So there are moments as a dad, when I’m so glad I did Landmark Education.  First of all, In the midst of all the circumstances of my life that can take away my joy, my power, and my commitments, one of my most important commitments is to McKenna.

So you have been living with me since Christmas Break of 2022. You started school at a great public school that is loved by almost every parent and kid involved with it. Your first semester was almost all straight A’s, aside from one class where the teacher’s administration and grading was delayed frequently, and we may have been able to work on things that would have resulted in you getting the three points you needed to get the A. You handled everything like a champ, with only a couple meltdowns. Always remember: Panic, blinds you from the logic, that helps you find the formulas, that help you figure out the issue. Your issue is never your intelligence. You have it. Believe it.

I am so incredibly proud of how you handled your new school, your new life. I wasn’t scared that you wouldn’t make friends. You started out with two great friends, Lotti and Zoe, and you just kept adding new, nice girls…OK, and boys..whom I met and met their parents. I joked that I had met all your friends’ parents and I was the weirdo among them!

I love your dedication to school work, and I love how whenever you have a problem, you come to me and we work it out together. You trust me, and I trust you.

If my biggest issue with you is your obsession with skincare (for your immaculate skin) and your face in your phone too much, we’re doing pretty well. You are polite, respectful, funny, fun and smart. In all the craziness of life, with scheming business partners, finishing up with the court and paying attorneys, finding the “right” place to live, and so many other things, you are the one extremely enjoyable constant among all the variables.

Well, the Summer has started, with an amazing, ridiculous bang. Can I just tell you how happy I am to have you here? Regardless of the craziness of the trial last week, a certain, crazy Greek woman living with us for about a month longer than anticipated, and unscheduled work trips out of town, I am so enjoying you here, where you belong.

The near future is NOT going to calm down at all, between moving to Audubon Park, getting you into school there, to multiple work trips to places all over the country. But with “our village” of people in Orlando, we will make it work, and we will have fun doing it. YOU are why I do it all.

So last night, we waited out the rain, and headed to the pool, after your phone call with your mom. I know why WE both love the pool nights. It’s our, uninterrupted time together, just like the phone call was, when you were living in Port Saint Joe. Our phones are away, the TV is away, and it’s just you and me. We work on your flips and twists. We come up with new games. We talk and we laugh.

At Tony Chinchay’s house on Sunday, you and I played catch in the pool, and I realized that this was the first time I had ever truly played catch with you. It was fun. You have a good arm, and you don’t “throw like a girl”, as the old, obnoxious saying used to go. I’m sure that we will do that away from a pool, and that will be the same experience, where we get our time together, alone and uninterrupted. It’s so important that we have that.

We have challenges ahead of us, in so many things. Our relationship will be totally different, in that I will now be the parent when you are in school. I can see how things were for you in the last five years. You expect me to be like it was in PSJ. While it won’t be like that, it also has to shift from “All Play, All the Time”, like it has been. I look forward to creating the communication for this to work for both of us.

We will have disagreements. You will have limits on your use of electronics. IT’S IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO! It’s not my idea. It’s the proven opinion of experts, that you cannot be on your phone or tablet all the time. For you to have MEMORIES of your life, the things that give your life meaning, you have to be PRESENT and creating art, music, connections with people. Very little of that happens with your face in a phone. That will be one of our challenges. But we will create an environment that works.

Well, despite my new promise, I’m still not holding up my promise to write every month. Don’t ever let that mean, for a second, that you aren’t the most important person in my life.

We are approaching some very important dates, as we just passed by some important ones. You turned 11 years old, and I turned 60 years old, on April 5th, 2022. One thing that has NOT been fun, is that I have not felt “healthy” in about two months. I lived my whole life without allergies to anything, and this Spring they really beat me up. I think the over-the-counter medicine I took then really messed with my stomach, and I have been lethargic and in pain for two weeks. I’ve been no fun, and certainly had no fun.

But you are about to finish the fifth grade in Port Saint Joe, FL, on May 25th. Rian graduates from Lake Highland Prep on May 27th, and I go to Hawaii, on May 29th, until June 4th. Then, we go to trial on June 6, 8, 9th to determine where you will live next year. Let’s just say we are confident that you’ll be living here in Orlando, and going to Audubon Park Middle School with Sharli for the sixth grade.

I’m excited, and scared, but I know it’s what is best for you, and it’s what you have told me that you want. It is certainly what I want. I have fought as hard as I could to make it happen. It’s been a long five years that you have been up there. So many cancelled trips. So much frustration. I love spending time with you, and it has been tough to do that.

I have to tell you how proud I am of you, and how you have handled yourself. You have handled quite an upheaval, now for the third time. First you were moved into Kevin Rambo’s house, a stranger, for six months, in November of 2015, then moved out in May of 2016, then moved into another man’s house in August of 2017. You were taken away from your sister, and from me. You have been dignified, emotionally-mature, and extremely patient.

And now, I hope to move you again, a fourth time. I don’t rejoice in taking you away from the friends you have made up there. You have always made friends easily, and you will again. I look forward to creating a fun life together for both of us, that challenges and encourages you to be your best, and to accomplish great things in a life that YOU design, following your passions and interests. I will try to expand your horizons and show you more and more activities and disciplines and sports and we will see which ones light you up as much as bouncing on trampolines does! It’s time for you to explore music and singing!

There are some great sayings that immediately come to mind, as I write for the first time in so long. My humanity has me immediately start to make excuses and explanations and justifications for why it has been so long.

Some of those great sayings are:

“Guilt is a just a way of “looking good” when you are out of integrity.”

What this means is that when you said you were going to do something, and you didn’t do it, you are “out of integrity”. You broke a promise. That promise can be to yourself and to others. You said you were going to do something either by a particular time, or on a regular basis, and you didn’t do it, or you stopped doing it. Think of something like, “I’ll send that letter/money/package to you this week.” as something for which you made a promise or a commitment, and you didn’t do it. Something you stopped doing can be, “I’m going to get up early/go to bed early/workout regularly/eat right/write on my blog.” So when you either didn’t do a particular promise, or stopped doing a regular commitment you made, you can say that you are “out of integrity”. It’s not bad or wrong. If you let your brain go there, there won’t be progress or a shift.

Being “in integrity” just creates an environment that works for all. Getting back in integrity requires a couple things. First, you declare that you are OUT of integrity. Save the excuses! Keep it simple. “I said I was going to do X, by this date/time, and I didn’t. My new promise and commitment is that I am going to do X (or Y, something different, if you need to change it to stay in integrity) by this time/every day/week, etc.” So you clean up your mess. Apologize if you have to. You let the person or people whom you promised initially know that you broke that promise, and you are making a new promise. Or you can clean up your mess by letting people know that you are NOT going to make that promise again. That’s living in integrity, living in reality.

When people say, “I feel so guilty that I did/didn’t do X.”, that’s a way of trying to look good, when you broke a promise or commitment. Your feelings don’t really matter in a world where you want things to work, and people to trust you. There’s your word, your promise, who you say you are and what people can count on from you, and your results. They are two different things. You either create the results and manage your integrity, or you make excuses.

Think of that way you feel, when someone makes you a promise, and they don’t make it happen by when they said they would. Now think of the way you feel when they say, “I feel so guilty.” and then they make an excuse. If it’s someone who breaks promises and makes excuses often, you think, “Yeah. Mm Hmm. Whatever.” Do you want people to think of you that way? I don’t want people to think that way about me. I don’t want people to think that way about you. Our life works better when people can trust us. People can trust us, when we keep our word.

Look, there are things that happen in life that have us break promises. Life happens. But we are powerful in life, we are respected and trusted in life, when we manage our integrity. We honor our word. We do what we can to fulfill on our commitments and our promises, and when we don’t, we clean up our messes and make new promises and commitments. When a powerful person breaks a promise, they apologize and make a new promise to that person or people, and then they do everything they can to fulfill on that new promise. We keep our excuses to a minimum, which brings me to a couple other sayings.

“Everything that comes after “because” is BS.”

When we break a promise, such as if we promised to be somewhere by a certain time, and we are late, very often, people say, “I was late BECAUSE ( Fill in the excuse.)”. If you REALLY look at most of the times we were late, it’s because we let something else distract us, or we didn’t take charge of the people involved with getting you to the place you needed to be by the time you were supposed to. “I was late for school BECAUSE……” and usually we lie and blame traffic, when in reality it was that you didn’t get your butt out of bed, out of the shower, off the computer, phone or whatever distraction kept us from leaving on time to get you there on time. So MOST of the time, whatever we say kept us from keeping our promise is BS. We were late, because we didn’t manage it. We were late, because we were late! Everything else we say after that “because” is BS. The more you can catch yourself saying that and stop it, the more you can keep your word. The more you honor your word, the more you show up on time. It’s the simplest level of integrity, but it’s a foundation on which you can build trust. You trust people who keep their word. You admire people who when they break their word, they clean up any mess that happened from that broken promise, they don’t make excuses and they apologize. We can’t be perfect, but when we aren’t, we can clean up our mess and get back in integrity by making a new promise and keeping it.

“Everything that comes before BUT is BS.” It’s similar to the saying above. “I want to go BUT….(you ultimately aren’t going to, because you really don’t want to.)”. “I would do that BUT….” and then you do what you really want to do. The more you can avoid using BUT, the more you can keep your word.

So now, having said that, I commit to writing here to you at LEAST once a month. So to manage that promise, manage that commitment, I’ll put steps in place to assist me in keeping my word. I’ll set alarms to remind me, if it’s been a month and I haven’t written anything. It’s important to me, because YOU are the most important person in my life. How you have people believe that, when you say it, is you keep your word to them.

My phone has a “Weekly Summary” feature that tells me how many hours a day I average. It ain’t pretty. Years ago, when I was taking you, by myself, to the playground and I would see parents letting their kids play and the parents’ faces were buried in their phones, not present to the wonder of their child playing. I thought, “How much art, music, comedy is being missed by just not being present to what is going on around us. Smells, sounds, sights, lights, breezes, all of “right now”. How much of their child are they missing? They miss their glee, their satisfaction, their sadness, their disappointment, their hope? By their inattention, they are saying, “This is unimportant to me.” You wanted to strive to cross those monkey bars, but you also wanted me to see you cross those bars. My attention was important to you. You wanted me to be proud of your accomplishments.

When we were in Yosemite, you were only 5.5 years old. You were loving it. Prior to our going there, I remembered how vivid the memories of Cape Cod vacations as a kid were to me, even as an adult. The smells, the sight of the tide out and the buried clams spitting water spouts up from the sand, horseshoe crab shells, and the sound of seagulls. The bright, early evening sun, reflecting off the flat, wet sand of the bay. So as we were crouching in this cold, crystal clear water of this Yosemite stream, with the setting sun gleaming off the mountains above us, this light breeze barely whistling through the trees, I just stopped and said to you, “OK. Look at all of this around us. Listen. Smell. Drink it in. Remember this.”

So I walked a half mile to the post office yesterday. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I just enjoyed what was there in front of me, not looking at my phone, not wanting to be somewhere else. I saw the cutest little wood duck in a pond, swimming in such a funny manner. I was trying to catch a picture of his little, brown, tufted head. But he kept swimming back and forth, behind the spray of the fountain in the pond, as if he didn’t want me to get a picture of him. It was so funny. I need to keep doing that. Just walk and observe. Listen, smell. Ask myself questions that get me present. “What’s beautiful about this? What’s funny about this? What do I want to remember about this? Resist the temptation to go to the phone. Be present. Be here.

When we moved off of Washington Street, we moved to College Park and to the house on Ivanhoe Street that was to ultimately become Sharli’s new house. It was a nice, old, four bedroom, three bathroom house with a nice front lawn that was right across the street from Lake Ivanhoe, where we have paddleboarded with Sharli and Mr. Kyle. It was where you had your first room of your own.

We had a lot of fun in that house, where we lived with Moxie, Luna and old Jerry, who ran away after a short time. Rian would stay over on Tuesday nights and we would have Taco Tuesdays every Tuesday.

We would invite other parents and their kids over and I would make soy tacos and people would bring chips and queso or other dishes. The parents would eat and have a glass of wine or beer and the kids would have CHAOS! for an hour or two. Everyone loved it. Jade and Eden would come over. Sharli was there most nights. Sissy would invite her friends. It was where you met so many other kids, too. You met Mr. David and Ms. Christina Zembala and their daughter Aria. You knew Uncle Tony Chinchay, but it was where you first played with Sophia. You met Mr. Mark and Ms. Jodie Hayes and Taylor and Leah. Mr. Brent Bell was there and you played with Piper too. Mr. Jay Madigan and his wife Marta came, too. Mr. Alex and Ms. Dana with their young boy Braxton. Mr. Michael Gouda and Chloe, who was your favorite babysitter, and Lexie and Jagger. Ms. Whitney Parker and her daughters. Whom am I forgetting? One night we had 19 people there! The crazier the better! The house and yard were big enough that all the kids could be off screaming and laughing and it wouldn’t even bother the adults. No one got hurt and nothing got broken. Success!

Now, Sharli and Ms. Katja and Mr. Kyle have built their house on that site, and you and Sharli have hours of fun there, and I spend time with Kyle and Katja. It is a place of fond memories that we created there, and a place for many more memories to come.

Minimally, I have to bookmark last night’s phone call for another moment where I am so proud of you. It was a Wednesday night call, and on both Monday and Tuesday nights, we had talked about someone at school, whose name begins with a ‘B’, who had been being a bully to you and Harper and other friends. She was being a ‘Mean Girl’, which is a term from a great movie about girls in school who form ‘cliques’ and are mean to other girls. One of the things that you and I had talked about a few times, was that when you know that you haven’t been mean to someone, and they are being mean to you, the way they are acting probably doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with you. They are probably experiencing some difficulty at home that is frustrating them, and they are taking it out on other people. I’ve shared with you the saying, “Hurt people, hurt people.” Meaning, people that have been hurt at home, or from loved ones, are the ones that are out in the world hurting other people.

We continue to laugh about the meme I sent you that says, “If you’re pretty, you’re pretty; but the only way to be beautiful is to be loving. Otherwise, it’s just, “Congratulations about your face.” 🙂

This girl likes to try to be the ringleader at lunch and at recess, commanding a group of girls in a particular activity, and excluding a couple people from the group activity. “Sorry, no room at the table. See you later.” or “We can only have four people doing this, so you and Harper are going to have to do something else.” She tries to put forth the image that she is perfect. She criticizes the most trivial things, like ponytails and clothes. She criticizes even when you TRY to look nice and say that you, McKenna, have an attitude that you think you are better than others when you look nice. She says odd things like, “You need to have some discipline, or there are going to be consequences.” Those are things she is clearly hearing from home.

Yesterday at school, she was yelling at Harper about something ridiculous, and you stepped in and told her to stop it and that you and Harper were no longer going to be her friends. She started yelling at you, and not only did other kids hear how awful she was being, but she was made to sit by “the pole” by a teacher, which I guess is the playground version of “Time-out”.

I have always said that you are a leader. We have talked about how you are lucky to be born to parents and family who love you, and that you are LUCKY to be so pretty. I have called on you to use what you have; your kindness, your sense of humor, your intelligence, and your compassion, to not only stand up for yourself, but to stand up for others. This is not the first time that you have. You did it at Hillcrest another time. I’m sure that there will be many more times throughout your life.

I also love that you are not afraid to talk to me about when there is a problem at school and to work things out with me to find a way that works best. Usually, those bullies realize that you were right. They see how you were a good friend to that person whom you defended, and they want someone like you as their friend. They come around to you and stop bothering you. That is you, being a peaceful stand for what you know is right. That is you, being a leader, and I am continually so proud of who you are.

So at the end of January, 2020, a global pandemic from Covid-19, the Coronavirus, shut down the United States and most of the world.  It really hit the United States and Florida right at the end of your Spring Break.  Your school was shut down the day before Spring Break started, on March 13, 2020.

Your mom drove you into town and I picked you up from your grandmother’s house on the evening of March 14th.  Sharli was in Utah skiing, so you didn’t get a chance to see her.  We started the week by going to “Uncle Tony’s” house, my good friend, Tony Chinchay, with whose daughter, Sophia, you had become friends.  We had fun with Emma Crannick and Sophia.

Unfortunately, Disney and the other theme parks were closed when you got here, and the pool at the complex was even closed. But we still had so much fun together.  The next day, we went to the pet store and met Lily, whom we took home the next day.  She was shy and hid most of the time you were here.  Luna was freaking out and hissing and hiding under my bed the whole time, threatened by the presence of such a cute, harmless cat who was so sweet.  The picture of you behind the dryer is because we had to send you behind there to get Lily to come out.

We had lunch with Sissy at her restaurant where she worked.  It’s always so great to see her.

We rode bikes three days in a row! I loved riding bikes with you.  You ended up riding 21 miles in three days.  The bike path by my place is so convenient and safe.    You may have started late in learning to ride a bike, for various reasons, but ever since I taught you, you have been great at it.

We finished with a good swim at Emma’s old house, with my golf lights lighting the pool and the golf ball.  It was a fun night.  It was an awesome visit.  All of them are.

So tonight we had another fun phone call.  You called me a little early, on your way home from your last cheerleading practice before your first competition on Saturday, in Ft. Walton Beach.

When you got home, you were in your room and we were laughing about our ongoing, “I’m in your head!” conversation, where I imply I always know what you are thinking.  It’s fun, because a lot of times I CAN guess what you are thinking!  I am pretty good at it, because of a couple reasons.  First, I listen to you, very closely and carefully, because I love you so much. So even though I’m hours away from you for weeks at a time, I want to know everything about your life, so I can be the best dad I can be. Secondly, you are very open and honest with me, and you share your whole life with me.  So when there’s so much love, honesty and trust there, it makes it easier to know what the other person is thinking, and to know when they are happy, and and also when they are upset.

So you started by asking, “How many fingers am I holding up?”  I said, “Two.”  You said, “NOPE!  Three!” You were happy that for once, I got it wrong.  You asked again, “How many?” “Four” (Got it!)  And again, “How many?” and I thought, “She’s either going to go one or five.”  So I said, “One.”  You said, “Nope! Six!” So REALLY, I was pretty close, because you held up both five and one.  🙂

You then asked, “OK, what am I thinking about?”  I quickly said, “Ice Cream.” (NAILED IT!)  You growled, “MMmmm!” in fake anger, because I got it right.  You said, “OK, how about now?” I said, “Legos.” (TWO FOR TWO!) You growled again, “Aaaaagh! YES!”

We laughed and had to wrap up the phone call.  So I told you that I am able to guess what you are thinking because I listen to you all the time, very closely, and that I love you so much.