Success

At the end of a podcast I've been listening to with other financial planners, the host always ends the interview by asking his guests how they define success. It's a good question.

For me, the first thing that came to mind was something that happened a few years ago when Natalie and I were out looking at colleges. We were headed from Larchmont up to Cornell and then, since we were up there, Colgate. On the way we stopped in to see a friend and client who was at a Balkan music camp which is the highlight of her summer, which takes place in one of those towns along Route 17 as it winds its way upstate, as well as another friend, the son of my dad's best friend from law school (a well-known environmental lawyer). On that stop Natalie and I swam in cold rivers not once but twice in a short span of hours, with some barefoot soccer with my friend and his daughters in the middle. Good livin.

Anyway, Natalie and I spent the night in Binghamton at a Hampton Inn (on points, of course), then found a diner for breakfast. The diner had seen better days, and it was blazing hot out and the AC was straining a little, but we were there and it was breakfast time so we found a booth and ordered. After we got our food, the waitress checked back in and asked us how the food was. We said it was fine and she went on.

A few minutes later a woman from a booth near ours came over and said how nice it was to hear us interact with the waitress, how gracious we had been, "everyone around here can be so nasty, but you guys were so kind." That made me feel really good about how we had done raising Natalie, because in my mind we had done absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, it was like breathing, but we had made this woman's day.

One more sign of success: a weekend or so back, I was making breakfast on Sunday for Graham (pancakes, of course, since it was Sunday) and I said something to him about how he probably didn't need both a steak knife and a butter knife for pancakes. I was thinking about how the steak knife handles dry out and fall apart over time in the dishwasher, a point Mary likes to make. I said something else which bugged him because he then said to me: "Have you had an OK morning thus far? Because you've criticized me about two things already."

The fact that Graham is comfortable enough in his own skin to let me know I was bugging him like that, to have not stormed off and sulked, that is a sure sign of success. So I thanked him for letting me know how he felt and apologized and explained that I didn't mean to be critical of him.... Anyway, those are two instances that we have done well raising our kids, which is really the most important thing.