Tag Archives: Introspective

Flurries of Change

Screenshot of weather forecast on iPhone: 64 degrees in February

There was a time when I hated snow. Detested it. Loathed it.

Having grown up with more than my share of ugly winters, I jumped at the chance to move south for grad school. I still remember my first January in Virginia, driving around my new city with no jacket on and my sunroof open. I felt as though I had arrived in a paradise.

You see, somewhere around my sophomore year in college (the best that I can remember), I began to struggle progressively more with each winter. The grey skies brought with them a deepening depression with each year of my life. That’s why a southern move was such an enormous relief to me. Instead of attempting to cope for months on end each year, I was now faced with this struggle perhaps once each year, and then only for a day or two. This seemed like a good situation in which to be.

Fast forward several years…getting married, having our daughter, moving to the Boston area, and now having landed back in North Carolina. These moves and events have been a whirlwind of occasionally contradictory experiences. My first New England winter was brutal, but I learned to cope. I bought the gear, and I re-acclimated with the rituals of my childhood: shoveling, scraping, and leaving early (at least, in my new career, working from home is sort of the norm). You see, if you grow up living with winter hardships, it’s sort of like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to drive in these circumstances. You may be rusty for a few minutes, but when the white stuff starts falling, you just sort of know what to do. I found that these sorts of things aren’t things that many people know about in the South (like brushing off your car halfway through a storm in order to significantly lighten the workload when it’s over, or keeping a steady momentum at all costs when going up a slick incline).

That said, this has been a good winter to have spent in the South, as my friends back in the Boston area tell me about the six feet of snow that they have (with more coming each weekend, it seems). Last weekend, though, I had one of those moments in which your brain sort of…short circuits. In February…a month in which I’m used to wearing base layers and heavy wool…I was wearing a t-shirt and no jacket as I walked into our Sunday morning worship service. That day came in at just short of 70 degrees.

Now, as I write this, we’re in the grip of an ice storm, and life is forced to slow down a bit. This is the exception, though, not the rule at all. Life doesn’t slow down here. There is no season of rest, no season of early darkness in which to drink cider and talk with friends and family, no easy time to catch up on your reading by the dim light. All of those things that I never thought that I would miss, I now do. And, while snow is not among them, the quiet that results from it is.

Perhaps it’s an overly positive recollection of an area with which I was quite enamored. I miss New England so much it hurts some days, and I remember the times that we had there during the harsh winters…much harsher than the ones that I experienced as a child. It’s a season of life that’s important, one that I didn’t truly miss until I had experienced it. There’s much to be said for slowing down, for pausing, for appreciating the seasonal flow of the life around us.

Could it be that I miss the snow?

I should probably stop just short of admitting that…

A Hiro of a Different Sort

Our daughter, from as early as we permitted screen time, has loved Thomas the Train.

I have no complaints. First off, the grammar and language use are excellent, and the morality tale contained within each movie is of high quality. I think that it’s a good thing for her. I also like that she likes “playing trains” with Daddy, because, honestly, I’m sort of into watching the trains rush around the track. For that matter, I like putting the track together with her. I’d much rather she be absorbed in the world of Thomas than in more…well, more frilly, girly things to which I would have difficulty relating.  So, we feed her habit. She’s amassed quite a collection of trains and track at this point.

Because we travel over the Christmas holiday, we usually open our gifts at least two days early, before we’re either in a car or on a plane to see family members. This year, the gift from Daddy was one that I had been hoping to be able to have her unwrap for some time.

One of her favorite Thomas movies is Hero of the Rails, where we are introduced to a new character, Hiro. Hiro is a wise, old engine that brings a new dynamic to the group of friends and characters of Thomas’ world. Our daughter loved Hiro, but, because he was initially a character only appearing in that movie, the toy was produced in limited quality and had become a bit of a collector’s item. Hiro was rare and difficult to find for less than $50, which is more than we were willing to pay for a toy.

Recently, Hiro has been produced again, but it still more difficult to find than many other engines. When we stumbled onto him online while shopping for other gifts for an under-$20 price tag, we clicked the buy button without a second thought. Our daughter’s squeal of delight when opening her gifts…”It’s Hiro!!!”…was more than worth it, and I was having a tall day after having given her the favorite gift of the season.

Of course, then the travels to grandparents happened, and I was totally upstaged by the onslaught of gifts that comes with being an only grand-daughter. I’d like to say I’m too emotionally and spiritually mature to be jealous of this, but…I was totally jealous.

Over the weekend, we were playing trains. We will sit and spin stories and tales of the adventures of Thomas and his friends as her amazing imagination gets its workout and she amazes me with her eloquence. I steered the story to revolve around Hiro wherever I could. I have to be honest, it wasn’t because I was excited about how excited she was about the new toy. Rather, I was a little irritated that she had all but forgotten about Hiro amongst all of the other toys that she has to play with following the Holiday. I was saddened by the fact that the impulse to “nudge” her toward playing with the plastic representation one of her favorite characters wasn’t because of my desire for her happiness, but rather my desire to rectify what I saw as a way that I had been cheated.

Not cool for me to role model selfishness, even though I’m relatively certain she’s aloof to my motivations at age three.

I think that the character of Hiro would probably recognize the sad predicament of my selfishness. Little girls see their daddies as their heroes. I grew up as an only child, which, despite best efforts, results in a bit of a mentality that the world revolves around me. I want to think that, now that I’m an adult, I’ve grown out of that, left it behind. Turns out that I have a great deal of which to purge myself so as to not pass this along to my little girl.

Recovery

Christmas tree standing in my favorite apartment from years agoAs I write this, I’m listening to a country artist doing a cover of questionable quality of a Christmas carol while I’m sitting in a Starbucks surrounded by red and gold. I’m pausing for the first time in a long time, or at least the first time when I haven’t been too exhausted to formulate coherent thoughts, and attempting to wade through the slush of melting ideas in my head.

You know those great articles that you occasionally read in good magazines that make their point with the story of the experience rather than formulating a logical argument? So, with that in mind…

The last time that I remember having a truly devoted Advent and Christmas season was over three years ago. Last year wasn’t actually too bad, but it was still scattered, too scattered for my taste. This year, instead of being swallowed in the realization of this most holy of seasons, I’m swallowed in my desire to be swallowed in the realization of this most holy of seasons…like so much of me is exactly where it needs to be, and yet something central, something core, needs to be brought from the past and re-introduced to where I am today.

I’ve forgotten something that I knew then, something that is still within me somewhere, but flitting just out of sight with each attempt of my eyes to focus when it appears in my peripheral.

I know what it is, almost by name, and I’ve caught glimpses more often in the past two weeks. I saw it when I watched our daughter, now old enough to begin hanging her own decorations on our tree, hanging each decoration with care, proudly placing the angel on the top of the tree when I lifted her high to do so. I saw it when, beaming from ear to ear, she rang a bell that had been given to her by my late grandmother, and announced, “Merry Christmas, Mommy! Merry Christmas, Daddy!”

I heard it in the words of hope on the first Sunday of Advent, announced most beautifully and most powerfully by a minister with a pony tail and a bow tie in a small church in which I had never set foot before.

I’ve seen it as I looked back over our memory tree, pausing especially on the maple leaf that we purchased to recall our home in New Hampshire before we made the most abrupt move to North Carolina this summer.

I’ve read it in emails from friends in New England, felt it in my longing to return to what has forever become my home.

What I’m truly swallowed in is a frenzy, an unforgiving scramble for things that we have been forced to consider as important and necessary, and which are ultimately material and will not survive this corporeal life. Yet, we are forced to forsake the unseen, the immaterial of infinitely more worth for more and more time in order to survive with the material pittance without which we cannot eat, cannot live.

I’m swallowed in angst as police officers shoot unarmed people, as some celebrate in excess while others have too little, as the idea of God is supposedly made less plausible by a deity of a different type that we’ve conceived in our  own minds.

There are about two weeks of Advent left before those of us who celebrate Christmas observe our most precious Holiday. That isn’t enough time for me to recover what I’m missing, to lay hold of what I’ve mis-placed. Not nearly enough time for my cloudy eyes to clear. And I wouldn’t be able to part this fog on my own, in any case. It’s not within my power. That clearing must come from outside of myself, by something external, something that is not myself.

Then again, that’s sort of the point.

Paean

As of shortly after 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, I no longer have any grandparents.

I grew up with three…one maternal and two paternal…and I’ve buried all of them in the last eight years.

When my maternal grandmother passed, we had a sort of false alarm a couple of weekends before. Karen and I had packed and were leaving for an impromptu trip to attempt to maximize those final moments with her, when her condition unexpectedly improved. We turned around and went home, both tired from the week and glad to avoid a few hours on the road. We questioned briefly whether or not there would be wisdom in going to see her anyway, but ultimately decided that we would not.

Forgetting the clinical principle that there is frequently a spontaneous partial recovery just before a catastrophic crash, I lived to regret that decision.

Years later, Karen and I were returning from an unplugged vacation. I turned my phone on for the first time in a week, to be greeted with the voicemail that my grandfather was gone. We returned from vacation only to pack and travel again for a funeral. That time, I hadn’t seen it coming. I remember watching my grandmother say goodbye during the grave-side service, and marveled at her strength as she proceeded forward with her life as she always had. She had a firm constitution, and had lived through more than her share of hardships. She had endured more than I likely will ever have to, and she had figured out a way to make it through each time. She had always done so with her partner, though, and this would be a new…and unenviable…phase of the journey into which she would enter.

She carried on for years until this week. An unfavorable diagnosis a little over a month ago heralded what would be a fast decompensation…faster than we anticipated. At the end, she knew no one. Her transitioning on was a merciful relief.

I’m of the age at which losing grandparents is to be expected. I grieved late for the first. When I received the call for the second, I asked Karen to please keep me distracted for the day…I couldn’t work through the grief in that moment. When I received the call for the third early this week…and I knew why the phone was ringing, because, whether it be the odd time or some other sensory perception that we suddenly possess in such moments, we just know…I talked with my family about it, and then I kept working.

I’m sad. I’m remembering different moments that I had with both grandparents while they were alive. Mostly, I’ve just kept going with life. When I pause to think, though, I consider the time in the future when we tell our daughter something to the effect of, “You were very young when she died,” perhaps while looking at photos or something of the sort. This grandmother was the only one of my grandparents to have met our daughter. I’m so glad that she did. I think that the thrust of what overwhelms me…whenever I pause to let myself feel something like overwhelmed…is that, with my grandparents gone, I know what the next phase of loss in my life will be. That is a thought that I keep at arm’s length, a darkness which I cannot contemplate.

Sufficient for today are it’s losses.

Impulses to Click

It happened.

I’m sort of disturbed about it, to be honest.

You see, I’ve always spent a decent amount of time online, and I’ve been writing stories and ideas long before I wrote code. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I guard my reading carefully (though life with a three-year-old leads to a less careful guarding of this than I would like). By guarding, I mean that I have always worked to reserve time for it (that’s the part that slides with a toddler). I used to routinely read 2-3 books monthly, part of which was motivated by a really great online book club, but then school and life and a daughter happened, so that average has significantly declined. That’s life, though, and the point is that I guard the time that I have carefully. I also guard what I read. I spent so much time in non-fiction during grad school that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a novel again at the end of each semester (the only time I seemed to have to read them then).

By guarding, I also mean that I’m careful about how I read. I’ve read the research about how reading with a backlit display before bed causes disrupted sleep (and I do a lot of my reading before bed). I’m cautious to try to read the printed (or eInk) page while reading in bed, and leave the screens asleep for the night before I go to sleep.

I compartmentalize easily…I always have. Reading different mediums (a blog vs. a book) has always meant reading in two different modes, if you will. I’m careful about this because I want to, as much as possible, stave off the rewiring of our brains that different modes of reading brings. The beauty of reading a book…and one of the things that I so carefully guard against…is that I can become absorbed in those pages, that the world around me can melt away and that the only thing that exists in that moment is the story in which I engage as a willing participant. No distractions of incoming mail, no links, no infernal ads…rather the ability to leave all of that behind. It’s a different sort of experience, a different type of reading to me. That reading experience is what I’ve guarded, because I feel it to be so important, important enough to hold a dedicated place in our lives.

Last night, geek that I am, I was looking through a DC Comics superhero encyclopedia (don’t judge). In one of the entries, one of the images of artwork for the character in question was quite small. I got closer to it, squinting, and my right hand involuntarily moved for a mouse to click the image and make it larger.

My compartmentalized, guarded modes of reading collided.

Now, there’s a lot of conversation that could come from this, not the least of which is that this sort of book is exactly the sort of reading that is perhaps better suited for the medium of the web or an ebook on a tablet device. All of that conversation is valid. It’s just that I feel as though I’ve slipped in some capacity, that my guard has come down, that my reading or even my ability to think has somehow come into question.

And, that’s perhaps more than a bit melodramatic.

You see my point, though, right?

I’m going to go think about how to guard my reading again.