The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for August 2011

You Need Courage To Live

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“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

My son and I like to watch superhero movies together. Batman, Superman, Thor, Ironman, Green Lantern, X-Men, Captain America- we love it. It is great fun to set aside disbelief and watch the good guys battle the bad ones. As a father I like it because it provides a slew of teaching moments that I can use to try and impart some fatherly wisdom and family values.

The funny thing about it is that my favorite heroes tend to be the guys who have the tragic flaw. I like the darker characters like Wolverine and the Dark Knight version of Batman- but that is a post for a different day.

Sometimes when we talk I try to slip in these little nuggets of wisdom like that Emerson quote above. I like it because it is both practical and true. I like it because it is reminder that we don’t need superpowers or special training to be superheroes. All we need to do is remember that sometimes the difference between us and the next guy is the courage to stand by our convictions and to try.

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I often write about my desire to live my dreams and not dream my life. That is always coupled with trying to teach my children to do the same. It is something that I think about often. I think about it because the rules of the blog demand brutal honesty and that dictates that I say that I am not satisfied with my life. There are many things that are good about it. There is much to be grateful for and more than a few blessings. Yet that doesn’t prevent me from acknowledging that I am not happy with a number of things.

It doesn’t prevent me from stating unequivocally that I am responsible for making those changes. It is why I wrote these words: “It is never too late to change the end of the story- We have more control than we realize and less than we want.” It was a reminder to myself that I can change things and that I am responsible for doing so. But it was also a reminder to give myself permission to accept that though I can control much, I cannot control all. It was a reminder of the need for balance and patience.

If I am diligent about working to make the changes that need to be make I have to give myself time to let the seeds of change blossom.

“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think of that last line as being representative of my biggest challenges.  It is something that I talk to the kids about because it is critical. Part of making changes and living our dreams is having the courage to take a chance and to not make excuses for why we can’t do XYZ. It is not always easy but it is important. I have relatively few regrets in life but those that I do have are enormous. When I look back upon those situations and evaluate what happened I can see spots where I got in my own way.

I can see places where for whatever reason the thing that didn’t happen can be attributed to my actions or lack thereof.  It is something that I think about because as a father I don’t want my children to get caught up second guessing themselves. Sometimes what is done is done and you just move on or at the least you don’t perseverate on what you could have or should have done. That is the kind of thing that will paralyze you.

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear of failure is another thing that leads to paralysis. Fear of failure is one of the greatest sources of failure that I can think of.  If you want to use a sports metaphor you can talk about how some coaches manage a game by playing not to lose instead of playing to win. I’d much rather play to win and fall short than fail because I played not to lose.

I talk to the children about failure and all of the lessons that can be learned from it. I am very candid about these stories. I am not one of these parents who goes crazy trying to catch my children every time they fall. I need for them to fail a few times because they have to develop coping skills. They have to learn how to deal with adversity. The challenge lies in trying to let them fail without crushing their self esteem.

“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ask my kids and they’ll tell you that I say this is critical. Ask the children and they’ll tell you that I would love to be lucky but that I focus on what I have control over. I can’t wish for things to happen. I can’t ask the universe to give me a million dollars but I can work for it. I can take action to try and make my own luck. I can do my best to distinguish between good opportunities and a fool’s errand.

At the end of the day when the lights are off, my eyes are closed and I am alone with my thoughts I want to drift off to sleep with the knowledge that I did my best. That is how I find peace of mind. That is how I recharge my batteries and get ready for the fresh start that comes the next day.

Ok my friends, that is all I have for this post. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

He Died A Hero

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Field of Sunflowers

This is the sort of post that requires music but what to play is something that is beyond me, or so it feels. I sit here in my chair fighting to come up with the write words to share about my grandfather. I sit here in my chair and try to make sense of something that seems impossible- grandpa is gone. Though I always knew that one day this would happen I find myself wondering if maybe this was just a dream. Until today there had never been a time where I didn’t have grandparents to visit and talk to.

My grandparents were a constant force in my life and now they are all gone. Every…single…one has died and I find that the world is a little bit darker than it was. I shouldn’t be surprised. I have been down this path before. This is not the first time that I have sat at the computer and reminisced about a grandparent. It is not the first time that I have shared some thoughts about talking with the children about death, but I hope that it is the last time for a while.

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I feel numb. I am in a place that exists somewhere between sadness and ambivalence. My grandfathers were my heroes. Two amazing characters who couldn’t have been more alike or more different. Such a contradiction but one that is filled with so much love. And now I find myself trying to figure out what sort of words I intend to share at the funeral. Now I sit here lost in thought and memory trying to find the right words to write about him. Chances are I will speak off the cuff. Chances are that I’ll share a few words and hope that I don’t sound silly. And no matter what I say afterwards I’ll kick myself for not sharing XYZ or for not talking about PDQ.

It is not a tragedy when a 97.5-year-old man dies of natural causes. That doesn’t mean that we can’t be sad because I am. I am sad for a million different reasons but the biggest one is that my children won’t ever know grandpa the way that I did. They’ll hear stories about him and grandma. When they get older they’ll have a better appreciation for how incredible it is to be married for 75 years but they won’t know it in the same way that I do.

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One of my strongest memories of my grandparents is of them dancing. I close my eyes and I can see them gliding across the floor together. I close my eyes and hear grandma tell the 13-year-old version of me that if I learn how to dance as well as grandpa I will never lack for a date. I close my eyes and see them in their nineties sitting next to each other in matching recliners. They are both fast asleep but they are holding hands. I close my eyes and hear my grandfather tell me about happy grandma has made him. I hear people asking grandma what their secret is. She laughs, shakes her head and says she doesn’t know. She says that they have always known how to compromise.

Grandpa laughs and tells me that when two people adore each other they find a way to work it out and then he says that it doesn’t hurt to have a hot 85-year-old wife. Grandma blushes smiles broadly and tells him to shush. I think of grandma as being a very proper lady. She doesn’t swear but she doesn’t have to. On the rare occasion she gets upset she has a look that causes plants to wither.

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Grandpa’s death certificate will say something about natural causes and that is ok. But the true cause of death is a broken heart. He missed grandma terribly and even though she was gone he used to talk to her photo. But it would be unfair of me to paint a picture that didn’t describe him as trying to live a vibrant and active life without grandma. She was his best friend but even in her absence, he did what he could to get the most out of his days.

But no matter how fast we run time is always faster and it caught up to him.

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I saw him every day last week and noticed a steady deterioration so I made a point early in the week to tell him that I loved him. Even though he knew it, I wanted to make sure that he heard it. Even though he told me that he was ready and that he wasn’t afraid I wanted to try and ease his burden anyway that I could.

Yesterday afternoon I went back and found him fast asleep. His breathing was labored and you could see that he had to fight for each breath. They had given him some Morphine to make him more comfortable and consequently, he was sort of out it. He stared glassy-eyed at the ceiling and I hoped that it wouldn’t be long. Not because I didn’t love him but because he was very clear about his wishes. He had a DNR and had told us all that if there came a time where he couldn’t function on his own he wanted out.

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“Grandpa, I have to leave,” I said. I bent over and told him again that I loved him and that if he wanted to let go it was ok with me. This time I just couldn’t say goodbye, so instead I said “so long” and walked out of the room. Six hours later he was gone, but in my eyes he died a hero.

Blogging Is Not An Obligation

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We get letters, oh yes, we get letters. And lately we have received several that suggest that your old pal Jack is a scoundrel and a scallywag. They have chastised me for a variety of things and have accused me of intentionally committing a multitude of blogging sins.

Some of the letters have suggested that I do something that to the best of my knowledge is anatomically impossible. It is an interesting idea and if I could I might not ever leave the house. Unfortunately I am not quite that flexible. Sorry Charlie. But I did decide to dedicate this next sentence to you and therefore I am typing slowly so that you can keep up. I know how cumbersome it is to read words and not look at pictures, especially the glossy kind.

Another one of my fans wrote in to say that I have an obligation to do better than I am doing. I am in agreement that I want to do better than I am doing but it is not because I think that I am doing poorly- it is because I always want to improve. I want to become a better writer. That is a natural desire on my part. But I don’t feel obligated to do so because of the reader.

This isn’t my job. I don’t get paid to do this. I do it because I love it. I do it because I enjoy the interaction and engagement with people. I like talking to moms and dads about parenting. I like sharing stories and talking about science/medicine/music/sports/business. It is fun.

What Makes a Blog Successful?

I could write an entire post about this but it is Friday and my time is limited so I’ll keep this short. The definition of a successful blog is subjective and based upon the goals of the blogger.  It is not contingent upon being paid to write or getting a hundred comments per post. These things are only significant if they are meaningful to the blogger. Without his/her approval they are meaningless.

For me the most important part of blogging is that I enjoy  it. I love writing. I love the interaction. I love meeting people and developing friendships that could never have come about in any other way. That makes me happy and that is what makes me feel like I am successful.

Keywords and Most Popular Posts

Some people will tell you that you should determine what posts are most popular so that you can focus on writing more about those topics. They’ll tell you that it is important to see what keywords drive traffic to your site so that you can leverage that. I pay attention to those things but mostly because I find it interesting. Here is a snapshot of some of my most popular posts based upon my stats. If you are a regular reader you’ll notice that most are recent.

It is interesting to see, but like I said most are recent so I have to wonder what is missing. Or should I say that I wonder about posts that didn’t benefit from being showcased/promoted as well. What about posts that weren’t pushed in front of as many eyeballs. Maybe lack of exposure doomed the finest thing I have ever written to obscurity. I wonder about it, but I don’t spend too much time wondering/worrying about it.

Because I do this for fun and not obligation. More importantly, I feel good about it and that is worth a lot. How about you? What do you think? Why do you come here and what do you hope to get out of it?

A Flickering Candle

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Dear Children,

It is late Thursday night and my mind is moving at a million miles an hour. Yesterday I took you to see your great-grandfather, my grandpa, to say goodbye. It was hard for you and it was hard for me. You don’t have the same memories of him as I do. You don’t remember the love affair he had with grandma nor do you remember the million and one things that I do.

That is ok. You are not supposed to have those memories of great-grandparents, though I wish that you did. These are people who helped make your daddy into who I am today. They watched me grow up. They were at all of my graduations, baseball games, swim meets and a million other events. They know me in a different way than you do just as I know them. Did you notice that I switched from the singular to the plural. That is because it feels more natural for me to refer to them in the plural and not just grandpa.

Please don’t misunderstand that to mean that I loved one more than the other. I loved them all for similar and for different reasons.

Today you both told me that you didn’t see me show emotion about this and I am a bit concerned. You said the same thing about my reaction to moving and I am concerned. I am concerned because I don’t want you to think that your daddy is an unfeeling person. I don’t want you to think that I am never sad or that things don’t bother me.  It couldn’t be farther from the truth. You are not reading this blog yet and you won’t be for quite some time so I need to sit you down and try to explain things in terms that you understand.

That fire in my belly that I write about here burns ever so brightly for those I love. It hurts to lose grandpa. You don’t realize how much it hurts or how I miss my other grandpa. You don’t know how much time I spent with them. You don’t know that I don’t cry very easily. You don’t know me as Jack, just as dad. And because of that you don’t see all of me. Some of that is not for you to see, at least not now. It is not because it is bad, but because there are pieces of me that you don’t need to know until you are old enough to understand  them.

I don’t quite know how to explain this in a way that doesn’t sound goofy and melodramatic, so bear with me. But dad, your dad that is, me, well my job is to try to be more than just a man. For a brief period of time it is to be a superhero. For a brief period of time I am teacher/bodyguard/guardian/Batman/Superman what have you. And it is not easy, because sometimes heroes fail and I have…failed. I have stumbled and fallen. I have taken a severe beating but I always get back up again. I get back up because that is what daddies do.

I would take the bullet for you or jump in front of the bus. I wouldn’t hesitate nor think about it because that is what daddies do. And I know this because of what I learned from my dad and from my grandparents.

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In the years that come I want you to see a bit of what this night was like for me. I went back to see grandpa today and he was much weaker than yesterday. His candle is flickering and he is slipping into the darkness and whatever comes afterwards. I held his hand and talked to him. I told him that your aunt was on a plane and that she was coming to see him. I asked him to hold on a little bit longer so that she could say goodbye in person.  See, in addition to being your daddy I am a big brother. For the time being I stopped teasing her about being an ancient woman of 40 and I told her that I would make sure that grandpa knew she is coming.

And now it is heading towards midnight and I feel jumpy.I am waiting for the call. I am waiting for the word that will come sooner than later. I am not happy that he is going to die but I am ok with it. He has had a very good life and he made a point to tell me so. It is hard for him to breathe and hard to speak, but he still tried to make me feel better.  I told him that it was ok and that I was ok. We made eye contact and nodded at each other.

I will keep visiting him until that moment comes, but if it happens before I get back- I am ok.

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But the most important thing to me is to make sure that you understand that though I may keep some things close to the vest it doesn’t mean that I am not sad or that this doesn’t hurt. It  is important because I don’t want you to keep it bottled up as tightly as I do. This is not one of my finer traits and not something that you need to emulate. But we can save that talk for a different time. I carry you with me always.

Love,

Dad

Shakespeare & the Blogosphere: Of Idiots, Scallywags, and Scoundrels

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“Life is a tale told by an idiot — full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5

I spent 287 minutes writing and rewriting the lead for this post. For those of you who don’t have a calculator close by or are short on coffee that is almost five hours.

The purpose was to try to come up with something so compelling you would sit up, smack the table and scream, “this man is Muellerific!”

Unfortunately posterity will not record how many of you actually did so but if God smiles upon us the comment section here just might provide some insight into whether this is successful or if I need to wear a mask during my next visit to town.

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This is part of a guest post that I wrote for Inkling Media. Please click here and go read the rest of it.

 

A Question of Dignity

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I know happiness and I know heartbreak. Failure has kissed my lips and wrapped its arms around me- but victory hasn’t ever been a stranger to me either. I have a closet full of trophies and more than memories of triumph. I have loved and lost and lived. Take a walk through the stacks here and you’ll find examples of these things. You’ll see the stories that make you laugh and stories that make you feel other things.

Read the archives and you’ll find more than one discussion about the boundaries of blogging. I think about these things for many reasons. I worry about invisible people and wonder about whether we live in a bubble. Really I spend quite a bit of time looking for teaching moments. I do it because two kids and a dog call me dad. I do it because being a parent is a little bit like being on one of those crazy Japanese game shows.

I do it because life consistently presents opportunities that remind me that there are moments where the focus in life is about a question of dignity.
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That is a picture of items from our garage sale. An unexpected rainstorm is the reason that the ground is wet and things are tossed about- but that is not what I see or think about. What I see is the homeless guy who is standing off to the right side of the page. I can’t tell you how old he was but I can tell you that he was weathered, dirty and that he looked like hell.

Can’t tell you if he read one of our signs and wandered over looking for stuff or if he just stumbled upon us and I don’t care. What I can tell you is that I sold him a pair of shoes and an old backpack for $1. One of my “customers” yelled at me for charging him for those items. She told me that I was greedy. I told her that it was a question of dignity. He asked me how much it cost. He didn’t ask for me to give it to him. So I charged him a dollar for shoes and a backpack that are worth far more than that to him.

That is one of the lessons that I can attribute to my parents/grandparents. He deserved my respect and that dictated my response.

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It was something that I thought about today. As we stood around my grandfather’s bed I watched my children and gauged their response to what they saw. It is clear to everyone including them that the end is almost here. When I went to see him on Sunday I helped him out of bed so that he could go to the bathroom. What that really means is that I carried him five feet and then held him up so that he could answer nature’s call. I did my best not to make eye contact so that he could maintain some semblance of dignity, but we both knew what was happening.

Later on I found myself thinking about both of my grandfathers and reflecting a bit upon their influence upon my life and who I am. I am not the same man I was when my paternal grandfather died. That is not to say that he wouldn’t recognize me because he would- but life has changed me. If he were here he would tell me that you can only play the hand you are dealt and that you the best you can with that.

I’d smile and say that I do that…every day. I’d tell him that I love him, that I miss him and that I am sorry he can’t see how incredible his great grandchildren are.

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I knew that the kids wouldn’t be up for a long visit so when it became apparent that they were getting squirrely I told them it was time to say goodbye. They walked out of the room and started chasing each other down the hall. Grandpa motioned me to come closer and reached out to hug me. I bent over, kissed his cheek and said “I love you grandpa.” He looked me in the eye and said “I love you too.”