A Simple Post

The song above is by Aya Korem and is called SHIR AHAVA PASHUT, or in English A SIMPLE LOVE SONG. And this is a simple post about everything and nothing.

I can't get the image of my grandparents walking away hand in hand out of my head. In some ways it was incredibly comforting and at the same time it was a bit nerve wracking. For a moment I couldn't help but wonder if I'd see them again. You know that the day is going to come and one more piece of my childhood will be gone.

Before they left my grandfather asked me to bring my kids over to look at some family photos. Hanging on the wall are a ton of family pictures, including pictures of his grandparents. Lately I look at them a bit differently.

I stare at them and silently beg them to speak to me. They have been gone for almost seventy years. I can't help but wonder about them. They were born into a different world than myself and a far different world then the one my children occupy.

So I stare at them and wonder about who they were and whether I have any traits of theirs. I wonder if we would have liked the same foods and what they'd think of life in the 21st century.

Not far away are pictures of my parents, siblings and myself. The kids look at pictures of me and shake their heads. They can't quite imagine that their dad was eight or ten or even twenty. Ok, they can picture twenty, but they giggle. My son stares at the picture of the guy with the flat top and asks "what happened to your stomach?"

I smile and ask what he means. "You used to have lines in your stomach and now it kind of sticks out." So I lift up my shirt and flex my stomach. "Dad, I can almost see the lines. Should I get a pen and draw them in?"

And thus a seven year-old simultaneously inflates and deflates his father's ego. This brings me to the topic of Pesach, or Passover and my decision to go full bore on the Atkins diet.

Ok, it is not solely my decision, but what the hell. I do it every year and this year I think that I am going to try and make a real effort to continue. I have this fantasy that I am going to lose every single extra pound and that I'll keep it off.

A dear friend told me that she'd like to have me around for the next fifty years and asked if I'd consider losing some weight. I told her that I'd be happy to lose 135 and that she should get lost. She laughed and then said that she had known me too long to be offended.

If I actually lost as much as she suggested I'd weigh less than I did in Junior High, but I suppose that sooner or later I need to get serious about dropping a few pounds. I have a large enough frame that I am able to hide some of the extra poundage, but the time has come to try and get more serious about it.

Confession of the moment. Part of me wants to say screw it and just go eat with reckless abandon. What would basketball be like if I tipped the scales at over 300 pounds. But then again I enjoy seeing my feet, not to mention I like looking down and seeing all of me, including the parts designated for fun and good times. 300 pounds would put a real damper on that.

As I publicly shame myself I'll take a moment to say that I have been good about doing push ups. It is a daily activity and I have found that I have made improvement there. Every now and then I'll let my daughter climb up on my back and give her a ride.

Earlier tonight my son and her both hopped on. I was able to complete one push up and then promptly collapsed. If all goes well by the end of the year I'll be able to handle both of them at the same time.

One more comment and then it is off to bed. For a couple of hours each day I am trying to disconnect myself from the computer and my BlackBerry. It is bit nerve wracking. I have a home office so it is really easy to make the excuse that I need to check in with work, but at the same time I really need to focus on doing it less around the children.

What prompted this? I heard my son tell his grandparents than I am either on the phone, the computer or in the bathroom. I asked him if that was what he thought I did and he said not all the time. He clarified things by telling me that I also played with him and his sister. I was happy to hear him say that, but since it wasn't the first thought I think that I'd better work on it.

Anyway, it is bedtime for this old me. See you all in the A.M. Laila Tov from Los Angeles.