When we are little kids, we are drawn to grownups who haven’t lost their capacity for childlike wonder and enthusiasm. That enthusiasm and our desire to connect with it means that what we learn most easily is what our parents are most enthusiastic about — be it fly fishing or football, baking or Broadway shows. Those things we learned from that place of easy joy are the things we will always hold closest to our hearts.
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Lessons from the Alaskan Highway: Love Bears All Things
Last week, my friend Greg and I drove the fabled Alaskan Highway. It took us six days to drive from Portland, Oregon, to Anchorage, Alaska.
Never Too Late
As a child, it was my mother who taught me "right" from "wrong" by putting the literal fear of God into me, and being the gatekeeper to what was good and permissible and what was not. As a child, though I bridled agains her will, it was often just easier to do it her way . . . for both my father and for me.
I was a child of immense enthusiasms. The ones she approved were usually the ones that most resembled her own. The ones she did not -- the messy ones, the inexplicable ones, the ones that smacked too much of privilege -- those became our battlegrounds. But my greatest enthusiasm -- my love for my father -- was the one enthusiasm we both fully shared.
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