Month: May 2016

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A Duchess in Waiting

When I leave for the store at night, Duchess parks herself beside the window and waits.  It’s a familiar position.

For the newcomers, Duchess the Wonder Dog is the older of our two canines, a 13-year-old mix of border collie and black Lab. She’s shy enough to stay nearly invisible when strangers are around and brilliant enough to have figured out how to beat a pedal trash can and get at the goodies inside.

But what she does best, and what she does often, is wait.

For years, that’s been part of her duties as furry bodyguard to my wife Heather, whom she has been devoted to ever since they reached an understanding over pizza. And like the passage in Ruth, the understanding is simple: “Whither thou goes, I shall go.”

When Heather is in bed not feeling well, Duchess waits nearby.

When Heather gets up, Duchess waits close behind, even if that means following her into the bathroom.

If someone rings the bell, Duchess lets our big dog Blake be the security guard, barking at the door in challenge – her job is to be the messenger, running back to “tell” Heather, and wait by her side.

And of course, she does the waiting any dog might do, whether it’s in the front room to wait for one of us to return, or near the table to see if a stray bit of food might slip. (Admittedly, Big Blake is the master of the latter, with eyes and jaws that are about as opportunistic as a rising politician.)

Now, as the years go by, she’s added some new waiting. Sometimes it’s harder to watch.

She sometimes waits by our bed with intense eyes, trying to see how she can get all the way up when her legs no longer want to do the job.

She waits behind Heather just a beat too long, especially in the kitchen, where my wife will suddenly turn to find a furry hurdle in her path that wasn’t there before.

She still waits with devotion, love and care. But now, there’s a bit of age in the mix as well. And it’s hard to see. We like to think that the ones we love won’t change, can’t change. We don’t like acknowledging that even the best of times can be all too short.

That’s true of dogs. Of people. Of almost anything in the world we give our heart to.

And yet, despite the frailties and the changes, the core remains the same.

Duchess is still Duchess. Her other waiting hasn’t stopped, even if it has become more tentative at times. Her loving heart and curious mind are still there. Sometimes the body is, too, especially on snowy winter days that still make her energetic beyond belief.

So much changing, but so much the same. It’s both the reason the changes hurt so much at times, and the great comfort in the midst of them.

And it’s the unchanging pieces we’ll always remember.

I don’t mean this to be an early eulogy. The time to mourn is later – hopefully much, much later. A love that is still present should be celebrated, embraced, and enjoyed. Leave the future to its time. You’re together now, and now is the time to appreciate it.

Sure, a time will come when things move slower and with more care. But don’t ever let the celebration stop, even if it has to move at a more deliberate tempo.

After all, love is well worth the wait.

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Familiar and Strange

Lately my life has been set to the sounds of “Hamilton.”

Granted, it’s not exactly uncommon for me to put a Broadway cast album on heavy rotation. But this time I have a lot of company. The rap musical about America’s first Treasury Secretary is now the hottest thing on Broadway, winning the Grammy, the Pulitzer Prize, and probably a lot of Tonys in a couple of weeks, all while being sold out into the next presidential administration.

By now, the CD is spending half its time in my car and the other half with friends and family as I repeatedly ask “Have you heard this?” Sometimes it takes quite a while to come back.

It’s probably one of the most unlikely successes on the New York stage. And I’m still trying to figure out exactly what went right. You know, beyond having catchy tunes, acrobatic lyrics, and a truly compelling life story to build around. Any theatre fan knows about fun shows that didn’t last – mass obsession needs something more.

In this case, I think it’s the unfamiliar familiar.

No, my brain didn’t hiccup there. But one of the best hooks for any idea is to be almost familiar, the way a mind latches on to a song lyric you can almost remember or almost make out. (“Louie, Louie,” anyone?) You realize that it’s something you sort of know, but not quite … there’s just enough that’s alien or different to require closer examination.

Like a historical figure that most of us studied in school but only vaguely remember. (The same thing has happened with John Adams a couple of times now.)

Like a Founding Fathers drama that casts minorities and uses rap and R&B to make its musical points.

And maybe most compelling, a political setting that echoes the turmoil of our own, but with hope for the future.

I’ve said before that the Founders aren’t marble figures on a pedestal, nor were their times a stately waltz to the inevitable. In the years after the American Revolution, we had economic distress, brawling factions, threats of outright rebellion, and intense wars of words in the newspapers that sometimes escaped to the dueling ground. A presidential election once sat in paralysis for days because of an Electoral College deadlock, and passionately-held ideas fought for attention with accusations and scandals.

Nothing like the peace and sanity of our own times, right?

In that fact lies a lot of hope. It’s easy to get disgusted, to forget that we’ve been through chaos before and will be again. That’s part of what it means to be a free society – to know that things aren’t going to be neat, pretty, and pre-ordained, but that passion, conflicting motives, and even sometimes outright ignorance and intransigence will be part of the mix.

And yet, somehow, we keep going. In its own way, that’s as unlikely a story as the illegitimate kid from an obscure part of the Caribbean who defended a Constitution and built a national economy before being shot by an aggrieved politician.

“What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see,” Hamilton now declares from the stage. Amid today’s strife, seeds and stories are being planted that could grow into something totally unexpected. As long as we don’t give up on the garden (and on keeping an eye for weeds), it will survive the weather.

We know we can. We have a daily reminder. And a catchy one at that.

Want to borrow the CD and see?

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Fantastic Tales

Beware the dragons. Watch out for the trolls. And always remember that heroes may be hazardous to your health.

Not your usual prescription, I grant you. But it’s apparently second nature to Graeme Whiting, an English headmaster who made international headlines when he declared that fantasy fiction would rot your child’s mind.

No, I’m not overstating it. Kind of hard to, really.

“Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and Terry Pratchett, to mention only a few of the modern world’s ‘must-haves’, contain deeply insensitive and addictive material which I am certain encourages difficult behaviour in children,” Whiting wrote as part of a lengthy blog post on his school’s website, “yet they can be bought without a special licence, and can damage the sensitive subconscious brains of young children, many of whom may be added to the current statistics of mentally ill young children.”

You might be surprised to learn that he and I agree on exactly one thing: Parents should pay attention to what their children read. Books do indeed open doors onto many places, and every parent should know where their child is spending their time, whether it’s in the park or in the Shire.

But fantasy can open some wonderful doors indeed.

I’m not writing to disparage the more classic works that Mr. Whiting himself loves and encourages for a growing mind, such as Shakespeare or Dickens, which were also part of my reading. Enough so that I’m a bit amused. After all, Dickens was long considered popular trash by lovers of “proper literature” and as for Master Shakespeare – well, whose life couldn’t use a dose of teen marriage and suicide (Romeo and Juliet), eye-gouging (King Lear), witchcraft (Macbeth), and rape and mutilation (Titus Andronicus), with just a sprinkling of cross-dressing and humiliation of authority (Twelfth Night)?

Sure, they’re wonderful – dare I say magical? – stories. But safe? C.S. Lewis once warned visitors to Narnia that the great Aslan was “not a tame lion” and if a story has any power to it at all, it can never be considered a “safe story.” When books meet brains, anything can happen. Anything at all.

Stories have a power that the great authors of fantasy knew quite well.

“Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures?” the hobbit Bilbo Baggins declares in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Tolkien has been my own Gandalf since about third grade, leading my imagination into places both terrifying and wonderful – as have many of the fantasy authors who followed in his wake. My family and I have cheered on Harry Potter, wandered with Taran and Eilonwy, leaped through wrinkles in time, and stumbled through wardrobes into unexpected worlds.

You acquire many things on a quest like that. Beautiful language. Heartbreak and hope. A decidedly quirky strain of humor. And most of all, the realization that evils can not only be survived, they can be overcome.

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey,” G.K. Chesterton famously wrote in 1909. “What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”

No, stories aren’t safe. Few things worth having are. But they can be priceless.

So yes, have a hand in your child’s reading. Be careful. Be aware. But be open to wonder as well. And don’t fear the dragons.

After all, that is where the treasure is to be found.

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Running the Course

LeeAdianez Rodriguez had been running late. And then she was just running. And running. And running.

The 12-year-old New York girl had meant to line up for a family 5k race in Rochester, a run of about three miles. Somewhere along mile four, she realized something had gone wrong. Quickly checking with another runner, Lee learned the truth – in her rush, she had accidentally joined the competitors for the half-marathon instead, a 13.1 mile competition.

By then, according to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, her mom was trying to find her. The police were trying to find her. And, unaware of that, Lee had decided to keep on running

“I was like, I’m going to finish this, I’m going to keep going,” she told NBC New York.

Finish she did.

“It was such a scary moment for her, but rewarding in the end,” her mom, Brendalee Espada, told the Democrat & Chronicle. “I don’t even know how she did it.”

Sound familiar?

Mind you, I don’t expect that any of us has ever signed up for the Turkey Trot and then accidentally run to Twenty Ninth Street in Boulder for a little shopping. But we all know about getting on a course that’s longer and more exhausting than we’d planned. That’s how life works.

When Heather and I first got married, for example, we thought we’d mapped out the course pretty well. On our first dates, where most people learn about their favorite books and movies, we had filled each other in on our medical history. (OK, so we’re a little weird.) She learned about my epilepsy. I learned about her Crohn’s disease and her endometriosis.

All planned and prepared, right?

Well, except for the part where she got diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis a few years later. And multiple sclerosis a few years after that. And of course, the part in between all that where we became guardians to her disabled aunt, Missy, a constant source of wonder and amazement to both of us.

Other than that, I suppose we were ready. Which is a little like saying “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

We had no clue what we’d signed up for. But we kept running anyway. And so far, we’re still in the race.

It doesn’t have to be that dramatic, of course. But it’s going to happen. Jobs, families, and even hobbies hold unexpected on-ramps and detours that can carry us way out into the countryside before we know what’s happened. (One of my personal favorites remains getting handpicked for the lead in an Oscar Wilde play, with its beautiful, witty language – and then being told I had exactly three weeks to learn the script.) When it comes to signage, life makes the Colorado highway system look clear and sensible.

And most of the time, all we can do is run the race out.

Well, maybe not all we can do. If we’re paying attention at all, we also learn a few things about strength and patience and endurance. We probably get some lessons in flexibility and humor as well. And we definitely discover some experiences that we would never have chosen for ourselves.

Most of all, most of the time, we learn that we can do it. We can last. We can keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when we’d rather just curl up in a ball for a while. We don’t always want to. It’s not always fun and it’s rarely easy. But it’s there.

“I’m going to finish this. I’m going to keep going.”

Words to live by.

After all, what’s another mile or ten between friends?