London: The Kensley Brentrance

Wedged into our seats clutching roller bags and backpacks, we are overtired yet buoyed by the promise of three weeks away from home and the mysteries of a new continent. I scan the Tube and my fellow passengers who solemnly head to work and wherever else, enduring brief pauses at quintessentially British-sounding locales like Hounslow East, South Ealing and Hammersmith. This is what I live for.

Under a typical gunmetal gray sky—at least before we go Underground—we pass working cranes, red brick apartment buildings and graffitied walls. Minding both the gap and their own business, passengers board and exit our train car, smoothly connecting to District, Circle, and Victoria lines and to the busy streets above. So London.

Ella going Tube-ing

After a transfer at Leicester Square, the four or us lug our suitcases up the stairs to connect to the Northern Line and exit at Camden Town. From there, all that remains is a 15-minute walk through the London borough of Camden, known for its funky market, lively arts scene, and what Sophia, my 10-year-old, will soon refer to as "Freaky People." Across narrow sidewalks and scaffolded construction sites, past residential buildings, hair salons and kebab stands, I sense that, drunk from one hour of stilted airplane sleep, I'm enjoying this a little too much.

Sure, it's only a couple of hours into our vacation, but I'm already salivating at not only the prospects of a late night kebab and four days of Tube-ing, but the reality that comes with piercing London's gritty streets alongside the people that frequent them every day.

Like I told my wife before we left: I don't do guided tours. Europe, and London in particular (this is my third visit to Britain's capital) is about more than churches and museums and hop-on-hop-off bus tours. Here with my family for the first time, I want to surrender myself to London's history, its timeless architecture, its multiculturalism, and its commuter sensibility. I want us to live London, not just exist inside of it.

Tanya, Ella and Sophia at the Tower of London

At the Tower Bridge

Yes, we visited the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge (fascinating); strolled from Trafalgar Square up the Mall to Buckingham Palace (a nice walk along St. James Park, and decorated in anticipation of the Queen's birthday celebration); rode the Eye (great views but skippable); saw the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben; had lunch at a pub by Covent Garden (think Boston's Faneuil Hall with an accent); toured the British Museum (enjoyable for the whole family); rode in a black cab (meh); had delicious dim sum in Chinatown and got half-price tickets to a fabulous West End show (a must for both).

But the essence of our four packed days in London can be filtered down to the fun we have browsing and gawking in Camden Market (made even more fun by doing it with our Londoner friends, Robert and Fiona, whom we met in Mexico in 2012), and the walks to and from our compact but comfortable flat a few minutes away, alongside the "freaky people" that perhaps just looked the part.

Within two days we become London public transport experts: deciphering maps, braving crowds, and topping off Oyster Cards at machines in the Tube stations. We eat and walk and stare and buy like tourists, but feel like locals. Camden Lock, the canal, the train rumbling through every 30 minutes, the sirens in the distance; we own them all.

And most importantly, I got that late night kebab.

A busy Bobby at Camden Market

Camden Funkiness

"Freaky People"

A Raucous Caucus

For my first major act of U.S. citizen-ness, on Super Tuesday I caucused. And had a ball. At this caucus.

Ahem.

And let me say, in a moment of Donald Trump-like arrogance and complete lack of emotional intelligence, I am damn proud of myself for single handedly making America great again.

Okay, maybe my mere presence didn't have quite that effect. But ever since I dipped into the required reading for potential naturalized citizens last spring, I've been fascinated by the process involved in running a successful democracy. Republic. Whatever.

The parking lot was totally full, forcing all those excitable registered democrats to wedge their Priuses and 1998 Subaru Outbacks with Thule roof racks into the spots between parking space margins and just inside the peripheral wire fencing. The lines stretched down the street and around the block. Old, young (many people brought their kids), millenials, a CNN crew, baby blue Bernie shirts, Hilary shirts (not as many), dreadlocks, Birkenstocks, baseball caps, wheelchairs, head scarves, all shades of skin tones...what you'd expect from a group of excitable democrats, and unquestionably a fire code violation. No one noticed.

Once things gets organized (so to speak), everyone gets a thin blue strip of paper and is asked to raise it up in favor of each of either "Republican Public Enemy Number One (with The Donald, it seems, lately, coming in a close second)" or "Feel the Bern." I was still undecided. So I asked supporters from the two candidates to woo me to their side. Each gave an impassioned speech directly to my face, which made me feel like I was speed-dating.

I was deeply affected by the idea that so many people—regular folks, all with the same goals of living a peaceful, fulfilled life—came to express themselves. It was true grass roots, people toting their opinions and passion and feeling part of something. If you were there, you felt like your voice needed to be heard. And it was.

No one was afraid of being oppressed for speaking their mind, or of having their feelings invalidated by a thug on a dais, or of being sent away to a work camp or prison because of their beliefs or opinions. The excitement, the angst, the tension, and the joy that filled every crack and cranny; all were quite palpable. This group was empowered. And empowerment brings with it the capability of greatness.

Caucus Crowd at Rocky Mountain High School

We complain endlessly about our politicians and our system and how the country is going to shit. But I kept imagining a person from North Korea or Saudi Arabia, or a child-soldier from war-torn Sierra Leone, or a Syrian refugee with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, walking into such a place and being told: "Go ahead, say what you want. Use your voice. Be who you are." I pictured them crying with joy at this privilege, and the sense of self-determinism that would result.

Kind of makes a congressional filibuster look like what it really is—a preschool temper tantrum.

The raucous caucus, for all its quaintness and desperate need to be updated with the times (hello, primaries with their easy-peasy mail-in ballots), is clear evidence that people simply want to be heard. We want to emote and be driven to something greater.

It's that kind of empowerment—not border walls or repeated, empty rhetoric and sophomoric attacks on anyone who dares criticize us—that makes America great.

The overwhelming majority

Down Here...Up There...Where Are We???

Where is Stephen Hawking when you need him?

Last week Sophia asked me how the Earth started. I took a few deep breaths and before you knew it, I was dipping my toes into that soul-cleansing pool of unanswerable questions that turns even the most intelligent and well-read adults into stammering idiots.

How old is the Earth? How old is the universe? How are we here? Why are we here? How can people get to Mars? Why don't we fall off into space?

Our one-hour tête-a-tête over dinner turned out to be one of the most illuminating conversations I've ever had. I loved that my curious 9-year-old was questioning the complex machinations of our universe. Even more importantly, I was elated that Sophia, whose brain is like that of most kids— trafficking primarily in concrete facts—was entering the wondrous and shapeless territory of abstraction.

The question that took me forever to reconcile with my decidedly non-astrophysical mind was this: "How is Earth up there (pointing to the ceiling) and we're down here?" It took me a while to figure out that her image of Earth—our iconic blue spheroid, complete with continents and swirling clouds, a living ball of mass surrounded by the infinite blackness of the solar system—had been carved from what she'd seen in books and the internet, and that she couldn't figure out why we didn't see that same image from our street. How, she thought, could we possibly be on the planet yet not see it?

We spent a good hour trying to quell our twin frustrations; hers in comprehension and mine in explanation. I employed every prop I could think of, including ourselves ("You're the sun and I'm the Earth," I said as I spun around in place while also circling dizzily around Sophia and calling out "It's day, now night, now day...winter, now it's spring, summer, fall, winter, spring...") and some random objects around the house. We talked gravity and the elements and Big Bangs and God and orbits and space-time until I realized how much I simultaneously know and don't know.

So, so cool.

It was also strangely empowering to try to explain things that are not easy to explain, and to know that my kid expects me to know all this stuff. And it didn't matter what I knew or didn't. I came away feeling refreshed and exhilarated by Sophia's instinct to ask hard questions and her willingness to stretch to understand the complicated answers.

And at this time in our history, where technological advances, destruction of resources and the constant threat of terror conspire to drag us down, I would argue that self-awareness, compassion and tolerance—what truly makes us so freaking awesome as a species—are likely to remain our most potent antidotes against self-extinction. By questioning and wondering and listening and processing, Sophia has taken the first step on that incredible journey toward understanding what it truly means to be human. The possibilities of such growth are as endless and exciting as the universe itself.

And you don't have to be Stephen Hawking to appreciate how cool that really is.

It's Complicated...

No matter how much we try to shield our young children from the evils of terrorism and the continual onslaught of extremist violence, we can't. Might as well talk about it.

I was in Montreal last week when the November 13th attacks happened in Paris. Understandably, the topic came up a few times amongst my dad and mom, brother in law, and aunt and uncle, and cousins with whom I spent a lot of time over four days. My kids and my nieces were generally doing what kids do, having tons of fun, but these kinds of serious discussions filter down and I know my kids heard it.

Tanya and I decided long ago that we would try to be as honest as we could with our children when it came to introducing them to the these kinds of topics, keeping in mind the appropriate intellectual level to try to explain the horrors perpetrated by the "bad guys." So it came as no shock to me when Sophia, my sensitive 9-year-old, starting poking around.

"What happened in Paris?"

"Terrorists killed people," I answered. "A lot of innocent people died. It was terrible."

The discussion didn't last too long, but I knew Sophia heard me. Like most kids, her idea of right and wrong is monochromatic. And while real life is made up mostly of gray areas, I envy the simplicity that governs her developing brain. Being an adult—especially a parent—requires so much more.

At the airport on the way home, while I was picking up my final smoked meat sandwich before boarding, Sophia brought it up again. News channels tend to overreport these things on airport TVs, you know.

"Why do people blow up stadiums and kill all these innocent people?" she asked.

I thought for a few moments. "Terrorists try to make everyone afraid by killing whoever they want."

"Did they blow up the Eiffel Tower?" she asked.

"No," I chuckled.

"Why don't we just kill these people before they have a chance to do it again?"

"It's complicated. I think we should but...these things are complicated."

Her face was serious. "We're going to Paris next summer."

"Yes we are," I said. Suddenly, my sweet, innocent, giggly and silly fourth-grader was a different person. Fearful, anxious. "And we're going to have a great time! Mom and I REFUSE to live in fear. Okay? Our family will not live our lives in fear. If we do, that means the terrorists win."

I've been thinking about our discussion ever since. Life can be so complicated.

The First Fast

Last week, with the Jewish high holidays around the corner, Ella asked me about Yom Kippur. I explained to my curious 12-year-old what the most solemn day in the Jewish religion was really about. And fasting was the day's "signature event."

The Day of Atonement, I explained, took place 10 days after the new year and signified the day when Jews are forgiven for all of their sins over the previous 365 days, and thus get inscribed into God's "good" book for another year.

(For my gentile friends: Think of Santa's "nice" list, but instead you have to suffer through dehydration and hunger headaches while spending most of your day stuck in synagogue. And the reward is not presents but leftover brisket from Rosh Hashanah. So, just like Christmas but...totally not.)

Despite my distaste for observing arcane and outdated religious customs just because someone else told me to, my parents will be proud to know that 12 years of private Jewish education were not wasted. Translation: I understand the reasoning behind many of the traditions celebrated by what I like to call, "Christmas-Easter Jews." As such, I can make sense of them, and choose to follow the ones that actually mean something to me. This one, unlike the milk and meat thing, or the lack of bacon thing, or the let's-equate-electricity-with-work-on-the-Sabbath-thing (really, guys?), for some reason, I actually get.

No offense to Catholicism (especially with refreshingly "lefty" Pope Francis hanging out on the East Coast this week), but Yom Kippur is about much more than hopping into a confession booth, admitting a sin to some guy you can't see, being told to recite some phrases and voilà...forgiven!

No, Yom Kippur is meant to be the culmination of many days of reflection and prayer, including a concerted effort to right wrongs. (Not that I did all that this year.) Depriving oneself of food, drink and other creature comforts (archaic, but kind of cool, in a minimalist/environmentalist sort of way) is more than just a formality; it's a metaphor for improvement, in that it requires introspection to help us not only figure out why we did certain things, but to cleanse our palate of them before they can be officially erased. There's an element of rebirth in there, like an exorcism without the spinning heads.

It seems that the religious scholars of days past felt like in order to really gain a fresh start and demonstrate one's willingness to atone for misdeeds, one must not only suffer a bit, but also rid the body of whatever remnants of the past year's bad juju still remain. For us medical folks, Yom Kippur's basic premise might be likened to a colonoscopy for the soul: you can't really examine one's innards until the old stuff is gone. Bring on the bowel prep, baby.

I had made it very clear to Ella that fasting or not was to be entirely her choice, with the only requirement that she knew WHY she was doing it. If she chose to try, I offered to even do it with her. (I am obsessed with food, so this is a BIG deal for me, FYI.)

She did, and I did. Ella even texted me at lunch, asking if she could have a chocolate milk. I texted back that she could have whatever she wanted. Around 3:30 she texted again saying she had decided to forego the drink. I was impressed. She had clearly thought about it.

I was very proud of my middle schooler, not because she withstood the temptation of eating and drinking for an entire day at school. For that, I don't really care either way. As I said, I'm not into the Jewish thing much anymore. What I am into, is trying to teach my kids to think for themselves. No atonement necessary for that one.

"I love you." "Well, duh..."

All relationships are filled with subtle games and ongoing unconscious conversational tête-à-tête. For example: We all say things like "How was your day?" and "Did you sleep well?" without actually thinking about what they mean, or even awaiting an answer. In our family, one of the most frequently uttered is the "I love you—I love you, too" exchange.

I often take for granted those snippets of banter. But yesterday, as I was driving Ella to volleyball practice, something happened that made me think about it a little more.

Out of the blue, Ella says: "Dad, I love you."

"Of course you do!" I reply. "I'm awesome!!!"

"Uh," she says, with prototypical tween-dramatic-annoyance inflection, "not the response I was looking for but...okkaaayyy."

I laughed as she squirmed for a bit before reciprocating her sentiment, and also waited with breath held to see if I had really hurt her feelings. Thankfully, Ella is fully aware of my penchant for silliness and sarcasm, and is also quite adept at flinging it back to me. Nevertheless, I started thinking about what it might mean to a child to have his or her overt, unprompted volleys of love and affection returned in kind. Or not.

From what I've read and observed first hand with my own kids and others I have spent some time with, those little psyches can be fragile. Yes, it's important for them to become self-reliant and able to deal with adversity, but I think it's more important for them to first feel secure and develop a high level of self-worth. These values need to be constantly reinforced, at least until they start to navigate the world on their own.

I don't think that telling a kid we love them on a regular basis amounts to overly coddling or infantilizing them. On the contrary, it continually reinforces that Mom and/or Dad (or Mom and Mom, or Dad and Dad, whatever the case may be) thinks they are worthy of their place in the universe. Better to be loved too much—is that even possible?—than not enough. My parents did it to me and my sister, and while I admit that at the time I thought I HATED it, I realized once I hit my early 20s and then again once I had my own kids that all that annoyance and irritation was not only a genuine expression of love, but also might have been part of a carefully thought-out plan.

Of course, my little joke with Ella and her reaction brought to mind the possibility that their plan backfired, in the form of my absurdly overinflated sense of self-worth. (Inflategate, anyone?) But I doubt it. I'm probably just that awesome, and of course Ella would love me.

But I sure do love her, too, and she definitely knows it.

The Contract

I think I may have a future lawyer living in the Kensley house.

On our way home from camping this morning, the girls informed me that Ella had agreed to be Sophia's slave-slash-servant. As with most of their proclamations, I had no illusions that this grandiose situation would turn out to be any more than the usual short-lived play scenario.

Until Sophia insisted on a contract.

During our stop at Picnic Rock, a peaceful, popular play spot along the Poudre river as it snakes through the the tail end of the Poudre Canyon outside of Fort Collins, Sophia, who is 9, would have her older sister by 3 years, Ella, do something for her (get a towel, sunscreen her back, etc) and then turn to me with a toothy grin and mouth, "This is awesome!"

The 30-minute drive home was filled with discussion of contract terms, salary, and the like. I'm still not sure how this whole agreement came to be—other than the fact that Ella is happy to work for some extra cash—but I couldn't help being amazed at the ingenuity of it all. And so far, in the first couple of hours, they are taking it very seriously.

Once we got home, Sophia drew up a contract on Ella's laptop, complete with space for initials and signatures and a witness signature, and asked me to be the third party to ensure that the contract signing was legit and to help mediate so all parties were satisfied. Truly, this is the meat and potatoes of parenting that I LOVE.

Of course, Colorado Bar Association rules prohibit me from making this private arrangement public (and also, I think my kids might kill me if they knew about this blog post. If you see them, don't tell them you know...) but I would love to share a few of the stipulations, some of which are quite thoughtful:

• Ella gets a 30-45 minute lunch break and 2 15-minutes breaks, one each in the AM and PM (I helped tweak this one; the original draft didn't include lunch. I said that amounted to slave labor)
• Ella cannot be Sophia's servant while babysitting her
• If Mom or Dad ask Sophia to do something, she is not allowed to transfer responsibility to Ella
• And this is my favorite: "You can quit, but I can also fire you."

There is more, but I'm hesitant to share too much for fear of retribution from either party, even though I've clearly proven that I'm not above embarrassing either of them. And also, I'm worried they might really lawyer up and sue the shit out of me.

Oh, and as I finish typing this blog post, I hear Sophia from upstairs saying, "Ella, your break is over," right on time.

Move over Johnnie Cochran.