"The World is so Full of Such Wondrous Things..."

When I was in grade school, I learned to square dance, the American folk dance where the couples and groups of couples perform steps like dosey-do and promenade as they are announced by a "caller."  It was fun.  When I was in junior high I was taken to a symphony orchestra concert that featured singers doing the arias from "Carmen," and it was fun.  I learned to bowl in high school, and it was fun.  I've been to a heavy metal concert, I've seen an exhibition of Monet paintings, and I've seen and acted in live theater.  I've shot guns, planted gardens and even earned a living by doing hard physical work, and it was all fun.  OK, the hard physical work wasn't as much fun all of the time;  The point is, I've tried lots of things and found something to enjoy in most of them.  I try hard to not decide I don't like something before I have tried it.

Who is more foolish, someone who enjoys what we consider a foolish pastime, or someone who dismisses as foolish a pastime which they have never tried?  The world is so full of things to try that we can never try them all.  If we don't have enough of an open mind to give things a shot when they present themselves we may miss out on the best thing ever.  If someone invites you to try curling don't decide not to go because "sliding rocks on ice is dumb."  Enough people enjoy it to make curling an Olympic sport so there must be something to it.

Of course, common sense tells us not to try things that are stupidly dangerous;  I'm not advocating playing in traffic because it might be a thrill.  Bull riding and auto racing are probably best left to the pros and enjoyed as spectator sports.  What I'm saying is that activities/experiences that you haven't yet tried should not be subject to "condemnation prior to investigation."

Everyone knows (and many of us have been) a child who is a picky eater.  If you take them to a restaurant that doesn't have mac 'n cheese, you had better bring along a pbj.  We laugh, but still we try to change them because we know they are missing out on some good things.  Shrimp in lobster sauce sounds kinda weird, but as served at Jimmy Wong's restaurant in Chicago back when I was in my twenties, it was one of the most delicious things I ever ate.  Taste all the things life offers.  You will not like all of them, but you won't miss out on the good ones.


 

SOMETHING SPECIAL

One of the things your dad suggested as a possible topic for these scribblings was "things you are proud of."  Looking back, that seems a topic far too soon exhausted, but I do have a few candidates for it.  One of these is a title given to me by your dad's preschool teacher, Miss Polly, when he was four years old.

For several months in early 1983 I was laid off from my job because of  a long strike by the union workers at Caterpillar.  Grandma B was pregnant with your Uncle Ryan, and since I had time on my hands it was easier for me than for her to take your dad to school and pick him up after.  Some mornings I would just stay at the school and watch the kids instead of driving home and coming back.  At some point, I noticed that some of the wooden chairs that the kids sat on were loose and wobbly and asked the teacher if she would like me to repair them.  She was happy to have me do it so the next day I showed up with some tools, glue, and clamps and started in.  I didn't have enough clamps to do a lot of chairs at once and most of the chairs were needed each day anyway, so I came back day after day until I had finished all the chairs.  Many of the kids found what I was doing fascinating to watch and I would try to explain to them what I was doing, why the chairs had to be clamped or bound with rope while the glue dried, and so forth.  When the chairs were done I asked if there were other projects she would like me to do, mostly because I was having so much fun being around the little kids each day.  She found other work for me (one I remember was making a large bulletin board) and before I knew it the school year was drawing to a close and so was the strike that had given me the freedom to be there.

The "title" came about because when other parents came into the classroom, the teacher would explain to them who I was and why I was there.  Her explanation was, "This is Zak's dad who fixes things."  I doubt that she remembers saying that, but it always makes me feel good about myself when I think of it.

Because I had always enjoyed making things, when your Uncle Josh "graduated" from his baby crib  (and we were about to need it for your dad) I had made a bed for him modelled after the famous "Radio Flyer" wagon.  This bed was about to be retired because we were getting bunk beds for the boys to make room for the newest baby, so I asked Miss Polly if the school could use it.  She thought it would make a perfect spot for kids to use for "reading" picture books by themselves.  Here is a picture of the wagon when it was being used as a bed.  

That's your dad sitting on it.

I don't know how long the school used the bed or the bulletin board or how long it was before the chairs needed repaired again.  I do know I am proud of the small contribution I made and cherish the memory of the affection those little kids showed me while I was there.

One other memory of that time sticks with me.  It was a song that the children learned.  I can't recreate the tune in a blog and I can't credit the author because I have no idea where the song came from, but the words went like this:

"I'm something special,
I'm the only one of my kind.
God gave me a body
and a bright healthy mind.
He had a special purpose
that he wanted me to find.
That's why I'm something special,
I'm the only one of my kind."

It was just a cute little song that they sang for the parents on the last day of school, but I've never forgotten it and the promise of young lives that it celebrated.  If someone had been watching me that day they would have noticed my eyes looking a little wet as I watched them sing.  Except for your dad,I don't know where any of those kids are today, but they are still "something special" to me.

GRANDMA’S HOUSE

“Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.”  It wasn’t quite such a trip as that and we never made it in a horse and sleigh, but trips to “Grandma’s House” were a weekly, sometimes almost daily, occurrence while I was growing up.  I have written before about living in many houses as a child.  We moved, on average, once every two years until I was a teenager.  For this and other reasons, my Grandma Freytag’s house was the geographical center of my childhood.  I cannot remember not knowing that house; she was living there before I was born and until after I was grown.  Also Laurence, her second husband (more about him later) was there until he died when I was nine.

Many of my earliest memories are from that house.  Holidays and birthdays were celebrated there.  John and I would often stay there overnight when our folks went out for an evening.  Mother and Dad were married there.  “Dad” was actually my step-dad and they were married when I was four and half so I do remember the wedding.  I loved going there, because to my young eyes Grandma’s house had so much more of everything than did our own home, including, for a number of years, an indoor bathroom. 

    There were always cookies, kept in green glass jars and stored on top of a kitchen cabinet.  I can remember, when I was so young that I had to stand on tiptoe to see onto the table top, that jar was so high overhead it could have been on the moon.  My brother and I learned “Please” and “Thank you” asking for cookies.  It pleases me that those jars are still in the family, now in the possession of one of your cousins who remembers it from her grandma’s house.

     Also among the “more”  things in the house were all sorts of exotic objects and devices that Laurence (he insisted that we call him that, not Grandpa) had accumulated.  Grandma and Laurence liked to travel and brought back souvenirs of the places they had been,  among them Mexican and Cuban handicrafts and pictures from the Grand Canyon.  He was interested in just about everything  and loved making things.  Two of his more impressive creations were a loom (for weaving cloth) about the size of an upright piano, and a Newtonian telescope with an eight inch mirror.  The one that fascinated me the most as a child was a working model steam engine, complete with a high pitched whistle,  which  he would sometimes operate for us.

    Because I didn’t have a “dad” between the ages of two and 4 ½, Laurence was my first male role model.  I learned about using tools and hard work and loving from Dad, but it was Laurence who gave me the attitude of “Everything is interesting,” that I still enjoy today.

    Christmas was always spent at Grandma's house.  The presents waited for us under the tree, but first came the Christmas feast with all the traditional dishes.  Then came the longest hour of the year.  "The menfolk" including my brother and me would move to the living room where the tree was set up while the women cleaned up after the meal (this was the 1950s).  Opening presents did not begin until the dishes were done and everyone was gathered around the tree.  Only then would John and I begin handing out the gifts. 

   "Grandma's house" will always be a special place for me, the center of family, warmth, and security when I was a child and the source of my desire to be a part of creating such a place for my own children.  I only wish that being long distance grandparents didn't get in the way of our providing you with a "Grandma's house" of your own.

 

ME AND TOM WINGFIELD

The gate to memory lane this time was unlocked by a note on another blogger’s site  encouraging her to tell more stories about herself, and was opened by running across the name of a teacher from my college days.  The teacher was the faculty sponsor for the Drama Guild and directed most of their productions.  I took part in several of those productions, either on stage or operating the lights.  Most memorably for me, I was given the part of Tom Wingfield in Tennessee  William’s “The Glass Menagerie.” That’s right, your grandpa was a “thespian.”  Probably I was not a very good one, especially since I was terrible at memorizing, but it was a lot of fun and a chance to be friends with some of the more eccentric people on campus.  “Campus” was Aurora College and at the time it was a small, conservative, church related college, so “eccentric” is a relative term.  We were very much not the local chapter of the student protest groups that were beginning to claim national headlines around that time, mostly we were just more interested in fun than scholarship and possessed of exaggerated opinions of our own cleverness.  Rebellion was mostly nothing more than breaking curfew and drinking rules and "protesting" about the cafeteria serving mystery meat..

College for me was much more about the extracurricular activities than about the accumulation of classroom knowledge.  Dorm life, sports (cross-country and wrestling) and campus social life added more to my education than any course or lecture series.  Participating in Drama Guild and working on a student newspaper were two experiences that are still a part of me.  The newspaper experience actually did begin as a form of student protest.  A group of us felt that the official on-campus paper was so dominated by the administration that it was incapable of raising even small issues of student body discontent, so we started an alternative paper.  Looking back, it seems we were playing at dissidence, but at the time we felt daring and independent.  However little we may have accomplished, we did learn a great deal.  Deadlines to be met and column inches to be filled required us to work hard for goals we had put in place ourselves.  Voicing unpopular opinions and sometimes making mistakes provided real learning opportunities, mostly to learn that actions have consequences.

I can relate to those people who look back at their college or high school days as the best years of their lives.  I have been so fortunate as to spend the last thirty-nine years (and counting) with Grandma B, so there is no question in my mind that the best years of my life are still in process.  Even so, those years at Aurora College were filled with youth, aspiration, camaraderie, emotion, belonging, immersion and intensity that no other time can match.  I don’t know what “the college experience” will look like for you, my grandchildren, but I hope it can bring to you some of what it brought to me.

 

REACH OUT, Even When it's not Comfortable

Since passing on some of what I have learned in life is supposed to be one of my reasons for writing, I’m going to pass along something I just learned, or figured out, or whatever.  I caught on to something I should have recognized a long time ago, that acts of kindness or friendship don’t have to be perfect nearly as much as they simply have to be done.

A blog friend of mine suffered the loss of a loved one this week.  She and I have never met, but we have exchanged a few comments on each others blogs and I feel like I know her well enough from reading what she has written to call her a friend.  In any case, on hearing of her loss, I wanted to express my sympathy.  All the overworked phrases, “so sorry for your loss” “deepest sympathy” etc. came to mind but just seemed too trite to use.  After some more pondering, I finally came up with something I could put in a Facebook comment format that I was comfortable saying and sent it off.

It was only later, as I thought about what I had written, that I realized it wasn’t what I said, or how well I had conveyed the sympathy I felt that mattered, only that I had said something at all.  “I don’t know what to say,” is an often heard refrain.  When someone is hurting, we want to help but often feel that there is nothing we can offer that will do any good and are even sometimes afraid we will cause more pain.  Unfortunately, reluctance because we might say the wrong thing can easily be interpreted as indifference.  Someone once said, “The opposite of love is not hate;   it’s indifference.”  It isn’t as important that we always say just the right thing as it is that we not leave the impression that we just don’t care.  The grieving person might not even notice that we have reached out, but if no one reached out their pain could be much worse.

As I think about this subject, I realize that I have been on the other end of it before.  My dad ran a gas station for a number of years after he quit farming.  He had a series of boys/young men who worked for him and to a number of them he and my mother became almost surrogate parents.  They listened to their problems, fed them meals, celebrated their birthdays, and generally treated them more like family than employees.  When Dad died, I expected that some of those boys, now men, would come to “pay their respects,” and I was acutely aware that none did.  I’m sure that many of them had good reasons why they weren’t there, but their absence nonetheless caused additional pain in an already painful time.

When you can reach out to someone in pain, do it.  You may not do it perfectly, or even as well as you would like to, but you can be sure it will be better than not reaching out at all.

 

THIS IS THE DAY

The summer solstice is just a few days past and I am reveling in the long summer evenings.  Thanks to daylight savings time and our location on the western edge of our time zone, twilight in June lasts until almost ten o'clock.  Those long, soft, golden rays of light angling across the yard never fail to increase my joy.  I know I must get annoying sometimes with my constant "Life is Good" mantra, but I just can't help myself.  I can only hope it is infectious.

This is another post that has been sitting around for a while waiting to get "finished."  It is now the second week of August so I had better wrap this one up soon or let it wait until next year.  The days have actually started their headlong rush to the miserable short days of winter;  the sun is noticeably further south as it comes through our west facing windows at the end of the day.  Crisp fall days with the smell of burning leaves in the air are not too far away.  All this means is that I will have to look  harder for the joy that each day brings, and not let myself think about the next round of warm summer evenings with too much longing.  It's time to tell myself once again, "THIS is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

A WAR STORY

In the summer of 1967,  having  lost my student exemption a few months earlier, I was drafted into the army.   At age 22, I was older  than most of my fellow draftees, with most of a college education.  In spite of these things in my favor, I was as uncertain about my prospects in this strange new environment as any of the other young men in my group of inductees.  I was, in a word, scared.

We were harried and harassed by barking sergeants from one place to another.  “Tighten up that line!”  “Attention! Left face! Forward march! Halt!”  Strange commands we had never heard outside the movies came in a continuous stream.  We were lost and far from home, adrift in a strange new world where we knew no one and any past experiences we had had were useless and forgotten.  Looking back, I can see that this was the first step in forging the bond that is the essential part of turning a bunch of individuals into a unit that can perform the impossible task of combat.  By picking on us and stripping us of our civilian identities, the sergeants were turning us into US.  

At the time, it only seemed that they were bent on maximizing our discomfort and proving that we were unfit for service.  They nearly had me convinced that this last part was true, or at least something to worry about.  I remember being distinctly doubtful that I could meet the army’s expectations, wondering, “Can I do this?  Can I be a soldier.”  I don’t think I actually thought about what the consequences of failure might be, I simply dreaded the prospect of failing.

Then, into all this fear and worry, came salvation.  It came in the form of another young soldier, a Spec4 (Specialist 4^th class) working as a clerk checking the inoculation forms of the line of men I was standing in.  He wore glasses, weighed maybe one twenty, and looked like he would be hard put to even pick up an M14 rifle, much less fire one.  He took my papers, checked them off against his list and handed them back.  As I moved on to the next station I was thinking, “He made it through basic.  He has even been promoted.  What have I been so worried about?  If he can do it so can I.” 

 

That was the last time I worried about “making it” in the army, and when I left the service after completing a tour of duty in South Korea it was with a sergeant’s stripes on my sleeve.  I came out of the army with the confidence that comes from a set of experiences I could draw on for the rest of my life;  beginning with that one in basic training.