Depth Perception

What if we could, when it matters most, suspend our disbelief in order to see things with more clarity?

Doing so is difficult. Take, for instance, the philosophical theory about the differences or parallels of perception and reality. It may very well be that reality is only that which we personally perceive—kind of like the idea that a tree falls silently in a forest without there being anyone there to hear it. Most would say that the tree does indeed make an audible sound in its fall, but we can also grasp the feasibility of that concept enough to lend its inception some credence.

That idea extends even further, however, with those who posit we actually only live in a dream state and that our reality is simply a perceptually constructed one, the premise of Poe’s quote that “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Most people jump off the bus at this juncture; it is a little frightening for us—science fiction kind of frightening—to imagine that our reality is neither tangible nor true.

Like most people, I exit at that same point. I rationalize it (now, and as I did once before to the frustrations of my philosophy professor) with the argument that countless beings would all have to be constructing the interactions between ourselves and the realities and different outcomes that arise from those interactions. We would all have to be dream-state constructing the same world, and determining and perceiving all the variables the same way, and all accepting them as our personal and shared truths. Either that or (and I shudder at this thought) everyone and everything in our world is simply a creation of our imagination. That seems even more inconceivable.

But honestly, when I do that, when I argue that, I am really only using logic to fend off my fears. I am afraid that what I want to believe is both real and true, because admitting that it isn’t, or even just allowing the smallest of doubts about it to creep in, would shake the very foundations of everything else about me and my life. If X is not true, then certainly Y may also be false because Y is related to X, and so on and so on, until all the dominoes are laying on their side. Chaos.

Interestingly enough, thoughts along those lines took me back to a time when I was trying to examine and salvage a faltering relationship, and took to books by experts to find ways to attempt this. One of the more interesting books I found (the authors of which I cannot give credit…it was long ago burned) made the point that when couples argue they argue from positions of fear and defensiveness.

A simple example: if my wife/girlfriend and I would argue about why I didn’t manage to take out the trash that week, we would both be retreating to our defensive corners and trying to protect the most basic ideas we have about ourselves and our realities. My not taking the trash out would represent to her my disregard for her feelings by doing something she hoped I would do, which in turn would mean that I do not care about her needs, and meant I did not value her as a person or care about her, which also meant she was not a person worth caring about, either by me or by anyone else.

Likewise, I might be feeling that her initial request was her asking me to do a demeaning and menial task, that her calling me out on it meant she was willing to hurt my feelings, or to call into question my skills or abilities as a partner (or a partner who is capable of caring and courteous acts). I might be thinking she meant I was not a good mate for her, or anyone else, and thus, a less worthy person.

In an argumentative and self-protective game of Six Degrees, we would both end up raising the stakes over a silly bag of trash and turning the entire thing into a war to ward off our most basic fears of self-perception and self esteem.

That book went on to offer ways of working around this, but my girlfriend at the time never read the book, and the application of their advice must have escaped me. At least it did then.

No, check that: I think it still has.

I know this because of a recent conflict in my life with people important to me. As it was happening, as it was building to a ridiculous crescendo, I could feel within myself both anxiety and fear building to levels that clouded my interpretations of others’ words and deeds, and it was only in my understanding of this in myself that I began to realize it was what was prompting the same within them. We had all retreated and raised our hackles and bared our claws in a display of primal instinct.

Once I could recognize that, it became easier to understand the actions, but did not make the resolution and reconciliation any easier, because that meant that one or both of us would have to be humble enough to admit some wrongdoing and reach out to each other. Just like with couples, this is probably the hardest step.

In retrospect, what I learned about myself in all this was that I may have been (or still am) a little hypocritical of my mantra to “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” At some point in the process my emotions took over and they short-circuited the Six Degrees process I needed to think through in order to understand my gut reaction, or—just as importantly—their actions and reactions. If I had been adept at doing so, whether they had been or not, I might have helped steer things in a different direction, or been humble enough to see things through their eyes and agree to disagree in a manner that would not have been destructive or damaging.

And that doesn’t have to apply to my closest of relationships either; it works for acquaintances and friends and peers at work as well, if I care enough to be the kind of person to try and apply it. It might make things a little easier at work, or relieve a little of the stress that so often comes with the holidays and time with family, or possibly even ease the tensions that seem to build during election cycles. I don’t necessarily have to attempt this as a means of respecting or caring about someone else more; it might be something I want to do for myself in order to be a better person.

Which will, in turn, probably make me a more likable or lovable person to others. Which will then tell me that I am indeed a good person. Which will then tell me that my foundation of self esteem is a little more solid, and that my perception of myself is a little more real and true.

See how that works?

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Not One

Not One.

Not one single name did I know, or even recognize, in the list of names that I was reading, but I could still feel something for each and every one of them. Something painful. It emanated from the page, at first as a realization that they themselves were very real people—even though their images were only abstract to me—and then as a realization of their connection to someone else.

It was their age that struck me first. So young. Lives measured in too short of terms. I thought back to what it was I was doing at their age, and then forward to everything that I did with my life after that point. So much missed.

Here in Iowa, in the early days of Our Aggression in the Middle East, government buildings and businesses would lower their flags to half mast whenever someone from the state lost their life over there. At first it seemed to be rare, rare enough that the local media would often feature pieces about the soldier and their families, would still treat them as someone real—flesh and blood, belonging to someone.

But, after a while, I began to notice fewer of those pieces while the flags seemed to stay continuously at half mast. I began to think of them as permanently positioned there, and thought they would be until the end of the war. Over time I lost sight of them. I struggle now to remember the last time I noticed them, if they still have been flying low. Shame on me.

That particular day had been a dismal day for soldiers from Iowa, and so the paper chose to headline as much and list their names and ages. I think the oldest was in his early twenties. It made me curious about the average age of our men and women over there in active duty, curious enough to go out and research it on the net, even compare it to previous wars. It seems our soldiers today are a little older than in previous wars, but are still too young for this, in my estimation. Why is it a country sees fit to throw its best and its brightest, its bravest and most ambitious, its most fit and most promising, into the carnage of war?

I’ve never known anyone personally who has died in conflict, not in this war or any other. I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced the loss that a father or a brother or a son might feel over a loved one who went away in fatigues and never came back. I’ve never had to imagine what their final moments might have been like, or lose sleep over the empty feeling that I never had a chance to be with them or say goodbye to them, or in any way be even remotely connected with them in their passing. I’ve never had to answer that knock at the door that brought the news, news that would have to take your breath away. News that shattered the separation between the assurance and concrete comfort of a loved one in my life, and the immediately real absence of them. News that swiftly produces a sudden vacuum, a huge, gaping hole in your life.

Being a parent and just imagining what that would have to be like is both too potentially real, and too frightening. What would I ever do?

Because the conflict is usually so distant from our homes and the tolls often just a list of names in the news, we become jaded to the real costs of war, unless it strikes us personally. We objectify the enemy. We romanticize the warrior. We cling to an idea of war as right versus wrong, as good versus evil, as justified by our virtues versus irrational campaigns for power. But I think we fail to realize that it is, in reality, our attempt to press our life on to theirs, our attempt at Manifest Destiny, or—quite possibly—a product of our own greed and hunger for power. We strike a muscular pose on the world’s stage.

We still think we can win wars on foreign soil. We have too quickly forgotten the lessons of Vietnam. Our adversaries are no longer neat formations of uniformed minions, but instead are subtly different shades of the very people we believe we are there to protect, fight for, save. They no longer identify themselves for our easy killing, no matter how ingenious our killing devices, because they know they are no technological match for our massively funded weapons programs.

We still fight wars by rules long forgotten by others because we believe our wars are a matter of principle. They fight like the confederate that didn’t see anything wrong with taking a shot at Grant, atop his horse on a nearby hillside, as he looked over his troops going to battle.

This particular war was started with suspect reasoning. WMD’s never materialized, but just the threat of them—like a page ripped from the book written by decades of a Cold War nuclear threat—was just enough to raise our collective fears, sufficiently quell our questioning on whether or not it was the correct thing to do. Why do we feel like we have to stretch our long tentacles of weaponry into lands on which we’ve never lived, into a history so vastly different from our own, and into a way of life we will never understand?

We have no place there. We shouldn’t, and cannot, impose our definition of life and democracy on them, despite our convictions in how well it works for us. They are entitled to their way of life, and the mistakes they may make in living it, just the same as we are entitled to our way of life and the mistakes of our own history. And whatever threat we perceive is brewing there could just as easily be defended against, if not more so, with all those resources better utilized here at home.

But, my biggest question, the one that bothers me most, is this: at what point do we, either as a nation, or as a government representation, or as a presidential leader, so easily make the switch from thinking of a young man or a woman as a real person and convert them into an expendable resource? At what point do the functions of their living—breathing, speaking, feeling—disappear and make us able convert them to machines? At what point do their souls become invisible to us?

My questions are simple, maybe too simple. But I can’t get past them.

Why can’t we bring them home and stand them shoulder to shoulder along our border with Mexico, become our solution to southwestern states’ concerns over illegal immigration?

Why can’t we disperse them in dozens to our international airports and let them become the security that many of us would trust far more than that offered by insufficiently-paid people in poorly fitting suits?

Why can’t we let them swell the ranks of policemen and policewomen, and make our streets safer for everyone?

Or, for that matter, why can’t we let them become doctors or lawyers or artists or musicians or anything else they would dream to do with the rest of their lives, so long as it is not something that makes them a part of a grotesquely large and ugly killing machine? Why can’t we just stop making them machines?

Let them have the lives they deserve as much as any of us, without it being violently cut short, so far from home and loved ones, by an enemy neither they nor we will ever even see, let alone know or understand.

Because not one young man or young woman’s life is worth any attempt to convince a different culture in a faraway land that they should want our way of life.

Not one young man or young woman’s life is worth even a billion barrels of oil that might be sent back here with them, strapped on their backs.

Not one young man or young woman’s life is worth them bringing Osama Bin Laden himself into custody.

Not one young man or young woman’s life is worth any reason anyone can give me for us sacrificing it.

Not one.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Just Sayin'

I wondered if Kim was catching me stealing glances down the row of manicured back lawns that stretched down the block. “Kim is a friend,” I thought to myself. She gets it.

Her kids—as well as a couple of others from the neighborhood—were buzzing orbits around her on the sidewalk, on the parkway. They were still releasing energy bound up from a full day in classrooms, now set off by the sun and fresh air on the walk home through the neighborhood. Kim smiled, kindly, in between the snaps to keep the kids corralled back off of the street and their interruptions of our conversation. I checked Megan and Kylee to see if they were looking for the same things and felt a little relief in seeing it held no interest for them.

The sunset maple was gone, I noticed, but the willow was still there. There was a grill on the flagstone patio where before the outdoor furniture rested. It looked bare, with just the grill there. It needed something more, I thought. Hours and days went into hauling off the dirt and setting all that stone level, and it deserved something more than just a solitary grill resting on it.

Kim and I chatted, as best I could, while I tried to keep my attention held on her. I was in the car, Megan and Kylee with me, idling in the middle of the street. We were close enough for easy, conversational voice, but the distance between us seemed both vast and tangible. Today it felt just a bit uncomfortable there, being in the neighborhood.

I remembered how much I hated that willow, even in all its tenacity and grace. I thought it a weed tree. It was her favorite, her choice. I begrudgingly planted it and wished it dead, then later debated for two years over killing it and setting it ablaze. A fitting end for it, I thought.

I felt the curious urge to drive around the corner, see if the garage door was open, but then thought better of it. It would be picking at the wound, obvious and maybe hurtful to the girls. It would be selfish and silly and serve no good purpose. Not now.

How long ago was it? I was already struggling with remembering it in the context of time. Two years? Three years? How long didn’t matter.

One evening in particular burns in my memory even though I can’t put a date to it, or frame it with any other life events. I was sitting at my desk, paying bills and mapping out my finances. The girls were at their mother’s house for the evening. In the figures scrawled across the pages it was all too obvious. The promotion didn’t happen. The raise was way less than expected. The reserves were all gone and the 401k was tapped. I wasn’t asking family—even if they could help—to throw money down a rabbit hole that didn’t show any promise of a bottom. It was game over.

The certainty washed over me, a wave of disbelief, like so many before since she asked for the divorce. I’d come to recognize that each new step in the grinding and slow legal process would shake me from my fragile denial, remind me that it really was happening.

I got up from my desk and went to my room, and curled up on the bed. I looked at the walls around me and wondered how and when I would make them just that to me—walls. I had to forget the suede-textures and fall colors I carefully chose and painstakingly painted. I had to forget the river birch in the front lawn, prairie grasses clumped around it, that sunset maple and the willow (that damnable willow) and the hours invested in planting, pruning, and maintaining. The same for the Japanese maple in front of the windows; it would now become a Father’s Day gift I would not be able to take with me. The garage (man, how I wanted to see what he did—if anything—to that garage), painted, the floor coated with epoxy, the walls lined with cabinets, the workbench handmade, a lifetime of accumulated tools on the walls—all that would have to somehow become meaningless material.

I told myself things. I told myself I tried everything. I told myself it was a product of the divorce. I told myself I was like so many in the area, in the state, in the country. I told myself it was the economics of the times and it was unstoppable, that it was a larger-than-my-life freight train rolling over thousands. I tried to tell myself it didn’t define me, wouldn’t define us. I was grasping for something that would help me shake the feelings of shame and blame and guilt.

But none of it was working.

And I worried. I worried about the whispers, about what the girls might suffer at the hands of their friends if they chose to be either cruel or, at the very least, inconsiderate. I hoped with all hope we could hold out for the end of the school year before we had to move, could slip quietly into an apartment during the summer when everything would be less obvious. We had an exchange student with us at the time, and I didn’t want to face having to uproot her as well. She never wished for anything like this as a part of her American experience.

We did make it through that school year, and I was able to shift mental gears from feeling beaten to feeling empowered. The work and preparation that had to go into finding someplace else to live and making it a home took over, and the disconnect began. Anticipation replaced fear and uncertainty and dread and melancholy, as best it could. The garage sale helped me sell every little unnecessary remnant of what would soon be our former lives.

I took the girls with me looking at apartments, tried to give them some sort of investment in our new home. They seemed eager and excited. I couldn’t tell if they were just trying to help me (What had she told them?) or if they never really had much invested in wherever we lived. I remembered how many times we had moved for my career when we were all still a family and wondered if that afforded them some sort of detachment. I envied them for that, because this house was home to me, more than any others had been.

We haven’t gone back very often since; it’s only Kim with whom we keep in contact, and the invitations to visit have been few and far between. Whenever we have gone back, the girls and I would take different roads into the subdivision—avoiding the street we lived on—so as not to tempt the feelings I felt I could barely keep suppressed beneath the surface.

It wasn’t so much the house as it was the intangibles I missed, struggled to let go. There was a void where before there were feelings of community and belonging. When we first moved I used to call and see if there was a fire pit gathering planned during one of my weekends off, see if we could stop in, but somehow came to think that maybe I was inviting us back into something that made everyone a little uncomfortable. After a while I quit calling to see if they would call to invite us, and wasn’t surprised to never hear from anyone. Disappointed, but not surprised.

Those days, our house still sat empty, and everyone—including me, I think—still identified us with it. We’d built it, after all. But, now it’s sold, and the new owners have likely filled any and every void we may have left for the neighborhood, financially or emotionally. I imagine they’ve joined in those fire pit gatherings we so enjoyed, our absence now barely noticed, if at all.

It’s only days like today—when we are in the old neighborhood—that some of those old feelings resurface. I don’t want them to, but they do anyway. I wish those feelings away as best I can for myself, and hope nothing similar is being processed by the girls. I wish them all the protection their youth and naiveté can afford them.

Later that same day—in another cozy subdivision not far from our apartment—I drove Megan to her singing lesson. She’s been several times now, and I’ve never even gone in to meet her teacher. When I take her, I sit outside in my car on the quiet street that meanders past landscaped lawns, three car garages, and bicycles splayed out under basketball hoops in the drive, all the while feeling out of place, detached. This isn’t me, isn’t us. Not anymore.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

"All That We See or Seem..."

I was digging around in some old boxes the other day, in search of something I just knew I had stashed and kept somewhere for safekeeping because I knew I would surely want to have it as a memento later. I was not having any luck finding this particular item, but I was finding all sorts of other memorabilia that I had long forgotten I'd kept. After a few minutes I gave up on what I thought would be a few minutes of searching, and let it turn into a much longer trip through memories.

Among the things I found which were most interesting was a list of the “100 Things I Want to Do In My Lifetime.” I can’t remember at what age I originally wrote this; it may have even been prompted by a speech I once heard by Lou Holtz, the then-venerated coach of Notre Dame football. But I had not heard that speech until I was in my thirties, and I am pretty sure I remember dreaming up this list in my early twenties sometime.

The list ran the gamut; it hit on everything from visiting that rare travel spot (“Tour an Aztec or Incan ruin,” or “See the pyramids”) to civic or charitable tasks (“Help with A Habitat house,” and “Fulfill a Dear Santa letter”), and even the less ambitious (“Handcraft a piece of furniture,” or “Have a recipe published”). There were the obvious ones that I have had all of my life, like getting a novel published, or doing a photographic safari in Africa, and some that I will now never get to do in my lifetime because they can no longer happen. Not unless Pink Floyd comes back together, or Dean Smith returns to coaching the Tarheels again.

Most of the list is very ambitious, although I did not think so at the time, I'm sure. I am betting that I believed it would all happen one day, with little doubt. I believed I just had to keep pushing toward the opportunities, keep hoping, keep my eyes open, and keep that hunger for seeing and learning new things. I think I've always had a hunger for learning (although my high school teachers, or Principle Klaasen may not have thought so), as well as a thirst for a certain level of adventure.

At one point in my life I let that hunger and thirst get dulled, blaming it on the responsibilities of being a father and a husband, and of providing a living for my family. I took it even further—too far—because it became more of an excuse for not living life to its fullest, and became an excuse for not even living life well. I let it make my life…well, a little mundane.

But I must have had that urge still living in me somewhere, because it tried to manifest itself in other pursuits. Instead of feeling the need to “Dive the Andrea Doria,” or “Drink a beer in Munich,” I set my sights on clawing my way up that next rung on the corporate ladder, buying a bigger and (supposedly) nicer house, or a bigger SUV. I became very good at all that.

Funny, but the one thing that was not on that list was finishing my degree in college, even though it would later become one of the most significant (for myself) accomplishments in my life. It was unfinished business, so I can’t imagine why I would have left it off the list, unless I wrote that list during my somewhat angry “I don’t need a sheepskin to be successful” days. That would date that list to somewhere in my early twenties, when I had run out of money for school, was rising fast in the ranks of the railroad contracting company I worked for, and traveling quite a bit. To know when I wrote it, it also helps to see the nature of what is on the list; there is nothing there that a father could reasonably run off and do with a family in tow.

The completion of my degree would later happen at a crucial time for me. I was forty, and my marriage was in trouble. In fairness, it was likely in trouble—at least in part—for one of the very reasons I was working so hard, to be a good provider. I was a certified workaholic. I thought that hard work would get you everything you needed, or all the rewards you hoped you would one day earn. I was always chasing that proverbial carrot that dangled just out of my grasp, sure that my equally proverbial ship would come in if I could just reach out and grab it. Every day was just one more lunge. But the time and effort I invested in that took away from what I should have been giving more energy and attention toward, and so that ship hit tough waters, and eventually rocks.

In the midst of all that, I began looking around for other ways to satisfy my need for learning and new experiences, and finishing my college degree was just the thing. I had a campus less than five minutes from my office, they offered a number of the classes I needed online, and I was alone in the town since Michelle and the girls had already moved back to Des Moines ahead of me. I thought it was a productive idea that would fill my time, my mind, my curiosity, and keep me out of trouble. And, that it did.

I was soon drifting further and further away from career ambition and enjoying more and more of the other things in life. A different perspective of Corporate America began to take shape in my mind, and I began to see myself as having been a little bit foolish in my addiction to work. I approached my role as a father differently and relished it more. I tried to be a different and better husband, thinking that I could still save our marriage.  It was a little too late for that.

Eyes opened, I moved on, with the desire for learning and experience now returning to replace the need to achieve career success and material possessions. I no longer needed those things, and instead wanted a life enriched in a different way. I wanted my dreams back.

Sometimes I worry if I am too much the relentless dreamer, and that I am sometimes fooling myself with what I think I can achieve, or am addicted to whatever it is that I do not have in my life and feel the need to pursue. It reminds me, when I think about it, of a gambler who is sure that their one big jackpot is surely going to happen for them, if they can just keep playing, just keep in the game. It’s probably a good thing I don’t gamble.

But still, I believe in myself, and I believe in the different types of pursuits that I have in my life now. I believe they are better than I’ve had during the “middle” of my adult life, and more in line with my true self. They may still be only dreams at this point, but I think we all have to harbor some sort of hopes for ourselves that are outside the scope of our everyday lives. Without them, a little of our spark dies, and we let more and more of our spirit and core erode, or just fade away. Can you imagine a life without any dreams, or something similar to a dream?  Something to which we look forward? I can’t. I could only imagine it to be like a slow death.

So I keep alive the thought that I am supposed to—no, destined to—do something more with my life. I’m not sure I could kill it even if I wanted to, anyway. It has always been a part of my life, further back than I can remember making that list of 100 things those many years ago.

When I was looking back over this list, I noticed that—for all the dreaming and wishing I did back then—I had a pretty fair amount of them I could now cross off the list. I know that they were things that were (then, when I made that list) far removed from my life and its possibilities. But, I have forty-two of them completed at this point, which puts me just about on track, given that I am only about to the halfway point of my lifetime right now.

I guess it pays to dream.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

A Power No One Wants

As I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from my father, who is resting somewhat comfortably in his hospital bed. I’m not sure anyone can really rest very well in such a bed; what distant memory I have of one from my childhood reminds me that they never seem to be able to be positioned in just the right way, or in a way that I could withstand for very long. Maybe it was my youthful impatience.

Dad’s comfort is further challenged by the fact that we are waiting for him to be taken down for a procedure, and waiting far too long. He was checked in here on Friday night (three days ago) and has been doing little more than waiting for something since he was admitted. Waiting for his MD to come in and speak with him. Waiting for his heart doctor to come in and speak with him. Waiting for a nurse to come in and either bring him some news about when his procedure is scheduled or help him with something.

In the time I have spent with him here in his room over the weekend and today, I have decided that the medical profession has a two-pronged approach to their care: waiting things out might possibly make the problem go away (what I call “Head In the Sand Treatment”), and patients are people to merely be tolerated through their stay, and occasionally placated by doctors with ambiguity and thinly-veiled condescension in their voice. The nurses are nice and well-meaning enough, but it was about all I could do to keep from shredding his heart doctor in the brief time he was here, restrain myself from lecturing him on the pompous pratfalls of his God Complex. I remembered, before I vomited that all over him, that I would have been just as pompous to do so.

My father, lying there in his bed, is not quite the same person I have known most of my life. I always remember him looking much more physically fit than I see him now, which is the way I think we all want to envision our parents. But I have this idea about Kilgore men, only a theory really, that we seem to be blessed with a gene or two that slows our aging process, or at least the appearance of it. I am sure that theory is wishful thinking on my part, but it has its roots in how I remember my dad being fairly fit, trim, and active for much of my adult life. Attractive too. Okay, so maybe I am wishing.

Dad doesn’t need much from me here. We talk from time to time, but neither of us feel the need to fill the room with conversation. There is a comfort between us in the silence. It’s not an ignorance of anything needing to be said, but more a fulfillment created by just being around each other. Reassurance through small talk is not so necessary between two men of our age, and our shared history creates more of a palpable connection that hangs in the air between us. Conversation may only disturb that, interrupt the silent movie memories that are a part of our current stream of consciousness.

I do have something I want to talk about with Dad, but now is not the time. He is due any time now to be taken down for a heart catheterization to help diagnose what is causing his recent spate of coronary issues, and I worry that if I raise the subject with him now, it will only raise his anxieties. There is no need. The waiting already has sufficiently rasied his anxieties.

A few years ago, dad asked me to be the one to make any decisions should he ever be incapacitated to do so himself during a crisis or medical procedure. I was flattered that he placed such faith in me by asking me to do so, but because I was not sure if I was the son closest to him at the time, I had to ask him why he chose me. His reasoning, he said, was that because he trusted my perspective on life—my views on religion and the afterlife—I would most likely make a decision he thought would mirror his wishes if it ever came to that.

At that time, we only had a brief discussion about what his wishes would be, and I asked him to either have his wishes documented, or have his lawyer draft a power or attorney to have on hand. Dad had told me, in the best way he could from the terminology of his days, he did not ever want to live “like a vegetable.” I knew roughly what he meant by that, even though I knew it was not specific enough for any doctor, or hospital administrator, or lawyer to understand if it were ever to involve them. And at the time we first discussed this, there were plenty of cases in the courts and in the news that made those specifics that much more important.

But I didn’t ask dad for more specifics because it was a difficult conversation to have. The details seemed both too morbid and too uncomfortable to voice openly, and he never volunteered anything either. I suppose neither one of us really wanted to deal with it in anything more than the abstract, the future, or possibly something that would never have to be. About the only time it seemed to come up was when he was having a health issue, and I wasn’t sure if that was the best time to talk about it. When each health problem was over, I didn’t want to seem like I was unnecessarily worried, or create that same worry for him. Where your parents are concerned, does the timing for that conversation ever seem right?

I’ve had some time to think about it this morning though, and sort through those thoughts well enough to commit them to paper, and to this medium. I told myself I had to, even if I couldn’t worry him with that kind of a conversation right now. I also knew I really had to be well prepared for that kind of a moment in case it ever does come, because I will need a clarity and a resolve in that moment that will be very hard to summon up, and which will produce a decision that will also be acceptable and clear to everyone concerned.

The best I’ve been able to come up with in our five hours plus of waiting—what I would ask of myself and of the medical staff—is this:

1. What is the raw end result? Would the medical condition or problem or illness be over when we are done with this specific choice with which we are immediately faced?
2. What would be the potential life extension my father receives as a benefit?
3. What will be the quality of life for my father after the fact, as compared to what he defines as a quality life? I know my father well enough to know he would not enjoy life if he could not communicate or interact with those he loves, even if they could communicate with him. I also know that if he were able to communicate, but were not ambulatory, he would carry on. In the case of the latter, he would also want me to revisit Question One and Question Two again.
4. What strain, or effort, or pain would he have to live with after the fact? I know this seems redundant of Question Three, but I am convinced that pain and suffering have to be considered separately from issues of mobility and consciousness. Still, in addressing this I have to go back and revisit almost all of my other questions.
5. What, if anything, would Dad be left to deal with after the fact that would be outside the normal process of aging?

I know this seems somewhat like circular reasoning, and maybe it is. It isn’t an easy decision that can be arrived at through a checklist or with black and white definitions. There is a great deal of gray area. But it is clear to me what my father would want if he knew the answers to those questions, and that is exactly how I would decide.

And in the end, I, as the decision maker, and we, as a family, cannot be a part of the equation. It can’t be about how much more of our father we would want, or how much more of his time with us we would want. Likewise, it can’t be about the effects it might have on our lives, decided either way, because you cannot understand some of those things beforehand, without living them. Like a friend of mine just recently said, you never know how strong you can be, until you have to be.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

When Opposites Attract

A few weeks ago, I went home to Kansas City for a week, to spend time with family, with Bill and Mary, and with a couple of hundred other friends who were all converging there for a weekend-long reunion. It was a week filled with a great deal of fun, some meaningful conversations, and an invaluable sense of belonging. But, by the time the end of the week had arrived, I was ready for it to be over. I was tired, and I longed to return to my normal routines, believe it or not.

That I was a little fatigued by the time of the final picnic on Sunday is probably not surprising itself; I had invested substantially in my role in making it all happen, and was personally engaged on an emotional level that made it kind of a week-long high for me. But, after returning home and trying to put it all in perspective, I was unable to write about the experience, largely because I was not moved by it as much as I was the much smaller reunion preceding it.

Don’t get me wrong; everything about it was great. It just lacked the intimacy of the smaller group, and it did not have quite the emotional impact on me as the time when I first came home, 30 years after graduating. This last event was more an opportunity to see and reconnect with more old friends who were also coming to Kansas City, so—as emotionally valuable as it was—it was not quite the same. For me, the homecoming I had needed had already happened.

The last couple of years have been a time of reconnection for me with myself, with friends, with skills and dreams, even family. It has been a healing process, and it was long overdue. I had turned my back on people who truly cared for me for far too long. Whatever the reasons were, they seem silly now, no matter how valid they seemed all those years I was away and staying away.

Now, I find myself driving the highway from Des Moines to Kansas City at every opportunity I can find, because I live in a town where I have few friends and even fewer opportunities to see them. I can’t point to any one reason why that is, but I know a few of the factors: a career in management doesn’t necessarily help (We can’t fraternize with the help now, can we?), a somewhat nomadic life of moving town to town and neighborhood to neighborhood contributed, a focus on the needs of the family, and I spent too many years as a workaholic. Things just evolved that way.

So, when the family changed, I was left with a bit of a void to fill, and it was not the easiest thing to do. But, I made due, just the same, and never really paid much attention to what might have awaited me at the end of my efforts to drive the one hundred and eighty-six miles south, to where I spent the majority of my life. What matters most now, is that one day I did, and I enjoyed it immensely—so much so that I kept coming back for more.

When I think about what that reconnection has meant to me, I understand it to be my own, a product of my life and my circumstances. It may not mean as much to others, whether they were a part of that small, close-knit group that gathered last fall, or the larger mass of us that jammed into Minsky’s pizza or the Embassy Suites ballroom this last summer. But, I think everyone came for a reason of their own, be it on an intensely personal level or just out of some sort of passing interest and curiosity.

I wonder if we all needed it on some unspoken, basic level because of the times we live in now. I’m not sure I have ever witnessed more divisive times. Our politics seem extremely polarized, our ideals pushed toward the far ends of the spectrum, and our social and economic circumstances spread further and further apart. I can’t remember a more acrid time in our culture than it has been over the last decade, and I can’t identify any other time in my life when there seemed to be a more defined difference between the “have’s” and have nots.”

So maybe a little trip to KC to see old friends was a bit more than reminiscing and nostalgia for all of us, at least on our personal level. Maybe we all wanted to feel some of the unity that we remember from those times as well, when our differences were of another, seemingly less significant nature. Maybe we wanted to remember and relive a time in our lives when we were more defined—to each other—by what we all shared together, rather than how everyone around us is so different from us, or has differing priorities. Maybe we wanted to spend a few days with people with whom we had no desire to argue, or could at least set aside any arguments easily, for the sake of just enjoying time with each other.

For one weekend (or more, for some of us), our differences were minimal and even forgotten about at times. We saw each other in some of the same light we used to back in the day, when we all ran the gauntlet of one of the most troublesome, puzzling, worrisome, and emotional periods of our lives together—with a little more added. We framed each other from our memories we had of each other then, but with the added nuances of what we had recently learned about each other over the last few months. But through it all, we were connected by what we shared, more than we were separated by what we didn’t share.

And there was more to it than that, actually. While we were all together, we didn’t just lose our differences; we also lost, or forgot about for a while, the mundane responsibilities, the stressful pressures, and the sometimes hectic pace of our everyday lives back home. We were, in effect, on vacation from our real lives, the “pause” button pushed and all the noise of what we deal with daily silenced for a few short days. I don’t think it was anyone’s unhealthy denial; I think it was just a welcome respite.

I wonder how many of us, once it was all over and we returned home, suffered from some sort of a vacation hangover. I wonder how many of us had a hard time going back to the first day of work, or the laundry and the bills and the necessary upkeep of our daily lives. And I wonder about how many times, as we dragged ourselves back into our routines, we caught ourselves going back and reliving a memory or two from the previous week.

I know I did. I still thought about it for several days during the week after, when I returned to work and my life in Des Moines. Because, no matter how tired I was at the end of that week together, or how different it was from the time fewer of us got together the year before, it was still the best days of my summer. It was still time well spent seeing people whom I wondered about from time to time, people I was glad to see were still around to be there, no matter our differences.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Venus, Fleshed

The question that Robert posed to me that afternoon on the golf course—repeated to me, actually—was probably typical fare for two guys out on the fairways and greens for a day.

“Why hasn’t someone snagged that?"

But the person to whom he referred was probably not typical of such a conversation. He was repeating something someone had said about me. And, for just the tiniest of a microsecond my initial reaction was that of objectification, which then quickly turned to a feeling of flattery. That's where it stayed. It did, after all, signify that someone thought of me as a catch. I liked that.

After the fact it got me thinking about how women react to flattery of that kind, if they felt either objectification or flattery, and which of those two feelings stayed with them the longest, or which of the two they gave the most significance. It may be because I am a guy, but I seem to see and hear more things that reduce women in such a manner than I do the opposite, where men are referred to in such a way. Funny how that fleeting, small moment set me wondering.

I began to think about my role and my participation in treating women as objects over the years. When you have daughters, it takes on a little more significance to you, because you wonder if they will be viewed or discussed in the same manner when they grow from little girls into young women. And, although it is likely inevitable, unstoppable (particularly when they are as beautiful as Megan and Kylee!), I would rather believe that it won’t happen, even if—most of the time—it is harmless enough. Or is it?

I have only my own example from over the years to predict the future behavior of boys and men, because I have been no saint in this regard. I’m a pretty typical guy. When I was younger, I am not sure I always treated girls and women I knew with the best of respect, or even the kindest of actions. I like to think I matured from that, but every once in a while I still catch myself thinking or doing things that are old and (seemingly) harmless habits. I think it stems from my lifelong thoughts about women in general.

I love women. I am not sure there is any one creature that walks the face of this earth any more beautiful. They are mysterious, graceful, intricately woven, and masterfully constructed physically. Regardless of any woman’s physical appearances, you have to admire the way they perceive and think so differently than we men. Their mind is a complex organ that I have never been able to comprehend more than minimally; they feel things distinctly differently than we men do (or should I say “I” do), and this mystique, for me, only adds to their allure. I believe they think and feel on a level we men sometimes wish we could, and that women are often our guides, voices of reason, balanced sanity, and sources of humility—when we choose to listen to them.

Marry all of that with their physical form, and you have a goddess deserving a pedestal. That is likely the best way to characterize how I have thought of women.

At face value, that image of women I’ve created seems like adoration. However, within that image lies a premise of objectification itself. No matter how positively I praise their essence and being, my thoughts are attempting to make them into some thing, and not some person, and it is only a little distance from that to thinking of women in terms of what they are, rather than who they are.

The reverse of this adoration, the worst case scenario of how men think of women, is complete and total objectification, where we do indeed think of women only in certain terms that suit our own needs. At the center of this: a woman’s physical beauty, and how we define whether or not a woman is beautiful or attractive. It is within that arena that we are most guilty of reducing women, and with giving them impossible standards up to which they should measure. And as if that were not bad enough, we have also convinced many women to judge each other, or their own value, through that same lens. It is buried deep within our culture and wreaks havoc with many a woman’s psyche.

A few years ago someone close to me finally admitted to me that she suffered from bulimia. It was a heartbreaking thing to hear, and was only a confirmation of my own suspicions. I had already witnessed enough of the telltale behaviors to be pretty sure of it; I just needed the right moment of honesty, or of undeniable proof, to ask her about it. As it turned out, that moment of truth only came about because of the deterioration in her health that eventually landed us in an emergency room one night. When the crisis was over, I was touched by her emotional admission.

I had never before been exposed to something like this—or, I had ever taken the time to notice—and it seemed incredible to me. I had heard about it, and had read about it, but I had never before experienced it or spoken with anyone first hand who suffered from it. To me, before that moment, it was an abstract idea that women and girls more than a little off-balance suffered, and I couldn’t reconcile this person I was close to with the image I had of someone who suffered from bulimia.

As I often do, I turned to reading and research to help me understand their affliction better, and understand her better. It opened my eyes to just how widespread the issues of eating disorders are in our culture, and made me a little more aware of the things we expect from young girls and women, how we set the bar so incredibly high for them.

This loved one was, by anyone’s standards, beautiful physically, and she was intelligent. She spoke four languages and achieved the highest of grades in all of her school endeavors. She was athletic more than many her age and skilled in several sports. She came from a loving family. Young men around her almost always took notice of her. Honestly, she had all that a young girl could want, and had every reason to see a bright and happy future for herself.

But that night, when she admitted her bulimia to me, and I asked her why, here are the very words that she used to describe herself: fat, unattractive, and uninteresting.

It broke my heart to hear her say it, because it was so far from the truth and it was hard to hear her say those things about herself with such conviction. She went on to say that one of her deepest fears, because she felt fat and unattractive and uninteresting, was that no one would ever fall in love with her and she would spend all of her life alone. Where I could only imagine an incredible future for her, she saw only a life of despair looming on their horizon, based solely on her perception of her physical appearance, and the role that it played in her finding someone to love and spend her life.

It was a gut check, begging me to rethink the smallest of things I did over the whole of my life that might contribute to anyone seeing themselves that way. I could look back and find moments in my life when I certainly did things that could have helped someone see themselves that way, or at the very least reinforced the ideas that our culture imposes on women to make them feel that way.

At the same time, I realized that I was also the father of two beautiful girls, and that it was likely important that I try to shed some of those old, easy-to-learn thoughts and habits, and replace with them with things that would instead help me help them with their self-esteem and self-perception.

But, I’m still a pretty typical guy, so it’s not easy. And, I still adore and idolize women, which is not the easiest thing to unlearn. I’m not sure I want to. The trick, for me at least, is in how to both adore and respect, while not sending the wrong message about what it is that makes them all goddesses.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I ended up with two beautiful daughters.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

So Goes Lauren

I had lunch today with Lauren, a young girl with whom I used to work at my part time job. She had recently posted some disappointing news, and it reminded me that we had not seen each other much since we both had quit working at the sandwich shop. I asked her if she wanted to meet and have lunch with me and Shane, our old boss, at his place, and she asked us if we could all meet on Friday because she was moving to go off to school on Saturday morning.

She was already there when I arrived, and from the moment I saw her I knew something was a little different. Whenever Lauren visited us at the shop after she left (she left a few weeks before I did) she always breezed about the place with the comfort of someone who still worked there. But now, she was sitting at a table alone, waiting for me and waiting for Shane to finish a few late lunch customers at the counter. She seemed reserved, even in the greeting we shared and the small talk we made while waiting for our food.

I took a guess and asked her if she was worried about going off to school. She smiled a little nervously and admitted she was more than slightly concerned about it. Lauren never has been someone who could lie about her emotions, whether they were anger, or fear, or hurt. They all play out too easily across her face.

To describe Lauren is easy; she is a good girl. She has always been studious at school and a good athlete. She loves and always speaks well of her family, and she seems to strike a good balance between her family, friends, and school. When we worked together, she never missed a shift, and she always worked hard, with a sense of responsibility you don't often see in teens. Blonde haired, blue eyed, and statuesque, Lauren is beautiful beyond what she recognizes in herself, and her humility about that only adds to her charm and aura of naïveté.

Shane joined us as we settled in over our food, and we began to talk about her going off to college. We tried to make light of some of the things she was about to experience, but it was easy to hear her biggest fears in some of the things she said:

"It's a big campus. I could get lost easily."

"I won't know anyone there. All of my friends are going to other schools."

She went on to say that after lunch with us she was going to her best friend's house to see her and say goodbye. Tonight she was going out to one last movie with her close circle of friends from school and say goodbye to them.

"You are emotionally moving today, where tomorrow you physically move," I told her. I also shared with her that I thought tomorrow was going to be a little bit of a rollercoaster, with much of the day being a high of moving into her dorm, followed by the emotional moment of when her parents drive away and she is suddenly by herself. She said her mom promised not to cry until she was in the car, but didn't mention that maybe she was making that same promise to her mother and herself as well. I hoped to myself that maybe talking about it now, preparing for it, would possibly make it a little easier for her tomorrow.

In Lauren's voiced concerns I recognized one of those times in life where our established confidence recedes and gets replaced by humility. It usually happens when we are moving from one environment to the next, entering a new phase in our life, our growth, our development. I am not sure it is just fear; I sometimes wonder if it isn't something inside us telling us that we need to emotionally wipe the slate clean and look forward to, be open to, whatever it is that is new which is about to be written for us, or by us.

I have often thought that life is a series of environs that we shakily enter, then slowly adjust to, and then finally master. Some last longer than others, and some we only adjust to and decide to linger within. But that initial entrance is somewhat magical, a time in our lives where curiosity and uncertainty blend together to create both focus and openness. It happens with school, work, relationships, moving—all of our major life changes. It isn't until we look back on them that we see how important and exciting those times were for us that we possibly understand their significance.

I was both happy for Lauren and proud of her. She was going through the process of experiencing all that, in her going off to school. It surfaced, for me, my memories of those same kinds of life changes I've been through, and reminded me of how much I've loved them afterward.

I wanted to tell her what I thought she might feel about it after she had been through it all, and gotten more comfortable with her new surroundings, her new friends, and her new routines. But, then I thought better of it. For an eighteen year old, that is something best recognized in the afterglow of your own personal experience, rather than having it spelled out for you by someone older. It wouldn't have meant nearly as much to her to have heard about it now, from me, as it will to see and feel it for herself later.

Lauren has so much ahead of her, and it's easy to imagine a wonderful life for her going forward from this, her new beginning. It will likely involve schedules, and friends, and interests, and deadlines, and responsibilities that won't allow much time for stopping in to see either Shane or me in the future. I realized that today as we said goodbye outside Shane's shop and got in our cars. I don't mind admitting that it made saying goodbye a little difficult.

But it's all okay. I've played my small part in her growing up. It's time to let her grow on her own now. And I expect, as always, she will do it very well.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

There's No Comparison

I like to read a lot, and in the summertime my reading trends toward the lighter fare, my choices usually ending up being non-fiction, adventure pieces. Lately I have been reading several books written about the history, expeditions, and tragedies that are an integral part of the sport of mountaineering, like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which I read several years ago. I’ve been hooked on such stories since.

I started this summer with High Crimes, by Michael Kodas, a book about what a circus the scene on Everest has become in recent years, and K2, by Ed Viesturs. I’ve switched mountains in reading Viesturs, and I am now devouring his first book, No Shortcuts to the Top, which also chronicles his quest to top all fourteen of the world’s mountains over 8,000 meters.

It’s not hard to recognize that I’m living vicariously through these books. I have never once set foot on a massive mountain, or done anything that even resembles mountain climbing. But, reading these books—as any good book should—transports me, allows me to be someplace mentally where I have never before been. The only downside to that: the realization sometime after reading them that I may never actually be there, or do those things. That’s kind of a bummer.

I had a moment to think about these things recently, what my life was and wasn’t, at the dinner and dance that was a part of my high school reunion. It was a fairly large event; about 300 people from various years ended up attending, and I was spending as much time working it as I was enjoying it. I didn’t really get the chance to stay in one place and talk with some of the people I wanted to spend time with while it was going on, instead tending to several details that came up or moving around the room and making sure everyone was enjoying themselves.

At some point I took a minute to myself and just sat, getting off my feet at one of the empty tables at the edge of the large ballroom. It was then that I slipped into an old habit of people watching in large crowds, and I began to examine who had made the trip to see old friends, and who was gathered with whom. What I first noticed was that the room was filled with people from every end of the socio-economic spectrum, but that it didn’t seem to matter to anyone. The room was mixing well, and most everyone was glad to see anyone they recognized.

But when I noticed that aspect of the individuals of the crowd, I began to wonder about the different paths all of our lives had taken between the years we were all last together and now. There were people there who had experienced success in differing degrees, as well as people who had endured equal levels of hardship. As I mentally went around the room, I imagined what their lives must have been like before that night and what experiences they must have had.

Watching and imagining about people is a writer’s habit. Observation, particularly of human nature and motivation—to me—has has always been extremely interesting. It is fascinating to try and understand why people do the things they do, and what they do. In doing that, you sometimes have to work backwards and fill in the gaps to see if it explains why they act or behave in certain ways.

But the problem with what I was doing at the moment was that I let it slip a little past that, and I began to evaluate what I thought of my life in comparison to some others, particularly other lives that I thought might have been a little more fortunate than mine. It was a silly thing to do, a self-indulgent moment of feeling sorry for myself, actually. And before I could realize it, I was justifying my life experiences to myself in order to feel better.

I mentally ticked off the places I have been and the things I have seen. I visualized the parts of the country that I traveled in my years on the rail, beautiful places, that I know most people will never see because they were so remote. I remembered diving in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Bahamas, and Florida. I remembered being out all night on the streets of Barcelona with friends, and then deciding to go on to Paris and spend four days with them there. I remembered the Louvre, and the Seine at night. I told myself that most people will never see their first philharmonic performance outside on the steps of a 600 year old church in a village in Italy. I told myself that just as few will likely ever fish the deepest, most remote wilds of Canada, or fly a small plane out of it.

I told myself all those things, until I realized how stupid I was acting, because I was doing the very thing that I supposed that others might be doing if they were to compare their lives to mine. In my attempt to justify my life to myself, I ended up pushing myself over the edge and being smug, and feeling like my life was more fortunate than theirs. It was a waste of my energy, and so untrue.

I think we all have lives of value, and no one is valued any more than the next. Many years ago, while I was still traveling a great deal, I used to marvel at the lifestyles of people who lived in rural areas. I always wondered how they did it, without the conveniences and entertainments I thought necessary to an enjoyable life. At one point, I remember scoffing at what I thought were their backwards ways, with pickup trucks and four wheelers, and rifle racks in the back windshield, and small towns that offered no big city amenities at all. I used to think my life was so much better than that, and I wondered how they ever resigned themselves to living their lives out that way, without questioning what more they could have if they ever escaped it.

Then one day, I managed to get to know O.D., a man who would later invite me into his home with his family anytime I was working near his small town in Arkansas. They embodied everything I thought was wrong with small town America, but they were the warmest of people. I ended up spending a lot of time with O.D. and his family, and I learned that their life was just as rich as mine, maybe even more so at the time. And they helped me understand that my judgments about their lifestyle were wrong. My life was no better than theirs, just different. Their reality was just as fulfilling to them as mine was to me.

It was also the moment in my life where I began to see people I didn’t really know less as objects, and more as real people. From there it was just a few stepping stones to appreciating individuals and differences, and striving for inclusion. But, that took years, and today I still have to keep a vigil over myself about it.

I would have been better served to remember that particualr lesson in the contemplative moment I experienced that evening, watching everyone and comparing my life to theirs, but I didn’t. Instead, something small happened which taught me a similar lesson through another avenue.

As I got up from that table, resolved that my thoughts were silly to be having at that moment and wanting to get back out to talk with the people I came there to see, I was facing another table on which the names of fallen classmates were memorialized. Suddenly I realized I should consider myself very fortunate for what I have and what I have experienced, because in front of me was a table full of names of people that probably would have loved to have any of it. Each person listed there was someone whose life—even at our middle-age—was cut way too short, and who deserved better. It was pretty selfish of me to feel like I had to rationalize my life, even to myself, and even just for a moment or two.

It’s much better, I think, to realize and be grateful for what my life has been, and that the value of it is important to me and no one else. I’ve never climbed any mountains in the literal sense, but I think I can say I’ve gone up a few figuratively. I’ve never had great wealth or possessions—a poor means of measurement in any sense—but , I’ve had my share of life experiences, have some great friends, and two beautiful daughters.

And I’m not someone listed on a memorial table, which may be the only measurement any of us need.

Time, Space, and Shape

This will sound a little odd to say, but I have been to Beverly’s basement, and I have to admit that I was a little touched by it.

Normally, visiting someone’s basement is not necessarily any kind of learning experience, or something that prompts any contemplation. Mention the word “basement” to most people and the mental image conjured up is usually less than ideal. Most of the time we imagine something dimly lit at best, cool and often damp, with an unmistakable musty smell we often connect with what we picture through some olfactory memory. Many of us have either lived in an older home or known someone who has, and our experience has helped create that image for us.

But, for me, Beverly’s basement was a little bit of a different experience. I think it would be for just about anyone that would have the opportunity to visit it.

My chance visit to this unique space happened just the other day, when—as luck would have it—the downstairs refrigerator at Bill and Mary’s went on the fritz. The girls and I were staying with Bill and Mary the first few days we were in Kansas City for my long-planned high school reunion, and enjoying the time in their “old/new” home.

There was frozen food stored in the downstairs fridge, and that food would spoil in the time it would take any repairman to respond, which would mean there would be loss, or worse (in Mary’s mind), there would be waste, and so the best and most reasonable response would be to load up all of the food and hike it to Beverly's house around the corner. Beverly was an older friend of Bill and Mary’s, the mother of one of our high school friends, Bart, who has lived in her home some forty-odd years there in Parkville, and she had ample space in her basement freezer to accommodate Mary’s food.

Mary and I loaded up a couple of coolers worth of frozen items, plopped them into the back seat of my car, and headed down their steep hill to main, over one block, and then back up the steep hill to Beverly’s address. Beverly was there to greet us at the gate before we even got out of the car to unload the coolers, as was Barney, her energetic and friendly Sheltie. She led Mary and me toward the back door that opens into a workshop and held the door open for us. She smiled and said hello as Mary re-introduced us, both of us noting that it had been several decades since our last, rare meeting.

Mary and Beverly talked on as we walked the coolers in, and I was almost immediately struck by what I saw as I came through the door. After entering, there is a second set of stairs that you have to descend to get into the main part of the basement, and at the bottom of those stairs sits a rather majestic looking full-sized billiard table. I remember thinking to myself that it seemed a little out of place there amongst everything else I saw, like a Victorian home nestled into the middle of a circa 1960’s erected neighborhood. I even wondered, given its heft and size, how on earth it even came to make its home there, honestly. It had to have taken some work.

But, it was that one incongruity that prompted me to open my eyes a little, I guess, and look a little harder at everything in that space around me. Mary and Beverly were chatting away, talking about the food that Mary wanted to store (which she also offered to share with Beverly as she pleased) and Beverly’s delectables (which she in turn was offering Mary), and while they talked, I took some time to survey everything inhabiting the basement spaces.

There seemed to be forty-some years of family history on every shelf and surface, prompting a multitude of questions I felt more comfortable keeping internal; I thought anything I would ask would be prying, and honestly felt more satisfied with the impressions of stories they offered me.

This basement is not the cluttered storage room of a hoarder, but instead, a room for everyone in the family throughout the years. Everything seems placed out of some sort of necessity, as if it were a new addition that needed some location to permanently reside. When something new was needed and added it has not necessarily meant that something else had to leave, and so the various pieces of family life have come to spatially coexist, accumulating like décor that speaks volumes of memories.

In a recess created by two shelves is a plank door painted white, with a dartboard mounted on it. The hundreds of holes in the surface surrounding the board bear testament to hours spent by kids hurling darts at it. The aforementioned billiard table shows signs of equal use. One section was obviously a father’s workshop area. There are meticulously crafted work benches, built to fit the space and detailed to meet the need of the hobbies he enjoyed. I spotted, on a shelf above one of the workbenches, an incredibly detailed model of a sailing ship, and pictured someone painstakingly working for hours on it.

At some point I think Beverly began to notice my interest in everything, and so we began a leisurely tour of the room. There are numerous artwork pieces everywhere, created by this or that family member. In a corner between the billiard table and the door stand Beverly’s potter’s wheel and kiln, both obviously still very used. A number of Beverly’s pottery pieces—in various stages of completion—sit nearby on a set of shelves.

Beverly is a welcoming person, not someone you feel like scurrying in to see and dashing out from, even if you are there primarily to solve a food spoilage crisis, and so we more or less sauntered our way out of her basement and paused to talk some more in her back yard. Beverly settled into a chair, while Mary made herself comfortable on the sidewalk and I dangled a leg in her pool. The two of them chatted news and food and pets, all mixed in with the occasional story or two about the neighbors who had lived in, or owned, the house next door.

It was while relaxing there and watching Barney run a frenzied pattern around the small paths in the back lawn that I began to notice something else; the pattern exhibited in the basement seemed to be repeated across the exterior of Beverly’s home as well. This is not the symmetrical, predictable, planned-out garden space that one sees in so many lawns. Instead, this landscape seems like it evolved over years of unplanned plantings acquired through gifts, impulse decisions at local nurseries or farmer’s markets, or peer gardener trades. I imagined a friend stopping by with a plant and Beverly commenting on how nice it would look in the corner off the pool, or under the shade tree, or just off the gate that led to the back door. Everywhere you looked, plants just spilled out everywhere, less tamed than they seemed comfortable and thriving.

Beverly makes an impression, and I could easily see why Mary is attracted to her as a friend. She has a sense of humor easy to relate to, and a knack for easy and inviting conversation. In the soothing tone of her voice and the still-present gleam in her eyes, Beverly seems like someone made comfortable and confident by her life experiences, while at the same time offering no hint that she is through living them. Her family raised and her husband passed, I think she has entered a state of grace, learned and earned from both enjoying and overcoming everything that life has thrown her way as a wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. I couldn’t help but wonder if I may one day earn that kind of space in my life, rich with both memories and history, yet still full of experiences to look forward to.

I couldn’t help but do a mental comparison to Beverly and her home as we were leaving, and it made me a little envious in the process. I am notorious for discarding or selling anything nonessential, and so I have no basement full of memories. My memorabilia is limited to a plastic tub shoved into a storage closet. I also have the habit of needing symmetry in my space; gardens I’ve grown and landscapes I’ve planned and created all had to be just so, designed and planted and maintained with a necessary amount of order. I go nuts when the house is cluttered, can’t even concentrate on work or writing. By comparison, my life seems almost too sterile when I look at what Beverly has built around herself, with the help of her family and friends.

But, I think there’s still plenty of time and hope, in my case. You never know. Maybe one day I’ll have a basement like Beverly’s, one that—someday, far off, when I’m gone—will take the girls hours and days to clean out, because they have to keep pausing to ask each other, “Do you remember…?” as they work. Or at least leave some sort of an impression on someone that visits it.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

A "Bestest" Day Ever

How would you like to hear a 3200 word, step-by-step recounting of my run in the Dam to Dam 20k over the last two years?

I didn’t think so. But, that was exactly what I was about to inflict on everyone. That is, until I took a moment or two to be a little less self-absorbed. I guess I got a little caught up in my own accomplishment and didn’t really reflect much beyond that.

And that was a silly thing to do, because the day meant so much more. Somehow, I could sense it, but I never really understood why until almost a week later, when I struggled to write about it and came up with little more than a verbal replay of the days’ events, both this year and last. But—if I can beg your patience a little—I do have to backtrack a bit and compare last year to this year, in order to best make my point.

It all started, simply enough, with a desire to run better than the previous year’s dismal 2:18 performance in the Dam to Dam. I was pretty disappointed in that 2009 run, because I had set myself up with a goal of trying to finish in less than two hours; no grand performance by many runners' measurements, but it was my first time running a race that long and seemed appropriate given my training times and conditioning.

But when the race day arrived, I made every conceivable mistake any runner could possibly make. I also created a few I think I’d never seen in any book on running or training I’d ever read.

For starters, I worked the night before, closing the store and not leaving to go home until 11pm. That in itself was probably not too big an impairment, but like many people, I am not apt to immediately fall into a restful slumber the moment I walk in the door from work. Usually, I’m hyped. Add to that the anticipation of my first ever 20k experience and you would understand why I was still staring wide-eyed at my alarm clock at 2am, sure that I was going to sleep through my alarm.

I also skipped breakfast. I thought I didn’t want anything churning in my stomach for the next several hours and certainly didn’t want to have to interrupt my run to dash off to a port-a-potty, or worse, be far from one if the need suddenly overtook me.

It was not until I was on the bus ride to the dam, where I noticed everyone else eating power bars, that I realized that particular mistake. But, undaunted, I brushed that concern aside, and my pre-race jitters began to settle some as I talked with some of the other runners on the bus. The conversation and camaraderie relaxed me a little. I began to see myself, finally, as someone who belonged there, had done the work and had earned my chance, just as much as anyone else.

After waiting around a while and warming up at the dam, the pack began to form and I found a place near the end. I couldn’t help but worry, there in the middle of all of those strangers, if I had gotten in over my head, hadn’t trained well enough, or would suffer the fate I feared most, in which I would not be able to finish.

Soon we were started, and not far into the run something odd happened to unnerve me a little more. At about mile three, a woman a few feet in front of me darted off the road suddenly, pulled down her shorts, and squatted in the ditch. I wouldn’t speak for anyone else running that day, but a half-naked woman is distracting to me no matter where I encounter her. A half-naked woman in broad daylight, in an open ditch, only fifteen feet away from and in full view of about six thousand other runners passing by…well, that is enough to disturb my concentration and throw me off my game. I nearly ran over the person who was in front of me because of my suddenly inspired burst of speed. I apologized and wormed my way through the crowd to the other side of the road, feeling a tad bit embarrassed all the while.

And this was just within the first three miles of twelve total miles to run. For those unfamiliar with the Dam to Dam, the first three miles are fairly easy and mostly downhill, and it was actually the ease of this earliest part of the race route that set up my next major mistake. Feeling more confident at having tackled the first several miles, I skipped all the hydration stops over much of the course. I didn’t feel that taxed or thirsty, and the heat of the day had not really set in. Later in the run, when it did turn considerably warmer, I suffered badly for that rookie mistake.

It came on about mile ten, where the course turns into a series of small but sometimes gentle inclines as you pass the residential neighborhoods of north Des Moines. By that time the temps had climbed significantly higher than the upper sixties we had at the start. Not eating breakfast to give myself some reserves to draw from and not hydrating properly through most of the race began to take its toll on me. Somewhere in those hills I had to stop running and walk some for recovery.

But, after about a mile of walking I was back running again, at a reasonable pace, when I discovered yet one more mistake I could find to make. There, at mile 11.5, was a seemingly nice man standing alongside the route, under a shady tent, with glass upon glass filled with champagne.

“You’re almost there,” he said. “Have a glass of champagne to celebrate.”

So I did. And I never should have.

I’m pretty sure that glass of champagne greatly contributed to that delirium I felt the few minutes later when I crossed the finish line. My brain was throbbing, I felt very dizzy, and my body hurt from head to toe. I didn’t feel any relief from being finished; I felt more like I had survived something than I felt anything like a sense of accomplishment.

I stumbled my way from the finish line and to the tubs of iced-down sports drinks, asking people twice for directions to where they were. When I found them I grabbed two bottles, despite the protestations of the guy who was obviously the appointed Gatorade Tub Guardian, and then I promptly plopped down on the sidewalk in front of him to summarily down both bottles while under his seething gaze.

It took me a few minutes to recover enough to feel like I could stand again. When I did, I realized I was still pretty disoriented and not quite sure in which direction I should head to find my car. Downtown looked very different at that moment; my internal compass was still reeling, and I had arrived there that morning in the dark at five am. I walked around downtown for over an hour looking for my car, and when I finally found it I realized I had passed within a hundred feet of it at least twice before in my search.

That was my Dam to Dam 2009. It was bad. Still, like the golfer who shoots a triple digit round but gets a birdie on the 18th, I was determined to return and do better.

The memory of all that was still in my mind this last weekend as I stood under a dripping tree alongside Bill and Mary, waiting for the race to begin. Try as I did to prepare and train, I wasn’t sure I had trained any better. I was still struggling with the hills on my longer training runs, and at about a week out from the race, a pain developed in my lower leg. My calf felt as tight as a banjo string and the front of my shins hurt with each and every step.

The pain I thought I could run through, but the fear of having set myself up with an unreasonable goal and potential embarrassment was eating away at me. I had invited Bill and Mary up to run it with me, and they were both runners with far more experience and speed than I possessed. I had also announced several times to all my friends on Facebook that I was running to raise awareness for thyroid cancer, and my training runs had often been a part of my status updates. I’d even announced my goal time for this year, that same two-hour mark that I had declared, but missed by eighteen minutes, in the previous year. If I did not finish, or if I performed as I did the previous year and missed my announced goal, it would be an epic failure witnessed by far too many people.

But race day this year proved to be anything but a failure. In fact, it turned out to be one of those days where everything fell into place.

It was still raining when we started the race, and the rain gear we went looking for the night before was one of the best purchases I think I have ever made. It was my first good call. And the power bar I picked up on the way to Bill and Mary’s hotel turned out to be just the thing I needed to get me going that morning, probably my next best good call.

The race strategy I had taken the time to devise also made all the difference in the world. I took advantage of the beginning downhill miles to give myself some breathing room for the rest of the race, letting it carry me along at a quick, but relaxed, pace.

I was also overly cautious about staying hydrated, using every water stop (there is one nearly every mile) except for three.

I never looked up to the top of any hill I climbed to let myself get de-motivated by it, and I was able to push my way through all but one.

I ate my gel at about the halfway point, and at mile six I began walking a few seconds while drinking the Powerade or water, instead of drinking it on the run.

By mile four I felt like I was in a perfect rhythm. At about mile six I felt like I was experiencing that runner’s high. My friend Kim—a marathoner who helped renew my interest in running—was alongside the route at about mile eight, with a high five and a “good job” that made me feel even better. At the ninth mile any doubts I had about finishing were gone, and I glanced at my Garmin for the first time since the 10k mark. At that point, I knew I would make my goal time. When I was still a mile and a half out I felt like kicking up a notch, and so I did.  With a half mile to go, full of adrenaline, I went into a sprint.

Life was good.

I was ecstatic when I finished, according to my Garmin, at 1:48:03. I knew that even if it didn’t exactly match the chip time that would be official, it could not be twelve minutes different. Bill and Mary were also there at the finish line waiting for me, and instead of the previous pressure I felt from their possibly witnessing my potential failure, I was relieved and glad to see them there to share my perceived success.

And that made all the difference in the world. In fact, when I could take the time to properly reflect back on this year’s race and compare it to last year’s race, I began to see it as the biggest reason I was able to accomplish it in the time I did this year, and enjoy it as much as I did. This year I was with friends, instead of going it alone.

For far too long, running alone was my style. For too many years, I operated from the belief that no one in the world cared about me as much as I cared about myself. I also (mistakenly) thought that the accomplishments I achieved, the battles I won, and the rewards I earned were always richer when I did it myself and didn’t have to count on anyone else for my success. Looking back on all that now, I can see that it was me, defying my insecurities and trying to prove something to myself, as well as prove myself to everyone else. And I am still not sure who that everyone else was supposed to be.

I’m glad that nowadays, I see things a little differently, where I can either trudge through life as me against the world, or I can run it with friends alongside me. The latter is much more rewarding.

In closing, I don’t know if this piece justly expresses my gratitude to Bill and Mary and Kim for being there with me that day, or for all they have meant to me before and after that day. I’m not sure I can pen that.

But, maybe I can frame it this way: in a few weeks, I head home to spend a weekend with about five hundred people I haven’t seen in too long a time and still consider friends. Okay, maybe it will only be about two hundred or so.

But, I wouldn’t be disappointed if I ended up spending the weekend with only three.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.