"That ain't workin' That's the way you do it............."

[DFW]

Well, actually, my daughter and her S.O. do work like crazy, so I can't really say the song fits, but I definitely can say "that's the way you do it." She and her man drove up here (Düsseldorf area) Wednesday to celebrate Karnival with some old friends. They drove back home to the Taunus Hills today.

Tomorrow, they are driving down to St. Moritz in Switzerland for a week of skiing. I guess they plan on doing some work for a few weeks, and then they are flying over to Hawai'i to visit his eldest son from a previous marriage, who applied to (and got in to) Hawai'i Prep on the Big Island. He is apparently having a great time, acing the academics, which are rigorous, and I'm curious if he's ready to leave after what was supposed to be his high school year abroad, which Germany encourages. That was the original plan for my , who went to Hawai'i Prep for a year (supposedly) almost 25 years ago. But she liked it so much, she said she wanted to stay on and graduate there. I said OK (my wife was NOT happy), but keep in mind that German universities usually do not accept American high school diplomas, as German secondary education involves 13 years instead of 12. But she said, "then I'll apply to an American college." She indeed got into a decent college (GW in Washington, DC), went on to Law School and did brilliantly there, too. She now makes something like five times what I do, so it has not been our place to tell her what to do for a LONG time, now. If her S.O.'s son decides it is time to come back to Europe after a fabulous year in Hawai'i, he's got some kind of willpower.

My daughter still considers herself a Kama'aina (Hawaiian), and keeps going back. Hawai'i keeps drawing her back like a magnet. She is finally going to visit Kaua'i this time, something she never got around to before.

Still, that is apparently only their highlight for the first half year. In the fall, for her S.O.'s birthday, she has invited her sister and family over from New York, where they will leave the children--both daughters have two--with my wife, a Polish-German nanny and their Dominican Republic nanny from New York. The kids and their caretakers will remain in Königstein, where our younger daughter lives. Then, the four of them will take off for the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka.

I understand where the money comes from--they are apparently the best there is at what they do--but what I don't get is how they find the time to do all that. At that age, I couldn't fit in the space of three years what they do in one year.

My wife and I tried to raise our daughters to be the best at whatever they wanted to do, and not be afraid to shoot for it. Well, big deal, so do most other parents, I suspect. It's just that we stand in awe at what they have managed. It's not like they are billionaires or ever will be, but they couldn't care less, apparently. Being the best they can be, and enjoying the results of it, seems to be enough for them. We are at the age where several of our life-long friends are being hit by serious illnesses and even death. Who are we to tell our children to deny themselves the fruits of their labors while they can still enjoy them?

This all Fantasyland stuff to us. I still work for a living, and if I didn't, a good chunk of the money I have intended for retirement would be eaten up very quickly if my wife and I would be just taking off on trips like that whenever we felt like it. It's not that we're sitting here wondering what we did wrong. Obviously hardly anyone, especially in Europe, can afford to both work and travel around like that whenever they feel like it--especially when their travel is 100% funded by their own money that they earned with their employer, minus the 50% taxes they both pay. We just lean back and say, "good for them." We're content to sit on the sidelines and applaud.

[GreenWave]

1. I never got my money for nothing. Even the IRS wants to tax some of my SSI!

I will write to them and ask how should I pay them parts of my SSI checks which they never earned for me?

[cachukis]

2. Nice to have a vicarious side, too.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Wow, my dear DFW, your kids really know how to live!

Good for them. What they're doing is so not easy! But they're determined (it seems) and it's working.

Take a bow! Your efforts on their behalf have truly paid off!

Congrats!

[Prairie_Seagull]

4. There's 'be the best at whatever you do' and then there is DFWs

Be the best at whatever you do. My guess, you were able to get your ideas across with some flair that many others struggle with.



PS. Good on you dad. I'd buy you a beer but the flights would knock me out for a week. On another note, daughter and husband are heading to Amsterdam in May for a College friends wedding any tips?

[DFW]

5. Table the beer, but I miight be able to help you with the Netherlands

I never drink beer, never could stand the taste of it (I'm a lousy Southerner, I know).

As for NL, once you have seen the museums and the Anne Frank huis (if the lines aren't too long), get the hell out of Amsterdam, and go see Holland. Haarlem and Utrecht are very cool, and close by. May is a little late for the tulip season, but if there are any fields left, drive from Den Haag down to Rotterdam, maybe an hour, and get blown away by the carpets of color. In Scheveningen, there used to be a fabulous Indonesian restaurant with an unreal "rijstafel," sort of an Indonesian Smörgåsbord. Scheveningen is sort of the waterside adjacent town of Den Haag.

With children, you never know if they "get it" or not, until that test-of-fire momrnt arrives, and usually you never knew it was there in the first place. A friend called our younger one "Madame 10,000 volts" already at age 2. The elder one took some time to blossom. My wife was terrified she was turning into a couch potato. But she finally got in to an associate degree fashion college in L.A., graduated, and then switched to a fashion-business college in New York City. Her high school in Germany had rammed into her head that she would never go anywhere academically, since she was never very aggressive about speaking up in class. She was a little shy, but she wasn't stupid. But the German school system is very Darwinian, and they are there to weed out the chaff so that their universities only get the best of the best--something my daughter never would be, they were sure of it. After years of this, she believed it, too. So, you can imagine her confusion right before graduation in New York, when she called me up in Germany, asking what did the English word "valedictorian" mean, and was there any way she cold get out of giving a speech in English in front of 3000 people? I said the valedictorian was the best in the class, and always gave a big speech in fron of everybody at graduation. She said there was no way it could mean the best in the class, since she was it, and she was never the best at anything. A fashion-business school in NYC, after all--that sure sounded like a party school to everyone else. But no one told her, so she actually applied herself to the schoolwork. How was she to know?

So, maybe that "stupid" or "merely average" kid out there isn't so stupid after all. Schools don't know everything, certainly not here, anyway. What children do need is early encouragement. It's like oxygen--deprive a child of it for too long, and the damage may become permanent.

[OldBaldy1701E]

6. I always loved that song...

No matter how many times I heard the exact same thing from my own family. Usually right before they derided me for also pursuing the same profession. "So, when are you going to get a real job?" and all that. The song is brings both joy and a deep sense of anger and resentment.

[DFW]

7. I once did a Russia (sorta) version

[OldBaldy1701E]

8. Very cool!