Bernie or Bust!

This isn't a post about whether one should or shouldn't Bernie or Bust, but rather it's a post about culpability.

I've been presented with an argument that has been making me think the past few days. It goes like this: assuming one thinks a Donald Trump presidency would be worse than a Hillary Clinton presidency, who is culpable if Hillary is nominated and she loses to Trump ever so marginally? The popular answer is the Bernie or Busters. The less considered answer is that those who voted for Hillary knowing that the Bernie or Busters wouldn't vote for her are at least equally as culpable.

My gut reaction is to place more blame on the Bernie or Busters. But we can't really trust my gut (after all it loves Cup of Noodle Soup). So I've been forcing my brain to give it a more thorough analysis, and in the end it too reaches the same conclusion.

In simplest terms it comes down to probabilities. There is no guarantee that if I were to vote for Bernie rather than Hillary in the primaries--and he were to win the nomination--then Bernie would beat Trump (or whomever). It is very hard to see a guaranteed path from me voting for Bernie to Trump losing that is significantly more likely to happen than if I were to vote for Hillary. So you're asking me to be held culpable for a very unsure future regardless of which choice I make, you're faulting me for not having an effective crystal ball. If you are of the opinion that it's absolutely obvious that Hillary will lose to Trump and Sanders would beat him, then you still might want to blame me but I will feel no responsibility if Hillary is nominated and loses because I don't know that Bernie would have done any better. It's literally impossible for me to know that fact, even in retrospect, much less before hand.

On the other hand, if there are only two viable candidates up for election, Trump and Hillary, and a large enough contingent of Bernie or Busters keep their word and waste their vote, and Trump wins, then we'll be able to see very easily what caused the Democrat loss. There will be a number of votes cast for Trump, a number cast for Hillary, and a number cast for Bernie. We'll be able to examine them and see how they would have or would have not made a difference. And even before you cast that vote you know you are in no way helping stop a Trump presidency. Again, this assumes you believe a Hillary presidency would be better than a Trump one. If you don't then the question is rather moot (though I still might be obligated to question your sanity).

A few factors come into play that lead me to believe that I can't make a valid estimate of the Bernie or Bust effect at this point in time.

1. Polls this early in the game about the general election are nearly useless. So it doesn't really matter who beats whom by how much right now.
2. While there are Bernie or Busters out there now who say they will vote for him no matter what, there is still a chance Bernie himself after losing the nomination (if he loses) will endorse Hillary. I don't know all the Bernie or Busters so I can't count too much on their mental make up, but I feel like I can depend somewhat on Bernie's. I fully expect, if he's true to his word about caring about income inequality and over turning Citizens United, Bernie will see that the most likely way that is going to happen is to have a Democrat in the White House. If that matters more to him than the glory of being the President then I fully expect he'll back Hillary eventually if she wins the nomination. At that point the Bernie or Bust movement should lose a lot of steam.
3. While I don't know the Bernie or Busters well they seem to be compassionate (and passionate) people. I just can't imagine as the specter of a Trump presidency looms large before them their hearts won't be turned and they'll vote in the least harmful manner possible, pledges to bust be damned.
4. Time. There are three to four months between the DNC convention and election day. If Bernie isn't in the game anymore, and isn't on the news all the time, I imagine some people will let that busting be done by others once their flames of passion have been cooled for a few months.
5. Exaggerated Numbers. Bernie or Busters are loving the Internet. The Internet might lead you to believe there are a lot of them out there. My suspicion is they are actually a relatively small number of the people voting for Bernie.

That all being said, I think it's a good strategy from the Bernie voters to insist on busting. It could change some Hillary voter's minds before the DNC convention. It could swing things their direction. I don't fault them for using it; I just don't expect many of them will follow through with it come election day. But if they do and we lose the day, then I'll feel sadness but not guilt; I don't know how they'll be able to say the same.

I'm Liberal, but I'm a pragmatist, not an ideologist

If I were granted the privilege to decide who the Democrat nominee will be I would choose Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Sanders. I'm not telling anyone how they should vote on this matter, but rather I feel a need to defend my own choice because there is a lot of "how blind and stupid must you be to put your support behind her?" going around the Internet from Sanders supporters. It's a fair question, even if asked with a bit too much vigor and presumption (and too often) for my taste.

I made the following chart--which has the illusion of being scientific, but in fact is based on my subjective visceral feelings--and it illustrates my general thinking. Click on the graph to enlarge.

Basically it comes down to the feeling I have that Bernie's floor and ceiling are lower than Hillary's floor and ceiling. In all likelihood they both would end up being in the 5-7 range of goodness (goodness according to me and what I want out of a President).

But perhaps the thinking that got me to the graph is more interesting than the graph itself. How did I make up these imaginary data points? To answer that requires some introspection but first an admittance: I think the version of America that Bernie is selling is more akin to the version I would like to live in. In many people's eyes that should be sufficient to get my vote. So for starters I'll say Bernie is selling me a nine or ten level Presidency while Mrs. Clinton is selling me a seven or eight level. And yet, I think her ceiling is higher. Bear with me here.

Let's first look at what is wrong with the GOP. They have an insistence that the candidate they put up be a reflection of their farthest right ideology. They think it is appropriate that a person as far right as possible should run the country even though clearly half of the populace would prefer the country resemble a more liberal place. This works on small scales (like Congress), but we're talking about hundreds of millions of people when we talk about the President. It's simply unrealistic to think the most extreme candidate you can put up should speak for all those people who fall into a wide spectrum of political beliefs. Beyond that it's a good way to lose an election.

But aren't you settling if you don't pick the person furthest to the left or right? Maybe? Perhaps? I don't have a good answer to that. However, I don't in actuality believe Hillary and Bernie are that far apart in what they believe is right; where they mostly differ is in what they believe can be accomplished, and perhaps should be accomplished for a population as large and as varied as ours. And to be honest, what I think this country's politics lacks more than anything is a willingness to compromise. I get wanting what you want. But the left isn't the entire population and we have to respect those with differing ideas about the country even if we have the presidency. We have to compromise. I'm probably more liberal than Hillary and closer to Bernie in my personal beliefs, but picking the candidate to the furthest left simply feels unwise and counterproductive to me. At some point someone has to stop the madness that is the game of one-up-manship the two parties are playing with each other, someone has to offer an olive-branch to the other side. This incessant pushing toward the edges is what will tear this country apart, IMO. So while some value Bernie's seemingly unbending nature and his unwavering demand for his policy changes, I value someone who will work with the other side. I'm of the opinion that if a vast majority of the population and politicians aren't on board for a change as massive as single payer health care, then the version we get is going to be sabotaged and ham-stringed if it ever makes it into law. We'll all end up hating it. We need all our best minds on how to make this work, and whether we like it or not, some of those best minds don't share your political ideology.

I've seen the list of amendments Bernie has made during his time in Congress, and it's a fine list, but it's not large in number nor are any of them vast in scope like the big changes Bernie wants to make. He's shown himself to be effective at adding small pieces of legislation to larger bills but not getting big ideas and projects through, and he's been trying a long time. I'm just not convinced he has the political know-how or the demeanor to compromise in meaningful and fruitful ways that this country needs right night. Would I take him over the mess on the right? Of course, those guys are insane (at least the two with any chance of winning), but I just can't see Bernie being as effective as Hillary.

Then there is the boogie-man of Hillary changing her ideas/mind over time. People say this like it's a bad thing. In my mind part of being a liberal is not being conservative (which by it's very nature tries to prevent change). A person changing their opinions and admitting faults in the past is not a negative at all to me. It's a sign of growth and progress and a certain amount of humility. So again, when people complain about her in this regard, I view it as a plus not a minus.

Why is Bernie's floor so low? Because if he is as bullheaded while being the President as he sounds on the campaign trail, then American politics will continue the downward spiral of doing nothing. Even if he compromises and gets some of his ideas into legislation he's still not getting everything he's promised and he likely will have to do some serious compromising with the right, which will be okay with me, but will risk causing major disillusion in new voters who thought he was going to be as unto an angel coming down from the firmament. He either has to dig in his heels as President and get nothing done or get a subset of his ideas done but look like a sellout to those who placed so much faith in his ability to cast some sort of wizardry over Congress. This limits his ceiling.

On the other hand I don't fear Hillary will ever be as obstinate as Bernie appears to be. At worst she keeps us where we are (which I know is not optimal) but at best she compromises, plays the game of politics which she appears to be apt at, and pushes American social systems further left. But beyond that having a woman as president feels like it could do so much for this country, for every little girl or woman who has ever felt powerless or dumb or less than. It's palpable and has great and incalculable value. Bernie makes fantastic speeches and inspiring videos, but when I saw Hillary's first video announcing her candidacy I was moved to tears. While some find value in a bird sitting on a podium I find mine elsewhere, but it's no less heartfelt. So even if Hillary accomplished the exact same set of legislative goals as Bernie, she offers something more, something beyond, something that puts her ceiling above his in a meaningful way to me.

And finally, I think she has a better shot at winning the election than he does. I know there are polls out there saying he has as good of a chance or better to win than she does vs Trump or Cruz. However, he's greatly benefited from having Hillary in the race as the supposed nominee. He has it good right now because the GOP spends its days worrying about email servers and Benghazi. If Hillary isn't going to be the nominee then no one on the right is going to have time to worry about those things when they have articles to write about how bad socialist Russia was/is and how much more Americans are going to pay in taxes so that Healthcare can be ran like the DMV. And then his poll numbers will inevitably stop looking so good. Hillary has taken her lumps for 20 years, the GOP damage is done and she still beats Trump head to head. In the end this fact alone is probably enough to push me to her side. The Supreme Court nominations she will possibly have to make are way more important and will have longer lasting effects than what either she or Bernie will be able to accomplish policy-wise as President.

I think I could be swayed otherwise but this is why I'd vote for her today.

America, the Beautiful?

Yesterday a friend of mine made this poignant remark:

"The day may come when your grandchildren ask you what you did to stop Trump." - Jeff Zentner

Of course I've done a lot of bellyaching about Trump. You know all the usual stuff the left rolls out against him. I don't know if it's worthwhile rehashing any of that here because it still leaves me feeling like I haven't really done anything to stop Trump. I'm part of an echo chamber and I'm likely not changing any minds. Could I wander into the den of lions that is the comment sections of foxnews.com or alexjones.crazy.org? Even those options feel like jumping on a live grenade in an otherwise empty house.

The first thing I have to do is take a step back and honestly ask myself, do I only dislike him because he's the Republican front runner? I'll no doubt be accused of this. I think I can honestly answer this question as "no" based on two reasons. I'm no old man but I've been eligible to vote and paying attention to politics now for four presidential elections. (If you're doing the math you'll know I've been eligible to vote for five such elections but I shirked my duty that first election (Gore Vs Bush and the Supreme Court)). In that time I've had various reactions to the republican nominees. Bush vs Kerry made me the saddest; it seemed so plain to me that Bush wasn't up to the task of being President, it was heart breaking that we'd re-elect him. But he was only dangerous in his bumbling sort of way, we could suffer through another four years of him. He left us with a pretty sad economy and two stupid wars we didn't have the money for, but thankfully America is resilient. McCain I had some appreciation for and I suspect if he had won the election he would have shifted back to his more central position and away from the far right appearance he had to put on to get the GOP nomination. Romney was probably least offensive of all. I suspect he would have made a perfectly fine President, he was disillusioned about the plight of the poor in this country but he wasn't mean-spirited nor unscrupulous. Secondly, I think I can answer "no" to the question because I've tried the following mental exercise. Would I rather have Trump win the nomination and have a poor chance of beating the democrat in the general election or would I rather Cruz or Rubio win the nomination if they had a better chance of beating the Democrat in the general election? It's not an easy choice, but I bend toward taking Cruz or Rubio over Trump even if that decreases the chance of a democratic victory in November.

Some on the left might wonder if Cruz and Rubio are actually better options. I have a canned response to that these days with a single example. I'd take Rubio over the other two clowns. Ultimately Trump is worse not because of policy but because of personality. Take for instance the recent encounter with Iran and the American sailors that were gathered up near or in Iranian waters. Obama made that a non-incident with his diplomacy. Trump would have--without a doubt--started a war over that relatively unimportant B.S. Cruz and Rubio, I believe, would be more measured in their responses to such an encounter, probably not as great as Obama handled it but their stupid little fingers wouldn't have hovered over the red nuclear button the entire process. The man is simply too bombastic to be the most powerful human on this planet. There are literally hundreds of millions of people in this country I'd probably rather have as president than him.

Some on the right might wonder if I expect them to vote for Hillary or Sanders. It's probably not too surprising that I think both are infinitely better suited to the job than Trump, but that probably doesn't sooth anyone who thinks Hillary is (x) and Sanders is (y) (sorry to not be more specific but I'll leave slandering my potential vote getter to others). Regardless of how terrible you think either of them are I think you can rest assured that neither of them will draw us into a war (even if it is just another cold war) with Russia after a visit with Putin doesn't go well. And neither are going to be so regressive that they'll bring us all the way back to 1963 or 1864. I won't ask you to vote for my choices, but staying home might have the same effect. I know everyone is suppose to vote, etc, etc, but honestly I'll respect any republican who doesn't vote at all rather than vote for Trump. Or vote for some other third party or pencil your favorite conservative in. Just don't lend your support to him.

To my liberal friends who say they won't back Hillary, they'd rather stay home than vote for her, I offer this personal introspection. Back in 2008 I was heartbroken when California's Prop 8 wasn't passed. Being a progressive means watching progress move slowly. Sometimes it's really painful. It makes your insides hurt. It makes you cry. It makes you wonder about humanity. It surely makes you want to rage against the machine. But there is a far greater pain I'm newly realizing. In the distance, merely a speck on the horizon, I see it, the skull and cross-bones of a pirate ship: regression. When Trump says he wants to make "America Great Again" you can be certain there are those who hear that and believe what Trump intends to do is make America a place where we can again freely disrespect people of color. A place where grown white men can push teenage black girls around without fear of repercussion. A place where we can bomb the families of our enemies. A place where we number and register a group of people based on their religion. Hillary might not be Bernie Sanders but frankly the worst she does is keep us where we already are. She appoints a left of center Supreme Court justice (if Obama loses this particular battle), rather than who knows what crazy Trump pulls out of his past to sit on the bench. There are other liberal justices of very old age that likely will get replaced in the next four to eight years. Hate Hillary, that's fine, but plug your nose as you mark the box next to her name, and sooth yourself by remembering those justices will have a longer lasting effect on America than her four or eight years in office would. But if you want to "feel the bern" of regression, if you want to feel the ache of watching the arc of the universe bend (even temporarily) away from justice, then stay at home and let the Supreme Court become a 7-2 conservative majority. Say goodbye to women's rights. Say goodbye to healthcare reform. Say hello to Citizen's United forever. Say goodbye to same-sex rights. Say hello to a future America that looks more and more like religiously controlled Iran and less and less like the home of freedom. Sure, sit at home feeling smug about your abstinence. Feel justified in penciling in some other name. But the rewards of such actions aren't just for others to reap, you too will be sucked into the chaos that is Trump as President. So I implore you, don't stay home. Don't condemn us all because we can't offer perfection.

Here I expect the complaints about "but what if Sanders wins?" So let me just address that briefly. I haven't heard anyone say they'd stay home if Sanders wins the nomination. So I don't think Hillary supporters need the same motivation, but if they do, please read the prior paragraph and flip the names around and go vote for the man in the general election.

So what am I going to do to stop Trump? I still don't know exactly. I'm going to go out and vote for whoever is against him. I'm going to not belittle either of the democratic candidates because they are our last best hope. They are the firewall and I don't see any point in trying to burn the firewall down as we witness a massive fire approaching. I have a few people in mind who I think might vote for him and I'll pester them until November. I'll write big blocks of text and send them off into the internet in hopes that they'll touch some random person, change one heart. And for my children and grandchildren I will pray. I'll pray that America of tomorrow looks no worse than America of today, that we as a country still have goodness in our hearts, that we can see ugliness when it gets up on a platforms and declares itself before the whole world. I'll pray we do the right thing and not make Donald Trump the most powerful person in the world, not even for a single day, much less four years. Be wise America.

1989 vs 1989

Now that I've listened to Ryan Adams' version of the album a handful of times I feel compelled to make the comparison. Who did it better? Taylor Swift or Ryan Adams? I'll go song by song with a overall judgement at the end.

1) Welcome to New York (Ryan Adams) - Neither of them make this song bearable to me. But I'm giving the nod to him because he makes me think I could like this song if 1989 Bruce Springsteen covered it.

2) Blank Space (Taylor Swift) - She does crazy better. 

3) Style (Taylor Swift) - Her version is just too good. No competition.

4) Out of the Woods (Ryan Adams) - I love his guitar work in this one and his version seems a lot more heartfelt. 

5) All You Had To Do Was Stay (Taylor Swift) - Her voice was made for this song. It makes it hard for someone else to claim it--no matter how hard they try or how well they do. 

6) Shake it Off (Tie) - This was the hardest to judge. Her's is perfect for what it was meant to be. His somber twist has better purpose but not quite as great at being what it wants to be. 

7) I Wish You Would (Taylor Swift) - This is a near tie, but I'm giving it to her for writing it. 

8) Bad Blood (Ryan Adams) - Hard to judge properly. I might just be done hearing her version on the radio.

9) Wildest Dream (Taylor Swift) - Again, her version is way too good to be competed against.

10) How You Get the Girl (Taylor Swift) - The shift from female to male doesn't work as well as it does in other songs. It feels better coming from her. 

11) This Love (Ryan Adams) - Wow, he kills this song. By far the best on his record, IMO. 

12) I Know Places (Taylor Swift) - Barely. I'm not super thrilled with either version but she knows how to sing a hook like no ones business. She gets the nod for making the chorus so catchy even though the rest of the song is sort of meh.

13) Clean (Taylor Swift) - Her version of the song does 1989 better than anything else on either album. So she wins.

Overall: Taylor Swift reigns supreme (8.5 vs . 4.5). I'd say his album feels a bit more cohesive and has a more consistent sound and mood, but her highs are a lot higher and overall her version feels more like 1989 than his does, which is important for an album like this.

Identity theft

"I've always been good at math." No seriously, like really good. I once skipped studying for a calculus final in college because I felt I'd learned enough doing just the homework and I wanted to play some Magic the Gathering in the cafeteria--I managed to get the highest grade in the class. In high school, my senior year, I participated in a school-wide math test and was crowned math champion of Lakes High 1996. When Robyn took statistics in college I not only explained Bayes Theorem to her but pointed out that the manner in which her professor was teaching it was incorrect. 

So I've said on countless occasions, "I'm really good at math." I made this realization in the fourth grade when our teacher would make us take timed tests of our multiplication tables and I was always the first one done. It progressed naturally through high school, as I explained above, and later carried me through higher level math in college. It was mostly effortless, some sort of natural number sense. Often it was hard for me to explain math to other people because it was all so very intuitive to me. I had no language to explain my intuition, I still don't. 

I've spent my life believing at any given moment I likely was better at math than anyone else in the room. This notion of course is challenged from time to time when encountering someone who studies math for a living, but this happens irregularly.

Part of my personal mythos is that I'm a person with great math skill. I'm male, I'm nervous in front of big groups, and I am a math champion. These are long time constants of my identity, old traveling buddies. 

But why care? It's incredibly tedious I imagine for someone else to read about these facts. And it likely comes off as bragging. But I'm trying, and ironically failing (if you keep reading you'll see the irony eventually), to find the words to express how big of a part "being good at math" is of my identity. I've worked as a programmer for 17 years now, day in and day out; even so, when I think of myself and my talents, math comes to mind before software development. It's a layer of skin. 

Who else am I? I hated writing papers in high school. Grammar vexed me; I was horrible at spelling; writing at length made my wrist hurt; my senior year English teacher told me I had a limited vocabulary. I partially chose my college major because it had me avoiding major writing assignments. Still to this day I'm a terrible speller, and sometimes I want to dropkick commas and semi-colons. 

Then today happened. I sat down at a computer and over the course of four hours attempted to bang out answer to the GRE. At the end the testing software flashed two numbers onto the screen. The numbers themselves probably lack meaning to most people not actively preparing for the test or who haven't recently completed it. You get two immediate scores upon completion. One for "verbal" and one for "quantitative" which is synonymous with "math." My verbal score was exceedingly good, something that places me in the 98th percentile of test takers. My math was far less flattering, a relatively pedestrian 71st percentile score (I would have been happy with an 85th percentile). The score is borderline embarrassing to me, it's hard for me to share it here. 

I no longer know what it means when I say "I'm good at math." I've been in a bit of a daze since seeing these scores. 15 years ago I never would have guessed I could have achieved either of the scores I did. A part of me feels like I should be celebrating that verbal score. But I feel at a loss, like some part of my identity has been taken. Perhaps it has been replaced with something even better. But that doesn't alter the fact that today I feel like I know myself less than I did yesterday. Where else might I be wrong about who I am? Am I getting old and slow witted? So, you see, all that earlier bravado wasn't about me, but about some other version of me lost in the swirls of time. 

I can give you a logical explanation for why I received the scores I did, but it doesn't make the experience, even now, any less dizzying. Here's the explanation in its simplest form: I've read and written a lot these past ten years. As for math, besides simple addition and subtraction and calculating a 20% tip, I have rarely used it. Geometry has been especially useless in my life and the test bombarded me with questions about angles, areas, and lengths of sides of rectangles. Once upon a time I knew about those things. And once upon a time I was good at math. 

My Struggle, Book 1

I read the first page of this book in a bookstore and promptly bought it. It sounded fantastic! I was excited for it; I've been having a hard time recently getting into books and this one seemed full of potential from the little snippet I read. I started reading it in January.

I finished the book sitting at my kitchen table last night.

I must say I enjoyed the first and last pages more than the rest of the book. I'm still confused on what his struggle is. I assume it's related to alcoholism, but it's not really clear, perhaps it's just his entire life. He struggles.

Anyway, I wanted to like the book more but couldn't manage to. I also don't think I'll manage reading the other four books (or however many). I can see people liking the story and the book and even the author. But I couldn't handle him as a teenager. I know I should take pity on the teenager he was but when I was in high school the only people I liked less than popular people were people who worried about being popular but failed spectacularly at it. So much potential in not being popular, of not having it come naturally to you, and to have it wasted on efforts to fit in and be cool seems like such a shallow shame. Now that I'm older I'm much better at liking popular people and failed popular people, but it's hard not to view the story through the lens of my own childhood. It's like, we could have been friends but he wasted all of his time trying to get into parties and trying to find ways to consume alcohol. Such a bore. Man I'm fun. This paragraph says more about me than it does about the book or the author.

The writing (translation?) was fine. I did notice that he did something I feel like I do all the time in my own writing. I don't know how to say it other than "writing action as a list". He did opened the door, looked for some food, sat down, and turned on the T.V. I was very aware of it happening in this book for some reason. Either he does it more than other authors or I don't know what. But it distracted me.

The Year Was 1996

Seeing as it's March, the month of my birth, it might be worthwhile to think about aging and time and such.

The year was 1996, the summer of 96 to be exact. The day after I graduated high school, I packed my shit and left home, off to sunny California with my best friend since the fifth grade, my parents standing, crying in the driveway watching their youngest son leave in the car they'd bought him. There are two stories there, one about Jason and me, the other about my parents and me. I've been thinking on the latter, in large part because I have kids of my own now and secondly because I'm reading this book, "My Struggle," which over the last hundred pages or so has been about a parent's death.

This event was written into destiny years before, the year I left Indiana (the start of my 9th grade) it would have been made irreversible. But even before that, the day my dad joined the Army it was all but done. I wonder if my parents took for granted that some day they'd be done with the Army, that they'd settle down and their kids would settle down near them as well. I wonder if they knew or even suspected the impossibility of that notion, at least for their youngest son. I'd spent a life-time getting pulled around, living at the whims of others, not even of my parents' but of the government. At my first possible chance of choosing where I could live I reached for it. I couldn't leave sooner. I couldn't shape my life before that day. And yet my parents probably dreamed of us kids living "in town" while they lived out on the reservation. Or even less possible, all of us close together out on the reservation, just a field of grass separating one generation from the next. Dreams of cows and hay, pigs, chickens, and pickup trucks--dreams of grandchildren a stone's throw away. Dreams all crushed by the gentle hearts of their own children.

I didn't give consideration to what they wanted that day. I don't think I was especially cruel, just 18. In my head they were fine if I stayed, they were fine if I left. And so I left. I couldn't conceive of it being a big deal. Now, having  a one-year-old and four-year-old in the house, it is, of course, all these years later, incredibly obvious to me how stupid that thought was. Another 17 years down the road I can only image how much more stupid it will look.

That moment wasn't even the original inspiration for this post, my 37th birthday was. But my 37th birthday quickly took me back to that day. Having left home at the ripe age of 18 and some odd months, I've now lived outside of my parents' house longer than I lived with them, a division created on that day. And likewise, they've now been empty-nesters longer than I lived in their house. Being the younger person, the child who left home, I'm expected to have changed a great deal. But I wondered, how much have they changed? If I stood 1996 Charles and Barbara Kessler next to 2015 Charles and Barbara Kessler, what would I see? How much do these two living breathing people resemble my memories of my parents? I'll surely be asking these questions again in a few years--I expect a certain amount of vertigo when I reach the age they were when I left home, which will be quite a few years before my own children flee the nest. On the surface it seems like a real shitty deal for parents. So much is given. And so much is taken for granted. It can be no other way. What's below that surface? I suspect you never stop worrying. I suspect you never see them enough, they'll never be close enough. After holding on so tight for 18 years, a whole other lifetime is required to learn to really let them go.

Would it have hurt to stay another day? Another week? To live in their house as some kind of adult for a while? Probably not, but my heart was set. Even to this day I'm bad at those transition times. If I'm on vacation for longer than a week then the last few days I just can't enjoy fully. It's not the dread of returning, but the realization that the vacation isn't the real part of life, and the real part of life is beckoning me back. If those days had existed between graduation and when I left, I imagine they would have been much like those last days of vacation for me. While my body would have been there at their house, my spirit would have already been on the road. Perhaps no one would have enjoyed my time there. I don't know. But still, 2015 Shawn Kessler sure would like to send some flowers and a hug and a little note that read "I'm sorry" to 1996 Barbara Kessler.

Love you mom and dad.