The Old Guard

This last spring break the girls and I loaded up the car, pointed it south, and headed to Kansas City, with the plan of spending the week there with our friends, Bill and Mary, seeing family, and celebrating St. Patrick’s day back home at one of the country’s largest such parades. With everything we had planned to do we were all a little excited to be on our way, and once we were finally able to hit the road, couldn’t wait to get to our destination. And—as a bonus—something remarkable happened along all those miles on the highway.

We talked.

Real, genuine conversation and everything.

I expected, as was usually the case on every previous drive, that the iPods would emerge as soon as we hit the city limits of Des Moines, and that this would be another one of those drives where I would get three hours of Contemplative Windshield Time while the girls blasted their eardrums and chomped away at their requisite snacks. But, had I been paying attention, I might have picked up on the hint or two from the few days before our departure that might have told me this trip was going to be something different and special.

The first such signal came in a phone call from Megan the previous Thursday. She was concerned she did not have anything appropriately green enough to wear to the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

“Dad, we need to go shopping,” she said, putting the characteristically long extension into her “shopping” to infer both excitement and connivance. She knew she had me. How could I not put her in sufficient green? That warm feeling of being both conned and spoiling arose.

The girls have always embraced their heritage with a certain amount of pride. I think it makes them feel like they own a little piece of something that sets them apart up here in the Near Great White North. We number fewer here, surrounded instead by a larger population of Danes, Swedes, and various other European cultures. For years I have been telling them about how big the celebration is back home, hoping that one day we would get to share it, maybe even incorporate it into our family traditions, but for one reason or another we never have made it back for this special celebration. Not until this year.

That conversation in the car should be something so remarkable may not be saying much about our communication between us all, but I would ask you to remember that I am the father of a Teen and a Tween. The younger has not yet tuned me out for Girl World, but the older most certainly has. So this time we spent (for lack of a less trite word) bonding, was golden for me.

It wasn’t that we just talked, it was more about the subjects we covered, which was the truly unique part. They seemed very interested in me, my life and times growing up in the Parkville area, and my friends. They had met Bill and Mary on a previous trip and were impressed, and they knew I had planned on them meeting several more of my friends while we were there this time, so some of this was pre-work, I imagine. Their curiosity about me and my younger life was heartwarming, to say the least, but I have to admit that it caught me a little off guard. I’d never seen it before this trip.

And, it wasn’t just the conversation and curiosity that made this particular drive vastly more interesting than all the previous, or more enjoyable. There were other things.

The car, somehow, was silently declared a No Conflict Zone. Neither Megan or Kylee antagonized, teased, bullied, or taunted, the other—nothing short of a modern day miracle.

We listened to music that ranged from Journey and Kansas to Dave Matthews and Black Eyed Peas. I don’t think anyone ever reached for their favorite radio stations, and nobody cared. In fact, nobody said a word when I actually sang along with some of my music, which was a previously forbidden indulgence.

Then, it only got better. At about the halfway point, my Facebook page lit up and the notices on my cell phone kept going off. Someone or something needed a reply, but I was too busy driving to answer, and so I handed the phone to Megan and asked her to answer for me. Then I asked her to change my status. Then, my brother, who had found me on Facebook several miles back, struck up a conversation, which I dictated and Megan typed. She became my little typing partner, and I could tell she was really enjoying it.

So it went, all the way into Kansas City, where we got out of the car at Bill and Mary’s on an incredible “We’re the Kilgores and We’re Here” high. But it was at about this same time, when I felt like breaking into a chorus of “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” from the old Coke commercial, when I also remembered a few anxieties I had about this trip.

Bill and Mary live an admirable lifestyle. They try to live as green as possible, make as little an environmental impact as they can, are very healthy with their diet, and don’t have cable TV. Megan and Kylee, on the other hand, are addicted to both meat and television and have never really been taught what I would call a consistently green-minded lifestyle. About the time that we all sat down to eat an incredible meal that Mary had expertly prepared I remembered all of this, and prepared myself for my new role as chief negotiator of the diet concerns. I imagined a meal, and a week ahead, where I would have to quiet whines about a lack of meat, no cable television, and constantly be reminding the girls about small things that might not respect our hosts lifestyle.

But it never happened. None of it. All week long, it never happened. At some point I was wondering if I had picked up the wrong girls in my sleepy and hasty departure from Des Moines, until the two of them reminded me the next morning that I had promised to take them shopping. Yep. Those are my girls.

Before that shopping, however, I was up early that morning and enjoying the quiet of the house. From Bill and Mary’s third-floor window there is an incredible view of the Kansas City skyline, framed by the river in the foreground, Park College (sorry, Park University, now) and its hills to the left, and Parkville with all its quaint little shops and homes to the right. The view was a piece of nostalgia, for me, and I had that comfortable feeling of being at home. Downstairs, I could hear the sounds of a couple getting ready for the day, attempting to do so quietly so as not to disturb their upstairs guests, I imagine. Funny, and a bit odd: that made me miss those things a little.

I had more quiet time downstairs with coffee, pen and paper, jotting notes of feelings and impressions of the trip thus far that eventually would become this piece, but I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than scribble. I was unplugged. The swirl of the world around me outside, and my life as usual, with all of its advanced communication and speed, was outside of my consciousness. It was bliss.

And the rest of the trip: well, it went exactly the same way. I never heard a single complaint from Megan or Kylee about anything the entire time we were there. The closest thing there was to conflict was in a little teasing about old houses, attics, orbs, and ghosts, with both girls making each other so nervous about it, we all ended up in the same bedroom the entire time. I really didn’t mind that.

We enjoyed that Monday together shopping a little, then traipsing from one house to another to have lunch with my father and Margaret, and then dinner with the rest of the family that evening. Tuesday was just as enjoyable, meeting Jack at O’Dowds so he and I could have corned beef and cabbage together (something I still cannot get the girls to at least try) and talk about times old and new. The girls’ ears perked up when Jack and I reminisced about some of our younger antics, like the time when he and I got shot at (with details of why we were there and with whom carefully edited out). Later that night, we met more family for dinner, but by late evening we were fairly tired from all the running to and fro, and so we enjoyed a couple of movies together while Bill and Mary were out to a concert.

The next morning was the parade, and despite having stayed up too late watching movies, the cool weather, and gloomy skies, the girls were up early and excited to get down to the parade. For all the preparation, they lasted about forty-five minutes in the weather before they finally admitted they wanted the warmth of the car. It didn’t matter, however. All I cared about was the fact that they wanted to go, wanted to be there, to experience it, and to experience it with me. That was huge. So, I put up only a little objection when they begged out of going to Minsky’s with me later that night to see more friends. I’d gotten my share.

I don’t think it was until the drive home that I got to think about everything that had been over the last week. There wasn’t as much conversation going home as there was coming down, as, in their fatigue, the girls reached for their iPods and napped for most of the way. I slipped in my Fleetwood Mac that I downloaded from Bill’s collection and dove into that Contemplative Windshield Time I enjoy.

At some point, while trying to think of what it was that prompted the girls to enjoy this trip so much, for us all to have such a great time together, I asked myself what I had done right. I wondered why it was the girls were putting more than the usual effort into coming toward me. And then, the mirror turned, and I recognized that I hadn’t necessarily done anything to make them enjoy it more, but instead they enjoyed it more because I was relaxed and doing so myself. I guess the stress and pressures of work and bills and this worry and that didn’t get hastily packed in that suitcase I threw together before rushing out the door. I left it there. And as a result, the girls got to be with Vacation Dad this time, and got the opportunity to get to know several sides of me, and several stories of me, they probably haven’t seen enough of until recently.

And I remembered something else from just the week before. A couple of Megan’s friends found my writing page on Facebook and became fans. I was concerned when I saw that happen, and wondered how Megan would feel about it. It was not something I had hid from her, and eventually wanted Kylee and her to see it and take it all in, but I worried if she would feel any embarrassment from it, from being a subject of all this sometimes. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t care. I got the distinct impression she might have even read at least some of it.

But, that dad—the one they have read in those essays, and spent time with last week—I think they like that dad best, the one that is not necessarily a one-dimensional father figure, has a little more color, flair, and maybe depth. I think they’ve enjoyed getting to know him. I know I've enjoyed letting them in.

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

Lessons In Humility

Almost two years ago, I was having lunch with my friend, Shane, and bemoaning the realization that I was going to have to take on a second job. I had come to know Shane by eating, all too frequently, at his Quizno’s. Cooking for one while the girls were away had long before lost all appeal.

“Why don’t you come to work here, with me?”

I looked up from my sandwich and saw the dead serious look on Shane’s face. In fact, it was a little more than serious; it was almost pleading. I guess most of his help had gone off to college and he was pretty shorthanded, working from open to close every day, and not seeing much of his family.

I had already been making the rounds at the local businesses and putting in applications, hoping someone might be able to offer me a few hours a week at something simple and enjoyable. But, my efforts were really only half-hearted. I was still in denial. It was still a little hard to believe how tough a turn things had all taken over the previous several months and where it all seemed headed. Getting a second job made perfect sense, but it was not going to be fun. My time was already stretched.

And, I was being picky. I didn’t want to work at just any second job. I had already ruled out certain things I had deemed beneath me; there was no way I was waiting tables. I had already done the convenience store gig many years ago and I had no desire to return to that. Besides: I knew I would see too many of my friends and neighbors every shift if I tried working at one of the several stores that dotted our neighborhood.

So when Shane popped his question, I thought, “What the hell?” We talked on a few minutes about what hours I could do and what the job entailed, but we didn’t quite seem to seal the deal. I left there after eating feeling like it was more a solid prospect—kind of a fallback position—instead of a real offer and decision.

I didn’t go back for a couple of days to eat, but when I did, Shane was there, and so I asked him if we were both serious about what we had discussed. I wondered if he wasn’t sincere, and when he handed me the application to fill out, I thought he was giving it to me as a way of finding a graceful way out of an awkward situation. I took the application home with me, not wanting to be seen sitting there in the shop filling it out and wondering if I were making him uncomfortable as I did. When I returned it the next day he still didn’t say anything that indicated I was assured the job.

A small part of me hoped I wouldn’t be hired. It was both reluctance and denial, in that space where one disappointment after another becomes too common and easy to accept. Each one becomes a moment where you become more and more convinced that something fantastic is about to happen for you and the entire nightmare comes to an end. Surely this wasn’t all happening. I was a good guy. I worked hard. I played by the rules. Things this bad don’t happen to good people.

But, it was happening. I just hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet, hadn’t submitted to it.

When the phone didn’t ring for a couple of days I was sure Shane had found the necessary excuse to retract his offer, but thought I would stop in anyway. Shane didn’t even say hello when I walked in, he just asked me how soon I wanted to start. We discussed the missing details, and it worked out perfectly. He understood my parenting and primary employment situations and was willing to work with me however I needed, and it would eventually get him some evenings off with his family. The next Sunday afternoon, I would be working two jobs.

Oddly enough, I walked out of there elated. I was glad to be done with the drudgery of filling out applications and hoping someone might offer me some work. There is a little bit of humility that one suffers in all of that process, especially someone my age and in that position. But in actually asking for and getting work with Shane I felt somewhat empowered, like I was doing something instead of letting it all just happen. Then there was that feeling of having gotten a job. Sure, it was a silly little part-time position in a sandwich shop, but…I got it. Me. Someone picked me. I even called a friend with the news.

But, as Sunday afternoon approached, a few worries set in. I knew I was walking into a work situation where I was going to be working with a lot of people much younger than I. I envisioned snickers behind my back, where my coworkers would be wondering who the old guy was. I wondered what I would say in that awkward moment when a friend or a neighbor came in and saw me behind the counter. I even worried if Megan or Kylee would be embarrassed by their dad’s new part-time job. I nearly backed out because of all of those fears, but didn’t, for some reason.

I came in that first day expecting all that to happen, and none of it did. Shane put me in the patient hands of his most trusted teen, a nice girl named Lauren, and she spent the afternoon showing me everything. Lauren never let on if she thought it odd a guy my age would be working there, she just showed me something, left me to do a few things while she waited on customers, then came back to me whenever she could.

It wasn’t long after I got there that the worst news about the economy started breaking. Business slowed a little, and Shane got nervous. He held off hiring anyone new, and I picked up a night or two more each week to cover the gaps. I noticed the flow of customers was not nearly as hectic as had been the previous months. Winter was even slower. We all worried about our “silly” little part-time jobs with Shane.

At my regular job, I also noticed something different. Our applications and the people that were submitting them were changing. People my age, and older, came in by the dozens, and applied for part-time jobs. I remember interviewing one after another, recognizing the fears in their faces, wishing I could help them somehow. At that point the worst had already come and gone for me. I wondered if it still laid ahead for them.

As the weeks wore on, I became more and more comfortable with working two jobs, with the job I did for Shane. I actually began to enjoy it. It became almost mindless work, a welcome relief from the stress that can be a daily part of managing in the retail environment. I got to know the regulars who came in frequently, and conversation became a part of taking care of people. Friends and neighbors—even coworkers from Target—no longer made me feel awkward. I think they accepted it as a part of the economics of our time, maybe even thought, “there but by the grace of God, go I.” For myself: I didn’t care. Take me or leave me, I try hard. Everything is for Megan and Kylee, and I can humble myself to whatever I need for them.

Even the youngsters I worked with accepted me. Lauren, that girl that taught me everything I know about the place, turned into a great work partner. We could crank out a closing faster than anyone else’s. We would have fun with the nice customers, and laugh at the rude ones after they left. Sometimes she would ask me for advice about things, and I would feel flattered. Eventually she moved on and went to work at her mother’s law firm, so she could earn more for college this fall. We felt like our little girl was growing up, Shane and I. But, she still stops in now and then.

At some point, I kind of became Shane’s trusted partner and trainer. He began taking more and more time off, and even asked me to watch the place a couple of times so he could go out of town. I started getting all the new hires to train on my shifts.

Gabe, another young girl from the local high school, passed through briefly. She was a good kid; she learned fast and worked fast, and was fun to have around at work. But, Girl World and cheerleading eventually swallowed up her life, and she left to work somewhere a little more socially acceptable to her friends. I worry about her, from time to time.

Tommie—the girl I work most with now—will be the one I might miss most when I leave Shane. She is a sweet girl, bright, with a good heart and a good head on her shoulders. The friends who stop in to see her all seem like good kids as well, so I worry about her very little. She is making her way through a childhood very similar to mine, a split family, but doing a much better job of it than I think I did at her age.

Things change, as they are wont to do, and in my case, they changed for the better. Come April, I will not need both jobs, and I am reducing to one so that I can live a little more sanely, can offer better time with the girls, maybe even enjoy myself a little more. But—believe it or not—I am going to miss working at the Q and the people I see there as much as I see them now. I will miss being a part of each other’s lives as much as we are now. And I will leave a little changed.

If everything in life happens for a reason—and I tend to believe they do—then my time there has had far more value than just the income of a silly, little part-time job making sandwiches. The guy who would never work a job like that is no longer; he’s been replaced by someone possibly a little more humble. The invulnerable, disbelieving suburbanite is gone, supplanted by the person who understands everything material can go away in a heartbeat, and that the most important things in life are family, and friends, and new friends you can find in the least expected places. And those unexpected friends and little unexpected lessons: sometimes they prove to be the most valuable of all.

Originally published 3/11/2010.

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

My Fortunate Life

I am the world’s most self-absorbed and least charitable person. Well, maybe not. There is always Simon Cowell, so maybe I run a close second.

Like the rest of the world, I have been watching the recent tragedies of Haiti and Chile panning out across my television screen, my web browser, in my radio. So many lives. So many families. It is hard to get your head around the immensity of it, really. But, even in the age of instantly breaking news reaching into our homes as fast as a camera can switch on, it all seems so far away, so abstract compared to our own corner of the world.

Which makes it easier, actually, to become jaded to it. News of this sort comes to us so much more often now; it seems commonplace. I sometimes wonder if equally sad but lesser events—not ones on the scale we have recently witnessed, mind you—have always been this numerous and common, but that we now only know of them because of the speed of the internet and global communication. It seems like there is almost a daily occurrence of some kind that makes the news.

So I, like millions of others (I think, I hope, so as not to seem so singularly aloof), find it just a little easier to take a back seat, a spectator’s position, and not pick up the phone when a telethon, or some other vehicle, is raising money for victims. I watch for a while, watch the millions rack up and the entertainers parade past, and then I move on. My dollars do not move from here to there, do not become a part of those millions of others that so many feel compelled to give. And I seldom wonder why.

I never used to think this way about involvement and responsibility, or the misfortune of others; not even about myself. In fact, I once worked hard toward quite the opposite. I once started a successful food drive when I still lived and worked in Kansas City, one which was viable and raised several tons of food annually for needy families. I used to contribute and work with several organizations that made real differences in peoples’ lives. I did these things because it was rewarding to do so and because I thought it was important for my daughters to see and understand the importance of it.

But at some point, I had to make a decision. Charity had to start at home. Every bit of my time and energy and resources had to go toward them, toward the two most important people in my own life. I knew I was no longer offering the example, or the learning experience, but it was the choice I had to make in order to answer more pressing needs. In the process of withdrawing from that, I must have become desensitized. I became a little closed off to the needs of others, or how I may be able to help with them, even in the smallest ways.

It is a little disturbing to see that in yourself, no matter how you rationalize it. It’s disappointing. I wonder also if it is a byproduct of an experienced life. In our years, do we draw our circle of concern closer to ourselves?

Recently I have had a number of reminders pile up around me—closer to home reminders—that have somewhat shaken my perspective of my own life in relation to others. They are things, old and new and some new only to me, that beg me to rethink the way I see my life and how fortunate it is, or has been.

I used to think my life somewhat unique, a story worth telling. Growing up with, and surviving, a severely bipolar mother (a fact that, until now, was known by very few), traveling the world extensively at a fairly young age, seeing and having done the many things I have in my life—I thought these things set my life apart just a little from all the “normal” lives I saw all around me. I wore it as a badge of courage. I considered myself a survivor. I was still standing, and still (arguably) somewhat normal, even a little accomplished. I won.

But are all those lives all around me really so normal, or so uneventful? I think probably not. By comparison—at least in gravity—my life is at once both pale and fortunate.

Two of my closest friends are fighting off thyroid cancer. One of them received her diagnosis while she was eight months pregnant. From the outside looking in, many people dismiss thyroid cancer as “the best cancer to have” because the successful cure rate is pretty high. But that rate is little comfort in the face of the very word “cancer.” In that one word, for even those of us that have never faced it in any form, lies ominous and fearful feelings. It is still a great unknown in the world of medicine, let alone to the rest of us. Imagine hearing the news that it is in your body. You never expect it. And when you do hear that diagnosis, even in combination with all the statistics that support hope of overcoming your particular form, its presence is, at least, unexpected news, and that leaves you feeling very vulnerable.

Their fight against the “best” cancer is still very difficult. It involves surgery, and radioactive iodine treatments, and time away from loved ones, away from a newborn, and healing, and waiting, and wondering, and lifelong medication. I think it is safe to say that neither of my friends feels fortunate to have their particular kind of cancer. But, I also know both of them to be very strong, and each is showing immense courage and poise in the face of it all. I admire them both, greatly. I wonder how I would fare under the same circumstances.

And when I look around me, their stories are not the only remarkable ones. I have another friend, someone with whom I have only recently reconnected, who has suffered loss in their lifetime beyond anything I could ever fathom. Their courage and strength in the face of those losses seems so incredible, so beyond me, that I feel humbled, and wonder why I ever thought myself a survivor.

There are others. One friend I know has had health problems similar to those I spoke of earlier. Someone else close to me fights daily with bulimia—an affliction rooted so deeply in one’s self-image—despite the fact that they are both intelligent and beautiful, and they have the brightest of futures ahead of them if they can only overcome it. I know a number of people who are either going through, or have been through, family splits that are horrendous, are far more bitter and spiteful and challenging than was mine. One friend had so much more (in material terms) than I ever had, and then, for a time, lived so much harder than I ever have after their family changed. Yet another friend suffered a childhood trauma much, much worse than anything I ever witnessed, but today possesses the strength necessary to be a loving parent in a situation where many of us might not be.

The more I look around me, the more fortunate I begin to feel. I think maybe I just had to open my eyes a little to all those around me to know that. The challenges of my life are very real to me personally, and I suppose we all feel something similar about our own circumstances. It may be only through the lives of others, others close and very real to us, that we learn of life’s bullets we’ve dodged, learn how fortunate we are, or have been. Then, maybe we, when we true up our view, might see our way to reach out, or to do something of value, of real impact, in some form that we feel comfortable.

I still won’t pick up the phone and send money, anonymously combined with millions of other peoples’, to Haiti or Chile. For myself, there still remains a need for the direct connection, the feeling of being close to the cause. So, this June, I run in the Dam to Dam. It’s a 20k run which has, to this point, been a run of fun and personal challenge for me. This year I want to leverage it to do more, so I will be running to also raise awareness for thyroid cancer. It’s the least I can do. But it’s something, and I’m pretty fortunate to be able to do so.

Originally published 3/7/2010.

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

Costly Renovations

My first home was in Brookside, at the corner of 60th and Cherry. It was a two-story shirt-waist built in 1915. It was exactly what I was looking for: it was older, had “character,” was structurally sound, and needed cosmetic work. It had been passed over by several people before me that had looked at it, but I didn’t even hesitate. It had all the basics I wanted and it had real potential. The potential was what I saw most. In fact, I remember that the most important aspect of every house I looked at then, and for every house I bought after that, was the potential they had. Even the one we built new.

If you have ever owned an older home, you have likely experienced something similar. It is why we buy older homes. We love that old wood, stone fireplace, antique fixture feel about them. And whatever challenges we may see in what we purchase is easily overlooked at the beginning. We assume those challenges are a part of the process and we also assume that we have the abilities to overcome them. If the plaster is falling off the walls in one of the bedrooms, we see that as a negotiation point at purchase, not as a problem. If the landscape looks like it has been neglected for years, we envision a couple of weekends of work and Voila! It’s a cover story for Better Homes and Gardens.

But the work and expense involved almost always turns out to be way more than we anticipated, once we really dig into the projects. That plaster wall, when it is peeled away for drywall replacement, often reveals rotted framing or termite damage. The weekends we figure it will take to fix up the landscape usually becomes a summer-long project that also eats up a few days of vacation as well. It never fails. It can be frustrating how much work and expense it gets to be after a while, and I remember many a project that tested my resolve. But somehow, I got through them all, and in the end I was pretty happy with the final result. With houses, I was pretty lucky.

My memories of those houses and all the hard work I put into them, oddly enough, was somehow surfaced the other day when I was examining a relationship of someone close to me and re-examining my own as well. Understanding things—in particular, choices—I think can sometimes be done by looking at patterns and similarities in the way we use them, make them, or apply them in different situations. So when I think about how I have always chosen my relationships, I wonder if I can learn something from the way I have made choices in other aspects of my life. In other words, what can I learn from how I have chosen homes that helps me understand what I need to learn about how I have chosen relationships?

Originally I thought about this in reference to this other person. I was totally perplexed by what she had gotten herself involved in trying to accomplish. The person she was involved with had a plethora of issues, both physical and emotional, and I say that knowing that I am not without my own. But, by her own admission, this guy has a ton of work to do, and he has health complications that make his challenges even more difficult to overcome. They met a couple of years ago and then married soon after, and not long into the marriage his challenges began to grow in depth and complexity. It was not long into the marriage that it all became overwhelming for the both of them, and he exited stage left. She moved on and filed for divorce.

But recently, he has reappeared, and he is asking for reconciliation of their marriage. She is considering it. The question that first came to my mind, and which I am yet to express to her, is: “Why?” That was followed by “Why would someone who has been hurt so much by another person let them back into their life?” Then came “Why would you want to take all that on?” Next was “What is it about this person that made her choose him as a relationship and husband?” Eventually, I got to “Why is it she chose someone like this?” She has a history of similar choices.

My deduction and concern: she chooses relationships like I choose houses. I think she sees a diamond in the rough and believes that if she puts in the work, it will be a great relationship and he will be a better person. The only problem is, that choice means that he also has to be willing to do the work and that he is willing and able to change into what she is hoping he will be. I think that last part is the hardest part for us to recognize sometimes, that we ourselves cannot change people, only they can, and that we may be making a major mistake in wanting them to change into what it is we need.

But how many times do we overlook, fail to see, minimize, or ignore the crumbling drywall or weedy lawn that may be obviously inherited in a relationship? Or worse: how many times do we see it, but see it as something we can change about someone, that we can overcome? Why should we feel the need to change someone? And if we do mistakenly take all that on, are we willing to bear the potential cost it brings to the quality of our own life? Will we bail out, or will we see it through to the end? Do we possess the tenacity? I think the worst thing we can do is to give someone in that situation the assurance of our commitment, and then exit when the project gets too tough or more costly than we estimated.

In trying to process all these questions about this person, and in drawing out the analogy of picking and buying a house, I suddenly recognized that I had already connected the dotted line between myself and these same questions. Oops! I hate it when I do that.

When I met Michelle, we had both just ended relationships which were not healthy for us. That in itself was not the core issue that likely caused our eventual split, but I think it was a factor. In that early romantic stage of euphoria that begins every relationship, I think I overlooked things in her and she overlooked things in me, and we both overlooked things together that would, in the end, tumble the house we tried to build together. Or maybe we didn’t overlook them, but instead took a look at them and told ourselves that they were the dripping faucets which could be easily fixed. It was an easy thing to do when we started off together, and we both just came from something bad. By comparison, everything looked great, and hope and optimism was aplenty.

But unlike houses, I can’t fix, save, or change anyone. I’m not sure I can even fix, save, or change myself. And no one can fix in me things they feel make us incompatible. Nor would I want anyone to try. It is not a good approach, seeing someone as an investment that you can change, or grow, or develop to fit your needs. Recognizing all that is probably an important step toward being comfortable in your own skin, but more importantly, it’s a bigger step toward healthy choices in any potential relationship.

One of the things I have learned about older homes is that they all have gremlins. There is the too-small closet, the squeaking staircase, the quirky plumbing, or the stubborn window sash in every one. Some of these things are things I came to love and appreciate about each one of them, even though they really frustrated me at times. It’s part of the old home character I wanted. I chose it. And so long as it is only the small things I had to live with, it just added to life, really.

But I’m not up to any major renovation jobs anymore. I’m not sure it was ever smart to think I was.

Originally published 2/21/2010.

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

As Megan Becomes a Cat

I see cat people. Everywhere.

I have always been a dog person myself, but I have known a lot of cat people in my lifetime. In fact, I once lived in a large house in Hyde Park with three women…and thirteen cats. It was not as bad (or as good, guys) as it sounds at first. It was a really big house and an economic advantage for all of us to move in together, and it just so happened that these women had four or so cats each before we decided to do this. No one was willing to shed any of their respective cats for the arrangement, so we made it work. To their credit, they took great care of their cats and all their habits, and after a while all of them kind of grew on me and displayed distinct personalities I recognized.

There was Luna the King Cat, Zachary the Mamma’s Boy, Cassiopeia the Space Cadet Cat, and so on. It was twenty-some years ago. I can’t remember them all. The point is, I learned a few things about cats during those years we were all together in that house. It just took time and exposure. And I kind of took that lesson along with me, developing the idea for myself that the people in my life I disliked or were at odds with were the people I knew and understood the least.

Usually, but not always, time around or with someone and a little effort to see things from their perspective helped me understand them better, at least to a point where I could accept them if I still found it hard to do much else. I am not sure I have ever met too many genuinely bad people on the planet (although, any normal day in retail challenges that theory), just people with agendas, priorities, and ideas that may be a little at conflict with mine. And who is to say mine is the measuring stick?

I was thinking about all this again recently when I was examining my relationship with Megan. Lately the conflict has been less, and I was trying to figure out what was going right. Actually, I was trying to figure out just what it was I was doing right, because with a teenage girl you are not likely to affect significant change resulting in them coming toward you. Life is pretty much on their terms, just the same as it was for you and me when we were self-absorbed teens.

And let’s face it: more often than not, where women and teenage daughters are concerned, I have often had to walk away, scratch my head, and admit I was wrong about something. I do it later, where I don’t have to admit it in front of them, but at least I recognize my lesson to myself. If you would, keep that under your hat, please; don’t tell Megan or any of the women I know that little secret.

So I began, oddly enough, to explore the similarities between my situation now and then, and I stumbled across an interesting analogy:

Teenage girls are like cats.

Doubt my theory? Then as proof, I will offer the following parallels. Jump in and differ with me whenever and wherever you want.

Cats like shiny new toys. The newest cell phone. The bigger iPod. The expensive flatiron. The latest version of Guitar Hero or DJ Hero. A new camera. I think I read somewhere that the single biggest buying block in America is the Teen and Tween girls. I believe it. Collectively, they are a Monster Consumer. Figure out something that they just have to have—something that seems important to their self-image or their externally-driven image—and you are a rich man. Megan is no different, and she has a particular problem with shoes. She owns more shoes at thirteen than I have owned my entire lifetime. I call her Little Imelda Marcos anytime she asks me for another pair. We can’t drive past Famous Footwear without her pointing out to me that they are having their half-price sale. Never mind if we have to subsist on peanut butter and jelly for the next two weeks; Megan’s feet will be fashionable.

Cats can spend hours just watching something. Like a television. Well, not many cats actually watch television, but teen girls do. Hours of it, hypnotized. Megan is no different. I have never really been addicted to television much myself, and I have tried to pass that along to the girls, but I feel like I am waving my finger at a tidal wave. It’s as much a culture thing as anything. And so much of a young girl’s culture comes from media exposure that I would have to be preparing her for life in a convent to take it away from her. The danger I see in all of it is in what they are taught as a good self-image, what the definition of beautiful or attractive or acceptable should be for them. I’ve witnessed first-hand how that can result in eating disorders. So tragic. So heartbreaking. So unnecessary.

Cats often prefer to spend their time in the company of other cats. One of the biggest arguments I ever had with Megan was over her not being seen with me and her sister at the mall, by her friends. It was Lesson One. And I have already had to learn where the proper place is to pick her up after football games or various other social events. Dropping her off at school is okay still, but just guess what happens if I try to give her a kiss goodbye or even say the words “Bye! Love You!” within earshot of one her passing friends? Correct. Those little eyes heavy-laden with eye liner flash a look that could pierce armor. And she wishes they could, at that moment.

Megan and I have gone around about how she has to have a friend along on just about every family outing. I’ve given up on that one too, even though I know it means they will spend more time engaged with each other than with Kylee and me. About the only way I could divert Megan’s attention would be to break out in song or dance somewhere public, at which time she would sprint, record speed, hurdle small children, and dive yards to take me down in a full body tackle.

If ever given the choice between something to do with a friend or friends and anything (even if it were shoe shopping) with Kylee and me, friends win every time. It’s just another one of those things I’ve come to accept. I do a lot of that nowadays, this accepting thing.

Cats like to have primp fests with each other. I am yet to (and dreading as much) see the pre-date or pre-prom rituals, but have you ever had a peek into Girl World right before a show choir competition, band concert, or even a pre-mall? Amazing. Astonishing. To make matters worse, Megan is a stunningly pretty girl with her blonde hair and blue eyes, and I think she is learning as much. I’d like to see a federal law enacted limiting the age when girls can buy cosmetics, but I am more likely to see the NRA banned, and gun control enforced first.

Cats are aloof, and are okay spending a lot of time alone off somewhere. I can’t fathom that teen girls spend a lot of time contemplating the questions of life, which is the sort of thing I do whenever I am spending time alone. So what is it that she is doing, other than texting her friends or watching television, behind that closed door? It is closed often enough to go ahead and hang a piece of wall art on, frankly. Or tell me this: do I want to know? If not, it is quite alright to spare me the pain of that education.

Cats love you, even though they don’t always want to show it. And sometimes, the only time they do is when they need something from you, or they are tired. Want to know when it is that I experience the best little moments with Megan? It’s usually at the end of the day, when I am saying goodnight to her, or when I check on her for some reason while she is sleeping. Sometimes I might just sit there with her a moment, pull her covers up for her, or brush her hair back off her face. I can usually see a somewhat serene look envelope her face, and on occasion it slides into a little smile. It’s almost like her subconscious acknowledgement of the connection.

Those are the best times. The less-than-best are when she wants that $100 flatiron that she hasn’t earned enough babysitting money for, or a friend over for the night, or that new pair of shoes that she just has to have right then and there. Those are the times when Megan exhibits an uncanny knack for flattery, persuasion, and even manipulation.

Megan (in lilting or whining voice): “But this is a better quality flatiron dad. All the others are cheap and break! Buy this one and it will be cheaper in the long run because you won’t have to buy me another in a month or two!”

Really? And yes, she wears me down almost every time.

And so…I’m not sure why I ever dreamed that I would understand teenage girls any better today than I did over thirty years ago. Maybe I thought that age and maturity offered me some advantage and perspective that would make me, well…wiser. Silly me.

But, just like I didn’t care for or understand cats before I had to live with thirteen of them, I gradually make peace with Megan as a teen. Her personality is taking shape in ways I have never recognized, or at least wanted to acknowledge, and as I come to understand that, and deal with her as a littler, developing adult, we have more good days than difficult.

But I still draw the line at her dragging a dead mouse—my code words for a teenage boy—into the house to proudly show me what she’s caught.

Originally published 1/26/2010.

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

Questions We Don't Ask

Lately I seem to be having a lot of conversations with divorced people. Maybe I shouldn’t, because just the other day, someone asked me one of the most difficult questions I have had asked of me in quite a while.

“What went wrong with your marriage?”

The question kind of took me back, because I can’t remember anyone ever asking me that point blank. It struck me as having come from someone that had already examined those things for their own answers, and it struck me even more that I probably had not. In fact, I know I had not. I had never taken the time to fully understand one of the biggest events of my life, the death of my marriage, and I was intrigued by why I had not.

I think, for many of us, the business of moving on becomes reason enough for skipping over that step. We have all those phases to go through: anger, denial, yada , yada, yada…it’s easy to want to move forward to the path of least resistance. And with the pain that is so often experienced in trying to process a divorce, who would blame anyone for a little escapism, be it whistling our way past the emotional graveyard or partying our brains out every night until the break of dawn. There is little in life you will experience—aside from the death of a loved one—that will compare to the death of a marriage or deep relationship.

So, when I first responded to that question, I could feel myself reaching for answers, and whenever I feel myself reaching I begin to hear that little voice in the back of my head telling me that I am saying something about which I know absolutely nothing, or too little. I stopped myself, stopped reaching, and I admitted that I didn’t really know. And then, the customary self-examination began; I needed to know why it was I never tried to understand it.

When you ask that same question of many of those divorced, I think the natural tendency is to first find blame, or find some ambiguous reason that, at the very least, deflects any sort of blame. How many times have you heard the other party was completely at fault, or that a marriage just died, or that some outside force just created too much pressure for the marriage to bear? I thought so. It’s easy for us. It’s a natural self-defense mechanism.

In my case, the process of tearing apart the marriage involved so much blame thrown at each other that I myself developed a pretty thick suit of armor. Later on, it easily became a muddled mess of confusion and hurt that was too murky to see through, and so I gave up trying. The girls became both sanctuary and shield for me, and I closed off protectively. A wall went up, brick by brick, and I eventually forgot about what answers I might have left on the other side.

The even bigger frustration: even if I try to find the most humble route to understanding what ended my marriage, I may only be able to find half the answers. To paraphrase the way one philosopher put it, I may be able to dissect and physiologically know how a bat sees and feels the sensory, but I will never understand or know the way a bat interprets or experiences it. I will never know what it is like to be a bat. I will also never know what it is like to be Michelle, because I will never know or feel what it was she brought into the marriage that filtered her interpretation of the experience. It’s not possible without being her. And even asking her, which is impossible for the same reasons why we were not a good couple—a lack of trust and communication—would prove fruitless. So my answers are limited to understanding myself and my own culpability, and I have to be satisfied with that.

But when I try to find my answers, the things I need to learn from or take from all of this, I still find it easy to slip off into finding the symptomatic, the things that were really signs of a failing marriage rather than the root causes. I still can’t get to the core, or feel like I have gotten there, anyway. Maybe self-defense, at least for me, is so strong that it becomes impossible to reach what may be a balanced state of humility, of complete understanding of self. I find myself peeking through the door for answers but still a little worried that it will blow wide open from my hands and the cold wind of doubt rush in. I’m uncomfortable with that; even the thought of that imagery makes me shiver. It reminds me of when asking myself these things wasn’t so healthy. When everything was still fresh, it was difficult, and seemed amplified by the particulars of my situation.

In a post-relationship event you want to know why and what, and at some point you begin to wonder what you own of the why and what. Its not far from that to wondering what issues you yourself brought into it, what baggage you may carry from it, or are you or will you be seen as damaged goods. Divorced and in your forties, it’s also not hard to wonder if lightning will ever strike for you again. Time eventually wears all the hard edges off of all those thoughts, but it’s not much fun to experience.

Maybe the reasons why we don’t ask ourselves the hardest questions, or even think of them, is because the answers are not what we want to hear, or are too painful to hear, or our fear of the uncertainty that lies in looking into them too threatening. And maybe this does or does not apply in my case, my marriage, or others’ failed marriages. At some point I end up asking myself why it matters, what it may really mean to me going forward. At the moment I still find myself more fascinated with why I haven’t asked the questions more than I am the questions or the answers themselves.

Then I am reminded of something I have tried to tell myself often, that learning through pain is sometimes the most valuable learning I will ever do, and that to ignore what may need to be learned is to make the same mistake again later. Maybe that is the most I will get out of this particular thought process, for now anyway.

Still, at this point in my life, it feels more like a healthy curiosity. I feel like a kid with a mechanical toy he wants to understand, tries to take apart to find its inner workings and demystify the magic underneath. The answers I don’t have are not so pressing to me anymore, because what I don’t know about myself or that situation, seems less significant than what I do know about myself, and that is, quite frankly, that I’m an okay guy. Maybe I’m an even more okay guy because I take the time to try. I like that. I’m going with it. I try. And tomorrow, I’ll try again.

Originally published 1/20/10.

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

One Chapter and a Mentor

On the nightstand beside my bed is a photo of me on a fishing trip to Canada when I was still in my twenties. Kylee placed it there for me; she said she wanted me to have it there to remember what I looked like with long hair, and to not feel lonely when I go to bed at night without them here with me. Never mind that the place is loaded with pictures of the girls and me. She picked this one, maybe out of some understanding of someone else in the photo with me.

The photo is of me and two other men, sitting on a log on the shoreline of a small island of some Canadian lake. It's funny: when I look at it I can still conjure up the feelings, the smells, the temperature, all the details of that particular moment when the picture was taken. At the time it was just another moment. But it's indelibly impressed.

The man seated right beside me on that log is Don Horne. Don was the owner of the company I was working for at the time, and my friend and mentor. In the photo, he is already in his sixties, which is as I always picture him (because I never knew him until he was that age and never saw him age any more than that). Don was cut from a different kind of stone than most of us. He was raised on a North Dakota farm during some of our country's most difficult economic times, one of three sons. He left the farm after high school to join the Navy, then went on to college after that, and then worked a series of jobs before ending up as a salesman for a large chemical company.

It was during that time that Don literally created the industry of railroad contractors that applied herbicides along the tracks to keep vegetation off the railroad beds and back from road crossings for safety. Four other companies sprang up in the wake of Don's endeavor, but Don was the eternal godfather of the industry. He was respected far and wide. He had a calm, quiet demeanor that bordered on stoic, and combined with his physical stature, it was easy for him to command respect. But he never demanded it. He just earned it from you.

Don became a father figure for me at a time when I most needed it. I had left school to work for his company full-time when neither school nor anything else was really working for me. I worked for him for an entire year before I even met him, but shortly after I did meet him at a company gathering, word came down from his office in Minneapolis that I was to be invited into a management role. I was all of 19 at the time. I was also joining the ranks of a management team of four that, aside from me, was all above the age of 65. I was flattered, and eager to please.

These were heady days. I was doing a great deal of growing up at the time, and while I was I was traveling the country and experiencing things that were a great deal different than my life had seen up to that point. The whole world seemed to be opening up to me, and I am not sure now that I was properly prepared to choose between all of the options that I faced or that presented themselves to me. At times, I chose poorly.

But in my effort to do what I thought would earn Don's respect and appreciation, I somehow made more good choices than bad. My career flourished as a result, the satisfaction of that fed on itself, and I worked that much harder. An even greater reward: Don and I grew close. He became my first and best mentor and friend. Whenever I would travel north to the Minneapolis office, he always insisted that I stay at his home with him and his wife Bea. Bea would spoil me with home cooked meals, which you learned to treasure when you traveled nine months out of the year. Don would always take me out fishing on the lake or to dinner at his country club. In the evenings we would relax and enjoy the view of the lake from his living room or back deck and talk, or not talk, for hours.

Everyone in the company used to kid both Don and me about some of the most ridiculous reasons Don would find to make me travel to Minneapolis. In the spring, there was always some 15 minute sales call we would make on the division VPs of the Burlington Northern, followed by an afternoon spent putting Don’s dock out into the water. When it was time for the annual meetings—which were really just those chemical company-sponsored fishing trips to Canada—Don would have me come up a week early for pre-meeting preparations. Those preparations usually involved some project that needed done around the property. In the fall we would spend about an hour in the office one morning going over bids that would be due for the next season before spending the next two days putting the lawn and landscape to bed for the winter.

Those fishing trips called company meetings were golden. I always felt like the kid invited to the castle on those things. All you had to do was show up, because the chemical company sponsor covered every single expense, including guides and all new gear to use. While there, I got one-on-one time fishing with Don for hours and days. Sometimes it was enough just sitting there with lines in the water, listening to nothing but the water lapping the side of the rented, aluminum 16-footer. Other times we actually talked shop, and I remember sitting there in that boat, feeling like young Grasshopper, while Don shared with me his business acumen and leadership skills honed sharp from his decades of experience.

After about ten years of bliss in working with Don, I started having serious thoughts about where I was going with my life and what I could do with his company. Don was signaling that he was growing a little weary of the travel and the effort it took from him personally to keep it all going. He didn’t seem to trust any of the older managers to take the reins, based on his conversations with me. I began to develop big dreams about succeeding Don one day, running his company for him, but in the back of my mind I knew there was no way someone my age would be given that. I wanted it, but I also knew I wasn’t really ready for it, and knew that my enthusiasm would never overcome all the inherent obstacles there would be for someone my age to run it. It was an industry and company heavy laden with gray beards. I could never fully win over their trust, despite whatever backing Don gave me.

Don must have understood it as well, because we never discussed it. He got an offer to sell the company to a larger company and took it. I stayed with the new company because Don ushered me in to them as his rising star, and I had a great relationship with the new president, but it was not quite the same.

Our group, though, did not mesh well with the larger organization, and so when it began to fail, Don bought it back and started rebuilding it again. It took an enormous effort on his part, and I jumped in to work with him with everything I had. He just inspired you to do whatever it took.

When the company was back on its feet again, Don started looking for another buyer. I had another series of “I could do this!” thoughts which quickly subsided, and began to think about moving on again once Don was gone. I still felt a little like I was betraying Don. The whole reason he bought the company back and rebuilt it was because he loved the people who were about to lose jobs after years of dedication to him. But like any good father, Don knew when it was time to let me go. We talked about it a little one night. I would stay to help another owner get a start, and then I would move on to other ventures.

A new owner did come along that next winter. I stayed one more season to help with the transition, as did Don, but I considered that last year on the road my swan song. I hit every old haunt I could on the road that year, and along the way I looked up every friend I had made throughout the years of travel. I enjoyed that year of travel more than I had since many more before it, and at points had thoughts about how much I was going to miss it. But in the fall I came across another opportunity and took it. I called Don to tell him. He had also ended his relationship with the company just weeks before, but I still felt like I was deserting the House That Don Built. It was one of the hardest conversations I had ever had with someone. But, Don understood completely, and he made me promise that it was not the end of our relationship.

The last day I worked on the railroad, one of the most romantic industries I think there is in the country, was nearly picture perfect. I took a crew heading out of Kansas City on one of the special jobs treating brush along side the tracks, a job done only at the end of the year and staffed with only the most senior road vets. Some of these guys and I were together my entire career there, some of them growing up and older just like me, while traveling the country. At the end of the day, our train, and our work, ended at my old hometown of Mosby, and at about a hundred yards from the house my dad had inherited from my grandparents. I climbed down off the train, walked off the tracks, and got in my dad’s truck so that he could drive me back to town. I’m not sure I can put any words down here to describe that feeling—something like pride, relief, and anticipation all at the same time--that I felt at that moment.

Over the years after that Don and I still talked frequently. I would call him whenever I was considering any type of a career move, and he always had sage advice I valued. I also never grew tired of hearing Bea tell me whenever she answered the phone how it was good to hear from their “adopted son.” It was never easy to get up to Minneapolis to see them in my new job, but I got to do so now and then. And during one of the difficult years the girls and I made it up there, and Don and Bea got to see the family I was raising. It was another moment of pride.

A couple of years ago, I got a letter in the mail from Bea. Bea was writing to tell me that Don had died suddenly from a heart attack at church one morning, and that she was writing me to tell me because the phone number she had for me was disconnected. I’d forgotten to call them; I had dropped my land line and changed cell phones during the process of Michelle and I separating. I felt horrible, because the man I loved and respected for 26 years, a man that I think helped raise me, helped make me who I am today, was gone, and I wasn’t even there to pay my respects because of a stupid oversight and lack of thought on my part. Even worse: I couldn’t be there for Bea in her time of need.

Despite that ending, I know that Don knew, and knows, what he meant to me and my life. He invested in me when maybe others would not have. He recognized something that no one else took the time to, even though I was not making it very easy for anyone to see in me at that time. He carefully and patiently guided me during my career at his side and for many years after. He was the greatest mentor I ever had in my life, and I still think of him often.

I’ve tried, in my career and otherwise, to find opportunities where I can pay respect to Don by being a mentor to someone. I don’t know that I can ever be the sort of leader and mentor he was, but trying to do so means a great deal to me. Becoming someone’s mentor is not something you just do; it is a relationship that grows based on trust and respect, and so it’s more something that you feel invited into by someone more than you solicit. But I have had the honor of fulfilling that role for a person or two, and every time I do, I try to remember the way Don guided and directed me and use it as my example, because I remember how much it meant to me and worked for me. And then maybe, just maybe, if I do it right, someone I mentor will one day want to do the same.

Originally published 1/23/10.

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

A Better Me in 2010

I tend to shy away from making resolutions. In fact, I avoid the gym the first couple of weeks of the year just because it is loaded with people that have made them. I give them two weeks, three tops, then go back when I can always find an open treadmill at any given moment.

But this year, I thought I would jump on board and try a couple of self-improvements. Here are mine for 2010.

Stop Making Lists
We men are visual creatures. Outside of our alleged aversion to the use of maps, we do better with many aspects of our life when we see things. Say something to us and it may or may not register, and it may or may not stay with us any longer than the 7 seconds it will stay with your pet Labrador. Show us, and we’ll take it our grave. This is exactly the reason why I have to use lists and calendars. I currently operate from 6 rotating, running, or set calendars and an electronic Daytimer on my laptop. One is just a calendar for the school year so that I am reminded of early-outs, non-school days, benchmark skills testing weeks, and conference weeks. Another is a blank where I can write in non-routine things like birthday invites, doctor or dentist appointments, or other spur-of-the-moment things. The other four are weekly calendars running four weeks out, updated weekly, and color coded for Work Target, Work Q, Running, Writing, Cleaning, Laundry, Bills and Banking, Study Time, various Activities for the girls, and yes, even Sleeping. I schedule my sleep.

I know you are thinking OCD. I’m not. Really. Unless you consider that odd habit of having to repeat myself. Unless you consider that odd habit of having to repeat myself. But, I am resolving to do one less thing in this area. I currently have, and will stop making:

1.) A Target shopping list
2.) A Grocery shopping list.
3.) A Barnes and Noble shopping list
4.) A To-Do list, with,
a. Sublists of items or steps necessary to support the list of things to do.
I.) Sub-sublists of things or steps necessary to support the sublist.

But, as you can see, I’m not doing well with this one. Let’s move on.

Attend More Class Reunions
I had a great deal of fun at our mini reunion last fall; so much so that I have decided to make it a new pastime of mine. Yes, I know we will—as a class or school—only get together once a year, but who says I have to stop there. I’ve decided to start trolling Classmates.com for class reunions that are happening anywhere within a 150 mile radius, and start attending every one I can. Why should it matter if I went to school there or know anyone? Think of how easy it would be to show up, slap on a name sticker, and mill around drinking. Why not?

And if anyone comes up to me, as you know they will, and asks, “Do I know you?” I can simply reply:

1.) “I should hope so. We slept together several times.” --My level of liquid courage and comfort with my sexuality at the moment will determine if I use this as a unisex response.

2.) “I was an exchange student. My English are much better now.”

3.) “Not really. I ran with a more attractive, popular crowd.”

4.) “You should. What you did (choose: saved my life/cost me years of therapy)!”

5.) “No, but my sister has been raising your child on her own for years now.”

I’m betting I can write my memoirs of this adventure and they’ll make a movie of it, hopefully starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. Anyone care to be Vince?

Broaden My Musical Horizons
I have never really spent any quality time trying to enjoy polka music, and that is probably one of the biggest travesties of my life. I feel ashamed. I mean, who in their right mind doesn’t get a little excited every time you hear the DJ fire up “The Chicken Dance” at a wedding reception? And Hungarian folk music: when was the last time I ever had that on my iPod playlists? I’ve been living my life too narrowly.

Once a Month, Try the Impossible
I do best when I have a routine, a deadline, and some challenge to look forward to overcoming (see “Lists” above). So, I thought I could combine all three of these pressures into one activity for my own personal growth. I haven’t thought of twelve yet; I am still up for some suggestions. But, here is what I have thought of so far.

1.) Look good in a picture of me dancing.
2.) Get a Republican friend (I know…oxymoron) to attend sensitivity training with me.
3.) Make a speech convincing an entire restaurant of customers to eat their parsley garnish.
4.) Remove the same number of socks from the dryer as I put in.
5.) Get Megan to clean her room.

The list so far works its way up from slightly impossible to needing god-like powers to make happen. Please consider this in your suggestions.

Have Someone to Hate Me
I have finally figured out that I have been doing it all wrong all these years. I learned this from the numerous romantic comedies I have watched in my lifetime. You see, I have been trying to find the perfect mate by being a likable guy, someone who someone else might want. It’s a good theory, but it doesn’t work well in practice.

If you pay attention to the plot that is employed in every romantic movie, comedy or otherwise, then you first have to get them to hate you after they meet you. Try it. See if I am right. Think of any movie that involves romance. It’s Boy-Meets-Girl, Girl-Hates-Boy, Boy-Gets-Girl every time, particularly if it involves Tom Hanks or Matthew McConaughey.

Somebody hate me, please.

Spend Less Time on Facebook
Yeah, right.

And finally: Learn To Accept Things Better
We all probably have things we wish did not bother us, or things we know are our personal pet peeves that might not be entirely justified. How simple life would be, if these monumental or little frustrations would go away, or at the very least were of no concern to us. I am resolving to rid myself of at least a couple this year, and in trying to find something positive in them.

What would be the harm of complimenting Megan for doing a fantastic job keeping the ceiling of her room clean? Or wouldn’t it be just as easy to ignore the urge to correct all that bad grammar, punctuation, and spelling friends use in their texts, e-mails, and Facebook posts? Think of all that time I’ve spent returning edited text messages. I know the reason people don’t text me anymore is because they worry about taking up my time.

And I have to stop mentally punching those rude guests or customers. One of those muscle twitches I experience when I do that might actually produce a spasm that will hurt them. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Originally published 1/4/10.

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

Like Father

When I was 17, on the night I was getting ready for my high school graduation ceremony, my dad came to me with that look on his face that told me I was about to have some much-dreaded fatherly wisdom bestowed on me. I was correct. I think I remember looking away to hide my eye roll.

“About tonight son: tonight is the night when girls start crying and boys start jumping over chairs to comfort them. Be smart tonight.”

That dad was warning me—in his own, subtle way—about the perils of sex, was no surprise. I had come to expect these little moral signposts, no matter how oddly timed or late to the punch they were. Later, in my twenties, he would offer career advice. In my thirties, he decided it was a good time to talk to me about the good and bad parts of marriage. In my forties he has taken to giving me financial advice, and over the entire span of my lifetime, to this very day, dad still advises me on good driving habits and on how to safely make the trip from Des Moines to Kansas City and back again.

But what dad said next was a little less expected. “Son,” he said, with his characteristically dramatic pause after, “you’ve spent the last few years wondering how I could be so dumb. Now you’re gonna wake up one day in the next few years and wonder how I got so damned smart so fast.”

At the time I dismissed what exactly dad was saying to me, or the significance of his timing. And I cannot tell you exactly when it was in my life that I realized that dad was right, or when I realized why he said it when he did. I completely failed to recognize dad’s sentimental moment and that he was saying what he felt would be his first in a series of goodbyes. He was watching his youngest son graduate from high school and knew that the first major task with the last of his sons was done. He had to be feeling both relief and loss at the same time. Being young and self-centered, and not too perceptive, I missed it.

My failure to see my father with depth, to recognize his sentimentality and pride in his sons, was something that has been too long a part of my life. In fact, I have spent too much of my life trying to distance myself from him. He was raised in a different time, when being a boy and a man was defined by things so different and foreign to me that I often wondered how in the heck I ever came from the same bloodline. I even remember remarking once, when I was very angry and confused, that we were all merely people that somehow ended up living together in the same house. For my dad, being a man meant that you smoked two packs of Camel non-filters a day and stopped at the bar on the way home for at least a six pack of beer. It meant being a racist. It meant being a sexist. It meant that emotion and caring and education and evolving were things all better left to women or boys of questionable sexual preferences.

Somehow, and I can’t explain how, other than the fact that I did not live with dad from the time I was seven until I was thirteen, those things never became a part of me. When I moved in with dad and my step family, it was at an age where I had already made decisions for myself on those kinds of things, and it was at an age where adolescent rebellion made it even easier for me to discard them. That dad did it meant that I did not want to do it. Well, all of it except for the beer drinking thing, anyway. But that was more a product of peer pressure than rebellion.

And that was how I defined and saw my dad for a very long time. He was a picture of someone I did not want to be, even though he was not, mind you, devoid of any redeeming qualities. I always remember my father as having a great sense of humor, someone that could tease and kid with the best, even though he was corny at times. My father was fun to be around, with a lot of friends that seemed to enjoy the same sense of humor and similar lifestyle. He took us fishing whenever he could, and he instilled in all three of his boys a fondness for, and skills on, the bowling alley (mine now long gone). In the summers he would take us to the lake to spend weeks at our uncle’s cabin, hanging out with all of our cousins, swimming, skiing—it was like being at camp with family.

When he and my mother divorced, he never missed his weekends with us and he diligently retrieved us from mom every Sunday afternoon, right after church, to spend the afternoon with him and our grandparents at the farm. He was a steadfast provider; we never had much, but we always had the essentials. And if anything ever happened, say something where his youngest son got drunk and stole the red lights off of a county police car, he would rise to the occasion and be right there beside us, even if he didn’t like why.

Dad has always enjoyed trying to be the hero, especially for his family, even when it resulted in a less-than-heroic moment. Once, when the neighbor’s house was burglarized, dad kept a vigil in the drive with his pistol holstered at his side, his unbuttoned shirt blowing in the night breeze like a cape. He was focused so intently on all the police activity next door that he failed to notice the tail of his shirt had blown over his cigarette and caught fire. Another time, he tore off across the lawn to grab the family cat before it dashed into oncoming traffic on the street, only to take a painful-to-watch header into the ditch and cause a passing motorist to nearly crash. The cat sat down calmly on the shoulder of the road and looked back at my dad as if he had planned the whole thing.

When I was a child I remember that dad could never drive past a damsel in automotive distress, and he never saw a traffic accident he didn’t feel he had to stop and be involved in. There may have been twenty emergency vehicles on the scene already, but dad always thought that there was certainly something he could offer in the situation.

It would be easy to dismiss my responsibility for failing to recognize the other side of my father, but it would never be fair to him when I think of him in the context of some of those memories I have related here. Why couldn’t I see dad’s Hero Complex as genuine care and compassion rather than as a caricature?

And there have been so many other signs along the way. I always knew that when my father was young he did uncharacteristically non-macho things. He was renowned in Excelsior Springs as a teenager for being a fantastic tap dancer, and even did shows at the old Elms Hotel with my uncle. Those shows stopped, however, on the day that a friend teased him that it was a “sissy” thing to be doing. Sadly, my dad never tap danced another day in his life.

Dad told me stories of how much of a ladies man he was when he was a teen, stealing the hearts of many a girl from all around the area. He used to like to brag about dating girls from Kearney and Liberty, which was a social violation unheard of at those times. You just didn’t date boys from Mosby if you were an upstanding girl from those respectable towns. One of dad’s favorite and funniest stories he liked to tell was about how the boys of Kearney tried to corner him and beat him one night after he dropped off a girl from that town after a date.

Still, for years and years, my father remained the person I did not want to be like, even though we both—and I say both but it may really have been just me—matured. The first sign, for myself, of my maturing: understanding that the advice dad gave me on graduation night was right. He was a lot smarter than I had ever given him credit for. And with this realization came others; there were many other things dad had told me along the way that later proved to be pretty sage. So one day I began to think of my dad as a little wise but quirky. He changed into being a character, someone I had a great deal of respect for but still thought of as a little odd and not necessarily someone whom I would mimic.

And my perception of dad stayed that way for much of my adult life. Our relationship changed over time; I think he came to respect me more as a man and equal somewhere during all of this, and even expressed his pride from time to time in what I had done with my life since flirting with late-adolescent mischief. We grew together, a little, with what distance that remained between us a product of my holding him at arms length in order to maintain what I thought needed to be my separate identity and character. I still didn’t want to think of myself as someone exactly like him.

Dad retired during the nineties, and not long after he began to suffer the usual health problems who someone his age that has led a rough life suffers. He had a heart attack first, I think, and that served as his wakeup call. He struggled with, and eventually gave up, his daily two-pack a day habit. He struggled even longer with giving up his daily consumption of at least a six pack of beer, but eventually won out over that as well. But still, the damage was done in the years past, and dad has continued to fight off this or that ailment of some kind. His biggest fight: a couple of years ago he beat back lung cancer. I’m still amazed at that today.

Dad’s health problems, when they present in some sort of crisis mode, typically play out in this way: I get the call, sometimes during or after the acute event, from my stepsister, because dad doesn’t want to bother his youngest son that “has enough to worry about already.” I then have to make a round of calls to my siblings to determine the reality or drama of the situation. Then, when I know everything I can, I call dad at the hospital or at home to get his side of the story, see what I can hear in his voice, and just generally visit with him to subconsciously comfort us both. The unspoken between us: a connection and understanding that all is not right, but that we both want to ignore it’s not right, along with the bigger implication of what is inevitable in the years to come.

It was during one of these crisis phone conversations, at the very moment that we were both trying to find the best way to end the call in a tactful and manly manner, that my father floored me with just four, short words I had never heard him say before:

“Son, I love you.”

I responded the same, but I remember that at the time what I said what was not so much on my mind as having heard him say it, or what it meant. “Why would he say that?” I was thinking as I hung up the phone, and immediately feared the biggest reason why. But I was wrong about dad yet again. He wasn’t saying it because of something he and I both feared; he was saying it because he honestly wanted to. Still, underneath the desire to tell me that, lingering way, way back there beneath multiple layers of the unspoken between dad and me, was his fear—and my fear—of his future and mortality.

That moment, unfortunately, marked another phase in the relationship between dad and me, because it brought to the surface that fear. We still don’t speak of it, but it tempers our every moment together on the phone or in person. We both try harder to understand and appreciate each other, and respect each other’s differences, and we find it much easier now, more than ever, to be honest with each other and to say we love each other.

For some reason dad has been on my mind lately, and I got a chance to see him the last time I was in Kansas City. That doesn’t always happen because I stay with my sister Debbie in Parkville when I visit and dad still thinks of everything inside of I-435 as a crime–ridden, war zone. In addition to that, I am usually juggling being with the girls and letting them visit former in-laws, as well as trying to see friends. Dad is also busy with the heroic effort he makes daily—even with his health problems—of taking care of Margaret, his wife of 30 years, who daily fights Alzheimer’s.

When I was visiting with dad he was going on and on about the break-in they had recently had at their place. He was upset and angry and blamed everyone in the town and the police and the world in general. I tried to talk to him about moving, about getting an alarm system, or a dog, or something that would make them less vulnerable way out there in the country. Dad was having none of that logic and was being, I thought, very stubborn, and displaying a great deal of misplaced anger. I found myself getting angrier with him the longer I listened to him rant, and those old feelings of detachment returned. I felt like the teenage son again, wondering how my father could be so stubborn, so dumb, so uneducated and angry, and I resented him for resisting my advice and for making me feel the way I was feeling at the moment.

It wasn’t until the drive home later that weekend that I had time to think about that difficult afternoon with dad. It intrigued me that I was so upset by it, by him. I kept asking myself why I let it bother me, what business it was of mine—other than concern over his heart condition—how dad felt. It made me think about all of the history between dad and me, the good times and the bad, and all of the different ways I have felt about him and thought about him over the years. Eventually I came to ask myself why my dad and I were such a paradox, such a mixture of differences and distancing and, at the same time, deep respect and love. Why would I always feel such a need to be so independent from him yet so protected by him?

That last question finally reminded me of something I had read once in one of the many books I have read to do the best I can for Megan and Kylee. In short, it said that part of growing up is establishing our own identity while knowing the security of the safety net our parents provide, and that that net is what gives us the courage to venture out there on the edge a little and discover ourselves. So I began to understand: my life was a product of that very same dynamic, and I owe a great deal more to my dad than I ever have known. In essence, he has defined me, and he has done so in a far greater way than I ever credited him.

And the more I thought about it, the more I recognized my father in me. I can recognize it in the reflection offered in the relationship between Megan and me. I see it in the way the girls see me as more a comical caricature than any authority figure. I see it in my desire to be a superhero to my daughters. It’s there in my work ethic and my frugality and my sense of humor. It is funny how I never saw all that before.

Seeing myself as very much my dad, or at least the best parts of him, made me smile, but also made me a little sad, because I also I recognized a selfish fear in what I witnessed that afternoon. It is likely that part of my anger, part of my frustration of that afternoon with dad was because I had already internally noted that I was very much like him, and that my time as him—the “him” I saw that day—was someday coming. I saw my aging and my mortality reflected in his behavior, and it frightened me. I was reminded by my father that, as Bill once aptly put it, the “conveyor belt” just keeps on moving, and as no one or only one person stands between us and the end of it, we begin to watch that end with a little more interest and fear.

But I can put that away for now. It’s easy. I have a whole host of memories I am now remembering about times with my dad, all prompted by trying to write this and trying to define him as best I could. And I think dad would like it best if I dwelled on that instead. He’s kind of protective that way. It’s a superhero thing.

Originally published 12/11/09.

© 2009 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Between the Two

Recently, I wrote an essay that I never published, because it was a little on the dark side. It explored something I had on my mind at the time and couldn't shake, one of those questions you keep circulating in your stream of consciousness unresolved. Writing about those types of questions helps me sort them out a little, if sometimes only enough to put the question out there for others to discuss.

I had a number of reasons for not publishing it at the time, and still hesitate to do so now if it were not for the fact that several aspects of it’s core questions still plague me. But then I got to thinking recently—again—that I am not unique, never have been, and that someone out there is pondering the same basic question or questions.

The essay dealt with my lingering doubts about faith, belief, thought, and emotion. My position on these very basic aspects of our everyday life is something I have never been able to completely resolve, and the fact that I cannot resolve them is, in itself, an answer I suppose. Then again, I can’t imagine why I would be any better at resolving an argument for myself that philosophers have been unable to answer for the masses over the run of a few milennia.

At the heart of my argument with myself is the split in what most people see as modern philosophy. In layman’s terms—and please don’t mistake me for being far more educated or philosophically capable than I am—the two sides of modern philosophy are Dualism and Materialism.

Dualism is the idea that there are two realms, the physical and the metaphysical. Think of it this way: to subscribe to Dualism means that you believe that you have mind and body, and that thought is generated by the mind. You can also think of it in terms of the tangible and intangible. Dualism makes possible the idea that our thoughts and emotions are intangible things, just kind of out there, impossible to touch physically but no less real to us than the keyboard across which my fingers now dance. At some point in the history of man we tried to make these things more tangible by assigning places where they reside, such as the heart and mind, but we’ve come to understand that we are stretching what we know from modern science to do so.

Materialism is the opposite, far beyond that attempt to make thought and emotion reside somewhere within us. Materialism (not to be confused with the accumulation of wealth or things) is the belief that everything in the universe, ourselves and all of our thought, emotion, and belief, is the product of a physical process that takes place as far down as the atomic level. Someone in the Materialism camp would say that when I am happy or sad it is the result of a biochemical reaction taking place in my brain, which in turn triggers a number of other chemical and physiological reactions in the rest of my body and produces the feeling of euphoria or angst physically.

What is the importance of where I stand with or between these two positions (and why would anyone else care)? I’m sorry. I can’t answer that for you just yet. Despite the openness I feel I can express when I write, and in particular write to the audience I feel I am speaking to when I write, the significance of my is question delves deeper than I can comfortably express to anyone, even though it may be simple. And I think that what I was thinking at the time, and the question that I was unable to answer, is what is more important to examine.

Put simply, I was writing an argument against, yes, very much against, the concept of love. My position at the time was squarely rooted in Materialism, and it stated as much: that love was merely a product of the biochemical cocktail sloshing around in our brains, resulting in what we mistake for an emotion that we make far too important. I went on to argue that what we see as romantic love changes over time and becomes a functional and convenient compatibility. I further argued that when even that breaks down, the end result is a complete emotional and then physical separation of two people supposedly in love, and that current and longstanding divorce rates were great proof of that argument.

But I didn’t stop with love. I went on to attack faith and emotion as well, and eventually came smack up against God. And then, that is where the essay and my thoughts paused.

You are probably thinking right about now, “Geez Cody, you were feeling a little pessimistic at the time, now weren’t you?” And you would be correct. I was. And I recognize that now. Which is why that moment, that essay, and those thoughts all came back around, why I thought of them again. Sometimes I like to explore why I think or feel something at a particular moment and think or feel something else completely different at another time, even if it may not interest another soul on the planet. My recent feelings have been a stark contrast to those at that time.

The pause I mentioned, the moment where I could not progress my argument any further, was the point at which my argument turned on itself. Despite my logic and pessimism, I could not give myself over completely to a complete lack of faith or complete hopelessness in love. I just couldn’t, no matter how much it infuriated me that I could not be black or white on either subject. So I was no further along in my development than I had been at any other point in my life and had no better answers for myself.

I even tried an end run around all that and attempted to rationalize that I was falling prey to archetypes, or that I was just having trouble shedding years and years of fundamentalist upbringing. That didn’t work. I tried arguing with myself that I was subscribing to deeply rooted cultural influences that have surrounded me all of my life, as they did my parents and siblings and generations before me. That didn’t work either. I just couldn’t get there.

I could not give myself entirely to Materialism. And the longer my pause in between the two, the more I began to come back toward the opposite. Gradually, things like hope and love crept in.

I couldn’t hit the Post button. I couldn’t abbreviate the essay stating one position over the other. Evidence of impossibility—make that possibility, actually—quickly mounted. At first it was fear of perception (“What will people think?”). Then I began to think about how it would impact others who read it, and how it might hurt.

I know a number of married couples. How could I, as a loving friend, try to reduce what I see reflected between the two of them to an argument that it doesn’t exist? Who am I to say or think as much? I suddenly felt like I had let myself slip off into a crass and nasty space for a while, and I felt a little selfish. What I saw as very real between them was bigger than me. My perspective, and my perception of myself in comparison to those very powerful things shifted, even humbled me a little.

Even bigger: I began to think about the very real and very powerful love between Megan and Kylee and me. I felt real shame when I began to think that I had tried to make that into something only physical and base.

Sometimes, I think timing is everything, even critically so. At the very moment that I was perplexed and frustrated with myself over the whole contemplation and trying to write about it, Kylee walked out of the bedroom upset from a nightmare. She needed me, and her need for me, need for the comfort she could feel from me, was based on our love, which could overcome the biggest and worst of her imaginary monsters. Mine too.

Thanks, Kylee, for saving me.

Originally published 12/7/09.

© 2009 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.