A half-full look ahead

The winter solstice can be seen as either a glass that's half empty or a glass that's half full.

The solstice on Dec. 21 marked the change from fall to winter. Here in northern New England it was quite a change with a severe ice storm, and a snow storm, then another snow storm following each other in quick succession over the course of 10 days.

This official start to winter tends to give some folks a dim view of what seems like a long winter slog toward spring. They don't like the cold, snow and ice. And the fact that we lost daylight saving time means most people are commuting home from work in the dark. Even the term "fall back" gives the impression that we've retreated, that the future is a glass half empty.

But here's the reason I come down on the side of half full. The days are getting longer.

I think most people lose sight of that piece of good news because that ever-so-gradual improvement gets lost in the more overwhelming consequences of winter. And this winter can give the impression of being especially dark -- the economy sucks, the job market sucks, the weather can be brutal on the psyche.

Here are a few bright spots that I'll keep in mind as we add more sunlight, about a minute a day from Dec. 21, when the sun set at 4:12 p.m.:

Inauguration Day
On Jan. 20, the sun will set at 4:41 p.m. and Barack Obama will have been sworn in as the 44th president. It is a bright spot of politics after eight years of darkness. I take the half-full view that Obama's promise of change and hope won't be lost in the history of political rhetoric.

Baseball's spring training
Red Sox pitchers and catchers report for spring training in Ft. Myers, Fla., on Feb. 16. The sun will set that day at 5:16 p.m.

Daylight Savings
We'll "spring forward" -- now doesn't that sound more optimistic? -- on Sunday, March 8. The sun sets at 6:42 p.m. that day.

May graduation
My son graduates from Boston College on Monday, May 18.The sun sets at 8:04 p.m.

Each of those events -- and certainly more along the way -- will help keep my glass half full as I make my way through the long winter months. In order to winter well around here you need a correctly filled glass.

In search of The Moment

I am on my annual Scavenger Hunt, and it has one item on the list -- the Christmas Spirit.

Every year I am in search, actively and passively, of The Moment that I feel the spirit of the holiday. Perhaps I'm wrong to go looking for it, or even expect that it will come to me. But I do.

Often, when The Moment arrives it involves music.

Several years ago, it was during mass on Christmas Eve, while one of the carols was being sung. The woman behind me sang in beautiful harmony to the choir members on the risers at the front of the church. Last year it again involved hearing a rehearsal of Handel's "Messiah," but with my son in a church in London where he spent a semester.

I think of the spirit of Christmas and I think of the expectation and excitement of small children.

These days, however, the spiritual, magical part of Christmas is easily pushed aside by the commerce, chaos part of Christmas. The seasonal drumbeat of advertising and marketing seems to start earlier and earlier. The worse the country's economy, the earlier the drumbeat starts ... before Halloween this year. It's become like the presidential campaign: it starts too early, it lasts too long, it focuses too heavily on all the wrong things.

I made my obligatory trip to the mall, thinking I'd get in during the work week when no one else would be there. Silly me ... the place was packed with kids and parents trying to escape their homes that had no power or heat because of the severe ice storm that hit the area last week. I thought my head was going to explode. That certainly wasn't The Moment. It was more like The Wrong Moment.

I'm still on the hunt.

Have you had a Moment yet? Do you expect one, need one? Let me know by replying in the comments.

OMG! Dad's on Facebook

The bad news is my high school niece won't accept me as a Facebook friend. No big surprise there.

The good news is that my daughter and son have accepted me into their Facebook universe.

That I'm wandering around Facebook represents an interesting trend -- Baby Boomers, especially those between 55 and 59, account for the largest growing segment of Facebook users in the United States. According to research, in the last 12 weeks there's been a 73 percent increase in the use of Facebook by people 55 to 59 years old.

And it's not just socializing that's occurring on the social network site, it's professional networking as well.

My online attention span is being divided in too many ways these days. In addition to Facebook, I have accounts at Twitter, Digg, Reddit, two on YouTube, LinkedIn, AARP and Eons. And there are probably others that I lost track of.

I'm finding it difficult to get to all the places where, because I've signed up, I feel obligated to socialize or network or otherwise offer my two cents.

Part of why I do it is social. Being a stay-at-home writer these days means I spend a lot of time at home on the computer. And part of why I do it is professional as I try to make myself seen and heard in a vast universe of online content. It's all a matter of visibility in a place where you can easily be invisible.

It's interesting to me -- this graying of Facebook, as it's being called -- because the site started as an online yearbook of sorts for college kids to see who was who on campus.

Parents weren't allowed. And I suspect some parents still aren't allowed, and there's probably some resentment that parents are allowed at all.

I picked up a recent copy of The New Hampshire (the Unviersity of New Hampshire student newspaper) and there was a story on the subject of potential employers finding ways to check out the Facebook posts of job candidates.Not all posting are private. The advice was pretty sound: Don't post anything that makes you look like a risky or bad hire.

But there was another story with the headline: "Parents on Facebook: To friend or not to friend?"

My children Elizabeth, who just finished grad school, and David, who is finishing up at Boston College, were okay with friending me. It's a trust thing. I won't embarrass them; they won't embarrass me. We talk by cellphone and write emails and exchange texts, but their Facebook postings give me a chance to know a bit of how they're getting along without being intrusive. And they know what they post can have a wide audience.

This idea of friending parents is abhorrent to some their age. As one senior told The New Hampshire: "I think adults on Facebook is like having chaperones at a party. Not wanted."

Yikes, I bet her Mom and Dad would die if they saw his Facebook page. Better yet, what would a potential employer think?

The upside of empty nester angst

Part of the Baby Boomer angst is the empty nest.

The house that once chirped with the activity of children is suddenly quiet.

Yesterday, it seems, it was filled with chatter and clatter – a cacophony of homework and phone calls and running out the door for school or soccer practice or socializing.

And suddenly today it’s quiet.

Of course, Baby Boomers who are empty nesters had years to prepare for the fact that their children would go off on their own, but there was never time really to be ready. You can think it through as many times as you want and it’ll still surprise you how quickly it all happened.

Yesterday the nest was full. Today it is empty.

But we Boomers can look forward to the happy task of helping the children who have flown the coop start to feather nests of their own.

That was my fortunate chore this week, giving daughter Elizabeth a hand as she moved into an apartment in Connecticut.

The new home gives her a sense of permanence that no other place had while she was an undergraduate student and graduate student; the other places were stops along the way as she earned her doctor of physical therapy after six and a half years of study and clinical experience.

Now, with a job waiting for her at Yale-New Haven Hospital, she’s moving on and moving in to the grown up part of her life.

And a big part of that is a place she can truly call her home.

While on her final three-month clinical in Ohio, she stored much of her stuff at my home and the home of her mother.

Now all that stuff is making its way from storage to actual use. My part was to transport the stuff I had stored in New Hampshire to her in Connecticut, then helping unload and unpack.

She unpacked dishes and linen and pots and pans. She inspected framed pictures to find their correct display space on walls. Coats went into the closet, books into the bookcases. We put together a rocking chair that she bought and shipped home while doing a humanitarian medical visit to Nicaragua.

She is finding a place and a use for the several items donated to her by family – a lamp here, a teapot there. Everything is finding a home within the home.

When many of the family gathered in New Jersey for Thanksgiving Elizabeth (pictured above) and her cousin Sara, who also now has a job after many years of undergraduate/graduate schooling, received their Christmas angels.

These are a tradition in my family, handmade by my sister Ella. They can go on a mantle as a decoration or as a topper for the Christmas tree. You get one when you have a home.

In the end empty nesting isn't so empty after all because you realize that several pieces of you have moved in with them.