Room #306 Where Are You?

We had a third grandchild added to our family mix in the last couple of weeks.

The birth of Lyla has reinforced a philosophy we have and that is this: there are certain times in life when everything should come to a complete halt in a family, and those times are weddings, deaths, and births. No matter what else we have going on, when one of those three occur, we find some way to put our own agendas on hold. Once in a lifetime these are the occasion that call for a lot of attention and a bucket load of sensitivity, a “pouring out” of yourself.

There are certainly other life shifts that run a close second to those events like graduations, retirements, moving, and our calendars sometimes get chalk full of them. However, nothing trumps the Three Biggies, those huge life moments where the sight of our faces speak volumes, and our praying hands are essential.

I think part of the logic behind setting aside time for life-changers, like a birth for example, comes from the many new layers of feelings that float in or float away. Slowing down creates time to be gracious, to lean in on someone else’s joy or heaviness, to listen, to sit and have coffee, to recognize a temporary new normal. These are the times to stop and reset our vision of reality.

To illustrate how uncomfortable we feel when we stop, imagine that you enter a building looking for Room 306 to pay your water bill. You begin down a long corridor, and as you walk you notice the lack of other doors or windows on either side, making the hallway seem narrow and constrictive. You begin to feel a bit nervous and pick up your step to get to Room 306 because, let’s face it, you want to get out of the hallway.

Abruptly, another person comes around the corner and approaches, which causes you to shift a bit to the right so they can pass. This person is called Front Guy. And then, surprisingly you notice another person walking behind you, catching up. He is Back Guy.

This is the corridor most of us find ourselves walking much of the time, at least unconsciously, when life gets crowded with things and events. We become Mr. Hurry-Up-and-Wait Guy but then run smack dab into ourselves named Mr. Meeting-Myself-Coming-and-Going.

Now, including Mr. Front Guy and Mr. Back Guy, there are four people in the hallway with us trying to move around each other. They are all uncomfortable and want out of the hallway. They don’t talk because they are all nervous. They don’t move because there is no room to move. Everyone’s in too big of a hurry. What they do is bump off the walls creating headaches that need Tylenol. Nobody gets anywhere.

That is when we meet Wherever-I-Go-There-I-Am. It’s where we first started. It can be comfortable there and peaceful. It is where our new grandbaby Lyla is, and we love bumping into her.

Drop and Give Me Twenty

Remember when they told us that a computer would take the place of paper? At the time I had some swamp land I could sell you, too.

Now we write our words on every surface we can get our hands on, including our tattooed hands. TV and computer ads swell our brains, clog our vision, and personal signage demands our attention at every turn. We cover our children’s eyes when we pull behind a car that is F-bombed with a bumper sticker proclaiming a favorite cause or philosophy. It’s a visual pollution we are forced to inhale until we can cough away the tailpipe fumes.

I recently saw an advertisement for a lawn business on the side of a truck named “Kicking Your Grass.” I’m sorry, but were all the wholesome grass names in the English language already taken? I use a lawn service titled after the owner’s first name, Steve. He has enough confidence in his skills and services to mow a lawn without threatening to kick it anywhere.

What we are talking about here, of course, is free speech, one of those inalienable rights our forefathers gave us to ward off tyrannical censorship. The fine line, that between censorship and discretion, is one we have been walking ever since. It’s the line that gets stepped on when your free speech and my free speech cross over each other. In other words, my grass is yours until your dog poops on it, then it’s your job to clean it up. Not doing so sends us down a slippery slope of resentment, revenge and in this country even violence.

One of the saddest chapters in my life was my college days. I did a lot of dumb things back then. For example, I brazenly wore a t-shirt that said, “Spare the Sperm, Save Our Whales.” I thought the slogan was funny and got a lot of cheap laughs when I wore it. Now, I see that t-shirt as the exhortation of vulgarity, and an example of a derogatory jingle posing as a magic charm. I wonder how many parents had to cover their children’s eyes to protect them from my offensive whale trail?

I had an interesting conversation with ex-Marine the other day. He told me a story about a fellow Marine who couldn’t get anything right, and every time he messed up during basic training, it cost everyone in the unit. None of the Marines were allowed to take their frustration out on him in any way. Instead, when their fellow marine screwed up, they all paid by joining him in more marching, more push-ups, and more grueling drills. Their commanding officer made it clear that in battle there is no time for emotions. They would not be saved by their feelings or their opinions, but by their clear-headed thinking and the training of the guy next to them.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press

Hmmmmm. No time for emotions. Interesting. I wonder if the Marines have been onto something all these 250 years? You’ll not see a loud trendy sign polluting a Marine’s front yard, or a Marine wearing a t-shirt encouraging another shot at Willy Barracuda’s Tequila Bar. Their training has taught them to watch each other’s back, and that there is a risk in embedding oneself in their own impulses. They are trained to drop and give their fellow Marine twenty push-ups rather than pushing a personal viewpoint.

Unfortunately, the wholesale proliferation of our culture’s ridiculous signage has become part of the quicksand our country is slowly sinking into, one individual at a time. We cannot wiggle free of our polarized stance until we look to the guy next to us and give up some of our freedom of bad speech. In simple terms, that means editing our words, wherever we put them out there. In exchange, we may find ourselves able to get out of the quagmire we fell into and really be free. Perhaps we need to look at the values that matters most, instead of looking at the individual who matters most.

That Marine I met wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing one of those Save the Whale t-shirts, or any other with the latest logo, trend or cause. He would have been too busy, down in the trenches, doing something about it.

The Overcoming Life

We tend to think of summertime as a time of renewal and growth, of greens and warmth, and a shedding of our winter protection. It is not always so. Life has seasons too, but they are not seasonal like the weather. They arc through as plots and subplots, but they are not scheduled like classes for us to pick and choose. We do not sign up for the seasons we want or need, we sign up for everything we get.

Oswald Chambers, the great theologian, once said that God does not give us an overcoming life, but a life as we overcome. He knew better than to tell us to look for a clear winner or loser, or to rely on the joys of summer like our grills, our pool parties or baseball games. Rather, he was warning us to expect a series of battles in which we would be challenged to find our great Protector. He knew something about life’s mercurial nature, a mysterious sojourn through special effects like fog, cliffs, and winding pathways that would cause us to grasp at nothing, trip and sometimes fall. He knew those would also be our seasons.

Recently I had a good friend die rather suddenly. He was one of my buddies, a guy I could hang with, laugh with, goof around with and yes, commiserate with. Chuck and I didn’t see each other often but when we did, my life filled up with a renewed hope for what lie ahead. He made my difficult seasons easier, and through our exchanges, the fog lifted for a while. Now Chuck is out there, above me, but still with me, encouraging me to lean into my faith, but I still miss his presence in front of me.

I am letting go of the once-beautiful gum tree that formed an enormous canopy over my yard, which I call a garden. The difference between a yard and a garden is that you live in a yard, but you grow in a garden. The gum will be cut down this fall and I will have to let go of how the sounds, light and water moved through it. The birds will have to get used to landing somewhere else, and I will have to have faith that new life will spring forth as God and my garden decide what to do with each other.

I don’t like loss. It’s not the adjustments that hurt – it’s the soreness I get from stretching those faith muscles I haven’t used in a while. They are there and ready, but I’ve been ignoring them for fear that they might break if I put them to use, or they might ache if I ask them to sing and breathe again. Loss is not a spectator sport. We will be immersed in it whether we like it or not, and to insist on sitting on the bench will only make it worse. Our garden and our friends would not want us over there by ourselves.

Over the past year I’ve sent out over one thousand queries to agents asking them to read my book called Something to Write Home About. Though the book has evolved, gotten tighter, more readable and richer, agents are still not responding. Through the myriad modifications and marketing efforts, my book is not getting off the ground. It may never launch, and as time goes on, I feel a subtle nudge to let it go, and let God take me down a new path, perhaps a new book. It may be time to recognized that my determination to hold on and keep trying has taken on the mask of stubbornness, which sound a lot like the dark side of being stuck.

So, I listen closely to the sound of new birds moving around. They are the ones looking down from above and seeing things I cannot see. They are in other yards, waiting to move in and take up creative residency in the new tree I will plant someday where branches reach out again and cover my sense of loss and sadness.

Without Chuck, without the old gum tree, without a book agent, life will not be the same. New muscles are stretching everywhere while God and loss figure out what to do with each other. They look like the same person, but they are both the beginning of something new.

And, Oh the Places You'll Go!

The hardest part of a race is when you’re in the middle of it. When I was teaching, the winter months weighed in heavy and found me trudging, just barely, through thickets and mud. The corner seemed to turn around spring break when being able to finish another school year became doable—a genuine, palpable entity.

For teachers, parents, kids, and the whole community, finishing this school year marks the end of an achievement and a feeling of moving forward. It’s not spring or summer but a pass to the next season, another level whether that level is kindergarten, seventh grade, or high school.

“Did you get bored with the same level of teaching, year after year?” a friend asked me the other day.

“Whaddaya mean?” I asked.

“I mean, I know the kids change, but when you are a teacher, you don’t change grades. They move up and on, but you don’t really…move.”

It was a fair question. I knew enough to know my friend’s question was climbing a different hill.

On the surface, it is true. Teachers don’t move up or down by levels as kids do. For them, there is no sense of graduation, no certificates of achievement, and for the most part, little recognition. Teachers are working hard to make sure the accolades are going to all their students that have grown and matured in some way, either academically, athletically, or even socially. That is part of the job of being a teacher. It’s all for the kids.

As I gave this more thought, however, a memory came back to me. I was out on the playground at the end of one school year talking to another teacher when a sick feeling came over me about my own past teaching year. I realized that in so many ways, I had let the kids down by my lazy teaching methods and my lack of enthusiasm. While during the year I had thought I was smart by taking short cuts in the classroom, I had undermined the very thing that was motivating me to teach. I wasn’t moving forward with my own learning, the learning that gave me a sharp edge, the learning that kept me one step ahead of the kids and engaged.

The kids were moving up, but I wasn’t, and that was the problem. It was a feeling I never wanted to have again.

Learning should always be exciting. If it’s not, something else is going on, but it’s not learning.

Do teachers move up? Not by grade levels, but by maturity they must move if they are good teachers. They might be singing, sliding, dancing, or wiggling, but there is movement going on if there’s really learning going on in their classroom. It’s the moving that matters.

I think I was one of the lucky ones to be teaching a subject that I loved which was art. But it is the same for all subjects. We teachers always learn from the students, and as they learn, the classroom changes and moves. There in the back and forth between student and teacher, learning starts to fill the air and the environment becomes electrically charged.

What makes teaching so full and fascinating is that every effort a kid makes is the first of its kind anywhere. Have you ever thought about it? Every new mark on the page, every new report or experiment a child makes is the first of its kind anywhere and contributes to the energy in the room, and in that sense, to the world. That kid is taking a step that is a first for them, always original and fascinating to behold. There is nothing more exciting for a teacher than to see the lightbulbs going off and ideas popping like French fries.

“May I be excused?” says a student raising his hand in the famous Far Side cartoon. “My brain is full.”

No, you may not be excused. Your brain is on a bullet train! Grab a hold of a good teacher, thank him or her for the school year, but hold on for dear life! If you’ve learned anything this year at all you’ll put on your seat belt and lean into your next learning curve!

And, oh the places you’ll go!

We Ain't Playing Here

Recently, my hometown of Evansville, Indiana became part of the national news cycle when a wanted felon was apprehended here after a dramatic car chase. Did you hear about it? The felon had escaped his jail in Alabama with the aid of a guard-turned-girlfriend, instigating a nation-wide search for both of them. Right cheer in Evanspatch, our police force made a heroic effort to nab the felon, thus saving untold lives and Evansville from becoming a brunt of a media Barney Fife joke.

There were many facts about the escapee that got my attention, among them the fact that he was 6’9” tall. That is not just tall, that is approaching Biblical proportions, and we know what happened to a lot of giants in the Bible. Our unwanted “wanted” Alabama visitor made a last-ditch effort to escape and appropriately ended up in a ditch and eventually back behind bars.

Granted, there are some things that make me cringe about our town. I sometimes wish we would really clean up our littered streets, beef up our local commercials, and stop carrying grills around in our pick-up trucks, but this time we got it right. Our police were on this criminal faster than a hound flea, avoiding what surely would have been a very ugly and lethal shoot-out.

Still, I was left with some perplexing, if not slightly odd missing pieces from our local drama. With all due respect to the Redneck Riviera, I’d like to revisit the crime scene, and ask a few questions…

1. Why wasn’t this XXXX-Large criminal ever given a basketball in school when he showed signs of veering from the straight and narrow? As a side item, I’d like to comment that he looked rather good in bright orange, which fits the color schemes sported by most pro basketball teams nowadays.
2. Why did he get out of his car while it was in the middle of a car wash? We know in their hearts, all criminals want to come clean, but that’s going too far.
3. What are the chances that a law enforcement officer named “White” would hook up with an unrelated criminal by the same name, and then seal their pre-nuptials by an early honeymoon?
4. Why did this felon risk being seen, and therefore caught, by driving on one of the busiest thoroughfares through Alabama? When I travel that route coming back from Florida, I’m caught in traffic jams every twenty miles starting with the Choctawhatchee Bridge, then Montgomery, followed by Birmingham, Huntsville, and around downtown Nashville.
5. What enticed the fugitive couple to hang around Evansville for six days? Even the law enforcement officers are stuck on this one. I suspect they became addicted, like a lot of us here, on the 831 fast food choices available throughout our fare city.

Well, we may never know the answer to any of these questions, and I won’t be looking for them on any episode of Law and Order, either. I’ll be going about my business, getting my car washed at Mike’s, and eating a cream filled Long John at Donut Bank, and feeling a bit safer than I did before. Thank you EPD!

The Faith to Fetch Water

It is telling that Mother’s Day is the busiest phone day in the United States, with some 122 million calls going out to the ones who brought us all into the world. Back in the day when party lines were shared, loved ones waited all day for their call to go through. Even then, party lines cut conversations in half by the next person waiting in line. While Mother’s Day isn’t the busiest holiday of the year, it’s not a day you want to forget.

I did that once in college, but a quick call from my father corrected that.

It is not within our humanly power to fully appreciate the sacrifices mother’s make for their children’s lives. I was blessed to have a smart, conscientious, dedicated mom, and those good traits were just the tip of her rich character. She was not perfect, and she made mistakes, but often those mistakes were born out of trying to protect and guide me and were not born from her resentment or bitterness. That women have the gift for providing the gentle blanket of empathy and caretaking over their children is a rock-solid truth of life. My mom had that gift also.

Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, was part of the female entourage that accompanied Jesus and his twelve disciples on his ministry during the three years before his crucifixion. In those days, it was common for the women to fetch water for that day’s chores, a task too culturally “low” to ask of men. Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ mother were up before dawn after Jesus died, probably on their way to get water and to care for Jesus’ body (Matthew 18:1), when Mary noticed that his tomb was empty.

Only a mother can imagine the grief and sorrow the mother of Jesus felt as she began her day attending to the simple chores required of her; get water and check on the body of Jesus in the tomb. She probably would rather have gone back to bed and drowned in her sorrow there, but she rose and began her day. Christians would call that faith, and Jesus called it that, too. When we are given the simple job of believing in something, our acts of faith are in the hope of what we cannot see. It is there in those moments, that God redefines us with the grace of his presence. It was also in their act of faith, that Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” went to the tomb and were met by Jesus, the Risen Christ.

Then, He says to us: “Why are you crying?”

Given the horrible death of Jesus on the Cross, I am reminded that in the worst of times, it was a woman who found the courage to move forward and find the miracle along the way, the resurrected Christ standing beside her. It is a moment that all Christianity hangs upon. We lean on our faith, and the faith of Mary, to put one foot in front of the other as she did, to go and fetch water, and find our own miracle in that faith journey.

Mothers help us do that. When all seems lost, mothers find their way through a tomb of darkness. They help us rest and look over our shoulders to the One who has been there all along. They rise before dawn. Then, they bring us a cup of hot tea to heal our wounds with the faith that our problems will be solved in time, and that we will find strength and hope along our own path.

A Dash to the Sea and Back

I moved to Florida back in the early 80’s to a small town touting itself as Florida’s “Luckiest Fishing Village in the World.” At that time, Destin, Florida had one plumber, a newspaper that might not meet its once-a-week deadline, and endless dunes. During the summer months 20,000 people poured in, and charter boats kept the tourists happy with loads of fresh grouper and amberjack. By the time school started up again and tourists tired of the tropical heat, locals began to turn right on red again. The boon season faded, beers went back to seventy-five cents apiece and I played grass court tennis for free just to keep the mole crickets from tearing up the surface.

While Destin has always had a touch of the seasons, I was raised with yearly winters whose snow came down quietly for one or two days, maybe a week, and the Indiana landscape got a good cleaning, like a bleached t-shirt coming out of the wash. The world briefly turned flawless, perfect and timeless. It got quiet during the four months of Winter, but one’s spirit was tested and renewed. You had to be creative to get through it. In contrast, my beach life was invigorating and active, but it always felt like I could break out in a sweat any minute as I circled parking lots looking for a palmetto leaf of shade.

It was one Florida in the summer, another one in the winter. Native or transient, Florida was a place that was difficult to put down roots. Snowbirds, spring breakers, and fish heads rotated in and out of neighborhoods where I lived like spare tires. My job at the newspaper was steady but news wasn’t. I took notes on local bridge and clabber clubs, and there was an occasional new cobia boat that needed christening, but I found myself feeling listless and not having purpose. As much as I tried to immerse myself in the gulf coast culture, making friends in Destin was like hitting a moving target.

With real estate skyrocketing, developers were having a heyday. Multi-million-dollar yachters rolled in, partied, and cut deals for a slice of the real estate explosion. With rapid expansion new businesses were popping up at every corner, giving the illusion that anyone could turn over a piece of property for a buck and then live it up on the beach. Despite a buzz of activity, however, Florida never quite felt like home.

Several of my friends now have time-shares or condos in Florida and take off during the frigid months when grey is the dominant Midwest color. Some fly back and forth to keep dual residences in tow. My Midwest house seems small next to the magnificent sandcastles I witness being made by a beach child. I sometimes wish I could build a deep moat to ward off the bandits of insecurity and indecision, the ones that attack without warning and undercut the foundation of my own castle.

I sit working on my gratefulness, but I also gather images in my head of pelicans flying just inches over breaking waves, harnessing small air pockets that allow them to glide for miles at a time. Sandpipers, like wind-up toys, bump off each other and poke around, and I can see a maintenance man hoist up a yellow flag cautioning the open water swimmers. Those details are in sharp contrast to the relentlessly advancing ocean whose waves are uncountable, yet still come forth, crest, then force power walkers to quicken their pace.

One midnight long ago I awoke to chase down a photo at a biology reserve. I visited a giant turtle nesting area cordoned off for protection, then saw the sand literally turn to foam as turtle hatchlings bubbled up and made their dash to the sea. There, they hid in the safety of the kelp until embarking on a journey that would return them to the same beach over and over again.

That journey is flawless, perfect, and timeless.

No Room for Fluff

On the short list of what is important, dryer balls come in dead last. That doesn’t explain why we have ten of them rolling around in our dryer and taking up more space than our clothes.

For those of you out of sync with advanced dryer technology, dryer balls are spiked plastic spheroids one puts in the dryer to keep everything fluffed up as your clothes are spinning out of control. The packaging claims they also distribute heat better and keep clothes from clumping, and therefore dry a load of laundry faster. I’ve never seen any warnings as to the number of DB’s one could use, so we keep adding a couple every week and now have a tall pile. (Naturally, drying a load of clothes at our house is very similar to being in a bowling alley, apart from the shoe rental and complicated scoreboard).

I began thinking that the more dryer balls I added to the mix, the faster our clothes would dry. My strategy was to insert so many in the dryer that the mere sight of them would scare all the heat and moisture out of my clothes and I wouldn’t have to turn the dryer on at all. Thereafter, I could get rid of the dryer altogether and simply scatter dryer balls around the house to take care of any of my drying needs. But first, I had to make sure all the dryer balls were in good working order, and more importantly, that they were working at all.

That is easier said than done. Quite honestly, I have no earthy idea what is happening inside our dryer after I push the start button. Given the state of our country, I have my suspicions that most of the plastic dryer balls are not doing anything at all. That is fine for the rest of the country, but not for this house. Here, even a dryer ball must have good moral fortitude, be of strong character and possess a sincere work ethic. Like we say here, “When the going gets clumpy, the clumps get going!” It was time to see which dryer balls were pulling their weight, and which ones were the slackers.

As I put my ear to the rotating drum, a question came to mind…Were there dryer balls I should retire and send to quietly tumble out their days at the local laundromat? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to make any airhead decisions. Finding help these days, particularly good help, is difficult with signs posted outside businesses practically begging for anyone to put in a couple of hours. I knew if I fired a dryer ball for no reason, all my dryer balls might boycott me with loud signs that say, “REVOLUTION STARTS AT HOME!” Or “TURN UP THE HEAT, PUT BALLS BACK IN THE DRYER SEAT!”

As it turns out, I didn’t have to work very hard. I found several slackers hiding in t-shirt sleeves, and a couple more wrapped up in a wad of well-done bedsheets. Well, there you go, I told myself. Those sneaky fellows hadn’t been fluffing and spinning at all, but just going along for the ride. My suspicions were further raised when I noticed that a few more of them had gained a few pounds. Not a big deal you say, but it was enough that their shape had changed from round to ovaloid, a change that was unsettling in the circular atmosphere of a dryer drum. I knew they couldn’t possibly be circulating evenly, and most probably were taking a few breaks in the cycle when they thought they could get away with it.

Finally, I had to eliminate a couple more due to their co-dependency, a condition common when a dryer ball gets so enmeshed with the clothes that it is more interested in controlling others than taking care of its own wrinkles. Clingy and full of static, they often fall out of the dryer when the clothes come out and bounce off to pout in the corner.

There is some good news here, though. Over the course of my evaluation, I’m proud to say I’ve whittled my dryer ball team down to five hard working, stalwart examples.

And just in time! I was beginning to worry I might have to rely on the actual dryer.

Six Pounds of Pure Family

We lost our cat several years back from old age. Chloe was 17. When she adopted us, we took her in to the vet to find out more about her, thinking we would hear that she was a kitten that was about five months old. Turns out she was three and at a whopping six pounds, wasn’t going to get much bigger. We had a loaf of whole grain bread in our fridge that weighed more than she did.

All pets have something unique about them. When I was teaching middle school and the classroom discussion wound its way off course with pet stories, I knew what my students were doing. They were doing what Congress is a master at, which is filibustering, except in this case the subject usually turned to my student’s pet hamsters, snakes, Gila monsters, and cocker doodle-doos (not a rooster). And somewhere in the mix of those stories there was always a Chloe story.

As my garden tries to crash land here at home after signaling Spring for over two months now, I sometimes wish our kitty was still here. She followed me around my garden while I worked, and because I enter a Zen-zone out there in horticultural bliss, Chloe scared me out of my overalls by tenderly rubbing up against my leg when I least expected it. Try to explain to a paramedic that a furball caused your heart palpitations.

To be honest, I never had a burning desire for a cat. I’ve always been more of a dog person, because honestly, dogs act more like us. They drool, they follow other humans around, and they hang their heads out of moving cars. I gave my daughter strict instructions to leave “that animal” alone, thinking it would eventually wander off. What I didn’t know was that Emily had already named her, sang lullabies to her, and supplied her with a steady ration of leftovers. The cat and Emily won of course, leading shortly thereafter to a pricey vet bill, an array of cat toys, and a weight activated bed that warmed to a comfortable 101 degrees when Chloe stepped in for a nap. Not a bad life for a drop-by cat, but a life I began to think needed some tweaking if she was going to earn her keep around our house.

So, I taught her a couple of tricks. At least they looked like that to the casual observer. What I really did was read a book on cats and then adjusted my commands to the stuff cats do anyway. Those things for our cat would be, in order of importance, sleeping, watching things move and eating fried chicken.

Fried chicken? Yep, Chloe love the Colonel. After watching her devour a piece of fried chicken like a mountain lion, I began to wonder if I could teach her how to sit on command with a little operant conditioning. At first, the idea seemed ludicrous given our cat’s air of self-importance, but over the course of a week I began to see some evidence of progress. A week later, fried chicken in hand, my authoritative “SIT!” resulted in our cat promptly plopping down like a boss. No one could believe it, but there it was, a performing circus cat right in our kitchen.

My next cat trick really had more to do with trust than a trick. It involved a cat’s desire to nap about 23 hours a day, so that when I found her in deep REM’s I quietly slid both my hands under her little tummy and air lifted her to another location. It was kind of like time travel only in our house. Chloe just yawned, looked around once to get her bearings, and accepted the fire mantel as the natural place to resume sleeping.

After suffering through commands to sit and random relocation, I gave our Chloe a bit of down time by setting her up with a YouTube movie of birds coming and going at a bird feeder. Movement, as it turns out, is a primordial aphrodisiac to a feline, so it wasn’t long before Chloe was addicted to the iPod and regularly assuming an attack pose in front of her favorite bird video, ready to pounce. Like all good parents, we had to limit little Chloe’s TV time, so we put a cap on everything but starlings and pigeons. Her response went from quiet maiows to outright howls, but I just told her to sit, and that took care of it.

If Spring ever gets here, they’ll be a day when my trowel will be working through the soil and my flats of zinnias will be spread out under the maple, waiting for their new home. Something will come over me, a ray of sun or maybe the sight of geese flying up to the nearby park, but it might be the silent nudge, a swooshing tail of a cat adopting me as family.

Breakfast of Champions

I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you that I recently placed an order for a new pair of walking shoes at a cost of nearly one hundred and fifty dollars. The pair advertised itself as having some supernatural foam that would provide superior cushioning should I decide to jump out of a tree or have my feet pressure washed. I was also impressed by some other highly technical features, each having their own patent, indicated by an indecipherable Aztec symbol next to them. Shoes, like everything else in the world, have become highly sophisticated and expensive, which often leaves me being picky, if not spoiled, when it comes to what I think I must have.

Growing up I had two choices for breakfast. I had Kellogg’s Special K and Cornflakes. Then Wheaties came along, and breakfast choices got a bit trickier. Every month the cereal box came with a new athlete adorning the box cover, with people like Muhammed Ali, Chris Evert Lloyd and Tommie Smith. In the fall, Bart Starr from the Green Bay Packers showed up on the box cover, just in time for me to get fitted for cleats, and then in the spring Bruce Jenner was pictured throwing what I took to be an Apache spear on the Wheaties cover. There was no way I was going to eat Special K or Cornflakes when I could eat a cereal that helped me throw a football with a perfect spiral or heave a spear across the greater Midwest basin. Nowadays, there is an entire aisle in the grocery store dedicated to just cereal, and in one store I was in recently, you could even mix your own. If I would have known that when I was nine years old, I would have left out the raisins, which always sunk to the bottom anyway where they lay like gravel trying to re-hydrate themselves.

When I think of how specialized we all have become, how individualized, I’m easily impressed by someone who orders their coffee black, or a guy that still drives a stick shift. However, in other parts of the world right now, in the Ukraine for example, people don’t have the time or the energy to be impressed by anything. They are just thankful for a day when a tank isn’t rolling down what is left of their street. While no one is asking me point blank to become a martyr for their cause and give up my fancy walking shoes for the war, I can and should be more aware when my mac and cheese isn’t my Stouffer’s favorite, or when my Netflix series goes on the fritz in the middle of season five.

We see the effects of what happens when a pinguid autocrat like Putin becomes engorged on his own favorite recipes. In the war he started with Ukraine, he is like a spoiled child who can’t have his favorite meal all the time and begins to throw his considerable weight around. Now, Putin, representing the Russian people, has thrown what amounts to a military temper tantrum and will continue to create a devastating wake of destruction until he gets the meal he wants, at the cost of Ukrainian sovereignty and lives. Like a child, he can no longer see the weight of his selfishness, greed or inhumanity because his own totalitarian belly is in the way. Meanwhile, there are reports that Russian soldiers shoot themselves in the leg so they don’t have to fight, which closely resembles the metaphor for shooting oneself in the foot.

I remember complaining once about a meal my mom made, a ham loaf as I recall. I did not spend the rest of the evening pouting or banging my silverware on the table until I got the meal I wanted. Instead, I was summarily sent away from the table with no supper at all. My parents were not going to allow me to grow up and demand that every meal be my favorite. They loved me way too much to watch a spoiled kid grow up to be a tyrant that walked out in the world and took whatever he wanted whenever the mood struck. They were very wise and knew the consequences of letting an apparent little thing grow into a monster, the little thing being me.

The entire world has lost its appetite for violence. We sicken over the horrific pictures filing past us and have lost our appetites for those sitting at the table pushing their proverbial weight around. It is up to us in small ways to stop people who do this, and it is up to the global community in a big way to send Putin back to his room until he remembers his manners.

In the Land of the Living

We recently placed my father in a nursing home for an extended stay. I emphasize “extended” because at ninety-nine years old, my father may outlive all of us. He’s on no medication, speaks clearly, has normal vitals, and still loves to argue for causes he believes in. The tough decision to move him out of his home to a care facility is one many adult children of the elderly will face at some point. For us, the answer was obvious after multiple falls left him banged and bruised and his balance had become too shaky to trust. It was time for a change.

In our case, it would have been a lot easier on us to place him in the nursing home community many years ago. We would have slept better knowing he would be ok during the night, we wouldn’t have worried about him being taken advantage of by some kook on the internet, and we wouldn’t have worried about how we might find him when we checked on him. That said, we also would have confiscated his self-esteem and made the personal decision for him that our way of living was more fulfilling than his way of living.

In the last five years, as I talked to my dad and heard him repeat the same stories I’d heard a thousand times, I saw my sunny afternoons slipping by knowing I had leaves to rake at home, and a long to-do list that I thought was more important. Sitting with him, I often had trouble fighting off the resentment and boredom. During those times I’m sure he was afraid I might leave if he stopped talking, and then he might be left all alone again. So, he chattered endlessly about the prisoner of war island he was stationed on during the Korean War, the time my eye swelled up so big from an allergic reaction he thought I would become a pirate, and how he fell in love with mom. He also shared every wisdom he had learned in his five decades to me so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes he had. And sometimes, through his long narrations, I’m sure he was also hoping those stories would redeem him for mistakes he had made as a father, husband, grandpa and great grandpa.

One day, as I was writing out his bills, we got into a heated discussion about how to keep his checkbook up to date. He was sitting across from me, and we were bickering back and forth about some figures that were not adding up. His approach made no sense to me, and mine made even less sense to him. The table we were working on looked like a kindergarten art project with newspaper clippings he had kept, unopened mail, and a backlog of paperwork. In the heat of our discussion, we had both taken off our reading glasses and mistakenly picked up the other’s pair.

“I can’t see a darn thing out of these,” Dad barked, “I’m going to my den to look for another pair.”

I took mine off and put them back on, looking down at the figures in front of me. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of anything in front of me either!

“Dad, I think we picked up each other’s glasses,” I said, “I’ve got yours on and you’ve got mine.”

Dad turned around and stared at me.

Ever the consummate physician, Dad replied dryly, “Apparently our mental proficiency was interrupted by our ocular incapacitation.”

We began to laugh at our own idiotic mistake, and then the laugh grew and became an all-out commentary on our own ineptitude. In that moment, he was a kid again, and I saw him in his youth, energetic and soaring and lighthearted. Laughter would not be lost on my father at his new nursing home residence, but those kinds of moments would have been lost had I prematurely moved him there.

Last week when he fell for the third time in ten days it was time. He was banged up like a schoolboy that had been in a tussle, and it was time to bring the fight to another home. After ninety-nine years I told him I thought he had earned the right to take it easy, to watch a bit more TV, to take longer naps, and to wear his own glasses instead of mine, the ones that allow him to see the world on his own terms. Those terms have gotten him to nearly one hundred years old, so he must have done something right along the way.

Funny, but when I called him today at the nursing home and told him I was coming out to visit he told me not to.

“I’m too busy. Don’t come out today. And don’t come out tomorrow either. I’ve been making rounds, getting people up, fixing hearing aids. Tomorrow I’m going to give the cook tips on a healthier menu. They need more fish, less chicken, then I’ve got physio after that. Just stay home. You’ve done enough and you need to get caught up on your rest. I’m fine.”

I’d worried that he was missing his life, but he was worried I was missing mine. He certainly was not agonizing about dying or falling or unpaid medical bills. He was making turmeric tea in his new microwave, cussing the stock market, and bringing in his nursing attendant to show her his collection of scrimshaw photographs. He was fully engaged, like he always had been, making a new path like he always did and gathering his people. He was in a nursing home, yes, but he was also in the land of the living, seeing life clearly through his own pair of glasses.

Ducks Out of Water

My garden is where I get my best praying done. There in the relative quiet between the push and the spade, God gets my attention. Last week he sent a couple of ducks to talk to me.

Enter Maude and Claude, a cute little mallard couple that waddled across our driveway, like they do every year, and invited themselves to be our pond guests. We aren’t good with uninvited guests, but we love to see this couple flap in and make their uncoordinated landing near our back porch. I would say they do this unceremoniously, but flap and uncoordinated already blew that cover. They always look bewildered when plop down, as if their GPS gave them the wrong direction on the skyway highway, and they ended up at Cracker Barrel where they ate too many carbs.

That’s ok. My wife and I still welcome them in because that’s what feathered friends do when they haven’t seen each other for a while and it doesn’t take long before we’ve all picked up right where we left off. One of the things we like so much about Maude and Claude is that they are so up front with their shortcomings, and as it turns out, ducks have a lot of them. Maude is having some carpel tunnel surgery on her flippers this year, and Claude is having laser surgery on his bill, which he admits looks like a spaghetti spatula. We just laugh, and tell them they look great, and that they’ll probably live to a hundred.

“We are like a wannabe circus act,” laughs Claude, ruffling a few tail feathers. “Maude says my body looks like a missing wedge from Mr. Potato Head.”

My wife and I politely laugh also, and just to make Claude feel comfortable, I show Claude my hammer toe, which he looks at sideways.

“Whhoooaa!” he teases, “I’m glad that thing is on you! I wouldn’t make it ten feet in your pond with a foot like that!”

“That’s good,” I laugh, “Because that is about all the room you’ll have in our pond!” Whereupon Maude and Claude rear back and cackle and then ask for another cracker.

“How’s the yoga classes going?” we ask Maude and Claude that night at Duck Happy Hour.

For those of you who don’t know, ducks love yoga. If you are watching a gaggle of them, they line up in a V pattern out in a field and do a lot of odd poses. When the lead duck at the top of the V gets a bit tired or must hold a duck yoga position for too long, that duck falls to the back of the pack and another yoga duck waddles forward to take its place. This is an amazing adaptation God built into these birds that enables them to practice yoga for hours on end without eating or sleeping, as the ducks in the lead take the eddy drag for the others.

“Great!” piped in Maude, the louder of the two. “I love our instructor. He’s very good, very professional. He can hold the V like nobody’s business!"

Claude went up on one foot and disagreed. “Well, I’m not a fan. He keeps trying to teach us the Cat Pose! Hey, c’mon, really? Cats? I find that personally offensive myself, but he’s young. A couple of us drakes met at DuckBucks the other day and talked about it. Darned if that Quack didn’t come right back the next day in class and teach us Downward Facing Dog! HONESTLY! The nerve!”

“I think he’s kind of cute,” said Maude, “and can he ever crane that neck! Amazing! I learn something every time I take his class!”

“Oh really, dear, c’mon!” piped in Claude again, “There’re so many good poses…Pigeon, Peacock, Bald Eagle, any of those I’m good with! But, P-LEASE, no dogs and cats! I figure he’s a right winger smart duck trying to make a point.”

There was an awkward silence in the air. I looked at my wife, and she looked at me. We looked back at our guests. I thought to myself, I’m not touching this one… I’m not going to judge… just listen… be supportive. Never get in between two ducks in a row.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to. Maude and Claude had already waddled off to our pond for Aqua Aerobics. It was spring.

Hold the Sauce, Please

My mom once said, you can stick anything out for a year, but how about two?

I went in to get a sandwich at Subway the other day and put my order in over the protective wall of tables and three-foot-high plexiglass sheet separating me from the manager. Making small talk, I noted how happy he’d be when the restrictions of Covid were lifted.

“What did you say?” he said in mask-talk.

“I SAID I BET YOU’LL BE GLAD…” repeating my comment, but a lot louder this time.

“Oh, I heard that part,” he butted in. “They are already lifted, except for the glass partition,” he reported. “We have to keep our bathroom closed, but other than that we are good to go. ’Course, we can’t put anything on the tables. Sauce for you today?”

“No thanks, I’m trying to cut down,” I replied in a lame attempt at humor. As I paid up and went towards a nearby booth, the owner piped in again.

“Sir. Sorry. That booth is off limits. Too close to the vents they say. Airborne something or other. Can you sit at another one?”

“Sure,” I answered, being the easy-going retiree that I am, and moved around the caution tape crossing off all but one booth. “How about this one?” I added, being the slightly sarcastic easy-going retiree that I am.

As I turned to the booth, I accidentally bumped a customer that had arrived and was standing patiently behind a few others, waiting to order.

“Excuse me sir. Yes, you, the one with no sauce,” the owner said loudly, “You have to stay on your X. Please stand on your X. Six feet, sir, those are the regulations.”

“Oh, sorry!” I called back, being the slightly annoyed, easy-going retiree that I am. “I’ve already ordered and, well, I was just trying to get to my booth, but there are no X’s going that direction, so I thought I’d…” my voice dribbling off as I realized I was breathing air from someone else’s special area.

I looked back again towards my booth, but a couple had already taken it. They had lots of sauces. I stared at the floor for the longest time, trying to figure out what X they had stepped on to get to my booth, the only booth. There were no X’s going over there, so I figured it had to be the sauce. THE SECRET WAS IN THE SAUCE.

“Sir,” I yelped over the line, “I’ve decided I’ll have some sweet onion sauce on my sandwich. Can I get some…”

Several unauthorized stares came my way, so I took a few steps back, to eat in a corner, trying to cross my legs like an X to camouflage my non-Covid standing position. Since Subway sandwiches are shaped like a breaded version of a popsicle, I thought I might be able to just stand there, boothless, peel back the Subway paper and eat my sandwich like a Push-Up.

That idea went over like a screen door in a submarine.

“Hey buddy! You there impersonating a pretzel with the Push-Up! You got a mask? Have to wear a mask if you’re gonna eat a sandwich with no sauce standing up!”

“Ok,” I answered, being the slightly demoralized, easy-going retiree that I am. “Got it. Eat my sandwich with a mask through a straw with my legs crossed standing in an isolated corner, boothless with no sauce.”

I gathered in the tender smell of Clorox wipes wafting through the air, with a hint of strawberry, perhaps grapefruit. I took it all in, lifting my shoulders, even squaring them off like the aromatic easy-going retiree that I am. It was an empowering breath. I felt thankful for that clear smell, that it was not interrupted by sweet onion or Covid. I can stick anything out for a year, I thought, maybe even two if I leave off the sauce.

Sweet Dreams

When you get a great night’s sleep, all seems well in the world. That is the shifting thought playing in my artwork, “Sweet Dreams.”

As adults, we dream of returning to those days when we slept like babies, the biblical promise (Prov 3:24) of following God’s commands. In fact, the very phrase “sweet dreams” derives from that passage. When I was a kid, they were the last words I heard before Mom shut my bedroom door and I drifted off to Never Never Land, where my heart flew on wings and my dreams were born.

At our home, getting eight hours of solid sleep is so rare that when it happens, we find ourselves unable to believe it, and walk around in a total stupor until noon. We look outside to see our trash receptacles dropped three houses down from where they are supposed to be and think, “It’s ok…whatever, no problem.” Even when a hawk, seemingly out of nowhere, swoops in to snatch a bunny right out of my front lawn, I have a feeling that it happened for a reason, it’s all good, and that, well, the world is gonna make it, that life is good. Hey, good sleep does that to you.

Our bedroom, lest I get too personal here, could double as the National Headquarters for Sleep Research, containing a variety of gadgets and devices to bring on the shut-eye. We have a white-noise machine, an air purifier, ear plugs, and a Habbermacker and Shopperypepper Alpha Cooling Blanket used by Nasa in the 1960s. By the time we get all our toys fired up and going, our bedroom sounds something like a Disneyworld ride, complete with a wind tunnel, cannon fire, and a weather system. It’s a blast really, and worth the wait in line.

However, every now and then I have a nightmare. I thrash around in bed trying to outrun some villain in a setting that is vaguely familiar but just out of focus. Yes, I’m catching a glimpse of it right now…There I am! I’m stark naked in an ancient amphitheater lecturing to a laughing crowd of Platos or Hippopotamuses. Bed covers are flying, my arms and legs are thrashing, and I’m shouting out Greek wisdoms in iambic pentameter. My wife wakes up with a shock, and as I regain a semblance of consciousness, I try, vainly, to convince her that I am learning a second language in my spare time. Nightmares in Greek do that to you.

Yes, sleep is a crazy mix of subconscious movies, some dramas, some comedies, some horror. In my artwork titled Sweet Dreams, both worlds appear. Pink prevails and set a warm tone for horizontal patches swinging back and forth in a consoling rhythm, like waves of rapid eye movements. They are made from a kid’s green dinosaur pajamas that sprinkle down the picture plane. Near the bottom, as a landscape of tanks and dinosaurs battle it out, a goofy stuffed animal swoops in to referee and sings everyone to sleep via a music box whose crank you turn yourself.

As the innocent melody sifts through the frame, our memories of childhood surface, and we rest for a moment, a child’s moment, to the tune winding down. We are reminded, perhaps subconsciously, that we can pull the covers up over our heads and roll over for another forty winks. We sleep again, wide awake, and escape for a moment into the Sweet Dreams of wind-up toys and stuffed animals. Art has a way of taking you there, doing that to you. When it’s good, like sweet, sweet sleep, it winds you up and lets you wind down. When it’s great, you never knew what hit you.

Pick Your Soldiers, Then Your Battles

Last night as I returned home, I found a toy army man posed on top of our doorbell, pointing a rifle at me. I hesitated before turning the keylock, thinking I might be crossing an imaginary check point and be required to state my business before entering my home. Maybe it was my imagination, but my posture seemed to stiffen under the eye of this one-inch military man, so I squared my shoulders, got out my identification and saluted my wife when I entered the house.

Army men, at least the monochromatic toy versions, are a time-honored tradition around our house since I was a kid. My brother introduced me to these green guys, having been inspired by a host of television movies at the time, particularly Pork Chop Hill, the Desert Rats, and, most inspiring for him, a movie called The Dirty Dozen. That one showcased a lousy band of no-good criminals and imprisoned scoundrels who were repurposed to take on an impossible military mission. After watching the movie, Gary enlisted twelve of his best fighters and sent them out on treacherous missions around the house, positioning them in treacherous spaces like mom’s make-up drawer, the breaker panel, and in front of our icy mailbox.

All of these military encampments challenged the very fabric of our family, but the last one became a battle in and of itself as our mailman, a shy and sensitive fellow, slipped on the surrounding ice trying to sidestep the carefully arranged troops underfoot. As his feet went out from under him, he grabbed the mailbox for support, but became hopelessly stretched out in no-man’s land, not able to pull himself up nor wanting to fall and flatten Gary’s military encampment. His predicament soon caught the attention of Mrs. Odermeier across the street, who ran out in the bitter cold, presumably to help him regain his balance. Instead, she reached into his bag, yanked out a package she’d been waiting for, a free giveaway bottle of perfume whose bouquet complimented her floral bathrobe, then slid away.

From our vantage point, watching with binoculars from the picture window, Gary’s diabolical plan was pure entertainment. He had correctly surmised the mailman’s temperament, a man who could not bear to step on toy soldiers or be deterred, as the saying goes, by rain or snow or rubber army men. The Dirty Dozen had prevailed again. Later, after reading the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Gary decided to make his soldiers immortal as well as invincible by cutting off their heads. This bothered me somewhat, not because it was creepy or frightful, but because I could never win another army battle as long as I lived – his soldiers could not be killed or defeated and would always prevail even if I had flame throwers, bazookas, and 200 men on my side.

In honor of our brotherly tradition, the first present I bought my grandson, Cash, was a bucket of army men. He was three days old, but I decided to get him started early and regularly created battles around his crib, sippy cup, and goldfish snacks. By the time he was one, our armies were engaged in combat while he sat in his car seat. By two, I had suffered serious battle losses and retreated, holding on only by turning the air on high and blowing his approaching infantry to the floorboard.

Bravery comes at a cost.

For now, I hold my position, but it isn’t easy. Cash is starting to develop superior combat noises, and, as every trooper knows, the guy with the best noises wins. While I still do a first class machine gun and walkie-talkie chatter, his fiery airplane crashes may have me beat… at least until my Dirty Dozen make their comeback for the cause of toy soldiers everywhere, and childhood play.

Then, it’s off with their heads!

No Surprises Here

We recently had a significant announcement in our family. Our daughter, now in her thirties, was having another child. Truth be told, we knew that was going to happen, and it was the gender reveal that was the news. “Gender reveal” is a term I can’t quite get used to because it sounds like one of the categories I can’t ever find at Lowe’s. I see signs that say GRILL TOOLS, CARPET REMNANTS, and there in the back you’ll find the GENDER REVEALS (you know, the motion detector nightlights that look like seashells).

When I’m at Lowe’s looking for zip ties or car deodorant replacement capsules, I find them in a unique way. I take my list right up to one of the people with vests on and they tell me what aisle everything is in. That saves me from weaving in and out of lumber jacks, oil refinery repairmen, and giants that can only be found in storybooks. These people intimidate me because, for one, they are twice as big as me in height and circumference, and because they are in a hurry. They are waiting to get back to a job where they are already running four days behind schedule, which explains why almost invariably, they are wearing the same Refrigiwear Coveralls they had on a month ago.

Recently, carrying with me these types of obvious prejudices, I was at Lowe’s, headed to pay for my VELCRO, when I turned the corner and ran into a stack of two-by-fours on a cart pushed by a man I took to be a sumo wrestler. The cart he was pushing was in line to pay, but due to its length was the entire line itself, so I eased past it and found my lowly place, stood quietly waiting, hoping not to get picked up and body slammed.

“How ya doing today?” the wrestler opened up.

“Good, how ‘bout yourself?” I said, trying to avoid any sign of weakness on my part. “What kind of project are you up to today?” I offered.

“Building an addition,” he said. “There’s always something, right?”

“Fer sure,” I noted, using my best carpenter-type talk. “What company ya with?”

“This? No, it’s for us. We ran outa room.”

“I take it that means kids are taking over.”

“You got it. This one will be number nine,” Sumo said with a sigh.

“Boy, girl?”

“Don’t know yet. We’ll find out sooner or later.”

“Do you do the whole gender reveal thing?” I asked.

Thrown off, he looked at me like I was from another country. Shortly though, he did reply.

“No, I just use nails the old-fashioned way. You can find those things over with WHEELBARROWS and PUSHCARTS. I really don’t know why Lowe’s puts them there. Makes no sense, does it?” he stated.

“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “Not at all. I don’t get any of it. Too many changes, too many signs.”

We both had a good laugh at that one. It was a gender reveal all in itself.

In the Midst of Our Drift

Fish aren’t really a pet you get close to. In the dead of winter, I see my forty assorted goldfish and Koi hanging motionless in their 3,400-gallon pool, barely twitching a fin. They drift in the water if they move at all, dormant and paralyzed with cold. I think they look at me as I move around the pond, but I’m not sure they are looking at me. Usually, when they see me they turn the other way. Eye contact is not a strong suit with fish, but my expectations may be a bit high. In the winter, I barely make eye contact myself.

Sometimes a goldfish will wander too close to the edge of the pond where the ice forms faster. They must nod off, because I’ll occasionally find one completely frozen and encased in ice and not come out of it until the pond thaws. Then it takes me all summer to gain their trust so that they will eat out of my hand again. Now they wouldn’t approach me if their life depended on it. All trust has disappeared until the water temp rises in the Spring, and their designer food is handed out again.

During our Midwest winters, people act much the same way. We all take on that catatonic fish stare and have a cast of pale orange because our healthier red blood cells go on vacation. They go south like Snowbirds, where they resurface in Tampa for spring training with the Riskateers Baseball Team. For the blood cells that linger behind, they float in a state of suspended animation between the surface and the bottom, between heat and cold, and barely protected by a wafer-thin oxygen layer.

“Do you want to meet for coffee?” I asked an old friend recently.

“Thanks, no,” he answered, “let’s wait until Spring and get a cookie with it.”

“Oh, do they not have cookies now?” I inquired.

“Yes, they do, but they are all stale,” he said in a hushed whisper, as if he had just come from a funeral march. In his defense, he was in a fog, and the light was just barely managing to squeeze through his eye slits, his deep freeze. He softly repeated “they are all stale,” as he shuffled away with one shoelace untied.

That was the sign. The shoelace.

I watched it trail behind, snaking across the floor. I had a sad feeling come over me. My gut told me that his laces would not become an integral and working part of his shoe again until spring. The shoe was too far south. To bend over and tie it would take great fortitude on his part. He would have to go deep. It would take blind faith. It would mean a decision, a soulful commitment to face his doubts head-on despite his own lazy character. If he could try to bend over, his determination might take the lead, and then, bending over would be worth it. Tying the shoe would be worth it. The effort would result in a knot, and that knot would hold. It would take sheer willpower. His effort would define the knot he tied, and it would be solid and durable.

Winter tests this kind of inner fortitude around here. We are still in the midst of our drift, and we need to be solid. We need to be able to look deep inside ourselves, tie our knots so they hold, clean up our sloppiness. If we do, our character will sit up straight, it will be refreshed, then refresh our faith for the rest of January, February, and roll with momentum into March. Now we need to stoop over, get low, say a prayer. Tie our knots so they hold.

Then one day soon, we will walk outside, make eye contact with our fish, and notice they are moving, they are rising, and the water is stirring.

Achieve Peace of Mind

Let’s set the scene. It’s early January and those brand-new pajamas you’re hibernating in are beginning to smell like a bear. You’ve thrown them in the washing machine and dried them on a hot cycle that shrunk them down to an unwearable size. There’s a light snow falling outside the laundry room window, and as you hold your pj’s in disgust, you catch a glimpse of the juncos and finches happily eating continuously from the bird feeder. Right now, eating continuously sounds like a good idea. Should you chuck the jammies or try to stuff your head through an opening the size of a donut? It’s a moment of truth for the year 2022. What you need is a fresh start even though you just were given a fresh start a week ago. Truth be told, you’re ready for another present, aren’t you?

Well…here’s it is. They aren’t new pajamas, but a list called Achieve Peace of Mind. On the list are ten ways to help you reboot when your proverbial underwear is in a knot. My list is printed on a pocket card I can pull out when I’m fit to be tied and losing the dots on my dice. Check these out:

• Find something bigger than yourself in which to believe
• Cultivate old-fashioned virtues
• Develop healthy boundaries
• Shun suspicion and resentment
• Live in the present and the future, but mostly the present
• Don’t waste time and energy fighting conditions you can’t change
• Cooperate with life
• Refuse to pity yourself
• Stop expecting too much out of yourself and others
• Remember: we are all frail

Reading through these I’m sure you’ll hasten to add your own wisdoms, ones like the Golden Rule, or perhaps a beatitude or verse from the Psalms. However, if you are like me, long verses and lots of words can be confusing when an albatross is flying overhead. I need a few mantras to focus on until that bird has flown the coop.

I’d like to lead with the first one: finding something bigger than myself to believe in. That is the bookend that keeps all the others on the list from falling over. For me, that bigger voice is God and the Holy Spirit, but maybe you need to start elsewhere. I can tell you that when I am in a funk, and nothing seems to be working quite right, that quiet and simple step is the best and the hardest one to lean into. It’s about surrendering, and when you do, the rest of those items on the list for achieving peace of mind will come right over and eat out of your hand.

One of my wife’s favorite mottos is to allow mystery to have a place in your life. It’s very freeing to do this because it allows things to go unanswered for the time being. Allow is the key word here. It works the same way surrender does but sounds a lot less religious. Mystery isn’t the same as mental laziness. Mystery is happening, it’s real, it’s moving and active. Mystery is everywhere. It’s the reason the label you missed on your jammies says 100% cotton and is printed in ancient Polynesian. It’s the reason you are cultivating old fashioned virtues and considering sleeping in your boxers like they did in the old days. You’re feeling more peaceful already…see how that works?

Moment of the Year 2021

There was a pop radio station when I was a kid that posted a top forty list every week. While my brother picked the list up at the grocery store, the list was a staple for every teenager following the folk and rock hits in the sixties, which was every teenager. My brother (Mad Magazine’s twin), poured over that Casey Kasem’s hit list every week, and our radio was kept on a steady hum on December 31st until the countdown reached Number One at midnight.

That countdown got me thinking… What is the moment I’d replay a few minutes before midnight if I were counting down my favorite moments from the year? The likelihood of me counting down anything at that hour is slim to none, as I plan to be sound asleep. But let’s say I did stay up to bring in the new year, what would be the moment I would hear at midnight? Would it be a moment of personal accomplishment, or some purchase that brought temporary happiness? How about a memory of one of those perfect days when everything feels right in the universe? I did have a few of those days last year, but they were fleeting. If I was to pick a memory like picking a song, it would have to be one that is catchy and has good staying power over time – a golden oldie.

For that kind of memory, I turn to my grandkids, and creativity. When those two cross paths, we get hits that just keep on coming. This year, lucky me, there were a lot of those with Cash (4) and Carter (2). There were the spontaneous hugs and I love you’s. There was the impromptu lemonade stand we made together that brought out all the neighbors. Our moments also included many walks in the woods looking for earthworms under logs and talking to owls we couldn’t see. As I remember, we had another moment where the three of us tried to stand on a frisbee at the same time so their dog, Piper, couldn’t run away with it. That one ended with me falling on top of both boys, and two of us crying. Somewhere in the middle of the summer I connected our hands together with rubber bands and we did a crazy collaborative painting whose result was better than any Jackson Pollack you’ll find in a museum. There were morning, noon, and bedtime stories that I made up ala Dr. Suess, including one about an imaginary family called the Slappies. Family members from this story included Pappy Slappy, Mappy Slappy, Gandpappy Slappy and Grandmappy Slappy. The kid’s names ranged from Appy to little Frankie Zappy, and I could go into the names of their pets, but I think you get the idea. I stopped that story when Grandpappy Slappie had to go to the bathroom and ran off to use the cr…well… you get the idea. And tops in the running for Moment of the Year would have to include the Christmas trip we made to the grocery store to buy ingredients for Grinch Pie, a mixture of the most disgusting things humans can put in a pie crust, including one stinky sock, and a jar of mushrooms that looked like slugs.

Wow. Take a breath. That’s a lot of highlighted moments! But when all the lights have dimmed, and the wrapping paper has been put away for another year, I have to vote for the quiet “little while” when the world got a bit brighter for me. It was 70 degrees outside Christmas day, and while we were still dressed in our PJ’s, Cash, Carter, and I took a sleepy walk down the street. We held hands the whole time, stopping now and then to point at the beautiful contrails in the sky, wave at cars that looked at us curiously, and drop rocks down manhole covers. Those moments won’t get a half-million views on U-tube, but on that peaceful walk holding hands, a great hit rose right to the top of the charts for me. It’s one I think we can all hum to, one that I know I’ll play over and over in my head for a long time to come, long after the ball drops to bring in 2022.

Be happy, be safe, thank you lovely readers who read this blog the last year. You made my top forty list. May you feel loved and hold each other’s hands in 2022! As Casey Kasem always said, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!”

Pencil Me In... All In

I remember constructing one of my favorite pieces of art, The Dysfunctional Pencil Family, around this time of year, a time of year when the best and worst traits of a family pop up. Like in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, we can wish each other Merry Christmas and turn right around and say Bah Humbug in the same sentence. Internal friction can flow through every little pencil in a family, tall or short, number 2 or number 4, wearing out our points as we put our lines and circles down together.

When I was a kid, I had trouble letting go of small pencils. I was the kind of kid who bonded with the pencil the more I used it, but the more I used it the smaller it got. I got comfortable with it at the same time I was letting go of it. It’s part of the beautiful paradox of life and part of the dysfunction of being part of a pencil family. When I first learned how to use pencils, I would walk around with a worn-out pencil in my hand for hours without being able to make a decision whether to let it go or keep it. I got close to my pencils, and finally, after carrying a useless pencil around, I would silently say goodbye and let it slip out of my hand to the floor in the hallway at school.

The pencils at the bottom of The Dysfunctional Pencil Family came from a big bag of broken pencils I collected from the hallways at the middle school where I taught. It was as if there was a little graveyard of unfinished homework all around me waiting to be finished if only the pencils could find their way home, and they have become kind of a trademark in my work.

I think one of the things that is so beautiful about pencils, and something that we can’t find in humans, is that pencils have an eraser that allows us to scratch away our mistakes. Erasers give us a do-over. They help us put the past behind us. Wouldn’t it be cool if we humans had a built-in eraser, and could just flip each other over and erase the parts we have trouble living with?

For some of us, we do. He is called Jesus. He is our eraser guy, our do-over. He is the guy God gave us at Christmas, a giant pencil of a man, who by his life example showed us how to flip ourselves over, rub out the mistakes and bloopers, and make all our marks new and snowy fresh. That Eraser Guy is always there in our dysfunctional pencil family, and all we have to do (and here’s the rub) is the flipping.

In my drawing pictured here, I tried to depict that same sense of renewal. Everything in the piece is rather happy, but there are some menacing details floating around that hamper the four little family members from relaxing into the white, puffy atmosphere of the handmade paper. High up in one corner there is a big star shedding brightness on their future, but chaos is lurking in a row of broken pencils at the bottom, like a pit of grass spears, which seems to threaten the balance of the stick people family.

I’ve heard it said that all families are dysfunctional to some degree. I was reminded of this one time when a small child walked past my piece and said excitedly, “Look! There’s the Dysfunctional Pencil Family!” It was as if she had found her own family again and was excited to see them no matter how crazy they were. It was also a reminder that we all come from different parts of the hallway and are looking for our way back home.

Back home to Jesus. We get there by putting down our best marks with the broken dysfunctional pencils that we are. We get there by being flipped over by our own families and the world, and then allowing ourselves to be rubbed clean by The Do-Over Man. Sometimes, the rubbing is a bit painful, but the new drawing is flawless.