Month: December 2016

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A Thirty-Year Gift

Star Wars grabbed hold of me at an early age.

I had the action figures in the Darth Vader carrying case, including a Han Solo whose hand went into the pencil sharpener, courtesy of my sister. I knew the movie dialogue, read the comic books, and reinvented the world around me in terms of a galaxy far, far away. Swings became X-wing fighters, blizzards turned the backyard into the ice world of Hoth, and even “A Christmas Carol” was seemingly improved when my best friend and I put Han in the role of Scrooge.

Obsessed? Maybe a little. But we had a lot of company. The story was thrilling and the characters were so much fun to be with. The wide-eyed Luke. The wise-cracking Han. And of course, the gutsy and determined Princess Leia.

And now the Princess has left the stage.

There’s been a lot written about Carrie Fisher since she died at 60 from a heart attack. She had that kind of life. People have talked about how they drew inspiration from her far-from-helpless Leia, or hope from her open acknowledgement of mental illness. They’ve talked about her rough-edged humor, her career as a Hollywood script doctor, even her dog.

The one thing I haven’t seen so much on is how close we came to losing so much of it.

It happened in 1985. After filming a role in Hannah and her Sisters, Fisher almost died from a drug overdose. She was rushed to a hospital in time and it afterward became a turning point for her life and career, beginning with “Postcards From the Edge” and going on to so much more.

A slightly slower ambulance might have meant a headline of “Carrie Fisher Dead at 29.”

That makes one pause.

Yes, age 60 is too soon to leave the world these days. But given what could have happened, we should count ourselves lucky. Time is a precious gift, and the world got 30 more years with her that it might not have had – years in which so many of us really got to know her, and in which she really got to know herself.

It doesn’t take celebrity to appreciate that.

None of us are promised one more day. When we leave a friend, it might be the last time. When we put off a dream, there might not be a later chance. Life can be an amazing story, but there’s no theme music to warn you when the credits are about to roll.

We avoid thinking about it most of the time. Life is busy and the implications are uncomfortable. A cartoon I saw once on a college door read something like “Bob lived every day as though it were his last” – and naturally, what it showed was Bob running around, screaming “I’m gonna die! Im gonna die!”

But turning away doesn’t make it less real.

It shouldn’t make us live in dread. But it should make us live.

Be aware of the world instead of sleepwalking through it. Make the choices, take the action, do the things that will make you and it better. Reach for people and lift each other up.

When I leave the house, my last words to Heather and Missy are almost always “love you” – just in case. It’s a small thing, but a big meaning.

None of us get guarantees. Not even gutsy space princesses. But what we do with what we get can mean the galaxy to someone.

And that kind of bond is a powerful Force indeed.

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Dropping the Ball

A couple of years ago, on a frozen New Year’s Eve, I watched as a brilliantly lit Hippity Hop ball descended to Earth.

It could have been a budget remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, minus Keanu Reeves. (See, we’re ahead of the game already!) But this idea sprang from the minds of two good friends who, long ago, made this their own Dick Clark-style tradition. Simply gather the neighborhood for a party. Wrap a perfectly good hopper ball – the kind that are about two feet around with a handle on top – in Christmas lights. Then hoist it into a tree and lower it as the crowd counts down to midnight.

They’ll be the first to tell you it’s weird. Maybe even bizarre. And why not?

After all, when it comes to the New Year, we can use all the joy and laughter we can get.

It’s a strange holiday, to start with. It doesn’t commemorate any notable people or great events – just the passing of an arbitrary line. And it’s an oddly placed line to boot, celebrating the birth of a fresh new year in the cold and darkness.

Maybe Baby New Year is a cat burglar?

Not that it really matters. Even though the holiday’s officially about welcoming the new year in, most of the enthusiasm is usually about throwing the old year out. That seems to have reached a pitch this year, when Old Man 2016 might do well to trade in his scythe for a good pair of running shoes to keep ahead of the angry mob – well, everyone except the Cubs fans, maybe.

Zika. Russia. Creepy clowns. Beloved stars dropping left and right. Ugly election seasons with uglier aftermaths. Someone even let the Oakland Raiders start winning again.

Brrrr.

Even if your personal life was stellar, this was a grinder of a year. Add in a few crises (and many of us had more than a few) and it can seem downright intolerable.

Next year has to be better – right?

Well ….

Remember that arbitrary line in the snow? It’s not a magic barrier. All the raw materials of 2017 are contained in 2016; whether we liked it or loathed it, it’s what we have to build on as a foundation.

The good news, of course, is that we can build. We can’t erase what came before. But as a world, we can produce some unexpected changes in the plot.

Step back a moment to 1986. That was the year of the Challenger explosion, the Chernobyl meltdown, the first confirmations of the Iran-Contra scandal. Someone could be excused for calling it a grim year, maybe even a hopeless one for everyone but John Elway.

Three short years later, the Iron Curtain was tearing and the Berlin Wall was falling.

OK, that’s stark and simplistic. Yes, there were good things in 1986 and bad things in 1989 as well. But that’s part of the point – where will we put our attention? Where will we put our mind? Where will we put our hands and our backs?

No, this year won’t miraculously erase 2016 with all its good and bad. But it’s not condemned to be a clone of it, either. The year will need our vigilance, our diligence, our willingness to examine and challenge and call out evil. But it will also need all the joy, beauty, and hope we can bring to it—not as a futile gesture, but as the genuine start to something better.

Maybe it does make sense to put New Year’s in the cold and dark after all. It makes the light all the easier to see.

So if we truly want to see a Happy New Year, let’s get hopping.

Heck – let’s get hippity-hopping.

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Ho, Ho … WHOA!

By now, I should be used to the wacky and the tacky at Christmastime, from beer-can trees to Kris Kringle toilet seat covers. But nothing in a lifetime of holidays prepared me for The Ugly Sweater.

The best thing I can say about The Ugly Sweater is that it’s one-of-a-kind, because the existence of two on the planet would cause me to despair for the human race. To properly envision it, imagine a sweater created with the budget of Donald Trump and the taste of Liberace on a bender, with just a touch of George Lucas for panache.

A-glitter with nearly 25,000 gaudy crystals, it features Santa Claus flying through space on a unicorn, while garishly red-and-green planets gleam in the background. There’s even a faux diamond necklace around the collar – because, you know, if you’ve gone this far, you might as well do it with class, right? The price tag for this little gem? About $30,000.

Hey, who needs a car, anyway?

Yes, it’s real. You can Google dozens of references in a blink as long as you remember not to eat first. And it’s tempting to be just a little outraged at someone spending thirty grand for a sweater that’s too heavy to even wear comfortably. (Yes, of course it comes with a frame!)  But anytime something like this comes to my attention, I usually calm myself with two thoughts:

1) Anyone who would blow $30,000 on Santa Bling Is Coming to Space probably wasn’t about to spend it on widows and orphans as their second choice, anyway.

2) Unicorn Santa and gewgaws like it make a nice lightning rod for people with much wealth and little judgment, relieving them of their cash before it can do some serious damage. Sort of like taking the keys from the inebriated at New Year’s, only with less need for breath mints.

Besides, while it’s easy to laugh – and I did my share, believe me — it is possible to turn the question around.

What have we done with our time and money that could have been better spent elsewhere?

Reality check: I don’t live like a monk and I’m not about to force anyone else to do the same. We all do fun things, frivolous things, even downright bizarre things with our resources at times, and that’s not a bad thing in and of itself. It’s even part of what makes this world a fun and colorful place to be.

But it’s also never wrong to ask “Have I done all the good I could do?” Maybe we don’t live in golden palaces or have Rudolph the Ruby-Encrusted Reindeer, but many of us have something. Compared to much of the world, we have a lot.

What are we doing with it?

It’s a question that becomes very palpable at this time of year. It’s one that should be more visible at all times.

The writer C.S. Lewis once said that the only safe rule for charity was to give more than we could spare. “If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they were too small,” he wrote. There should be something you would like to do, and can’t, he insisted, because of what you’ve already given.

It can look overwhelming, I agree. But just because we’re not doing everything doesn’t mean we can’t do something.

Is there someone to be helped? A friend, a relative, a stranger not yet met?

Is there a task that needs our skill? A hurt that needs our comfort? A wrong that can be made right, however briefly?

All it takes is a willingness to start. And if each of our littles can equal a lot, that is one dazzling gift, indeed.

Even more dazzling than Santa Claus on a space unicorn.

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The Uninvited Guest

I looked out the window one morning to see Longmont transformed.

White covered the grass, the sidewalk, the driveway – enough to make a Hallmark card, not enough to make a blizzard. It was the sort of landscape that inspired winter thoughts, like “How long til Christmas?” and “Where did I put my snow shovel?”

I smiled. This was what I had been waiting for. This was what I had needed, ever since leaving work the night before, spotting some small specks in the air, and excitedly texting Heather the news: “First Flakes!”

Yes, I’m THAT guy.

I have always loved winter, a childhood preference that was later reinforced by too many years of doing summer Shakespeare in Kansas’s 95-degree heat and 95-percent humidity. And to me, winter has never felt complete without snow. It’s a birthday cake without candles, Star Wars without the Force, a Broncos game without a hint of orange.

Don’t get me wrong. I know it’s cold. I know it’s wet. I know it can test the limits of vertebrae as backs strain to clear sidewalks or free stuck cars. And I certainly know how Colorado’s first few snow storms turn most drivers into either a tortoise or a Tasmanian devil.

But the child in my heart can’t help cheering.

This is snowflakes flying into the windshield as my sisters and I imagined the car making the jump to light speed.

This is the memory of Dad’s Subaru grinding the few short blocks to pick Grandma up for a Christmas Eve visit.

This is seeing every familiar detail covered and obscured – including my bicycle, left on the back porch overnight and now invisible except for the tip of one handle.

And in a way, this is what it means to wait for Christmas.

My Episcopal and Catholic friends like to remind me that this isn’t Christmas yet. This is Advent, the time of waiting, the time of expectation, the time of odd little calendars that hide a daily chocolate. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

For churches, it’s typically a four-week march to the 25th, with each week emphasizing a different trait: hope, love, peace, joy. Warm qualities for a cold time. And like the old Sesame Street song, one of these things is not like the other.

Hope requires work to be more than optimism. Love requires effort to be more than infatuation. Peace – not just the absence of conflict, but the restoration of how things should be – requires a constant reaching out, understanding, cooperation.

These are winter qualities, the candle against the darkness that grows brighter as more light the flame; the warmth that drives back cold as more huddle together. This is the winter.

But joy? Joy is the snow.

Joy is the one that can surprise you, ambush you, change everything you thought you knew. There’s never quite enough warning before the world suddenly looks different. It comes without invitation, jolting you out of the usual routine and into something new.

And if that isn’t a Front Range snap snowstorm, what is?

It’s not always comfortable, true. But it can make you see the world with new eyes. And if that child inside is still awake, it can be an awful lot of fun.

So bring it on, white Christmas and all.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make sure I’m ready to scrape a few inches of joy off my front walk.

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Holding On

Pets have a way of making the holidays unforgettable.

There was our long-ago cat Twinkle, for example, who discovered the joys of Christmas-tree tinsel. She not only lived, she shared the results in glorious Technicolor behind the television for all the family to see.

There’s our mighty Big Blake, the English Labrador who has spun entire trees like a propeller in his eagerness to charge past them and greet a guest.

And of course, any time Duchess the Wonder Dog has met a new-fallen snow, the result has been somewhere between the Dance of Joy and a high-powered Indy 500 winner.

Well, this time around, Duchess is at the center of another holiday memory – this one a little less high-adrenaline and a little more painful.

This Christmas, Duchess appears to have cancer.

We discovered it by accident. Having the genius of a border collie and the curiosity of a Lab, Duch had figured out long ago how to break into our pedal trash can.  She hadn’t been looking too well after her latest garbage raid, so we brought her into the vet to be looked at.

The tummy upset proved to be none too serious. But while looking at her gut, the doctor happened to notice some nodules in Duchess’s chest. That glance and a follow-up soon brought the M-word – metastasis.

This wasn’t necessarily the end of the road, the first vet hastened to explain. Depending on what an oncologist saw or didn’t see, it could be possible to drive things back, to beat this. Still, the shadow of the word had entered the conversation. And it’s a hard one to evict.

Cancer.

I hate the word. I hate even typing it, like pressing the keys might somehow make it more real. Cancer has already made too many marks on people I love. My Mom survived it. One of my grandmothers didn’t. Nor did Heather’s grandma, or her 40-year-old uncle, or … well, the list is too long. At one name, it would be too long.

I hate the thought that, with one bad turn, every Christmas memory of Duchess might become final.

Even before this, we’d been trying to steel ourselves against that possibility. At 13 years and almost eight months, Duchess has been slowing down. Her step is a little more careful, her hearing not quite so sharp – though all bets are still off when food is involved. Her heart is still as big as ever, but the body that houses it has some miles on it.

But she keeps going. And we get used to that. The mind doesn’t like to acknowledge change and especially painful change. Not until it’s forced to.

Even now, I don’t know if we’re there yet.

It’s not the most comfortable thought for the holidays. But then, none of us is assured a Norman Rockwell Christmas. Sometimes “the most wonderful time of the year” carries pain, or anxiety, or uncertainty. Much as we might wish otherwise, the bad stuff doesn’t take a vacation for the holidays.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t hold on to something more.

I refuse to let fear for Duchess’s future poison her present. Whatever the doctors finally say, she’s still our dog, well-loved and cherished by us for over 10 years. Those chances for love aren’t going away yet. And we are going to continue to seize every one of them, whether it’s for one year, or three, or enough to make a canine Methuselah.

We will not let fear drive out joy.

Duchess has amazed us many times over the years. Maybe the Wonder Dog has another miracle left.

But whatever lies ahead, her love is here now.

Powerful.

Unmistakable.

Unforgettable.