Goodbye 2023 Hello 2024

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.

2023 was a strange year for me. I’ve been working on a wildly ambitious novel that has sent me down many fun - but ultimately distracting - rabbit holes.  

Then, towards the end of the year, our family lost one of our elders: my step-father, John McBeth.

John had many nicknames, as befits a legendary journalist whose career spanned more than six decades: McB, The Old Man, RoboHack, just to name a few.

He covered five coups and reported on the popular overthrow of dictatorships. With probing questions, he extracted choice quotes from rockstars and presidents, scoundrels, and saints. He wrote about natural disasters, corruption, scandal, and political intrigue all with equal aplomb. A life of adventure told in his memoir, Reporter. 

In the family, however, he was just Grumps. He was flummoxed when he became a grandparent, presented with my newborn son, a fat, burbling bundle of smiles. He had no idea how to change a nappy or burp a gassy baby, but this self-proclaimed macho man was willing to give it a try. That’s how he became Grumps.

Our family is blessed with an abundance of doting grandparents, each with their own gifts and wisdom. But Grumps often seemed like a big kid himself, making fart jokes, inventing games on road trips, throwing himself into endless rounds of Go Fish and Crazy Eights as if he was playing high-stakes cards in Las Vegas. He was also notoriously terrible at poker. As soon as he fanned his cards open, his face would tell you everything. Grimacing when he had nothing. Eyes wide with delight when he thought he had the winning hand. And we’d clean him out of his chips, every time.  

We spent several glorious summers like this at my mother’s house in Bali. Playing games, diving into the pool, cooking his ‘award-winning’ pasta sauce, and crooning to the Rolling Stones, his favorite band.  Every morning, I would wake up to find John out on the terrace tapping out a story with two index fingers. He never did learn to type. After some keyboard rumination, he would always call up someone in his giant Rolodex of sources. Sometimes just to shoot the breeze. Other times, he would dig for a story, needling them on some obscure point. He had a genuine curiosity and he loved to sift through the granular detail, looking for the nuggets that made a good story. His skill, as a journalist, I realized was more than the writing and investigating, it was also the connection he forged with people who wanted to tell him more. 

It seemed right to say goodbye to John in Bali. We had a simple ceremony at my mother’s house. We burned some of his everyday items (favorite cap, sunglasses, business cards from his many sources, and more) then walked to the sea to scatter the ashes. The waves knocked us over and quickly took the ashes and flower petals we offered. Despite the grief, we found ourselves laughing in the surf and smiling at the ocean. It was the closure we needed.  

Now, I’m back in Valencia looking at the collected items of my own writing life. Piled high on a bookshelf are stacks of my old reporters’ notebooks. Scribbled notes that are barely readable but filled with details I wanted to save. Folders and binders stand waiting, stuffed with story ideas that I started in bursts of enthusiasm but have yet to finish. There is also a copy of John’s book that, I’m embarrassed to say, I have not read.

I think of John tapping with his two fingers on his laptop, every morning without fail. The best I can do, to honor his memory, is to keep writing. Even when I get lost in rabbit holes of distraction or worried that the words on the page are not lining up with the story I had envisioned in my head. But also to stay curious and connected every day. Maybe a quick phone call to check in with old friends. A coffee to meet new ones. And, yes, even writing a blog post more regularly.  

Here’s to a new year and new beginnings.