Tag: uncertainty

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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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A “Muddled” Message

As we rolled past the Christmas light pioneers of 2020, Heather began to raise the Garland.

No, not tinsel. Judy.

I promise, this year of all years it makes sense.

Ever since we began dating, Heather and I have hit the roads each winter to see what the Holiday Light World™ has to offer. We’ve witnessed the simple rooftop “landing pad,” the warmly glowing homes that belong on a Christmas card, the flashing blinkers and chasers that could launch America’s newest game show, and of course the gloriously overloaded theme parks that look ready to spontaneously combust with holiday cheer.  You know the kind: “Joy to the world, my retina’s gone!”

But when we began taking care of Missy, things moved up to the next level. For Missy, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” isn’t a song, it’s a way of life. When lights begin to appear, she’s ready to hit the road – every night, if possible. By Dec. 26, we may have made a dozen or more forays into the electric wonderland, visiting a different neighborhood every night. Sometimes we even discover brand-new neighborhoods thanks to her eager curiosity and my poor sense of direction.

Hey – if you don’t get lost in your own town at least once, is it really Christmas?

So when we rolled out on Thanksgiving night to see the early bird displays, we were ready. Heater cranked. Eyes alert. Christmas music on the radio.

Which brings me to Judy.

Somewhere around Sunset Street, Frank Sinatra began crooning the wistful strains of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” And as the tune played on, Heather sang over it with the original, darker Judy Garland version:

Someday soon, we all will be together,

If the fates allow,

Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow …

“I like it better,” Heather said as the last notes played. “Especially this year. It fits.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

When Garland originally sang it in Meet Me in St. Louis, it marked an uncertain future for the characters in the story, faced with the likelihood of an unwanted move to New York City. Outside the world of the movie theater, the reality of late 1944 faced just as much uncertainty. World War II had shown unmistakable signs of being winnable at last – the Normandy invasion, the liberation of Paris, the steady advance across the Pacific – but with months of fighting still ahead, families had to keep wondering.

When would everyone be together again?

When would things return to “normal?”

Could they?

They’re the same questions we face now. And they don’t have easy answers.

Right now, hope and fear are entwined in an anxious waltz. Vaccines have begun to appear on the horizon – three of them! – side-by-side with yet another hideous surge in the COVID-19 pandemic. Even when they’re ready, it won’t be as simple as turning on a light switch. It takes time to distribute the shots, time for the antibodies to build, time for immunity to build up high enough to finally damp down community spread.

And with every hour of that time, the uncertainty continues. For the lives of loved ones. For jobs and livelihoods. For the hope that “someday soon,” we CAN all be together.

Until that time, we have to muddle through as best as possible – not despairing, but not ignoring the reality, either. Doing what we can, where we can, how we can as we watch out for each other and endure.

For now, we hope with the song that “Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight.” We keep the light alive and prepare for the day when it will grow.

And for those who keep it alive on rooftops and front yards across Longmont – more power to you, my friends.

You’re definitely going to need the wattage.    

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Seeing Through the Walls

Big Blake’s tail didn’t thump when we walked in the room.

His eyes were … there but not there.

Even the magic word “Food!” provoked only a little attention and some reluctant movement – maybe. For a dog who had always been ruled by his stomach, that was the scariest of all.

“I think we’d better call the vet again.”

It would be his second trip in two days. Yesterday he had been moving fine and eating fine, but with rather messy results out the other end. He’d been checked out and sent home with something for an upset stomach – but this seemed like a new ballgame.

There are moments in a crisis when all the walls turn transparent. You can see all the possibilities but you have no idea which one the path leads toward. Were we looking at an intestinal blockage? An injury, from a slip as he left the car the day before? Something more insidious that had been waiting until now to show its head?

All we could do was take him in, hope, and watch the clock.

Two hours later, the call came. Two minutes later, so did our reaction.

“It looks like what he’s having is an extreme arthritis flare-up . We’ve added some pain medicine to his NSAIDs for now ….”

I think our collective sigh of relief must have re-routed hurricanes in the Gulf.

We could see the path at last. And it actually led somewhere that we wanted to be.

Now, with our furry friend beside us, we get to watch another moment of clarity and uncertainty – this time on a national scale.

As I write this, the drama of COVID-19 entering the White House is still going on. So many questions are still hanging in the air. How many more names will we hear that we recognize? What does this mean for the country? Headlines about confirmations, debates, economies, elections, and yes, very real lives – those actually infected and those affected by them and their choices – continue to whirl and spin across the landscape like a Kansas tornado.

Once again, the walls are transparent and the path unclear. The nature of the virus almost guarantees it. Some get sick and get well and get on with things. Some require much more intensive medical care. Some recover, but with serious after-effects that can hang on for months.

And yes, some die. Too many have.

Again, you’re reading this later than I’m writing this. You may already know the next chapter of the story. But if we’re still watching the news, wondering what’s next and what it will mean – well, I suppose in 2020, it isn’t all that surprising.

Once again, we have to wait. And to keep doing what we need to do while we’re waiting. Because life doesn’t stop for the rest of us.

We still need to hold out hope for the future and caution for the present, looking to a day when things can be better while taking the careful steps needed to make it there.

We still need to look to each other as friends and neighbors, giving and accepting strength.

We still need to look to our own care, so that whatever the world sends us tomorrow, we’re ready to meet it.

Ready when the path starts to re-emerge.

For now, we’re once again walking the path with our dog. Big Blake’s tail is thumping. His eyes are bright. And his attention to food is as laser-sharp as ever.

It’s the moment we didn’t dare hope for.

And we couldn’t be happier.

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2020, Get Me Rewrite

Not long ago, a friend posted a cartoon where the unspeakable horror Cthulhu arises from the sea … side-by-side with Godzilla doing the same.

“How strange 2020 is ….” Cthulhu mutters as the confused monsters try to untangle their schedules, just in time for the planet-eating Galactus of Marvel Comics to make an apologetic appearance.

“Ahem – am I early?”

No, sir. This year, you’re par for the course.

In a way, this year feels like 1989-1990 in reverse. Back then, every headline seemed to bring news that was amazing beyond belief. The Berlin Wall came down. The Soviet Union broke up. Nelson Mandela walked free. The World Wide Web took its first baby steps.  Absolutely anything seemed to be possible (which made it all the more devastating when the Tiananmen Square protests in China went so terribly wrong).

Today? Well, we’re amazed all right. Or is “stunned” a better choice of words? It says something about the present day when horrific wildfires on the Western Slope are the most normal thing that’s happened all year.

No wonder a new “Bill and Ted” movie sounds so good. Who doesn’t want a time-traveling phone booth right now?

I’ve seen some people joke about living in a horror story. To be honest, they’re not far off the mark.

And that’s more hopeful than you might think.

Horror has two key qualities: uncertainty and isolation. You know something’s coming for you, but you don’t have all the information – it’s out there, ready to come at any time, just beyond sight, building the tension. And you’re facing it alone. Maybe you’re in an isolated place, or cut off by a disaster, or simply in a situation where no one else believes you, but for whatever reason, no help is coming.

Alone in the dark. It’s the core of every scary story since campfire days.

But if you change those qualities, you break the story’s power.

Uncertainty’s the harder one. We plan and strategize and arm ourselves with information, and it undoubtedly helps. But none of us have yet been gifted (cursed?) with the ability to see the future, so our extrapolations only take us so far. That’s not an excuse for not planning, of course – just an admission that reality can be even stranger than our imaginations.

The real key is in isolation.

That’s going to sound ironic in a year where social distancing can save lives. But while physical isolation is crucial to survival, mental isolation is deadly. That’s when we stop being a community and turn into a collection of despairing or self-centered individuals.

Alone, we’re overwhelmed.

Together, we can make it.

We make it by thinking of the safety of others and not just our own ability to tough it out.

We make it by reaching out to friends and neighbors and finding ways to help.

We make it by breaking down the anger and fear that drive us into a corner and reaching for a hope that can open doors.

We make it by being us. By caring. By standing behind others when they need us, and being able to trust that someone will stand behind us, too.

It’s not easy. It takes more than just misty optimism. We have to work and build, not just wait for everything to magically get better.

But if we do that – if we look to our neighbor and do what needs doing – something pretty wonderful can arise.

Maybe it’ll even be in time for Godzilla.

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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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Here’s Mad in Your Eye

In the still of the night, the most terrifying tale of the year waited to be born.  Not “It.” Not “Stranger Things.” Not even the Denver Broncos’ quarterback situation.

Not compared to the prospect of myself with a hobby knife in one hand, preparing to perform surgery on a ping-pong ball.

Yes, Halloween approaches. And this year, a non-profit group I belong to was putting on a Harry Potter night in advance of the holiday, so a little wizardly transformation was in order. With the aid of some building, borrowing, and scrounging, I would Transfigure my humble frame into the visage of Mad-Eye Moody, hard-bitten survivor of the wars against the darkness.

It sounded cool. Even a bit nostalgic. After all, my Mom used to make most of our Halloween costumes, sending me into the world as Robin Hood, or a scarecrow, or Hercules, or a ghost, all covered over with the heavy coat that even heroes of legend require in a Colorado October.

But completing this transformation would require sharp objects. And hot glue. And abundant snickers from the unseen peanut gallery.

You see, I’m not my Mom. (News flash!) My skills aren’t fated to be the centerpiece of “Craft Wars” or “The Handmade Project” or a PBS special on domestic skill. A Comedy Central special on unintended slapstick, on the other hand, would be right up my alley.

I’m the guy who, every Christmas, loses a wrestling match to wrapping paper.

Who once turned cleaning up dog vomit into a Chevy Chase routine, including two collisions with a bathroom door.

Who famously walked offstage in the middle of a solo, in order to make an unscheduled visit to the orchestra pit by the most direct route.

As a result, my Halloween costumes as an adult had been somewhat … well, safe. An IRS agent, with a briefcase saying “I’m not Death, I’m the other one.” A Man in Black. A reporter in a borrowed trench coat.

But no one stays safe in Hogwarts. And so, the Night of the Ping-Pong Ball Sacrifice awaited. After all, Mad-Eye Moody has to have that oversized eye. A full complement of fingers, on the other hand, was clearly optional.

In a situation like this, Harry would have relied on the wisdom of Dumbledore, or the learning of Hermione, or even the gentle strength of Hagrid. Thankfully, I had something better – a lesson in the sheer practicality of my brother-in-law.

Heather’s brother Brad has helped us with more than a few home improvement projects over the years, from repairing ceilings to replacing doors. But his best advice was also his simplest, given when a little bit of force had just solved the problem of the day.

“You can’t fix something,” he said, “if you’re afraid of breaking it.”

The more I think about that, the truer it gets. And it fits a lot more than just basic repair.

Everything worth doing carries risks. And it’s easy to get intimidated by them, especially if the task is difficult or unfamiliar. The costs loom large, the worst-case scenario all too palpable, summoned to life by the words “What if …?”

But while you never take stupid risks, taking none at all is the quickest route to failure. Not every attempt will succeed. But making the attempt gives it a chance. And when the extra push clicks something into place instead of snapping it in two, you gain something worth having – a cool costume, a repaired home, a neat idea that helps a community or a nation – plus a little more confidence for the next time.

Confidence and effort won’t solve everything. But it’s where a solution can start. It’s almost magical that way.

It certainly snapped me out of my Moody blues.

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Five Years On

A lot of things can happen in five years.

Five years ago, Peyton Manning was a badly injured Colt with an uncertain future.

Five years ago, Longmont was talking about how best to prepare for a 100-year flood, given the new, larger flood plain map that had come out a few months before.

Five years ago, the Colorado Rockies were … well, maybe some things don’t change that much.

And in the Rochat household, it meant the biggest change of all. Because it was on this week, five years ago, that Heather and I first moved in with Missy.

I still can’t believe I just wrote that.

For the newcomers to this column, Missy is my wife’s physically and mentally disabled aunt, the same age as I am physically, but so much younger in mind and spirit. We became her caregivers in 2011, arriving at her home with hope and uncertainty and way too many cardboard boxes.

I’ll be honest. I was scared out of my mind.

Heather and I had talked about doing this ever since Missy’s mom had died a couple of years before. Heather was excited, even eager. I was … well, uncertain is a charitable way to put it. Questions seemed to orbit me like race cars on Memorial Day.

“What if Heather gets ill again? She’s had a lot of chronic conditions in the past …”

“What if I don’t know what to say to Missy? Sure, I’ve visited before, but living is different …”

“What if something goes wrong? What if it’s more than we can do? What if What if What if What if …”

It became an internal echo chamber after a while. The questions were no longer really all that coherent, just background noise for a rising theme.

Maybe you know what it’s like. Walking in the dark, one foot forward, not sure if you’ll find a road or a cliff ahead. Wondering if it wouldn’t be smarter to stick to the known trails, the safe odds.

Which, in retrospect, is kind of silly. Life gives no guarantees. Even the safest ground can crumble beneath your feet, while the most threatening cliff can represent a chance to fly.

And for five years, we’ve done more than fly with Missy. We’ve soared.

I’ve had the chance to discover how a woman who says maybe a few hundred words a week can fall in love with the written words of her nightly bedtime story. We’ve explored worlds from the epic sweep of Narnia to the small towns of Homer Price. She even became an eager part of the Harry Potter fandom, complete with Hogwarts blankets and a loud whoop at Voldemort’s defeat.

I’ve learned how a woman who walks through the world with halting steps finds fascination in everything around her, from a classic car parked in the next space to a cute dog walking across the street. And how she seems to know literally everyone in Longmont, even picking her long-unseen grade-school teacher out of a crowded Main Street festival.

I’ve learned how fearless Missy can be about expressing herself, right down to shouting “WOW!” in the middle of a church service.

And through her, I’ve seen the world and myself through brand new eyes.

My questions weren’t entirely wrong. Heather did develop more health problems. (So did I, for that matter.) I do sometimes struggle to understand what Missy is asking or what she wants. There are times when it feels like we’re making it up as we go along.

But what I didn’t anticipate is that it wouldn’t matter so much. That the answers we would find would be worth so much more.

That the love of a new-found family could be bigger than all the fears the shadows could hold.

Five years. It feels like forever. It feels like yesterday.

No. It feels like the springboard to tomorrow. And I can’t wait to find out what the next five years will bring.

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Horton Hears an Owww!

There’s a place in your head where your cranium sits,

And it craniates daily without throwing fits,

But sometime last December, my cranium crashed,

Making thinking as hard as a week-old Who-Hash,

 

There came first a wave,

Pounding hard as it came,

Dimming down all the lights,

Blotting out my own name,

And when the knife-pain came after,

(As knife-pains will do),

I was sure as a Cat with Thing One and Thing Two.

 

“It’s a migraine!” said I, in a voice mighty quiet.

If you don’t know why quiet, I suggest you should try it.

For a migraine’s a headache scaled up just a few,

To the factor of five hundred seventy-two!

 

Had it happened but once, well that might be just life,

But I soon found that daily I met with that knife,

And my doctor said “Hmm,” with that doctorly eye,

“Why not come place your head in this fine MRI.”

 

So it hummed and it thrummed as I lay in the drum,

And I waited to see just what answers would come,

(I also did learn in my lengthy long lying,

I could quote Alice’s Restaurant, without trying!)

 

And my doctor said “Humm,”

And she asked me to come,

To see what transpired in that rumbly drum.

 

And I saw there … a spot.

Really, almost a dot.

In the midst of my brain,

Where a dot should be not.

 

Now a spot can be deadly or nothing at all,

Just a mark of the chalk on your cranium wall,

But as we looked it over, we couldn’t help stewing,

Just what is this dot? What the heck is it doing?

 

 

Is it a lesion? A mark of MS?

A tumor that does who-knows-what-can-we-guess?

Or simply a scar from when really-young Scott

Hit his head? (I’m told that this happened a lot.)

 

I get slightly more anxious

With each passing hour,

I just want to know,

(They say knowledge is power)

As though knowledge would make all my problems go “Poof!”

“Enough with these questions now! Give me some proof!”

 

For we’ve puzzled and puzzed til our puzzlers were sore,

After all, we declare, that’s what puzzlers are for,

It’s hard to admit, faced with puzzling stuff,

We might never know “all” – we might just know “enough.”

 

And if we find something that puts down the pain,

All the waving and stabbing and pounding the brain,

I’ll be happy for now, though I’d still like to view,

Just what kind of dotting that dot likes to do.

 

So we’ll poke and we’ll pry,

Seeing if we can spy,

Things that are so important yet lost to the eye.

 

And if something be seen,

Be it yellow or green,

Or even some new hue, like blue-red-gra-zine,

I’ll tell every fact and I’ll keep you apprised.

(That’s the value of knowing the newspaper guys.)

 

But if you have a spot or a dot of your own,

And you’re longing to see more than doctors have shown,

Take comfort, though comfort may hide far from view.

It can still come to me, it can still come to you.

 

With patience and calm, may we all come to see,

Just “enough” of our needs for a small guarantee,

That somehow our problems may each be turned loose,

Now, farewell – for I’m calling a truce of the Seuss!

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Making Faces

At the risk of letting my inner geek out, I think I’ve figured out the real reason Spider-Man wears a mask.

Oh, don’t worry. This isn’t one of those oddball columns that discusses Superman’s immigration status or Batman’s patent protection. You don’t have to know the mighty Marvel footnotes in order to hang around here or care about how Hollywood treats caped crusaders. (Though if that sort of thing does light your fire, I’ll track you down for coffee later, OK?)

No, this has its roots in more familiar territory: in hospitals, in family, in simple conversation. And, as with so many things in this space, it starts with Heather and Missy.

My wife Heather got to spend the night at Good Samaritan hospital recently. Regular readers may remember that we’ve been chasing some medical mysteries worthy of Dr. Watson and not getting much in the way of answers. To move things along, Heather’s doctor suggested it was time for a sleepover, so that all the tests Heather needed could be run at once instead of strung out over weeks.

Logical. Helpful, even. Certainly appreciated.

But it did mean explaining a few things to Missy.

Despite her mental disability, Missy can be pretty sharp. Sharp enough to guess that when one of her guardians goes into the hospital and doesn’t come back right away, something may be wrong. Vanishing without explanation was never an option – not only do we respect her too much for that, but she’s stubborn enough to sit in the bay window for hours waiting for someone to come home if they’re not back on schedule.

So I took her up to the hospital in the afternoon and let her see that Heather was in good spirits. Missy lost her own mom to cancer, so we assured her that this wasn’t like that, that the doctor was just having a look around to see what was going on so Heather could feel better.

Even so, on the drive back, I could see Missy wasn’t entirely buying it. Not judging by the sniffs and red eyes and careful glances out the car window.

“It really is going to be OK, Miss,” I told her. And I believed it. But at the same time, as I tried to keep Missy’s worries at bay, I felt a sudden kinship with the ol’ webslinger.

Spider-Man, like I mentioned, wears a mask. The comics always have plenty of good reasons, starting with the need to protect his family from supervillain retribution. The fact that his real-world boss is a Spidey-hating jerk offers some extra incentive.

But masks hide more than just an identity. They hide feelings, too, especially fear and anxiety. Comic geeks know that one reason for the wallcrawler’s constant string of wisecracks in a fight is that he’s covering for nervousness, so that he can keep being a hero, to the world and himself. A mask makes that all the easier.

And it’s one that I think many of us have put on a time or too ourselves.

A good parent doesn’t lie to their child, or a guardian to their ward. I firmly believe that. But there are times when you stay brave to keep them from worrying, when your own fear and uncertainty have to stay out of sight so that you can help them through a tough situation. There are times when sharing everything you know and feel would just make the situation harder, especially when the real quest isn’t for information – it’s for reassurance.

I’ve been on the other side of this long ago, when Mom had to deal with breast cancer while my sisters and I were in grade school. We knew that Mom saw a lot of doctors and even went to the hospital sometimes. But Mom and Dad never weighed us down with stress we didn’t need. We knew we were loved, we knew we were safe, and we never knew about the anxiety they felt in the small hours of the night until much later.

There’s a funny thing about reassurance, though. If you provide it enough times, you can start to feel it yourself. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” Mom is fond of saying. I can’t argue: not only is Missy doing better, so am I. In talking to her, I was somehow talking to me, too, and making both of us stronger.

Sometimes, over time, the mask can create the hero.

And that’s a marvel more real than any radioactive spider.

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The K Word

When I used to watch “Happy Days” as a kid (and boy, does that date me), it was always hilarious to watch the Fonz try to apologize. He’d take a running start at the key word, like a verbal Olympic track star, but never quite clear the barrier.

“I’m s-s-s-s ….” (Stop, grimace for laugh track.) “I mean, I’m real s-s-s-s- ….”

But that was a sitcom. I’m a grown adult in the real world. Which is why I will have no problem saying that my four-year-old niece has been declared ready for k ….

You know. For k-k-k-k …

This is ridiculous.

Kindergarten.

Wow. It’s even hard to look at that word on the page.

I’m proud of her, of course. And objectively, it should be no surprise at all. She’s the right age. She’s been doing very well at her pre-school. When she visits, the living room now has a more focused mess that receives at least a token effort of cleanup. And she’s very good at telling our behemoth of a dog “No, Blakie!” when he accidentally whaps his gigantic tail in her face.

So she’s ready. Beyond a doubt. And it’s a good thing.

So why does it feel like the world just caved in?

I know I’m not alone here. (If I were, “Sunrise, Sunset” would be a forgotten song.) And I know a lot of it is sheer human cussedness. We like to think that our world will go on the way it is forever, never changing in any significant way. And when reality intrudes – a shrinking hairline, a growing child, a friend or relative that moves away – it’s unsettling. Sometimes it even seems to give you eyes to the future, where you can suddenly envision the new kindergartner’s first date, her college graduation, her efforts to start a career … all this from the individual who once bound the first floor of your house in yarn because it was fun.

With me, the shock is a triple whammy. Some of you may remember that 2010 was the year I became Uncle Scott in spades, acquiring two nieces and one nephew in a six-month period. (That makes it sound like “The Price is Right,” doesn’t it?) Sometimes at close range and sometimes from over a thousand miles away, I’ve watched them discover finger paints, the Blue Angels, drums, the solar system, ballet and the non-negotiability of naptimes.

So when one of them is ready to cross the bright blue line of The Big K it means all of them are. That they’re growing up. Maybe even that they’re growing away a little, with a part of their lives happening at a distance.

Mind you, I know we want children to grow. I’d be even more disturbed, and for different reasons, if the Terrific Trio of 2010 was 35 years old and living in our basement with no immediate prospects for departure. No one wants to be the helicopter relative or to be dealing with a family full of Peter Pans.

But when so much of a life has been so close, it’s hard to let go. Even a little.

Their life has changed. Your life has changed. And it’s time for you to do a little more growing up, too.

I know this isn’t the end. There will be plenty of exciting adventures ahead. Probably more than a little exasperation, too. But Heather and I watched them transform from confused babies into enthusiastic toddlers and we’re ready – if a little sobered at times – to see what’s coming next.

So go ahead, word. Bring on the k-k-k-k …

The k-k-k-k…

Sigh.

Arthur Fonzarelli, where are you when I really need you?