Moving Sawyer

July 29, 2019

Greetings from the drayage,

The Alden Towers apartments were built in the twenties, classic architecture for the time, eight stories of brick and limestone, edged with just enough flair that you know when it was built.  It is a dramatic presence on the edge of the Detroit River, home to nearly four hundred doors to someone’s life.

The inside is a warren of hallways and lobbies, lined with marble and heavy wood molding.  Arched doorways, carved plaster walls, the floors are terrazzo and marble and wood.  There are ghosts of women in floor length dresses, men in tuxedoes, the Grand Lobby filled with people waiting for the cab to take them out for the night. 

I have moved my children a lot.  It’s never convenient, usually chaotic and stressful, and yet a secret part of me enjoys it.  I’ve moved Sawyer in and out of his college apartments countless times, and now, in and out of Alden Towers. 

We rented a van which, based on our history and some totally wild guessing we thought his possessions would fit within.  Sometimes wild guessing is good enough.  As I stood in Sawyer’s apartment, looking at his things piled haphazardly in the living room, I doubted wild guessing was good enough this time.

“It’ll fit.” Sawyer said.  Some people might hear this and think he is being cavalier, or naive, but it is a blend of optimism and something else.  I watched him as he said it, this confidence sort of draped over him like a matador’s cape.  He had no logical reason to think it would fit, or that we would ever be able to even get it all out of his apartment and down the four stories into the basement garage.  It’s just who he is.

The freight elevator was twenty steps down the hall, an opening so narrow you would mistake it for a closet. ‘Freight elevator’ was a silly name: it was too small for a wing back chair, or a mattress We would wait for it to appear in the little diamond window, see it slide slightly past our floor, then stop and begrudgingly adjust and the door would open with an unearthly sound.

The inside of the elevator was a claustrophobic’s nightmare.  It was hot, like someone left the elevator out in the sun all day and then sent it down this shaft to torture us.  The metal walls were marred from ages of other passengers and thick layers of paint blocked the air vents.  The floor tiles were heaved and cracked; one light bulb was missing. 

Again and again we crammed ourselves into the elevator, laughing each time, both of us already sweating, hauling boxes or bags or furniture.  There was one mechanical pause when the silence fell on us, and we both waited for the elevator to move, wondering if this would be where we would spend our last day.

I was laughing at the buttons on the elevator panel.  One switch was missing, between labels that said ‘Run’ and ‘Stop’.  Sawyer said: “That is for when you see the monster.”

The elevator door groaned when it closed.  Whatever safety device is supposed to keep it from crushing pokey passengers has long since lost its sharpness.  If we were a step too slow it would just clamp onto whatever we were moving, hold it for a second or two and then sigh and reluctantly release.

“I think it just waits for us to get in the doorway and then tries to close on us. Otherwise, it’s like, ‘Well, whatever’.” Sawyer said.

When we couldn’t fit in the freight elevator, we followed a maze of uneven steps and halls that eventually took us to the same deserted service hole in the bowels of the building.  The ceiling drooped low and huge flaking pipes hung down to knock the bark off unwary movers.

In the basement garage the van slowly filled.  “It’s a work of art.” Sawyer said, as we nested his belongings inside.  He looked at me, reading the doubt on me.  “It’ll fit.”

I admired my son’s possessions.  There were some things I knew he cared about because I had moved them many times.  This sign, the stereo and speakers he inherited from my first apartment, these books, this leather jacket, a small collection of records.  The rest I know he would be comfortable leaving in the basement of the Alden Towers.  But he said: “It’ll fit.”

If someone asked me what the best part of my day was, I would tell them it was the last trip down in the freight elevator, clutching my son’s flotsam, still laughing at the Monster button. Seeing him leaning against the hot wall, smiling, unafraid of monsters or moving or mountains or whatever is on his horizon.    

This other thing, the thing that shapes his matador courage, the strength he shares with his brothers and sister, is the knowing.  They know that whatever comes, whether stalled elevator or broken heart or broken collarbone, lost job or cancelled flight, they will adapt, they will see the possibility, and they will take the best they can find in their lives.  Wherever they move.

As we drove home to unload his things, at least for a few weeks before we move him again, I thought of the first move, that moment when we drove away leaving our son in a lonely apartment wondering if would be ok.  Laughing now, as I write these words.  An hour later he was running the streets of Detroit with new friends, a gazelle among concrete, exploring the city he would call home for six years.

The secret part of me that enjoys moving my children is the part that feels they still need me.  I know it’s less and less true, and I am glad of it.  But while I can, and when they want, I will lift the boxes and slide the furniture and sweat and think with them, and then stand back and be amazed and happy that they were right.  It’ll fit.

Hope this finds you with a perfect fit,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith

Learning

July 22, 2019

Greetings from the student,

Last year I intended to learn enough Spanish to get through basic interactions when visiting Colombia.  I chose an app, a free one, because I was involved but not committed, and set about spending a dedicated amount of time each day following the app’s direction to hable Espanol.  My enthusiasm and my naivete, got me through the first few weeks.  Then it felt like work.

No one who knows me will be surprised to find that my first response after landing in Columbia was to panic because I had no idea what anyone was saying, including myself.  And I was speaking English. 

Last week I was in a workshop and learned a valuable lesson, not the one being taught, but the one that kept me from learning.  Even in the moment I almost stumbled past it, but somehow managed to learn something despite myself.  Blinded by my experience, and somewhat ponderous ego, I was certain I knew what I knew, until thankfully I was shown what I needed to do to learn.  Apply humility first.

One of my favorite people is married to my daughter.  When Tim chose the last two jobs he took he said this: “It will be a great chance to learn new things.”  He says the same thing about rock climbing, cooking, playing guitar or competitive chess, and running ultramarathons.  Tim has a significant capacity for learning, but at the heart of it is curiosity and the willingness to take on the challenge of learning.  He has the will, the grit, he knows what learning demands, and he walks into that with open eyes.

My sister, my wife, many of my friends, are teachers.  Over the years I have seen what it takes to be a teacher for life.  They have told me about the process of learning, the science of teaching, and the connection of humans in that process to make it possible.  They have described the ‘teachable spirit’ what lifelong learners are like, what joy there is when a student lights up after finally embracing what is being taught.  It is a fascinating and important experience. Magical even.

So, I have some understanding of what is needed to learn but it doesn’t always help when the opportunity presents itself.  There is this adage: ‘When the student is ready the teacher will appear.’  I am stubborn, and as Claude Bernard said; ‘It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.’  And the other thing is, when the teacher appears, sometimes they are the exact wrong person for me to learn the exact right lesson.

Most learning is done in friction.  A lot of learning is done from people we don’t agree with or perhaps even dislike.  This is another challenge for me.  My friends named Tom have both taught me a lot.  They are patient and kind and encouraging.  Both, I think, have gone away from our conversations wondering if I will ever learn anything, but they always come back willing to share their knowledge and wisdom, and honestly, I have benefitted greatly, I have learned from reflection on their words and their example.

But then there is this: some years ago, I attended a series of workshops on racism.  There was one man in the room who was so disruptive it seemed to ruin anyone’s chances of listening or learning or understanding.  I resented his presence there, a place I thought would be neutral and peaceful, where people could somehow find empathy and community.  The fact is, all these years later, it is what he brought to the room I remember most. 

Which led me to understand that often the teacher appears, and we look over their shoulder waiting for one we like better.  Our best learning is done with those who sharpen our blade with theirs. 

I see as I write this that most of this growing happens when we are uncomfortable. Sweating as the app demands that I remember a word.  Frustrated that the instructor puts unrealistic expectations on me.  Agonizing over a mistake I made, that finally, finally taught me not to put my hand on the hot stove. 

Knowing this, we should recognize that when things get challenging, even when we aren’t in ‘learning mode’, there is growth in front of us.   The writer Wendall Berry said: ‘It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.’

Learning in libraries and classrooms where ideas wait in order, but not always the order we expect. Learning in the streets where the ideas are growing wild, uncouth, surrounded by thorns. Learning from disagreeable strangers, where the lessons are bold and frightening.  Learning from kind friends.  In all of this, if we prepare ourselves with curiosity, arm ourselves with courage and the willingness to learn, and no small dose of humility, the world will grow before us.

When my friend Karen was diagnosed with the cancer that would end her life, she signed up for classes, began reading ambitious books, began teaching complex ideas to others.  Her love for learning was not driven for an outcome, she was not hoping for promotion or to impress others or to fill some bucket list.  She chose to learn because it fulfilled what she saw as her purpose, to know more of what our Creator put here for us to know.  She knew that whenever she learned, she moved closer to her best self, to what she had been designed for.  

It is always time; it is never too late.

Hope this finds you growing,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith

As good as it gets

July 15, 2019

Greetings from This,

Melvin Udall says: “What if this is as good as it gets?”

He is in a psychiatrist’s waiting room, it is a sad tableau, surrounded by people who are as broken as he, all wondering where their hope will be.  Melvin says this out loud to be spiteful, because he is an atrocious person, which is his version of brokenness.

He also says it because part of him is terrified that his reality is as good as it will ever be.

I can remember moments, celebrating with friends, or cresting a mountain range and being changed by the seemingly endless horizon, or holding my daughter for the first time, and thinking; “This is as good as it gets.”

Melvin Udall and I are both right and wrong.

‘This’ is the life we are given.  Mountaintop experiences and miracles and the love of others, and frustration and disappointment and heartbreak and grief.  Time, in its beneficence, prevents it all from happening at once, but it is all in our lives.   

Jack Nicholson played Melvin Udall in ‘As Good as It Gets’ twenty plus years ago, so I’m not sure why the quote came to me now.  Like all of us, I walk through the spectrum of experience, including the days when it’s easy to feel the good and the times when I wonder how good could exist.  This week was no different, but I was reminded of my part in the spectrum.  And somewhere in the mist of sleep and wake, I heard Melvin ask his question.

I have felt frustrated and empowered and exhausted and exhilarated and disillusioned and inspired and content and unsettled.  Other than a few details to react to, my view of things all happened in the same life that existed for others around me who responded differently.  The same ‘This’.

Melvin Udall asked the question “What if this is as good as it gets?” practically daring the universe to show him the answer.  He desperately needed to know it could be better.  And it was.  The only thing that changed was him.  Not the terror, not crime, not politics, not ‘Those People’.  Not the economy or the weather or his hairline or the gifts God gave him.

To be fair, it was a romantic comedy, and so let’s keep that in perspective.  But ultimately what fractured Melvin’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic, neurotic reaction to ‘This’ was love.  The same love that existed all along.  When he finally understood it.

It is a companion lesson in the movie, one worth noting.  When I see life is unfair, when people disappoint, when the bagel burns and the barista is rude and the traffic snarls and tempers flare, the healthiest response is love.  Seems terribly simple and too easy to call trite, and no one has a better answer.  This response is best for me, and it turns out, for the people I run into.  And it feeds the thoughts I need to really understand my place in ‘This’.

In any given week I am shown the incredible beauty and immense challenges of the world we live in.  I see the hope and potential in the three year old boy.  I see the brilliance of the morning light, a gift from the east where every day waits to be filled.  I feel love, explode in laughter, press myself to my fullest potential, reach out to help others, find faith in small miracles.  And I am slain by the smallness of people, discouraged by my own failures, cringe from my own gifts, retreat from the greatness in each God-created second because I lack the imagination and courage to seize it.  Is this as good as it gets? 

The answer is yes, this is as good as it gets.  The other question remains; Is this as good as I get?

Hope this finds you gooder,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith

Ipperwash

July 8, 2019

Greetings from the gift returned,

We would drive along a windy road that mimicked the coast, crammed into a Buick Vista Cruiser, a half dozen humans of various ages, our tent, the camping things we would need except for the things we forgot.  We had crossed the Blue Water bridge into Ontario, bending the truth about my Dad’s place of birth, and then amid arguing and poking in the Way Back, we made our way to Ipperwash.

The dusty drive into the campground took us past the camp store, where we knew if we asked often enough, we would be allowed to buy candy.  We would creep between the other campers wedged into each lot until we found our place, marked by a wooden post with a number carved in its face.  And then we would disgorge from the Vista Cruiser and change the place into something that looked like a refugee camp, which in a real sense it was.  Our home for the week.

The shore was shaped by a perfect beach that stretched for miles.  We roamed up and down that coast, picking up shells and pieces of wood, and dug in the sand and watched the water pool.  There was a place where a channel was cut, and a small peninsula of stone jutted into the lake, pointing back at the country where we came from.  We would explore among these huge flat rocks, playing in the tidepools, finding small living things.  There were people who would come to lift the rocks and scrape the perfect clay from underneath and create art on the stone.

My Dad’s family would join us sometimes.  They came from the north of Scotland, a place of cold and damp, of bleak and harsh.  To them, this simple place was like the French Riviera. They would lie on the beach and play in the water until they were scoured by the sun into various shades of pink and red and brown.  Their laughter was the most robust in camp, and everywhere you could hear their thick brogue calling to each other.

My sisters and I would roam the tents and small trailers looking for new friends, run in the sand, play along the beach.  Creating castles, or holes, or burying each other up to our necks in the warm soft sand, as fine as powder.  We could swim out into the water and find a sand bar where it was so shallow we could play on our knees sometimes.  There was a pontoon boat that plied the coast called the Good Ship Lollypop, a floating party shop, and if the stars aligned, we could take the colorful foreign currency with us to the shallow and buy popsicles.  We could stand in the water and turn our faces orange or blue as the boat chugged off, the tinny sound of its theme song playing over cheap loudspeakers.

Just beyond the border of the campground there was hundreds of acres of sand dunes.  There was a fence, a pitiful affair that any ten-year-old could foil, strung with warning signs that this was a Royal Canadian Army camp, and there was a risk of live ammunition there.  To a small boy these were more invitation than caution

We explored the dunes, finding all manner of things, including spent shell casings.  The dunes came to the shore in a dramatic bluff where the bravest of us would run and leap from, landing in the soft sand below.  The beach here was wide enough and firm enough that cars could drive along near the water.  People would carve art into the face of the dunes.  Sometimes there was bonfires built there, and teenagers would gather and sing and do whatever teenagers do.  Once in a while the local police, or the soldiers from the camp, would come along and gently remind us of the warnings on the fence.

When the campground didn’t hold our attention, we drove a few miles down the coast to the little tourist town of Grand Bend.  We had to put on sandals and shirts, so there was chafing of all sorts, but we knew the rewards if we behaved.   We would walk along the sidewalk, crowded with other sunburned visitors, and wander into gift shops and admire moccasins and t-shirts and tourist trinkets. There was a block of arcade games, and a section of small carnival rides.  We would get fish and chips wrapped in greasy newspapers and put vinegar on our French fries.  We ate cotton candy and taffy and ice cream.  On the way back to camp we would stop at the ‘package store’, the only place where you could get beer and spirits.

We played and explored and ate and slept and did it again until we were brown everywhere and everything had sand in it.  The tent swelled and emptied, and the family buzzed and whirled and soaked in the place.  For the children it was timeless, limitless place of fun.  For the parents it was simple refuge from the daily grind, and the sharp shapes of the city.  A beautiful, natural wonder, a pairing of water and earth that refreshed the soul.  These were our memories of our Ipperwash.  What we didn’t know was whose memories were already there, surrounding us.

Three decades before the Canadian government had taken this section of land from a First Nations tribe of Chippewas, a people who had lived there since before the British Crown.  Families were moved out, and with some promise that the land would be returned one day.  Ipperwash campground, and the Canadian Army base we played in, had always existed, as far as we knew.  But there were generations of people who had been there before us, who stood in the shadows waiting.

Almost three decades after our time there, they decided they were finished waiting.  A group of protestors occupied Ipperwash, and eventually, after a violent confrontation, the Canadian Royal Army left.  In time, nearly another three decades, the land is finally in the hands of those who first claimed it as home.

When I was grown, I drove by the place, not long after the occupation.  I was shocked and saddened that our little resort had been taken away.  All I could see was our little snapshot of time had been spoiled.  The training camp was littered with burned out cars and old snowmobiles, the buildings covered in protestor’s graffiti.  I shared the story with my family and we all tisk-tisked and life went on.

I see now how lucky we had been to have been guests, unwanted or not, in that beautiful place.  I know now that the dunes we played in were important burial grounds, that the places we lounged and ate and ran and played were once someone else’s back yard.  We were only there by the grace of good timing between injustice and justice.  I don’t feel guilt in that, I think we were innocent spectators, but at least with this perspective I have a new respect for our page in this chapter.

I don’t feel a shadow on those childhood memories, those were wonderful times for our family.  I am grateful for our chance to have been there, and to now know the story of Ipperwash.  Reminds me of how fleeting our own history is among humanity’s history, no matter whose tribe you point to.   It makes me aware of the same kind of stories that exist all over our globe.  Makes me a better visitor, no matter where I explore and play.

Hope this finds you knowing where you are,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith

Singing

July 1, 2019

Greetings from b flat,

Nature has ways of protecting us from ourselves.  We can’t smell our own bad breath, or (usually) or own body odor, we can’t see how we look from behind in our new shorts, we can’t kiss our own elbows.  And, we can’t really hear how we sound when we sing.

I sing a lot. I am that guy in the car next to you howling to ‘Born to Run’ (with dance moves) and the loony in the elevator still absently murdering the lyrics to ‘Southern Cross’ as I drip my post-run sweat on the floor.  In that moment I don’t know how bad I sound OR how bad I smell.  Thanks nature.

I will sing while I run, sing while I putter, sing while I listen to music (sometimes a different song) and sing/hum while I am getting dressed.  It is really surprising how often it goes on, considering how awful I am.

I sing in the shower.  I like to go over my favorite parts of songs (the words I think I know) where my manly bass/mezzo soprano/nasal rasp voice booms the most in the shower.  So, if you were outside the door (which would be weird) you might guess I had suffered some kind of stroke.  “…and I still haven’t found, what I’m looking for….and I STILL haven’t found what …still HAVEN’T found what.. I…looking for..mmmm… for…”

Some years ago, I was singing karaoke at a church event and there was something exactly wrong about the acoustics.  It was one of those moments when there was no ambient noise or supportive friends or alcohol to mask the awfulness.   I won’t tell you the song I chose but I will say later I got a cease and desist letter from Bob Dylan.  If you sing a Bob Dylan song worse than Bob Dylan, that’s not a good sign.

I’ve sung ‘God Bless America’ a few million times, led groups of people singing it in fact, so I know the song.  But I still get to ‘To the oceans, white with foam’ and have no idea how I am going to sing that high. So, then there is this moment where I either go for it and risk setting off smoke alarms, or suddenly switch octaves and pull a song muscle.  Actually it’s fun to watch the reaction of people around me no matter which way I go.  You know, that look of ghastly embarrassment people get when they see an escaped lunatic splashing naked through a park fountain and everyone is thinking ‘Someone should do something!  This is awful!’ All the while singing along in another key and trying not to make eye contact.

I sing in church, but I have learned to mostly lip synch that since I don’t want to throw off everyone around me, and possibly be excommunicated or risk purgatory, if that is still a thing.  I hope God understands, since he created me and my voice, and not the rules in church.

It takes a certain courage to sing and not be self-conscious about it, particularly when you are nearly fatally awful at it.  Like with other things, my bravery in this area waxes and wanes, sometime shaped by the strength of my inner five year old, who does not care who hears him sing.

In the summer mornings I am awakened by the sound of birds singing.  Sometimes just a mourning dove, sometimes a small choir of those higher range performers, welcoming the morning.  They sing to acknowledge each other, to attract a mate, to call to their parents, to fill their lungs with air.  They sing because they can and they should.

I like the way they sing together, even though they sing in a different language, from me and from each other.  Somehow it sounds natural and lovely, as they are created to be.

This week I had the beautiful opportunity to sing with them.  It was a song I hadn’t thought of in a long time and it’s hard to say why it came to me when it did.  But for a minute it felt as though my voice and the vibration of creation was in harmony.  I could feel it in my chest, on my cheek, as if someone were singing with me, helping me remember the words, and what the music was like.

The birds did not seem to mind.  Well, maybe a couple sang louder to perhaps cover my warbling, but it was in that good-natured way that birds have.  By the way, I don’t think birds can smell their own worm breath.

It’s interesting to me that at either end of six decades I am less concerned with how my singing sounds to others.  When I was five, I sang blissfully unaware of any lack of talent, and now, I am aware but not concerned.  I will be considerate around other humans, and if invited to sing along at a birthday party I’ll try not to spoil the celebration.  But in every other moment, I am going to sing when the song comes to me. 

 “The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one that sang best.”  Henry Van Dyke

Hope this finds you full of song,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith