Who needs it?

“Facebook is insidious.” That’s what my old friend Roger says. I’m not sure he isn’t right.

I’m on Facebook. I see its value, in connecting me with distant friends, allowing me glimpses of their lives. I’ve learned of deaths and pregnancies, illnesses and awards, affinities and pet peeves. I’ve learned a lot of things I never would’ve known. It’s nice to feel connected.

Too often, though, I’ve been annoyed by political harangues and hot air, and by people who feel the need to broadcast everything, filling my wall with boasts on their kids and pictures of their knitting and chain-letter nonsense.

It feels weird to have conservations on Facebook that used to take place in the relative privacy of email: a back-and-forth with one person to which any number of others are privy. I feel exposed, and like a voyeur when I follow such conversations between others.

Mostly, though, I experience Facebook as a facilitator of envy. Tina’s wall-to-wall coverage of her latest world travels, Doug’s paeans to the weather in Hawaii, where he just got a new job, Benji’s photos of the zillion-dollar estate she’s selling, Lanse’s descriptions of his new success as an artist... The carefully presented facades and accomplishments, the temptation in response to puff myself up into something I’m not. It’s high school gossip all over again.

The best gauge is this: Almost every time I get on Facebook, I get off feeling roiled and un-peaceful, envious or superior or just annoyed, but less grounded, and less content with my life than before I got on. These days, therefore, I mostly stay away.

No more shoulds

Nothing kills the creative impulse quicker than worrying about what I should be writing. Unless it’s people talking loudly and endlessly in the next room. Or a sunny day after weeks of rain. Or thinking about how old I am. Or my neck hurting like hell.

But I digress. It’s the “shoulds” that really jam the gears and shut things down. I should be writing about serious and important matters, demonstrating my maturity and intelligence, showing how compassionate and well-informed and insightful I am. Or, to take a different tack, how light-footed, clever, sharp, observant I am. How likeable, in short. I should be making a good impression, so that people will like me. Deadly, deadly stuff.

What comes naturally? What tone? What subject? What voice? What voice is truly mine?

Follow the spark. There’s a live-wire connection when you’re on the path, a faint glow that gets brighter. It’s worlds apart from the heaviness of should. It’s life and death.

So easily snuffed! So prey to distraction (and judgment)! But if you can get into that zone, that cone of silence, it can be remarkably strong, too. Words come with alacrity—the right words. Not yours, exactly. Not owned. It doesn’t last long, but you can find it again—given faith, commitment, refusal to be squashed. And when you find it, you are shown what has to come next, which way to go. You don’t generate it, with effort; you hear it. It’s out there.

But you can’t care what people think. Most of all, you can’t listen to that person inside you—the frightened, needy, self-hating one. The one who says you aren’t good enough. He’s speaking right now, in fact, calling this whole post banal, juvenile, obvious. But, like old Croce said, that’s not the way it feels.

You don’t have to be flamboyant. You don’t have to be good. You don’t have to be anything, in fact, except true.

Another lesson in humility

They keep on coming. I went for a run at lunchtime, nice and easy, 30 minutes, walking interspersed, and it was a struggle. Worse, I felt the effects all afternoon, and feel them even now. I feel sandbagged.

What is it? Dehydration? Lack of sleep? Heavy pollen? Am I that out of shape?

Mostly the latter, I’m afraid. I’ve run very little over the last six months, and it’s been only—what?—three weeks since I started up again. I’m 52 years old, and I weigh 211 pounds—15 pounds over my fighting weight. I should just be thankful that my knees are holding up. I’m lucky I can run at all.

Can I let go of impatience? Can I accept the reality of where I am and embrace it? Can I just keep doing the work, day after day, time after time, humbly and patiently and without straining? Can I be satisfied with incremental progress, not despair and throw in the towel?

I’ve got big dreams, and that’s good, up to a point. But day to day I need to let go of expectations and just be with what’s real. That’s the only way to keep going. Enjoy what’s real.

There were brief stretches today when I felt good, took pleasure in movement. Let me not neglect to appreciate these moments, even as I work to make them last longer. Let me remember strong, sure runs in Spokane and Tallahassee and Bloomington and State College, and dream of repeating the feeling of those runs, without trying to force it. Let me, in the words of the WWII hero Dick Winters, “hang tough” and keep going out there.

Money to Burn

I’m itching to buy something. Just got paid for some freelance work, a tidy sum for a fun project that I put a lot of time into, and now I’m looking for a tangible reward.

No, I can’t just put it in the bank. This is extra money, for extra work, and I have to use it—some of it, anyway—for something extra. Something I would never otherwise purchase.

Disposable income, they call it. For a long time, when L wasn’t working, I didn’t have any. Things were tight; whatever extra I got went into the kitty. Now, though, I can hold some back, in a separate account, to do with whatever I please.

Over the years, depending on the interest du jour, it has pleased me to reward myself with a Conga drum, an MP3 player, a camera, a sautee pan, a mountain bike, and a ukulele. Objects of good or even excellent quality, a level of quality that I would otherwise deny myself. And they have brought me much joy.

Sometimes it will be something small—a bottle of fine whiskey. And sometimes large, like a wood stove—a thing I have dreamed of for many years but would never spend the money on. What pleasure that stove has given, and not only to me, in the months since its installment!

Nor does it have to be something for me. I’ve bankrolled vacations and donations, concert tickets and clothes, splurges on L and D and others that have done my pinch-penny heart a world of good.

This time, not surprisingly, given the recent renaissance, my focus is on running gear. And that puts me in a bit of a quandary, because I have always been philosophically opposed to such accoutrements. My pure, spiritual, Zen-of-running side, in other words, is currently rolling up and down the barroom floor in a fierce and enduring clinch with my gotta-getta-Garmin side.

There’s no telling how this tussle will come out right now; there’s too much dust in the air. But the pleasure of searching and learning and dreaming is starting to give way to exhaustion.

A man possessed

Wii golf looks to be my latest obsession. We went to the neighbors’ for dinner on Saturday, and I played a few rounds with O. It was strangely addictive, requiring just enough skill to hold my interest and keep me playing. On Sunday afternoon I played with D at home, and later that night after he was in bed, compelled to keep at it and better my score. I can see the attraction. I can also spy already the end of this bender in the fact that it’s the same nine holes played over and over. Lucky for me.

Wii golf thus joins the long list of enthusiasms that have taken complete possession of me at one time or another, flings brief and intense that typically run their course in a week or a couple of weeks before I lose interest and drop them for a year or two, when I may just as typically be bitten afresh and go through the whole thing again.

Thus have I accumulated piles of newspaper sections, each one folded to the day’s Sudoku puzzle, so that I’d be sure to have one to solve tomorrow and the day after. Or gone on extended binges of Solitaire and online chess. I can say the same too for spates of watching movies or baseball or playoff basketball or the soccer World Cup. For a month every four years that tournament becomes my favorite thing, soaking up most of my waking attention. When it’s over, it’s over. I may miss it for a couple of days, but then, in spite of my intentions, I forget about soccer entirely for four years until the Cup returns and grabs my attention again.

The same pattern fits my impulse to cook. For long stretches I don’t just cook, I inhabit cooking—studying recipes, watching cooking shows, trying new techniques and ingredients, cooking meal after meal, cooking like a fiend.

It may seem dilettantish, scattered. But these passing enthusiasms, storms or waves of interest, have been a source of immense pleasure in my life, of consuming interest, and I am thankful for them. The abiding mystery is that I don’t control them. The wind bloweth where it listeth.

Old Men Running

I’ve reached the point in running where I look to the old guys for inspiration. One of them, George Sheehan, has been inspiring me since I was young: I first ran across his tough, philosophical running columns in a journal called The Physician and Sports Medicine when I was in my twenties. His writing, and his personal story of starting to run when he was 47, pushed me to get out there and try. Then I found Joe Henderson and Long Slow Distance, “the humane way to train,” and more encouragement to run honestly, at my own pace. Then the other Runners World stalwarts, Burfoot and Yasso, both my age or older and refreshingly human. And Hal Higdon, another old goat with unflagging optimism, wrote the training plan that helped me run a marathon.

Then there are the personal gods at the end of my street. George E., another late bloomer, is 88, and he still runs the Mount Washington ascent every year. Truman H., the same age, is a traffic guard at the local elementary school, and one of the “Old Men of the Mountains” 50-mile relay team. E. didn’t start until he was 48; how can I possibly think I’m washed up at 52?

Tops on my list, though, is Arthur Walker of Portland, Oregon, who I met at the Steamtown Marathon in 2008. Walker is retired military; at 69, he had just stepped away from a physical therapy practice to travel the country and run in a marathon in each of the 50 states. By the grace of God, I sat down next to him on the pre-dawn bus to the start at Steamtown, a nervous first-timer unsure of what lay in store. He immediately took me under his wing, encouraging me to relax and have fun. He seemed genuinely delighted to help.

I saw him twice more—once before the start, a cape of foil around his shoulders to keep him warm, and once early on the course at a porta-potty. Each time he yelled my name and fresh encouragement, a true comrade. We finished within a few minutes of each other.

I have Arthur’s finish photo tacked to my bulletin board at work. He looks strong in his cap and sunglasses and his barrel chest, flashing a grin and a peace sign. He ’s there to remind me what I have to look forward to.

Chiropractic works

One Friday night in late February, shortly after L’s brother and her mom had arrived for the weekend, I stood up quickly after squatting to feed the wood stove, and felt dizzy. I’m used to this; I’ve known the same response since I was a teenager. My dad has it too. I stand and feel the world close in for a second, before the blood rushes to my head and the lights come back on. I’ve always chalked it up to being tall.

Sometimes I will steady myself, put my hand to the wall, but I’ve never blacked out or fallen. This time, though, it was different. The light-headedness didn’t resolve as quickly as it usually does. Worse, it was accompanied by a tingling in my left arm, running from shoulder to fingertips, unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

The first time it happened, I sat back down at the dinner table, where the whole family was eating and talking, and quietly hoped it would go away. Slowly, the feeling did fade and I felt better, but when I rose from the table it happened again: the light-headedness and the tingling. By now, I was mildly alarmed, fearing I might be having a cardiac event. I quietly called L into the bedroom, and told her what was happening.

A few minutes later I was sitting in the emergency room, with L on one side of me and her brother on the other. The ER doc pulled out the stops: EKG, X-rays, blood work, I don’t even remember what-all. Clearly he was thinking cardiac. But he found nothing, and after three or four hours he turned me loose. “If it happens again…”

Sunday afternoon it happened again. I was lying down, alone in the house, when the phone rang. I jumped up to answer it, and wham: the blackout feeling and the crazy tingling.

This time the admitted me. I spent the night in the ICU, and had what the docs called the million-dollar work-up. Cardiac, neurological, stress test, everything. Again, nothing showed up.

Over the next month, I saw half a dozen doctors, and even wore a heart monitor for a couple of weeks. I was prescribed an anti-anxiety drug and a thyroid medication. I had a couple more trips to the ER, and nobody could find anything. I had five days, a week without symptoms, and just when I thought the whole thing had gone away, it came back.

Finally, I went to see a chiropractor. He listened to my story, palpated my spine, pulled and stretched and rubbed. When he had me relaxed, he deftly “cracked” my neck, cradling my skull like a dinosaur egg in his huge and knowing hands, and immediately I felt better, lighter. Walking home, I felt like I a weight had been lifted off of my chest, that I could breathe again for the first time in weeks.

It’s been a month since that visit. I have not had any more tingling in my arm or any feelings of impending black-out. I can’t find any convincing medical description of exactly what a pinched nerve or an “impingement” is, but I am convinced that something of the sort was at the root of my mysterious problem. My dad said to me, half-jokingly, “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” meaning chiropractic. “All I know,” I said, “is that after he cracked my neck I felt better, and I haven’t had a problem since.”

Kid pitch

I spent the morning at the ball field with D. Only his second game in kid pitch. We had the early game, which meant it was cold and damp. Team picture day.

The picture packages started at $25. D wanted his picture on trading cards. Sure, I said. Then he saw the other options available: his picture on a mug, a t-shirt, refrigerator magnets. These I wouldn’t grant, which made him pout. He only pouted briefly; then he asked plaintively, “Next year, can I get a mug?” That almost worked on me.

Walking toward the field after pictures, he told me he didn’t know whether he could play. His leg hurt. Since when? I asked him. I don’t know, he said. I told him he had to play; his team needed him.

During warm-ups, it was announced that the other team had only seven players and would have to forfeit. The teams would scrimmage anyway.

I chatted amiably with the few other parents present. We were cold just sitting around. The field is beautiful, but completely enclosed and off limits to all but the teams and the umpires; the bleachers are way out beyond the right-field fence. From that distance, it’s hard to tell exactly who is batting. We speculated that our banishment was intentional, to preclude parental overbearance. We blew into our hands, bought coffee from the concession stand, wished the sun would come out.

D was last to take BP. He looked bad, flailing blindly. I cringed inwardly. Batting ninth in the first inning, he struck out. More flailing, more cringing. I began to wish that other boys would strike out too, just so he would have some company, but everyone was hitting, even little Alex. How was it that Alex was hitting?

D’s second time up, I prayed before each pitch that he’d get a hit, or at least hit the ball. He struck out on three pitches, watching a strike then swinging badly at two balls up around his eyes. I remembered a friend's father, growing up, who never came to his son’s games, because, he said, he couldn’t stand all the mistakes.

On defense, D played right field, then left, then center, running to and from his position with a limp that came and went. Not a single ball reached him all game.

The third time up, he walked on four pitches. We'll take it, I thought. He ran down to first excitedly, and made it all the way to third before the inning ended. The next time up, he had his strategy—he didn’t swing at anything. He watched a couple of strikes, but walked again, and scored from second on an outfield hit.

He was happy with that when the game finally ended—that he’d scored a run, and his team had won. That was enough for him.

I was thankful that he had something to hold onto, and a little ashamed of myself for wanting more. Still, I felt frustrated and a little bit embarrassed, too. For him? For me? I don’t know, maybe both. I struck out an awful lot myself back in the day.

I just wished he had managed to hit the ball.

Will running make it worse?

That’s the standard for whether pain justifies skipping a run. My knees hurt a bit, like they’ve done before when I resumed running after a long hiatus. There is dull pain in the meat at the inside of the knee cap on both knees, and in the left there is a screaming pain below the kneecap when I lift the bent leg while sitting to put a shoe on. Sometimes. It’s kind of unpredictable.

The dull pain was a little more noticeable this morning than it has been, and for that reason I considered giving the knees a rest today. But I ran anyway—an easy run, with walk breaks. The pain did not worsen. If anything it grew less as I loosened up. Now it’s back as I sit bent-legged at my desk, but no worse than it was earlier.

I have tended to err on the side of caution. Discretion is the better part of valor, and all that. Now, especially, there’s no good reason to risk injury. But I’m at that stage in my comeback where I’m impatient with excuses. I’ve missed far too many turns with flimsy ones. I’m afraid if I take off one day I’ll fall behind, and worse, I’ll fall away again, break the spell. I know how those misses can snowball.

I have tended to err on the side of self-indulgence, in short, and I don’t want to do that anymore. But I also don’t want to be a fool and get hurt.

Doing the Work

Walking in today, I passed a young woman running hill repeats. She was focused and deliberate. Her form was good. She looked athletic and strong.

Doing the work. That’s what I thought when I saw her. She is doing the work that is necessary. Paying her dues. I was inspired. You start where you are, you rein in your expectations, and you do the work. That’s all. There’s no room for vanity, or self-condemnation, or greed. There’s no rushing it. There’s a comfortable tension, neither slack nor strain. You come to live within that tension, to understand when you can push it and still maintain control, and when you need to back it off. You learn to feel, and to be honest--not to cheat yourself.

At the top of the hill was another young woman, run-walking. She was a bit overweight, no athlete, but she too was focused and deliberate. She too was doing the work.

It begins with a commitment, and that, since the marathon, has been hard for me to muster. It requires a stripping down to what’s important, and immediate. Discipline is remembering what you really want.

Long Road Back

I almost didn’t run today. My knees are tender—from starting up, from carrying too much weight—and the road ahead seems daunting. To get to where I want to be, which is simply in decent shape, able to run up to 10 miles, say, in reasonable comfort, is going to take a considerable and steady effort. For a moment or two, it didn’t seem worth it. More accurately, it didn’t seem possible. The goal was too far off.

The only way forward, of course, is to put on blinders and take it one day at a time. What this requires is, first, humility, facing the truth of where I am, accepting the reality that progress happens in small increments; and second, faith that those small increments will eventually add up to something.

I have the experience of having successfully trained for and completed a marathon to bolster my faith. What may be harder at this stage is to maintain a true humility, that is, the ability to face and accept what is right now without becoming discouraged. I am challenged every time I look in the mirror, by things that I can control (albeit with difficulty) and things that I can’t. Let me accept what I must with grace and equanimity, and let me also be resolute in changing what I can.

Defenders of the Faith

They’re everywhere, and their presence wounds the Spirit. There are bishops among them, and bishops who give them succor, and also bishops who fear them like the secret police. Their cranky, hateful letters in the newspaper were bad enough, but their nasty blog comments are even worse. They are relentless, bullying, eager to pounce and to pull every conversation around to their singular obsessions, which are either homosexuality or free market economics. They boast an invincible certainty, coupled with an utter lack of compassion. And boy do they have time on their hands.

I ran into one of these lamentable creatures today on the America blog. There was an innocuous post titled, “We are all adopted,” the gist of which was that we are all God’s chosen children, and lamenting the fact that the people of Haiti have yet to be adopted by the human family. The word “adoption” set off this jerk’s radar—evidently it says to him gay parents and test tube babies—and he posted in response a gratuitous defense of birth parents that insisted on attacking and demeaning adoption.

I was sorely tempted to hit him with a blistering response—went so far as to draft one, in fact, but thought better of sending it. Then I resented the time and energy he had taken from me, the anger and hatred he had stirred. It does no good to trade punches with these troglodytes, of course. And I could summon no real charity for his sad and stunted soul locked away in its loveless prison.

Growing pains

The kid is upset and it’s hard to take. All of his little third-grade friends are caught up in the latest Youtube video sensation, and we won’t let him watch. It’s crude and it’s rude and it’s meant for teenagers. It’s not appropriate for a nine-year-old, in our judgment, and we’re holding the line.

His frustration with us is keen, colossal from his perspective. These videos are forbidden fruit, the only topic in his class right now, and he feels painfully left out. It’s on his mind all day long, but he can’t do anything about it.

There have been lots of tears, but the worst part is when he screams in his frustration, “Just stop talking about it! Pretend it doesn’t exist!” He doesn’t want to go over it yet again, not when there’s no hope of changing our minds. His inclination is rather to be resigned, to suffer in silence. It hurts more to talk about it.

We second-guess ourselves, of course; we can’t stand to see him suffering. We come almost to the point of giving in. It would be easier on us if he got angry at us and acted out, but he just walks away and cries quietly until we prod him, and that only makes it worse.

We ourselves get frustrated, with the raw power of viral Internet culture, the permissiveness or absence of other parents, the immaturity and meanness of other kids. “Should I say something to the parents?” his mom asks him gently. “No!” he wails. “Then everybody will hate me!”

God knows this is nothing—there will be a whole lot worse than this before all is said and done. At the moment, however, it feels bad enough.

Scandal

The real thing is this: For me, an educated, professional, 52-year-old man working at a large public university in a secular society, to publicly kiss a cross is a scandal. What would my colleagues say? My boss? Neighbors? Fellow parents? Friends?

I didn’t have my kid with me for cover. He was in school, and I didn’t insist on pulling him, which would have been another scandalous move. So it was nakedly me and this public display of affection.

Affection? Reverence? Acknowledgement? No other church requires such a definitive focusing act, not that I know of. And that is a reason to cherish the Church.

We endure it sheepishly, distractedly, glancingly, because to really face what we’re doing is too difficult—at least it is for me. Can others make this gesture wholeheartedly? I envy them. For me it is a mere show of piety, and this makes me deeply uncomfortable. I can’t see Jesus; all I can see is myself.

All I can do then is pray: to see more clearly, to grow in faith. To be freed from the iron shackles of self-regard. To sweat blood.

Maybe that’s all that is required.

Good Friday

I took off work and went to the liturgy, as I always do. Walking from the parking garage, I felt the familiar doubt. Why are you doing this? And the corollary temptations: No one else is doing it—only the young and the gullible. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go—it’s only a ritual. You already know what this is about. You don’t need to do it. God will understand. Then: It’s really kind of silly, isn’t it?

It’s a dramatic ritual: the altar is stripped, the priests blazing in scarlet. They come in without music, prostrate themselves, their prone bodies our confession. The silence is powerful.

That much I like. But from there it drags on, with a long stilted reading of the Passion, repeated from Palm Sunday, and an even longer litany of prayers for all categories of people. The homily seems like overkill.

The center of the liturgy is the veneration of the cross, and this is the part that really triggers my self-consciousness. Everyone files down and kisses, touches, or otherwise reverences the cross held before the altar. Should I kiss it, or just touch it? Should I kneel? Everyone is watching (and, if they're like me, judging). It takes forever. The music is lugubrious. Two attendants are wiping potential germs from the wood after every kiss, a modern touch of fastidiousness that to me is both jarring and lamentable.

It’s an old-fashioned act of piety, and it makes me uncomfortable. But of course that’s the point. The whole overlong service is an enactment of shared discomfort. We are required to make some small sacrifice, of our time, our attention, our foolish pride, to remind us, however inadequately, of the larger sacrifice. To the extent that it annoys me, makes me uncomfortable, tries my patience, and is therefore an opportunity to embrace His suffering, it is important for me to attend.

Turning Point

I have started running again, after a long absence. As I look back at my records, it’s been longer than I thought. I ran not at all between mid-January and mid-April. Before that, I missed all of October and November and most of December. So I’ve run at most four weeks out of the last six and a half months.

There are reasons for this drought, and some of them are even legitimate. I had a month or so of mysterious episodes that first looked like they might be cardiac. That was scary; I even spent one night in the ICU. Before that (and perhaps related) I had my annual mid-winter sinus problem, which seemed to linger even longer than usual. And before that, I succumbed to inertia: settled into a new department, a new office, a new routine, I fell out of the habit of running. The comfort devil took me over.

The most obvious, and painful, result is that I’ve put on weight—at 215 pounds, I’m 15 pounds heavier than I was during my last serious training, and likely as heavy as I’ve ever been. My pants are too tight. My paunch is noticeable. I can’t stand my image in the mirror. And there are other tell-tale signs: I feel old and achy in the morning, and I labor to walk uphill.

Worst of all, it hurts to run, and after running. I huff and puff. My back and hips have stiffened up. Most worrisome are my knees, which hurt and threaten to give out.

Running is not fun right now. It isn’t pleasant. But at 52, I feel like I’ve reached a crossroads. Stick with it, endure the suffering, slowly and painfully climb back, or give in to comfort and begin the downhill slide in earnest. For now I’m committed to hanging tough, but the decision isn’t as easy as I wish it would be.

Marathon Man?

I have half-heartedly committed to run in the Steamtown marathon in October. This is something I’ve wanted to do, toyed with doing, for a number of years. This year I’ll be turning 50. Seems like an added reason to try it.

I say “try it,” not “do it.” That’s a problem. I’m not fully on-board with this yet. Still testing the waters. What if I get tired of the training? What if I lose heart?

My cover now is injury. That’s a legitimate excuse for dropping out, right? I say to myself doubtfully, well, I’ll try, if my joints hold up, but I’m not sure they will. This weekend I said this to my parents, half to cover myself, and half to ease them into the idea of me running a marathon. I hadn’t planned on telling them anything. I had told Lori of my tentative plan, and sworn her to secrecy, but she forgot and told my mother!

My mother’s reaction was surprisingly positive, considering her propensity to worry. “Well, it’s a goal,” she said. “If you want to try it I’ll support you.” I don’t think she even said “Be careful.” My father’s reaction was similar. They respect my running, and have for some time. My father has even asked me in the past whether I ever thought about running a marathon. The idea intrigues him.

I wouldn’t even have considered it up until about two months ago. For the past several months, maybe a year, until then, my running had been desultory; I had felt heavy, sluggish. I wasn’t enjoying running much at all. Of late, though, there’s been a change for the better. I don’t know what occasioned it—was it slowing down my pace? Losing a few pounds? For whatever reason, I began to feel a marked improvement and, well, I ran with it. As I started to feel better and better, Steamtown began to seem like a real possibility. I looked up Hal Higdon’s training plan for novice marathoners on the Web and saw that I was just in time to start training, so I fell into it.

Already, I’m in the middle of the fourth week. It hasn’t even grown hard yet, but already, I’ve had to fight off some internal resistance. What do I want to do this for? I’ve asked myself. It’s too much of a commitment, I’ve complained. I don’t feel like it. I’ve anticipated other people voicing the same thoughts. But so far, I’ve made the effort to stick to the training, and I think that with every week I put in, my commitment will grow along with my investment.

Formidable

William F. Buckley died today, aged 82, at his desk. His cook found him at 10 a.m.

I found myself drawn to his intelligence, energy, immensity of output and influence, charm. By the greatness of the life he lived. By the idea that he was not like today’s conservatives, bullying, nasty, bankrupt, partisan, that he treated his opponents with respect, was decent, gracious, large.

This is the impression I’ve formed from a distance, not paying much attention. A certain fondness, even though I had no affinity for most of what he stood for, and to pick up a copy of the National Review made me clench my teeth with fear and loathing. To me Buckley was like a pope—his presence forced me to give consideration to what I didn’t agree with. He had that kind of ballast.

We grew up watching Buckley perform on Firing Line on our black-and-white TV, that sprawling presence, the darting tongue, flashing eyes, feral smile, the evident joy he took in measuring, pouncing on and dismantling his opponents, the sheer style and humor with which he did it. We didn’t like him, but we were mesmerized by him.

Our father expressed admiration for Buckley, along with amusement at his mannerisms. This led to a period of years when a Buckley book was regarded as the logical birthday and Christmas present for Dad; when these events came around we pooled our money and bought him one, until at last one Christmas, after he ripped off the wrapping paper, he couldn’t help exclaiming, in a somewhat exasperated voice, “Who told you guys I like Buckley anyway?” There was a pause for us all to gulp. Then the reprieve: “I mean I do,” he said, “but…” I don’t think he read any of them.

Here’s the other connection: Eudie, my mom’s friend from girlhood, worked for Buckley in the early years of the National Review, as a secretary. She spoke of him with reverence.

He was a figure from my childhood, one who in recent years I would turn to for a principled conservative opinion on the war in Iraq, at a time when I didn't know what to think. I probably wouldn’t agree with him but I had to take him seriously. I could trust in his integrity and had to respect his opinion. For whatever reason, I assigned him not just with intelligence but with wisdom.

Remote control

It’s a curious thing how a switch in the mind can suddenly be turned on after long lying dormant. This happened to me recently with regard to the television in the kitchen. We installed the thing when the kitchen was remodeled, eight years ago now; it perches on a black metal stand at the end of a jointed arm bolted to the wall, so that it takes up no counter space. It is a somewhat guilty pleasure, but a pleasure indeed: cook’s companion, weather guide, boon to dish-washing. Many the Phillies game I have checked on, the political debate I have sampled, the episode of Scrubs I have caught the end of. Without this television I would have no experience of either Everybody Loves Raymond or Deal or No Deal.

Placing a television in the kitchen has its hazards, however. Chief among them is food spillage, which, except on Superbowl Sunday, is not as much of a threat in the den. When a television set sits suspended above the coffeemaker, when a busy cook or a dishwasher is handling the remote control on a daily basis, problems are bound to ensue. In our case, the poor remote suffered so many wet thumbs and splashes of spaghetti sauce over the years that it gradually ceased to function. First the number keys, then the mute, and finally the on-off button became stubborn and unreliable. We were left with a crippled TV. To turn it on or change the channel required accessing the controls on the front of the set itself. In an age of fewer channels and less obnoxious commercials, this might not have posed a problem. But when you have to toggle 28 times to get from CNN to MSNBC, and 40 to get from PBS to Nickelodeon, it becomes a source of considerable frustration.

The point is we lived with this frustration for a very long time. From the first refusal of the “Previous channel” button, when I thought we needed new batteries, to the current state of all-but-total paralysis, where only the “5” key works, the remote had been in a state of advancing failure for at least two years. And for the length of that time, we had suffered with it, toggling those arrow buttons up and down every time there was a commercial or other lull.

Finally, yesterday, when Lori said she had some things to pick up at the store, it occurred to me to ask her to purchase a new remote, the kind they call a universal, that can be programmed to work for anything. The very concept is amazing.

Anyway, she brought home the device, I quickly got it programmed, and our troubles were over. After two years of struggle, we instantly had a television that was no longer crippled. What a relief!

But the question I’m asking myself now is: What the hell took me so long? Why on Earth did I keep muddling along with the damaged remote for two years, shaking my head, lamenting, cursing, before it finally occurred to me to just replace the damn thing? Why did it take so long for the Sun to break through the clouds?

I can identify the precipitating event. I had started to worry that the accumulation of all that rapid-fire toggling, that rough handling, was going to end up damaging the television itself. And the next thought was that if the set broke we were not going to replace it; we didn’t have the money, and anyway how would we manage to get one that would fit in as well as this one did? It was the fear of losing the source of pleasure that finally pierced through the inertia. When that fear became real, the idea took shape.

A trivial example, perhaps, but it shows how we fall into ruts in our daily living.

Healthy perspective

This morning it was raining, a cold winter rain to melt the snow on the ground. I looked out the glass door and felt sorry for myself, knowing I’d have to walk in this. It’s fifteen minutes from the church parking lot where I leave the van to my office, I thought, and I don’t have a damn umbrella. What will I wear on my feet? I also lack a proper raincoat, I thought. My long topcoat lacks two of four buttons and a belt loop. My rainjacket is short for me, and the rain pours off it soaking my pants front and back at the upper thigh. Why does it have to be so wretched out, I groused? And why don’t I have the things I need? Because I don’t plan ahead. Because I don’t make enough money.

So things snowballed until I had myself good and miserable. There seemed no getting around a dismal start to the day. As we left the house I braced for the cold drops from the hemlock tree above the driveway that would no doubt find their way down the back of my collar. We got in the car and drove to the end of the street.

There, struggling to get out of his car, was the old retired guy who serves as our school crossing guard. A month ago he had a knee replaced, and now I could see him wincing as he tried to stand. By the time we reached him, though, and Lori rolled down her window, he had tottered over to his post, where he stood half-hidden under a red and white golf umbrella.

“Nice day, huh?” Lori said, sympathetically. The rain was beating on his umbrella.

“It is a nice day,” he shot back. “We’re alive, aren’t we?” He was grinning.

Lori and I both stood corrected. “We sure are,” she said. “Stay warm.”

I stopped feeling sorry for myself immediately. By the time I got to the church, the rain had pretty much stopped.