Skip to main content

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE



MEMORIES~1963

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys

Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys

One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more

And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar


In the 60's we all assumed Puff The Magic Dragon was a folk song about smoking pot. The truth is that the writers, Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, will tell you it's a fantasy based on a poem about fading into old age. If you were alive in the early '60s, as I was, you may look back on Puff with nostalgia and a different take on life.

Puff was the imaginary friend, a Dragon, of a little boy named Jackie Paper. The lyrics explain that Jackie's life was temporary and that Puff lost his roar when Jackie was gone.

I tell my children and their spouses that they better live in the present and enjoy their children every waking moment, they'll be gone in the blink of an eye.

Play with them, read to them, take them places, make them laugh, hug them when nightmares come, and never, ever be too busy for them. They are your legacy,  your reason for being, nothing else matters.

I haven't practiced what I'm preaching, I've spent most of my life away from home, traveling to far off lands, away from my family.

It was left to their mother to make sure they appreciated what's important in life. Her example gave them the values necessary to attract the right partners, people with the same values. Their marriages, like mine of sixty years, reflect that. 

My kids aren't blinking, their living. 

I'm often told I have a beautiful family and that's true, they take after their mother, but what people don't know is that appearances are fleeting, what's important is that moral compass that points in tandem between two people, it's about principals that lead and inspire their own children into the next generation.

Don't Blink! 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

WAKE UP AMERICA

 Wake up to the crushing wave of new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths raging across America with abandon. Be honest, we, none of us, are taking this 2nd and more deadly wave of COVID-19 as seriously as we did in March. It was then that we scrambled for home delivery services, that we self-quarantined, that we stopped church, sports, concerts, movies, bars, restaurants, and in-store shopping.  The pandemic slowed and almost stopped in places like NY, NJ, and CT. We stopped seeing our Doctor, delayed elective surgery, testing, and hospital visits. We discovered the ease and efficiency of online shopping and Zoom for family facetime. In a word, we changed our lives to preserve our physical health at the expense of our financial health. Now, what, we're entering the critical winter season when flu hits its peak, the forecast for new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are staggering and we're barely emerging from an economic recession if not a depression. The question rema...

LEAD~MOTIVATE~INSPIRE, THAT'S WHAT A LEADER DOES

                            FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT We're frightened because of COVID and the economy, fair enough, but consider history. The Great Depression and the 2nd World War didn't cause more death than the pandemic, they caused more fear. The difference is, in the 1930s and '40s we had a leader that told us in a calm, reassuring voice that "we had nothing to fear but fear itself. " Fear is a crippling emotion, it causes indecision and panic during times of peril when what we need is leadership that reassures us. Remember when your kids woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares, they were scared to death. What did you do, you held them in your arms and whispered calmly that it was alright, they were safe and had nothing to fear. FDR was the nation's parent he knew that we needed reassurance that we needed that calm, strong voice leading us through a crisis. I honestly believe Joe Biden is that voice and t...

HE WON~WHY?

I read the news, I heard the news, I couldn't believe the news. Joe Biden, Barack O'Bama's Vice President, the Senator from Delaware, the Scranton kid from PA, the politico with 40 years of experience, the guy with friends in Congress, lots of friends, friends on both sides of the aisle, the guy who never gives up, never stops trying, never deserts his friends, that's why he has so many. The guy who never fails to take responsibility for his mistakes or fails to give credit for his successes. The guy who believes in science,  respects the medical profession, and knows that climate change is threatening the planet. The guy who knows that without defeating COVID-19 we'll never rebuild a robust economy. The guy who married a Ph.D. educator who is dedicated to both, his career and her own. Yep, that Joe Biden, the one who has been elected President of the United States with the largest and most diverse plurality in history, over seventy-four million Americans voted for ...