Personal Note: Six Months

My last post on this blog was on December 7th, 2015.  Six months ago.  Much like a New Year's resolution to hit the gym, recommiting to the a creative endeavor can be fraught with much of the same personal pitfalls.  How many of us have told ourselves we are going to get in shape this year, to hit the gym three times a week, and then failed to show after week 3?  I know I have.  The blog is much the same way.  Once I miss a writing goal, I appear to abandon my craft entirely.  Here's the thing.

I don't care.  I have to get back on this pony eventually.  I can't allow myself to put so much emphasis on my failings.  They are things of the past, and I cannot change the past.  I am here now, and I am typing words on to the screen.  That is all that matters.  I fell down, but now I must get back up.

The thing that brought me back to the screen?  A funeral.  The funeral hasn't happened yet.  It is on Wednesday, but, once again, people close to me have chosen to enlist me to help them say goodbye to a loved one.  The person who died?  Margaret Ellen Gitts, my friend's grandmother.

I had met her before, sure, but I didn't know the woman well, but I got the chance to talk to her family and I received emails detailing aspects of her life.  My job is to then distill all of this rich material into a shorter form, to put it in some kind of order, to make sense of a 90 year old woman's life in the space of about 20 minutes.  I loved every minute of it.

The reason I did?  Margaret was FASCINATING.  She was a wonderful Depression-era woman who sewed, cooked, ran a dairy farm, a dahlia farm, who raised 5 kids and a gaggle of grandkids.  She made her family's clothes for generations, learned to ski in her 60s, she traveled the world in her later years.  She devoured life with a passion and grace I am forced to marvel at.  She is wonderful.

So, how did that bring me back here to this page?  It brought me back to writing because I realized that more than anything I like making sense of the world by processing it in words.  I love the complexity of life, and I love the challenge of trying to distill that complexity into something that others understand.  I love...connection, and my words are my best tool for making that connection.

My perch on the patio.  Not bad.

Writing about the family's love for Margaret reminded me that I love the world too, and my way of loving is to tell my reader's how much this world is worth our affection.  It's been a long time since I've been here, sitting under the starlit sky at two in the morning with a glass of whiskey and the sound of the wind and the keyboard in my ears.  I'll try not to stay away so long next time, but if I do disappear again, I know I will be forced to forgive myself until I find my way back.

Peeling the Onion: A New Encounter

To borrow a line from the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, "Haaaaaaaaaaave you met Ted?"

Ted Ramsey is a newer edition to the Wild Hare family, and I've had the pleasure of getting to know him over the past couple of months.  He's a vivacious, pleasant young man who is quick to smile and quick to engage with other people, but I didn't really get to know this young man until I sat down with him over a beer after work the other night.

It is so easy to assume that you know people from the sparse interactions you may have with them throughout a day.  You work side by side with them, so you think you have an idea of who they are and what they are about.  I have to tell you that Ted was one of those surprises that caught me completely unaware.

Let's start with what I thought about Ted in the beginning.  He seemed nice, charming, and good for a laugh.  I thought him young, fresh, just out of college, and, while smart, maybe not that worldly in his experience in life.  I was wrong.

When Ted and I sat down to have a beer together, it became quickly obvious that this was a young man with potential! He had a diverse range of interests and a lot of experience for one his age.  For example, Ted worked as a singer on a cruise ship for a year.  He worked for years in Washington D.C. on public policy issues, aaaaaaaaaaaand there is this:

Ted was a part of the University of Oregon a capella group "On The Rocks" that was featured on NBC's Sing Off a couple of years back.

It's amazing what happens when you put your assumptions aside and actually engage others in conversation.  I had an overly simplistic view of this young man in my head, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to be corrected.  Stereotyping and snap judgments are easy to do, especially as we get older and feel like we "know" more, but I was glad to be wrong in this case as I got to better know a nice young man who I might have overlooked if I kept my blinders on.

Plus, and you know this is true, I just wanted to post that Youtube video and see if I couldn't get people to embarrass Ted at work.

Homework: Act Like a Lady...Think Like a Boss

When I picked Shea up from school today, we set off for home and had our daily small talk.  We covered our usual topics of school, play, her friends, etc.  We then set the agenda for the day.  We were going to go to the store and then return home for homework.  We agreed that both of us were going to do our homework.  She had a composition to write, and, guess what?  So did I.

I had to do my own daily homework of writing, and we agreed to do it together.  I hadn't planned on sitting down to write, but an opportunity presented itself, and I decided to take it.  Thus, you find me here in the blogosphere brainstorming on what to write.  This can oftentimes be the hardest part for a writer, discovering your subject, but today was easy as I latched on to a small detail from my drive to pick up Shea.

On the way to the school, I was behind a car with the bumper sticker, "Act Like a Lady...Think Like a Boss."  My first reaction was, "Right on, sister."  Then I stuttered a moment and had to rethink my original idea.  I wasn't sure if I liked the "Act like a lady" part.  I decided this would be a great chance for Shea and I to have a talk about it, to pick her brain and see what she thought about what it meant to "act like a lady."

After our initial small talk, I told her about the bumper sticker I saw and asked her what she thought.  Her first answer, "Good."  I had to press her a little bit to see where she truly stood.  I followed up with, "What is a boss?"

"Someone who tells other people what to do.  Like at work or a teacher."

"Is that different from being a lady?" I asked.

She had to think hard on this one.  "Yes," she said.  "Ladies are nice."

"Is it mean to tell someone what to do if you are in charge?" I asked.

"No," Shea said after a moment.

"So a lady can be in charge and tell people what to do, right?"

"Yeah," Shea said her voice rising in excitement.  She was on board with this whole train of thought.

"So...if ladies are supposed to be nice, then what other types of things are ladies supposed to be?" I continued.  I even air quoted the "supposed" to emphasize the point.

Shea struggled with this one, so I changed my line of questioning.  "Is there anything a lady is not?"

In my college lectures, I always tell my students that it is easier to say what they are not than to actually say what they are, so I took this tact with Shea.

Shea came back with, "Boys can lift heavy stuff."

"OK," I said, "But how often do you practice lifting heavy things?"

"Not a lot," she said.

"So what would happen if you practiced lifting heavy things?  Would you get better at it? Would you eventually be able to lift heavier and heavier things?"

"Yes," she said.

"OK," I said, "so are there girls who can lift heavy things?  Girls who work hard at being strong?"

"Yes," she said.

"So would you say that girls are strong?"

"Yes," Shea said, again her voice rose at the idea.

"So it's not just boys, is it?"

"Nope," she said.  She even had a hint of a giggle in her voice.

"So, let's run through some words and you tell me if it describes girls."

"Okay," Shea said through her smile.  She's used to me by now, and she knows my little word games with her.

"Strong."

"Yep," she said.  I lobbed the ball to her on that one.

"Smart."

"Yep," she said.

"Funny."

"Yep," she said.

"Pretty."

"Yep," she said.

"Powerful."

She took a moment on this one.  She asked me what the word meant.  I told her that being powerful meant that you could do things on your own, that you commanded respect from others, and that you were able to do things on your own without help.

"Yep," she said.

I reached across the car and gave her a high five.  "Sounds right to me," I said.  This girl makes me proud.  She has a natural sense of her own power, but I'm always careful to have conversations with her that reminds her of it.  In all my time as a college instructor, I saw so many young women who had lost a sense of their own power and were slowly reclaiming it through the process of a self-guided education, but it makes me wonder at how spectacular they would be if they simply didn't have to go through that culturally indoctrinated period of self-doubt.  As a parent, I know some of it will happen, but I hope to be an advocate of my daughter's own self-worth throughout her lifetime,  to maybe soften some of the trappings of adolescence.

It was a wonderful conversation, and one that I hope she remembers and takes to heart.  If she doesn't remember, then maybe she will one day read this and either remember or be reminded of how her daddy sees her.  When we got home from our errands, my daughter and I sat at the kitchen table together.  She did her school work and I got the chance to reflect on my day with her.  These moments are small moments, the moments that make up a life, and a good life at that.  I hope to spend many more hours working with her like this, showing her that writing, thinking, and questioning are all a part of how we navigate the complexity of life.

All in all, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

This Is How I Love You

It has been a long time since I've posted on my blog.  I've been undergoing a phase of personal transformation, and I didn't feel steady enough to post here, but recently my mind has turned more and more to the blog.  Today, my mind locked on an idea that I finally felt compelled to bring to the page.  Here goes...

I've been making a lot of changes in my life recently.  Examining the way I identify myself, making career moves, and trying to become more present in my life in real ways.  As I was working around the house this afternoon, my mind drifted back to a story I wrote during grad school at Pacific University.  It was titled "The Little Things" and it was one of the most personal stories I wrote during that phase of my life.  It was also the story that taught me the most about who I was, who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to live my life.  As I was elbow deep in dirty toilets today, I thought back to the things I learned in writing that story.  And this is what I thought about as I scrubbed away.

Recently, I created this chalkboard for myself.

Self-imposed chalkboard chores

I don't know why the idea came to me in this particular form, but I know that the idea came from the feeling that I was somehow disconnected from my own home, from my family.  I've recently taken a position that requires me to work nights, a situation that removes me from the evening escapades of my family, and I was feeling like I wasn't present when my family was in the home.  I couldn't miss work, so I had to find another way to participate in my family's life.  This was one small answer to that nagging feeling.

In a marriage, in a family, there are all kinds of compromises that must be made, all kinds of sacrifices that must be made in order to keep the family unit afloat, but that doesn't mean that I had to be absent, or inactive, in my family's life.  The chalkboard chore board gave me an opportunity to feel like I had contributed to my family in a real way.  It allowed me to be of assistance to my loved ones, even if I couldn't do so by being physically present in the room.

My chores are an expression of my love.  My contribution to the household is a way of leaving a love letter every day that shows my family that I love them and want to help them navigate their busy modern lives.  My love may not be present in a hug or a kiss at bedtime, but my love is the scaffolding that holds up the structures that enable them to be successful in their lives.  Each of these things are small, minuscule efforts, things that can be done in short periods of time, but they still are what they are...they are expressions of my love for my family.  They are a statement that says I am there for them in all the ways that I can, even if some of those ways are "invisible."

I don't like the fact that I barely get to see them these days, but I will make every effort to make sure that I am a presence in their life in all the "little" ways that I can.  It sometimes takes a little swallowing of pride, a little mental coercion to get myself to play "Suzy Homemaker," but when I am done at the end of the day, when I've taken a chore off my spouse's plate, or prepared the home to receive my daughter, I feel like a man.

Promisary Note: Tiny Hands

In 2014, I took on the task of fulfilling 52 promises over the course of a year.  It was meant to be a promise a week.  In the end, I failed to keep the timeline and I eventually lost track of the task.  That isn't to say that I failed utterly though, for there were some interesting things that arose as a result, and I think I can trace many of them back to the 52 promises.

First, I wanted to take a year's end accounting of the promises.  In the end, I failed to complete 11 promises, that's almost three months worth.  Although, another way of looking at it is to say that I completed over 9 months of promises.  While I stopped blogging about my promises, I still engaged in the exercise.  What I found when I looked back through the promises was that I didn't complete a lot of the promises that had to do with a couple of subjects: exercise, writing, and those oriented toward personal (not social) time.  It looks like I was dedicated to making time for others, but not for myself, which brings up some things that I look forward to working on in the next year.

The question may arise as to how this all wound up coming up now, conveniently at the end of the year.  The answer is simple.  I was cleaning up my office in preparation for a new term, which includes a new adjunct teaching position, when my daughter found my bowl of promises.  She remembered the activity and asked if she could draw a promise.  I told her, "I'm not really doing that anymore, honey."  She then gave me this face...

I couldn't say no.

So, she drew a slender piece of paper from the bowl.  It read, "Surprise your daughter with something fun."  Shea read it in her slow 2nd grade thoughtful way, looked up at me, and said, "You already did this, Dad."  I thought about it and agreed.  I had made an effort to surprise Shea on occasion with a thoughtful activity or gift.  She recognized that fact immediately.

"Can I draw another one?"

I told her she could, and she dipped her hand back into the bowl to retrieve another slip of paper.  She drew out, "Do some home improvement."  I thought back and remembered my fight with a pipe leak under the house.  It was a long term home improvement project I finished on my own.  Done, I thought.  Shea drew again.  The next two promises had also been fulfilled.  I was on a roll.  Something I thought I had failed at turned out to be something I had naturally incorporated into my personal life.  By paying attention to these promises across the first seven months and blogging about it, I had naturally worked this sort of attentiveness into my way of living.

The next thing that unfolded was that I began to make bigger and bigger changes in my life.  I incorporated a lot of new changes into how I taught my writing class.  I went back out into the job market in search of a new adjunct position.  I quit drinking.  I began working on improving myself in new and revolutionary ways.  As I finish out 2014, I can see a difference in myself.  There is a new attentiveness to the "now" of my life.  I try and allow myself a greater presence in the moment, without dread of the past or fear of the future.  I'm looking forward to implementing these changes in 2015.

As I formulate those goals in greater detail, I will try in earnest to return to the page.  I'm hoping you, my audience, will still be there in all the lovely ways you were in 2014.

All of this grew out of the movements of one tiny set of hands.  As I am discovering more and more in my life, those tiny hands are my greatest motivation to become a better and better man for the future.  Both hers and mine.

Man Notes: Former NFL Lineman Joe Ehrmann

I'm fascinated by the idea of modern masculinity.  The idea appears again and again in this blog, but it also appears repeatedly in my fiction.  Even when I'm working through an idea that is, at least on the surface, not about this theme, it finds a way to exist in between the lines of my creative work.

Image Source

On my way home yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to an interview with Joe Ehrmann, former defensive lineman for the Colts.  He had some fascinating views about masculinity, sports, and spirituality.  The interview began with a quick mention of the three words most men have encountered throughout their lives, "Be a man."  These words, while often used as a way of trying to salve, or suppress, an emotional moment, often find a way to lock men into a box.

The interview quickly expanded to include three lies of masculinity: "athletic ability, sexual conquest, and economic success."  He goes on to talk about how culture sends messages to men about these three categories of life and prioritizes them in destructive ways, especially in the modern era of social media and internet and access.  He speaks about the dearth of "moral clarity and moral courage" and links this back to the Steubenville rape case.  While I assume he understands and deplores the heinous nature of the crime, he expands his analysis of the situation to include the people not directly connected to the crime that occurred that night, but to those complicit in either covering up or advancing the scope of the crime through the sharing of pictures and tweets in the case.  He points to these actions and, rightfully, attaches them to a lack of "moral clarity and moral courage" in the larger community.

When asked directly about what masculinity is, he responds by saying, "It can only be defined by two things.  One, it is your capacity to love and to be loved.  Masculinity ought to be defined in terms of relationships.  Second thing it ought to be defined by commitment to a cause.  That all of us have a responsibility to give back, to make the world more fair, more just, more hospitable for every human being."

This interview brought me an overabundance of comfort for many reasons.  The first is that I wholeheartedly believe in Ehrmann's message.  The second is that Ehrmann speaks with real credibility for men who have a predisposition to the "lies" he mentioned earlier, specifically to the lies of athletic ability and economic success.  I'm always seeking role models in the world, men who stand as positive forces within the world and actively demonstrate the full spectrum of what it means to be a man.

At times, media feels like a cyclops, a singularly-visioned creature that can't see in dimension, in depth.  I applaud NPR, All Things Considered, and Joe Ehrmann for putting this discussion out into the world.  At the end of a long work day and after allowing the interview to wash over me, I felt affirmed and contemplative in all the best sense of the word.  Media reflected something back to me that felt authentic and sincere, which is too infrequently the case.

The discussion is happening out there.  We just need to find it.  I realize now that All Things Considered is doing an entire series on Men in America, and I can't wait to catch up on streaming segments that will, hopefully, allow me to hear a spectrum of voices on the subject of modern masculinity.  A good song possesses more than one note, and a discussion of a complex topic like this requires a range of notes, a choir of voices, in order to bring the richness and vibrancy it demands out into the world.

Again, thanks to all the contributors and producers for making this happen.  If Joe Ehrmann intrigues you, you might think about picking up his book.

Personal Note: Fear and Silence

I've been offline for a couple of weeks now.  This hasn't necessarily been intentional, but it has been necessary.  I recently had a health scare that sent me spiraling into a pit of anxiety, covering all the necessary stops through denial/isolation, bargaining, etc.

It was a lump.

I found a lump on/near one of my testicles.

It scared the hell out of me.  This was weeks ago.  I didn't tell a single person.  Not one.  At first I denied it was there.  Then, I bargained with myself and said, "I'll give it a week or two and if it doesn't go away, then I'll go to the doctor."  Eventually, I realized that it wasn't going away, and I had to do something.  I resigned myself to calling the urologist who did my vasectomy.  I figured skip the general practitioner and head straight to the specialist.  When I called to set my appointment, I set it for the earliest possible date.

I couldn't handle waiting another day or week.  Once I had accepted that this situation was real, that is was worth examining, there was nothing that could have held me back from that appointment.

The appointment revealed that I have a spermatocele, a relatively harmless condition brought about by a blocked tube in my testes.  It is nothing to be alarmed about, nothing that needs any further medical analysis, and I was free and on my way.

This was last week, a week ago to be exact, and for some reason I am still working my way through the news.  While I am in perfectly good health, I still get the jitters, an uneasy anxiousness that sits within the pit of my stomach and reminds me, maybe for the first time, that I'm mortal, really mortal.

The most extreme medical treatment I've ever had was to get my tonsils out, maybe when I had my wisdom teeth removed, but I've never had anything serious, nothing that made me really concerned for my overall well-being.  Those weeks when I didn't tell anyone were some of the most anxious of my life.

The only person who really picked up on it, the only one who really looked me in the eye and said, "What's going on with you?" was a twenty-year-old hostess at my work who often reveals herself to be an astute observer of people's personalities.  Because she persistently asked me what was happening, because she kept insisting something was "going on," I realized that the lump was starting to effect the way I carried myself throughout my day, and I decided to take action.

The first person I told was my wife, and the moment I had the news out of my mouth, I was on the internet and looking up my doctor.  I had an appointment for three days later.

There was no reason for me to delay the appointment, besides a fear of the unknown, a fear of recognizing that there was something potentially serious happening with my health, and I was a fool to let it go on so long.  As I sit her typing these few choppy paragraphs, trying to work my way through the residual relief and fear, I realize, as I often do, that writing would have helped me through all of this.  Writing is processing.  Writing is putting things in order, puzzling out knotted threads, finding a way to navigate difficult situations, and I shouldn't allow things like this to keep me from the computer for so long.  I am really backed up on promise posts (yes, I'm still doing those, even though I've missed two during this time), and I may just march forward instead of trying to catch up on the back log.

I'm feeling more and more like myself with each day.  Today will help.  I'm watching a friends daughter for a couple of hours, allowing Shea and her a couple of hours of play.  In the background as I write this, the girls are creating an original song with an electric keyboard, a pen, and a small pad.  Their giggles and their earnest efforts to commit words to the page serve as an inspiration for this small effort, my effort to somehow capture the complexity of what I've experienced in a blog post.  I have a feeling I'm not done with this subject.  I'm done with it for the blog, but I have a feeling it will find its way into my writing in other forms.  Writing is processing after all.

Thanks for listening.