Month: February 2018

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Back to the Neighborhood

I don’t remember much of my high-school French, with one notable exception. A simple little song that I translated for a silly little sketch, one where I knew that even if I didn’t have the words quite right, the tune would be unmistakable:

 

C’est un jour ravissant dans le voisinage,

C’est un jour ravissant pour un voisin …

 

It was, indeed, a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Especially when you realized your classmates would have Fred Rogers’ signature song in their head for the next three class periods.

***

It’s now officially been 50 years since Mr. Rogers first appeared on a television screen. Looking back, it’s kind of a marvel he was ever there at all.

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood had no boisterous gags or bellowed punch lines. Instead, it had a quiet man putting on a cardigan and welcoming friends to his home.

The show had no animation or state-of-the-art tech. It got by with a trolley, a traffic light, and a collection of hand puppets that interacted with only one live actor – a mailman – and that, rarely.

And in an age where even the most educational of shows is developed with an eye to the toy budget, the biggest thing Mr. Rogers sold was respect.

He didn’t talk down to children. He didn’t avoid hard subjects like divorce, or war, or the death of a goldfish. But he also made it clear that the world need not be a scary place, and that it never had to be faced alone.

“You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is loveable,” he once said in a documentary. “And consequently, the greatest thing we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.”

***

But that was then and this is now, right?

For most of us, it’s been a long time since we heard the dulcet tones of Mr. Rogers’ sleepy voice, soothing and reassuring and with a dozen small questions in every sentence. We’ve gotten used to a scarier world. A dangerous and frightening one where no one seems particularly neighborly. A world where it’s harder to tell what’s real and what belongs to the Land of Make-Believe.

Oh, putting on sneakers and singing about how you won’t fall down the drain is fine for kids, we tell ourselves. But surely we’ve outgrown all that. It’s time to face a bruising, bustling world that gives you 24-hour stimulation and where “special” is just one more demographic to be measured, analyzed, and marketed. Right?

And yet … and yet.

The world was a chaotic place in 1968, too. The headlines screamed of assassination, war, and protest; of a political process that seemed to be turning meaner by the day; of a world that seemed to grow increasingly hopeless.

That was the world in which the Neighborhood first began.

To meet such a world with quiet tones and pleasant songs might seem an act of futility. But that was only the stage dressing. The core was always the same. To hope. To learn. To respect. To care. To look out for each other. And especially to trust that everyone had value – including yourself.

Those are still the tools that can light a world today, whatever form they take. Those are still the essentials that must be wielded before any change for the better can take place. We remember them in the hands of a soft-spoken Presbyterian minister, but they have been held by many others.

Workers and teachers.

Rescuers and friends.

A myriad of “helpers” from every walk of life – the very thing that Fred Rogers’ mom once told him to look for in scary times. “Look for the helpers.”

Their actions may be as simple as welcoming a new face to town. They may be as earth-shattering as giving their life to save students in danger.

Large and small, these are the neighbors of today.

And so long as we continue to seek them out, and strengthen their number, and teach their lessons anew, we can again make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

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In Just a Moment

“I don’t care what you’re working on, get home now,” Heather said on the phone. Then came the words that shattered everything.

Melanie was gone.

Melanie was my wife’s 21-year-old cousin, kind and sassy, stubborn and compassionate, a night owl full of conversation on any topic or none at all. For the last 14 months, she had been staying with us as she put her life back together from a number of challenges and became a full and vivacious member of the household. She swapped stories, played games, helped around the house, even began to crochet a blanket in Hogwarts colors for Missy, our disabled ward.

All that ended on Friday, Jan. 26, 2018.

We thought Mel was sleeping late. She often did.

She was still in bed. But this time she wasn’t waking up.

 

There are moments that the words don’t reach,

There is suffering too terrible to name …

— “It’s Quiet Uptown” from Hamilton

There are a lot of questions that chase through your head when someone dies so young. “Why? How?” are the obvious ones and sometimes the easiest – those are the ones that at least have a chance of being answered with patient work. (Eventually, that is; we’re still learning those answers ourselves.)

But the most pernicious ones, the most painful and useless questions of all, are the ones that begin “What if?” You know the litany, I’m sure:

“What if we’d taken her to the hospital when she came home feeling sick?”

“What if I’d checked on her sooner?”

“What if I’d said something different … done something different … been more concerned about this … paid more attention to that … ?”

It’s self-torture, running in place on a treadmill made of knives. You get nowhere except to hurt yourself worse than before. But we all keep getting on.

If we’re not careful, we can drown out the question that really matters. “What next?”

It’s a question that Mel was an expert at.

 

Every day, you fight like you’re running out of time …

— “Non-Stop,” from Hamilton

Melanie seemed to fill every moment she had. Sometimes drawing or writing. Sometimes making a friendship bracelet or a brightly-colored rice bag for someone she cared about. Sometimes chatting in the kitchen or over Skype until well past midnight.

None of it was easy. Mel had severe Crohn’s disease and the autoimmune complications that often come from that. Mel had many other struggles and the repercussions that often come from those. But she faced it all with a quirky sense of humor and a heart that could never be anything but genuine.

This is the woman who kept photos of her latest colonoscopy in her wallet, where baby pictures would normally go.

This is the little girl who, when told by her granddad to stop opening and closing the back door as she and her friends raced in and out, simply left it open. “Well, you said …”

This is the friend who had plans to work in a veterinary clinic, and was genuinely excited to receive an animal anatomy coloring book for Christmas.

This is the relative who would trade silly Snapchat photos with her mom and little brother, seeing who could turn each other into the most ridiculous image.

All of which means this is the friend whose absence leaves a hole. A silence. A gap in the story that aches to be filled.

And, perhaps, a reminder.

 

And when my time is up, have I done enough?

Will they tell my story?

— “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” from Hamilton

All of us work to a limited clock. None of us are promised tomorrow. Most of the time, we’re good about not thinking about that.

But when a loved one leaves too soon, it hits you right in the face.

You look at the choices that you made and that you didn’t make. The things you’ve tried and the things you were too scared to do. A different sort of “what if,” perhaps, but one that looks forward instead of backward.

“What have I not done that I should have done? That I still could do?”

I use the word “choice” and it starts that way. But the funny thing is, the mind and the soul have a muscle memory, too. The more you choose an action, the more reflexive it becomes. That can be the start of a lot of bad habits – but it’s also where things like bravery, diligence, kindness and generosity come from. You do the right thing often enough, and eventually it leaves conscious thought. It just becomes what you do.

When time is short, those reflexes matter. And time is always short. Train them. Sharpen them. Reach out. Welcome in.

Melanie did.

And in her absence, I hope we all can, too.

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Reading Into It

Once upon a time, I watched children’s literature win the Super Bowl.

OK, not literally. There were no overpriced commercials armed with bad jokes, cold beer, and cute puppies. Justin Timberlake never got within a mile of the microphone. There were no questioned calls, no fireworks and high-flying blimps, no appearances of the Tom Brady game face. (Broncos fans, take a moment to cheer, please.)

But the small city of Emporia, Kan. lined the streets for a huge parade. Well-known children’s authors from across the country descended on the school system for classes and events and even sleepovers. LeVar Burton himself, he of Reading Rainbow, showed up to be the emcee on the big day.

It was 2002, the 50th year of the William Allen White Children’s Book Awards. And on that day, there was no doubt that reading had power.

As the last remnants of Super Bowl LII-RTD-LOL-EIEIO get scraped off the field, it’s good to remember. Football champions come and go. But a good book lasts.

This week – in theory, at least – it’s time to call that out.

The first full week in February, it seems, marks one of the thousands of obscure holidays that the world has to offer – Children’s Authors and Illustrators Week.  Normally, I call holidays like this out to tease them a bit, on the order of National Popcorn Day (Jan. 19), National Kiss a Wookiee Day (June 15), and Eat Country Ham Month (October, which must make trick-or-treating a little interesting). But in this case, even if the date is forgettable, the topic’s a close one to my heart.

I started reading when I was two and a half. I never really stopped. Kids’ books were old friends, from Richard Scarry and Dr. Seuss, to Stuart Little and Encyclopedia Brown, to The Westing Game and The Secret Garden. Never mind the family read-aloud time, where my sisters and I discovered Middle-Earth, Green Gables, and many more.

Each story led to the next … and possibly, to my habits as a night owl. When I met my wife Heather, she was the same way – she had shed tears at the end of Charlotte’s Web as a child, and thrown 1984 across the room as a teenager in anger at the ending. Even now, as guardians to Heather’s developmentally disabled aunt Missy, our most sacred time of the day is the evening storytime. (Often with Mr. Harry Potter, the audience favorite.)

I know some will call this memories of a bygone era, that social media and smartphones have eaten any desire to actually read. I smile and remember working in a bookstore in the 1990s, when television and video games were the worries of the day … and children streamed in to buy Goosebumps books. Or helping with children’s summer theater during the 2000s, when the internet was taking over … and seeing half the cast parked backstage with the latest Harry Potter.

Books have found distracted youth before. They can still find them now.

And they’re still needed.

A good book builds empathy. It requires you to put yourself in a character’s shoes, live in their brain, see how they experience the world. Chosen well, it can make you reach outside yourself and enter a world you never knew.

A good book can build family. Taking even a little time to read together – and I know how that seems to get harder every day – not only spurs interest in a story, it strengthens family bonds to simply have the time together. (It also means there’s a guide on hand for the more challenging words; I first learned “fortnight” and “quay” from reading Tolkien with my dad).

And yes, it builds language and learning skills – but maybe even earlier than anyone realizes. A recent study found that babies learned more quickly if they were read stories that had named characters. As young as six months.

It doesn’t take a halftime show by Bruno Mars, or an overflight by the Blue Angels, or a trick play drawn up by Bill Belichick. Just time, love, and a library card.

And if you want to hold your own private parade for your favorite title, I’ll be the last to stop you.

Go, team. Let’s book ‘em.