It’s been a while since I’ve just had a thought or feeling and gone all stream-of-consciousness and blogged it. In the early days of blogging, before blogs became a “crucial component of your personal brand” or a “multi-channel advertising vehicle” or any number of other sets of strung-together buzzwords, that was the norm. After all, blogs were just online journals. Logs of what was happening lately. Let’s hop in the wayback machine and go there again for a moment, yes?
So right now I’m watching the Grammy’s. Since it’s time-delayed for the West coast, I already know that Adele swept the awards, winning for every category she was nominated in.
Also, earlier this week I was out with some friends I hadn’t seen in a long while at a going-away party.
These things are somewhat related, stick with me.
Between travel and baby-wrangling, I haven’t seen much of anyone since Isaac joined our merry band of Watkii. So naturally, a lot of conversation turned to how being a parent was going. I said it was going well, and I heard from a few people that I seem like one of the more sane and together new parents that they know.
It’s something I hear not infrequently, and other than “have a pretty good baby” I have little-to-no idea how to replicate. Nonetheless, I’m asked a lot how we do it. And one thing I often think, but have never said is, I ask myself: What would Derek K Miller do?
Before I was a parent myself, I admired Derek’s approach to fatherhood. He had an amazing capacity (at least it appeared to the rest of us) to be both logical, realistic and considerate of how his kids impact the world, without an ounce of coldness. Right alongside that he was equally proud of and loving to his girls. He believed in free-range parenting and letting his kids shine. And it was never something he was arrogant about. He was just raising his kids the best way he knew how, even though to some of us, it seemed extraordinary. I’m not the only one who thought so, it also came up at his memorial service, as others shared what a parenting role-model he was to them.
I am so, so sad that as I’m a parent now myself, I only have his memory to reflect on, rather than his mentorship as I navigate raising my own kid.
Back to Adele.
In the last months of his life, Derek mentioned how much he loved her music, and how her latest album, 21, touched him.
Watching her accept her awards, so full of grace and disbelief at how her native talent, just being Adele, was being recognized. She seems at each one surprised that just making music the best way she knows how is so extraordinary to the rest of us.
It’s an incredibly special thing to watch.
And tonight, I really miss my friend.
