Tag: passion

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Bye-bye, Beebs

Justin Bieber has left the building.

No, the Beebs hasn’t died or retired or volunteered for a manned mission to Mars. (Does that count as a homecoming?) I’m speaking a bit more literally than that.

Namely, Missy’s life-sized cardboard standup of the young JB – a historic landmark in Chez Rochat – has taken its final bow.

How the heck did we get a cardboard Canadian pop star in our house in the first place? To make a long story short, Missy gets … well, enthusiastic about things. She has a lot of energy and a very straightforward approach to sharing it, possibly enhanced by her developmental disability. So when she decides she loves something, she doesn’t hold back.

Like shouting “WOW!” to an entire restaurant after one bite of peanut butter pie.

Or pointing gleefully at a Darth Vader magazine cover, like a metal detector locked onto pirate gold.

Or hugging EVERY single member of the Face Vocal Band backstage after a concert. (Pre-COVID, of course.)

So when a certain teenage YouTube sensation hit mainstream success over a decade ago, Missy was all over it. Light, dancy music has an easy time making it onto her playlist anyway, so the house was soon full of the strains of “Baby” and “Never Say Never.”

Heather and I did what parents and guardians through the ages have done – we rolled with it and tried to make it fun while it lasted. That included a birthday party with a standup of the Beebs himself, for laughs and photographs.

And when the party was over, it was clear that Cardboard Justin wasn’t leaving.

He came to occupy a corner of Missy’s room, eventually festooned with a small tiara from one of her prom nights.  Never mind that Bieber Fever had taken a turn for the weird in the rest of the nation; young-and-innocent Justin lived on in that piece of memory and real estate.

And then, like some pop-music version of Puff The Magic Dragon, things shifted.

Missy discovered Harry Potter. And Star Wars. And a whole lot of music from a whole lot of other bands, past and present. She never outright rejected Yesteryear Justin, but the grown-up JB just didn’t have the same appeal. The cardboard star faded into the background, barely noticed except when trying to explain his presence to guests with a chuckle.

Finally, the moment came. Missy’s room needed a reorganization. Her stuffed animals needed Justin’s corner. And Justin himself was starting to … fold. Just a bit.

Yes, it was time to go.

It didn’t take long. And without its extra occupant, the room seemed a little brighter. Ready for a fresh start.

Funny how that works. Some passions prove lifelong, treasured for ages. Others have their time and move on. And it can be challenging to tell the difference. We hold onto a lot of things that just take up space and energy: unused stuff, worn-out ideas, lingering resentments and more.

Some just need to be gone. Others still leave a fingerprint behind, a memory of past joys. Either way, clearing the space can let a little more light in.

So we’ll salute the fun. Look to the future. And wait with interest to see what Missy the Excited embraces next.

Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll come along Justin time.

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Snownose

In the shady recesses of the Rochat back yard, the last holdouts of snow still linger.

For a little while each day, so does Duchess the Wonder Dog.

For those who haven’t met her yet, Duchess is our eldest dog, an 11-year-old mix of border collie and black lab who’s both too smart for her own good and too shy to be believed. A rescue dog, she latched onto my wife Heather like a furry guardian angel and still gets anxious on the rare occasions that the two of them are apart.

She’s getting a little slower these days, as older dogs do. She rests a little more, takes a little longer to hear her name, trots downstairs a little more slowly when it’s time for a run or a meal. She’s hardly on her last legs yet, but those legs have less hurry and more care than they used to.

Until the winter comes. And then something magical happens.

A sparkling fountain of youth arrives.

When the nights are cold and the ground is white, Duchess is in her glory. She crouches. Buries her nose in the snow. Takes off at top speed for the next drift. Buries her nose again. Then repeats and repeats and repeats, running an Indy 500 course through the yard, looking more like a puppy than a Grand Old Lady with every snowflake.

Like Clark Kent becoming Superman, Duchess has become Snownose the Unstoppable. No fear. Just pure unadulterated joy.

It’s worth watching. Even if it does mean opening the door … and opening the door … and opening the door again in hard-freezing temperatures just to see if she’s finished up her business yet. Not only is it fun to see the young dog I remember, but I even get a little jealous of how thoroughly she can lose herself in her wonder and exuberance.

That is, until I recognize in her joy an echo of my own.

No, I don’t spend Friday nights sticking my nose in random snowdrifts. (Well, not unless the walk is really icy.) But I have noticed that when I start to write, the rest of the world falls away for a while. Even headaches of near-migraine level will get pushed to the back as the cranial supervisor declares “Sorry, no time for that now. We’ve got a fresh shipment of words coming in and we need the space.”

Maybe it’s an extreme focus on the moment. Or the power of routine for someone who’s been putting fingers to keyboards for far too long. But at its core, I think it’s a passion, a liberation, even an embrace.

It’s knowing what you were meant to do. And then doing it.

And it’s a joy I think too many of us never discover.

That’s not a condemnation. Especially these days, many of us just try to make it from moment to moment, doing what we need to do just to keep life going. For someone burdened by the “now,” asking to reach for something more may seem frivolous, even cruel.

It’s not an easy escape. But when it happens, it can give the moments meaning.

And once reached, it’s hard to resist going back.

I know an author, Christopher Paul Curtis, who wrote his first novel on an assembly line. Literally. He’d double up on hanging car doors to give a friend a break, then take a few minutes to write here and there when his buddy did the same for him.

He reached for his joy. Even in the middle of a car factory.

And it changed his world.

Maybe it’s a battle to find even five minutes. Maybe those five minutes won’t produce the next hit song, or the recipe of the year, or the business that lets you lean back and retire.

But if the effort takes you out of yourself – no, takes you more thoroughly into yourself – that’s the real prize. And the more it happens, the more you want it to happen. Even if it means fighting for that five minutes again.

When you get there, it won’t matter.

All that will matter is the chill of the night. And the waiting dance of the snow.