The boldness of youth
January 16, 2012
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Kid down the road got a new skateboard for Christmas, a bright red one with orange flames, white wheels, and tiny metal blocks underneath that spark when scraped against the pavement. He’s been riding around the neighborhood on it every day since. Doesn’t matter how cold it is or if the mountains have driven down black, snow-laced clouds. He’ll still ride by. Every day after school, and most every day during the weekend.
Of course the skateboard hasn’t faired well in the process. The red has now begun to fade, and the orange flames are now a dull ochre. The metal blocks will still spark—I can see them doing so in the early evenings as he rides by—but now they come more as puffs of light than showers of fire. I suppose this is by design. I’ve heard stakeboarders abhor the new and shiny. The used and scuffed is much more appealing.
I’ll watch him. I’ll even go so far as to say that once I see him pass my living room window once, I’ll pause at that window until he rides by again. It’s the way he does it, you see. The way he rides.
He’s not flashy. I’m not sure if this is his first board, though I’m inclined to believe it is. He’s of the age when the world widens at the seams and expands beyond his home and his block. He can ride now. He can explore. He can race down the slight incline of the hill and feel the wind in his face. It is freedom, and it is good.
It’s too bad that one of these days he’ll likely get clobbered by a passing vehicle. Again, it’s the way he rides—in the middle of the street, through stop signs, jumping curbs, like a miniature Evel Knievel. I don’t want you to believe I watch him out of some admiration, some envy. No, I watch him because I’m scared to death for him.
Also, because I used to be him.
Call it a boy thing, though I’m sure girls aren’t immune. They play and romp and do all manner of reckless things, all seemingly without care or thought of consequence, all because they are convinced of their immortality. Nothing will happen to them. Nothing can. Because they’re going to live forever.
That was me.
I once jumped off the roof of the house with an umbrella, thinking it would make a cool parachute. It didn’t work. Once I caught the breath that had been knocked out of me by the hard ground, I tried it again.
I once rappelled down a two-story set of stairs using a jump rope attached to a combination lock.
And there was the time when after watching a re-run of Happy Days, I tried jumping over four empty garbage cans on my bike. I managed one and a half.
Why did I do these things? Stupidity is the first thing that comes to mind (I had, and have, that in abundance). But the truth is that I honestly thought nothing could go wrong. Nothing bad would ever happen.
Now I’m older. Now I’m a husband and a father. Now I know the bad things that can and do happen, often without the slightest provocation, and often through no fault of my own. I think as we get older the glow in the world begins to fade and light because dusk. I think we begin to see shadows, that lurking What If. And I think we ponder the worst that can happen so much that the best that can happen goes ignored.
I think sometimes we worry so much about the traffic that we don’t allow ourselves to feel the wind in our face and know the freedom to simply be.
Age robs us of more than just our strength and our innocence. It also demands our boldness. If anything, that’s something I’d like to reclaim. I’d like to recapture that sense of immortality, even if it is a false one.
I know this: in a few short minutes I expect to see a young boy fly by on his skateboard, and when he does I will instinctively look for an approaching car. But I will also root him on, and I will see the wind in his face.
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Needs, wants and pretty blue pens
January 12, 2012
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I’m guest posting over at Rachelle Gardner’s site today. You can get there from here by clicking here.
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A world worth saving
January 9, 2012
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Piney Mills may sound like a good enough place to live—one of those neighborhoods that offer a mixture of Cape Cods and ranches and the occasional bricked manor home, all with the stars and bars hanging from a pole, each with mats at the front door that say WELCOME. But it’s not like that at all. Piney Mills is instead a sprawling trailer court just outside of town that borders an expanse of national forest that is largely untrodden save for moonshiners, meth dealers, and love-struck teenagers in search of somewhere private to do some heavy petting.
In other words, every town has that one place where you don’t go unless you absolutely have to. For my town, Piney Mills is that one place.
It was a favor for a friend that took me there a couple weeks ago. He had a sofa that needed to be moved, I had the truck to move it. It was a minor errand that would take no more than an hour, but I still dreaded the trip. Piney Mills is an underbelly. When you go there, it’s best to prepare yourself for the things you’ll likely see—the poverty, the want, the neglect, yes. But mostly it’s the crass, profane attitudes the people there have adopted, either because of the sorry states of their lives or their bleak prospects of their futures.
I wasn’t disappointed in that regard. The decayed (and bullet-ridden, I might add) wooden PINEY MILLS sign at the entrance was guarded by a boy no older than six. He was dressed in jeans that were a size too short and a stained sweatshirt that read AUSTIN 3:16 SAYS I JUST KICKED YOUR ASS that was at least three sizes too big. As I pulled from pavement to gravel, he looked at me and offered a tiny middle finger.
I wound my way along the park’s main avenue. Trailers in various states of disrepair offered clues as to what the inhabitants considered important and not. I saw a bevy of duct-taped windows, porches littered with empty beer cases, and pristine satellite dishes clinging to sagging roofs. What few people that mingled about in the cold stared through dead eyes with a mix of resignation and distrust.
The guilt I felt wasn’t because my life had been offered more, but that I had to go to a place like that to be reminded of it.
The sofa in question was colored in a microfiber lime green and seemed to weigh as much as the truck that would transport it. My friend and I managed to hook it out of the narrow doorway and into the bed without causing further damage to either. He offered me coffee that I eagerly accepted. We spent the next half hour talking on his front stoop.
There is a rhythm to every place, even a place like Piney Mills. As the minutes wore on and the talk drifted from Christmas to work, the neighborhood awoke to a point where I was tolerated if not accepted. A woman across the street came outside long enough to wave and ask if we needed further help with the sofa. The man in the trailer beside us walked out to fetch his morning paper. He wore a threadbare purple bathrobe and nothing more. That didn’t stop him from noticing the errant newspaper that straddled the boundary between his trailer and the next, which he promptly delivered to an expectant and thankful elderly woman next door. Children appeared to play football in the street. For a while, even in that sad place, there was the sound of laughter and fun.
I realized then that I’d been missing something besides that appreciation for my life’s bounty. It was an important lesson, one I think is worth sharing here. It is simply that there is still joy in this world, still beauty. Still good. We might believe those things to be sparse and that might be true, but I don’t think so. Even in Piney Mills, that place the local police know well, you can find glimpses of our better selves. You can be reminded that while we are all fallen, dirty, incorrigible people, we are also capable of good and laughter.
I’m going to remember that the next time I turn on the television or pick up a newspaper. I’m going to hang on to that notion the next time my eyes are drawn heavenward and I’m tempted to say Come now, just come on and put an end to all this mess.
Because this world is still worth saving. It’s still worth our faith. It’s still worth living in.
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On settling and being settled
January 4, 2012
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The thing about Troy Heatwole is that he’s settled. He’ll be the first to tell you that. Not outright, mind you. Troy never says anything outright and never has. He prefers instead to take the long way around to the point he’s trying to make. So instead of simply saying, “I’m settled,” he’ll say something like, “I ain’t as young as I used to be an’ I ain’t as smart, but the world’s quiet.”
And really, who doesn’t long for a quiet world?
Not that life doesn’t pose any challenges. Troy’s like all of us in that he has bills to pay and ends to meet. That’s not what I’m talking about when I say he’s settled. What I’m talking about is that Troy not only knows his place in the world, he’s accepted it with all the happiness and peace one could ask. There is no striving in him, no longing, no unmet expectations. Just a nice, peaceful quiet.
I say this because I want to say that I envy Troy Heatwole. Not so much for what he possesses (which isn’t much aside from a small cabin in the woods, a battered Ford truck, and a coon dog named Bo), but for what he has. There’s a difference between those things. What you possess can be taken from you. What you have can’t. And Troy possesses a settled life. I do not.
But that’s not really what I’m getting at, either. I suppose I’m taking a page out of Troy’s book—I’m taking the long way around to the point I’m trying to make. How else could I bring myself to admit that I’m envious of a man whose life, settled or not and quiet or not, revolves around cleaning and draining septic tanks?
Oh yes, that’s right. Troy’s the septic man.
It isn’t that he loves his job. He does, however, find a purpose in it. Because just as Troy once told me that “Even the Lawd woulda had trouble lovin to do what I do,” he also said that, “Dis here world’s fulla crap, an’ somebody’s gotta clean it all up.” Wise words, those. Kind of makes you think.
I pass Troy on the road often. Our workdays tend to end around the same time and converge at a stoplight just outside of town. He usually gets the green while I’m stuck at the red. He blows by in his big pumper truck, windows down and long stringy hair waving in the breeze. And smiling, always smiling, because Troy has a quiet life and he’s settled.
Me, I’m not.
That’s not a big deal, I guess, assuming you’re not closing in on 40 and you don’t have a family and a mortgage. All of which describes me. If I’m ever going to be settled, this should be the time when I should get started. But I can’t. Even though I’ve been blessed with much, I can’t escape the feeling there’s more out there I should be shooting for. There are other lands to travel and other things to do and other Me’s to be. I want to settle and yet I feel I shouldn’t settle for less than I should.
That, in a nutshell, is why I’m envious of Troy the septic man. He has no need to ponder such things. He’s found his life. He doesn’t have to wander anymore.
But there are times when he passes me at the stoplight after a long day and I see his hair waving and his face smiling and I think differently. I think that maybe I have it all backwards. Maybe we should all be craving to be a little more than what we are. Maybe we should all be wanting to grow a little more each day.
Deep down we all want to be settled, but that may be more a trap than a treasure.
Maybe only as far as we’re unsettled is there any hope for us.
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Filed under: choice, dreams, future, life, longing, perspective, purpose
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New Years with the Devil
January 2, 2012
He came to me on New Years Eve as I stood outside gazing up at the stars—not so much a person (and not so much a light, as the Book says he can appear), but as a shadow in my own thoughts. He stood with me there beneath the moon and Venus and Orion, saying nothing at first, letting me speak because he can do no damage unless invited first.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
And he answered that he was roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.
“You still do that?”
Oh yes, he answered, oh yes indeed, I have done so for ages and will for ages more. Nothing gives me greater pleasure.
“Not many people believe in you anymore,” I told him. “You know that, right?”
He was well aware of that. In fact, he surprised me by saying that was what he wanted. It made things easier, he said, when it came to his work.
“Guess this is a pretty rough time of the year for you, huh?” I smiled as I said that, not because it was funny but because it was true. “You must hate Christmas more than the ACLU.”
True, he said. Christmas and Easter were not his favorite things. And he confessed that it was not so much the joy and peace that bothered him as it was the hope. He said he hated hope most of all. But tonight was New Years, and there was no better time for him.
“Why’s that?”
Really? he asked, and in my mind I saw him shake his head in wonder. You really don’t know? Why, think about it. How many people this moment are huddled together in bars and at parties with drinks in their hands? How many right now are making their resolutions (he told me he loved resolutions almost as much as our nonbelief) and promising themselves they will do better this time around? As if things could change so easily just with the turning of the calendar!
He chuckled then, and there was a chill in his laugh that even the December wind could not match.
How many people out there want nothing more than to put this year behind them? he asked me. How many want to drink those memories away? And how many think this next year will be everything this year wasn’t? I’ll change, they say. I’ll do better. But in the end it never works, and do you know why?
“Why?”
Because change hurts. Because change won’t come until it hurts more to stay the same than it does to become something different. And that’s where I win. People will endure a plain life even if they want something more, because a plain life is a painless one.
He said something else to me then. It was soft and swallowed by the wind, but I think he said that he will always win so long as we believe we are ordinary. I’m almost positive that’s what he said.
He left me then under the stars. Midnight came and went, bringing with it another year—365 days that promise the same hope and fear and longing that every year before it has held.
I hope he doesn’t come back, even though I know he will. He comes to us all sooner or later, whether we believe in him or not.
This I know: the hope I long for and the change I want in myself won’t come as easy as the turning of a calendar page. It will be hard for me. For you, too. It will often hurt and sometimes seem impossible. But I think that’s how it should be.
None of us should want a plain life.
Because none of us are ordinary.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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