Coming Up For Air

Gina and I made for an odd pair. Aside from the wheelchairs we rode in and the fact that 20 years ago we traveled with a little band of fellow residents in an inpatient rehabilitation program for about a month, we had nothing in common. Black. White. Democrat. Republican. New to the adult world. Experience in the halls of power with the stories to prove it.  Close-cut Afro. Opie Taylor haircut. My vague notions of changing the world through politics so as to avoid getting a real job but with no concept of confrontation contrasted sharply with her willingness to name the Opie Taylor haircut and assertiveness to volunteer to pay for its updating. With that same assertiveness, she told me I needed to make the most of my party's ascendancy. I basked in the attention. I also wanted to make it clear that as a very recent college graduate, I was a man of the world. To prove this, I brought Gina a photograph made with a congressman for whom I interned. I undermined the effo...

Wizened political sage from The West Wing Leo McGarity intoned, "Presidential elections are won and lost on one square foot of real estate." Pointing at his wrinkled brow, Leo designates the crucial space. "Up here." The campaign to rejoin the 95 or 96% of you who are employed, or for anyone trying to navigate the crucial barrier from outsider to insider, is also maintained in the mind before it is waged anywhere else. Since a career as an actor or actress seems to be one long job interview, that might explain the state of mind the late, blessedly candid Carrie Fisher opens up to us in The Princess Diarist . "It's not nice being inside my head," she admits. "It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live in here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. The same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else." Me too. Unemployment increases gratitude for breaks from the same old...

Good writing and mutual frailties can connect us with people whose labels are different from our own. Great writing made it possible for godfather of rap Kevin Lee to make the week's biggest impression on me as this sheltered, preppy white guy comes up for air. In "Street Sense" in the issue of the New Yorker magazine dated December 18 and December 25, Kelefa Sanneh. "Lee," Sanneh describes, "is forty-six, an age that offers some advantages of its own." Lee says of his professional influence on youth culture, "With this gray beard I'm a O.G. When I say something, they listen – like, 'Oh, the O.G. must have been through it." The Bible says as much, signifying gray hair as my crown. When I look in the mirror at the same graying whiskers Kevin Lee sees, I'm gratified for the confirmation that some of the youth culture I hope to influence in my next job might have the same reaction. If being the O.G. and owning up to it, rather tha...

"It is a wonderful experience," reminisces Thomas Merton in his spiritual memoir The Seven Storey Mountain, "to discover a new saint." Even more delightful, I consider as I come up for air, when that saint's name is Patrick. The middle-aged male, or at least THIS middle-aged male is not noted for adding friends so readily and enthusiastically among the fellowship of the saints, which is how the Bible refers to the Church. THIS saint, Patrick, might have made himself a candidate for canonization by my decidedly egotistical standards just by reading what I wrote and offering feedback. See how benevolent I can be, I say with the President on The West Wing, when everybody does what I want? This saint, Patrick, grew in my good graces by what he wrote after commenting on this blog. His two words, "Keep smiling," were more impacting than a passel of mine. If there is a personification of the Sesame Street game show host Guy Smiley, it has never been me. Pho...

An eight-year-old who enthusiastically tackles a book on how to care for his dog is likely to get my attention. An eight-year-old so intent on the wisdom his book offers that he fails to notice when the actual dog needs to actually go outside is likely to keep that attention and be on my mind when I come up for air to consider the week's events. Jonah can be excused for his lapse. Books are a great source of widening experience. Still, I wonder how often people who have been around longer than Jonah choose a favorite, familiar format from which to get most of their input about life and then, purposefully or not, ignore everything else. Closing in on another year of reading or listening to at least 250 books, I'm sure I've missed my share of dogs in distress. That is, I've missed opportunities to actually use what I learn in order to benefit others whose presentation may not be as ordered or as efficient as the page sequence or high-speed, on-demand narration of a book....

I didn't intend to come up for air with the sitcom silliness of Man With A Plan on my mind. Such an outcome tempts me to take another breath and to dive back into David Copperfield, that I've also been feeding on, to present something which will feed my readers, and my ego, with more highbrow material. What's next? Will the sidekick on the show played by Kevin Nealon as so obtuse as to make Matt LeBlanc's character seem relatively smart, get the microphone and the spotlight ? Nevertheless, here we are. In the most recent episode I saw, Leblanc's title character Adam Burns finds out that the bargain pastor he hired many years ago contrary to his fiancée's instructions was a fraud with a gambling addiction. For the length of the show, we get to skewer his cheapskate ways. Though currently prosperous, he insists on getting multiple uses out of portions of coffee grounds designed for daily disposal. He indicts himself as a cheapskate when he opens up a drawer full o...

If C.S. Lewis has any insight into it, the demons delighted in my state of mind on Sunday. His fictional master tempter in Screwtape Letters calls on his inexperienced nephew to foster in humans, "an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men." Unfortunately, this trail of sulfur follows me into church, at which point I attempt to cover it with the incense of religious excuses. For the fellow men, women, and children in my congregation, what concerns the great mass of them this time of year is Operation Christmas Child. It's part of the unofficial liturgy this time of year. Operation Christmas Child extends holiday giddiness for those who do giddy by a full two months. The emphasis on the church-wide preparation of shoeboxes full of gifts for children in the Third World is hard for any but the expert curmudgeon to disparage, but I was managing. I told myself during the extended announcements portion of our service that I crav...

Last night, like the similarly introverted body man in my favorite show The West Wing , I got a purposeful invitation to "speak as men do". Like Charlie, I was invited to hang out with a couple of guys. Though the territory was unfamiliar and my question to my new acquaintance was bookish, his reply sparked quick connection. I asked Richard, whom I had known all of 90 minutes, how his outlook was different as he and his wife expected their second child. He said he wanted to write down more of the experience this time. THAT I can certainly relate to. In fact, the resolve of another practitioner of writing as reflection was timely. Five years ago today, my wife and I got a call that would change our lives. We became foster parents. I'm with Richard in that I've spilled more ink over lesser things, so the opportunity to come up for air and commemorate the experience with lessons from Little One, not named here in keeping with social services policy, seems appropriate. ...

C.S. Lewis was self-conscious enough about undertaking the coming-of-age memoir that became Surprised by Joy that he expressed his diffident ambivalence in print at the book's beginning. In short order, though, he recovered his healthy sense of the worth of his own story. At an incremental intellectual milestone of his childhood early in the book, he tells the reader, if you didn't find this interesting, you probably won't find the rest of the book interesting. Neither his introspection nor his candor have caused many people to close the book. It has become a classic. In that tradition, my landmark event upon Coming Up for Air for the week doesn't make its own noise. With Lewis, I reflect back with honesty that it was important to me. With the encouragement of one of my steady readers, I keep in mind that this alone might be reason enough to find print. Alfred Hitchcock said drama is life with the dull bits cut out. Bill Klein of the reality show The Little Couple ...

My mother and my wife were talking over kitchen matters. I'm not ungrateful for what goes on there. I'm certainly not ungrateful for the fact that the two most important women in my life connect so consistently and so easily. Since both my hands and my interests have been impacted by disability, I tend to readily turn my attention from such conversations, toward my books, and, eventually, toward the next meal that will come from that kitchen. The scent of their kitchen conversation wafted into my notice, however. They were talking about oven cleaning, and the sweet scent of faith sanctified the burning chemical odor I would typically associate with that effort. Prompted by talk about her own oven rather than by any desire to draw attention to herself, my mother mentioned nearly climbing in to clean the cavernous communal oven her church uses to serve the homeless. I've already been inspired by my mom's willingness to reach across class, and, typically, color, and ventur...

In the mental shelf space where a Bible verse or someone's birthday could be, there's a picture of a wide-eyed kitten from posters past. Beneath the kitten's memorable gaze was the inscription, "Work fascinates me. I can look at it for hours." I have. I've looked at work for hours, days, years, and decades. My vantage point on vocation has been worth enough for me to make a living helping others find it in roles as a job and college counselor. In recent days, I've looked at work differently. Unemployed at the moment, I had a little epiphany in the most unlikely of places, on an assembly line. As cerebral palsy impacts my muscles significantly, I didn't expect to be here. I didn't expect that repeated movement of my uncooperative muscles would provide much value. My mind, I've been told, is my moneymaker, and I've gotten plenty of gratitude over the years to confirm and perhaps narrow that perception to myopia. Henry David Thoreau's...

Most scenes I would frame in this space as I come up for air to record the week's strongest impressions for myself and you, my faithful reader, are clinically well lit. There is no subtlety or sinistery behind the computer screen telling me whether I'm qualified, or not, for the latest job opening. Electronic entertainment dances across my retina with a deliberately distracting series of exploding colors. Lines of text march beneath my book lamp, inspected for inclusion in my OneNote file that stands in for what my readers or hearers may mistakenly think is a good memory. Scenes can make a vivid impression, though, even in the dark. The combustion between smoldering rage at one end of the room and the projection of a a colorful cartoon character at the other was enlightening enough. Such was the unlikely, and unintended, combination from Tuesday's summons to the unemployment office. When those two components collided, sound stood in for light. The bureaucratic brotherhood ...

Zoey's entire face was surrounded by the teacup she held with both of her diminutive hands. Zoey has been a reality TV star on her adoptive parents show The Little Couple almost all of her life, but she was dividing none of her intensity with an awareness of her audience. This was a tea party. In the UK. She was all in. Zoey's mom, neonatologist Dr. Jennifer Arnold, saw more than kitchenware and ritual. Zoey started life in an orphanage in India. When she arrived in an American home, Dr. Arnold said she didn't play with toys. She didn't know how. Perhaps plates and cups were what she used to fire her imagination at the orphanage. Maybe the same props and prompts kindle the same reaction as she grows. Adults could learn from Zoey's connectedness and intensity. Aware of a wider world, we often lose something of her capacity for gratefully engaging the earthiness of the here and now. Just because our roles are serious, as is my primary one as suddenly unemployed,...

I've been present in a few "holy ground" moments, and this was one of them. My wife and I got to be present in my brother's home as he returns there for the first time after a seven-week hospitalization for a traumatic brain injury. He took the steps in the front slowly and surely, and he proceeded similarly inside the house. As he hugged each one of his kids individually in the domestic environment they had been occupying without him, he said, "Welcome home." I've been trying to figure that out ever since in the month that has elapsed. Did his brain, much recovered though he would admit still subject to malfunctions, transpose the normal social order of our interactions? Aren't the kids, who have been in the home, supposed to be welcoming him there? I've noticed that when we anticipate someone's processing or interactions to be a little off, we can assume this even when they are not, so I was glad to get a chance to ask him what he meant. ...

This week went on without any particular Damascus Road experience, even of an intellectual variety. The days ticked off toward the weekend when I typically Come Up For Air in this venue. I was sure they would coalesce around something compelling, witty, or thought rich to share. I'm not quite ready to divulge the specifics of my real life predicament and preoccupation on my current unexpected life detour until I can make some sense of them, probably in retrospect. In the fleeting time for quiet, written reflection I've got, I was counting on hiding behind a five dollar words or genial anecdotes about other people. Even my socks wouldn't cooperate with my appendages spastic with cerebral palsy, or with my pretense of control. They were just the latest rebels in a morning of setbacks somewhat specific to CP, but we will let them stand in for stuff which, to visualize, would definitely qualify as Too Much Information. The clock was ticking loudly, marking off the looming expir...

In Saving Private Ryan , the troops are complaining among themselves. One approaches their commanding officer who keeps a somewhat mysterious back story to himself and asks why they never hear him complaining. Gripes go up the chain of command, he says. Never down. A real-life friend of mine reminded me of such differing or distorted impressions. In graduate school, while my life was somewhat in turmoil, she seemed implacable. She even managed to complete a major paper overnight after being out of town with her family in response to a dear grandmother's passing. "How did you do that? I would have been freaking out and would have been unable to write the paper," I gushed admiringly. "You didn't see me when I was freaking out," she said with stoic candor. Colossians 4 also speaks to the wisdom of sharing selectively. The first verse sets the ideal that authority would be used with grace, and the second gives us the appropriate outlet for where to file our comp...

In Star Trek:The Next Generation , the android on the crew, Data, tries to be a parent. When the circuits of his android daughter begin to break down, she returns to the lab where she was formed. That's what she was programmed to do. This was a "return to the lab" kind of week. I'm still reestablishing much of what had been my life's orderly circuitry, so I'll spare you splenetics on exactly what happened and trust time and perspective to produce a more evenhanded account at some point. Meanwhile, I return to three basic principles programmed, err, parented into me. They are my coordinates when I am otherwise adrift. (1) I have skills other adults will notice. The first time I remember really believing this as more than parental pablum was, not surprisingly, in reference to my writing. I placed highly in a contest against fifth-grade contemporaries, and I liked this. I remember more vividly, though, feedback from my father. I was moved by the earthshaking co...

When the woman who introduced you to Green Eggs and Ham asks if you ever laugh, that's a pointed question. Perhaps sharpened by the technologically efficient brevity of a text inquiry, that was the question with which my mom confronted me yesterday. Like Hermione in the Harry Potter series, my recourse when confronting anything is to go to the library.  That's what she and I always do. I've found it safe to filter the outside world through the C. S. Lewis section of my mental book reserve, and he offered me a retreat from the question at hand. In Mere Christianity , he cautioned against evaluating people against some scale for outward happiness that we imagine to be objective. People are different, he says. People's experiences are different. The woman of whom we wonder, "Does she ever laugh?" might have become a lot more free at expressing joy over the last year. She may, in fact, more deliberately focus on whatever is good, whatever is lovely,...

I didn't realize a blue shirt could mean so much. This is the status symbol employees of the fast food chain receive when they are promoted and are now distinct from the red shirts around them. For the son of a friend of mine who hasn't found particular validation as a student or athlete, the blue shirt was especially gratifying. His dad says the accompanying raise didn't matter nearly as much as the blue shirt others could see. For the adolescent venturing out into the working world much like where he will find himself for the next few decades, the harbinger of the blue shirt is altogether good. Too much of a good thing, or too much worth assigned to a good thing, is not. With much more work behind us than my friend's commendable son, how many of us are still looking for the blue shirt, or the next blue shirt, to designate us for separate praise from our working peers? Is the blue shirt, or its more expensive equivalent, an accompanying RESULT of work done heartily ...

“Comparisons are odious.” Here, humorist Oscar Wilde is uncharacteristically blunt. I didn’t expect to be prodded by him, nor that his warning be delivered and confirmed in a bit of light reading on the second 25 years of the Star Trek phenomenon. By such diverse fuel, though, are the warp engines of my transformation engaged. As Star Trek: The Next Generation has unexpectedly provided the eerily timeless décor of my mental furniture, rearranging its assumptions is thought-provoking. What if James Avery who later played Uncle Phil on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air robustly filled the role of Geordie in place of the tentative, maturing grace that LeVar Burton brought to the role? It could have happened. What if Wesley, the show’s much-maligned boy prodigy, was a girl named Leslie? It could have happened. What if producers insisted on   my initial, adolescent reaction that Patrick Stewart was too old to take the captain’s chair from James T. Kirk?  Patrick Stewart, who w...