Times when I've hollered

I’ve been known to raise my voice every once in a blue moon.

I’m not a constant yeller but neither am I one of those admirably mild souls who manages to hold his water in instances of extreme tension or annoyance. I’m just an average schlub who’s exercised his pipes more often than he’d like to admit.

My bro and sis-in-law are visiting and we were watching old home movies last night. (I really need to get those puppies digitized but that’s another whole discussion.)  And the whole last month, the couple who’ve just purchased the house next store are frantically working on a remodel before they can move in with their very small children. I know from our brief welcome discussion that their rental is up tomorrow and I know from peering in the windows (Oh, come on, you would, too!) that they still have a lot of studs as yet uncovered with drywall.

By now, you may be wondering how hollering, reminiscence and home renovation will ever come together in a heartwarming New Year’s missive.

And here’s how:

Many moons ago, Mary and I bought this house that was exactly what we wanted in grand terms and almost entirely unsuitable in the details. That is, it had the right number of appropriately sized rooms, all badly in need of paint, new fixtures, doors and updated wiring. The plumbing more or less directed anemic dribbles of water to approximately the point of use.

The oven couldn’t get over 350 degrees on its best day, only one of the four stove burners worked reliably and the windows, modern and sleek when the house was built in 1954, were now mere suggestions that some form of barrier had once existed between the weather outside and the tepidly heated inside. The roof leaked, part of the foundation was crumbling and the garage was a cruel joke.

It did have two major advantages: it was in a stellar school district and-  largely owing to its real and perceived deficits - it was for sale within our budget.  So we bought it, moved the family in and embarked on a twenty-year project of home improvement that we hope and believe will now finally be completed in the next year or so. We’ve replaced much of the drywall and half of the windows, all of the interior doors, and completely rebuilt the kitchen. We remodeled one bathroom and built another from scratch. The house now has a walk-in pantry and an in-home office and it’s generally very comfortable. And with the exception of the new roof and upgrading the main electrical service, we did it all with our own hands.

It was tough rebuilding this creaky old shack while raising kids, working full time, taking classes and living our lives. And there were times when we questioned our own sanity. One of those times comes to mind tonight as I wait with drugged dogs for the cacophony of illegal fireworks that will signal the advent of a new year.

We’ve replaced every inch of plumbing in this house, from the water meter to the sewer drain, hot and cold, inflow and egress and vent. And there came a time when I found myself sitting under the house, at the nexus where all the plumbing came together, frantically trying to get the plumbing back in service before Mary and I had to go back to work the next morning and take the kids to school. And as it got to be late on the Sunday evening, it became increasingly obvious that the sun may come up and the world would revolve, but there would be no water passing through our pipes that night or the next morning.

There was just too much left to do, I was too worn out and there had been too many setbacks that weekend for me to confidently predict anything approaching success. My stress level was at its peak when, in trying to sweat a joint of copper overhead, I managed to let the heat barrier slip and dropped a stream of molten solder on my bare leg. This caused me to launch vertically in the attempt to escape maiming but my trajectory was interrupted when mine noggin came into contact with the beam to which the piping was attached.

With blistered leg and bleeding scalp, the fitting now frozen in place but incompletely soldered, I somehow managed to get the torch extinguished and set aside before launching into the longest and loudest uninterrupted stream of expletive-laden hollering that had ever issued from this mouth and these lungs. I cursed my luck, condemned the house and its builder and each previous owner and wondered loudly and plaintively what sort of self-delusion had led me to think I could accomplish this job in one weekend.

I vehemently condemned the hubris that led me to believe I was up to this chore and wondered what I had been thinking and how I had dared to put my family in the position of being without the basic requirements of civilized life ON A SCHOOL NIGHT, for Gawd’s sake! And when I ran out of things to holler, I started over again at the beginning. I’m pretty sure I could be heard in the next county.

This went on for some time but gradually I ran out of steam. Finally I sat, wounded and defeated on my field of dishonor, staring at my filthy, cracked hands and trying to make sense of what should come next, when I heard my wife’s  voice.

She was standing at the access door to ‘down under,’ as we call the utility space in which I was working, and had clearly just been waiting for my soliloquy to run dry before speaking. She was calm but forceful as she began.

“I want you to stop and put away your tools. You’re done for tonight. I have a hotel room across the freeway and the girls and I are going over there to shower. When we get back, you’re going to take your turn. And in the morning, you’re going to call your boss and tell him you won’t be in. And you’ll get this done tomorrow.”

She didn’t say anything about my failed plan, my faulty estimate of the time the job would require, my abject failure to say something long past the time it should have been obvious we needed a Plan B. She didn’t reprimand me for the additions I’d made to our daughters’ vocabulary. She just presented a solution that worked for all of us.

It was one of the times I hollered and also one of the times that cemented for me the simple fact that Mary is a better life partner than I could ever have hoped for. And that simple fact still holds.

Mary is still keeping my head from exploding at appropriate moments and I like to think I do the same for her, as and when needed.

It’s going to be a great new year for me, deserved or not. I hope the same is true for each of you.

The gatherers

I’ve been ill of late – hence the paucity of sharing here - and today was my first day out and about. It was a really cool day with Mary, Daughter Two, the Brother-in-Chief and his esposa.  Since I’m still in recovery mode, we had to do things that didn’t require a great deal of exertion so we went to Chittenden Locks and then down to check out the fishing fleet on Salmon Bay.

The fleet includes many of the boats and mariners you see on shows such as Deadliest Catch, so we’re talking about serious fishermen. When you get within twenty feet of these boats, you realize how small they are in the context of some of the storms they run into in the Bering Sea.

I don’t know where they find these guys who risk their lives and livelihoods bringing seafood to my table. What they do is part of a long and proud tradition shared by the dorymen of the North Atlantic, the men who sail dhows and sampans, the lobstermen who break their backs working their strings of pots in every kind of weather and the indigenous Americans who balance precariously on flimsy platforms to wrest steelhead from the Columbia.

And of course, there are the farmers who bet their futures that the rain will come this year, but not too much. And the folks who grind the grains, load the gondolas, top-load the bales and drive the trucks. I’ve worked hard to get where I am but I’ve never had the kind of daily grind some of these folks face up to every day of a working lifetime.

In this world of modern convenience and specialization, in which most of us haven’t a clear idea where our next meal will really come from, perhaps in this time of thankful reflection we can spare a thought or two for those who labor and bear the risks of our collective food gathering.

Where I live

I know there’s an annoying element to the grand chauvinism of place that I’ve occasionally displayed in these pages virtual. I understand some few of you may actually have had quite your fill of my descriptions of the beauty of the Northwest in general and northwestern Washington (the real Washington, that is) in particular.

I understand all this and yet, I’m curiously unrepentant. Because the fact is, I do live here and I will call it a sad day when Mary and I finally give up and move somewhere else in order to maintain proximity to our Daughters, One and also Two.

For now, I’m content to be where I can watch orcas feeding from the Bremerton ferry, as I did a couple weeks ago. Or watch the spume from the breakers blowing over the floating bridge, which I’ve already done several times this year from the warmth and dryness of a metro bus.  

On a clear day, of which -  contrary to popular belief among people who’ve never made their home here - there are many, I can see three volcanoes from the same bus ride over the same bridge just by turning my head.

This is where I did winter camping with the Boy Scouts and had my paper route and mowed lawns and failed utterly to pursue my first schoolboy crush. And where my buddy Johnny fell out of the Big Fir while playing buck-buck and where my brother surprised the whole neighborhood when he chased the bully with a length of pipe and where we never caught a fish but never stopped trying and where the cat bit Anne right on the nose and where I accidentally stomped on Marilyn’s pet frog. (Turns out, frogs have more guts than one might think.)

This is also where I’ve spent most of my time as husband and father to three strong women who are the glory of my life. It’s where I’ve wielded chain saws with my brother and spackle knives with my wife and taught Two how to hammer and One how to cut shapes out of plywood for theatrical sets.

I could go on and likely I will after I post this blog and surrender to my private musings.  Mary and I are having a low key holiday with Two this year, the first without One.  We hung ornaments on the tree tonight, each and every one with a story attached.  A good anthropologist could put together a reasonable reconstruction of our lives in this house just by paying close attention to the narrative offered by the ornaments hanging on our tree.

We still have One’s ornaments but that will change one year soon as she establishes her own traditions and our tree will thenceforth tell less of the story. Or at least, the same story but from fewer points of view.

This place is home. It may not be for much longer but for the moment, it remains the place where my life is rooted.

My wish for each and all of you this holiday season is that you can take a few moments and just love being where and who you are. My life is rich and made richer by each of you and by these women. And of course, by this place.

We’ll  have family stuff taking up the next couple of days so who knows when I’ll be back to you. But wherever you are and whatever you call this holiday, I hope it’s a time of happiness and peace for you.

Resolved...

This next year is going to be our year, Mary’s and mine.

The year now ending has been a tough one, with upsets in both our jobs, multiple medical misfortunes for the family, more or less evenly distributed, and financial challenges related to the recent recession. I know – wah! But really, this year has been a pain in the bum. Even so, we appear to have gotten through it all well enough.

We’ve been talking a lot about what we want to do with our time and we’ve each settled on a major project for the next year. Mary will be studying for certification in a new field and as soon as my degree program is finito in June, I’m getting back on my book writing. And of course, the upgrading of this blog.

We’re going to do a bit more travelling, as well. Nothing fancy or expensive – refer back to the comment regarding the recession – but relaxing trips we can both enjoy. We’ll finally check out Pat and Patty’s place in Colorado, make it to California for visits with family and friends and perhaps, Christmas in Florida with Mary’s family and Angela.

We’re also keen on finally finishing this house that has been an ongoing project for going on twenty years.

2013 will be a good and productive year. That’s our resolution.

(Thanks to Sheila for a heads up regarding a typo in this post. Are you available for copy editing duties?)

Blogitude

As we head into the New Year, I’m determined to make two changes: less me and more writing output. The less me side of things will be a function of a magical combination that I’ve just invented and may soon patent: less in through the pie hole and more out through the sweat glands. Don’t know how I thought of it. We’ve joined a really good gym where I’ve found I really enjoy spending time. I’ll let you know how the whole eating thing works out.

As to the writing, I’m toying with the idea of taking this blog beyond the confines of a little vanity publication meant for a few close friends and actually start blogging. Of course, this would require a change in attitude.

I’ve become really lazy, both as to quantity and quality. Reading through some past postings, there are some typos that I’m shocked I didn’t catch, odd word choices, questionable usages, flagrant violation of the rules of punctuation, etc. All this as evidence of the way I write these things – once I have the idea, I just write until I run out of words and then hit the submit button. If I’m feeling particularly industrious, I might make as much as a single pass through to catch the most obvious sins. If I’m queasy about posting something – something personal about family or friends, for example – I may do some actual editing and will usually let Mary exercise veto power.

For the most part, though, what you see here is pretty much as it occurred to me. And that also speaks to the other side of the equation – quantity. I’ve felt free to post when the spirit moved me, which is the lazy man’s way of, well, being lazy. If I’m going to turn this thing into a real blog, and especially if I want to start building a following, I have to get that discipline thing going.

But of course, that would mean posting on time, when expected and only good writing free from obvious defects.  I REALLY like writing, and I’d like to start getting an actual conversation going with a regular family of readers, but discipline? Hm-m-m.

I believe perhaps Fagin put it best, “I think I’d better think it out again!”

My latest crush

There’s this guy who rides my bus. Okay, so lots of people ride my bus but one of the things that make this guy special – I’m assuming his friends and loved ones could identify other special-making attributes – is that he is frequently accompanied by a drop dead gorgeous young lady. I have a terrible crush on her. Don’t tell Mary.

She has beautiful blond hair, a trim figure and a come-hither gaze. She’s friendly and polite, interested in the people around her but entirely unobtrusive. Her fashion choices are limited and reserved. Most days, she just wears a vest that says “Guide Dog Puppy.”

I’ve been around service animals quite a lot and I know the rules, so I smile but no more. Occasionally, I’ll have a brief chat with her partner. But I don’t reach out to her or even acknowledge her directly. My yearning for her will go unrequited. She’s in training and when in harness it’s about reinforcement, not distraction.

This young lady will soon leave this man who has raised and socialized her for the next phase, a period of intense training and examination, culminating in her pairing with a human partner whose life will become inextricably interwoven with her own.  Or, she won’t make it through training and pairing for any number of reasons ranging from inability to grasp intelligent disobedience to previously undiagnosed dysplasia and will wind up with a loving family who will have the best pet they could ever imagine.

Whatever happens, this young lady is disposed by breeding and prepared by training to take her place in polite society. And best of all, she’ll be a fun-loving, loyal, protective and intelligent friend to a human who needs just what she has to offer.

This guy who accompanies her on bus rides is one of the good guys. He can’t help becoming attached to this wonderful lady and then has to give her up abruptly and entirely in order to allow her to fulfill her doggie destiny. And he does it gladly – has done it before and will likely do it again.

I really like this guy and I don’t really even know him. As I said, he’s one of the good guys.

I feel a little guilty for having a crush on his girl.

(NOTE: If you’ve interest in learning about Morris Frank and Buddy, the first dog-human pair whose success was pivotal in the development of training techniques perfected at The Seeing Eye, please find a copy of Love In The Lead: The Fifty-year Miracle of the Seeing Eye Dog by Peter Putnam.)

Children…

…should never have to cower in a storage room listening through a barricaded door to the terrifying sounds that signal the deaths of other children and their teachers.

A friend reminded me quite correctly today that the answer to this problem is more complex than just controlling guns or providing more mental health resources. It will take a lot of thought and good will and passion and sacrifice to make this sort of thing a historical footnote rather than a frequent current event.

Meanwhile, let’s start with the possible.

Stand up to bullying, especially on behalf of another.

Don’t laugh at cruel jokes.

Stop watching shows that depend on rudeness, stupidity and cruelty for laughs.

Stop patronizing stores that depend on de facto slave labor offshore to maintain their price structures.

You can make your own list. But we really have to start somewhere.

Headlines including ‘massacre’ have become much too common.

Approaching the cliff

I’m not a fan of brinksmanship, so I really don’t like the fact that pols on both sides of the aisle seem to find the edge so tantalizing. They know and you know and I know that they all assume they will make a deal at the last possible moment to avert fiscal disaster.

I would be much more confident about all this if I felt their self-confidence was well placed. In order to believe they WILL pull back from the precipice, one must believe that CAN pull back, which is to say that they are collectively competent to do so.

I wish I could believe.

I am sore afraid.

Bored ducks

I’ve had a long but not an intimate relationship with ducks. I suppose that’s why when I read a passage in which John Irving referred to “bored ducks,” it sort of clicked for me.

Of course, that’s it! They’re bored!

You see, I’ve often wondered at the frame of mind of waterfowl, ducks in particular. I mean, cormorants and gulls for the most part just go their own way, except to see us as a source of cast off food. The one time I spotted an albatross it was far at sea and other than the obvious references to ancient mariners and other lore of the sea, my primary reaction was that, damn - that was a big bird.

Geese, especially the Canadas that frequent our local lakes and beaches, have an agenda and when my activities intersect theirs it’s immediately, manifestly clear whose plan of the day the geese believe should prevail.  As with the gulls, they examine me as a potential source of food and failing that, they become guardedly aloof, ignoring me unless I should happen to approach their turf and they find it necessary to honk and bite and chase until I go safely away. And of course, to put a point on it, they leave their grease where it will inconvenience me should I decide to re-enter their hood.

Ducks are different. Oh sure, they aren’t immune to analysis of me as a possible food source but they go farther. I think they’re a bit curious about me. Or about the girls when they were young and we’d go explore the local duck ponds. They always seemed more interested in the girls than in me. Maybe it was my size or perhaps some silent and invisible duck-girl affinity.

They never stayed with us long. Not like the otters and harbor seals that approached our kayaks and circled so insistently, intent on finding out what we could do for them and whether we could be coaxed to play for a bit.

Ducks approach curiously but then, satisfied we have nothing of interest to offer, move on away in their unceasing search for something to do. Looking back a few times to make sure they haven’t overlooked some minor way in which we might interest them.

That’s it!

They’re bored. Of course!

Ducks don’t care about me or the girls or my paddle partners. They care about something – anything – that will bring something interesting into their lives.

Next time I’m around ducks, I’m going to do my best to be more entertaining. You should, too.

A list for 6 December, 2012…

…when the Washington State law allowing same-sex marriage went into effect.

Marriage is:

·         A confluence of two lives

·         A public, explicit statement of an agreement that has already been entered into in private and implicitly at a profound personal level

·         A celebration of having found another person upon whose happiness and well-being your own depends

·         Built on a foundation of love and respect or it is nothing

·         Tough, for anyone of any sexual orientation

·         Personal

 

Marriage is not:

·         Based primarily on sex, particularly in a day when few people go into a wedding as virgins and most of us will outlive our libidos.

·         Based on the tenets of a particular religion , especially when you consider that as an institution it predates the religious traditions of the people fighting gay marriage

·         Limited to those of us on the “right” side of the sexual orientation line

·         Designed solely for the creation of progeny

·         The province of a particular political party of my former affiliation

·         Selfish, internally or externally

·         Easy, for anyone of any sexual orientation

Dave Brubeck - in memorium

There is one less artist in the world tonight.

Dave Brubeck was one of my all time favorite musicians and must have been a lot of people’s faves because he was the first jazz musician to sell a million records. The year I was five, the Dave Brubeck Quartet put out a platter called Time Out on which they experimented with non-traditional time signatures. A huge hit single from that album was Take Five, in which the melody and breaks were so expertly woven around the then-revolutionary  5/4 time signature  that most people didn’t  realize right away just why it sounded ‘different.’  I loved the piano and sax solos – Paul Desmond was copied and copied and copied again by lounge players all over the world. Eugene Wright’s bass made you feel right at home in five.

Of course, Joe Morello’s trap work was what grabbed and held me. The drum solo was like a sidebar conversation to the main piece and went its own way for awhile before rejoining the rest of the quartet.  Even ten years after that recording hit the charts, it was magical to be a young drummer hearing it for the first time. Of course, I had to learn it. I had to wait until no one was in the house to practice because without Brubeck chording on the vamp background, it just sounded like a high school kid beating on the drums. Which is of course what I was.

Brubeck and various incarnations of his combo produced a large body of work, much of it in inconvenient, marvelous times. Every piece was interesting and entertaining.  Dave Brubeck continued to play at least as recently as earlier this year and was 91 when he passed.

Daughter One likes to talk about the importance of following your passion as your life’s work. Mr. Brubeck did that. In spades.

Our kids

A week or two ago, I saw a photo on Facebook of our friends’ drop-dead-gorgeous daughter and it came back to mind this evening. I got to thinking about daughters and sons and family in general.  I’m on post-surgical sick watch with Mary (not to worry, all is well) with not much to do but stand by to meet her needs. Both daughters checked in on her by phone. Which is what daughters do, of course.

One and Two check in with us when they have problems or something to complain about or crow about or when they need advice or for no reason at all. And we call them for advice (yes, we do!) or to conduct family business but most often, just to hear their voices. Which is what parents do, of course.

Our daughters are always going to be part of our lives and we will always be part of theirs. As thrilled as we are to see them slipping their moorings and heading out toward their own horizons, we feel their presence. They’re frequently beyond our reach but never outside our embrace.

I wonder how many young adults are out there adrift with no family to send them off or to whom they can come back home. In this country, we do a better job than some of providing foster care for kids whose parents are out of the picture for myriad reasons. Yes, I know we can argue about how well our systems serve the needs of these children. As well as we do, we can definitely do better. And we can debate the best, most caring, most effective approach to providing for the needs of children without reliable home lives.

No matter how well we do for these kids as kids, we utterly fail them as young adults. Because when they hit a given age – eighteen for most benefit programs – they “age out” of the system. The transition is as abrupt and potentially cataclysmic as if they’d sailed over a waterfall.

At seventeen years and three hundred, sixty-four days, they have a home and food and clothing and a school district. The next day, they’re emancipated. Which is an unintentionally cynical term meaning they’re cast adrift with neither compass nor anchor.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like for me when I turned eighteen and went off to the Navy if my parents and siblings, and Mr. McKay, the Ee Girls and Mr. Unland and Aunt Bobbie and so many others hadn’t been in my life. Each of them was there for me at a critical juncture with words of advice or encouragement or even (ahem!) comeuppance as appropriate. And my connection to each of them came about one way or another through family and friends.  

So what about these kids who at eighteen become presumptively independent adults for whom no one has any further official responsibility? Who shares their triumphs and helps them through the rough spots?  What network of relationships provides them with assurance that they’re connected?

I think that’s maybe the word I’ve been looking for. Connection.

We need to do better. Meanwhile, it would be a good thing to at least help these newly minted adults know that they are a welcome part of Us.

While we’re thinking about the holidays and soldiers far from home, perhaps we should also give a thought to these young adults for whom ‘home’ is an illusory concept. If you’re wondering how to do that, please take a moment to peruse the "Foster Care To Success” site through this link: http://www.fc2success.org/how-you-can-help/build-a-student-care-package/.