Friday, May 27, 2011

The End

Even though there were predictions to the contrary, as far as I can tell the world did not end on Saturday, May 21st. Although on the following day the world did end for many people in North Minneapolis and Joplin, MO when tornados roared through and took their lives. For the rest of us, life on Earth kept going – for good and bad, I suppose.

Anyone guessing the correct date and winning the “end of the world” sweepstakes seems unlikely, but I do think it serves us well to hold this contest every few years. When the last day is fixed on the calendar, correctly or not, it shifts one’s thinking. Even though I never really believed that the world had been stamped “BEST IF USED BY MAY, 21 2011” I began to number my days.

I suppose it would be terrifying and even paralyzing to know with certainty the exact day of either your own demise, or of all creation. But just knowing that day is out there somewhere in the future can sharpen your focus.

The number of years each of us has is somewhere this side of 100 years (with some exceptions of course). For me I have used up about half of that number. If I have anything to say about it I would like to live to be 100, so that means I have about 49 left to get things done before the drop dead date.

I suppose I should have a to-do list: Get closer to God, mend fences with friends and family, read and write, take better care of myself, and leave a legacy. But with almost 50 left it seems like I have plenty of time – no need to rush into anything.

But what if it was less? What if I knew I had only 10 years left? I suppose I would grab a snack, sit down and watch some TV while I mull over my limited time. After I wake from my nap I would make a list of things I want to accomplish, people I want to see and places I want to go.

Not much of the day-to-day would really change though. I would still have my responsibilities: go to work so I can pay my taxes. With a full ten years ahead of me there doesn’t seem to be a pressing need to make any big changes.

I guess I operate best if I work under pressure – if I have a deadline I can really focus. To continue with this morbid line of thinking allow me to sharply reduce the number. Let’s say instead of the world ending May 21, imagine that it’s May 28. Now things get interesting.

Apologies, relationships and eternity all become very important when the days are numbered. With only a few days remaining I wouldn’t even go to work (unless it was to pick up my check). Material possessions would quickly lose their luster and become almost meaningless. Phone calls, letters and one-on-one conversations would rule the day. My dog, Buddy, would certainly get the walk he deserves.

As I see it, the trick is to go through life and take care of your responsibilities while focusing on the important and the eternal. When time is short, friends and family matter the most. How much time do you have left to make things right?

I predict my life; my world will not end in a week. On the contrary, Saturday, May 28th, 2011 is just the beginning for a young couple. On that day two people will begin life together and build their world. My daughter Jennifer is getting married to Adam (there I said it). As my wife, Rhonda, said, “Others must carry on for us.” Someday, Lord willing, they will bring our grandchildren to visit and the world may continue.

Congratulations Jennifer and Adam!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Iron Men

Some people read in bed before they fall asleep, some read to hasten sleep. I love to read but I find it almost impossible to read in bed, for as soon I lay my head down I can feel consciousness slip away.

I even have to be careful how I sit in a chair. But if I have the window open I can stay awake for a very long time. As I lay there with my eyes wide open I watch the window shadow spirit across the wall in its nightly race with the rare traffic on the avenue, and I listen to the sounds of the night.

Mark, my college roommate of four (or was it five) years, liked to have a window open – even in January. I liked having a fan on, he had a humidifier going during the dry winter months. Looking back on I can’t believe neither one of us didn’t get sick. Sleeping in a room with cold, wet air being blown about should have got us two beds in the hospital for pneumonia.

This has been a tough May for many things, including sleeping with the windows open. My father, who was pretty well acquainted with the old ways of thinking, would, on a cold day in May, talk about the “Iron Men.” These “Iron Men,” referred to three days in the middle of May when frost is likely. I remember them coming around sometime between May 15 and 17 (of course I could be off by a day or two one way or another). Dad may have picked this fun fact up from his Czech (or, if you prefer, Bohemian) relatives, or from a conversation with a member of another European clan. I just wish I could know for sure which three days he was referring to so I could be ready.

Other nationalities refer to the three days as the “Three Ice Men,” and have them arriving earlier (May 11th – 13th). For them, these three days coincided with the feast days of three saints. In some countries one or two feast days, with the respective saint, was replaced with one or two other holy days and moved down the calendar. And yet still others believe that the middle of June is the proper place to be on the lookout for frost that is both unseasonable and completely unreasonable.

Whatever the three days are their threat of frost is testing my mettle. I so want to open the windows and listen to the sounds of the night filter through the screen.

As a boy growing up on Church Street in the days before central air conditioning, I could lie awake for what seemed like hours and listen to the night life. Sometimes I would hear my father talking to Donald, our neighbor, or it could be kids still playing outside who were either older or had a later bedtime than me. And every night the train and the trucks called me to ride along.

The other night I opened the window as I climbed into bed after midnight. It was still too cool, but I was growing impatient. On Harlow Avenue I can still hear the wheels click on the rail and the tires whine on the highway. The train whistle is carried up from the valley and begins to lull me to sleep, but not before I hear the sound of gravel crunching underneath shoes.

Am I dreaming or is someone walking on the road outside my window? A chill goes through my body. Have the Iron Men come?

Friday, May 13, 2011

Food Chain

I have lived in small towns, big cites, suburbs and far outside the city limits. Each has its advantages. Which is better? You may as well ask which came first, the chicken or the egg. But when you live in the country you live more closely with nature and by doing so you must find the balance between contentment and control. You can choose to live like Thoreau at Walden’s Pond, or you can throw up fences and drain the pond.

In my attempt to find a spot somewhere in the middle I have chosen to soften nature’s harsh realities while trying to commune with it. My one-hundred-year old farm house (with the three-year old addition) heats me when I am cold and cools me when I am hot, but outside its walls there is life and death.

The food chain gets rattled once in a while around my home. From the fields, woods, and skies come snakes and frogs, mice and voles, rabbits and squirrels, muskrats and skunks, owls and hawks, foxes and coyotes. They all compete for survival. And despite my best efforts the carnage will sometimes spill over into the farmyard.

Given to counting heads I can say with some certainty that we never shared a cow, horse, sheep or goat with a predator. We have however, been more generous with our smaller stock. Predators usually come at night, although sometimes the slayer will come calling during the day.

As I pulled into the yard one afternoon something seemed to be amiss. An osprey had dropped in for a chicken dinner. I watched with rapt attention knowing since there was nothing I could do for the dead bird, I may as well enjoy the live one.

But I am not always so willing to stomach uninvited guests; I will usually grouse
about the pilfering of poultry. One summer we kept a paddling of ducks in a wading pool.Not wanting to have these messy birds muck up the barn we thought it better for all concerned to have them quack about freely in the barnyard. But we hadn’t concerned ourselves with raccoons.

At night the ducks started to disappear. This went on until I put Max, our 90 lb. German shepherd, inside the gate. He seemed to always know what was expected of him. The first morning I found a raccoon in a tree near the barn, the second morning Max came to the gate with bloody gashes near his right eye.

The ducks, which belonged to Nathan, were scheduled to go to the county fair as a 4-H project. Nathan and I talked about it and concluded that saving some dumb ducks wasn’t worth losing one of Max’s eyes.

Fortunately the raccoons never came back for the ducks. But a weasel was more tenacious. Although I never saw him, the slaughterhouse he left behind inside the barn provided ample evidence. He removed heads and filleted bodies. Ignoring live-traps and closed doors he decimated our chicken and pigeon population. The research I did told me that if I didn’t catch him he wouldn’t stop coming until the last bird was dead.

I kept a loaded shotgun next to the bed and a baby-monitor in the barn to alert me. But still I could not catch him, so I resorted to something I had never done before: leg traps.

I built heavy wooden boxes with small holes on one or both ends (I experimented). Placing the boxes over the baited traps I would place a concrete block on top so a cat or dog could not trip the trap. I even baited one live trap with a live pigeon (she was protected by a wire mesh wall I had attached to the inside).

I was out walking my trap line one morning after about a week of cleaning up dead birds inside the barn (the pigeon in the trap survived). One of the leg traps had been sprung. The weasel never came back.

Somewhere out there a weasel may have an injured leg, but I have to set my priorities. For after all what comes first, the chicken or the leg?

Thursday, May 5, 2011

May I

On the last Friday in April I did something I have never done before: I took a long lunch and went to a movie (including the previews) by myself. Now before you start congratulating me for my bravery it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m sure there are others who routinely have the popcorn all to themselves, that’s just never been me. I guess I’ve always considered “going to the movies” a social outing that is best shared with someone. The person who recited “one, please” seemed, to me, forlorn and forgotten. As I don’t want to consider myself either of these I hope I was wrong.

I have been to a bazillion movies, sometimes several in one day. One summer day I, and two of my friends, went to five movies in one day (three of them were at a drive-in). But I don’t think I have ever watched an entire movie from title to credits by myself – not even at home.

The movie, “Atlas Shrugged,” was pretty good. I liked the book better though. At 1,168 pages it took me awhile to get through it. But it didn’t take me nearly as long as “Lassie and the Mystery at Blackberry Bog.” At 282 pages, that book, a present for my 8th birthday, took me a full year to read. I read it once more recently and was able to stretch it out again for a whole year – for old times’ sake.

I would like to do that with my life: slow it down, revisit my favorite parts, set it down and savor it. This year, for selfish purposes, I’d like to slow the whole month of May down.

This month I will watch (hopefully from a good seat) Nathan receive his college diploma in his cap and gown; this month I will sit in the front row and watch Jennifer stand on the altar in her wedding gown. I know I’m not the first man to see his son graduate from college or his daughter get married, but to have both of these happen inside of one month (May) may be more than I can handle.

As I have watched my kid’s lives unfold I have been able to foresee where both of their storylines would lead – I just never considered that they would happen so close together. The student becomes a teacher and the single woman a wife. The plot thickens. This May I may lose my mind.

I know I’m being selfish, but as the co-producer, assistant director, writer-in-residence, and sometime choreographer, I’d like to say “All right everyone let’s take it again from the top, and this time let’s slow it down.”

Life goes by too damn fast.

Nathan is ready to graduate and Jennifer is ready to get married. Both of them have done their homework and have learned their lessons. It’s time for both of them to take the next step. For all of us life is changing in a big way.

For 26 years I was the man in my daughter’s life and she lived under my roof; for the past 21 years, one or both of my children were in school. I have loved both of those supporting roles. It has just occurred to me (at this very moment – which is why writing may be more important to the writer than the reader) that my role as a father is also changing, and rather quickly. Thank you Captain Obvious. I may need to study my lines for the new part.

This month, I am going to do something I have never done before, but I won’t be sitting by myself. Rhonda, my wife and their mother, will be there too. Be sure to watch this space for reviews of the events as well as previews of coming attractions.

Pass the popcorn please.