management

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you
--e.e. cummings

I avoided funerals for a very long time. I had a good excuse. Dad took 10 years to die of ALS and before he died Mom had Alzheimer's disease. For a long time I hid from death and its trappings. In my cowardice I avoided funerals in particular. It wasn't the reminder of death that scared me, I think, but the intimation of my own enormous grief, waiting patiently for me to finish my dance, my drink, my long rationalization, waiting to enfold me in its inevitable arms.

When Dad died he was in many ways a stranger in town. He wasn't capable emotionally of maintaining many friends. The emotional strains of intimacy and the ensuing analysis of others motivations made it a painful adventure for him. I assumed his funeral would be a small, almost secret affair. What I failed to understand was that my mother and I had brought many people into his world. Those people came and sat with us, showing up for a ceremony that allowed us to close Dad's book. What I expected to be a lonely exercise was about community and appreciation. Even the old veteran with his bugle, who apologized for muffing a note in Taps, cared for us that day.

While I can write about them, I am not very successful in managing my emotions. This is because, I believe, emotions happen first. If we're centered, we sit with our emotions and learn from them, decide what they mean, and perhaps what we need. I've always been an "emotional optimist." It won't be that bad. I'll be fine. See! I'm fine! This isn't bothering me that much at all. Then, a few days later, something hits me like a baseball bat, an assault in the dark and, surprise! My feelings are what they are and I can't manage them. I'm not the only person who has to learn this lesson over and over again, and thus I make a tidy living.

A 16 year old girl dropped dead this week. She was a classmate of Walker's and we have seen her around since Walker was 5 years old. Katlyn was athletic, smart, and genuinely decent. The autopsy was inconclusive. She just died.

I had really planned to avoid her funeral, and did, but my daughter, another Caitlin, asked me to go with her. "It won't be that bad," I thought. . . .

I must say that this was the most emotionally ravaging viewing I have ever attended. After about an hour of standing in line with the entire community, looking at pictures and mementos of this beautiful, vital young woman, we came to her family. They had learned to intercept the conversation and thank us for coming before we could speak, sparing them more memories when they were trying to hang together. They were almost not in their own bodies. The word "devastated" is overused. The casket was open and I won't describe its contents except to say that the contrast with our memories, with the photos, was stark. Punch in the stomach. Hit by a truck, a mudslide, a tidal wave. We winced and moved as fast as we could toward the door.

Yesterday morning I was gripped with overwhelming anxiety over things that don't amount to much. I felt horrible, guilty, angry at myself for saying something minor the night before, all out of proportion to the "crime," which really didn't exist and was easily remedied. After about two hours of misery, it began to dawn on me that I was familiar with this "trip." The dance of deferred emotion, the contrived incident followed by all out of proportion guilt and self admonishment.

I'm sorry that you died, kid. I'm sorry you had the same name as my daughter and dropped dead for no reason. I'm sorry I felt relieved that it was you and not my child lying there, a husk, a corpse that no amount of make up could remediate. I'm sorry that I shied away from your parents visceral pain and rushed for the door gripping my daughter's hand. I'm sorry I don't know your family well enough to do more than show up, witness their pain and run for the parking lot. It was what I could do. I showed up. I can't get them out of my head.

Karkowski night

It was an interesting weekend, much in the usual way. I saw clients on Saturday morning. They are always interesting and pleasant (no joke - if you see clients and don't find them interesting and pleasant you should find something useful to do - sell shoes!). I drove around in my new Golf, which is mostly a carbon copy of my old Rabbit, with fewer doors and a manual transmission. Anyone who hung with me had to hear about how something is wrong with 2nd gear. One should not have to double-clutch a new Volkswagen. Interesting, but as mundane as a Christmas letter, you're thinking. True.

In the evening I spent some time at a benefit for Russell Karkowski, a furniture builder and craftsman who fell off his roof and landed on his head. Russell is doing pretty well, all things considered. His personality remains, by all accounts, as does his determination to recover. He's learning to speak, to use his body, staying longer in rehab because they believe there's more progress to be made. Apparently if you're discharged quickly from rehab it's because they feel they have achieved what we in the human services used to call "maximum benefits." That's social work speak for "shit, we give up!" Russell, God bless him, has not met Max yet. Good man.

Will and I got together and sang and played a little and then went down to the Mill and sang about a half hour together. It was a loud crowd, not particularly attentive, there for Russell and each other. This is as it should be. Any experienced musician knows that sometimes the crowd is (are?) into each other and not us. We used some tricks to quiet the crowd and create space and had a good time doing duo work, which requires less precision and uniformity than working in a four or five piece group. I love Will and he loves me and I trust and hope that we'll always be able to tune in and make music together. I thought of our friend Cam, who jumped ship this year and the times we spent at the Mill singing as a trio together. In his honor, I mentioned that Cam had no butt. Of course now he's missing more than that, but it felt important to tease him in absentia.

What was most interesting though was that discussion turned several times to my own injury. Now, I'm not 100% yet, but I'm enjoying my life again and exercising the privileges of autonomy and independence. Some would say I'm also recovering my cognition, although that may remain to be seen.

In any case, what's happening to Russell absolutely dwarfs anything I experienced. I had the good fortune of avoiding coma, brain damage, and physical incapacity. We were worried about whether I'd walk, but I walk and I had all my potential gratifyingly in line as soon as I recovered from surgery. My toes wiggled and that was it. After that it has been a matter of endurance. I'll admit to employing some determination. I'll admit to despairing of ever being able to get around by myself again at some points, but those points were located over the span of a few months. Going on about my experience at Russell's party did not feel appropriate.

Faithful readers may recall that as I lay on my back in the hospital, fresh off the helicopter, recently off the side of a county road in Wisconsin, I was told I'd have to wait a day for surgery because I was "stable." They boy scouts riding in an SUV on the highway had not been so lucky and they got to go first. I found I couldn't argue with that. I was very uncomfortable but my condition was not going to deteriorate further. I was able to think and speak (sort of) and feel impatient (then guilty for it). I dozed off into my narcotic haze counting my blessing that I was not a boy scout late of an SUV.

Russell, by all accounts, is showing great attitude, love, and determination each day. His future is uncertain. A master craftsman and furniture builder, co-founder of the Artisan's Gallery, labors on in rehab to master every day tasks. His great courage dwarfs any I might have summoned. Russell and those boy scouts - upstaged again, and grateful for it.

RIP William Morrison

William F. Morrison died yesterday. He invented the Frisbee, surely the cultural totem of our generation. Morrison had to sue to retain the rights to his invention, which I believe he copied from pie tins tossed around by college freshmen. The work Frisbee was imprinted on the bottom of the tin. If the toy had been invented in Cedar Rapids, it might have been named Kathy's Pies.

My friend Roger comes from a family rife with entrepreneurial spirit. They are successful car dealers and investors, always looking for the next thing. Roger's dream in college was to be the inventor of something like those little spring-loaded hands that everyone in the 80's suction cupped to their car window and imprinted with various slogans. "Honk if you love Jesus." "Baby on board." Roger's sense of irony attracted him to particularly worthless inventions that nonetheless catch on. He now owns a successful Honda franchise in Wichita. The irony, I suppose, is that although he is a success, Honda's are useful, and so his youthful ambition is ultimately foiled.

Morrison, and Wham-O!, working "together," if invention and subsequent theft can be described as cooperation, produced a toy that is wonderfully simple, even tacky. It has spawned any number of wonderful games (ultimate frisbee, disc golf. . .) and given many a boomer an excuse to run and throw and catch without being a "jock" about it. Some of us may have engaged in simultaneous recreational activities that were less than healthy, but we got our hearts moving and we found joy. My old pal and erstwhile musical partner Swinton and I used to spend hours throwing a big frisbee long distances over the lawns of the Oakdale campus, between tall oak trees, working up a sweat and taking intermittent smoke breaks of one kind or another. I cannot help but associate the frisbee with enthusiasm and youthful joy.

My friend Kevin's dog Truly is a champion frisbee catching dog, with several trophies. His teeth are worn down from grabbing and clenching hard plastic in mid air. Truly is a dog obsessed and although he weighs well over 100 pounds, he is so filled with motivation that he can fly. My dog, alas, is more obsessed with tennis balls and crotches than with frisbees, and so athough he has some neat moves in a closed course, he does not compete. At least, not until there is a competition involving tennis balls and crotches.

When I was a freshman living in Burge Hall in Iowa City, my friends Brad and Nick threw the frisbee down the long narrow hall of our dormitory floor. This required a strong, straight side-arm flick that I never mastered. It was very impressive, and we all got used to peeking out of our doors cautiously in order to avoid being incidentally decapitated. Our RA tolerated it amicably until the second time an errant throw shattered a light fixture, something even Brand and Nick could not manage on purpose. Compared to many of our other Burge Hall activities, this was good clean fun. (256 false fire alarms during our first semester . . . the "mercy day massacre" culminating in the frat house across the street with all its window broken out by frozen rock cornish game hens, courtesy the cafeteria work study folks).

My good friend Chris, leader of our pack in age at least, turned 52 yesterday, which means as surely as snow melts that I'll do it, too. I had a conversation last night with a young man who was worrying about where his life was going. He's 24 and I didn't laugh as I told him I still wonder the same thing sometimes. My accomplishments in life have been both tangible and evanescent. Our kids are certainly top notch people. I have been a good therapist and social worker. My friends and I have made some good music together, both literally and figuratively.

I wonder if Mr. Morrison appreciated that his invention was actually pretty profound. It wasn't just a toy that "took off," like the yo-yo and silly string. (There is a case to be made for the profundity of the yo-yo, actually.) The frisbee is an important part of three or four generations worth of lives. My son's favorite part of cross country practice is playing ulitmate frisbee on the fully lit football field after games. Generation after generation, the cheesy plastic disc marches on!

A man could do worse with his life. I'm just sayin'.

Early

There are times when I wake up very early and my mind begins to work. I begin to list things undone, concerns unresolved, to plan logistics and polish old stones and second guess when part of me knows I'd be better served by another hour or so of rest.

The solution, such as it is, is to get up, make coffee, read, and impose some order on my thoughts instead of letting them run amok.

And so I unpack my head. The psychoprofessionalbabbler in me points out that waking up early is a symptom of anxiety. My prefrontal cortex points out that I was recently on Eastern Standard Time and that I don't usually transition well from time zone to time zone, easily defaulting to the earlier one. When I was in Marin County a few years ago I found it impossible not to awaken at 5 a.m., even though we stayed up late and sleeping in was the rational thing to do. Desirable. Enjoyable, even.

Money. Another trip to Baltimore. More money. How is Walker going to get to work if I see clients and then rehearse with Will for the benefit we're doing? Is Mom really on Hospice's mythical 6 month slide toward home? I have learned not to trust predictions of mortality and yet she's clearly weaker and weaker. Is it acceptable to hope that her end is near? Chris told me the other day that I'm a good son, but it feels like I don't give her enough of my time, and simultaneously it feels as though she's already gone. Student financial aid forms and Caitlin's tuition. Jeff's birthday party Saturday night will be important to attend. Robyn will be gone on a well deserved girl's weekend so how can I go when I'll already have been gone all day? Money. I need a work out. My son went out to supper with an inspirational speaker from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Am I going to have to hire a deprogrammer? What if he becomes all Fundementalist and Inspirational? Euthanasia? Not for Mom, mind you! I enjoyed a regular evening dosage of Scotch in Baltimore. Moderation dictates I go without alcohol for a while. In fact, my cortex points out, the temporary (I assure myself) increase in dosage may account for some of this funk. On the other hand, an early morning Scotch. . . No! No! No! Change the brake light bulb on the Rabbit. Replace the parking light assembly on the Honda. Fix the leaky plumbing in the dining room ceiling, although the hole in the ceiling and the glass underneath to catch the drips have become a permanent part of our decor. Scrape the driveway down to the pavement before the next snow. Call the eye doctor to see if my new glasses came in at 4 then race to get them before 5 because I can't get them Saturday. I have to see clients. But not until 11 so I guess I could squeeze it in. God, I can't wait for my new glasses. The old ones have me cross eyed. Not my best look. Robyn looks so sweet. I wonder if I just tickled her a little. . . . Moving from euthanasia to suicide, eh?

Coffee, the New Yorker and New Republic slowly fill my mind with orderly, reasoned discussions of events. After a while, Robyn stirs, never knowing how close to an amorous assault from an early morning drinker she came. One more trip to Maryland next week and my travel adventuring will be over for the foreseeable future. An amazing number of the things I need to do I will do, each in its time, I suppose.

I trained some young people this week and they seemed to really enjoy it. The looked at me the way young adults sometimes do, as though I was wise and eloquent and responsible. I appeared to have negotiated my rites of passage, to have mastered the secret handshake, to have taken on the mantle of responsible adulthood. I was glib, entertaining, informative and highly caffeinated. That was a good day.

Which is real? Rolling around in bed careening through mental chaos me or eloquent, informative (almost Fellowship of Christian Athletes inspirational) me?

Yes and no.

Baltimore

I was a stranger in the city . . .

My buddy Chris called me the other night while I was lying on my hotel bed digesting seafood. I ate nothing but seafood while on the East Coast. It was so fresh and a Mid-Westerner forgets how much better fresh fish is. I have similar affections for Mexican food from locales where there is a real barrio.

Anyway, Chris said "you're traveling all over. This is like a real job, isn't it?" I'm helping another site that is currently in between counselors: assisting with interviewing, doing some training, and then orienting the new counselor a bit next week. The novelty of travel is beginning to wear off now after flight delays, time changes, early-bird flights out. It's good to be useful, though, and folks have been very hospitable, feedback for my training was good.

Baltimore has been hit with the poor economy and from the looks of it there may have been some issues when things were better. Caitlin assigned me the mission of finding Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes is the reality show), and when I asked around it turns out the location is a big fat secret. There is a false location on Google, but a picture on their web site said 30th street and a helpful check out girl suggested that I go to 30th via Highway 83, so I killed an afternoon driving around urban Baltimore. The 30th Street I found was in a pretty "downscale" neighborhood full of row houses, many of which were boarded up. Still there were people out pushing baby carriages and children running around. My social work street cred tells me that when kids are out it's likely to be pretty safe. Charm City cakes was nowhere to be found and I got good and lost a couple times. My blackberry has GPS and a map program, and so getting lost doesn't really carry the emotional punch that it used to. ("Oh my! I'm off my directions in a bad part of town, going in circles and my wife isn't here to blame!") I just hit the "update from here" button and I get new directions, also confusing, but somehow optimistic. The GPS is paying attention to me, at the very least. I was too busy driving in circles to get good photos of these neighborhoods but they were really interesting visually. Think of hundreds of identical 1920's row houses marching up either side of a narrow street, each porch a small variation on the theme, slight variations in trim, but overall a sense of geometric harmony just short of monotony. Some streets are boarded and sad, others show signs of life, care, and a sense of carrying on.
Baltimore's Inner Harbor is more polished, more of a destination, and I got out and ate some (guess what!) lunch at a seafood joint with a great view. I get the sense that on a sunny day this area might light up with people and events and be a very pleasant place to spend time.








I am interested in urban landscape and would like to get a better view of the industrial part of the harbor. It makes me think of T.S. Eliot.












Gulls are, of course, ubiquitous.















In my pursuit of signs, I found this amusing. I was feeling okay about my life, but had I been feeling otherwise, I suspect I could have availed myself. . . .











I'm not absolutely certain of this, but I think this little person in the cross walk identifies where some poor soul got squished. He's made out of the same stuff the crosswalk lines are made of, and I saw a couple of these. Someone was a bit too far from the life ring, I suspect.

I'm going back next week. I'm now a jaded traveler, making love to my electronic devices in the relative safety of the travelers' zone, all of us vetted by TSA, hermetically sealed off from danger, at the mercy of whatever pilot refuses his jet, the latest storm, the recycled air of the pressurized cabins where every sneeze reminds you that we're all recycling each others respiratory minutiae.

Chris asked me if I was lonely, and until he asked I really wasn't. I like some time by myself and I don't mind finding things to do alone for a while. Right now I'm glad to have spent the night cuddled with Robyn, to have hung out with Caitlin and Walker, to have had my early morning with Tye the wonder dog, always ready for his morning love and his slimy dog toy. Back in my own life ring.