To JDS, In Memoriam

I drove my son to school today.

I worked with students. 

It snowed most of the morning.

I read the last text I sent you yesterday, asking if the doctor had a plan. 

I read your answer: yes. He was a nice doctor. He sat with you for an hour.

Great, I said. What’s the plan?

I thought maybe you’d tell me today.

All day I thought of Roethke’s letter to his student who died. “If only I could nudge you from this sleep.” I read some Yeats. “...a crowd of stars.”

They didn’t help. We want to believe that writing helps. We talk about it in the hall before class. Writing is something, at least. Isn’t it? 

It’s Friday. It is an ordinary Friday.

On my way home, I see a car accident. I have to make sure. I slow down. Everyone’s ok.

Everyone is ok. 

No one is ok.

I don’t want to stop writing this letter. It’s all I have.

It’s all we’ve ever had. 

So, just me to you, just this, let me write you an exit. I’m going to pretend for a good long while that you are in the cabin in western Pennsylvania. You have gone “hunting," but everyone knows you are just reading. It’s a crappy novel, but you don’t care. The air is clean, isn’t it? The sun sets just a little slower here. The quiet. The peace.

The peace.

The peace.

I will try to remember how much you loved that peace.

To Commitment

[I wrote this one about/for a good friend who passed away today. So I'm reposting it for tomorrow's post. He was one of the few people who knew about this blog before I started it, and he was always very encouraging about my writing. I remain committed. More than ever. Because, really, that is all we have.]

My friend writes me, “Every morning I see my 60-yr-old neighbor head out for her walk. Today she was trudging along, umbrella open, head down against the driving rain. You should write a letter to commitment.”  Only, I think he doesn’t want me to write about commitment, really, but about her commitment: her umbrella angled against the rain, the implication that now that’s she’s 60, she could take a day off, the morning routine that could be so easily broken. One day you just don’t go.

He wants me to write about that, but of course, I want to write about his commitment. He drives 47 minutes to work, all through winter. No matter what time I get to the office--7:45, 7:15, 7:03--he is there before me, lights on, jacket off, grading or writing class notes. When his students come for help, he greets them with, “Hey! What’s up?” as if he has been doing nothing but waiting for that person to walk in.

He would say that’s not commitment, that’s just a day. We talk about the upsides of teaching and realize, in many ways, how lucky we are. How hard is it to commit to a life like this?

He married his high school sweetheart. When he talks about his 13-year old son, he says, “My little boy…” They live in the same area he grew up in. He has a PhD in literature. When his son’s baseball team traveled all over the Midwest last summer in an unpredictable playoff season, he went with them, staying in hotels and eating crappy road food.

Commitment is easy to see when it’s someone else’s. That’s you, we think, doing that again. We look and see all the other choices you could be making: staying in bed, getting to work at a normal hour, letting someone else drive the kids. When it is ours, though, the choice is often so obvious as to not even seem a question.

Commitment isn’t choosing every morning, even in the rain, to go for a walk. Commitment is defining yourself once as a person who walks every day, rain or snow, and then believing it, all the other options gone. It’s just me, you think, this is just who I am.

To The Indecisive Squirrel

Today is your lucky day because it’s morning, I’ve had my coffee, I’m not in a rush and the traffic is quiet.

So go ahead and take your time right in the middle of the lane. Please, do not rush. Shatter the stereotype we all have of squirrels as being frenetic little animals who can escape quickly at the very last second.

Not you. At least not today. Trees everywhere. It’s warm for a winter morning and the road holds the heat well. Something, a burn of sunlight through the clouds in just this spot or a memory suddenly appearing before you, has stopped you and and so, it has stopped me.

I have all the time in the world right now. The well of my patience is deep. This day will last forever. Nothing is more important than you.

To Algorithms I Would Like to See

Because soon, all experience will be translated into mathematics and because soon, all that math will be formulated into computer programs that will solve problems we didn’t know we had, we should consider which problems should be addressed first.

The Problem of Future-Predicting: The problem isn’t that we don’t or that we shouldn’t, but we are very bad at it, even when we call in science. We are not rational people, especially when we most need to be, when we will be making decisions. We need to be able to enter in the variables and simply know the likelihood of the possible outcomes. If I say this to my partner, will she get angry? Or will she see the love in it? Will she hate me or be grateful? Is this a 60/40 proposition or more like 90/10? We should not leave this to chance or our blind faith in each other.

The Problem of the Sleepy Dog or Baby Resting on Your Lap: We spend the morning trying to tire them out. We play, walk, feed them. They will not leave us in peace and their eyes follow us everywhere with the hope that maybe we will come be with them. “Let’s do something together!” But we have limits. Maybe there is work to do or maybe we just want a few minutes alone please. Either way, the baby or the dog should stop squirming. After several minutes of quiet time on the couch, they get it. Their eyes droop and they breath deeper. The problem is moving: how do I maximize the sleep time for this small creature, especially after I extract myself from the couch? There should be an app for that.

The Problem of Believing: We need to believe. Science and reason and careful analysis help, but first, we believe. We are curious and believe in asking the questions. We believe we can ask and then, foolish or not, we believe we can answer. We believe an answer is possible. How do I get out of this trouble I find myself in? Where do I find the next trouble? Can I find some new combination of these old things or do I have to invent something entirely fresh? Can I write you? Will you answer? How long can I wait? Believing keeps us moving. If nothing else, I believe in my morning coffee. But for every belief there is an equal and opposite belief--or beliefs--I am choosing not to chose. You have forgotten me. You worked hard on forgetting. When you see my name, nothing happens.

To Occam’s Razor

The fewest words. The least amount of steps. The smallest effort.

The time spent deciding what is and isn’t needed is not as simple as the outcome.

I do not need this house. I could live in a smaller one. We could, all three of us, even the dogs, live in one room. We don’t need the car. We will survive without our phones, without the computers. 

We could move south, very far south, and we would not need our heavy coats, these winter boots. We could sell the car and use bikes.

Living a simple life is complicated. The solution may seem simple but getting there, the process, is anything but. 

Not only do we have to make all the decisions, not just about things but about how we actually get through the day most easily, we have to carry out the plan. 

Simple may be easy, but getting to simple is not.

If the most simple is the best, then we must line up all the options before us and compare. And to do that, we need the options to be there, we have to create them.

William of Occam never mentioned that part. The goal is noble, but like most religious teachings, it is an aspiration rather than a practice.

I pull on my coat. I grab the dog leashes, a different kind of leash for easy dog because one will choke if I attach it to her collar and the other wants to run ahead. I’m walking the dogs in the window between work and dinner. Some days, this is the easiest part of my day.

Some days, it’s the hardest.

To Radio Listeners in 1938 Who Thought "War of the Worlds" Was Real

Today, we smirk, all smug in our 21st century wisdom and hindsight.

So gullible, we say, we’re so much smarter now.

We think fears are different. Our fears are real; we can see the tracers of them in the air, even if we can’t see what makes them. Something must, and that enough is evidence. But aliens suddenly invading the world? Come on. Nonsense.

But you know better. Even if, days later, you were ashamed to admit it, in the moment, you knew it was possible, even plausible. You’d seen things you never thought you’d see. You saw the decadence of the 1920’s, the short dresses and long cigarettes. The new cars people would drive, going nowhere, just for the drive itself. Cities blocks bursting with immigrants, and the nation had finally reached the Pacific Ocean, taken over the whole continent, from sea to shining sea and the party was on. 

And then, out of nowhere, dust. Dust so fine it would settle in the very creases of your ears as easily as it blew off the prairies. Breadlines and soup lines and unemployment lines snaking around corners. All pride finally swallowed. 

Abroad, the news is bleak. War, again, continental wide. Every day, news reports suggest any day now, any minute, the enemy is coming. You have to live in two times: the now--when you are looking for work, doing day jobs, taking in laundry--and the could be--boys getting called by the draft, packing up small duffle bags, taking a couple photos, maybe. Of course, you would be proud of them, but you wish more they didn’t have to go. 

Aliens? A supreme intelligence that finally has finally made its way here? Look at the skylines, look at the roads, look at the factories and radios and telephones. When the question is “How far can this go?”, the imagination answers with all the possibilities. Men from Mars or the moon in a world like this--unpredictable, terrifying, uncontrollable--seems as reasonable as a market crash, as wastelands in Oklahoma, as world war. Another world war.

When the news breaks, when you hear the screams and eye witness reports, when you hear the events unfolding, when you haven’t felt safe in your own living room for years, you are not a fool for believing. 

You have trusted enough. I don’t blame you. You were not the first. You will not be the last.

To Answering Machine Messages

The ones we leave are best short, a quick, “Hey, it’s me. Call me.”

When we try to explain why we are calling, we go on too long: “Hey, it’s me. I was just wondering if you were heading out of town this weekend or not because I have two extra tickets to the game if you want to come. You can bring a friend; we were going to go out for dinner, but if that doesn’t work for you we could alwa [beeeeeep].”

We have to figure out if we call back and continue the message or let it go and hope it’s enough.

Talking to people who aren’t there gets complicated.

Especially if it's a hard call and we weren’t expecting to get the machine. We’ve worked ourselves up all day, worked up the nerve to say whatever bad news or let down or broken promise we have to say and after the fourth ring, we know what we will have to do, and we aren’t prepared.

“Hey, it’s me. Uhhh, listen, I was just calling because I was hoping to catch you. Maybe when you get this, call me. It’s not urgent, but we should talk soon. I’m home the rest of the day, but then tomorrow, I’m [beeeeep].”

We are bad at improv.

But we are worse at interpreting. We save the messages, even though we shouldn’t. We should let it go, be bigger than this. Move on. Surely we have better things to do with our time than listen to that damn message again.

We play it again. When we are sleepy and really should be in bed. We listen again. Was that a crack in the voice? Is there someone in the background? Is that sadness or relief? We imagine those lips near the phone, speaking so softly. 

To Aircrafts That Crashed, Killing Famous Musicians in their Prime

Rarely was it your fault. It was the bad weather, poor judgement and pressing performance schedules.

 

Otis Redding flying into Madison. Had you been able to speak, through whatever mechanism possible, you may have said, “You sure about this? Because that’s a small northern town surrounded by a lot of freezing water and I know you want to make that gig and they will love you there, but maybe you want to call that one off. The fans will survive. They’ll still buy your records.”

Redding had just recorded “Dock of the Bay.” “Wasting time…”

You wish they would call them weather crashes and not plane crashes. Place the blame where it belongs. Stevie Ray, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper, Patsy Cline. These are not your fault. You can’t stop people when they insist. The fog is dense. The wind is mad. You know where this is headed.

If it’s not the weather, it’s pilot error. John Denver hits the wrong switch, thinking he’s fueling up, but he’s not.  Jim Croce’s pilot manages to clip your wing on a pecan tree in Louisiana on take off. Aaliyah's pilot is drunk and high; you can feel it as he fumbles with the controls. You’re helpless.

Your engines rarely fail. Your mechanics are sound. Sure, you’re small, lightweight, but in skilled, sober hands you’re a pleasure, a marvel, a well-earned luxury after years of hard work, playing in bars and then packing up all that equipment at 4 AM, writing hundreds of songs, playing thousands of hours. Maybe they dreamed about the day when they would have their own plane. You’re the good life.

But you can only do so much. If the snow swirls or the rain batters your wings, you have to go. Engines on. Lift. They’re praying they make it. You know, even now, prayers aren’t enough to overcome this bad judgement.

To “Who’s on First” by Abbott and Costello

Who’s on first, What’s on second, IDon’tKnow is on third. 

 Bud is the straight man. Serious. Clear. Doesn’t crack a smile or lose composure.

Lou is the real comedy here, never catching on, always befuddled and guessing. Always working to understand. He’s hearing the words and he knows they should make sense, but they don’t. How is he supposed to know?

Watching this, we start out on Bud’s side, with his point of view. That’s the role of the straight man, the Everyman. He’s the one we are supposed to see ourselves in: sensible, grounded, reasonable. We understand more quickly than Lou that "Who" is the guy’s name.

But we change perspecitives. We remember all the times in our life we were Lou, when we asked and asked again, only to make things more confusing rather than less. We reworded the question and the answer got worse. We painted whole scenarios in which surely, when the blanks are filled in, the situation will make sense, but no.

When it happened to us, we usually weren’t laughing. Something was at stake and figuring it out was urgent. The computer was broken. The map was wrong. The diagnosis just didn’t seem like it could match these symptoms. Say that again. Say that again. Say it one more time, please. Could you write that down for me? What am I supposed to do exactly?

We’ve all been swimming in that disorientation. We’ve had to dive deep and forced our way up for air. So we know. And when Lou bangs the bat and throws his hat, we remember and now, we can laugh. We are Lou.

Naturally.

To The Person Who Wrote “Hello World” on a Dead End Street

On a dead end street. 

In Akron, Ohio.

Perhaps you thought no one would ever see it.

Akron.

Before we moved here, I had never heard of this town. Cleveland, sure. Cincinnati from the 1970’s TV show. Columbus when I learned the capitols. But Ohio, even as a whole state, was just a place filler on a map puzzle.

Ohio doesn’t have the romance of the West. Think about the deserts of Utah, the Rocky Mountains. It doesn’t have the glamour of Nevada. Ohio doesn’t have the south’s taste in food or the politics of New England. It is the everystate, with the most generic accent and the worst weather.

We are not a destination state.

And this little love letter isn’t going to save us and I’m not going to attempt it. We know, living here, the hand we have been dealt. We get courted heavily during election season, but other than that, we go silently about our business. We make the news the way every state does: a crime here, a storm there. We are not the most fit but we are not the most fat. We’re affordable. Chevys are affordable. Honda Civics. Fords. We are the Ford Escorts of states.

But someone, at the end of this tiny block, was feeling optimistic one day, happy enough to write it in big block letters and address it to the whole entire world. It’s been there for years. My son delivered papers on that street and he walked over those letters for years. They never fade. He passed the paper route on to another kid the way it passed on to him. Every week they get their papers, snowstorms and heat waves.

HELLO WORLD.

It’s amateur irony, and I love it.

To Wishing Days

When my son was little, two and three years old, there was no such thing as a “quick stop” at a store. He wasn’t difficult, he was a toddler. And he had the toddler impulses and questions.

    “What is this?” 

    “Can I have one of these?” 

    “Can I get this?”

My trick became “Wishing Days.” Before we went into the store, I would explain that today was a wishing day, not a buying day. We would only get what we came for but he could wish for as much as he wanted.

He’d walk up to the Optimus Prime t-shirt, place his hand on it, and squeeze his eyes and wish for it. If we walked past the toys he’d wish for the dinosaurs. When we stood in the checkout line by ALL THE CANDY, I would watch him wish for each and every one.

Walking out, it was as if he had bought the whole store. Maybe he thought, at least for now, he was willing these things to appear in his room one morning, or in a package from a grandparents in a far away state. He had done his part to make it happen. He had made his wish.

It is the first step. To wish. To envision a place for this in your life. Put your hand out, and if you can, touch it. 

But walk away without it. Wait to see what happens with the wish.

To Closure

A ‘90’s fad, you were whatever it was that was supposed to happen at the end of something that made it feel like it was really over.

Closure.

You became something people needed. They would call each other, having just broken up, and say things like, “Look, I just need some closure.”

Or, given all the layoffs happening, therapists would tell their clients the reason they feel so empty or rejected is that they didn’t have closure.

Or someone died, unexpectedly, and never would you get to say “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you” or “I’ve always loved you,” that last statement that would have given the survivors peace. Closure would be peaceful.

Closure, you are a lid snapping shut. The well-engineered closing of a BMW door that feels not only safe but air-tight. Closure is Bogart and Rains walking through the fog and the rain, and Bogart quips, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Everything is right with the world, no matter how wrong the world is. We could accept lost jobs and lost loves and lost lives with closure.

However much we want you or need you, despite seeing you so often at the end of movies and novels, even when we think you should be there and it’s not too much to ask for, you are rare. Elusive at best. But the breakups never make sense (at least to one person, often to both), we hated the job but it was better than nothing. No matter how much advanced notice we are given that our aunt, now 104, is going to die, when she does it’s too soon and we have one more thing we’d like to say.

In my life, I’ve never known you. I’ve known letting go and giving up and moving on. I talk to my dead relatives all the time trying to finish up those conversations, trying to start new ones. 

If I wanted it--the job, the romance--to end, I didn’t need you.

But if I didn’t, if I wasn't ready, I would have never seen you there anyway.

On the runway. Fade to black. “The End”

To The Last Chapters

They all begin in mostly the same way.

 

The first couple chapters orient you, open the map in front of you and, if the book is good, slowly reveal the details of the terrain. They point you in the right direction and you have, after a while a good lay of the land.

 The author’s voice. The main character’s voice. The setting. An inkling that the trouble right now is just the beginning. Storm’s a-coming.

 

Fiction, biography, autobiography. Just about any narrative.

And then, you’re in, too deep to turn back, no choice but to keep going forward. Clearly, there is no way out and--holy shit, can you believe?--it just keeps getting worse. You are trying to will the main character to see what is so clear to you but is obviously lost on her. Or, you want him to hurry up and get through this, passed this, over to the other side.

Alice, don’t drink the potion in the bottle. Hamlet, your sister!! Daisy and Tom, this will never work.

You cannot put the book down. Even when you actually put the book down, leave it at your bedside table in the morning and go about your day, you are just passing time until you can pick it up again. You live a whole other life while you are filling out reports or sitting through meetings.

This part takes only a few days.

You know the moment, right. When you scan ahead to see how many pages and chapters you have left. The right side of the book is now significantly smaller than the left.

Wait. How can this happen? As much as you need to know, you aren’t ready to let go. You suspect the main character will leave her husband, but once she does, she will leave you too.

You slow down. Every sentence becomes precious and if, heaven forbid, you space out a little, you quickly turn back and read the whole paragraph again. Just to be sure. You set the book down between scenes and do a load of laundry. You call your dad. You make a very elaborate sandwich. Anything to stop it from ending and, at the same time, keep it going.

The last two chapters take as long as the first 12. Like any break-up, you know it has to happen, but all you can do in these last moments is think about the good times. You reminisce with the characters.

Remember when you first got to India and had to learn how to use the bus?

Remember that time you were making out with your first boyfriend in the backseat and the windows steamed?

Remember when you wanted to tell him the truth, you wanted to say no, but you couldn’t? It would have broken his heart. You didn’t know then, like you do now, it was broken long before he met you.

To Movie Credits

Never in my life have I heard someone say their career goal is to be a grip. I never, as a child, played with the neighborhood kids when one of them asked to build all the lighting mounts, even if it was just pretend. 

But there, at the end of the movie, on the silver screen is someone’s name, tagged as “grip.” Then someone tagged as “key grip” and literally almost no one outside of the industry knows who they are and what they do.

The foley artist gets a line. Anything with “artist” sounds expensive. The food artist, the set artist. “Wrangler” must be worth a few thousand. “Snake wrangler,” “child wrangler.” Wrangling is more exotic and skill-based than “sitter.”

Jimmy-jibs operators, gaffers, colorists, loaders, concept artists, boom operators. All the assistants and associates. 

All there. They worked all those days and into the long nights. They suffered the snubs from the stars. They endured the sheer boredom, the hours spent that will get edited down to a 2-hour, $9 per-ticket movie, during the end of which, people will be turning back on their cell phones and chatting about where to go to dinner. The audience never reads the credits.

But I’ll bet their parents do. I’ll bet their parents see movies they would never ordinarily go see, pay the $9 just for the last 123 seconds when the credits roll. They see the name they’ve been waiting for. 

Yes, the lighting was perfect. The sound effects brilliant. I heard every step.

To The Day John Lennon Died

I woke to the news. His death had happened late at night in another time zone on a different day, and I slept through the initial announcements.

When I turned on the radio, like I always did, before I got in the shower but after I had my first cup of coffee, I heard a song of his, and it made me happy. 

And then, the DJ, probably pulling close to the microphone, whispered what he must have practiced so many times before getting to the studio that morning, “If you’re just joining us, John Lennon was shot and killed last night outside his apartment in New York City. Rest in peace, John Lennon.” And then he fades into another song.

I had only discovered the Beatles about a year before. But I knew. I was in on it, whatever “it” was. I was just starting to get it, to be aware of difference as a good thing. I didn’t know how, but for the first time in my life, I was getting the message that being on the outside is a vantage point that affords a stunning view.

I was passed “She Loves You” and beyond Rubber Soul. I was deep into Magical Mystery Tour but not yet into The White Album.

I understood “I am the Walrus” for the shenanigans that is was, but I played “Fool on a Hill” and “Your Mother Should Know” over and over, lifting the needle back to the right groove on the record time after time. I wasn’t decoding them for secrets; I simply loved the hell out of those songs. 

I was sad they broke up, but that happened before I even knew about them, so I never grieved. I never took sides in the Lennon/McCartney feud and never cared who was more the genius. I didn’t have posters, but I did have books about them. I didn’t even own all their albums, and I wouldn’t see Hard Day's Night until a film class in college. I knew they studied the Blues but I had not yet tried to learn about Muddy Waters or Chuck Berry. I could not name all the B-sides and still, to this day, when Keith asks for my top 5 Beatles songs, my answers are pedestrian.

But that morning I felt a loss I had never felt before. It was not the grief of losing someone I knew and loved. It wasn't the pain of having and then, suddenly, not. I wasn’t feeling the emptiness one feels when you expect someone to be somewhere--in the kitchen, down the hallway, by the phone you would call if you want to call--and she isn’t there. I remember when my great grandmother died. I remember when my favorite priest at my school died. I felt those deaths deeply.

Lennon’s death was the first impersonal death. For the first time, I was a part of a national grieving, a worldwide grieving. For the first time, I knew I would remember this, the way people remembered where they were when Kennedy was shot, when King was shot. I can recall the red stripes on my wallpaper, the feel of my pillow. I knew I was a part of history now. 

I thought, at the time, nothing else would be like this moment. The way a shooting and a death could take over every discussion. The way people would talk about grief even though they never met the person who died. 

That was the first time.

To the End of a Race

I’ve trained months sometimes for this moment, though I rarely think about it.

Akron Marathon Finish with Whit

The beginning is easy. Music plays and the sun rises while runners huddle like penguins, chatting about shoes or PR’s, reminiscing about past races and planning for future ones. At the beginning, possibilities are the siren call at the starting line: the runner’s high, the downhills, passing all the young runners who blow out in the first half and lose it in the second. 

I can feel the blood in my veins. I can hear my heart.

Of course, once the pack thins out around the end of the first mile, and I am no longer connected to some energy larger than myself, I am untethered. Always a surprise. Even more surprising is that I want to be. It is the opposite of letting go; it is the experience of being let go of. My mother lets go of my hand. I am driving alone in the car for the first time. I am getting off the plane in a new city. Our son dies.

Released. Ready or not.

Elizabeth Bishop called it “losing.” She described the ways we master it, little by little, practice it until the day we lose what matters most, which, she knows, we can never prepare for. 

But losing points less to what is lost and more to the subject, “I lost ____” when, during the race, or when we held Rainer for the last time, the subject is not me at all. I am the object. I am being let go of because, God knows, I would never let go. 

During the race, I am let go of. First, by the other runners who either fall behind, or more likely, pass by, and because it is early, they do not cheer or compliment me on how great I look. Next, my body lets go, which is to say, it works without instruction. I pass the point when I count miles or think about pace or wonder about this hill or that curve. I am entirely of my mind, which is the biggest impediment to finishing. My mind does not want to let go.

“Finally, we are alone,” it says. “We can dream now; we can be our true selves together; tell me everything.” It’s the snake in the garden of Eden. It’s James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. It’s the fourth glass of wine at a horrible party. It’s a blank canvas and fresh paintbrushes. A room of your own. So tempting. 

But the voice grows raspy and mean. Finally, it is yelling and breaking the dishes. The tantrum would be spectacular if it wasn’t so familiar. 

And then, the end. I hear it first. The slow crescendo of the noisy crowd. More and more people cheering. Runners around me speeding up to get to the end. It is there. 

It is right there.

And the mind shutters. Sometimes suddenly. Sometimes silently.

It lets go. 

I have lost nothing in my life.

To This Cormorant

Bird, with wings open to wind, to the sun, to the grace of the morning, something stills you, stops you, so that even a dog passing nearby, barking a warning or a threat your, you do not move.

You are focused intently either on something so far outside yourself or so deep in yourself, we, the passers-by, don’t even exist.

I didn’t even know ducks prayed.

Bird, you are the very definition of prayer, of meditation, of living in the moment. Other birds are swimming, enjoying the unseasonably warm day, but not you. You are singing your one perfect note of being and it harmonizes with exactly everything.

Bird, you aren’t thinking of the days you have wasted, whatever that would be for a bird, or the days to come. You have, at least for now, given up your goals: fly farther north next summer, take that trip all the way to Mexico. Dive all the way to the bottom of this pond and see, finally, what’s there.

You have released yourself from yourself.

Even if it is only for a moment, for a few minutes, you have found the exact balance between effort--your wings held wide, your neck lifted, your heart beating just a bit faster to hold the pose--and rest, the sun rising, the breeze mottling the water. 

Let the day come, let it break open. Let us begin and begin again.

To All the Houseplants I Killed Over the Years

Believe me, I’ve tried.

Growing up, our house always had plants inside. Tiny vines of this or that in the kitchen and large tropical plants in the den. Mom just seemed to know when they needed to be watered and how to turn them for just the right light and then, some days, as if talking to them, she would set them out on the back patio to soak up the sun. Just enough. She made it look so easy.

So in college I thought I would try doing those kinds of things adults do that kids never do, voluntarily take on responsibilities for living things because you can, because they bring a kind of joy to your life and in exchange, you give up some of your time and money to keep them around. Plants, cats, dogs, fish.

I started with an African violet, given to me by my ADPi “big sis,” whose name escapes me. I’m pretty certain I was not the top of her list and she made it clear that she knew my name, would buy me a beer, but other than this African violet (the sorority flower), she would give me nothing. Not a ride to a party. Not help on my math exam. Certainly not her phone number.

Maybe, in some way, the violet was tainted and when it died a few months later, after I had decided sorority life was not for me, I wasn’t sad. I didn’t see it as the precursor to all the other houseplants I would try to grow. Two years later, I was living in a house in upstate New York, and I filled a windowsill full of tiny potted plants, given to me by friends with assurances that “You cannot kill this plant.”

Overwatering. Underwatering. Playing REM too loudly, not playing Chopin loudly enough. We smoked a lot. The air was filled with things that kill other things. The plants could not survive, did not survive. I think, sometimes, it’s lucky we did.

To Winter in Wisconsin

The first winter there, I was numb from grief and didn’t notice the cold.

The second winter there, the baby was born. In January. During a snowstorm. The nurses told me that lots of babies are born during storms, something to do with a change in air pressure. Out the hospital window, I watch the storm. I am in labor for two days. The storm never stops.

Two days later, they sent us home. I thought they were insane. Surely, you cannot take a baby outside in this weather?!? Look it up in those fancy medical books you have. Or the law books. It’s 20 below out there. The baby is 8 ½ pounds. Anyone can see…

But the nurses were chipper as they helped us gather everything and Keith brought the car around to the sliding glass door, the car well heated and the windshield clear.

I sat with the baby by the big picture window for three months and watched the winter; it was one of the coldest and snowiest ever (for me, not for Madison). Keith would shovel snow every morning and every night. On the radio, the forecaster would use words like “dangerously cold.” 

Honestly, other than the high gas bill and some cabin fever, winter that year didn’t feel much worse because I just didn’t go out in it. Twenty above or 20 below made little difference because in my living room it was 68 and I had coffee.

But I watched, in disbelief, as the children walked passed my window on their way to school. I knew they had five more blocks to go. They were little, kindergarteners and first graders following behind their older brothers and sisters, trying to keep their backpacks on over their bulky coats. No matter what they had on, they looked cold. I was holding this baby, 32 days old, and wondering how I will get the nerve to let him walk to school in the cold and the dark in just five years. 

The kids shouted to each other, playing on their way, throwing snowballs, never thinking of warmer climates, of Januaries without snow, of different winters.

To Lottery Winners

Teary and surrounded by family, she appears on the evening news. Reporters ask her what she’s going to do with the winnings. She’s won over a billion dollars.

She’s going to pay off all her debts, she says. With a mortgage of $74,000, credit cards of $3,2076 and student loans of $12,000, she will be able to write one check and be done with them all. 

And still have a billion dollars left over.

Most of us can’t even imagine what a billion dollars is, much less how we will spend it. The question isn’t meant to find out how she will spend it, but who she is.

She steps up to the mic and we listen for our own dreams: a trip around the world? A house for all her kids and all her grandkids? Neither she nor anyone she loves will have to work again if they don’t want to. Is there a charity that needs the money or a foundation she wants to start? Will she save the bees? Will she go international? 

I would do all the same things: pay off my house, let my son go to any college he can get into, even if it’s in Canada. I would buy a car that is maybe a little less reliable than my Honda but more Eco-friendly. I would donate to the Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, start a fund in my son’s name. We’d pick a date and the whole family--the Texans and the Michiganders--would take a cruise together, maybe rent the whole ship. Maybe buy it. 

And still have millions left over.

But life isn’t short. If we’re lucky. And this has to last. Statistics stay many winners are broke within 5 years. They have given or spent or loaned their money away. The truth is they can’t say no and suddenly, there is so much to say yes to. They had no idea. 

The cameras everywhere are clicking around her. She stands at the mic, her husband behind her. Will you quit your job? Will you move?

Reveal yourself

To Naps

3 PM. You didn’t sleep well last night and though the morning went smoothly, it’s catching up with you. You’re trying to stay upright, but every 10 minutes you slip a little lower in your chair, lean a little more on the desk.

When you were young, your parents would pick you up and put you into bed. You’d lie there, stuffed animals all around you, until you couldn't stand it anymore and then call out and call out and call out. No more naps! No quiet time! Let me out!

These days, what would you give for someone to insist that you stop whatever you are doing and lie down? Turn the lights down and fluff up the pillow. You have to stay there for at least 30 minutes and no one wants to hear a peep. No one. Not one peep.

When you wake up, you know you have a few hours of work left in the day. But the room is a little brighter. The work a little lighter. 

To the “God Question”

A student walks into my office for a conference. We are going to narrow down topics today and come up with research questions. This student has a lot of energy and I’m eager to meet with him. He also has a lot of Big Ideas that often need a lot of pruning.

He’s kind of buzzy when he comes in and pulls up a chair and says he’s taking a philosophy class right now and it’s really got him thinking. They are going over so much he just never knew. He’s really like to write his paper on the God Question.

I took a good number of philosophy courses. I’ve read Kant and Kierkegaard and Sartre. I read Plato and Aristotle. I dabbled in Descartes (don’t we all dabble in Descartes?) and I’m reaching to remember the God Question.

Is this a question one poses to God? A question that, if asked just the right way would reveal the meaning of life? Or is this something that Job would ask if he thought of it. Why me, Lord? 

Maybe it’s more about the type of God or which God is the real God? Is the God Question founded on the notion that all religions basically pray to the same God?

Given the number of God questions, I have to admit I don’t know what he means.

“You’ve never heard of the God question? The question is this: Is there a God?”

Ohhh. THE God Question.

That, I say, is an excellent question.

Surely this is not the first time in this young man’s life that he has wondered about the existence of God. We all have doubts even if they don’t come from someone else.

We have all wondered, late at night, why, if we pray so hard, does it seem like the answer is no.

We have all had to stop ourselves from begging.

We beg anyway. 

We practice gratitude and begin to see more and more of our life as blessings. We change all our prayers into prayers of thanksgiving and appreciation. Gradually, we feel the shift.

Still, we wonder. I’m sure this student has wondered.

Maybe no one ever said it out loud. Maybe he’s never read whole books filled with doubting and struggling to believe. Maybe he’s never seen another person wrestle so honestly.

He’s running his fingers through his hair the way people do when they are thinking deeply. He will go back to his roommates and if they are the kind of roommate we hope for in college, they will stay up all night debating this or that premise. They will travel with him through this existential crisis. They will go out for cheap coffee served in small mugs. They will not have answered The God Question.

But they will have asked it.

To The Comma

You are, by far, the most misunderstood and abusedof all the punctuation marks. Though young writers are baffled by the semi-colon, your distant cousin, they could, in fact, live their whole lives without one and though it would make their writing more dull, at least it would be grammatically correct.

Periods are easy. Colons are simple, even if what comes after them isn’t. Hyphens get used for dashes, but we all know they meant a dash, so no harm done. Despite the rule that each writer gets three exclamation points, everyone borrows more. Sadly, we don’t savor them like truffles or aged brandy or that silence when the house is finally empty, the dogs sleeping. We should, but we don’t.

Surprisingly, the question mark troubles some writers. Is it because sometimes the question asked isn’t really a question, the author knowing the answer all along and the reader knows the author knows, or is it because the end of the sentence is so far away from the beginning the writer has forgotten this is, in fact, a question? Hard to say.

But all the other punctuation marks seem to have one purpose. Ending a sentence? Period. Have a speaker? Quotation marks. Embedding information that could be lifted seamlessly out of the sentence? Grab your parentheses.

Comma, you, however, have to do all the dirty work that the other marks can’t. You are the duct tape of writing tools, plastered here and there, sometimes effectively and stunningly well-placed, but then other times, recklessly so that you ruin not only the meaning but the very aesthetics of the sentence. It’s not your fault.

And I don’t blame the teachers. I’ve yet to find a way to fully explain the nuances of the comma, indeed of all grammar, to students. Many are told to put a comma wherever there’s a pause, but then, I say, all grammar is pauses, some longer than others. And sometimes we pause and don’t have any punctuation so what then? 

I’m going to have to say “dependent clause” and I have to explain that a clause is not a phrase. I’m going to have to say “coordinating conjunctions,” “coordinate adjectives,” and “appositives.” Sadly, this is the language needed to know how to use you. 

I don’t blame them. Like any form of critical thinking, this will take years to master and I can see they really want to get it. And then suddenly, one day, when they are writing to their beloved or to argue their tax bill or when they plead with their senator to pass a bill, you make sense. Your exact placement will matter like never before. They will hang, with confidence, their entire meaning on you, tiny hook. And it will be right.

To Upgrades

Sometimes, we save months or years for the upgrade.

 

An efficiency apartment: one room and two doors, one for the entrance and one for the bathroom. Then, a one bedroom. An entirely separate bedroom. Then a house, but still renting. Then a house, still renting, in a nicer neighborhood. Then a nicer city. Then a house you own. The housing bubble works in your favor. A bigger house. When you wake up in the morning and make your breakfast, everyone else can sleep and not hear you.

The cars get newer, the clothes get better. The wine gets just a little older. Aged.

You’re lucky. You’re the first to admit it.

Other upgrades just come to us, not because of our patience, not because we have finally stashed away enough cash.

You’re flying home from a wedding with your 6 year old. He’s old enough to sit through a flight, but not old enough to know, when exactly, to use his inside voice. You consider every year he is alive an upgrade. You ask him to wait while you get your boarding passes and low and behold the travel gods smile upon you and move you both to first class.

You settle in and as the flight attendant offers a basket full of Oreo cookies and other name brand snacks and your son cannot stop commenting on the Size of the Seats, you look around and realize you are the only one in first class traveling with a young child. He’s asking, loudly, for all the types of juices, and you watch around you as they pull out laptops and call up spreadsheets.  They order scotch and other small bottles. You have a Diet Coke and your son has an apple juice. And an orange juice. And a cranberry juice. And 3 Oreos.

 The plane hasn’t even taken off yet.

Take the upgrades. Go for the bigger picture, the better sound, the bigger room, the larger snack basket. Enjoy it. Tomorrow you will go back to the smaller apartment, the older car, the slower Internet speed. But today, today you have a choice.

To Resolutions

I resolve to right at least one wrong this year. This will work best if it’s someone else’s wrong and I get to get all righteous, which is also a wrong and I will fix that as well. Next year.

 

I’m going to become literate in something I know nothing about. Nothing difficult, like writing code, or time consuming, like knitting, or that requires expensive equipment, like astronomy or film cameras. No, something more esoteric like Victorian cures for TB or quantum string theory.

 

 Or Netflix.

I resolve to put myself in some situation that will feel uncomfortable to the point of pain, the “uncomfort zone.” I will do this every day for a year and write about it. Oh, wait…

I resolve to eat more kale. Even if I have to batter and deep fry it and wash it down with Jack Daniels. Seriously, I am going to make healthy choices. Even if I have to make 7 unhealthy ones to get there.

I resolve to be nicer if it kills me. It will. It will totally kill me. So, if at some point in the year when I can’t take it anymore--say, February--and I do something crazy like drive to Ecuador to escape, you’ll understand.

I resolve to be more patient and empathetic and generous. I resolve to listen more and talk less. I resolve to withhold judgement until I know all the facts. I resolve to run up all the hills and walk over all the eggshells.

I will write the great American novel in NANOWRIMO and then the great American memoir in December and will follow it up with poems and then a final volume bending all the genres. Oprah will ask me to be on her show but I will be too busy.

Resolutions don’t keep themselves, you know.