Monday, August 30, 2010

A Power No One Wants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best I’ve been able to come up with in our five hours plus of waiting—what I would ask of myself and of the medical staff—is this:
  1. What is the raw end result? Would the medical condition or problem or illness be over when we are done with this specific choice with which we are immediately faced?
  2. What would be the potential life extension my father receives as a benefit?
  3. What will be the quality of life for my father after the fact, as compared to what he defines as a quality life? I know my father well enough to know he would not enjoy life if he could not communicate or interact with those he loves, even if they could communicate with him. I also know that if he were able to communicate, but were not ambulatory, he would carry on. In the case of the latter, he would also want me to revisit Question One and Question Two again.
  4. What strain, or effort, or pain would he have to live with after the fact? I know this seems redundant of Question Three, but I am convinced that pain and suffering have to be considered separately from issues of mobility and consciousness. Still, in addressing this I have to go back and revisit almost all of my other questions.
  5. What, if anything, would Dad be left to deal with after the fact that would be outside the normal process of aging?
I know this seems somewhat like circular reasoning, and maybe it is. It isn’t an easy decision that can be arrived at through a checklist or with black and white definitions. There is a great deal of gray area. But it is clear to me what my father would want if he knew the answers to those questions, and that is exactly how I would decide.

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

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

Sunday, August 29, 2010

When Opposites Attract

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Venus, Fleshed

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

“Why hasn’t someone snagged that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, August 13, 2010

So Goes Lauren

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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