Transitions

Tony Bladen retires tomorrow.  And my mom's new assisted-living apartment is ready for her to move in.

On the face of it, these two facts have little in common.  Tony rose from a GS-3 clerk to become an Assistant Director of the FBI in his 29 years.  I came to know him about five years ago, when I moved to the admin section in DI and Chris took me around to meet some key people.  He was always a great go-to guy, expected a lot out of you but was willing to give even more of himself.  He took the chance on bringing me into his RPO nearly three years ago and I've appreciated all that that opportunity meant.  Today was his retirement ceremony and the stream of the most senior leaders in the organization who stood up to testify to his incredible accomplishments, to his sacrifice, and to the loyalty he inspired in others, was outstanding as a testament to the kind of man he is.

Monday we took possession of my mom's new apartment, and Adam and I took the day to put two coats of paint on the walls (and only one on ourselves, which is a pretty decent ratio).  The painting wrapped up at the end of the day, in late afternoon shadows, so I returned Tuesday for touchup work and to ready other aspects of the space--the phone, the TV, assembling a couple of pieces of furniture, that sort of thing.  Oh, sure, there's a small punchlist of items they need to finish in there before Mom arrives, but they have nearly two weeks to accomplish those.  But we load the truck in Vermont next Wednesday, and unload it in Virginia next Friday, and then Mom and the cat arrive Monday the 11th, for keeps.

And so I find myself in a place of transitions, of people moving on to the next stages in their lives around me.  Transitions are often a place where one can pause, and take stock.  And in the one instance, I hear the voices saying, "Your retirement won't be anything like that.  People won't say anything about how wonderful you were, how much you accomplished, because let's face it, you're just an average bureaucrat."  (The voices often aren't kind.)  And at the same time, in the other instance, I am doing what little I am (as compared to my sister who, let's see, packed a house, oversaw a home remodel, and then sold a house within 96 hours), in the hopes that it will be sufficient to ease my mother into her next chapter in life.  The one has a tinge of selfishness to it, the other a tinge of selflessness; the one a sense of paling in comparison and the other a sense of paling before What It All Means.  And yet both are bound in the realm of transitions, which seems to be much on my mind as March comes to a close.

Will I engender the kind of respect and love that wove through Tony's retirement celebration, or will mine be "Oh, was he still here? I thought he left years ago"?  Will we successfully manage the move of my mom into an entirely new phase in her life, or will this be something she regrets for the rest of her days?  That's the thing about transitions: it's not really possible to tell which way the fork in the road is taking the traveler.  Yet they're inevitable, there are often no manuals to follow, and how we muddle through tells us a lot about the kind of person we are.  So here's to the next set of transitions I'm managing; let's raise a glass to Tony and to my mom, who, after all, really do have the much more difficult transitions to be making than I am.  And then back to work.

Daddy's New Toy...er, Car: The Midlife-Mobile!

I've got a great wife, I really do.

When it came time to start thinking of a successor to the 2002 Sable, Mary told me to go ahead and get something fun, get something I really wanted, and so I started looking at four-seat convertibles.  I've driven a couple--recall the Mustang we rented for David's birthday on the Cape last summer--and when all was said and done, I had a tossup choice between the Lexus IS350C and the Infiniti G37 convertibles.  (Yeah, I drove the BMW 3-series one...it really didn't impress, and seemed more work than fun to drive.)

I went back and forth on it awhile; there for a bit it was really an even race.  The Infiniti had better rear visibility, slightly better mileage, and would probably be a touch cheaper.  The Lexus just *felt* better, and to be honest, it had more toys on it (paddle shifters!), and when the car is itself supposed to be "something fun," well...

I'd always been so practical in the cars I'd bought myself--a Mazda 323, a Sable--and received as hand-me-downs (the Sundance, once Mary bought the Mystique) that the ability to make a choice based on "fun" was so unusual it took me a couple of days to pull the trigger.  But when I did, we got it!

I'm now enjoying tooling around Northern VA as the weather begins to warm and the sun shines.  Sarah, who expressed such aversion to a convertible at the beginning of this process (see "Getting What We Want" in the archive), now allows that riding home from school with the top down is a fun thing to do on a bright spring day.  And David certainly enjoys the cool-by-association factor of pulling up to the bus stop in the morning in it.  ("Your car is really cool, Dad"--I finally made it to the "cool" side of the proto-teen!)

Is it practical? Meh.  I can get the kids to and fro, and yes, the d-pole for lacrosse does barely fit in the cabin.  I can get a couple of bags in the trunk with the top down, but this is no long-distance cruiser.  It's great that the kids are old enough to not need carseats, I can certainly say that.  But with the Sienna rolling fine (just paid off the loan on it one day before we bought the Lexus!), we have the family-hauler as well as the haul-@$$-er.  And cliche though it may be for a 43-year-old guy to get a convertible, tough: I've got one and I'm lovin' it.  And if you don't give me too hard a time about it, you might get to come for a ride some April day.