Month: October 2021

Posted on

Living Upside-Down

Some things just have to be mentioned in the same breath. Like Beethoven and the Ninth Symphony. Or Sean Connery and James Bond. Or John Elway and “The Drive.”

So now that my friend Brie Timms has taken her final bows, it’s only right that someone brings up “Noises Off.”

If you don’t know the show, “Noises Off” takes every nightmare an actor’s ever had about the stage and blends it into a smoothie. It’s a comedy – no, an outright farce – where backstage jealousies lead to onstage chaos, with stalled entrances, sabotaged props, and an increasingly bedraggled cast. It’s also a notoriously difficult show to do, including a stretch where the story has NO dialogue for several minutes, relying on perfectly-timed action to get the laughs.

Brie came back to that show again. And again. And again.

No surprise. It fit her so well.

Let me back up: I’m not calling her a soap opera on wheels. Quite the opposite. Brie didn’t have time for unnecessary drama. Anything that distracted from the show didn’t belong. It’s the kind of focus that made her such a terrifying Nurse Ratched – a role quite opposite her real-life personality – and that built fantastic loyalty in her casts whenever she directed.

But she understood the paradox behind the best comedies. It’s an upside-down world where the golden rules are as follows:

  1. Silly is funniest when it’s taken seriously.
  2. It takes great acting to portray “bad acting.”
  3. Division onstage requires tight teamwork backstage.
  4. And most of all, if you want chaos, you have to plan for it.

Brie loved that. Especially the last one. And because of it, whenever she took on “Noises Off,” it ran like a Swiss watch. But a lot funnier.

And now that she’s gone, it feels like a gear in the watch is missing.

But even as the show goes on without her, I think there’s still something to be said for living an upside-down life.

Unlike comedies, life doesn’t give most of us the luxury of planning our chaos, which may explain why it’s often more tiring than funny. But it does tend to send us situations that work best when we flip the script. Where paradoxes make sense.

And the biggest one is that in a world ruled by isolation, we need each other more than ever.

Over nearly two years, we’ve all learned the pandemic litany. Cover your face. Wash your hands. Get your shots. And keep your distance. But we don’t always talk about the why. Maybe it just seems too obvious – in virus times, a person’s got to protect themselves, right?

But it’s not about each of us. It’s about each other. It’s about making ourselves living breakpoints so that the virus doesn’t wreak further havoc among all of us, especially among the old, the sick and the vulnerable.

When we think of our neighbors first, we win.

Teamwork matters. In comedy. In disasters. In life. And when it’s a teamwork born of compassion, one where we each give a little of our strength to help another, that makes all of us stronger.

I wish the team still had Brie in it. We need her. We need all our loving storytellers. But if we keep up that best paradox of all – to help yourself, help another – then I think we’ve kept one of the best parts of her, too.

And that’s a showstopper even “Noises Off” can’t beat.

Posted on

She Shoots, She …

WHAM!

Missy grinned as I scrambled to the basketball and ran it back to her. Our fall day in Carr Park had turned out to be perfect for an afternoon of shooting hoops.

Or … well, shooting something.

WHAM!

From her wheelchair, Missy gleefully examined the target. (With her cerebral palsy, it’s easier and safer for her to shoot while sitting instead of standing.) After a moment, she reared back and let fly with an energy Michael Jordan would have envied.

Jordan, of course, specialized in “nothing but net.” Missy’s aim was a little different.

WHAM!

“Good one!”

Shot after shot sailed at the metal goalpost. Lacking elevation but never determination, Missy  had decided to shoot for a target at her own level. And more often than not, she was hitting it.

WHAM!

In the 10 years since Heather and I became Missy’s guardians, we’ve learned a lot about her abilities. We know she can remember and follow instructions (when she feels like it), that she can follow along with the plot of a novel and keep track of the characters, that she can bowl a 100 game and dance up a storm and write a recognizable “M” when she works at it.

We also know, of course, that there are limits and accommodations. Missy uses a ramp to bowl. She solves 50-piece puzzles instead of 500-piece ones. She often dances with a partner or a piece of furniture nearby to keep her balance.

In short, she likes many of the same things that everyone else likes, but she often enjoys them in a different way. Her targets are at a different level, one that engages her and even pushes her, but  without being cruel.

That’s important. And not just for Missy.

We’re often encouraged to dream big, set our aims high, shoot for major goals, whether in the personal realm or the wider world. And there’ nothing wrong with doing any of that … until it becomes a source of intimidation instead of inspiration. Until you reach a point where, because you can’t do everything, you don’t do anything.

But there’s nothing wrong with setting the bar to where you are.

Writers know this. When the fantasy author Terry Pratchett started out, he wrote just 400 words a day for his first three years. That’s about as long as everything you’ve read in today’s column so far. By the time Pratchett died, he’d written over 50 books.

Chronic pain patients know it. There’s a saying that’s gone around social media that “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” The usual example is that if your pain and fatigue won’t even let you spend two minutes brushing your teeth, it’s worth doing it for 30 seconds instead – because it’s still better than not doing it at all.

Leaders and dreamers throughout the ages have known it, winning the small battles that can be won now, even when the larger vision still seems so far ahead.

You set your aim. You give it what you’ve got. And if what you have today isn’t what Stephen King has, or LeBron James, or even a Disney Channel extra, it’s still yours. And you’re still doing it. That matters.

When the goalpost is what you can hit, hit it hard. And keep shooting.

The target may change. The sights may rise. And even if they don’t, if it moves you forward or gives you pleasure or tests what you can do –  then it’s a win.

So have a ball. And if you have it on the Carr Park courts … well, just watch out for flying objects, OK?

WHAM!

Posted on

Beyond Words

Heather hurts. A lot.

I wish I could say those words felt unfamiliar.

She’s had a lot of practice. Since her teen years, my wife has put together a list of conditions that sounds more like a pre-med syllabus. Crohn’s disease. Multiple sclerosis. Ankylosing spondylitis. By now, if we ever hit a Jeopardy! category called “Autoimmunity,” we’re sure to clean up on the Daily Double.

Yes, we joke about it sometimes. We’ve had to, the way Londoners in World War II sometimes joked about the Blitz. (“Last night’s raid hit Monkey Hill at the zoo. The morale of the monkeys remains unaffected.”) We’ve quipped about how Heather’s conditions mostly have the courtesy to take turns, flaring one at a time, or how catchy some of the medical terms would sound when set to music. In a situation you can’t control, sometimes absurdity helps get you through.

And sometimes nothing does.

The last few days have been part of that “nothing.”

Heather’s control is amazing. Most of the time, she carries on so well you wouldn’t realize anything’s wrong, at least, not until she went upstairs for an extended nap. So when the breakthroughs happen … well that’s when you know it’s truly awful.

That’s when 3 a.m. comes and sleep doesn’t.

Words become inadequate. Gestures of comfort feel small. All you can do is try to make it through the night and hope the next day brings more strength to face a painful world with. Sometimes it does. Sometimes you’re just fighting the battle again.

Even without a diagnosis, I think a lot of Longmont is fighting a similar battle right now.

We’ve all grown used to bad news in the world. Maybe too much so. When life keeps screaming in your ear on a regular basis, your mind has to push some of it away out of sheer survival, just to make it through the day.

And then it hits close to home. And you can’t not hear.

You can’t not feel the pain.

You know the story. By now, I think we all do. I don’t need to recount the mailbox shooting point for painful point, where one life was taken and at least two more forever changed. Some of us knew the people at the heart of it. Some had never heard their names before Wednesday.

But all of us are hurting now.

We don’t want things like this to be real. We want to understand why, as if that would forever keep the pain from returning.

But we don’t understand. We can’t.

And a sleepless 3 a.m. comes again.

I don’t have any miraculous words of wisdom here. I don’t think anyone does. Nothing that wouldn’t feel like trying to wrap a wound in tissue paper. The tools aren’t strong enough for the task.

All I can offer us is each other.

When the incomprehensible comes, whatever form it takes, we need someone there. The friend who can listen as the pain pours out in words. The partner whose gentle touch is a reminder that we don’t stand alone. The souls beyond our own who can walk with us and face the unimaginable together.

It may not be enough. But it’s more than we have alone.

And together, maybe we can reach the morning.

Posted on

Points of Light

It’s Birthday Month at Chez Rochat. And that usually means something special ahead.

First, a point of clarification. We don’t actually celebrate the entire month. That tends to be September, the golden month that seems to have kick-started half of my wife’s family, including Heather, her sister, her late grandfather, one of our nieces and possibly her fairy godmother for all I know. (If anyone’s seen that fairy, by the way, would you mind having her give us a call? I’m pretty sure she’s holding our lottery tickets.)

No, Birthday Month belongs to Missy, the developmentally disabled aunt we care for who’s been the star of many a column here. She’s an October lady, but the date we celebrate tends to jump all over the map. Still, she knows that when we hit this time of year, special things happen.

There’s been the Year of the Pink Bowling Ball, which Missy unwrapped and joyously lifted to the sunlight, both of them glowing like the climax of a fantasy novel.

There was the Bieber Birthday, when Missy’s temporary obsession with a certain Canadian pop star was rewarded with a cardboard stand-up at the party.

And of course, there was the Day of the Dancing, when a certain milestone birthday (never mind which one) turned into a musical marathon. Missy spent 98% of it on the dance floor, while the rest of us just tried to keep up with her.

Some years have been quiet, others have received NASA-level planning. But there’s always something to remember.

This year, it might just be the Lite Brite.

For those who haven’t met that old classic, Lite Brite is a children’s light board with colored pegs for creating pictures and designs. Missy got a set this year from her brother Jeff and his wife Meg, who know her far too well.

You see, as I mentioned a couple of columns ago, Missy likes temporary art. And few things are more temporary than a Lite Brite paper template. You fit the paper onto the screen. You punch each peg into its spot on the paper, like “B” for blue. And once you punch through, that spot is gone. The result is a beautiful design and a thoroughly perforated former set of instructions.

From all this, you get two basic results.

First, you learn to appreciate each point of light as you create it. You might not be able to do it the same way twice.

Second, unless you’re really good about stocking up on refills, you’re eventually going to have make your own designs.

Simple lessons. But lasting ones. Especially these days.

If we’ve learned anything in these last couple of years, it’s that change can come quickly. Old ways of doing things get transformed, old assumptions overturned. It’s been a time of uncertainty as we look to see what comes next, and that’s never a comfortable place to be.

In times like these, we become aware of how fragile our moments are. It becomes more important than ever to see them, notice them, appreciate them while they’re there.

And if we want to perpetuate them, we’re going to have to find the patterns ourselves.  Working point by point, not always sure if the image we’re making will be beauty or chaos.

But each step is another point of light in the darkness. Hopeful in itself, helpful in what it may become. And that’s a gift to cherish.

Maybe even one as marvelous as a pink bowling ball.

Posted on

A Place of Peace

“All right, Missy, are you ready?”

Sitting up in bed, Missy grinned her crooked smile and nodded. I set our bedtime book to one side.

“Ok, close your eyes.”

Two hands eagerly went up to her face.

“Take a breath … no peeking now … here we go.”

Carefully, I picked up a tiny photo album of hers, one she loved to page through. And set it with great delicacy on top of her head.

“One … two … three ….”

Missy waited through the count, trembling with excitement as the album balanced precariously … but without falling. On “10,” I removed the book and she broke out in joyful laughter.

“You did it, Miss!”

“Yeah!!!!”

That’s what happens when your nighttime reading takes a turn for the Force-ful.

For about 10 years now, Missy’s bedtime story has been an unbreakable ritual. We’ve journeyed with Bilbo Baggins and studied with Harry Potter. We’ve peeked into The Secret Garden, cracked the riddles of The Westing Game, and laughed loud and long as Anne Shirley broke her slate over a classmate’s head before returning to Green Gables. In the process, my wife Heather and I have seen how engaged Missy becomes and how her developmental disability is no barrier to following the plot or caring deeply about the characters.  

This time around, we’ve been able to mix in something different. The story is a familiar one, a junior-level take on The Empire Strikes Back titled “So You Want to Be a Jedi?” But the take is unusual, placing the reader in the role of Luke Skywalker and offering “Jedi training exercises” in between each chapter.

The first ones simply involve closing your eyes in peace for a few brief moments, learning to quiet yourself and concentrate. Then it adds simple (and often silly) things. Like balancing a book on your head. Or batting aside thrown socks without opening your eyes. Or balancing a book while batting away thrown socks without opening your eyes.

For Missy, it’s a fun way to show off. It also, in disguise, is a neat little lesson in balance, awareness and mindfulness.

And time and again, they start in the same place. Take a moment. Close your eyes. Breathe.

That’s valuable no matter how old you are.

And it’s something that’s oh-so-easy to forget.

We’ve all had a lot more than socks thrown at us lately. From the personal to the national, we’ve had worlds upset, lives overturned, familiar things disrupted and shaken and broken. Stress and worry pile up on every side, and not without reason.

Everything demands our attention and concern, but there’s still only one of us. It’s easy to become a balloon in a hurricane, tossed this way and that before something finally makes everything pop.

In the midst of that, taking a step back sounds impossible. Like Luke trying to lift his own X-wing, the situation just seems too overpoweringly big to get a grip on.

But that’s when a place of peace matters most.

It doesn’t have to be long. But it does have to be. Just for a few moments. Just long enough to set the shouting of the world aside and find your own thoughts again.

It’s hard. We live in a world of urgency and “do it now!” where action is valued over contemplation. And finding that moment doesn’t solve the problem – but it puts us in a better place to understand it, to see rather than just react.

Take that moment. Find that place. It’ll probably take practice. But it may just give a bit of balance in return.

And if that balance involves a photo album, Missy’s got a trick she’d like to show you.