Heathen #1 On The Fly

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”                                                                              – Johnny Cash

Great quote, right? I stole that from a friend’s Facebook feed today, thereby proving that I can actually get LAZIER than just using Wikipedia as my sole research source. Pathetic, really. But, it seemed actually relevant, and here’s why: today was Track & Field Day for the kids in our school district. As a parent, you’re invited to attend, or actually work the event, depending on how much you love your child. I mean, I love mine and all, but since I don’t want to come across all helicopter-y (and, I forgot to sign up), I participated from a spectator’s vantage point.

What that loosely translates into is 4 hours of roasting on shiny metal bleachers while your offspring participate in parachute and rubber-chicken tossing events off in the barely visible distant horizon. Desperately, you search the bleachers for a familiar face so that your descent into mild skin cancer won’t be a solo journey. As a father, it’s imperative that you find another father to chat it up with, so that there can be some common conversational topics (damn liberals. Damn conservatives. Damn weather. Damn people) and so as to stir up the least amount of salacious gossip. Beer is not served at this event, and it’s socially frowned upon to show up to your kids’ track meet at 9:30am with a frosty beer in hand (found THAT out the hard way), so you’re left with an apple, some water and time to passively parent.

So you settle in and wait. And wait. And wait. Wait for the actual Running Of The Second Graders, the only event that will take them past the parents at any point in the day. You idly sit there and marvel at how the long jump mostly consists of kids coming off the asphalt, not jumping at all, but just hauling ass into the sand and landing on their cabooses and grinning like foxes in the henhouse.

Which got me to thinking. A lot.

The friend I was sitting with has gone through a lot with his family. I’m currently waist deep in my own troubles, constantly worried that as it comes to my role as a father, I’m failing, paranoid about so many, about so much. Throw your troubles in the public eye, and there’s never a shortage of your peers who have a lot to say about it. To everyone. And I’ve been guilty of defensively throwing up my own barriers, shutting out the haters, hating being shut out by the judgers. It’s a vicious cycle and you hope that your friends will help see you through it all, all the while knowing it’s a process and journey you must endure on your own. You know who’s problems are the worst in the world? Mine. That’s what we all think, but then I need to stop and truly think: I have my children, they have their health and home and love from their parents, and you can’t quantify that. I need to start being just a little more grateful for what I DO have, not the other way around. It was either getting philosophically deep up there in the nosebleed seats or I was in the beginning stages of heat stroke.

As the little girl in soccer cleats, shin guards and a tutu came around the track bend, destined to finish last in her heat, but pushing through nonetheless, I found myself admiring her grit, the spirit in her face and the chutzpah to dress herself like that for a track meet. Parents were cheering her on, chuckling at her Little Engine That Could mindset, probably thinking the same thing: “C’mon, kiddo. Keep charging. Don’t give up, ever.” If only as adults we treated each other with the same genuine encouragement, given without condition. Many can and do, and I’m grateful for their presence in this world.

Everyone is fighting their own battles. Everyone. We’re all struggling, whether it’s with our kids or how to program our remotes. I watched each of these kids run their races, limbs flailing, the obvious athletes cruising into victories while the majority of them clutched their sides and twitched like ants under the magnifying glass, stumbling and weaving across seemingly impossible distances, but finishing always, sometimes with only one shoe on. They were fighting their own battles, swimming in the sunshine and freedom from the classroom walls.

My own son took last in his own heat, by a long shot. He was crestfallen, kept looking at me with the kind of eyes that get puppies adopted. I couldn’t stop grinning at him through the fence.

“Dad, I came in last. Last.”

“I don’t care, son. You were IN the race. THAT’S what matters to me.”

His face slowly shifted, thoughts careening through an 8yr. old’s restless mind. Then, he saw his buddy, tiny little Andy who finished last in his own heat wearing jeans and cowboy boots, and the two took off to throw water balloons at a coach, laughing all the while and forgetting their troubles.

As the kids loaded back up onto buses and the parents were assessing their own sunburns, I heard my my boy say “Yeah, that’s my dad. He ‘s always at these things. He’s my hockey coach, too.”

I might fail at a lot, but as it stands with my boys, I’m in the race. All the way to the finish line, even if it means crossing it with only one shoe on.

The Source Of So Much Engineering Angst

One of my childhood memories that hasn’t been blurred by the passage of time and a million cups of coffee is when I ordered an Ant Farm from the back of a magazine. I gleefully parted with my allowance for the chance to watch some ants burrow in sand, oblivious to the fact that I could look in our yard and witness the same miracle for free. But no, I am and was a sucker for good marketing (hence my insistence upon buying wine based solely upon the artwork of the label), and I was adamant that a plastic container filled with red ants would satisfy my scientific curiosity. As expected, when the package finally arrived, and I tore into it with reckless abandon, half of the ants were dead. Undeterred by the casualty rate associated with U.S. Postal Service transport, I eagerly set up the “farm” and dropped the ants in, with the prescribed droplet of water to motivate them. They seemed unimpressed by the plastic farm buildings in there, and mostly just stabbed one another with their antennae for a while. As typical of my attention span, I stared at it for three minutes, then went outside to try and maim my brother with a croquet mallet over some perceived slight.

While I was gone, and sometime that night, those silly bastards began tunneling in their farm, driven less by a desire to please me and more by instinct, I suppose. When I looked at it the next time, there were tunnels leading everywhere and to nowhere in particular. I felt cheated. Why didn’t they work while I watched them? And, in a cruel glimpse into nature’s ways, some of the ants were dead in some of the tunnels, having constructed their own mausoleums in an act of martyrdom. Like a kid might, I shook their tunnels up as an act of vengeance from an unyielding god, demanding that they construct their farm in front of my eyes. More ant death followed.

Clearly I was not cut out to be The Creator.

But my boyhood frustration signified more than just a desire to control and manipulate the construction of a universe…hell, we’ve ALL been there, right? Ok, maybe that’s just me. Nonetheless, what I truly wanted was not to witness the final product, but the effort and construction, the trials and tribulations that it took these miniscule red devils to CREATE their world. If only I had been there to witness it.

If only.

Now there’s a term.

If only I could spare my boys the heartache that will come from the teasing they will get for their clothing choices. If only I could spare them the pain in this life that comes with establishing your own independence. If only I could fast forward in time when the chaos in my own life has settled into some mangled hybrid of inner peace. If only I could get a publication to say “YES” to an article submission instead of dozens of “HELL NO’s!” In many parts of the world, there are those saying “if only there were food on our table.” I have brothers that probably say “if only my friends were still alive, not shot down in some God-forsaken slice of the desert”. A million people pounding out a million “if only’s” across the world and neither the works of Shakespeare nor world peace will emerge. While it’s endlessly infuriating to realize I cannot will the world to bend to my whims any more than I can bend spoons with my mind, there is also a rough-hewn truth that is beautiful in it’s own way lying there.

The sum of the setbacks, the hard times, all the ways that we get frustrated in our efforts to forge forward equals the characters we become. I don’t want a Presidential candidate who’s never tried drugs, not even once in his life….that person has lived in a bubble outside of reality, which hardly makes him or her qualified lead our nation. I’d rather the person that said, “yeah, I’ve been there, rough place, but I slogged through it, and, well, here we are, so vote for me.” The most interesting people we encounter in this life aren’t necessarily the highest achievers, but the characters who’ve been molded by living a life of insatiable curiosity and getting smacked in the face a few times.

I can “if only” for hours on end, and it makes for a good way to pass the time whilst we navel-gaze, but the truth is that my brothers are who they are because of the things they’ve had to witness overseas, and I love them all the more for it. One of my boys comes home with tales of being teased for bringing a bear to school, and although I wanna punch the kid in the face who teased my boy, I realize, it’s helping my son build strength of character, and I love that character. Screw ‘em….you wanna take your bear to school, you do it. I got your back, son, but you gotta fight this battle on your own.

Someday when the dust all settles, I’ll still be standing, too, having endured all the things that give us the lines on our faces, from parenting to fuel mileage concerns to how we’ve dealt with all of the other characters in our life. And I’ll be that much richer for the ride….so will you.

I’d like to apologize to the occupants of my short-lived Uncle Milton’s Social Engineering Experiment, also known as the Ant Farm. You didn’t die in vain, you crazy red slaves to instinct; you taught me a lot in our short time together.

If only I hadn’t shaken that thing up.

The Legend Back In The Day

I’m a bit of a concert junkie, I admit it. I’m not a groupie, superfan or psychostalker, and my concert history specifically does NOT include ever seeing the Grateful Dead nor Radiohead. So let’s just settle on junkie; I go to concerts when I can and like a kid in a toy store, it seems like EVERY concert is THE BEST concert I’ve ever been to, I swear it this time, I mean it.

So when the legendary B.B. King came to our little corner of Missouri the other night, I knew attendance would be mandatory. After all, the man is the reigning king of the blues and at 86 years young, is likely reaching his final touring years. This was a bucket-list kind of event in my opinion; since the advent of Sirius/XM radio in the house and car, I actually began listening to the blues as a genre. A trip to Kansas City a few years back where I saw the band “Four Fried Chickens & A Coke” fostered a musical curiosity and ever since I’ve associated the blues with hot and sweaty grit, soul, poverty and desperate hope fueled by man’s ways. If I can appreciate blues in the abstract as a means of conveying broken hearts, broken dreams and broken beer bottles crashing down on those who’ve wronged you, seeing them played in concert, by a father of the medium no less, was not something one takes lightly.

I won’t post my crappy cell-phone photos. I won’t tell you his set list. I won’t go into detail about the confrontation that went down between some couples in the back row, where my budget mandated I sit. None of those things are relevant when it comes down to the conveyance of the work of an original master and his beloved guitar “Lucille”. His band was impeccably dressed, masters of their instruments in their own right, tightly knit around Mr. Kings dance along the frets, his songs peppered with an elders recollection of favorite tales to tell. Respectfully, the crowd listened as he rambled about this and that, each of us hanging onto his words, fascinated by what makes a legend tick. With his signature bending of the strings and raspy wail breaking your heart, I was momentarily removed from the litany of chaos in my own world. I’ve never seen a performer or musician so gracious for the opportunity to grace people with his creative whims… every other sentence seemed to be “thank you ladies and gentlemen for having us here tonight.”  An all-around display of class and style, Mr. King and his court make you feel like a slob for just sitting there, NOT in your best suit with a fresh haircut. These guys were grade-A, old school professionals.

I’m not from the mean streets of anywhere, and my story is hardly one that would warrant a bluesman’s lyrics, but I can appreciate the soul that produces such fare. The very same rhythm courses through all of our veins, and if anyone can stir the ability to tap the toes and lament life’s losses a little, well, there’s none better than The King himself. If you get the chance, catch Mr. King in concert; you won’t leave disappointed.

Heartless bastards on coffee break

Somewhere in between the mundane task of dislodging a howling patient from between the tub and toilet to the adrenaline-laced rush of watching someone ride the lightning of a defibrillator shock lies a curious state of being known as observation. One of the first things that they teach you in EMT school is that people are going to die, they’re going to die right in front of you, and try as you might, there are times when that’s just reality. Once in a blue moon, you’re gonna step into a pile of fortuitous awesome and actually make a life save, but don’t hold your breath.

In my opinion, though, worse than working a patient and losing is being told that there’s nothing to do as you get there, that they’re already gone from this world. All you can do is observe, respectfully, the situation surrounding the call and hope you don’t say something stupid.

That’s exactly what we found in the middle of the wee hours of our last shift. Two cars involved, lots of downed light poles, high speed and bad decisions made the entire scene an eerie, awkward mess. Three people refusing medical care and one who would never again make a decision on his own, dead upon arrival.

For practical reasons, we were called to extricate the victim from the wreckage so that the assessment could be made official by the supervising medic. While the boys from the Engine worked to control vehicle fluids meandering down the road and dealt with some errant smoke coming from the engine compartment, the Ladder Truck crew worked the victim. He was knotted up in a curious contortion, and as we worked, it crossed everyone’s mind that a utilized seat belt may well have made a crucial difference here. There is no grace nor beauty in death by car wreck. It is messy, bloody and an affront to the senses. Your cognitive mind doesn’t like to witness this, and you have to shut off your emotions to deal with the task at hand with any sort of sanity. Laid out on the asphalt, among shattered glass and bathed in the strobes of all the emergency vehicles, he takes on a vaguely human form and you begin to sort the pieces out. There is no Hollywood moment where David Caruso is gonna whip off his shades and say “looks like we have……a murder.” There is a quiet acceptance that you’re not going to shove someone’s brains back in their skull, they’re not going to sit up, or walk or ever breathe again. You notice, because his clothes got shredded and torn in the accident, that he has curious and curiously placed tattoos and you wonder what was going on in his life when he made the decision to get those. You wonder what was going through his mind, 12 minutes ago, when they came careening through the intersection, while he was still among the living. He is a nameless young victim, maybe a med school student (probably not, not in our ‘hood), maybe a reprobate skirting along the fringes of the law. None of that matters anymore.

I look up into the ambulance where the driver of the car and front seat passenger are busy refusing medical care, their eyes as big as dinner plates. I wonder if they know that their friend is dead, that their lives changed irrevocably at 1:23am. I hope that his mother doesn’t have to see him like this. I’ve never MET the guy, and I don’t like seeing him like this. It’s such a helpless feeling to just stand there and accept that Death beat you to the punch, again. I feel like he, Death, continually invites us to be pallbearers at the parties he throws. There are times when there’s nothing we can do, except to observe the aftermath, and especially at 2am, when we’re all back in quarters, it’s a lonely feeling. The other boys at the station later confess to restless times in their racks, and though none will say that the death has had an effect on them, I can’t help but wonder if their minds are furiously grinding away like mine. In the morning, some of us will gather at a coffee shop and collectively bash one another over runny eggs and crappy coffee, trying to transition back to our civilian lives. We’ll shelve what we saw in the storerooms of our minds, and as I’m driving home rehearsing the unearned lecture I’m about to give my boys about seat belt usage, Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat” song comes on the air. “Daylight comes/ and me wanna go home”, Harry croons, lamenting his night shift tallying bananas.  Leaving the City limits and my job behind for two days, I couldn’t agree more.

"this IS my downward dog, you morons" (photo by Sarah Sonsthagen)

Sweat raining monsoon-style down my forehead, I’m on my hands and knees, desperate for the mental clarity that will allow me to push forward. Humid claustrophobia slowly chokes me out as my vision blurs and I fear that at some point I may lose control of all muscle function, resulting in what may be me in a pile of my own piss. No house fire should have this kind of sway over me after nearly two decades in the fire service.

But this is no ordinary house fire; in fact it’s not a fire at all, except that my eyeballs are melting from the heat. This, as it turns out, is hot yoga, or as I’ve taken to calling it “hot yogurt”;  I don’t know, somehow that seems less ridiculous sounding. And it turns out that it’s just like exercising in a house fire, minus all the smoke and the random hoarders detritus.

I’ve been drug here by a friend who insists that it’s a nice balance to the workout regimen that is CrossFit. Just as intense as CrossFit, hot yoga encompasses everything I’m not good at: semi-nudity, excessive sweating, flexibility and dignity. I’m told that it’s good for purging all of the toxins that accumulate in your system, and I’m prone to believing it; I taste what I’m sure is a french fry from 1987 working its way through my system. I can’t keep up with all of these flexy, bendable people, and as a result, I look something like a dehydrated walrus on a beach, doing a complex mating dance, minus the seaweed. The friend who’s brought me here is chiseled like a damn Greek God, and by the hostile glares being shot my way from the lady next to me, she’s most agitated that she’s drawn the unenviable spot next to me, a heaving musk ox, as opposed to next to him, all sculpted and shit, cutting manly yoga moves with grace as I slip slide all over my leg hair.

This is supposed to be a spiritual experience, like sitting in the front row of a Shamu show at Sea World, except that instead of sea water, it’s sweat getting flung about, as we think about thrusting our hips out and letting go of all of our worries and having a heat stroke. At once, it’s liberating and emasculating. One moment, I’m folded over in half, attempting to twist my torso into a tourniquet, then next I’m down on my mat, imagining that this is how it feels to get slow roasted in a Crock-Pot, simmering in my own juices and hating myself at levels previously unimaginable. When the teacher, who looks like she bounces quarters off her abs as a sideshow act, opens up the door in a brief moment of mercy, I’m giddy with oxygen-deprived joy at the thought of a rush of air across my disgusting corpse. We’re nearing the end of this little hour and a half exile into slimy zen, and all the while I’m convincing myself that this is a good thing, this is going to help with hockey strength, with flexibility, with focus on the positive in my life.  I’m withering, praying for sweet release, my toes sweating in concert with the drool that is freely leaving my gaping mouth, my body in full revolt as if to say “what the HELL are you doing to us?”

I don’t know, body. I do know that in a half-hour you’re gonna feel a million times better. That long dormant french fry will be purged, our thoughts will focus less on the haters in this life, and we’ll find ourselves at the front desk, willingly signing up for another round of purification at 10,000 degrees.

A few years back on the Central Coast

Last weekend I took the Heathens to the movies. Just they and me, us just three. We saw “We Bought A Zoo”, a heart-wrenching tale of a father and his two kids who undertake ownership of a zoo as part of buying a house, all brought on by their attempt to move past the death of the mom in the family. Heathen #2 took the opportunity to nap, #1 took it all in and wrestled with the concept of death and roaring lions, while I took the chance to weep like a damn baby every five minutes. Yeah, I don’t recommend you go into that movie with the hopes of a comedic romp, but if you feel like staining your sleeves with tears and snot like a child might, then by all means, go.

The movie highlighted the struggles of family dynamic, of a father trying to connect with his son and daughter, trying to find purpose when his has seemed to vanish into the ether. I haven’t lost a spouse to death, nor have I up and quit my day job, but nonetheless, I’m struggling. We all are. In this time of Facebook and Twitter, where everyone is trying to sell either the very best versions of what they WANT you to see, or in the case of the  latter, bitter snark, it’s easy to feel as though you’ve fallen off the Normal Train.

Lord knows I’ve made horrendous errors. My propensity to only learn things the hard way has cost me pride, dignity and self-respect on more than one occasion. I’ve had friends, good friends, take a look at me and just say “nahhh, I’m not dealing with you.” The ability to take everything too personally has slowed down my personal growth to the point where the middle finger is often my primary reaction to people who may, or may not be, just trying to help. And the sad truth is that is it’s probably going to be that way in many aspect of my life, always. I never wanted to grow up thinking “well I better not experience THAT part of life, because I’ve been told it’s not good, or it’ll hurt.” I’ve NEEDED to grab the stove, so that I could KNOW what getting burned felt like, to hurt like that, to live.

So how to reconcile this rocky path I keep choosing with raising my boys with a semblance of stability? I looked over at them during the movie, as the father in the movie was in the middle of arguing with his son, and I felt distinct chest pains; already my boys like to push the edge of the envelope, and although it’s a normal part of establishing your individual identity, it still hurts sometimes. People in this life will let you down, as I have to many, and I’ve had done to me; but these, my boys, my most rewarding endeavor in this life….they’ve changed the game completely. At the age of six and eight, they’ve taught me more about being an adult than any other adult I’ve known. It is they who continue to teach me how to be a parent. Those two giggling spasms of drive-me-loco energy are who prop me up from my darkest moments. From some unknown paternal well of inner resolve, I’m able to put aside my selfish drive and focus on strength for them in return. From the moment they arrived into this world, naked and screaming, nothing has driven me quite like the sense of protective love I feel for those lunatics. Nothing else could.

Our paths together will continue to wind around unknown corners, little hurts and big heartbreaks testing our will and resolve. But I didn’t get to town on the Normal Train myself, so to bend to convention seems an unlikely option as a parent for me. I’ll love those boys ferociously, for all their lives and then some, and maybe they’ll grow up to question just what kind of unhinged dad they’ve inherited. That’s okay, I’ve never claimed to be normal, or stable for that matter. They’ll grow up with many questions about this fantastic, mean, beautiful world, but one thing I hope they never question is my boundless love for them.

As heart-wrenching as it was, it really wasn’t the movie causing my eyes to leak so prolifically. The sheer enormity of this journey of fatherhood can, at once, cause you to buckle at the knees and give you the kind of strength you never dreamed existed. What a crazy blessing. Thanks for having my back, boys. I’ll always have yours. Always.

My Grandparents On Their Honeymoon, 1941. Old School.

“Thanks, Grandpa, for letting me drive you to the service; it means a lot to me to be able to spend this time with you”, I said, probably a little too loudly.

“I didn’t have a damn say in the decision”, he replied.

“Odd”, I thought, “that’s the second time in ten minutes he’s cursed”. While I may swear like a sailor on shore leave, my grandfather isn’t prone to profanity except in times of great distress. So, in essence, it wasn’t weird at all: my grandmother, his wife of 70 years, had passed away in her childhood home after 92 years of toil on this earth. While not totally unexpected following a difficult surgical procedure, the loss is profound for all of us, not the least of which for this once-strapping man, reduced at age 94 to minimal talk and the frail carriage of a body he struggles to control. Here’s the man who showed me how to ride a bicycle backwards in his late 60’s now requiring two people and a considerable effort to get him from his wheelchair to the car, where I’ll spend what will probably be our last time together privately, save for Uncle Phil riding in the back seat.

As soon as he uttered his seemingly derisive curse, I noticed the faintest hint of a smile curl up at the corner of his mouth. He was yanking my chain in the face of all this sadness, while I witnessed, for the first time in 33 years of knowing him, a tear escape his blurred eyes. His rock, his soul mate, the love of his life had soldiered on into the beyond, and while he was surrounded by family, I was struck by the enormity of his new, lonely reality. And yet, there he was, tears dripping on to his natty pin-striped suit, busting my chops, just a little.    

“Did I ever tell you about the time I told mother to meet me in Omaha?” he mumbled to me as we bounced through the rough outlying town of Oildale, a nasty stretch known for brawling roughnecks and hardscrabble living.

I thought I’d heard all of his stories over the years; most I knew by heart. I’ve always tried to patiently hear each one each time, knowing that these chapters are the significant tales of his life, and someday, when he’s gone, those will be my memories of him. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard this story and told him as much. His stooped posture took on a re-invigorated thrust of energy, and his gnarled hand rested on my arm, one conspirator to another as Uncle Phil leaned forward from the back seat, hungrily devouring his father’s words, no matter the content.

“I had just graduated from Officer’s Candidate School in Maryland” he feebly uttered, “and I wanted to get posted as far west as I could, wanted to get back home. So I tried for, and found out I was going to be stationed at Ft. Crook, Nebraska. That’s near Omaha, you know. And so I got ahold of your grandma in Bakersfield and told her ‘Meet me in Omaha’. It was 1941, or 1942, and the war was on. I got on a train, and mother got on a train in Bakersfield, and wouldn’t you know it, three days later, we both got there. (I later found out they got there within a half an hour of one another, something of a miracle, given the time period, the war, all of the variables).  So there we are, and I meet her on the platform at 11 at night, and I hadn’t seen her in 3 months….” his voice trailed off at this point, and he muttered a little more about getting a hotel and ending up in Nebraska for 3 years, but for the briefest moment, as he described being on the train platform, he was again a young man in uniform, serving his country and waiting for his pregnant bride, a remarkably stoic and thoughtful woman. The reunion was being played out in his mind, and he was  joyful at the thought; more tears flowed. Time froze for he and I both, loving silence enveloping us in its sad beauty.

“I told you to slow down; it’s 45mph here, and you’re going to get a damn ticket if you’re not careful”

“Yes, sir. I’m doing 44, Grandpa.”

“I know. You know that time we took that trip to Mexico?”

“Of course Grandpa. It was a very important time in my childhood.”

“I remember we were all there at Puerto Vallarta, at dinner, and Robert announced that he would be marrying your mother. And I remember, you must have been, what, 7? And I remember you looked up at me and you said ‘Now I can call you Grandpa’”, another sad smile emerging from the corners of his mouth as he recounted the evening in perfect detail. “I told you to slow down through here.”

Now we’re BOTH leaking water from our eyes, the tough old farmer and me. He and grandma were the only grandparents I’d ever really know, accepting me into the family as one of their own from the moment I came crashing into their lives a chaotic 4yr. old, top of my lungs and full throttle. In their strong, quiet way, they’d be the foundation of so much in my life, from the now priceless hand-knit pot holders she would give me at Christmas to the work ethic he demanded of his family, trying to instill a sense of self-sufficiency and pride in craftsmanship that is the hallmark of each of their seven children.

He was at once strong and vulnerable as the oil derricks and freight trains quietly passed by the windows of his Buick, and our time slipping too fast before my eyes. He won’t read this, and I don’t know if he can today recall the conversation we had three days ago, but as we journeyed together to bid a sad farewell to a remarkable woman, he gave me what will probably be his last and most important gift: the recognition of our bond as family with all that that entails: loving, squabbling, growing, but through it all, doing it together.

After the service and the lunch and he was situated in his chair, grandmother’s recliner conspicuously unoccupied by little more than memory, I clutched his gnarled hand and told him that, yes, I’d be safe going home, and more importantly, I love you, Grandpa.

“I love you too, Uli.”

Maybe she’s in heaven and maybe she’s in Omaha, but I bet no matter where it is, she’s waiting to meet you there, Grandpa. And she’ll be damn happy to see you again. Thanks for the ride, it was worth every last mile to me.

Yeah. That. Courtesy of Wollongong, Australia

“Face it: you’re a town guy. You NEED people around you, neighbors to steal coffee from, people to shoot the bull with.”

Of course, she was right. People that know you generally are, especially when it comes to your defining characteristics. I was heading down an off-ramp of isolation, about to be compounded by a 24-hr. flu. My eyeballs were sore, my body ached and my mindset was all knotted up. Living as we do, out on 5 acres and surrounded by relatively xenophobic neighbors, you must get used to your own company, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with a borderline Amish personality.

We’ve been out there about 6 years, and that which I loved so much has turned into a lonely landscape, especially this time of year, leaves off the trees and a bitter wind coming out of the west most days. Without the old excavation company to justify needing so much flatland, the big shop and wide open spaces, it is a reminder of a business gone; and, like the neighborhood feels when your lifelong friend moves away in the fourth grade, it’s that much less fun to live on that street. But mostly, I miss people.

Surely the need to be in contact with my fellow man is a thwarting mechanism for dealing with latent issues of abandonment, or some other psychological malady occupying the walls in my head. And, at the rate the therapist charges, you feel the need to consent most wholeheartedly. But there’s a part of me that prefers the wisdom of my friend in the coffee shop, she responsible for that quote above. I DO like people. I find them fascinating, their stories weaving character into our lives, so much more interesting than watching my weeds wither all winter long. I find a calm with people that I never would used to have, back when I acted so much older, a 65 year old in a 30 year old body, bitching nonstop about the errant ways of others.

Whether it’s at CrossFit, down at Patton Alley Pub, the ice rink or the firehouse, we all need some community. We need to belong to woodcarvers guilds and historical societies and fraternities of one stripe or another. When we leave those communities we tend to cast about, rudderless fools adrift in chum-laden chaos. And I LIKE chaos, just minus the chum.

I’m glad she recognized that fact; when we get down in the mouth it feels good for a friend to reach out and say “hey, jerk! Come back to your community. You may be an ass, but you’re our ass.” And sometimes that means a change of address.

I hope the future neighbors have coffee.

No running for me, thank you very much

This time of year, Missouri lives in a cold-storage state of mind. We’re stockpiling holiday cheer and consumptive orgies for round 2, having just overindulged at Thanksgiving and lazily eyeballing the birth of Christ as personified by televisions going on sale at low, low prices. One particular day, the weather turns cold, very cold and we brace for it with ever-louder holiday music and a fondness for melted cheese dip. Belts get loosened a notch and we analyze football games on the weekend while inflatable Santas keep watch over the neglected leaves in our yards.

No wonder people hate themselves over the holidays.

We cook like the end of times is nigh, we apply subtle social pressure to one another (“hey, are you already done shopping for the kids? Bob knocked his all out  last week. What an asshole”), we pretend not to notice the wagging finger of the devout as they clamor for us to remember the Christ in Christmas, and we force smiles to one another as we anticipate yet another two weeks of our children NOT being school and tearing our homes apart all while we seethe inwardly and debate the merits of child labor laws in our minds. It is enough to make you pray to the baby Jesus in the manger to smite down the inventor of Black Friday in a righteous fury. THAT would have set the tone for history, in my opinion.

But since Jesus has not seen fit to smite down those who would program holiday music to begin the day after Halloween, I need to find other ways to avoid fits of freezing temper tantrums. Workout burnout comes quickly to the short attention spanned, and there’s something cleansing about running that even motivated me to write about it the other day (here). In this weather, though, running is pure misery, in some respects. Grown men end up wearing tights (guilty), snot meanders onto your upper lip more frequently, and it’s hard to catch your breath in cold jabs. Misery, it turns out, loves company. I know someone who I can force to run with me, even on those days when my runner-wife decides she can’t bear to watch my painful loping: the dog.

He’s been signed up to run the Frosty Paws 5k with me on December 10, and he didn’t even sign a consent form. To be fair to the poor bastard, I thought he might be in need of a training run or two, since he’s been living like a damn spoiled Saudi prince at the house. That picture above? His normal workday, personified.

So we ran this morning. He was less than impressed, and after taking a prolific dump somewhere near mile one, I could tell his heart just wasn’t into it. Clearly, he was missing his daytime episodes of Animal Cops Houston and pining for another rendition of “White Christmas” to be cranked over the airwaves. With a droolish curious look on his mug, he trotted alongside me full of the attitude you’d expect from a teenager, only to be excited by the taunts of random squirrels and the chance to pee on new trees. That’s ok….if I’m going to have festive cheer foisted upon me, he’s going to have cold runs forced upon him in anticipation of a race in a few weeks. It’s the holidays, dammit. Show some spirit.

The Dad We Wish We Had On Turkey Day

You know, we have so much to be thankful for, you and I.

If you’re reading this, you have access to the internet, which means you’re not spending you time hunting down raccoons for a meal. Likely you have a roof over your head, the ability to live outside of the yoke of an oppressive regime in the heat of the Middle East and enough money to buy that latte you’re drinking at Starbucks with your Power Mac laptop which is how you stumbled across this page.

As a cynical raconteur and avowed skeptic, I find it easy to take the “not only is the glass half empty, it’s cracked and leaking but I’m too lazy to do anything about it except complain to no one in particular” approach. On a related note, this is precisely why I’d make a crappy religious zealot; I wouldn’t believe myself most of the time. I could stand to be a little less jaded, I suppose, a little peppier when I get into a fender bender, a few more “woo-hoo’s” at CrossFit when I see someone skipping rope really, really fast. And truly, in this life, there is so much for which to be grateful.

• The unconditional love your children have for you (at least before their age gets into the double digits)
• The way in which your dog acts upon your return home, even if you were only gone for 5 minutes; the maniacal tail (or nub) wagging, the eyes, casting about wildly, the incessant pawing. You’ll always be the biggest celebrity in your dog’s world.
• Waking up in a country where you can be as free as you’d like. Free to be informed, free to be ignorant, but most importantly, free to be.
• Thermostats in the winter, and the ability to use them.
• Enough leisure time on our hands that we pay the Kardashians of this world exorbitant sums to basically live in front of cameras and date/marry professional athletes at their casual will.
• We can choose to run for health or sport as opposed to running for our lives from a pride of hungry lions with low blood-sugar issues.
• When Wall Street’s greediest chowderheads choose to abscond with others money, and our faith in man falters, we still forgive our neighbor for running over our garbage cans or that jerk who swiped your parking space….we forgive him too. Or we oughta.
• A well stocked liquor store on virtually every corner. Turns out, that’s quite handy.
• Family. Even the one’s you’re not talking to right now.
• Friends. Even the one’s who won’t talk to you right now.
• A house to clean. Laundry that needs to be done, because that means you’re still needed for more than just operating the dishwasher.
• Want bacon? Go buy bacon. Want a big-screen tv? Go buy one. Wanna meet a disease-infested tranny hooker in a park after hours? Go to Craigslist. My point? We don’t lack for much, except for an appreciation for what’s in front of us.

And I may well be the worst when it comes to a basic appreciation…..but not today. So thank you, one and all, for mostly just being you; friend or foe, you’re shaping the landscape of this life for me, and I’m grateful for the challenges and gifts of this life. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled pessimism soon enough, but today, I’m just thankful.