Tag: promises

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Beyond the Fourth

This year for Independence Day, I want to think a little less about July 4.

Heresy, I know. But let me explain.

The imagery, of course, has become iconic. The Continental Congress pledging “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” to the fight for independence. John Hancock flourishing his gaudy signature, with most of the others adding their own a month later. Public readings, bells ringing out, fireworks, dogs howling … OK, maybe that last one was added from my own experience.

It’s all very celebratory. Triumphal. Familiar.

And in times of struggle or questioning, or among those who feel left out of independence’s promise, it can also sometimes feel a little hollow.

“The Fourth of July is yours, not mine,” wrote former slave Frederick Douglass in the 1850s. Others have taken up that call at different times, seeing freedom pledged to all but denied to them, or a government in which their trust is shaky or absent.

But celebration is only a small part of the Revolution’s heritage. Maybe not even the most important one (with apologies to John Adams).

So for a moment, I want to step back. Widen the lens. And look at the months after the Declaration.

The British kept coming. And coming. And coming, in overwhelming numbers. In September of 1776, one American solider said the massive fleet off Kip’s Bay looked like all London was afloat.  

And the Americans? Mostly a familiar pattern. Fight. Lose. Retreat. Repeat. Over and over, Washington had to pull back, just to keep his army alive. By mid-December, Congress had fled Philadelphia, fearing that capture of the city was imminent.

In short, the fight looked hopeless.

But the fight went on. Because the alternative was unthinkable.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” Thomas Paine wrote, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. … Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

Hope in hopeless times. Resolution in the face of seeming defeat. Standing up when it’s called for, whatever the cost.

That’s the Independence Day message I want to remember.

And it’s one that we can all inherit and pass on.

Even in the times when the nation is divided. Even by those who feel little reason to celebrate. And even in days when an array of crisis upon crisis seems to grind the soul with teeth of stone.

We’ve seen these times. We were born in these times. And we know how to face them.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now: the Revolution never truly ended. There is always more to do, always more to build to achieve an America that can match its ideals. Sometimes we stall. Sometimes we go backward. But the fight goes on.

That’s a promise that rings louder than any bell and shines brighter than any firework. A declaration that lives not in ink and parchment, but in each of us.

Happy Fourth, everyone. Make it what you will.

And then do the same with the nation.

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Looking Forward

This year, I resolve to be irresolute.

OK, I’m being a little bit of a wise guy. But only a little bit. After all, we have the New Year coming up. And next to drinking, partying, and lying about staying up until midnight, the most popular New Year’s activity is the Oh-So-Solemn Resolution.

“This is the year I lose 30 pounds.”

“This year, I’ll finally write that novel.”

“It’s time I learned to play guitar.”

“Aliens are out there, and I’m going to catch them on camera.”

Well, maybe not that last one. But this is Boulder County, so one never knows.

About 45 percent of Americans make at least one New Year’s resolution, a recent study found. About 8 percent actually keep them. I’ve been part of both groups. If I kept every New Year’s resolution I’d ever made, I’d cook like Julia Child, play guitar like Andres Segovia, and have more New York Times bestsellers than Stephen King. (Oddly enough, one of the resolutions I did keep – to lose weight – was a springtime promise, made long after Baby New Year had been put down for a nap.)

In a way, it’s understandable. When a resolution is made because you feel the need to do something, more often than not it gets done. When a resolution gets made because you know it’s the Official Time To Make Resolutions … well, you get a lot of resolutions and not much else. It doesn’t mean they won’t get fulfilled eventually, but without a conscious need, Life Happens.

So, I want to try something a little different as we approach the boundary line of the year. Rather than look forward and make a promise, I want to look back and learn a lesson. When I do that, two things jump to the top of the curriculum:

1) I have no idea what lies ahead.

2) I can’t do it all myself.

Number one may seem too obvious to mention, but 2015 pounded it home in a big way. This was the year I got my first-ever leads at the Longmont Theatre Company, including one in a show I never tried out for. It was the year that Heather first learned she had MS and the year that I first met the power of migraines. We had to work out new rules for life, even as we kept on with what we already had: the wonders of Missy, the wrinkles of a new job, the joys and stress of a family wedding.

And thus – number two. The Ringo Starr lesson: “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Maybe the hardest one of all for me to learn, year after year after year. But no less essential for that.

I can’t do it all. I want to. Heaven knows I try to. But until science discovers full-body human cloning and does away with the need for sleep, there’s simply no way that I can be everywhere I’m needed doing everything that needs to be done. As I’ve said here before, I hate not having control – and I know that any of it I think I have is an illusion, subject to revocation without warning.

That means I have to ask. And to accept. And to be grateful. Friends and family and co-workers have all been there at different points to make things happen. I’ve still taken on more than I probably should, partly because I’m stubborn, partly because friends and family and co-workers can’t be everywhere, either. But they’ve been a lot more “everywhere” than I could ever be alone.

So I’ve learned partnership. And pacing. And even just taking care of myself; the hardest thing for any caregiver to learn, really. Vital, though. If your own foundations aren’t solid, how can you support anyone else?

Those aren’t bad lessons to jump into 2016 with. Be ready to be surprised. And don’t meet those surprises alone.

Maybe those are resolutions of a sort. And with a year of learning behind them, maybe they’ll be easier to keep.

But easy or hard, it’s time to turn the page.

Class is back in session.

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Tower-ing Achievement

As soon as Labor Day weekend hit, my wife Heather packed up her suitcase, hit the road and headed for Wyoming.

Gee. I didn’t think my puns were that bad.

No fear. This was a trip 25 years in the making. Once upon a time in high school, Heather and her grandma had gone off together to visit Devils Tower. Unfortunately, visit it was all they managed to do; the weather had been so foggy they could barely see the famous monument.

Someday, they promised each other, they were going back. And one day, after my own grandma died, Heather realized that a lot of “somedays” had passed.

The time would be now. Lest it become never.

Kilkellys can be like that.

 

Kilkelly, Ireland, eighteen-and-sixty,

My dear and loving son John,
Your good friend the schoolmaster Pat McNamara’s

So good as to write these words down …

— Peter and Steven Jones

 

“Kilkelly, Ireland” is one of those quiet songs that still makes me swallow hard when I encounter it unexpectedly. It describes a series of letters between an Irishman and his son John in America, drawn out over 30 years. The letters are never harsh, always loving and full of the family news of the day: the latest children, which relatives are doing well or getting in trouble, how the crops in Ireland are going from bad to worse.

And almost always, there’s a wish in closing that John might find a way to come home again.

Years pass. Then decades. And one day, John is the age that his father was when they parted, now with his children grown and thinking he might finally come for a visit at last.

And then the next letter arrives.

 

Kilkelly, Ireland, eighteen-and-ninety-two,

My dear brother John,

I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner to tell you,

That father passed on ….

 

Ever since the first time I heard that song, I’ve referred to “Kilkelly moments.” Times where you realize there is only so much time, that promises don’t keep forever, that the passing world can undo the best of intentions.

That chances with those you love should be grabbed while they can.

Heather and her grandma saw that moment. And they grabbed it. The result was a weekend road trip with all the fun and chaos that implies, including crazy drivers, fatigue-driven giggles and a lost-and-found wallet.

And yes, they finally saw Devils Tower.

“Now I understand why so many Indians thought it was sacred,” Heather’s grandma said as they got close.

Funny enough, I understand something as well. A facet of the song that eluded me for years.

Namely, that there’s two sides to a Kilkelly moment.

Even while overseas, John remained close to his father. He sent pictures, he sent news, he even sent money from time to time. And when time finally ran out, it was John who had been at the front of his father’s thoughts all along.

 

And it’s funny the way he kept talking about you,

He called for you at the end.

Oh, why don’t you think about coming to visit?

We’d all love to see you again.

 

With an ocean between them, John and his father had still “visited” each other for 30 years. Enough to keep the bond close, even if it wasn’t enough to keep the last promise.

With Devils Tower still a memory in the fog, Heather and her grandma stayed close. There have been visits and songs and memories in plenty over the last 25 years, including the 16 or so that have passed since I came into the picture.

Even if the second trip to Wyoming had never happened, that bond would still have been there.

It is important to seize the Kilkelly moments before they pass. But it’s also important to remember how many moments there have been in between. How much of a life and a love has grown up.

That’s what gives a Kilkelly its poignancy. We want to keep every promise we make to those we care for, however impossible it might prove to be. But it’s that love those promises grow in that is the greatest treasure of all.

Remember the promises. Honor them when you can. But remember also why they became important in the first place.

That’s a meaning that even time can’t take away.

And a greater monument than even Wyoming can offer.