It won't be like this for long

I know you're getting tired of posts about my son going off to college. But that's what's taking up all the brainspace right now, and writing about it here is cheaper than therapy (and a lot cheaper than tuition). I promise this will be the last one on the topic for awhile (fingers crossed, snickering to himself...).

This startlingly beautiful baby is my boy. It's always been one of my favorite shots of him. It was taken at our great friend Michelle Purcell and her husband John's former house in San Clemente, just before he gave a piano recital of Rachmaninoff's piano concerto number 3 (I recall he was pretty accomplished at number 2 as well - BAM!).

I don't remember how old he is here. I only know he's sure not that age anymore.

We just got back from dropping him off at his dorm room in Austin where, if you don't know by now, in between going to all-night movie festivals, eating barbecue brisket by the pound and locally-sourced quinoa salads, he's majoring in film.

And I don't mean dropping him off in the "here's your hat what's your hurry" sense. More in the "we're going to take six days, fix up your dorm room, buy even more things for you at Bed Bath and Beyond, take you out to eat for every meal and let you stay with us in our nice hotel until you absolutely have to move in" sense.

I won't go into what it was like to say goodbye before we had to leave for the airport yesterday. As I'm sure you've surmised by now from the other posts I've put up on the subject, suffice it to say I was a mess (I know, I'm as shocked as you are).

But twenty-four hours later, you'll be glad to know, it's not one iota easier.

I'm lucky in that I have a kid who wants us to text, call, FaceTime and Skype with him all we want. Or so he says. We won't drive him crazy, but we will be in touch on a regular basis. But he's grown up and he's growing up, and we're going to let him do it - no matter how much it hurts or how counter-intuitive it is.

It's been said they're leaving you from the moment they're born. Maybe, but for sure he's been leaving faster and faster as he's gotten older.

And now, in the blink of an eye, he's off becoming the man he's meant to be.

I'm so lucky, because I can't remember a time when my son and I ended a conversation without saying "I love you" to each other. And I'm not about to start now.

I love you buddy man.

Now I have to go help your sister move into your old room.

What's the attraction

I've always been attracted to a certain theme in art and photography. More than just "That's a nice picture." or "Huh. Interesting." I'm talking about images that draw me in, make me feel something on a visceral level.

Images like this one my friend Ron posted on his Facebook page.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I gravitate mostly to either solitary figures, representations of loneliness or images of disparate people, together and at the same time isolated in their own thoughts like those in much of Edward Hopper's work, especially his classic, essential Nighthawks.

It probably says I need something as a counterpoint to all the happiness and joy I put out into the world. Either that or I need help. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Maybe I'm attracted to them because of the universality of the emotions. Aren't we all a stuffed teddy bear, cast out to the side of the road?

Okay. Maybe not.

The point is there seems to be more of a reality and truth to these images than ones where people are laughing, just a little too happy despite the reality of the world around them. Like the people who dance in commercials because their detergent gets the clothes brighter, or they're finally free of the constipation that's been plaguing them (hard to dance when you're constipated, so I hear).

Many of my friends find it an interesting contrast that I usually go for the joke at any cost, yet I'm a sucker for a sad image.

I would've been great in a Woody Allen film.

Close to home

I'd much prefer this were one of my usual sarcastic, snarky posts with a snappy end line. We'd all have a good laugh, then get on with our day.

Sadly, not this time out.

Last week, a school friend of my son's committed suicide. He was only four months older. They were in a rock band together for awhile.

This young man had been somewhat of an outsider. He wound up leaving my son's school and going to a performing arts school three and a half years ago for various reasons, one of which is he was an extremely talented musician. Everyone at school, his bandmates as well as several professional musicians respected and envied what he could do on the guitar. His guitar teacher called him the next Jimmi Page or Joe Satriani.

It was a road filled with promise and wide open to him.

When we got the call and told our kids, they were both understandably in shock, as were we. My son said it's the first person he's known who's ever killed himself. I hope he never knows any others. He asked me if I've ever known anyone who's taken their own life. I've known two - a creative director and an actress. But I only knew them in passing, and would never say I was close to them (which of course doesn't make it any less tragic).

My wife and son went to the funeral last week. And while this is the part where normally I'd crack wise about putting the fun back in funeral, there's nothing funny about it. According to my boy, it was extraordinarily sad. Both the funeral and the reception were uncomfortably silent. You couldn't mention what had happened, and you couldn't not, so no one said anything. It was a silence you could feel.

I can only imagine that in the aftermath his parents pain is more than anyone should have to bear. The details don't matter. What's important is a talented young man, who's life had barely gotten started, was in so much pain he thought taking his own life was the only way to make it stop.

I don't have any wisdom or insight here. All I have are the truisms we all recite by rote and take for granted, until something like this happens.

Pay attention. Watch for signs. Love and hug your kids. Let them know the lines of communication are open whenever they want to talk. Make sure they understand no subject is off the table.

And let them know as unfair as it is, they'll have to live with the fact that sometimes there's no answer for why.

Got happy?

I thought it was a skill. Come to find out it's an art.

I was looking around Barnes & Noble the other day. It's not normally the bookstore I go to, but the Borders near me has gone away, so there I was.

I'll be the first to admit it - I wasn't feeling as happy as I could. But just as I was getting sadder about the fact I wasn't happy, I stumbled into this section. And really, if this couldn't make me happy then what could?

Apparently I should've been happier since there are a lot of things to be happy about. But then I started thinking - in a world this big, 14,000 didn't seem like very many things to be happy about. I couldn't help think there should've been more. And that made me sad. Because even with thousands of reasons in front of me, at that moment I couldn't think of one.

Fortunately, thanks to Marci Shimoff, I realized I didn't need one. I could just do it. I could just force myself to be happy for the sake of it. The problem with that approach was even if it felt like real happiness, how would I know if it was?

Here's how. Authentic Happiness would tell me by showing me how to put the New Positive Psychology to work. To realize my potential for lasting fulfillment. Truth be told, it didn't need to be that lasting. I'd settle for a couple hours. Or at least enough to last while I was browsing the store. But since I wasn't going to be there that much longer, would I have enough time to find out everything I needed to know to be happy?

Turns out I would, thanks to A Short Guide To A Happy Life. I liked the idea of this one, because first of all I really didn't want to spend a lot of time reading about a happy life - I wanted to get to it. The shorter the guide, the more time for me to get to work on my happiness project. But where should I start?

I'll start here. The Happiness Project will be like a go-to manual for my happiness project. I love it when life works out.

The one thing all this browsing of happiness books made me realize is how many freakin' depressed people there are walking around bookstores.

Frankly, I was happy to get out of there.