CHRISTMAS 2014

                                                           

                                                                                               

CHRISTMAS 2014

Somehow, I think it’s getting a little harder for me to write about Christmas each year. Sometimes I’m not always sure what were talking about, when we talk about Christmas. I know the true meaning and why-- but I think it’s evolving to a point where the birth of Christ, will just be an after-thought, lost in the crush of Holiday parties and mad gift giving. It’s like celebrating your own birthday with a lavish party but no one ever gives you birthday wishes-- they just say-- “what a party huh?” So you say, “This is a free country and you’re able to celebrate anyway you want to,” and you know what? Your right and I have no problem with that. My problem comes when you call it a Christmas Holiday and yet have no intention of recognizing Christ’s birth as the reason for the holiday.

            But in the true spirit of Christmas, I must get beyond this and not let others spoil my Christmas. If I’m to be a scrooge, then I only add to my dissatisfaction. It seems ironic but the Christmas’s that stir my soul the most are the ones when I was so poor and not the opulent ones that came later in life. Maybe it was because those poor Christmas’s came with a huge measure of sacrifice from my parents and others and sacrifice is so often, synonymous with love. How easy it would have been for them to say, “Let’s just skip the whole thing.” However they didn’t do that because they knew if I was to see the real meaning of Christmas, then it had to happen. They knew as a child, maybe I wouldn’t understand their sacrifices but they also knew that there would come a day when I would-- and believe me it is here and now. Meager or not it wasn’t meant to be about gifts; they were just an afterthought. It was really about Jesus’ birth and us. Dr Seuss said in ‘How the Grinch stole Christmas.’ “Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas—perhaps-- means a little bit more.”

            Christmas for me evokes so many memories. I look at pictures from Christmas’s past and although those sometimes-grainy photos are really just moments frozen in time, the stories they tell are still so real, so fluid. For me at least they are truly a hallmark moment. Nostalgia-- at least for me-- brings comfort and hope from the past and that enriches my present and helps me to make what is happening in my life today, okay and more bearable.  If Christmas still weren’t important to me anymore-- then I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?

            So its Christmas 2014 and I really hope that it’s one that you will never forget. That one of the reasons will be because little boys and girls will have a dream or two come true from under your Christmas tree and you will be the happy giver. That somewhere in a house of worship, you will sing Silent Night and remember the reason for the season. That someone you love will blow you a kiss from across the room or snuggle with you in the corner of the couch in front of a fire and it will all be so perfect and someday sixty years from now, those same little kids will look at a picture from that very night and say. “That was the best Christmas ever.

CHRISTMAS 1950

Growing up in the fifties there was no such thing as an artificial Christmas tree. I don’t even remember a Christmas tree lot in my hometown but they were popular in the big city, I guess. My father, on this particular holiday, of which I speak, borrowed a page out of “Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation,” although the script was yet to be written for many years. I had to keep telling him. “My name is Mike, not Rusty,” but maybe that was just a coincidence.

So a couple of weeks before Christmas, dad, mom and all eight of us kids would pile into the old family sedan and we would wander the countryside, looking for the perfect Christmas tree. Dad’s philosophy was that any land that didn’t have a fence around it was public domain and the trees were there for the taking. In fact, it was an honor for any tree to be chosen as a Christmas tree and he would mutter something about those rights granted to us by our forefathers in the constitution. I was never able to quite figure out—if, what he said was true-- why did one of us kid’s always have to be a lookout-- and how come, what should have been a fun family event, always turned into a snatch and grab. There was no time for measurements either, as Dads reasoning was, we could always make the tree fit the room. Myself, sitting in the back seat of the car that day could not help but notice that Mom and Dad had a remarkable resemblance to Bonnie and Clyde.

On this particular year of, which I speak, the tree we brought home, tied to the roof of the old Plymouth, could have decorated Rockefeller Square. Most of the treetop was gone by the time we got home, being drug down the highway behind the car. The rest broke off while the tree was being squeezed through the front door, which I can only describe as trying to push a corncob into a Pepsi bottle. Because the base was ten inches in diameter we dispensed with the inadequate tree stand and put it in a washtub. The top of the tree-- after trimming-- had a similar size diameter as the bottom, so the angel that was supposed to be perched up there, alone on a spindle, had a virtual stage for itself, Rudolf, Santa, G.I. Joe and a Raggedy Ann doll.

The girth of the tree took so many lights to adequately light it, that we were only allowed to turn them on for a few minutes each night and then only after unplugging every other electrical appliance in the house. I personally witnessed the lights in the neighbor’s house dimming and the streetlight in the alley going out when dad plugged the tree in. Also because the living room was not that big, most of the family had to sit in the dining room when we gathered around the tree. Dad seemed to be especially proud that year because we heated with wood and he was heard to say after Christmas, “There was a quarter cord of wood in that Christmas Tree.” Yes Virginia, my family was one of the original recyclers. So with those fond memories of Christmas past in mind, this year I decided to go cut a tree myself and get back into the spirit my father tried to instill in all of us. My neighbor has so many spruce trees she won’t miss one but if she does, I have my story already concocted. I will tell her it was an old man in a 36 Plymouth with a whole raft of kids and he went that way and no she cannot come see my Christmas tree.

WISHES

                                                            

If you had one wish, what would you wish for and don’t tell me you would wish for more wishes. I have asked myself that question so many times but always the answers were not forth coming. Maybe its because I am a realist and had little faith it would happen and likened it to the old English proverb that said,” If wishes were horses beggars would ride, if turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side,” That little ditty doesn’t make much sense but it does show the folly of trying to get something for nothing. Even to win the lotto you have to buy a ticket. To those who believe in a higher power, even asking for divine intervention, takes some effort on your part. You have to at least ask and practice a little faith.

I guess before we formulate a bucket list of wishes, we have to ask ourselves what is really important in this world and what isn’t and what is really possible? I used to wish and pray a lot for world peace. But then reality bit me in the butt and I grew to realize that in all of the annals of history in this world, there has never been world peace and there never will be. That somewhere, somehow, what we perceive as an evil person is trying to inflict power over some lesser members of society. There is an old Christian hymn that begins with,” Let there be peace on earth and let it began with me.” I have grown to realize that is probably all I can hope to accomplish in my lifetime when it comes to peace and believe me there are days I struggle with even that but in the end-- I am the one, I am trying to please. Maybe my wish should simply be that I could live in peace with myself.

I could wish for riches but what good would more riches do me? When I look at the world around me and all of the struggles taking place out there personally, and amongst family and friends, I realize how blest I have been. I know now, that had being rich, been one of the most important things in my life, I probably would have been rich. All to often there is a price to pay with being rich. A price that would have gone against many of the things I believe in. My late wife taught me a great lesson in life. For you see, she was a very private person who led by example. She worked hard always and loved hard too. In the end, she didn’t take to the grave with her, ideals that money can’t buy but left them to keep on giving every day in her family and friends. Maybe my wishes should be for things that I can personally make happen because that’s how wishes come true. If wishes just magically appeared to all who wished for them-- who in the world would not have all they ever wanted?

I have always thought that unless you are soliciting someone for something, like kids do at Christmas time, then your wishes are probably more like prayers. If you’re not directing your wish to any one person here on earth—then I ask-- who’s left? On the other hand, to have some celestial power grant you all of your wishes is to take away your self made dreams and ambitions. Life is much more worth living when you have goals you want to achieve and celebrations you want to have and you get there by yourself. That’s called self-satisfaction.

Now if your wish is for me to shut up. Then I will—There, you got your wish.

WATER

There is something mystical about a body of water that can appear so peaceful sometimes, yet turn into something so menacing at other times.  Have you ever watched, on a peaceful summer night when that crimson sun is setting low over the lake, down at that place where the sky, sun and water seem to simply melt together? It seems to be an only fitting and proper ending, capping off another perfect summer day. It is so conclusive and you almost expect that at some point, when and where they meet, for sky, sun and sea to whirl around and blend together—like those tiny glass pieces and beads in the end of a kaleidoscope—forming a spellbinding picture and a brief parting encore to the day, and then quietly fading away into a starlit night.

Then there are the days when the gray clouds seem to roll and churn out of a cold angry wind. Together, they make the water heave and boil in some kind of grim, macabre partnership, and the waves seem to stretch and reach out with white watery tentacles from the greenish black depths of the lake, grasping for a chance to tear away at anything that gets in its way. It pounds the shoreline in relentless fury, trying to devour the very land that holds it in and somehow seems to be the only thing impeding its forward progress.

Yes, water can make quite an impression. Without it, you’re dead in three days, and all the creatures on the face of the earth would not survive. We clean ourselves with it, we journey to other lands on it, and we use it as a gigantic moat to protect our shores from intruders. It evaporates and then comes again as rain to grow our crops and cleanse the earth. It’s the gentle tinkling of ice against glass that ushers in an afternoon cocktail. It’s the snow in the mountains that feeds the rivers—that feed the desert valleys and makes them bloom. Without it there would be no waterfalls, no rainbows, “Where bluebirds fly.” No “Up the lazy river by the old mill run.” No “Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water.”

Every drop of water that was on this earth a million years ago is still with us. It has been used over and over again. It has been evaporated, condensed and rained. It has been boiled away, condensed and rained. It has been sweated, condensed and rained. The tears that were spilled from the cheeks of a child in Kenya can, theoretically, come back as raindrops over India a few days later, or lie deep in an aquifer for centuries before coming out of some spring. It has been frozen for ten thousand years, melted and drank, and yes, it’s been consumed by animals and peed back out onto the earth in the greatest recycling effort that has ever existed.

But there has been a change. Mother Nature has, for years, been the filtering device that cleans and recycles our water. She has taken muddy rivers water, full of debris, and brought it back from the bowels of the earth sparkling clear, cool and refreshing. But then man, in his infinite wisdom to control the growth of crops and reduce the insects that eat them, and the weeds that crowd them out, has introduced chemicals that can no longer be filtered out and now we get to wash with it, and drink it. Just something else we have left our kids and grandkids.

THANKSGIVING 2014

                                              

I wanted to write about Thanksgiving because I feel it’s becoming a somewhat forgotten holiday. It used to be a long, late fall weekend, when with friends and family we stopped everything to reflect on the things we were thankful for in life. Although a lot of us still make an attempt to celebrate, the real day has been lost, somewhere between Halloween and Christmas. You see outside of some extra groceries, there isn’t a lot the merchants can do, to make a windfall off of Thanksgiving. Yes, like it or not, money drives everything in our society now days. On a side note, I saw today that my Christmas cactus is blooming, two months ahead of schedule. It too, can’t wait

Let’s have a little test here and be honest with yourself. Does spending a weekend with yourself and your loved ones really turn you on? Or does crashing the crowds on Black Friday, looking for that ultimate bargain, seem more like what’s up your alley? Maybe it’s a chance to reconnect with grandpa and grandma and go for a slow walk on a warm November day. Or does six hours of football seem like the better choice? Or is it just a four-day weekend and it doesn’t matter why? It’s four days off.

There was time when I used to think, more like a lot of people think on Thanksgiving about all of the busy times but then something told me to pay attention, because Thanksgiving was important way then and it still is now. I think back when I used to pick up my handicapped brother who was all-alone and bring him out to our house for dinner but I can’t do that anymore because Ken passed away this summer. I fondly remember my dear wife getting up at six in the morning to get that bird in the oven and make that stuffing that got you drooling just thinking about it but I can’t do that anymore either because she too has gone to heaven. I used to enjoy the house being full of my family and their families and little kids playing games with their cousins and siblings, reconnecting with each other, if only for a few short hours but I can’t do that anymore either, because they all grew up and moved away.

This year I will probably go to my sons place for Thanksgiving. It’s the closest family I have. He feels about family like I do and I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful I can still drive myself down there and for being able to write about this. I’m thankful for my health and for Pat who has made my life exciting again and giving me a new purpose in life. I am thankful for my faith and the friends I have made. For the readers who take time to talk with me. I hope all of you have someone, someplace to enjoy the holiday with. But most of all I would be remiss to not say, I’m thankful for the love in my heart that continually trumps the evil this world has chosen to tempt me with.

 I am especially thankful this year because at least for a while, while living through life, I made some memories and no one can take that away from me-- at least not until my mind is stilled. On my living room wall there is a picture that means so much to me. It’s a family picture of my family. It was taken at Thanksgiving four years ago when she was still with us. I feel a sense of pride and achievement in it because you see way back when-- before all of this ever came to pass---it was what I wanted so much and I’m so thankful it came to be.       

NEARING THE END OF THE ROAD

                                               

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my neighbors and dear friends moving away and how painful that was going to be for them and me. Twenty-seven years of memories to sort through for both of us but what seemed to me to be the most egregious is--- this was because it had to be-- not because someone needed a change of scenery or was taking a new job. They used to say, “when life handed you lemons you made lemonade” but there comes a time and a place when you have all of the lemons you can tolerate-- and there is really nothing you can do with them-- but eat them.

Their place sold quickly and last Saturday was moving day. The yard was full of trucks pulling trailers and for a while it was family members totting out boxes and furniture and everyone was busy but then in the late afternoon, I saw him standing in the yard looking wistfully over the lake. I used to see him crying on the end of his dock on Labor Day because the end of summer was so painful for him. I could only imagine what was going through his mind now. An old man, alone with his thoughts.

All through our married lives we seem to bounce from place to place. It’s an apartment at first, to a starter home, to something much better. Maybe two homes or a motor home or a condo, someplace warm in the winter. But all of the time, the clock is ticking and the time will come when all of this just seems too much to take care of and worry about. Money can become a problem, as does your health. Then that sad decision comes that its time and that last move looms on the horizon. All of your life you were moving on up and had your sights set on even bigger things then you now have but suddenly you realize you’re at the top of the hill, the end of the road and you don’t want to think about what lies ahead, even though you know.

I remember when my wife was diagnosed with cancer and we knew from the start there was no cure but we hoped and prayed that tomorrow would be no worse then today. That the chemo was working and we weren’t going to get too hung up on what we knew was coming but live in the day-- in the moment. Then one day she went for her treatment and they took us to another room that was more like an office and the doctor wasn’t making eye contact with us anymore. He explained it was the end of the treatments, the end of the road. As a terminal cancer patient you have to sometimes feel like a condemned prisoner on death row who X’s out the days on a crude calendar drawn on the wall, until he takes that last lonely walk. 

We all have our dreams and aspirations and yes even our end of life dreams about how we would like to tie it all together and go out in a blaze of glory but you suddenly realize that you have so little control over that. I can only imagine what it felt like for my neighbor to drive down that driveway, one last time and know that what is up there in his rearview mirror, is what was once in his windshield, twenty seven years ago. I walk around my place and every corner, every nook and cranny, harbors some memory of a time or event that took place there. True you do take the memories with you but it’s not the same. It’s not the same without the cries of the loons, the waves lapping the shoreline, the painted sunsets over the still waters and even when you close your eyes, the smell of the lake. A.A.Milne of Winnie the Poo fame said, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

VETERANS DAY

                                                                                    

The year was 1953 in the town where I grew up, Staples Minnesota. Mostly a railroad town but still a sleepy farming community too. I was twelve years old and at that awkward age-- somewhere between a boy and a young man. It was early spring, the icicles were melting and the water was running in the streets. The sap was running and buds on the trees were swelling in anticipation of summer. It was too early for baseball and to late for skating and I was bored with winter and waiting for summer as I wandered uptown daydreaming.

That late afternoon I had walked up to the depot to watch the train come in. The son of a railroader, the trains were in my blood. This was still the days of the steam engines and I had never grown tired of watching those behemoth, black steel steam engines, belching steam and smoke as they chugged into the station pulling a line of box cars that seemed to stretch for as far as the eye could see. This train was a passenger train however and right behind the coal and water tender there was a baggage car. On one end of the car was the storage for all of the boxes and baggage, with a roll up door and on the other end was the U.S. mail.

On this day I had perched myself, not in front of the depot on those red cobblestones but on one of the baggage carts, that sat under a canopy on the east end. They were green with red wheels and looked like huge wagons, made to carry big loads. The steel wheels would click on the bricks as they were pulled around the depot apron. I had watched them load them many times but never with what they were going to be carrying today. The door on the baggage car slid open and there were two men standing there at attention in blue and red uniforms, white hats with rifles by their sides. Between them on the floor was a flag draped casket.

I heard a noise to my right and there was a hearse, it’s back door wide open like a big yawning mouth. The noise I had heard was an elderly woman sobbing into her husbands shoulder as they made the transfer. I shrunk back trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The honor guard stood at attention until the body was transferred to the baggage cart and then into the hearse. I looked up the tracks and the engineer and the fireman were also standing beside the engine, their caps over their hearts.

From studies at school I knew we were at war in some place called Korea, but then it seemed like we had just got out of a war and now another had started.  I was immune to the effects of it all, at my young age-- that is until that day. It was the day that I realized what war could really do. That this young man had come home at last, after giving all he had to give, for his country. That his grief stricken parents had given their son, and others gave someone’s brother, someone’s cousin, someone’s friend to keep our country free. This image has stayed with me all of these years as if it was yesterday. I think of it every time I see the Staples depot and now if you stand where I stood and look to the east you can see the Veteran’s memorial, beside the railroad tracks and I think how fitting.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

A few days back, I was asked if my father believed in corporal punishment? I asked if that meant getting a spanking and they said “yes.” Under that definition I guess he did. For the most part I respected my dad too much, not to do what I was asked to do. But it was the things he never told me not to do-- that I did-- that got me in trouble a couple of times. His spankings were never a very painful thing but more of an embarrassment to me. He wasn’t a violent man, even when he had to spank.

I am grateful that my dad disciplined me. I think in the end it made me a better person. As a father I don’t recall ever-getting physical with my kids except to pinch their shoulders to tell them “That’s enough,” In retrospect my kids were pretty good kids but I give their mother most of the credit.

Fast-forward to today and all the buzz is on corporal punishment because some children have been severely punished, even to the point of death. The excuse that you were treated that way when you were young, sounds like something some defense lawyer dreamed up. When you’re twenty-nine years old and still believe that to be so--- you must have been living behind a rock.

Then we have the people who don’t believe in even raising their voices to their child. I was in a church the other day and the women in front of me had about a four or five year old girl who kept kicking the seat in front of her. She was told to “stop that” numerous times but she smiled at her mother and kept on doing it. In effect the child was telling her “I will do it if I want to.” Finally her father reached over and held her legs down to the seat. Then the child started crying and went to her mother for support. The father got a disgusted look from his wife for making the girl cry. Right then and there that child found out how to play her parents against each other. I’m sure that won’t be the last time she uses that tactic.

Grand parents are also on the outside looking in. My wife used to go shopping with our grandkids and their mother. The kids ran wild in the store. When my wife tried to intervene she was told, ‘if the kids needed correction that wasn’t her job. “ When my wife said, “Someone needed to correct the kids” she was told “kids will be kids.” I think the mother knew the same Lawyer I talked about earlier. My wife had no choice but to quit shopping with her when the kids were along.

I have known people who could freeze their kids in their tracks when they said “no” or “stop that.” To me that’s a sign that somewhere along the line, respect for their authority, was established. I don’t believe in hitting your kids anywhere but on the butt and then only with an open hand and then when all else has failed. If it’s done right and only when verbiage fails, you won’t have to do it very often. Respect for your parents or a guardian is the first lesson in respect for others of authority. Teachers, coaches, grandparents, anyone who is instrumental in working with your kids. Your inability to teach your kids respect, will only hurt them in the long run. You’re not doing them any favors by trying to always be their best friend.

MORE ABOUT MOLLY AND DOGS

                                   

I have said several times, “I never met a dog I didn’t like.” I have spent all of my life attached at the hip, to some kind of a dog. As I write this, Molly my Lab, lies curled up on my feet under my desk. Dogs, like humans are emotional wrecks. They crave attention and they love to please you but like humans, they have their whims. No matter what they have in mind to do one minute, the appearance of a squirrel or rabbit in the yard, trumps all of it. They live in the moment and that’s something I wish I did better. We get to wound up sometimes in stuff that isn’t that important.

 Mollie loves to help no matter what the project. Last spring after the ice went out I was putting in the dock and was in the lake with my waders on. I was at the limit for depth with the water about an inch from the top of them, tightening up the dock bolts. Molly was swimming around supervising the whole project when I think she got tired. She swam up behind me intending to rest her paws on my shoulders. Instead she pulled the back of my waders down and in came about forty gallons of ice cold water. I think only dogs could hear, the scream I let out

Last winter I was asleep one night when Molly woke me up whining beside the bed. She usually sleeps out in the other room and I rarely hear from her until morning, I was irritated with her for waking me up and told her to go lie down. But she was insistent and won’t go away. So thinking she had to go outside I got up to open the door. Then I heard this noise in the lower level. Investigating I found my C.O. detector off in the furnace room, behind a closed door.  In my bedroom I was not able to hear it but Molly heard it and she knew something was wrong.

When I was on the fire department we had a house fire in the middle of the night. The fire started in an enclosed back porch, from a space heater that the owner had left to provide some heat for a dog and her newborn puppies. He wasn’t home when the fire stated. After the fire was out the distraught owner wanted us to find the bodies of the dogs so he could take care of them. There were no dogs there, so we expanded our search. Curled in a dry sump basket in the basement we found the dog and her six pups. She had somehow pushed opened two doors and carried her pups to the lowest spot she could find in the house. She was singed from the heat but otherwise they were all okay.

Not a week goes by that I don’t read of some child being abused or worse. I have never to my knowledge known a dog that abused hers or some other dog’s pups. Yet we as humans, have instances of abuse of our children, on a regular basis. Most animals would fight to the death to protect their young. A lot of the child abuse happens when children are left to be cared for by bad people. There is nothing more precious then your own helpless child. Animals know this, why can’t we figure it out? Mark Twain said, “Of all the animals, man, is the only one who inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.” He also said, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, we would stay out and our dogs would go in.”

SO YOU HAD A BAD DAY

                                            

This morning I followed my usual routine and made myself a cup of coffee upon rising. Then I went out to the road to get my newspaper. On the way, I found a small sinkhole in my driveway, so I went back to the garage to get my shovel. I went back to the hole and repaired it and then took the shovel back and put it away. Back in the house, after I had taken my shoes off, I realized I forgot to get my paper. Shoes back on, I went and got my paper but on the way back my dog was sitting by a tree barking so went to see what the ruckus was about. After seeing that it was a porcupine in the tree I set my paper down and went to get the dogs leash and took her back to the house. Took my shoes off and realized my paper was still down by the tree. Shoes back on I went and got my paper and finally made it in the house. Coffee was cold so I put it in the microwave. Went to the bathroom and came back out to the kitchen to get coffee and discovered I had set microwave for ten minutes instead of one minute and coffee all boiled away. Soaked up the mess in the microwave with an old towel and put the towel out on the back porch. Dog followed me out and went back down to the tree with the porcupine. Back in the house to put shoes back on to go get the dog again. When I got back to the tree my dog wasn’t there.  I went back up to the house and the dog was sitting in the porch chewing the coffee out of the towel I set outside. Back inside I made a fresh cup of coffee and set it on the counter. Hit the cup with the back of my hand spilling it all over my newspaper. Went back to bed.

I once observed one of my old uncles sitting in a chair rocking slowly. I noticed he had one red sock and one black sock and asked him if he was aware of it. He just smiled, never looking down, and told me had had a split personality and this morning they couldn’t get together on what color socks to wear. It wasn’t worth the argument he said, “So hence the two different color socks.” Then he winked at me and said, “your day will come.” I got news for you Uncle. I think it’s here.

I once cut a candy bar in half for two of my grandsons. I didn’t quite gauge the halfway mark accurately so one piece was bigger than the other. The older grandchild who was about eight got the bigger piece. The younger one, who was about five then, started crying and asked me if I liked his brother better because he got the bigger piece. I told him it had nothing to do with it and what would he have done if he had to pass out the candy? He told me he would have given his brother the bigger piece and kept the smaller one for himself. I told him “You got the smaller piece so quit crying and eat your damn candy.” Years after that I would tease him about that and he would just smile. But he didn’t forget. A few weeks ago I was at his parents house for a barbecue. The young man is now sixteen and when I asked him to grab me a steak off the grill he came back with a platter of steaks and gave me the smallest one he could find. I looked at the steak-- and then at him standing there smiling and saying nothing—and yes I knew-- it was pay back time.

IT'S THE FIRST DAY OF FALL

Yesterday {Sept.22nd} was the equinox—you know, that day of the year when night and day share the same amount of time. Today is almost a carbon copy of yesterday. However, now there is a difference. They’re not equal anymore. One is longer than the other and it’s not the good one this time. I spent some time on the porch swing today, looking out over the lake. The trees on the shoreline across are changing into their colors of autumn.  There is a south breeze creating little ripples on the lake, and pushing already-fallen leaves across the surface, like tiny sampans in the orient. If you sniff the air, there is a musty smell from the woods, reminiscent of dying vegetation and moldy logs. The dock is out of the water, the boat and the outdoor furniture put away, and now we wait.

It doesn’t seem to have been that long ago when we enjoyed the spring equinox—and we waited for flowers to bloom and grass and leaves to put some color into our gray and white world. Back then, the increasingly longer day, was the good one. Springtime was like showing a film of fall backwards, as the dock and the boat were going into the lake, instead of out. The plants were budding instead of shedding, the flowers were blooming instead of wilting, and my whole attitude was so different because I was excited, instead of subdued. But now its fall and the leaves have become my proxy-colored flowers. Today, I feel like a little kid who’s just been told to go to bed because playtime is over, and all of my friends have gone home.

In the Pacific Ocean, west of Ecuador, lie the Galapagos Islands. One thing that is unique about them is they virtually straddle the equator. They have no change in the hours of daylight—spring or fall; the sun just shines from a different direction. I have often wondered what it would be like to live like that. I guess in the winter I would think it was pretty good, but in the summer, not so much. Because summer here—well, it doesn’t get much better than it is. Summer, as we know it traditionally at the lake, lives between two bookends, as it arrives on Memorial Day, and thumbs its nose at us on Labor Day. Fall, however, is so fickle, so open-ended, never announcing when it’s coming or going. It’s like welcome company that arrives unannounced—leaving us guessing how long it’s going to be around and dreading the ending we know is coming.

So we take the fall days as they come, wishing for more, but knowing each day is one more day that it’s not winter yet. No one seems to understand what makes a summer rain so refreshing, but in fall—well, it’s just unnecessary and sad. Then, one day we wake up and look out the back door and there it is. As soft as a mother’s whisper, it came while we slept, blanketing the earth once more; and now fall has left us just like that. No Labor Day weekend, no ‘cheerio’ or even a goodbye. The gray and white winter world is back and oh, it’s so deathly dark, cold and quiet. Maybe its Mother Nature’s way of telling us, “I’m sorry I had to put the earth to sleep for a while, so why don’t you just take it easy for a time, too.”

For a writer, autumn seems to defy ordinary description, with its tawny grass and shriveled leaves, and all its death and dying. It’s not so much a season, but a transition, that lets us down easy as we slide into winter. No pun intended.

A DAY IN A FIREFIGHTERS LIFE

                                   

           

Most of you know that I am a fiction Author. But what I am about to tell you is not fiction but true and factual. Most of you also know I was a Fire Fighter for the City of Brooklyn Park. What I am about to tell you, happened to me and a man named Bill. (Not his real name.)It probably happens much more then we realize and it really makes no difference where you might be a firefighter. This could happen anywhere.

It was a daytime fire in our city and we were short of manpower at most daytime calls as we were a paid on call department. The call came in as a fire in an apartment building in the southwest corner of the city. The police on the scene were evacuating the building when we arrived, about seven minutes into the call. There was one chief officer on the scene and he told us the fire was in a back apartment, on the ground floor. There was little to no access from the outside. We were told to lay a hose line down the hallway to the unit and attack the fire from the hallway. Bill and I took the only line being used and proceeded in.

From the time we got into the hallway the heavy smoke and heat told us either the door was open or had burned through. Visibility was zero. Unbeknownst to us the walls of the hallway we were crawling down were decorated with wooden cedar shingles. We crawled over halfway to the unit, pulling our hose line with us, when the temperature in the hallway peaked, spontaneously ignited the shingles. Bill and I were in a tunnel of fire. You have two choices here. Turn and get out-- and at this point probably get burned badly on the way out-- or press on and get that water on the root of the fire and cool it down. The fire in the hallway was being fed from the fire in the apartment. It did no good to fight it in the hallway. Long story short. We got to the door and extinguished the fire. Why am I talking about this because it was later that night, when it really sunk in, what could have happened to Bill and I. After the fire was out I got a chance to go back into that hallway. Soggy blackened sheet rock and light fixtures and alarm pull stations melted to the walls. My plastic helmet shield had melted in there and the paint had been burned off Bills air tank on his back. Unknowingly we were seconds away from becoming more fuel for that fire.

I went home that night and my wife was washing dishes when I came in the door. She turned to say something to me and I just took her in my arms and hugged her tight. “My what got into you? ” she said. “I just have a new appreciation for life,” I replied. “Where’s the kids, lets go out to supper.” I sat in that restaurant with my family and thanked God for giving them to me and letting me be there with them, safe and sound. I never told my wife about the fire. If I had, I would have been resigning the next day, because she would have made me do it.

I wrote this because a while back I woke up at two in the morning and I was back in that hallway--in the midst of a bad dream. Although we never talked about it, I’m sure Bill feels the same way as I did about that day. From the outside, it wasn’t really that bad of a fire when it was all over and barely made the news.

It’s fire prevention week this week. Do what you can to keep fires from starting in the first place and if you know a firefighter. Say thanks.

LIFE GOES ON

                                                         

I have neighbors next door who have lived along side of us, here at the lake, for over twenty-five years. Over the years, we became the best of friends. We traveled and played together on vacations and we fished and swam together down at the beach. We ate many meals together and drank pots of coffee trying to solve all of our problems. We watched each others grandkids grow up, shared our pets and remembered each other’s birthdays and anniversaries. Then it all changed.

It seemed to unravel the most when my wife died and we were no longer a foursome. It was as if it was awkward to go anywhere, not paired up. So they stopped asking. We had this ugly glass plate I bought at an auction that said happy anniversary on it and each year we would wrap it up in gift paper and exchange it on our anniversaries, just as a joke. I think we got the better of the deal because their anniversary was just a couple of months after ours so we didn’t have to hold it very long. We spent long afternoons together sitting on the deck, in the shade of the house, gossiping and getting to know each other’s lives like our very own. We held keys to each other’s houses and kept a careful eye on the others property.

Then a couple of weeks ago the “For Sale” sign went up next door. I stood and looked at it, and as much as I understood why-- because of their health and taking care of the place-- it seemed like such a tragic end to our friendship. Oh, I know they’re only going back to the cities and it’s not that far away. But life has taught me that most friendships are cemented in common interests like work or play and that’s something that isn’t going to exist any more. To be truthful, for me, it left when my wife died. I have gone to so many funerals of people I haven’t seen for years. Maybe that's why the words, “Paying your final respects,” was coined.

So new neighbors huh? One of the things that happens, as you age, is you don’t tolerate change as well any more. You like the status quo. It’s predictable and you don’t like surprises anymore. Maybe its because you had nothing to compare it to when this all started and now you do and that can be very unfair but it’s human nature. Life, at least for me, is like a series of earthquakes. For years there were always little tremors that came and went and you rolled with the punches. A little damage here or there, but nothing earth shattering. Then the death of a partner and the 9.2 that rocks your world and three years later you’re still recovering. But what is the most bothersome now to me, are the aftershocks, like the end of a friendship. Each one makes you flinch a little because you don’t want to see them coming. Each one makes you a little weaker and you start to realize your own fragility.

We need to live life in the moment and I know that’s easy to talk about and hard to do. In A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Poo. Poo ask’s, “What day is it?” “It’s today,” squeals piglet. “My favorite day,” says Poo. That’s the attitude we need. If only we could convince ourselves that it is us, and not future events that determine if we are going to be happy tomorrow or not. Each day we live, prepares us for the next one but we shouldn’t have to worry about the next day until it gets here.

BUCKET LIST

Since Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman costarred in the movie “The Bucket List,” I have heard many people refer to their own wishes and ambitions for the future as their bucket lists. I think it’s noble to have a list of goals and ambitions you would like to accomplish within your lifetime. It may even fall under the guise of good planning. One big difference for most of us is—as it applied to the two actors in the movie—they had an end date in their story, and most of us don’t. So, does it really fall under the guidelines of a true bucket list, when you have no timeline to complete whatever it is you want to do? Common sense tells us we all have an end date, but fortunately, no one has spelled it out for us. When I was married, my wife hinted at one for me if I didn’t change my ways, but thank God, it never came to that.

As I remember in the movie, Jack & Morgan had a written list, and not just some things that were on the top of their minds to accomplish someday. They also put them in some kind of chronological order where we, who have no written list to refer to, tend to not prioritize things but say, “If the opportunity presents itself, I would like to go here or do this.” I, personally, still have a bucket list, or at least, I think I do, but it’s not written in stone, or anywhere else for that matter. I have taken things off my bucket list because they were no longer physically possible or monetarily feasible, and I have added new things that I didn’t know existed when I started the list and I’m not sure if that’s legal or not. I’ve taken things off the list because, truth be told, I can’t remember what the heck it was I was going to do, anyway.  Heck, I’ve even put things back on my list that were once on it, and that I had already done, because I had so much fun I wanted to do them again. If I had a written list, I probably couldn’t do it anyway because, if you’ve seen my desk, you would know that I wouldn’t be able to find it even if I wanted to. Also, if I did find it and it was written in cursive, by me, I wouldn’t be able to read it either.

So, for the most part, I fly by the seat of my pants. I say “for the most part” because someone else has come into my life. Most of the things I want to do involve her now, and she is incredibly organized, so I defer to her in such matters. Now, that being said, it makes sense that some of the things that are on my list, and not on hers, and vice versa, need to be negotiated if we are going to do them at all.  I don’t think she has any interest in tipping cows, so that’s off the list. One of the things that is so ironic about this whole bucket list thing, at least for me, is this—she was once on my bucket list.

In the end, I think many of us have one thing in common on our bucket lists, and like Morgan and Jack, it will be the last thing on our list because, at least in my Christian belief, you can only experience it once and it will be the last thing you do. It’s the one thing that takes you to the next level after death, and it is something you talked about accomplishing all of your earthily life. I’m talking about getting your hand stamped at those heavenly gates and being invited in. It’s something you prayed and worked for all of those years and it’s something that should be on everyone’s bucket list.

FAREWELL TO SUMMER

                                              

So it’s the weekend after Labor Day Weekend in the lakes country. It’s a time that is a simple carbon copy of yesterday except the sunlight is three minutes shorter and its strangely quiet at the lake today. Memorial day and Labor Day, the alpha and the omega of summer, have come and gone and now we wait. We wait for the leaves that are already turning, to fall from the trees. We wait for eager children, with backpacks on, crowding onto school buses once again. We wait for the orange-coated hunters and the shooting to began. The fields will be stripped of their bounty and grain bins and corm cribs will be full to bursting at the seams. We wait for that morning when you wake up and the ground is white once more and fall and summer will have slipped quietly away and it’s one more summer for the old memory bank.

Late fall and the months of the year seem to share a likeness that tugs at an old mans heartstrings, because the calendar of months and days of the year seem so intertwined with our own inner calendar. The white hair, wrinkles and sore joints, are so reminiscent of better days, like a summer now gone by. But then the last days of many things in our life, evoke some degree of sadness. All good things do come to an end. Be it the last day on your job before retirement or maybe your kids moving out and moving far away. Maybe it’s the death of a loved one and the end of an era. Maybe it’s your favorite Pastor at your church moving away. Life seems to be full of a litany of sad endings for all of us.

But as sad as the end of summer is and all of the other changes that are coming our way, there is a glimmer of hope, that in a few months the earth will tilt in our favor again and a Minnesota summer will come back to please us once more. That many of these sad endings I just mentioned, are just preludes to new beginnings. One door closes, another opens. We have no idea when we too will end our journey and be called home and little control over it; so sad endings are best forgotten until we have to deal with them. Maybe forgotten is a bad choice of words because some things do need remembering but at the very least we need to set them aside and try not to let them ruin the future. Tears are put there to wash away our sadness and pave the way for a smile but at least for a while you need to let them fall. For every friend you lose, the opportunity is there for a new one in your circle of life-- if you only look around. I have many dear old friends but as precious as they are, there is always room in my life for another.

But back to the end of summer. Mother nature is a busy gal and she needs a break and winter gives her that time to rest. For it’s in winter that the plants and many of the animals go to sleep too. Those that don’t either leave or take it easy for a while. But for mankind, we are driven and there is no resting until the body and mind simply won’t respond anymore. Then all we can do is dip into our memory bank and redigest the good times once more. Lauren DeStefano wrote and I quote. “Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”

AUGUST THOUGHTS

  There comes a time at the lake in late August, when it suddenly dawns on you that another summer has quietly passed you by and you scarce remember it. It seems only yesterday that the colorful crocuses were poking their heads out of the last vestiges of the melting snow pack. They were followed by a litany of different flowers, each announcing itself in another time and place, in the days of the summer season.  But now, suddenly it seems, we are down to the mums and some late season daylilies. Out on the lake the lily pads bruised and tattered as they may be, from summer storms and boats, still bob in the swells but soon they too will slip below the surface.

In the background, as I look out my window, I hear the sweet sounds of ‘Danny Boy’ playing.  “For summers gone and all the flowers dying. ‘tis you, ‘tis you, must go and I must bide.” Solitary Leaves are beginning to float down now. Early quitters, they are, falling from the protective canopies above us and calling it a summer. Along the roads the sumac is turning scarlet and red berries crown the bushes, waiting for a chance to plant their ripe seeds in mother earth. But first, like us, they must endure another winter. “But come ye back when summers on the meadow.” Yes, at some point in time we will relent and at some point, we, like those early quitters, will call it a summer too and sit back and bide our time and wish for at least one more summer to come upon the meadow, so we can do it all over again.

For in the troughs’ of old age it’s so easy to draw parallels between the earths’s seasons and our own waxing, waning, lives. My personal roll call shows several more friends and family members who have had their last summer. But if you fall as all the flowers are falling and if you’re dead as dead you well may be. I’ll come and find the place where you are lying and kneel and say an Ave there for thee. For far to long we have said “goodbye” mostly as a polite formality but now after we have said “goodbye” so many times over fallen friends and family, we have recognized the finality of that statement and those sad goodbye’s fall on ears that have been silenced forever but never forgotten.

But its summer and not life we are bidding farewell to this time and we know that’s not the end of life as we know it. Alexander Pope said, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” He meant that even in the face of adversity, be it winter or our fading lives we have hope for another go around. Hope, like our creator, is eternal and when all else fails we draw upon it. Soon the rustle of leaves will be replaced by the first snows of winter and we will bide our time once more, like the Gaelic songwriter wrote in Danny Boy, “And when the valleys hushed are white with snow.” Patiently we wait for the summer to descend on the meadows once more. We have learned to cope through the difficult winter months and the anticipation of spring and summer is never far from our minds and as the earth tilts in our favor once more, those colorful crocuses will emerge once more, signaling that life goes on within the ranks of the flowers and so it will go on for us too.