There's No Comparison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time, Space, and Shape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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