Wintertide in a small world

Wednesday night, one of the choirs I sing in had its dress rehearsal for our upcoming concert. Lots of professionals joined us--brass, percussion, harp, and two soloists. The soprano soloist looked really familiar when I saw her.

And then I realized it. Once upon a time, this woman was my mother.

* * *

Hold on, I'll get back to the soloist in a minute. I'm really excited for our concert. It's been great this fall and winter to be singing regularly in a choir. Almost all the pieces we're doing were either instant hits with me, or else they've grown on me over time.

Oh, and I should add right up front, for anyone local (east side of Cleveland): the concert is this Sunday at 7:00. See flier for details!

Pro tip: the church is huge, and the best sound is going to be 10 rows back from the front (and further), because it takes about that far out for everything to blend. If you just want to hear the trombone, by all means sit front row on the right.

* * *

I first started singing in choir because of drama. That is, doing theater in high school, not people being all crazy, though that's also a good enough reason to sing. I was basically pulled into drama by one of my best friends (isn't that always the case?), auditioning for the fall show and getting a small role, auditioning for the winter and getting another small role, and then auditioning for the spring musical, ending up as pretty much an all-purpose chorus member in Fiddler on the Roof. I was a Jewish boy, a Russian dancer, and a bottle dancer (despite no dance experience). Singing in the chorus, one of the older girls said that I should be in choir, and when you're a freshman boy and an older girl tells you something, you tend to hear that just a little bit better. So I joined our church choir (not, incidentally, a great place to meet girls) and then I ended up pulled into the choir for my sophomore year as an accompanist (we changed directors, though, and I bailed out of playing the piano--because I wasn't very good--and started singing instead.

Even though the choral program was something of a dumpster fire that year, I found myself singing in the show choir as well as the concert choir, and so when we got a great new director my junior year, I was ready to go and found myself a section leader in the regular choir, men's ensemble, and show choir. Our new director not only raised the musical level of our choirs tremendously, but he also brought in several elements that spoke especially well to the adolescent male soul. First, the men's ensemble was something new and special. We sometimes rehearsed during the school day, but often we met in the evening. Now, I'll argue that there's just something special about the harmonics of a male vocal ensemble that makes it inherently amazing, but beyond that I think that there's also something magical about making the extra commitment, spending the extra time together, working toward a common goal.

And that was also something that our director brought: a focus on goals and competition. I assume it's more or less ubiquitous, but our choirs and bands played in district competition each year, where groups were rated from 1-5, with 1's advancing to the state competition. The previous year, with our one-year director, our best choir got a 3, and our other choir got a 4. Ouch. We were acutely aware of what losing looked like, but I think it was pretty clear early on that our director, with clear goals, a plan, professionalism, and attention to details was not taking us to another district competition massacre. From day one we learned to sight-read,which also spoke to my soul as a pianist (however mediocre) and trombone player (again, however mediocre). I already knew how to read music, but it was another thing entirely to do so with vocal music, and I loved the challenge.

Anyway, long story a little less long, we got 1's at District that year and 1's at State. Well, except our men's group, which got a 2. Hugely disappointing, considering all the work we put in, but also hugely motivating for those of us who were juniors. Spoiler alert, we got 1's at State the next year.

* * *

I've already gone on at length, and there's one more story that I've committed to telling at this point, so I'll just say that my college experience with choral music was even better, and better in very different ways from the ones that made my high school experience good. My experience was such that I was happy to go off and pursue a master's degree in choral conducting afterward. And not just because I had no idea what else I could do with my liberal arts degree.

To bring down the curtain on this post, I have to go back to elementary school. I think it was back in 6th grade, I was one of a handful of my classmates who got the chance to audition to be in a high school play. I got the part, and I and a 4th grader from my school became children in this play (speaking lines and all!), Life With Father. Obviously, "Father" played a big role. Mother, though, was the teen-aged version of the woman I saw again Wednesday night for the first time in maybe three decades. Her path took her from our little high school's theater and music departments to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and on to a professional career that found her in Cleveland, where she took this gig as a soloist with our choir. And obviously own circuitous route through music degrees brought me here as well.

I'm not sure if she remembered me with any specificity, and I can't blame her. I was in a show in high school that used elementary kids, and if one told me that we were in a play together, I can confidently say that I have no memories of working together. Though, to be fair, I was a pretty memorable kid, and there were two of us (as opposed to the gaggle of brats that infested The Best Christmas Pageant Ever). Still, it was nice to connect briefly with her, to talk about the family that still ties us to Bellevue, Ohio, and the paths that brought each of us to Cleveland, and the apparently-small-world of its choral music scene.

Enjoy the journey--sometimes' that all there is

Inspiration struck today, as I decided to take Beans (our almost-three-year-old) to the library for story time. The brilliance of the plan was that I had the idea early enough to bring it to fruition.

Theoretically.

Story-time is at 11 am, I floated the idea around 10:20. She loves going to the library, so that was an easy sell, but she also loves to walk there and hates wearing a coat. Since it's around 30 degrees today, I was afraid I was in for some tough negotiations, but she was actually pretty reasonable (on this issue).

She did, however, want more to eat. Say, her sister's leftover Nutella toast. Fair enough. I cut it into smaller pieces and let her have at it. So now I had to budget in time for cleanup, because Nutella might as well be called a hazelnut spread-all-over-everything. Still, no problem. I gathered my own things, got her to put socks on while she contentedly made a chocolatey mess of her face and hands. Then we cleaned up... and then she wanted more of the Nutella toast, so we had to clean up again. These things happen. When you're not-quite-three, it's hard to predict that maybe you should eat all the Nutella toast before cleaning up.

Okay, ready to go. Except someone is "still hungwy!" How about a fig bar to go? No! No!!!

Oh wait. Okay, yes. Had to think about that for a second. 

So we got set to start walking, but time was getting tight. We probably weren't going to make it for the start. Oh well. Onward!

Before we were one house away, "my hands are a wittow bit code." Especially the one holding her fig bar. Back we go. Now, where are those mittens? How about these gloves... nope, comically large. Um... How about we just accept that we're going to be a little cold? She agreed.

It's just under half a mile to the library, and well before we were halfway there, she declared that she was too cold and I needed to carry her. Or, as she says "I pick you up!"

We got to the library after story time had started, but it was still going. We hung up our backpacks and coats and went in through the tiny door and found a place on the floor. Two songs and two stories later, she declared that she wanted milk.

Like, now.

My explanation that they didn't have milk at the library, and that we'd have to go home to get milk led to an inevitable conclusion: "Let's go home." Seriously? You'd rather walk home 5 minutes after we got here than get to the best part of story time (bubbles at the end) or play with the toys in the kids' section? Because once we get home, we're not going back to the library.

Yeah, she was good with that.

Not only did I have to carry her all the way home, though, I also had to carry her all the way through the library. I don't know, just in case it got drafty, I guess. But we made it home and she got her milk.

Now, it would be easy to look at this as a failure of sorts, or at least a pretty lousy deal for what we got out of it. I had planned to connect to the internet (saving my phone hotspot data), get some things done on-line, and then cuddle up with a book while she played with toys and made friends. Clearly none of that happened (glad I carried all that stuff in my backpack, btw).

Nonetheless, wins were had. First, we got outside and got some fresh air. The ratio of my exercise to her exercise was more than a little skewed, but it's probably for the best, selfishly speaking, if I want to avoid slouching into "dad bod" territory. And as much as we only had five minutes of story time, it was actually a huge step forward. In past story times, she has basically ignored the stories and avoided the singing and movement, and just burrowed into my lap. This time, from her safe little warren, she did answer questions ("which animal's ears are these?" and she moved her feet a little bit at the appropriate place in the one song. At this rate, we'll have her participating fully about the time she's reading independently, but whatever. Baby steps are steps, and I'm marking them in the win column.

And hey, I got to spend quality time with my girl. Up [very] close and personal, mostly cheek to cheek, arms wrapped around my neck or buried in my coat. The perfect place to hear her little observations and questions ("Yook at doze flowers!" "Dere's two sqau-yuls!").

Where else should I rather be?

Coffee

Although it's part of my almost-daily routine, the scent of coffee still has power, sometimes, to take me back in time. Today though, it was a word: thermos.

My father was a truck driver, which I suppose almost by default meant that he was a big coffee drinker. When I think of my dad, it's the scent of coffee. And it's two big stainless steel thermoses with lids that screwed in, capped off by another lid that doubled as a plastic coffee mug. They were big, they were sturdy, they were Dad. 

I remember Dad and Grandma drinking coffee after most meals, at least when out and about. I don't remember it at home so much, but if we went to a restaurant or a church potluck, they were both sure to have a cup of coffee after the meal, with dessert. 

Despite that, coffee didn't hold a big appeal for me. When I wanted caffeine, I turned to Pepsi or Coke, but mostly that wasn't until college when I would accompany an all-nighter with a ridiculously large Coke from the campus Pub--no ice, please, I need as much Coke as you can fit in there. 

In high school, coffee did take on another association, though: working at McDonald's for a couple of years, there were periods--particularly in the summers--when I opened to store on a regular basis (there were also periods when I closed: I guess that's part of being a high schooler, none of the adults managing the schedule give a damn about your sleep schedule). The first thing we did each morning when opening the store, before a single egg was cracked, muffin toasted, or hash brown fried, was to make a pot of regular and a pot of decaf. And even though I wasn't a coffee drinker, it was like the coffee maker there pumped the caffeine right into the air, because it was invigorating. Sure, it was 4:30 in the morning, but once the coffee pot was going, I was ready to go too. 

I first became something of a social coffee drinker at my first job, a small boarding school in western Pennsylvania. One of the traditions there was that all the faculty members--after we'd been to the day's required dinner with students--were invited to the Headmaster's house for coffee and maybe some sweets. It was a good time to grow closer with your colleagues, and if the old man was in attendance, you could hear some wild stories of the way things used to be, back in the days when teachers smokes cigars in the classroom (using the chalk trays as ash trays) and could more or less strike students at will. You know, the good old days of concussions in history class and lung cancer in English. 

I would have felt out of place there not drinking coffee, so I did what any sensible sugar addict would do: I loaded my cup with the cute and oh-so-sophisticated sugar cubes provided as well as cream, so that I had a sugary-milky substance with a dash of coffee for color. 

But what can I say, I suppose it was a gateway for later coffee explorations. I think I became an inveterate drinker of coffee when I started playing around with low-carb diets, because incredibly fat-filled coffees are kind of a staple of those dietary communities. I tried "Bulletproof" coffee, which is basically coffee blended with coconut oil and butter--it's decent, but after a brief flirtation I've felt no calling to make it my regular joe. I drank coffee with coconut milk--fine, but it seems to end up a little watery (but then, I could probably fix that if I just didn't insist on using everything that comes in the can). My favorite though, the one I come back to day in and day out, is coffee with heavy whipping cream. 

My god. 

It's just so rich and amazing. I never put any sweetener in my coffee, just loads of cream, and it's wonderful. If I'm out and about, I'll often go for the Starbucks flat white with heavy whipping cream--basically it's just espresso and heated and frothed HWC, and it's perhaps a thousand calories of fat, but what a thousand calories they are. Not something to drink every day, unless it's basically the only thing you consume  every day. Which, now that I think about it, doesn't sound half bad. 

And that's my coffee story: it's a long way from my father's relationship with coffee, but still, that whiff of brewed or brewing coffee just sometimes takes me back to being six years old and hugging my dad as he said goodbye to go off and drive a semi to the next state, putting bread on our table and coffee in our thermoses. 

Breakfast with Santa

One thing you can say for paying in advance: it's motivating. Given than Lauren and I were up until 1:00 and then up again quite a few times with our little one, getting up and driving to "Breakfast with Santa" was not high on our priority list when we woke up--late--at 7:00 this morning. But we'd paid for this thing, so we got our butts--and our daughters' little butts--in gear to make the trek up to South Bend's Fiddler's Hearth.

With the tables all full, we "got to" sit at the bar.

You can kind of see it in the picture, but they brought out special pieces of wood to sit on the edge of the bar and give the girls a level eating surface closer to their little gobs. Also, you can play Where's Waldo? with Santa in this photo.

You had two options with breakfast: take it or leave it. They gave everyone some scrambled eggs, a couple sausage links, and some French toast sticks. Kids could choose OJ or milk, adults could and did choose coffee. I guess the kids could have chosen coffee too, but they were comparatively well rested.

If it has "oatmeal" in the name, it's a suitable breakfast food, right?

Fortified with a hearty Irish-ish breakfast, the girls went and sat on Santa's lap.

A little overawed, Y couldn't remember what she wanted to ask for (so she'll get nothing. Nothing, I say!).

Her sister, meanwhile, couldn't stop talking. We actually left her with Santa and I assume she's still talking eight hours later.

We have a tradition of pictures of our children brought to tears by Santa Claus. The tradition is alive and well:

They did reach a milk-mediated truce, however uneasy:

You can tell from the picture, she doesn't trust him one bit. She doesn't trust him as far as she's about to throw that bottle when it's empty.

But we did manage to get all the girls in for one picture.

Someone's still not trusting this dude.

Also, the older girls got balloon animals.

. 

I mean, what would breakfast with Santa be without a ridiculously large candy cane and a poodle on a balloon leash?

Appalling, that's what. Fortunately, Fiddler's Hearth is a good place, run by good people, with sound judgment. Here's your balloon animal. Merry Christmas. 

Old Year, New Year

As December 2015 comes to a close, I'll sneak in this single blog post for the month (the last five months or so, in fact). Once upon a time, I would routinely blog every day in December as part of Holidailies. Even further in the past, I would routinely blog every day of the year. But times change, people change, and here we are, heading into 2016, and ready to take this arbitrary boundary as a time to reflect. I've made resolutions at times in the past, but this year I'm struck by a suggestion I heard, to reflect instead on something from the past year I'm grateful for and something I'm looking forward to in the new year. But I always have trouble narrowing things down, so I've got a handful for each.

2015 Gratitude

In August, I was anxious about education for both of my daughters. Our oldest was going from the most wonderful PreSchool in the world straight into first grade. At first, I was a little concerned about her social transition from a small preschool to a 1st grade class of 22 in which she would be the youngest. Then, as the year went on, I was concerned about the quality of the education she was getting. But overall, I think it's been a good experience for her. At the same time, our younger daughter wasn't able to go to the same wonderful preschool, because it closed. She started at a different preschool which... is okay. It's not amazing like the other one was. But it, too, is good for our child. And we're thinking we'll try to put her in Kindergarten next year, a year early. So I'm thankful that my girls are doing well in their respective schools.

It started in 2014, but through the spring and summer of the past year, I connected with a local writer's group. I'm still working to make writing a routine part of my life, but I'm thankful for a group that has nourished this part of myself and enriched my life.

Just recently, I had some very difficult realizations thrust upon me, about myself and about my relationship to someone important to me. Confronting these realizations wasn't easy, it wasn't comfortable, it wasn't something I wanted to deal with. But I'm grateful to be able to see myself more clearly and perhaps to strengthen a relationship before it's completely broken. Here's hoping.

2016 Looking Forward

My wife's trying to keep an internet secret, so I won't say the most important thing that I'm looking forward to in 2016. But it is #1 on my list. I'm hoping I can talk about it publicly soon.

This spring will be my first season (and hopefully not my last!) as head coach of the girls tennis program at the high school where I work. I've got some very definite ideas about how I want to approach this, and I'm excited for the opportunity to try some new things and help my players reach their potential and, hopefully, win more than a few matches.

Most of the other things that come to mind seem far less certain. They're more like those resolutions that are more hopes and wishes than plans and certainties. I'm excited about the possibility of planting some almond trees in our yard. Could this be the spring we get chickens? Maybe in 2016 I'll finally finish at least a rough draft of the novel I've been putzing around with for the last few years? I did read more than a few books in the past year, which bodes well for reading a fair number in the next, and I'm always excited by what new great wonders I may discover between those pages. I expect I'll grow as a father and a husband, a son and a friend in the next 366 days--anyway, I'm sure those people most important to me hope so.

And so, a happy new year to you all: may it be filled with much to anticipate and much to be grateful for. I'd love to hear in the comments some of your own things in those categories.

Christmas Dream Gift

Today's Prompt: Many of the December holidays are marked with gifting. What is the one thing you really wish you could get as a gift this year (doesn't have to be a physical item)? 

Well, I've got quite a list of books on my Wishlist on Amazon, not to mention books I've flagged on Goodreads as things I'd like to read some day, and books are the things that spring most quickly to mind.

However, that's not really what I want, because as it stands, I can look over at my bookcase and quickly see several dozen books that I already own that I would like to read. I don't lack books. What I lack is the time and energy to read them. So what I really want, since the prompt did say, after all, that it didn't have to be a physical item, is the time and energy to read the books I want to read (and, for that matter, to write the things I want to write).

So I need my children to sleep through the night. In their own darned beds, not crawling in with us in the middle of the night. Then, I might have the energy for sustained attention, assuming we could also get them to go to bed at a decent our. And assuming I could discipline myself to go to bed at a decent hour.

Then I would actually need the time that wasn't constrained by work or family obligations or anything else, just free time.

So yeah, there's no Santa Claus on earth who could give me all that any of that, but I guess that's life.  And even if it's a life that doesn't have all those things--at this moment in time--it's still an awfully good life, filled with joys of its own. That's not to say I wouldn't appreciate having a break from work that was like the break from college junior year when I read Moby Dick 8 hours each day until it was finished, but you can't go back, can you?

No, I'm pretty sure you can't, so I'm prepared to live within the constraints of, you know, reality. And really, at Christmas--and any other time of year--it's best to appreciate what you've got. Like right now, as I try to bang out this blog post, I've got the cutest little 32-month-old all over my lap, getting in my way, sticking her fingers in my ears and eyes, and pulling me back and forth between annoyance and laughter, telling me what all the numbers and letters on my keyboard are, hunting and pecking them to extinction even while I try to type. And she's a total sweetheart, and if I didn't get a single present for Christmas this year, that would be okay too, because life is pretty darned good. 

Books-in-Progress

As Goodreads likes to remind me every time they send me an update, I am currently reading four different books. That's... probably not a good idea, all in all. And I expect that I'll soon be starting a fifth book, still without finishing the other four, because at this point, why not?

So, what am I "currently reading"?

In early November, I started reading Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson because it's been on my shelf for a while and I thought it might be some inspiration for my own novel writing. Of course, time spent reading is not time spent writing, so that wasn't really sustainable.

In mid-to-late November, I realized that one of the book clubs on Goodreads was reading To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts, and besides the usual discussion, they had Janny involved, answering questions. I really like her Wars of Light and Shadow series and like her as an author, so I wanted to join in the discussion. But, of course, November was devoted to writing, not reading. I listened to the first three chapters, which were available on a podcast, and I like it so far... but then the discussion and author Q&A was over. And, as you'll see, other books elbowed their way in.

While driving to Thanksgiving, Lauren and I started listening to an audiobook, Ken Follett's Fall of Giants. We both enjoyed his Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, and as a bonus I've been listening to an awesome podcast called Hardcore History, specifically I've been listening to the series on World War I. Fall of Giants, then, has been a very good fit. So when it comes to listening to something, it's been this one. Reading without reading.

Another Goodreads book club, it turns out, is reading Steven Erikson's Forge of Darkness this month. So, in a way, it comes full circle, reading what's sort of Erikson's equivalent to Tolkien's Silmarillion, rather than my initial selection of stories contemporaneous to Erikson's landmark Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

But it turns out that I'm kind of a bad person, at least if you look down on things like buying a book for someone as a Christmas present and reading it before giving it away. Somewhere in the mail, I have headed to me a book for a friend that I also want to read, so I'll probably blitz through that so I can get it in the mail in time for Christmas. It is Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion by Sam Harris. As detailed in this post I have a longstanding interest in meditation and yoga, but both of those practices can have a tendency toward woo-woo mushy thinking. I'm interested, then, in "spirituality" or "spiritual practice" that's grounded in science and a certain skepticism.

But I'm really going to have to read it quickly. And then I can get to the other four books.

Daily Movement Practices

Yesterday I blogged about meditation, a practice that I recognize would benefit me greatly if I did it more often than sporadically. Today, I would like to add a few more things that I do do, and wish I did even more often.

You've probably heard by now that, as a society, our health is basically screwed because of all the routine practices we have. Spend most of your life commuting in a car? You're going to die young. Sit at a desk all day long? You're going to die young and fat. Probably with diabetes and cancer. Yeah, yeah, I'm exaggerating, but I'm sure you've heard all about it too. Even if you get yourself some kind of awesome standing desk (like I have), it turns out you're still up a creek, because it's not just sitting that's bad for you, it's not moving around. And the research is pointing toward it being the case that just going and exercising isn't enough to make up for all the movement you're not doing throughout any given day.

Anyway, I've been trying to incorporate more movement and mobility work into my everyday activities at work. What I'm going for here is not to add another workout to my week; the point is to have some little things that I can add, that just take a minute or two here and there, but that add up to big improvements in flexibility, strength, what have you.

One of the most basic things I've added is the deep squat. I just hang out there for a while. Not surprisingly, this is easier to do on Sundays--the day before my workout that includes back squats--than it is on Monday (or Tuesday).

I started doing deep squats even before I saw this article, and since it recommended squats along with three other movements, I was pretty sure it was legit. So to squats I added glute contraction, a hamstring stretch, and something called the crucifix stretch, which is almost as much fun as it sounds (good for the chest, shoulders, and back, anyway).

For a while, I was really into Kelly Starrett's Mobility WOD (Workout of the Day). I started with episode 1 and for a while there I was doing every stretch in the first four or five daily, but in retrospect that probably wasn't sustainable. I did feel pretty good when I was doing it, though.

The real magic that I've found, though, is something called shoulder dislocates. Which sounds almost as good as a crucifix stretch, I know, but it's done great things for me. Specifically, the last couple years, I've had elbow pain when I play tennis. So you might think it's some kind of repetitive stress thing, like, you know, "tennis elbow," but it turned out, as I tracked this problem to its source, the source was my shoulder. You see, a couple years ago I injured my right shoulder in the weight room. What stupid thing I was attempting to do isn't important, but between the injury and the time off to recover, I lost a good deal of mobility in my shoulder without realizing it. Then when I played tennis, to compensate for poor shoulder mobility, I would--unknowingly--put my elbow in a compromised position. I started doing shoulder dislocates regularly, improved shoulder mobility, and the elbow pain disappeared. Cue the choirs of angels.

I really liked the idea of hanging as being a good thing. For that matter, I like the idea of doing chin-ups or pull-ups or what-have-you more or less every day. Outside of the gym, however, my options are limited. Living in an old farmhouse, we literally have no doors that will fit a standard pull-up bar. My office door at work is perfect for a pull-up bar, but... I feel kind of awkward doing chin-ups in my jacket and tie any time anyone walks into the building. And it's pretty much a guaranteed thing that as soon as I hang up the bar and start to hang or do chin-ups, someone's coming into the building, even if it's been dead quiet for the previous hour.

But then, all of these are things that I feel like I could/should/would do more of, otherwise they wouldn't have made this blog post, so in that regard there's nothing special about hanging or chin-ups.

What do you think, gentle readers? Do any of these things appeal to you? Are there little things that you'd like to put into practice in your own life?

Meditation

Today's Holidailies prompt:

Today is Bodhi Day, a Buddhist holiday that commemorates the day that Buddha experienced enlightenment. Tell us about a time when you felt truly enlightened.

Um, I can't say that I've "felt truly enlightened." At least, not in a way that made a lasting change in my life, which it seems to me like "enlightenment" would have to do in order to qualify. So instead, I'll talk about my experience with a practice associated both with Buddhism and with his experience of enlightenment: meditation.

I think I first encountered meditation from two directions in high school: there was sophomore year world history, where we talked about Buddhism and the Buddha, and then there was... the International Thespian Conference, in the early summer after that year. One of the sessions they had was on using yoga for relaxation, to improve theater performance. Intrigued, I came back to small-town Ohio and checked out every book our library had on yoga, which I'm pretty sure was two.

It's probably fair to say that you can't learn physical skills through reading, but that didn't stop me with yoga (or tennis). Ironically, I've gone on to teach both of them in one way or another. But I digress.

I've been more and less into yoga over the years, but as anyone who's ever done yoga would probably attest, the best part of the whole thing is "corpse pose," the last thing you do, which as the name implies is basically laying there like you're dead. It's meant, of course, for meditation, not for falling into an exhausted sleep.

Aside from that meditation, I've also had an interest in other forms of meditation, gravitating most toward the sort where you observe and/or control your breath. I did this even before I connected it to music, but there's a natural fit. Breath control is an important technique for singing and for playing a wind instrument, and I've done both in my time. I suppose music is a meditation in and of itself.

Although I've been acquainted with meditation for over 20 years, I'm afraid I can't say that I've built a really consistent practice in that time, though I've done enough to have moments of--oh yeah--enlightenment in which I realize that life would be better if I did have that kind of practice.

I've become in some ways reacquainted with meditation through the health and fitness communities that I've participated in, which have moved beyond nutrition and exercise into broader areas of one's lifestyle, including sleep and stress management, particularly meditation. I skimmed through 8 Minute Meditation in roughly 8 minutes (spoiler alert: the book is too long to actually read in 8 minutes), and mostly what I got out of it was nothing new, just the idea of setting a timer for eight minutes and, you know, meditating.

I've had a few times in the last few months where I've hit a wall in the middle of the afternoon, where I felt tired and unfocused and just generally unlikely to get any productive work done. Sometimes I go get coffee. Sometimes I end up wasting time. But sometimes, I set the timer and meditate. I turn off the light, close the blinds, lock my door, lie down and meditate. And two things seem to happen: first, I hit my 8 minutes and it's so good that I just set the timer to do another 8--but then almost exactly 4 minutes in someone knocks on my door. It's uncanny, like 12 minutes is how long the universe decrees that I should meditate. The second thing that happens is that I feel fantastic and have no problem getting to work and being super productive.

Seriously, why don't I do that every day? I guess that's what I meant at the beginning of the post when I said I hadn't really found enlightenment.

In the midst of feeling lousy, frustrated, and unhappy

When you can't get quality sleep, I guess you go for the next best thing: a greater quantity of sleep. Anyway, that was my approach last night, when we spent 10+ hours in or around the bed.

The evening's progress had made it clear that good sleep would not be in the cards. Lauren is away for most of the weekend, so it was just me and our two girls (and the dog and guinea pig). Our almost-5-year-old, T, is in the middle of a cold, and our 2 1/2 year-old, A, is in the midst of non-napping and destructo-tot phases. And whereas Thursday night seemed to prove that children's sudafed does, in fact, need to be taken precisely every four hours, Friday evening was apparently demonstrating just how quickly drug tolerance can develop, because just an hour or two in, T seemed miserable. So T was fussing and crying, while A was trying to destroy one or more Christmas trees, or maybe my computer, or the TV, or... whatever was close at hand. Meanwhile, I seem to be picking up T's headache, which despite adult sudafed seemed intent on giving me a sinus headache.

Yeah, it was that kind of night.

So we went to bed as early as I could bring myself to give T another dose of sudafed before the 4 hours was up. For some reason, A wanted us all to lay in her sister's bed--a twin bed--and got really upset when I said no, we would sleep in mommy and daddy's bed. There I lay, T snuggled in the crook of my right arm, A in the crook of my left arm. T crying and fussing and coughing in my right ear, A crying and fussing in my left ear. I tried singing our tried and true lullabyes, and I may have "tried" losing my temper. All the while, my headache was building.

And then, I just took a deep, meditative breath, and decided to reframe it all in my head. I have a headache, but it's just a sinus headache, just a symptom of a cold; it's not a brain tumor or a cerebral aneurysm. My daughter was upset and difficult to comfort because of a sore throat, stuffy nose, and the aches and pains of a cold; how much harder would it be to comfort her if she suffered from leukemia or cystic fibrosis or any number of fatal diseases? It can be hard on nights like this to be alone with the girls, but besides the fact that my wife has also had to do when I've been gone somewhere, I considered the people who have to be single parents all the time, or the people who are separated or divorced and don't have the opportunity to be with their children as often as they would like.

And I felt gratitude. I was able to give myself a little perspective, to remind myself of how lucky I really am, even in the midst of circumstances that moments before made me feel lousy and frustrated and unhappy. That's not to say that my headache disappeared--it didn't, lingering through the next several times I woke up during the night. That's not to say that my children instantly quieted down, but they did quiet down before too long. Giving myself a new perspective wasn't magic, it didn't make a single problem go away, it just made them easier to deal with them. It gave me a core of serenity that served me well.

****

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, this is the highest of arts.”-- Henry David Thoreau

Pain and Discomfort

Wednesday, uncharacteristically, my almost-5-year-old asked to go to bed early. She wanted me to put her to bed, so I laid down and snuggled with her. She snuggled in the crook of my arm, her head on my shoulder.

And it hurt, mostly because I was still sore from my bench press workout a couple days before. Which got me thinking about pain. First, there's your response to it. We have a natural aversion to pain (uh, duh). Even a little bit of pain sets my little girls off, screaming and fussing. Yet as we get older, we learn to put up with it. For instance, I was happy enough to put up with this pain, because it seemed to serve a purpose. If I pushed my daughter off my shoulder, denied her the snuggling embrace, I would set back the going-to-sleep process. So even though it was uncomfortable, and a bit painful, I endured it.

For that matter, this pain came, in the first place, from exercise, which itself is a form of enduring discomfort. Whether one is lifting weights or running or doing yoga, there are always--if you're doing it right--moments when you become uncomfortable and you would like to quit. However, you endure that pain, you push through it, and you do more of the exercise in question. You get another rep, you rest a little do another set, you run another minute, another ten minutes, another mile, you hold a pose that much longer. We do it to make ourselves better: stronger, faster, with more endurance. We embrace the pain of the moment, we even embrace the pain that comes in the days afterward, may come to enjoy it because we know the benefits it ultimately brings.

All this, of course, goes against our natural instincts. Young children don't do this--they stop running when it becomes uncomfortable. They don't even seem to know how to "push through." Many people who start exercising for the first time, they encounter the pain and they can't push through it. They encounter the post-workout pain and they decide this isn't for them. We have to learn how, and we can only learn by doing it, by stretching our boundaries.

We all do this to some extent, of course. It turned out, I discovered in the middle of Wednesday night, that my daughter was coming down with a cold. She had a miserable night, which meant that my wife and I had a miserable night. Adults, we have developed a certain stoicism. A cold is lousy, we all know that. But we don't tend to fuss and cry and make everyone around us miserable too. We keep it to ourselves, we manage as best we can.

Now, all of this can be carried to extremes. We probably all know people who won't go see a doctor no matter how sick, how miserable they are. The only way they get to a hospital is by ambulance or carried there by someone else. In the exercise world, there are people who take the maxim "no pain, no gain" to the extreme... and end up injured as a result. There's a certain truth to the phase, but it's only in the way I described earlier: we have to endure some discomfort, push past it. Real pain, in this context, is a bad thing. If you tweak your knee or injure your shoulder while lifting weights, for instance, and you keep on exercising because, you know, "no pain, no gain," you're actually just going to further injure yourself, which will keep you out of the gym longer, which will limit your gains. Likewise, while it may be appropriate in your run-of-the-mill illness to "don't be such a baby," to keep a stiff upper lip and keep working through it or avoid burdening your family or friends with your complaints, we can also make things worse if we don't treat an illness.

In the end, it all comes down to moderation, and the wisdom to find it.

NaNoWriMo Reflections

As readers may or may not be aware, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The basic idea is writing 50,000 words of a novel in one month. This is technically my third year doing NaNoWriMo, but really my second. The first time around, I reached my 50k goal, was enjoying my novel... and haven't touched it since. I'd gotten to a tricky part in the plot and had no idea where it was going. Plus it was the end of the month. So that just sort of fell apart.

This year, I have once again reached my 50k target, on a different novel, and here early in Holidailies seemed like a good time to reflect on this year's project.

1) There's something beautiful about just getting started. I decided to write a fantasy novel this year. I've had some of the ideas for this novel and for the larger world for a solid decade or two. I've wanted to write it, but I've also avoided writing it, because I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to outline the plot, I wanted to spend more time creating the details of the world. And the truth is: I could probably have spent the next 50 years putting off writing this novel, assuming I live that long. So yes: there's something beautiful about just getting started.

2) Going along with #1, once you get started, it's wonderful the way that imagination fills in the details between the broad strokes of what you already knew. Part of this magic, though, I think, came from the devotion that I gave the work, the way that kept my focus on the novel. Part of my normal daily pattern is to listen to podcasts. I love podcasts! I listen to them while walking the dog, working out, driving, just about anything that might be "down time." Instead, for most of the month, I refrained from listening to podcasts, and instead thought about my novel. And one result, particularly during the first half of the month, was that I was able to very efficient with my writing time, because I already knew most or all of what I wanted to write when I sat down to write--the plot, the characters, the scenes, even in some cases the particular words I wanted to use. That was the magic of focusing my attention so thoroughly on one end.

3) All the trackers and stuff are really motivating. There's just something about having a website where I go and log my progress, a website that tells me what my average per day is, a website that's visible to other people (who, granted, don't actually care whether I finish or not)... it really helps keep me focused. Reinforcing this point: in the four days since, I haven't written a word on my novel. Which is unfortunate, because I'm pretty sure that 50k only puts me about a quarter of the way through. So, I would need three more months of that level of focus to finish the novel. ::Sigh::

4) The community is and is not motivating. In past years, the on-line community has been more active. This year, not so much. And yet, I got through. On the other hand, I did benefit from a real-life writing group that met a few Sundays throughout the month. And that was helpful both for the way that it scheduled a block of time and, I don't know, kind of gave me permission to spend three hours writing on a Sunday.

All in all, it was a good month. Now I've just got to get myself sorted out to finish what I've started. By the way, in case it isn't obvious, even when I get to, say, 200k, that's just going to be 200k of a rough--very rough, no doubt--draft. Then it will be time to re-write, write some more... so yeah. It's a big commitment writing a doorstopper of a fantasy novel. Wish me luck!

A Series of Unfortunate Moments

Yesterday:

That moment while running cabbage through the mandolin to make sauerkraut when the assessment that I was being "pretty careful" had to be revised to "not quite careful enough."

That moment, moments later, considering how I might manage a trip to the ER to stitch up the tip of my thumb, either getting someone to watch the girls or bundling them into car seats and taking them along. See if our amazing nanny is available on a Saturday? In the midst of a bit of a snowstorm? Our teenaged babysitter? In the snow? The neighbor guy who mows our lawn? Seriously?

That moment where the fact that I'm only halfway through the first of four cabbages is at least as important to me as what I should do about my thumb.

So I staunch the bleeding with a paper towel, douse with hydrogen peroxide, secure some gauze with duct tape, and carry on slicing cabbage. The thumb's probably going to be fine, and there's stuff to do.

Stuff like half-filling this 10-liter crock.

Then there's that moment as I go to sleep when I wonder if the burning sensation in my thumb is just because I tried to shred it into kraut or because I have an infection working its way from my thumb to the rest of my body. I consider that if I die in my sleep, I won't get the chance to blog about the way that I stupidly sliced the tip of my thumb nearly off. There's a moment where that seems like a relevant consideration.

Today:

That moment when I bang my injured thumb into a hard surface, and I realize that I haven't look at it yet today to see how it's doing, and now that I may have reopened it... but what am I really going to learn by looking now?

But okay, here it is, just over 24 hours post-mandolin-ing.

New Year's Eve 2: The Eve Strikes Back

As noted Monday, our guests and we rang in the new year with the residents of King Edward Point (all 30 or so of them, not counting seals and penguins). We had no doubt it would be an epic celebration.

I'm pretty sure this guy is singing "Auld Lang Syne."

Here in Indiana, meanwhile, 10 adults and 6 children gathered in our house to share fondue (a veggie broth and chicken broth fondue to cook steak, chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms; a cheese fondue to smother anything and everything in Gruyere-and-Emmenthaler goodness; and a chocolate fondue for marshmallows, cake balls, and anything else that got in its way), Mesir Wat (Ethiopian lentils) with pita bread, salad, brownies, and homemade ice cream (our friends made honey-cinnamon and chocolate ice creams). We had a wide variety of drinks, including make-your-own Italian soda (and make your own whatever else you wanted--it's not like we have a bartender on staff!).

Things were going smashingly well until I started making the chocolate fondue for the dessert course, when the lights went out. I'm presuming there's no causal link there, despite the darkness of the chocolate. Fortunately, the gas stove kept melting chocolate and we were able to locate our camping lantern and a bunch of candles (and, of course, it's 2013-going-on-2014, so everyone has a phone or two that can double as a flashlight).

So the fun continued with chocolate fondue and ice cream cones, and even if we couldn't pull up the video countdown that Lauren spent roughly three hours yesterday tracking down and selecting, that was okay. One of our friends brought a variety of noisemakers to distribute among the children and adults, and I myself grabbed a suitable pot and an equally suitable wooden spoon to do my share of the annual making of the noise.

It brought to mind the years in high school when a friend of mine would have a massive New Year's Eve party, and as midnight approached we would line up from oldest to youngest and then spill out into the neighborhood banging pots and pans to ring in the new year and scare away the old.

After "midnight," which our neighbors might have referred to as "t-minus three hours and counting," our guests filtered out and left us to our dark house. Since our upstairs is underheated in the best of times (even with electric heaters up there), we made arrangements to sleep downstairs.

We have one of these downstairs--during the day, it's basically a couch in our kids' playroom, but at times like these it pulls out and we slap another mattress on it and it's basically a king-sized bed. The unfortunate circumstance here is that we only own one decent twin-sized mattress, which I dragged downstairs for our use--we basically slept with our upper bodies on the good mattress and our lower bodies on the lousy one--overall, it was fine, though I did seem to wake up a lot during the night.

Starting with about five minutes after we lay down, when the lights came on. We had turned off a number of the lights in the house, but--of course--not the overhead light in the room where we were "sleeping." After a bit of running around the house turning off lights, I turned in for the  night.

The night that will always be "the New Year's Eve the lights went out."

Late December Sunday

A day like this, I feel too scattered to pull together a decent blog entry, so it's just going to be a bit of this and that. I indicated yesterday that I was going to write a follow-up entry, but that's not happening right now.

I woke up this morning in the Cleveland area, and I type this at the end of the day back home in Indiana. I woke up this morning with my wife and daughters (including our canine daughter), but I'll be going to sleep with just my 4-legged girl. I traveled in a car loaded down and packed full of all the Christmas loot; I'll pick up the rest of the family tomorrow morning as they head west by train.

After getting things packed up, I went to watch "my" NFL team win its final game of the season as Cincinnati beat Baltimore. This is the first time in a long time that they've gone into the playoffs with a win, but it was an ugly win. There was some hope that they could snag the second seed and get a first-round bye, but it wasn't to be as the Patriots won their game. We do at least get one home game, and the Bengals have been devastating at home this season (undefeated, with the offense really showing up--the defense pretty much always shows up this season).

I've been listening to the audiobook of Dune, which I've read at least once or twice before, though not in many years. There's going to be a bookclub discussion of the book, so I wanted to refamiliarize myself with it. I remembered a lot... and I forgot a lot. Plus I'm just at a very different place in my life (I first read it in my early 20s, almost 15 years ago).

On the way home, I stopped at the Walmart in Mishawaka to pick up a Christmas present that my mom gave--or tried to give--us: a mobile internet hotspot. We bought one near my mom's house, but as we were driving home and Lauren tried to activate it, there was some kind of problem. Apparently, someone else had already registered our number. Which I guess either means that someone put in the wrong number or it was returned improperly, or something. Since it didn't seem convenient to go back to that same store, we went to another... which didn't carry the mobile hotspot. So we tried again in the Cleveland area, where they took our return and indicated they had it... but didn't. So we did return it and get a refund for my Mom, but we didn't come away with a mobile hotspot. So we looked at ordering on-line, and the price appeared to be $30 less than what we'd paid. But it wasn't available at the Walmart that's local to us. Oooh! But it was at the South Bend Walmart. We ordered... and a half hour later got notification that they did not, in fact, have it. So we went back to the drawing board, tried to get it through the Mishawaka store... and it worked. So there we go--except that I haven't actually activated it yet, so it's still possible that we're not going to have a working hotspot, but here's hoping.

Local Music Scene: Cleveland Edition

Last night, an old friend of mine invited me out to see some bands at a place called The Grog Shop over on the east side of Cleveland. It's the first time I've been to a concert in (I think) 4+ years, and I wasn't familiar with any of the bands playing. Fortunately, my friend Elliot has good taste in music.  If I'm not mistaken, all three bands are from the Cleveland area.

It was a small venue, but we got there early enough that we not only weren't part of the crowd who didn't get in because the place was full but also managed to snag a space to stand right to the side of the stage. We were about as close as we could be, and being off to the side, it almost felt like members of the bands were looking at us when they were looking at bandmates--in other words, it was like being part of the band, without any of the pressure of playing the right notes or looking cool.

Tom Evanchuck (and the Old Money--I think--they weren't announced that way, but I think from his website that that's who he was playing with) was good. It was a show full of covers, but they did them well. Tom plays guitar well and sells a song; I think I picked up that his drummer is his brother, and I absolutely loved watching him on drums: good drummer, clearly having fun.

The second band was The Moxies, which my friend described as "Rockabilly Punk." And that pretty much summed it up: they'd be grooving along with this rockabilly feel and then they'd burst out into this punk explosion. Their show was a ton of fun. The crowd--which I swear seemed like it was about 83% high schoolers--seemed to know all the songs and were singing along and rocking out, which helped make it a fun show.

As good as Tom Evanchuck was, The Moxies brought something even more polished, but still with a wild energy to it.

Elliot picked up an EP and gave it to me s a souvenir, and I was just a bit disappointed: it felt like the studio recording captured the rockabilly feel but not the punk side so well.I'm still listening to it, though, still trying getting into it. The vocals live were as good or better than the studio recording.

The final band of the night was The Modern Electric. To the polish and energy of The Moxies, The Modern Electric also added a bit more... show. The stage was set with a TV that looked like something we had in our living room in the 80s, which had A Christmas Story playing throughout, and along with that there were some old lamps and furniture set up around the stage.

The music was solid--a lot of fun, a nice sound, and the singer, Garrett Komyati, has an intensity that really takes it to another level; there was a real sincerity there, like he was putting his heart out there on every song.

The bass player and drummer switched back and forth between bass and drums, and I suspect that the musical flexibility these guys have (the lead singer was also bopping around between piano and guitar) is one of the things that makes the band distinctive.

Once again, the crowd knew all the songs, so they were rocking it like this concert was their job, too. Elliot picked up a 2-song EP for me, and their sound holds up really well in the studio, it seems to me. I played it for Lauren, and "David Bowie Save Us All" is now lodged firmly in both our minds.

Christmas 2013 Recap

Earlier, I recapped of the set-up for Christmas day and told about the start of the day. Here, we pick up the story from when the girls started opening their presents.

Our youngest doesn't quite know what to do with the Jumpolene. Or the beanbag chair, apparently. She did figure out the former before the day was done.

Our oldest knew exactly what the new purse is for.

My wife didn't want me in this picture, but I inserted myself. And my coffee mug inserted itself, too.

See? She's just stinkin' cute!

And she's already to start conducting the family Christmas carol sing...

Here, she gets her first good look at her new cousin. How will she react?

About like this, apparently.

I just liked the way this picture got both of our girls and (a glimpse of) their cousin.  And the Aunt Emmy they all share.

Lauren wasn't going to be denied her time with the wee babe, and our older girl gets to know her a bit better too.

After 11 straight hours of Christmas, at 5:45, our younger appeared to give up the ghost. Sadly, she got her second wind a couple hours later and is still going strong as I type.

Her sister, on the other hand, lost the battle with sleep right in the middle of a delicious, delicious brownie. Sweet dreams, sweetpea!

Merry Christmas morning!

With my mother-in-law sidelined this Christmas Eve / Morning, we're left to our own devices for Christmas breakfast. Lauren theoretically went out to Walmart last night to get the ingredients we needed for at least some of the things that my mother-in-law had planned, but it wasn't until Lauren and I woke up in the wee hours of the morning that either of us (me) thought to look into this whole breakfast-making thing.

So yeah: it turns out that we only have the ingredients for one of the breakfast dishes that was planned... and that's supposed to take 7-8 hours in the crock pot. And Creme Brulee French Toast sounded so good, too.

Not to worry: I was able to find a baked version of Creme Brulee French Toast that I can pull together in a pinch. Meanwhile, I'm contemplating whether or not breakfast sausage made with ground beef would be worth the effort.

One thing we did do right was the delivery of presents (I just brought stuff in from the car and then kept the kids asleep while Lauren and her sister did all the real work):

Besides all the other presents--to be opened later--you can see a Mickey Mouse beanbag chair, and a Minnie Mouse chair that's scaled down (not that our younger daughter is either that much smaller or very likely to heed the boundaries of "my chair" and "your chair").

 And then there's this (I had no idea from my casual acquaintance with the box that it would be this big!): it's called a Jumpolene. It should be just about the best thing ever, given how frequently they ignore our injunctions not to jump on beds.
------------------------------------------------
6:04 Update: our oldest (nearly 4) just woke up, complaining that we woke her up. Despite the picture that you can see, the first thing she gravitated toward was... the stockings, hung by the electric fireplace with care. But then she noticed... the smaller beanbag chair. She read the tag that marked it as being for her sister with mild disappointment, and had to be pointed toward the larger one for her.

And when she saw the jumpolene, she said "It's a little swimming pool!" Once we showed her what it actually was, she did love it.

Blue Christmases

A Dirge

                 Rough wind, that moanest loud

                    Grief too sad for song;

                 Wild wind, when sullen cloud

                    Knells all the night long;

                 Sad storm, whose tears are vain,

                 Bare woods, whose branches strain,

                 Deep caves and dreary main,—

                    Wail, for the world’s wrong!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Monday morning, we awoke to headlines in the local paper that a 16-year-old boy had died in a car crash the night before, less than a mile from where we were putting our children to bed, and it turned out that he and his family lived more or less literally in my mother's back yard. I didn't know the young man or his family, but it was still heart-rending. The boy had just gotten his license recently. Another young man in the car with him is in the hospital, in critical condition last I heard. 

I can only imagine the one family's grief, the other's heart-sick worry. "Wail, for the world's wrong!" And so close to Christmas, I fear the season will come around with grief for years, if not for ever.

Another poem that perhaps speaks their heart is W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues":

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Less dramatically, but even closer to our hearts, Lauren's father called to tell us that her mother is in the hospital after what has turned out to be a non-heart-attack cardiac event. Due to further issues that arose while she was in the hospital, she will remain there until Thursday or Friday. She's expected to be fine, but of course it's worrisome, and although we'll be visiting her in the hospital tomorrow, it just won't be the same as waking up to Christmas morning with her or spending Christmas even all together as a family. It was strange to get to their house and not see her usual warm welcome. Splitting Christmas between my in-laws' house and the hospital is not what we expected.

Still, knowing the kind of tragedy that others are dealing with this Christmas,we feel fortunate that it doesn't appear to be anything more serious than it is.