I was honored when Amma Marfo (hi Amma!) recently asked if I'd share my insight with the blog for Lead365, a national conference "committed to empowering collegiate leaders and professionals dedicated to developing student leaders." 

The question on everyone’s mind: Where has the summer gone?

Soon, we will be sipping on Pumpkin Spice Lattes (now with actual pumpkin in them!), praying our fantasy football teams don’t fumble, and trekking to vineyards and apple orchards, clad in cableknit. It will be heavenly.

At least once a day, my mother could be found meandering around our house naked.

She was the same mother who, at the age of 10, assured me “shit” was not a swear, which I, of course, took full advantage of as we sped down Route 1 on our way home from Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I called every three cars we passed that day “a piece of shit” — BMWs included. 

Every time I go home to Lewiston, Maine, whether it be for holidays, birthdays, or my own sanity, I stop in at The Blue Goose. Whenever driving by as a teenager, I’d gawk at the goose flying high on the bar’s wooden sign in all of its navy blue-and-white feathered glory. Like so many of the state’s residents, it always appeared to be migrating south, and that’s all I had dreamed of doing. I wanted nothing more than to escape from the state where outsiders think every road leads to nowhere, none of the homes have electricity and everyone’s shacking up with his or her relatives.

My father gave me the sex talk during a Celtics halftime show when I was 20. After watching a commercial in which a fellow father fumbled through his own birds and the bees speech, mine sat up from his recliner and asked, “Well, are you ready?”

“For what? The second half? Yes! Halftime always takes too long.”

“No. The talk.”