Day 357: The King Of The Castle

Today, after my daughter and I made a fine snowman to grace our front yard, we set about building a snow castle. I've had a lot years' practice at making snow forts, so I've gotten pretty good at making icy edifices in a hurry. Well, truth be told, there isn't much to it, really. You just grab a shovel and start piling snow upon snow upon snow. Pack it down and dig out a center. Bam! That's it. Then you lay back and relax, staring at the blue sky. 

My daughter, though, expects more than the mundane of minimum. She expects a castle that can hold off the hordes of evil-doers that will embark upon us soon enough. So also expects the walls to be just the right size on all sides. There's no slacking where she and snow castles are concerned. There's also no question who the king of the castle is. She is. Always. And I'm guessing she'll want to be forever. 

That's fine with me. I don't mind being the princess, which I always seem to end up being in any game we play. It's a good distinction to hold. There's merit in being the lady of the land. But what bothers me a little bit is my daughter is under the illusion that to hold real power in this world and gain respect among your fellow humans you have to be a man. I explain this isn't the case, and that there have been very fine queens who have ruled ably and justly throughout the years, but she really doesn't want to hear any of that. She wants to be king. 

And so she is. I have to say, though, that she's a bit of a tyrant. She rules with a iron fist. Bossing her subjects around. Demanding more weapons (snowballs) to fight those who would approach her domain. Ordering the princess to "get busy." I'm not sure where all of this is going, but I guess I'll take solace in the fact she's using her imagination and is shooting her sights high. I'm sure somewhere along the line she'll realize that it's good to be the king, but it can be even better being the princess. 

Day 356: "Always Be Closing"

One of my favorite movie quotes ever comes from Alec Baldwin's character Blake in "Glengarry Glen Ross." 

"Always be closing," he barks to the salesmen who he's gathered around for a little ass-kicking, motivational speech. Blake is snarling and deliberate and cutthroat. He's brutally honest in his expectations. He has no time for losers. No time for compassion or patting men on the back. No time for second-best. He wants results, and he really doesn’t care how they come about.

Take the monthly sales contest that Blake is in the office to pimp, for example. The winner gets a Cadillac Eldorado. 

"Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired," he states with no sense of joking whatsoever. 

I have no desire to be a salesman. I'm convinced I'd suck miserably at it. I lack both the skill and the heart for the occupation. I'm not cold-blooded by nature where sales are concerned. I’m not motivated by money primarily.

Where I am cold-blooded is my desire to win. I don’t like losing. I’m ultra-competitive by nature. I don’t like losing a game of checkers. I don’t like losing a pickup basketball game. I don’t like losing a debate. I don’t like losing.

Now, I’m not a blinded freak who will cut your legs off in order to come out on top, but I’m not one to do you any favors or back off, either.

As I’ve gotten older, though, my competitive outlets seem to have grown fewer and fewer in number. Nowadays, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to satisfying my competitive juices by pushing myself in things I do alone. Take golf, for example. I don’t really compete against those I’m playing with because I’m typically not good enough to expect to. Instead, I compete against my previous rounds. And this kind of approach really has been good enough to fulfill me until lately. This year, I’ve wanted to step up my game and go further out on the ledge.

That’s why today I signed up to run a half-marathon in May. It may turn out to be a terrible, huge mistake, and I have all kinds of doubts, but if I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that I’m capable of more than I ever gave myself credit for. Further, I’m capable of setting myself up for more than I previously ever would have considered.

In short, I’m finding great fuel and joy in sticking my neck out there and seeing if I can keep my head intact.

Sticking the neck out, however, is the easy part. Putting in the work to keep the head attached is the hard part. I’m stoked to do the work, and I’m stoked to try to close this deal.

“Always be closing.” On a personal level, sealing the deal is where it’s at for me right now.

Day 355: On Guns, Opposing Views & Lessons Learned

I’ve never really had much respect for wishy washy people. As testament to my own weaknesses, my tolerance level for such people has never been what it should be. People who float from camp to camp, belief to belief, opinion to opinion—not because they’re adapting their stances upon serious contemplation but because their inherently too lazz to do the required research to form their own thoughts—bug me. In other words, I don’t like sheep.

I do respect people who take a stand. People who put their foot down and defend that stand. People who defend their position. Who aim to prove their point—as long as that stand isn’t a knee-jerk, hastily conceived one that refuses to take reality into account.

Hey, I’m as much of a knee-jerk (or just jerk, for that matter) reactionary as there might be, but I like to think I put in at least a respectable amount of thought and research in on the given subject at hand prior to popping off. I like to think I’ve done my homework before spewing forth. I like to think I know enough to know that if I don’t have a solid foundation about a topic, I shut up until I do. Not always, but I try. I’ve been in enough arguments and debates to know that you can only bullshit so long before someone smarter and more adept comes along and calls your bluff. When that happens, you better be prepared with a better reply than “just because” to back up your claim.  

The topic of guns is front and center these days, as it should be. Everyone has an opinion it seems. Everyone has a stance. Many of them are set in stone. What’s alarming to me is that many of them were based upon a reality that excited decades and decades ago. This history is not the present.

On the topic of guns, I have to say I’ve offered up a few of my own knee-jerk reactions in the past several days, reactions primarily fueled on years of tears and frustration and anger concerning needless deaths. I’ve also read more knee-jerk reaction than I can count. I’ve had my fill of knee-jerk reactions, especially those lacking a wide scope of the issue. I can’t count the number of comments I’ve read and heard in the past week wanting to know why “honest” and “decent” and “law-abiding” gun owners should have to give up their guns. Why a few “evil” people or “criminals” or “f*cking idiots” should spoil things for the rest of us. This black-and-white, all-or-nothing sentiment drives me crazy. Some are so misguided and off-putting and defensive in tone, it’s difficult to even read them or take them seriously. The same can be said of those on the other side of the fence who are deaf to any countering opinion.

But there are those who have formed opinions filled with well-informed and thoughtful words. Thus, for every tweet I read and saw reported earlier this week that lambasted our “n*gger” president for having the gall to interrupt their Sunday Night Football game in place of his speech at a memorial service in Newtown, I’m relieved and happy to also know there are those taking the gun debate seriously and approaching it with the respect and compassion it deserves.   

It’s been a long, difficult, strange week since so many kids were taken so, so early, but I been pleasantly surprised along the way. Take, for example, the completely encouraging exchange I had with a 19-year-old or so kid that marked perhaps the most intelligent and even-keeled conversation I’ve had since the Newtown tragedy. A kid who is a gun-owning, avid hunter, mind you. A kid passionate about the subject and grounded and stately in expressing his thoughts and beliefs. I don’t agree with them or maybe even respect them, but damn it, I respect him.

And that’s the lesson I think I’ve learned in the days following Sandy Creek: Opposition to my beliefs is everywhere, but not all of it comes from ill-informed knee-jerk reactionaries more concerned with making their point than also making a concerted effort to hear and respect the point of others. In recent days, I’ve been prone to want to let my anger and sadness do my talking. I realizing that’s not going to cut it if I want things to improve. I'm ready to fight for my stance, but I'm convinced I fighting responsibly is the way to proceed. 

Day 354: Dreaming Of The Dead

I have a surprising amount of dreams about people who are no longer living. I had one last night. It wasn't a particularly eventful dream, but it was beautiful all the same.

I've grown to really appreciate these dreams as a chance to catch up with those who are no longer in my physical world. The dreams are never sorrowful or filled with sadness. Like most of my dreams, they typically are just alternative versions of my actually life. Me driving in a car, for example, having a conservation, turning the radio stations, checking out the scenery, and so on--except I'm doing it with someone who is no longer alive. It's all very comforting really. Peaceful and sublime.

The only thing I'd change about these dreams is how they play out. I'd like to be able to pick the person who is revisiting my life via the dream world, for instance. I'd like to push a button and be able to dream of one of the grandparents I never got to know. One of the uncles who could tell me about my family. I'd like to be able to change the age of the person reappearing in my dreams. They're always the same age as when they left this world. I'd like to be able to dictate our surroundings and what we talk about. I'd like to ask them certain questions and seek their advice. But it doesn't work that way.

Despite the lack of control, I'm thankful for the time we share. I'm thankful for the memories these dreams rekindle. I'm thankful for the reminders of what they meant to me while they were here. It's a wonderful gift to have a relationship live on, no matter where it takes place.

Day 353: Nebraska Winters

Tomorrow, the weather gurus are predicting that the snow will fly crazy mad where I live. The winds will blow with hopped-up force, too, they say. Conditions will get nasty, the temperatures will dip, and there will be an excitement in the air that’s been missing in my neck of the woods for too long.

The snow gods have not been good to us here as of late, and we’ve noticed. I’ve noticed. Winters in Nebraska should be snow-filled. They should be white. They should be icy and treacherous. They should be bitter and biting. Winters in Nebraska should be as harsh as the summers in Nebraska are. Winters in Nebraska without snow aren’t really winters in Nebraska. They’re like a circus without clowns, incomplete. That’s the kind of winters we’ve seemingly had too much of in Nebraska lately.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate the winter. I hate everything about it, other than the snow. The snow I love. I always have. I hate being cold. I hate scrapping frost off of windshields. I hate wearing sweaters. I hate having to wear a stocking cap inside to keep my bald head warm. I hate long johns and gloves. I hate ice. I hate snowplows. I hate it all. But if I’m going to live in Nebraska, give me snow. I love the snow.

I love the isolation that only a long, contemplative walk in snowy woods can offer.

I love the goofy energy that my dogs get when the snow is drifting down. I love watching them burn that energy off by romping through the white stuff, bearing those noses as deep as they can, and tearing through one drift to get to the next.

I love the romanticism that is a snow floating from the skies on a winter night.

I love the grace of a lilting snow falling on my face with the backdrop of the black sky up above.

I love the magic luminance that the street lights conjure up.

I love the way the sun dances like a child on the newly created banks in the morning.

I love the snow.

That’s why I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when inches and inches of the fluff are expected to congregate. My memories that involve snow are good ones and they’re numerous. Like the ones of sledding as a kid south of Ashland, past the grocery store, past the Giles’ house, and into the canyon where at the bottom of the hill you had better duck your head or risk having your dome taken off by the barbed-wire fence waiting menacingly down there for children to approach.

Memories like coming home from college with my friends, only for a blizzard to force us to hole up inside—with no alcohol, with no girls in proximity, and with no way to escape.

Memories like sledding on the hill near Wiggenhorn Park with the scores of other kids who had the same idea. Run after run we’d make, all in complete and utter safety thanks to the good-minded town leaders who blocked off the hill from traffic.

Memories like the hill directly beside my own house, where for the last 10 years all of my children at some point have zoomed down, fallen down, rolled down, and tumbled down, laughing and smiling and basking in what it means to be a kid.

Memories like riding in Rick Hammers Volkswagen bug, bumping from snow bank to snow bank like a pinball and loving every minute of it.

Memories like the monster eight-foot sledding ramp my cousin Daryl built by hand next door, going so far as to get the garden hose out and water the thing to create a nice thick sheet of ice overnight.

Memories like walking with my dad as a kid while he checked his traps, wondering if this was how the early mountain men did it, too.

Memories like scooping off the back patio in the dead of winter so my sister and I could shoot baskets and keep our skills honed.

Maybe winters in Nebraska aren’t so bad, after all.

I really do love the snow.  

Day 352: Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012

Feb. 5, 2012, the day I failed to publish a post to this blog. 

Feb. 5, 2012, you haunt me. I set out this year to make a post each and every day of 2012 with the intent of documenting something positive. Something appreciative. Something hopeful in scope. I haven't managed to meet those expectations fully. Some days, I got sidetracked with current events, my current mood, my current situation, etc. and wrote about frustration or sorrow or what have you. But by and large, I have stuck to the game plan. I have made a post with a positive spin to it each and every day. Except Feb. 5, 2012. 

For weeks now, I've been searching for that lost day, but to no avail. I couldn't find it. Coming into today, the number of posts that I've published totaled 351. The number, however, should have been 352. I looked high and low for the discrepancy longer than I care to remember, but it eluded me. Until today. Finally, today I found the little bastard. Feb. 5, 2012. That's the day I failed to make a post. 

I'd like to think that I actually wrote a positive-filled post that day and just failed to publish it, but I honestly can't remember. It's been too long, and I'm too old to expect to recall specifics about yesterday let alone months ago. Maybe the hour grew late on that day, I got bleary-eyed and reckless, and by some accident deleted the draft I was stringing together instead of published it. But I can't say for certain. 

So I did a little investigating. Feb. 5, 2012 was a Sunday. Guess what it also was? That's right, the Superbowl. Ah, now it's all coming back to me. New England vs. The Giants. I watched in the living room. I was in severe multi-tasking mode, watching the game while also playing with my daughter. The game was a good one. I'm sure I watched until the end. I know I was happy with the outcome. But did I write something that day? I don't know. Like the Patriots I came up short. 

Damn, it. 

What happened to you Feb. 5, 2012, I'm sorry I lost you. I'm sorry I let you down. I should have been there for you. I should have paid you more attention. I wish I could make it up to you, but you're long gone. You're history. I squandered you. I took you for granted. I've learned my lesson. I apologize. 

Day 351: It's The Little Things

Now, more than ever, I'm starting to realize that it's the little things with our kids that matter most. I don't think it's the life lessons they're after. It's not the Ward Cleaver moments they desire. It’s the things that don’t appear in parenting books that they remember and appreciate the most. 

I'm starting to realize that it's the self-deprivation that makes them take notice. It’s the poking fun at one’s self that hooks them and convinces them your "one of us." It’s exploring the unfamiliar with them, showing your awe and appreciation of the moment. It's presenting yourself without shields up. 

It’s letting them show you the way. 

It’s enabling them to come out on top. Take charge. Bath in the glory. 

It’s being willing to go places they don’t expect you to go. It's dancing with them, badly or otherwise. It's making yourself available when they need it, not the other way around. 

It’s making certain you don’t take yourself or your life too seriously. 

It’s not telling them that they’re a priority but showing them, repeatedly and often. 

It's adapting to their schedule as much as you expect them to adapt to yours. 

It’s recognizing your mistakes, and when you do, backing up, sizing up the mess you created, and righting the wrong. 

I'm starting to realize all this isn't as hard as maybe I've made it out to be. Maybe the pressure of being a parent doesn't stem from the parental responsibilities expected of us but from giving the responsibilities a larger platform than they deserve. 

I'm starting to realize that to really impresses my kid and make a lasting impression, I have  to focus less on what I need and want and more on what matters to them. 

Want to build up really credibility. Admit when you make a mistake and mean it. 

Want to prove to your kid how strong you are? Don't hide your weaknesses. 

Want to show your kid that you’re trustworthy? Don’t break promises. 

Want to show them you’re dependable? Be there, and be there on time. 

Want to show them that you’re a force of life? Be full of life. 

Want them to have confidence in you? Don’t be afraid to fail in front of them? 

Want to earn their respect? Show grace vs. disgust. 

Want them to hear your words? Speak with truth. 

Want them to view you in a different light? Share your past and the future you envision. 

Want to floor your kid? Ask her to go for a walk. Write her a note. Freestyle a rap on the ride to school. Ask her opinion. 

It’s the little things.

As much as I’d like to fancy myself as the “Father’s Knows Best” type, the guy that dispenses meaningful, life-altering advice with a calm, even-keeled voice, even in the most dire of situations, the guy who makes serenity fall like rain drops from heaven, the model of consistency and dependability, I'm not. Not even close. 

I’m someone who panics, fails, flails, stumbles, and disappoints. But I'm also someone who tries. Who strives. Who seeks to improve. Who works hard. Who plays. Who attempts to sooth and comfort and fulfill expectations. Someone who seeks to do the right thing, even when I’m not. I’m typical. Normal. Good and decent. Boorish and judgmental. Steady. Stubborn. Up. Down. Down. Out. Soaring. Boring. Roaring. Thoughtful and dim. Conflicted and complex. Simple and predictable. Grounded. Flighty. Patient. Irrational. Sane. Delusional. Glad. Sad. Good. Bad. 

I’m typical. 

I’m normal.

I'm starting to realize there's a lot to like about typical and normal. About being happy in the pursuit of “the little things.” 

I want to create memories. A sense of reliance. A sense of ease. Assurance. Strength. Joy. 

I’m realizing that I'm serious too often for my own liking, and I swim against the flow just as frequently. But I'm also realizing I’m smart enough to recognize opportunities when they present themselves. 

Now more than ever, it’s the little things that I’m convinced are worth keeping an eye out for and seizing. 

Day 350: Come Together

One of the things I like most about this country and that a great many people seemingly to really, really care about their freedoms, and they're passionate about defending them. One of the things I like least is that passion seems to get in the way of meaningful dialogue. There a million and one examples present currently, including the obvious "leave my guns alone vs. it's time for a ban" debate now happening. Unfortunately, it seems more important to engage in debate than engage in debate to make a change. I pray this changes.