Another Day

I turned 52 today. Its Saturday morning and like other Saturdays, I get up, walk the girls, make a pot of joe, get into my art class with Jerry Yarnell, and then do some writing. All this before I face the day-- love this time of day.

Men, I think all men, get up this high in the number range of their ages and when their 'special day' comes around, they can't help but be reflective. Think about it; I'm much closer to the end than the beginning, at least I pray to god I am. I would hate to think I am going to live to 104. "Roll over Mr. Williams. We need to change your bed linens-again." The Inuits had a good idea. The old ones would just wander out onto the ice pack and go away, eventually falling asleep and then surely becoming an afternoon snack for a polar bear. I would love being food for a bear! What a great cycle of life you could claim.

"How did you die?"
"Drowned in my own pee. You?"
"Fell asleep on an ice flow then a bear and her two cubs ate me. They didn't have to eat for two weeks after that."
"Oh, dude, that is SO COOL!"

So men get all reflective. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here, polishing off a bottle of Jack and wiping tears away from my stained cheeks with a pair of dirty underwear. I feel pretty good right now. Very little in my life that I wish I could have done different or that I still see as an un-obtained goal. Maybe I still want to own my own restaurant or be a short order cook at Denny's. Plus, with age, come a paradigm shift in feelings, beliefs, values, etc. I want to grow up and be a Silverback!

My daughter hates that term, Silverback. I spoke at her wedding and while addressing her new husband, I made him turn and look into the audience an focus on the old men with silver hair. I told him those are the wise ones whom he should seek for counsel when you need it. Now there is a goal worth pursuing!

Look, my legs are starting to wear out. My "Christmas Day present handing out injury" actually still bothers my left knee which means my running ability is cut. I am sure I am going through male menopause-I'm having night sweats like a Coyote muling a bunch of illegals across the Arizona Sonoran in the summer time, and now there is just the act of living-like why is there water under my wood floor in the den and where is it coming from? That kind of living.

Life is a strain, its suppose to be. How I respond to that life, well, that's the fun part. I had a couple of partners in my prior life who I would still run into a collapsing building for. They're older men now, just like me. I remember we were following a bad guy along a canal. One of the young bucks we were working with was in a foot chase with this guy. Problem was, the young buck was a young buck who liked food too much and the bad guy was a gazelle. We couldn't shoot him; that would have been bad form. So, my partner and I were chasing him in a car. My guy pulled up next to this man running and opened his car door 'accidentally' causing the man to fall. That was Silverback wisdom.

We let the young buck cuff him after he finished puking his lungs out.

I am at a time of my life that I am still willing to try hopping walls, leaping tall buildings, and jousting at windmills. My Scottish heritage won't let me think that there isn't a day that isn't a good day for a fight.

But there is also something to be said for driving the car, filling the inside with the sounds of Bachmann-Turner Overdrive, up to the local Denny's for a short stack.

Now, where the hell is that leak coming from?

To you and yours, thanks for being in the life of this developing Silverback.

Stop and Sniff!!

There are things around us that if we blink, we miss. The simple things, the quiet things, those things that we haven't seen because we've been too busy worrying about the building burning down around us. Sure, we have to survive the fire, get out of the building, make sure it doesn't collapse on our heads, but what about the beauty of the fire? Fire is primal. Both sexes love a good fire. Women love one in the fire place with a glass of wine, snuggled next to someone they care for and who they think cares for them. Men, well, we like the burning building.





I discovered this 'blink' thing this morning. I should say, rediscovered it. I got up and didn't have enough coffee to make coffee. So, I loaded the girls, Betty and Mindy, into the back of the rental (I was in an accident last week in my truck, a story for another day) and we went to Copper Star Coffee Shop on 7th Avenue.





I enjoy coffee. I don't worship it or light candles to it, but I am of an age now where I will spend $8 a pound for some instead of the $2 at Fry's.





The girls stayed in the car because I wanted to give Betty enough time to get her white hair on the dark upholstery. I ordered a cup of joe and a pound. Then I looked at the food display case. I have been coming to this neighborhood store since it opened, sometimes stopping on my bike ride to work for a cup, but I've never ordered food. Bagels, muffins, scones, things with frosting and things plain. I was easily talked into a scone, something between a biscuit and a heavy loaf of bread only this one had chocolate chips. They had some with blueberries and cranberries but why? I paid for everything and went over to a side table to dress my coffee. I then pulled a chunk of the scone out of the little paper bag it was in and, without thinking, plopped it into my mouth.



It was warm.





A warm-bready thing, with soft, melting pieces of chocolate, some fresh ground coffee with cream and sugar. All of a sudden, life just got real good.





For moments in time, we have these things cross our path-then they leave, sometimes never to be seen again. Here are just a few that I have overlooked:

• The color green in the early morning light as it falls into the shadows. Sunsets work the same way, but those are at day's end and we're usually too tired to notice.


• A dog sleeping on your foot or curled up next to you on the couch and placing their paw in your lap.


• The smell of an out-door grill from a neighbor cooking beef (men can smell the difference between beef and anything else).


• The smell of the lawn at a spring training baseball game.


• Having to stand in line for only fifteen minutes at the grocery store instead of hours in most countries only to be told they were out of whatever you were standing in line for, two days ago.


• Reading a book in the afternoon and falling asleep after a page.


• The laughter of a child younger than three.


• A morning run, bike ride, especially this time of year. Summer time we would move from neighbor's sprinkler to sprinkler, dehydrating ourselves until our pee was a fluorescent yellow, but this time of year, it's glorious.


• The soft, stroking, touch of a hand from someone you care about across your cheek while they smile at something 'cute' you said.


• A barefoot walk on a beach, almost any beach.
• ANY single-malt scotch, cigar, and a good friend talking about nonsense.
• Seeing a rabbit in your backyard.


• A clean pair of white socks. Underwear is a distant second.

Look, life is a freight train screaming right at our noggins. I guess we need to ask ourselves, what are we doing? Are we living to work, finding our identity in the labels we get from each other? Or, are we working to live? Most of us would say the second, but are we really? "Mark, you don't get it, my hours got cut, my wife is sick, my kids are sick, the car broke down...."Yeah, I've been there. I've also said that same exact sentence-still do sometimes.

But when you think about it, is our identity in what we do, since what we do, when we're done doing it, is just handed to someone else or cancelled due to budget cuts?

Here, tell ya what, lets try something. Today, go for a walk, a bike ride, or a simple drive in the car with the windows down-wear a coat if its cold. Throw the dogs in the back seat and let them have their own windows and just go. Stop off at some gooey store and buy a scone or a scone like substance. "Mark, (insert whine) I can't eat that. My doctor said I...." Geezus, quit yer bitchin', are ya French? What's it going to do? Shave a month off your life? I'm not asking you to double-salt your fries, although that sounds pretty good right now. Nope, we're going out for 'socks.'

Some nice, white socks.

Maybe if we're lucky, we'll see a house fire.

Pulling on a Cat's Tail

I love the sound of bag pipes. I like the sound of drums-any kind of drum, bass drums, bongos, Native American drums, USC marching band playing with Fleetwood Mac, just about any marching band, really. Put those two sounds together and I'm marching off to war.

We had a "Cultural Awareness Assembly" at our school yesterday. It was one of those assemblies where student get up on stage and dance, sing, do something from their culture. We are an international school, something like thirty-seven languages are spoken by our students from all over the world, pretty cool. Of course, as I get older, I draw closer to my own ancestry-the Scots. These students don't necessarily need to see another white guy in a dress but I give them a pretty good accent when we're talking about Shakespeare and my theory that he was drunk most of the time, a prime reason why you can't understand half the crap he wrote. London water, terrible in 1604.

So I'm sitting there watching the tribal dancers and eventually, the Hula dancers arrived. Who the hell on our campus is from 'Hula,' I thought to myself. Most of the kids I saw dancing, from the back row I was sitting in, looked like Hispanic kids. Of course, if you put a Hispanic kid next to Polynesian kid, baggy their pants, turn their hats on backwards, and have them say "Wazup?" they would be identical. If they can have suspect Hula dancers, why can't they have the Scots!

I'm sitting there imagining a pipe and drum core marching in and then up the aisle to the stage. Kids would follow them automatically because they couldn't help it. That's just what they did at the Battle of Sterling!! Wait, I think we lost that one, anyway-why can't we?

So, as the sun starts to crack the horizon on another snow-less Phoenix landscape, the beasts are sleeping at my feet, the coffee is oh, so good, and The Royal Dragoon Guards play on the CD, I think today, later after the sun dries the lawn, I will proceed to the yard where I will mow the bonny glen to an even layer to the melodic sound of someone jerking on a cat's tail. Aye, tis a good day for a fight!

Tales of the Heart

This next week men and women, little boys and little girls, and those in between, will be running around ordering flowers, cards, rings, making dinner reservations to lavish on their life partner, or someone they just met. We scramble to either get a date or to avoid it all together, to not give any false impressions, intentions, or basically tip our hand. Valentine's Day is next Sunday and this week is a running gaggle of stuffed bears made of soft reds and whites with sewn heart-shaped pillows attached to them. I think sometimes, we mix our definitions of 'romance with 'love'. Or even worse, the definition of 'gee, I really like you...' with love.



I remember in grade school, I had a Cyrano heart for a girl named Mary, I know-how traditional. She never knew about it. I could never tell her. Sometime between then and college, hormones kicked in and I think I 'loved' everything: cloudy days, rainy nights, my bathrobe, Gilligan's Island, liver and onions from the school cafeteria, and just about any high school aged girl and three teachers-everything. But upon reflection, it was the romantic side that I was wallowing in, not love. Especially after I learned what 'love' really meant years later.



I wrote, some time ago, that my bed was my 'lover'. Now, before you shutter and wipe the key board down with alcohol, you have to understand the context. It was in a book and, well, I thought it was pretty cool. My editor slapped me-hard. "Geezus, Mary, and Joseph Williams, are you from some small town in the West Virginia Appalachians? NO ONE can have a bed for a lover-unless, of course, you live in that part of the country." The point was, I liked my bed and bedtime and the resulting sleep a lot, most men, my very young age, do. I misused the word.



Every year, I get my students to write a letter expressing their love to their parents. That will take place again this Friday, for hand delivery on Sunday. Now, some of my kids really don't like their parents or many don't know where their parents are at so we substitute someone else. But this letter follows a discussion of the origin of Valentine and what 'love' might really mean.



A great teacher once said "Love is a sacrifice word." There, I should just let that line end this discussion. When I ask my high school students to tell me what 'love' is, they give me all the TV versions. They giggle when someone is bold and says 'Sexin' it up.' They dance all around it from 'really really liking someone' to marriage. When I ask them why do we say we 'love' our ham sandwich-does that fit into one of their definitions, they give me the deer in the headlights look. Sacrifice is funny too. I love my dogs. But I wouldn't sacrifice our financial stability and spend thousands on vet bills to keep them alive. However, and here's the weird part, I would run back into a burning building to rescue them.



But what if love meant 'sacrifice' and we lived by that? What does that make the world look like then? How would that thought, change the way we look at each other?



I look back at myself, coming up on 30 years of marriage. I swear, it just started yesterday. I made a video for my kids to give them on my 50th birthday, about two years ago, of pictures showing our family as they grew up, and set it to music. I have it on my desktop and watch it every now and again and still get teary. What a life I have been privileged to live! Now, hold the pony there sheriff, we stepped into it big time when we got married. Both Joni and I would say, and actually we did say in counseling six months after we were married, that it was completely different then the day before we were married. When you say 'for better or worse, sickness and health....'-- wow! Hold on to your toast.



We all say those words, almost as an after thought. Then, about a week into it, something I do, isn't so 'cute' anymore. Then the world applies stresses and tugs on that bond like the Olympic tug of war team. Job stress, bills, hidden issues from our childhood that we thought were dealt with come back again, addiction issues, self-esteem issues, unflushed toilets, pms, sex, fatigue, all weigh in, sometimes all at once. Those are fun days! The romance, so easily supplied at first, drains away and what you have left after the sweet candy outside is licked away is that weird chocolate center, which we all know, isn't chocolate. But there's something that happens in that trail ride of a married couple. Something that only happens if we allow it too.



We get purified.



After years of life, and if we allow ourselves to, we never reach the apex of that word, 'love'. It never stops growing-until we take our last breath. Soon into relationships, after the sex, and makeup, and ski trips to Vail, are all washed away in the sink, we wake up to living life and all the blemishes it has for us. During the daily melee of living, we have respites of peace, spread out over time, broken by life landing on us again. It is here, when we look around, we see those who matter. They matter because they stood in the fight with us. We look up and down the trench line and those faces that look back at us, providing a wink, a slight smile, a look of confidence letting you know they are standing firm with you, no matter the cost-'sacrifice'. They mouth simple words, like an old Scottish warrior-"Aye, ti's a good day for a fight." There is love in a form we can almost taste.





We have seen it daily:


The nineteen year-old marine in Fallujah


The single mother working to provide for her son


The father working three jobs to make ends meet


The fire and police running into a collapsing building while everyone is running out


The child, holding the hand of their dying parent as they reach the end of their life.



The problem is many of us fail-once, twice, many times. So, we think we can never find this Valhalla that is so celebrated; we can never get it 'right'. But we can. That's the thing, we can find it. Its there, we see it all around us if we stop to look. That act of sacrifice, we do-daily. We don't think much about it but the fact is, its huge! Look to both sides and see who is near you. Look and see who you are near and then take a hand. Sometimes that last few dollars or minutes of our time, that we can't really spare, we use to give a small token for someone less fortunate, a shirt, a birthday card, letting them know they matter, sometimes that small act will change that person's life forever.

So, here we are, approaching another Valentine's Day. Legend has it, that an old priest refused to give up marrying people in the dungeons of 3rd century Rome even after Caesar said he would have him killed. He was following an example of a guy before him. He didn't stop, and he was killed for it.



If you looked throughout the catacombs of the Roman dungeons where Valentine wandered, you won't find a stuffed bear with a red heart sewn to it anywhere.

Happy Valentine's Day!!