When Small
Good morning GB, its mister sunshine. Good night, Granpa... See you in the morning.
While You're Growing
You're finding your own light now, aren't you? You're learning that the world can be hard, that people can disappoint, that you won't always win. When it gets heavy, when you're confused, when you need someone who knew you before you knew yourself, run to me. Not because you're weak, but because you're loved. There's strength in knowing when to come home.
When You're Finding Your Way
You're out there now, making your own mornings, being someone's sunshine. You've learned that independence doesn't mean doing it all alone. When life throws you something you didn't see coming, when you need perspective, when you need someone who remembers every version of you, run to me. I've been where you are. I've made mistakes you're about to make and some you'll avoid. The door is always open, and there's no judgment here.
If you have kids
Now you understand. You're the one they run to. You're exhausted, stretched thin, wondering if you're doing it right. When you need to remember what unconditional looks like, when you need to be someone's child again instead of everyone's parent, when you need to rest, run to me. Let me hold you the way I did when you were small. You're still mine.
When I'm Gone
I won't always be here in the way you can touch. But run to me still. Run to the memories. Run to the lessons. Run to the love that doesn't end just because I have. When you hear "see you in the morning" in your own voice to your own children, you'll know I'm there. When you are someone else's sunshine, you'll feel me smiling.
Run to the person you've become. Run to the strength you didn't know you had. Run to each other, your siblings, your cousins. We're always connected, and you're welcome here, not because you can't stand on your own, but because you never have to. From Sunrise to sunset.
.
Love Always,
Dad/GB/UB
A City Island senior wearing a bright windbreaker doesn’t look his age until a closer look at his hands tells the story.
His veins stand out like noodles or thin ropes. His fingers move carefully, slower, as he fumbles with keys.
Anyhoo - As he's leaving the community center, not performing, but living. He walks heel-to-toe along a crack in the pavement, deliberate and steady. Two people sit nearby, chatting, occasionally standing to roll an ankle, stretch a shoulder, and not power-walking or counting steps.
This is the workout, and something quietly radical is happening.
When the weather turns—humidity, rain, snow—brisk walks are often the first thing to disappear from the to-do list. Knees ache. Motivation fades. Yet the people who age best are rarely the ones who never miss a workout. They are the ones who seldom spend long stretches completely still.
This is the overlooked truth of healthy aging: movement matters less as an event and more as an environment. What protects mobility, balance, and independence isn’t a heroic burst of daily exercise. It’s the steady accumulation of small, varied movements woven into the fabric of the day.
In communities around the world where people routinely live into their 90s and beyond, you don’t see many treadmills. You see kitchens without high stools, which means more time on their feet. Gardens that need tending. Low shelves that require a squat. Floors that demand bending to reach storage baskets. Movement isn’t scheduled; it’s unavoidable.
He doesn’t work out. He does ten small things, repeatedly, all day long. He stands while talking on the phone. Hangs laundry on a low rack. Walks the corridor every time a TV commercial comes on. His step count isn’t impressive, but his grip strength, balance, and reaction time look decades younger.
Large population studies back this up. Total time spent in gentle, varied motion across 12 to 14 waking hours consistently predicts better mobility, independence, and even cognitive resilience than short bouts of intense exercise alone. The key pattern isn’t intensity. It’s an interruption, breaking up stillness before the body settles in.
Long, chair-bound stretches slow blood flow, stiffen joints, and dull proprioception, the body’s sense of where it is in space. A single walk, no matter how brisk, can’t fully reverse ten hours of sitting. Muscles and connective tissue respond to frequency more than force, especially with age.
The nervous system plays a role, too. Balance and coordination depend on constant sensory input from the feet, hips, and spine. Each time he rises from a chair, twists to reach a shelf, or shifts his weight, he’s feeding the brain tiny packets of information. It’s less a workout than an ongoing conversation between body and brain.
The movement pattern that protects healthspan turns out to be surprisingly unspectacular: modest, multidirectional motion, repeated throughout the day, every day. Not flashy. Deeply effective.
Instead of thinking exercise, think in categories: Every hour, a posture reset, stand tall, roll the shoulders, look left and right. Three times a day: a sit-to-stand cluster, three to five slow stands from a sturdy chair.
Twice a day: a balance moment, hold the counter, lift one heel, then the other.
Once a day: a longer loop, five to ten minutes through a corridor, garden, or street.
Anytime: a sideways move, step side to side while holding the back of a chair.
None of this needs to look like fitness. It can look like pausing at a window, shifting your feet, and reaching a little higher for the cereal box with one hand on the counter. On a hard day, it might be nothing more than standing tall while the microwave hums. On a future day, it might be a walk or a flight of stairs.
The goal is simple: prevent the moment when getting off the sofa feels like lifting a mountain, physically and emotionally. All-day movement is a subtle way of preserving that moment as rare, rather than letting it become the new normal on City Island - A Slice of NYC Paradise.