Thunderbolt

I worry about Sophie. My concerns run deep ranging from how does her brother’s disease affect her to is she receiving enough attention? The greatest fear I have for my daughter is that she somehow feels a lack of love on my part. I can tell her “I love you” until I’m blue in the face, but unless my actions show it, these are just words. Because of these fears, I try to set aside time and activities for just the two of us. I’m excited because today she is coming to spend the whole day at work with me, part of a “bring your child to work” thing the studio is having. Something else we love to do is watching baseball games. We have as been to several Dodgers games in the past couple of years. Sophie really tries to follow the game, asking questions about the players and how baseball is played. It’s not all about hot dogs and cotton candy. Sophie is a remarkable, smart, talented little girl who is growing up to quickly. I love her dearly and she is the reason Paul Simon’s “Father...

Each year, I post the Great Strides fund-raiser letter Julie and I write. If you're reading this now, please, please, please click on the link and make a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Aloha Dear friends and families, It’s hard to believe that this will be our sixth year participating in the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Great Strides Walk. It seems like only yesterday that we began reaching out to all of you as we began our battle against cystic fibrosis (CF). In 2002, Jacob was just a few months old as Julie carried him in the front pack on our first Great Strides Walk. Now, as an active 5 year old, Jacob will zip alongside big sister, Sophie, on his scooter at this year’s Great Strides on June 2 in Valencia, CA. This has been an exciting year for Jacob. He began preschool, which he loves, in particularly because he’s at the same school as Sophie. In class, Jacob has been a brave boy, handling the questions and curious looks of his classmates when he takes his ...

In December of 2001, Jacob was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. To this day I can remember sitting in my cubicle at work and trying to comprehend exactly what this news meant. As Julie talked through tears, she began explaining that Jake would begin a life of medicines and breathing treatments. To this day, I regret that I wasn’t there with her when the doctor gave the news. I guess we both believed that he was fine. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to us. Right. I eventually joined her at home that afternoon and we walked around the house, numb, taking phone calls from friends, calling others and trying to keep from crying. At first, with all of the information you gather on the Internet and from what the doctors tell you, it feels like they’ve just handed you child a death sentence. The next few weeks, as we began giving his medicines and doing his treatments, the two of us were zombies. Each year in December, we’re both kind of in a state. While we should be celebrati...

It's tough to declare which lines of his are the absolute best, but this morning, and for every morning for the rest of my life, I'm going to declare this to Julie (or at least until she tells me to shut the hell up already). "Together we'll live with the sadness I'll love you with all the madness in my soul Someday girl I don't know when we're gonna get to that place Where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun" Love you, Jules. Aloha

I don’t know where to begin with this one. While on vacation in Tucson I received an email from my friend, Jeff Giles, who writes the excellent blog, jefitoblog.com. I have never met Jeff in person. We have a relationship based solely on writing and a shared love of music. A couple of years ago I responded to one of his posts about a Radney Foster song, “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)”. It is a poignant, loving testament to fatherhood that I immediately related to. After a couple of emails, I wound up sending Jeff some Springsteen bootlegs and a friendship was born. The two of us have exchanged music regularly and last year I even wrote a guide to the albums of Journey. Jeff has been a big supporter of the blog and has regularly promoted the site. All this, mind you, through his own kindness. Because he’s been a reader of “Thunderbolt”, he knows about our family and our struggles with cystic fibrosis. This year, he decided to pitch in on our efforts to raise money. Unbeknownst t...

We’re in Tucson this week which means an eight hour drive through the desert to my folk’s house. Whenever we take these long drives, I’m tossed back to m childhood and the long summer vacations we spent driving across the country. My mom was (and still is a nurse) and my dad was (and still is) a teacher (will they ever retire?). This meant that we had three months off when school let out and we sure as heck weren’t going to spend it sitting around watching television. My earliest memories of those trips were of an old Ford the family owned. I have no recollection of ever sitting in that car, only the sleeping arrangements. In the front seat, my dad drove, my mom rode shotgun and my younger sister, Heidi, 4 or 5 at the time, sat in the middle. In the back, my oldest sibling, Beth, always wound up on the floor of the car, resting on the foot rest. This left Budd to stretch in the entire backseat. Where was I? I had the best spot to sleep, the back ledge, under the rear window. ...

I am so glad March is done. It was, by far, the worst month in recent memory. Both personally and professionally, I couldn't get my head on straight. It was a very frustrating and depressing month (as those of you who have checked in on occasion can attest). Anyway, the month of April began in fine form yesterday. It was a beautiful day here in California. Sophie had two classic moments. In the morning, she came up to me while I was sitting, reading "All The President's Men" and she quoted two lines from the chapter I was reading. I don't know if it was because she was quoting Woodward and Bernstein, or because at 8, she can read pretty much anything I can, but I was pretty blown away. Then, as the kids were taking a bath, I was mesmerized by the video for The Shins' "Phantom Limb". Toward the end of the song, Sophie comes walking down the hall in a towel, singing the melody from the end of the song. Awesome. How many parents can say their ...

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."