Good morning, and happy Friday. Managing Editor Don Seiffert once again here to bring you five things you need to know to start your day. Also, in a week when a lot of parents (including me) are feeling a hole in their hearts after dropping their kids off at college, I stumbled across a column I wrote years ago about life when he was a toddler. I reprinted it at the bottom of this column.
Looking for clues on further interest rate hikes
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is set to speak on the outlook for the U.S. economy, inflation and interest-rate policy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming today at 10 a.m. ET. The Fed is likely to weigh whether to raise rates by a half-point or 0.75 point at their next meeting on Sept. 20-21 “after achieving consensus this summer that rates would need to reach levels that slow the economy’s growth to dampen investment, spending and hiring,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The S&P 500 was down slightly as of 6 a.m.
A rally for the Beverly birth center
North Shore Birth Center patients say the potential closure has left them without adequate care options, and that even though those plans are on hold, they’re left with a very uncertain future.
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Security software company completes acquisition, makes layoffs
An Israeli-Boston security company that was acquired by a software-focused private equity firm completed its acquisition Thursday by Turn/River Capital in a deal valued at approximately $570 million.
Amazon to close Mass. warehouses
The ecommerce giant plans to close five warehouses across the state as it tries to compensate for overgrowth during the pandemic, reports the Boston Globe.
Check out our 2022 Executive Education guide
Our annual compendium of information on programs and courses targeted at professionals working in managerial and executive roles as offered by dozens of higher-education institutions in the Bay State.
What else you need to know
By the numbers
This day in history
On this day in 1826, Boston celebrated the grand opening of the Faneuil Hall. (MassMoments.org.)
An old column, suddenly relevant again
For more than two decades I’ve been lucky to hold a job where I can write what I’m thinking and feeling, and have it published. This week, while going through old photos and mementos of the past 18 years with my son, I found a column I wrote 16 years ago (in the pre-Internet era) as editor of the Newton TAB when my son was 2. I reprinted it below for all the parents who are going through a similar emotional journey this week.
“Bubbles!”
My son shrieks the word as he runs out the door and teeters at the top of the stairs. I’m carrying a plate with his leftover breakfast, his socks and shoes, a sippy cup, and bubble liquid as I run after him. I balance on one leg while closing the door, holding the other leg in front of him, thinking I’ll somehow catch him if he starts to fall.
Outside, I show him, again, how to blow bubbles. I dip the wand in for him and make the blowing noise. He tries, but he always blows air through his teeth, like he’s saying the letter ‘F.’ Make your mouth into a circle, I tell him, like this. Soon the bubble liquid has all dripped off. I dip it in and start again. After a few minutes we both give up. I blow bubbles for him to chase, running around the backyard yelling “I need you! I need you!” I decide he must be talking to the bubbles.
On summer weekends like this we get out the kiddie pool, the sandbox, the playhouse, the wheelbarrow, the play gardening tools, the little car. The house looks like a yard sale no one would stop for. We spend whole days rotating around to every toy he owns. Sometimes he orders me to help him, other times to go away. When I try and talk to him, he shouts, “Stop telling me a question!”
The lawn is a patchwork of all different heights of grass. These days, I mow only in spurts, for a few minutes at a time. That’s how we do everything now. The house has bare sheetrock, unfinished walls that have been like that for years. Places where we stopped when he woke up from his nap and never came back.
He’s squarely in the middle of the “terrible twos.” I used to think he was advanced for his age, that he got there a year early. Now I know better. Now he’s never still, from the moment he wakes up to an hour past bedtime. The answer to most questions is “no.” When he answers at all. I sometimes pour his Cheerios for him, instead of letting him do it himself, and it causes him to collapse on the floor, screaming and flailing.
My wife and I spend hours trying to fathom what he’s talking about. For a month, he told us every day that he was sad “because the cow mooed” at him. We asked everyone we knew if they’d heard of some book, some TV show that might explain. No one knew. He’s since stopped saying it. We’ll never know.
His new thing is asking “why?” It happened a month ago, like a floodgate opening. Suddenly, he realized he could keep people talking by simply repeating that word. It’s like those dialogues from college where Socrates makes everyone else look like an idiot by asking simple questions. I am required to keep answering until I uncover the underlying, inscrutable axioms of my beliefs, and it’s usually something stupid. The conversations often end with, “Because that’s the way the universe works.” Or else, “I don’t know.” At that point, he wins. I lose.
We go up to his room at bedtime. We read the book, again, about going to the dentist. That’s the book this week. Afterward, we sit in the chair and name the planets hanging from his ceiling. Our solar system has eight planets at most, usually fewer. We lost Jupiter months ago. The others fall down every few days, and I put them back up, hanging them with putty and string. Tonight he’s almost asleep when I hear a familiar “plop” behind me.
“The Earth fell down again!” he says.
“I know,” I say. “Go to sleep.”
These days are exhausting, at once too long and too short. Filled with last-minute schedule changes. Sore backs. Frequent headaches. Messes that never get cleaned up. Fretting when he won’t eat his vegetables.
But also, hugs. Overflowing joy when he smiles. Singing. Amazement whenever he discovers something new. Forts. Learning, from him, that play is not part of life, it is life.
The days float by, hard to focus on any one, carried along as though on a constant breeze, one after the other. For each, there is just a moment to stop and watch in rapt wonder before — pop! — it’s gone.
“Bubbles!”
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