Brita won the MMTA piano contest this year.  What does that mean?  She gets to play a concert in front of 3,000 people.

As a kid, I think the enormity of the situation does not really sink in.  ”I’ll do this again.” or “This is what people do,” thinks the child.  No, I have never played in front of so many people.  And no, you might not get this opportunity again.

Pictures during the concert were not allowed…and I followed the rules.  What I can say about what I saw from my very remote seat is that Brita smiled all the way through.  And tears came to my eyes, I was so proud.

And Brita’s smile never ended all night.  She beamed from ear-to-ear until she fell asleep.

We visited my nephew Markus at Beloit College, and he took us on an engaging tour of the Godfrey Building of Anthropology.  I got these pictures and never posted them before.  Portraits of the kids rarely work out, but these turned out great.

While the visit was amazing, I had to pause and think about Markus, and how far he had come since the first time I had met him.  Shortly after meeting Gretchen, I went to see her in Chicago.  Bill and Ursula took us down to Hyde Park to meet their first grandchild, Markus, who was just weeks old at the time.  Little did I know, he would mark so much time in my life.

I met him as a baby.  He was the ring-bearer at my wedding.

I remember going to visit him in Chicago after a Price Waterhouse conference.  He was 6 or 7 and had boundless energy.  I wanted to sleep.  He wanted to play soccer.  We ended up going to a local park and playing for an hour or so.  I was a goalie to endless shots and had the greatest time with a kid, until my own came along.  I will always remember blocking shots between trees, the joy he had in playing with me, and the energetic hugs he gave me when I first arrived.

Later, we would visit Markus as a family.  He took up trombone and practiced in the living room, in between good-natured wrestling matches with my kids.  Later, Lars would take up trombone after seeing his older cousin playing.

After that, we were lucky enough to have the whole family move to Minneapolis.  They arrived on a warm spring day, all the snow gone.  But a couple of weeks later, 10 inches of snow laid on the ground.  Markus, and his brother Tobias, took us sledding at the local Minneapolis park.  We built a huge snowman and posed for some amazing pictures, before retiring to the local pizza parlor for one of the best lunches of my life.

And then Markus was a high-school student.  He was great with the kids and computers, but we lost touch a bit.  I was OK with that, because that is what happens in high-school. Whenever we came over, Markus always had time to play soccer with the kids.  (If he wasn’t there, Tobias was.)

And now Markus is grown up.  His tour of the campus was generous and engaging.   I can see success around the corner.  It has been an amazing journey.