Why We Remember

Lately, our two-year old, Benjamin, has taken to becoming a mini-Chris Farley in every aspect of his conversational life. Just like that fabulous persona on SNL where Farley portrayed an interviewer who began every question with "Remember when...?" Ben has been imbued with such a trait lately.

Ben's questions come at the most random times. When we're sitting eating dinner together, Ben will suddenly look up and out with blazing eyes and remark with rapture on his face: "REMEMBER DINOSAUR AT BARNES AND NOBLE!?" 

This would be referring to a dinosaur book at Barnes and Noble where, when you push a button, the dinosaur selected subsequently responds with a resounding ROAR!

Tyler, Jennifer, and I all answer Ben, "Yes, we remember that dinosaur Ben!"

To which Ben replies, "Dino say ROAR at Barnes and Noble!"

At other times, we will, all four of us, be snuggled on the couch together ready to rock and roll with some reading before bed, and Ben will spontaneously pipe up, "Remember boy fell down!?" 

It referred to an incident three weeks when, at the beach, a boy had fallen while he was running and began to cry with every bit of lung capacity he possessed. 

"Yes, Ben. we remember that."

"That boy OKAY, that boy OKAY, that boy gon' to be OKAY."

To which we respond, of course, "Yes, Ben, that boy will be okay. he is all-okay!"

Jen and I have talked a lot lately about how fast everything seems to move. Rushing out in the mornings to get to school on time, rushing to get papers written and deadlines met, rushing to make dinner to get int the bath on time to read books to get to bed before OH MY GOSH HOW IS IT ALREADY 9;30!?

And with the rampant pace--and the rampant news cycle to keep up with, and all the beautiful and glorious work that we so long to do to make the world just the tiniest bit better--remembering seems to take a back seat to the NOW, to the DO, to the MOVE MOVE MOVE.

But maybe Chris Farley, and our little guy Ben, are on to something.

Maybe there's more to Remembering than meets the eye. Maybe slowing down and focusing less on the what-still-needs-to-happen and more on the what-work-has-already-been-done, we actually grow. Maybe it's in those spaces where we experience life close to the bone and learn from it, celebrate it, and remember it, that help us feel content and even peaceful. 

As Sarah Lewis claims in her inspiring Ted Talk, after all, sometimes mastery isn't about the absolute best and the absolute perfection; rather, it's about coming close and celebrating that fact--even enjoying it. 

Remembering reminds us that while we have much to do, we have also already done much. Remembering also reminds us that we do not need to make the same mistakes twice--we can learn from the errors we've already encountered and, by slowing our pace and taking the hand of a friend beside us, move forward with a little more wisdom. 

I hope to practice the art of remembering a little more, and striving a little less. 

Two Weeks Notice

Seems like, lately, everything is a precursor to my eyes becoming watery and my head telling my heart, you'll be back, really, you'll all come back every few years to see people you've come to know, walk the obscenely curvy, narrow streets you now are no longer afraid to bike on, and catch the # 7 bus into town.

And yet.

Almost three years ago, Jennifer and I and Tyler--then not yet two years old--boarded a plane at Boston's Logan Airport wondering if, in fact, the apartment we'd leased on nothing more than a phone call and a York, England address would in fact, well, be real. We carried pretty much everything we owned, which by the time we boarded the plane was, well, whatever we could fit into three suitcases. We had enough money to make it a few months and then, well, then--

A few months turned into a few years and Jennifer finished a draft of her PhD thesis on human trafficking.

Tyler went from almost-two to almost-five and in that span concocted analogies that made my aspiring-poet / bathroom-humor-loving dad-self rejoice, such as: "Poops are like thunder; pees are like rain."

I worked as a dad, writer, night-teacher, and morning-paperboy.

Together, we all learned something we didn't expect to be the point of this journey. (But then again, what we learn from the adventures we choose to traverse is seldom what we think we'll learn them beforehand.) We learned that gender roles are tough to reverse, no matter how progressive a family is. But they're worth murkying up and seeing what results.

We learned that living without a steady salary is tough. Really tough. But the freedom to experience what an entirely different class of life is like is priceless. We learned that no judgment is ever warranted--no matter how well we think we might understand someone else's situation. (Or, as Mother Teresa put it much more succinctly, "If I am judging, then I am not loving.")

We learned that life is about learning. There is no getting it right the first time. Period. No one gets it right the first time. (And if they did get it right the first time, they probably just hid their earlier attempts!)

We learned that it's really, really hard to set one's heart on something, and then be rejected from that vision again and again.

And again.

And again.

Until finally, the dam breaks and--!!!--rejection, again.

And again.

But we learned that--trite though it sounds, I'm sure--this is where authentic love happens. In the seemingly endless caesuras after defeat, rejection, almost-but-not-quites, there is an incredible and breathless space for love. The kind of love that doesn't come easy and doesn't feel easy but that, when chosen, feels like your heart is, quite literally, bursting open.

In that openness, it seems there is space for the whole world to fit.

We learned that perfection is a ploy. And even if it weren't, we wouldn't choose it anyway. Perfection leaves nothing to imagination, mystery, depending on others, vulnerability, risk, joy, pain, hope. We learned that choosing the latter is much more fun.

We learned that people are remarkable. I mean, remarkable. People! We learned that people will stop and talk and invite you in to show you their pictures of America back when they lived there fifty years ago, laugh as your son plays with the cat, cry when they remember their own adventures, then ask you if you'd like tea.

People--old people--will smile at you and give you the thumbs-up on a morning paper route, totally disregarding the fact that you are a fully-grown man who didn't have time to shave that morning.

People--little people--will hug you and show you pictures and tell you stories and the light in their eyes will look to the light in yours and will beg, beg, beg for that connection of no words but kindness, seeing, really seeing.

People--regular people--will surprise you with a knock on the door, an offer to join in a basketball or football game, a pat on the back, a phone call or a text message checking in, a sunflower seed that will grow taller than you and next to which your whole face glows yellow.

People of all shapes and sizes and colors and faiths and no-faiths and languages and cultures will look at you and will be willing to connect. If you are willing to connect. And then everything that is assumed to be accurate and aligned and just-the-way-it-is is, well, no longer is.

We learned that it's true what the African proverb says, "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." And, man, it's fun to go far.

We learned that laughing on the couch in the living room when one's wife is Wonder Woman and one's son is Superman and oneself is Lex Luther provides two hours of fun that is free, ridiculously giggle-filled, and utterly exhausting.

We learned that watching the Queen ride through the streets of your city is a powerful experience, but just as powerful is talking with the man a few streets over who hasn't eaten in a while and of whom no one is lining the sidewalks to catch a glimpse.

We learned that having family who loves you--family that saw all your many imperfections growing up, knows you underneath the grand visions and the big dreams, loves you still, and always will. And the thought of going home to their arms is thrilling.

We learned that adventure isn't one big choice to do something wild. Adventure is a thousand small choices to lean towards things a little unlike what you always thought they would be like.

We learned that we know a lot less than we did three years ago, yet feel more full.

In two weeks, we'll board a plane (preferably the absolute cheapest plane that flies across the Atlantic) and head back to Boston's Logan Airport. And in the next two weeks, I'm going to cry a lot more. Because I'm grateful for the chance to have seen life from a different angle. And I'm grateful to the thousand teachers I have had over here in York--teachers of all ages and cultures and walks and perspectives.

Success, in its raw definition, didn't necessarily happen over here the way I'd thought it might. We're not going home wealthy and prestigious and as bestselling authors. But in that caesura that follows suggested defeat or rejection, there's a kind of success that burns inside of me deeper than anything else I have ever known or felt in my entire life.

It burns so hard and, were it to explode, I venture it'd be big enough to let the whole world in. The success being over here has taught me, in the simplest articulation possible, is this: to say thank you, and to mean it. 

Tonight

Sweeping the kitchen floor,
Washing dishes,
Picking pasta remains off my bare feet:
Singing "The Eye of the Tiger."

A new kind of tiger.
A new kind of eye.

It's Not about Results

When I was a middle school teacher, I always told my students that it wasn't about the grades. It wasn't about any score, or any comparison; it wasn't about making the team; it wasn't about winning something. Instead, it is always, always about the work you put into it, and the way you keep facing the challenges that show up on your doorstep.

That's it.

I was pretty good at giving the above message in bold ways. Using stories and examples, I could make it funny. I could make it poignant. I could make it look and feel and walk and talk like truth.

But I didn't realize until a few nights ago how I still needed to learn to believe it myself. And it's thanks to my wife and her breaking through a core belief I hadn't changed.

It had been one of those long days where the sky hangs heavy, telling you, Hey, man, don't even try to come out, because as soon as you do, I am going to POUR on you. I'm not just talking drizzle; I am talking about sheets of water.

So we made the best of indoor time, doing puzzles, pretending to be joint Bobs the Builder, running back and forth between the washing machine (in our kitchen) and the front door (at the front door part of the house), banging on buckets, making trucks talk, and trading tickles.

But by the end of the day, I was wiped. Exhausted.

When I get tired, my mind usually races with failures--things I have worked really hard at, but which haven't come to fruition. It's like being overtired triggers something inside me that says, Ah, but Luke! If you could only work a little harder, you would have had success in this area!

This particular night, it happened to be the voice of condemnation over my writing.
My writing had come pretty darn close a couple of times.
And every time, I would hold my head up high, say, Getting there...getting there...and keep trying. Meanwhile, I kept telling myself what I had heard hundreds of writers say you must do as you wait for a book to make the rounds with editors: keep writing.

So, what did I do?

I kept writing.

I wrote ferociously. I wrote every story that popped into my head (which was a lot, I found, when you have an overactive imagination and some solid writing time while your son is napping).

But when the passes continued to come, I started to feel like I did when I was I was in high school, playing basketball.

Well, perhaps it's a misnomer to say, playing basketball.

The truth is, I didn't do much playing during the games. I made my high school basketball team--which was a steep challenge. We had a big school, and there were a lot of strong players, and our team won the state championship a couple of times.

I made the team, and worked hard under our demanding but wise coach (whose day job was a prison guard). In the off seasons, I worked four or five hours a day practicing drills, running miles dribbling two basketballs, sprinting suicides, shooting hundreds of free throws, completing shooting drills that were complete with sit-ups and push-ups mixed in between shots.

In short: I worked my butt off, ate zero bad food, and turned the spotlights on above our garage to do night drills when it got too dark to see.

But no matter how hard I worked, I didn't ever play much in the games. It was like this was this mental block, making me afraid on the court, causing me to hesitate, to doubt I could make the same shots that I made thousands of times in my own driveway every day.

Throughout my entire high school basketball-playing journey, I probably played less than the minutes of a full game. (Which was 32 in our league--eight-minute quarters)

Afterwards, I looked back at that experience, and dealt with what happened by telling myself things like, Well, I learned a lot from it and I worked really hard, and I became very physically fit and healthy, right?

And I kind of thought that it was over and done with. Old news. Moved on.

But it was only in talking with Jennifer a few nights ago, as I began to bemoan my lack of getting a contract for Atticus & Me that she asked me about my high school basketball experience. Even though it was years ago, the first thing that popped out of my mouth was this: "It was an utter failure."

Jen: An utter failure?! Do you really think that?

Me: Well, I know I learned a lot and all that...but, really, my goal was to play--and I never accomplished that. So, yeah, it was a failure, essentially.

Jen: (She gives me this knowing look--but kind of sprinkled with confusion, and doesn't say anything. But her not-saying-anything-look says the following to me in very clear words: whoa, buddy, you are way off here, and I'm going to give you a minute to really let how off you are sink in...think about what you just said...and think about what is really true, deep down.)

Me: Wasn't it? A failure, I mean...

Jen: NOT AT ALL!

Me: Why not?

Jen: Because you worked at it. Every day you were out there busting your butt, when most other high school kids wouldn't have been able to do half of what you did--the way you worked, the discipline you learned. It was never about making shots in the game--it was always about the person you were learning to become.

Me: (Okay, I'll be honest: tears.)

Jen: Achievements are like tiny dots on a long line. The line is journey you take--the way you work at something, the way you live--and achievements and results are just single points. Do you really think that your life is all about the dots, and not about the lines?

Me: Well, when you put it that way...

Jen: (The look says: Now, you're finally starting to get it.)

And the truth is, I am. Starting to get it, I mean.

It's what I always told my students, and REALLY wanted them to believe and make a part of their lives--in the deep kind of way that core beliefs become a part of all of our lives. But even though I knew what to say to my students, I hadn't yet destroyed my own false belief.

I wasn't a failure because I didn't play much basketball in high school.

And as a writer, I am not a failure because Atticus & Me hasn't yet garnered a publishing contract.

Instead, I am finally learning to live out what I have often preached--and that, thanks to my wife, who challenged me to face the lies I had been telling myself. I am finally learning that it isn't about those tiny dots on the long lines of our lives that count. It's isn't about the results.

Instead, it's about something much more beautiful. It's about the way we draw those lines, the directions we send them towards, and the way they intersect other lines along the path they take.