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.

Magic Reindeer Feed: Our Christmas Tradition

"But how will Santa know where we are?" Faith's voice carried that particular mix of worry and wonder that only a child facing their first Christmas crisis can muster. We'd recently moved to Southern California, no snow, no chimney, no clue how Santa was supposed to make it work.

Hanging Santa's Magic Key, Christmas Eve 2004

"And how will he get in without a fireplace?" she added, her brow furrowed with the kind of serious concern that makes you realize your five-year-old has been thinking this through.

At the time, Teddy was still a true believer, full of wonder and ready to defend Santa's honor to anyone who dared question him. Kailey, on the other hand, had already been quietly inducted into the fraternity of elves that knowing, magical role older siblings step into when they learn the truth but choose to protect the magic for the little ones. That Christmas became a turning point. The questions were real, but so was our response.

So, like any good parent backed into a magical corner, I improvised.

The Solution

Kailey, Faith, Madison, and Teddy making
Magic Reindeer Feed, Christmas Eve 2008

2004 marked the beginning of our tradition of Magic Reindeer Feed and Santa's Magic Key. Standing in our California kitchen, we gathered around the counter. The kids stirred the oats and sparkles, the gentle sound of ingredients hitting the mixing bowl creating its own kind of Christmas music. Faith added a healthy scoop of Christmas hope with each stir.

The mixture was festive and fun, but more than that, it was purposeful. I told the kids the reindeer could see it glimmering from the sky, guiding Santa straight to our home. It was a homemade beacon, one part snack, two parts signal, and all heart.

And the key? Oh, the key. Growing up, my mom had her own ways of making Christmas magic work, no matter where we lived or what challenges we faced. She taught me that the best traditions aren't the ones you inherit perfectly; they're the ones you adapt with love. Our first Magic Key was humble and homemade, an old house key we weren't using anymore, decorated with a red yarn lanyard and absolutely smothered in as much glitter as we could glue on. It looked more like a kindergarten art project than a piece of North Pole tech, but it worked.

A few years later, one of Santa's "elves" (with an Amazon account) upgraded us to a more elegant skeleton key, something shiny and antique-looking, worthy of the North Pole. But I still keep that original glittery mess tucked away with our decorations. It was the key that started it all.

Magic Reindeer Feed Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 cup red and green sugar sprinkles
• 1/4 cup edible glitter or colored sanding sugar
• A pinch of belief (the secret ingredient)

Instructions: Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl until evenly distributed. The mixture can be stored in an airtight container for up to two weeks before Christmas Eve.

The kids spreading the feed, Christmas Eve 2006

On Christmas Eve, give each child a small handful to scatter on the lawn, porch, or even a balcony. If rain is in the forecast, place small piles under covered areas or on windowsills. Reindeer have excellent eyesight.

Notes: Back then, we used regular craft glitter, thinking more about sparkle than sustainability. But over time, as the kids got older and more aware of the world around them, we made the switch to edible glitter, a small but meaningful change to make sure the reindeer (and the North Pole) stayed microplastic-free. Magic shouldn't come at the planet's expense.

The Ritual

The kids scattered the feed on our lawn with the gravity of an ancient ritual, whispering instructions to Dasher and Dancer and all the rest. Their voices carried across the California evening air, mixing with the sound of distant neighbors and the unfamiliar hum of our new neighborhood. I remember thinking how different this felt from the snowy Christmases of my childhood, yet somehow just right.

The next morning, we'd find the sparkles mostly gone (thanks to birds, wind, and morning dew), evidence enough that the reindeer had found us after all.

The Evolution

Now, years later, the kids are older. The questions have changed. Kailey is getting ready for medical school, Teddy is in college, Faith has taken her place as an elf, and all the kids know the secret. But the magic? It lingers.

However, I've learned something important about traditions: they're not museum pieces to be preserved exactly as created. They're living things that grow and adapt. Some years, we've added different colored sugars depending on what I had on hand. One year, we made extra bags so the kids’ friends could join in “our” ritual. The tradition became less about the exact recipe and more about the moment of connection that Christmas Eve pause, where we acknowledge wonder together.

Every Christmas Eve, I still see that first night through Faith's eyes, the worry, the wonder, and the moment I realized that magic isn't something that happens to you. It's something you create, one handful of sparkly oats at a time.

If Yes, Virginia was about believing in the unseen, this tradition was about doing something to make that belief real. And maybe that's the greatest kind of magic there is, the kind that starts with a parent's quick thinking and becomes a memory none of us will ever forget.

Merry Christmas, and may you always find just enough sparkle in your yard and your heart.

The Eisenhower Matrix: How I Break Down My Professional (and Personal) World

There's a moment every Monday morning when I sit down with a Coke Zero, open my laptop, and stare at the tsunami of emails, calendar invites, and sticky note reminders that have accumulated over the weekend. It's the same feeling I used to get looking at a pile of green bar paper reports back in my Atlantic Richfield days, overwhelming, urgent, and somehow both crystal clear and completely incomprehensible at the same time.

That's when I reach for my mental Swiss Army knife: the Eisenhower Decision Matrix.

My path to discovering this framework was about as circuitous as my college career. When I was eighteen, fresh out of high school and convinced I was smarter than everyone else (as eighteen-year-olds tend to be), I marched into college dead set on engineering and mathematics. My mom, in her infinite wisdom, gently suggested that maybe I didn't have the personality to be an engineer. Being eighteen and knowing everything, I naturally ignored her advice completely.

It took me too long to figure out that she was right. Again. (Mothers have this annoying habit of being correct about their children, even when we're too stubborn to see it.) I thought that Aerospace Engineers were "airplane architects," which would demand both creative and systemic thinking. The rigid, systematic thinking that engineering demanded felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I was good at math, sure, but I craved the messy complexity of human behavior and decision-making that engineering courses conspicuously avoided.

So I pivoted hard into Economics and Political Science. And suddenly, everything clicked. Economics gave me frameworks for understanding how people make decisions under constraints and competing priorities. Political Science taught me how those same people navigate power structures, build coalitions, and manage conflicts. The juxtaposition of these disciplines, one quantitative, one qualitative, both fundamentally about human behavior, created a lens through which I started seeing patterns everywhere.

That's where the Eisenhower Matrix first made sense to me. It wasn't just a productivity tool; it was a decision-making framework that bridged the analytical thinking I'd learned in economics with the strategic thinking I'd absorbed in political science. A way to quantify the qualitative, to systematize the human elements of priority-setting in a world where everything feels urgent and someone is always convinced their particular request is the most important thing in the universe.

You know the one that deceptively simple 2x2 grid that supposedly helps you sort your life into four neat quadrants. Urgent/Important. Urgent/Not Important. Not Urgent/Important. Not Urgent/Not Important. It sounds like MBA buzzword bingo, but stick with me here. Because after years of wrestling with competing priorities in advancement work, I've found that Ike's framework isn't just useful, it's become my professional (and personal) salvation.

The Upper Left: Where Heroes Are Made (And Stress Lives)

Let's start with Quadrant II: Urgent and Important. This is where the real work happens, but also where most of us live far too much of our professional lives. It's the donor who needs a proposal by EOD for tomorrow's board meeting. It's the database that crashes during the year-end giving season. It's the emergency meeting to discuss why our gift processing is behind schedule.

During Caltech's CRM conversion project, my team was drowning in Quadrant II work. Everything was urgent because the old system was literally dying, and everything was important because without functional technology, our entire advancement operation would grind to a halt. Those were the weeks when I found myself bringing donuts to the office, not just for National Donut Day, but because I could see the stress eating away at people's souls one TPS report at a time.

The thing about Quadrant II is that it's seductive. It makes you feel heroic, indispensable, always fighting fires and saving the day. But living there too long is like being the office's "go to tech guy," a trap I fell into early in my career. You become so good at crisis management that people start manufacturing crises just to feel your expertise.

The goal isn't to eliminate Quadrant II work; some fires are real, and some heroes are needed. The goal is to not let it consume everything else.

The Bottom Left: The Delegation Sweet Spot

Quadrant III is where I've learned to park other people's emergencies that somehow became mine. Urgent but not important, the kind of work that feels pressing but doesn't actually move the needle on what matters most.

Take font changes. I still laugh about the time I was instructed to change fonts on thirty reports because "that's the font our executive prefers for internal documents." The request was urgent (he was reviewing them that afternoon), but decidedly not important to the actual content or function of those reports. It was a classic Quadrant III moment, something that could have been handled by literally anyone with access to the Format menu.

This is where delegation becomes an art form, and where I've had to get comfortable saying, "Let me connect you with someone who can help with that." Not because I can't change a font, trust me, I've shown the same person how to sum a column in Excel six times, but because my time is better spent on work that actually requires my particular combination of experience and expertise.

The volunteer work I did in Faith's computer lab taught me a lot about this quadrant. Parents would sometimes ask me to fix their home printer or troubleshoot their Wi-Fi during school events. Urgent for them, sure, but not really what I was there for. Learning to redirect those requests politely while still being helpful was like a master class in professional boundary-setting.

The Top Right: The Strategic Zone (Where I Should Live)

Quadrant I, not urgent but important, is where the magic happens. This is strategic planning, relationship building, long-term thinking, and the kind of work that prevents Quadrant I crises from happening in the first place.

When I started PRSPCT-L back in my UCI days, it lived entirely in Quadrant I. There was no urgent deadline, no emergency that forced the creation of a listserv for advancement professionals. But it was important that the field needed better ways to share knowledge and support each other. The fact that it became a cornerstone of our professional community happened because I was willing to invest time in something that wasn't screaming for immediate attention.

The same goes for the weekly donut runs that became part of our office culture at Caltech. Nobody was demanding pastries, and Foster's Family Donuts wasn't exactly mission-critical to our advancement goals. But recognizing and supporting team morale? Building the kind of workplace culture where people feel valued? That's Quadrant I work that pays dividends for years.

Here's what I learned the hard way: if you don't deliberately protect time for Quadrant I work, you end up living permanently in crisis mode. During that CRM conversion project, we were so buried in urgent tasks that we nearly missed the strategic planning needed to prevent future system failures. It was only when I forced myself to block out time for non-urgent but critical work that we started getting ahead of problems instead of constantly reacting to them.

The Lower Right: The Time Sink (Where Good Intentions Go to Die)

And then there's Quadrant 4, neither urgent nor important. The email rabbit holes, the meetings that could have been emails, the busy work that makes you feel productive without actually accomplishing anything meaningful.

I'm not immune to this trap. I've spent more time than I care to admit perfecting Excel formulas that saved thirty seconds of work, or following interesting but irrelevant research tangents because they were intellectually satisfying. There's something oddly comforting about Quadrant 4 work; it's controllable, measurable, and low-stakes. But it's also where good intentions go to die.

During busy December gift processing periods, I'd often pitch in to help my team enter donations into our database. What should have been straightforward data entry would inevitably turn into elaborate prospect research sessions. I'd spot an interesting company name on a check, notice an unusual address, or see a gift note that sparked my curiosity. Before I knew it, I'd be deep in Google searches, updating donor records with employment history, board affiliations, and family connections I'd discovered along the way.

It felt productive after all, I was enriching our database with valuable information. But while I was adding fascinating biographical details to one donor record, dozens of other gifts sat unprocessed in the queue. My team would politely ask if I needed help with "my" pile, not realizing I'd fallen down a research rabbit hole that had nothing to do with the urgent task at hand.

The key is recognizing when you're there and having the discipline to climb out. Sometimes that means closing the browser tabs and returning to real work. Sometimes it means admitting that the "research" you're doing is really just intellectual curiosity disguised as productivity.

When the Matrix Makes Life-Changing Decisions

Sometimes the Eisenhower Box forces decisions that go beyond daily task management it becomes a framework for life-changing choices. I learned this firsthand in 2014, when I found myself in one of the most professionally awkward situations of my career.

Cal Poly's CLA Building

I had just left Caltech after nearly a decade to become Executive Director of Advancement Services at Cal Poly Pomona. On paper, it was a great opportunity for more responsibility, a chance to lead a database conversion project from the ground up, and the perfect solution to a family logistics challenge. Faith had been accepted to a performing arts high school in Pomona, and taking the job would eliminate a daily commute for both of us.

But life, as it tends to do, threw a curveball. Faith decided to stay in La Crescenta for high school instead. Suddenly, I found myself driving past Caltech every morning and evening, a daily reminder of the professional relationships and institutional culture I'd left behind. Those twice-daily drives became an unexpected opportunity for reflection, a forced meditation on what mattered most.

Caltech's Millikan Library

Then Caltech called. They needed help. The database conversion project I'd initiated before leaving had hit complications, and they realized they needed someone who understood both the technical challenges and the institutional context to see it through. It wasn't just about technical expertise it was about institutional memory, relationships, and the kind of deep understanding that only comes from years of working within a particular culture.

Here's where the Eisenhower framework proved invaluable for something far beyond email prioritization. Was returning to Caltech urgent? Not in the traditional sense, Cal Poly Pomona was a good job with good people, and I was learning a lot. But was it important? That was the harder question.

I applied the matrix to my life: Staying at Cal Poly was neither urgent nor particularly important beyond professional courtesy and short-term comfort. But returning to Caltech? That felt both important (helping an institution I cared about complete critical work) and, given the timing of their needs, increasingly urgent.

The decision to return to Caltech after only nine months at Cal Poly wasn't just about career strategy it was about values clarification. It was about recognizing that sometimes the most important thing you can do is acknowledge when you've made a mistake and course-correct, even when it's professionally embarrassing.

Where the Personal Creeps In

That experience taught me that the Eisenhower Box isn't just a workplace tool; it's a life tool. The same framework that helps me manage donor relations and database conversions also helps me navigate Little League politics, school volunteer commitments, and the endless logistical juggling act of single parenting.

When Faith needed help with her science fair project, was that urgent and important? Important, certainly, but the urgency was mostly manufactured by our tendency to procrastinate until the last possible moment. When the Little League board needed someone to run for president, was that urgent? Not really. Important? Absolutely, if I wanted my kids to have a quality youth sports experience.

The personal stuff gets tricky because the lines between quadrants aren't as clear. Your kids' request for help with homework feels urgent to them and important to you, but maybe not both simultaneously. The school fundraiser volunteer signup feels important to the community, but is rarely urgent until the deadline approaches.

I've learned to apply the same discipline to personal commitments that I do to professional ones. Not every volunteer opportunity requires my specific involvement. Not every school activity needs my attendance. And sometimes, the most important thing I can do is model healthy boundary-setting for my children by being thoughtful about what I commit to and why.

The Generational Divide

One thing I've noticed in my years of managing teams is that different generations tend to live in different quadrants by default. My younger colleagues often treat everything as Quadrant II urgent and important because they haven't yet developed the pattern recognition to distinguish between real crises and manufactured ones. Everything feels career-defining when you're early in your professional life.

Meanwhile, some of my more experienced colleagues have become so comfortable living in Quadrant I that they sometimes miss legitimate Quadrant II situations. They've seen enough manufactured urgency to become skeptical of all urgency, which can be just as problematic.

The sweet spot is developing the judgment to tell the difference, and that only comes with experience, mentorship, and probably a few mistakes along the way. Part of my job as a manager has been helping people calibrate their urgency meter, teaching them to pause and ask: Is this really urgent, or does it just feel that way? Is this truly important, or are we confusing activity with progress?

Beyond the Matrix: Values in Disguise

Here's the dirty secret about the Eisenhower Box: it's not really about time management or productivity hacks. It's about values clarification. When you force yourself to honestly evaluate what's truly important versus what just feels urgent, you're essentially defining what matters most to you, your team, and your organization.

Those Friday morning donut runs? They lived in Quadrant I because I valued team morale and workplace culture more than I valued an extra hour of email processing. My decision to keep coming to the office during the holidays? Quadrant II, because someone needed to be there, and I valued leading by example over personal convenience.

The volunteer work at Valley View Elementary? Pure Quadrant I: building community, supporting my daughter's education, and investing in relationships that would pay dividends for years. The decision to return to Caltech? A values-driven choice that prioritized institutional loyalty and meaningful work over career advancement and comfort.

The Ongoing Practice

Like most useful frameworks, the Eisenhower Box isn't a one-time sorting exercise; it's an ongoing practice. I find myself mentally revisiting it multiple times throughout the week, especially when I feel overwhelmed or when competing priorities start pulling me in different directions.

Sometimes I even share the framework with my team, particularly when we're facing competing deadlines or when someone seems to be drowning in everything-is-urgent work. It's a way of stepping back and asking: What really needs to happen today? What can wait? What should we be doing proactively to prevent future crises?

And yes, I've been known to sketch it out on a whiteboard during particularly chaotic meetings, much to the amusement of colleagues who've learned to recognize my "Eisenhower moment" expressions. These visual conversations often reveal how differently people prioritize the same tasks and help teams find common ground on what truly matters.

The Simple Truth

The truth is, most of us already know intuitively what's important and what's urgent. The value of the matrix isn't in the sorting, it's in the permission it gives us to act on that knowledge. To say no to Quadrant IV busy work. To delegate Quadrant III requests. To protect time for Quadrant I strategic thinking. And yes, sometimes to embrace the chaos of Quadrant II when the situation truly calls for it.

Because at the end of the day, whether we're processing gifts, coaching Little League, or just trying to get through another Monday morning email avalanche, we all need a way to separate what feels urgent from what actually matters. And sometimes, that way comes courtesy of a former president who knew a thing or two about competing priorities and an eighteen-year-old who finally learned to listen to his mother's advice, even if it took a few decades and a career change to get there.

The matrix may be simple, but the wisdom is profound: not all urgent things are important, and not all important things are urgent. Everything else is just commentary.

Green Beans, Chicken & Potatoes

Over the years, I've realized that each of my children can be a very picky eater. One often repeated conversation starts...

Dad: "What do you guys want for dinner?"
Child 1: "In-N-Out"
Child 3: "No, I hate In-N-Out, let's go to KFC..."
Child 2: "Yuck, they are both disgusting, I want barbecue..."
Child 1: "I asked first..."

       ...and so on, until:

Dad: "...Enough, we are stopping at the grocery store for TV dinners."

Most parents can relate to some form of this conversation. Having one picky eater can be challenging, but having three can turn into an argument. It took me a long time to realize I can not force the kids to like (or even eat) the foods I think they should.

But coming to this realization was challenging, and I haven't always earned my "best parent of the year" trophies when it comes to getting my fussbudget eaters to "come around"...there was the (now) notorious episode of my oldest hiding sweet potatoes in her milk (and me then trying to force her to drink the concoction). Then there was the Tuna Helper riot of 2007, with my youngest (only slightly exaggerated for comic effect...) throwing her pasta at me, from across the table, and me responding that she could have it for breakfast too...

At the end of the day, I realize I can't force my children to do anything, especially eat, so I have (for the most part) stopped trying. The best I can do is offer them nutritious, varied foods—and eat them myself. The kids can have theirs, or not, and the best I can do is model the behavior I want them to emulate.

So, I put the food on their plates; if it stays there, I don't push them (too much, but is a "no-thank you" bite too much to ask?!). Really, I try not to stress over it too much (to varying degrees of success). Unfortunately, none of them seem to like the same foods at the same time, which can make family dinner time a pretty stressful situation for everyone involved.

But I finally found a one-pan meal that they all tolerate (some might even say that they like...). Presenting Italian Chicken:

Ingredients

• 6 small to medium red potatoes, cut
• 8/9 oz package of frozen cut green beans
• 1 1/2 lb chicken breasts (3-6 breasts)
• 1/2 c. butter
• 1 package Italian dressing mix

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Lightly grease a 9x13" (3-quart) baking dish with butter.
3. Line one side of the baking dish with the cut green beans.
4. Line the chicken breasts down the middle of the baking dish.
5. Cube the potatoes and line the opposite side (from the green beans) of the dish with the potatoes.
6. Cut the stick of butter into small pats and layer over the green beans, potatoes, and chicken. 
7. Sprinkle Italian dressing over the entire pan. Cover with foil.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour 15 minutes (or until the chicken breasts reach 165 degrees internal temperature).

There isn't anything here that any of the three kids hate (in fact, they love all the ingredients, although just last night my youngest said she doesn't like the green beans with the Italian dressing mix...sigh). 

I serve this meal with a fruit salad, or even some canned pears or peaches, and voila, dinner time is solved (at least two times per month).

It took time, some trial and error, and a few tears (mine and the kids'), but I learned that by continually offering them choices, I was finally able to hit upon something that appeals to all of our tastes (well, for the most part)!

From Little Girl to Leading Lady

Watching My Oldest Graduate and Reflecting on the Journey

Kailey, yesterday, I had the honor of watching you walk across the stage at Bucknell University to receive your Bachelor's degree with honors. As I sat in those uncomfortable folding chairs that seem to be standard issue at graduation ceremonies everywhere, I found myself doing what parents do at these moments: thinking about how impossibly fast twenty-two years can pass.

But mostly, I was remembering.

Full Circle at Bucknell

There's something almost poetic about the fact that you graduated from the same university where we really started our family journey twenty years ago. I can still picture that July day in 1995 when we first stepped onto Bucknell's campus together. While I was nervously navigating my first week in a new job, the two-year-old you was fearlessly conquering the jungle gym at Sunflower (the campus daycare) and treating the whole university like your personal playground.

Even then, you had this remarkable ability to make any space your own. Whether you were climbing to the top of that jungle gym or, just a few months later, getting ready to go trick-or-treating with your little brother in your Tigger costume, you approached everything with a combination of determination and joy that has become your signature.

Always the Performer, Always the Healer

Looking back through photos and memories, I can see now how your love of performing was always paired with something deeper, a genuine desire to care for others and make them feel better. When we lived in Mechanicsburg, you loved being a munchkin in the high school's production of The Wizard of Oz, and you threw yourself into the chorus and the school district's Songfest with the same enthusiasm you brought to everything else.

But even during our family Thanksgiving "Boeke Bowls," those wonderfully chaotic family gatherings where everyone was expected to contribute some form of entertainment, your performances often had a nurturing quality to them. You weren't just performing for applause; you performed to bring the family together, to make us smile, to heal whatever small rifts or stresses the year might have created.

That same spirit carried you through high school, where I saw you channel your love of performance into cheerleading. But even then, when I'd watch you on the sidelines, encouraging the team and energizing the crowd, I could see that what you really loved wasn't the spotlight, it was that your energy could lift other people up.

Daddy's Little Girl (Who Always Knew Her Own Mind)

The photos from those early years tell a story I sometimes forgot in the midst of living it. There's you at one year old, covered in chocolate/marshmallow Easter Bunny, grinning like you'd just discovered the secret to happiness. There you are at Disneyland, intently steering one of those spinning teacups with Faith and Teddy, already showing the focus and determination that carried you through organic chemistry and someday the MCAT.

And yes, there are all those "Daddy's Little Girl" moments, the Cubs games where you wore your Cubs hat with such pride, the quiet times when you'd let me read to you or help with homework. Those moments were precious not because you were compliant or easy (though often you were), but because even as a little girl, you chose to share them with me. Kailey, you were never the kind of child who needed to be coaxed into affection; she gave it freely, genuinely, and with her whole heart.

Through the Messy Years and Beyond

I won't pretend your teenage years were always smooth sailing. Like most parents, I occasionally found myself wondering if the sweet little girl who used to curl up with me for bedtime stories was still in there somewhere, buried under homework stress and the perfectly normal process of figuring out who you wanted to become (newsflash, you were still there).

Those years taught me one of the hardest lessons of parenting: the art of quiet, patient watching. Standing back while your child makes mistakes you could have helped them avoid. Biting your tongue when you see them choosing the difficult path instead of the easier one you could have shown them. Watching them stumble when a simple word of caution might have kept them upright. Often, I wasn't good at any of those things, but I never stopped loving or caring about you. Yes, I wish I could have those days, weeks, and months back, but please know that I am grateful for seeing you become the person that you are - no matter the temporary heartaches.

But I did learn something important during the times when I had to step back and just watch: I could still be your trampoline. When you fell and you did fall, as all young people must, I was always there to give you the spring you needed to bounce back up and take another crack at whatever challenge had knocked you down. I would have loved to solve the problem for you, but I hope settling for helping you find the resilience to solve things yourself will serve you well.

Here's what I learned during those years: You never stopped being exactly who you'd always been. That determination I saw on the jungle gym? It carried her through honors classes and college applications. That nurturing spirit from our family gatherings? It translated into genuine friendships and a growing certainty that you wanted to spend her life helping people heal.

By the time you became one of my "Santa's Elves," trusted with the family Christmas magic and the responsibility of keeping wonder alive for her younger siblings, I realized that you'd successfully navigated the transition from being a child who believed in magic to being a young adult who could create it for others.

The Doctor She Always Wanted to Be

When people ask me if I'm surprised that you chose medicine, I have to laugh. From the time you were little, whenever anyone asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, the answer always seemed to be the same: "A doctor." Not because it sounded impressive or important, but because you genuinely wanted to help people feel better.

What does surprise me, in retrospect, is how perfectly your path prepared you for that goal. All those years of performing taught you how to be present with people, how to project confidence when others needed to feel safe, how to read an audience or in this case, a patient. Your cheerleading experience showed you how to be part of a team while also taking individual responsibility for a role. Even those chaotic family Thanksgiving performances taught her how to bring calm and joy to stressful situations.

The Graduate

Watching you walk across that stage in your cap and gown this week, I wasn't seeing the end of your childhood or even the end of your college career. I was seeing the beginning of the next chapter in a story that's been remarkably consistent from the very beginning: a young woman who wants to use her considerable talents to make other people's lives better.

Kailey, I know you're going to be heading to medical school in a year or so, and while I know it will be challenging in ways that even your demanding undergraduate coursework wasn't, I'm not worried. I've had twenty-three years to watch you tackle new challenges, and you've never failed to rise to the occasion.

What Comes Next

As I write this, I realize that one of the greatest gifts of being your father has been watching you grow into exactly who you were always meant to be. The little girl who climbed fearlessly to the top of the jungle gym has become a young woman who isn't afraid to tackle the mountain of medical school. The child who performed with such joy for our family has learned to bring that same warmth and authenticity to everything she does.

I have no idea what specific challenges medical school will bring, but I expect that you'll meet them with the same combination of determination, compassion, and grace you have shown throughout your life. Please still call me when you need encouragement, and know that I'll probably still worry about you more than I should. But mostly, I'll continue to do what I've been doing for the last twenty-two years: watching with pride and amazement as you become more yourself with each passing day.

So congratulations, Kailey. You've earned every bit of recognition you received this week, and you've earned something even more valuable: the confidence that comes from knowing exactly who you are and what you want to accomplish.

The little girl who wanted to be a doctor has grown into a young woman with the knowledge, skills, and character to make that dream a reality. You've always been Daddy's Little Girl, but more importantly, you've become your own person, someone I'm incredibly proud to know, and incredibly excited to watch as you embark on this next great adventure.

Break a leg, kiddo. But then again, you always do.

It's a Wonderful Life

Every year, without fail, I tear up at the end of It's a Wonderful Life.

Sometimes it's just a lump in my throat that sends me out of the room for a "drink of water." Other times I just openly cry, no single dignified tear about it. I think the kids have noticed, and they've learned to look away right around the part where Harry Bailey raises his glass, maybe so I won't feel embarrassed. But I never do.

For some reason, this year I am thinking about why this movie, and this scene in particular, gets to me every time. I think I finally understand it. But I'll come back to that.

I am sure that I saw the film for the first time as a kid, on our huge console television set. I don't remember crying then. I just filed it away. But years later, in college and working at Brentano's Books, one of the first things I did with my first paycheck was special order a VHS copy of this movie. Naturally, using my employee discount. Not a textbook. Not a concert ticket. A 1946 film about a man standing on a bridge, ordered on purpose and waited for. I don't think I could have explained why then.

That first VHS was a poorly colorized version of the movie, which was less than ideal, but when the tape eventually faded, I replaced it with a better (B&W) DVD version, and when iTunes started streaming movies, I bought it there too. Some things you just keep.

More Than a Christmas Movie

The easy reading of It's a Wonderful Life is that it's a feel-good holiday picture about family and friends. That's not wrong. It's just thin.

What Capra is actually doing is building a moral argument about what makes a life worth living. George Bailey is not a hero in any conventional sense. He doesn't fight wars, discover cures, or build anything that bears his name. What he does, over and over again, is show up.

He shows up for his brother Harry when Harry falls through the ice as a boy, losing hearing in one ear in the process. He shows up for Mr. Gower the druggist, who accidentally poisons a prescription, saving the man's livelihood and probably his freedom. He shows up for Mary, for his family, for the working people of Bedford Falls who need someone to fight Potter on their behalf, year after year, at the cost of his own dreams.

None of it looks heroic in the moment. It just looks like life.

The film's real genius is what Capra does with the alternate universe. Pottersville isn't just darker and meaner than Bedford Falls. It's a place where no one ever had someone show up for them at the right moment. George's presence was invisible and unheroic. Every small decision to stay, to help, to absorb the cost held the whole community together. Remove him and the web collapses.

Jimmy Stewart and the Weight of 1946

Stewart was never more perfectly cast, and not simply because he was a veteran. He spent nearly two years fighting to get overseas, his superiors reluctant to send a famous actor into danger. He finally got his way and arrived in England in late 1943 as the operations officer, and later the commanding officer, of the 703rd Bomb Squadron, flying B-24 Liberators over Nazi-occupied Europe. At a time when air crews were expected to be killed between eight and twelve missions, Stewart flew twenty. Near-death experiences and the loss of men under his command aged him visibly.

On February 24, 1944, during what airmen called Big Week, Stewart's own squadron was sent to bomb an aircraft plant at Gotha, deep inside Germany. Only one plane of the 703rd made it home that day. Stewart sat through the surviving crew's debriefing, listening to what they had seen. Partway through, he broke down and left the room.

In the final months of the war, he was grounded for what we now call PTSD. He returned home in August 1945, went almost directly into production on the movie, and never spoke publicly about his wartime experiences for the rest of his life.

All of that is on screen, whether Capra planned it or not. Actors and crew on set reportedly realized that in the scenes where George Bailey unravels in front of his family, Stewart wasn't entirely acting. The hollowness behind his eyes in certain moments, the way his voice cracks before it steadies, those aren't performance choices. They're a man carrying something real into a role that needed exactly that weight.

The rough edges in the performance are features of the same thing. The broad early scenes, the outbursts at Mary and the teacher on the phone, reflect what postwar audiences were actually carrying. They hadn't yet arrived at the tidy domesticity of the 1950s. "Leave It to Beaver" was still a decade away. Life in 1946 was messier and rawer, and a perfectly composed hero would have felt false. George's flaws are what make his redemption land. A man who never snapped, never came unraveled, never stood on a bridge and meant it, doesn't need redemption. The arc works only because we've watched someone genuinely come apart.

Barrymore's Potter works precisely because he's a cartoon. The film is a morality play, and morality plays require moral clarity. A more ambiguous Potter, some conflicted figure with understandable grievances, would have complicated George's choices in ways the story can't afford. Every time George refuses what Potter is selling, that refusal needs to read as virtue, not mere stubbornness. The cartoonishness keeps the moral architecture clean. George isn't wrestling with a complicated man. He's choosing, over and over again, not to become one.

Donna Reed's Mary is sometimes called underwritten, and that criticism misreads the role. Mary isn't the dramatic center. She's the fixed point. She's what Pottersville doesn't have. Her constancy isn't a limitation; it's the whole point of the character. She knows what George is worth before he does, and she holds that knowledge steady through everything. It's a supporting role by design, the story belonging to George and, in its way, to Clarence, and Reed plays it with exactly the right quiet precision.

Why I Cry

I don't tear up when George is saved. It almost always happens when Harry stands before George and raises his glass to "the richest man in town."

It gets me because George never knew. He spent his entire life pouring himself out and genuinely believed, standing on that bridge, that none of it had mattered. He'd measured himself against the life he'd given up and decided the ledger came up short. And he was so wrong that it's almost unbearable.

There is a particular kind of work in life that doesn't announce itself. It shows up without being asked. It keeps its word because keeping your word matters. It stays in the room when leaving would be easier. It doesn't generate recognition. It just quietly makes the town worth living in.

I've said before that this film inspires me to be more and do better. Most people describe it as comforting, and I understand that. The ending earns its warmth. But for me, it has always felt more like a charge. A reminder that the work isn't finished. That showing up tomorrow matters as much as having shown up yesterday.

Part of what moves me is something I've only recently been able to name: the chain dimension of what George does. He saves Harry from the ice, and Harry grows up to save a transport full of troops during the war, and those men go home to their families and their towns. George never sees any of that. He just pulled a kid out of frozen water because his brother needed pulling out. The ripples go where they go, long after the moment is gone. That's not a comforting thought, exactly. It's a clarifying one. The things we do for the people in front of us travel farther than we can see, in directions we'll never know.

This year drove that home more than most. I lost Maddie, our big yellow Lab, in February, and she took a piece of the house with her. Ted came home from school to sit with her near the end, which told me something about the kind of person he's becoming; maybe the years of showing up helped to make him that way. In June, Kailey walked across a graduation stage, and I stood there calculating all the years that led to that afternoon. The teachers, coaches, quiet presences that never get named in a commencement program. The chain of people who showed up.

I think about Bill Peters, who spent four decades at Crescenta Valley Little League keeping the Rally Tally and answering questions nobody else could, mostly because he couldn't stop caring about the kids. I did a lot of his work this past spring. His name doesn't appear anywhere in those results. The kids who ran to check if their names were in print didn't know, and don't know, what it cost him to put it together every week. But it shaped them. It shaped me. I think about Yoko, too, whose quiet, steadying presence made me better at my job for nearly a decade, and who was gone without warning in the spring of 2013. Her name doesn't appear anywhere in the work she made possible either.

George Bailey finds out, at the last possible moment, that all of it mattered. Most people never get that scene. They just keep showing up and trusting that the chain holds. For me, that is enough, and this movie, every December, reminds me that it always will be.

The Verdict

It's a Wonderful Life
Directed by Frank Capra

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Most people reach for It's a Wonderful Life in December because it comforts them. I reach for it because it reminds me of something I don't want to forget.

The script is as good as anything Capra ever wrote, and the casting... Stewart, Reed, Barrymore, and the incomparable Henry Travers as Clarence hold up against anything from the era. What the film understood, and what most holiday pictures don't, is that sentimentality only works if it's earned. Every warm moment in the final act lands because the preceding two hours made it cost something. That's craft.

A version of this story gets made in almost every decade: the ordinary person who discovers their life mattered more than they knew. Most of those films are forgotten. This one keeps finding people every December because it got the thing right that the others usually get wrong. It doesn't let George off easy, and it doesn't let the audience off easy either. The ending isn't a reward. It's a challenge wearing the costume of a reward.

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It's a Wonderful Life runs every December, and it's easy to find. Watch it to the end; that's where the payoff lives.