Love, Friendship, Family

I reconnected with an old friend the other day. We’ve known each other since we were 8 years old or so, but lost touch with each other for the past 30 years. We had pleasant conversation. It was fun to listen to the older version of a voice from distant memory. It was good to catch up.

But the best part of the conversation involved an old poem I wrote for my friend’s wife and unborn child when she was pregnant 30-something years ago. He said that old poem, written on a scrap of paper bag, was still in the family, living with their daughter.

I remember nothing at all about the poem – I don’t even remember writing it. In truth, I’m not any good at writing poetry – never have been really. I suspect the majority of folks who read rhyme and verse I’d written would find it mediocre or bad. So, for myself and most folks, whatever words I wrote those many years ago would be forgettable at best.

But not for my friend’s wife. For her, the words meant something at that moment in her life, and she kept them all these years. Today, their daughter has given them three grandchildren. The words still live in the hearts of the mother and the daughter, and on that worn-out old paper bag. Read more »

I had a discussion with my grandmother a few years back. She lived to be 101, so had a deep history to draw from in conversations. We talked about how people related to each other these days, and how disappointing it was to see the lack of civility. When you turned on the news, she said, you no longer saw reasonable and intelligent people reporting, you saw crazy people jabbering on about their own point of view. Discussions were hateful and personal, almost like nobody had the intelligence to think for themselves so they needed the news to tell them how to think. Nobody had the courage to express their views sensibly, and had to try and rely on intimidation in a discussion.

I certainly agreed with her, as we commiserated about the sorry state of discussion and dialogue in our culture. She commented about how much my dad had liked to argue, and how refreshing that was. I wrote about his love for argument in this post.

Image by Larry Schwarm

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In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
~ John Fowles 

A friend, (let’s call her Darla), told me once of a piece of furniture her husband had made for her. It meant a lot to her, she explained to me, because her husband is a pretty quiet guy, and she’s come to realize over the years that making things for her is his language of love to her.

Decades ago, I cut firewood to make extra money. Wherever I found trees being pushed over to make room for new houses, I’d ask permission to cut as much firewood as I could out of the area. Occasionally, I’d find an ancient tree pushed over that was big enough to harvest lumber from, and I’d work mighty hard to load it into my truck, and haul it to the sawmill, and have it milled down to rough-sawn lumber. Then I’d carefully stack and dry it.

I accumulated quite a treasure trove of excellent lumber – oak, walnut, and cherry mostly – much of which was 12” wide or more. I used it over the years, for things like bookshelves and fireplace mantles in homes we built. But much of it has stayed with me all these years, pieces of ancient woodland history harvested and cared-for by me as I’ve traveled through life.

I think I always held out hope that my kids would come to appreciate the deep wealth and history of those bones from within ancient trees. But, as is generally the case with kids, they follow their own paths, and those paths didn’t take them close to or through the libraries of ancient tree lore.

But fate crossed my path with Darla, whose husband used wood as a language of love. Who better to appreciate the thirty-something years of care my lumber received after the trees it came from had gathered life from the earth for hundreds of years? Who better to understand the significance of the language this wood can speak?

So I helped him load the wood into his truck the other day, and handed custody over to a younger man who can care for and craft the wood into it’s next iteration of language. While there was perhaps a tiny bit of sadness as the wood left, there was far greater joy that it might now be crafted into a rare and wonderful language.

My role in the transformation of those ancient trees was only to rescue their lumber, and to cure and care for the lumber through many years. Through those years, it aged and ripened in my care, preparing for the next step in its transformation. It’s now been given to its next custodian, who will help it emerge into a wonderful language – much like the language it must have spoken all those years ago standing tall and strong in the forest.

The groves were God’s first temples.
~ William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn

Lots of things in life are like that, aren’t they? We’re often called to play a role for a time in the transformations of this world around us. To protect a thing, not to possess it. To be a steward, not a tyrant. To be a gardener and a nurturer, not a leech and hoarder.

To every thing, there’s a season.
A time for seed to take root,
A time for growing,
A time for uprooting…
A time for holding on,
and a time for letting go.

I am the heat of your hearth, the shade screening you from the sun; I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table; I am the handle of your hoe, the door of your homestead; the wood of your cradle, and the shell of your coffin. I am the gift of God and the friend of man.
~ Author Unknown 

A friend and I were corresponding about a road trip she took recently. She reconnected with a brother, and found herself surprised at who he was. She and the brother had apparently not really talked or corresponded for quite some time – maybe 20 years.

I don’t know the details of why the estrangement occurred in the first place. There are almost always all sorts of reasons for these sorts of things. I think part of it was that she made some assumptions about what he must believe, and he made some similar assumptions about her. Probably things got said that reinforced those assumptions.

She has a lifestyle that most folks would call alternative. He converted from something to Mormonism. She was getting wild tattoos way before wild tattoos were all the rage. He was apparently deeply involved in his Faith. She assumed his Faith would have little room for her lifestyle, he probably assumed her lifestyle would mock his Faith.

The years went by. No voices crossed phone lines. No letters came into mailboxes. Email became a “thing”, but email inboxes remained uncluttered by messages from one another.

Then a conference came up that she wanted to attend, and it was close to where the brother lived. A hand was extended, and grasped, and a dinner happened.

And they liked each other. They found one another to be far more open to the other than either had expected. She was, after all his sister. We all have faults after all, and who’s to say which faults trump others, and what are really faults anyway? He is, after all, her brother, and his heart is open and good and accepting.

They enjoy dinner, and are amazed at the similarities they share as brother and sister. They feel the glow of reminiscence as they tell stories they haven’t thought of in years.

In the depths of our DNA, we’re all brothers and sisters at some ancient place. Like my friend and her brother, we’ve all had assumptions and misconceptions woven into the lens through which we see those distant brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbors. Those assumptions and misconceptions maintain walls and borders that are most strong and excellent. They help the morally corrupt among us sow hatred of anyone a little different that we are. They stoke the machinery of war, and maintain a constant flow of our tax dollars into that machinery.

In the relative scheme of things, I wonder if it was easy for my friend to reconnect with her brother. He’s her brother after all. Or is it even harder with those that we’re closest to? It’s not a matter of forgivingness for past wrongs that I’m talking about – it’s a willingness to be open to truly understanding the other person, without the burden of assumptions and misconceptions.

I think it comes down, once again, to that amazing power our brain has to categorize. We build a category for something, and then our brain does a really great job of sorting the world we walk through very efficiently, placing new things into the categories it’s built. So, I have a brother that becomes a Mormon, and my wonderfully efficient brain drops him into the category it’s built for Mormons. I don’t need to ask him what he believes, and waste all that time listening to how he really feels, when my wonderfully efficient category already has a set of answers.

I don’t need to spend time getting to know my Muslim neighbors, because I have a wonderfully efficient category for Muslims that tells me what I need to know about how they behave and what they believe. I don’t need to waste my time with my coworker who’s quite vocal in his support of Atheism, since my category for Atheism tells me all I need to know about him.

Life is so efficient when we let those efficient categories in our brain work to keep the world around us nice and tidy. We don’t need to think too much. We don’t need to go through the messy and uncomfortable soul searching and self-evaluation.

Or we could get a bit messy, and have dinner with our brother.

Next Sunday (January 30) I’ll join 3 other local authors at the Boulder Book Store in Boulder for a signing and event.

Here’s a flyer for the event – details on the event page.

Thanks in advance for your support!

BoulderBookStoreFlyer_30Jan11

22 years ago, I stood in an operating room and watched a tiny little messy baby girl emerge into the world. There was a stereo playing in the background as the docs and the nurses worked. It was an Eagles album – I’m sure it was a tape as CD’s probably weren’t invented yet. Desperado was the song that played as the little baby pulled that first lungful of Mother Earth into her lungs.

“…

You know the queen of hearts,

Is always your best bet…

And some fine things, have been laid upon your table…”

That little baby is all grown up now, celebrating her 22nd birthday today. She’ll always be the Queen of Hearts in my book I suppose, or maybe the Princess, though everyone else seems to think she’s all grown up.

I look at her sometimes, and listen to her talk, and wonder at the beautiful person she’s become. How did this happen? It seems so sudden. It seems only a short while ago she was 8 years old, and we’d race upstairs at bedtime, and negotiate how many books we’d read together before the lights went out. She’d fall asleep cuddled up to me. I’d fall asleep too.

While I miss those wonderful times a little bit, I also burst with pride and joy at the beautiful person that keeps emerging into adulthood. We banter now and then, and tease each other a bit, and I suppose in another 22 years I’ll look back on today with nostalgic longing, while watching in wonder as that little princess continues to emerge into yet another stage of beauty.

Happy Birthday Princess.

I watched a generation slip into memory the other day. She was 101 years old. She’d outlived all her friends, and some of her children. Every bit of evidence I ever saw made me believe she savored every moment life blessed her with. In the end – for the last few years – she was increasingly tired, and ready to go home.

She’d lived life to its fullest, and she was tired now. While she was happy to continue to savor those little moments that life continued to give to her, she looked with increasing longing toward the next transition.

Her soul had left the wonderful vessel that was her body, but we gathered around that vessel nonetheless last weekend, and bid her goodbye. While we were sad that we’d not have her smiling face with us now, we continued to rejoice at the smile that her soul left within the heart of each of us.

It meant a lot to me that I could help to carry the casket within which the vessel that was my grandmother would now rest. The preacher said his words, and we all filed in a line past the crypt within which will rest the vessel that was my grandmother. She’ll take her place where she’d want to be – beside the vessel that was her husband and my grandfather. Her casket waited – they would put it into the crypt after we all left.

I waited at the end of the line, not wanting to feel rushed as we walked past the crypt. It was a tiny and quiet little moment standing there with my brother and sister, in that quiet place, after everyone else had left. We knew we’d walk away soon, and leave behind the deep and penetrating quiet. I took in a breath, pulling the quiet deeply into myself, and let in out slowly, hoping to leave behind a tiny shred of the love I hold for her, hoping it would rest with her through the years.

We left the cemetery, and drove past the house where she’d lived. The house where she raised her children. The house where she raised her grandchildren. We drove past the old house several times, savoring the memories with each pass. Memories of popsicles in the freezer on the back porch, memories of a fresh sweet corn in the summer, and a chicken coop converted to a garage. Memories of warm summer evenings under a giant willow tree in the back yard. Memories of covert bicycle rides down the gravel road to the river for a cool swim on a hot summer day.

The house has belonged to someone else for years now, and it’s a lot less neat and tidy than it used to be. There’s probably not a freezer on the back porch any longer – or at least not one with homemade popsicles. The willow tree was taken down many years ago. The road is paved in asphalt now, and the place we used to swim in the river is silted-in.

But none of that stopped the wonderful memories from wrapping themselves around me, and filling my heart with the warm love that Grandma leaves behind with us.

We talked about whether we’d ever be back to look at that old house again, or to visit with family that we’ve not seen in years. One last time, Grandma had brought us together to say goodbye to her, and while I desperately want to believe that we will, there’s a part of me that wonders if we’ll ever come together again, now that the glue that bound us has moved along.

Makes me stop and think. Where am I the glue? Where is it that I hold people together? In this world where the media and the hate mongers work overtime to push us apart and convince us that “the other guy” is evil, it’s increasingly important for more of us to live the sort of life that Grandma lived, where we work to pull people together rather than pushing them apart.

Amen.

Jesse and I shared a few beers at the Red Carpet Club at LAX last night, then he got on his flight toward Hanoi, and I got on my flight to San Francisco. I really enjoyed myself, but must admit saying goodbye was tough.

My kids are all adventurers. Seems that each year, one or more of them is embarking on an adventure of some sort to one corner of the world or another. I love that about my children – that they are so confident and adventurous, that they embrace learning and becoming, that they face the whole world with a smiling spirit and outstretched arms.

Whenever each of them leaves on an adventure of one sort or another, the father in me always worries – how can I not? I always mourn just a little for my loss as they venture away from me. Most of all, the pride inside of me always overflows at the adventure they’re becoming, and the way they embrace life.

But this one’s a little different for me. Seems that each of these emotions I’ve come to expect is particularly amplified this time. Maybe it’s the combination of distance and time – a year’s a very long time! But fortunately, all the emotions are amplified, so with the greater worry and loss comes even greater excitement and pride.

I watched him walk away down the concourse toward his gate. Such a strong and confident man, showing little fear as he approaches the portal to the next him. I suppose I’ll carry that image with me for a long time – the image of him reaching the end of the concourse, and turning that corner out of my sight.

I must confess that one of the “amplifiers” this time is news we just received last week from some dear friends of many decades. They recently lost their son, who was not much older than Jesse. Of course, all across the world – every hour of every day – folks are leaving this life and moving on. But when it’s someone you know, and have known for so many years, who loses a grown child, it opens a dark and fearful place inside your soul. I think it’s natural to want to cling just a little more tightly to your own kids – to hug them a little closer – to worry just a little more.

So the image of Jesse turning the corner will stay with me, and I’ll worry just a little more than I usually do (though my kids would say that’s not possible…) The loss I feel already at having him so far away from me is strong and probably won’t get any better soon. But I’ll focus more keenly on the adventure he’s having, and I’ll look forward to emails and skype time.

And when I finally see him again, I’ve no doubt I’ll feel an amplified sense of wholeness when I hug him and feel he’s safe and close.