Running to Catch Her

My older daughter, Megan, recently turned sixteen. That can be a somewhat bittersweet birthday for a father, or any parent for that matter.

On the one hand you have a milestone birthday which you know she is excited to celebrate, because it ushers in the days of increased, independent mobility. In the eyes of a teen, the prospects offered by a driver’s license are no less than those considered by someone watching their cell door open at the end of a sixteen year prison sentence.

However, it isn’t only that independence itself which seems important to her. I think there is also an awakening which is happening at this age, a sense of maturing, or feeling that she is entering into the world of being a young woman.

It’s this last part that I find most frightening, actually. That she can move about in the world with more ease and without my help is something I’ve already had to learn to adjust to and accept. But, it is difficult for me to begin thinking of her as a young woman.

The realization and acceptance of what she is becoming runs contrary to the way I have always thought of both of my girls. I never considered it until recently, but I see now that I have always pictured them in a static state, either as the person I see them as now, or in the image I have of them from some point when they were younger. Often I find myself comparing the two, and wondering how we got from there to here. I’ve never really envisioned them in their futures, grown up, and away, probably out of self-protective reasons. It’s just never dawned on me to contemplate it. It’s beyond my horizons.

Parenting, for me, has been a satisfying, yet worrisome journey. When my first daughter was born, I have to confess that I’m not certain I was emotionally ready to be a father. I didn’t settle into a marriage until I was thirty-four, and she arrived in our lives just one year later. I had barely begun adjusting to being a husband—a life far different than the one I’d known—and then found myself thrust into yet another new, and even more challenging role.

I was afraid of the responsibility, or, at the very least, felt unprepared for it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever witnessed good parenting in practice, and, because I hadn’t really considered it a reality in my immediate future, I’d done nothing to compensate for that lack of role models, or prepare myself for it. I also knew it meant my life was changed forever, that it meant a commitment on a level I’d never before contemplated, and all that frightened me.

I think it took me nearly a year to adjust, for the full impact to really settle in. But, in time, I went from going through the motions of being a parent to deeply loving this little person who could, in turn, love me back, and return the affections I showed her. She gradually got under my emotional skin.

But that initial, unsettled feeling from those first days has never really left me completely. I think it comes from the understanding that, as a parent, you have to be the ultimate person responsible for someone else’s safety, well-being, and development toward a happy life. If anything goes wrong, there is no one else to call in for backup, and no one else but you to blame. You’re it. If you screw it up, you are responsible for the misery of someone you love.

After each of the girls were born, I had a recurring nightmare that would wake me. One of them would slip off the side of a boat we were in, out in the middle of a wide and deep lake. I would dive in after them, only to be unable to swim fast enough to catch them, and I would watch them slowly fade away from me and into the water column. Somewhere I read that kind of a dream is fairly common for new fathers. It’s our unconscious thoughts wrestling with, and working through, the fears and responsibilities we see as a father’s role.

Mix those concerns with the additional challenge of being a man who is a father of two daughters, and another set of complexities become involved. Try as I might to be sincere, or enlightened, or mature, or caring, or loving, or affectionate, or different, there are aspects of the girls' lives from which I will always be locked out. It feels unfair at times, but it is a simple truth with which I have had to deal and adjust.

With both of my daughters I have always felt like I am in uncharted waters. I’ve never been a girl, and I will never know what that life includes, no matter how much I try. And, because I always think of them in their current or prior state, and have a tendency to never think ahead in their lives, I always feel like I am playing catch up with them as they grow, mature, change, and evolve.

That same unsettled feeling.

A friend recently asked me something interesting: she wondered at which point a parent reaches that threshold of not acting on the cares and concerns they have for their grown, or growing children. “What is the difference,” she asked, “between worrying about what I do at 18 and while living at home, and being 28 and living out on my own?” The only answer I could muster was some sort of “out of sight, out of mind” rationale for behaviors and actions I would one day not witness. I had never really thought about that happening within the context of my relationship with the girls, and her question made me wonder where that point might be reached in our future.

Thinking of this brought me face to face with what must be a fear of every responsible and loving father: one day, in the not-so-distant future, they will both leave to live and experience the world on their own, and they will no longer need me.

And in considering that time and all that it implies, I realized how selfish I’ve been in fearing them growing up, and in never visualizing our separate futures. That fear is something self-serving. It is my worrying about my need being unfulfilled, instead of a selfless concern for their future and their happiness.

What I realized worried me most is that, in their maturing and needing me less, I am diminished in their eyes, and as a result of that, also diminished in my own eyes. I lose an importance I constructed myself, built possibly out of a need to add significance to my own life. I’ve let it fill gaps. I’ve let it define me. I suppose there are worse things a father could do, but I dislike discovering that I may not have been totally selfless in my motivation to care for them the way that I have.

I’ve often said that the single most gratifying, fulfilling thing I’ve ever done with my life was to rise to the challenge and privilege of being a father. Nothing else gives me more pride, or satisfaction, or sense of purpose.

But, that’s me, and not them. No matter how much it means to me, it is not theirs to share as either a feeling or a burden. My need to be their father is mine. It is also my duty to adjust appropriately in order to best serve them as their father. It has to be secondary to their need to grow, and feel independently strong, and empowered, so they may best face a world that is very challenging within which to find happiness, particularly so for women.

At some point, they must see me less as their father, and more as their equal, and I have to let go the fear and the pride I’ve deeply embedded in the role I so love. To a degree, I think, all that has already started to happen on Megan’s part. She is looking forward and into a future which holds so much promise for her, and will not includeas much, me. She’s already deciding that my job with her is nearly done.

I, on the other hand, have not been ready for that, and so I find myself—once again, and as so often before—running to catch up to her.
   
© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Forward Momentum

I used to have this little thing I did at the beginning of the school year every year, where the girls and I would go to the basement and mark their height on a vertical support of the stairs. The girls enjoyed it. For them, it was exciting to see how much they had grown over the previous year, a signal of progress that satisfied their eagerness to grow up, to move forward, and to experience the things to which they looked forward. It was the reverse for me; I did it to freeze a moment in time that I knew was passing and needed to be captured. How many of us have done this?

I remembered this annual ritual just the other day as the girls and I were driving home from school. The girls have been abuzz about school these last few days, as they always are when the end is so near. They’ve been excited about the summer ahead, with trips and lazy days at the pool already planned, and—to a degree—they’ve also been excited about the next year of school that awaits them after the summer.

Megan was telling me about the classes she had chosen for next year, some of the options she had, and why she chose the classes she did. She listed trigonometry as one of her classes, and it struck me that she was getting into a class with which I would not be able to help her. I never took trig, or any higher level math classes, for that matter.

But, on the heels of that thought, I recognized that the choices she was offered the next year meant that she was getting into the tougher study years, and slowly the realization that Megan was going to be a freshman in high school next year kind of washed over me.

Megan is going to be freshman in high school next year. Even when I repeat it and understand its certainty and inevitability, it still takes some getting used to.

In trying to get my head wrapped around that realization, I began to recall some of my most treasured memories of Megan as she has grown up. I think, as a parent, I have tons of catalogued memories and experiences of my daughters as they grow, but some stand out more than others. What makes them more memorable to me, or significant to me, is probably the emotion I attach to them.

One of those memories is of one of the first times I took the girls camping at a lake not far from our home in Chatham, Illinois, when Megan would have been nine or ten and Kylee only five. The lake was close enough that we could wait out the weather until the last minute to see if it would cooperate, and Michelle was on a trip back to Des Moines to visit friends. The girls and I needed something to do, and the idea of a night around the campfire making smores and sleeping in tents seemed like just the thing.

We loaded up the gear and headed to the lake on a Saturday afternoon and managed to get one of the last spots left open at the campground. While I made camp, Megan and Kylee ran off to the playground nearby to keep themselves busy for the hour or so it took me to set up the tent and break out all of the food and supplies we’d brought along. It was still early in the evening when I finished and the girls had tired themselves on the merry-go-rounds and swings, so I suggested we go for a little hike on the trail that wound along the edge of the lake for a ways.

The remarkable moment of this trip was not anything that happened on that stroll or during the evening by the fire; it was something that happened on the way back from our little hike. The sun was just setting on the campground as we came back up from the lake and were making our way back through the campground, winding our way through the other campers in the grass. The girls were playful and excited, anxious to get back to camp and build a fire to make their smores and hot dogs. They were barefoot and running a little ahead of me, and as I watched them I could see the sun washing through their bouncing, long, blonde hair, already made lighter by the summer days.

They were pretty oblivious to everyone and everything else around them, and Megan never noticed, or paid any attention to, a small boy about her age that was approaching her on his way toward the lake on a bike, his fishing pole strapped across his handlebars. But the boy noticed her. I watched it—almost as if it were in slow motion—as the boy noticed Megan as he approached, then watched her intently (mouth gaping open) as he passed her, and then nearly broke his neck turning back to continue looking at her as he rode on.

An instant parental instinct arose in me. I wanted to make sure the boy saw me—her father—and that I was fully aware of his eyes and thoughts being so locked on my daughter. But, because he was so focused on Megan, he never saw me, nor did he see the tree into which he crashed his bike. I stopped to make sure he was okay, and after I was satisfied he was, chuckled a little as I walked away. Karma, I thought.

That was the first time I ever saw any boy ever take an interest in Megan, and it awakened me to the fact that Megan was (and I know this is the perspective of a proud and biased father) a stunningly beautiful little girl, and that she was becoming more so with each passing day.

I have only recently shared that memory with Megan. In the years since, because she has sensed my worries about her and boys (Because I was one!), Megan has always kept that part of her life fairly private from me. I’m sure it is nothing new between daughters and fathers, that privacy, and as much as I would like to know every detail so that I can protect her, I am held back by the instinctive feeling that if I pry too much by even being curious, I can drive her to even more secrecy. So, I trust, and I hope, while at the same time enjoy the thought of her experiencing all those magical feelings and thoughts that come at her age.

A couple of years ago I got a peek into that world of hers, as well as a signal from her that she was not ready for her father to see that side or her life. I was walking home from the visiting neighbors one afternoon, coming from the cul-de-sac up the hill and through the back yard of the neighbor that butted up to the back of our place. Megan and Kylee had stayed home, as I had just gone up to chat for a few minutes and was coming back soon to make dinner. On my way back, as I rounded the corner of our neighbor’s house I could see Megan in the back yard, talking with a boy whom I recognized from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

They both looked up in surprise to see me coming, and then each took off in different directions, Megan headed for the house in a full-out sprint and the boy headed towards parts unknown with Achilles-like speed. When I got to the house, I found Kylee sitting alone and watching television downstairs.

“Where’s your sister?” I asked.

“She ran upstairs and slammed her door shut,” Kylee answered.

I got busy making dinner and decided to leave well enough alone for the moment, but I thoroughly enjoyed the different shades of pink Megan turned when I asked her over dinner who the boy was. I got some mumbled answer, which I barely understood, but understood enough to know that I shouldn’t ask anything else. So I didn’t.

I have been sometimes perplexed by what it is a young girl (I’ve only had girls) decides is strictly private territory and what it is she wants to share. I am sure my inability to understand that is due in large part to my being a guy and from my being a guy my age. It has been a few years since I was a teen. But I have learned to respect Megan’s need for feeling she has a life and a world of her own, and that in turn only makes me appreciate more the times that she feels she can include me or show me a part of it.

Just a couple of years ago the girls and I went on a ski trip with several other families from the neighborhood, a trip that proved to be one of our most memorable experiences. There were four families along and we had a large rental together, so there was a great sense of community to the trip. It was also the first significant trip that the girls and I had taken as just the three of us and was part of that effort I was making of creating new memories together in our new lives.

None of us had ever skied before, so we all spent the first day or half-day in lessons. But, after that first day, I felt pretty comfortable on skis, and I could see that Megan felt even more comfortable. She had no issues with running ahead of me down the hill at speeds I couldn’t match and in terrain I was not yet confident enough to tackle. At one point, on our second day skiing, Megan ventured off with a neighbor who was a very good skier and made a run down a couple of black diamond hills. Of course, I never knew about it until after the fact.

On our third day there some of the group decided to take a day off from the slopes and either relax or spend time on other activities, but Megan and I had not had our fill of skiing. We wanted to ski every day we were there, and so we headed for the slopes while Kylee stayed behind to play with the other kids at the house.

On the lift to the top of the mountain, Megan could barely contain her excitement. She was trying to convince me to go down a black diamond with her and wanted to show me all the slopes that she and others had been down that I had likely not seen. She was too cute. And, after we unloaded from the lift and got into our bindings, Megan took off for the head of the trail before I was ready. When she realized I was not with her she stopped, and looked back for me, and waved her arms at me to hurry up and join her.

Seeing Megan waiting there for me at the head of the trail, beckoning me, produced a moment that has long stuck with me. Megan had gone off and discovered and learned something on her own, and now she wanted to share all that with me. She wanted to show me her world. The student wanted to become the teacher, or at the very least, display her pride in what it was she had learned in her independence from me.

There have been many moments similar to that since then, as Megan’s independence grows more important to her and her learning without me increases. But, that moment on the slope was the first time I recognized it, recognized her need for it, and recognized her need for me to appreciate and understand it. And as much as I worry about what she experiences and learns outside my reach or vision, I look forward to all the moments in the future when she will ask to show me her world and what is new about it again.

Last night Megan asked me to take her out for a driving lesson. Driving is a huge milestone for both a parent and a teen, with implications beyond the challenges of learning the skills of operating a car. With the ability to drive comes independence, and the ability to sometimes move outside of our protective reach. It also means that there are times and memories that are now in the past, and that there are experiences unexplored and unknown in the very near future, maybe a little sooner than we wish.

I’m sure that wasn’t what I was thinking about when I was nearly struck dumb with fear by her request. I was thinking more about the mental images I had of my car crumpled into a wrinkled piece of metal, and the sounds of ambulance sirens, and lawsuits, and the insurance rates I was about to face.

But, Megan did just fine driving. After a short while, I wasn’t even afraid. I was, however, very proud.

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

Damsels and Dragons

The girls and I were walking in from the car one day recently, continuing a casual conversation that had started on the drive home from school. I can’t remember where the conversation had started, or what it all entailed, but I remember an exact moment when Megan asked me a question which had been posed to me by others before, and expected one day from either her or Kylee.

“Do you ever wish you had boys?”

“No,” was my brief, quick response. I waited for the follow up question, but Megan never asked it. She just kind of smiled at me. Maybe that was answer enough for her, but I thought more needed said, and so I asked her question for her.

“Do you want to know why?”

“I guess,” she said sheepishly, the smile starting to fade from her. She looked as if she was either afraid of the answer or afraid of the length of my answer. Megan has adopted her mother’s opinion that I can, at times, be either verbose or philosophical.

“Because I think having two daughters has made me a better person, a better man,” I offered. “I think that having two daughters makes me work harder, because I am a man and I don’t know what it is like to be a girl. The two of you keep me off guard. If I had two boys, it would all be too easy, too predictable, and I would have fallen into every father-son trap possible. So, I think I was always meant to have daughters, and in particular, the two of you.”

Megan never said a word in response to that, nor did Kylee. By the time I could get all that out, we were in the door, which meant Megan could make a quick escape to her room before I could make anything more of the conversation. But, in her silence, and in Kylee’s silence, I sensed she absorbed what I was saying. At least that is what I am telling myself.

I expect that I don’t speak for all fathers with what I said to the two of them that day, but I know it true for myself. I have always felt like Megan and Kylee complete me. In trying to be the best father I can for them, I really have to stretch myself to go beyond the typical male mode of behavior. I’m not saying that I am the stereotypical male; I like to think I am not, and I think many who know me would offer the same perception. But there are many things about me that are perhaps stereotypical, and those things I have to recognize and keep in their place, so as not to let them become obstacles or blind spots in my relationships with Megan and Kylee. I honestly work hard at it, and I think that any father of daughters who doesn’t loses out on a great deal.

It is challenging for any guy to understand what life is like being a girl, no matter what age he is when he attempts an understanding. I never did as a boy, or as a teen (where my misunderstanding was likely at a peak), or as a young man. Nowadays, I can safely say I know more about the opposite sex, but I don’t think I could ever say I understand or know what it is like to be a girl. I have never lived life inside that skin, so I will never know perceptions and interpretations from that kind of a life.

But I recognized that early on, and I tried to educate myself, and arm myself, for the years ahead. When the girls were both still very young, I read a great deal about girls and girl culture. One of the first books I read was Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. I had seen her interviewed on a news program, and the things she spoke of during that brief interview were so foreign to me that I was alarmed, and I decided I had to read the book in order to be any kind of a responsible father. Wiseman’s book gave me a small glimpse into what I refer to now as Girl World—the social structure and dynamics of tween and teen girls—and it was an eye opener, to say the least. I had no idea. Where I knew my way around the social structure of boys and men, and knew the aggressive nature it can be at times, I had absolutely no idea that girls in Girl World could be so emotionally and mentally brutal. It actually made me glad I grew up a male. On top of that, Wiseman’s last chapter discussed current trends and teen (and, yes tween) opinions on sex, which frightened me enough to give home schooling serious consideration—until they were age thirty.

Another book, Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Phipher, did nothing but frighten me even more. Where Wiseman dealt with the social forces of Girl World which come to bear on daughters, Phipher explored more, including family and cultural issues that can create so much conflict for a young girl that it leaves her defenseless in the face of such things as alcoholism, drugs, and eating disorders.

Needless to say, both of these books jolted me, but they also steeled my resolve and reaffirmed my theory. I had always believed that if you give a child a solid base at home, they will carry the strength of that with them out into the world and be able to ward off many of life’s little evils.

Silly me.

I learned very quickly that there truly is no formula or recipe for success in raising kids, whether they are sons or daughters. For all things human, there are myriad variables which can produce an exponential number of outcomes, and nothing is certifiably predictable. So no matter what I read, or whatever wisdom I acquired and tried to apply, it all went out the window when put up against real world experience. For all my trying to learn and understand, I was more educated, but no better armed. And so, that uneasiness about being the best father, at best raising strong and confident little girls, returned at some point, and I nervously awaited the years ahead.

I don’t think I was, or am, any different from any other father of daughters in that regard. I see the girls as my charge, and will likely always see them this way. I am the guy in full armor, standing outside the gate, doing battle with all the dragons that would like to storm the castle behind me and swallow up the two damsels of my kingdom who are enjoying a blissful and protected life within those walls. As I parry off talons and breaths of fire, I assure myself that they are safe within the fortress I have constructed, happy and content with the way that I have built it for them, and without a worry in the world about whether or not that dragon is going to get past me.

What I never counted on, however, is that the older of those two damsels would one day look out over those walls and take an interest in the world beyond. She would be intrigued by what it is she might experience out there, what there may be to learn, or what people she might meet. She was no longer content with just my company. One day, she would walk out the front gate, across the bridge, and tap me on the shoulder while I was doing battle with the aforementioned dragon.

“Excuse me, umm, dad, umm, hey look out for that fireball. Yeah, see, I want to go over there, and, umm, see what’s going on, see what those people are doing. I’ll be over there, okay? Yeow, watch that huge claw thing there, dad. Okay, see ya.”

And out of the corner of my eye, while I am busy fighting, I see her sauntering off across the field of flowers and grass and running off with a giggling group of other damsels, all the while being observed from afar by a group of young squires. I freeze. My shoulders drop, and I hear the tip of my sword clang on the ground. I look up, and I am staring straight into the mouth of the dragon, and my shield slips out of my hands and on to the ground. I am prepared to roast.

But, at that moment, the dragon sits back on his haunches, cocks his head at me and says, “What? You didn’t expect this?”

“Well…”

“You should have known.”

“Yes, but…”

“But, what?”

“Well, what am I fighting you for then?”

“You still have one in the castle, don’t you?”

“Yes!”

And as quick as that, the sword and shield and talons all go up, and we are back at it again, mixing up fire and armor and strength of will against each other.

Later, when the day is done and dragons are slain, I’ll reflect and I’ll worry. I’ll worry that Damsel One is out there, on her own, outside of my easy reach and protection, fending for herself. I’ll worry what may become of her. I’ll worry she feels she might not need me anymore. I’ll worry even more that she might be right. And I’ll feel a little torn between Damsel One being out there, and my need to continue protecting Damsel Two.

If there is anything I worry about most in my future, it is the day I know will come when Megan and Kylee will be leaving, be it for college or marriage, or whatever. I will hate to lose them, because I will always see them as my charge, and more so than I know I ever would any sons. If I had sons, I would expect them to one day go out and have families of their own and be self-reliant, to take care of their families in much the same way I would, and thus be an extension of me. But with the girls, I know I will always feel a need to protect them in some way, be responsible for them. I don’t know that I could ever shut that off. In a way, it’s me being a sexist I guess, but (I tell myself) in some chivalric and noble kind of way. It gives me and my life a purpose beyond my measly existence, something bigger to live for. What do I do if I have to tell myself that purpose is no longer necessary?

In that purpose, and in emotional ways, I feel like the girls complete me. In trying to understand them and in loving them, I have added depth and dimensions to myself that I likely never would have had, given a different experience of any kind. In being their father and trying to protect them and care for them the way I feel compelled to, I feel a calling to something far greater than myself. I’m grateful fate brought me that deeply rewarding and enriching experience.

But, how and when does that experience end, and what lies beyond? Is it feasible I can move into Megan’s dorm and serve as a dorm father? When Kylee one day gets married, will she mind if I buy the house next door? Or, for that matter, will any man feel brave enough to come near my daughters?

If he does: what challenge could a mere man be, when I’ve spent years slaying dragons?

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

Seeds

Deep breath. Exhale.

My mother was bipolar. I did not see her, and rarely spoke with her, the last 20 years of her life, and I did not attend her funeral.

When I say that, I don’t share it as a badge of courage, or to elicit some sort of reaction. I also know and understand that, for many, that last statement might seem unfathomable, that it represents a distinct disconnect. To me, it is just a fact, and while I recognize it as obtuse, I still see it an aspect of my life that is no more significant than my brown hair, my hazel eyes, or having two hands. I have, however, carried that one thing around with me, back in the far recesses of my thoughts, and allowed it to sometimes bubble to the top as a tiny little fear.

Like yesterday. Yesterday was one of those odd little days that just seemed like a jumbled rush of things to do and not enough time to do them, or too many things to do at the same time. One of those things necessary to do yesterday: sleep. By the time I got home from work—slightly later than usual, that morning—I had already been up for thirty hours straight. Because I had to pick up Kylee from school just five hours later, it meant I was also not going to recover enough to be operating at my best mental capacities. And, whenever I don’t sleep, or get enough sleep, it produces a fog, within which I am always slightly distrustful of my temperament, thoughts, and feelings.

In the middle of the afternoon, I forced myself out of bed and stumbled into the shower, and tried to muster motivation for what needed to be accomplished. I was really only successful, however, with the shower part. And when I got ready to leave and Megan—who was home sick with me that day—reminded me that Kylee had an after-school activity and I was an hour early on my intended errand, I laid back down. I thought I could catch another hour’s nap, but never expected my thoughts to intrude on that nap.

But that was when they hit, those thoughts and ideas and scrambled pieces of consciousness, and along with them came the small shot of adrenaline that served as just enough to keep me awake, to make it impossible to sleep. Usually they are welcome, these thoughts, and that was the case this time as well, because they brought with them more than the usual internal dialogue and questions and explorations that I jot down, contemplate, and compose for sharing later. This time, they brought something bigger to work on, however, and so I turned on the light, reached for paper and pen, and I scribbled furiously for the entire hour I still had left before I had to leave.

It wasn’t until later in the evening that I stopped to fully examine what had happened in that hour, what it could be, why, and how it happened. When I did, I found myself a little frightened by it, actually, and that set off an entirely different chain of thoughts. What astounded me, as I looked at it, was the intricacies, complexities, and volume of ideas and notes that were the end product of merely sixty minutes. It seemed immense compared to the time. It seemed out of whack. I was grateful for it, but at the same time, I was taken aback by it.

At some point, I asked myself if what I had experienced in that hour was the creative process of a fertile mind, or if it was something else. I had experienced it to that extent one other time before, but only once, and it was smack in the middle of one of the most emotional periods of my life. Then, just as yesterday, it produced a volume of notes and ideas that filled—not only a notebook—but a large sheet of craft paper plastered to a wall, with thematic approaches and character developments and plots and subplots and outlines. When it was all said and done, I was ready to flesh it out and develop it. But, as usual, life got in the way. Things bigger than my ambition ate up my time and thought. That notebook, along with all the diagrams, got shelved, waiting for me to revisit them. And, one day, I will.

Yesterday’s episode also did not halt in that hour, but instead resumed itself the moment I was alone in the car, driving to have dinner with my friend Shari. In fact, it was as if I couldn’t turn it off, as if it were a stream of consciousness that had taken on a life of its own, ideas triggering one after another and becoming sentences and strands of words that tumbled into rhythms in my mind. When I reached Shari’s, I had to ask her for a piece of paper and pen and a few minutes of time to write things down I had thought of in the car on the way there, so as to not lose them and try to retrieve them from memory later. Those thoughts on the drive turned into a page of notes that later became this piece.

Remembering that previous explosion of ideas, and seeing its similarities to the one I had just experienced, led me to the thought of patterns, of behaviors, and , eventually, my mother. That is how that bubble once again surfaced: what, of my mother, am I?

This may be a little hard to understand for people who have never had those kinds of challenges in their family or their family history, or who have never been around or exposed to it. But when you have, and when it has been as close to you as your parent, the person in your life as a child who is supposed to represent everything solid, it is not hard to later wonder what small (or worse, large) portion of that was passed on. It is, after all, genetic, and we are all genetically and environmentally products of our parents, whether we want to accept that or not. It is not a big leap from understanding that and questioning what parts of your parents you did and did not inherit, or—of even greater concern—how those things might manifest in your children.

Although I have wondered about this from time to time, I have never really spoken about it—the concern of it—with anyone, except with my brothers. My conversations with them regarding this have always been safe, as we shared the history and experiences. Discussing it outside of that circle, however, required more courage and candor than I wanted to display with most until now, because I thought it might cause people to view me through that lens.

But at dinner that night, I thought that maybe I could, indirectly at least, get some objective input on those thoughts and concerns. Shari is an artist, an accomplished and awarded painter, and a teacher. I have known her for several years now, and she was someone who became a very good mentor and guide to me when I was first experiencing my divorce. So, I trust her advice, and I thought to ask her at dinner about her experience with the creative process. I was curious to know if she sometimes experienced this thing that you can’t seem to shut off.

“You mean being in the zone?” she replied. And then she went on to talk about “being in No Man’s Land,” and losing track of time, and sometimes not even realizing that you have not eaten because you are lost in your creative work. I explained to her how I was slightly disturbed by everything that had flooded my mind in that one hour, and how it related to my concerns about my mother’s mental health, wanting her perspective on that as well.

“You mean you’re paranoid about being bipolar just because your mother was bipolar and you experience creative spells?” I probably should explain that Shari is as subtle as a Mack truck, and that she usually speaks whatever is on her mind bluntly. Although her question and tone made me shrink back just a bit as my being just that—paranoid—I still felt some comfort in the fact that someone I trusted saw my concerns as unfounded.

In truth, I have always felt pretty safely sane, and I’m pretty sure that anyone that knows me—slightly, or with any depth—shares that same judgment. I do think there are things about my mother that I have inherited, but I think that they (most of them) are her better traits. Mom was creative, an amateur poet and painter, and she had an active imagination. She often looked inward and examined herself deeply, even though she may never have fully understood what it was she found there, or explored everything that she should have found during those periods of introspection. These things about her, and about myself, I have accepted. But I am fairly sure that is where most of our similarities begin and end.

So that small bubble of fear is yet even smaller after yesterday, despite that still frightening volume of notes I now see sitting on the nightstand by my bed. Looking back, I sometimes question why it ever surfaces at all. Maybe, no matter our age, experience, or confidence, we are all subject to small frailties and foibles, and minor doubts, and indecisions. It’s a part of life, this wondering who we are, where and what we came from, and where and toward what we are headed. Our personal experiences and feelings shape those questions for each of us individually and personally, but it is a healthy thing to ask about them and explore them.

I figure we’re all good, so long as we don’t hear the answers we are looking for being voiced by the inanimate objects around the house.

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

Fairy Tales Lost and Found

“Dad, I know.”

Kylee was whispering. I was on my way to work and calling to say goodnight, and I had just asked her about how the day—or,more specifically, that Easter morning—had been for her. When I heard her whispering, though I heard her distinctly and correctly, I asked her to repeat it, because that father’s voice was going off in the back of my head. You know the voice; it’s the one that tells you you’ve just heard something really significant and want reassurance, or confirmation, of either something you know you’ve just witnessed or something you need to hear repeated before you rashly say something parentally stupid.

“Dad, I know. I know there is no Easter Bunny,” she continued. “ I know it was Mom that hid the eggs.”

Thus ended the Age of Unquestioning Innocence for Kylee, and for the second time in our family. I wondered, in a rush of thoughts, if the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus suffered similar fates that day, and would no longer be visiting our home to leave their sprinkling of magic. It was kind of a bittersweet moment. Not only did it mark the end of such things for Kylee and signify she was growing up (despite my protestations), it also meant there would be no more of it in the family, since she is the youngest.

And, in Kylee’s whisper, I heard so many things. I heard a little girl who felt the empowerment of discovery and knowledge. I heard the freedom of being let loose from a child’s fantasy, and suddenly feeling like you belonged to the club of People Who Know Better. I even heard the appreciation of a little girl that knew her parents promoted such fantasies for the enjoyment and enrichment of their child.

With Megan it was about the same age as Kylee, but Megan let us believe our act was working for at least one more Christmas beyond her discovery. The next year, as we decorated the Christmas tree and Kylee was momentarily out of the room, she nonchalantly let me know that she picked up on a neighbor’s kid’s slip-up. I think, for her, it was one of the earliest signals I got that she was declaring herself a more grown up girl, something that I really never wanted to hear. Not then, not now.

As children, we all go through this ourselves. It’s that moment in time where we transition from believing to questioning—usually prompted by that school-age friend that plants the seed—and to finally knowing outright. I even remember it happening at too young an age for me; I must have been seven or eight at the time. I confirmed it by staying up on Christmas Eve, waiting out mom by pretending to be asleep, then waiting for as long as I could before getting everyone up to open gifts. I lasted an hour; it was one o’clock in the morning.

But Kylee’s revelation got me thinking about where it all leads from there, where the pragmatic life begins to intrude on fantasies, and then dreams, and maybe even the simplest of hopes.

Spin the clock back thirty years. We all had hopes and dreams about everything we wanted to do with our lives. It was just the other day that a friend of mine, Don, commented on how “we could take on the world.” The point he went on to make was that we—and I don’t suppose to speak for everyone—didn’t quite hit the lofty expectations we had for ourselves, all those years ago. Yes, some of us are living the dream, or some semblance of it, or a dream maybe a little different than we imagined back then, but still a dream nonetheless. Yet others are living that life somewhere on the sliding scale that ranges from pounding out an existence to comfortable happiness. We make our peace with it, I suppose, in whatever way we can. Sometimes our hopes and dreams rest or rise only in our own mind, or sometimes we attempt to recreate them through the lives of our children. I don't think either case is good.

I remember a point in time in my life where I was on the pounding end of the spectrum. I never planned on being there, my life just evolved to that point. I had long given up any hopes of writing and what it would ever do for me, would mean to me again. I let it go as a pipe dream. I was a father and a husband and I resolved myself to what I saw as the realities of that life; I had to be a provider. I couldn’t afford to pursue dreams that were either risky or low-paying, and so I had to shelve any aspirations of writing, to redefine them as something else that made me more comfortable with setting them aside.

Don’t get me wrong; that life was not an unhappy one, or one where I thought, on a daily basis, about what I was not doing with my life. I never even recognized where I was, what kind of existence I was living. In fact, I found new pleasures in life that helped me feel satisfied. There was much to do, being a father and provider, and I could keep my time filled with the many things with which so many of us preoccupy and distract ourselves. It’s easy to do, this being a good provider thing, as easy as sleepwalking. But it can also get out of hand.

Before I knew it, being a good provider meant the bigger house, the bigger car, the next promotion, the better pay raise. One carrot led to another. We always spent what we had available, and sometimes more. And long ago and far behind me, the hopes and dreams of something else I might have accomplished in my life—not in spite of it, but possibly within it—laid dormant and sleeping, possibly never to be resurrected.

So, as all of the rewards of that kind of life began to unravel, there was a void left, and that made the trauma of the loss that much more difficult to endure. At some point I must have seen it coming, because at the tender age of forty-one, before it was clear where everything was headed, I went back to school to finish that English degree.

That was a frightening endeavor, to say the least. Before starting, I imagined a classroom filled with much younger people, all faster, sharper, and brighter than me. I never was the most diligent student in either high school or in my previous college stint, and so I was not sure I had the study skills necessary to pull it off, or to even prevent me from looking like a fool. But luckily, my first professor in that first course was an incredible teacher and person, and he was both encouraging and helpful. His interest in me and my skills gave me an insatiable hunger for learning, discussion, analysis, and writing. By the time I got to my final year, he was nominating my papers for publication and for presentation at Modern Language Associaion conferences, and I graduated with a 3.98, magna cum laude. Go figure.

And that was how my desire to write returned, even though I still didn’t practice it in the same way I ever hoped. But, it did give me back the faith in myself that I could craft words, and make them useful, thought provoking and interesting. The problem was, I was never going to make any better living out of writing theoretical analysis papers on literature—my talent at the time—than I would by not writing anything at all. So my writing, well, just kind of moved a little closer to the front of my thoughts and didn’t really go anywhere.

That is, until now. Now, I write what I enjoy, in a personal voice, which is the voice at which I was always best. It’s my voice, no one else’s, really. It feels comfortable. It feels genuine. The voice I write with now may never earn me a dime, but I get more satisfaction from it than anything else I have ever tried to pen. So, in a way, my dream is a little more alive now than it has been for many years, which is good.

Maybe one day I will write something else, a work of fiction, from all those reams of notes I have stashed away here and there, and maybe not. Or possibly this voice I enjoy will take me somewhere, become something more than just an exercise in thought and words on paper (or screen). At this point, I feel like I am progressing toward that end and can make it happen someday. If it doesn’t, I have a lot of rewards happening for me right now with what I do, and with what the girls do, and that satisfies me.

Around here nowadays, it seems like we keep dreams not only alive, but thriving. I watch—with great interest—Megan as she launches her Facebook page showcasing her photographic skills, and I am reminded of my interest in photography in years past. She has a talent, that girl, and enthusiasm and ambition to match it. She believes, not only in her talent and in herself, but in all the possibilities that her dream can make real for her. I hope, with everything I have, that her dream will happen for her, and will do so at a much earlier time in her life than it has for me. More than that: I believe it will.

And Kylee: well, Kylee and a friend are putting together a little book of essays they are writing. I can’t tell you just how much that makes me beam. I have no idea if that will eventually end up being her dream vocation, as she has plenty of time for others to take shape. After all, she just ended things with the Easter Bunny.

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

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.