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.

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.

There's No Comparison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time, Space, and Shape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A "Bestest" Day Ever

How would you like to hear a 3200 word, step-by-step recounting of my run in the Dam to Dam 20k over the last two years?

I didn’t think so. But, that was exactly what I was about to inflict on everyone. That is, until I took a moment or two to be a little less self-absorbed. I guess I got a little caught up in my own accomplishment and didn’t really reflect much beyond that.

And that was a silly thing to do, because the day meant so much more. Somehow, I could sense it, but I never really understood why until almost a week later, when I struggled to write about it and came up with little more than a verbal replay of the days’ events, both this year and last. But—if I can beg your patience a little—I do have to backtrack a bit and compare last year to this year, in order to best make my point.

It all started, simply enough, with a desire to run better than the previous year’s dismal 2:18 performance in the Dam to Dam. I was pretty disappointed in that 2009 run, because I had set myself up with a goal of trying to finish in less than two hours; no grand performance by many runners' measurements, but it was my first time running a race that long and seemed appropriate given my training times and conditioning.

But when the race day arrived, I made every conceivable mistake any runner could possibly make. I also created a few I think I’d never seen in any book on running or training I’d ever read.

For starters, I worked the night before, closing the store and not leaving to go home until 11pm. That in itself was probably not too big an impairment, but like many people, I am not apt to immediately fall into a restful slumber the moment I walk in the door from work. Usually, I’m hyped. Add to that the anticipation of my first ever 20k experience and you would understand why I was still staring wide-eyed at my alarm clock at 2am, sure that I was going to sleep through my alarm.

I also skipped breakfast. I thought I didn’t want anything churning in my stomach for the next several hours and certainly didn’t want to have to interrupt my run to dash off to a port-a-potty, or worse, be far from one if the need suddenly overtook me.

It was not until I was on the bus ride to the dam, where I noticed everyone else eating power bars, that I realized that particular mistake. But, undaunted, I brushed that concern aside, and my pre-race jitters began to settle some as I talked with some of the other runners on the bus. The conversation and camaraderie relaxed me a little. I began to see myself, finally, as someone who belonged there, had done the work and had earned my chance, just as much as anyone else.

After waiting around a while and warming up at the dam, the pack began to form and I found a place near the end. I couldn’t help but worry, there in the middle of all of those strangers, if I had gotten in over my head, hadn’t trained well enough, or would suffer the fate I feared most, in which I would not be able to finish.

Soon we were started, and not far into the run something odd happened to unnerve me a little more. At about mile three, a woman a few feet in front of me darted off the road suddenly, pulled down her shorts, and squatted in the ditch. I wouldn’t speak for anyone else running that day, but a half-naked woman is distracting to me no matter where I encounter her. A half-naked woman in broad daylight, in an open ditch, only fifteen feet away from and in full view of about six thousand other runners passing by…well, that is enough to disturb my concentration and throw me off my game. I nearly ran over the person who was in front of me because of my suddenly inspired burst of speed. I apologized and wormed my way through the crowd to the other side of the road, feeling a tad bit embarrassed all the while.

And this was just within the first three miles of twelve total miles to run. For those unfamiliar with the Dam to Dam, the first three miles are fairly easy and mostly downhill, and it was actually the ease of this earliest part of the race route that set up my next major mistake. Feeling more confident at having tackled the first several miles, I skipped all the hydration stops over much of the course. I didn’t feel that taxed or thirsty, and the heat of the day had not really set in. Later in the run, when it did turn considerably warmer, I suffered badly for that rookie mistake.

It came on about mile ten, where the course turns into a series of small but sometimes gentle inclines as you pass the residential neighborhoods of north Des Moines. By that time the temps had climbed significantly higher than the upper sixties we had at the start. Not eating breakfast to give myself some reserves to draw from and not hydrating properly through most of the race began to take its toll on me. Somewhere in those hills I had to stop running and walk some for recovery.

But, after about a mile of walking I was back running again, at a reasonable pace, when I discovered yet one more mistake I could find to make. There, at mile 11.5, was a seemingly nice man standing alongside the route, under a shady tent, with glass upon glass filled with champagne.

“You’re almost there,” he said. “Have a glass of champagne to celebrate.”

So I did. And I never should have.

I’m pretty sure that glass of champagne greatly contributed to that delirium I felt the few minutes later when I crossed the finish line. My brain was throbbing, I felt very dizzy, and my body hurt from head to toe. I didn’t feel any relief from being finished; I felt more like I had survived something than I felt anything like a sense of accomplishment.

I stumbled my way from the finish line and to the tubs of iced-down sports drinks, asking people twice for directions to where they were. When I found them I grabbed two bottles, despite the protestations of the guy who was obviously the appointed Gatorade Tub Guardian, and then I promptly plopped down on the sidewalk in front of him to summarily down both bottles while under his seething gaze.

It took me a few minutes to recover enough to feel like I could stand again. When I did, I realized I was still pretty disoriented and not quite sure in which direction I should head to find my car. Downtown looked very different at that moment; my internal compass was still reeling, and I had arrived there that morning in the dark at five am. I walked around downtown for over an hour looking for my car, and when I finally found it I realized I had passed within a hundred feet of it at least twice before in my search.

That was my Dam to Dam 2009. It was bad. Still, like the golfer who shoots a triple digit round but gets a birdie on the 18th, I was determined to return and do better.

The memory of all that was still in my mind this last weekend as I stood under a dripping tree alongside Bill and Mary, waiting for the race to begin. Try as I did to prepare and train, I wasn’t sure I had trained any better. I was still struggling with the hills on my longer training runs, and at about a week out from the race, a pain developed in my lower leg. My calf felt as tight as a banjo string and the front of my shins hurt with each and every step.

The pain I thought I could run through, but the fear of having set myself up with an unreasonable goal and potential embarrassment was eating away at me. I had invited Bill and Mary up to run it with me, and they were both runners with far more experience and speed than I possessed. I had also announced several times to all my friends on Facebook that I was running to raise awareness for thyroid cancer, and my training runs had often been a part of my status updates. I’d even announced my goal time for this year, that same two-hour mark that I had declared, but missed by eighteen minutes, in the previous year. If I did not finish, or if I performed as I did the previous year and missed my announced goal, it would be an epic failure witnessed by far too many people.

But race day this year proved to be anything but a failure. In fact, it turned out to be one of those days where everything fell into place.

It was still raining when we started the race, and the rain gear we went looking for the night before was one of the best purchases I think I have ever made. It was my first good call. And the power bar I picked up on the way to Bill and Mary’s hotel turned out to be just the thing I needed to get me going that morning, probably my next best good call.

The race strategy I had taken the time to devise also made all the difference in the world. I took advantage of the beginning downhill miles to give myself some breathing room for the rest of the race, letting it carry me along at a quick, but relaxed, pace.

I was also overly cautious about staying hydrated, using every water stop (there is one nearly every mile) except for three.

I never looked up to the top of any hill I climbed to let myself get de-motivated by it, and I was able to push my way through all but one.

I ate my gel at about the halfway point, and at mile six I began walking a few seconds while drinking the Powerade or water, instead of drinking it on the run.

By mile four I felt like I was in a perfect rhythm. At about mile six I felt like I was experiencing that runner’s high. My friend Kim—a marathoner who helped renew my interest in running—was alongside the route at about mile eight, with a high five and a “good job” that made me feel even better. At the ninth mile any doubts I had about finishing were gone, and I glanced at my Garmin for the first time since the 10k mark. At that point, I knew I would make my goal time. When I was still a mile and a half out I felt like kicking up a notch, and so I did.  With a half mile to go, full of adrenaline, I went into a sprint.

Life was good.

I was ecstatic when I finished, according to my Garmin, at 1:48:03. I knew that even if it didn’t exactly match the chip time that would be official, it could not be twelve minutes different. Bill and Mary were also there at the finish line waiting for me, and instead of the previous pressure I felt from their possibly witnessing my potential failure, I was relieved and glad to see them there to share my perceived success.

And that made all the difference in the world. In fact, when I could take the time to properly reflect back on this year’s race and compare it to last year’s race, I began to see it as the biggest reason I was able to accomplish it in the time I did this year, and enjoy it as much as I did. This year I was with friends, instead of going it alone.

For far too long, running alone was my style. For too many years, I operated from the belief that no one in the world cared about me as much as I cared about myself. I also (mistakenly) thought that the accomplishments I achieved, the battles I won, and the rewards I earned were always richer when I did it myself and didn’t have to count on anyone else for my success. Looking back on all that now, I can see that it was me, defying my insecurities and trying to prove something to myself, as well as prove myself to everyone else. And I am still not sure who that everyone else was supposed to be.

I’m glad that nowadays, I see things a little differently, where I can either trudge through life as me against the world, or I can run it with friends alongside me. The latter is much more rewarding.

In closing, I don’t know if this piece justly expresses my gratitude to Bill and Mary and Kim for being there with me that day, or for all they have meant to me before and after that day. I’m not sure I can pen that.

But, maybe I can frame it this way: in a few weeks, I head home to spend a weekend with about five hundred people I haven’t seen in too long a time and still consider friends. Okay, maybe it will only be about two hundred or so.

But, I wouldn’t be disappointed if I ended up spending the weekend with only three.

© 2010 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.