's why, subconsciously, I write this blog. Why else would we spend so much time pecking away into the night, or early in the morning? It's 60 years later. And I'm still trying to get someone to listen to me!

    

How Do You Talk to Your Children?

    B has dutiful children. Her two sons call her on the phone about once a week. Her older son lives some 60 miles away, in his own apartment, and he will call when he gets home from work if he's not doing anything with his girlfriend. We also see him once or twice a month. In fact, we drove down to have dinner with him and his girlfriend over the weekend.

     Her younger son lives more like 800 miles away, in South Carolina with his fiancee. He also calls his mom once a week, usually on his way home from work -- yes, he has a hands-free phone -- although we obviously don't get to see him as much. He was home for a long weekend last Christmas; and B flew down to see him over the summer. He and his fiancee are planning another trip home around Thanksgiving.

     So that's how B talks to her children, mostly by voice, over the phone, and occasionally in person. Kind of the old-fashioned way. In fact, she was thrilled when she found out her older son did something almost unheard of among the 20-something crowd -- he installed a land-line telephone in his new apartment!

     Maybe the way you communicate with your children changes once you have grandchildren. But for us, we're not there yet. And I wonder if we're at all typical; or if we're missing out somehow.

     As for my daughter, she will not pick up the phone. She simply does not use the phone for voice communication. She communicates by messaging. If I call her, she never answers. If I leave her a voice-mail message, she will not respond. And she never calls me. But she will message me; and she will respond to a message. That's just the way she communicates, and I've found that I just had to adapt.

     My daughter lives almost 400 miles away. We see her a couple of times a year -- largely (I think) because despite the fact that she's crossed the 30-year-old threshold, she's still living an itinerant lifestyle and is storing most of her worldly possessions in our basement. She stops off a couple of times a year to drop something off, or pick something up. Although this past weekend I met up with a friend of hers whose family lives near us, and the friend was home for the long Columbus Day weekend. We met at the mall, and I gave her my daughter's snowboard, and some winter clothes, to take up to her. That's how I "communicated" with my daughter this past weekend.

     But honestly, my daughter is better at visiting me than I am at visiting her. But she's living in Buffalo -- which means the visiting season is short. We drove up there in August, which was my first-ever visit to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and I did enjoy the trip. But I won't be venturing up there again until after the snow stops flying -- sometime after mid-May.

     My son, who lives in New York City, will not answer the phone either. But he uses aol instant message at work. I can never reach him on a weekend. But during the week when he's at work, he's on AIM, and he almost always answers me. That's good, because I feel like he's available pretty much whenever I want to talk to him (you know, as long as it's not a weekend).

     My son occasionally comes to visit -- usually when he travels home to see a friend -- and he'll often stay with us overnight. But even then he doesn't really talk to me. The exception -- when I drive him back to the train station. Do you remember those days, when your kids were young, and the best time to talk to them was when you were alone in the car, driving them to soccer practice or piano lessons?

     Well, for me, it's still true. The car is dark; you don't have to look at the other person. There are no distractions; and you can't walk away. The perfect time and place to find out what's really going on in your kid's life.