Two Emails

It's easy for me to get down about things. I'm in the middle of several problems at my job including one in which the school system is charging me a quarter per page for copies of a 147-page document. It's tough not to read that as snotty and mean. Maybe it's standard policy, but it's no way to treat people. My younger daughter has a nasty cold that's in her lungs now and which hasn't much responded to antibiotics. My older daughter is disappointed with her swimming at the last couple meets and befuddled by what's going on. I don't have solutions and struggle with not being able to fix things. It all brings me down.

Then I got a couple emails.

One was from a friend with whom I haven't spoken in years. We grew apart and he and his family moved away. Things just kind of fizzled. He sent a note catching me up and reading it I saw that he has had a more difficult time of things than I have, by far. As I read, I kept wondering, how do I respond to this when my life is so good? I don't want to be an ass and rub my blessings in anyone's face, but I keep being blessed and both his email and my response to it left me in wonder at how well things are going.

The second email was from another friend who lives with his wife in a country violently coming apart. I've been concerned for their safety and am relieved that they are preparing to move to Syracuse, but his wife's family, who are from that country, will remain behind in the midst of all that violence. I can't imagine having to leave my family behind like that, but there are few good choices. He asked if I could look at an apartment here in town for them. I not only had the time to do that, it was easy and showed me again how good I have it.

My daughter has a cold, my other daughter swam a fraction of a second slower than last week, management is miserly and punishing, but none of these things are overwhelming. We will take one girl to the doctor, tell the other to relax and just swim with joy, and I'll play $36.75 for copies and live to fight another day.

The problems aren't the takeaway from all this. It's the blessings that become clearer with each passing moment, too many of them to count.

Make Things A Little Better

I took the scrubby sponge in the shower with me after running and mowing the lawn. Our tiled shower stall is old and lately pretty gross. There's black moldy stuff in the grout, a brownish film over the lower tiles, and I don't even want to discuss the state of the shampoo and conditioner bottles. We aren't filthy people, but don't clean on a strict schedule. That and I'm likely to push things such as shower cleaning not just to the back burner but right off the stove.

Taking the scrubby sponge in the shower, I let water run down my back while I scrubbed a section of tile. I cleaned mildew from the grout. I cleaned about two dozen tiles, a small section of the shower. I made things a little better. I've done this off and on for a week and the worst of the filth is gone. I'll keep at it.

I get caught up in wanting things to be a lot better right away. I want enough money to retire today, not tomorrow. I want to lose twenty pounds before sundown. I want to somehow become a best seller overnight (preferably last night) and have a whole new life. Strangely, none of that has happened and even I can admit it ain't going to right away. All I can hope to achieve today is to make things a little better.

I got up this morning and wrote three Morning Pages. It didn't change much, but I've done those three handwritten pages every day for more than four years. Each one changes me a little. I can feel those changes accumulating.

A friend invited me to walk and run the 185 Euclid steps. We went up and down five or six times then ran home. It was a short workout, the first run I've done this month, and it failed to earn me a spot on the cover of Men's Health. Still, it felt good enough that I want to run again, and I'm a little healthier for having moved my body and spent time with my friend.

Home again, I mowed the lawn. There are so many things I need to do around the house, but the lawn looks good and the house looks and feels a little better.

Then there's this short blog post about a simple idea. What good does it do in this world? If nothing else, it makes me feel a little better and making anything even just the tiniest bit better turns out to be good enough. If I keep going, little things add up. Real change just requires enough patience, belief, and persistence to make things a lot better a little bit at a time.

From The Highest Branches

On a walk this morning with the dog I noticed, at the triangle park two blocks from our house, apples smashed on the ground. These were full-size apples, not the crab apples I see beneath our neighbor's tree. Kids, I thought, shaking my head which has been filled with thoughts of rotten kids since yesterday. Why would they smash so many apples? Then I looked up.

The tree, which has been there longer than I've lived here, is a real apple tree filled with ripe apples. Maybe a hundred of them hang from the branches in singles and bunches. The tree is wild and overgrown unlike those I'm used to at the orchards. The apples are way up high, no way to reach them. I imagined having to wait until one decided to fall and then trying to catch it. The whole thing would be an exercise in luck or futility.

A squirrel could have one any time.

I stared at those apples in the high branches, the dog waiting patiently at the end of her leash. They were so beautiful. I have a thing for apples and apple trees. They speak to me of life and sweetness and possibly even love. I looked down sadly at the fallen apples, food now for worms and beasts. How have I failed to notice an apple tree so close to home? It's as if I haven't been looking.

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Our daughter has been diagnosed with an ear infection. My wife is taking her to the pharmacy for a prescription which should heal it. Harder to treat is all the difficulty of being a girl in high school with undependable friends who often ditch and then lie to her. She can't understand it and even though I can, I can't. It isn't that she is perfect, but she is devoted and she wants to be a real friend and have someone be a real friend with her.

I didn't much have this problem as a kid. I was blessed to meet someone when I was only a few months old and never again worried about having someone. My first wish for my girl would be to find that someone who will remain true and to whom she could remain true.

Teenage girls are often lying shits. I'm to the point of telling my girl to be brutally honest with her friends and maybe have them be the same with her. It might be a huge mistake. Honesty isn't necessarily always best. Still, this dance of "friendships" hasn't done her much good and I lean toward her stepping on a few toes. If they can't take it, she hasn't lost much.

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Carl Richards in The New York Times wrote of discussing this question with friends: "If we were having tea three years from now in this exact same place...what would need to happen for each of us to be happy with those three years?" My answer begins like this:

I would want my family happy. I would want to have moved onto a new job, be writing and publishing, and feel healthy.

Like those high-up apples, these things feel difficult to reach, but of course they aren't. I'll encourage my daughter to tell the truth, brutal or not, and help her work through these things. I will keep applying for other jobs. I'm writing and publishing the blog. That's progress. And I am running, walking, and trying to eat well.

I keep waiting for apples to fall, but they're likely to fall from the other side of the tree and smash into the ground. My daughter keeps waiting for the tree to be nicer and offer more than the just promise of sweet fruit. Instead of waiting, we can carry a ladder from the house, lean it against a branch full of ripe apples, and I can hold it steady as she climbs up into the crisp autumn morning.

I imagine her climbing slowly, unsure and afraid but moving one rung at a time. I tell her it's going to be alright, I've got you. She climbs higher. As I look up, she disappears into the light of the sun. She calls down that the apples are perfect. Here, she says, in a voice that carriers her smile and happiness. Catch!

The Right Direction

On Friday, a kid left our school. The kid was a handful, often challenging, usually draining, really loud or completely withdrawn, a bundle of nerves. At the end of the day, after the kid had said a final goodbye, a few of us stood in the hall talking. It was mostly rehashing old complaints and expressing relief to be free of the kid. I stood thinking that this was the kind of kid for which our school is designed. As they talked I felt a courseness developing within me.

Thoreau wrote:

As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after...dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense." (The Journal, pg. 80)

I left the group and went into my classroom and be alone. I'm not sure I recovered my tone or sanity, but it was a step in the right direction.

I noticed again how often the right direction is away from the crowd and trivial affairs.