Month: October 2015

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The Halloween Brush-Off

“So do you guys roast the seeds afterward?” the checkout clerk asked as I paid for our three pumpkins.

“Huh?” It took me a minute. “Oh. No, not really. You see, we don’t carve these up. We …” The confession felt odd for a moment, like admitting to a secret fanship of Justin Bieber. “We paint them.”

The clerk blinked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before.” She smiled. “I like that.”

Whew.

No, that’s not a misprint. For three or four Halloweens now, we’ve celebrated as though Linus had discovered Jackson Pollock. Our disabled ward Missy is the artist-in-chief, smearing blues and browns and whites across the natural orange canvas until the mighty holiday symbol looks … well, distinctly out of its gourd.

My wife Heather and I love the results, with all the usual oohs and ahs and pictures to Facebook. What’s harder to explain is how we started doing this in the first place. It really comes down to two things: a weak stomach and a Halloween hesitancy.

The stomach is mine. As a kid, my family used to carve pumpkins – nothing elaborate, just the fun of the usual gap-toothed grin. And then, one Halloween, I had a stomach bug.

Just for the record: when you’re already presenting previous meals to the porcelain altar, the smell of fresh pumpkin guts is less than enticing. Well, that’s not quite true. It certainly enticed me to do one thing.

“Blaaaaargggh!”

I have never been able to smell a pumpkin’s insides since without starting to revisit that moment.

The hesitancy is – or rather, was – Missy’s. When we first moved in to take care of her, she loved holidays with two significant exceptions. She hated the sudden explosions of the Fourth of July (and still does). And she didn’t care for Halloween.

We couldn’t quite figure out why, unless it just weirded her out to have so many people walking around in fake faces and strange clothes. (A similar objection could be made to Election Day, come to think of it.) A newfound love of Harry Potter finally reeled her in – this is the second straight year she’s enthusiastically dressed up as the boy wizard for the season – but the hook was first set by the chance to wield a paintbrush.

Missy loves to paint. With abandon. It can be a quiet Saturday or the midst of a flood, on anything handy – sketch pads and computer paper are a favorite, but she’s even decorated plastic bags before if they got in the way. The style is abstract in the extreme, though images sometimes seem to appear: a large “M,” say, or green and blue shapes that looked a little like our old parakeets on a branch.

Pumpkins were a great new medium for her and one that still hasn’t worn off. It’s egg coloring on the grand scale, with no need to hide the results afterward. (Hmmm … is that what the Great Pumpkin does?)

With a few simple strokes, she found her way back into the holiday. And she pulled us with her.

Maybe that’s the secret to more than just Halloween. You have to find your own way of celebrating life, your own approach to times and events that others might observe or ignore. And when you do, it will be what keeps the time fresh to you, however odd it might seem to the neighbors.

And with enough enthusiasm, you might even pull them along with you.

So no, no roasted pumpkin seeds from our endeavors. Just bright color, great energy and a lot of fun.

That’s a neat trick. And quite a treat.

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Keeping Watch

On Wednesday evening, I’m pretty sure Denver International Airport was tracking an Unidentified Flying Missy.

As Heather waved me over to the car, Missy began bouncing in the passenger seat. And bouncing. And … well, you get the idea. She had a cold, she had a seat belt, and at that moment, absolutely none of that mattered.

“Hi, you!” I called out. Missy was too excited for anything but a laugh and a hug. And oh, what a hug!

Longmont was still most of an hour’s drive away. But I was already home.

***

For a lot of movie fans, Oct. 21 was Future Day, the 30-years-ahead date reached by the time-traveling DeLorean in “Back to the Future II.” For me, it was more like Back to the Present – or maybe Back to Reality.

I had been off to Austin, Texas for four days on my first extended business trip since changing jobs. That meant a lot of planning, and not just for plane tickets and hotel reservations. It also meant dealing with the two biggest unknowns for an out-of-state stay: the health of my wife Heather, and the reaction of our disabled ward, Missy.

As it turned out, we hit a good patch with Heather: the symptoms of her MS began to subside about two days before takeoff. Neither of us were sure how long it would last, but we weren’t going to complain, any more than a pilot gripes about hitting unexpected good weather.

Missy … was a little more complicated.

Mind you, Missy’s dad used to be a traveling salesman. So having a relative away for large chunks of time used to be nothing new. But that had been a long time ago and Missy had always been a “Daddy’s girl” – after Heather and I moved in, one of her most common questions while I was at work was “Where’s he?”

Missy’s perception of time can be interesting. On the one hand, she easily recalls faces from more than 35 years ago. But she can also worry when someone is gone for more than a couple of hours, keeping a vigil in the bay window until their return. Our first real test for an extended absence had been the flood, when I was working 14-to-15 hour days for the newspaper, but even then I was still coming home at night.

Then, she had dived into artwork, her blues and browns evoking the deluge around her. We could only hope to be so lucky a second time.

We weren’t.

***

“She slept for maybe 2 hours” came a text from Heather on the first day. Part of that was from a head cold, part from waiting up for me.

Further updates: Missy was spending time in her room, except for a little bit of painting and puzzles. She was trying to talk into the telephone. (I had called the other night to reassure her.) She wasn’t taking her bath.

In the middle of it, Heather pointed out the upside. Missy hadn’t done this when other relatives had moved out, or when Heather had taken her big trip to Devil’s Tower. That at least pointed to something special.

“U are very awesome,” the message on my phone read.

It had become a Dorothy moment for all of us, when you realize the value of something through its absence. For Dorothy, lost in Oz, it was the Kansas farmhouse. For others, it might be a lost relative, a longtime job, an old home that had to be left behind.

We were lucky. Ours could be cured in four days, without the intervention of a humbug wizard. And we’d realized more than ever how strong a family we’d become.

***

Toward the end, Missy began to perk up a little. She worked out her new stereo (especially the volume) and even dressed herself – a bit creatively – for the trip to the airport. Even so, I’m not sure she believed I was coming back until the moment she saw me.

Then there could be no doubt. Or escaping the force 5 hug.

Home was healed. Missy had learned I would come back. And that night as I closed her door, I re-learned the five most magic words in the universe:

“See you in the morning.”

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Turning Tales

Many of my baseball-loving friends have the blues. And they couldn’t be happier.

Some of that blue belongs to the colors of the Kansas City Royals, questing for their first title in 30 years and desperate to wrap up the unfinished business of last year’s almost-world championship. No question, these are Royals in search of a coronation.

The rest have a darker shade to their uniforms – appropriate, since these are the friends who know the blues indeed. These are the brethren of the Chicago Cubs, the legendary hard-luck team that has not even seen a World Series game in 70 years without buying a ticket. The team that has not won a championship in over a century. The team cursed by a goat, now praying to be freed by the prophecies of the Back to the Future movies.

I promise, I’m not kidding.

If both teams manage to make the Series at once, I think Facebook may just explode. After all, these are fans who have not just been loyal, they’ve done penance. The moment is at hand – Luke Skywalker in the Death Star trench, Frodo Baggins at the edge of Mount Doom, Rocky Balboa ready to get the tar beaten out of him.

Er, never mind that last one. But it does make a compelling story.

And that’s a primal power indeed.

Stories surround us and penetrate us, binding the galaxy together – no, wait, that’s the Force. But it’s a small difference. This is a big world we live in, too large for us to take it all in at once. By shaping a story, we make it something we can hold and understand, something that makes sense.

It’s why sports can have such a draw. This is a story in its basic form, redrawn every day on the playing field: good guys and bad guys, victory and defeat, beer and hot dogs.

It sits at the heart of our politics. In a democracy, candidates compete to tell us the most convincing story, with themselves as the hero who can ensure success or avert disaster. Sometimes those stories are true. And sometimes … well, you know how to finish that tale.

It’s why good journalism can be some of the best writing around. Every person on this earth has at least one story worth telling; a skilled reporter can let you into that story as though it were your own and reveal the wonder that lies beneath the most everyday persona and event. Whether it’s a mighty flood or an airplane-throwing contest – and I’ve written about both – anything can be compelling if you find the heart beneath. (I’ve always said that the heart of every one of my columns is the question “Why do I care?”)

Granted, like any power, it can be misused. Often – maybe too often – we impose the story we want to see on the world around us, regardless of the facts. Researchers have recently suggested that our brains aren’t wired to seek the truth, but to cling to the items that support what we want to believe. Call it Simon’s Law: “Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”

But stories make us human. They fuel our curiosity and build a community. And if a story survives long enough, it can bind us across the centuries, tying us to anyone who ever invoked our version of “Once Upon A Time.”

Yes, even Cubs fans.

So if sports make you crazy, take heart. You’ve got a tale or two of your own that means just as much. From the outside, it may seem just as odd as celebrating men who swing lumber and fling horsehide. Let someone in. Share it. Revel in it.

How to do it? That’s another story.

And one that no one can tell as well as you.

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Fight Fire With Firing

I don’t usually get political in this space. But I’m hoping you won’t mind this time. Not when the aim is getting rid of politicians.

Yeah, I thought that might get your attention.

These days, politics in this country has gotten pretty tiring at the national level. Republicans and Democrats have drawn the battle lines and never the twain shall meet, lest one of our nation’s leaders be tainted with the sin of compromise. It’s quite possible that birthday greetings to a sixth-grade class would require 17 appearances on Fox and MSNBC, three filibusters, and a 19-day government shutdown until a majority could be found to agree on the “birthday” part. (“Happy” is clearly tied to either Obamacare or Wall Street and will have to be set aside until the next federal budget.)

Most of us are tired of it. And we all possess the ultimate term limit for a tiresome politician: vote for the other guy. But it takes so much effort to make even the smallest dent, like firing BBs at a tank.

Enter the Fire ‘Em All movement.

Now, I’m not a lawyer. I know this sort of thing probably isn’t doable without major rewrites to the Constitution, the U.S. code and the Boy Scout Law. But even just contemplating it can feel pretty good, and stranger things have happened – after all, (opposition president of your choice) made it into the White House, didn’t he?

It goes like this:

1) On every ballot for national office – the House, the Senate or the Presidency – there shall be an option called “Fire ‘Em All.” (“You’re Fired” has already been claimed by certain representatives of the National Alliance of Tangled Toupees.)

2) At the end of an election cycle, all votes cast in all federal races shall be totaled up by party: how many Republicans, Democrats, independents, Greens and so on. “Fire ‘Em All” shall be counted as its own party.

3) If at any time, “Fire ‘Em All” is among the top two choices nationally, the terms of all elective federal officeholders – again, House, Senate or Presidency – shall end on the next Jan. 20, regardless of how much time they would have normally had left to serve.

4) Replacement officeholders shall be nominated and voted on in the time between the announced results and Jan. 20. (Yes, this gives a little over two months to elect everybody. Whatever shall we do without a year and a half of campaign ads?)

5) Those chosen will serve the remainder of the term they are replacing, unless ousted by another “Fire ‘Em All” vote before then.

6) Individuals who have been ousted due to a “Fire ‘Em All” shall be ineligible to run for federal office for at least three election cycles.

7) Sports Authority Field shall immediately change its name back to Mile High Stadium. Just because.

Yeah, it’s a nuclear option. It clears out the good, the bad and the indifferent alike. But the sheer appeal of the idea should send a warning to Washington that it’s time to learn seventh-grade civics – or at least fifth-grade etiquette.

With or without a Fire ‘Em All button, we hold the power. And when we choose to exercise it, no amount of money or influence can stop us. This just makes it more efficient – and satisfying.

You really want to start from scratch? Go for it. Set down the disgust and resignation, and build the change you want to see.

It’s time to get fired up.

Who else gets fired is up to you.