Candy everyone wants

The day before we left our mountain vacation, we drove along a winding mountain road to the very top of a smooth peak on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina. We were there to find and cut our Christmas tree.

As we milled about the tree farm, a golden retriever sidled up to Reilly and nuzzled her arm. Reilly laughed and gave her a pet. After choosing our tree the dog was still following us around, so I asked the owner of the tree farm who he belonged to. The man said that he didn't know, that he had seen the dog running around and that it had probably been dumped. The dog had no collar or identification, and though it was relatively clean, the dog was thin and I could feel his ribs when I bent down to pet him.

I told Shawn that we should take him home. She sort of did a double-take, knowing that impulsiveness is not my forte', but when she saw that I was serious, said, "Yes! Let's take him home!"

She asked Reilly what we would name him, and Reilly said, "Candy." This is actually a pretty high compliment from Reilly, considering that candy is her favorite thing.

We put the christmas tree on top of the truck, and Candy inside the truck, and told the tree farm man that we were going to take him with us. He said that it was a great idea, but that we might want to drive up the mountain a bit and check to see if anyone had lost him.

So, we drove up the mountain, past countless multi-million dollar estates, and finally came to a house that had a car out front. I got out and knocked on the door to the cabin, and a crazy old bat lady came out and said, "That's what's-his-name's dog. Barry. He does some of the electric and plumbing work around here. I'll call him. Hopefully he hasn't had too many beers yet and he can drive up and get Gomer--that's the dog's name. His other dog just got shot the other day from wandering around someone else's property. He'd just be sick if you took him."

She got ahold of the man and said he would meet us at the Christmas tree farm. When I got back in the truck, I said, "Well, the bad news is that this dog already has a name. It's Gomer." And when I said his name, the dog wagged his tail and looked up at me.

We drove down to the tree farm, and up pulled a beat-up pickup truck. In it was a scraggly man wearing a Gators hat. I let the dog out of the truck and the dog walked over with his tail between his legs. Gomer refused to get in the truck, and cowered when Barry drew near.

Reilly began to cry hysterically for Candy.

My dad summed up the situation best when he said, "We had a choice between doing the right thing, and doing the right thing."

Good luck, Candy. We'll miss you.

Reasoning with my head

I’ve never liked the expression, “Everything happens for a reason.” I think it is the undercurrent of divinity that troubles me; I always find myself wanting to ask, “What reason?” which in turn leads to “Whose reason?”

I don’t really want to get into the whole guiding hand of God conversation here. That topic has been talked to death—at least in my own head, and probably the heads of others, except for those with the luxury of blind faith.

I think the expression that works better for me is, “All events in the past have led me to this very moment.” To think that only the positive events have led me here is to be ignorant—the wrong turns have as much weight as the correct turns, and blue sky days as much weight at days the blue sky turned yellow with smoke.

My life, as it is, is very good. I am very happy. Some would say that I am “blessed.” I think that I am lucky, and fortunate, and unlike three thousand plus people who died on September 11th, 2001, I am alive, which is something to be thankful for in itself.

Gone Catchin'

A few photos from my fising trip with my father.

This is a nice river trout, caught on a March Brown fly:

Here is a nice lake trout, caught on a live worm suspended below a slip bobber.

Here is dad with what you would define as a "mess of fish":

Great Expectations, Part II

When I was a boy, my grandmother lived just down the street from us for a short time. Every few weeks my brother and I would pack up our little blue suitcases and head over to her apartment for a sleepover. Our suitcases were blue leather and had the phrase, “I’m going to grandma’s” in white lettering on the front.

The best part about going to grandma’s was not the evening spent with her, but rather the next morning, when she would cook my brother and me a country breakfast. Coming from a house where cereal was king, the eggs and sausage and pancakes that my grandma cooked were simply awesome. She always made biscuits, which was my brother’s favorite food. He would eat them loaded with butter. I ate them the same way grandma did—with a dab of honey.

I still prefer my biscuits this way, and I guess that is one of those things that grandma has left with me, now that she is gone.

The story that grandma liked to tell was of the morning that we woke up and didn’t smell the sausage in the pan. There was no butter on the table, no biscuits in the oven. On the table was a cereal box, two bowls, and a gallon of milk.

When I got home that day, I went straight to my mom and said, “Mom, you won’t believe what grandma fed us today—cereal!” I guess my mom told my grandma this story later in the day, and I bet they had a good chuckle together at the crushing of my breakfast expectations.

This was my grandma’s favorite story to tell about me, and she told it so beautifully, the way that country folks are prone to do, and I can still hear her as she delivered the punch line at the end of the story, the way she imitated the derisive tone I used when I spat out the offensive word cereal, as if she had fed us gruel.

We would laugh together every time she told that story, and despite its repetition, I never grew tired of hearing it.

Great Expectations

There is a woman that I see walking all over our neighborhood. Every day. She is tall, very thin, and always wears a scarf on her head. I think she's about 37 years old. Over the last few months, I have built up a story in my mind about her, and of course it is a romantic story in which this woman has cancer, no health insurance, and is forced to walk everywhere because she had to sell her car to pay for her medical bills.

On a recent weekend, I was outside in the yard, mowing the lawn, I think, when I saw her walking down the sidewalk toward me. I strategically mowed my way over to her, then paused as she approached, anxious to engage her and find out her true story. I said “hello” or “good morning” or some other greeting, and unbelievably, she walked right by me without even a glance.

Then she stopped, swiveled around and said to me in a voice with an accent, “Do you have a cigarette?”

I said, “No.”

She turned on her heel and walked away.

What a disappointment.

Instant Karma’s gonna getcha

This morning while turning right at a particularly busy intersection, I paused to allow a woman to cross the street—she had the walk sign. A driver three cars back took offense to my stopping an undeniably long line of cars wanting to make that same turn, and announced his displeasure by not only honking his horn, but actually holding it down for a good thirty seconds.

Naturally, I was pissed, but my anger turned to a smile just a moment later as a motorcycle cop pulled out, lit up his lights and siren, and pulled the guy over.

I don’t know what the driver got a ticket for, but if being an asshole is a moving violation, he must have gotten a big one.

Evelyn Overcast (1927-2008)

It is impossible to sum up a life in only a blog entry, and I don’t wish to try. I might choose a few select stories that I remember of my grandmother and me, and I might in future entries, but not today.

Of course I could have visited her more. I wonder if I might have been a better grandson but is it fair to ask that without considering if she could have a been a better grandmother?

What matters in the end is that she lived a full, long life. And when it was time for her to go, she was enabled to do so with the dignity befitting such a life.

I have a voicemail on my phone. It is from grandma, and it is dated June 24th, just a few days before the stroke that would eventually claim her life. On it she asks to be reminded of my mother’s birthday. My mother had just visited her, and was the last to see her.

It is tough to reconcile this voice with my grandmother post-stroke, a stroke that stole from her her voice.

Even harder is it to know that aside from memories and photographs, this is all I have left of her, a twenty second message of a life that now has passed.

To all those concerned, an update:

Grandma had a stroke—a blood clot in the brain—which eventually burst and caused an open bleed in her brain. Though she can move her left arm and can move her head a bit, all other bodily functions are beyond her scope of ability, and that goes for everything from speaking to using the bathroom. She will remain in ICU for a bit longer, and then will be transferred to an assisted care facility to live out what remains of her life, which feels like a very sad, sad thing to write.

that it was

I learned this morning that my grandmother had a stroke, and that she was in the ICU, and that it was one of those situations that it was important to see her right away, just in case.

When I saw her, it was as if I was not seeing her; she looked like her worst prognosis, and yet when I held her hand—her one working hand—she spun my wedding band on my finger and looked at me with her intense blue eyes.

Let’s just say that I thought she was trying to tell me something, and the message was loud and clear.

Gorilla Pod

For father's day, Shawn bought me an accessory for our camera. It is called a Gorilla Pod, and is basically a more flexible version of a tripod.

It comes in handy when you want to take a timed shot, or a slow shutter speed shot, or if you want to look really cool in front of other people.

Swimming Lessons

Reilly is taking swimming lessons this week, and so far, she has performed admirably.

I vaguely recall my own swimming lessons, a fuzzy image of the pool, of a woman instructor, of water.

What is more clear is how knowing to swim saved my life, at age 5, when a young friend who was angry pushed me into her pool—I’m sure without considering the consequences—and I was able to swim to the steps and pull myself from the water.

-sht

I spent the last couple of days at a conference, and at that conference I heard a presentation presented by a woman who had a speech pattern so unusual that I figured I’d put it on this here blog.

The woman pronounced the word “most” like “mowsht.”

I’m not trying to make fun of her, especially if this is a result of a speech impediment, but it came off as some sort of regional pronunciation, except I don’t know of any region that adds a consonant between the ‘s’ and ‘t’ of a word, and also—she didn’t add the letter ‘h’ in words such as “blasting” and “yesterday,” which made this mispronunciation all the more strange.

From the mouse's mouth

Today I got to hear Abigail Disney give the keynote speech at the Planet Philanthropy Conference. She said a few things in her speech on the nature of privilege that really struck me, but none more so than this: “I am to America what America is to the world.”

She deconstructed the concept of privilege all the way down to who goes to bed with their shoes on versus those who don’t, and her speech was so profound and moving that it got a spontaneous standing ovation from the crowd, and honestly, when was the last time you saw that happen (State of the Union speeches not included)?

Sleepless nights

Lately, Shawn has been thrashing around in bed at night. I don’t know what her problem is, but I do know that ever since she started her thrashing around, I’ve been having some trouble with waking up during the middle of the night. Do you think there could be a connection?

The one interesting result of waking in the middle of the night is that I tend to remember whatever dream I am having at the time. The one I remember from last night was of protecting a young woman who was being bullied, she was sixteen years old, blond. I believe this dream somehow stemmed from some poems I recently read by a young woman named Sam who I used to mentor. Her poems dealt with love, suicide, and other topics that I think tend to crop up in those early teenage years.

This morning as I drove to work, I was thinking about bullying, and how it has become a problem, leading to shootings at schools and other violent behavior. Of course, bullying has always been a problem. I was bullied at school, or rather, on the school bus. I remember another boy who was always threatening me and trying to steal my Swatch watch. I don’t recall if I ever told my parents about this. It was terrifying then. I still remember that boy’s face and hate him to this day.

I was also on the other end of bullying. I recall walking down a wing of my high school with some of my friends from the soccer team and one of them, Fergie, saw an unpopular freshman boy, picked him up, and put him in a nearby trashcan. We all laughed. Fergie would look for this boy every day, and managed to torment him for a few weeks before the boy smartly changed his route. Do I have to say that I didn’t do anything then, and that I feel guilty now for not stepping in?

When I reflect on this memory, I see a classic bullying relationship that still plays out to this day: the jocks and the nerds. Naturally, I wonder what happened to that boy. He is probably about thirty years old. I empathize with him, I wonder if he was angry then, if he hates us even now. Maybe, like Sam, he was a good poet. Maybe his being a poet saved my life.

Cold-lanta

I've been in Atlanta since Sunday evening, specifically downtown Atlanta. My room has a balcony that overlooks the covered-over pool of the hotel and the vista is of a number of multi-story office buildings.

There is something to be said about staying or living in a city. The city, without speaking, seems to speak of a quiet yet urgent sense of purpose that the suburbs can't quite match.

Cities make me depressed. And maybe this is a mixture of listening to Ingrid Michaelson while also missing my family back in Florida, but with the sense of purpose mentioned above, also comes a rawness. I'm referring less to the icy weather outside and more the exposure to other people and the varied expressions of so many different faces.

Living in suburban Florida has again turned my attitude for the homeless toward the negative, and this is surely fed by the panhandlers I encounter on a daily basis. And yet when we were riding a bus back from an opulent, $50 per person conference reception, I saw from the window a young woman hurry past an open vestibule on the side of a building, a vestibule that was occupied by an aged man with grey hair who was at that moment gingerly pulling his sockless foot from a worn tennis shoe; his feet I imagine were sore and perhaps cracked from a winter season spent outdoors in the elements of the city.

In my thirties

I know two people who share my birthday, one from high school, Kelli, and one that I met at a wedding, Amber. Amber and I spent the night running around the reception and stealing people’s drinks as they put them down. She told me that what she was doing was rebellious because she was a Mormon. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but she was a lot of fun to be around. We kept in touch over the years via post, but as letter writing goes, one or the other of us delayed and delayed and then finally it was too late to write anymore.

January 29th isn’t much of a day for anniversaries, I mean, there aren’t many who get married in the chill of winter, but I do think of the anniversary of my old friend Chip on this day. Today is the anniversary of his death. In some ways I like that his death happened on my birthday because it guarantees that I won’t forget him. Also it reminds me that birthdays—even the innocuous 32nd one—are meaningful and should be celebrated.

Chip’s funeral was the first one I ever went to. I remember his wife—I’ve forgotten her name—and how she was the very picture of grief, and how uncomfortable that made me. More so, I remember his daughter, she was about Reilly’s age at the time, and though she didn’t affect me much then, I feel her pain even more so now, imagining how Reilly would react should I get cancer and one day leave her for good.

So, when people wish me a happy birthday, I am thankful, and I am grateful. After all, I’m only “in my thirties.”

It could be much worse.

As Willie would say, "On the road again..."

A travel day, in quotes only:

“Air puffers on. Wait for green light.”

“You can see my house from the window, right next to that tower. My family owns a horse farm.”

“Please initial here, here and here.”

“Please proceed to the highlighted route.”

“I heard of a man that ended up turning onto the train tracks just because the GPS told him to.”

“Hello, Brian, this is Natalie from the front desk. How is everything in your room?”

“You’re thinking about the Opa-Opa, aren’t you?”

Inspector Mustache bids you adieu

A Mr. Potato Head representation of me, after shaving this morning:

The Band-Aid was Reilly's addition.

The Inspector, Part 3

When I was a teenager, my mother started to call me The Inspector because of my penchant for spending an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror. I think most teenagers spend a lot of time in front of the mirror; after all, we are for the first time going through rapid bodily changes while also trying to attract the opposite sex for the first time. Being that I had quite a bout of acne in this stage of my life, it is possible that I spent more time than most in front of the mirror. Perhaps I thought that by staring at my zits, they might disappear.

This habit of looking at myself in the mirror carried through into my adult life, so much so that while living in New York, Shawn once accused me of being vain. In fact, she sang the song to further drive home her point. I was quite defensive at this accusation. I’ve never considered myself vain—I was merely inspecting, and to prove the point, I decreed that I would not look into the mirror for one week.

One week later, I took the notes I had written on this experience and formed them into an essay, which I then turned in to my professor at The New School for my writing assignment. At my group critique, my professor led off by skewering my essay ruthlessly. My classmates, taking her lead, followed with scathing remarks. The essay, I’ll agree, was not great, but I though the gusto that my professor took in dismantling it a bit harsh. I did not like her for this.

My professor was Lucy Greeley. She told me I should read her book.

Looking back now, I can see how I stumbled here, how, as a person with a face, I had failed to consider that my teacher was not like me, that my week without a mirror was trivial compared to her life before one. Still, I did not like her. She was mean.

Many in my class did not like how mean Lucy was. When it was time for us to choose our advisors for our theses, none of us chose Lucy. This hurt her. One day she popped in to one of our literature classes and asked again if anyone needed an advisor. No one responded. Downcast eyes. I could see that it hurt her, but I didn’t want to work with someone so difficult.

It would have been wise of me to do so.

There are two kinds of writing teachers, the nurturing kind, and the cruel kind. When I reflect on my time at the New School, I know for certain that it was the third essay I wrote for Lucy’s class that was my best of my entire career. It was the best because Lucy’s meanness made me reach down for something that was raw, that might shock the class, and the essay that resulted she praised and praised. My classmates, taking her lead, followed with laurels.

Not long after Lucy ducked her head into our class, she killed herself. This fact was difficult for all of my classmates, difficult because of our guilt, and difficult because of our anger. How mean of her to give up, such a strong woman who had been through countless surgeries to recreate her face, to lay down in that grey city and give in to the unfairness of it all.

The Inspector, Part 2

Yesterday, I returned home to find a sink full of dishes. Being “Husband of the Year” for two years running now, I rolled up my sleeves and got started. However, after washing the silverware and a few cups, I noted a scene that gave me pause.

Reilly’s large pink cereal bowl was partially full of leftover Peanut Butter Bumpers. However, there was also a second bowl, a smaller purple one that contained a few soggy Cinnamon Life squares. Being the world-class inspector that I am, I was able to deduce several things. Allow me to recreate Shawn and Reilly’s morning.

Shawn asks Reilly if she would like Peanut Butter Bumpers for breakfast. Reilly says yes. Shawn fills a bowl of Peanut Butter Bumpers for Reilly and lets her begin her breakfast. Then, Shawn returns to the kitchen to make her own bowl of cereal. Since Shawn does not like Peanut Butter Bumpers, she instead selects for herself Cinnamon Life. She takes the bowl into the dining room, sits down, but upon her first bite, hears a voice of protest from across the table. Reilly, being the conformist that she is, sees Shawn’s cereal and demands that she too be given a bowl of Cinnamon Life. Shawn, having had this argument before, silently thinks I should have seen that coming and goes to get Reilly a second, smaller bowl of the aforementioned cereal. However, Reilly, having eaten most of her Peanut Butter Bumpers already, is too full to finish her new—albeit smaller—bowl of cereal. Hence the scene from the kitchen sink.

Elementary, my dear Internets.