a definition

Progress:

Before, I never rode my bike in my neighborhood because it's hilly. Now I ride here because it is.

kids today

I first noticed him out of the corner of my eye as he rode lazy circles out close to the highway. And then again, one hill ahead of me, standing as he pedaled to the crest. Two thoughts: the first a kind of wordless satisfaction that the climb took the kid some effort, and then, as we both left the neighborhood and crossed through the new subdivision to the blacktop behind:

"Does your mother know where you are?"

Not that I knew where he'd come from or where he was headed or even that, really, he was going that far. I guess I've been brainwashed, too, as I had to remind myself that roaming around was once a vacation birthright, and still a good thing to do. Because I never see any kids out, despite summer, despite beautiful days. And I know they live here. I see the swingsets and free-standing basketball hoops drug out to the curb. I've waited behind school buses delivering from door to door to door-- one even stops at my house. And now and then, she'll walk to her friend's, or they'll hang out on the docks, or go down to the park. Even go for a walk with me. But more often than not, she's in while I'm out, and it's just me and the landscape crews traveling the too-quiet streets, except for that one day and that one kid who somehow discovered the right idea.

for life

I understand it's only a gesture, and a meager one at that. My contribution was minimal, my participation limited. In the scheme of things, it won't matter. Unless maybe, somehow, it does.

Four weeks ago, a man I never met received a diagnosis. His cough was not just a cough, but lung cancer, stage 4. His funeral was today. As I pulled back my hair to head out into the lingering heat, a friend who helped write his eulogy told me this blunt story, and I could not help but picture his daughter, a long ago classmate, sitting in the same funeral home parlor where my family gathered twice before.

Tonight as my mother and I circled my high school track amongst the survivors and fund raisers, our conversation turned, as it does each year, to another man gone too soon. "He was kind, and, funny, and generous to a fault." It's a litany I've memorized after thirty-one years. "Of all of us," continued my mom, describing her father-in-law, "he was the best person. So why did he have to die?" That unanswerable question, multiplied, is the reason for our walk, the reason for luminaria lit in the names of family, friends, and tonight, one complete stranger. Celebrate, remember, fight back.

Today was an off day for me according to the schedule that maps out my miles. Three yesterday, six tomorrow-- multiplied by 102 degrees, or maybe by 78 air conditioned laps. So this evening, instructed not to exercise, I instead laced up my shoes. Not to run but to Relay, an effort that trumps the rules.

tragedy

I admit I only knew the outlines of the story. I knew that Aaron Kampman, a Packer whose number 74 hangs in my closet, is one of four NFL players to play at and graduate from a tiny high school in Parkersburg, a tiny Iowa town-- remarkable in itself. I knew of the monstrous tornado that devastated Parkersburg in 2008, and I had read stories of coach Ed Thomas, and his role in putting that town back together.

But until today, when Ed Thomas was shot in the head, in front of players, in his team's weight room, I'd never heard too many of Ed Thomas's words. My loss.

Ed Thomas, in his own words, compiled by Mike Hlas of the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

I’ve always said my job is not to prepare our kids to be college athletes. My job is to make football a learning experience, and there are so many things they can learn from being a part of our team that will help them be successful later in life as a father, member of a church, or member of the community. There are so many intangibles we can teach that they can take with them.

I don’t have captains anymore—I went to a system of senior leaders. Around the end of February, I go over our senior leadership program with all of the next year’s senior football players and ask if they want to be involved. For seven weeks, I teach a morning leadership class to those who do. They are then responsible for the other players—whether it’s behavior, succeeding in the classroom, or working in the weightroom, they provide leadership for our program. I decided to teach leadership because I think it’s something that isn’t present in kids as often as it used to be. We have to show kids how to be leaders today.

I talk about leaders setting an example, the responsibility of being a leader, and the idea of being a servant and a giver. I talk about standing up to do what is right when nobody else will, and letting other players know when they’re doing something wrong. I also explain the importance of being a role model—that leaders have to set the tone for other players to follow. I talk about the respect that they have to gain with other young people. I tell them that everyone might not always like you, but you should act in such a way that they respect you.

Ethics is doing what’s right. It’s following the rules, and teaching football the way it ought to be played. Ethics is teaching young people about sportsmanship and how to conduct themselves in a first-class fashion regardless of whether they win or lose. I tell our kids that we’re going to go out and play hard, and we want to win as much as anybody. But when the game is over, we’re going to line up, shake hands, and be gentlemen, knowing that we did the very best we could. To me, that’s all part of ethics.

Let Them Eat Big Macs

I'm not sure I have the energy. Then again, I'm not sure she's worth my time. Keith's got the gist, here, and honestly the prospect of picking through all the logical flaws, willful misunderstandings, and inconsistencies in Missouri state rep Davis's objections to the Summer Food Service program just hurts my head. I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps she is similarly flumoxed by her work as the Chair of the Committee on Poverty, considering she doesn't seem to think it exists.

My Father's Day

Twenty dollar bills and oil change reminders. Dire warnings about, oh, everything. A paralysis of worry over what might and who could and what will. Sentimental tears and shouted impatience. A certain family resemblance in the lines of my face or the edge of my temper. That's what I think of, when I think of my dad. That and talents rarely used but always perfected; pride in accomplishment. That and a laugh at the kitchen table. That and money being no object even when it was. The best was all he ever wanted. Sometimes, he'd tell ya, he got it.

dialogue

She does not, shall we say, tread lightly.

And being a mother, I seem pre-programmed to shout over the rattle and the thump of the stairs as I wonder if it actually matters:

"You sound like a herd of buffalo!"

She leaps off the last step and peers in the laundry room door: "At least you didn't say elephants this time."

"This time?" I think, despite instantaneous evidence. "Do I really have a mom-speak repetoire?"

"Elephants," she grins, already pleased with herself, "are significantly larger than buffalo."

Score one for the girl.

an alternate reality

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9681449@N05/3482064163/

Okay, so Amtrak waiting areas don't really deserve to be called Little Calcutta, the epithet I was just hot, tired, and crowded enough to throw out at Chicago's Union Station yesterday. It wasn't even close to chaos, though when that woman cut to the front of the line I felt it move closer to the verge. The cost of any fare, however, is inversely proportional to the number of times one will hear, "You can't make me take my bipolar pills!" during the course of a journey. I do stand by that.

And I do stand by the train as a good-enough, cheap-enough way to get from here to a place such as the Chicago part of Chicago, as my friend puts it-- not Berwyn or Schaumburg or some other Chicagoland locale full of free parking and lots. I don't mind the driving, but my dread of the citified car-storage, both finding it and paying for it, is great enough that when I heard the story of the neighborhood loon who leases three cars to store excess junk-- real trash: fast food bags and empty detergent boxes! I saw it myself, I swear--the craziest part of the story seemed to be voluntarily trying to park a trio of cars on the metered, zoned, and otherwise unavailable city streets.

If that deranged soul ever felt like hitting the road, as it were, I'd suggest he look into Amtrak. I'm convinced porters allow anything on as long as the bag can be lifted without assistance; the entire security system seems to be photographs of badge-wearing dogs. No x-rays, no pat-down, no 3.4 ounce bottles in ziplock bags, no ID, shoeless shuffle to the gate-- it's a traveler's pre-9/11 timewarp. Unless and until, I hesitate to say, one of the crazies decides to really blow up.

work

My father was a union man, an art school dropout who spent 40 years making the parts that make machines that make glass bottles. How's that for a niche? He worked with his father and his uncles in a shop that is now closed that belonged to a company that no longer exists. How's that for an American story? He earned a wage that provided plenty and a pension, though a paltry one. He still has metal fragments in his hands.

The man who bought this house--my house--when it was new was a union man. After 30 years in the blast furnace of a steel mill, he was ready to sell and retire young when his retirement vanished in a merger. He moved to Pensacola anyway. Last I heard, he was working as a security guard. What else is there to do? Back here, in the life he left, the mill is now idle, has been for months, and thousands like him await their fates.

This county, where I've lived 90% of my life, used to seem 90% a blue collar place, by family if not individual. Brass, steel, oil refining, ammunition (Winchester)-- most people seem to have a connection. And if not for the workers and managers who moved out and up, literally, a good fraction of the houses in my current town need never have been built.

And so when I ask, "now what?" that unorginal question, it is not theoretical, but a concrete query about will happen here when these jobs cease to exist. It's not as if I don't see that labor has run itself off a cliff alongside big business; it's just that I wonder where the bottom is, and how hard it will hurt when we all hit.

parade

It's a few minutes past as I navigate a sidewalk shoved off-kilter by tree roots; I look up when I hear a band. The intersection ahead is yet empty--I've made it, technically, despite a poor choice at that last crossroads. I look up and I look ahead. A float concocted out of a pick-up truck and good intentions passes as the percussion grows louder; I reach the corner as rows of grey polos and khaki shorts approach. My mission is almost accomplished. I scan trombones and trumpets, clarinets, saxophones, clarinets, and then a pony-tailed flute-player not too far out of line.

I think twice about calling her name, do it anyway, am somehow glad when she doesn't notice. For half a block, I walk alongside, in plain view, out of sight, out of mind. Minutes later, the middle school marching band debut will have ended at the edge of this neighborhood that claims city limits, and so I head to my car to beat the buses back to the school. Given the sprouting corn and furrowed fields that fill the ten minutes between here and our suburban home, it feels as if we're in a much different place now. And in a way, we are.

repetition

This is 12, as I remember. Not exactly, but the gist. 

This afternoon I stand at the counter, giggling-- some of us don't outgrow it-- at the pair of girls flitting through the clearance racks. One of them, mine, cares nothing for clothes or whether they match or whether they're clean. But give her an array of chunky plastic bracelets or sparkling cut glass pendants or, today, long summer scarves knit out of blue and black stripes and she's like a crow collecting. 

She comes over, especially: "It's only two dollars."  

My "I wonder why,"  doesn't even lift my eyebrows before she wanders away. Her money, her fun-- doubled,  I soon see: her friend is buying an identical accessory. Of course. They both wear them out of the store, discussing whose is "cooler," oblivious to all else. A generational deja vu that somehow confirms what I knew was someday coming. 

As we walk to the car I remember a picture that was, back then, my favorite. The seventh grade me and two friends out of three were wearing nearly exact sweaters. I'm not sure I noticed it at the time. 

two questions

1.   Who orders this?

2.  Does Will Smith know?

Holy cow, Dick Cheney

goes without saying

Commencement concludes and the graduates spill out. Family portraits line the sidewalk, convened by cell phone and tip-toed scans of the crowd. As I make my last-chance circuit, I'm glad to recognize sister, mother, not-exactly-stepdad around my now-former student with an aunt behind the lens. 

We do-si-do, snap pictures and pose, and I reach for the mother's hand.  She nods through my congratulations and says, "She told me you're a very very nice teacher." And the hesitation in my pleased reply is part polite and part unspoken, "You do speak English!" interfering with my words. She never has, in front of me, before.  

In short, present-tense sentences that I could understand in Spanish, I tell her that I think the world of her daughter and that we'll be in touch.  It's not the time or place for much more than that, though there's plenty more that I could have said and been glad for her to understand. Maybe now there will be another time.  Perhaps before the younger sister graduates I'll remember to thank the woman for the tamales!