“How are the boys?” my father asked. It was New Year’s Day and he looked thin, exhausted from fighting a difficult infection and bad hospital food.
“They’re learning to swim,” I said. I figured he’d like that. I remember looking up from a swimming lesson of my own, a little boy in a big lake, and seeing my dad on shore, making enthusiastic doggy-paddle motions. He meant it to be encouraging. I just wanted him to rescue me.
Now the roles were reversed. I knew he hated asking for help. So when he did, I went. As the sun rose for the first time on 2025, I shook off the champagne cobwebs, left my wife and kids (Theo, 5, Jamie, 3) on vacation in Florida, and flew to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. On the drive from the airport, I felt a pit in my stomach. They call it the “sandwich generation” when you’re pressed between little kids and aging parents. Was this what the next few years would be like?
Coming into town, I passed the house where I grew up. A lot of my dreams still take place there. It’s been more than 20 years since it sold and I’ve lived many other places, but in my subconscious it’s still home. As I worried about the future waiting for me at the hospital, I felt the tug of the past. When you see your father frail, it’s hard not to think of how he used to seem indestructible. To miss the safety and security of those days.
My dad loved climbing mountains and always wanted me to love it, too. When my boots gave me blisters, or I fell in the steam jumping from rock to rock, or I cried out, “Are we ever going to get home?” the answer was always the same: Don’t worry, Dad’s here. I wish I knew how to give my boys that same sense of sturdy confidence, especially in this unsettling time.
January in Washington, DC, where we live, felt particularly bleak. As I helped my dad leave the hospital, I said, “I’ve been thinking about California. Maybe we’ll move back.”
During the first Trump term, my wife YJ and I lived in Los Angeles. I had spent the previous decade in Washington working for Hillary Clinton, including as chief speechwriter on her 2016 presidential campaign. Losing that race upended the life we thought we were building. Like so many before us, we hoped that heading west would give us a chance to build something new.
There were no kids then. No mortgage. No real plan, either. We talked a lot about wish fulfillment and doing things we couldn’t have done if we had won and were chained to desks in the White House. Let’s live by the beach, we said, and go hiking in the canyons. Let’s buy a Jeep and learn to surf. Let’s start a family. Eventually we found a house in Pacific Palisades. It didn’t have much of a yard, but there was good light and a graceful tree that filled up the bay window of the second-floor living room. We painted the doors and trim a bright Santorini blue and planted jasmine in the back.
After our first son, Theo, arrived, wish fulfilment gave way to midnight feeds and diaper rashes. On one of those stressful early nights of parenthood, my father called from New York. The baby was screaming in the background. I was exhausted, distracted. “Savor every moment,” Dad said, “You’ll miss this.” That wasn’t a sentiment I was ready to hear. In fact, I resented it. This was hard! Didn’t he remember that?
