Here is a fun parenting fact: Many kids spend a lot of time in activities. As a result, many parents spend a lot of time in the car. This isn’t specific to adoptive, or single-parent, or transracial families, of course. On the other hand, I think that being in an alternative family structure opens up the possibility to exploring different types of activities, and doing so in different ways, from the traditional (read: gendered) paths. Here are a few of the memorable activities my kids engaged in over the years.

Cooking

There are many ways that I can finish the sentence “I have the great good fortune that . . . .” One of the ways I have great good fortune is that my kids like to cook. And they’re actually pretty good at it.

When the kids were growing up, we did everything in a democratic, consensus-based style. So one day, when the boys were about ten and eight, I said: “Starting now, one night a month, you guys are going to cook dinner.” The explanation was pretty simple: As they might have noticed, in a family made up of two boys and one dad, a guy who knows how to cook is pretty useful to have around. Since we had no idea how their futures would play out in terms of partnership, living arrangements, and so on, this would be a good skill to carry with them.

The rules were also simple: The boys would, together, decide what they wanted to make. I would get the ingredients, and then they would be the chefs. I would supervise, but from a distance. Otherwise, dinner was on them.

Here’s what I thought would happen: lots of hot dogs, English muffin pizzas, and tater tots. Why I expected this, God only knows. You’d think a guy would know his own kids after a few years.

What actually happened was this: A few days after my announcement, Daveon’s class—we’ll call it fourth grade, give or take—went to the library. In addition to his usual Harry Potter knock-off/rip-off fantasy books, he got not one, not two, but a whole set of about a dozen Cooking from Around the World cookbooks. For those of us of a certain age, I think it was a Time-Life series.

Anyway, here comes my little man home with his huge stack of (thankfully, very thin) cookbooks. Since we could only keep them for a couple of weeks, I asked the boys to go through the books and put a post-it on any recipe that looked interesting (which, now that I think of it, was the same process I went through to pick the kids all those years ago). I copied those pages, put them in a binder, and thus was born our Sadusky Family Custom International Cookbook.

Now you might be thinking: “That all sounds cute, but I bet when the kids actually ended up in the kitchen, out came the English muffins.”

You would be wrong.

Within the first six months we had, among other dishes, Korean dumplings, Irish stew, and chicken cacciatore. All of them were delicious—and I don’t even like stewed tomatoes. I’m a little embarrassed to say that most of the meals the kids made actually tasted better— and were certainly more elaborate and labor-intensive—than the basic spaghetti and meatballs or roasted chicken I would typically throw together. Score one for team effort.

Things we learned: Mark never met a measurement he bothered to follow. When making pumpkin roll, who cares that the recipe calls for a third of a cup of canned pumpkin, when the whole can will do? Who cares if the resulting batter is so wet, you’ve basically just made rolled pumpkin pudding? (Although tasty, it is very hard to roll pumpkin pudding.) And for Daveon, it was all about coming up with new and previously unknown spice combinations. And then finding out that maybe they were unknown for a reason. I’ll never forget the otherwise perfectly cooked ribeye, seasoned with basil and … cinnamon.

Over the years, trying to get the kids to collaborate in the kitchen became more trouble than it was worth. (This followed a pattern where trying to get them to do anything together was more trouble than it was worth.) So, teamwork’s loss became Dad’s gain: Instead of working together on a single monthly meal, each kid eventually got his own monthly cooking night. Double bonus!

After the first year or two, I also retired from supervising—all I needed to do was buy the groceries, which they needed to figure out and list. After those early years of experimentation (yes, we bought a Harry Potter cookbook, and yes, Daveon made shepherd’s pie out of it), things settled into kind of a routine. Daveon regularly made steak— some of the best I’ve ever had, in all honesty, especially when it wasn’t cinnamon-topped—and baked fish. Mark’s typical menu was “whatever Daveon made last time”—until Dad reminded him that it might be nice to come up with an original idea once in a while. This usually led to Mark grunting out a frustrated “Fine,” grabbing a cookbook, and picking whatever looked easiest to make.

Believe it or not, after Daveon went away to school, he no longer cooked for us on any kind of regular basis. Somehow that meant that Mark—who was still at home—didn’t either, which (a) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and (b) says a lot about how life rolls with older teens.

But the good news is, when push comes to shove, they know they can whip up something tasty. To their future partners/spouses/ kids: You’re welcome.

Music

There’s no way I could paint a complete picture of our life as a family without talking a lot about music. I’ll describe Dad’s crazy bedtime hits later. Here, I’m talking specifically about my kids’ musical endeavors.

It all started in the fall of 2008 or 9, when I took the kids to Family Day (presented by Target®) at the symphony. This was kind of a big deal.

As anyone who’s spent five minutes in our house with the radio on can tell you, we’re not exactly a symphony-type family.

I clearly have a problem with lowest-common-denominator expectations. Just as I expected that cooking for my kids was going to equal English muffin pizza, I was sure that at Family Night we were going to hear Peter and the Wolf, or maybe that Saint-Saëns thing where the tuba represents an elephant (or is it a hippo?). Instead, the music was surprisingly varied and complex. More important, the kids seemed to soak in every note. When the concert was over, all Mark could talk about was the flute. How cool the flute was, how it was his favorite. Flute, flute, flute . . . and for good measure, flute.

About six months later, at the end of the school year, I told the kids I wanted them to pick an instrument to learn. They would start over the summer when homework wouldn’t be an issue. They had to commit to take lessons for six months, to learn the basics. At the end of the year, they could decide to continue or stop. This was one of the only times—or maybe the only time—that I made the boys pursue a particular extracurricular activity. I’m definitely on team Musical Education Is Good for Kids, in a whole bunch of ways.

Daveon chose saxophone, which lasted about two weeks. The teacher said his hands were too small, and that he should start on clarinet instead. The bad news: She didn’t teach clarinet, nor could she recommend anyone who did. The good news: Daveon was agreeable to the switch, so we went to the local music shop to rent a clarinet. We asked the salesperson if she knew of any good teachers, and she did: herself. Carolyn ended up working with Daveon for well over five years, swapping up as his hands grew larger to tackle alto tax, then tenor—the next Coltrane. Carolyn came to our house for Daveon’s lessons. This automatically put her in a tie as my favorite kids’ music teacher, even aside from the fact that I—and more important, Daveon—liked her so much.*

(*Small world aside: Carolyn was playing in a women’s big band jazz ensemble and invited me to attend one of their shows. I went, and it turns out that one of the women running the band was . . . the original teacher who recommended the switch to clarinet, and thus was indirectly the reason we met Carolyn in the first place. Because, of course.)

Meanwhile: Remember Mark, he of the flute fascination? For his instrument, he, of course, chose . . . violin. (If you knew Mark around age ten, this made perfect sense.)

Once again, we lucked out in the teacher department. Mark studied with K.C.—the co-winner for my kids’ favorite music teacher—almost all the way through his senior year of high school. Although she didn’t come to our house, K.C. gets bonus points because she not only talked with Mark about skating and the relationship between practice and performance on an instrument and on the ice, but often came to his competitions. Plus, she has a brother who lives in Hawaii and rents out his back cottage, so she is a good person to stay friends with.

Along the way Mark dabbled in piano, which lasted all of a month when he realized that practicing two instruments was actually kind of a lot of work. He and his brother did manage to learn a mean “Heart and Soul,” though. So if you’re ever in need of some party entertainment . . .

Skating

If you ever want to not have a life . . . well, first, have some kids. That will take care of most of it. And then, have your kids get involved in figure skating. I promise you will never have an unoccupied moment from that point on. Partly because there is always some lesson or session or performance or competition to attend, and partly because you need to work three jobs to pay for it all.

People often ask me how Mark got into skating. The long, scientific answer is: “I don’t know.”

Unlike Daveon, who played baseball for years, and then switched to cross-country and track for the last several, Mark flitted from activity to activity every few months. From move-in day one until about seventh grade, he tried: swimming, gymnastics, ultimate Frisbee, baseball, basketball, capoeira, soccer, and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

There’s one story that maybe gives a clue as to Mark’s bond with the rink. When they were little, I took the boys to Toy Story on Ice. (Perk of fost-to-adopt: During the fost period, you get free tickets to just about anything and everything kid-related.) A few months later, we rented Toy Story 2 on DVD. About halfway through, Mark started crying. Bawling.

There wasn’t anything sad going on in the movie at that moment— no lost puppies, nobody pulling out Mr. Potato Head’s nose. So I asked what was wrong.

Mark practically shouted, “They’re supposed to be on skates!” So maybe that’s where it all started . . .

Here’s everything I did not know about skating:

There are eight levels. The people you see at the Olympics—the Michelle Kwans and Johnny Weirs—are at the senior level, the top. But there are seven levels to go through to get there.

To pass from level to level, you need to take a test. For the lower levels, the test has a single judge, and you basically set up an appointment with them ad hoc. Based on our experience, the judge might or might not show up on the scheduled day and time, depending on whether she wanted to spend the weekend with her boyfriend.* Nothing like leaving a little kid eager and anxious, and … “Sorry, I was too busy making whoopee.”

(*This really happened.)

After you get a little higher up, there are set scheduled test dates with three judges. You need to book a slot for a test date well in advance, or the session becomes full and you have to wait another month or two for the next one. You also need to bring food for the judges, cookies or brownies preferred. Nothing like serving as nutrition role models for young athletes.

At the lower levels, you skate a single program. As you move up, you skate two programs for your test, and two for competitions. These are not the same two: You get tested for moves in the field and your short program, while in competitions you skate your short program and your long, or freestyle, program. The difference between short and long is thirty seconds.

Skating competitions are scheduled to make skater parents hate life, themselves, and everything. They almost always require a drive of an hour or more, if not a plane ride. Your kid’s first event takes place early in the morning on Saturday, and the second one in the evening on Sunday. You need to be at the rink for a minimum of two to three hours at a time, to allow for warm-ups and the unaccountably long time it takes for someone to post the scores. The kid’s program itself is two to four minutes long. So you get to commit nine to twelve hours of your weekend either driving or sitting in an ice rink—all to watch your kid on the ice for four or five minutes, eight, tops.

It doesn’t seem like the greatest return on investment for the skater, either. Mark skated (and continues to skate) almost twenty hours per week, every week. He has had maybe half a dozen competitions per year, at which he has skated for those four to eight minutes. So figure roughly 1,000 hours of practice for thirty or forty minutes of competitive time on the ice per year.

We haven’t even gotten to costs. Each year, your kid needs new music for the short and long programs—different music for each, of course.* Your kid also needs a new costume to go with each set of music. So, two new costumes per year.

(*Short program music is usually peppy, long music slower and more dramatic. I can count on hearing some version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at least twice during the long programs at each of Mark’s competitions. I am really sick of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”)

Besides music and costumes, here’s everything you pay for:

* Ice time
* Coaching fee for private lessons
* Other coaching fee
* And yet other coaching fee (No joke—at one point, in addition to his regular coach, Mark had a moves coach and a spins coach.)
* Choreographer’s fee (I guess the choreographer is not a coach.)
* Skates, of course—a new pair every year, year and a half
* Skate blades (Did you know that the skate and the blade are two different things? You do now.)
* Skate blade sharpening
* Group classes on ice
* Group classes off ice (I know you think I’m making all this up—if only. There is a stretch class, a Pilates class, a jumps class, etc., etc.)
* Competition registration fees—usually in the vicinity of $100 a pop, until it goes up to $175 a pop
* US Figure Skating Association membership fee
* Local skating club membership fee
* Paying for the coach’s hotel and flight for out-of-town competitions (For the first competition, this one took me completely by surprise—I didn’t know about it until I got the bill.)
* Did I mention bringing food for the test judges?

So yeah: skating.

As someone who can’t stand up on skates, I’m completely in awe that my tall son can throw himself in the air, spin around a bunch of times, and land upright. He now has all of his doubles (which I couldn’t tell apart if my life depended on it) and most of his triples.

Throughout high school, Mark faithfully got up at 5 a.m. three days a week—two of which were Friday and Saturday—and went to the rink for a two-hour 6 a.m. session. Every day after school, he took BART back to the rink for at least two, sometimes three, three-and-a-half, additional hours. I told him he should find an empty room and set up a cot there. Thank God the rink was closed on Sunday, or we might have gone weeks at a time without seeing each other.

He watched videos of champion skaters at home, volunteered with the little kids’ classes twice a week, and took part in a holiday show class that mostly looked like lots of going around in circles to the tune of “Winter Wonderland” or “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I’m sure that Mark—by far the oldest and most experienced skater in the group— was bored to tears, which only shows his dedication to the cause.

The payoff arrived when, a few years ago, Mark made the national championships at the Novice level. They were held in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the middle of January. Over the ten days we were there, the temperature got above zero exactly twice. One day, it was colder there than in Antarctica. Further proof that the skating powers-that-be are evil.

In any case, Mark came in twelfth—out of twelve. But still: One of the top dozen skaters in the country at his level? Not too shabby.*

(*After high school, Mark switched to pairs skating. This past year, he and his partner made it to nationals, again at the Novice level. They came in seventh—a pretty decent improvement. The event, which is always in January, was held in Detroit. Weather-wise, not an improvement at all.)

Little League

As Mark is to skating, Daveon was, for many years, to little league.

With a few key differences.

The way they were alike is that, just as Mark has a passion for skating and it has been his main thing for several years now, Daveon played baseball every season for at least five or six years in the spring season. He even threw in a few years of fall ball for good measure. The year he aged out of Little League, he immediately started looking forward to turning eighteen in January, when he could find an adult rec league to play for in the spring.

As for the differences: Through a combination of natural gift and tons and tons of hard work, Mark has made himself a high-level skater. Daveon, by his own admission—at least when he got old enough to start trading bravado for self-awareness—was never more than an average player. He is a terrific baserunner and a mediocre fielder. As a hitter—well, let’s just say, when he got a hit, it was cause for major team celebration.

Daveon might have had one or two practices per week, plus two or three games. Outside of that, he picked up a ball and bat exactly . . . never. This is not an exaggeration. At one point, we (OK, I) paid for a private coach to help him with his hitting and fielding. The coach gave him exercises to do daily in between their weekly sessions. Daveon did these . . . well, never. It reached the point where the coach—a guy I was paying handsomely, mind you—told Daveon that he (coach) would not see him (Daveon) again unless he (Daveon) started the daily practice. I guess Daveon was too young to understand that a coach willing to give up a client(’s dad)’s money was as rare as the honest man that guy with the lamp went around the world looking for. In any case, the threat didn’t change Daveon’s behavior one iota. So there went the private lessons.

Keep in mind, all this time he was planning his career as a major leaguer.

As far as logistics, baseball beats skating hands-down. I’ve already described the wonders of the skating year. By contrast, baseball is a short, very intense season where you are out on a field for three- or four-hour stretches, three to four times a week, for about three months. The parks are all within a half hour of the house. It’s sunny and pleasant—except for our wonderful Northern California summer days when it’s gray and freezing—and the rhythm of the game allows for much bonding among parents. You can also bring siblings who can play at the nearby park. You will have trouble getting those siblings out of the park to go home.

Daveon’s little league career did have a few memorable moments. There was his first big hit, a “triple” that was basically the result of three throwing errors on the part of the other team. I will never forget the sight of that little guy with his arms upraised in victory, nor the cheers of his coaches and teammates.

Neither will I forget the season where, over a period of about six games, his every at-bat went in this sequence: walk, hit by pitch, walk, hit by pitch, walk, etc. I’m not even kidding. The upside? His on-base percentage that year was about .800. The downside? Welts.

And personally, the highest highlight was the year Daveon won the Valim award, voted by coaches for the player who best demonstrates leadership, character, loyalty, and courage. His coach, who nominated him, gave a beautiful speech about how Daveon was exactly the kind of player the award was created for. He may have struck out a lot, and there probably aren’t any Gold Gloves in his future, but where heart is concerned, Daveon is in a league of his own.

Union Square

If you live in the Bay Area, or have ever visited San Francisco, you’re probably familiar with Union Square. For anyone else: Union Square is an actual square—a block-square plaza with sidewalks and grassy areas and a small restaurant/café at one end (not to mention an underground parking garage, which might be the most important thing about it in downtown S.F.)—in the heart of the city’s upscale shopping district. Macy’s runs along one side, the Westin St. Francis Hotel along another. From the square you can look out onto storefronts including Tiffany, Neiman Marcus, Gucci, and Saks Fifth Avenue.

During the holidays, the city lights a giant tree and menorah on the square (you know, diversity). Throughout the year, a variety of performances take place there, to the delight of well-heeled shoppers and tourists. Among the performers who delighted? My kids.

If I may puff a few feathers here, I don’t know many parents whose kids have performed in Union Square. I have two, who performed at different times, for different events, in the same year.

Daveon, as fits his birth order, came first. Daveon had been taking lessons from DJ Lamont, an awesome guy who provided the music at Uncle Cedric and Ray’s wedding party. During the party, Daveon spent most of his time over at the DJ booth, watching and asking and learning. Lamont just happened to teach DJ skills to kids, so every Saturday for about six months, Daveon would hop BART into the city, walk to Lamont’s house, and have a lesson. He actually managed to use his training to pick up a couple of gigs—even one that paid.

As part of his program, Lamont featured his students at a Union Square event as part of San Francisco Pride.* So, in June of 2010, Daveon “DJ Dreme” (actually, I think he was DJ Tic-Tac at the time**) took the stage and did an hour-long set.

(*For those who don’t know (is there anyone out there who doesn’t know?), Pride is San Francisco’s annual LGBTQ event. It regularly turns out over half a million people.)

(** Someone gave him the name Tic-Tac as a reflection of his small size. I begged him to change it—it made him seem like a novelty act. Dreme, an anagram of his and his brother’s initials, finally stuck.)

Suffice it to say, he was a hit. You haven’t lived until you watch a bunch of German tourists doing the dance-along to “YMCA” as put on by a fourteen-year-old African American boy on a public plaza under a giant rainbow flag (wrong season for the menorah). I have the video to prove it.

The event went so well that Daveon was invited back for the next couple of years, long after he had stopped taking lessons with Lamont. This includes the year that a couple of my sisters came out to visit with their kids, and decided that a trip to the zoo that day was way more important than seeing their nephew/cousin showing off his unique talents. Because, you know, gay people.

Family issues aside, those gigs went so well that for the last year, Lamont invited Daveon to open on the main stage at the main Pride event on Sunday in Civic Center. True, it was cold, gray, and pretty empty—the Saturday partiers were not exactly awake yet when the festival opened at 11. But if anyone can make a jam out of spinning for a couple of security guards, a homeless lady, and Dad, it’s DJ Dreme.

Meanwhile, remember Mark’s participation in our ice rink’s annual holiday show? He did that one year, and the next. And then I guess someone got really excited by kids going in circles to crowd favorites, because the next thing you know, the group got a booking to perform in a show of notable Bay Area skaters.

The venue? Union Square, of course.

Like many places, Union Square throws up a human-powered outdoor ice rink at the holidays. Although, the night Mark & Co. performed, it was freezing enough that they probably could have gotten away with natural ice.

The menorah was up, the show was—you know, circles and “Sleigh Bells.” As for Mark, I think the most memorable moment was when he got his picture taken with Kristi Yamaguchi. So when he becomes ultra-famous, she can say, “I knew him when.”

Next Chapter: Family Lore