Thats part of what I’m feeling today, remembering the difficult weeks a year ago, when the one who holds my heart was being with her father as he passed from this life to next. I only met VG a few months earlier, and he quickly became part of the life we were building together. I meet a few people who are older than me in the course of my daily life, some are distant, you can tell when they shake your hand, they’re thinking about the next important thing they have to do, some, well, they work hard in that first few minutes to let you know how wealthy they are, or how important they are. But you meet some, you look in their eyes, and you see that they are looking into you. Not in a critical way, but in a way that lets you know, you’re their focus, right then, right there. Voris was that way, and Fredrick is that way too. They look, they smile, they listen. When they talk, I learn, that’s what makes them my elders. That’s what I give my respect to.

When you see them in a group, especially a family group, you see more. You see them looking around trying to keep up with all the chatter, sometimes working to get a word in edgewise, but then there are moments, you see it, the immense pride they have. Not in a stuffy or judgmental way, not putting on airs, but a pride in their family…like they see right then, right there, what they have made…a family. You see the pride they have in their children, and the way they light up when a grandchild talks to them, its almost as if you can see the energy being given from one generation to the next.

Maybe I see these glimpses because i’m a dad, and I know I can’t keep a poker face when I see what my daughters accomplish, its touching when it hits you, these are great people, and they are part of me. Who wouldn’t be touched by that? The tyranny of this is, I don’t get to know them well as elders, time in visits, time in life, makes these experiences fleeting, but when you see that look, the moment they realize they are the father of the family, and that the family is doing good and amazing things, it just stops time. Like the room full of people around them are in a freeze frame, but they’re still moving. I know when I have those moments with my daughters, time stops. I flash back to Pachelbel’s canon coming through the radio as i held them for the first time…how did that song come on at that moment, on days that were two years apart? It still mystifys me. If i told VG that story out loud, I think he’d say “o ye of little faith”, Fredrick would make a big smile and say a long drawn out “ohhh yeah, how did that happen?” But in those frozen moments, when she’s walking across a stage, their first dance recital, interviewing as a Rhodes finalist, or making a crosswind landing, you remember. Their first time getting on the schoolbus, their first touch of the ocean, the moments of grief you shared, the moments of beauty when you could stand with them quietly, everyone knowing the moment was about the beauty…

Pride comes from all that. Sharing the ups and downs, the simple things, and the complex problems. It comes from slowly letting them go, like the first time they ride on two wheels, they’re on their own, but you’re running after them as fast as you can to catch them, just in case….Pride isn’t unique to dads, I see it in a mothers faces too. Maybe its easier to see, or I see it more often, I’m not sure. I’m learning that pride is a two way street, and as much as I am proud of my daughters, they’re starting to tell me they’re proud of me too. Talk about a deep touch to the heart!

I don’t think I ever told my Dad or Mom that I was proud of them. I’m not sure why, it just never occurred to me. But as Mother’s day is just around the corner, maybe, tell Mom that… in a card, or a whisper, or a quiet moment in the car. Pride is a two way street.

As the one who holds my heart and I begin planning our ceremony, our wedding, I’m feeling a new kind of pride. Her daughter, who postponed the beginning of her professional life, to care for VG, and look after the one who holds my heart, got her first job in the profession of architecture. Seeing her study, learn, work hard when no one was pushing but herself, and then succeed through tricky interviews, I felt a pride in her accomplishment, not because I had anything to do with it, but because I’m getting to know her, and her brother. Next year at this time, maybe this day, he will receive his degree. I thought of that today, as my students were coming across the stage, and I felt it. Being a step-significant-other is kind of a tricky thing, I absolutely don’t want to be seen as trying to replace their Dad. Their Dad works hard to be in their life, and I can see how important it is to them. But i find myself running after the bicycle, only I’m farther back, behind the one who holds my heart, and their Dad, but still, I’m there…something for another blog one day I think.

I think the reason we feel pain when we lose someone we’re proud of is because pride and love are pretty much the same. We feel the same kind of sadness when we lose them, from life, or from our immediate touch, or from our sphere of learning. I find myself trying to hold on to the wisdom I learn from those I have pride in, thats what happens in those freeze frame moments for me.

Here’s to hoping you have a freeze frame moment with your Mom this weekend as I have with my graduating students. Remember to whisper your love and pride in her when you give her that hug, in person, on the phone, or in memory. Pride is a two way street, believe it.

Be good to each other!

The first one was back in our old Morton Grove house. It wasn’t air conditioned, and I remember how hot it would get upstairs. There was a large exhaust fan in the ceiling, I guess you’d call it an attic fan, and Dad would turn it on when the six of us would go to bed. We’d open the windows a tiny bit and the fan would pull outside air (sometimes cooler, sometimes not) through the bedrooms, making them (sometimes) cooler for sleeping. 

On those hot nights in July, all six of us would pull blankets and pillows out into the hallway and sleep on the cool hardwood floor, cool air pulling over us, and the steady drone of the fan helping us sleep.

I remember sometime later, we had gotten a dog, and I have memories of a Saturday morning, early, after dad had gone to work, and before starting chores, our dog would flatten out the tall grass and sleep, I’d lay down with my head on his back, I remember the deep blue sky, the whiteness of the clouds, and how warm his black coat felt. That early on a Saturday used to be very quiet, I remember birds, the smell of the grass, and that warm tingly feeling of sun on my face.

I think it was in high school, the cubs were making a pennant run, I remember come home from work, maybe in late August and pulling the bed over to the windows, the sill and mattress were exactly on the same level, I’d put the pillow in the open window, turn Jack Brickhouse and Lou Boudreau on WGN and fall asleep to the play by play, waking when they would turn a double play “Santo to Beckert to Banks” or when shortstop Don Kessinger would backhand a grounder and execute a turning, leaping throw across his body that Ernie would scoop out of the dirt to rob Lou Brock and the Cardinals of a base runner. I remember hearing the train at Dempster and Lehigh as I drifted to sleep.

I remember one of the only times I was up at the lake by myself, in the addition Dad and I had built. I remember it was cold, grey, drizzly, and the house didn’t have heat yet. I had driven most of the day and after unloading, put on the hooded sweatshirt my daughters gave me, pulled up the hood, and laid face down, the warmth of my breath making a little bubble of heat, all I needed to fall into a deep sleep.

I remember too, the house in Blacksburg, on a Saturday afternoon, turning on the NASCAR race on the xm radio the girls gave me and feeling the sun on my back as i fell into a solid nap after mowing.

It’s hard to know why these memories popped up just now. It could be that good sleep is hard to come by these days. Mostly it’s just the season, springtimes are filled with difficult memories, mostly of losses, and it’s the busy season, classes wrapping up, taxes being organized, summer plans coming into view, but the memory of sleep is almost as restful as the real thing. I think it’s a memory of slowing down, feeling relaxed enough to let down and to take it all in, the sounds, the smells, the warmth, the coolness, all of it.

These days when we’re all so distracted by the devices around us, it’s a real treat to unplug briefly, and just be…right there, right then. Not thinking of the past or future, just the immediate present.

There’s any old saying, “let sleeping dogs lie”. So if you ever come across someone sleeping a peaceful sleep, let them be for just a while, someone will return that favor to you one day, and you’ll appreciate it.

your strength
your grace
given freely to those in need
during difficult times

I think of you
wanting to know the stars
wanting to know the world

I think of us
at the moment of our first kiss
cooking together
watching clouds
floating in the pool
dancing in the kitchen
sitting under a tree

and i know
i can’t live
without us
without you

Our later trips to the new river were more exciting. I remember him telling me to put the paddle away at the front of the canoe, that were were going to go UP the rapids. This I’d never seen done and was a bit nervous. Jay would sit up tall and read the water, looking for the slackwater, and the zigzag path up through the rocks, he’d move the boat forwards, then sideways, then back a bit, then forwards, and before I knew it, we were upstream of the rapids. We’d go wade fishing then, working shorelines and structure, pulling little bass out and letting them go. I remember casting to an undercut, popping the bug once and seeing the water bulge up behind the lure. At that moment you hold your breath, waiting for the fish to smash the lure. But it kept coming, past the lure, headed for me! I was hip deep in water, standing on slippery rocks but must have done some fancy steppin to get away from whatever it was. Jay came over and with his calm voice said something like “you’re supposed to catch him, not have him catch you”…

Jay had always been the most passionate person about architecture that I’d met. He’d study a building in incredible detail, trying to learn what the architect and the builders had infused into the fabric of walls, roofs and especially cabinetry. He was a principled man, leaving a tenured university position because he didn’t agree with the emphasis on sports, and then spending every day in the year after in the library and visiting our offices. We’d have a lunch, i’d be amazed by the amount of habenero sause he’d put on his food. He told me once that it was the only way he could taste anything.

Jay was a lifelong smoker. He had tried everything to quit, but just couldn’t. During the summer he rode his motorcycle from Virginia to Texas to visit for a few days on his national tour he said he wasn’t feeling good, but after a few days rest, he put the leathers on (in 104 degrees!) and head on to see friends in Alabama I think. He was looking into retiring in little towns in Oregon, where the water was clean, the trout and salmon abundant, and people thought for themselves. I could see the excitement in his face as he talked about it. It was always great to see him excited, about a new tool, a water-jetted part for his motorcycle, or about his travel plans.

I was telling the one who holds my heart about Jay just this weekend, probably just as he was passing from this life to the next. She was amazed that he would travel by canoe, in the early years with his dog, but later, all by himself. Canoeing for almost two weeks in the wilderness, executing a plan that he had meticulously worked out for weeks during this time of year. He’d give me dates and locations where he thought he’d be, and leave a trip map with me in case I didn’t hear from him. Jay used to stay at the same motel in Eau Claire, Wisconsin that Dad and I stayed at, and then go for pie at the Norske Nook in Osseo. They knew him by name there, and would mention him when Dad and I checked in. He was memorable.

I’d guess that a few thousand students were lucky enough to pass through his studios at Virginia Tech. Many rankled at his high standards, but Jay was more of a coach than a studio master. He’d be there with the students late at night, showing them how to precisely draw the engine block he’d just cut in half, or how to model an off the grid house inspired by Thoreau.

Jay had thought he was ill when he came to see me, and i’m told when formally diagnosed that he refused treatment. Hospice looked after him that last week I’m told, and I’m sure his friends from the department were around him. I wish I had been there.

One never knows what those last days and minutes are truly like, or if our presence bedside is important. I think its a way we honor the person, respecting them to the end.

I’d like to bring his memory to my students, but i don’t think i could. I’ll try to coach them a bit harder though, help them a bit more. Its what he taught me.

I’m hoping his students remember him today. I know his friends are. My world’s a bit smaller now. But i’ll think of him when i throw a cast, or take the tools to the field.

We all have a few close friends in life, and usually they can be counted on both hands (Steve, Chuck, Frank, Marcel, Ward, Heiner, Bill, this means you). Jay was one of those for me. Make sure yours know what they mean to you. Life is shorter than we all think.

Send in a comment if you’d like me to post your memories about Jay, I’m happy to host them for you and his memory, he’d like to see more from all of us i’m sure.

We’ve been seeing the signs for a few weeks now, an outbreak of red here, a wash of yellow over the fields, but not the solid signs of spring. This time the signs were everywhere, bluebonnets beginning to take over the road shoulders, daisies by the handful next to the road, signs of nesting in the trees, the return of the cardinals and jays, all of it means that its almost here.

The equinox won’t arrive for a few more weeks, so we’ll not be official until the 20th, but its already spring in the lives of the plants and birds. The cattle seem to believe it too. After last years drought drew down the herds, I was surprised to see so many cattle in the fields, and so many calves, some pretty much brand new by the look of their legs.

Seeing the calves reminded me of the day I watched my daughter and her friends have their first encounter with a calf as part of a middle school science project where they would raise and show a calf. Not a big deal to some who spend their lives around them, but for my urban daughters it was quite a challenge. Those first few minutes when they would be skiing through the feedlot muck holding on the the rope halter shouting “stop” “sit” “heel” trying to get the calf, who was only thinking of food in the trough, to listen and behave. It was their first encounter with a part of the world that didn’t listen to them or pay them much attention. I remember going after school most days then, watching them feed and groom the calf, and through these little acts of kindness, earn the trust of the calf, if there is such a thing. But the calf and the girls slowly figured out how to work together, how to signal each other (the head butt didn’t mean good things) and over time, they had the calf accepting their intentions, learning how to stand, and getting ready for the performance in the ring. Inevitably, once inside the judging pavilion, the calf would have other ideas, and revert to its “i wanna be out in the field eating!” state of mind, but overall it was a good thing…learning to cooperate, earn trust, with a stubborn creature…its kind of humbling.

The girls will be taking on a similar task soon, trying to get someone who hasn’t really cooperated, has broken trust, and isn’t really interested in them as people, to be civil, and polite as first steps. I’m not sure it will work, a handful of hay won’t be enough incentive this time, and theres a chance it will turn on them and they’ll have to walk away to protect themselves. But like the middle school encounter with the calves, I’m proud that they have a plan, they’re united in the goal, and they know that sometimes you just have to let the calf go. Ok, maybe its not a calf, but you get the idea…

I was surprised how uplifting it felt to see water in the landscape. Creeks full, ponds full, tanks full, and green re-appearing in the landscape for the first time in almost a year. I’m not sure how long it will last, but it made me feel hopeful that we’d have a quiet normal year ahead, without the fires. There’s still tending to do, lots of pruning and tree removal, evidence of the damage the past year has wrought on the land, but today in the sunlight, in the green of the land, it looks survivable.

Lets keep our fingers crossed that this continues, I’ll have mine crossed for my daughters and their effort, and will be enjoying the renewal that is spring.

So get outside if you can (in Texas, i know spring hasn’t made it far north yet) walk in the green, smell the flowers, and get to the garden center…its not too early to plant! and planting gives us hope. Maybe give a friend a packet of seeds this spring, or a little tree, both your friend and the environment can use a little of your shared hope.

Take care of each other, be good to each other

What did I lose?
The house I built and all the equity, about a quarter million dollars, half of my retirement…which means i’ll never retire…about 125,000 dollars, 41% of my take home pay every month, for the next ten years, about 1/3 of a million dollars, and most of my savings…gone.

But there’s good news, the person who tormented me and my children is out of our lives now, and after five years of counseling, we’ve all learned that the tormentor has some problems, and that we are survivors of abuse…but we are survivors, thats the important part. We won’t suffer the anxiety of birthdays and christmas anymore, having our gifts scowled at, and discarded that same day. We won’t come home to a tree decorated with the images of dead and dying people…that was a real holiday treat….we won’t have to endure the scowls and frowns and little digs that were intentionally designed to hurt us each at the deepest parts of our psyche….and by someone who’s now a mental health provider! Tell me it wasn’t all on purpose…I don’t believe it….

So we lost some things, the ability to fly and be together whenever we feel the need, and our ability to weather the adversities and emergencies of life, health and the economy is pretty severely dinged, but so far we’re getting through ok…fingers crossed!

We lost some innocence too, believing that a mothers love was unquestioned, and was a kindness… our tormentor proved that you couldn’t just take that at face value, that love and trust are earned, and lost, when we are exploited, deceived, and ridiculed.

But we gained a few things too, really important things as it turns out, that we’re all in this together, that our family of three can do well together, survive and flourish, even add members! I gained a freedom of sorts, one that was costly, but maybe thats the best kind of freedom, a freedom thats earned. In my freedom I’ve learned that I have things to contribute to someone, and like my children, learned that it isn’t all our fault, and that anyone who isn’t able to accept their responsibility for causing pain and suffering, is a red-flag person, and it doesn’t matter if they cover themselves with hearts, they are a source of toxicity that can’t be in any normal persons life…set a firm boundary and enforce it with the full protection of the law…it turns out stalking across state lines is an interstate crime thats taken very seriously these days…and I’m comfortable asking the police to help me hold that boundary.

I’ve gained a deeper sense of how important my relationships are with my children, and how blissful, how freeing, a love relationship can be. For the second time in my life, i’ve given my heart to someone, and this someone has taught me that love isn’t about making the other person feel bad about themselves. I’d never known this kind of love before. Even at her darkest hour, her most stressful moments, she doesn’t have a glimmer of the mean spirit i’d endured for decades. Its truly amazing.

My ability to make a future has been significantly reduced. I have to work harder, longer, to try and earn back what’s been paid for freedom from pain, but when you think about it, its a good deal on the whole for me and my daughters.

I watched a person riding their bicycle on campus this morning as i walked in for my early lecture. The person was pedaling away, smiling. I wondered if they were happy about where they were going or where they had been, but now I think they were happy where they were. Thats a gift, a life skill many of us have to work at. But, in the final analysis, its a priceless gift.

If you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have empathy, who hurts you, physically, socially, or emotionally, GET OUT! What we’ve learned from this is that you cannot “fix” them, and until they hit bottom, they won’t get better. It doesn’t matter that they are in the field of mental health, they won’t get better until they make the effort themselves, and accept responsibility. My recommendation is get far away from them and stay far away from them. BPD is widespread, toxic, and will ruin your life. So if you have to give up most of what you’ve built in life to get free, do it….and i hope you find one person who will hold your heart gently…its the best!

Take Care of each other, and take care of you!

Our calls at the end of the day are mostly about the day, the things we did, the people we saw, what we think of all that, our online scrabble games and sometimes deeper topics. It puts me at ease to hear her talk about those things, something that helps me end the day and get ready to sleep, and without it i find myself reading Semper or the Times and not really getting to that state of ease she puts me in.

We’re together a few times a week, and i try to make sure i’m there, in mind as well as body which has not been so easy of late, too many distractions in closing out the details of my former life, sometimes we walk one of the four little dogs frequenting the backyard and we hold hands and talk and pull and talk and pull and…you get the picture, and its all very very relaxing. We sit and watch the sun go down, light a little fire and dream together too, which i can tell you is much better than dreaming alone, and we watch the stars rise in the sky while the dogs chase whatever they brought to us to throw.

Without all this, i feel myself missing. Missing her voice and the calm it brings me, missing the warmth of her hand, the smile in her eyes, and i realized that all those little things, which some people would say aren’t extraordinary, well, they make up part of me now, and when she’s not here, i’m missing those parts of who i am.

I busied myself with drawings, sculptures and preparations for classes, but its not the same life. As i sit here at the table the card she sent me before she left is at my hand, the roses we ate dinner over are in front of me, and the stove is warming the house, but it would’ve been so much warmer if she was here.

My daughters do something similar for me. They bring out a part of me thats not usually around, and when they’re gone, i’m missing that part of me and the energy they use to bring it out in me.

We all have people in our lives who make us more somehow. Parents, spouses, siblings, children, and when they go away, to camp, or school, or vacation, its good to take a moment and consider yourself. What part of you is not there when they are gone? I think thats what missing is.

This is one way I’ll tell the one who holds my heart how much i’ve missed her, and my daughters too. I’ll do more of course, but I think its the first time i’ve realized how much they make up in my life. That line from Jerry Maguire…”you complete me” seems a bit corny and overused maybe, but i think its really a life truth. When you let someone deep into you, they become a part of you, and when they’re gone, that part is missing.

Missing you!
With all my heart

And while that worries me…will I be able to help my favorite daughters? Will I be able to provide for the one who holds my heart? It’s not what’s making me sad.

I’m remembering the wood in my hands, sitting on the steps of a rented duplex, watching my daughters playing in the parking lot. They were riding around on “pink thunder” a two wheeler with training wheels and a big wheels trike. I had been given the wood by my contractor, who was trying to get me out of his hair. It had been raining for almost twenty days, the foundation was ready, the modular house was ready, we just needed ten dry days in a row so the crane that would lift the modules into place, wouldn’t sink or tip over. My carpenter was tired of me asking “are we almost there yet?” and had handed the piece of 5/4 fir to me (with a bit of velocity) and told me to “go make sawdust.”

So I was sitting on the porch worried about the weeks passing, the lack of progress, when my favorite oldest daughter asked me to draw a hummingbird.
I took out a pencil and drew one on the board. She asked me if I would put it up over her window. I found a small chisel and carved the bird in low relief in the board. My favorite youngest daughter asked for a fish, so I drew and carved on for her. I did a few others, and brought them to the carpenter who nailed them up over the appropriate windows. My hands worked that house, tarring the basement, priming siding, designing little custom bits, all throughout the summer of 1989.

I’d start each day at the house site early, sipping a bit of juice, and having a donut while sitting in one of the ground floor windows looking over the tangle of greenbriar that would become the backyard that I enjoyed mowing in long flowing lines following the count our of the land.

To be accurate, there were times I didn’t enjoy the mowing, or the mistakes I made with the paint, and I didn’t ever like the wood for the back deck but, the house, the yard, the garden, the secret pine grove where we’d have ccokouts, and the playhouse that quickly was renamed “the pony house” I liked making them for the girls. It was all this I remembered and the idea of giving it away makes me sad.

Little things like loosening one stair tread so it would squeak when someone came in late, the little window where we’d sit on the stairs to watch for the school bus, all that’s gone now. The garden looked overgrown, the holiday lights were half heartedly draped, the work of my hands slowly rotting away.

A house you build has something of you in it, like anything we make, food, cards, stories, the thinking, the effort is a gift, one we usually give freely hoping the gift will bring pleasure. I think in the case of this house, it feels like it was stolen, at least those parts that came from my mind, and my hands.

I’m not in the habit of wishing anyone ill, but I’m hoping that if a person takes a gift, that the cosmos will look badly upon them, and that no joy will come their way….well it’s the worst I can wish…

Losing the house may be appropriate as an analogy, that life is past, nature will take back the wood in time, and soon maybe, I’ll get to put my hands on some wood again and build something. 

It was quiet then, there were a few birds calling, a train whistled in the distance, and what light remained painted everything in shades of orange and yellow. Behind the fence a football would pop up, then fall down, much to the consternation of the dogs, and some disappointment with the Aggies overtime performance could be heard.

Before long, the one who holds my heart was there, and i readied a fire in the chimenia, a little portable fireplace pretty common around here. I hadn’t built a fire in a while but the old “little sticks first, bigger sticks on that” was the principle that always worked at the cabin so I thought it would work here too. In not time the fire was at a healthy roar, and we started putting the piñon pine blocks in to give the smoke a better scent.

The smell of burning pine took me back to the cabin, not the new cabin dad and i built, but the one before, the one dad bought when he had his falling out with grandpa. Maybe it was the spite cabin. It had been built in the early 1920′s and was a cold cold place each evening, we needed fire to have a comfortable evening playing cards.

I remember we’d spend most of a day unloading (mostly rolling logs downhill, trying not to roll them through the cabin) and splitting the logs into burnable chunks. Dad looked hard for oak, was comfortable with pine, but didn’t really like burning balsam. Balsam burned fast, had lots of sap in it, and would spit and pop and send sparks from the chimney…something not so good during dry years.

We split the wood with a maul usually. Its a dumb lump of metal at the end of a handle, tapered to a wedge to split the wood, with the back of the head shaped like a sledge hammer. Sometimes the maul would get stuck in the log and we’d have to take a sledge and drive it deeper till the log split. Good wood (dry with a straight grain) would split in one maul blow. It made you feel like you weren’t just a paper pusher, like you were a woodsman, but then the next piece would be wet, have a knot buried in it, and would tangle up the maul on every swing, reminding you that no, you were just a paper pusher and not a woodsman.

We’d stack the split wood, cover it with tar paper, weight down the paper hoping that it would come through the winter drier than it started, which sometimes worked, sometimes not…thats the thing about fire making, it keeps a person humble. We usually never burned the wood we split that year, depending on the previous stack that was nice and dry from the year before. Hauling the wood inside was often a bit of an adventure as we’d inevitably disturb a whole bunch of ants who’d been nesting for the year, and a few big wolf spiders.

Once inside, we’d choose out some straight grained dry splits to turn into kindling. This usually required taking the hand ax and splitting kindling from the log right there on the hearth. It takes a stout concrete arch to deal with this pounding, and a person has to keep a close eye on the sharp edge of that axe. More than once it skid off the log (ok i missed when i swung) and bounced off the ankle of my boot (keep your boots on when splitting kindling) When that would happen I’d look up at dad as if to say did you see that? I almost cut my foot off! but we’d never say anything, he’d have his eyebrows up and tell me to keep my eye on the axe.

The kindling would go in the firebox just above a few wrinkled sheets of newspaper, whatever cardboard we had (cereal boxes) and if we were lucky, a split of birchbark. Birchbark was magic fire starting material. It burned hot, always caught, and its heat would get the kindling going almost every time. We’d lay one or two split logs on the kindling pile and then bet on whether this was a one or two match fire. (any more would be an embarrassment and would result in removing and rebuilding the fire)

If i did it right, if the wood was well chosen, if the kindling was not too big, if the paper was dry, I could take one match and it would come to life, not quite like a gas log, but almost. Dad would say something like “one match, you’re almost as good as me!” and I knew I’d done well.

I’d sit by the growing fire, feeling the heat dry out my wet boots, begin to bake my jeans stiff, and start to make that almost falling asleep heat on one side of my face. I think dad would start to see me fade and then begin dealing gin. It was always just a tenth of a cent a point, but i never could play well with that fire warming me.

Those fires were all the entertainment we had at the spite cabin. TV reception was poor to impossible, there was only one channel, and it was public tv. Dad and I would listen to the radio, a country station, the only time he listened to a country station was at the lake (wkkq?) and we’d play cards into the evening. The fire would begin to fade when we did, and we’d go to sleep with the crackle and pop of the remaining logs.

I remember that there was seldom hot water at the spite cabin, so we didn’t shower often, and that I’d smell mostly like pine smoke for the days I was there with dad.

The growing fire in the chimenia reminded me of all this. The first whiff of piñon pine brought all this back, in an instant. We sat together in the cold air, the one who holds my heart and I, watching the fire, holding hands and transporting each other back and forth into our memories. It was a dark night and the flames in the fire were brighter than the moon that night. The stars showed up and once we were well frozen we let the fire die and went in to the warm and light.

It was a perfect saturday night. Fire, long shadows, steamed shrimp, and life stories shared slowly.

It’s fall now, across most of the country. I hope you have a chance to safely enjoy a fire, to remember marshmallows, chocolate dipped strawberries, and mysterious sounds in the woods beyond the firelight. Making fire is what distinguished our species from others early on. It kept them alive physically, and fed their minds and spirits. I hope you have a chance to teach fire making (responsible fire making) to your children, to sit around and watch the magic in the flames.

Be good to each other, teach each other well!

Time is the topic, and while walking to the office yesterday, i was thinking of people who don’t have time. Not the ones you might think of, not the presidents, department heads, overworked middle managers, or the armies of people who work under their supervision, no i’m thinking of people who live on the land, in australia, in africa, in the great plains, people to whom time and life are one and the same.

Maybe its because I have some time now to think instead of just doing, that brings all this up, but also i’m feeling acutely aware of time passing. Mornings to afternoons, to evenings, to nights to mornings….and wondering how all this time is passing and I’m not accomplishing much?

The short answer is, of course, i’m thinking about time too much! But the more real answer is I’m not measuring time much beyond the sunup and sundown, in between, as the days shorten, is work. Work i love, to be sure, but the moments outside of work are barely enough to get me out of work-mind and into life-mind. Yet there are incidents, a conversation that becomes unexpectedly interesting, a sight or sound that seems to fill all the time of the day, its odd I know, but sometimes time stretches it seems and sometimes it shrinks.

I can see I need much more thought to make something out of this, but I’m out of time! Have to go and talk about glass to some earnest chocolate-loving students, hoping they don’t see through the lecture and realize i’m still thinking about all that could be done without time…

I’ll try again on this later, be good to each other, give each other a moment that will last forever, we all need that from time to time.