I walked home from work today through a mostly-empty park. I was struck by the peacefulness and simplicity of the lake. That peace was disrupted a bit later as a couple drove up the isolated road. The windows of their minivan were closed but the ugliness of their screaming spilled out all over the neighborhood.
The driver slowed as he approached a stop sign. The female in the car had her door open, presumably to get out of the passenger seat once the minivan stopped.
With a big “WELL FUCK YOU” the driver make a right-hand turn from the center lane and they sped out of sight, obscenities blasting.
Where there are minivans, there are probably kids. I had this feeling of sadness for that couple. I thought about calling the police, but I know what a waste of time it would be.
I felt grateful that what I witnessed wasn’t anything like my life.
Today marks 20 years since I married my wife. My days are quiet and boring. There is no screaming there’s no crazy driving there’s no public scenes, no guns, drugs, police, hospitals or psychiatric holds. All THOSE people are dead; they burned themselves out completely decades ago.
There’s just quiet now.
Don’t under-estimate the power of quiet. Never underestimate the value of peaceful. You can’t buy peaceful when you don’t have it.
Betwixt and between the first and second dinner seatings, the atrium, the elevators and the stairs of the Disney Fantasy are packed with people in formal dress seeking the creation of mementos.
Families huddle together in one of several lines, waiting for professional portraits.
A very little boy wearing a tuxedo face-plants, but immediately bounces up unharmed.
Two singers by the staircase perform a Marvin Gaye classic accompanied by a Mac.
At the top of the staircase, after a very long wait, a Chinese family delight in taking a picture with Captain Mickey.
Servers hand out free wine, mojitos, and juice.
Before mom can snap the shutter, one of her two handsome and carefully-posed boys bolts towards Aladdin, who has just arrived on the scene.
A teenage girl is looking for wi-fi in the middle of the ocean.
A Romanian drink server claps his hands to the music as he heads backstage to reload his empty tray.
A middle-aged couple disagree about buying pictures.
The lady who was wearing huge sunglasses when she fell asleep in the Caribbean sun turns from the front desk and I force down a chuckle after the word “raccoon” came to mind.
A man in a gold-buttoned blazer walks by holding a glass of Shiraz by the base of glass.
An older couple somehow manage to take a beautiful picture together in front of the busy staircase.
A tall and husky corn-fed family of six walk by with a swagger and presence reminiscent of that scene from “The Right Stuff“.
An adorable 5-year-old princess poses in front of a paintings of Sleeping Beauties Castle.
A guy in a monkey suit watches people, jots notes and takes pictures all the while his stomach rumbles for dinner.
I was drinking tea from my beer mug as I worked late into this evening.
It’s a mug that I purchased when I spent a January session at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter Minnesota back in 1986. That was the January the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off. “Life in a Northern Town” was the popular song of that time.
Over the years, that mug has been filled with Diet Coke, water, coffee, tea and even, on occasion beer. It’s an excellent device for mikifying Nilla Wafers. Lots and lots of Nilla Wafers. When I had next to nothing, I had that mug.
That mug finished college with me and moved to Boston. It came back to California and lived in apartments, condos and houses with me. It was a constant companion each night and weekend that I worked on my MBA.
Over the years, there has always been that fear that one day it would break.
My thing. My precious old thing.
As I rinsed by tea-bearing beer mug in the sink tonight I wondered what I would do if I lost it or it broke. What if they all broke. One good earthquake, it could happen.
What would I do? Answer: I would buy a replacement. Would I order a new one from Gustavus? Probably not.
But if all the coffee cups and glasses in the cupboard, there would be so much room. There would be so much room for new stuff. Or maybe there would just be a void.
The things we hold on to take up space. They diminish our capacity. People, resentments and memories diminish our capacity too. They take their place on the shelves our minds and sometimes they suck up the real estate in our hearts, limiting us.
So break all the glasses and the coffee and beer mugs. Consider retaining the ones most dear and them smash them to pieces…
And be free. Be free for anything else that comes along.
A few weeks back, in the final days before running the LA Marathon, I had to decide what to wear.
When I ran San Francisco last year, it was an easy call, I tie-dyed a cotton Nike running shirt and lead my inner-hippie run wild for 26.2 miles.
Originally, when I saw that the LA Marathon would be held on St. Patrick’s day, I thought I would wear the “Irish you Were Here” shirt that I purchased a while back. I had also purchased the same shirt for my sister, who lives in London. Wearing the shirt during the race would be a reminder of friends and loved ones who for various reasons (distance, other commitments, death) couldn’t be with me that day.
I had a few training runs in my Irish shirt and it worked just fine. No problems what so ever.
Brother and Sister in our “Irish You Were Here” Shirts in 2008
Then, about a month ago or so, I came across a “We Run Santa Monica” shirt on clearance at a Nike outlet for $5. I normally loath shirts like this, but as the LA Marathon ends in Santa Monica, I thought it would be a nice keepsake. A week or so later, I started thinking it would be nice to wear that shirt instead during the race.
I struggled about which shirt should I wear, the one that was perfect for this day and reminded me of friends and family both alive and departed or the one that is most apropos to the venue of the race.
So I sought council of my wife and explained the long story of the dilemma. She understood the points and struggled the same way I did and had no clear guidance. So I decided to ask The Child.
The Child paused the DVR to listen to my long tale of the two shirts. She looked at me somewhat disdainfully and said, “wear the one that is more comfortable”.
With furrowed brow, I replied, “they are both comfortable”.
Barely hiding her contempt for my obvious stupidity, she said, “they’re just shirts” and she dismissively released the DVR from its pause.
Sophie’s Choice – I Think Not
Clearly she did not understand the nature of my ontological crisis. Or, perhaps she didn’t see it as being as being an issue as I did. In her world there are no great messages being sent to the universe in the wearing of a shirt.
Maybe I put too much significance in something insignificant? Besides, who cares how you look in LA?
There are things I am really good at. I take to them like a fish to water. I enjoy doing them. I am lucky to be paid for doing those things. They are easy to me and difficult for others.
Is it possible that those things might be trap? A way of locking myself into a job, a role, a definition? You know, the guy you go to get “THAT” done.
What if the universe has other plans for me? Something else I am supposed to be doing…
Perhaps picking up that activity time and time again, excludes me from what the universe really wants me to do?
Just because it’s fun, or just because I’m good at it, doesn’t mean that it serves me. More likely that I serve it.
Time to move some stuff on to others and see if the universe does abhor a vacuum?
If you are what you do, then you don’t, then you’re not.
Tango the Dog and I were out for a very long walk. As we were approaching home I saw a beautiful little finch sitting in the middle of the sidewalk.
I expected it to fly off as we approached but it just sat there, on this chilly day; yellow chest puffed out, but not moving at all. The bird didn’t register to Tango as a living thing, because he walked right by it without giving it a sniff or trying to pee on it.
At first I walked by the odd bird, but then circled back to check on it. It was clear that the creature was dying.
I took Tango home and went back with a small shoe box in hopes of somehow saving this bird. I’ve seen it done before. I realized that by trying to save it, that I just might push it over the edge and scare it to death. It was pretty helpless there in the middle of the sidewalk, so I chanced it. I didn’t want a cat to come along and eat it.
The bird went into the shoe box with little fuss. It scooted itself until its face was in the corner. I brought it home, wondering which of my neighbors might have some birdseed. I used a little straw to put some water by its feet in hopes it would drink. It leaned over and died.
The picture above was taken less than a minute before the poor bird passed, while it literally still had it’s last breaths. I watched it’s body as life left. It was unmistakable. It has been a long time since I’ve seen something/someone die that quickly.
It’s laying in the box now. That puffed up look it had when I first saw it is gone. No bravado. No pretense. No fears, worries, nothing. It has a little hole waiting for it in my back yard under the peach tree. A peach tree which, right now, is blooming.
As I write these words, this eulogy, I am aware the other birds singing. I wonder how this particular little fellow came to be in my path today. As Lent is coming I recall quite clearly that we all return to dust eventually.
I am sitting waiting for the Child to finish cheer practice. My Ipod just randomly brought to my ears an old song from 1974, Bobby Vinton’s , “My Melody of Love“.
There are many hours days of music from the 60′s and 70′s on my Ipod, but this song is there because it I was special to my mom.
When I was about 9 my mother was “with” a gentleman by the name of Bob Allen. I remember his name because he was the the first person I knew who was on TV. Bob was the Ed McMahon to some guy behind the desk on a late Saturday night talk show on a UHF channel on Long Island.
I always knew that this song was theirs.. or at least it was her song for him. After New York we moved to Canada and then onto Las Vegas. We didn’t have much, but that that ’45 came with us. I know that the song was special, but my sense was that the little piece of plastic the music was encoded on was special too.
It was until much later that I really understood the words wrote on the 45. It was in my mother’s handwriting and it marked their time together. September ’74 marked when Mom pulled a geographic and we left New York.
I love the little x’s around the title of the song, like little kisses. It took me much longer to grasp that she never gave him the 45. She never gave it to him.
A Melody of Love
So now, 15 years after her death, I have the little piece of plastic my mother purchased for someone back in 1974. It’s safe with me. Is that silly? I don’t even own a turntable. But I won’t toss it.
We know the songs that are special to us. The songs that remind of the summers of our lives. There are those songs that remind us of friends, good times, bad times and lost loves.
Our parents have those songs too. Those special songs. The ones that tug at their memories. The songs that remind them of their summer of ’74.
So I dare you to call your mom or dad and ask them what song reminds them of someone from long ago. I double dog dare you.
Summer of 1991 was a memorable for a great many reasons reasons.
That year that Queen released the song “These are the Days of Our Lives”. I remember exactly which street I was driving on, what radio station I was listening to and all the circumstances around that weekend. It was a special song at a transitional time in my life. I carry that song and the feelings associated with that first musical experience to this day.
Another thing that I carry from that summer is a line from a Robert Subby book that I was reading about 5am one Saturday morning. The line went,
“If you are what you do, then you don’t, then you aren’t.”
I highlighted the words in blue and I had to reread them several times before I really got it.
Subby was speaking to our tendency to define ourselves in terms of one thing. For me, I was about my job. For others it was about being someone’s parent or someone’s significant other. For some it’s about defining themselves as that thing they want to be.
Those definitions are ephemeral. I can lose my job, my child can move away, my significant other can die… then what am I? Who am I when that which I use to define myself ceases?
So 20+ years later I find myself ( in alphabetical order) as an asthmatic, a bad-joke maker, a blogger, a brother, a Business Development guy, a California resident, Catholic, a chemist, a Chopin listener, a cousin, a fan of old country music, a deadhead, a diet coke drinker, a dog lover, an early riser, an English major, father, a guitar player, half Colombian, half-Irish a half-marathoner, a hockey fan, an eater of frozen chocolate cake, a husband, an INFP, a kale eater, a 30 year wearer of K-Swiss tennis shoes, a lacrosse junkie, a motorcycle rider, an MBA, New Yorker, a peludo, a pelado, a photograph taker, a poor proof-reader, a purple wearer, a recovering from Las Vegan, a rock climber, a runner, a son, a tennis player, a traveler, a twenty-four year employee, an uncle, a Whittier College Poet, Dr. Who and Yankees fan, and probably a few other things that I will remember once I push PUBLISH. None of these things define me, but in aggregate, perhaps you start to get a sense.
I feel the need to put some kind of picture of myself in this blog. Some type of self-image which represents all these pieces. These pieces have accumulated over 47 years. They could be considered fragments, broken pieces that fit together with some gaps. Alternatively they could be a set of appreciations developed over the first half of my life. Instead of a picture of myself, I will leave you with a video of Freddie Mercury.
I always knew that Freddy Mercury was a bit off-center, but I never really bothered to learn about him. I didn’t know he was gay nor did I care. I know he made some great music during the time we shared on this planet. He left me with songs that are strongly associated with more than a few times and places. He was a part of my life. He is gone but not forgotten.
So, how do you define yourself? Is it in terms of one thing or many? Is it in terms of things you do, you have or you want to be?
