The Mirror of Personal Semantics

There are words I have started to avoid. They are words I have come to think of in an entirely different way than I did for much of my life. Maybe it’s simply my maturity, or maybe it is cultural influences. I’m not sure.

The other day I was reminded of one of these words when I was catching up on news and wasting time on Facebook. It was the day that Prop 8 was ruled against in court in California, and the posts hitting Facebook all that day were a mixture of elation and disgust, with a majority of them crossing my page in favor of the court’s ruling. In some of the celebratory postings and comments, I was beginning to see the word “tolerance” surface frequently, and I began to think of that word and the context in which it was being used. Although those using the word meant something positive, I began to wonder if it were really true to be doing so and what it meant about us when we did.

When I tolerate something, it usually means it is something I may not like or agree with, but that I am willing to live with, or ignore, or dismiss as something too trivial with which to bother myself. It means I see my position or status as preferable, and that I see the other position in a negative manner, or maybe slightly above the mark of acceptable.

I don’t think I like this word “tolerance.”

I’m not sure it applies here. In fact, I think it marginalizes someone in this case, only because they were born with a sexual preference different than mine. And different is not necessarily properly placed when we see it as a negative.

I guess that bears repeating: different is not necessarily properly placed when we see it in the negative. Not when we define someone by their sexual preference. Not when we define them by their religious views. Not when we define them by the color of their skin. Not even when we define them by their lifestyle, no matter what it may, or may not, include. Different is just that: different. Different should mean parallel in value and significance, particularly when it comes to another person. There should be no positioning beyond that.

But “tolerance,” and “acceptance” are two words—the latter only slightly less potentially offending than the former—that are among those I feel are somewhat judgmental and that I try to avoid using. I’ve come to dislike them. I see them as condescending, and I know I have a history of using them before I came to feel about them as I do now. I dislike that I used to include them in my vocabulary, and I feel better knowing that my feelings about them, something as simple as those words, helps keep me a little more humble.

The extreme of this, or at least what I see as the extreme, is when I hear someone define themselves or someone else as either “straight” or “gay.” If you think about it, we apply a great deal of positive inference in the word “straight.” We think of it as true, as correct, as morally upstanding, and the best path from point A to point B. The opposite of “straight” is “crooked. Just about everything we think of as not being straight we think of as being wrong, or possibly not the norm.

I don’t think I like this word either, this word “straight.”

I posted something on Facebook that day that stated my dislike of the word “tolerance,” and I was a little surprised by the discussion it prompted. It eventually led to a debate about the use of certain words that many use in the positive, but that might mean something much different than what we intend when we use them in reference to someone else, or our relationship with someone else. Eventually we hit on a word that I have come to dislike for a long time now, that being the word “sympathy.”

Most of us see sympathy as a positive trait in ourselves. We see it as an ability to feel for someone else who is either struggling, or disadvantaged, or suffering in some manner. When we believe we feel sympathy for someone else, we feel we are being compassionate and understanding, and that we care about that other person.

But are we, really? Could it be that when I feel sympathy for someone I am not really feeling compassion, but instead feeling something entirely different, something that might even be considered selfish. If I feel sorry for someone, am I really wishing they were in a better state, or am I only affirming my own as the one I see as preferable?

Oddly enough, this is a word I came to feel differently about when I was a younger man, before I thought myself capable of such contemplation. At the emboldened age of 19, when young men tend to think themselves both invulnerable and wiser than their years, I set aside college and went to work for a railroad contractor. It may not have been the best long term strategy, as far as career decisions go, but it proved to be a springboard into my management career, and an experience that would serve me a lifetime.

I spent the next eleven years—including all of my twenties—roaming the continent, and getting paid for it. Much of my travel was through rural areas, and the largest portion of it spent in the deep south, where I often thought of myself as far out of my element. I had a dim view of the people of the rural south, because I saw them as people trapped in a way of life that was uneducated and apathetic. I felt sorry for them. From my perspective as a suburban-raised, modern, and “enlightened” boy, I thought their lives both difficult and backwards. I wondered how they could enjoy their lives, and why they never chose to leave them or do better for themselves. I defined their lives by the four-wheelers I saw parked on their front lawns, and, by their manner of speech. At times, I mocked them.

And then, I met O.D., a man assigned by the railroad to work with me for an entire week. O.D. was a big man, the epitome of a rough and tumble railroader who had worked the rails all of his life. He was adept at every nuance of the communication and cooperation necessary to expedite my work, and he was respected widely by peers and supervisors. He had an affable air about him and an infectious laugh, which was easily stirred even though he seemed a serious man as he went about his tasks. I grew to like O.D the first day we worked together, because he was candid, not self-conscious, and a little rough around the edges. He made me comfortable. We began to click, and the work flew past us.

On the third day of working together O.D. had me pull off the rails in a small town just north of the next major rail yard, deep in the heart of Arkansas. It would be a stretch to try and make it all the way in before the dark and other rail traffic caught up to us. I raised my gear and pulled on to the road at the crossing, and looked at O.D. from across the cab to ask him which way I should head to find a motel.

“We’re not staying in a motel tonight,” he said. “That right there’s my house.”

The house that O.D. was pointing at was a somewhat-kept, brick ranch not more than 50 yards from the tracks, with a beat up and muddied Chevy 4-wheel drive parked in a driveway hard to pick out in the sparse lawn. It was one of only about a dozen homes that were clustered in between an expanse of rice fields and the railroad. On the front lawn was also parked—you guessed it—two equally muddied four-wheelers. I felt immediate dread, and desperately reached for excuses to not stay with him and his family, all of which failed. O.D. was having nothing of me driving to a motel, and if I could even manage to convince him I should, he was not about to let me do so on an empty stomach.

O.D.’s wife met us in the drive. She was a pretty, petite woman, who seemed dwarfed by O.D.’s heft as he enveloped her in a bear hug that lifted her off her feet. She laughed as he did. She seemed a little embarrassed by his affectionate exhibition in front of a stranger.

“This must be Co-o-ody,” she said, in a syrup-thick drawl, and she extended a hand to me to shake. Her smile was warm. “Supper’s ready, come on in.”

What followed dinner that evening, and for the next three days I was rained out of working, was an education about people who live differently than I do, and an education about myself. Because of the kindness of O.D. and his family, I came to understand that my sympathy for people in their lifestyles was misplaced, and I felt humbled to understand I had ever thought less of them. These people loved life, and loved their lifestyle, no less than I did. In fact, I felt ashamed of how they could be so kind to me, when I had previously thought so little of them without really knowing them. I came to care deeply for them, and I stopped in and stayed with them every time I was in the area over the years. Without fail, they always welcomed me, and they treated me as family.

Because of O.D. and his family, I came to dislike the word, this word “sympathy.”

And I came to distrust and examine other things and people I had long held thoughts and opinions about, including words I often used to define or describe them. Over the following years, and through my life’s experiences, I would hold these words and my beliefs up in the mirror and ask myself if they pass the test that earns them the meanings I assign them, and what might I learn about myself in my examination of them? Do I carry nuances of bigotry, or judgment, in what I say, even when I mean the best with what I say? And if I do, how do I go about eliminating those shadowy errors, and say what I really intend? How do I act and reflect the best of someone else, without posturing, or without minimizing or marginalizing someone else?

I haven’t entirely figured that out yet, because I know that not only my vocabulary is loaded with things like that, but that my actions and deeds are as well. Actions and deeds are habits more deeply entrenched and rooted in our psyches than any words. I, like many people my age, have lived through ages that have seen rapid cultural changes on many fronts, and in our struggle to accept and live with those changes, we’ve had to go through the process of unlearning what we’ve often been taught and had reinforced. Our families may have engrained things in us that we later decide are wrong, or learn are wrong through changes in our lives, and changes in ourselves. Sometimes we even have to do so reluctantly, because we have to reconcile what we’ve known with the cultural changes going on around us. Sometimes we have to adapt, or we suffer for it in some way, or unwittingly lessen our quality of life by remaining steadfast in our outdated and erroneous beliefs.

Either that…or we tolerate it.

© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Margins of Error

And there it was: that little signal. It came from one of the least suspected places, a handcrafted sign being held by a fellow Occupy activist. Later I would learn this person did not intend its effect, but I didn’t have the luxury of considering that at the moment I first spotted it in the photo.

“Occupying is in tents.”

Although those words would be benign to most who would see them, people within Occupy Des Moines—and myself in particular—would clearly understand the message. There had been tensions growing within the group for some time about what our next step should be, and whether or not resources should continue to be dedicated to the camp. A wide divide was growing between members that physically occupied the camp, and those that did not.

By then, most of the camps in major cities had been shut down, including Liberty Plaza in New York City. Ours was still going, despite the fact that less than a dozen people stayed there and the local fire marshal kept finding ways to prevent the camp occupants from maintaining heat. Iowa’s winter, and the patience of the city government, loomed large.

And, in the process of debating the decisions ahead of us, Occupy Des Moines slowly became a group eating away at its own flesh and paring itself down to its hardest bone. People began to turn away from the negativity, and as a result, away from the movement.

My personal reaction to this sign was one of anger. I thought it was terribly selfish and disrespectful that the one message someone would choose to express at an action designed to speak up and speak out was—instead of being directed at an injustice--aimed antagonistically at others within the group.

I took it personally.

But, I do that too easily: take things personally. So much so that I have had to develop mental tricks to make myself step back any time I feel a reaction to something building within me. It doesn’t always work, and most often doesn’t work in my interactions with those dearest to me, but when it does it usually yields useful introspection.

In stepping back and away, I’m able to disengage and see myself, and the situation, from a different perspective that makes it easier to deflect anything intentionally directed at me, or dismiss something that I shouldn’t have interpreted as being directed at me. From that space I can also often determine someone’s motivation. Motivation, to me, is the single, most important thing to recognize of something someone has done to cause my reaction, and whether or not I should give it any more credence than I already have.

And so I began to mull this over, this sign, and its intention, and my feelings about it, and I began to wonder why it mattered to me so. That was when I was struck by the thought that I was possibly too involved, too connected, and that stepping back and away—not just for introspection, but for emotional protection, as well—was the best thing to do. It would be the safest thing to do.

Step back. Stay on the sidelines.

Because on the sidelines, in the margins, I could remove myself from the judgment of those words, that I was not really a part of the movement as defined by this person. And in removing myself from that judgment, I also removed the emotional risk, or harm, caused by that narrow definition. I also removed myself from any future risk, which, for me was an even greater motivation to move myself to safe harbor.

It was as simple as that. Or maybe not so. Because, to be honest, it pained me to not feel a part of the group, because so many I had come to know in my involvement with Occupy had become very important to me. I had come to know their personal stories that brought them to the movement, and I had come to care about them. I had learned their struggles that were common with mine, their morals and sense of fairness I shared, their concerns for others and for a better world, and their deep desires to affect change. I was going to miss all that, and them.

So instead, I resolved to hover. I decided that if I placed that buffer between myself and what I saw as the new definition of the movement, I could still maintain those relationships from a comfortable and safe distance. I could even serve a role—a practiced one—as observer and recorder, that would allow me to still feel involved, and would allow for the personal relationships, but would position me out of harm’s way.

It seemed appropriate. I have often thought that some of us are wired to be on the edges looking inward, be the ones that observe, record, and recount from a perspective that allows for a detached commentary. I’ve been a writer and a photographer for much of my life, or thought myself as much, and both of those are skills that require, at least, a certain amount of detachment, because you lose the ability to artfully, and completely, express something if you are essentially involved in what it is you are trying to capture, portray, or project.

However, there is a danger in turning yourself into Life’s spectator; you can often miss out on the sweeter nuances that life itself can bring you. You can make your life absent of real passion, or utter joy, or even contentment. You can forget what it is like to ride the rollercoaster of emotions that are supposed to be an innate aspect of the human experience. You can also lose that sense of sharing that comes with genuine attachment to others, or to one, and, both easily and imperceptibly, you may turn yourself cynical, or bitter.

It is something I have toyed with for much of my life; I’ve carefully and curiously studied and observed others for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been intrigued by the actions of others and what motivates them to those actions. I imagine, when I am not allowed to know, or have not had shared with me, the personal narrative of others that has brought them to be the person I know at the moment, and what motivates them to do the things they do.

When I was younger and traveled a great deal for my work, I used to spend a lot of time in airport terminals, and I found the people there fascinating. I would pass the time and entertain myself by imagining the lives of people I would observe there, and what it was they were coming from and going to.

At social events I could almost always be found near the corner watching everything happen in the room from an advantageous perspective. Add a touch of alcohol and a little music, and human behavior becomes a fascinating spectacle to observe.

In thinking about all of this, I realized that I have often placed myself at the edge of things to be able to observe them. But in considering it within the context of what prompted this particular contemplation, I also realized I’ve done so for other reasons. I’ve done it most often to protect myself.

And, that has also been the case with relationships; it’s safer. The single most frightening thing I believe we may ever do with our lives is to entrust our feelings with someone other than ourselves. Those feelings may be the most precious thing we personally own, and giving over control or care of them, or placing them in a space of vulnerability, is to risk great emotional harm.

Nearly every time I have, I’ve been reminded somehow of the safety, comfort, and ease of those margins, and I’ve returned to them. But, I’ve done so, at times, with some regret, and with an understanding of what I may have denied myself.

And, I’ve even realized at times that doing this can sometimes be a mistake, as was the case with the misinterpreted protest sign that I took personally, and that made me consider my usual retreat. Because this time, I felt too much was at stake, and too many people had become too dear to me. I couldn’t simply resort to being a casual observer. This time, I stuck it out, and I’m glad I did.

I might just try doing that again sometime.
   
© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

When Words Fail Us Both

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know,” I added.

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

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

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

Scarecrows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Small Note About a Big Man

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, dad. The kids are alright.

Significance

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

“Head size at birth?”

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

“Age at which she started walking?”

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

“Age at which she began talking?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Victories

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

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

“Indeed we do,” I thought to myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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