Not Grandpa Joe

For as long as I can remember, I had my grandfather model all figured out.

Me with Shep at six months (2023)

The moment one of my children handed me a grandchild, I would become Grandpa Joe, Roald Dahl's irrepressible, bedridden patriarch from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who springs to life at exactly the right magical moment. Pure delight. No discipline. No logistics. Just wonder and stories and the unearned credibility that grandfathers seem to accumulate simply by existing. I've been quietly rehearsing the role for decades.

Then it actually happened. Kailey and Matt gave me Shepherd in 2022. Then Sadie in November 2024. Then Faith and Will gave me Philip Joseph in January 2026. Kailey will bring a fourth grandchild into the world: baby Bo, due early in September. Four grandchildren in four years. The role has arrived.

There's just one problem. Grandpa Joe lives in the same house as Charlie Bucket. I live in Syracuse.

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Sadie at one year (2025)

Before I go any further, I should acknowledge what I glossed over in my romantic vision of Grandpa Joe: his actual track record isn't great. The man spent twenty years in bed while his family lived in grinding poverty. He shared a mattress with three other grandparents and apparently never once thought to get up and find work. Then the moment a golden ticket materialized, he was on his feet, tap-dancing around the bedroom, ready for adventure. By any reasonable standard, that's not a role model. That's a cautionary tale.

And yet. When Charlie needed someone to walk through those chocolate factory gates with him, Grandpa Joe showed up completely, with every ounce of joy and wonder he had. You forgive a lot in a grandfather who can do that.

I've always wanted to be the grandfather who shows up completely. The problem is that "showing up" has been my whole identity as a father, and it requires a geography that my children, sensibly and lovingly, declined to provide.

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I told them to do it, of course. I've now given four wedding toasts, which either speaks to my eloquence or my stamina. In each one, I told my children that nothing of any value or magnitude tops family. Build your home around the people you love. That's the whole instruction. Kailey and Matt built theirs in Nashville. Faith and Will have started theirs in Albuquerque. Teddy and Taylor, still early in the process, are down in NYC. These are good choices, and I am proud of them for making them.

I am also, let the record show, in Syracuse.

The distance has a particular texture when you're a grandfather. Shepherd, I know. I held him before his sister arrived, watched him develop opinions and preferences, and that specific toddler confidence that makes you wonder where on earth they get it. But Sadie has been on this earth since October 2024, and I haven't yet been in the same room with her. PJ arrived in January 2026, and same story. Some of my grandchildren don't yet know my face, the way I tell a story, or that I have very specific feelings about what they should be called.

Which brings me to the name situation.

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Kailey's family calls me Grandpa Boeke, or sometimes G'Pa. That's the name my own kids used for my father, Richard. I didn't plan it that way, but when it happened, something quietly settled in my chest. A name passed forward like a piece of furniture you didn't know you wanted until it appeared in exactly the right room.

Faith went her own direction. Faith always goes her own direction. It's a defining characteristic, well established over twenty-plus years of loving her, and I say it with complete admiration and only mild exasperation. She has decided I am Opa.

I want to be clear that I have expressed my feelings about this. I want to be equally clear that my feelings have not moved the needle whatsoever.

PJ at six months (2026)

Opa is a perfectly fine name for a grandfather. In Dutch tradition, it's warm and familiar and carries real history. My family does have Dutch roots, so Faith has done her homework. I understand all of that. I am still not thrilled. Partly because no one consulted me, and partly because the same daughter who named me Opa also decided to call her son (Philip Joseph)...Flip.

Flip.

I have a grandson named Philip Joseph Witherow. It's a good, strong name with real weight to it: Philip Joseph, which also happens to share a middle name with his grandfather, a fact I will not pretend I didn't lobby for... Faith sees this name and thinks: Flip. I see this name and think: PJ. We are currently at an impasse on two fronts. This is, I have come to understand, simply what it is to be Faith's father: you negotiate, you persist, and eventually you just call the boy PJ and wait.

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My own father was Grandpa Boeke. He taught me through presence, not lectures, not grand gestures, but the quiet accumulation of ordinary moments. The Cub Scout Jamboree at Moraine State Park. The patience he showed when I didn't recognize the lesson for decades. I wrote about him when we lost him in 2020, borrowing Kierkegaard's line: life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward. Looking back at Dad now, I see that he laid the foundation for everything I became as a father. The road trips. The scorecards at Ted's Little League games. The Thursday mornings I spent volunteering in Faith's computer lab, showing kindergartners that a mouse works better when it stays on the desk.

It all came from watching him show up. All of it assumed I would be close enough to show up the same way.

What nobody told me is that the children you raise to build their own lives will, with some regularity, build them somewhere else. You were right to encourage them. You meant every word of it. And now Kailey is in Nashville, and Faith is in Albuquerque, and I am in Syracuse, counting the days until a September due date and wondering when I can get on a plane.

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So I've been rethinking what it means to show up.

This blog started in 2008, when Kailey was in high school. I wrote then that she and Ted and Faith were the reason I write: that these pages were a record of where we'd been, what I'd learned, the laughter and heartbreak and hope we'd accumulated as a family. I meant it as a letter to them. What I'm realizing now is that it was also always a letter to whoever comes after.

Shepherd and Sadie and PJ and future Bo, and to those whose names we don't yet know, will grow up hearing stories about people they never met, places they'll have to imagine, a family history that stretches back through Dutch grandparents and Chicago Cubs loyalty and Christmas elf traditions and a man named Richard who showed up without making a speech about it. These posts are part of that record. They'll be here long after I'm gone, waiting for a grandchild, or a great-grandchild, who's finally old enough to be curious.

But lately I've been thinking about doing something more. I want to record some of our traditional Christmas stories, not just my own, but the ones we've read together for years. The Polar Express. A Christmas Tree in the White House. The classics that found their way into our family's rotation and never left. I want Shepherd and Sadie and PJ and Bo to hear them the way their parents heard them, with exactly the pauses I mean and the voices I can't help making. And yes, I also want to record the story about the year Santa couldn't find Flipper. That's the dolphin, not the grandson, and it belongs to our family in a way no published book ever could. Text on a screen is one kind of presence. A voice reading a beloved story to a child who isn't in the room yet is something else entirely. A voice can travel to Nashville and Albuquerque and wherever they end up building their own lives years from now, and it will still sound like G'Pa Boeke at Christmas.

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Grandpa Joe waited twenty years for his golden ticket. I'm not built for waiting. Anybody who has met me knows this. But I am learning what patience looks like when you don't have another option. And in the meantime, I'm writing, recording, planning visits, booking flights, and calling PJ by his proper name, knowing full well Faith may never stop calling him Flip.

The golden ticket, it turns out, comes in different shapes. Sometimes it's a visit to Nashville when Sadie is old enough to know my face. Sometimes it's a FaceTime call where Shepherd holds up a drawing and waits for my reaction. Sometimes it's a September due date circled on a calendar and a plane reservation I haven't made yet but absolutely will.

In 2008, I wrote that Kailey, Ted, and Faith were the reason I write. They still are. But now there are four more reasons, and counting. And whether they call me G'Pa, Grandpa Boeke, or, God help me, Opa, they are going to know exactly who I am.

I'm going to make absolutely sure.

Keeping Score: A Legacy Written in Box Scores

July 2016 Cubs Scorecard

I found it while packing up my office, preparing for my move to Boise, a dusty file folder tucked behind a stack of old software manuals and holiday cards. Inside was a scorecard from July 20, 2016, featuring the Cubs versus the Mets at Wrigley Field. Five years to the day from when I'm writing this, and the pencil marks have faded some, but I can still make out the neat columns and careful notations that chronicle nine innings of Cubs baseball for my daughter Kailey and me during our cross-country road trip. It's more than just a souvenir; it's a thread that connects three generations of my family, linking back to a lesson my father taught me on a cool early fall evening in Pittsburgh more than forty years ago.

I was nine years old in 1974 when my family moved to Pittsburgh. My father, a Yankees fan from New York who had married into a Cubs family from Chicago, knew how much I loved my mother's team. Despite his own allegiances, he promised to take me to see the Cubs play the Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium that fall. It would become the first professional baseball game that I really remember.

That day stuck with me not just because it was my first, but because I kept score. And now, decades later, I can revisit it with uncanny clarity, thanks to a relic preserved for the internet age: the game's box score, sitting there online like some sacred archaeological tablet.

September 30, 1974. The Cubs' right-handed pitcher Bill Bonham pitched a complete game, but the Cubs could only muster one run, with Billy Williams scoring on a bases-loaded walk to Pete LaCock in the first inning. That was it offensively for the Cubs. Bruce Kison and the Pirates held on for a 2–1 win.

I had every play neatly recorded in pencil on that crisp scorecard in my lap. That quiet thrill of charting a real ballgame, pitch by pitch, was something new entirely. It transformed the experience from one of a spectator to that of a storyteller. But I was still heartbroken at the loss.

Dad showed me the symbols, the elegant shorthand of baseball. He drew a miniature version of the field and jotted down the numbers for each position. He explained how a strikeout was a backward ꓘ if the batter was looking, how a 5-4-3 double play told a complete story in three numbers, and how a home run was simply 'HR,' but somehow contained all the joy of watching a ball disappear into the stands. His patient explanations transformed what I thought was just watching into something deeper, active participation in preserving the game's narrative.

Then came the moment that would define not just that game, but our family's sports allegiances for decades to come. A Pirates fan sitting behind us struck up a conversation with my younger brother and me. When he offered to give us a foul ball if he caught one in exchange for switching our loyalty from the Cubs to the Pirates, my response was immediate: "No way." But my brother, perhaps seduced by the promise of an actual baseball, said "okay".

That single word changed everything. What started as a Cubs family suddenly became divided. My brother's newfound love for Pittsburgh sports, the Pirates, the Steelers, and the Penguins created a rivalry that continues to this day. While he embraced his adopted city's teams, I remained stubbornly loyal to Chicago, setting up decades of semi-good-natured family warfare that adds spice to every sports conversation. That moment taught me something about loyalty and choice that I'd carry forward: that the traditions we embrace are chosen deliberately, and they become part of who we are.

But the real gift my father gave me that day wasn't about team loyalty; in fact, he was quietly rooting for neither team, content to watch his Cubs-loving son discover the game's deeper rhythms. It was about attention and presence. Keeping score forced me to watch every pitch, every swing, every defensive play with intention. It taught me that baseball, like life, is composed of small moments that accumulate into something larger, and that paying attention to details creates memories that last. Looking back now, through the lens that only comes with time and distance, I understand that this wasn't just a baseball lesson; it was a masterclass in being present, in showing up, in the quiet ways that love is demonstrated through shared experience.

Decades passed. I married, had children, and found myself facing the same choice my father had made: whether to pass along this beautiful burden of Cubs fandom. Even as I embraced this ritual with my own children, I couldn't escape Mike Royko's famous warning Sins of the Fathers and the generations-long suffering we Cubs fans inflict upon our children. In his 1989 column, Royko pleaded with fathers not to pass along the disease of Cubs fandom, calling it worse than drug addiction. He warned against hooking innocent children on a lifetime of disappointment and heartbreak. Royko was kidding, but not really...

Despite his wisdom, despite knowing the pain that comes with loving a team that specializes in creative ways to break your heart, I couldn't help myself. Still, I carried that lesson forward. When I wasn't coaching my son's Little League teams, I was in the stands with my scorecard, chronicling his journey from tee-ball through high school and into college. Those scorecards became the record of his baseball career, not just the statistics, but the story. The strikeout that led to tears but also to determination. The diving catch in the gap at the Little League Western Region Complex. The clutch HR with two outs in Arcadia.

As I wrote back in 2009, during another year of Cubs disappointment, I knew I was passing along the same "optimistic pessimism" that had been inflicted upon me. I was the dad telling my children that tomorrow is a new day, that there's always next year, that this season surely this season would be different. Despite the decades of evidence to the contrary, despite the mathematical reality of Cubs history, I continued to believe. And worse, I taught my children to believe too.

Every box filled in was a moment preserved, a way of saying this mattered, you mattered, this game we shared mattered. The habit became so ingrained that I've purchased a program or scorecard and kept score at nearly every Cubs game I've attended since that first one in Pittsburgh. My children learned not just the symbols and abbreviations, but the ritual itself, the careful attention, the patient recording, and the way that keeping score transforms you from a passive observer to an active participant in the game's unfolding story.

Which brings me back to that scorecard from July 20, 2016, when Kailey and I sat in the sweltering heat at Wrigley Field, watching Bartolo Colon face off against Kyle Hendricks during what would become the Cubs' championship season. Our seats were next to two Mets fans who had flown into Chicago that very day just to see Colon pitch. A friendly rivalry bloomed between us, scorecards in hand, each of us tracking every pitch, every run, every substitution. As the Cubs pulled ahead, our scorekeeping turned competitive, complete with light trash talk and shared laughs. Two Anthony Rizzo homeruns later, we left the ballpark grinning, ready to continue our trip westward, while our new Mets friends flew home to New York, slightly sunburned and disappointed. It was the kind of fleeting, scorecard-fueled camaraderie only baseball can conjure.

As I filled in each box that afternoon, I was struck by the perfect symmetry of the moment. Here I was, passing along my father's gift to my daughter, just as he had done with me four decades earlier.

But there was something different about that day, something that only became clear in retrospect. For the first time in my adult life, that eternal Cubs refrain of "wait 'til next year" actually came to pass. That 2016 season, the one chronicled in part on that faded scorecard, ended not in heartbreak but in celebration. The curse was broken. The suffering, at least that particular strain of it, was over.

I think about my father often, especially now that he's gone. I understand Kierkegaard's point about how we live life forward, but also understand it backward; those moments that seemed simple at the time were, in fact, profound acts of love. He was teaching me not just about baseball, but about presence and the importance of being fully engaged in the moments we share with the people we care about most.

The scorecard in my office now represents more than just that Cubs-Mets game or even our cross-country adventure. It's a tangible reminder of a chain of connection that runs from my father to me to my children, each of us learning that some things are worth preserving, that attention is a form of respect, and that the stories we keep are the ones that make us who we are.

My children are now young adults, and they've inherited more than just a Cubs fandom from me. They've learned that baseball is a language of connection, that keeping score is really about preserving memories, and that sometimes the most profound gifts are the ones that appear to be simple pastimes. When they have children of their own, I suspect they'll find themselves at ballparks with scorecards and pencils, continuing a tradition that started with a patient father in Pittsburgh all those years ago.

The game ends, the crowd goes home, but the scorecard remains. A humble piece of paper transformed into family history, one box score at a time.

And for all of Mike Royko's warnings about the sins we visit upon our children, I can't help but think some sins are worth inheriting, especially when they come wrapped in the language of love, attention, and the enduring hope that this year might finally be the year.

To Dream Impossible Dreams

In my sophomore year of high school, I saw two musicals. The first was A Chorus Line, on a double date with friends. The second was Man of La Mancha.

Man of La Mancha is the one that stuck.

I came by my love of the form honestly. My mom was a theater kid in high school and in college, and she made sure my brother, sisters, and I were exposed to the art form whether we asked for it or not. My dad was considerably less enthusiastic about the genre, which meant taking us to see shows fell almost entirely to my mom. I never wanted to be on stage myself (despite a turn as Otto Frank in an eighth-grade production of The Diary of Anne Frank), but in high school I worked crew — sets, lights, props. Our school put on Godspell my junior year, and I spent more evenings than I can count in that theater without ever saying a word from the stage. I didn't mind. Something about being in the building when a show comes together suits me better than the spotlight.

In college, I took a history of musical theater course to fulfill a humanities breadth requirement. The kind of course you sign up for because you need the credit and stay for because it turns out to be the best class of the semester. It connected my love of history to something I'd always enjoyed without being able to say why. Musicals, at their best, are documents. They tell you what a culture was worried about, what it needed to believe, what it wanted to hear sung back to it.

I never lost that thread. Man of La Mancha has been with me since my sophomore year. My mom put me in that theater. I don't know if she understood what she was handing me — probably she just loved musicals and wanted her son to love them too. But something about Don Quixote settled into me at fifteen and shaped how I've looked at things ever since. The willingness to see what you choose to see. The refusal to stop before you're finished.

Which is why, forty-some years later, I took Faith to Pasadena on a Saturday afternoon. And why I wrote the check for her summer theater program. You can't give a kid what a single experience gave you. You can only open the door and hope the right thing is waiting on the other side.

A Noise Within, on Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena, was running a production. It's a serious theater, a repertory company that takes classic texts seriously and draws audiences who come to be moved. Faith had been on stage in church Christmas pageants, high school productions, and at summer acting camps before, but this was different. This was the two of us and a story I'd carried for forty years.

She loved it. That didn't surprise me.

Faith is a theater kid the way my mom was a theater kid — the way some people just are, from the beginning, without needing to be talked into it. She's done every school production available to her and has made no secret of her desire to pursue acting professionally. As a freshman, she told her mother and me that college was probably unnecessary, since she planned to move to Hollywood and become an actor. We had many conversations (and therapy sessions) about that. She came around about college. She has not come around about acting.

What Man of La Mancha did that afternoon was confirm something she already knew about herself. I watched her watch the stage. I recognized the look.

A few weeks later, we signed her up for Summer With Shakespeare, A Noise Within's youth acting program. Six weeks of real work: movement, language, stagecraft, the business of what professional actors actually do. Not a drama club. Not a school showcase. She came home from each session exhausted and talking faster than usual.

Following the program, the theater held auditions for its fall season. One of the productions was A Tale of Two Cities. Faith auditioned. She got cast.

She plays a member of the mob. It's not a large role. But it is a professional one, in a real production at a theater that gets reviewed. The show runs through November. Her first professional credit.

A Noise Within ran a short interview with her on their website. She told them, "This is my first time in a professional production. I want to be an actress, and having the experience of working with Julia and Geoff [Elliott] and also with all the other super talented actors on stage is the very best part." She also said something I keep returning to: "If I had not participated in the education programs at ANW, I would never have had the chance to audition."

That sentence is the whole argument, as far as I'm concerned. You can't hand a kid a dream. What you can do is put them somewhere the dream becomes possible. You take them to see the show. You pay for the summer program. You drive them to auditions. Then you get out of the way while they figure out whether this is who they are.

Maybe she becomes an actress. Maybe she doesn't. What I know is that this fall she's standing on a professional stage for the first time, working alongside trained actors, learning what the work actually requires. She got there because a door opened, and she'd been given the tools to walk through it.

Don Quixote spends the whole play insisting the world is not what the world insists it is. The play doesn't ask you to agree with him. It asks what it costs to stop.

For today, I'm not going to be the one to tell her the windmill is a windmill.

You can read the interview A Noise Within did with Faith on their website. A Tale of Two Cities runs through November 19th. Go see it.

Editor's Note: In a more recent post, I wrote about how my mom's love of musical theater, my time on stage crew, and those years sharing shows with Faith all came together around a very different kind of theatrical tradition. You can read it here: Liberty in Three Acts.

Just the Two of Us

Ace, the Glendale Trifecta, and What the Quiet Had to Say

There is a particular kind of quiet you only find on a trail when no one else is around. Not silence exactly. The chaparral has too much going on for that. But a quiet that settles over you like something lifted. The scrub oak moves. A hawk works a thermal overhead. Your trail shoes find a rhythm on the fire road, something between a hike and a run, the pace you fall into when the legs are warm, and the grade is manageable and there's nowhere else you need to be. And next to you, a twenty-pound Schnauzer/Scottish Terrier mix matches it stride for stride, nose down, ears up, doing the job.

That was most of 2014 and 2015 for me. The kids were grown or nearly so. Kailey was in Pennsylvania, finishing college and then starting medical school. Ted was away at school, though I could still catch his baseball games when the schedule allowed. Faith was finishing high school, more independent by the week, her own life assembling itself in ways that were good to see and strange to adjust to. The house that had been full for twenty years was going quiet. I was in a relationship that wasn't what I wanted. Somewhere in that mix of pride, uncertainty, and an open calendar, I started getting up early on Saturdays and taking the dog to the mountains.

Ace and me, out on the trails above Glendale and Pasadena every weekend, covering ground, not saying much to each other because we didn't need to. He wasn't asking any hard questions. Neither was I, exactly. But somewhere on those fire roads, between mile two and mile six, with the city falling away below and nothing required of me except to keep moving, the questions had a way of surfacing on their own.

We were in shape for it. On weekdays, rain or shine, we'd run a morning 5K through our La Crescenta neighborhood, before I left for work. Ace set the tempo, pulling hard through the first half mile until he settled in. By the time the weekends came, we weren't starting cold.

It started simply: hike the peaks above home. Verdugo Peak. Cerro Negro. Mount Lukens. They sat above the sprawl, indifferent and patient. I lived close enough. One weekend at a time.

Ace volunteered without being asked.

Cerro Negro: The Training Ground

We started with Cerro Negro because it was close, and close meant we could keep coming back. Cherry Canyon Park is ten minutes from the house, free, dog-friendly, and on a weekend morning active with runners and trail regulars who know the difference between a hike and a workout. The San Rafael Hills aren't dramatic. They're the small, scrubby range east of the Verdugos that most people in La Cañada Flintridge drive past every morning without a thought. We weren't there for drama. We were there to build.

Every weekend for about a month, Ace and I pushed through the park's 130 acres until we knew it like the back of our hands. Cherry Canyon Motorway. Ridge Motorway. The Cerro Negro Trail proper, a stretch of single track through scrub oak with views east over the San Gabriel Valley. The Five Points junction, where the fire roads fan out, and you pick your line. We tried every combination, figured out which climbs built the most and which descents let us open up. Covering 130 acres on repeat turns a park into a training circuit.

What I remember most about that stretch isn't any single morning. It's the repetition. The way a trail changes when you run it enough times to stop thinking about the footing and start thinking about everything else. In late fall, the light comes sideways across the ridge by mid-morning. The San Gabriels, sharp and snowcapped on the coldest days, appear and disappear behind the shoulder of the hill as you move. Partway down from the ridgeline, where a small creek had coaxed a strip of coast live oaks into existence, the trail went shaded and cool. Coming out of the exposed chaparral at pace, that stretch always hit like a reward. The temperature dropped five degrees, the light went green, and Ace picked up his knees a little as if he felt it too.

The summit tower at 1,887 feet now holds communications antennas, but a painted bench sits nearby, pointed southwest toward Glendale and downtown Los Angeles. We'd stop briefly, water up, take in the view. Ace worked the fence line. The hawk that seemed to live on the same thermal every morning ignored us both. Then back down, moving.

The post-hike ritual was as reliable as the trail itself. A few minutes south on Foothill Boulevard to Juice It Up!, something cold and green for me, shade and a spot on the patio for Ace. He had a talent for making strangers feel personally responsible for acknowledging his efforts. He was usually successful.

Cherry Canyon was our warm-up. By the time we moved on to bigger things, we were ready.

Verdugo Peak: The Figure Eight

I wanted to approach Verdugo Peak from the north, not the way the trail guides suggest. The Brand Park approach from the Glendale side is the most-written-about route, but it puts the city in front of you from the start. I wanted to earn the view. So we started at the end of Whiting Woods Road in La Crescenta, through the gate of the Verdugo Mountains Open Space Preserve, and hit the fire road moving.

The Whiting Woods climb is steep from the first step and stays that way. Steeper than the approaches from the south, which partly explains why the mountain bike traffic thins out fast. Fall was cooling into winter, and the air still carried the faint remnant of the previous season's fires. On those early weekend mornings, we often had the trail to ourselves. Ace worked ahead at his own pace on the north-facing slope, where the cold hangs on longer, burning off the chill section by section.

The Verdugo Motorway opens things up when you reach it. The range is only eight miles long and two miles wide, and from the main fire road you can see both sides at once. To the north, La Tuna Canyon drops away, and the San Gabriel Mountains rise immediately behind it. To the south, nothing yet. Just ridgeline, chaparral, sky. The summit keeps itself hidden until you're almost on it.

At 3,126 feet, Verdugo Peak announces itself with radio towers and a communications building. These mountains are honest about what they are: not wilderness, but the rough working edge of a city that ran out of room. The infrastructure can't take away the view. On a clear winter morning you see downtown Los Angeles to the south, Pasadena to the east, the full San Fernando Valley to the west, and on the best days, Catalina Island, faint and gray. We stopped here long enough to mean it. Ace sat beside me, which he almost never does voluntarily on the trail, as if the summit required a different kind of attention than the climb.

The descent ran us down the southern slope toward the La Tuna Canyon side, skirting the range in a loose figure eight before we climbed back through the preserve and dropped to Whiting Woods. Long miles, good miles, the kind that accumulate in the legs and leave you honestly worked.

The reward was Jeremy's. The little diner on Honolulu Avenue has been a La Crescenta fixture long enough that the servers know the regulars by their usual orders. The shaded outdoor patio doesn't just tolerate dogs. It welcomes them, with an ice water bowl already out when you arrive. Ace would drain it fast, with the urgency of a dog who has covered serious miles. I'd order over-easy eggs with whatever came alongside them, drink too much juice, and watch him go out under the table before I finished my meal. A complete morning.

Mount Lukens: The Hard Lesson

We didn't go to Mount Lukens without preparation. The full loop from Deukmejian Wilderness Park is over ten miles with nearly 3,000 feet of gain, longer and harder than anything else on the list. For several weekends beforehand, we ran the lower trails out of Deukmejian to build legs and get comfortable with the terrain. Ace knew those trails well enough by the end that he'd accelerate through sections he'd sorted out, taking turns wide, reading the grade ahead. Those Saturday mornings had their own rhythm: pre-dawn drive to Markridge Road, hit the trailhead hard, cover the miles, then drive to Everest on Foothill Boulevard for something massive. A french toast and eggs, usually. Everest has never once underdelivered on portion size.

The full summit day started at the Cooks Canyon Trail. The opening miles are unlike anything else on this loop. The trail drops into a shaded creek bottom where a year-round stream runs through a narrow grove of sycamore and willow, the kind of low canopy that doesn't belong to the chaparral at all. Four narrow footbridges cross deep ravines in quick succession. After weeks of exposed ridge running, that cool, green corridor felt almost startling. Ace moved through it with extra attention, nose in constant contact with the ground, processing a completely different set of information than the dry hillsides offered.

The Cooks Canyon Trail connects to the Rim of the Valley Trail, which climbs out of the canyon and links to Haines Canyon Motorway. This is where the mountain starts asking serious questions. The motorway is a long, grinding fire road that wraps around the back side of Lukens, gaining elevation steadily with no shade and nothing to look at except the next section of road above you. The San Gabriel Mountains fill the view to the north and east as you climb, the chaparral giving way to scrubbier, sparser growth. It is not a scenic stretch. It is a work stretch.

The Mt. Lukens Truck Trail branches off near the top and delivers you to the summit. At 5,074 feet, the highest point within the city limits of Los Angeles is marked the way civic infrastructure always marks things: radio towers, locked equipment buildings, chain-link fence. The USGS benchmark is set in concrete in front of the towers. You have to step off the road briefly to stand on the actual high point. We did. Then we ate our snacks, drank our water, and looked. To the west, Verdugo Peak sat on its ridge, visible and now familiar. Beyond it, Griffith Park, downtown Los Angeles, the Pacific. To the east, the ragged skyline of the San Gabriels. The marine layer that had softened the morning start was burning off faster than I'd expected. We felt good. We started down.

The descent follows the Crescenta View Trail, and the name earns itself fast. The switchbacks face south and west, the entire Los Angeles Basin opening below as you lose elevation. It is the best view on the loop. It is also fully exposed, and by mid-morning in late spring, the sun was working hard. Ace's black coat absorbed it all. I noticed him throttle back. Not dramatically. Ace doesn't make a production of discomfort. But there's an unmistakable way his stride shortens and his head drops, and you understand his body is managing something his will hasn't acknowledged yet. I pulled back to his pace and started watching his gait and breathing instead of the trail.

About two-thirds of the way down, he found the redoubt before I did. A circular stone piling we'd named on earlier training runs, a small ring of rocks throwing just enough shade for a twenty-pound dog to press into. On a normal day it was a waypoint. That June morning it was the most critical piece of real estate on the mountain. I poured out the last of our water, half to drink and half over his coat, and we stayed until his breathing steadied and his ears came back up.

The Crescenta View Trail connects back to the Dunsmore Canyon Trail for the final stretch to the parking lot. We covered it at a walk. We made it down.

I packed two extra water bottles and set the alarm an hour earlier every time after that.

Standing at the trailhead cooling down, I ran the math. Cerro Negro. Verdugo Peak. Mount Lukens. Three peaks above Glendale, all done. That's when the name came to me: the Glendale Trifecta. It made the whole thing sound more official than it was. We'd done it, and I liked knowing that.

Pasadena: Learning New Ground

The trifecta was done, but the Brown Mountain and Arroyo Seco loop was still out there. Twenty-six miles. A different order of distance than anything we'd attempted. The Cerro Negro and Verdugo months had built us for the Glendale peaks. For this, we needed Pasadena.

Over the next several weeks, Ace and I explored the trail system threading through Hahamonga Watershed Park, the Upper Arroyo, and the Lower Arroyo, all connected through the hinge of Devil's Gate Dam. The full circuit circumnavigates the Rose Bowl in a loose loop, the stadium visible from multiple angles as you move through it, a strange and grounding landmark for an urban trail run. The terrain shifts constantly. Sandy wash. Oak woodland. Exposed ridge. Paved path alongside a golf course where you could hear golfers debating their lie from across the fairway. It keeps you paying attention.

Hahamonga is 1,300 acres, named by the Tongva people who lived here long before anyone else. The word means "Flowing Waters, Fruitful Valley," and it earns that. The park sits where the Arroyo Seco first leaves the San Gabriel Mountains and opens into the basin, and you feel that transition on foot. The lower trails run through open sandy wash with wide views of the front range, JPL's buildings visible to the west. The upper trails narrow and go shaded in the oak woodland, the temperature dropping noticeably. A disc golf course runs through one section, and you get used to the distant sound of a disc hitting chains while hawks circle overhead. It is a genuinely odd park, and we liked it.

Devil's Gate Dam is the connector. Built in 1920 as the first flood control dam in Los Angeles County, it sits where the Arroyo Seco pushes through a narrow gorge. Its name comes from a rock formation that once resembled a devil's profile in the canyon wall, now covered during restoration and gone, but the name remains. A tunnel under the 210 Freeway links the watershed to the Upper Arroyo, and passing through it always felt like a gear change: from the open, arid wash of Hahamonga into the greener, more wooded character of the Arroyo proper.

The Upper Arroyo trails run alongside the stream, water audible most of the year, Brookside Golf Club pressing against one edge while the canyon drops away on the other. The Rose Bowl appears and disappears as you move. In the Lower Arroyo, the Colorado Street Bridge appears above you, its Beaux-Arts arches rising 150 feet over the canyon. The traffic on it so far up reads more like architecture than road. Ace had strong opinions about the stream crossings in this section, which varied by season and by how much he'd been looking forward to getting his feet wet.

Together, the three parks gave us mileage and variety. By the time we'd run those trails for several weekends, we had the legs for a long day and a feel for how the Arroyo Seco canyon behaved. Knowing the terrain from the bottom gave us a sense of what we were climbing toward.

The post-hike stop on those Pasadena mornings was Lucky Boy on Arroyo Parkway, a roadside institution producing breakfast burritos since 1961 with no signs of reconsidering. The burrito is massive in the way only a place utterly indifferent to trends can manage: home fries, eggs, bacon, cheddar, the whole thing wrapped tight enough to hold together but large enough to challenge the paper bag's structural limits. Ace would get his water. I would get the burrito. Neither of us had complaints.

The Arroyo Seco: Twenty-Six Miles and a Detour

A few weeks after the Pasadena training runs, we drove back over for the real thing. The route ran counterclockwise from the Gabrielino Trail trailhead near JPL, up through El Prieto Canyon, across the Brown Mountain Truck Trail and the Fern Truck Trail, then the Ken Burton Trail toward Switzer Falls, before dropping back down the Arroyo Seco and completing the loop on the Gabrielino. Twenty-six miles. Over twelve hours.

The first several miles up El Prieto were familiar, the same shaded oak woodland and creek crossings we'd trained in, but longer and gaining more purposefully. Ace moved well, sorting the crossings cleanly, nose down in the canyon where the scent register is richer than anything on the exposed ridgelines. The Brown Mountain saddle opened the San Gabriel Valley below us, the Rose Bowl sitting on the valley floor, familiar now, seen from a completely different angle. The trail toward Switzer Falls threaded through increasingly narrow canyon terrain, the creek appearing and disappearing as the walls closed in.

Somewhere on the Ken Burton Trail, we took a wrong turn.

The trail thinned, and the canyon narrowed until we followed the Arroyo Seco into Bear Canyon, a slot canyon where the walls press close, and the creek fills the floor. A fallen tree spanned a dammed pool. It looked passable. It was not. We both went in, Ace first, then me, in a sequence that was avoidable and undignified. The water was cold enough to be instructive. Ace surfaced immediately, swam to the bank with the matter-of-fact competence of a dog who has been betrayed by humans before and expected no better, and waited on the rocks while I worked out my own exit. Patient. No moral support offered. He sat there, soaked and watchful, ready to move as soon as I got myself sorted.

We retraced our steps, found the right trail, and kept moving. Soaking wet, upward of sixteen miles in, still four or five hours from the car. Switzer Falls was worth it. The water drops into a pool that looks impossibly clear for something thirty miles from downtown Los Angeles, and we stood there a while, Ace finally still beside me, both of us dripping, the canyon quiet around us.

We got back to the car as the last light left the sky. No post-hike stop. Twelve hours on trail, an unplanned swim, twenty-six miles. We drove home. Ace ate his dinner, arranged himself on the couch with the settled finality of a dog who has given everything and has no further obligations, and didn't move until morning.

What the Quiet Had to Say

I sat in the quiet of the house and thought about the year.

Kailey was in Pennsylvania building a life I could admire from a distance. Ted was away at school, still letting me catch a baseball game now and then. Faith was nearly out the door, the last of the three, her own story gathering momentum. I'd spent twenty years as an involved parent, present, deliberate, all-in. Now the thing I'd given myself to most completely was winding down on its own schedule, which is the only schedule it ever follows. A relationship in my life wasn't what I needed it to be, and I was slow to admit it. I wasn't ready to answer questions about what the next chapter looked like.

The trails didn't answer any of that. But they gave me a place to carry it. That's what I was looking for, without knowing it: not solutions, just space. The fire roads don't ask anything of you. They go uphill, and you either follow or you don't. The thinking happens somewhere in the middle miles, when the effort is high enough to quiet the noise and low enough to let the mind move. By mile four or mile seven or mile twelve, things that had seemed complicated in the house at six in the morning were sometimes clearer. Not resolved. Held more honestly.

Ace didn't care about any of it. He wanted to be where I was. He woke up every weekday morning ready for the 5K, every Saturday ready for whatever came next. He fell into the creek in Bear Canyon, swam out, shook off, and waited for me to catch up. No complaint. No recrimination. Watchful, patient, ready. That's the best thing about dogs. It's also the thing I was trying to teach myself.

He was better at it than I was.

We kept hiking through 2015, and into 2016, and beyond. The questions got answered, some better than others. The kids kept building their lives. I kept lacing up the trail shoes on Saturday mornings, though the routes changed as I did.

Those two years on the trails above Glendale and Pasadena: the trifecta, the Arroyo, the long Saturdays spent covering ground. I carry them. Not because we climbed anything remarkable, though the views were good. Because of what it felt like to have a few hours every week that were completely uncomplicated. The two of us. Moving through the quiet. Working things out one mile at a time.

Lessons from the Lab: Five Years of Pixels, Patience, and Parenting

Every parent knows that moment when their child's teacher sends home the volunteer signup sheet. You scan the options field trip chaperone, book fair helper, classroom reader, and somewhere between "lunch duty" and "party planning," you spot something that makes you pause. For me, that something was "computer lab assistant."

But if I'm being honest, my motivation for volunteering ran deeper than typical parental involvement. Going through a divorce had shifted my relationship with time, particularly the time I spent with my children. Suddenly, every moment felt more precious, and the traditional pickup-and-dropoff routine wasn't enough. I found myself searching for ways to be more present in their daily world, to carve out extra hours together that weren't structured around custody schedules or weekend plans.

There was another factor weighing on my mind: balance. I was spending considerable time as a volunteer for my son's Boy Scout activities and coaching his Little League team practices, games, tournaments, and events. While I did help coach Faith's AYSO soccer team, that commitment felt small in comparison to the hours I was investing in scouts and baseball. I wanted to make sure I was showing up equally for all of my children, and that Faith didn't feel like her activities and interests were less important than her brother's.

The volunteer signup sheet represented an opportunity I couldn't pass up: a chance to spend an additional hour or two each week in Faith's world, to see her in her element, and to be part of her school experience in a meaningful way that balanced out other commitments.

Looking back now, after five years of volunteering in Faith's computer lab and classroom at Valley View Elementary, I realize I signed up thinking I'd be helping kids with technology and hoping to steal a few extra moments with my daughter. What I didn't expect was how much the children in her classes would teach me about patience, problem-solving, and the art of rebuilding connection one small interaction at a time.

The Learning Curve

My first day in the computer lab, I arrived with the confidence of someone who'd spent years troubleshooting work systems and helping colleagues with tech issues. As a parent, a former office go-to for tech help, and someone who’d even rebuilt a computer or two, I figured I was more than prepared. How hard could it be to help a few kids log into their accounts?

The answer came within the first ten minutes. Twenty-something five-year-olds, each with their own unique interpretation of how a mouse works, their own completely logical (to them) approach to navigating software that made perfect sense until you tried to follow their reasoning. One student tried to use the mouse by lifting it off the table and waving it in the air like a remote control, convinced that if she just pointed it hard enough at the screen, it would obey.

"Mr. Boeke, my computer is broken" became the most common phrase I'd hear, usually spoken with the gravity of someone reporting a natural disaster. Most of the time, the "broken" computer simply needed the Caps Lock turned off, or the student had clicked somewhere unexpected and needed gentle guidance back to their assignment.

I learned quickly that my job wasn't just technical support, it was translator, detective, and cheerleader all rolled into one. Every successful login felt like a small miracle. Every moment of frustration is a chance to build trust and patience. And every smile when something finally worked? That was the real reward.

The Unexpected Role Model

What I didn't anticipate when I first stepped into that computer lab was the impact of simply being there as a male presence in an overwhelmingly female environment. Elementary schools, by their nature, tend to be staffed primarily by women teachers, aides, administrators, and volunteers. While this creates wonderful, nurturing environments, it also means that many children have limited exposure to male role models during their school day.

As the weeks turned into months, and months into years, I began to notice something remarkable happening. It wasn't just Faith who looked forward to my Thursday morning visits; other children in her classes did too. Kids would wave excitedly when they saw me in the hallway, ask when I'd be back, or specifically seek me out for help with their projects. They even invited me to sit with them at lunch.

Some faces became familiar fixtures year after year as children moved up through the grades. A kindergartner I'd helped with basic mouse skills would greet me as a confident second-grader, eager to show off their new abilities. Others would rotate in from different classrooms, but they'd quickly warm up, drawn by the novelty of having a "Mr. Boeke" alongside their female teachers and volunteers.

I realized I had become part of the classroom life-cycle, offering these children something they didn't often experience in their academic environment: a male adult who was patient, encouraging, and invested in their learning. For some kids, especially those without father figures at home or whose dads weren't able to volunteer, I represented a different kind of supportive adult presence.

Watching Faith Navigate Her World

Volunteering in my daughter's school gave me a unique window into her academic life, one I desperately needed during a time when so much of our relationship was being redefined. I watched her grow from a tentative kindergartner who needed help finding the right letter on the keyboard to a confident fourth-grader who could troubleshoot basic problems and help classmates with their projects.

But more than watching her technical skills develop, I saw how she interacted with her peers, how she approached challenges, and how she balanced independence with asking for help when she needed it. There's something profound about seeing your child in their element, among their friends, tackling problems and celebrating successes in a space that's entirely their own. For me, these glimpses became treasured insights into who Faith was becoming, separate from the upheaval happening at home.

I also got to witness something that filled me with quiet pride: Faith watching me interact with her classmates. She saw her dad being patient with struggling students, celebrating others' successes, and treating every child with respect and kindness. In a classroom where she was surrounded by female authority figures, she got to see a different model of male leadership, one that was nurturing, supportive, and invested in everyone's learning, not just hers.

Some of my favorite memories aren't from the computer lab at all, but from the classroom volunteering, reading with small groups, helping with art projects, or assisting during those chaotic but wonderful classroom parties. Each experience added another layer to my understanding of Faith's school community and the dedicated teachers who shaped her early academic years.

The Unexpected Rewards

What started as a way to be involved in my daughter's education became something much richer. I found myself looking forward to those Thursday mornings in the lab, not just because I enjoyed helping the kids, but because their enthusiasm was infectious. When a first-grader finally mastered using the mouse to complete their math game, their genuine excitement reminded me of the joy in learning something new.

The kids taught me as much as I taught them. Their questions forced me to think differently about technology, not as a tool I'd taken for granted, but as something magical and powerful that deserved explanation and respect. Their creative problem-solving often surprised me, and their willingness to try new approaches without fear of failure was inspiring.

Building Community, One Click at a Time

Valley View Elementary fostered a strong sense of community, and volunteering was my way of contributing to that environment and my way of creating stability during a season of personal change. The other parent volunteers became friends, the teachers became partners in education, and the school became a place where I felt genuinely invested and needed.

There's something special about being part of your child's daily world, even in a small way. When Faith would mention her friends by name, I knew those kids. When she talked about a project or assignment, I had context for her excitement or frustration. That connection enriched our conversations at home and helped me understand her challenges and victories more fully. During a time when many things in our lives felt uncertain, these shared touchpoints became anchors, consistent threads that wove through our weeks together.

The Technology Generation

During those five years, I watched a generation of kids grow up as true digital natives. What seemed revolutionary to me was simply Thursday to them. They adapted to new software with remarkable ease, figured out features I hadn't discovered, and approached technology with a confidence that both impressed and humbled me.

But I also saw the importance of guidance and structure in their digital education. These kids needed to learn not just how to use technology, but how to use it thoughtfully and purposefully. The computer lab wasn't just about building technical skills; it was about building digital citizenship, problem-solving abilities, and confidence in learning new tools.

Lessons Learned

My years volunteering in Faith's computer lab and classroom taught me lessons that extended far beyond the elementary school walls:

Patience is a practice, not a personality trait. Working with young learners required me to slow down, repeat explanations, and find new ways to communicate the same concept. That patience became a skill I carried into other areas of my life.

Representation matters, even in small doses. Being one of the few consistent male volunteers showed me how hungry some children are for diverse adult role models. My presence filled a gap I hadn't even realized existed, and the relationships that formed taught me about the ripple effects of simply showing up.

Healing happens in community. The school became a place where I could contribute meaningfully while processing my own changes. Working alongside other parents and teachers reminded me that everyone carries their own challenges, and that showing up for others often helps us show up for ourselves.

Children need to see different examples of care. In an environment dominated by nurturing female figures, I could offer a different but complementary approach to encouragement and problem-solving. The kids taught me that there's no single right way to be supportive, there's just the way that feels authentic to you.

When Everything Changed

After four wonderful years at Valley View, life threw us another curveball. When Faith's mom moved to a new place, Faith had to transfer to a new school between fourth and fifth grades. Just like that, my Thursday morning routine, my familiar computer lab, and the relationships I'd built over half a decade were gone.

The new school was different fewer volunteer opportunities, different systems, and unfamiliar faces everywhere. I found myself at a loss, unsure how to recreate what I'd had at Valley View. The staff didn't know me, didn't understand my commitment to being present in Faith's academic life, and frankly, I didn't know how to insert myself into an established community where I was starting from scratch.

For someone who had found stability and purpose in those weekly volunteering sessions, the transition felt like losing an anchor. I'd built my identity around being "Mr. Boeke from the computer lab," and suddenly that version of myself had nowhere to exist.

The Lasting Impact of Relationships

But here's what I discovered: the relationships and reputation I'd built during those five years at Valley View didn't just disappear. Word travels in communities, especially among parents navigating similar challenges. The connections I'd made with other volunteers, teachers, and parents became a network that extended beyond the school walls.

Parents I'd worked alongside at Valley View sought me out in my other volunteer experiences, like Boy Scouts and Little League. Teachers who had seen my commitment would mention my name when their friends at other schools needed reliable help. Even some of the children I'd worked with over the years would light up when they saw me around town, introducing me to their parents as "Mr. Boeke from my old school."

What I learned was that authentic community investment creates ripples that extend far beyond the original context. The care I'd shown, the relationships I'd built, and the reputation I'd earned as someone who genuinely cared about children's education became portable assets that served both Faith and me as we navigated this new chapter.

Moving Forward

Faith eventually moved on to middle school, and my regular volunteering days became a cherished memory. But the experience shaped how I think about education, community involvement, and the patient work of helping others learn and grow.

To parents considering volunteering in their child's school: I encourage you to take the leap. You might sign up thinking you're helping your child's education, and you are, but you'll discover you're also investing in yourself, your community, and your understanding of the remarkable work that happens in elementary schools every day.

And to fathers specifically: your presence matters more than you might realize. In a world where elementary schools are predominantly staffed by women, your consistent, caring involvement provides children with a different model of adult support. You don't need to be the loudest voice in the room or the most qualified volunteer; you just need to show up with patience and genuine care for all the children, not just your own.

Whether it's the computer lab, the library, or the classroom, your presence matters more than you might realize. And who knows? You might just learn as much as you teach.

What experiences have shaped your understanding of education and community? I'd love to hear about your own volunteering adventures in the comments below.