Tag: change

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Up on the Roof

Parts of my childhood forever echo with the voice of Chaim Topol. 

If the name doesn’t ring a bell with you, look up a friend who’s into great musicals. Ask them who this Topol guy is. And then prepare to be listening for a long, long time. 

“You mean you’ve never seen ‘Fiddler on the Roof’??” 

Many actors have inhabited “Fiddler’s”: lead role of Tevye, the Russian Jew whose traditional world is beginning to pull apart. Many of them have been fantastic. But if you saw the movie, if you owned the soundtrack album like my parents did (or played it a zillion times like I did), then Topol is almost certainly the Tevye that lives in your mind and heart. A measured pace. A wry humor. An unmistakable voice. 

And now, like so many other greats, what we have left are the memories. 

It’s easy to get pigeonholed in television and film. Adam West became Batman to such an extent that he spent much of his remaining career playing Adam West. Leonard Nimoy wound up writing a book “I Am Not Spock” … and then later a sequel that embraced the inevitable, “I Am Spock.” 

Topol lived in an unusual variation of that world. He got to spend a career doing many other things, some of them light years away from his small-town milkman. (Literally, in the case of his role in “Flash Gordon.”) But he always came back to Tevye, a role he played on stage again and again. By the time he made his last bow in 2009, he estimated he’d played the role over 3,500 times and still loved it. 

An unusual case indeed. But then, “Fiddler” is a very unusual show. 

Spoiler alert for the newcomers- it’s not a happy-ending musical, except in the broadest sense. At its heart, it’s a story about the struggle between identity and change, in times when “the way it’s always been done” has to find ways to adapt. Tevye’s own daughters make choices that force him to reexamine who he is and what’s important to him time and again. And after all the choices and heartbreak, a change that’s bigger than anyone ends up shattering the community, erasing the village that’s endured so much for so long and forcing its former inhabitants to start again in a hundred different places.

It’s powerful. Heartwrenching. And oh, so familiar.

Old expectations turned upside down? A world that looks less and less familiar every day? Families trying to adapt to each other, either strengthening or shattering in the attempt? All of it resonates pretty strongly these days, and these last few years especially. As the internet joke goes, it’s a time when “normal” is just a dryer setting.

But if our change-filled world resonates with Tevye’s mythical village of Anatevka, maybe some of the lessons do as well.

Tevye’s best choices are always the ones that take someone in instead of shut them out. The one time he closes the door on someone asking for acceptance, it tears his family apart. And when he finds a way to re-open that door just a crack, it adds the smallest bit of hope even as his world is scattered to the winds.

Maybe that’s what kept Topol coming back to the story. It certainly keeps drawing me. And if enough of us can reach out with love to each other, even while we’re still trying to figure out who we are and where we belong … maybe that can be enough.

“I do what I can,” Topol once said of the children’s charity work he did in his later life, “otherwise it is a waste of fame.”

Do what you can. With what you have. With all the love you have in you. There are worse ways to spend a life.

And if you can make a little time in it to watch “Fiddler” as well, so much the better.

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Dis-pursed

Reality has been shaken.

OK, I know that’s nothing new. After all, we’re still grappling with an ever-shifting pandemic. UFOs and artificially intelligent chatbots have made this year’s headlines look like a science fiction blockbuster. And the Broncos haven’t been to the playoffs since 2015. But this is big.

Missy’s purse has left the storyline.

A sign of the apocalypse, indeed.

You may be new here. If so, suffice to say that for our disabled ward Missy – my age physically, but much younger inside – a Big Red Purse has been her constant companion since before Heather and I were married. It’s a pairing on the level of Han Solo and Chewbacca, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or even Taylor Swift and breakup songs. That serious.

But the world shifted on its axis a couple of months ago when a weekend cleanup uncovered an ancient treasure – a forgotten bottle of pop beads, a little larger than a football. We dusted it off and passed it over, figuring the rediscovery would fill a quiet afternoon.

Click.

That Bottle O’ Beads™ has become Missy’s new sidekick. At any given moment, her hands are likely to be busily screwing the lid on or off (or at least attempting to) and then quietly assembling and breaking down a new string of beads. Her need to fidget and her love of arts and crafts seems to have found its natural crossroads.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

It has its advantages. The old purses attracted material like a black hole – stuffed animals, small books, acres of Kleenex and the proverbial Partridge in a Pear Tree – eventually reaching a level of density that weighed down her shoulder and wore out the strap. (Any rumors that we occasionally helped the strap along will be officially denied at the next press conference.) Missy’s new friend is a lot lighter, even if it does sometimes need an Official Sherpa to carry it up and down the stairs for her while she holds on to the bannisters.

For a while, I kept looking for The Purse Returned to make a reappearance, chosen from among the many in her closet. Missy’s habits tend to set themselves pretty firmly, after all.  But this seems to be a lasting shift. For now, anyway.

A contradiction? Not really. All “lasting” things have a way of being temporary, depending on where you set the scale.

But it always shakes us a little, doesn’t it? Maybe even more than a little.  

Sometimes it’s just an annoyance, like a style that shifted or a tech that moved on.  (“I have a cabinet full of VHS tapes, what do you mean I can’t find a VCR anymore?”) Other times, it touches us a little more deeply. New discoveries, for better or worse, about a friend we thought we knew. Changes in work, in life or in the world that force us to redefine who we are. We grapple with unexpected concepts, including one that should be no surprise at all: that “normal” is just what we’re used to. And that’s a very, very fragile thing indeed.

That doesn’t mean we can’t try to preserve the things worth keeping. But it does mean we can’t set our feet in concrete. However appealing consistency may sound (and I’m right there with you), we have to be ready to adapt. Kids grow up. Worlds change. And yes, even purses come and go.

Funny thing about pop beads. There’s always a new way to assemble them. No matter what pieces happen to come to your hand.

Maybe Missy’s on to something.

I’ll just have to see what pops up next.

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Decision with a Capital ‘D’

About halfway through the death march of the Broncos’ last season, my brother-in-law Brad said he knew just what Denver needed.

“They ought to get Sean Payton at coach,” he said. “He knows how to get the most out of a quarterback like Russell Wilson. It’d be a great fit.”

We laughed and bantered and said, sure, that would be interesting. But it wasn’t going to happen. Too high a price, too many other teams likely to be interested, most of them with better prospects. Everyone knew the sort of coach that came to the Orange Crash these days: rookies and maybes, not former Super Bowl champions. Right?

Well.

Maybe I should let Brad buy a lottery ticket or two.

As you know if you’ve even casually glanced at a Denver sports page these days, the Saint has come marchin’ in. Naturally, his selection also kicked off a debate, because if there’s one thing Bronco fans love almost as much as a win, it’s an argument.  For the pro-Payton bunch, it’s the hiring of a proven winner with the prestige and tools to rebuild Denver. For the “punt on Payton” people, it’s mortgaging future draft picks against an uncertain present, one who’s been out of the game for a while and was right at the storm center of “Bountygate” a decade ago.

But good, bad or ugly, the choice has been made to shake things up. And that’s bigger news than Payton himself.

It’s easy to keep doing the same things in the same way. We see it in sports teams, in business and government, even in ourselves. And when times get hard, we often double down on it. Why risk what you still have? Best to play it safe, turtle up and weather the storm, right?

The trouble is, it often doesn’t work. Sometimes it means you’re trying to get out of a situation with the same approach that got you into it. Other times, it means you’re postponing any decision and just waiting for things to improve. But not deciding is a decision itself, and one that takes the initiative out of your hands.

To fix something, you have to risk breaking it. Commit to the action. Take the chance. Turn off the route you’re on, even if it feels like a major detour.

“The longest way round,” Alexander MacLaren once wrote, “is sometimes the shortest way home.”

Yes, it can be a gamble. Action in the face of uncertainty often is. It’s uncomfortable, not least because it exposes you to criticism. Failing by the numbers, after all, shows you knew how to “do it right” – you’re part of the club. Taking a chance that doesn’t work turns everyone else into an expert on what you SHOULD have done.

But when the conventional just perpetuates the cycle, it doesn’t make sense to keep committing to the same old three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust. Then it’s time to decide. And risk.

Will this risk pay off for Denver? It’s too early to say either way. (I knew I shouldn’t have sent my crystal ball to the cleaners this week.) But it’s an attempt to break beyond the mediocre, to literally change the game.

That’s not a bad model. On the field or off it. After all, failing doesn’t have to mean failure … as long as it leads to the next attempt.

And if this one fails, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of fans ready to tell the Broncos exactly what that next attempt should be.

Right, Brad?

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Always Elizabeth

Every so often, we like to joke about famous figures who seem eternal. It used to be George Burns. Then Betty White. And of course, there’s Keith Richards, who looks about 3,000 years old despite an actual age that’s closer to 750.

And then there’s the Queen. Or there was.

After her recent passing, a friend pointed out that most of us had never known a world that didn’t have Queen Elizabeth II in it. Granted, that could be said about almost anyone from the ever-smaller World War II generation. But with a presence as well-known as hers, it was a little like learning that the Big Ben clock tower had suddenly vanished. Distant and faraway, with no real impact on my day-to-day life, and yet somehow … one more constant that was gone.

I wonder what Grandma Elsie and Granddad Bill would have said.

My grandparents, like my wife’s grandmother, were English. Elsie and Bill came to this country in 1957, when QE2 was still very new indeed. Granddad had even seen her close up as a young girl in the 1930s during his brief tenure in the Grenadier Guards – yes, the guys with those wonderful hats. The Guards liked little Elizabeth,  Grandma once told me, but her little sister Margaret was much more mischievous, dashing past soldiers she had already walked by to make them jump back to attention. Kids will be kids, even when they’re royalty.

It’s probably Grandma’s occasional royal-watching that sparked my own here-and-there awareness of the Windsors. And through all the family drama – and my, was there a lot of it – the familiar face aged and endured. Always with that familiar stern dignity and a Corgi close to hand.

In that regard, losing her was a little like losing Grandma all over again.  

The stoicism was easy to tease, of course. “The Naked Gun” portrayed Queen Elizabeth at a ballgame, passing refreshments and doing The Wave with aplomb. The Olympics depicted her skydiving with James Bond, while her own jubilee put her at tea with a well-meaning Paddington Bear. But the joke always had a bit of respect in it, maybe even some envy at the ability to stay unruffled in the most unexpected situations.

None of us have the wealth or the staff or the seemingly endless hat collection of an English queen, of course. But the patience … that’s something more achievable. And something we seem to need more of every day.

Elizabeth took her throne in a nation still recovering from the strains of war. Our own time seems to be forever in the midst of it. I won’t run the roll call of disasters; it’s too familiar and too depressing.  But as each new crisis arrives – whether personal or international – the pressure on each of us pulls just a little tighter.

But we continue. We have to. Perhaps looking back at what we’ve survived, perhaps looking forward to what may come. But always looking to each other as we meet the moment now, with whatever hope we can find to push back the night.

That, too, has remained changeless over 70 years.

“Today we need a special kind of courage,” the queen said early in her reign. “Not the kind needed in battle, but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics, so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.”

That spirit, more than any crown or monument, is a legacy to be treasured. And shared.

Farewell, Your Majesty. And thank you.

And don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on Keith.

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Oh, G’s

Stephen Wilhite led an animated life.

OK, his is not a name that leaps to mind like Maya Angelou, Steve Jobs or (heaven help us) Justin Bieber. But if you’ve been online at all, you touched his work. Wilhite, who died recently at 74, invented the GIF, the moving photos that turned social media into a special effect out of Harry Potter.

He also, years after their invention, triggered one of the internet’s most long-running minor debates with just five words:

“It’s pronounced ‘jif,’ not ‘gif.’”

Yes, like the peanut butter. That had actually been part of the documentation for  the Graphics Interchange Format since day one … which of course most people never saw. And in a jiffy (or even a giffy), we reconfirmed two essential truths of our species.

First, that people will argue about absolutely ANYTHING, and the flames only get hotter as the stakes get lower. Online battles over the “proper” pronunciation of GIF still rage back and forth with the intensity of a Star Wars movie, joining such timeless classics as “that stupid call in the Super Bowl” and “who needs the Oxford comma, anyway?”

After a while, the exchange gets pretty predictable:

“Well, the G stands for ‘Graphic,’ so of course it’s a hard G!”

“The U in SCUBA stands for ‘Underwater,’ are you going to start saying scuh-ba?”

“It’s like ‘gap’ or ‘get!’”

“No, it’s like ‘genius’ or ‘giraffe.’”

“Jif sounds stupid!”

“You sound stupid!”

“NYAAAAAAH!”

Verily, this is a philosophical discourse that Socrates himself would envy.

The second essential truth is more subtle. Namely, that the meaning of an idea doesn’t start and stop with its creator.

Any literature fans reading this will recognize this immediately as “the death of the author,” Stripped of PhD language (you’re welcome), this basically says that the author isn’t the only one who gets to decide what a story’s about. Just as an invention can be created for one purpose and used for another, a story can change when it reaches the reader’s hands. Yes, the author has intents and purposes, but the reader brings their own experience to the tale, which may lead them to discover something quite different.

It’s a little scary and a little exciting. It means that reading a story or watching a movie isn’t just a matter of cracking a code (“what did they mean by that?”) but a process of adventure and discovery (“what will I find here?”) J.R.R. Tolkien called it the difference between allegory – a strict this-means-that definition by the writer – and applicability.

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence,” he wrote. “I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

That’s challenging.

It means that while stories shape us, we can also shape them right back. It means that we don’t just have to accept ideas in couch-potato fashion. We can grapple with them, challenge them and take them in new directions. All sorts of concepts can be transformed this way, from fiction to ideologies to language itself.

So if 20 years down the road, the “hard G” folks win the GIF battle for good (or even for jood), it’s not an error or a crime. It just means the story wasn’t over.

It’s your tale. Choose as you will.

Just be gentle – or gracious – to those on the other side.

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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.

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The More Things Change

In 1998, Japan hosted the Olympic Games. The world marveled as humanity’s oldest space traveler launched into the blue. The Colorado Rockies struggled to stay out of the basement, prevented only by the even-worse Arizona Diamondbacks.  

Oh, and a young Colorado couple realized they had no idea what they were doing, but were willing to make a try of it together.

Fast forward 23 years later and …

Hmm.

Did someone give us the script of “Groundhog Day” when we weren’t looking?

OK, I’m teasing a little bit here. Obviously, we’ve seen more than a few shock waves since the days when  Google was new, Facebook was non-existent and masks were mostly for operating rooms and trick-or-treaters.

But after 23 years together – as of July 25 –Heather and I still spend a lot of time feeling like we’re making this up as we go along.

“It’s really only 10 years, right?” Heather teased me the other day. “We’re not counting the days with all the chronic illness stuff, are we?”

Sounds great to me.

It’s a little startling to think about. We’ve seen the larger world deal with Y2K and 9/11, ubiquitous computing and social media, even worldwide pandemic. (All of which have somehow failed to shake “The Bachelor” from the airwaves, by the way.) In our own lives, we’ve left Colorado and returned, become parents of a sort, and carefully learned how to spell scary stuff like “multiple sclerosis,” “ankylosing spondylitis” and “post-journalism career.”

But through all the blessings, scars and lessons … well, it still feels like we’re on day 2. With a world ahead and no idea how we’re going to meet it.

I guess that’s true for all of us, isn’t it?

We like to think we know better. From the first day that someone asks “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, we start to build grand plans for the future. It might be a general ambition or a detailed breakdown that looks like Richard Branson’s pre-flight checklist, but we like to think we know where we’re going and that we have some control over how to get there.

And then – life happens. A lot. And then a lot more.

If we’re lucky, we hang on to a piece of what we were expecting. If we’re even luckier, our old dreams give birth to new ones. I never expected to leave newspaper reporting – but I also never expected to be a parent-by-choice to Missy, either.

But a lot of times – scary, tiring times – it can feel a lot like circling the Monopoly board. The territory looks awfully familiar, but you’re not quite sure where you’ll land. (And that $200 for passing Go never seems to materialize.)

At those moments, I’m glad to not be the only piece in the game.

In a world where the changing and the changeless can be equally terrifying, it makes a difference to face it together. To know that even if you’re guessing, one person is guessing along with you.

I don’t know what tomorrow will be. Some days, I’m barely sure what yesterday was. But I know who I’ll be facing it with. And that makes all the difference.

Happy anniversary, hon.

Oh, and if we’re replaying 1998’s greatest hits … do you think we can get a Broncos Super Bowl win out of it?

Just checking.

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Ark of Recovery

Don’t look now but we just beat the Raiders.

No, not those Raiders. Even for the wandering brethren of Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland-Las Vegas, it would take some doing to lose a football game one month before the NFL preseason even started. (Of course, it may also take some doing for the Broncos to win a game after it starts, but let’s allow ourselves to dream, OK?)

No, I’m talking about the Raiders from everyone’s favorite 40-year-old action film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the breathless adventure where Indiana Jones recreates the thrills, spills and chills of the 1930s serial cliffhanger movies … and, famously, doesn’t accomplish a whole lot else.

The argument’s been made across the internet (not to mention one episode of The Big Bang Theory), so I’ll be brief. By the end of the movie, the Nazis have been destroyed by their own arrogance. Their plan went on pretty much the way it would have without Dr. Jones – in fact, he may have sped it up slightly by showing them the Ark’s true resting place – but it just happened to be a bad plan that was always going to kill them.

For Indy, the adventure’s main significance is in the changes it made in him personally. And since he’s an ‘80s action-movie star, even those aren’t guaranteed to be carried over to the next film.  He did a lot of running. A lot of fighting. And it didn’t make much difference.

That’s where we’ve got the edge.

We know we’ve made a difference. And that we can continue to.

Colorado recently ended its official state of emergency, a crisis condition that’s extended over 16 months, a lot of executive orders, and more than a few fogged-up glasses from habitual face-masking. Worldwide, the pandemic isn’t over by a long shot and even in this country, there’s still a lot of concern about what the delta variant of COVID-19 may mean for the immediate future. But at this time, and in this place, we’ve done a lot.

We went from one of the worst coronavirus fatality rates west of the Mississippi to one of the 10 best states in the nation.

We’ve gotten an awful lot of us vaccinated – at the time I write this, more than 70 percent of our adults have had at least one shot and nearly 64 percent have been fully immunized.

Most of all, we’ve been finding ways to help our neighbor and try to keep life going even when it’s been at its weirdest.

We’re living life differently these days – new habits, new priorities, maybe even new perspectives shaped by what we’ve gone through. And unlike a Hollywood film, normal isn’t a matter of rebuilding the sets and restoring the status quo. Some of what we’ve learned will stay with us. It might be big changes in how and where we work or small pastimes that we got hooked on while living apart, but it’ll be there.

We’ve changed.

Hopefully, that means we’ve grown as well.

I don’t want to be too dramatic. Plenty of pre-pandemic stuff has survived as well (including, to my own surprise, the handshake). The world’s not completely unrecognizable, like some sort of Rip Van Winkle tale. But we have an opportunity to carry lessons forward. We’ve seen the impact our actions can have on others and we have a chance to learn from that.

Let’s face it: this movie doesn’t need a sequel.

After all, why settle for keeping up with the Joneses?  

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Has Anyone Seen My Normal?

After this week, I think I’m stuck in the doorway of “normal.”

Step on through and I’ll show you what I mean.

We began the week on the playing fields of Clark-Centennial Park where, after a long COVID-related hiatus, the Niwot Nightmares finally returned to the softball diamond. Long-time readers may remember that this is the home team for our own Missy, part of a “Softball For All” program for the disabled that warms the heart every summer …. along with warming everything else, given the Colorado heat.

It’s here. It’s familiar. It feels like it never went away.

Yay, normal!

And the end of the week? We spent that celebrating the high school graduation of my wife’s youngest sister, the one who used to come over for sleepovers when she was seven years old. Somehow, in the blink of an eye, we’ve moved from building marble runs and shooting self-produced living room videos to making plans for UNC and a possible future as a social studies teacher.

It’s here. It’s unfamiliar. It feels like everything is moving at high speed.

Uh … yay, normal?

Oh, and in the midst of all this, of course, there was a tornado that popped into the area with almost no warning, narrowly missed a major power station, brought some damage (though thankfully no deaths) and then nipped back off without so much as a “see ya.”

Uh … yay, normal.

And if that’s not the last few months in miniature, I don’t know what is.

Ever since March 2020, when everything got frozen in amber for several months, most of the attention has been focused on what we’ve missed, what we’ve lost, what we can’t wait to restore. We’ve talked about rebuilding normal like it’s a tornado-struck building, where we can unroll the blueprints, get the materials, maybe fix that carpet we’ve always been meaning to adjust and then pick up life where we left it.

The trouble is, of course, that normal is a moving target. Some of the familiar won’t come back. Some of the new won’t go away. And plenty of things will stay in motion and change, whether it’s as predictable as a girl growing up or as out of the blue and disruptive as a summer storm.

The fact is, we don’t know what “normal” is going to look like. Any of us. The outlines have started to form, some of the colors have been filling in, but the picture that will emerge and the reality we’ll have to fit into is still uncertain. And it’s not going to be wholly comfortable.

This isn’t the calm experience of walking out the front door. This is standing on the edge of the airlock, with scattered reports of the alien world beyond, but no firsthand experience. We can’t stay. But we’re not sure what we’re going to.

These are the moments of discovery. Of our world and ourselves.

A friend recently recommended a book to me about “liminal experiences,” the in-between moments when an old identity has been lost and a new one is still emerging. They’re not easy. They’re not comfortable. But they’re also unavoidable. And if we let them, they can be a special moment of transformation.

It requires trust and discernment and no small amount of courage. Walking in the dark – or at least in the fog – always does. But as unsettling as it is, we have to go on.

And when the new has fully emerged, we’ll be shocked at how quickly it becomes “normal.” It always does.

I’m glad for what’s returned. I’m curious for what will be. A season of discovery is ahead.

And while I’m waiting, I even get to watch a little softball.

Yay, normal. 

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Change Of Course

At long last, Heather’s sleeping.

That sounds simple. It’s been anything but.

For a few weeks now, Heather’s bedtime routine has looked like a kung fu movie. Every few seconds, she kicks with a force that could shatter pine. Every few moments, her arms lash out with a speed that Bruce Lee would envy. Over and over, on and on for hours, long enough to clear even the largest army of unseen ninja.

All we’re missing is the bad voice dubbing.

As you’ve guessed, there’s no Hollywood contract involved. Heather’s multiple sclerosis sometimes unwraps surprise gifts for us, and this has been one of the most unwelcome to unwrap. Call it myoclonus. Call it restless leg syndrome amped up to warp factor 5. Call it whatever you want, but please call it from long distance – you don’t want it visiting the house.

Not unless you like getting about five hours of sleep a week, that is.

Nights can be endless when you’re trying to find something that helps for even a few minutes – distraction, massage, anything – and hope becomes hard to find. You start to wonder what the doctor can do, what tools still might be in the box, especially for the woman who’s allergic to almost everything.

And then. One day after the worst night of all. One change in medicine, so small we weren’t sure it could possibly work.

Quiet.

Peace.

We’d both forgotten what that felt like.

Heather’s not completely motionless at night. But the big battle is over. What’s left is on mute – uncomfortable, sometimes even still painful, but not hopeless. She can sleep and rest and rebuild.

Just one change can make all the difference in the world.

That’s true for a family. For a state. For a nation.

Maybe it’s the small suggestion at the end of a hard day that makes everything brighter for a minute. (“Hey, Missy, how about we grab some ice cream?”)

Maybe it’s the promise of snow after weeks of fire, bringing the cold and the wet to where it’s most needed.

Maybe it’s the election year reminder, after too many commercials and too much junk mail, that we have the power to change things. To decide who we should keep and who should go, to vote against what weakens us and for what makes us stronger.

Whatever it is, it’s a reminder.

What was, doesn’t have to be.

I don’t want to just stop at Lincoln’s favorite lesson, “This too shall pass.” For me, that’s a little too …well, passive. In my mind, it’s clearer to say “This too shall change.”

Some changes we simply have to endure and make the best of. But some we can touch. Some even start with us. They may not be big changes, but small ones can propagate, whether it’s the crack that brings down a foundation or the seed that someday shades the entire yard.

That’s a cause for hope. That even our worst situations are unstable at their roots. That with work and effort and determination, something new can emerge. Probably not perfect. Almost certainly with problems of its own. But nonetheless, something we can build from.

The cast of Les Miserables once sung in hope that “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” They weren’t wrong. The light’s still there. Waiting.

That sounds simple. We know it’s anything but.

But difficult isn’t impossible.

And when the big battle is over – any of the big battles –  maybe we can even take a moment to rest.

Anyone up for a kung fu movie?