Month: April 2018

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Making the Takeoff

My mind had become a steel trap, my body a living extension of my car.

Gone was my usual, doubtful sense of direction.

At that moment, no version of Google Maps could have plotted a more efficient route, and no GPS unit could have outguided the conversation in my head.

“This light is always fast, but turn anyway; there’s a truck ahead … ok, this can be a 10-minute run if there’s no cross-traffic on Mountain View … 17th is slow this time of day , be aware of conditions….”

Medical emergency to attend to? Package to meet? Natural disaster to outrun? No, no, and no. This was far more vital.

In roughly 15 minutes, Missy’s van would be arriving to take her to art class.

So in roughly 15 minutes, I had to be there, or she would refuse to go.

As regular readers know, life with our disabled ward Missy is both wonderful and curious. In the seven years that Heather and I have been caring for her, we’ve gotten used to a lot of things. The overstuffed purse that comes with her everywhere she goes. Her ability to love and rejoice in simple things, whether it’s acrylic paint or pie at dinner. The way she latches onto the details in a bedtime story, or seems to remember every person she’s ever met.

But some of them take a little more adjustment. Of those, the most notable may be her reluctance to take off from the house on an activity unless I’m there to see her go.

There are occasional exceptions. If Heather can talk her into waiting together in the front yard, or if the driver seems cute (yes, really), or if the van comes exactly when she’s on the threshold of the door, there’s a chance. But even then, it’s a roll of the dice without the best of odds.

It’s not a dislike of the activity. Once she’s at art, or the bowling alley, or her trip of the day, she has a blast. But for whatever reason, Missy needs to have the full team at home before she’s ready to leave it. Maybe she wants to make sure I’m OK. Maybe I have the deep, authoritative voice that she’ll listen to. (Relatively speaking; my timbre is more-or-less normal, but compared to Heather’s vocal pitch, I’m Johnny Cash.)

But the need is there. And once in a while, when the need just can’t be met, she’s missed some fun things because of it.

I can sympathize with that a lot. I think most of us can.

After all, there are always times where it’s just not easy to let go.

Sometimes we’re holding on to memories that won’t let us move forward. Sometimes we’re holding on to fears that keep us back. Sometimes, for the best of reasons, we’ve convinced ourselves of a need that isn’t. It might be a harmless “magic feather” like Dumbo’s that’s just needed to build confidence, or something much more toxic or dangerous that would be better left behind, if we could just figure out how.

But in all those cases – good, bad, or ultimately harmless – holding on can mean missing out. We lose opportunities because we’re just not ready.

There’s not a magic light switch to change that. All of us become ready for things in our own time, in our own way. But we have to know the choice is there and in our power, or we’ll never reach for the next thing at all.

I’m pretty sure that Missy knows. And I don’t mind being part of her launch party as often as I can. What caregiver, or parent, or guardian, doesn’t want to be loved and needed?

But when the day comes that Mission Control can repeatedly report a successful takeoff of the USS Missy, without hesitation or reluctance, that too will be welcomed.

And then, at last, the GPS can go off duty.

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When the Bough Breaks

It stood through a lot of things. But The World’s Biggest Bonsai is finally gone.

It wasn’t really a bonsai, of course, except in my own wisecracks. The WBB was a small fruit tree on the corner of our property, one that had the ludicrous survival ability of the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” – even after losing limb after limb, it would keep coming back for more.

Woodpeckers gnawed away at its trunk. Ice storms broke off a large branch, windstorms another, leaving less and less. For the last six months, it had had one major branch left, reaching out to the sky in mute appeal.

For a while, it looked like it would survive yet again. The smaller branches remaining on that thick wood had begun to bud, getting ready to offer what shade and bounty it could, with whatever it had left.

And then Tuesday’s windstorm came. The one with the 80 mph gales.

Crack.

Broken at the base.

When a tree is pretty much all one branch, there isn’t much margin for error.

It’s mostly been removed now. (For which, by the way, I must offer thanks to a kindly neighbor who left me a pleasant surprise while I was at work.) But even though it no longer stands, the memories it entwined with have deep roots.

This was the tree that was casually referred to as “the cherry tree” by most of the family, even after years of growing and dropping crabapples.

This was the tree that our cousin Melanie’s family helped us doctor once, carving up the remains of its latest battle. And also the tree that stood nearby as I hugged Mel for the last time when she’d had an impossible morning, just a few days before her unexpected passing.

It was the Tree That Lived, with apologies to J.K. Rowling. Always a little smaller, always a bit more battered, but somehow still standing against all the odds.

And against the odds, it had become a milestone.

You know what I mean, I’m sure: a memory that holds down one of the corners of your life, one by which you orient your other memories. “Remember when … ?” Some of them are obvious, like a wedding or a birth or a death. Others are more unusual but still unmistakable – parts of my life, for example, are sorted by whether they happened before or after The Night Scott Stepped Off The Stage And Into The Orchestra Pit.

But some are much more subtle. The quiet events that meant so much later. The place where so much happened to happen. The person whose influence you didn’t realize at the time, but can’t think of now without wanting to thank them.

They can be the phone call in the night. The chat on the bus ride home. They can be a hundred things that suddenly leap to mind after the fact, a flashbulb that makes the picture clearer.

And they can be us.

Most of us don’t get to write grand history that gets set down for the ages. But we all touch lives. We all have the chance to hurt or heal. Which means we all have the chance to be that memory that means the world to someone, even if we never know it.

The branch breaks. The moment passes. But the marks remain, shaping what’s left behind.

Reach out. Take the moments, large or small. You never know which one will be the one that lasts.

Even if it does mean going out on a limb.

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What a Great Idea! Right?

Anyone can sing in the car on long trips. The Dutch took it one step further.

According to Reuters, the highway near the Dutch city of Jelsum will play a song when you drive over the rumble strips. Not just any song, either. When you hit the strips at 40 mph, the road will ring out with the anthem of Friesland, a northern region of the Netherlands. Imagine if a stretch of US-287 suddenly started playing “Rocky Mountain High” and you’ll have the idea.

It was brilliant. And also insane. Because what sounds cool when one car drives over one stretch of road every now and then, becomes chaos when a regular stream of traffic travels the same road at all hours and at varying speeds.

“Locals say the musical road had created a never-ending cacophony that keeps them awake at night,” Reuters reported, briefly quoting one neighbor who got to continually listen to the anthem at high speed in the early hours one night when a long string of taxis chose to blaze across the rumble strips.

The strips will soon be removed. And the Dutch get to join a long line of people in singing one of humanity’s oldest anthems: “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

You know this song. So do I. It’s not the song of the moments that are inattentive and clueless, like the time I walked off the stage and into the orchestra pit on Opening Night in mid-song (a matter now part of Longmont Theatre Company legend). No, these are the ones with a little thought and a lot of optimism, deliberate choices that felt really good until the consequences started to kick in.

For me, it was the night I tried driving home from Garden City, Kans. on a single tank of gas, figuring I could refuel in Bennett instead of my usual Kansas stop in Goodland. Great idea – except it was late in the day on a holiday weekend when I arrived and the gas station was closed. The result was increasingly urgent prayer as I ultimately arrived in Hudson – and an open Conoco station – on fumes.

For our disabled ward Missy, it might be the decision that her Big Purse always has room for one more item. Great idea – until it suddenly contains half the known universe. The result is a purse that she’s reluctant to leave behind but often asks someone else to carry on trips.

For my wife Heather – well, she married me, didn’t she? (Just kidding … I think.)

At its best, it’s born of an admirable capacity – the human ability to imagine something worthwhile and then put out the effort to make it happen. The trouble comes when hope and sweat are divorced from judgment and reflection. That’s when the weird things happen.

When we’re lucky, the worst it produces is embarrassment, expense, and an unforgettable story.

When we’re not so lucky, the results can be tragic. On a national scale, it can even mean lives disrupted or lost, regions devastated, and seemingly-endless wars begun – though in that last case, the anthem’s title is usually rephrased to “What Else Could I Do?”

A great question. But one that’s usually never asked until after it’s already too late.

I believe in hope and imagination. I believe in making the best decision you can from the information you have, rather than being paralyzed because you can’t make the perfect choice. But I also believe that’s a different thing from not considering consequences at all, just because what you want to do seems so compelling or necessary.

Consequences have to be considered. And if they’re not faced before the choice is made, they certainly will be after.

At that point, it’s best to learn from the Dutch. Acknowledge what happened. Fix it as soon as possible. Learn from it. And move on down the road.

Because sometimes you just have to change your tune.