Sizing down, touching hearts...

“Saying good-bye to things which have meaning in

your mind, but not your life, is a good thing!

Keeping those things that bring

both is a blessing”

- Anonymous

Downsizing is time consuming, and if you carry even the vestiges of a hoarding gene, extremely stressful.  While I am uncertain I feel a compulsion to keep things, I sometimes wonder what should go and what should remain.

You now the saying, “Reduce what you have…decrease what you want.”  In this decade of my life, and in particular with this move, I have been trying very hard to incorporate that wise saying.

In the process of the move, one makes decisions about what to keep and what to pitch on the front end, and also on the back end as the ‘settling in’ takes place.

The unexpected…

The card slipped out of the file folder I had been sorting through in the office of our new home.

It was one of those birthday cards you get for the appropriate gender of child – in my case it was to a ‘son.’  The outside was a brightly colored cartoon drawing of flowers in the foreground, a field of vertical light yellow and green furrows just behind the garden, several fully shaped trees of the same colors at the end of the field, set with a blue sky in the background.  The Header said, “FOR OUR SON On His Birthday”  In my father’s hand between the words “…OUR…” and “...SON...” was a moderately readable, “only.”

The inside was dated, May 31st, 1974…the card would arrive twelve June, the date of my birth. 

The inside text:

Your birthday

brings back memories

So warm – so full of fun –

That our hearts are brimming over

With good wishes for you, Son!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

It was signed in the same hand, “Deepest love in Christ, Mother and Dad.” 

Most greeting cards put their standard message on the right panel, leaving the left side either empty, or small graphic of some sort.  This one brought some of the flowers from the front to the left panel for continuity…a nice touch.

Pretty standard stuff one might say…thoughtful...sent early so that it would arrive on time.  Yeah, pretty standard…except there was nothing typical about this card.

On the left panel just under those lovely flowers was this note in my father’s hand,

“Dear Ted,” the faltering hand wrote with his favorite ink pen. “We gave you to Christ on your 1^st birthday and he has given you back to us.  Our cup is full and running over.  Dad and Mother”

The exceptional nature of this card is it came from my father…he had picked it out…hand written the note…something he NEVER did.  Writing even these short words legibly would have been an agonizingly slow and difficult of process and reading these words struck my heart with the unexpected accuracy of a sniper waiting patiently in his nest for the unsuspecting target to emerge in his sights.

Dad had been in the throes of Parkinson Disease for several years by now, and it had already taken much from him.  He was a proud man and did all he could to mask the symptoms in public and from the pulpit, as he fought the beast with everything he had. 

By now the disease had taken his body and most of his ‘hand.’  Truth be told, his pen to paper had never been very clear…or at least to me in years after I learned to read cursive writing.  It seemed the longer he worked in his life, the more illegible his writing became.  He could read it, but that was about it.

If I were to broadly categorize my father, it would be that he was a fighter, a man, I am uncertain that had the word ‘failure’ in his vocabulary.   He would have denied it was Parkinson’s and would, of little doubt, have believed he could overcome these stress induced tremors…it would just take discipline and time.  The prison he found himself in, however, as hard as he tried to find escape, had been locked shut, the combination thrown away, the walls slowly and inexorably encroaching inch by inch until they would eventually crush him. 

There was another inmate in this prison.  It was my mother.  She knew the private struggle, the depression, the anger and stress as she saw this man lose his physical capacities through the ever tightening strangle hold of this devastating disease.  What she didn’t realize, in the beginning, was how it would ensnare her time and energies, slowly engulfing them both for the next decade as she cared for him and he slipped away.

As I read these words, I felt a tear slip from my eye.  She would have told him, “Ed, let me take care of the card to Teddy.  I always do it.”  I can almost hear his voice, “Fan, I want to do this…I need to do this…just let me do this, ‘PLEASE!’”  He loved this woman, but sometimes he had to put his foot down.  The  “…please…” would NOT have been pleading, but rather in the kind of knowing impatience that comes from living with someone you know too well.  I had come back from the war alive when he had been terrified I would not.  He would write this card damn it, and that was all there was to it.

On many levels, these few handwritten words were a labor of love…one he would NOT be denied.

He was sixty-one when he struggled to put these words to paper, five years younger than I am as I sit behind this keyboard.

In these moments of reflection, many images of my father flashed through my mind…some made me smile, others touched me deeply.  Fathers that loved their sons can do that, you know.  I wondered what he might think if he were to have seen my journey, since he boarded the flight of no return…who knows, maybe he has.

In my heart I found myself composing these few words,

“Dear Dad, Thank you for giving me back to Christ on my first birthday.  Thank you for giving me life and for trusting that God would keep me in His hand.  I want you to know, He has.  While I am uncertain exactly how this will transpire, I look forward to seeing and feeling both mother and you once again.  As I think of the table you set for the life of your ‘only’ son, I am grateful beyond this brief expression, for it is my cup that “…is full and running over.”

- ted

Names are more than labels...

What’s in name?  That which we call a rose

by any other name would smell as sweet.”

- Shakespeare, W.

She was named for the Old Testament Biblical character ‘Hannah.’  The name means ‘favor or grace.’  While Hannah is a minor character in the scripture, her impact in bearing the child Samuel – one of the great history-shaping prophets in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition – shaped the future of Israel more than any other woman.  Yes sir, without Hannah, not much of the Old Testament happens.

In her 70s, Hannah carries her portly body with grace, refusing to look as if she has aged since her early forties!! 

I’ve known her most of her life…I mean as well, I suppose, as any man knows those of the ‘fairer persuasion.’

The thing about Hannah is that, except for those very early years, she has always been a pretty big girl.  One might say it appeared she had real potential to pack on the weight from the very start.  You know what they say: big hands in youth suggest a big body in adulthood.  What?  You’ve never heard that?  It is clear then, you have never met Hannah. Those ‘paws’ were outsized almost right from the start, leaving little doubt that when she grew into them, she would be considerably hefty. 

Sometime take a look at the work of Auguste Rodin, the prolific French artist who sculpted ‘The Thinker’ among many other well-known pieces including the ‘Gates of Hell.’   The hands and feet, on his figures, are disproportionally larger than the bodies; a trademark of much of his individual and multi-person work.  That would be Hannah.  The ends of those arms and legs took some time to grow into, but grow into them she did.

As a policy deeply ingrained in the neurochemistry of my mind, the result of living in the home of a minister, and the lovingly firm but gentle hand of my mother, I learned to not draw attention to individuals with physical issues, but the more I was around Hannah, I found myself referring to her as “the little pig.”  To be fair, for a long time, I did not do in her presence, feeling it might inflict trauma accompanied by unintended consequence.  

While not proud of it, as time passed; completely out of character, I simply could not restrain myself, and began saying it in her presence.  I don’t even know how many times Molly admonished me or doing so, but in full acknowledgment, it was a compulsion – one for which I openly declare, “I need help.”  Balancing this unseemly behavior on my part, however, I have always greeted her with genuine loving enthusiasm – it does seem inconsistent doesn’t it?  The thing about her is that she seems to take all of this in stride.  In fact, when I talk like this, she appears to completely ignore me.  I have to give her a lot of credit for that.

While not having the most intimate of relationships, we do feel comfortable touching one another – appropriately I hasten to add.  I regularly tell her I love her, patting her lovingly on the head, or occasionally rubbing her back – she really seems to like that.  It is true, however, that I initiate most of this.  On those rare occasions when we are together, she will sit on the couch with me and watch a little TV.  I have the quiet suspicion she does this just to patronize me, because while she appears to gaze directly at the screen, she has the most disinterested of looks.  She has never once indicated she enjoyed the experience.

Occasionally while I am sitting in the backyard of our little home, she wanders by for a visit.  I might be reading or just enjoying the mindless entertainment of the birds that come to munch from our bird feeder. I am uncertain which one of us enjoys this the most – bird watching I mean – she or me.  Sometimes she chatters away, but as happens with those who have a degree of familiarity, we are able to quietly enjoy sharing space together.  I particularly like that…the quiet moments.

While she is very healthy, for her age I mean, I wonder sometimes what it would be like NOT having her around.  She is older and unless something unexpected shortens the breath I take on this planet, I will outlive her.  They say cats have ‘nine lives.’  Oh were it that she truly had that many and that she was purring near me as I finish my journey, even if she appeared disinterested…for that I would give much indeed.

While I have uncharacteristically teased her and she can be a little high maintenance, whining a fair amount when she does not get her way, for the most part I have “…grown accustomed to her face…” 

Hannah?  What she has lacked in ‘grace,’ in my life, she has more than made up for in ‘favor….’

- ted

Judging books by covers...

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers…”

- Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

Central Ontario weather is not so bad in November, but as the page turns into the New Year, it can be brutal.  I was 22, and it was pretty clear I was going to have to find something else to do with my life!

Not cut out for this…

Following separation from the military in October of 1971, I was a gofer for a old carpenter for whom, when the weather wasn’t so bad, I helped roof some houses and put in a couple of lake docks, and as it got cold built small houses.  My job?  “Bring me some of those two by fours kid.” “Hey, I said put in two nails, not four!”  “Let’s get going, you are going to need to speed up a little youngster!”  Yes sir, I was a ‘skill less’ gopher, good only for carrying, lifting, hammering and whatever else needed to be done.  

Oro Valley, 2013…

There were three of them: Bill, Jim and Larry.  We were having some construction done on the house and these fellows were doing the work.  I mentioned to them that I had been a construction gofer in Canada after separating from the military.  Jim spoke up saying; “I’m the gopher here,” bringing a chuckle all around.

The young mid to late twenties man was slight in build, piercing blue eyes, closely shaved blond hair, standing around 5’10” and markings that were clearly amateur tattoos sparsely distributed around his bare arms and chest, exposed by the narrow sleeved muscle tee-shirt that he wore.

At first he wasn’t particularly noticeable until a few days after they began work when he came to me and said, “Sir, would it be alright if I smoked a cigarette in your back yard during my break?”  It was the formal respectfulness that caught me a bit off guard.  The kind of formality one might expect from a basic trainee in the military addressing a superior officer.  I replied, “Sure man, and thank you for asking.  You really didn’t need to ask.”  “It was out of respect sir,” he noted.  “This is your home.”  With that he was back to work.

When I saw him a couple of days later, I thanked him again and said I was impressed that he had asked.  It was the end of the day. “Thank you sir,” he said as he looked down breaking eye contact. He then slipped across the street, got into his car and headed home for the day.

Getting to know you…

Over the next couple of months as the work on the house continued, Jim was definitely the ‘go to gopher’ always early to the job and always distantly polite.  Tucson mornings in the winter are pretty chilly, so we got in the habit of having fresh coffee for him.  “Thank you very much,” he would say and then slip in his ear buds...listen to music, humming and sometimes singing while he worked.  Occasionally, waiting for instructions from his supervisor who had not yet arrived, we would chat, but his words were generally compact and polite.

As we got to know each other a little I slowly learned a little more about him.  He was a transplant from Indiana, living with his aunt in Tucson for a few months.  As it turned out he was bantamweight mixed martial artist, and had been ‘in the game’ from a child.  Those crystal clear blue eyes were quick, always scanning and although I never saw him fight it was not hard to imagine him being pretty good at this skill. It is hard to describe, but his extremely formal politeness appeared to act as a self-imposed barrier of protection for him.  Yet when he talked about martial arts, it was like he slipped into a zone of comfort...a place of safety for him.  His affect would change; the conversation confident and thoughtful.

He was not specifically forthcoming about his upbringing, but it was clear it had been difficult.  While not finishing high school, he had worked to get a general educational development (GED) credential that counts as a high school equivalent here in the United States…as if he realized he needed to change his path if he wanted to become something more.  Coming to Tucson to live with his Aunt for the winter seemed to be part of a process to change his environment and his life.

The dance…

In the early going, I listened to chatter filled with catch phrases, looking for opportunities to ask questions to see how deep his thinking was.  At breaks, or when his supervisor had run out of work and he waited for his next set of instructions, we had chances to talk a little more.  As his trust increased, we began to have more meaningful conversations and it became clear this young man had a lot more going on in his head than he showed.

It also became clear there had not been many opportunities in his life to engage in meaningful interactions about things that were important to him.  It was as if he was aware that he was a ‘stranger in a strange land,’ and in many ways hoping that he was not alone.  It was easier for him to keep people at bay through formal and non-engaging conversation.  Over time, he realized there might just be other 'strangers and pilgrims' and that maybe he had found one while working as a gofer on a small construction site on a sunny street in Oro Valley.

The music is ending - maybe…

Work on the house is nearly complete.  All that is left are a few touch-up things as the contractor goes through the final items before we sign off and he moves on to his next job.  Jim, of course, will go with him.

Over the past few weeks I think we have become friends...not close...not intimate, but we have found a 'place' that works.  Now when we talk about the bigger issues, we have conversations – that wonderful method of human interaction where both parties are giving and taking.   It is hard to describe the change in the way he engages me now.  He is relaxed, his gaze steady with an open affect that is enthusiastically unguarded.  We agree a little, argue a little and smile a fair amount.

While finishing his work here, I have been unpacking books and putting them on the shelves in the new office space Jim helped build.  A small book I have truly cherished over the years is the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius. I have written notes all over it, and have it on my iPad where I have highlighted it so much that in places the pages look like someone turned loose a five year old with a set of crayons! 

Although uncertain, I thought this might be a book Jim would enjoy and benefit from...I offered and he accepted.  In addition, I sorted more books to keep and some to give away…putting those in a cardboard box on the office floor.  He asked about the box of books and I said they were going to go to the library, but if he wanted any of them, he was certainly welcome.  He thanked me and left the house with a small stack of books in his arms.  I smiled as I saw him carrying them to his car, and knew I had connected with this young man…no doubt a great feeling.

I don’t know where Jim’s life will take him.  I know ‘he’ is NOT a gofer and has potentially much to offer.

Often when I travel, I have the opportunity to interact with people in small vignettes of time.  I find these events edifying and truthfully, great fun.  There seems to be so much to learn from the people I meet along the trail of life.  I don’t often, however, have the kind of time I have had with Jim.  In fact, I suspect, we would not have been able to connect through a brief encounter of some kind.

I felt early on there was something in this young man, but it was clear it would to take a little effort…a little trust…a little listening.  In the end, I will remember Jim and hope he finds the path he seeks.

We exchanged contact information – we’ll see…

- ted

- ted

It is the New Year - I am resolved...

“…most people overlook the advantages and pleasures of their individual lives,

 and run to their difficulties and grievances…It is an act of a madman

to distress oneself over what is lost, and

not to rejoice at what is left…”

– Plutarch LM,

 On Contentedness

of Mind

 “Merry Christmas Teddy-poo.  I love you to the sky and down.  Love, Nancy (and Mariah).”  

“Teddy-poo.”  It had been a year since I heard or seen that name. It came when I got the gift card for Barnes and Noble ‘from Nancy,’ my deceased sister.  It was something she had done before her death, because she knew I liked to read, and as we realized later, it was simply easier for her to do.  Mariah handed me the card and simply said, “This is from Mom.” I was overwhelmed.  I looked up and saw that she too was in tears…and so the tradition began.

This year when I opened the card, I once again entered the ‘timeless zone,’ and found tears streaming gently down my cheeks.  Mariah was sitting on the couch across the living room, in our new home in Tucson, with her fiancé Dan…her life taking a new direction with a partner, and yet as I glanced up unable to speak, her cheeks were glistening – not tears of sorrow really, but rather a celebration of remembrances reflected in memories of the brightness that was my sister’s life.

“Teddy-poo” indeed!  In fact, often she would add an additional ‘poo’ making us all chuckle, “Teddy-poo-poo!”

The rest of the day, I was visited by snippets of memories I had built with her…summers in Canada…friends in common…letters back and forth from Vietnam…movies on the holidays from school…quietly reflective times…Yep, I spent a good part of the day in a lovely ‘full body shower’ of remembrances of shared experiences in that wonderful woman’s life.

I then found myself thinking of others, now “…gone but not forgotten…” who touched my life in the richest of ways.  There were many…much too many to mention here, but a brief purposeful few might be worth sharing.  Purposeful, because maybe they will ‘jump start’ a few thoughts of thanks for pivotal people in your life without whom you might be a very different person today…

In the beginning…

Fan and Ed Dreisinger, who lovingly and with dead seriousness took responsibility for the lives of three children, one of whom was a challenging baby boy.  Their consistency of love and character setting the course.

High school…

Harold Duvall, a church member and coach for the local college who thought there might be some athletic potential in a young high schooler.  Jim Priester, coach for a rival school’s football and track team, who took interest in a boy from a different part of town, the seeds of which blossomed when he convinced this young rudderless Vietnam veteran to return to school.  Both of these men were doers, not talkers and I loved them for their steadfast enthusiastic support when the glass seemed pretty empty.

The middle years – a spiritual community…

Theora Bell whose raspy voice, real life experience and uncanny spiritual insight, took a recklessly unguided life in crisis and brought a laser tight focus.  Mattie Belzer and Marguerite Kitchen, matriarchs with the quirkiest ‘plain spoken’ personalities and a love that only country living, devoid of the ‘…social ladder climbing stuff…’ could bring.  Love?  There is no better shelter from the storms of life.  Yes sir, they had advanced graduate degrees in that field!!

Professional years…

Vert Mooney, an orthopedist with the wisdom of Plato who had the inbred gift of knowing when to ‘…hold ‘em…’ and when to ‘…fold ‘em…’ He was the wisest professional man I ever knew and quietly, with the skill of a chess master, played the game ten moves ahead.  Much of my professional success has his fingerprints all over it.

Arthur Jones and Robin McKenzie, two men polar opposites in personality, yet in terms of internal character as similar as identical twins.  Arthur, the inventor of Nautilus changed the lives of millions of people by introducing focused strength training to athletic teams and the general public.  Robin, whose genius of insight, created a method of understanding and successful treatment of millions suffering from back, neck and peripheral musculoskeletal pain.  Both these men befriended and taught me things I could NEVER have discovered on my own.

There is a point…

The New Year has begun, and as we so often do at this time of year, we look ahead to the uncharted highway of life lying before us.  Our lives become filled with lists of things we would like to change…eat a little more carefully…lose a little weight…exercise a little more…spend a little more carefully.  Yet these are all things that are ‘self-focused,’ ways we want to shape our lives in the coming year.

The thing is, each of us wants the same thing, the ‘same thing’ meaning to be a little happier…a little more content…a little more fulfilled…find a little more meaning.  Sometimes, it is not about ‘us,’ but about others.  You know, “…more blessed to give than receive…”  Giving to others as we have been given to in our lives often brings a perspective that is more than ‘self’ directed. 

One of the ways I do this is to remember those people in my life who took time to engage me…who took time to be proactive in my life…who for completely unknown reasons, invested their time in my time… When I do this, I become removed from ‘me’ and begin to think about ‘them,’ those people who are waiting unknowingly to be coached…to be guided…to be loved.  You know, “…do unto others as you would have them do unto you…”

The walk down memory lane inspired me for the coming year…helped me to be a little more vigilant for what might appear on the ‘…TV screen of my life…’  

Maybe there is a youngster, middlester or oldster just needing a little touch in the coming year, and I will bet that finding such a person might bring a little more happiness, contentment, fulfillment and meaning to our lives…

Yes sir, 2014 is rushing at us…I’m looking forward to building a few more memories, and yet am unspeakably grateful for those whose shoulders have given me a place upon which to place my feet…

- ted