Tag: flexibility

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Schrödinger’s October

By the time this column appears in print, we’ll either be tired of shoveling or cynical about weather forecasters.

No surprise. That’s how October in Colorado works.

My friends from warmer climes often do a double take when they hear that a Front Range “snow season” runs from October to May. But even those words don’t really capture the true experience. The symbol of those eight months isn’t a snow shovel, but a pair of dice. You listen to the forecasts, buy out the bread and milk at the grocery stores (and somehow it’s always the bread and milk) and then roll ‘em.

Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes the big Snowmageddon forecasts produce nothing but a dusting of flakes and an ironic “I survived” post on social media.

Other times, it’s no laughing matter.

I grew up here. I remember a lot of Halloweens spent with a winter coat pulled over a truly awesome costume. (Hercules just doesn’t look the same when he’s bundled up against the cold.) But the year that really drove it home for me was 1997, when we got slammed by a late-October blizzard right before the Broncos were due to leave town for a game in Buffalo.

In those John Elway days, every bit of Bronco news was Serious Business. And so, in the midst of relentlessly raging snow and cars stacking up on Peña Boulevard, broadcasters would break in with the latest escapades. Kicker Jason Elam caught a ride to team headquarters with a group of fans. Safety Steve Atwater joined the rest of the team by snowmobile. Somehow, incredibly, everyone got out of town, stumbled into their hotel at 1 a.m. in the morning, and then  staggered their way through an overtime win that afternoon.

So yeah. We know. Feast or famine. Snow or “Snow big deal.”

And the thing is, we have to be ready for both. Like Schrödinger’s cat, the fabled “Chance of Snow” isn’t really alive or dead until we open the box and find out.

But then, isn’t that how we live our lives anyway?

We like to think we’ve minimized uncertainty. We make plans, we check forecasts, we schedule out our day. Everything’s in control.

Until it’s not.

The reminders, inevitably, come in. Sometimes as small as the storm that cancels a birthday picnic in the park. Sometimes as big as the injury or illness that transforms a lifetime.

We may have planned a route. But we’re not the ones driving the car.

So what do we do?

First, be aware. Always. Both in the moment-by-moment “situational awareness” sense and the bigger-picture sense of seeing what’s out there, not just what you want to see. Not only will that keep you ready – well, readier – for the unexpected, but it also reminds you of how much great stuff there is to see around you and how many situations your gifts and talents might be able to improve.

Second, stick together. I stress this a lot, maybe more than anything else I’ve ever written in this column. But it’s that important. Whether it’s shoveling our neighbor’s walks or standing up for our neighbors’ needs, we depend on each other. It’s how we weather a crisis or enhance a celebration.

We’re not going to see everything. But with eyes open and hands clasped, just maybe we can see enough.

Even in a stormy October.

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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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Unexpected Lives

When I found out that my immunization period would end on May 4, I joked that it was perfect for a geek like me.  International Star Wars Day – “May the Fourth Be With You” – what better time to wrap things up?

But lately, it’s not a John Williams theme I’ve been hearing. And that’s appropriate, too.

You see, while the mainstream world knows this time as the day before Cinco de Mayo and the would-be Jedi flood the internet with Star Wars memes, musicians know that there’s another meaning to 5/4. It’s a rhythm, and  a tricky one for many people to feel. Compared to the steady walk of a 4/4 or the lilting waltz of a 3/4, it sounds offbeat, like there’s a slight hitch in it, even though it’s completely regular.

Only a few 5/4 pieces are well known to the general public. But one of them is very well known indeed.

You know it as the “Mission: Impossible” theme.

“Bum, bum, BUM-BUM; bum, bum, BUM-BUM …”

Heather and I have had a lot of Mission: Impossible on lately – not the Tom Cruise movies, but the old 1960s and ‘70s TV show where a team of sharp-witted agents had to think their way through a sensitive assignment. Instead of the abilities of James Bond, an Impossible Missions Team relied on the skills of the con man: planning, misdirection and an ability to steer an over-eager mark into engineering their own doom.

The structure was completely predictable and easy to parody. The team leader would get the latest assignment, “should you choose to accept it,” on a self-destructing recording. He’d assemble his team of experts – usually the same ones every time, unless a guest star was in store – and then put together an elaborate plot of fake identities, careful timing and a little technological magic.

And every single time – EVERY single time – that careful plot would go off the rails halfway through, if not earlier, requiring the team to improvise.

Does that last part sound familiar?

For more than a year, we’ve been living unexpected lives. OK, it’s fair to say that life is never utterly predictable (John Lennon did say “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”), but most of us aren’t used to the disruptions being quite this relentless. We’ve had to rewrite how we work, how we learn, how we live … not just once, but over and over.

It’s dizzying. Even infuriating to some. Certainly tiring. Constant alertness, constant adaptation can exhaust anyone.

But two realities from the old show are also in play for us.

The first is that survival and success require a team. We’re not in a Hollywood world where one superstar can save the day, no matter how powerful or famous that person might be. It needs all of us, looking out for all of us, doing what we need to do together.

The second? Simple. The team’s success was never based on “Did the plan anticipate everything?” It was “Did we accomplish the mission?”

We’ve learned. We’ve adjusted. Sometimes we’ve failed. And we certainly won’t see quite the same “normal” at the other end of the pandemic as we did at the start. But as long as we reach that other end, still together, still finding a way to do what we must … then we’ve succeeded.

It hasn’t been easy. But it can be done. Like a certain theme, we all feel a little offbeat, but we are moving forward.

You might even say we’re heading Fourth.

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The Next Chapter

These days, Labor Day weekend feels a little novel. If the novel were written by George R.R. Martin, anyway.

Maybe I should explain.

This is the time of year when I usually spend a lot of time looking forward and looking back. The looking forward is one that I share with millions of Americans as I try to stare into a crystal ball and put together two viable fantasy football teams. It’s an exercise in trying to predict greatness, injury, and whether you can scramble to the fridge for another Dr Pepper before the next Draft Day round pops up on your computer screen.

The looking back? That involves Missy. As I’ve sometimes mentioned here, September is when my wife Heather and I have to put together our annual guardian’s report on Missy, combing through receipts, bank statements and memories by the score. It’s time-consuming but oddly rewarding as well as we reaffirm another wonderful year together.

It’s a well-worn routine. In any other year, it’d be utter reflex.

Any other year isn’t 2020.

This is the year when football prognostication means guessing whether there’ll be a full season at all – not exactly a guarantee when the team stats may include points against, yards allowed and positivity rate.

It’s the year when most of Missy’s usual activities and expectations were turned upside down. No bowling. No softball. No hugs with her favorite band (Face) after a great show – kind of hard when you’re crowding the monitor for a livestream performance.

In many ways, life has become month-to-month, if not week-to-week. Grand plans for the future? These days, if we can figure out what’s available at the grocery store, we’re probably doing well.

It’s a little like living in a Paul Simon song: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

Even more, it’s like living in a novel.

Not reading one. Writing one.

Readers, after all, have the benefit of knowing how much of the book is left before major plot points have to be resolved. (Assuming the absence of a sequel, anyway.) They can cheat, skip ahead, look up a review on Amazon.

Writers don’t necessarily have that luxury. Oh, some laboriously outline everything – and still get surprised. Others go in with a starting point, a destination, and a loose idea of how to get there, discovering the path as they go. The reader is almost guaranteed to be surprised by the next chapter because … well, so was the writer.

As E.L. Doctorow put it (and many others have quoted), it’s like driving at night. All you can see is what’s in front of your headlights. But you can make the entire trip that way.

That’s our life at the best of times. 2020 just made it obvious.

The good news is, some truly epic journeys have been made that way.

It’s how J.R.R. Tolkien picked his way across the landscape of the Lord of the Rings, discovering each new bend as he came to it.

It’s how Stephen King walked every step of “The Green Mile,” staying just barely ahead of his readers as he wrote each new installment.

And it’s how we’ve survived crisis after crisis, both as individuals and as a nation.

That’s not saying foresight and planning are useless. When you hit a crisis, your preparation shows, as anyone knows who’s ever plunged the depths of a blizzard-bound grocery store in search of milk and bread. But however well we’ve trained our reflexes, we’re still living life at one second per second. We can only see so far ahead. And we may be wrong about that.

But as long as we’re staying aware – of ourselves, of the moment, of each other – we have a chance of building a story worth remembering.

Maybe we’ll even get a decent quarterback out of it.