When will I listen to me

At the end of last month I did a post that I tried to bury under a much longer post about my dad. It was dealing with my frustration about my recent change in appearance and how I felt like I was disappearing. I wanted to bury it because I just wrote it and posted it to get it out of my head---but it sounded kind of like a pity party and so I hoped no one would find it.

However, you guys found it, and not only did you find it, and I got more responses to that post than I every have before. And I thank you for that. You're words of encouragement were heartfelt and gracious, and did much to help my anxiety.

I did exchange a couple of emails with the wonderful Deb, and I thought I should share a portion of what I told her to kind of fill in the picture. After she got more details than were in that quick post, she said things started to make more sense. So I started to think, that's only fair then to put things in context for everyone. Here's what I wrote:

"This year has been so strange. I feel like there is a cosmic plan to strip me of every preconception of myself, so that I can be built up again new and different. Sort of like basic training. I keep thinking that the demolition is done and start getting all prepared for the renovation and then something new comes along and says "oh, no. not quite yet. still have some more scraping to do. This won't hurt a bit." But, of course, it always does. I guess that little post was just an articulated grimace of sorts. But be assured. I keep plodding on, confident that the new day will bring more exciting adventure. My addiction to novelty comes in handy here---it keeps me thinking that tomorrow will always be worth the wait. And reminds me that there was a lot of cool stuff in today too."

That all still holds true. From the keeping on by placing one foot in front of the other, to the reformation that my psyche is going through. Over the last couple weeks it's taken a new turn.

I have recently had a discussion with my wife where I came to understand that in much of the way I've been piloting our family ship, things that are important to my wife get taken care of on sort of a 2nd tier basis. As time permits. If we can afford it after everything else is taken care of.

I understand the things she desires and I endeavor to take care of them. But the things that come first will involve me, the kids, the family as a whole. Rarely a special moment for the mom. I have always preached to my kids that love is not a noun, it's a verb. That it's not a feeling, it's a decision---one that is most vividly expressed when it requires sacrifice. But I'm understanding more and more that I may be preaching mostly in words, and I do understand that in most cases, preaching with words should be a last resort. Like the Francis of Assisi quote, "preach the good new---use words if necessary." Action is a most dynamic catalyst. And in that, I'm beginning to see I've been lacking.

So I made a promise. We have recently started a project for my wife replacing our chain link fence with a natural wood finish, gothic top picket fence. And my daughter's Sweet 16th Birthday is coming up on us, which my wife has also taken deeply to heart and would like to make a special event for her, our only girl. When these two things intersect, the mandate is clear. I could see how I could demonstrate to my wife that things that are important to her are important to me, and important in general. So I made a promise. A promise that I would put the priority of that fence on the top of my list, all other things that might could happen that weren't emergencies would be put aside for the time being. This, so I could pursue that task with a passion I might put on things that were important to me first.

And it seems that as soon as that promise was made, that the heavens decided that this was far too significant to be merely a promise. It would become a pledge---and a pledge only becomes golden when it is tested. So this is to be my test.

On the first weekend after I decided this was to be my course, I would be working alone to add the pickets to fence posts my father and I had already put into place a few weeks before. It had rained for several weekends in a row in the meantime, preventing any progress. It was crazy. It was as if the rain had looked at my schedule, found any free time, and decided to show up there. So, long last, it was looking like I was going to be able to get to the fence.

Then the first bomb dropped. My brother called from his home, three hours to the west, and told me of the wonder news. His inlaws had won a pair of tickets to the Husker football game this weekend. He also had their two regular season tickets that they were letting him buy from them for this weekend's game, and now he was inviting me along and allowing me to bring guests!

You may be asking yourself, what the heck is a Husker? It's a term of affection, short for Cornhuskers, which is what the Nebraska University sports teams are called after. Like Hoosier, or Yankee or Broncos. And what is a cornhusker that they may be called after that, you ask? It's a person who harvests corn and peels the husk off it--and since so much of the state revolves around corn, it's what stuck. Writing this right now, it's kind of stupid sounding seeing it explained out of context like this. But then, what the heck is a Hoosier? And for that matter, how weird is the word blog? Say blog 10 times fast and it starts to sound like you're gagging.

But this is a big deal in Nebraska. Our state University football team holds the NCAA record for the most consecutive sold out games ever. They've been sold out since November 3, of 1962. On home games, the Memorial Stadium in Lincoln becomes the third largest city in the state. They've won 42 conference titles and 5 National Championships---the most recent 3 being 1994, 1995 and 1997. Prime years in my fandom. The coach that took us to those titles retired from football and was promptly elected to congress where he is currently representing Nebraska still. The new coach's previous job was with the Oakland Raiders where he took them to the Superbowl. This is a big deal in our state.

And since tickets haven't been available since 1962, when some one says "I've got tickets, you want to go?"--you go! I've only been once, when I was 11 and my uncle called from out of the blue on a Saturday afternoon. I was home alone not knowing what I was going to do for the day besides getting a haircut, and feeling a little bored. And the next thing I knew I was whisked away, finding myself walking out of the tunnel into the stands at Lincoln like when Dorothy opens the door to see OZ for the first time. The colors were so vivid---the green of the turf, the red and white of the crowd. It made everything that had gone before seem to have been in black and white.

But I had made a promise. I can't say that I was completely graceful about the whole thing, but stuck to it. I didn't go. My wife, not being a football person, needed a metaphor to understand. I told her that it was like some one coming and telling her that the Odd Couple with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick was in town and here are free tickets. She said if it was those two in town in The Producers, she'd go. But I had made a promise, so I didn't go.

But I did make sure Robo got to go with grandma and his uncle. I found out at his most recent Parent/Teacher conference that he wrote about that Saturday for an English assignment titled, "If I could live any day over again it would be. . .".

The second bomb dropped like a payload off the Enola Gay. I knew that it would be coming, but I didn't know when. They never really talk about it. Not until right before it's ready to happen. I have no idea why they can't give people a little planning time, but it's not their practice. So that Thursday as I was looking around online, I see the article on a national news site. I found out on the internet about this event happening locally. But that's par for the course.

The Apple store was opening.

THE APPLE STORE WAS OPENING!!! What kind of a cruel, sick joke is that? I have been following sites that track Apple store openings for more than three years. I found out about one coming to Omaha last November and have been tracking hints of progress across the internet ever since. And still I am taken off guard. And I can't go. I CAN'T GO! And I didn't. I made a promise, and a promise is a promise, even if you have knitting needles stabbing you in the stomach.

The crazy thing is, I still haven't been there and it's been open going on two weeks. With both the wife and the daughter in rehearsal every night, I am being responsible dad getting home as soon as I can so I can be with the boys while they go off to rehearse. No one really understands my pain with this store. Maybe this is part of the healing ---to help me let go of this sickness. A little.

And the final blow. We found out this last week that we have to have the 80+ year old sewage line in our house replaced to the tune of about 5K. And what can you do. You don't argue with sewage. There's no winning that argument. You just do what has to be done. Hello bank loan.

So here I stand. Not sure if I've started the building up yet, or if I'm still being stripped down.

I know that the glass is half full. But sometime the half full part looks at the half empty part and asks me, "Are you ok with that? You're really just going to let that sit there like that? That non full part? Really? Don't you think you should do something about it??" It gets me to wondering how capable I am of filling that other half. Even a little bit. The world feels so big, and I feel so small. So it just sits there, mocking me.

What I think I'm finding is that the best way to make the glass fuller is to find a smaller glass. Then if things work out better than you've planned you have a cup runneth over kind of situation. And in the end, the size only matters if you let it. Or when you let those for whom it is a big deal set the agenda. Hope is still the defense against despondency. Even false hope is better than no hope at all.

And if the world thinks it foolish and the dreamer a fool, truth is, between half empty and half full, no one really knows for sure which one is the lie. In the end, to me, even taking the risk that I might be embracing a false hope filled with light seems to more sense and preferable to wrapping your self in a nettle blanket filled with thorns and broken glass in the name of pragmatism.

But personally I feel like the bright, warm place on the carpet seems to be filled with more truth than lie. And like Switchfoot says, the shadow only proves the sunshine.

Sitting in the dark

Written Friday, Sept. 16 at about 10:15 p.m.:

"Right now I'm sitting here in the dark while a storm is absolutely raging outside. My mom is listening to the police scanner at her house. I called her on our cell phone and she said that there are several tree limbs down very near here. That's why there's no power.

When the power went out I put my boys to bed and they fell sound asleep. The streets are full of water curb to curb and it's still coming down. My wife is out to a movie with a friend, so she's probably just peechy.

So, what the heck do you do in the dark when you're wifes away? The only thing there is left to do---blog on you're blackberry, of course.

My daughter was with a friend at a neighboring town's homecoming football game. I called them on her friend's cell and they had made it back to the house ok. So I went down to Robo's room and grabbed his boombox (the only one which will run on batteries in our house) and brought it up to the livingroom. The local classic rock radio station is keeping me up to date on the situation while at the same time taking me back through the 60s, 70s, 80s and today.

Such a grand adventure. And oddly, a pretty major chill out at the same time."

Bits and pieces

So strange. The weather seems to have taken a cue with the flip of the calendar page to September. Suddenly the air has that crisp hint of memory, and I look at the still green trees knowing that they are ready to burst into a flaming shimmer of their former selves. I get more reflective than normal this time of year. Every song I hear seems to harken back to something I will soon be remembering, like I'm walking through a scrapbook photo that I haven't taken yet. For me it has the strange combination of new beginnings and savored endings all at the same time. The fading sunshine, cooler than even just a few weeks ago, seems to become part of the air so you can actually breath it in. I fill my lungs and hold it there, trying to store some up for the dusky days ahead.

My wife and I met in this season, we were married in the fall, and we had our first wonderful child in the fall. And I'm glad of that. It just feels like the right season for epic life changes. Who knows what it will hold this time around.

So I've been ruminating, and here are a couple things I've started to write that didn't quite flesh out to a full post of it's own.

"One thing that's happening this fall is that I've started to become dumber in the eyes of my children. I was aware that this would happen. It is inevitableble as the teen years takes it's sometimes ugly hold of my beautiful babies. It was just so delayed in my daughter that I thought maybe we were unique and gifted by God to be spared this part of the journey. But no, we were only given the extra time to prepare, which, it would seem, I have squandered. And now is the winter of our discontent, and my storehouse is already nearly empty.

Not that the kids are what could be considered bad really, and not that we don't still share a whole heapin' helpin' of lovin' around still (more times than not), but there has been a dramatic spike in the number of breathy under-the-breath non words being uttered around our house, accompanied by rolled eyes which all have the same basic unspoken translations: "That's so stupid!"

And not only has it come, it's holding nothing back, leaving no child left behind. My 8 yr old is aiming to be an over achiever, entering his teen years very early. He takes great pains on every occasion, with evangelistic zeal, to explain to me in great detail how his plans are so very wise and my counter desires only reflect folly. Typically when we have 5 minutes to get him to school and he still doesn't have his shoes on because every time he tries his shoes "bug" him.

Even down to our youngest member is trying on teen-age behavior he is witnessing for size. This has caused my wife to give our youngest, the little Bear, a new nickname. Mr. Frass. Which is short for Mr. Sassafrass, because lately he is trying out just where the limits are. We refer to him by one or the other of these two names. Bear when he's being his wonderful, cute little self---Mr. Frass when he's testing boundaries. And he's is a master of this double identity.

He will be go back and forth between these two personalities 3 or 4 times within seconds, to see which will serve his purposes best. His latest Mr. Frass is including the phrase "I said. . .!" before the most recent demand that is not being heeded. Well hey, why not, it works for the giants living here. My wife reported this latest development to me. She asked him to do something and he of course said No, because that's the default answer.

It's funny, even when you ask him something like, "Bear, would you like some ice cream?", he inevitably gives his immediate No. But when the question would actually benefit him, the 'no' is followed by a moments hesitation, like an internal systems check where you can see that little ensign on the bridge chiming up, "Um, Sir. With all due respect, you may want to reconsider. She did say ice cream, after all." To which the little internal Captian replies, "What's that?! Ice cream you say? Why wasn't I informed??! Full Steam REVERSE!!" and as we're leaving th kitchen, he suddenly comes padding after, "Yes. Yes. Ice cream, please!"

So, in the latest incident, the wife asks him to do whatever it was, and he says no. So, of course, she has to a little more firmly ask him again--to communicate that she wasn't kidding. Only this time, instead of seeing wisdom and conflict avoidance in complying, he turns and takes a firm stance and tone himself and declares, "I said NO mommy!"

She did say, though, that there was the slightest little crack in this new facade where she could see the thought occurring, "Hmmm, is this going to make me die?"

He's also gotten a new habit. Once, at a family gathering, he was doing something that caused him to go into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Of course, we all thought this was totally fun to see. However, he got such a good reaction that now it's his latest trick in his little bag of cute. He'll pull that out now as a tactic when he feels like he's loosing ground in any situation. Only the counterfeit is not cute at all. It's shrill and loud and makes you want to pull out your eyeballs and wipe the grit it puts on the back of them."

After all that, I was writing about some music I gave my mom for her birthday. I made her a playlist of music I found on the iTunes music store (which is down right now, this Tues 9-12-06 morning, pending an Apple announcement this afternoon---aren't you excited! I know I am). I put together songs for her that reminded me of growing up, and then explained them for her as we listened to them at her party. I'll post that playlist and it's explanations when I have it written up in it's enirety, but in the meantime I had this reflection as I thought about all those tunes:

"This music reminds me of when I was like 5, maybe. And I would be in the living room in mid-November at about 4:30, when it was getting dusky outside and very cool. There might be uncharacteristicly early dusting of white powder being cradled in the fallen leaves on the ground, but nothing you could call snow with a straight face. It would be just before Dad got home and carried in some of the metallic outside air on his coat, and it would fall off of him onto me like spilled water when he stomped his boots off at the door.

I would be sitting there watching something on PBS that my mom would have turned on to entertain me after the 3 mainstream networks had switched over from afternoon cartoons to early evening news programs. I would be sitting there running my fingers absentmindedly through the channels in our green sculpted carpet, the air made thick with the scent of the warm dinner she was cooking in the kitchen.

That was the decade I remember as smelling of natural fiber macrame twine and brown leather and fondue burner fuel. It was painted in paisley and tie-dye, denim and polyester, olive green and burnt orange. It was a time so full of youth that even the plastic felt young, like this wasn't was plastic would someday be, but it was a good start. People seemed confused and inspired and sad and quietly angry all at the same time. I could feel the tension of recent disagreements between people, but I never saw the arguments myself. Somehow I knew that the cause of all of that was very far away from the warm summer sidewalks or the cold winter snow that sometimes kept us from being able to use our back porch door, and so I shouldn't be too worried about it. Worries would come another day.

But even that young I had a feeling that the world was more sensual than it have ever been or would be for long, and that somehow my sensual exploration of the sights and sounds and textures around me was more in line with this "new thing', than it was in the lives of the adults that surrounded me. I had no idea that the near future held for me a rendezvous with Mad Magazine, Hulk and Spiderman comics, and the ultimate experience that would launch me into my very first pop culture frenzy, one that started "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away. . ."

This was the music that flowed out of roller rinks, pizza places, swimming pool loudspeakers and through the rolled down windows of cars without air conditioning. It was trapped on 8 tracks in glass topped display cases with holes in them for your hands, allowing a 6 year old to touch it but not possess it.

It felt like this was the soundtrack to a rebirth, and I was just fortunate enough to be born right along with it."

So there it is, a couple bits and pieces. Sweep them up, do with them as you may.