Tag: friendship

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A Step Into Memory

“This popular game show brought attention to Longmont, Colo. and memories to a local columnist.”

“Ken, what is ‘Jeopardy!’?”

“Correct!”

Like a lot of former reporters, I’m a “Jeopardy!” fan. Journalists have a habit of picking up a lot of odd facts in a wide variety of fields – someone once called it a ‘wastebasket mind’ – so the trivia game with the guess-the-question format has a natural appeal.

So when Longmont resident Stephen Webb began racking up the big bucks on the blue board, I got as excited as anyone. At this writing, he’s been the champ for three straight games, living the dream for all of us armchair trivia buffs.

Including one who really ought to be here watching.

My friend Mark Scheidies had a mind made for “Jeopardy!” That’s not just hyperbole. He made the contestant pool six different times. Had the world been different, he’d probably be trying yet again to become the third Longmonter to win big on the show (following both Webb and previous champion Jennifer Giles).

An accident claimed Mark in 2020. But even without a “Jeopardy!” appearance, he still left behind some indelible memories. As a treasured Longmont Theatre Company actor. As a gentle man with a wry sense of humor.

And, for a few months in 2013, as the “Longmont Street Walker.”

It’s not what it sounds like. (That wry humor again.) In 2013, Mark set out to walk every mile of every street in Longmont. It took him over 1.5 million steps, but he did it, blogging the journey after each new expedition.

In the process he rediscovered the city he’d been living in for 30 years. And reintroduced a lot of us to it as well.

“Even though I’ve driven a street many times, there are still things that I will notice walking that I have never noticed driving,” Mark wrote.

Yes. Yes. A hundred times, yes.

I’m not in Mark’s class as a walker OR a trivia champion. (Our epic battle of Trivial Pursuit never did happen, and I’m probably less humiliated for it.) But in my own lengthy walks across Longmont, I’ve noticed the same thing. Driving gives you tunnel vision. Your mind locks on your destination and (hopefully) the drivers around you, but you don’t really experience much beyond that bubble of thought.

Walking forces you to pay attention.

You learn where every dog in the neighborhood is – or at least what their bark sounds like.

“Where the Sidewalk Ends” is no longer just a Shel Silverstein poem, but an occasional reality. (And a challenging one if you’re also pushing a relative’s wheelchair, but I digress.)

You discover shortcuts. Faces. Interesting sights that get missed at 30 mph but become glaringly obvious at one-tenth that speed.

In short, you learn to see. And that’s a rare skill.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote of the importance of “recovery,” the ability to clean off your mental windows and actually notice things that have become commonplace. It means not just telling yourself “oh, another tree,” so you can put it in its box and move on, but actually seeing the tree as though you had never seen one before: its texture, its color, its life.

Life at walking speed makes a good window-cleaner. No bubble, no isolation – just a world close enough to touch, or at least to notice.

Mark’s blog Is still up at www.longmontstreetwalker.com. The sidewalks await any time. It doesn’t have to be an epic journey. Even a few steps can make a big difference.

And if you plan it right, you’ll even get home in time for “Jeopardy!”

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Stream of Second Chances

Smart phones have found their Timex moment

I realize that I just dated myself with that one. Anyone under the age of 30 who recognizes the phrase “It takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’” is probably either a serious YouTube fanatic or a time traveler in disguise. But how else do you describe the super-powered phone of Jordan Miezlaiskis?

According to UPI, Miezlaiskis was up in Canada last year to celebrate her brother’s birthday when she dropped her phone into the fast-moving Chippewa River, where it quickly vanished  from sight. Worse yet, her brother died a short while later that year – and naturally, the last photos she had of him had been on that phone.

So far, it sounds like 2020, right?

But here’s the thing. Miezlaiskis returned to Canada this summer to remember her brother, and a Facebook message from a stranger popped up. Usually, social media messages from strangers are a little dodgy … but this one had amazing news. While diving near Chippewa Falls, he and his brother had found her phone.

Even more amazing, it still worked.

“(The photos) just popped up like nothing,” she told UPI. “It was wild. The phone had been underwater for a year in 12 feet of water and it was as if nothing happened.”

If someone hasn’t signed her up for a commercial by now, then the American advertising industry is really asleep at the switch.

That one stayed with me, even after the few moments it took to chuckle and shake my head in amazement. After all, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had the screw-up that seemed irreparable, the moment we would give anything to take back.

So it’s kind of nice to remember that, every once in a while, second chances exist. That not all mistakes have to be forever.

And those weird odds get just a little better if you face them with some friendly help.

When I was still newly married, I went on a feature assignment at the Arkansas River near Garden City, Kansas. Usually running at a trickle at the best of times, it had real water in it that day due to a reservoir release, so a photographer and I had traveled thereto meet with some folks who were boating down the stream while they could. Not a world-shaking story, but a fun chat and some good pictures.

As I started to drive the two of us back, my car hit an area of soft sand and bottomed out. The photographer and I got out to try to push it free … and my wedding ring, which still fit a little loosely, slipped off my finger and disappeared into the sand.

Panic does not begin to describe my mood. I tried to dig in but couldn’t see anything. Worse, the sand itself was so loose that I feared I was pushing the ring deeper with every attempt. I stared, frozen.

The photographer then knelt down and began to pick gently through the grains with her small hands and careful fingers. Nothing … nothing … wait …

There.

A friend’s patience had literally struck gold.

Small treasures like rings and phones may not seem like much in a cosmic sense. But they carry a heart. And when we each look after the heart of our neighbor, the world gets a little better. Maybe in small ways. Maybe in life-saving ones. (After all, what has this last year and a half been if not a constant reminder to look out for your neighbor?)

 If you’ve been that friend, thank you. If you’ve been helped by that friend, great. Pass it on. Make it better.

Together, maybe we’ll all keep on tickin’.  

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Hold the Phone

The Digital Age has its new poster child.

On Wednesday, when most of us were learning firsthand about bomb cyclones, an Australian man got out of his car to find a visitor waiting outside his home – with a bow and arrow at the ready. So the man followed normal 21st century safety procedure.

Namely, he pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

The archer fired. The arrow was on target. And according to Reuters, the homeowner walked away with barely a scratch.  Why? Because the arrow hit and killed the phone instead.

OK, show of hands. How many of us have wanted to do that to a smartphone, just once?

Thought so.

Our world of tiny phones and big social networks has come up for a lot of mockery over the years, sometimes justifiably so. People have walked into manholes while texting (and then, predictably, tried to sue). Fatal car accidents have resulted from drivers with one hand on the wheel and both eyes on a phone. In our time, we’ve been just an arm’s length away from the manipulations of political saboteurs, the boasts of killers, and even the rise of Justin Bieber.

So is it any wonder that when Facebook and Instagram went kersplat for many people on Wednesday, the mass frustration was mixed with a little joking relief?

“Son, I wasn’t alive for the Donner Party or Pearl Harbor, but I am old enough to remember when both Facebook and Instagram were down at the same time during that terrible winter of ’19,” comedian John Fugelsang joked.

The memes! Will no one think of the memes?

More seriously, though – it’s human nature to be frustrated with the tools we depend on. It was true of the first computer. It was true of the automobile. It was probably true of the first ancient human to deliberately set a branch on fire, and then later discover his teenage son had burned up Dad’s favorite spear. “What do you mean, you wanted to see what would happen?”

But for every frustration, our tools also open a door. Sometimes some pretty amazing ones.

My wife Heather is often stuck at home because of chronic illness. Her phone opens the world to her, allowing her the experience and interaction that her body might otherwise bar.

An acquaintance of mine has a love of reading and a tiny apartment. His devices give him access to a library that would overwhelm a four-bedroom house.

I have dear friends halfway across the country whom I’ve never met, yet “visit” regularly. We’ve shared joys, sorrows, and horrible jokes as easily as any next-door neighbor.

I’m sure most of you could add more. The weather report in a pocket. The research library that’s open at 2 a.m. before a term paper is due.  The chance to quickly learn a home repair, or some language basics, or just figure out the lyric you could never understand on the radio. On and on and on.

Sure, our tech can frustrate. It can be used badly, even horribly. But it doesn’t have to dehumanize. Used well, it can bring us together and open up possibilities that put a science fiction writer to shame.

It’s up to us. It always has been. And that is both a frightening and a wonderful possibility.

The future’s in our hands. What will we make of it?

Hopefully, something a little better than target practice.

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Making the Reach

It shouldn’t take a celebrity.

It shouldn’t require a death.

But here we are.

Some conversations never seem to be had until something painful and public happens. Like discussing security after a terrorist attack. Or guns after a shooting.

Or, in this case, talking about mental health after someone famous commits suicide.

Two someones, this time around. The most recent spotlight started with designer Kate Spade. And then, before the news could die down, chef Anthony Bourdain entered the headlines as well. Social media echoed and magnified the conversation, full of people trying to raise awareness, or share memories, or simply understand.

It’s what we try to do after all. Find patterns when something makes no sense. Make a painful moment manageable by reaching for an answer, any answer.

And then time passes. The moment passes. No one can live forever in crisis mode, and so the incomplete answers and uncertain explanations fade out for most of us and we return to a more normal sort of life.

Except for those who can’t. Those who continue to face a daily silent struggle. Unheralded. Unseen. Maybe even unsuspected.

And often, as a result, untalked about.

It’s a curious thing. Many of us these days are willing to talk about physical ailments, almost to the point of oversharing. Diabetes. Epilepsy. Multiple sclerosis. Even the once-unspeakable “big C” of cancer. We don’t necessarily pass around our latest medical charts, but there’s little hesitancy about speaking out, finding support from others, sharing stories, maybe even pinning some colorful ribbon to a shirt collar or Facebook profile once a year.

We don’t talk about mental conditions the same way. If we talk about them at all. It’s taboo, unsettling, dangerous. And those in the middle of it all often keep quiet, not wanting the judgment that comes with the label.

We all know someone who’s there. Whether we realize it or not.

I have friends and family who have lived with (and sometimes died with) depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Many of these CAN be lived with, even if that life has to be won again day after day after day. But in isolation, without support, the battle can become overwhelming.

Once in a while – usually after something like a Spade or a Bourdain – the drumbeat will go up. Folks will be shocked into awareness, will post the suicide hotline numbers, will encourage folks to reach out for help. And that is good.

But.

Many conditions are isolating. Your brain outright lies to you, telling you you’re worthless, you’re alone, that no one really cares. There’s a hesitancy to reach out, not just because of the social stigma, but because of the internal soundtrack that’s constantly playing.

The burden of action cannot be entirely theirs.

Don’t wait for someone to reach out. Reach in.

Reach in to the people you do know. Not as a nosy neighbor or a person with all the answers, but as a friend who cares that a friend is in pain.

Reach in so they know they’re not alone. Step away from the center and listen. Don’t worry about having the right words or the magic formula – it’s not about you, anyway. The right words are the ones that remind someone you’re here, now, for them.

You don’t have to be a psychiatrist. You don’t have to be a therapist. You don’t have to solve the problem for them and you’re not going to.

But if enough people reach in, it can become that much easier for someone to reach out for the help they truly need.

It starts with us.

Not every battle will be won. Not every person can be helped. Some will need more than we ourselves can give.

But where we can, we should.

It shouldn’t take a celebrity.

It shouldn’t require a death.

Just open eyes. An open heart. And open, ready hands.

Be there. Reach in.

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Miss-somnia

“Sweetie, honey, it’s past midnight, you need to – “

“NO!”

The word had been spoken. And even though she had been yawning, blinking, and showing every other sign of being ready to make an urgent appointment with the Sandman, Missy was as clear as an Old Testament prophet. She was NOT going to sleep.

This was, needless to say, a tad unusual. Normally, one side effect of Missy’s developmental disability is that routines go over very, very well. And few things are more routine than the Dance of the Missy Bedtime, wherein is laid out the last steps through the bathroom and bedroom, culminating in a bedside storytime, a final hug, and lights-out.

But that night, the dance band couldn’t even strike the opening chords. We’d had a good time together, even a fun time, despite having to explain that even though the neighbors’ decorations were cool, it wasn’t trick-or-treat time yet.

But all of a sudden, advancing to her bedroom was like suggesting we take a walk down the plank of Capt. James Hook. Missy is tiny, but 97 pounds of “No!” has a power all its own. As Master Shakespeare put it once upon a time, “Though she be but little, she is fierce!”

And so Heather and I talked, and cajoled, and tried to understand. And as her hands indicated an object on the forehead shooting things out (complete with impressive sound effects), the problem seemed to become clear.

“Missy,” Heather explained gently, “it’s just a weird costume. It’s still the real Scotty. Does Mad-Eye Moody sing old sitcom tunes and leave pop cans on the counter?”

Oh, dear.

I might have done my job just a little too well.

Those who read the column last week may remember that I was creating a costume of Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, a hard-bitten ally of the good guys who was most notable by his prominent magical eye. Armed with a milk cap, half a ping-pong ball, and an amazing lack of permanent scars, I had constructed a bright blue duplicate, always angled to one side of where I was actually looking.

Missy had been fascinated by the outfit, and especially the eye, examining it and calling Heather’s attention to it when I was away. She’d even made sure that I put it on for one of her own Halloween parties. (Yes, plural. Missy’s social life is far more impressive than my own.)

But apparently, seeing me in it also weirded her out a little. Maybe more than a little. Again, I was reminded that before she fell in love with dressing up as Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins, Halloween used to be an uncomfortable time of year for Missy – precisely because of all the costumes and masks on everyone around her.

When the familiar becomes strange, what can you trust? Is anyone really what they seem to be?

I think many of us could all too easily agree with that one.

Some of us have had trust betrayed. Some have discovered dark sides to beloved figures that make it impossible to see them the same way again. Many of us – maybe all of us? – have been in a situation that we thought we understood, only to have the ground slip away under our feet like a Longs Peak avalanche.

When a false step becomes that painful, it’s hard to walk forward again. To trust. To not wonder what traps are lying beneath. The experience can be valuable to learn from, but can be taken too far – as Mark Twain put it, the cat that sleeps on a hot stove-lid quickly learns not to do it anymore, but she also learns not to sleep on cold ones.

Healing takes time, and love, and friends. Maybe especially that last. In a nightmare, you’re always alone. In the waking world, there can be someone to help.

So Heather and I took the time. The final approach to the bed was made slowly, just an invitation to sit with me and look at some things on my tablet for a while. Finally, surrounded by familiar love and utter exhaustion, Missy was ready to lie back and relax.

Mad-Eye has been put away. He might come out one more time on Halloween, but only well away from the house.

Masks are fun. But some things need to be handled face-on.

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Exit, Left

There’s been a Marian-sized hole in my heart this week.

Those of you who read this paper regularly understand. Not long ago, the Longmont Theatre Company lost one of its stalwarts, Marian Bennett. On and offstage, she touched more lives than a workaholic chiropractor. She could communicate volumes about a character with one perfectly timed gleam in her eye and make you breathless with suspense or helpless with laughter.

I want to say she’s irreplaceable. She’d laugh at that and deflate the notion with her familiar Texas twang. And maybe she’d be right. All of us are … and none of us are. We all bring something unique that goes quiet when we leave. And barring a dramatic change in the history of the world, all of us are going to leave. Life is hazardous to your health, and the rest of us have to be ready to carry on when time brings another of us into the majority.

Easy to say. Hard to feel, to acknowledge, to own.

Especially when it’s someone close.

Doubly so when it’s someone who so undeniably lived.

 

Fill  to me the parting glass,

And drink a health whate’er befalls,

Then gently rise and softly call,

Goodnight and joy be to you all.

– The Parting Glass, traditional

 

The phrase “grande dame” can be easily misconstrued. It can suggest someone on a pedestal at best, a prima donna at the worst. But it literally means the great lady. Marian herself was charmed by the title until she looked it up in a dictionary and found that one of the definitions was “a highly respected elderly or middle-aged woman.”

“That (title) made me feel pretty good until I realized they were saying I was old,” she told me with one of her stage grimaces.

But Marian really did fill a room. Some of it was physical – she was a tall woman who naturally drew attention. A lot of it was that she did her best to reach out to everyone nearby. She wanted to talk, to chat, to hug – but you didn’t feel smothered. You kind of felt like your next-door neighbor had just come over to catch up.

On stage, that translated into the most perfect sense of timing I’ve seen in an actress. She could discard her dignity entirely to cross the stage in roller skates, or gather it around her to become King Lear himself, but she was always who she needed to be, where she needed to be.

Part of that was because backstage she worked like a fiend. (She and I often drilled lines on opening night, just to be absolutely sure.) Part of it was confidence, the same confidence that led her to travel, to speak her mind, to welcome a friend on one meeting. A lot of it may have been her willingness to look cockeyed at the world, and enjoy it when others did, too.

She could be nervous or anxious, like any actor. But I never saw her afraid. You can’t be if you go on stage. You have to be able to look inside yourself and then share it with the world.

Come to think of it, that’s true off stage, too. Life is more fun, more alive, if you can live it without fear. Not without common sense (Mar had plenty of that) but without drawing back from what you might find.

Even that makes her sound like a lesson. Granted, we all are to each other. But we’re all so much more, too. We’re friends and family and teachers and neighbors, connected by more than we can see.

And when that connection is broken, it hurts. For a long time. It never quite heals the same way … and it shouldn’t. You’ve loved them, cared for them, taken on some of their memories. Of course, they’re not going to vanish from your mind and soul like an overdue library book.

They’ve touched you – and you bear their fingerprints.

Goodbye, my friend. It was a pleasure to know you, an honor to work with you.

Take your bow with pride.

I’ll see you after the show.

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The Paws That Refreshes

I’ve referred many times to our younger dog as Big Blake, about 85 pounds of rambunctiousness who’s never met a substance that he didn’t try to eat. He’s lively. He’s fun. He’s carefully watched at meal times.

He also, unknown by me until now, has an alternate identity as Doctor Dog.

No joke.

Case in point: I’ve had four gran mal seizures in my life. Blake has witnessed exactly one. But the other night when I sighed loudly in my sleep, my wife Heather saw him get up and place his head over mine, ready in case I started shaking again.

Feeling sore? I’ve had more than one migraine graced by his sudden presence, where he’ll climb up and plant himself on my legs. He’s done the same for Heather during a bad MS attack. Canine acupressure, applied by an expert.

Bad mood? I defy it to survive when you’re suddenly staring at soulful brown eyes. Or, equally likely, being thumped by a vigorous tail.

Doctor Dog is on the scene. And if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that a loving touch refreshes.

It’s a lesson more of us could be reminded of, frankly.

The author Spider Robinson once wrote about the hugs given and received by another science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon. Robinson noted that Sturgeon always graded the hugs he received as either “Letter A’s” or “Number One’s.” After a while, he and the other bystanders realized what Sturgeon was talking about – a Letter A hugger touched at the torso but separated at the waist, like a capital letter A, just leaning in. A Number One hugger gave a full-body hug, top to toe.

Given his own druthers, Sturgeon was a Number One hugger. For him, he told Robinson and the others, all of the senses were just extensions of the sense of touch.

“If you can’t touch with touch,” he said, “you can’t touch with much.”

These days, how much do we touch at all?

Oh, we like. We poke. We friend constantly across a spectrum of social media. But for all our fervent activity, the academics like to point out, most of us don’t generate a lot of cozy friendships.

The most recent study came out of Oxford. In it, Professor Robin Dunbar found that while the typical Facebook user has 150 friends, only 15 were “actual friends” and only five could count as “close friends.” It might just be, Dunbar concluded, that actual friendships needed at least a little face-to-face contact to cement them.

In other words, they need the common touch.

But let’s take a step back. What does face-to-face contact do?

It verifies who you’re talking to.

It grants instant accountability – if you act like a jerk (or like a saint), there can be an immediate reprisal.

And just like with Big Blake cuddling up, there’s a commonality born of proximity. You’re opening yourself up and receiving another who’s chosen to do the same. When all goes well, that can mean comfort and trust and welcome.

But here’s the funny thing. Contrary to the suggestions of Professor Dunbar, that sort of positive touch can happen without ever entering the same room.

In following up on the study, Newsweek talked to a photographer, Tanja Hollander. She visited 600 of her social media connections and found that 95 percent welcomed her in the door instantly. About 75 percent offered her a meal or a place to stay for the night.

That doesn’t really surprise me. I have at least three close friends I’ve never physically met. If I had the chance, mind you, I’d seize it like Von Miller going for a quarterback. But even without ever sharing an atom of space, we all qualify as Number One huggers with each other … we’ve let the other person into our space without holding back, sharing good and bad times alike, being there to comfort and celebrate.

That’s the real measure of a friendship. Whether physical, virtual, or both, the key is the same – be there. Whatever “there” may mean for the space you’re in.

Be the eyes that care. The pressure that comforts. The presence that heals.

Be Doctor Dog.

After all, there’s no better way to build a pack.

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Waiting for the Dawn

Missy let out a whoop from the window seat. Another bad guy DOWN!

“Wow!” Heather called out from the laundry room, laughing as the echoing cheer reached her. It might have reached Berthoud, now that I think about it. Right along with the flash from Missy’s smile.

No surprise. She’d been waiting for this reading night.

For the past few months, Missy and I have been traveling the ways of Harry Potter. Together, we’ve followed the world’s favorite boy wizard as he learns, grows and readies himself to face a powerful destiny.

But as one character sardonically notes, it’s not exactly a nice, easy job. He’s mocked. Mistrusted. Even tortured. He watches friends and mentors be destroyed, one by one. By the time the seventh book comes around, Harry’s on the run with his best friends, with no idea how to achieve his world-saving quest and only the vaguest idea of what that quest really is.

He’s down. Flat. Doomed. As hopeless as the Rockies’ World Series chances.

And then … ah, but you know how this part works.

J.R.R. Tolkien knew what to call it: “Eucatastrophe.” It’s a big word with a big idea. With a catastrophe, things are going well when suddenly disaster strikes. A eucatastrophe is the opposite: evil is winning, darkness has fallen, things have gotten so bad they just couldn’t get worse … and suddenly, the first beam of light breaks the clouds.

It’s the Stone Table cracking.

It’s Washington crossing the Delaware.

It’s despair turned to hope, desperation turned to triumph, suffering turned to whoops of joy.

And it’s not limited to books and movies.

Curiously, we finished Harry Potter the day before my 14th wedding anniversary with Heather. And if you think Hogwarts is an adventure and an education, it’s got nothing on marriage.

For a long time, Heather and I used to joke “When does the ‘For Better’ part start?” Not that it’s been a bad marriage – on the contrary, it’s been amazing – but for the longest time, it felt like we were part of “Exodus: The Sequel,” receiving all the plagues left over from Pharaoh.

Her Crohn’s disease flared up.

Her medicine allergies mounted.

That wonderful autoimmune condition known as ankylosing spondylitis showed up.

My epilepsy returned, for the first time in six or seven years.

Add in all the other worries of a young American couple – money-related, work-related, family-related – and it began to feel like we had Mount Meeker on our back.

I think most couples reach that point. Maybe from different paths, but it’s a well-worn crossroads.

But it does lead somewhere.

For us, it led to Duchess the Wonder Dog. To a move back to Colorado. To a medicine that tamed the worst of Heather’s symptoms (most of the time) and finally to life with Missy, with all its joys, challenges and wonders.

We had held on through the dark, long enough to reach the day.

There may be other darknesses. This world seems to specialize in them at times. Bullets in a movie theater. Fire in a forest. Skies that stay stubbornly dry, or that bear planes bent on a mission of devastation.

In times like that – times like this – all we can do is hold to each other, look for the light to return, and do everything we can to make it happen.

We stand together as friends. As neighbors. As family. As spouses. Not always daring to hope, but not really ready to quit, either.

We stand. And in that stand can come an incredible story.

Just ask Missy.

And then hold on to your earmuffs.