A Quiet Morning
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
For years, Cam Marston wondered how he'd handle the empty nest once his last kids left home. This week, with his youngest twins dropped off at college, he finally gets to find out. ----- For several years now I’ve thought about my last children leaving home and wondering how my wife and I would fare in our next life chapter of empty nesting. I thought I may like a quiet and neat home, or not being waked late at night with kids coming in from a night out with friends, and many many fewer dirty dishes in the sink. When the older kids came home...
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Lining Up to be Judged
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This weekend Cam Marston watched 130 girls squeal with joy on Auburn's quad. Here's why his mind went straight to the ones who didn't get the call. ----- We sure love cruelty, don’t we? As refined and as smart and as elevated as we claim to be, we love us some cruelty. We line up to dish it out and, strangely, we line up to potentially take it. Saturday afternoon I watched the culmination of Auburn’s bid day. My favorite youngest daughter got a bid. I watched as she ran from Neville Arena to the quad where she and her 130 some odd new best friends whom she had never met before squealed....
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Climate Battles
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, It's August in Alabama, which means two things: the air conditioner is running non-stop, and somewhere in a house near you, a married couple is fighting over the thermostat. Cam is losing that fight. ----- It’s the time of year in Alabama where when the temperature tops out at only ninety degrees we feel like it’s a crisp fall day. The mercury is so high so often that ninety degrees feels like a cool breeze. And right now, the weather report online says the “feels like” temperature is one hundred twelve, a full twenty degrees higher than the actual...
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I Take Thee, Claudia
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam Marston insists there's nothing going on between him and his favorite AI — which is exactly what a man in love would say. Here’s Cam… ----- So, my wife has accused me of liking my new best friend and favorite AI Claude more than her. In fact she’s accused me of being in love with Claude more than her. This came about the other week when I was standing in the kitchen working on some project in Claude and I heard the words “I think you’re cute.” I looked up and it was my wife saying this. I thought, “uh-oh. Something’s up.” Apparently, she...
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No Longer Having to Try
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston bought an electric bike last weekend, and this morning he rode it to his writing spot without pedaling once. He calls it the best commute of his life — and that's exactly what's got him worried. Here's Cam. ----- I got an electric bike last weekend. I had ridden my brother in laws a year ago when we were vacationing on the Carolina beaches and thought it was the funnest thing in the world. I left that weekend thinking I wanted one but one of my children’s cars needed attention and my hopes for an electric bike disappeared into...
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Couple's Retirement
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston has been digging into what makes retirement happy — and it turns out, part of the answer is that spouses need a break from each other. Here's Cam... ----- My work continues to lead me deeper into retirement studies. My small team and I are creating a non-financial retirement assessment that anyone can take and get a gauge on how well positioned you are to retire. The key here is this is non-financial information. It is not retirement readiness based on what’s on the spreadsheet or what’s in the bank account, it’s retirement readiness based on how well prepared you are...
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A Raccoon for Everyone
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
The World Cup has taken over America this summer — and it's brought more than just soccer. It's brought raccoons drinking gin. ------ The World Cup sure has been wonderful to watch. I’ve loved all of it, though I’d be hard pressed to clearly explain offsides. The broadcasters show replays of goals that have been taken back and the commentators say “Oh yes, that’s clearly offsides” and I have no idea what they’re referring to. It’s the equivalent of the infield fly rule in baseball or the tackle eligible receiver in football. It’s taken me years to understand these rules, and...
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Death of the Accord
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston has a confession today — eighteen months ago, he and his wife made a pact to declutter their house for good. Here's why it didn't survive contact with a U-Haul trailer. ----- About eighteen months ago, my wife and I made a deal in a hotel room overlooking the Atlantic. We called it the Fort Lauderdale Accord — not a bucket list of what we wanted before we died, but a list of what we wanted gone. Our aim was to simplify and we agreed on one thing: we had collected too much stuff. So we made a rule. One thing in, two things out. Net loss, every time. We clinked glasses, pinkie...
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A Grief No Words Can Describe
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week's Keepin' It Real comes from a place of real pain. Cam Marston reflects on the loss of two young men from his community, and a grief he says words can't quite reach. ----- “There are no words” is an expression often used to truly describe deep grief. It’s a feeling in your gut, your stomach, that you notice only when the world around you is crumbling and those important to you are experiencing something truly awful. That’s the way I feel now. A grief has set in and there are no words to describe this feeling. ...
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Father's Day Recap
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Cam Marston spent Father's Day at church alone, then had dinner with his own dad — and somewhere in between, figured something out. ----- Father's Day came and went last weekend. It coincided with my wife and my anniversary and the summer solstice – all on the same day. That must mean something. My wife chose to prioritize Father's Day because, well, twenty-nine years is a nice number but it's not all that special, and she wanted me to be celebrated by the kids. I went to church on Father's Day. My wife was going to join me but there was a puppy emergency, and she stayed home on the phone...
info_outlineAfter thirty years of the same family tradition - I give some thought to the future.
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For the thirtieth year in a row my SUV left my garage headed for the North Carolina Coast the second to last Saturday in July. If we weren’t in it, it would go by itself. It’s what we do. It’s what the car does. And it was packed tight with everything from fishing gear, to bed sheets, to food, to 150 oysters in the shell on ice, two cakes from Bake My Day, and a case of get-along juice, also known as wine. My in-laws have rented a house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina every summer and we are all expected to be there – there were sixteen of us.
Question for you – Name one spouse you know or have ever even heard of that’s vacationed in the same place, in nearly the same house, with the same people, on the same days every summer for thirty consecutive years. Unless that person is me or my sister-in-law, that person doesn’t exist. I can’t speak for my sister-in-law, but it makes me… Well… I don’t know what it makes me. Honestly, it makes me afraid for my life to declare that having vacationed in the same place, in nearly the same house, with the same people on the same days for over half my life that I’m now ready to do something different. It wouldn’t go over well.
It's this week at the beach every year plus a few weekends in the fall at my father’s camp in Clarke County, Alabama that I’m reminded of the great disparity in penalties for loud noise in the nighttime versus loud noises in the morning. This does require some explanation:
I go to bed early. After about nine PM, I’m useless and am eager to get to sleep and start again the next day. However, some of my family like to whoop it up at night and at 9pm they’re just warming up. They make lots of noise. They’re having a ball. But little consideration is given to those of us that retire early. There’s little penalty applied for keeping us from getting to sleep or waking us after we’ve fallen to sleep.
However, the reverse is not the true. I’m an early riser. And early risers must tip-toe through the house, careful to not make a sound or else face the wrath of the late sleepers. Their being inconveniently awakened by the early riser’s God-awful sounds of the unloading of the dishwasher or the brewing of the coffee are intolerable fouls against the family’s 30-year-old tradition. I’ve come to live with it. It’s a small price to pay. It’s not a big deal. But there’s some sort of economy that needs to be flushed out regarding penalties for preventing sleep versus penalties for awakening sleepers. Small penalties are applied for preventing sleep. Large penalties are applied for awakening sleepers. Its’ not fair but we live with it.
How long will this yearly tradition last? I don’t know. My children have grown such that we now need two cars to make the 22 hour round trip. And if we decide stop one year, we’ll know when that week comes because the SUV will go anyway. It’s simply what it does.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.