When Words Fail Us Both

Grief is odd. It is disturbing to feel, to experience, and it is often difficult for many to just be near. It makes people uncomfortable speaking about it; we are sometimes not really sure what to say in situations of others’ grief, and when we do, we intuitively know that whatever we say cannot equate with the intensity of their emotional experience.

Take, for instance, the interaction I had with friends and acquaintances and peers the first week I returned to work following my father’s funeral. Most conversations began something like this:

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

It’s a perfectly normal thing to say, and I appreciated the sentiments of everyone who took the time to express them. But, as the week wore on and I would have first, or chance, encounters with people, it seemed as if they all had the same thing to say.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

There were those who actually sought me out those first few days, and they were thoughtful enough to ask about how I was feeling, how things went, or about my father and his life. Their compassion was genuine. Yet invariably we would reach that awkward moment where we both felt the need to segue to topics of work, or news, or just simple, friendly chatter. Then we would part, I would move on, and, moments later, I would run into the next person.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

After a couple of days I developed a succinct “Thank you” as a reply, and I would couple it with a sincere and appreciative smile in response to their equally sincere look of sorrow and empathy. I think we struggled with how to communicate the nonverbal, just as much as we wrestled with the words we chose.

There came a time when everyone’s comments became a disruption of my attempts to return to the rhythm of life, where each exchange served as a reminder of my father’s death, and of the start-stop emotions of the previous week. Their kind offerings also began to sound like a mantra.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

I thought I recognized code in what everyone was saying and possibly not actually expressing. It was as if they were warding off the same for themselves, because they recognized that the loss of a parent can, and will, happen for every one of us. It was possible my father’s death made their parents more mortal, and by extension, themselves more mortal as well. In their words, I began to hear hushed prayers.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

For some it may not have been what they feared in their future, but instead a remembrance of the same event previously happening in their lives. A few people spoke to me about the previous losses they’d experienced, but they often spoke of it with the detachment of something which took place long ago. I wondered if cataloging it in such a manner was their way of eventually coping with it, and if I would one day do the same with my father’s death.

After a few days a card came in the mail. I recognized it as one of the cards we keep around the office and leave at the central desk for everyone to sign. There may have been over a hundred different signatures squeezed on to this card from various people with whom I work, all written in the tiniest of handwriting to accommodate space for everyone that might want to sign the card. We’ve become practiced at such things.

I read through each of the comments. They were all well-intended and—I am sure—heartfelt, but even in that I saw a pattern of difficult communication. “Sorry for your loss,” and “Thoughts and prayers with you,” were among the most common expressions scribbled into all of the available space of the stark, white cardstock. The miniscule writing and the density of the comments made me hear a chorus of whispers as I read them.

We do, say, what we can, I thought to myself, when I finished reading them all and set the card aside for safekeeping. I’m still not sure what to do with it now.

Late in the week I ran into a friend and peer who is similar to me in age and who had recently come to work with me in the same building. She also had lost her father just a few short weeks before my father died.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “How are you doing?” In my voice inflection I heard my involuntary reach toward someone I knew must truly understand something I was still attempting to wrap my head around.

She smiled, and I thought I could see her eyes moisten a little.

“I’m okay,” she said. “But, every once in a while I feel like there are things about it that are still hitting me, still settling in. It’s like it is still becoming real to me. I think there is still more to come.”

“I know,” I added.

We talked for a few minutes more. I think she was the first person all week with whom I could make prolonged and sincere eye contact. It felt as if our two separate experiences folded together in the small space between us. For a brief moment, we each knew the other’s feelings on an almost palpable, and deeply personal, level. It was comforting.

Eventually work called us each separate ways. We promised to talk more when we had the chance, and we went back to our beckoning tasks. Walking away, I turned to find someone approaching me, and I felt myself brace in anticipation:

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” they said.
   
© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Scarecrows

The other night I went out for a run, a test run of sorts; I wanted to see just how far I was capable of running with my current conditioning, and check how I was recovering from some recent running injuries. I also had a larger question weighing on my mind, which I would only be able to answer or resolve with a very long run: I wanted to know if I could resume my interrupted training for a fall marathon, and dedicate my effort to the memory of my father.

I’d been thinking about this run all day. I knew a run would help me focus, clear out some mental clutter, and shift gears away from all of the activity and emotions of the preceding week. I needed that release, particularly after the first day of being away from the constant company of family and friends, and without the girls.

But, I waited until that night to go out. I enjoy running during the night because it is usually much cooler than our summer days here, and the neighborhoods in which I run are less trafficked and quieter at that time. I find it relaxing to go out for miles uninterrupted by any cars at intersections, or the din of lawn mowers, or all of the other nuisances that comprise the suburban cacophony. You can only get that in the middle of the night, or in the early morning hours.

On this particular night, I left the house around midnight, and without any real design as to exactly where I was going to run; my only plan was to run long. The night was as quiet as I had hoped it would be, and I started at a very comfortable pace, thinking I needed to preserve my energy for the long haul, rather than burning it up for a better time. I promised myself I would not look at my GPS unit until I knew I had run several miles. I didn’t want to know my pace; knowing it would only distract me from what I really preferred to do on this run, and checking it would probably make me quicken my pace.

I wound my way through the neighboring housing additions during the first few miles, in temps I found nearly perfect for running. No one was out. It was just me, and the sounds of my breathing and my footfall, which I soon found hypnotic. Even my thoughts were absent.

Eventually my route through these neighborhoods made its way back to the local trail that leads past several schools, until it came to the end in downtown Waukee, and when I arrived there I had to make a choice about where I wanted to run next. I felt really good at this juncture, so I cut over one block to run through the downtown triangle, and caught a street that led me to another, longer trail that runs alongside the highway leading out of town.

I had it in mind to run this long, straight, flat trail until I reached a distance in my run where I could tell—either from the way it felt as I ran, or from other signals I sensed from my body—that I was about halfway of what I was capable of running that night. Given that I was running at a slower than usual pace, I wasn’t exactly sure where that mark would be this time, only where I had hoped it would be.

But, at some point along this trail I began to feel like I was operating on two levels. My body was enjoying the exertion and rhythmic movements of running, and my mind, as was usually the case, was entranced by the physical activity. However, at the same time, I became aware of a feeling that seemed both strange and uncomfortable. For some reason, I began to feel solitude on a level I am not sure I’ve felt often, if at all, in my life. I felt very alone.

Maybe it was the setting. There were no streetlights to light the way along the trail outside of town, and very few landmarks. The stretch on which I was running monotonously made its way west, bordered by the expanse of grass which separated it from the parallel highway on one side, and crop fields on the other side. There was a farmhouse every mile or two, but other than that, there was no other sign of life, with the highway absent of any traffic. The dark of the night seemed voluminous, and I really only knew the way of the path because it was illuminated by a full moon, and stood in stark contrast to its borders.

I’m not sure how to explain it or describe it, but after a few miles on this path I began to feel like the night air around me was so much larger than me, that I was so small compared to the immensity of the darkened sky around me. It wasn’t frightening, but it was certainly something I would describe as humbling.

I ran on, carried by the enjoyment I got from running, while still thinking about how I felt there in that somewhat overwhelming environ. The mixture of the two must have kept me fairly preoccupied, because before I knew it, I had run all the way from Waukee to the edge of Adel, the next town down the highway. I stopped there on the outskirts, not really wanting to continue on and into the lights of town, and I checked my GPS for the first time. I was a little over seven miles from home.

And as I turned to run back toward home, the distance I knew I had to cover to get home added to that feeling of being alone, and of being small. The run home seemed daunting.

In time, and with some effort, I eventually made it back to within the city limits of Waukee, and at about the twelve-and-a-half mile point in my run, I came to a spot along the trail where there is a water fountain and a couple of park benches. Even though the night was cool and I was not dehydrating under a hot sun, I was thirsty and knew I should drink something.

So I stopped for a drink. When I no longer had the cadence and muscle memory and motion that carried me and focused me as I ran, I was more aware of how my body felt, its wear and its pains. I took a long drink, and another, and then I sat on the bench for a bit. It was there that my will to run fell too low to overcome the fatigue, and the aches.

I sat there for a while longer and thought about my efforts, and limitations, and capabilities, and potential, and examples I had to set for people for whom my examples were important. I thought about loss, and about missed opportunities, and I thought about fundamental life changes. I thought about responsibilities. I thought about things many of us probably don’t contemplate until we are in the exact position where we are forced to consider them. And, when I really didn’t see the point of dwelling on it any longer and I became frustrated, I rose to go home.

I walked most of the remaining way home, disappointed in myself for not being capable of running longer. I tried to run briefly at times, but it didn’t feel right. The enjoyment was gone by that point. It was purely mechanical, and without much heart.

Eventually, I made it home, and the next morning I felt rested, and I didn’t feel any of the remnant pains I was certain I would feel from such a careless attempt to run way beyond my abilities. No real harm done.

I think, possibly, my desire to run long that night was a product of a week of emotions, some of them mixed up, and some of them pent up. It felt like a week of stopping and starting, and pausing and running. At times, I felt like I was thinking a great deal, and at other times I thought it was all I could do to feel without really thinking.

I said to myself that night before I began that I needed to go for a run to clear my head. But I never really anticipated that by dumping all my reasoning and thought through physical exhaustion, I would create a vacuum which would be filled by something, maybe the one thing, I never really took the time to consider during all of the previous week. Something I previously had only had to think of in the abstract.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

A Small Note About a Big Man

Yesterday morning, quietly and peacefully, and on one of the most beautiful summer mornings I think we've had in a while, my father ended his long battle with cancer. He beat it back into remission a few years ago and reveled in that victory. This time, he couldn’t, but he still fought the good fight. He lived some sixty days longer than the doctors said he would live. He diligently cared for the health of his wife of 37 years, Margaret, despite his own challenges. He attended a surprise birthday party friends threw for him just a few days before the end came. One week he was driving, the next week he was gone. That was my dad. A scrapper.

My father was all about his family and friends. He never lived his work, but instead, he worked only to provide a decent life for his wife and kids.

Warm days at the lake cabin. Fishing trips to Canada. Saturday morning bowling leagues. Summer softball. Royals games. All-night card games at my uncle’s house. These are the things I remember with my father.

He loved all his kids equally, no matter how near to him, or how far from him, they lived. He took a great deal of pride in what he saw of himself reflected in them. He was always there to lift them if they needed, and always there to celebrate their successes as if they were his own. In a way, they were.

If you’ve chanced upon reading this, I’d like to ask if you might do me a favor, wherever you are at the moment, and as awkward as it may seem. Either literally, or just figuratively, I wonder if you might just stand for a moment and join me in giving my father one last tribute—one I think he would appreciate and enjoy—and offer him a brief, standing ovation for a life well lived.

Thanks, dad. The kids are alright.

Significance

Michelle and I were driving Kylee to a doctor’s appointment the other day, and on the way there we were trying to complete one of those detailed questionnaires often required with every first visit to a new physician. Michelle rattled off the questions as I drove.

“Head size at birth?”

I stared blankly at Michelle and wondered how many people could quote this about their 11-year-old child, or might actually have it documented somewhere for reference.

“Age at which she started walking?”

We looked at each other with puzzled expressions, and then talked about how we knew it was later than Megan and later than usual for many. But, neither one of us could pinpoint the exact month when Kylee became mobile.

“Age at which she began talking?”

We didn’t have a clue on this one, either. What followed was a long search of our memories as the highway passed by, and a discussion to see if one of us could even remember her first words. I think, if Kylee had asked either one of us alone, we each would have likely been tempted to make up an answer. Michelle would have told her it was “ma ma,” and I would have equally been tempted to say it was “da da.” Should Kylee later corner us for agreement, Michelle and I would be standing there, red-faced and realizing we neither one really knew the truth.

Further questions prompted discussions about what we were recalling, if we had certain details correct, and whether or not we were remembering those details about the right child. I’m pretty sure we had some things about Kylee attributed to Megan, and some of Megan’s raw data and history incorrectly remembered of Kylee.

By the time we were parked, I was beginning to feel like a bad parent who was neglectful of their child because they didn’t diligently, mentally, record these things, or have the ability to quote them with ease. I thought of all those baby books we got as gifts when the girls were born, and how they were incomplete and put away somewhere, collecting dust. Had I only known…

As we were getting out of the car I looked at Kylee, who had been quietly listening to our attempts to sort out the information, and felt a little guilty. I thought maybe I should take her shopping later that day.

The human memory is a funny thing. If I think about it, there are literally millions of moments that have happened in the course of my lifetime. Many of them I forget about soon after, or even immediately after, they happen. Some I can recall with little effort. Others escape me. Memories can even frustrate me because I seem aware of them on some level, but can’t quite fully grasp them or recapture them.

Even stranger: scientists tell us that some of our strongest memories are olfactory related. In other words, we are able to remember odors, or scenes, things, and events we attach them to, for a very long time. We are able to have the mental recall of the sensation of an odor, even when the odor, or whatever causes it, isn’t present.

I know this to be true myself. To this day I can recall the smell of the muddy banks of the Fishing River, a little stream that ran through the small town in which I lived as a boy. We used to slide down those banks and into the stream, and infuriate our parents when we would come home covered from head to toe with mud. It’s been close to forty years since I swam in that creek, but I can still smell it when I think of it today.

I can still smell the sand and soil mix of the town baseball diamond on which I played so many little league games. I was a catcher for all of those years, and pretty darn good at it. I was the only kid in town who was willing to step behind the plate to try to catch the wicked, and sometimes erratic, fastball of my close friend. Remembering the smell of that leather catcher’s mitt is still intoxicating for me.

I remember the smell of my Uncle Ernie’s cabin down at the Lake of the Ozarks. It had that musty smell of a place that never was completely dried out, or that spent days and weeks shuttered closed. Even when all the windows were opened for the days we would spend there, that smell would still linger. It still lingers with me now.

I was thinking of Uncle Ernie’s cabin and the times we all spent at the lake just the other day. I had cause to reminisce about some of the memorable moments of my youth, and the times my father would take us to my uncle’s cabin on the lake for fun-filled summer days with our cousins. They are among my most treasured memories. I’m still able to replay some of those days like an old, 8mm film reel, complete with slightly out-of-focused images of people and places projected on my mentally-blanked screen. I enjoy how those images can engross my focus, and chase away things I would rather not contemplate.

It dawned on me, when I was thinking of all this one day, that what moves something—a moment, an event, a scene—from being simple history to a memory, is the emotion I personally attach to it, either at the time it happens, or later. I think it is the feeling evoked in the remembering, either that same feeling I had at the time, or a new one, that makes it stay with me.

Sure, there have been events I’ve told myself to mark for future reference: novelties, or “firsts” that have happened along the way, or endings. But, these things, in and of themselves, are hollow actions without something to add depth to them. The emotion linked to them is what makes a memory of them, and keeps them permanently indexed in the yellowed and frayed pages of my personal narrative. Things like joy, love, pride, accomplishment, or even fear, or disappointment.

When my life was going through some change a friend once told me that I needed to create new memories with Kylee and Megan, create a new record of the way we live now. I know they weren’t telling me I needed to erase, or crowd out, previous memories, but instead wanted me to understand I should create memories that helped them value and appreciate their new life, just as much as they did before all the changes.

It was good advice, but I believe those things I recall now, from when I was a boy, are not memories anyone ever intentionally gave me. No one, I believe, ever set out to create them for me solely for the sake of making sure I thought well of my life. I only came to value them later. Today they are like small, mental jewels mined up from the layers of rich experiences my life has offered me.

So, I could attempt to give Megan and Kylee all kinds of enjoyable experiences, using every bit of my imagination and every cent of my earnings, but it really wouldn’t matter. What matters most is what surrounds those experiences, the feelings they will later use to frame their recollections. That is what will truly make them stand the test of time.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Little Victories

I was speaking with a friend whose life is going through a bit of an upheaval. They’ve begun the long and tedious task of putting their life under a microscope, identifying the pieces that they’ve only viewed as a whole thus far, and determining what should be kept and what should be dissected out.

At the end of our conversation, my friend said something that struck a chord with me: “I know it’s a cliché,” they said, “but we all really do have to find ourselves.”

“Indeed we do,” I thought to myself.

I’ve long been fascinated by the intricate webs we weave when it comes to how we see ourselves, how we portray ourselves, and how others actually perceive us. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to write about, but I've been unable to explain or piece together on a level I hope to understand or define. It seems as difficult a question as the meaning of a life itself. Honestly, I find that frustrating.

But, for whatever I can’t understand about my identity, or its components, this much I do know: that my best life, my truest life, can only be reached through a transparency that unifies all of those three things—my perception, my reflection, and others’ perceptions of me. A difference between the three, to me, signifies a break in an important chain of integrity that I value.

These ideas about identity and one’s true self were not always important to me. Like many, I believe I spent a great deal of my life content with the distractions we accumulate and surround ourselves with in the mistaken pursuit of adding value to our lives. In fact, I think my life became something where I let those distractions define me, until I reached a point at which I experienced a dramatic change, something similar to that through which my friend is going.

During that transitional phase, I struggled to hold on to, cling to, the things that had become important to my life. For me, it seemed like a fight to keep what I thought I had earned, what I had become comfortable with, and what I thought I was, to myself and others. I fought to keep my life the “same” as possible, and I met each wave or stage of change that came at me with a countering denial of equal strength.

It took some time to realize that my denials were doing nothing more than draining my strength, prolonging my difficulties, and postponing the inevitable. I finally recognized what I was doing, came to understand why I was doing it, and then made the conscious choice to stop.

I remember that time, not as the moment at which I lost, but instead as the point at which I began letting go of the trappings I’d surrounded myself with in order to insulate myself from the external world. And, as those things began to fall away, I felt more and more released. I felt more and more freedom.

Stripped bare of those things material and emotional that had long been too important to me, I found it easier to fill my life with the simpler and less complicated things that would give me equal, and sometimes even greater, pleasure. I rededicated myself to being an even more involved father. I began writing again. I reached out to friends, and I put more effort into the quality of the relationships around me.

Yet even those things couldn’t keep all of the questions crowded out of my new life. They were only replaced with a new set of questions. Instead of asking myself why this was happening to me, I was instead left with the time and ability to ask myself about who I was, who I had become, what I had done with my life and what imprint I had made, and what I thought was the meaning of my life.

I think we all face these questions sometime in our lives, be it because of a forced course change, our age, or simply a moment of curiosity prompted by the monotony of our routine existence. We want to understand these things, I believe, in order to either validate our lives or our choices, or assign some purpose to our existence.

They can be painful questions sometimes, and they can be further complicated, or more difficult to explore, when they come at a point where you may be traveling the path solo. There is a tendency to let doubt creep in when you are in that situation, and let it add another “why” to the list.

The answers are often elusive, or are at least so for me. At times they seem as difficult as my efforts to solve the perplexities of identity, and I have to admit that I enjoy continually pondering them anyway.

And, when I can’t answer those things, or I tire of contemplating them, or I grow frustrated with some other aspect of my life, I often find myself falling back on the “little victories" of life. The gleeful abandon of my daughters’ laughs. Watching them take shape as persons. The satisfaction of seeing and bringing together a few friends for fun. Giving someone a laugh. The feeling of being healthy. The knowledge of having given something my best. Being able to compose something that expresses well. The warm embrace of a close friend. Giving back through some service to others. Listening to, or offering some small advice that helps a friend.

I don’t know if those things define me, or if, by discovering and acknowledging them I have found myself, but those are the things I carry around with me now, and that carry me.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Echoes In the Labyrinths

Of all the most gratifying things in my life, the accumulation of knowledge and tools to be able to fix virtually all things a homeowner might encounter ranks near the top. I’ve owned several older homes and repaired them all, literally, from top to bottom, tinkering with many of them along the way in a sort of self-taught process. I was also in the lawn and landscape business for many years, and, as a matter of pride (and admittedly, competition) always made sure I had the greenest lawn in the neighborhood to prove it.


I’ve had a wealth of tools. Some I’ve used often, but some have collected dust, or have done so until they were one day called into service to perform that rare function for which they were designed. I had a wealth of knowledge—still do, for that matter—it’s requisite to retaining ownership of your Man Card, I believe. At any given moment, either for my own purposes, or for the sake of giving advice to that less experienced Man Card carrier, or for the distressed damsel with a distressed home or lawn, I can flip through the file cards in the recesses of my mind and whip out the solution for a needed repair.

For me, the knowledge and experience that enables me to fix things is empowering.

But drain traps and plaster walls and wood floors do not—even if I try to attribute as much to them—have a mind of their own. Their performance and actions, or inactions, are pretty consistent and predictable based upon their condition and purpose. If A is wrong with them then they will do B, and I can perform repair C on them with tool D and get them to act and function in the manner I want them to. Or I can replace them.

But not everything in my life is so rigid, or fixed, or predictable, or replaceable, and it is those things—things I shouldn’t call “things,” really—that I struggle with the most. It’s a frustration for me when I can’t produce result Y from action or influence X.

Here is where the how-to books and the tools fall far short of what I can apply or need. In these situations, there are just too many variables. I understand the variables that lie between those two points of X and Y, and I understand equally that they should be both expected and maybe even appreciated, but the inability to produce the immediate or best result is what gnaws at me.

In those matters, like most anyone, I look back through life experiences in order to find the lesson, or the countering lesson, from which to draw. People I’ve encountered in my life are sometimes great examples to follow, but sometimes they are also great examples to not follow. Usually I am a pretty good judge of which category these people fall into, but I sometimes discover later I may have initially misjudged them.

One such person from my past was Gary Brandt, the Dean of Men at Southwest Baptist University, which was the college I first attended after high school. Dean Brandt was fond of inviting me into his office, where I would have to endure private lectures and chats on a somewhat regular basis.

For whatever the reason, certain things Dean Brandt shared with me in those chats have stuck with me all these years, some things more than others. I remember one particular visit, when he called me to his office to discuss an event with which I might have been involved, one I then viewed as a rather minor flirtation with the campus rules.

The relevance to me now makes the words he said then even easier to recall, and as I do, I can still hear them in his own voice:

“My job, Cody, is not to regulate every little movement that young men make on this campus, or to even force them into any kind of lockstep. My job, instead, is to provide them with the two walls of a comfortable hallway that leads them toward what it is they came to this college to achieve. They may bounce a little against one wall or the other as they move down this hall, but so long as I keep those walls sturdy for them, and keep them moving forward toward their goal, then I am doing all I can.”

Dean Brandt was a little wiser than I gave him credit for at the time. And, he was a little more generous than I gave him credit for as well; during any one of those private lectures he could have summarily dismissed me from his campus. I’d given him plenty of opportunity to do so (maybe).

I remember how I felt about Dean Brandt at that time in my life. I thought he didn’t understand me. I thought he didn’t even really know me. I thought he had branded me and judged me by what little interaction he had with me on campus and in his office, and by the rascal reputation I had—quite erroneously, mind you—earned in the school community. I was fairly dismissive of his counseling and advice at the time, and even came to think of our little meetings as something akin to chess matches between the two of us. He would lecture on the hypothetical event that I may have been involved in, and I would argue hypothetically in order to avoid any admission of the alleged participation.

Thinking back on those conferences years later, I realize that Dean Brandt exercised a great deal of patience with me, and I am grateful he didn’t grab me by my ear and lead me out of his office, off of the campus, and down to the Bolivar bus station. Just the same, I spent a great deal of my life viewing Dean Brandt’s judgment of my character with much the same indifference. I carried around a certain satisfaction of feeling accomplished, despite what he ever thought I would turn out to be.

I thought for a long time, should I ever have the chance to be in Bolivar again (how that would happen, I have no clue), that I would have to march into his office and show him what a responsible, upright, dependable, and accomplished man I was now, despite whatever I did to justify his judgment of me back then. Never mind the fact that (I believe) he long ago left his post at that college. I think he should have to meet me there in his old office just to satisfy that little fantasy of mine. He and the campus security guard as well. And the Dean of Women. And that one dorm mom for the women’s dorm.

But, I’m a little off point—just a little. How I felt then, or later (or still now, just maybe) about the “Wall” lecture I got from Dean Brandt is not so much what lasts with me right now as what it is he said. In fact, I remember those comments he offered me frequently these days, because I am now in the challenging position of being those walls for others. I am at work. I am for a couple of people I humbly mentor. I am at home.

In each of those settings, my emotional attachment, involvement, actions, and reactions differ accordingly and appropriately. But, each of them often give me cause to recall Dean Brandt’s sage advice that one day, and to varying degrees test my patience and resolve in trying to maintain those caring boundaries I am suppose to offer.

I have to remind myself that I cannot make those walls too narrow, and I have to be careful not to make them too wide. Within that delicate balance, I sometimes have to admit I tend to err on the slimmer side. I guess I have always thought that I would rather be at fault for providing slightly narrower corridors than for giving too wide a berth. But a narrow gauntlet does act as a crucible of tension sometimes, and I have to recognize the need to relieve the contained pressure by widening the passage. That is not always easy, when you judge the future or well-being of someone you love or care about to be affected in that balance.

And I can’t just pick up a tool and fix it, which is the most infuriating part, really. It would be easy, if I could only do that. Instead, what I have to hope for is that—in the end, when the outcome is likely more critical and the judgments their own to make, and no tool or manual is of any more use to them than mine are—the people for whom I maintain those walls may remember my words in much the same way as I remember Dean Brandt’s.

Balance

Somewhere in our lives, at the point where the lofty trajectories of our hopes, our expectations, and our affections cross, lie our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of those close to us, those whom we love or have loved.

It can be a messy little spot on the map of our lives. It represents a place where we both love and fail each other.

Speaking only for myself, I know I am capable, at times, of taking people I love for granted. I say things to them and I do things to them that I often would not say or do to others. I expect things from them I often would not expect of others.

I also hope they will not take me for granted. I wish, at times, they were not able to say things to me that I never expect to hear from someone I believe loves me. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel that they expect too much from me.

They and I do all of those things to each other because within the binds that tie us we interpret a license to interact with each other in that manner. Be it solely emotional or legal, we see it as a tether that allows us that behavior, assumes a tolerance for it, and obligates us to withstand it without breaking those ties.

For those people in my life outside that personal circle, I can simply dismiss them if I choose. I can choose to not have them in my life by either losing or avoiding contact with them. I can express my disappointment in them and we can say our goodbyes if we cannot realign or come together, or I can quietly withdraw from them without a word. I can even—in today’s world—simply delete them. It can be as simple as that.

But, with those close to me I feel an obligation that translates into a contract fraught with moral, social, emotional, and even psychological complexities. I want their love and appreciation, and I want them to desire the same from me, hopefully at an equivalent level. However, that love and appreciation also comes with strings that can often get a little twisted.  Sometimes those strings tug and cause us harm.

I think I am both fortunate and cursed with the ability to feel intensely, or, as a friend once put it, I have a big heart. Depending on how you see it, that description can be either a compliment or a caution. I see it as an advantage because it allows me a satiating depth with people and things I love and enjoy. But, I know it equally as a curse, because it also affords that same depth of feeling in those people or things that cause me pain.

I am also observant, or at the very least, willing to be observant. I have always been curious about myself, and others, and human nature, and interaction. The upside of that curiosity is that it opens my eyes to things that others might possibly find trivial and mundane and makes them significant to me. The downside: I may not always like what it is I see, or I may see things not really there, or read too much into something.

And like many, I hold on, long and strong, to the memories which have a charge of emotion attached to them, be they pleasant or unpleasant.

Where the unpleasant is concerned, it seems to really stick with me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep an emotional chalkboard where I mentally tally the hurts. I know this of myself, and I try work on it, on the letting go and the erasure of those chalk marks, but it’s never easy. I find I can often forgive, but I cannot as often forget, and I am not sure I am really doing one without doing the other.

The forgetting part is what gets in the way of wiping the slate clean. Even when I try my hardest, the faintly erased marks flash up in memory whenever something resembling their previous scoring erupts in my present. “Here we go again,” I say to myself, and I begin questioning why I ever let myself be put in that same position.

However, I want to be in that exact position, actually, because my desire and need to forgive and forget is rooted in the addiction I have for that feeling forgiveness affords me. I enjoy that feeling of peace, and I appreciate the feeling I get from trying to rise to a selfless act.

It keeps me coming back to that conflicted space of vulnerability. I want the feeling of humility required to suspend my own needs.  I want to give of myself to another, while—at the same time—I fear it and see it as a giant leap of faith. I teeter between the confidence that my leap is taken with, and for, someone that will not make me regret it, and the dread that my faith in the other person, or persons, is foolishly misplaced. Therein lies the rub, because I know going in that those I want to love and trust are, like me, imperfect people.  They are people very capable of failing my expectations and saying, doing, or being someone or something other than what or who I hoped.

In thinking this through, it dawned on me that I may have hit on two of the most important components of an endearing and enduring relationship. When I look around me, those I know who have great relationships are those people who seem to have the desire and ability to be both humble and vulnerable with each other, on a consistent and balanced level.

It is as if those two qualities are the subtle subtexts of their relationship, signaling to each other—sometimes spoken, but most often only reflected—their trust in each other. Each entrusts their feelings to the other, and rewards the returned care of those feelings with reciprocating respect and sheltering. Not much seems necessary to prove to each other, nor does there seem to be any sort of competing or driving ambitions. Nor does one necessarily support or sustain the other disproportionately.

And I think when it fails, or doesn’t even begin to develop, maybe it’s not the failure of one person only, but instead a case where two of most important puzzle pieces are missing. Maybe one person is not solely to blame; it’s more likely that those two people simply fail to inspire those feelings between each other. Neither is a lesser person for it. They are just mismatched.

From what I see in those where it all comes together, it doesn’t seem to me that either person possesses humility or sensitivity as their central or most prominent characteristic, but instead that they each have those as innate abilities drawn out by, and enhanced by, each other. In each other they have found that “sweet spot,” where they are inspired by each other to be a better person, to take the greatest of care with each other’s feelings, and have a consistent desire to sustain and maintain that balance of care, respect, appreciation, and affection for each other.

Maybe that is the nirvana of a great relationship and what people are really referring to when they call something love. I’m not sure. I only know what I see.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

The Divides

Last fall, not long after the school year began, a text message from Megan woke me up in the middle of the day and split me in two.

“a kid is threatening to blow up the school…im scared”

The rip of indecision came from the intuitive feeling that this was one of those drama-fueled teenage hallway rumors that can escalate from a stubbed toe to Armageddon inside the length of a lunch period. The first half of her text was a bit hard to believe.

But the second half of her text struck home. I realized she was genuinely afraid, because Megan almost never texts me unless it is something urgent. I often get a “dad my self-dye job went bad and I need It fixed,” or “these boots are only on sale TODAY!!!!!!” or “need a ride now,” but never before in her life has Megan ever sent me the words “im scared.” I pictured her very frightened there in her classroom.

I asked her to give me some time to figure out what was going on and contact the school. I was still finding it all very hard to believe, and found it even more unbelievable when she told me that the young man in question had been called down to the office but was back in his class. I thought that meant that someone was at least addressing the situation, evaluating it, and determining things were safe.

Then it struck me, at that moment, that all of these situations which have happened in the past and ended in tragedy were neither predicted nor prevented. “What if” thoughts started bouncing through my head about what quiet dangers may be lurking undetected in the halls of Megan’s school, and I suddenly felt the urgent need to know or do more. What did the school know? Was there any communication sent out? Did they know about the information circulating in their building, and what were they doing?

The woman that answered the phone at the school that day likely had no idea how poorly she chose her words to address such calls, because her response, after I explained the text message I had received from Megan was:

“We have the situation under control.”

And that was it. No further comment, no explanation that it was overblown drama, or any information or indication about whether or not the threat was real or only perceived. I waited, half shocked at the silence at the other end of the phone, and then asked her for more information. She said she could offer nothing more other than “the situation was under control.”

Michelle and I exchanged a few calls and my blood pressure just kept ratcheting skyward. Megan had sent her the name of the student and she had checked out his Facebook page, which—unfortunately for him—he had not made private. She described disturbing things, but I couldn’t check it out myself because, by this point, I was in the car on my way to pick up Kylee. Megan was also on the bus and removed from any immediate danger.

At Kylee’s school I had a quick conversation with the principal there to see if he had picked up any news of the ordeal from district communication. He hadn’t. Nor was the district office answering their phones.

Megan met us there and we talked as I drove them both to Michelle’s house. After I had dropped them off I drove home, still trying to figure out the reality of the situation and not having much luck in doing so. It bugged me to not know. There was too big a gap between the depth of Megan’s expressed fear and what I could get in information. And so, when I got to the intersection where I either turned home or turned toward the school…I headed west for the school for one last try.

I didn’t expect to find anyone there, honestly, since it as a good hour after the junior high had let out. In fact, when I got there the doors were already locked, and there was only a solitary car in the lot. But as I turned to walk back to my car and leave, I spotted a woman on the phone in her office which I thought to be in the vicinity of the deans’ offices.

I did what any reasonable father would do: I knocked on her office window and pointed at the door, hoping she would interpret this knock and the look I gave her as meaning I wanted in to talk with someone…now. She nodded at me and quickly hung up the phone, and then met me at the front doors with a smile. She introduced herself as the principal.

We went to her office and she patiently listened to everything I could tell her about what I knew from Megan, from Michelle, all the while taking notes on what seemed to be new to her. Then she took her time in explaining all that she could to me without stepping outside boundaries of confidentiality, while still trying to alleviate my fears as a parent. When I left, I felt confident that she was on top of the situation, and that there was no imminent danger to anyone. But, I did see she had quite a mess on her hands in dealing with the aftermath.

By the time I got home there were two e-mails from her, one a mass e-mail to all parents and another to me thanking me for my time and concerns and reassuring me that she was committed to everyone’s safe navigation through this event. My nerves started to calm a bit in her words, but I somehow still didn’t feel like I knew everything I could. I felt like I needed to know as much as I could about the young man who supposedly made the threats.

So I did the next thing any reasonable father would do: I Googled, and I found his Facebook page, and I searched it for any telltale signs of imbalance, and for the things that Michelle had previously described to me. Sure, there were some things on his page that I probably wouldn’t put on my own, but they seemed more like the kind of things a teenage boy interested in zombie-killing video games would post more than anything. There was a reference to gasoline that kind of raised my radar a little, and a reference to an anarchist, but he seemed more a young man being a little provocative than being threatening. I think I remember being a little provocative at that age as well, when I wanted attention.

By the next day, through conversations with Megan and others (and my Googling), a clearer picture of this student came through. For whatever reason, he was a young man without many friends in his own school, and he was apt to do and say things that sometimes were meant to shock and gain attention. It was his way of being noticed in the sea of anonymity we all know large schools can be. But he didn’t know how to distinguish between things appropriate and inappropriate to say within the context of school, or within social norms. He apparently did not know that some things said may call all kinds of wrong attention to him, or that they may actually cause real fear in others.

After the fact, I actually felt for him. He did, in fact, make an inappropriate comment in the school hall that caused someone concern. But, because that comment became more and more distorted as the lines of communication stretched out wider and longer, the entire school had—by that afternoon—begun to paint him as a monster that threatened them all. By the end of the day he sat at a precarious edge, where either someone could reach out to him and pull him back, or where the entire student body could push him socially, and psychologically, off the edge to become the very thing they all feared him to be.

And I began to wonder whether many of the young people whose tragic actions we have heard and read so much about had once been at this same juncture. Was there a moment in their lives when they could have been pulled back from that chasm by someone who recognized their actions as a cry for meaningful human contact? Was there a tipping point in their lives where they decided to make real the things that people whispered about them in the halls? What might have changed with a little understanding instead of foregone conclusions spread rampantly?

The next day Megan came home from school and said that she had been to the principal’s office that morning along with several other students. I imagine a number of those visits happened all day in her office, with a number of different students. Megan didn’t give me all the details, but she did tell me that they talked about the young man, about everything that happened the previous day, and about being responsible with sharing rumors and information.

I remember Megan’s sincerity and maturity when she told me all this, and how she seemed to have taken a genuine lesson from it all. I also remember feeling very proud of her when she mentioned that she and some friends toyed with the idea of reaching out to this student, helping him feel less isolated.

I’ve never asked, so I don’t know if she ever did, or if anyone did. I hope so, because it seems to me a situation where the fate and future of One and Many are intertwined and shaped by each other, And that’s probably not a bad lesson to learn as young as when you’re in junior high.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.