25 Random Things About My Father

I mentioned once before, just in passing, John Eldredge's claim, in Wild at Heart, that every man is wounded somehow by his father. I implied in that earlier post that such wasn't the case with me. Today, Father's Day, I want to state it outright.

I do not believe I suffered any psychic wounding at the hands of my father, ever.

Honestly, that's no small claim. I've watched other men and their dads. I've watched women and their father's too. I had acquaintances long ago that couldn't return home when they left the Air Force Academy they hated because their fathers told them not to come home if they quit. I had a so much more than friend, who will likely read this, who went there for a year, because her father told her if she would try it for that long, he would foot the bill for college elsewhere--she did; he did not. I've heard fathers say things to children in public that made my heart ache.

I had and have the best father I know. I know a couple more who are right up there with him (my new father-in-law among them), and I have friends who think or thought the same of their fathers. We are lucky people, those of us in this club, and today is a day we celebrate that luck.

Not all that long ago, I posted 25 Random Things About Me. Today, I'm going to take a shot at publishing another 25 about him. Wish me luck.

25 Random Things About My Father

1. He has taken up the drums. At least, he bought a drum set months ago, and for a while at least, he was playing them. This is especially interesting to me because a little less than four years ago, I took drum lessons for a short while. Neither I nor my father knew this about one another, which is a good segue to the next point:
   
2. My father's life has mirrored mine in so many ways that it's genuinely eerie, especially romantically. I could elaborate, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.
3. I suspect my father of being a closet adrenaline junkie. He owned a motorcycle from the time my parents split up until well into his second marriage. And he was, after all, a volunteer fire chief for over a decade.
4. When I left for the Air Force Academy, over three decades ago, the last thing I remember him saying to me as I walked out of Charlotte's Douglas Airport to climb the stairs to a waiting jet, other than, "I love you," is, "If you get there and you don't like it, son, you know you can always come home." It put staying there all on my shoulders. No expectation, no threats, no rebellion value in leaving (not that I ever felt any need to rebel). It made it possible to stay even during the months that I hated it most and seriously thought of leaving. Having options makes almost any task less onerous.
5. In all the years of my youth, he gave me only one spanking I hadn't genuinely earned. That one time, he was acting on misinformation from my Sunday school teacher. I didn't forget, but I didn't really hold it against him either. I just never liked that teacher much after that.
6. I've seen him pitch nearly perfect games of horseshoes. At Five Forks ball park in China Grove, NC, I watched him and Lee Smith, on their way to winning first place in a church league, throw ringer after ringer from one end to the other. It was awe inspiring.
7. He taught me gun safety at an early age, and how to shoot birds on the wing, to drain a rabbit's bladder before putting it in your hunting coat, how to build a rabbit trap, and how to enjoy the beauty of good bird dogs working a field.
8. He also taught me, by example, to think of all men as equals, at least equal in worth and rights, vehemently disdaining all the petty prejudices that so many fathers so sadly wean their children on. The stories in this regard are almost legend and fodder for longer posts at a later date. I'll simply say here that had Harper Lee known him, and if you knew him and her novel, you would think him her model for Atticus Finch.
9. He blames a long tour in Alaska, at Gambell Air Base, on St Lawrence Island, for the early loss of his hair. His seven brothers each kept theirs most of their lives.
10. His children have always come first in his life. Whatever other ambitions he may have had, I truly believe that being a good father was the ruling goal of his existence. God knows, he put up with more, and sacrificed more, for our sake than any other man I know would have.
11. Right behind Atticus Finch, the character from fiction that he is most like would be Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry. He was, for all practical purposes, the unspoken mayor of the small town in which I grew up. Smaller than Mayberry.
12. He can teach anyone to waterski and he was always good at it himself. For the most part, when anyone learned to waterski with us, they learned to slalom, right out of the gate.
13. He plays a wicked game of hopscotch. He always played with us on the shore during our annual vacations at Windy Hill Beach, SC, and I have since played more than a few times with my own daughters.
14. He loves tractors. He may think we haven't caught on to that, but he does. I'm not entirely certain there isn't a frustrated farmer trapped in him somewhere.
    
15. His two greatest shots in golf may have been his hole-in-one and his blind eagle. The hole-in-one was so dead on that it bent the base of the pin going into the hole. In basketball lingo, he "stripped the net." His blind eagle I was there for--a par-four on which he'd hooked the ball into the adjacent fairway, hiding the green from him behind a set of pines dividing the two holes. He hit the ball over the pines on his second shot and into the hole. I found it there. He was still looking everywhere else.
    
16. His dedication to golf during my youth was such that my youngest sister once recited the days of the week as, "Sunday, Monday, Golfday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . " He worked all day on Saturdays until he retired, but only half a day on Tuesdays. He is as good a golf coach as he is a ski coach. I should have tried out for the golf team at the Academy instead of wasting my time with track.
17. He would still like to learn to fly. He says he's let that ambition go, but I think I know better.
18. He can fix or build just about anything.
19. So far as I know, he has never cultivated any of the vices that other men, including myself are prey to. He doesn't swear, drink, or smoke, and yet he doesn't begrudge other men those "pleasures." I think he is simply cautious of the genes he carries, having had a father, grandfather, and more than one brother for whom these things were problems.
20. He is fiercely and poignantly patriotic. I remember him once calling me to the window over our kitchen sink, pointing to the flag flying at the fire station he helped found about a quarter mile away, and saying, "Isn't that beautiful?"
21. In our family business, he was all about Total Quality Management and focusing on the customer long before TQM became a watchword for the rest of the world. I remember trying to figure out what the fuss was about when the Air Force tried to institute TQM because I had always thought those principals were common knowledge. I've learned better since.
22. He is a true gentleman--gentle and yet fiercely strong. He is always polite. He opens my stepmother's car door, holds her chair, helps her with her coat.
    
23. He's more or less ambidextrous. He plays sports left-handed, yet he writes right-handed. It makes him very handy to have around when your ball is up against a tree and you really need a left-handed club to swing.
24. What he lacks in distance these days, he more than makes up in accuracy. I've been able to outdrive him since college, but I've never outscored him on the links.
25. I love him. I admire him. And I still want to be like him when I grow up.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Dream Team Baby

Hard to believe it's been more than 18 months since I first mentioned the Dream Team on this blog. They were getting cranked up then, and I had every confidence they would be a success. Now they've really hit the big time. This morning, long time friend, Conner Herman, and her partner, Kira Ryan, made an appearance on NBC's Today show. You have to love it when good things happen to good people.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

A Tribute to Moms

Recently, I had the fun of being cc'ed on an exchange between a young mother and her aunt. Today's the perfect day to share that exchange, only slightly altered to protect the innocent. ;-)

First, the aunt sent the following:

Just in case you are having a rough day, here is a stress management technique, recommended in all the latest psychological journals. The funny thing is that it really does work and will make you smile.

Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream, and you're naked.

Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.

Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.

No one knows your secret place.

You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.

The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

The water is so crystal clear that you can easily make out the face of the person you are holding underwater.

There! See? It really does work. You're smiling already.

Funnier still was the response:

I could use this little meditation you sent below, Aunt Libby. Here was my day:

I was angry because I lost a potential client today and it would have been a very nice check. Then I came home, pilled the dog, took the dog with me to get Jack from school because she gets lonely and had been in her kennel all day. She might pee in the house otherwise. I then took Jack and Emma for coffee and flower-buying, got home to find that the dog barfed all over the back of the car (choose your battles) because I gave her the pills on an empty stomach, Jack cried because I was outside cleaning it up, so I brought him out so I could finish without having to deal with his crying. We came inside to cook dinner and do homework. Jack was dancing in circles loudly and I was trying to read a webpage aloud to Emma over all his yelling, then he wet his pants and had to change clothes. He wanted my help only and refused to cooperate with his sister. More yelling, this time, not playful yelling. Naked Jack. Finally Dressed Jack. Dog distressed because Jack was too loud for her to eat in peace and his toys were in the way of her dish. Finally dinner, then outside again. We tied the dog to the porch. Planted flowers with Emma, Emma was dancing around in a panic over ant piles, I was coordinating kids, digging, and spoons (we have no shovels). Meanwhile, the dog knocked over flower pot on front porch and it turns out to be ant-infested. Ants everywhere. Soil everywhere. Plants knocked out of the pot. Bad Husky! In the middle of all of this, Jack peed in his pants AGAIN. He was standing on the porch naked from the waist down and flagging his underwear over his head yelling, "All DRYYYYYYYYYYY!" while neighbors walked by-- one of them was pregnant. I told her, This will be you. We finished planting. Emma went to water the new flowers we planted and got the dog's leash tangled in the hose. In the middle of all of this, I start using "Damn!" and you can imagine why. Untangled the dog, convinced Jack to get his own clean underpants on, took the hose from Emma who wanted to turn this into a Wet and Wild Water Event as opposed to Help Mom Before She Shoots Us Event. Finished watering the plants, cleaned the porch, and restored the pot to an upright position, scolded the dog who took a major clue and found a place to lie down and watch the action, rounded up the kids, walked the dog for her nightly poop. Jack walked holding his penis the entire time and when we ran into a neighbor, moved the grasp from his penis to inside his underwear (he just had on that and a shirt by that point) and proceeded to pull out a massive wad of Husky hair from between his cheeks, I don't know how. I just don't. We made it back to the house, ran the bathwater, children's father called four times in a row because he is a pain in my @#$ and refuses to believe that ONE phone message might actually be enough, Emma had left the shampoo bottle on its side and it congealed in a big sticky mess in the tub, Emma left god-knows-how-many messages for Chris while I am bathing Jack-- (apparently she learns this trait from her father??) kids in bed, Mom tired, dog sacked out in the hallway like she did all the work.

The scary part? This is pretty much EVERY day. Some kind of chaos, every day.

Thank God for Moms! It's a wonder they allowed us to live or didn't just sell us to the highest bidder.

Why My Father is Still My Hero

Almost every young boy's father is his hero. For some, it sadly wears off when they learn to think for themselves. Not for me. And it probably won't for Demitri's son either. I'll offer two videos on this theme today.

House on Fire

The older I get, the more amazed I am by my Dad. The first video comes from an unfortunate structure fire that happened in my home town back in February. The video is long and probably not something you want to sit all the way through, but if you do, notice this: the house is only burning at one end--the fire, if I remember correctly, began in the garage. Wouldn't it have been nice if the firefighters had gone in the house from the end that wasn't on fire and pushed the fire back toward its source? That's what they used to do back in the 1960s and 70s, back when my father was chief of the department he helped create and make one of the very best in the state, probably the country.

But no, in this case, they don't do that. They do two things I used to hear my dad lament so many other departments did back then. First, they start by setting up a stream of water onto the roof. Precious water. Dad learned to fight fire back when hydrants were rare. The water you brought was the water you had, and you certainly didn't waste that water by soaking down the one feature of every house dedicated to keeping water out--the roof. Secondly, they attack the fire from the burning end. That's intuitive. See fire, spray water on it! So the instinct goes. But wait. Imagine if they'd gone in from the other end, protecting what hadn't burned yet, and forcing the fire back whence it had come. Novel idea? Not during Dad's day. That's how they did it. That's how they saved more homes than some nearby paid departments. You'll find the video and article here. And you can watch and cringe as they herd the fire from the buring end right out the other side.

Lord of the Dance

The second video comes from Britain's Got Talent. It'll start your day with a smile. And the embedding was disabled for it, but you'll find it here. It's worth a watch. Enjoy.

There She Stands, and The Gratitude Campaign

Veteran's Day has passed, but not without two moving e-mails from friends, both coming with videos.

The first video comes from perhaps the first girl I ever kissed, too young even to remember (though I do have this vague memory of sitting on the parsonage steps holding her hand), but reminded of it often enough by my mother to think I do. She has a beautiful family of her own these days, and looking at a photo of her, her husband, and their children recently, I know myself well enough to know that if her daughter's face is any bit a reflection of her own at an even younger age, she likely did steal (and just as likely break) my too young heart. How fast time flies.

The second I'll offer here because, newly retired, it's time for me to start saying "Thank you" to those who remain in uniform, carrying on the job I no longer have the privilege of doing. It hasn't been that long though, just over a month now. And it hasn't been three days since someone saw the parachute team sticker on my rear window or the HALO plate on my front bumper and said "Thank you for serving" to me. Even now, retired, the thank you's come.

But really, it's my turn to say thank you for younger hearts, stronger arms, even greater sacrifices than were ever asked of me or my family. If you've known me long, you know I think we ask too much, these days, of our young troops. Not as a nation, for I think the public is grateful in a way never before seen. But the people in Washington, the people running the war, the people making the decisions . . . they ask far too much with too little appreciation of the cost.

So if you have the chance to say thank you, do. I will. And if you ever think it doesn't matter, think again. It moves them, it moved me, often, to hidden tears.

The video can't be embedded, but if you'll click here, it will take you to the short movie. It's worth it. And I owe thanks for this to a newer but equally dear friend in the Pacific Northwest.

On the Opinion of our Peers

Two observations and a story.

Observation 1:

First, it occurs to me that a healthy disregard for the opinions of our peers is something that some people never develop. Oh, they matter. But only sometimes and in regard to some things. I think I'm known for speaking the truth. That matters to me. It doesn't matter to me that I'm known for doing so somewhat indelicately--what one unfortunate supervisor whom I revere to this day as the finest officer under whom I ever had the honor to serve referred to as "poking sticks at snakes." "But they're snakes," never seemed to answer the mail on that. I've gotten better though, more choosy about my battles. Still . . . >-)

So, in some respects, I do care what people think. Should they ever think me dishonest, cruel, ill-spoken, etc, then I suppose I would admit the need to seriously examine my behavior. But, if the labels they're tossing my way tend more toward "nuts," "flippin' crazy," "completely out of his gourd," well, those are just reminders that I'm probably still a hell of a lot happier and better adjusted than they are. >-) (There are psychiatric labels for this sort of conceit, I'm sure, but I am more resistant to cure in this respect than MRSA.)

In my case, it took a long time for me to reach this place. In some respects, I often think my current disregard for the head-shaking of my peers (my best friends just cheer--it's one reason they are my best friends) is a sort of balancing of the scales. I cared, like most teenagers and young adults, way too much, for way too long about the illusive twins of approval and acceptance. Way too long.

Observation 2:

Which brings me to my second observation. It also occurs to me that, at least early in our lives, we tend to possess that healthy scorn for the approval of our peers in uncannily inverse proportion to our need for it. The person who is part of the "in" clique has more peer approval than he or she knows what to do with, so whether they care or not doesn't really matter.

The person who marches to the beat of Thoreau's different drummer though, that poor person has a real need for a numbness to criticism or even attention. You may be thinking, I'm sure, that such a person's eccentricities are themselves a sign of possessing that precious disregard, and rarely, you would be right. More often though, the gene of utter uniqueness isn't paired with either the gene of self-confidence or heedlessness. Doubly cursed, such a one is equally incapable of running with the crowd and of not caring where the crowd is going or that it notices her solo journey.

A Story:

Way back in . . . well, a while ago--the year I graduated from college actually--I gave Britney (unborn at the time) a run for her money in the field of short marriages. (Hang with me. It relates.) Right after graduation, I'd looked up a girl I'd been thinking of for no less than two years, but had never dated because when we'd met, she'd been the girlfriend of a fellow student and friend. He'd moved on and I moved in. We dated through my summer leave, kept the flames burning through the fall, and then I flew her to Sacramento for her fall break in October. After 10 blissful days, she wanted nothing so much as a proposal. I held out for a couple of weeks (well, maybe a week at least) after her return to Western Carolina before admitting to myself that there was really nothing about bachelorhood nearly so appealing as beginning and ending each day in the glow of her raven-haired, blue-eyed, Cherokee-cheek-boned smile. Had her continuation at school been certain, I'd not have considered it, but she was thinking that finances were going to force her to take at least a semester off. So I asked if she had plans the day after Christmas, offered a suggestion in case she didn't, and she said, "Yes, yes, oh yes." Yeah. Exactly like that. Like it was yesterday.

And so all was excitement. For a few weeks, maybe a month. Then, the opinions of peers began to kick in. Back on campus, in the dorm, on the court (she was "most athletic" in her high school class) she began to hear, "Why do you want to get married? You can have any guy you want. What are you thinking?" Had they known me, they'd have known what she was thinking. That 6'1" tanned blond guy in the flight suit driving the British convertible when he wasn't flying wasn't exactly hard up for options either. But, by the time Christmas rolled around, "Yes, yes, oh yes," had become, "How would you feel about waiting until June?" This, two whole days before a wedding to rival Princess Diana's. Hmmm. BOLDFACE: BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT!

But, I was, back then, among the most susceptible of humans to that despicable craving for approval and acceptance that this post is all about. I knew what I needed to do. It was, as they like to say in physics texts, intuitively obvious to even the casual observer. But the thought of attempting an explanation to all our friends and family who expected a blissful event in two days time was petrifying. And so, knowing it wasn't the right thing to do, I stood there as she came down the aisle, and I betrayed us both.

A week in NC visiting relatives. A flight back to California one week after the wedding. Last, "I love you," I ever heard from her in the airport in Louisville, KY, changing flights. Two weeks in Sacramento, growing distance, faraway looks, "What are you pondering there?" "Just thinking about what I'd be doing if I weren't married." "I'm afraid it was just that the, you know, was so good." October, inseparable. January, low-level, moved to the couch, unable to sleep with someone not wanting to be touched, and needing to sleep before days zipping along at 250 kts and 500 ft. Three weeks to the day after the wedding, a trip to the airport, and in the worst winter storm Sacramento had seen in decades, I sent her back home to NC.

It's still open for debate whether the dumbest thing I've ever done was on the day after Christmas or on that day three weeks later. But looking back, one thing about the whole affair that is clearer to me now than ever is the role played by an inability to ignore, disregard, brush off, rise above, and otherwise overcome the opinions of our peers, hers and mine. Her lack of immunity to those opinions had basically killed a thing of such intense passion that I long ago gave up the hope of seeing its like again. My own hypersensitivity to those opinions had allowed me to ignore her one brief plea for help, "How would you feel about waiting until June?"

The opinion of our peers. What do they know of our hearts? Of our choices? Of our fate? The objective value of those opinions is constant over time. What changes is our understanding of it. Our susceptibility to it. Our immunity to its influence. Until we can achieve that, we are ever likely to purchase acceptance and approval with self-betrayal. None of this, mind you, is meant to be chiding. These are observations only; not lessons. For those born susceptible to it--and God knows most of us are; I know I was--no amount of reading or schooling can impart the needed disdain. Only time and life do that, and even then, not always, not for everyone.

As I said, I'm busy balancing my own scales in that regard. That I'm also feeling a little déjà vu these days is sad, but I would be the last to condemn anyone I otherwise admire so much for a susceptibility I once sported myself in spades. At any given time in this journey, we each have just so much disdain to distribute. If we march to a different drummer in one corner of our lives, sometimes we need to keep step with our peers in another. We all choose battles. And for those of us able to take all comers if we so chose, sometimes there is more honor in ceding the field.

Ryan Blanchard, Chef Supreme

Every now and then, I'll mention Plate World Cuisine in a post. I have dinner there during happy hour a couple times a week, or sometimes, just stop in for a beer at the bar and conversation with a friend. I can't ever say enough about the phenomenal quality of the food. Phenomenal.

Ryan Blanchard is why. So here's a link to an article from this past Wednesday's Gazette and a teaser to tell you what it's all about. Enjoy.

Ryan Blanchard is no Emeril Lagasse, at least when it comes to being a bombastic, flamboyant, larger-than-life celebrity.

But he might be every bit as talented where it counts: in the kitchen.

Tonight, Blanchard — executive chef at Walter’s Bistro and Plate World Cuisine — will prepare a six-course lobster-themed meal at the esteemed James Beard House in New York City, an invitation-only gig extended to the top cooks in the U.S.

Few chefs get even one invitation. This is Blanchard’s second in three years, but he’s not one to broadcast the achievement. He’s modest and soft-spoken, and can’t believe his good fortune.

“I was really surprised the first time I was invited to the Beard House,” Blanchard says. “I never thought I’d be invited again, but when they read about my lobster-themed dinners I was doing at Walter’s, they asked if I’d come and do one there. Of course, I jumped at the chance.”

All Grown Up: Always, Never, It Depends

Sunday's post was crafted from a post over at The Archer Pelican and my comment to it. Seems only appropriate to pair it, a day later, with an inversion of that genesis: a full post crafted from Phil's comment here. Confused yet? Simply put, Phil posted a long and thoughtful comment here--too long and thoughtful to let languish in the comments bin, where those who read this blog by e-mail subscription might miss it. Further, it invites an equally thoughtful answer, because it touches on a phenomenon I've given considerable thought over the years.

So, to open, here is Phil's comment from yesterday (I should also point out that Phil, sojourning in Mexico for the next few months, expands on his experiences there over at his own place, and if yesterday's post is any indication, I for one am looking forward to both the experiences he relates and to the deeper reflections they inspire):

Greetings from Merida MX, where I'm spending my first evening at the ultra-cheap apartment that will be "home" for the next few weeks. For the five previous evenings, I've been at the Nomadas Hostel -- in the company of people from ~12 different countries, ages 20 to 65.

A German 40-something commented that the 20-somethings touring the world for two months at 3 days per stop are simply taking an intensive course on how to misunderstand many different cultures. She may be right. But they are learning other things, too. Sometimes on their parents' dime (or Euro), sometimes on their own.

But to return to your original subject: two nights ago I was walking with two 60-something American women who were telling me about their own prosperous but troubled childhoods. The former deb from Philadelphia lived her entire childhood and much of her grown life living by her mother's rules and hating it. She knew she didn't want to raise her children in the same way, but some of it still happened. She's close now to one of her 40-something kids, but not to the other.

The Junior Leaguer's daughter from Texas never played by her mother's rules, though she inherited her mother's love for alcohol. Her only childhood memories of her mother's gentleness were from the times she was sick. Her mother would stroke her hair and give her some comfort and attention. Decades later when the mother was nearly dead, suffering from dementia and OCD/anxiety, the daughter remembered her childhood comforts and did the same for her mother -- stroking her hair and speaking gently. In those moments of the daughter's loving, the mother had her own few moments of lucidity and calm. "Good," she said. "Nice."

As for the kind daughter's own girls, they are also in their 40s, and are generally doing alright. All three generations have had their struggles with alcohol and drugs. But one thing different is that the younger two generations love each other actively and much, with few rules except for the one that says, "we will always hope for each other's good welfare."

When do we start seeing our children and their cohort as adults (and perhaps as "fellow humans")? Is it when we watch them acting like adults with each other? Or is it when we expect them to act like adults for us? Or maybe when we finally *let* them act like adults with us?

Working in mid-sized engineering firms throughout my 20s, I almost never worked with anyone younger than I who was also smarter and/or more knowledgeable. In my late 30s, I finally started meeting a lot of workmates in their late 20s or early 30s who actually had plenty of content-area knowledge (and sometimes also just plain brainpower) exceeding my own. It was honestly fun to start leaning on them for expertise.

Soon enough, it's going to start happening with my kids' friends. I'm glad to say that I'm looking forward to the change, not dreading it.

Oh, and to remember the other theme of the original post, I will do my best to hint nicely to the lucky kids just how good a job their parents have done. And I will do my best to be helpful to the kids whose parents aren't doing so well.

The paragraph I want to concentrate on is that fourth one up and that very interesting question: "When do we start seeing our children and their cohort as adults (and perhaps as 'fellow humans')?" It's a good question, when it has to be asked. The ideal answer may well be, "Always, never, and it depends."

Always

Always, because from infancy, my daughters' mother and I have tried to speak to our children as adults. "Because I said so," has not been in our repertoire. More than once, I expect, my children have probably wished it had been. That sort of arbitrary (on the surface) invocation of parental authority is easier to rebel against than the sort of careful reasoning and explanation my daughters were likely to encounter. When the youngest repeatedly questioned our unwavering prohibition of either child ever climbing onto a trampoline without us present (and once ignored that prohibition, proving that "the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice" by bouncing into view over her friend's backyard fence just as her mother happened to be stopped at a light on the other side of said fence), my answer was to print more information from the internet on the dangers of trampolines than any eight-year-old should really be subjected to. Really, "because we said so," probably would have been sufficient.

They are likely, those young charges, if they read this, to object that the sarcasm with which they were sometimes reminded of undone chores or rules of common civility violated was hardly "treating them like adults." And yet, it was. The employment of sarcasm assumes that the person spoken to knows and understands the issues at hand. Sarcasm is lost on the uninformed or uncomprehending. So, that I ever employed sarcasm was really a sign that I credited them with knowing better in the first place. Still, it's a mode of address I wish I'd used less often on the whole.

Nor can I remember there ever being a time when they were relegated to a "kid's table." From the days of the high chair on, they not only ate at the table when we had guests, but they were not discouraged from joining the conversation. The result was that, more than once, they earned the incredulity of some adults by the facility with which they could carry on an "adult" conversation. As those dinner guests were, more often than not, fellow professors, my oldest daughter, now in her first year of college, is wonderfully unintimidated by her teachers.

Now, more than ever, I converse with my daughters in this way, about so many things that my parents never discussed with me. I don't expect them to treat the things I say with the same veneration as the words of Moses just returned from the mount. But, I do want them to have a starting point for a deeper perception of many things. There are some lessons that must be learned "the hard way," but there are many I think I might have been spared if my own parents had been more open with me about some of their mistakes and regrets. If, by being carefully honest with my children, I can spare them some of those pains in their own lives, then I feel I owe them that.

Never

And yet, our children will always be our children, however mature they may be in intellect or age. And though we may treat them as adults, and we may recognize that their burdens and concerns are not so much unlike our own, still, there is within us (I hope) that feeling of obligation to shield and nurture. That they may no longer need nor want such protection is beside the point. And this eternal stewardship that bears no relation to chronological age is something they may never understand . . . until they have children of their own.

It Depends

And that brings me to the balance point where Phil's question really seeded the clouds of memory. As important a transformation as seeing our children as adults is, equally important is that day when they see us as human as well, not as infallible nor supremely confident nor fearless nor asexual, but simply human--struggling from day to day to get it right just like them, and as worried about what our children think of us as they are about what we think of them.

In judging the threshold of that awareness, I have nothing but my own perception of my own father and mother to go on. The key, I think, may be our arrival at an age that matches our first real memories of our own parents. And more important than reaching that age may be reaching it with awareness of reaching it. I was 29 when my oldest daughter was born--two years older than my father was when I entered this world. But I have no memory of him at that age. It wasn't until my early thirties, when I could remember my father in his own early to mid thirties, that I began, not infrequently, to perform a little mental exercise. I began to compare my own experiences and emotions to his, and to try to project myself into his grown up place in those memories whose neural storage units were formed in that child's mind. How would I feel, now, at this age which he was then, in that circumstance.

It has always been an interesting exercise, and rewarding. Each time, it has allowed me to see my father in new ways, to understand that this larger than life figure whom I had (and still do) idolized in so many ways was really just a man after all. That he was an exceptional man, I never lost sight of, but just how exceptional became all the more clear as I began to reach milestones in my own age that also marked milestones in his.

Around the age of 35, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be the principal creator and Chief of a volunteer fire department and rescue squad that really set the bar for such an organization, in our county and beyond. I could remember the arrival of the first pumper, the celebration around it, parked for the afternoon under the century-old pecan tree in our back yard. I remember thinking (as an adult looking back) what a huge responsibility he had, and how well he executed it. I was filled with even more admiration for his skills as a diplomat, his ability to lead without alienating and without letting the power of being in a leadership position go to his head.

Some five years ago, I was equally conscious of reaching the age my father was when my mother left our home. A couple years after that, during a Parent's Weekend at the college where I taught, I remembered that I was the age then that he had been when he came out for my own Parent's Weekend. He had seemed old then. He was, after all, my father. But, looking back, and thinking, He was then the age I am now, I could only think how young he was.

The point of all this, as the subtitle implies, is it depends. The age at which we can begin to think of our own parents as real people (if the operative mechanism I propose is really the key to such a thing) may depend, not on our age, but on the age they were when we came into this world. If that holds, then maybe the converse is true. Our ability to think of our own children as adults may depend, somewhat, on our age when they were born.

Then again, I don't really think so. At any age they are, we have already been that age, and with a little effort, we can remember how grown up we always thought we were. If we work at it, that's an exercise that can help us see both ourselves and them more clearly.

When do we begin to see them as adults? Always, never, it depends. The more we do though, the more I expect they will return the favor and see us, not just as "rents," but as people--the unique people linked to them in this lifetime by blood and by a love that no words can ever really explain.

Andy Olmsted

All day yesterday and not a post. Today I've been away from the computer and will be again in minutes, but I want to post a link.

A long-time blogger was killed in Iraq this week. Home was apparently here, in the same town where I live. I would have liked to meet him someday. Now that will never happen. But Andy Olmsted left a post with a friend for just such an event. And sad as it is, the post is worth reading. Few of the good men and women who have given their lives in war have taken advantage of such an opportunity to leave behind words to speak for them in their absence.

It's worth taking the time to read. A number of the people who read this blog on a daily basis will have read it already. Some of them have even posted links of their own to Andy's final words.

For my own part, I'll just contribute the following poem, which comes from Brian Turner's, Here, Bullet, probably the most moving book of poems I've ever read. I taught it in my college English classes to students all of whom would join Brian's and Andy's and my profession. The penultimate section of Andy's post, just before he begins to say farewell to his wife, made me remember this poem by Turner. Unlike Andy, I have had the good fortune to meet Brian, and share a long conversation over coffee. I'll have more to say on that later. For now, here is Brian Turner's "Sadiq":

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more. --Sa'di

It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend
it should break your heart to kill.

I think Andy would have liked that poem. I think Andy would have like Brian. I think they would have liked each other.

Godspeed, Andy. Godspeed.

Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jr.

In the course of attempting to find the proper term for the phrase, "These aren't the droids you're looking for," Barry (over at Enrevanche) and I discovered a common friend in our past. Friend, teacher, and mentor. Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jr's name appears on the title page of my bound MA thesis in the library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because if there is much value in it, he is largely responsible for it. And I have to say that he is largely responsible for more than that in whatever I may ever have contributed to any classroom in which I sat facing students.

Barry happened to witness our old teacher in what wouldn't even have been an atypical moment, as his quiet good sense reduced Bill O'Reilly to not much more than sputters. He was, in my recollection, one of the finest examples I've ever seen of the effectiveness of simply allowing the truth to do its own work against falsehood and wrong-headedness. The transcript of that exchange is available here, but I'll warn you that the hosting site is, rather sadly, on the side of O'Reilly, and posted the transcript by way of rebutting a Washington Post article (the link for which seems to have expired) that itself is written in admiration of Professor Kirkpatrick's exchange with the talk show host.

One of my own favorite memories of the man (and there are plenty to choose from) comes from a conversation we had one day, over lunch in the shaded courtyard of his Chapel Hill home, during a pause from the detailed attention he gave my thesis from start to finish. We were talking about the wonder of children's acquisition of language and he used a recent example from his own life to illustrate how idioms work, being constructions whose meaning is markedly different from what the literal meaning of the words might imply to a non-native or very young speaker.

The example centered around a recent train trip he had taken with his family, and while I'm sure I won't remember it perfectly, I think I can convey the gist. As the time to board the train approached, he had sensed the growing nervousness of his young son. He reported that when he finally pressed the young man as to the cause of his growing apprehension, the answer created one of those indelible memories that form the center of family stories to be told and retold, and also gave him an important insight into the nature of idioms. "If we're going to ride on the train," his son asked, "how will we get up there and what will keep us from falling off?"

I was deeply saddened to hear of his passing three years ago. 64 seems young to me now. If there is one thing abundantly clear in the recollections of him published in the faculty newsletter and the campus newspaper, it is that he touched every life he encountered with a depth that was rare and very nearly universal. I wouldn't even be surprised to find that, after a little time, the professor's words sank in through even Bill O'Reilly's professionally thick skull. Quiet truths, meticulously laid out and supported, have a way of doing that. And that, in itself, is probably one of the most important things I ever learned from Professor Kirkpatrick.

That, and how to make a really, really good tuna salad sandwich.

Andy McKee, "The Friend I Never Met"

While we're on the topic of music . . .

There were a couple great discoveries in my life today. The first was that I work side by side, every day, with one very talented musician. For months we've toiled together at righting wrongs, answering queries from inside the beltline, making life better for some, ending careers for others, and now and then explaining to people that nowhere in our job description does it say anything about protecting them from the justifiable consequences of their own poor judgement. It's only half in jest that people say IG's have no friends. But I digress . . .

Just yesterday, for some reason or other, I ended up introducing my co-worker to this blog, explaining that, for the most part, what I do with my ever dwindling spare time is write, here and elsewhere. This morning, when I arrived at work, he'd brought something to share in return: a CD of tracks he'd laid down at home. Turns out he plays just about anything, and his oldest son and friends sing. I ripped all eight tracks to my computer and let them play most of the day. You can even hear some of them for yourself at his MySpace page. It never fails to amaze me the talent that can surround us without our ever knowing.

The finding out, and the discussion that ensued, led to today's second cool discovery for me. At some point, we were talking about musical experimentation, and he mentioned trying alternative tunings on his acoustic guitar. I asked if he were familiar with Michael Hedges. Of course he was, and he asked if I were familiar with Andy McKee's "Drifting." As he began to describe it, I recognized it as a video a friend had sent me a link to a few months ago. Turns out my co-worker is working on learning that piece himself. To quote Keanu: "Whoa!"

So tonight, I looked the piece up on YouTube again. For about the next hour or so, I ran through most of the Andy McKee offerings there. Candyrat Records understands viral marketing. Owner Rob Poland posts high quality videos, lots of them, of Andy doing his thing. I will own several Andy McKee CDs very soon. For more than a quarter of a century, I've been a Michael Hedges fan. The video at the bottom of this post, "The Friend I Never Met," is McKee's tribute to Hedges.

I never actually met Hedges, but I did see him in concert. It was sometime between 1989 and 1991, and it was in the auditorium at UNC Chapel Hill. It was every bit as awesome as you would expect it to be. And though it was at least 16 years ago, Hedges gave our family a phrase that we've been using ever since. Mid-show he took a quick break to down a carrot juice on stage, following it immediately with a can of Coca Cola. His explanation, grinning, "It takes the purity edge off." And that's been our excuse ever since whenever the person having the tofu for lunch reaches over and snags a fry; or when standing on a Colorado hilltop, watching the sun set from well above any hovering smog I pull a cigar from my jacket pocket. You get the idea. "Helps take the purity edge off." Once you get the hang of it, you'll find it's a phrase that comes in handy to explain a lot. You can thank Michael Hedges. But, I digress again . . .

McKee is, quite simply, a rather incredible guitarist. And although Hedges had died in a car crash a few years prior to McKee's coming into his own, I think McKee is quite right to think of Hedges as "The Friend I Never Met."

In keeping with the theme of yesterday's post, and the post elsewhere that inspired it, I think the following exchange from an interview with McKee, conducted by InstruMentalCase.com (it's not a link, and I don't suggest trying to enter it as a direct URL because it's crashed my browser three times now), and published on the bio page from McKee's own website, does a pretty good job of capturing, from the musician's point of view, that mnemonic quality we've been talking about here and over at Enrevanche.

IC: Do you have any advice for aspiring young guitarists who want to make a living as a musician? (Other than, “upload some songs to YouTube!”)

McKee: Well, I actually just posted a blog on my Myspace page yesterday about this topic. The main point of that blog was to remind guitar players to not get caught up in the technical aspects of music. It's a good idea to try and become fairly skilled with your instrument of choice, but don't let it be your focus. If you are going to begin writing music, don't focus on the accuracy of your sweep picking, the speed of your alternate picking, or the skill involved in your tapping. Unless you want to write music that only appeals to other guitarists, then that's fine. But if you want to really touch people with your writing, your focus should be on expressing something to your listener. Something they will feel. That's what music is about.

So, without further ado, I give you a video, only one of many available over on YouTube, of Andy McKee, playing "The Friend I Never Met."

"It Ain't Conceit If It's True"

Way back in high school, in the Old North State, where Driver's Ed was (and still is) a required course and paid for through your taxes, I had a teacher who said basically two things that have stuck through all these years. One was, "I'll let you know when I quit rockin'," always said in response to, "All clear," at an intersection following a stop in which too heavy a foot on the brake caused too sudden a stop. Sarcasm, you see, is a tool in almost every teacher's bag. It stuck. Thirty-two years later, I remember Mr. Stikeleather as I patiently wait for my own daughter to master the gentle lessening of pressure on the brake that produces a smooth stop.

The other thing he was fond of saying whenever we young bucks gave him a hard time for his surplus of self-confidence was, simply, "It's not conceit if it's true." That stuck too, and oddly enough, I've had occasion to use it once or twice in my life.

It comes to mind tonight though, in a corollary form.

This is going to be, without a doubt, the most profoundly sad Christmas of my life thus far. (I'll not say "ever," because I know better than to tempt fate in that way.) I've been a little worried about myself lately, and about one of my very closest and dearest friends. I think, though, that Stikeleather's Maxim should serve to put my mind somewhat at rest, and likewise, the minds of my friends. I think that my cigar-chewing, Old Spice-wearing driver's ed teacher would argue that it ain't clinical depression if there's an acute external cause for it. We are entitled to our sadness, that close friend and I, even more thoroughly than our normally abundant self-confidence. She even more than I, on both counts.

I have held this post for days, wondering about the propriety of revelations so personal, both to myself and to, quite probably, the best friend of the opposite gender I am ever likely to know in this lifetime. But I am a great believer in the power of (insert your own word for it here). For some, the word is prayer--they credit the intensity of one person's supplications or the overwhelming volume of many simultaneous pleas with somehow bending the will of the Almighty to give divine attention to a mortal purpose that He might otherwise not have deigned to notice. I choose not to believe His purpose so malleable nor Him so needful of our efforts to direct His attention where most required. I choose, instead, to believe that our own wills and attention have power we are unaware of, and that our lack of awareness lessens that power not one whit. I believe that when many of us are concentrating on a single outcome--as when many people pray (genuinely, with great focus and earnestness) for someone's deliverance from a thing, be it sickness, addiction, or grief--that very real energies are contributed to bringing that outcome about. Call me a flake if you wish, but I will point out that no good Christian, Muslim, or Jew doubts the power of prayer to bring these things about through such efforts. The primary difference between my view of how it works and theirs is that I give both God and Man more credit than those who believe He can be thus bargained with. The result is the same, only the conception of the mechanism differs. I explain all of this because I am going to share what I do for a reason I will explain at the end.

In my case, the sadness to which Stikeleather's Maxim entitles me is grief for the end of a 20-year marriage. Even more than the disintegration of romance that causes my own heart to ache, I grieve the disintegration of stability and concurrent uncertainty about the future that weighs on my children's hearts. Every single thing in this holiday season that should be a source of joy is become a heavy thing instead, bathed in a finality that partakes of every memory back through two decades and shrouds each event or task in a pall far more bitter than sweet. Only one thing lessens that effect: because I knew a year ago that my oldest daughter would be leaving for school this past summer, I was aware even then of a certain finality about most events a full season ago--last time choosing a tree together as a family; last Thanksgiving all at the same table, for years at least. But I did not expect last year's yule to be even the penultimate Christmas morning waking under one roof. That, I expected to fend off a few more years yet, until marriage or engagement drug one or both of my children to some other hearth hung with stockings. But, it was that penultimate thing nonetheless, and that makes this one . . . sad.

But my grief pales, even in my own mind, next to my friend's. In a span of mere months--a span far, far too short--her healthy, active mother was diagnosed with a disease that my friend, the real doctor, knew would end her life. But used to being exceptional in every way, in no small part by virtue of coming from exceptional stock, my friend expected her mother, I know, to enjoy the generous end of that range oncologists give in answer to the inevitable, "How long?" But this time, it wasn't to be.

And because it came suddenly and in stark contrast to what I know she had expected, my friend is lost now, stuck in a place between worlds like Neo at the beginning of the final installment of The Matrix. There is the world that was but is no more. That world included a mother's comforting touch and voice and assurances--things even we nearly-half-century-old folk still need to lean on from time to time. And there is the world that will be, eventually, where my friend embraces her own assumption of that role, and recognizes that in every kind word or deed however small, in every child's injury attended, in every young mother's doubts assuaged, in every fine thing that she does for her husband that makes him aware of and grateful for her love, in every quiet secret, unrecognized as such, passed to her daughter or her sons about what it is to be a woman or a man, in every moment of considerate counsel, gracefully given or received with friends--in all these actions and moments, her mother lives on through her, and will live on through every life she touches. That world and her embracing of it, will be, but it is not now, not yet.

Now is the dark time, the lost time, the time of grief and inward wandering where all the things that she will one day recognize as her mother's continued presence are now the sharp and painful reminders of her too sudden and too new absence. This dark time, this place between worlds is a boundary that must be crossed. Even those who seem to deal with the loss of a beloved parent without passing through this valley eventually come back to it. The danger is in stopping, in looking back with such intensity and regret that one ceases to move forward to that brighter place where the person we loved so much and miss so much becomes, finally, a quality of the light in our smile, an overtone or harmonic in our laughter, and the breeze that rejuvenates our soul in our silences. Sometimes, making it through that valley requires more strength than we think we possess. It's those times when the prayers of all our religious friends and the concentrated attention of all our spiritual ones sustains us.

And that is why I'm sharing all of this here. For my religious friends, this amounts to a prayer request. For my spiritual friends, this is an invitation to focus your meditations on a heart that needs them. For my friends who are neither, this is an invitation to practice a new skill you may not have known you had. And it is not for myself I ask. There are gullies in my path these days, but few that I can't see over the edge of. My friend, though, is journeying through a darker vale with tall, steep sides, and I'm not sure the light at the other end is visible yet. Pray for her. Think of her. Send energy her way.

There was an episode of the original Star Trek titled "Requiem for Methuselah," which ended with Spock easing Kirk's grief through a mind meld and a single word, "Forget." I would not wish forgetfulness on my friend. What I would pray for, visualize, will into existence is not forgetfulness, but a different character of remembrance--one in which joy is the dominant emotion, in which the bitter no longer overwhelms the sweet, but serves as foil to deepen it. One which recognizes that remembering with joy is the greatest honor we can do those we loved and the greatest lesson we can teach to those we love still, for in doing so we school them on how to remember us, because our time will come, and sooner than we think.

Don't hesitate in this holiday season to reach out and touch one another. And I mean that literally. Shake a hand, wrap a friend in a full-bodied bear hug, hold a face in your palm while you tell someone that you love them. Life is short, and the only immortality we can be certain of is woven from the lives we touch.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I have never been so grateful for my friends as I am just now. Thank you all.

Sleep Now

I'm not certain I would ever have preferred any method of putting my daughter to sleep other than slowly swaying/dancing around our living room with her head nestled under my chin and me singing "Never Die Young" with James. But . . . there were those nights when I had to sit outside her door in order to keep her mother from going in to answer her heartbreaking cries of "Mooooooommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy." Hey, I don't know where that advice came from, and I'm not sure whether I was any more in favor of it than my wife. I think I was more like the crew that was tasked with lashing Odysseus to the mast and stuffing their own ears with wax. Only no wax for Dad, and don't think a father's heart is any less torn by those baby siren cries.

If only the Dream Team had existed then. With a mission of "Creating a World of Great Sleepers . . . One baby at a time," here's what they have to say:

We know how confusing it is to be a parent these days--especially when it comes to the "right" way to get your baby to sleep. When our children were born we read an exhaustive number of sleep books, tried almost every sleep method in existence and found ourselves with babies who were mediocre sleepers.

After we finally "figured it out" (and exited the fog of sleep-deprivation) we realized that helping your child be a good sleeper can be simple and anguish-free. So, we formed Dream Team and dedicated ourselves to helping other parents figure out their child's sleep. The result? Well rested, happy children and parents who feel confident, recharged, and connected.

If you have a baby between 4 months and 2 years of age, you should check out their web site. If your babies have aged out of that bracket like mine, you should check it out just to see the most brilliantly innovative consulting gig I've seen yet (and to lament how much easier your life might have been if only they'd been around then). Co-founder and very smart mom Conner Herman is a colleague from my blissful days in the graduate English program at U.Va., but something tells me reading The Canterbury Tales aloud in Middle English at bedtime isn't what this is all about. Check it out.

(And hopefully, John DeVille will appreciate the title's nod to his inferior-to-The-Matrix-but-still-interesting Dark City.)

Natalie Portman

I've been quiet for a bit. Not because I haven't been writing. I've been up late writing almost every night. But you can only write so much in so many different places or to so many different people. I started to title this entry "What I've Been Reading," and though this qualifies, I'll save that for a separate post.

Today's Parade contained a great little piece by Natalie Portman, titled simply, "What I've Learned (So Far)." Among those things she's learned was "Always Maintain a Sense of Hope."

Sometimes it’s hard to maintain a sense of hope. It’s impossible to know the outcome of anything: You have no idea whether the life you impact will go on to bring peace to the Middle East or will go blow up a building. All you can do is act with the best intention and have faith. Maybe it’s selfish, but I just don’t think it’s worth living if you don’t feel like you can change something. It’s a choice you can make: to have joy, to find joy and to spread joy.

I've spent much of my life being disappointed by pretty women with little depth. It will likely take me another lifetime or two to really learn not to expect physical beauty and internal beauty to be at least somewhat correlative. It's a lesson Ms. Portman doesn't really help with. Aside from being a talented actress (I've rarely come away from a film with her in it that I didn't think her contribution probably the most memorable thing about the entire effort--including the thoroughly depressing Closer, in which she held her own against equally beautiful and admirable Julia Roberts), she may be one of those rare people who's very existence makes it easier to believe in what she says. She makes it easier to hope that, in some cases at least, the two do go hand in hand.

Kaziah Hancock

A friend steered me to this video today. Her nephew, (an English major and fan of Blood Meridian, so clearly a man of impeccable tastes) is also a producer at MTV and working on some project involving this artist, who does incredible oil portraits of our fallen soldiers, at no cost to their families.

Enjoy.

In Memory of Randall Combs

"O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." Thomas Wolfe

I confessed recently to a close friend that, throughout my life, I've been blessed with better friends than I deserve, than I have ever deserved, than I am probably capable of deserving. That is still true. I open with that confession because I would never want the post which follows to lead any of those rare individuals without whose companionship my life would be simply barren to doubt for a moment their importance to me. "In Memory of" are words I pray never precede their names from my pen.

There are those for whom friendship is a zero-sum game. I am not one of them.

It has been seven years since The Friend of My Youth passed on. Judge Randall R. Combs shared nearly every formative adventure of my transition from boy to manhood. He was, in many, many ways, a better man than I will ever be. His obituary in the Salisbury Post couldn't begin to capture the man. The procession from church to graveyard was the longest most in our relatively small town had ever witnessed. To say that he was well known and respected stretches the limits of understatement. To say that he is missed, still, daily, is merely to acknowledge a void that can never really be filled.

I can at least say this. I did not have to regret, at the end, that I'd never told my friend what he meant to me. He knew. In memory of him, today, I want to offer here the text of the eulogy I offered at that service seven years ago, and to say, once more, I miss him. I miss him very much.

I’ve been to too many funerals for friends and acquaintances in the past few years and I’ve always wondered how someone who called the deceased his best friend managed to get through what I’m about to attempt. I’ve come up with a couple of answers. First, I’m going to keep in mind, that in all the years I knew Randall Combs, he never once felt sorry for himself, despite trials that would have defeated many of the best of the rest of us. And we, as Christians, all know where Randall is right now, so it’s not for him that we cry, but for ourselves, left here without him in our lives. So I’ll postpone self-pity for just a while yet. Secondly, I’m going to make the plea that the rowdy little boy in church made to the congregation as his daddy carried him down the aisle toward the back door. Ya’ll pray for me. Start now. Don’t wait until I get to the hard part, then if I make it through the little bit I want to say, we won’t have to wonder how.

Randall was my best friend. It’s that simple. I would have said Judge Randall R. Combs was my best friend, but that’s not the way I think of it, and that’s not the way it works. Randall, plain and simple, was my best friend. He was what Robert Penn Warren called The Friend of My Youth. “The Friend of Your Youth,” said Warren, “is the only friend you will every have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist any more, speaks a name--Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave--which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night . . . the Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you any more.”

The only false part of that is that Randall and I never reached the point of being strangers to one another. We could pick up a conversation after months of silence. We never lost touch with one another’s voices. Our last phone conversation began with his “Hello” followed by simply, “Good evening your honor” from my voice in Colorado, then “Well hello Colonel” from his end. Who doesn’t recognize in those greetings the wonder of two little boys in grown up bodies, amazed and amused by their own grown up titles.

“The child is the father of the man” says Wordsworth. You’ll hear more about the man from Steve Hammonds in a few minutes, and you’ve read about the man in every paper that serves our community. I want to tell you a little about the boy behind the bench. Randall was the least selfish person I have ever known. He was my best friend, and I’ll admit openly that I won’t presume to say that I was his. Some things are destined to be lopsided. Most relationships are. And I only know one person who ever gave as much to Randall as he did to all of us. God willing, I’ll come to that part.

I met Randall in 1974 as a sophomore at South Rowan High School. Through some quirk of fate we both chose same girl to be the unfortunate object of our competing affections. For the record, Randall got the girl. I got the best friend anyone could ever wish for. In high school Randall and I spent time on the phone with each other like a pair of teenaged girls, usually talking about a pair of teenaged girls. There was very little we didn’t share. Both of us went through the divorce of our parents, Randall just enough ahead of me to be more of a help to me than I was to him.

And this is as good a time as any to tell you that Randall was what God meant sons to be. Those of you who knew him also know that he loved his parents, both of them, but especially his mother, with whom he made a conscious decision to live, . . . he loved them both with an unconditional love that most parents can only pray for and dream of without ever expecting to see. Randall simply lived that love for his parents. If St. Peter stops Randall at the gate and goes down the list and holds him accountable for each commandment in turn, I can promise you that there will be no quibbling over the score on “Honor thy father and thy mother.”

I like to believe I played a small role in Randall’s becoming a judge. In our senior year, Randall and I filled the roles of opposing counsel in a mock trial in Ms. James’s Social Studies class. I don’t remember who won the case. I simply assume that if he won, it whetted his appetite for more, and if he lost, he must have resolved to seek vindication in the real world. We dressed the part for that trial, wearing our best (and only) three piece suits all day. Thereafter, we would call one another about once a month and one of us would say, “What do you think? Suits tomorrow?” And the other would say, “Okay.” And so, for no reason other than to be different, we would wear our suits and vests to school.

In 1977, before I left for the Air Force Academy and he for Wake Forest, we managed to steal the whole top half of a page in the Daily Independent by canoeing Lake Norman from Lookout Shoals Dam down to Cowan’s Ford. That’s about 24 miles of rowing. In the center of the page was a photo of the two of us, sitting together on a cooler, looking as cool as we knew how.

After graduation, we made the ritual trip to the beach together. We stayed at the Tryon Seville motel that year, and then returned there together like salmon every summer throughout our college years. Randall taught me to shag and we two taught our friend Dana to shag at Crazy Zacks in Ocean Drive. Dana, bless her heart, was another poor victim of our competing affections, but by that time we had learned, or mis-learned that the way to a woman’s heart was through disdain, and so we tried our hands for a day or two at who could appear most disinterested. When that failed, and having no inkwells handy in which to dip her hair, we took turns carrying her into the ocean, which terrified her, and dropping her there. We were college students by this time, but as the poet says, “the child is the father of the man”, and for the two of us, it was a long labor. Out of that summer was born a friendship that’s really hard to describe. Dana and I have decided that we now feel like a tripod with a leg missing, learning anew how to stand upright.

But there have been many times over the last few days that I’ve felt Randall still there and I’ve smiled. Last night, I knew that Randall was watching, sad, but immensely proud of Jessica as she stood by Donna and accepted the sympathy of so many people who were there because they admired him so much. Today, I felt him smiling and proud of Donna as she stood in his stead as witness to the swearing in of our newest district court judge.

And that brings me to one last story. Randall met Donna in 1984 while he was living in my townhome in Goldsboro where I was flying out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and he was interning in a law firm there. By the time I finally got to meet Donna, to hear her tell it, she was more than a little worried about that meeting. I’m going to tell you what I’ve always told Donna, which is another story within this one. While we were still in college, Randall was dating a girl who didn’t want to come to some picnic we were having because she didn’t think I liked her. I told Randall, “You tell her that I like her in direct proportion to how happy she makes my best friend.” Randall grinned, shook his head and said, “Well right now, you don’t really care whether she lives or dies.” And the unspoken rule for judging one another’s girlfriends became a spoken rule. Having explained the rule, I can now tell you, that Donna has been one of my very favorite people since the moment Randall met her. Of all the people who’ve shared his life, I believe Donna is the only one who’s given as much to him as he did to her. Of all my friends and acquaintances, I know of no one who married better than my very best friend. He was blessed with a wife whom he loved with all his heart, and blessed with two beautiful daughters of whom no father could ever have been more proud. And he was blessed with friends who looked to him to bring out the best in them.

A lot of friendship is timing. “The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you,” says the poet, “And perhaps he never saw you. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moonflower. It didn't matter . . . to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant. The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he hasn't the slightest concern with calculating his interest or your virtue.”

Randall had an amazing ability to look beyond the worst of each and every person he met and see the very best that person could be, whether it was a friend, a family member, or someone appearing before his bench. He simply always chose to see the best in people. Our Savior consecrated a memorial that’s performed thousands of times each day and hundreds of thousands of times each Sunday by saying “Do this in remembrance of me.” I ask you to do something in remembrance of Randall. When we look at one another, let’s look past faults and imperfections and see the very best we each can be. If we can do that, we’ll be looking at one another with Randall’s eyes, and Randall will live on in each of us.

America is not at war

I really should be in bed, but . . . some random thoughts first.

I attended a Holocaust remembrance today after work. Two really outstanding features of that. The first was the narrative presented by the speaker, one of the first four Americans to breach the wire at Buchenwald. I suppose he's in his 80's now. His gentleness was striking. His memories heartbreaking. His outrage at what he found there still fresh. His bride of 60 years was there with him--that says enough. Very small group of us there to hear him. And I'm glad I went. Second treat of that event was the trio that played before, in the middle, and after. Violin, accordion, bass. Worth going to hear either one.

And seeing the 3-star there reminded me of something he said the other day that I could write about for a long time, but won't tonight. "America is not at war. America's military is." And is, and is, and is. In more places than any of my civilian friends even know. And against some of the same evils that today's speaker fought. The great failure of the current campaign is not so much that it exists, but that people have forgotten why it exists, and that forgetting has enabled or necessitated, depending on how you look at it, its half-hearted prosecution. So it goes.

Lastly, I was having lunch with my daughter the other day. I picked her up at school and we made a quick trip to Panera Bread. Because I came from work and had to return to work, I was dressed for work. As we were leaving, an older gentleman and his wife said simply, "Thanks for your service." It's my honor to serve, but it still touches my heart every time I hear that. How is it that we're getting that right this time around? Whatever a civilian's position on the Global War on Terror, the troops are still embraced. An all volunteer force this time, yet we get thanked for prosecuting a less and less "popular" (an odd word to apply to that which follows, no matter how you cut it) war; whereas, a largely draftee and reluctant force was spat upon when they returned from an endeavor they had little choice in. Don't misunderstand--I am always grateful and touched by the acknowledgement. But it always makes me want to find one of those guys with the Vietnam campaign ribbon on a jacket, or in a car window, or on a license tag and hand that acknowledgement over to him with interest. Those men and women are overdue.

Edmund Ladouceur, one of my heroes

The last news article to attract my attention in today's Gazette announced the retirement, again, of one of the true heroes from my youth.

Edmund Ladouceur was the director of the Cadet Catholic Choir at the USAF Academy and probably one of the reasons I survived that four years. Every Sunday morning, and one night during the week when we would practice between the evening meal and Academic Call to Quarters, I shared the pleasure of his company with the rest of us who were fortunate enough to call him, simply, "Mr. L."

I came late to Mr. L's fold, having been reared a Lutheran in a part of North Carolina where there may have been one Catholic church in the whole county. I sang in choir from the time I was seven until I left for Colorado. Once there, I immediately joined the Protestant choir. I spent two years in that choir, singing every Sunday for a "non-denominational" Protestant service that didn't really much resemble what I was used to. But the setting was beautiful (the Cadet Chapel was once the most visited architectural landmark in all of Colorado; pictures here) and singing was my chosen mode of worship back then, so I was happy enough.

Then, during one evening rehearsal, the Protestant choir director threw a mini-temper tantrum not much worse than many others we'd learned to take in stride. The difference this time was that a particularly gentle-spirited soprano--on whom I had the kind of crush that just watching her elfin face from a distance was enough to make another week at The Blue Zoo tolerable--did not take that tantrum in stride. She walked out of the rehearsal. She didn't come back. Not to Protestant service and not to choir. In a supporting action, the exact motivation of which we won't begin to dissect here, I quit as well. But, for us both I suspect, choir was, as I said above, the way we worshipped. A couple of weeks later, I learned that she had joined the Catholic choir. "Why don't you?"

Catholic? Me? Uh, isn't that in Latin? It seems funny now, but remember, I wasn't yet even 20, and I don't know if I'd ever been within five hundred yards of a Catholic church before arriving in Colorado Springs.

So, one Sunday, I sort of snuck in the back to see what a service was like, fearing at the time, I think, that I might be captured and sacrificed before the service was over. It was like coming home. The service was much more like the Lutheran service I had grown up with than anything I'd seen in almost two years upstairs (the Catholic population at the Academy being smaller, the Catholic chapel is one floor below the much larger Protestant space). Having made that first step, I next found the courage to ask the Catholic Choir Director, Edmund Ladouceur, a man my father's age, if, perhaps, I might be allowed to audition for the Catholic choir. The rest, as they say, is history.

But it is history that literally mists my eyes even as I type this. I have never known a kinder man in my entire life. He was like my own father in that regard. And for the next two years, if I needed a fatherly ear in that era when a call from Colorado to North Carolina cost enough that I only made them every other week, Mr. L. was always happy to provide it--for me or for any of the hundreds of us who, through the years, have found ourselves so fortunate to owe him so much.

The happiest moments of my four-year career as a cadet were spent in his company in one way or another. I suspect most of us who knew him would say the same. From my first taste of Bailey's Irish Cream after a dinner with his family at his home to opening our road show with my best Neil Diamond impersonation, that choir and its director were the only things I ever missed about life at that place. He says in the article that his years at the academy were so busy that he "sort of neglected" his own kids. I hope they didn't feel that way. He seemed to me then, and now, like a man whose heart was more bountiful than the loaves and fish.

There are rare people you meet who touch your heart and make you a better person, the world a better place, and your life a richer experience in every way. Edmund Ladouceur is one of those people. I'll be surprised if there's room for everyone to get in the door at his final service next Sunday.

I'll let you know.