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One of the things I’ve noticed about owning an old Saab is that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING has a story around it.
The Saab this story’s about is my 1968 Saab 96. It’s been in a few stories, brought me through more than a few adventures, and in general, been a pretty dependable car.
It came with a V-4 engine (half a V-8) and a one barrel carburetor that got me about 27 miles per gallon. It was enough for smooth power, but not a lot of it.
One of the things I’d wanted to do for years was put a two barrel carb on it – which would allow the engine to ‘breathe’ more easily. Allowing an engine to breathe more easily made it more efficient, (it also meant more power 
…and if you’re thinking of cars, and breathing, between the carburetor, which did the inhaling, and the engine, which needed the air, was a hunk of metal known as an intake manifold. This was basically a cast collection of tubes that allowed the air from the carburetor to be divvied up and sent to each of the four cylinders that needed the air and provided the power. The one thing I needed in addition to the two barrel carburetor was one of these intake manifolds so all the pieces could come together. So over a few years I managed to find a manifold – as I recall, it came from a junkyard in Germany. I then found a carb on ebay, and was going to put the two together only to find that the carb was old and in desperate need of rebuilding.
It turns out that everything that could be worn out on this carb, was worn out on this carb. And… it had been dropped, and that meant it would have a bit of a vacuum leak if I wasn’t able to fix it. (that’s known, in technical terms, as a bad, but fixable thing). But, it was worth a try, so I bought a gallon of carburetor cleaner like I’d seen in a shop years ago, and just soaked the carb in it. That way everything that the cleaner could get to, would be gotten to, and then I could start this whole rebuilding process with clean parts and a rebuild kit. I needed good weather for it because you generally don’t work on car parts on the kitchen table (don’t ask why I know this, but it involves a friend’s motorcycle and the kitchen door catching fire… but that’s another story for another time), and one day, when it was sunny outside and I had some free time, I decided I’d actually do the cleaning bit, so to get started, I read the instructions on the can…
…and the thing that gets me about reading labels like that is “Why do the contents of the can only cause cancer in laboratory rats in California? I mean, is there something magical about laboratory rats in Seattle?”
Sigh…
Right. Bottom line, stay upwind of the stuff, don’t get any on you, and for heaven’s sake, don’t get any in the house.
I read a bit more, and found that the cleaner was to be used between 70 and 110 degrees.
The problem was it was 20 degrees outside.
Fahrenheit.
No more, no less…
But 20 degrees was clearly on the “a little too cool” side of making this stuff effective, so I tried to figure out a way to warm it up without causing problems… I mean, the stuff’s evil, nasty, flammable, whatever… I had to come up with some way of heating it carefully so that I could get it up to operating temperature. After some thought, I got a pot of water and put it on to boil, figuring that the cleaner had been sitting there in the garage for weeks, and it’d take some heat to warm it up to somewhere between the required 70 and 110 degrees to make it work. I figured I’d just put the gallon can of carb cleaner into a 5 gallon bucket, then put the hot water in the bucket and safely heat everything up.
Right?
Oh, if you’re reading this, you know dang well that there’s a story here…
I poured the first pot of water into the bucket, it covered the bottom of the bucket up to a couple of inches. Figuring that wasn’t enough, I went inside to heat up some more water.
It took a little bit to heat that second batch up, and I took it outside as soon as it was ready, but by the time I got out there with the water, the gallon of carb cleaner was boiling out over the top of the can inside the bucket, and it was well into eating the label off the can. (see picture).
The can was in the garage for awhile until I ran into it recently. It has been safely disposed of, and yes, the carburetor cleaner did eat the label off the can, as you can see.
It became fairly clear that the reason for the 110 degree limit was that that was the boiling temperature of carb cleaner – and if it ate the label off the freaking can, I didn’t want anything to do with it…
For whatever reason, the plastic bucket didn’t care about the carb cleaner, and the cleaner that had boiled over was sitting down at the bottom of the bucket – under the water. But gosh, you’d think they’d make the label out of something a little more durable or something…
I ended up putting the bucket in the very back of the Buick station wagon we had at the time to take it to a hazmat place here in the city. It was a little surreal to be driving there in the station wagon, with my son, who was still in a car seat at the time, just chatting away, only to get out and hand the bucket to a guy who was dressed in a full-on hazmat suit.
But we got rid of it, and that was a good thing.
I later put the carb itself on E-bay, wrapped in several layers of plastic that it didn’t dissolve, with a warning that it would smell like carburetor cleaner…
As I recall, a fellow in Utah bought it along with the rebuild kit I’d gotten for it, because, as it turned out, it would fit his Lotus. I told him everything about it, and he still wanted it. In the end, he was happy, because it made his car run. I was happy because the carburetor was miles away, and I was to the point where I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
Later, I just bought a new carburetor instead of trying to rebuild the old one, and put that on the intake manifold. I worked with Rob at Scanwest Autosport to make a linkage for it, and the car could inhale, deeply.
Now I had to figure out how to get it to exhale fully.
I’d learned that having an MSS (Motorsport Services) exhaust system on a Saab V4 was worth about 10 horsepower, and since the exhaust was pretty toasted anyway, I saved up my money and ordered one. The problem was that, if you’ve ever owned a Saab with a V-4 engine, there’s kind of a metal donut between the heads of the engine and the exhaust manifolds that allows everything to fit together. But the holes didn’t quite match up right. The exhaust came out of each head of the engine through a hole that was about 1 ¼ inch in diameter. The gasket that was between the head and our donut had a 2 inch hole in it. The diameter of the exhaust headers was also 2 inches, but the hole inside the donut was only 1 ¼ inch, all that breathing-exhaling stuff we were doing was nothing but huffing and puffing until that was fixed (because the car was trying to push lots of exhaust through 1 ¼ inch holes when it had a 2 inch pipe it could go through – it’s like putting your thumb over a garden hose) so that had to be fixed… I figured that if the gasket were the right size, then everything else should be that size, including that 1 ¼ inch donut hole.
I wasn’t sure how to do this, I didn’t have a machine shop, but then I found a fellow named Dan who did this kind of work.
On big engines.
I’d taken the heads off my Saab engine to get them down there to him to get hardened valve seats put in there so the car would run on unleaded gas, and he laughed as he looked at the valves that came off them. They looked like little toys in comparison to the engines he normally worked on. Some of the valve stems were 14 inches long, and the valves themselves were, I’m going to guess about 4 inches across. (by comparison, the valve stems on the Saab engine were about 5 inches long, and the valves 1 1/2 inches across).
The thing I learned quickly about Dan was that he came across as gruff as all get-out on the outside, but was a marshmallow on the inside.
Dan, doing what he did best
© Cale Johnson – used with Permission
I found out he liked Sprite, so I made it a point to stop by the shop on the way home from work a couple of nights a week, just to see how things were going. I wasn’t in a hurry, in fact, I was more interested in learning about the magic of turning a hunk of metal into something useful than getting it done fast, and Dan was a willing teacher.
And we talked… about life, about our families, about work, and friends, and how important it was to have them. I remember telling him how much fun it was to just be there in a machine shop, where things were actually made, which was so different from being in an IT department as a database administrator, which I was at the time.
To see him use all those tools he had at his disposal and make useful things out of raw metal was a treat. I mean, he could point to something and say, “I made that.”
He could reach out and touch it.
It was real.
But he kept saying I had to be smarter than he was because I worked with computers.
I told him, “Dan, you take these hunks of metal that are just that, hunks of metal, and you MAKE something of them. I work all day pissing off electrons. You tell me who’s smarter.”
He laughed, but I was serious.
It took a while, but I think it sunk in. I mean, I worked very hard at making sure the right electrons got pissed off, but at the end of the day, I just didn’t have anything to show for it, so chatting with Dan, in his shop, surrounded by all his tools, not a computer in sight, was a real treat for me. Not only did he teach, but he let me do some of the work myself. In one case, he was looking for the right drill bit in the mass of bits and taps and dies and all sorts of things he had on massive workbenches, and the sound of him rummaging around was so close to the sound of a kid looking through a pile of Legos that I just had to smile.
Eventually he did find the right drill bit, wiped it on his overalls, and popped it into the drill for me, then stood there, patiently, as I drilled out the new brass valve guides that he’d hammered into the heads.
One day when I came in with the can of Sprite, he was almost done. He’d installed the hardened valve seats and ordered valves to fit the extra-large holes he’d let me drill, and about a week later, the heads were finished. I put them on the car, where they are to this day.
But on that last day, when I was picking them up, I asked him what I owed, and he just waved me off.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What?”
“This was fun for me. Don’t worry about it.”
And he wouldn’t take my money.
I was floored. I couldn’t believe what he was doing, but it turned out that for Dan there was more value in something as simple as conversation than there was in a collection of little oval pictures of dead presidents.
I put the engine back together, and in doing so, was able to combine the heads on my Swedish car with the intake manifold from that junkyard in Germany and that two barrel carburetor from wherever it was made, along with the MSS exhaust system from Jamestown, New York, and I drove it down to the shop to show him, so he could hear how his work that connected all the different parts came together.
He listened to the rough idle, hearing music he’d helped make, and smiled as I revved it and it smoothed out. And I thanked him and shook the hand of a true craftsman.
For some time afterwards, I’d stop by every now and then to say hi, and if he wasn’t there, I’d just leave a can of Sprite sitting on the doorknob for him to let him know I was thinking about him.
A few years passed, I changed jobs, his shop wasn’t on the way to work anymore, and life happened. I didn’t see him for a long time, but a few months ago, my son had a problem with a metal part he was working on, and I thought it was time to introduce him to someone who could make metal do anything, so we got a cold can of Sprite and headed down the road to see Dan.
But it turned out Dan wasn’t there anymore.
His son was, and told us that his dad had had to give up the shop, and that it was going to be sold to their biggest customer in the next few months.
I looked around, and while I could sense his presence in all of his tools, and in no small way, in his son, standing there in front of me, I realized the spirit of the place had changed. Not only wouldn’t I see Dan again, at least the Dan I knew, but the shop, with all its familiar machinery, would soon be gone, too.
My son didn’t quite understand the catch in my voice as I asked Dan’s son if he’d take the Sprite to his dad and tell him it was from an old friend, the one with the little blue Saab. The one that he’d made go a lot better, a little faster, and just a touch louder.
© Tom Roush, 2012
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I went through a pretty challenging time awhile back, and as I was coming out of it, I had a dream. It took me months to figure out, but in the dream, I was hacking my way through a jungle with a huge machete. It was like boring a hole through a wall of green, but doing it with a large knife. Each hack would make it possible to clear out a little bit, then step forward into that cleared area.
It went like this for, in the case of this challenging time, months.
Hack… Slash… Step.
Hack… Slash… Step.
Sometimes it took a lot more hacking than stepping, but the stepping happened.
Hack… Slash… Step.
Sometimes the ground was uneven, and treacherous.
Hack… Slash… Step.
Sometimes it was like mud, trying to suck me down, or suck my shoes off.
Hack… Splash… Step.
Sometimes the jungle had those “wait-a-minute” vines you might have heard about. The ones with the sharp thorns you don’t see until you think you’re past them, then they reach out and snag you, and you’re stuck till you can rip them off or away.
And it hurts when you have to do that.
The thing is, for long stretches, one step didn’t look any different from the next one or the one that came before. In spite of all the danger, there was almost a routine to it, and to be honest, there were times when it didn’t look like I was making any progress at all.
It felt, in this dream, like I’d been sentenced to a monotonous, yet terrifying lifetime of hacking and slashing.
I was able, at times, to stop, and it was then that I took a breather and looked back. What was interesting is that when I stopped and looked back, I could see where I’d been, I could see what I’d hacked through.
I could see progress.
But I couldn’t see progress when I was hacking. I could only see it when I took a breather and turned around.
But the day to day stuff, the hour to hour stuff, sometimes minute to minute stuff, was the same.
Hack… Slash… Step.
My world at the time consisted of nothing further away than what I could reach with the machete, and sometimes it got even smaller than that.
Hack… Slash… Step.
There were times when it felt like I couldn’t go on.
There were times when I wanted to just let go of the machete.
There were times when I just wanted to drop it, but it was the only thing I had to hold onto. If I let go, the jungle would swallow me up, and besides, I had to find out what was on the other side of the next leaf.
This went on, in the dream, for a long, long time, until one day, I hacked my way out of what had become my little green hacking box and found myself in a clearing.
By this time the weariness I was feeling was beyond words.
Tired beyond reason, I collapsed against a tree, struggled to stand, and fought to comprehend what I was seeing.
In the middle of this clearing was a white helicopter. It was so pure, so clean, and inside it was someone, beckoning me to come to it.
I pushed away from the tree and started walking, then stumbling as I ran toward this thing that made no sense.
The rotor was turning, and strong arms pulled me up and in.
The door slid closed, the engine whined to a crescendo and the rotor blades turned faster, becoming almost invisible. The grass in the clearing flattened out as the blades blasted a hurricane of air down.
As it did, it blew leaves away, and branches, and I could see, for a split second, people standing there in the jungle. Cheering me on. They’d been there, but I hadn’t seen how many of them there were because the jungle was so thick.
We didn’t seem to climb as much as the ground just seemed to fall away, and it was only then, as we got higher, as I started to see the jungle that I’d fought through for the entire dream (and in reality, for the last 10 months) that I began to comprehend the magnitude of the size of the jungle.
I’d only seen what I could hack and slash.
I hadn’t realized how big it was.
I hadn’t realized how much it had taken out of me.
On the other hand, I hadn’t realized how much I had grown as a result of facing, and overcoming that jungle.
As we flew, I was able to look down and see where certain events had happened, and see them from a totally different perspective.
I was able to understand a bit more.
What if I’d turned left there instead of right? Would I have seen the helicopter I was in?
And it got me thinking…
In having this dream, in putting these images in front of me, my mind was trying to process the whole thing I was going through.
I was trudging through a jungle in the dream, but I was plugging through the challenging realities in real life. And the weird thing about the dream was that not only was the dream vivid, and clear, but it was also broad enough to fit any challenges someone might be facing.
Right now I know of an old friend who passed away recently. The wife lost a husband, the children lost their father, the siblings lost a brother, and his parents lost a son.
And they’ve each either entered or are continuing through a jungle of their own.
Hack… Slash… Step…
I know of a number of families going through crises of a different sort, related to employment, lack thereof, and all the financial ramifications involved in that, to the point where even just making ends meet is a struggle.
Hack… Slash… Step…
I know of several families where an elderly parent is ill, in the hospital, or in a nursing home, and the children are making endless trips to try to help, to try to take care of those who took care of them, or simply to hold their mom or dad’s hand for all the times they did the same for them.
Hack… Slash… Step…
The challenges could be emotional, could be related to health or relationships or your parents, kids, or siblings, or all of the above… but bottom line, you get through it one step at a time. Sometimes you get through it with the help of friends. Sometimes you get through it with the help of strangers.
But you will get through it.
Hack… Slash… Step.
I didn’t know all that as I sat in the helicopter, lost in my thoughts, lost in seeing things so differently, finally, it seemed, able to see “the big picture” .
I allowed myself to relax, and in my dream, drifted off to sleep, not hearing the change in the pitch of the rotors that signaled we’d started to descend and would be landing soon, to start another journey, through another jungle…
But this time, I had the experience of the last journey to help me through.
© 2012 Tom Roush
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Have you ever come up with a snappy answer to a question that you just couldn’t get out of your mouth in time? I generally get my “snappy answers” about a week or two later, having spent the entire time wondering what I should have said, could have said, didn’t say, whatever. I rarely, if ever come up with the *right* answer at the right time.
Except for once, when I was in grad school in, as it was known by the director of the program, “Athens-by-God-Ohio.”
One of the things that we tried to do, as grad students in photojournalism, was to get internships at newspapers. It built up our portfolios, got us to understand the daily pressures of working in a real paper, and so on. It was also a cheap way for the newspapers to get some help, and my first internship was in a small town in West Central Ohio. I’d applied for the internship by sending out the portfolio, the cover letter, the self-addressed, stamped manila envelope, and the whole nine yards, and was completely blown away when I actually got a call telling me that I’d gotten it. I was ecstatic, and I had to call someone to tell them the good news. The first person on the list was my sister (who, as an aside, was instrumental in getting me to start writing these stories down). I’d been telling her about the challenges in getting an internship (they involved moving to where the internship was, for example) so I called her.
She worked at Seattle Pacific University, and a college student who was her assistant at the time answered the phone. When I asked for my sister, the student innocently said, “…she’s not here right now, can I take a message?”
And at that moment, God saw the setup for a perfect punch line, chuckled a bit, and actually gave me the snappy answer without making me have to wait two weeks for it.
See, I realized that the name of the town I was in, the name of the town I was going to be in, and what I was doing could make for a wonderfully misleading combination. So I took a deep breath, and said in my most authoritative and confident voice,
“This is her brother Tom, I’m in Athens, and I got the internship in Sidney.”
There was an almost reverent silence on the other end of the line for a moment, and then, “Uh, wow. Congratulations – I’ll, uh, I’ll make sure to tell her.”
And so, on Easter Sunday, I got into the car and drove from Athens to Sidney, Ohio, (which was about 150 miles, vs. flying from Athens (the original) to Sydney (the one with the Opera House), which is just under 10,000 miles) and I spent some time as a photographer for the Sidney Daily News, in the little town of Sidney, in West Central Ohio.
Now one of the first things I learned in West Central Ohio is that people were just plain friendly. I don’t know if it was just an Ohio thing or more, but folks in the parts of Ohio I’d visited would just wave at you to say hi, just because you were there – not like where I’d lived in Seattle just before then, where they’d just look at you, maybe. I learned later on a lot of this just had to do with the proximity of so many people. If there were only a few of you (in the country), you tend to notice each other. If there are massive herds of people (say, in the city), you kind of ignore each other just out of self-preservation – one of the many differences in Country vs. City living.
Now I mentioned that I’d driven to Sidney.
I’d purchased a 1979 Ford Fairmont from a guy I could barely understand (if you think America has no regional accents, go to Southeast Ohio sometime and try to talk to some of the folks who live back in the “Hollers” and haven’t come out for generations (Oh, “Holler” – that’s spelled “Hollow” by the way – it’s a valley that kind of stops at one end). Oh my gosh, it was – um ‘different’ – but I digress…
The car was all straight and everything – in fact, it’s mentioned in another story — it’s the car I drove across the country in. Come to think about it, it’s also the one I was driving in Michigan when I met the strong arm of the law…
Anyway, back in Athens, as I recall, the very first thing I did after getting the car was to lock my keys in the trunk. Seems the fellow hadn’t told me about the spring to hold the trunk open being broken, and I hadn’t felt the need to check for dead bodies or anything in it, so I bought the car, not having opened the trunk. After he drove off, I unlocked it, opened it, accidentally dropped the keys in the trunk, then dropped the trunk lid on my head as I discovered the broken spring while reaching for the keys I’d dropped.
Yeah… good times…
So one lump on the noggin and $50.00 to a mobile locksmith later I was good, had the keys back, and was literally on the road.
For as old as it was, it got great gas mileage, and I used it to explore Shelby County, where Sidney was, and it was there that I learned there was an etiquette to driving in that part of the country.
See, if you’re on a country road out there, you wave at people as you go by. If you see oncoming traffic, the very least you do is raise a finger (no, not that finger) in simple acknowledgement of the other person’s presence. It’s a neighborly thing to do, so you do it.
If there’s a farmer (and there are a lot of hard working farmers out there) working in his field, you could be a quarter mile away, driving at 60 mph with your right hand on the steering wheel, the left elbow out the window, holding on to the roof of the car, and literally raise a finger, one finger (the index finger, on your left hand, the one on the roof, just in case you’re curious) and the guy would wave back.
I was just amazed at this, how easy it was to just chat with people you’d never met, how simply nice people were.
So one day I was driving out to get some of what we called “Feature” photos out at a place called Lake Loramie, I’d just driven past one of those farmers, had just waved at him with the index finger of my left hand, just like I mentioned earlier, when the car died.
Stone cold dead.
I checked the gas gauge as I coasted to a stop. ¼ tank.
Hmmm…
I put my four-way flashers on and carefully pulled over just a little with the last of my momentum (they have some pretty deep ditches in some of those places so I wanted to be careful) and then did the very male thing of propping the hood open and then, I just stood there, with a perplexed look on my face as I tried to figure this out. I mean, I wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere, but I thought I could see it from where I was, and the car I’d had for about a month was dead. No symptoms, no rattles, no wheezing, no coughing, no last gasp of any kind.
It was just dead.
Hmmm…
I’d been driving and maintaining cars for a while by that time, and was pretty sure I knew what an engine needed to run…
It needed gas (I had ¼ tank) and
It needed spark. (I’d had that).
I was still standing there trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong when I heard the chugging of a tractor coming out of the field.
It was the farmer I’d just waved to.
He asked what was wrong, and since I’d never had a car quit on me quite like this before, I said, “I think it’s out of gas.”
“Well, let’s take you up to Harry Frilling’s, Harry’s got some gas…”
He untangled a cable off the back of his tractor, wrapped it around the front bumper of the Ford and headed off.
I sat in the car, hypnotically watching the tread on those big tractor tires just a few feet in front of me as we chugged along at a whopping 8 mph, until we pulled into Harry’s farm yard, where the anonymous farmer unhooked the cable and headed off. Harry came out and asked what was wrong, and I told him what I thought the problem was, (that it might be out of gas) but that knew I still had ¼ tank, which made it all a little confusing. We both stood there for a bit, leaning on the fenders, and looked under the hood, in that thoughtful way men look at engines when they don’t have a clue as to what’s wrong…
“Wha’dja say your name was?”
“My name’s Tom Roush, I’m a photographer for the Sidney Daily News.”
“Ooooh…. and, uh, where’d ya say you were goin’?”
“I was just going up to Lake Loramie to get some pictures for the paper.”
He pondered that for a moment, as if trying to decide on something…
“How long d’you think you’ll be gone?”
I thought – figuring time to travel up and back, find an image, how long it’d take to get back to the paper, plus deadlines and the like… and that left me with…
“About an hour or so…”
More pondering by Harry.
“Why don’t you take my car? Key’s in it.”
Why don’t I take his car…
Why don’t I what???
I looked him in the eye to be sure – but he clearly wasn’t kidding.
So, I accepted his offer, and took his car, which was much nicer than mine, carefully putting my camera bag on the passenger’s seat beside me instead of just tossing it in like I did with the Ford.
I drove it to the lake, not much was happening, so I stalked some ducks and got a picture of a duck and ducklings, brought the car back, and got some gas from Harry’s tank that he had for his farm vehicles to put in the Ford. I paid Mrs. Frilling, who was inside, and went off, still kind of amazed at the difference in people from one part of the country to another.
I made the picture, it got into the paper, and life went on.
Weeks went by.
One day I had on my shooting schedule for that evening some kind of award at an event at a hotel in town. I went, it was, ironically, a “Ducks Unlimited” dinner – an organization which I knew nothing about, but figured it was about some kind of conservation of ducks. Okay, whatever. I figured I’d just show up and shoot the event and get back in time to process the film, mark the shot I thought was best, and then leave it for Mike (the chief photographer) to print the next morning.
So I was standing there at the back of the room, and realized that this award was happening sooner rather than later, and I’d missed the name of the recipient. I wouldn’t have time to get up to the front of the room and would have to quickly shoot from where I was, so I put a telephoto lens (my 180 f/2.8 for those of you who are curious) on the camera (my Nikon F3), along with my powerful SB-16 flash (the same one used in this story) and was just focusing on things when the award and a prize were handed to whoever the recipient was.
And the prize was…
A shotgun…
Wait a minute…
This is Ducks Unlimited… They’re not trying to conserve ducks to keep them alive, they’re trying to conserve them so they can make them dead!
Oh geez…
The things I learned when doing my own shooting…
I was just floored, but I’d gotten my shot, and I had to finish the job, so I noted the suit jacket the fellow with the new shotgun was wearing, and made my way to the front of the room where he was talking with someone.
I waited for a bit, standing behind him, and with my cameras and camera bag hanging off my right shoulder, and my reporter’s notebook in my left hand, I tapped him on the shoulder with my pen.
“Excuse me, sir, my name’s Tom Roush. I’m shooting for the Sidney Daily News and need to get your name for the paper.”
The fellow in the suit jacket turned around, and I saw nothing but a huge smile on his face as a big, meaty hand came down in a controlled crash on my left shoulder, “Why Tom, you know me! I’m Harry Frilling! I loaned you my car!”
And so he had.
I hadn’t recognized him in that suit, but sure enough, it was Harry.
The next morning, I told Mike the story and he, having lived in the town far longer than I had, made an astute observation. “You know, Tom, as big a deal as it was to you to get the picture, it was probably a bigger deal to Harry to have been able to loan you his car. I’ll bet he told his friends about that for some time.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but like I said, Mike had been in the town far longer than I, and had a good sense of what was important to folks.
Eventually I left Sidney, but I kept that Ford for many years after that. It turned out the problem had been a faulty electronic ignition module and replacing it fixed the problem (I’d never had a car with an electronic anything in it before, which is why it was so baffling to me), and after a trip west across the country, I kept it long enough to bring my son home from the hospital in it.
A number of years later, I looked Harry up, and on a whim, picked up the phone and called him, and introduced myself as the photographer he’d loaned his car to, and asked if he remembered me.
And he did.
We talked and laughed for a while, about how a young photographer and an old farmer met because of a broken down car and a shotgun, about how life had changed for us both over the years, and how good, and important, it was to just get in touch again, and how much that small act of kindness on his part had meant to me.
A few weeks ago, I got back in touch with Mike – and we got to talking, and laughing, telling stories, and just catching up. We talked about how it’s been over 20 years since I was a photographer at the Sidney Daily News, singlehandedly blowing through their annual film budget in the short time I was there, and then I remembered something, and asked Mike, “Do you remember the story about Harry Frilling?” – and without any other clues, Mike remembered, too, and we both just laughed and laughed…
There’s a Footnote, or Post Script to this story:
Last week, because this was a story about a real, live person, I did what I always do and tried to find Harry again to ask his permission to write and publish the story. I didn’t find him, but found and ended up talking to his son. As it turns out, Harry had passed away a few years ago, and I found out that Mike was right. It seems that that little story, the one that meant so much to me, that told me about how some folks are inherently just plain good folks, was indeed one that meant something to Harry as well, in fact, it was one of his favorite stories, that he told often, and I was astonished to hear from his son that my – that our – little story was told as part of his Eulogy as people told stories about who Harry was and what he meant to them.
It’s people like Harry who teach us that lifting a finger – figuratively, or literally one finger of one hand – whether that’s lifting it from your steering wheel as you drive by to wave at a farmer and acknowledge each other as fellow humans on the planet, or lifting it to dial the phone to call an old friend to get back in touch with them and see how they’re doing, or dropping what you’re doing and helping a friend do some things he or she couldn’t do otherwise, that ‘lifting a finger’ can make all the difference in the world in someone’s life.
He also taught me that that one finger, when crashing down onto my left shoulder with the rest of his hand and that smile of his, made me feel like I was the most important person in the world right then.
It’s been, as I said, years, but this formerly young photographer still treasures that smile, that laugh, and is humbled to have known an old farmer like Harry Frilling.
As I thought about this story, and about what became this post script, I realized that after anyone passes away, the material things they’ve accumulated in their lives have to be taken care of or taken over by others. But when people like Harry pass away, the love and the memories left behind, those are treasures, and they live on.
Special thanks to his son and daughter, who graciously gave me permission to publish this story.
© 2011 Tom Roush
Like this:
I’m posting this on Maundy Thursday – the Thursday between Palm Sunday, when Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem, and Good Friday, when He was killed there. This is the day when that Last Supper you’ve seen in pictures happened, and later that evening, when Peter, one of Jesus’ strongest supporters and disciples, denied even knowing him – . Tomorrow, those who celebrate Easter will remember Good Friday, and the crucifixion. Thursday and Friday are the lowest points of the Christian calendar – but it is Sunday – Easter – when we are shown that Grace can abound, that there is hope. It is through the remembrance of that Last Supper Jesus had with His disciples, what we now call Holy Communion, that through confession and repentance, we find forgiveness, even for those who feel there is no hope, or forgiveness.
The following story, for anyone watching as it happened, took about as long as it takes to sing the verses below – but inside me – I was transported through thousands of miles, and hundreds of years – to places where time, and distance, were absolutely irrelevant.
With that, please, as you may ponder the significance of Easter, I submit:
“Amazing Grace.”
It was Sunday, in a large, old church, in a big city. The pastor had called for Holy Communion, and as he got out the bread and the – in this case – wine, the notes gently flowed while the organist cleared the pipes to play. But these weren’t just notes that had come from the organ to our ears, nor were they words that were just now coming from our lips. They had come a great distance, through many years, having been written by a man named John Newton, who was exactly what he said he was in the second line of the song, a wretch.
But the story in the song is one of redemption, of John Newton coming to an understanding that this concept of Grace – in which we are given something we do not deserve. And the words, written by him in 1779 in England, composed with notes by William Walker in South Carolina in 1835, came together in this church, on this morning.
The organ sang the first notes out, and old bones and pews creaked equally as people stood, each heading to the aisle to walk to the front to receive Holy Communion, their chance to remember in the symbol of the Bread and the Cup the forgiveness that was theirs because of what Christ had done for them. Worn shoes shuffled forward on an equally worn carpet as they sang, not with gusto, but with the tired reverence that comes with age.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
I was one of those shuffling, and heard the voices singing – some gray with years, some with the color of youth, many of them older, first generation Americans, for whom English had clearly been a a second language.
And suddenly, even though I was still shuffling – I felt I wasn’t in this church in this big city anymore.
I was transported to a land of tile roofs and cobblestone streets
A cool mist touches my face as I find myself stepping carefully on a foggy sidewalk.
As I walk, I’m overcome by the wonderful smell of simmering corned beef wafting out of a kitchen window. I follow the sound of singing around a corner to a church, where the voices and harmonies show a faith and fellowship that has lasted through the ages.
An odd tinkling sound reveals itself to be from a young man, sitting on the sidewalk with a tin cup, begging. All questions are answered by the scar across his face. The tinkling comes from the people walking by toward the church, as they put some of their Sunday offering directly where it’s needed.
He smiles and blesses them as they go on.
We shuffled forward a bit:
T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed!
I’m confused, for a moment – as I find myself suddenly transported to what is clearly a prison, to a cold, damp cell, with only one window. A church bell rings in the distance, and the prisoner in the cell has experienced something not all prisoners do. He’s finally not only understood the significance of the mistake that brought him here, but has experienced a remorse that can only be answered by forgiveness. This does not mean that there are no consequences to his mistake, but there is forgiveness. His quiet prayer is as sincere as that from any pulpit, and the light and warmth coming into that dark cell at that moment isn’t just from the sun.
We shuffled on, and started to sing the next verse…
Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
A steam whistle blows. A locomotive hisses by, slowing for the station, and a young soldier nervously holds onto the open window as his now gray eyes search for the home he left two years ago. In those eyes are the exhaustion of a thousand battles he’d wanted nothing to do with, and both the longing, and creeping doubt of seeing his family again.
He looks at his battered watch, the strap long gone, and knows that at this time, the Sunday pork roasts will be cooking, wafting their delicious smells out into the street. It’s always been the first smell he smelled after getting out of the train station. It’s a symbol of home, and this time, the war over, he should be home for good.
The train clatters and bumps to a stop. He gets up, and like all travelers, reaches for his bags and automatically walks toward the nearest exit, his uniform helping to part the respectful crowd of people so he can get through easier. As he steps to the platform, he stops in the middle of the river of people pouring out behind and around him, and stands on his toes, looking around to get his bearings – so much had been destroyed in the war – and to see if anyone is there to meet him. He is tackled from one side by his younger brother and sister, with the excitement only younger siblings can have for an older one. The little brother, as little brothers do, wants to hear all about the battles. The little sister stands quietly until he kneels to her level. She hands him a small, soft object in a cloth napkin. It’s a slice of pork roast. THE pork roast. “Mama sagt, dass Du Heim kommen sollst, dass wir alle zusammen mit dir Mittags essen können.” He shares the slice with both of them, and as his little brother picks up the bags, he picks up his little sister, and they all run across the street to the still standing house, to the kitchen, to his family.
There is no shortage of hugs, no shortage of tears.
He is home.
The melody continued, and we shuffled another step…
The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Again, I am transported – to a sidewalk near a church. As I stand there, looking left and right, a stooped old woman walks closer, uncomfortably using a new cane to support her. She passes me by, sobbing softly. The gold ring on her gnarled left hand tells the story. It is her first Sunday coming to church alone in nearly half a century, her husband who had sat beside her every Sunday for that many years, who stood at that altar in the radiance of youth and repeated the vows with her – ending with “…until death do us part…” had loved her – for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health – and he had fulfilled those vows to the very last one. He would never accompany her to church again, but church is where she needed to be on Sunday mornings, and church was where she would go. Someone who is obviously her daughter runs up to her and supports her, saying gently, “Oh maman, je suis tellement désolé. Je suis venu dès que j’ai entendu.”
The rest of the words are lost, as I hear the sound of voices singing, and feel myself being pulled away again.
We shuffled forward again…
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
Again, I find myself near a church, with the bell ringing quietly, but closely. Only this time I’m in what’s known in some countries as the ‘churchyard’ – and the group of people, all dressed in heavy coats of dark colors to ward off the cold, have come to pay their last respects to one of their own. It is clear – even without understanding the language, that she was held in high regard by everyone there. It seemed, given the expressions of some, that they were now both relieved at the end of the suffering she had endured, and confused as to who would take her place, but one thing was certain, she had enriched their lives by her simple existence. She had enriched their lives by supporting them when they thought they were supporting her. And those looks on their faces told me her transition from this life to the next had been one of peace, of joy, and eventually of rest.
We shuffled forward one last step.
I was getting close to the front of the line now – and as we sang….
When we’ve been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.
I found myself in a large, old church, in a big city.
It was my turn for communion, and as I took the bread, and drank from the cup, that first verse came back to me…
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Folks, it’s been two years since I was asked to speak at my friend Betty’s memorial service. I got to thinking about her just recently, and as I read through this again, thought it might be something worth sharing. So that said, here’s my eulogy, for my friend Betty…
Hi – My name’s Tom Roush – I had the pleasure of knowing Betty – well, Don and Betty back – gosh, how long’s it been? – close to three years now, meeting both of them at the cancer survivor’s support group that was held in a nondescript conference room at the Ballard hospital.
There were a number of us there – old folks, young folks, and everything in between… I was one of the in betweeners, I guess… Each of these meetings was “moderated” by a social worker of some sort – and they each had their own way of going about things. They were all wonderful in their way – the goal being to bring us to a safe spot where we could actually talk about our feelings toward this – this *thing* that had brought us together.
There was the one who really insisted that things be done by the book.
(None of us had read the book)
There was the one who was like everyone’s Jewish Grandmother – she brought laughter, love, encouragement and hope to each of us.
And then there was the one who came in one day when we were all talking about something other than cancer.
You know… Life…
…and she got so mad…
We were there, in a cancer survivor’s support group, and she was upset because we weren’t talking about cancer.
And you know what?
We’d LIVED it – to be honest, it pissed us off…
We all knew – in that support group, that if you said “Chemo” – you wouldn’t have to explain that chemo was the thing that made you barf, or made your hair fall out – that chemo often – for lack of a better, more socially acceptable term – spayed women and gave men involuntary vasectomies. We didn’t have to explain to the folks there in the room that chemo – oh, let’s see if we can find a nice word for it….
Nope…
No nice words…
Chemo sucked…
For some of us, radiation sucked – and we didn’t have to explain that or talk much about it – it was something that most of us in the room knew.
You know what we wanted to talk about? We wanted to talk about surviving. Remember what kind of support group it was?
Here, I’ll tell you what it wasn’t.
It wasn’t a cancer survivor’s support group.
It was a cancer survivor’s support group.
We wanted to talk about surviving.
And we did…
Oh Lordy, we talked about surviving…
It was wild – if you can imagine a bunch of scarred up people who’ve done battle with “the big ‘C’” wild – we were so into talking about life –about this thing called survival – and not just surviving, but having fun doing it – that that moderator got mad and walked out…
Dang we were a rebellious bunch…
She wanted us to talk about cancer – because in her eyes, it was cancer that defined who we were, and she saw the common theme between all of us being that we’d had cancer…
The thing was – we had had cancer, but it hadn’t had us.
We didn’t have to take the time or words to explain to the people in the room that this whole thing called cancer sucked.
We didn’t have to spend the time talking about how lonely it was, to go through this battle that no matter how many people are helping you, supporting you, loving you, the battle, and the fight, is yours alone to fight.
But this was the place we could talk about it.
As so often happens when going through a battle like this, we do our crying in private, and then put on a brave face – a mask, if you will, and go out and face the world. Sometimes, in that room where we met, we cried, and sometimes the conversations we had were astoundingly hard, and sometimes – some of the best conversations we had had no words at all.
Sometimes, we didn’t say anything.
We didn’t have to.
The conversations were – you know what?
I’ll tell you what the conversations weren’t.
They weren’t shallow.
We rarely talked about what TV show was on, or what movies were on. Much as some might consider this heresy, we definitely didn’t talk about which sports teams were playing – or winning.
We talked about life.
We talked about easy stuff that made us laugh, and hard stuff that made us cry.
We, who had stared death in the face, and had death blink, had absolutely nothing to hide from each other.
When we went into that room, the masks came off.
You know what masks I’m talking about… They’re the ones we wear every day. The mask that you put on
- When someone asks you how you’re doing, and you’re having trouble at home, and you say, “Fine”
- When someone asks you how you’re doing, and your finances are down the toilet, and you say, “Fine”
-
When someone asks you how you’re doing, and you just found out that you’ve lost your job, and you say, “Fine”
Oh, the masks we hold onto – so tightly
- When someone asks you how you’re doing, and you found a lump the night before, and are waiting for an appointment to go talk to the doctor about it – but you still have to go to work to keep the health insurance, and you say, “Fine”
- When someone asks you how you’re doing, and you’re waiting on test results, and you say, “Fine”
-
Or when someone asks how you’re doing – and your spouse – or someone you love – found a lump – and you feel helpless beyond words, because no matter what you do – the battle is theirs to fight, and you choke out a “Fine”
And – after all those – when someone sees a certain look in your eyes that could mean any or all of these – a look you didn’t even know was there, and asks, really asks, “How ya doin’?” and you either bravely or stupidly, or, because honestly, you can’t quite face that question yourself, you put on that lie of a mask and you say, “Fine.”
Those masks were left in a pile outside the door to that room.
Oh, we did talk about cancer.
We talked about fear, about how much to tell people because society still wigs out a bit when they hear that word…
We talked about how much to say to the people you spend most of your life with – at work.
We talked about knowing you were going to be out of commission for a year or so as the medical establishment tried to cut or fry or poison the cancer out of you, hoping to kill it (the cancer) before either it (the cancer) or it (the poison) killed you, making you feel worse than the cancer ever did in the process.
We talked about how to get your job back after your body’d healed, knowing you’d be dealing with the effects and scars of this long after your hair grew back, long after those physical scars had healed.
We talked about our fears for our families, for our loved ones, for how this was affecting them, and how, in so many ways, they were fighting the same battle – and yet a totally different one.
We did talk about cancer.
But we didn’t talk about cancer nearly as much as you’d think – when we needed to, we did, but you know what we did most often?
We laughed.
We told stories.
We encouraged each other.
We talked about ferocious penguins in Antarctica, we talked about adventures across the country, we talked about our children – how proud we were of them, or what trouble they were getting into, and about journeys we’d taken, and journeys we wanted to take.
Closer to home, we talked about walking around Green Lake, about going up to Costco, and getting that pound cake they have up there, – and especially those Costco hot dogs. And we talked about Don’s wonderful little carvings when he brought them in for us to see.
We talked about this, this thing called life.
And every time I showed up late – let me re-punctuate that – and every time – I showed up late – it was hard for me to get out of work that early – I’d come into that room, with that pile of trampled masks outside the door, and in that room, there was at least one moderator (pick one, we outlasted them all) and a variety of people, but the one constant there was Don and Betty.
And when I saw Betty –there was always this look that said, “I’m so glad you made it!”
A look that told me – without the mask, how she was doing. Sometimes she was doing well, sometimes not… We didn’t hide it in there.
And actually, that says something… without masks, there were no secrets… Betty didn’t have any secrets from anyone… You called their house, and by golly you were on speakerphone. You talked to Don, and you were talking to Betty.
I have to tell you – that my memories of Betty are pretty much limited to that room.
I’ve spent the last week or so trying to put to words my memories of her, and as so often happens in times like these, your mind, in its shock, tries so hard to lock the memories away for safekeeping that you can’t unlock the door to get them out, even when you want to, and no matter how hard you try.
But one thing leaked out through that door.
It’s how Betty made me feel.
There were times when I came into that room – all frazzled from a crappy day, whether it was at home, at work, or somewhere in between, it didn’t matter, and there was this sense of peace there.
It didn’t make sense – given the battles we all were facing, and fighting, but the peace was there. There was always a hug from Betty – always a smile, a handshake, or a hug from Don. Betty made me feel welcome. No matter how hard it was to get there –
Betty’s eyes told me I’d done the right thing in coming.
Betty’s hand, when I held it, told me that everything was going to be alright.
Betty’s body – when she hugged me in that warm, gentle, soft way, told me things I can’t even put into words.
See? I told you some of the best conversations had no words.
Now you’ll see I’m not dressed all fancy here, that’s no disrespect to anyone here, especially Betty… In fact, – I was thinking about it, honestly –every time Betty saw me, she saw me, as I said, all frazzled, with my backpack from work slung over my shoulder, having either ridden a bike or a bus to get there. That’s the way I’m dressed now, because if she saw me all dressed up, she’d wonder who the heck that stud muffin was in the suit – and to be honest, I’d rather she recognized me.
The thing is – the last time I hugged Betty – I didn’t know it would be the last time I hugged Betty.
The last words I spoke with Betty – I didn’t realize they would be the last words I spoke with her…
And I don’t remember them.
But do remember how she made me feel, and so I’d like to leave you with this…
You young folks out there:
Look around – you’ve got parents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends here.
You middle aged folks – Oh, Lordy – I have to classify myself as one of those now.
Look around – you’ve got brothers, sisters, children, nieces, nephews, and friends here.
And you older folks – the ones who have earned that silver in your hair…
Look around – take your time – nobody’s leaving – look at those kids, those grown up kids of yours – those grandkids.
All of you – When’s the last time you hugged them?
What were the last words you spoke to them?
How did they make you feel?
More importantly – how did you make them feel?
I suggest to you, that
…if there have been cross words, go and forgive – or ask for forgiveness.
…if there is distance, reach out to each other.
…if there is pain, reach out to heal.
You don’t know which of your words will be the last ones, folks.
Please, take the time to think about them, make them good ones.
I’ve tried to put into words who my friend Betty was – but I can’t talk about her in the past tense – because my friend Betty is still very much alive, right here. (my heart)
Thank you.
…
And so, on this anniversary, I remember my friend Betty – and I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned from her with you as well.
Take care…
Tom
In this blog, I’ve been trying to write stories that have been “baked” – where I’ve spent the time over the years getting to that “aha” moment, where the laughter, the lessons, the tears have been learned, and I can share them with you.
This post is a little different.
I’ve been asked by a number of people to give “hankie warnings” on some of these stories, and in honor of that request, please consider yourself warned.
This post is a little more personal than the others, and it’s a number of stories, kind of intertwined.
As I write this – November 8th, it will have been 10 years since I spoke the words below, in front of a well-dressed, somber group of people who listened, who laughed and who cried.
I had been in that last category for ten months, and on November 8th, 2000, these people joined me there.
It was the day we buried my dad.
He’d been in the Air Force. He’d done his time in many countries. It was his time in the Air Force that had him meet my mom, that gave him stories of far-away places to tell, and that shaped my childhood. Some of those stories I’ve recalled in past posts, some are still, as it were, baking, and will be written when they’re ready.
I was at work on January 10th, 2000, when I got “the call”. Those of you who’ve been through this will understand what that means. It’s actually hard to describe the feeling to someone who hasn’t been there, but when I got “the call” – my heart froze, and given where I was, I did the only thing I could do…
I prayed…
…and then I wrote.
I didn’t know whether I’d ever get a chance to tell dad all the things I’d wanted to say over the years – and it seemed that if I was ever going to take the chance, that right then would be that chance, instead of saying all the things I wanted to say to him in a eulogy where he couldn’t hear me, and the words would be empty.
So I wrote a note to him that January afternoon. It’s included in what’s below – which, ironically, is the eulogy I gave for my dad, 10 years ago today.
= = =
Eulogy…
That’s what it says there in your program that this is going to be.
But how do you put into a few words the life of a man who was a brother, a husband, a father, an uncle, a father in law, a grandfather, a teacher — and all those countless other things that a man is in his life?
I’m not going to go into the history of dad too much, you all can read that on the backs of your bulletins. We tried to get as much in there as we could. We’ll also have some pictures going in the fellowship hall so you can see a little more about who dad was.
But right now, I’d like to tell you a little bit about who dad is.
By now most of you know a bit about how this all came about, and for a number of you, the last time you saw him was in this very church on January 8th of this year at Tom McLennan’s Memorial Service.
Dad went into the hospital that night, stayed in ICU at Madigan until May, during which time he had a stroke and some other complications, and later was taken to Bel Air Nursing home in Tacoma, where he died last Friday.
I wrote him a note on January 10th, when things looked pretty bad, his heart had stopped the night before, and we didn’t know what was going on, since he’d walked into the hospital the night before that, and I tried to tell him what he meant to me. I’d like to read part of that note to you, because in a lot of ways, it tells a bit about the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, and the legacy that he left behind.
<note>
1:45 PM 1/10/00
Hi Pop,
It’s Monday, you’re in the hospital right now, and I’m praying for you.
I have to tell you a few things, just so you know them.
I love you.
– this is so hard to write…
I don’t want this to be the time to say goodbye, but I need to say a few things so that when the time comes, I can say goodbye knowing I’ve told you what I need to tell you.
You know as well as I do that there were a lot of things in our lives that haven’t panned out the way we’d planned.
Because of the time you spent away from the family in the Air Force and at school, I didn’t get a chance to have you around when I really needed a dad.
This doesn’t mean it was easy for you, in fact it was hard. I know now it was very hard for you as well.
But I want you to know that good has come out of that.
I try to spend time with my little boy now as a result, and I’m glad I was able to get my schooling out of the way before I became a papa.
Because you went away to school to improve yourself, I learned that sacrifice is sometimes necessary for future growth.
And good has come out of that.
I learned how much a son needs his father, and I try to be here for my son. So even though you felt very much like you were a failure, you weren’t. You taught me a valuable lesson, one that I will treasure always.
Because of the time you spent fixing things (and the time I spent holding the flashlight for you*)
*He’d ask me to hold the flashlight for him while he was working on something, and being a kid, my attention span was about as long as a gnat’s eyebrow, and so I’d be looking all over, shining the flashlight to what I wanted to see.
I learned how to fix things I never thought I could.
I also expanded my vocabulary during these times.
Because of the way you showed us responsibility, I was able to get a paper route and learn responsibility early, on my own.
Because you helped us deliver those papers on weekends sometimes, I learned that sometimes helping your kids to do the things they’re responsible for doing is a good thing.
Because of the way you told me to take things one step at a time, I was able to build pretty big things at Microsoft when I was there,, one step at a time.
And because you made things for me (like a train table)
and read to me (from Tom Sawyer)
and told me stories (like Paul Bunyan)
and sang to me (The Lord’s Prayer)
and took me to work (where I spun the F-4 Simulator)*
* — in the Air Force Dad was a flight simulator technician — he fixed flight simulators, and one time he took me to work, I think I must have been 5 or 6, and there was this whole line of these simulators — all just cockpits of airplanes, and he, as fathers are known to do, picked me up and popped me in the driver’s seat. I sat there, my eyes huge, as I saw all these dials and gauges in front of me, and it was just so cool and so complicated. — And there was this big stick thing in the way, so I pushed it off to one side so I could get a better look at the dials. I didn’t know that the simulator thought it was flying, and by pushing that stick over I made it think it was corkscrewing into the ground, and all the dials and gauges started spinning and I got so scared, I thought I’d broken it, and I looked out at him — he was standing right there, talking to someone else, and with fear and trepidation said, “Daddy?” — he turned around, took one look at what was happening, reached in and fixed it. Just like that. He fixed it. I hadn’t broken it. But he just reached in, and with one touch, he fixed it.
and showed me things, (like Wolf Spiders)*
When we lived in Illinois, we discovered that the spiders there are significantly bigger than spiders here in Washington.
So one time Dad was in the basement, doing something, and he called me down. He wanted me to see what he’d found under this can. So, being a kid and being curious, I squatted right beside it, and then picked up the can — to find the biggest, hairiest god-awful ugliest wolf spider I’d seen in my entire life. I jumped up and screamed, and dad was over there laughing so hard. I didn’t think it was funny then, but for years all we’d have to say was “wolf spider” it would bring the whole thing back, and we’d have a good laugh over it.
and surprised me with presents (like at Christmas in 1971 when you told me to clean up a pile of newspapers, and you’d put a bunch of toy trains underneath them)*
*He kept asking me to clean up the papers, but there was always another present to unwrap, another toy to play with, another cookie to eat — and finally, when the Christmas eve was finally winding down and we were cleaning up, I remembered the newspapers and started to clean them up — and underneath was a train set he’d gotten from somewhere, on a set of tracks, just waiting for a little boy to play with them.
and provided for me (helping me get my first Saab)*
*Many of you in this church may remember praying for that very car…
and went out of your way to help me (when that first Saab broke down)
– and the second Saab, — the third one (the fourth one’s out there, it runs fine)
and drove all the way up to Seattle to SPU when I was a student one Christmas to bring me a present — a radio controlled Porsche 928) when you knew it was the only thing I would get.
and visited me at work when I was able to show you where I worked and what I’d become professionally
And supported me in your thoughts and prayers as I became a father in my own right.
You showed me love.
And because you told me, I know you love me.
I love you too.
</note>
I read this note to him several times, never being quite sure whether it got across to him. In August, at the nursing home, I read it to him again, and he looked at me very intently while I read it, and as I finished, there was this look on his face, of peace, of contentment, of, “My job is done.” and for a split second, the stroke seemed to be gone.
He then took the note from my hand and read it himself.
And I know that he knew when he left that he was loved, he was cared for, he was appreciated, and that he would be missed.
We rejoice for him, we’re happy, for him, that this ordeal is over, but we’re sad for us, for the big, dad/Gary/grampa shaped hole he leaves in each of our lives.
– I was thinking the other day about the things I’d miss about him, and I’m sure there will be many to come, but the things that come to mind right now are the little things — and it’s always the little things, isn’t it?
The fact that he’d say “I love you” and “I’m proud of you” so often that we didn’t realize how important it was for him to be able to say that, and now, how important it was for us — the whole family to have him as a cheerleader in the background. There were times he couldn’t do as much as he wanted to do for us, and in his mind, he always wanted to do more — and the fact that he’s no longer in the background, just being there cheering us on — I’ll miss that. We’ll miss that.
I miss his meow — for those of you who don’t know, he had this way of meowing like a cat so you couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It drove us nuts — and we miss it.
I miss him greeting Michael and me with, “Hello Sonshine”
I miss him standing with mom, waving good bye to us as we left after a visit. — and no matter where we were, when we got together, he’d always thank us for taking the time to do that, to get together as a family, and to include him and he would always remind us, “You are loved.”
We miss him telling us “Remember, a fat old man loves you.”
I miss him yelling at us to shut the living room door. That’s the sound we grew up with. We’d run out, be halfway up the stairs, and hear, “SHUT THE DOOR” — of course, he hadn’t done that for years since he put a spring on it so it’d shut itself. But I miss knowing I won’t hear it again.
I miss him calling me up at night to tell me there was something interesting on Channel 9 that he wanted to share with me, even though we couldn’t be together, we could see it at the same time.
When I was growing up, and I’d be upstairs brushing my teeth late at night, I’d hear dad snoring downstairs, — a gentle snore (at least from upstairs) and I knew that that meant all was right with the world.
I’ll miss that, too.
And even though there are many things we’ll miss about him, I know he’s better off now than he was for the last 10 months.
Some time ago I had a dream — a dream of him essentially dying, and it didn’t look as bad as we all generally think of dying.
In my dream, he was laying there, his body all there, but kind of gray, and damaged. It looked like dad, but suddenly he broke free of that body, and he just kind of came up, there was this whole, healthy copy of him, in living color that kind of came out of him like a butterfly comes out of a cocoon, and he was free, he was whole, and he flew away, leaving the gray, damaged body behind him.
After Dad died, Petra was doing some thinking about what his death was like for him, and the image she came away with was this, that dad was in bed, in the nursing home, having just been sung to and prayed for by the love of his life. She laid down on the bed next to him to rest, and dad, who had had his eyes closed, suddenly could see her.
The machine wasn’t breathing for him anymore.
His mind was clear, not muddled by a stroke.
His heart didn’t struggle.
His feet weren’t cold.
We imagine he looked around, saw the things we’d brought in to make him feel at home, saw his beloved wife laying there, who’d been with him for 41 years, for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and with his new, whole body, then left the presence of his wife to be with his Lord.
During dad’s life, we all knew that no matter where we went or what we did, dad loved us, and I am convinced that up there in heaven, he loves us still.
When the service was done, we headed to what would be dad’s final resting place, and on that cold, clear day, the wind blowing the oak leaves around the cemetery, our family gathered around dad one last time as he was given a military funeral, with an Air Force Honor Guard from McChord Air Force Base, a flag, and a rifle salute.
We shivered as we took our places in the chairs under the portable gazebo they’d set up for us, with mom sitting in the front row. I walked away for a bit to clear my head as the ceremony started.
I’d seen the airman with his trumpet, trying to keep his mouthpiece warm on that cold day, and I knew he was going to play Taps – which I’d learned to play when I played the trumpet in junior high school, but I’d never had to play when it counted.
Taps, originally used to signal “lights out” in the military, eventually became the bugle call played at funerals, where it signaled – or symbolized – a final “lights out” for an individual.
I’d heard it played when my friend Bruce Geller died in 1978.
I’d heard it played when I, as a photojournalist, was covering the funeral of Lee Stephens, a sailor from the USS Stark that was hit by a missile on May 17th, 1987, and each time I’ve heard it, it has been like a knife in the heart for me.
It is a symbol of the end of a life, and of a loved one, where they make that transition from living in your life to living in your memories.
I remember, as I shot the funeral of Lee Stephens, how I wanted to honor the grief and sorrow his family was experiencing, but at the same time, I wanted to tell the story that this young sailor, from a small town in Ohio, who’d graduated just a few years before, had people left behind who still loved him.
I remember seeing, through the viewfinder of my Nikon, through a long, long telephoto lens, the look on this sailor’s mom’s face as the sergeant of the honor guard handed her the flag. It was a photo that, while it was “the” photo from a photojournalism point of view, I did not take. The moment was too intimate, the grief was too raw.
I remember her eyes, simultaneously exhausted, numb, disbelieving, and utterly spent as she accepted a flag from an honor guard member, “…on behalf of a grateful nation…”
In walking away a bit, I had unconsciously recreated the view I’d seen through that camera, the photo I didn’t take in 1987 at that cold cemetery 13 years later, and I was not prepared to see that look on my mom’s face and in her eyes
But I’d seen that look before, and knew what it meant.
We’d had 10 months to prepare for this moment, but the fact is, we all know we’re going to die. Being faced with it as “sometime” in the vague future is one thing. Seeing it in front of you in unblinking reality is something else entirely.
I saw the honor guard fold the flag as precisely as they could fold it
But this time, I wasn’t hiding behind my camera, trying to insulate myself from the pain of a mother who had lost her son.
This time, while I wasn’t a mother who’d lost her son, I was the son of a mother who’d lost her husband.
This time, I was a son who’d lost his father.
I understood things a little more clearly now.
I understood a little more about how much it means to sit in that chair, and have someone hand you a flag, in exchange for someone you love.
As if that wasn’t enough, it was then that they did the rifle salute. For those of you who have not experienced it, it is very much like a 21 gun salute. Retired military members who have served honorably receive a 9 gun salute, a volley where 3 soldiers fire off three rounds apiece. It is done as a sign of respect, of honor. For those not prepared for it, it can be shocking.
The call was made,
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
Three fingers squeezed three triggers.
“Fire!”
Three firing pins hit three cartridges.
“Fire!”
Three cartridges fired and were ejected.
The honor guard was called to attention, and the command “Present Arms” was given so precisely – they all moved as one. Those without rifles saluted – those with rifles held them in the “present arms” position.
As the three shots echoed away, the only sound left was of those leaves, the movement of cloth, and the click of rifles being presented.
There was a moment where this was all we heard. Leaves rustling, coats flapping, and the stunned silence of those still not ready to let go.
It was then that the bugler, who’d clearly kept his mouthpiece warm, played Taps. He played it solemnly, clearly, and with the respect and honor due.
– and through the wind, I heard the sergeant’s words I’d heard years before, “on behalf…of a grateful nation…” drift across on the wind as he solemnly handed the folded flag to my mom.
And at the end of the day, as I watched them drive off, I found myself, in spite of the fact that I had my own family, a job, a mortgage, all the trappings of being an adult, I found myself crying, because underneath it all, I was a little boy who’d just lost his daddy.
I cried for the fact that much as I’d wanted to, there were things left unfinished.
I cried for the relationship that had at times been rough, but had started to mend.
I cried for the relationship that, like it or not, mended or not, was ended.
…
It is Veteran’s Day as this is published…
For those of you out there who are wearing the uniform, or for those of you who have worn it, with honor, you have my greatest respect.
For those of you who’ve lost your sons – like Mr. and Mrs. Stephens, who lost their son Lee, and so many others, and for those of you out there who’ve lost your daddies, my heart goes out to you.
For those of you who are still daddies, remember your kids only have one of you, and they only have one childhood.
It’s not a dress rehearsal, it’s the real thing.
Take the time to be there for them while you can.
Love them. Hug them.
Veteran’s Day, 2010
Dad and one of the merry go round horses he carved.
I opened a jar of jelly this morning.
It wasn’t store bought, it was home made.
It was made of something known as quince – a fruit that looks a lot like a drunken pear, and is really not all that good to eat directly, but is wonderful in jellies, it has almost a smokey apple flavor.
Mom’s had a fruit tree – a quince tree for years, and every year she’s canned jelly.
She’d put them in little one pint Ball canning jars, put the year and the type of fruit on them, and then put them on the counter to cool. As they cooled, you could hear them seal – there’d be this audible ‘doink’ as the lid of each one actually sealed shut.
When dad was still alive, I knew she’d be in the kitchen, cutting up fruit, and dad would be sitting in his chair, reading jokes or stories out of the Reader’s Digest to her just to keep her company. He was her cheerleader. There were things she did well, and things he did well – over the years they’d complemented each other. It was a scene that would play out every year, at the end of every summer, when it was time for the harvest of all the trees they had growing.
And every year, when the canning was done, there’d be this armada of jars on the counter, each with its own destination, each with the name of the fruit and the year written in sharpie on the lid.
The thing about this was that often she’d end up making far more jelly or jam than they could consume, and so whenever we visited, we couldn’t leave without a couple of jars of jelly. Sometimes it was quince, sometimes it was black currant mixed with raspberry, sometimes it was blackberry.
And sometimes, these jars of jelly would end up in the back of the cupboard in our kitchen, like this morning.
I opened a jar – this one clearly an old one, one that had been made while dad was still alive.
I rolled it around in my hand, hearing the stories it was telling me – of the fruit that mom and dad had picked off the tree in the side yard, of the way they had carried it over under to the picnic table or into the house, of the stories dad read to mom as she peeled and prepared the fruit. I heard it tell the story of how it was kept cool, preserved for just the right time until she pulled it out of the pantry to give to us.
I looked at it – listening, feeling, remembering.
I unscrewed the canning jar ring, then wedged my fingernails under the lid and heard the hiss as the air from today mixed with the air from many years ago – and the thoughts of today mixed with the memories of years gone by.
I realized, with a start, that not only was I holding a jar of jelly, I was holding a time capsule in my hand.
A time capsule of love.
I dipped a knife into it, and spread it on my toast, and with a cup of coffee and a smile, planned my day.
© Tom Roush
Have you ever taught your kid how to ride a bike?
I was thinking about that the other day, and realized that it never ends…
The thing about learning how to ride a bike – or teaching your kids how to – is you first start them off in a stroller – you’ve got full control, they’re just along for the ride, they don’t even know that you’re pushing, they just know they get plopped into the stroller and show up someplace else.
Next thing you know, you’re pulling them in a wagon, or a sled – and they become aware of what you’re doing, and what it takes to move you around.
Eventually, as with all children, they want to do it themselves, so you buy or borrow a tricycle for them, and they can move around on their own. It’s at this point that the story changes, because you’re no longer in control.
Soon they’ll see bigger kids riding two wheelers, and they’ll want to do the same thing, so you get them a two wheeler – of course, with training wheels.
And the transition continues.
Remember how they’d ride with the wheels all the way down? – and then after awhile you’d sit there rounding off the nuts with the wrong sized wrench, adjusting them so they’d be a little higher – so they’d still have the safety of the training wheels, but would be able to balance a little on their own? Each kid learns at a speed all their own, and each kid learns at a speed that’s best for them.
But what happens on your end is that you help them as long as you can. You teach them to ride a bike, and then you hold on to the saddle, steadying them, helping to keep them from falling until you can feel in your hand that they’re not wobbling.
You hold onto the saddle until you feel their pedaling is smoother and steadier.
You hold onto the saddle until they’re pedaling faster than you can run.
And you know that if you continue to hold onto the saddle at this point, they can’t ride their bike. You will, quite literally, be holding them back.
And you realize in a split second, that you have to let go.
You have to let them go.
And to do that, you have to loosen your grip.
Your world changes in that next split second, as you let go of the saddle.
In that one moment, everything changes.
By letting go, you’ve said to them “I trust you”
By letting go, you’ve said, “You’re in charge now”
By letting go, you’ve said, “I love you, and will be here to help, but you’re the one riding now. Your success is up to you.”
If you hang on – your child will only be able to ride as fast as you can run – and that simply isn’t fast enough.
I’ve talked to several dads who taught their kids to ride bikes – and as I did, they all instinctively held their right hand down as if they were holding onto a saddle as they told their stories.
They knew.
They knew the ride would be wobbly at first. That there would be falls, and Bandaids, and trips to the emergency room. There always are as your child starts to understand this newfound independence.
But in that first moment, that moment you loosened your grip, in the split second that you actually let go of the saddle, you relinquished control over them – you gave that control to them. And the control is everything… You’re letting them choose to succeed or fail. You’re giving them the freedom to win or lose. You, as you come to a stop after running alongside them, panting, see the distance between you grow as they ride forward with the excitement of youth.
And suddenly – their whole life flashes before your eyes as you realize that you’ve done this before – but you didn’t know you were doing it. You’ve celebrated their “firsts” – whether it was the first time, as a baby, they rolled over…
I remember that day with my son very well, used to be he’d simply stay where I put him. Then one day, I’d put him in the middle of the bed, and he rolled over, and off the bed onto the floor. He let me know about the impact at the top of his lungs…
- Or that first owie…
I remember when we had the little “child proof” (hah!) gate across the front door – from the living room to the front steps, and he was having so much fun bouncing and pulling on it that I didn’t get a chance to stop him before he fell out, and down the steps. His head hit one of the steps and within seconds he looked almost exactly like Worf from Star Trek. He cried so hard, and it hurt his head so bad, almost as much as it hurt my heart as I was holding him.
- Do you remember their first step?
- Or their first word?
- Or their first bite of “real” food?
You realize, as the thoughts drift through your mind, that inside every one of those “firsts” trumpeting in through the front door, there was a quiet “last” packing up its bags, and shutting the back door quietly behind it as it left.
You find yourself startled – “Would I have done something different if I’d known this was the last…” whatever it was… If you’d known it was the last bottle you’d ever give them, the last baby food you’d ever do the airplane thing into the hangar with that we all do as parents, or the last diaper you changed on them.
Would you change anything?
Would you do anything different if you knew when their last night at home would be? The last time you saw them?
Maybe it’s best we don’t know – because if we did, we’d be paying attention to that back door, when the front one’s important, too…
The thing is, this cycle repeats itself all through their lives.
Do you remember their first day of kindergarten?
The elementary school our son went to kindergarten at had a “tea and cookies” get together for parents of kindergartners – it was accompanied by large amounts of Kleenex – as it was an entire herd of parents standing there realizing they’d let go of that particular saddle – and they didn’t know what to do with their hands anymore. The kleenex solved that problem
What about their first time spending the night someplace else, when you weren’t the one to tuck them in?
I remember saying prayers with my daughter every night, and for many years, the last voice my son heard at night and the first one he heard in the morning was mine.
As a parent of youngsters, you often find yourself actively wanting this – you just want some peace and quiet sometimes – and what often happens is this:
It is quiet…
Too quiet…
There’s no one skateboarding down the stairs.
There’s no one screaming about who’s hitting who.
There’s no one stomping through the living room like the bass section of a marching band of elephants.
You realize, about then, that you’re definitely not a single person anymore, you realize you’re not just a married couple – but you’re married – with kids – and you’ve become a family. And without that part of the family – something just feels out of balance, and it only comes back into balance when the kids come crashing through the door again. The exhaustion comes right in with them, but so does the joy of having them back.
Do you remember them getting their driver’s license? Heck, do you remember what it felt like to get in the passenger’s seat on their first drive?
With our daughter – driving wasn’t so hard, but parking was. I remember how hard she was trying to learn how to parallel park. She’d tried and tried and tried – and it just didn’t work… Out of frustration, she said, “This is impossible!”
And I, being the Ever Helpful Dad, said, “Here, let me show you.” She got out, I got in the driver’s seat, pulled up beside the car she was trying to park behind in her little $800.00 Mazda, put it in reverse, hit the gas, flipped the wheel hard right, then hard left, then hit the brake, and put it in park.
“See? It’s easy!”
She wasn’t convinced… At all.
And for years she would figure out ways to park without doing the parallel parking thing – until she got it, in her own time.
One day, a few cars later, and – actually it was father’s day a year or so ago, she came up and said, “I would have brought you a card – but I have something better.” And then she told me that she’d paid off the car she’d bought – all by herself. “I just wanted to thank you – because without what you taught me about money – I wouldn’t have been able to pay this off.”
Wow.
No card could have been better than that.
In spite of the fact that she’d been living away from home for several years at that time, I felt I could let go of that particular saddle with a little more grace right then… With all of the challenges a young adult has in these times, she’s doing well.
The first time I let our son drive, we took my old Saab out onto an old country road. It’s a 4 speed on the column. I pulled over, said, “Okay, your turn” and got out – we did a Chinese fire drill, and the next thing I knew, after his stunned look of “You’re kidding, really?!”, he’d gotten us started – no bucking or stalling the car with its clutch that needs replacing. I was stunned. We were up in third at about 35 mph and I was still in shock, “Michael, that was incredible!” and Michael, ever the understated one, said, “Well, what did you expect? I’ve been watching you drive this thing for 16 years…”
That sentence alone is worth another story, and my mind was scrambled there for a while as I tried to handle the overload of that simple statement…
I taught him and I didn’t even realize it?
What does that mean – what else have I taught him without realizing it?
I taught him stuff I wanted him to know without realizing it – what have I taught him that I’d rather he not know?
Do I need to go back and try to undo things?
What would I undo?
How would I find out?
… while also helping him learn the intricacies of driving a 40 year old car with a tricky clutch and a freewheeling transmission.
What about their first date? – not the one where you drove them, but the one where they drove themselves, do you remember waving goodbye as they left? Do you remember wondering what kind of stuff they were up to? (only because of the “stuff” you got into when you were their age) – and speaking of “stuff – didn’t it scare the – uh – “stuff” out of you?
One of the hardest things/times that a lot of parents have gone through in the last week or so, is that first day of school after high school – when you all pile into the car and take your young one “off to college.” Your kid is just looking forward to being on his or her own, where you look at dorm rooms that seem way, way smaller than what you remember, and there’s so much more stuff in them now.
My first dorm room had a desk, a bed that folded into a couch thing, and a closet for my roommate and me. I brought in a 30 pound Remington Noiseless typewriter (yes, this was back in the days before word processors, but not by much, and yes, it was old then…) I remember that all the parents looked like foreigners. The day I moved in, I saw they all had puffy eyes that they wouldn’t acknowledge, the dads were sweating from carrying so much stuff up the stairs to the right floor, and the moms were flitting about all trying to do that one last thing to make things perfect before they’d have to admit that it was time to let someone pry their fingers from that saddle.
That ride back home from college – from dropping your first or last or any kid off can be very, very quiet. It might be the first time the back seat of the car’s been empty in years.
It is hard to get used to.
And it takes time. I remember one child who moved out with just a few hours warning to a city several hours away. The mom was not expecting it, nor was she ready for it. I remember taking a photo of that moment, when they hugged goodbye and both tried to smile for the camera – the daughter’s eyes bright, looking forward to a new and exciting future, while the mom was desperately trying to hold back tears, standing there, essentially looking at her hand, the one that up until moments before had been holding on to a saddle – one that had just been pulled out of her hand, when she herself wasn’t ready to let it go.
It is hard to get used to.
What about their first “real” relationship? The one where you can just feel the wobbling of that particular bicycle, you can feel the unsteadiness – you just KNOW, deep in your heart, that this just isn’t the right person for your child, and yet, you have to let go of that saddle… Sometimes you have to let them fall, or they won’t know how to keep from falling. Knowing when to do that is one of the hardest things to do as a parent. How would they react to having you interfere? How would you have reacted had your parents told you “she’s not the right one for you” – or “he’s not the right one for you”? – so you walk that razor’s edge of knowing what to say, but not when to say it – or knowing the right time to say something, but having no idea what to say…
What about the breakup of that first relationship? The one you find out about long after the fact – when you get what starts out to be an innocuous sounding telephone call, but over time, the truth comes out, and you know that they’re hurting in ways they don’t even have words for, in ways you’ve hurt before, and your heart just aches for them. You understand a bit of it – but you can’t actually say that, now’s not the time. You want to grab the saddle again, you want to rip it from the bike and use it to whack the crap out of the person who did this to your kid.
But you don’t.
You get the “Bandaids” – sometimes – this takes the form of a “care package from home” – sometimes it’s sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, or coffee, or a beer. Sometimes it’s going for a walk or a drive. It’s astonishing the kinds of things that you hear when you just take your kid out for a drive. But most often, the thing that’s most important is just taking the time to listen to your kid think their way through a problem to a solution, and what’s crucial is they need to know you’re listening to them, and you’re available to do it.
No cell phones, no blackberries, no iphones… Your kid needs to feel your hand on the saddle right then until they’re steadier, and when they’re ready, they’ll start pedaling again, and it will be time for you to let go.
Again.
This, as you may have guessed, will repeat itself through your life, throughout their lives. You will find, over the years, that they “ride their bike” in circles around you. The bike will change, whether it’s their first date, or their first job, or their first day after being let go from that job, or whatever. They will ride by and in one way or another, say what they said when they were little, “Look at me! Look what I can do!”
And your job is to do exactly what you did when they were little.
You cheer them on.
You encourage them.
You show them you love them.
And they’ll ride away, with the sound of those cheers ringing in their ears, knowing you’ll be there, in spirit if not in body.
–
This has been a pretty hard note for me to write, because as you might have guessed, some of what you just read came from personal experience, and as I was writing it, I realized, that as I’m working on letting go of the various saddles my kids are on – that things are coming around full circle, and that my mom is doing the same thing with me. It’s part of life, but it’s hard.
As I was writing this – I found my thoughts going back to 10 years ago, when my dad had a massive stroke, he was in ICU for a very long time, and in a nursing home for a while afterwards. It became very clear that as much as we wanted him to be with us, that the time we were able to share with him was coming to a close.
I wrote him a note – and in that nursing home room in Tacoma, on a warm August afternoon in 2000, I read it to him.
What was neat, if you can say that, in a situation like this, is that we could tell he was still in there – he just couldn’t communicate out very well. We adjusted the ventilator that was breathing for him so he could talk a little, and I remember his last words to me, “Tom, I love you, and I’m proud of you.”
He died two months later. Mom was with him at the end, they’d both fallen asleep, and dad died in his sleep beside her. As I was writing the eulogy, my sister had this image…
…the image she came away with was this, that dad was in bed, in the nursing home, having just been sung to and prayed for by the love of his life. She laid down on the bed next to him to rest, and dad, who had had his eyes closed, suddenly could see her.
The machine wasn’t breathing for him anymore.
His mind was clear, not muddled by a stroke.
His heart didn’t struggle.
His feet weren’t cold.
We imagine he looked around, saw the things we’d brought in to make him feel at home, saw his beloved wife laying there, who’d been with him for 41 years, for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and with his new, whole body, then left the presence of his wife to be with his Lord.
But as I thought of it later, I realized that in that moment in August, he’d done what all parents eventually do…
He’d let go of the saddle, one last time.
I miss you, dad.
…
So. (deep breath)
Run with your kids while you have them.
Love your kids while you can.
Hug them as often as you can.
Teach them how to ride a bike – but know that someday, you’ll have to let go of that saddle, and when you do, remember what your job is:
You let them go.
You love them.
And then you cheer them on.
Because while they’re riding away as fast as they can, and while you’re standing there, the bittersweet realization of what just happened slowly dawning on you, they need to know you’re still there.
Take care, folks…
Letting go of the saddle…
Have you ever taught your kid how to ride a bike?
I was thinking about that the other day, and realized that it never ends…
The thing about learning how to ride a bike – or teaching your kids how to – is you first start them off in a stroller – you’ve got full control, they’re just along for the ride, they don’t even know that you’re pushing, they just know they get plopped into the stroller and show up someplace else.
Next thing you know, you’re pulling them in a wagon, or a sled – and they become aware of what you’re doing, and what it takes to move you around.
Eventually, as with all children, they want to do it themselves, so you buy or borrow a tricycle for them, and they can move around on their own. It’s at this point that the story changes, because you’re no longer in control.
Soon they’ll see bigger kids riding two wheelers, and they’ll want to do the same thing, so you get them a two wheeler – of course, with training wheels.
And the transition continues.
Remember how they’d ride with the wheels all the way down? – and then you’d sit there with a wrench, adjusting them so they’d be a little higher – so they’d still have the safety of the training wheels, but would be able to balance a little on their own? Each kid learns at a speed all their own, and each kid learns at a speed that’s best for them.
But what happens on your end is that you help them as long as you can. – you teach them to ride a bike, and then you hold on to the saddle, steadying them, helping to keep them from falling until you can feel in your hand that they’re not wobbling.
You hold onto the saddle until you feel their pedaling is smoother and steadier.
You hold onto the saddle until they’re pedaling faster than you can run.
And you know that if you continue to hold onto the saddle at this point, they can’t ride their bike. You will, quite literally, be holding them back.
And you realize in a split second, that you have to let go.
And you loosen your grip.
Your world changes in that next split second, and you let go of the saddle.
In that moment, everything changes.
By letting go, you’ve said to them “I trust you”
By letting go, you’ve said, “You’re in charge now”
By letting go, you’ve said, “I love you, and will be here to help, but you’re the one riding now. Your success is up to you.”
If you hang on – your child will only be able to ride as fast as you can run – and that simply isn’t fast enough.
I’ve talked to several dads who taught their kids to ride bikes – and they all instinctively held their right hand down as if they were holding onto a saddle.
They knew.
They knew the ride would be wobbly at first. That there would be falls, and Bandaids, and trips to the emergency room. There always are as your child starts to understand this newfound independence.
But in that first moment, that moment you loosened your grip, in the split second that you actually let go of the saddle, you relinquished control over them – you gave that control to them. And the control is everything… You’re letting them choose to succeed or fail. You’re giving them the freedom to win or lose. You, as you come to a stop after running alongside them, panting, see the distance between you grow as they ride forward with the excitement of youth.
And suddenly – their whole life flashes before your eyes, and you realize that you’ve done this before – but you didn’t know you were doing it. You’ve watched them do a “first” – whether it was the first time, as a baby, they rolled over…
I remember that day with my son very well, used to be he’d simply stay where I put him. Then one day, I’d put him in the middle of the bed, and he rolled over, and off the bed onto the floor. He let me know about the impact at the top of his lungs…
- Or that first owie…
I remember when we had the little “child proof” (hah!) gate across the front door – from the living room to the front steps, and he was having so much fun bouncing and pulling on it that I didn’t get a chance to stop him before he fell out, and down the steps. His head hit one of the steps and within seconds he looked almost exactly like Worf from Star Trek. He cried so hard, and it hurt so bad.
- Or their first step, or a first word, or their first bite of “real” food.
You realize, as the thoughts drift through your mind, that inside every one of those “firsts” trumpeting in through the front door, there was a quiet “last” packing up its bags, and shutting the back door quietly behind it as it left.
You find yourself startled – “Would I have done something different if I’d known this was the last…”whatever it was… If you’d known it was the last bottle you’d ever give them, the last baby food you’d ever do the airplane thing into the hangar with that we all do as parents, or the last diaper you changed on them.
Would you change anything?
Would you do anything different if you knew when their last night at home would be? The last time you saw them?
Maybe it’s best we don’t know – because if we did, we’d be paying attention to that back door, when the front one’s important, too…
The thing is, that repeats itself all through their lives.
Do you remember their first day of kindergarten?
The elementary school our son went to kindergarten at had a “tea and cookies” get together for parents of kindergartners – it was accompanied by large amounts of Kleenex – as it was an entire herd of parents standing there realizing they’d let go of that particular saddle – and they didn’t know what to do with their hands anymore.
What about their first time spending the night someplace else, when you weren’t the one to tuck them in?
I remember saying prayers with my daughter every night, and for a long time, the last voice my son heard at night and the first one he heard in the morning was mine.
As a parent of youngsters, you often find yourself actively wanting this – you just want some peace and quiet sometimes – and what often happens is this:
It is quiet…
Too quiet…
There’s no one skateboarding down the stairs.
There’s no one screaming about who’s hitting who.
There’s no one stomping through the living room like the bass section of a marching band of elephants.
You realize, about then, that you’re definitely not a single person anymore, you realize you’re not just a married couple – but you’re married – with kids – and you’ve become a family. And without that part of the family – something just feels out of balance, and it only comes back into balance when the kids come crashing through the door again. The exhaustion comes right in with them, but so does the joy of having them back.
Do you remember them getting their driver’s license? Heck, do you remember what it felt like to get in the passenger’s seat on their first drive?
With our daughter – driving wasn’t so hard, but parking was. I remember how hard she was trying to learn how to parallel park. She’d tried and tried and tried – and it just didn’t work… Out of frustration, she said, “This is impossible!”
And I, being the Ever Helpful Dad, said, “Here, let me show you.” She got out, I got in the driver’s seat, pulled up beside the car she was trying to park behind in her little $800.00 Mazda, put it in reverse, hit the gas, flipped the wheel hard right, then hard left, then hit the brake, and put it in park.
“See? It’s easy!”
She wasn’t convinced… At all.
And for years she would figure out ways to park without doing the parallel parking thing – until she got it, in her own time.
One day, a few cars later, and – actually it was father’s day a year or so ago, she came up and said, “I would have brought you a card – but I have something better.” And then she told me that she’d paid off the car she’d bought – all by herself. “I just wanted to thank you – because without what you taught me about money – I wouldn’t have been able to pay this off.”
Wow.
No card could have been better than that.
In spite of the fact that she’d been living away from home for several years at that time, I felt I could let go of that particular saddle with a little more grace right then… With all of the challenges a young adult has in these times, she’s doing well.
The first time I let our son drive, we took my old Saab out onto an old country road. It’s a 4 speed on the column. I pulled over, said, “Okay, your turn” and got out – we did a Chinese fire drill, and the next thing I knew, after his stunned look of “You’re kidding, really?!”, he’d gotten us started – no bucking or stalling the car with its clutch that needs replacing. I was stunned. We were up in third at about 35 mph and I was still in shock, “Michael, that was incredible!” and Michael, ever the understated one, said, “Well, what did you expect? I’ve been watching you drive this thing for 16 years…”
That sentence alone is worth another story, and my mind was scrambled there for a while as I tried to handle the overload of that simple statement…
I taught him and I didn’t even realize it?
What does that mean – what else have I taught him without realizing it?
I taught him stuff I wanted him to know without realizing it – what have I taught him that I’d rather he not know?
Do I need to go back and try to undo things?
What would I undo?
How would I find out?
… while also helping him learn the intricacies of driving a 40 year old car with a tricky clutch and a freewheeling transmission.
What about their first date? – not the one where you drove them, but the one where they drove themselves, do you remember waving goodbye as they left? Do you remember wondering what kind of stuff they were up to? (only because of the “stuff” you got into when you were their age) – and speaking of “stuff – didn’t it scare the – uh – “stuff” out of you?
One of the hardest things/times that a lot of parents have gone through in the last week or so, is that first day of school after high school – when you all pile into the car and go “off to college.” Your kid is just looking forward to being on his or her own, where you look at dorm rooms that seem way, way smaller than what you remember, and there’s so much more stuff in them now.
My first dorm room had a desk, a bed that folded into a couch thing, and a closet for my roommate and me. I brought in a 30 pound Remington Noiseless typewriter (yes, this was back in the days before word processors, but not by much, and yes, it was old then…) I remember that all the parents looked like foreigners. The day I moved in, I saw they all had puffy eyes that they wouldn’t acknowledge, the dads were sweating from carrying so much stuff up the stairs to the right floor, and the moms were flitting about – all trying to do that one last thing to make things perfect before they’d have to admit that it was time to let someone pry their fingers from that saddle.
That ride back home from college – from dropping your first or last or any kid off can be very, very quiet. It might be the first time the back seat of the car’s been empty in years.
It is hard to get used to.
And it takes time. I remember one child who moved out with just a few hours warning to a city several hours away. The mom was not expecting it, nor was she ready for it. I remember taking a photo of that moment, when they hugged goodbye and both tried to smile for the camera – the daughter’s eyes bright, looking forward to a new and exciting future, while the mom was desperately trying to hold back tears, standing there, essentially looking at her hand, the one that up until moments before had been holding on to a saddle – one that had just been pulled out of her hand, when she herself wasn’t ready to let it go.
It is hard to get used to.
What about their first “real” relationship? The one where you can just feel the wobbling of that particular bicycle, you can feel the unsteadiness – you just KNOW, deep in your heart, that this isn’t the right person for your child, and yet, you have to let go of that saddle… How would they react to having you interfere? How would you have reacted had your parents told you “she’s not the right one for you” – or “he’s not the right one for you”? – so you walk that razor’s edge of knowing what to say, but not when to say it – or knowing the right time to say something, but having no idea what to say…
What about the breakup of that first relationship? The one you find out about long after the fact – when you get what starts out to be an innocuous sounding telephone call, but over time, the truth comes out, and you know that they’re hurting in ways they don’t even have words for, in ways you’ve hurt before, and your heart just aches for them. You understand a bit of it – but you can’t actually say that, now’s not the time. You want to grab the saddle again, you want to rip it from the bike and use it to whack the crap out of the person who did this to your kid.
But you don’t.
You get the “Bandaids” – sometimes – this takes the form of a “care package from home” – sometimes it’s sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, or coffee, or a beer. Sometimes it’s going for a walk or a drive. It’s astonishing the kinds of things that you hear when you just take your kid out for a drive. But most often, the thing that’s most important is just taking the time to listen to your kid think their way through a problem, and what’s crucial is they need to know you’re listening to them, and you’re available to do it.
No cell phones, no blackberries, no iphones… Your kid needs to feel your hand on the saddle right then until they’re steadier, and when they’re ready, they’ll start pedaling again, and it will be time for you to let go.
Again.
This, as you may have guessed, will repeat itself through your life, throughout their lives. You will find, over the years, that they “ride their bike” in circles around you. The bike will change, whether it’s their first date, or their first job, or their first day after being let go from that job, or whatever. They will ride by and in one way or another, say what they said when they were little, “Look at me! Look what I can do!”
And your job is to do exactly what you did when they were little.
You cheer them on.
You encourage them.
You show them you love them.
And they’ll ride away, with the sound of those cheers ringing in their ears, knowing you’ll be there, in spirit if not in body.
–
This has been a pretty hard note for me to write, because as you might have guessed, some of what you just read came from personal experience, and as I was writing it, I realized, that as I’m working on letting go of the various saddles my kids are on – that things are coming around full circle, and that my mom is doing the same thing. It’s part of life, but it’s hard.
As I was writing this – I found my thoughts going back to 10 years ago, when my dad had a massive stroke, he was in ICU for a very long time, and in a nursing home for a while afterwards. It became very clear that as much as we wanted him to be with us, that his time here was coming to a close.
I wrote him a note – and in that nursing home room in Tacoma, on a warm August afternoon in 2000, I read it to him.
What was neat, if you can say that, in a situation like this, is that we could tell he was still in there – he just couldn’t communicate very well. We adjusted the ventilator that was breathing for him so he could talk a little, and I remember his last words to me, “Tom, I love you, and I’m proud of you.”
He died two months later. Mom was with him at the end, they’d both fallen asleep, and dad died in his sleep beside her, and as I was writing the eulogy, my sister had this image…
…the image she came away with was this, that dad was in bed, in the nursing home, having just been sung to and prayed for by the love of his life. She laid down on the bed next to him to rest, and dad, who had had his eyes closed, suddenly could see her.
The machine wasn’t breathing for him anymore.
His mind was clear, not muddled by a stroke.
His heart didn’t struggle.
His feet weren’t cold.
We imagine he looked around, saw the things we’d brought in to make him feel at home, saw his beloved wife laying there, who’d been with him for 41 years, for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and with his new, whole body, then left the presence of his wife to be with his Lord.
But as I thought of it later, I realized that in that moment in August, he’d done what all parents eventually do…
He’d let go of the saddle, one last time.
I miss you, dad.
…
So. (deep breath)
Run with your kids while you have them.
Love your kids while you can.
Hug them as often as you can.
Teach them how to ride a bike – but know that someday, you’ll have to let go of that saddle, and when you do, remember what your job is: You let them go, you love them, and then you cheer them on. Because while they’re riding away as fast as they can, and while you’re standing there, the bittersweet realization of what just happened slowly dawning on you, they need to know you’re there.
Take care, folks…
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