General Essays

Pontifications, pomposity and other pretentiousness

Home for the Holidays

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The boys aren’t boys anymore.  They are full grown men, with their own lives to lead and their own paths to follow. Once again they were home for Christmas.  For a couple of mornings, when I’d get up and walk the hallway in the pre-dawn darkness, their rooms would be full again, just like they used to be, when home meant the same thing to us all.  Now they have left, and once again, like it feels every time they leave, the house is cold and empty.

At this moment, I’m sitting here alone in the midnight, listening to Patty Griffin sing “Heavenly Day”, and I’m thinking about love.   It occurs to me that pain and anguish and suffering are constant and never far away.  Love isn’t the denial or the absence of pain, rather, it is the defeat of, the triumph over, however temporary, our suffering.    Love is concurrently fleeting and permanent – even when it lasts for only a moment, its traces remain etched in our subconscious forever, and the memory of its healing power lasts long after the particulars of its instance have faded and dissolved.

We enter the world cold and alone, small and fragile, and then we are gathered in our mother’s arms, and the first thing that is communicated to us, the very first thing we learn, is love.    It is our initiation ceremony to this universe, our true baptism.  The power of that baptismal love and its ability to make us quiet and still in the enormous and harsh and frightening new world we have been thrust into is burned into the core of our being.   The simple truth that love is as vital to our survival as air to breathe or food for sustenance never leaves us.

So it is that, spurred on by a gnawing ache, we spend so much time blindly flailing about, stumbling over and confusing needs with desires, in a desperate search for love.    The need for love is so primal and constant that it can distort us, and distort our memory and knowledge of what deep down we know love to be, until all we have is the raw and unsatisfied hunger for that which we no longer can recognize, and we are blinded and preyed upon by those who have turned their backs on love.   To deny love is to embrace the black emptiness of cynicism.  Cynicism is the corruption of love, the betrayal of its pure and selfless essence, the manipulation of love into something dark and sinister.   These manipulations can destroy a love, but they cannot destroy the capacity for love.  Only love can wipe clean the dark stain that cynicism leaves on the soul.

Love is transformational.  The love in which my children were conceived has transformed into a love for them that has continued and deepened over the years.   It is a love that has sustained me and buffered me from the eroding forces of pain and anguish, and I hope that it is strong enough to shield them from the suffering that will be just as inevitable a part of their journey.  Above all, may they forever carry my love inside of them, and may it sustain them in times of need, as it has sustained me.

My Part in the Downfall Revisited

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(Saw this article on-line this morning, related to the Generation-Y workforce I discussed in this post last July.)

http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2838-Leadership-Management-Gen-Ys-impact-in-the-workplace/?SiteId=cbmsnhp42838&sc_extcmp=JS_2838_home1

For a few years now, I have been hearing and reading about generation Y, people born after 1980, and the complaints from my generation, the baby boomers, that this new generation isn’t willing to work hard, and expects to be pampered and treated as “special”.  Much of the blame for this is placed on people like me, people who coached this generation in youth and recreation league sports, where everybody got to play and winning wasn’t emphasized.   Apparently, people like me drove the competitive will out of these young minds and replaced it with the namby-pamby “oh, well, at least I tried hard.  I’m still special!”

I coached co-ed recreation league softball and boys basketball for most of the years my sons were growing up.  I have always loved sports, and played little league baseball as a child.  I was too small (I was basically a year younger than most of my classmates) to go out for football and not good enough to make the middle and high school basketball teams, but I played back yard and pick up games with other neighborhood kids every chance I got.    I became a rabid sports fan and developed a life time love for all three games.

Early on in my sons’ lives, I noticed that, at least in my little corner of suburbia, the landscape of childhood had significantly changed.   In the post urban sprawl spread of real estate development of 1990s suburbia, neighborhoods as defined in my childhood were a thing of the past.  Kids no longer found other kids in nearby backyards and began playing together.   Instead, with neighbors further away, with technology like gaming and the internet driving kids inside more often, with parents working more hours and obsessively worrying about sexual predators, playtime had to be carefully scheduled and coordinated.  Kids had to be driven to and picked up from their friends houses.  As a result, spontaneity was largely removed, and kids had fewer opportunities to explore places and discover new friends than when I was a kid.

The largest casualty of this was the backyard or driveway pickup game.   With so many logistical factors to coordinate, getting enough kids for a game together on short notice became impossible.  Organized sports became the only way kids could play baseball or softball or basketball.

There were two types of organized sports kids could choose from – competitive and non-competitive.   The competitive options included traveling teams, which have grown to become a unique phenomenon, and little league.  Little league wasn’t as demanding as the travelling teams, but you had to try out to make a team.

The non-competitive leagues were run by the village or the local Y.  Everybody who signed up was guaranteed a roster spot, and there were minimum playing rules to ensure that everybody played.  It wasn’t as namby-pamby as many of the critics like to exaggerate.  Score was kept, each game had a winner and a loser, and standings and season ending championship tournaments were usually tracked.   As someone who loved sports, and wasn’t good enough to make most of the teams I tried out for as a child, the non-competitive leagues were an attractive option for my boys.  We signed them up and I quickly became involved in coaching, first as an assistant  on my oldest son’s softball team, then as the head coach of my second son’s softball and basketball teams.

Going into coaching, I knew all of the different strategies and philosophies that I thought would make a great coach, and what my teams may have lacked in talent or skill would be made up for by my brilliant tactical approach to the game.  This dream lasted about as long as it took the ink to dry on my coaching sign-up form.  I soon realized that not only were these little kids with short attention spans, but that many of them had never played the game before.

In basketball, for example, instead of implementing post or perimeter offenses or zone defenses, my time was spent trying to figure out which player could dribble the ball past the half court line, and trying to explain that unlike volleyball, you don’t have to slap and swat at the ball, you can actually catch it, or trying to convince a kid that he can’t catch a pass or get a rebound or play defense with his hands inside his shirt (this last example was made more frustrating by the fact that the kid with his hands in his shirt was my own son, Nick.)

So our weekly practices were exercises in riot control.  First and second grade boys who had been cooped up in their homes in the cold winter months were suddenly let loose in a gymnasium with about 10 other boys and a bouncing ball – their energies were as broad as their attention spans were narrow.  The chaos would be paused at the end of the session, only to be picked up where it left off on the Saturday morning games, where despite all my shouting they would still dribble into the corner and the other nine players on the court would follow, as if magnetized to the ball.

But every now and then something amazing would happen – the ball would actually travel airborne in the general direction of the basket.  Even more amazingly, three or four times a game, it would actually go in!  The kids would jump up and down and scream, which they pretty much did all the time anyway, while in the stands, the proud Mother and Father would beam, the Mother thinking how cute my little Billy looks, while the Father began silent deliberations on Duke or North Carolina.

Co-ed softball was even more of a challenge.   There was the second grade girl who practiced her ballet during games in the outfield.  There were the missed throws that resulted in extra bases that resulted in more missed throws.  There were fly balls that bonked outfielders on the head.   There was one of my all-time favorite players who, for reasons that will forever remain unexplained, always travelled with a portable DVD player and a copy of the film “Ghostbusters”, which he’d watch over and over while sitting on the bench between innings or waiting his turn to bat.

In both sports, in both practices and games, there was an abundance of short attention spans, confusion, frustration, and general mayhem.    And I grew to love every minute of it.   They were not only as fun as a barrel of monkeys; they actually were a barrel of monkeys.  Once I realized they were never going to comprehend a pick and roll or a suicide squeeze, I had to determine what if any value any of us, players and coaches, could get out the experience.   In time, I realized that they were just kids, and like the girls in the Cyndi Lauper song, they just wanted to have fun.

This then became my mission – I wanted every kid on my teams to have fun.  On the surface, nothing seems easier, because kids are built for having fun.  Fun is the only reason for existence that a child has.  But after spending some time with my teams, I quickly realized and remembered that it’s not that simple.   Some kids weren’t as good as others, some weren’t as smart, some were small, some were overweight, some lacked social skills, and some came from difficult family situations.   It became apparent that for some of these kids, fun was a rare experience if not an alien concept.

My strength was a sense of humor that isn’t as well developed as I’d like to think it is – in other words, it remains at about a fifth grade level.  This may make me come across as juvenile and sophomoric in the adult world, but it served me very well with children.   I found that the one thing that would at least momentarily hold their attention was my potential for goofiness.  They may not have listened when I tried to explain which base to throw to from the outfield, but if they thought they might hear me say something stupid, they were a rapt and attentive audience.  I think that all kids, for a myriad of reasons, love hearing adults say really stupid things.  Once I realized this, it became my secret weapon.  I’d say enough stupid things to get their attention, and then, every once in a while, I’d slip in some coaching.   They’d remember verbatim every stupid thing I’d say, while maybe 25% of the coaching seeped through – but hey, that was progress.

Knowing now how to get at least a minimum of their attention, and knowing how much they enjoyed the stupid things that I said (and did), I realized an amazing thing.   The kids would all listen to me and laugh at me together.  A really good player might be sitting on the bench next to a really bad player, and they’d both be laughing at me.   They may have had nothing else in common, but they shared the common experience of being sentenced to listen to my corny silliness.  The year would always begin with separate cliques of kids from the same schools or the same neighborhoods, groups of familiar faces unfamiliar to the other groups of familiar faces.  There would always be a kid or two alone on the outside.  My job became to break down these groups and meld them all together into a team, a team that may or may not have won many games, but a team, and all that means.   Above all else, I loved watching those early season cliques dissolve, and I loved it when the good players would cheer on or try to buck up the bad players, and even more, when the cool kids found something interesting in one of the un-cool kids.

I coached for I think eleven years, until Nick was out of high school.  Over the years, I actually had some teams that were good enough to win championships.  I also had teams that failed to win a game.   The one consistent thing was, I believe, despite the fact that no statistics were kept, and regardless of our won-loss record, every year my teams lead the league in laughter.

Every year, I’d watch these collections of kids become a team, and that is what these leagues were all about.  I don’t mean to imply that I was a brilliant motivator or supremely skilled in developing young people.   Most of the other coaches were just as effective, using their own methods and skill.  It was the structure of the leagues and their mission that everybody gets a chance to play and learn the game that allowed teams to develop.  More than that, it was the kids themselves.  Adults have a tendency to take credit for too much; that these kids were able to overcome their own differences and preconceptions is ultimately a tribute to the open-mindedness that young children still possess.  It’s adults who close these minds with fear and suspicion and distrust.

Now these kids, whose minds I helped fill with unreasonable feelings of self-worth, are young adults starting their careers.  We keep hearing how demanding they are and how they expect to be treated as if they are something special.  They apparently believe the “everybody is a winner, everybody is special” philosophy learned in our sports leagues.  Baby boomers have difficulty understanding this, thinking, I’m not special, I’m lucky to have a job, and if I have to work 60 hours a week to keep it, then that’s what I’ll do.  What makes these kids think they are so special?

Maybe the generation Y kids will continue to insist they are special.  Maybe they won’t stand for their jobs being outsourced.   Maybe they’ll feel the job is lucky to have them.  Maybe they won’t put up with all the crap the baby boomers assumed was owed to their bosses.

One topical book refers to this generational difference as “Hard America” vs “Soft America”;  that the baby boomers of “Hard America” are driven by competition and accountability, while the “Soft America” of generation Y, having been coddled all these years, is inherently weaker, and needs the protection of government regulation.  I’d argue that this is ridiculous and short sighted.  “Hard America” may be driven by competition and accountability, but anyone who has ever had to suffer the obnoxiousness of an overly competitive family member who sulks and pumps his chest through games of Trivial Pursuit or Pictionary knows that weakness and insecurity lie not far below their surface.  It is this weakness, this fear of failure that has allowed this generation to take the world’s strongest economy and slowly destroy it.  Where families were once headed by a single wage earner, now two or more family members work two or more jobs and still struggle to make ends meet.  The competitive win at all costs mentality has been exploited, and as a result, we work harder for lower relative wages with fewer benefits.   The people who run the corporations love this, while everybody else suffers.

The values taught to “Soft America” place value on the individual and his contribution to the team.  Ask anyone who has ever been a manager who they want on their team, the overly competitive and aggressive ladder climber, or the good team player.   If members of generation Y truly believe that they are special, then there may be hope that they will demand the simple respect that the baby boomers have given away.  They may be the only hope to fix what we, their parents (who instilled these values in the first place), have destroyed.

(P.S. – my time as a coach was all volunteer, so, unlike those pesky teachers, my contribution to poisoning young minds was at least tax-free)

What’s in a Name?

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I’ve always been a big fan of funny and unusual names, whether real or fictional.  I think in real life, the name you are given shapes who you are and will be as much as anything else.  For example, if you were given the name “Thaddeus” or “Reginald”, odds are you won’t wind up working in a factory.  By the same token, if you are named “Merle” or “Hank”, you probably won’t end up in the cologne or fashion industry.

In literature, coming up with the right name for a character can be everything.  For example, had Charles Dickens  settled for “John Smith” instead of “Ebenezer Scrooge”, odds are the character would be long forgotten.   Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom” and J.D. Salinger’s “Holden Caulfield” are two more famous characters whose name is a large part of their power.  “Nick Adams” is the perfect name for Ernest Hemmingway’s alter ego,  because it mirrors his style – short and sweet and simple but masculine.  Moby Dick opens with the famous “call me Ishmael”, which wouldn’t be the same if it started “call me Herman.”

Sometimes the sound of the name is what is important.  “Alas, poor Bob” wouldn’t be remembered, but “alas, poor Yorick” is.  “Hazel Motes” is the perfect name for Flannery O’Connor’s tortured and anguished inventor of “The Holy Church of Christ Without Christ” in her novel, Wise Blood.  “Humbert Humbert” is as strange a name as, well,  “Vladimir Nabokov”

For funny names, it’s hard to top the names given to Groucho Marx’s characters in the Marx Brothers movies.  Note the importance of middle initials in the names “Otis B. Driftwood” (from A Night at the Opera) and “Rufus T. Firefly” (Duck Soup).   The role of a distinguished college professor calls for a stuffy and formal name, with the middle name spelled out – hence his character in Horse Feathers is given the impressive name of “Quincy Adams Wagstaff”.  The not so scrupulous horse doctor of A Day at the Races is given the name “Hugo Hackenbush.”

The Marx Brothers were pioneers in the surreal comedy that would, some thirty five years later, be the inspiration for the television series, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, which became a repository of wonderful silly names.  There was the boxer, “Kenneth Clean Air System”, the athlete who was going to jump the English Channel named “Ron Obvious”, the secret agent and master of disguise “Teddy Salad”, and the housewives who dropped in to visit Jean Paul Sarte named “Mrs. Premise” and “Mrs. Conclusion”.  The premise of their movie The Life of Brian centers around how silly it would sound had Christianity been created around “Brian” of Nazareth instead of “Jesus”.

There is, of course, the famous Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s on First”, with the unlikely lineup including “What” at second base, “I Don’t Know” at third base, “Why” in left field, “Because” in center field, “Tomorrow” pitching, “Today” at catcher, and “I Don’t Give a Darn” at shortsop.

Then there are real life names, some famous, some not, that I’ve collected over the years, including:

  •                 Robert Strange McNamara   (Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War)
  •                 Gaylord Pipcorn (A classmate of my Mom’s)
  •                 Finley B. Leech (A banker from Zion, Il., who’s name I saw on a pen once)
  •                 Millard Fillmore(13th president of the United States)
  •                 Mr. Ledger (my accounting teacher at Gateway Tech)
  •                 Moon Unit Zappa (daughter of musician Frank Zappa)

My Dad, who was a truck driver, always told the story about a fellow driver who, while in Cinncinati or Cleveland or some city somewhere, got stopped by a cop for crossing the street against traffic, in the middle of the street rather than at a light.  When the cop asked him his name and he replied, truthfully, “Jay Walker”, the cop just about took him in for insubordination.

Then there are names that are bad puns.  In my career in I.T., we frequently had to come up with test data, and some of the people I’d create included:

  •                Jim Nasium                                                          Physical Education Teacher
  •                 Chuck Wagon                                                      Cook
  •                 Sally Mander                                                       Oceanographer
  •                 Ellie Phant                                                           Dietician
  •                 Justin Case                                                          Detective
  •                 Sam and Ella Poisoning                                    Outlaws
  •                 Hank E. Panky                                                    Philanderer
  •                 Bill Board                                                             Advertising Executive
  •                 Noah Body and his wife, Annie Body            Philosophers
  •                 Scott Free                                                            Defendant
  •                 Jack Squatt                                                         Curmudgeon
  •                 Ken Tuckey                                                         Back Woodsman

I’m hoping to come up with a work of fiction in which all of these characters play a part.  It’ll be historical fiction, centering on the exploits of that famous explorer, “Puns De Leone”.   I’m open to negotiations on the film rights …

 

 

 

Armistice Day

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I’m old.

I’m old enough to remember, when I was in grade school, turning and facing east and observing one minute of silence at 11:00 on November 11.   This was done in observance of Armistice Day, commemorating those who served in World War One, because the armistice that was signed on November 11, 1918, ended the War effective 11:00, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.   Armistice Day was created, as most war memorials are, to ensure that “we never forget”, in this case the courage and bravery of those who served in that horrific and bloody war.

I was in grade school in the late 60s, or about 50 years after the end of World War One, so there were still plenty of living veterans of that war.  Now it is closer to 100 years after the war ended, and the last living survivor died a couple of years ago.

In 1971, Armistice Day was changed to Veteran’s Day, a day to honor the sacrifice of all those who served, not just the World War One veterans.  This makes sense, as that honor has certainly been earned, and no matter how much we claim to “support our troops”, the truth is that those of us who never served ALL take the courage and sacrifice of those who have for granted.   They deserve a day to be honored, and anyone who ever served in any branch of the military should be given that day off.   Anything we can do to acknowledge the sacrifices they made on our behalf should be done, because nothing we do will ever be enough to repay them.

Despite this, I can’t help but feel that Veterans Day should be some other day, and that Armistice Day should still be observed, that we should still face the east and observe a moment of silence at 11:00 on November 11.  Because we don’t observe Armistice Day, we have forgotten about World War 1.  Here is a reminder:  over 15 million soldiers and civilians were killed and another 20 million wounded in World War 1.     That’s more than 35 million.  There was the horror of gas and chemical warfare.   There were weeks and months spent in muddy and cold trenches.   There was brutal hand to hand combat.   

And there is no one left to tell us what that was all like.  One of the original goals of Armistice Day was to never forget.  Yet the vast majority of the country that is younger than me knows nothing of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.   People don’t know about facing east in a moment of silence.   And they don’t know that that moment of silence was intended to remind us all not just of the glory and valor of those who served, but also of the fact that there were more than 35 million casualties.  It is our ability to forget about the real and tragic costs of war that makes it too easy to start new ones.

To all of you who have served, please accept my humble appreciation and sincere gratitude, and I hope Veteran’s Day brings you some comfort.  I’d ask that you join me in facing east for one silent moment at 11:00, out of respect for our grandfathers and great grandfathers, and for our grandchildren.

RIP, Joe Frazier

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For most of the 20th century, the Heavyweight Champion of the World was the most honored and revered title in all of individual sports.  Tonight, with the passing of Joe Frazier, one of best to ever wear the crown is gone.

The measure of any champion is the quality of his competition.   If Muhammad Ali really was “the greatest”, it is because of George Foreman and Ken Norton and especially Joe Frazier.

Frazier was a great champion in his own right.  He held the title for five years, from 1968 to 1973, before getting knocked out by Foreman.  His career, however, will forever be defined by his relationship with Ali.   Ali and Frazier formed the greatest individual rivalry in sports history.   Russell and Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, Williams and DiMaggio, they all take a back seat to Ali and Frazier.   It is partially because the nature of the sport puts the two against each other in the most basic and direct and pure way; it  is also because both men, inside and outside of the ring, were giants who commanded respect and attention.

In the most eagerly anticipated fight ever, the “fight of the century”, the first match with Ali, Frazier dominated and defended his title, proving to any doubters that he was legitimate.   In the third and final Ali-Frazier fight, the “thriller in Manila”, in 1975, both fighters were well past their prime.   But, like great rivals do, they brought out the best in each other, and turned back time, and fought the hardest and most vicious and best heavyweight championship fight in my lifetime, if not ever.

In the ring, Ali and Frazier were studies in contrast, opposites that when blended together formed perfection and transcended the sport.  Ali was all about grace and speed,  his toes barely touching the canvas as he’d shuffle around the ring and release left jabs with blinding speed, then when the moment was right, he’d unleash a flurry of combinations, a fluid blur of power and fury .  Frazier, on the other hand, was strength and determination, his feet on the ground, he may as well have been wearing combat boots, as he’d bob and weave and bore straight into his opponents, swatting off punches like they were annoying flies, until he was inside his opponent’s reach, where his powerful and famous and inevitable left hook would be launched, with his arm seemingly starting on the floor and picking up momentum and power until it landed on his opponent’s head, launching beads of sweat airborne.    Ali and Frazier in the ring were like a high school geomtry lesson, as Ali would dance perfect circles around the ring, while Frazier would define the radius, starting in the center and boring in on a straight line, circumnavigating and dividing Ali’s circles into sectors and segments.

Outside the ring, they were also contrasting personalities. Ali was self promotion and bombast, Frazier was quiet dignity.   Ali was an artist and extrovert; Frazier was a craftsman and introvert.  Ali was obnoxious and over the top, but he was also funny and witty and charming, and eventually he’d get a laugh or a smile out of even his harshest critics.  Frazier was none of these; he never seemed at ease in the public eye, yet his mere presence commanded respect.  Frazier’s dignity was strong enough to withstand even Ali’s relentless taunting and baiting.

It will always be a subject of debate among fans whether Ali really was “the greatest” or not.  But anybody who ever saw Joe Frazier at his best wouldn’t hesitate to put him up there not only with Ali, but also with Dempsey and Tunney and Louis and Marciano.  It doesn’t seem very likely that the world will ever see men like these again, men who were truly worthy of the title Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Vulture

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We were just north of Kansas City.  It was mid afternoon, and we hadn’t eaten yet.  I spotted a Steak and Shake to the left, so we pulled off of the freeway.  Traffic was heavy, and the stoplight turned red at the top of the hill, just before we were to turn left.   As cars backed up behind us, we noticed the man in the green army fatigue jacket holding the cardboard sign that said “U.S. Veteran with Family Needs Help”.   I put him to be in his mid fifties; he was thin and had fading reddish hair.  He was clean shaven, and he kneeled near the stop light.   He did not approach us or any of the other cars.

Knowing I had a fresh five dollar bill in my wallet, my Sister and I had the usual discussion about whether he was legit or just one of the many rip-off artists you hear so much about.  Meanwhile, in my mind, the would-be writer in me immediately tried to construct stories about how this man ended up in this place.   Tragic stories of real loss and anguish were balanced by devious and cynical con jobs.   It struck me that either angle I took would be a good vehicle for exploring the theme that life is, among other things, an on-going assault on individual dignity.

If he was in fact a con, if he was merely too lazy to get a job, then he certainly wasn’t worthy of any of my money, and anything I gave him would just be perpetuating a lie.  Besides, there are shelters and mechanisms provided by our government and private faith based initiatives that are in place for people with exactly these issues.

If he really was the victim of tragic circumstance and fate, if he and his family really were hurting and hungry, if he had exhausted all other means and standing at that corner with his hand out was his only option, then it would be my obligation to help him.  Maybe my five dollars would somehow be enough to prevent his family from going hungry for the night, or enable them to sleep with a roof over their heads.

The light wasn’t going to stay red forever.   There was no time to do a background check, or to interview him to conclude if he was worthy or not.  I’d have to determine quickly what to do, whether this man was worthy of my five dollars or not.

Either way, at least I’d have some fresh material to write about.

Intersection

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A couple of months ago, on a warm August afternoon, I watched a hummingbird from my window.  It was smaller than my thumb, and it hovered and levitated, the motor of its tiny wings a blue blur, as it looked for nectar in the wild flowers just outside of my cabin. 

Around here, you don’t see hummingbirds in the winter.  They migrate south, to Mexico and Panama, as far as 2500 miles. Hormonal changes brought about by decreasing amounts of daylight tell them when it is time to go.  For some, the migration path takes them over the Gulf of Mexico, or about 500 miles of non-stop flying.  Predators are numerous, from the many birds of prey to bats and cats to even spiders and insects.  Hummingbirds typically migrate alone.  

I put this down so I don’t forget about that hummingbird and the blue blur of its wings and the long and perilous and solitary journey that brought it, on that late summer afternoon, to the wild flowers by my cabin at the precise time I happened to look out my window.

Orbit

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It’s six A.M. in mid October in my cabin in northwestern Wisconsin. The moon is full and bright and approaching the western horizon. Beyond the reach of its glow, stars shine bright and vivid. In less than a half hour, in the east, the sun will rise. Yesterday, shortly before it rose, it projected its rays onto the descending moon, and turned the moon a bright orange, almost a blood red, that the coyotes outside yipped and howled at.

She is light, lit by the same celestial spark that ignited the stars, and in the infinite darkness of the unending night and the numbing cold of oblivion, I cling to her.

Labor Day

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On September 5th, 1985, at about 8:30 P.M., I became a father.   Our first child, our son Jon, was born.

Talk about “Labor Day” – my wife was in labor in the hospital for more than 36 hours before Jon was finally born.  Even then, the doctor had to use forceps, a device that resembled a giant salad tong, to get him out.  But the moment when he finally said “It’s a boy” made it all worth the wait.

I thought I was well prepared and ready to be a father.  I had everything figured out – what rules I’d enforce, what beliefs and principles I’d instill, how fair and balanced I’d be.  Little did I know that you can never be adequately prepared, because, once born,  it turns out that this thing you’ve been obsessing over and reading and theorizing about is alive, and as unpredictable as any other living thing.   Nothing can prepare you for the challenges that await you, and you end up learning a lot more from your child than the other way around.  More than anything, nothing can prepare you for that moment when you look into your child’s eyes for the first time and feel the overwhelming spiritual sonic boom of love, a love so deep and complete that it is frightening.

Now, 26 years later, Jon is a young professional living and working in Minneapolis.   He has, despite my blundering and fumbling learn as I go struggles as a father, turned out to be a hard working and thoughtful man.  I am immensely proud of him, and thoroughly enjoy his company every time I see him.

One thing I do know – I fell in love with him immediately and forever.  I hope he understands this, that ill-advised though some of my actions may have been, they were always undertaken with the best intentions.    The thing about being a father is, it doesn’t end when the child grows up – I am proud of the fact that I will always be Jon’s father, and I hope he understands that I will always there for him.

My wife and I still live in the same house where we raised our children.   Our second son, Nicholas, is beginning his final year of college, while the youngest, our daughter, Hannah, just began her senior year of High School.  Next year at this time, we will officially be empty nesters.

About a year ago, the elderly woman who had always lived in the house across the street from us passed away.  Shortly afterwards, a young couple with a pre-school aged son bought the house and moved in.  Sometimes I see the father, home from work, on his lawn tractor, mowing his grass, with his young son on his lap, the same way that I used to mow my grass, with Jon on my lap.  As I watch them, I become aware that they have no idea what the future will bring, or how fast it will arrive.   They are, like Jon and I were twenty some years ago, lost in the moment, blissfully unaware of how quickly the world is spinning, of how fast the years will pass.   I imagine that the old woman who previously lived in the house used to watch Deb and I and our young children with the same wistful eye.

Times may change, but some things remain constant and perpetual.  People will always fall in love and they will always raise children, and if they are lucky, they will be able to find meaningful work to sustain their growing families.  

This is what we ultimately celebrate on Labor Day – the vital role of work in the perpetuity of love and in the dreaming of better lives for our children.

Their Brochures Seem Nice …

/ djgourdoux / Leave a comment

The process of settling down and starting a family is often referred to as “putting down roots.”   Roots are the part of a tree that is buried underground.   Roots in human terms usually refers to those relatives who are buried underground, our ancestors who came before us.  One of the reasons we bury our loved ones is to remind future generations of where they came from, who came before them.  

This leads me to a question that I rarely ask myself, but when I do, I never come up with a satisfactory answer.  It’s something that I really should resolve before too long.   The question is this:  where do I want to be buried?

First, to be clear, wherever I end up being buried, I’d prefer that it not happen until I am indisputably dead.  Please, make sure that no voodoo witch doctor has put me under a temporary spell, or worse, that I am not the victim of some administrative foul-up and buried alive, while some dead guy keeps getting my monthly AARP magazine.   I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a simple double check.   It can be as easy as having me fog a mirror, or pinching my arm, or showing me a photo of Megan Fox. 

Once it’s been verified that I am indeed dead, the question remains:  where should I be buried?  Like planning a new business, determining a final resting place comes down to three things:  location, location and location.   I’d like to be in a shaded and dry spot – I’d prefer not to be in a flood plain, for example.  I’d also like for it to be relatively quiet  – there is nothing I hate more than the sound of interstate traffic whizzing by.   Not that it is going to keep me awake or anything.  Most importantly, I’d like to be buried where family and friends can visit me, where there is at least someone familiar with the name on my headstone.   I’d rather not be buried with anonymous people who are complete strangers – I’m afraid that in death, I will be just as self conscious and shy as I was in life, and it’ll take too much out of my eternal afterlife getting to know the strangers in the plots next to me.   In fact, with my luck, I’ll probably end up buried next to an insurance salesman. 

So, just as my daughter is searching for the right college, I need to determine the right cemetery.  Like college, I’ll have to make sure I can afford the fees and meet the entrance criteria, which usually consists of being dead, while many of the better cemeteries also demand affiliation with a religion.  I do not belong to any church.   In addition, any hopes of an athletic scholarship are unlikely, because one, I am not much of an athlete, and two, most cemeteries have cut basketball from their programs.  So the list of eligible cemeteries has narrowed to a few candidates.

The first option would be the Gourdoux family plot in the Saint Francis of Assisi cemetery overlooking the Chippewa River in the northwestern Wisconsin community once known as Flambeau.  This would make sense because it is where many of my ancestors are buried, starting with my Great Grandfather, Alex Gourdoux,  who came from France to settle in the area in the late 1860s.  My grandparents and many of my other relatives are buried within the reach of the late afternoon shadows cast by the family marker.  This is some of the prime real estate in the entire cemetery, under a massive old oak tree and a stone’s throw from the church.  The problem is that in order to qualify for this location, you have to be Catholic, which is why my Mom is buried on the other end of the cemetery, in the non-Catholic section, where she waits for my Dad to join her under the headstone with their names, with the date of my Dad’s death waiting to be filled in.  

Despite being non-Catholics, Flambeau makes sense for my Mom and Dad’s final resting place.  It is only a couple of miles from where my Dad grew up, and about a mile away from where they first met on a New Year’s Eve in 1950 or 1951, and just down the road from where they lived for the last 12 years of my Mom’s life.    It would make some sense for me to be buried somewhere near my Mom and Dad, because before I was anything else I was their son.

The problem is that I never really lived in the Flambeau area.  We lived in Chetek, about 20 miles away, the first two years of my life, before moving to Milwaukee in 1960, and then moving to the small town of Union Grove in Southeastern Wisconsin in 1962.  As picturesque a location as the Flambeau cemetery is, it somehow doesn’t seem right to be buried in a community that you never really lived in.  

That would leave as the next option the Union Grove cemetery, in the town I lived in from the ages three to 18, and again from the ages 21 to 22.  This would make sense as it is the place where I grew up.  

The problem with Union Grove is that I moved out for good when I got married in 1981.  My parents left in 1983 when my Dad retired, and slowly the remaining Gourdouxs left, too, the last ones about ten years ago.  Not a single Gourdoux is buried in Union Grove, and it wouldn’t make sense for me to be the first.  It’s been thirty years since I left, and I have long lost contact with anyone who might still live there.   Once upon a time, it was home, but not anymore,

In 1984, my wife and I moved to Pleasant Prairie, where we still live.  Over the years, we have added on to the house, and we raised our children here.  It has been everything one could ask for in a home.

Pleasant Prairie, though, like a lot of  21st century suburban communities, is what they refer to as a “bedroom community”, meaning that most of its residents commute to  work outside of town.   This has been true for me, as for 24 of the 27 years we’ve lived here I worked in Illinois, and the other three years I worked in Milwaukee.  This means that most of the friends I’ve made over the years have been co-workers who don’t live in Pleasant Prairie.  While for years I was involved in the community as a youth league coach and met many wonderful parents, few lasting friendships have been made. 

Being a “bedroom community”, Pleasant Prairie is largely comprised of housing developments and an industrial park.  There is no downtown, and most shopping is either done in Kenosha or Illinois or at the outlet malls that have been installed near I-94 to cater to Chicago and Milwaukee shoppers.   Instead of neighborhoods, there are subdivisions.  We live on a one-way street that was one of the earliest housing developments in the town, having been converted from farms about sixty years ago, but it really isn’t much different from the modern subdivisions that proliferated and consumed most of the remaining farmland in the 1990s.

One thing the village planners seemed to have overlooked, when approving all of the new subdivisions, was what to do with all of these people when they die.  I am unaware of a public cemetery anywhere in Pleasant Prairie   Designed for workers who drive great lengths to their jobs every day, apparently it is expected that when dead, they make one last commute to wherever their final resting place might be.

So the issue remains unresolved.  It strikes me that, as society becomes more mobile and families are more spread out, I am probably one of many who have the same question.   The old you get buried where you lived paradigm seems like it was designed for a simpler time.   Everything seems to be more complex these days, even death, and the simple concept of leaving behind a marker to be remembered by, to prove to future generations that you were once here, is no exception. 

Maybe the answer lies in technology.  Maybe I could be buried on the internet, dead but on line in a virtual grave in a virtual cemetery.    This way, not only could acquaintances from all stages of my life easily visit me, but the 1,000th visitor could win a free weekend in Vegas.

It turns out my life had meaning after all.