Tag: impatience

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Snow Idea

A late May snowstorm carries certain obligations. Shake snow from the branches. Disconnect the hose. Rejoice that the Rockies won’t be able to lose today.

Oh, yes. And find a way to keep a young dog from losing his mind.

“Holmes, I promise, it doesn’t look any different out there now than it did 20 minutes ago.”

The deep brown eyes refused to believe me. I knew they wouldn’t. After all, the energy of a 1-year-old pup cannot be denied.

“OK, OK.”

The door opened. Holmes emerged … to a world still gray with cold and snow. The look in his eyes as he returned said it all.
“I thought you FIXED this!”

Sorry, buddy.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve discovered that our new dog’s secret identity is the Flash. (I know, Barry Allen will be shocked.) Given the chance to let out his energy outdoors, he gets the “zoomies,” dashing here, there and everywhere with a velocity that the Indy 500 would envy. Frisbees? Fun! Sticks? Even better! Squirrels? LET ME AT ‘EM!

But he’s also not all that fond of water falling from the sky. So when he hit his first spring snow with us, his pent-up energy could have easily charged a fleet of Teslas. Indoor play time helped, but (puppy and toddler parents, please join in with me here), “It’s just not the same!!!”

These days, I think many of us can sympathize.

After all, we’ve had our own routines disrupted for a lot longer than a one-day snow.

For more than two years now, COVID-19 has been a fact of life for all of us. We’ve learned about it, guarded against it, seen it touch those we know (or maybe even ourselves). At different times, we’ve masked up, locked down and learned the six-foot safety dance.  

All the while, we keep looking for the way out again.

All the while, we keep getting frustrated.

By now, we all know the cycle. Cases cool down. Caution gets relaxed. We sprint for “normal” like Holmes heading for the back door, sure that the world is different this time.

And like Holmes, we discover the world hasn’t changed that much yet. New surge. New variants Same restlessness.

After a few rounds of this, the term “normal” has started reminding me of a line from “The Princess Bride”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

We’re still finding out what normal is. It’s probably not going to look like 2019. It hopefully won’t look like 2020 (please, no). But there are two things we can know for sure:

First, normal is a moving target.  Always has been, always will be.

Secondly, discovering that normal will take time. And patience. And yes, some continued caution.

That’s not a popular thought. I don’t like it either. I’d love to be able to push “reset” and have instant resolution. We want clear definitions, quick resolution, a finish line that we can cross and celebrate.

But it’s not that neat and simple.

We have to wait out the storm as best we can. Or everyone’s going to keep getting drenched.

On Saturday, Holmes peeked out into a different world. Muddier. A little harder to navigate. But once again open to dashing and discovery. He hurried out, his faith in the world restored.

May we all be so lucky.

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In the Still of the Light

Heather’s had a lot of brilliant ideas in our marriage. This one happened to be literal.

Which is why, after 22+ years of talking about it, we’ve finally put up window lights.

Sure, Christmas was two and a half months ago. So what? These happen to be springtime lights, in pastel-pink and green. After all, March and April still have their share of cold dark nights in Colorado, and a string of lights shines just as brightly against near-certain springtime snow as it does against a semi-mythical “White Christmas.”

Besides, it’s not like we don’t have company. Drive around Longmont for half an hour or so, and you’ll still find enough dazzling domiciles to make a pretty good light run. Maybe not the outright Walt Disney Apocalypse extravaganzas (“Mad Max 13: It’s A Small World After All”), but at this time of year, even the simplest display stands out.

But it’s not about showing off. Not really. Speaking for ourselves – and possibly for many others – these winter-ish lights are born of a very spring-like impulse.

Impatience.

It’s not the sort of thing that goes on a greeting card. But it’s true nonetheless.

Why else would we rob ourselves of an hour of sleep for eight months every year?

If you’re a longtime reader of this column, you know I’m not a daylight saving fan. Part of it is because I genuinely love the nighttime – early sunlight gets me going when I need to, but a delayed sunset steals something special. Part of it is because, like many people these days, I see the time-jumping as outright ridiculous and would just as soon “lock the clock.”

It’s been argued on grounds of ecology, economy, Founding Father wisdom and more, and none of it holds up. (Ben Franklin’s famous piece on it, for the record, was a satire.) It’s not even all that necessary – left to itself, light extends into the evening as spring and summer roll on, anyway, without disrupting the suppertime of confused pets.

But a lot of us get impatient. We want the light now. Even if it means wearing ourselves out a little to get it.

I think that’s a sentiment that a lot of us can empathize with now, as we complete our first pandemic year.

We’ve been walking in the dark for a lot longer than four months. We’ve had stress and strain on every side as we try to last just a little longer, to adapt and constrain our lives until we’re sure we’re in the clear.

It’s hard. Absolutely. And every so often, there’s a temptation to jump the gun and declare “We’re ready NOW.” We know better – we’ve seen the results – but it still happens.

But it’s also a time when we share light.

In a hundred different ways, a thousand, we’ve pushed back against the darkness. From the smallest acts of consideration to the greatest acts of generosity, so many of us have kindled a light for others to see.

To the choir teacher who finds ways to share a collective joy of music online rather than let voices go silent … we see you.

To the neighbor making a necessary trip for someone who can’t safely do it themselves … we see you.

To everyone who’s been holding a family together in a time of stress beyond belief … we see you.

To you and many more besides … you are the ones who inspire joy. Who light hope. Spirits like yours are what will help us reach the other side, and will make it a place worth reaching.

We’re all impatient for the light. Let’s find the best ways to share it, the ones that make a brighter world for all of us.

And if it’s lit in pastel colors – so much the better.  

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Are We There Yet?

“No , Google, that’s not what I want.”

Not an unusual conversation under any circumstances. Doubly so when it involved Google Maps, as I wrestled with my phone screen to make at least one sensible route appear. (And by “sensible,” I meant of course, “route that I like.”)

I have nothing against the great orienteering tool of the 21st century. Most of the time, it’s been a godsend to me since I lack any real sense of direction. I’ve often said that the one direction I can reliably find is “down,” so long as I remember to leave my shoelaces untied first. It’s helped to know that the mountains are always west – at least, until I moved to Kansas for nine years, which may explain why my first attempt to find Lake Eisenhower ultimately led me to two ruts in a farmer’s field.

Ah, the good old days.

This time, though, it was being recalcitrant. I needed to visit the office of an out-of-town veterinarian friend. Google Maps was perfectly willing to take me there – so long as I used I-25, in part or in whole. Which for me, is a little like saying “You can come to the Bronco game, so long as you wear black and silver and carry a banner that says ‘Go, Raiders.’ “

I’m not totally unreasonable. I’ll use our great, great interstate when the time is right – say, 10 or 11 at night, when the cars are scarce and the exits are easy to reach. After all, there’s nothing wrong with I-25 that removing 90 percent of the traffic wouldn’t cure.

After the electronic equivalent of twisting one arm behind Google’s back, the map finally, reluctantly, gave me what I wanted. It wasn’t the fastest route there. In fact, it overshot the mark by a little bit in order to cross beneath the interstate and then double back. But it would take me on a route I trusted and get me where I wanted to go.

The fastest route is tempting. But it’s not always the best one.

As I write that last sentence, I’m tempted to look over my shoulder for the American Inquisition. After all, that’s heresy for us, and not just in driving. This is a nation that often loves straight lines, simple answers and clear-cut decisions.  And sometimes bulling through despite the complications does help us find a better way forward, like Indiana Jones in the bazaar blowing away a master swordsman with one shot.

Most of the time, though, it leads to frustration. If everything must be simple, then opponents must be crazy or wrong – after all, any reasonable person should clearly be able to see you’re correct. If things must be resolved quickly, then anyone who says “Hey, wait, what about this,” is the enemy, or at least wasting precious time.

And so discussions become debates become arguments. Positions get polarized with opponents seen as little more than cartoons. We dig in – and when you dig in, nobody is moving forward.

Health care. Immigration. Gun control. Each of us could name a dozen issues where we’ve had the same discussion over and over again without moving an inch. Many of these are high-stakes issues where people care passionately and deeply, which makes it even harder.

Most problems don’t have a single, sweeping solution. They require smaller steps on a number of fronts, as we define what we really want and what that looks like in each piece of the situation. That takes longer – and that’s hard when a sense of urgency is there. But it also means the solutions we reach are likely to be better fits, creating a path forward one cobblestone at a time.

The best route is not always the fastest. It’s the one that gets you where you want to go.

Let’s start mapping, shall we?

***

NOTE: Thank you to the many, many people who wished us and Missy well after last week’s column, “A Day In Emergency.” She’s been doing great and is as sassy and sweet as ever. We appreciate your thoughts!

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Half the Fun

They’d taken Heather’s temperature. Too high. Again.

Time to wait. Again.

For half a moment, I could feel the old station wagon forming up around us.

Longtime readers of this column may remember that my wife Heather was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about two years ago. At the time, we were more relieved than anxious, since it explained so much that had been going on – the periods of foggy memory, the occasional bouts of weakness, and so on. Better to have an enemy you know, right?

Since her MS is of the “relapse-remission” sort, we even managed to get some stretches where things were just about normal again. Well, as normal as you can get when a person also has Crohn’s disease and ankylosing spondylitis (quite a mouthful, huh), but you know what I mean. During that normal time, she and her doctor started planning ahead. A periodic infusion of a “biological” medicine might help her keep on top of things – basically, trading an occasional and very boring five to seven hours in a chair for the ability to keep the MS on a leash.

No problem. Boring medicine days are why God put the Lumberjack Olympics on TV, right?

But something always seemed to keep that medicine just ahead of us, like a will o’ the wisp in a swamp. Things like paperwork that didn’t make it through the mail, or blood tests that had to be rescheduled again and again because another chronic illness had flared up that day and left Heather unable to come out.

Finally, the preliminaries were over. Medicine Day had come.

Unfortunately, so had the Creeping Crud. You know this one. Maybe you’ve even had it, the one that keeps circling back around for another pass? It bumped up Heather’s temperature, just a bit.

Just enough to postpone the infusion. Twice.

It’s a good thing I already have a bald spot. Less hair to tear out in frustration.

That’s when my mind’s eye began to see the Volvo arrive.

When I was a kid, my parents liked to plan long vacations for all of us. This included, more than once, the Great Overland Trek from Colorado to California, with two adults and three children in the confines of one car for multiple hours.

Mom was an expert at distracting us. Dad planned out small jobs that each of us could do. But inevitably, at some point along the highway, the Official Kids’ Chorus of Summer Vacations would arise.

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

The answer was obvious, of course. Not yet. Not for a long time. (Maybe not for a very long time, if the chorus started while we were still in Wyoming.) But when the good stuff is still ahead and doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, what else can you do?

Some things don’t change very much in three and a half decades.

We still wind up on long journeys, where we’re not at the wheel. We still find ourselves watching the landscape crawl by. And again and again, it seems like each passing hour brings … another passing hour.

It can be maddening. Or at least wearying. Especially if the resolution refuses to come into sight.

All we can do is trust. That California is out there somewhere. That the road does reach a destination. It’s not easy. But it’s necessary. We just have hang on to each other, do what we can on the journey, and keep traveling.

In our case, at least I know we’ll get there. The infusion will, eventually, happen. The treatment will, eventually, begin. And then we can start on a whole new road.

I hope we packed enough snacks.