Grace and a grain of salt

My mom has often asked me where my creativity comes from. I never really thought about it; I’m just happy the stories come to me, regardless of the effort it takes to put them into words.

But it’s a good question. She can follow a pattern better than anyone. She can make a pant suit out of a discarded piece of fabric, knit you an afghan, build you a stuffed bear (complete with articulated joints), embroider a wall-hanging—and you should see some of the Halloween costumes. But creating completely new things isn’t really her thing.

Dad was a math guy; he worked with computers. Equations were his building blocks.

It wasn’t until the last few months that I really started to think about that question but when I did, the answer was pretty obvious:

I learned how to be creative by listening to my dad swear.

Now, he wasn’t given to much profanity. He wasn’t the kind of person to drop an ‘f’bomb the way some people say ‘Hi,’ or anything like that. He didn’t swear often, but when he did…

He put swear words together like a toddler building a toy train, cramming one word after another with reckless, free flowing abandon. He didn’t care if the words belonged together or not—he just wanted them to roll.

I’d give you examples, but we are in a house of worship—and guests, at that. Suffice it to say that the last thing my brothers, sister or I ever wanted to hear when we were growing up was a plaintive voice calling from the garage or the basement: “Can I get some help, please?”

Because dad, for all his gifts with the more…florid…forms of speech, was equally as gifted at making a simple job become more complicated—and therefore frustrating—than it needed to be.

But dad was basically a quiet guy. Humble. And, in his own way, passionate. He had a great sense of humor, albeit a slightly unusual one. Even that, he kept mostly to himself, laughing when appropriate and sliding a zinger in when it was least expected. His usual expressions—which we’ll get to later—were as smile-inducing as they were confounding.

He was the hardest working person I’ve ever known. He would go to work all day, deal with us afterward, then do chores until he collapsed onto the couch. If he ever complained, I never heard it. That trait served me well in the news business, but even I couldn’t hold a candle to it.

And he was a fighter, too. When he had cancer, he had so little regard for that disease that he told us all about it during a card game.

“I’m glad you’re all here,” he said. “I have cancer. Let’s make that trump. It’s your lead.” We just gaped at him, the cards drifting out of our hands like petals from a wilting flower. He got radiation treatment on his lunch break and then went back to work.

Heart disease took his mother and older brother, but when dad had a heart attack, he barely even noticed. He eventually went to an ER—four days later—and, when we expressed our shock and outrage at hearing that, he just shrugged his shoulders and said:

“I just thought I was tired.”

But, Alzheimer’s…

Well. What can you say about Alzheimer’s? There’s no weight set that’ll help you. Alzheimer’s doesn’t care how much cardio exercise you do. It scoffs at a proper diet the way…well, the way most of us scoff at a proper diet. You can’t really fight it.

And Dad was a math guy. A computer guy. Equations were his building blocks. There must’ve been a moment when he realized that this was an algorithm that had too many variables to solve.

At least in time for him.

So he fought it the only way he could: for the next victim. He was part of a research program at the University of Michigan and we had his brain donated to the same department for study. Nobody could figure out why it hit him so hard and took him so fast while he was alive. Maybe now…

I guess you could call it the gift that keeps on giving, against the thing that keeps on taking. Maybe it’ll give some other son more time with his dad, some other wife more time with her husband, a few more poker games and campfires.

That’s one thing we can take from all of this. As for the deeper lesson, well, I had to think long and hard on that. Everything has a purpose. Everything happens for a reason, right? Well, possible reason could there be for this, to take someone who worked so hard, asked for so little, wanted nothing more than a better life for his children and who offended no one?

I don’t know. I asked that question a lot. If there was an answer to that, I didn’t hear it.

I am left with this:

Sometimes, in our quest for miracles, we overlook the little blessings. The smiles. Inside jokes. Pats on the head. Simple things we see and discard all the time.

My dad was never overly affectionate. I never heard him say ‘I love you.’ But he showed me every day, if I had been smart enough to notice.

That is what I’d like you to take from this, from my dad. Love, real love, real passion: it doesn’t have to be spoken to be valid. It’s evident in the little things that we don’t even notice. A guy who will make his own sandwich out of the crusts of the bread, and then tell you it’s his favorite part. Or someone who spends his last buck on a pop for you, and tells you he’s not thirsty.

Recognize that for what it is. Smile back. Say ‘thank you.’ Or even, ‘I love you, too.’ Because in the end, you don’t know how much time you have. I think my dad would like that, if he knew at the end we all got him.

What he wouldn’t like is us all crying over his loss. He’d be embarrassed over all this fuss (but he’d appreciate the sandwiches). He was a fighter, you know. Cancer. Heart Disease. Alzheimer’s. He was 2-for3.  And he got an assist in #3, right? Don’t be sad. Mourn his passing, and pass on his legacy. Remember your blessings. You are loved, even if you don’t hear it.

And, if you want to pass on his legacy, here are some simple ways you can do it. The beauty of it is, they don’t really require—or perhaps ‘defy’ is a better way to say it—explanation. His expressions:

When someone says: can I ask you a question:

“Shoot Bruce, the air is full of pigeons.”

To this day, I have no idea who ‘Bruce’ was, or what questions have to do with pigeons. We never met anyone named Bruce and, even if the sky was indeed filled with pigeons, dad wouldn’t be able to shoot one, anyway.

When you take a turn faster than you have to:

“Wheel that taxi, Ponch!”

When you’re waiting to turn into or against traffic:

“What is this, a parade?”

Or as a general exclamation:

“Nice going, Clyde.”

Clyde. That was another guy. We never knew who Clyde was. But ‘Clyde’ was the pinnacle of all insults for my dad. It superseded all commonly known swear words or pejoratives. We never met Clyde or anything, but he must’ve really rubbed dad the wrong way at some point.

And, if you’re doing something that just is not going like you planned, before you start stringing together swear words, try this gem:

“Well, that’s enough to piss off the pope.”

Well. There was more, but I don't remember the ending I tacked onto it, and I'm surprised that I even made it that far. Thanks again for those that came or passed along their thoughts. And thanks for reading here.

There are no little things, or "What I learned without realizing it"

So a couple of my recent blogs contain seeds that were planted in my subconscious a long time ago. Both came at a time when my mind was ripe for new ideas and concepts, when I felt a bit like a little worm on a really big hook and I had no other choice but to pay attention to everything that was going on around me and absorb as much as I could. I was just starting out as a newspaper reporter then, and I was both very aware of the weight of my new responsibility and ignorant of the long term implications of it.

First, the silly part. In my sporadically ongoing science fiction writing exercise, Alice T. Kat, Queen of the Outer Reaches, Alice talks a bit about the concept of Verbal Judo.

I first heard the term sitting in an office at the Canton Township Police Department. That was always one of my favorite parts of the job; who wouldn't like to just sit around and talk with cops?

"Verbal judo?" I asked. "What's that?"

"This idea of letting your words fight for you," the media relations officer said. He was a generally amiable guy, a bit round and cheerful—not what you'd picture when you thought of a police officer. Maybe that's why he was the media relations guy.

"Oh, I see," I said.

Then his whole appearance changed. The smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. His voice dropped a bit and took on a harder edge.

"You better drop that weapon, son, or I'll knock it out of your hands, shove it up your ass and pull the trigger twice," he growled.

I, of course, didn't have a weapon. But I believed him anyway.

The other lesson is a bit more serious and is evidenced in the way Esmiralda thinks of her role in the world. Her character is still a bit of an experiment—and still very much under development—but it wouldn't surprise me if she took on some of the crankier aspects of my first newspaper boss, W. Edward Wendover.

I remember vividly the way he would berate me—and rightfully so—over some minor typo or misplaced decimal point.

"If they don't trust you on the little things, they won't trust you on the big things," he said emphatically. "Learn to SPELL, godDAMmit!" The paper landed with a heavy 'thwap' on the desk and he stomped off.

In that (and in much more) he was right. It is true in writing fiction, just as it was true in newspaper work—and in life in general. In journalism, your readers will not trust you with facts if they can't trust you with basic grammar. In writing, readers are not going to trust you to craft a good story if you can't put a sentence together—and they're not going to trust you to put a sentence together if you can't put a WORD together the right way.

In life (particularly parenting), well, you can supply your own comparisons:

"How can I trust you to take the car out tonight, son, when you can't even walk down a hallway without colliding with a wall?"

"How can I trust you with $20, when you can't walk past a gumball machine without reaching into your pocket?"

"You want to borrow my chainsaw???!? You can't even cut a piece of chicken!"

The list goes on.

The point is: pay attention to the little things. How you deal with them will, in some way, forecast how you deal with the bigger things. And file away all the lessons you learn, too. You never know when you'll need them. Who knows, maybe something you picked up along the way will come out in a blog about a space-faring cat and her crew. Okay. Probably not in that way, but you get the idea.

Thanks for reading!