"As someone who loves to capture moments, I’m convinced the best moments, like butterflies, were never meant to be captured.

Delicate as they are fleeting—flickers of light sprinkling magic dust in their wake. The only way to enjoy them is to be there, in their midst…

It was on a dusty and humid night in Tulum that my sister and I stumbled upon that magic.

Arriving only a few hours earlier, we’d meandered our way through the city’s Independence Day festivities:

The proud mariachi band

The wide-eyed kids blowing their bubbles

The street performers slinging fire in the intersection

We’d exchanged broken Spanish with the weathered man sitting in the pews

And we considered buying homemade jewelry from one of the local vendors

But strangely, or not so strangely, something left us wanting

A typical symptom of conspiring sisters, we weren’t ready to put our curiosity to bed

Listlessly peering from our hotel window, we were seduced by the young, vacant night.

Stepping in between the shadows of sporadic passersby along the potholed streets, a light guided us in the distance

We followed it...”

The Kitchen and Beyond

How one chef is solving the world’s problems with the “Seed of the Universe”

My Father loved the Sea

The sea swelled and receded with each breath.

The same blue sea that was forever on his horizon.

The same blue sea that gave him hope for one more dip.

And he same blue see that called to me after he was gone.

Just breathe.

Anticipating its first bite of cold, I briskly waded my way through the current and submerged beneath its surface. His spirit washed over me in a wave of salt water. And held me like he did when I was a child.

The chill revived my spirit as it took hold, lifting my head to the surface and casting my face toward the sun.

My gaze settling on the horizon.

Dad?

His bright blue eyes lit up as they always had in my reflection, the same color as water. His giant grin glimmering across the sea with the sun, endlessly.

This is it, Dad. We’re here. We’re FINALLY here. Isn’t it something?

It sure is, Sheen.

He was here, he was all around me. Always in adventure, in sunshine, in the ocean—the things we had bonded over time and time again.

But not enough time.

His love of it all, insatiable, like the ocean.

All my grief and vitality merged as one unfolding in the rhythmic exhalation of those waves… in and out.

So, I set out into the water, it calls my name. And I call his…

I love you, Pops.