Today I am throwing a surprise 90th birthday for my grandfather, Alvin Lester Sitomer.

My name is Alan Lawrence Sitomer… I was named after him. (Naming after the living is a somewhat dicey call… let my own life be a warning to you – LOL!)

I am not sure I can put into words as to the degree of positive impact this man has had on my personality, belief system or character. And for me to try right now will only leave me feeling as if I have done an inadequate job, so I will not.

(NOTE; it also feels as if it might have a sense of a pre-death eulogy aspect to it and as morbid as that may sound, he is 90, his health is “so so” and this weekend might be the last time I ever see him. However, I feared that 2 years ago as well when we last parted – he lives on the east coast – and I was wrong then so perhaps I will be incorrect now as well.)

Either way it’s a trip of love lined by melancholy. No one escapes the cycle of life. Not even the ones we most adore. And watching role models age – and becoming the caretaker for those who used to be our sole source of strength – well, it’s tough. (Yep, I am the one who does it all. My own father – his son – passed in 1994 and his other son, well… let’s just say it’s with honor and a spirit of love that I currently do the duty. No need to jump into family closets.)

Probably my greatest joy will be the fact that I get to bring my 4 year old daughter to see and hang out with her great-grandfather. He was a master story-teller in his day. (The sun sets on us all, I fear.) But if there is a reason I love STORY, a reason I love heroes and villains and people with guts and fortitude and determination, it certainly began with me sitting transfixed at his knee hearing him weaves tales that made me never want to grow up or leave his side. Zorro, Robin Hood, people who fought for social justice (now that I am old enough to look back and see themes – which, BTW, carry over into my own teaching and writing to this day) those are the stories which moved his soul… and in the telling of them, he moved mine.

As a lawyer, one of his greatest strengths was always oration. And a keen, keen mind.

I’d go on but I guess it’s a discombobulated post today. One filled with non-persued threads and feelings of sadness and longing, accented by love and wistfulness. Like a salad with lots of ingredients – colors and flavors – yet perhaps not really an all that edible dish.

Grandpa Alvin was married 67 years to my Grandma Dorothy… she passed about 2 years ago.

Here’s a pic of me making a trip to introduce them to my own daughter, back in 2010.

Grandpa Alvin is not only the most generous man I know… he’s almost always been the most generous man anyone who knows him knows. Literally, he always had time to be kind, offer wisdom and extend smiles and inspire hope.

Perhaps my greatest goal in this world was to one day be able to carry his water. He is beloved. And he’s my grandfather.

Phew… tough trip, this is.

Do you remember Golden Books? Well, I scored a The Golden Treasury of Children’s Literature a long time ago at a garage sale – like this musta been in 1988 or something – and I’ve had it in my life a long time.

Last night, I busted it out for bedtime reading with my 4 year old daughter. (I’ve been waiting years for this day.) And let me tell ya something, those who say that the smell of books is a meaningless, BS reason that printed books will be able to stick around in the onslaught of eReading probably don’t have many editions of text from 1947 laying around their house. Cause let me tell you… that is one cool book.

I can’t even begin to rave about the attention to detail. High quality paper. Unique, interesting drawings. (Everywhere! I mean what art! And what character!) Not a page left unused. Matter of fact, not a page left unloved by the publishing house.

The book rocks and the first thing I noticed when I took it off the shelf was… wait for it… the smell. That’s right, the splendiferous odor of literary fumes. It hit me like the soft punch of a childhood pillow in my face. You know the kind, the one that makes you instantly think, “Hit me again.”

My daughter noticed the smell immediately as well. No prompting, either. And she found it delicious. What a nice memory in the making for me, each of us taking turns to sniff the soothing scent of the spine.

As for the content, it’s spectacular. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Winnie the Pooh, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Aesop’s fables, Grimm’s fairy tales, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, stories from the Arabian nights, and on and on and on. 544 pages worth of magic.

Indeed, it’s gonna take us years to get through the whole thing. And I don’t think either of us minds that one bit.

Yep, I am a giant fan of the iPad but I gotta say, printed books and eBooks are going to co-exist because there is something special about what Johannes Gutenberg pioneered that has immense staying power. And moving into an either/or world is just not where I want to live.

Golden Press Publishers, they don’t make ‘em like you used to. As Edith and Archie Bunker used to sing, “Those were the days.”

Last weekend I took my daughter to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). I hadn’t been in a decade and WOW, was I blown away by the incredible experience.

LACMA is a really good museum. And I like really good museums. Why I haven’t been in more than 10 years, I have no idea.

Anyway, LACMA lured us to their museum with an offer of free art for kids. (My daughter’s 3 1/2 so what a great way to spend a Sunday, right?) Of course, it was a home run. Of course, there were scores and scores of other parents taking advantage of the day. Of course, 10 minutes after I arrived I was thinking to myself, “Why haven’t I waited so long?”

And then the nice lady at LACMA asked my daughter if she wanted to become a member of the museum. She said “Yes!” without asking the price. (She does that a lot.) But as it turns out, the price was free.

As it turns out, they gave her a free membership until she turns 18. It’s called NexGen. And everytime she comes, we get one free adult admission as well.

“Cool!” I said. “What a great program.”

“Yeah, well, we have to develop the next generation of artists and kids people who appreciate art,” the lady told me. “Cause our stupid schools sure ain’t,” she said.

Owch!

It was an unprompted comment. She didn’t even know I was a teacher. She just blasted away with a genuine sense of nobility about what she was doing combined with contempt for what our schools are doing mixed in her voice.

And I could not have agreed more completely.

Is modern day education striving to stamp out the human spirit on purpose or is all this nonsense just a by-product of stupidity, short-sightedness and an a fear that if we do not create enough child-widgets, our country is going to turn into a widget-less adult workforce?

As the proverb says, “Man cannot live by bread alone.”

3 Years Ago Today My Life Changed Forever. Why? Because that was the day my daughter, Sienna, was born.

What I discovered was that every cliche’ about parenthood was true. And really, I doubt that there’s anything I can truly add to the pantheon of conversation as far as what it means to be a dad. There’s nothing I would not do for my daughter, no sacrifice I would not make, and on and on and on. She is the center of my life’s wheel and I never knew what joy in life meant until I knew what it felt like to have Sienna smile at me.

It melts all the other shenanigans away.

If only we, in our schools, could remember that every kid in every one of our classrooms is someone’s child — and if we simply sought to educate these children the way we would ask that our own children be educated so much of the nonsense would simply fall away.

You can’t make this stuff up.

My 2 1/2 year old is in pre-school now. Today she picked up a cell phone and pretended to have a conversation.
“Who are you talking to,” asked her teacher, Cindy.
“I’m talking to daddy,” she replied proudly.
“Oh,” said Cindy. “Is your daddy at work?”
“My daddy doesn’t work,” answered my daughter. “He’s a teacher.”

LOL, right?

Apparently, the anti-tenure, union-busting, down-with-the-bums, teacher movement has already infiltrated deeper inside Sitomer territory than I ever imagined.

But funny as my daughter’s comments were, I realized, in a way, she is kinda right. I mean of course, I work. But I don’t really view teaching as work. It’s more than that. It’s my profession. It’s my vocation. It’s my avocation. It’s what I love. It’s where my passion exists, my interests lay, and where a part of my soul gets filled. Sure, I’d love to have 100 million in the bank so that I did not need to teach, but I do not want to not teach. I just get too much out of it.

It’s dorky, I know.

I guess I am just one of the lucky ones in that I do not dread when the alarm clock rings and it’s time to go to “work”. That’s probably why my daughter had no idea about what the teacher was referring to. Every day when I kiss her goodbye in the a.m., it’s because daddy is always off to go “teach” — never “work”.

Though it is work, it’s also so much more.