Thanksgiving

We have a long tradition of surprising each other in this family. And this weekend, Mary continues the tradition. She managed to pull off a surprise (for me) visit by Daughters One and also Two for Thanksgiving weekend.

So I come home with my mind full of just everyday stuff. I’d just been to the gym and then the store where I picked up such thrilling Thanksgiving staples as toilet tissue and Band-Aids. I’m thinking about whether to vacuum before I shower and wondering whether Mary has fed the cat. And I round the corner from the kitchen to the dining room and there they are!

I didn’t know quite what to say and in fact, it took me a second to comprehend what I was seeing. And not just because of the surprise, which was complete.

The two women before me were two women. Not my little girls (although you gotta know they always will be) but two women with their own lives and their own takes on life. Two women with experiences I will never really know from the retelling and whose futures are their own.

If ever there was a perfect time for me to become reacquainted with One and Two, this is it. They are each on the cliff’s edge of heading into new chapters in their lives, lives supported but not defined by our parenting of them. And I get a whole long weekend to get to know them.

I’ve long considered myself the master at pulling off these family surprises. But yesterday, I got schooled a bit by my wife.
I find myself feeling particularly thankful this Thanksgiving weekend.

The need for validation

Let’s face it – we all have it to a greater or lesser extent. Am I a good parent? A valuable contributor at work? Do folks listen when I share an idea that’s important to me and that I think should be important to them?

So many of the ways in which I’ve sought validation in my life thus far turn out not to matter, not really. At one time, I was totally vested in being one of the top paperboys for The Bellevue American. It was such a big deal to me to go to that dinner (free and you got to choose what you wanted from a huge buffet!) and have my name called. And as you might surmise, I am likely the sole living person who recalls today its importance to me.

The funny thing is, in retrospect that instance of recognition was extremely important to me. And still is. I was honored for something that I did that other people valued. And it was not a transient thing that they recognized that evening.

In order to attend that congratulatory event, I had to get up at oh-dark-thirty without waking the rest of the family, fold and stuff all the papers, then trudge around in the rain or the snow or whatever the Western Washington weather had in store for me that morning. The papers were left under cover at the doors in those days, so it was not the drive-by-and-toss sort of thing we see today. Many days I got home with an hour to spare before changing into my Catholic school corduroys and heading off to school. Other mornings, I would be soaked and muddy, with barely enough time to grab my lunch and head back out into the rain.

And of course, the first week of each month my after school time was devoted to collecting the receipts for the paper. I thoroughly hated knocking on doors and begging for money, even though it was owed me for services rendered. Not all of my customers were as forthcoming as I might have preferred and some required multiple visits before they would finally cough up their seventy-five cents. But I dutifully went back and back until all accounts were settled.

My point is that the recognition by the paper company was well earned. And to this day it makes me proud. More so that magna-cum-anything. Marriage and daughters aside, I consider it one of my prouder moments.

Look, I’m no more immune from the need to be recognized than the next guy. I enjoy being told that my chicken soup is tasty or that I’ve done a good job teaching. I like it when people compliment the fireplace surround I built, and I get revved up when I receive the news that my writing has touched someone.

It’s the things I’ve done that I like to have appreciated. I don’t suppose that makes me unique. And right up there in the top five is that paper boy award. It was work I did not much enjoy and it took a lot of it to make any considerable money. But I did it and over time, bought my first set of drums. And let me tell you, that was the real validation.  

Jacqeline du Pre

I like to run music in the background while I work on anything that is mentally demanding. I calms me and shuts out the randomness of office sounds so I can concentrate. The Internet has been a great boon to me in this regard, as it allows me to perfectly match music to mood with a few keystrokes. ‘Bluegrass’ brings forth offerings from The Dillards, Earl Monroe, even Flatt and Scruggs although a purist might cringe. ‘Classical’ allows me to choose longer works that will not demand intermediate choices while I work. I frequently choose a particular group such as ‘Seattle Symphony’ or composer such as, well, anyone.

Last week, I got on a sectional kick and queued up a full day’s worth of percussion ensemble concerts as background to a job of curriculum development. Turned out to be just the thing to get the proverbial juices flowing. I’m a big Dick Schory fan, particularly Music for Bang, Barroom, and Harp. Tuesday I was on a double reed kick – there’s a young oboist named Katie Sparks who has some of her Baylor recitals posted on You Tube and she’s quite impressive.

Thursday was given over to classical guitar, not least being Ana Vidovic. Check her out.

Then Wednesday I hankered for some cello music as the setting for sorting out some old files. I came across a recording of Jacqueline du Pre playing the Elgar concerto. It was wonderful. Her Elgar was so perfect and expressive that Rostropovich is reported to have refused to play it again after having heard her version.

There aren’t a lot of du Pre recordings on the Net because she stopped playing at 28 due to the effects of the multiple sclerosis that would finally take her at 42. And of course, recording technology during her performing life was not anywhere near what it is today. Still, I hope you’ll consider finding one of her recordings and if you can only choose one, choose the Elgar of her mid-twenties.

There are lessons to be learned from this sojourn but I won’t presume to tell you what they are.

Enjoy.

Watching and waiting

I have always been pretty good at watching. Waiting, not so much.

Which seems oddly out of sync to me, since both activities require flexing roughly the same disciplinary muscles. In each case, the whole point is the let it come to you rather than actively pursuing…whatever. Right?

I suppose you might say that watching is the more participatory activity in that it is acquisitive – taking mental ownership of idea, sights, sounds from an outside source.  Waiting is more inquisitive, and after all, who really likes the long pause before the answer?

I dearly love going on noticing adventures during which I can’t possibly know what I’m going to find but patience in anticipation of that which I know will be arriving (soon?) is quite beyond me and always has been. And it annoys me that I don’t understand why.

Writing a book is truly sublime torture. And no, that was not a non sequitur.

A list for the ages

Ages at which one should not do the things listed, in no particular order, not that I’ve done any of them (and we’ll start with writing incoherent sentences at age 61), based on personal experience:

·       Taking off cross country with Johnnie Sullivan in search of the ice cream truck – 4

·       Saying to Bill, “Yeah, what the hell, let’s do enlist together!” - 18

·       Telling your dentist that the reason you’re squirming in the chair is that you fell off the roof whilst installing Christmas lights and then expecting him not to tell your wife, whose appointment was a couple days later. – 41 (approx.)

·       Testing a rotary lint brush on one’s hippie-length hair – 23

·       Telling the cop who has asked permission to search your car “Why not, I didn’t kill anyone,” when in fact they are looking for someone whose description you resemble and who had indeed, just killed someone, at two a.m. while coming home from work at Jeff’s Restaurant– 16

·       Splitting your pants for the second time in the same show and this time, with your underwear unfortunately shifted out of position – 17

·       Falling off the stage in full Caiaphas regalia while singing “Fools, you have no perception – argh!” in front of a full house at the pavilion – 27

·        Throwing up in the jardinière between verses while singing Stookey’s Wedding Song for some poor girl who just wanted her wedding to be perfect – 23

·       Going to the K-Mart in San Jose dressed in a plastic Santa Claus costume  in the middle of August at one‘s brother’s behest to make his girlfriend laugh and getting ejected by the store manager (who was not laughing) and so having to do the walk of shame wearing a now-sweat-soaked plastic Santa outfit – 20

·       Admitting to the other guys (while, ahem, inebriated) that it was indeed remotely possible that up to that point in one's young but no longer teenaged life one had never actually had certain experiences of a carnal nature, which we need not enumerate here, and then engaging in a Navy version of Truth orDare– 20
 

Here’s the bad news – I have not included in the list any of my truly embarrassing memories. You’ll note that no item on this list references an age in the most recent two decades of my life. I’m going to pretend this is because I no longer do anything of an embarrassing nature.

Talking to strangers

I’ve long had a propensity for chatting up strangers. I don’t recall being that way as a boy or young man, although I’d have to rely on old friends to find the truth of that statement. I believe I recall being more reticent up until about twenty or so years ago.

It may have been my daughters who brought about my late garrulousness (garulocity?). Spend enough time as one of the two or three bored-to-tears chaperones at your nth class outing and you’ll happily strike up a conversation with a car fender. Ironically, although they were directly invested in the causal chain that led to my penchant for engaging, Daughters One and also Two frequently find my friendliness uncool, even inappropriately so.

(Sigh!)

So, it is probably just as well that neither of them was with me in Terminal 2 at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport yesterday afternoon, because I was in a decidedly chatty mood. I was capitalizing on the confluence of an early airport arrival and an empty work carrel to further my writing career when a young woman sat down next to me and in the course of figuring out outlet-sharing, we got to talking.

Don’t ask me the youngster’s name, because I never asked, the exchange of names being utterly irrelevant to our conversation.  But we shared a delightful half hour during which I learned that she is almost the same age as One, works in stock brokerage, was on her way to Seattle to visit family and friends and is considering a relocation to the Northwest. She LOVES teaching (she is her company’s corporate trainer) so of course, we had that to talk about.

She is also something of an outdoors enthusiast, so I gave her my card with the name of a young woman with whom I work who is a certified rafting guide – the idea being that if she sends me an e-mail, I’ll put them in touch.

I can’t say I’ll ever hear from her but if I do, I will indeed introduce her to my young friend Diana.

I quite enjoyed talking to her and I believe the enjoyment was mutual.

During a week when there is so much negative foofaral going around in the news, it was nice to just unplug and engage with another friendly human being, without agenda or expectation, attraction, repulsion, or fear of rejection. I may or may not incorporate part of my mental image of her in one of the characters in my writing. But of course, whether I do or don’t the experience will stay with me and it all comes out somewhere.

What a lovely encounter! And now, back to work.

Vote

Please do. I truly feel this could be a pivotal election so it is important that the outcome represents the majority.