Hannah

      “Doug….Doug…Do you work here all night?  I mean, do you have lights and work in the dark, or…or,  or do you come back in the morning?”  

        Excerpt of a conversation I had Friday  with Hannah.

       I told my wife Friday night  I think I’d  just met a  4 year  old female version of myself.  It was so enlightening.

       “What do you mean?” She asked.

       Me:   “Well, she’s  so serious.    

       It’s  just who she is. 

       Even at four years of age  it’s hard-wired into her personality. ”

      I’m currently building an  addition on Hannah’s house.  This wasn’t the first time our path’s crossed.  In April, her mom and dad  invited   my wife and I  over for supper to discuss their new addition.   Hannah  sat next to my wife at the dinner table.   Wife told me Friday , she felt like Hannah  had studied  her the whole night.

        Growing up,  I was told I was way too serious on several occasions. 

      Inside I would be  feeling just fine, having a gay old time but then mom or some adult   would say something like that  at a family get together  and I would get all self-conscious.

      Here’s an ancient picture of me when I was  3 in my lederhosen:

     My friend Catherine said the first time she saw this picture she wanted to pinch those little cheeks.  Don’t get any ideas.

      I realized on Friday I have subconsciously  looked @ my serious tendencies    as a personality defect and a curse.

     It’s NOT.  

Repeat after me:      ” Having a serious side to one’s personality is a beautiful God- given quality!”

     In fact, I heard last week on the radio, some women think that guys who are readers are sexy. 

     The ironic thing is, I am  a teaser, and behind my sometimes stoic expression  lives a man who is a cross  between Huckleberry Finn  and Will Smith.

My given name is Douglas, which if you care to look it up, means “Dweller by the dark stream”. 

      Now if that isn’t deep I don’t know what is.

     As always, thanks for reading my stuff, and if you have a moment, drop me a comment to let me know you were here. Thanks! DM

After Cancer Everyday Miracles by Dana Jennings

taken from the

 

Sunday, May 23, 2010

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April 6, 2010, 11:01 am

        It has been two years since I learned that I had prostate cancer, and a bit more than a year since I had any treatment for what I eventually learned was an aggressive Stage 3 cancer.

      Being from the sticks of New Hampshire, I’m reminded of a woods that has burned. There is still plenty of scorched earth and charred deadfalls, but, more important, the green scrub and optimistic wildflowers of normality are creeping back. Dana JenningsI’m in pretty good shape these days. I live from PSA test to PSA test – every three months – and so far, so good. I still get more tired than I would like because my body chemistry is still in ferment from hormone therapy. And, to get an erection, I have to inject my penis with Cavereject, which stimulates blood flow. (It’s not as bad as it sounds. Honest.) 

       But those are just physical details. I’m more interested in what I’ve learned from my cancer, how it has actually – and unexpectedly — changed me. Cancer is a hard teacher, but a teacher even so. More than ever, I know that I am blessed in sons and my marriage. That on a cold winter’s night a pint of porter in the company of a good neighbor is a bounty in this uncertain world. Yes, cancer is about an unwanted mutiny in the body. But, too, it’s about love and transience.

      Postcancer, I love who and what I love more deeply than ever. And I keenly feel in my bones the sheer evanescence of our existence. I’ve also undergone changes that are more obvious. The anger that raged within me after my diagnosis has mellowed to a simmer — I don’t bellow at speeding cars anymore. I do admit, though, that my tolerance for jerks and trivia has vanished as time’s arrow pricks at my back. I’ve become more myself these past two years, having shed the need to impress anyone.

       Cancer cells also knock the ego down a peg or two. I’m even more obsessive about my, well, obsessions. I binge-read, gorging on books and tearing through genres like some kind of literary wolf: fantasy (Tolkien, Rowling, George R.R. Martin), crime (Leonard, Burke, Stephen Hunter) and poetry (Li Po, Tu Fu, Basho).

        And when I realized recently that the last baseball season that truly floored me was in 1975, when the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds played their epic World Series, I galloped to the stacks to gobble up books about the primal days of the major leagues and the Negro leagues. (Yep, Ted Williams still hit .406 in 1941.) That reading, in turn, led me to Ebbets Field Flannels, and the wool replica of Satchel Paige’s 1942 Kansas City Monarchs home jersey that hangs in my closet.

      Like ol’ Satchel, I don’t look back, because I don’t want to see what might be gaining on me.

       Most important, I think, I continue to consciously slow down as our maniacal culture speeds up. I’m constantly on the lookout for those miracles in a minor key that present themselves to us each day.

         I crave a certain fierceness of perception, am more open to the fullness of life seized in one small moment or gesture:

       Bats carving inky compulsories in the purple-black dusk.

      Fern, the sweet apricot cockapoo up the street, who likes to plant her petite butt on my foot.

        The topographical hieroglyphics of moss and lichen thriving on rock and stone.

      The eternal summer conjured by Dick Dale’s feral surf guitar.

       The dank musk of rain on the wind.

       The down-home holiness of bluegrass gospel sung by Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers.

        A wicked curveball just nicking the outside corner of the plate.

       The puppy breath of our two new golden retrievers, smelling like wet and bitter grass.

        The daredevil gray squirrels that tap-dance along the back fence.

         April snow, which my country-boy father calls the poor man’s fertilizer.

         So … what are your miracles in a minor key?

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My friend Lisa from New York shared this with us on Facebook this morning-  thank you Lisa!

A musing on young apples, “facebook friends,” and Ralph Waldo Emerson

   

     We planted a small apple orchard with 100 semi dwarf  varieties in 2002-2003.  They continue to teach me life lessons.  

      I found out a few years ago,  an apple tree  will  naturally thin out the number of apples it carries in the event the bees do too good a job of pollinating.  About a month after the little apples are formed,  the tree will sometimes  discard a portion of the smaller fruit.

        I deleted  21 Facebook “friends” again  last night.   I say again, because I seem to cycle.  I did the  same thing back in February and before that,  last October.

      I  am not into numbers.  I would rather have 5 people  I hear from than 400 who never communicate.      

       I was telling my wife over coffee this morning about my latest  purge.  

       She asked me ;  “How many of the people you deleted were people who initiated the contact, or  were they  relationships where  I had been the  initiator ?”   

   I thought about that question today and  I would have to say, it was a little of both.

       You and I only have so much time and energy. 

      Significant relationships require both-  Time  and energy.   

     If an apple  tree knows it can only do justice to a finite number of apples in a given year, then  it seems to me that same might apply when it comes  to growing the  relationships in my life.

      I see Facebook as just another tool for me to meet and encourage a limited  number of people. 

      There has always been a certain mystery for  me regarding how friendships are formed.

     Why do  some friendships continue on for years and years , while others are only in my life for a season?

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     Here’s what Ralph Waldo  Emerson  had to say on friendship:

     “Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party.  Better be a nettle in the side of your friend that his echo.  The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it.  There must be very two before there can be very one.  Let it be an alliance of two large formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before they yet recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”

     Sidenote , I’m hoping some of you would be willing to   “translate”  this one for me ?  Thanks! DM

     Emerson again:

 ”My friends have come to me unsought.  The  great God gave them to me…..High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts….

  (I’m also having a hard time understanding this next part as well, so feel free to help me out:

       “Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love.  Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.  In the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with shades of suspicion and unbelief.  We doubt (suspect) that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation….”

     I suspect  within that 19th century English there may also be a nugget of wisdom, hence, me taking the time to include it here.  Well, there you have it, this is where my mind has been the past few days.  

      Thoughts, comments, questions? 

 

Parents in Pain

       

      My parenting pain didn’t start until  1994.    Even though I’d watched my parents go through their struggles with prodigal children (myself being one) nothing prepared me for the emotional  roller coaster ride of the past 16 years.    Watching  my   sweet, precocious, little ones making life choices that had the potential to haunt them the rest of their lives has been brutal.

   Our children  began to act out as they hit 14 and  15.    Those years aren’t  all gloom and doom, I have some good memories   but family life has gotten more stressful  as each of the kids discovered the opposite sex. 

       Our eldest  is  herself now a mom,  funny how becoming a parent has a way of reeling us in sometimes.   (don’t you think Ang? ) 

       I won’t re-hash and vent  all of the heartache/ confusion/ anger/second guessing /  I’ve experienced and expressed again on this blog-  if you’re interested, just scroll back through the archives  and you can find plenty of angst. 

       Here are some things I would say to any parent who needs  hope:

       Unless God himself works in your child (Children’s)  heart (s) , then no amount of nagging, loving, worrying, praying, fretting,     you name it,  is  going to change your child.   I am more  convinced than ever,  we can do no good thing apart from God giving us the “want to”-  left to ourselves, all of us have a bent/ tendency toward wrong-   

     On the other hand, God is able to reach down into our lives and bring us to our senses- because isn’t that really whats happening when our kids  (or us as well )  make choices that destroy our lives?

      I’m sorry if I’m sounding a little preachy, I don’t mean to be.  For several months now, I have not been able to reconcile why  an all-powerful, loving God would not intervene as I’ve watched one immoral choice after another.   Frankly, I still don’t have an answer but  I am convinced he does exist, he does care and he is VERY  capable of getting my kid’s attention if and when he wants to do so. 

      My struggle has been in the realm of what is to be my response from situation to situation and  secondly, what to do with the anger- towards the kids and towards God. 

     To give a word picture, living with non stop heartache is like having a short in your electrical system in your car- it drains your battery.  You get to the point where you lose your bearings.

     Another thing- I am so thankful for the handful of parents, and friends (both locally and whom I”ve met via the Internet)  with whom I can really open up to.   If you have no one else to talk to, and  if all else fails, feel free to  leave me a comment-  I would love to interact with you.

       I think I may have turned the  corner on my own pain this morning.  Later- DM

The Art of Hustling

Hustle: pressure or urge someone into an action ;  twist somebody’s arm; manipulate so as to persuade someone to adopt a certain position, belief or action. 

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    Bob and Rita boarded a  painted quarter horse with us a few summers ago.  In their mid 60′s,  Rita was 3 inches taller than Bob, wiry, sharp featured, intense.    Bob on the other hand was kind of roly-poly, wire rimmed glasses, very laid back, an interesting pair.  They would come out on the weekends  to work with their horse. 

     Can’t say we had much in common  (I hate horses/ had a run in with a Shetland pony when I was a kid, ) but we would visit on occasion.  That’s why it kind of took me for surprise one Saturday when Bob suggested they would like to get to know us a little more, take us out for dinner some time….”and maybe take a road trip to Nauvoo“

      Me being the simple  guy that I am, played dumb, smelled a rat, so first chance I could, I got on-line and googled “Nauvoo”.  Sure enough, those little rascals    were trying to put the moves on me spiritually. ..they were Mormons and this invite was a veiled attempt do some “friendship evangelism.” 

      Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses,  even certain segments of the Christian community are not above “hustling”.   It smacks of manipulation pure and simple.  Now if you have a genuine interest in me,  you’re willing to accept me  right where I’m at, and if I don’t buy what you’re selling, you’re still willing to accept me, then I’d say you’re not a hustler.  If on the other hand, you come into my life with a fixed agenda,  give me your little schpeel,  I don’t bite,   so you walk away muttering something negative about me..then  you are no different from the snake oil salesman of yesteryear….you don’t really care about me, no matter what you tell yourself.

    I’ve been thinking along these lines because I got a call last week from a couple who have reservations  in our Bed and Breakfast  come  June.  They have a booth at our  county fair selling two health related products.    Having sold a few things myself, I could already feel him working me  over the phone.

       It just so happens that my wife and I had already decided we needed to start eating healthier this past  February.  I got a craving for some cookie dough so I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I can still remember standing over my favorite ceramic mixing bowl,  dumping that cup of white sugar into the mix.  In  two and a half  days I ate the whole batch, never made one cookie. I was a sugar junkie  out of control.

      Later that same week  I caught Dr Oz on a PBS special talking about obesity, processed sugars,  blue berries, fad diets….he talked about keeping things simple, slow weight loss is more effective long-term or you end up loosing muscle mass.    the importance of a good breakfast, why you need to snack, why certain foods make you feel full while others don’t.    He said forget your pants size (mine hadn’t changed in 25 years)  instead, run a tape measure around  my  belly button area, that’s  the fat to be concerned about.  I was  shocked.

      So I’m already interested in being more healthy, if  you have some tips you like to share,  great, I’m listening.  (That includes you the blog reader)   I’m  not interested in being part of  your  great business opportunity.

      You’ve heard that old maxim don’t work for friends or relatives….I would add, don’t hustle   friends and relatives….relate to them,no strings attached, you can’t go wrong.  As always, thanks for reading my stuff.  DM