Micro-Post: A Birthday Postcard to Loved Ones

Posted on October 10, 2014 by John Coleman

Dear Blog and Regular-Old Loved Ones:

Yesterday, October 9th, was my fifty-third birthday. At 8:30 a.m., as I was sipping at Starbucks, I received an inconspicuous present that I want to share with you.

This is what fifty-three looks like–beard probably six months away from eliminating any need for a collar or necktie.

I had just finished a refreshing, philosophical discussion with Star-buddy John about goodness, forgiveness, and consequences and was getting back to polishing a depressing blog post when an unsteady, elderly woman shuffled past my perch with a hot beverage. She must have given her cup a random squeeze because the lid popped off and hot whatever it was started spilling over her trembling hand. I love Starbucks, but if they make their lids any more flimsy, they may just as well go with Kleenex or phyllo dough. She looked like her car just crapped the bed at 2:00 a.m. in rural Wyoming (redundant?). Anyway, I did what all of you reading this would have done. I stood up, said, “Let me take that for you,” pressed the lid on, and carried the cup to her table. She thanked me, and I made a remark on those darned lids and went back to writing.

No, young lady and old lady . . . thank you!

As I sat there, though, my insides were calm and blessed. It felt like a gentle spirit breeze or a hug held for three extra seconds. Ah! In half-a-minute’s time, a young woman, maybe twenty-five, tapped me on the arm and handed me a gift card. “I saw what you did,” she said. “There’s $5 on this. We’re just not nice enough to each other in this world. Thank you.”

Hey, friends, this is not about me. I’m sitting guess where again this morning and thinking about the reason my soul knew healing after doing what all of us would have done: maybe we were built to look out for each other, so when we actually manage to do so, it feels like Eden–the place we were intended to be all along. Plenty of shade. Food enough for everybody. Kind faces everywhere you look.

Did the Loving Creator make us for grace and mercy? I hope so. I think so. That would mean there’s good hope for the world.

Love,
John

A Study of Justice

Posted on September 22, 2014 by John Coleman

I have to clean my room,

I’m saying, “Not fair!”

Even though I make the mess,

That’s neither here not there,

Because I’m talking about justice,

I’m going to make you aware,

When you’re five years old,

Well, it’s just not fair!

(“Not Fair” by Joe Scruggs from the CD Ants)

“Just not fair”: sometimes imagined, sometimes real. (Credit: Reji Jacob on Wikimedia Commons)

Wife Kathy’s been downsizing lately. Children’s books and CDs from when our own kids, Elena and Micah, were young are migrating toward grandson Cole, nine months old and already getting ears-full of songs and stories. He’s heard over and over “I Been Workin’ on the Railroad,” including the “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah” part, “Nessun Dorma,” and another tenor aria I can never remember. Pavarotti calms him down in the car. Soon he’ll be ready for the lessons and play of Rafi and Joe Scruggs, whose music Micah was singing (poor “Joshua Giraffe,” “stuck in a zoo with buffalo poo”) on Saturday as he helped his mother put in a new basement window and I considered justice.

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A little guy like Joshua. Micah’s singing about him was a blessing. (Credit: Chrumps on Wikimedia Commons)

The Gospel yesterday from Matthew was Jesus’ “Parable of the Householder Who Hired the Laborers.” Summary: the householder pays those who worked only one hour the same as those who toiled in the sun all day. As the children’s song repeats, “Not fair, not fair, not fair.” If I had busted my hump all day, the householder’s lapels would have been wrinkled and torn. I would have yanked his beard right out of his loving, generous, foolish, unfair head.

Some beard on Benedict of Nursia. If the houseowner had such a beard and paid me the same as people who worked an hour, he might have come out of the tussle with a Fu Manchu and not much else. (Credit: photograph by Eugenio Hansen, OFS, on Wikipedia)

In the parable, the householder obviously represents God, and the teaching is that God isn’t fair. God is loving. But I don’t intend to talk about God. The world is so full of beauty that I get verklempt occasionally, but its blood-ugliness has the same effect on me, too. God for me is above all Mystery. I have neither the nerve nor desire to explain or even speculate much about how God dwells in the here and now. God is first-string in my heart, but I’m letting God ride the bench for a thousand words or so today. All I want to do is think about justice (or as Joe Scruggs puts it, fairness).

I got in a fender-bender this morning. (Nobody hurt, both vehicles just fine. Thanks for asking.) I was merging into traffic, checked to be sure the coast was clear, and hit the accelerator. Sadly, the woman in front of me was carefully assessing the traffic—waiting for her embossed invitation to arrive—so I gave her a stout “good morning.” It took her a long time to pull to the berm, and when I looked in her window, she was crying, face in hands. She rolled down the back window, got her bearings, then rolled down the front. No, she didn’t hit her head. No, I hadn’t given her whiplash. She may change her mind about that tomorrow.

After we exchanged information, I numbly drove to Starbucks, where I’m licking this immediate wound, speculating on the rise in my premium, and tending a couple of other bumps and bruises. I really couldn’t see any damage to my truck, but her bumper, made of that wonderfully durable plastic that ripples if somebody in the backseat farts, sports a horizontal crack down the middle.

Ah, a dimple on the chrome to the left. A 1998 with over 200,000 miles on it. Think I’ll pass on repairs.

The morning’s gravity is pulling toward the blues. Poor John! Actually, poor driver in her seventies with an Eastern Bloc name sorely in need of a vowel or two and an unfair jolt of adrenaline to work off. I’ve got no worthy complaints against fairness. Although I’ve been something of a mess lately, that’s my own problem. I like to say that I’ve got a great life, but sometimes I suck at it.

Where fairness is concerned, I’m the defendant, not the plaintiff. The evidence against me is damning:

1.) I have four weeks of vacation each year, and I’m taking one day today. Two Xanax will soon have my jittery soul calmed down. I’m on my third free refill of deliciously bitter iced decaf. Nobody’s got a knife to my throat. I don’t live, in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “under the bomb.”

2.) When I head home, I’ll have to decide what not to have for lunch. The house is dry and warm or cool as necessary. Bills paid.

Too much clutter at 322 Shenley Drive, but never too many flowers.

3.) The perils I face are mostly my own doing. Too much debt. Health risks to be brought under control. All this, so far as I know, is on me.

4.) My family has come through tough times I’ve already chronicled to death. Saying more about the past here would be tiresome, but last evening is worth a comment. Kathy, Micah, and I took family dinner to Elena and Matt’s: sauerkraut and pork and cream of cucumber and avocado soup with pearl onions. We sat in their postage stamp back yard and talked as Micah pushed grandson Cole around in his play car. The soup was savory, garnished with cherry tomatoes, raw cucumber, and avocado. Nobody but Matt had any, but down to my last culinary bone, I didn’t care. I tasted the hint of cheyenne and cilantro, sipped red wine, and received the cool air and love around me. When rain blew in, I didn’t give a thousandth of a solitary damn. I stood where it was sheltered and breathed, by now shoveling in kraut and mashed potatoes. Soon, Cole needed a bath, which he entered joyfully and immediately gave his business a tug. Atta boy, just don’t be too much of an overachiever here. Dinner, holding grandson, rain, peace, and laughter. Mercy within mercy within mercy.

Cole playing Grrrrrr with Gramps. What did I do to deserve this love? Not fair.

5.) At 5:30 this morning, Kathy said, “You’re snoring.” I rolled this way and that for ten minutes, trying to comply, but finally was informed, “Your snoring is incessant!” It takes brains to say incessant before 6:00 a.m. What to do? I wanted to stay in bed with my wife and feel the healing breezes through the screens, but the rattling of my glottis was messing with her last hour of life. So I decided to remain and let myself get only to the edge of sleep. I don’t remember ever doing this before, but it’s what I wanted. This isn’t about me, but about Kathy. She deserves such love. Until just before 7:00, then, we lay together, me keeping vigil over myself and rising to consciousness at the first sound of sleep and wet head-flesh’s gargly duet. Just before she got up, I issued a last, faint caw. She touched my cheek and said, “I’ve got to get up.” She wasn’t mad. Where’s the justice?

Lovely Kathy’s approach to life: don’t hold a grudge; let’s get on board and get going!

6.) I emailed Kathy at work about my accident this morning. Her response landed an hour later: “Oh John Coleman, what am I gonna do with you? I might have to ground you from Starbucks. Glad you are ok. Bet little old lady gonna be sore tomorrow. Love you.” No annoyance, even though she has warned me about that stupid merge many times before. When the insurance premium goes up, Kathy will frown, shrug her shoulders, and kiss me.

My Starbucks? No, anything but my Starbucks!

There’s more, but the prosecution has gone on long enough. Fairness has a litany of complaints against me. My only statement is this: Justice or the world or the universe owes me nothing, so I’ll try to receive indulgent love and all family dinners in the rain with a humble and grateful heart.

Not fair that I live in such a house, but I’ll take it.

My Parental Gland

Posted on September 10, 2014 by John Coleman

One morning in mid March, my parental gland sounded its mysterious longing in my chest. Of course, there’s no evidence such a gland exists, but I’ve got one. Made visible it would resemble a translucent almond situated behind my sternum, right where you get the wind knocked out of you.

I was pray-meditating at 7:30 a.m., propped up in bed, wife Kathy sleeping next to me. The only sound in the house was twenty-two-year-old son Micah whirling around downstairs like Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil. (He could slow down his routine and still get to his painting job on time, but he makes coffee, finds clothes, throws a nutritionally hollow lunch into his knapsack, and puts on his coat in a barely-managed frenzy.) I listened and breathed. The front door creaked open and banged shut, and thud thud thud he went down the front steps; car door; engine; drove away, at a reasonable pace, thank God.

Micah smoking his e-cig after a hard day’s work. How can you not love a twenty-two year-old who lounges in onesie jam-jams and tiger slippers?

That’s when my parental gland fired, as the car’s whir became a sigh that became silence. Kathy slept. The neighborhood was reverent. Deep breaths embraced the longing in my chest. Longing. Or call it whatever. That contradiction, that lush tundra parents inhabit as we watch our children move into the distance. Pride blossoms against apprehension’s frost.

Frost on an orange flower–a father’s spirit watching his child drive away. (Credit: Image Source / Corbis)

Daughter walks from the car to the school building. Please. After you kiss your son’s forehead, he gets wheeled away for an appendectomy. Please. Daughter and son speed off with friends for some destination you’ll never find out about. Please. Each departure turns me, at least, into a beggar: God on high, hear my prayer.

Lesmiserables_1900_valjean_rescues_Marius

“God on high, hear my prayer.” Jean Valjean rescues Marius–“like the son he might have known.” (Les Miserables, Credit: Mead Schaeffer / Wikimedia Commons)

If only my parental gland had dissolved once daughter Elena and Micah reached legal drinking age. When they were teenagers I peeked between my fingers like a child as they stumbled out of sight into their respective barbed wire and razor blades: flirting with death, dancing with heroin. I’d figured on landing in a deep blue expanse of peace if they grew up and straightened out.

Both of my children are healthy and sane at the moment, but sadly, no blue expanse. Turns out my heart worries even when my head can’t name the threat. It’s that shimmering parental gland. Mine is more active than ever, gaining potency as the years call me to honesty. I love Elena and Micah so much it hurts sometimes, especially when they’re traveling alone, fading from view.

Someone’s daughter disappears. Someone’s parental gland sounds. (Credit: Hans Berggren / Johner Images / Corbis)

My conclusion: a father’s and a mother’s hurt and sorrow reside in the same dwelling with a love that makes us want to take off after our adult children, pick them up in our arms, and rock them to sleep. That’s what my gland does, anyway. I’m not kidding. I would gladly put Elena or Micah in my lap, rest their head against my shoulder, and listen for sleep’s slow, even breathing. Ah well. Pain and longing are in love’s fine print. Deal accepted.

Now Elena is married to Matt, and they’ve given us all Cole. Judging from what a mush bucket I am already, I’m thinking the parental gland working so abundantly these days will be promoted and given grandparental duties as well. The raise in compensation so far has more than covered the increased workload. Each time my grandson cries, I’m in that lush tundra. Please.

800px-Tundra_wetland_with_plants_reflected_in_water

I pray from this place each time my children leave. (Credit: John and Karen Hollingsworth / Wikimedia Commons)

That’s what happened today when Elena, Cole, and I met at Presque Isle for a walk. The wind was chilled by snow and icy Lake Erie, and Cole was plenty warm, but in no mood for the stroller. Half a mile in, we pulled off the path for a drink. The kid’s amazing. He managed to nurse and make those calming-down snivels infants do after a crying jag. His tank full, we headed back to the car, taking turns carrying him. For a couple minutes, as I faced him forward and held him close, I whispered Grandpa foolishness against his bald head and listed in a chant everybody who loves him. But then he started blubbering again, which told me that his appetite for affection is bottomless. No problem. My grandparental gland, unlike my pancreas, is invincible.

“Take me out of this stroller and tell me you love me! Right now!

When we got back to the parking lot, Elena changed Cole’s diaper, got him in his car seat, and we all kissed goodbye. I started my truck, but waited as they drove off. Please.

I thought about my favorite passage from Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha. The main character is in anguish as his son walks away into the bliss and suffering life holds for him. A sage speaks to the father:

Do you then really think that you have committed your follies in order to spare your son them? Can you then protect your son from Samsara? How? Through instruction, through prayers, through exhortation? My dear friend, have you forgotten that instructive story about Siddhartha, the Brahmin’s son, which you once told me here? Who protected Siddhartha the Samana from Samsara, from sin, greed and folly? Could his father’s piety, his teacher’s exhortations, his own knowledge, his own seeking, protect him? Which father, which teacher, could prevent him from living his own life, from soiling himself with life, from loading himself with sin, from swallowing the bitter drink himself, from finding his own path? Do you think, my dear friend, that anybody is spared this path? Perhaps your little son, because you would like to see him spared sorrow and pain and disillusionment? But if you were to die ten times for him, you would not alter his destiny in the slightest.

This is the hardest part of possessing my peculiar gland: as Elena, Micah, and Cole walk away from me, “finding their own path,” I wonder when my chest will finally crack open from wanting to spare them. But there is no sparing them—or forcing them.

They could toddle, sprint, or “walker” away from me. No matter. Joy and longing kiss.

Now, in my fifty-third year, I understand the covenant: a father’s and grandfather’s love breathes, honors the silence when the beloved is out of sight, and prays from a lush tundra.

—

Note: “My Parental Gland” originally appeared as a guest post this past March on a great blog, Kerry’s Winding Road.

Beheadings, Exploited Children, Uzis, Nudies, and the Hope of Garage Light

Posted on September 3, 2014 by John Coleman

A tame one from a Blue Mountain Brewery growler was just right for last night, Tuesday, September 2^nd, with its high dew point. Wife Kathy and daughter Elena picked it up for me when they were in Virginia for a baby shower. As son Micah and Kathy used power tools in the garage, I stood in front of the Kmart box fan in boxers—try to get that picture out of your head!—grateful that the neighbors can’t spot me when I’m in the kitchen. ABC’s David Muir anchored yet another day of withering news, and I sipped toward buzzdom, which was a wise course of action, considering the state of affairs.

George “Gabby” Hayes, an actor in old westerns (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

I should note that I really get up in the face of the evening news, my eyes twelve to eighteen inches from the screen. My jaw probably hangs open, too. Such a bizarre relationship we have, the news and I. Just when I decide to retreat from current events, take up residence in a media-free desert cave, and start to look like a Zen-Christian-hermit Gabby Hayes, another story grabs me by the beard. Check that: it’s not the story that takes hold of me, but the people. Maybe that’s why I’m nose to nose with what’s happening. I see faces and feel obligated to witness on their behalf, as if it’s my calling to stand with them in the only way I can: watch, don’t turn away.

Yesterday was heartbreaking. A brief recap:

ISIS militants followed through with their threat and hacked off journalist Steven J. Sotloff’s head. “I’m back, Obama,” the executioner said. Yeah, no kidding, tough guy. The victim was thirty-one. His mother begged for his release. I would have done the same. Worth a shot.

Kiddos just like these are forced to work the fields to support their families. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Refugee children in Syria have to work in the fields to support their families. Parents, many of them professionals, can’t work because kids are a cheaper pay-date. So they get up at the crack and fill bags of potatoes so full they can hardly lift them. We’re talking seven-, eight-year-olds. Babies! They have lovely, sweet faces that for some time now haven’t been in schoolrooms.

A nine-year-old girl lost control of an Uzi at a shooting range and shot her instructor in the head, killing him. The gun was too much for her, she said. The report went on to show other little kids under adult supervision firing big-ass moxie weapons.

Finally, photographs of naked celebrities are being hacked and made public. This, of course, is wrong as wrong can be. The surprise for me is how many people take nude pictures of themselves or let somebody else do so. Out of consideration for public safety, I would never be undressed around a camera or smartphone.

The best work for a child in a field . . . pretending to fly (Credit: Radius Images / Corbis)

These stories, a whiplash crash of barbaric and absurd, put me in a fog that the beer didn’t create: another beheading, babies the age of my church kiddos rushing to get potatoes into sacks to their overseer’s satisfaction, a girl who will have to live with malignant guilt forever, and nudies. The result was malaise and paralysis: a chunky guy in boxers with a nice beer in his hand, slack-face glowing in the television’s light. With a fat cigar, I would have been a poor man’s Winston Churchill. I stood there for the longest time, a blob of middle-age wishing there were a way to take those refugee children into my arms, tell them that they’re beloved, tuck them between clean sheets, and sit with them for breakfast before walking them to school. Children, damn it! I didn’t have any prayer in that moment other than sorrowful curses, weary four-letter words.

Of course, sad or pissed or ennui-drunk as you can be, there comes a point when continuing to stand around in your underwear is letting the %$&*@! with the knife win. I had done due diligence as a witness to my sisters’ and brothers’ realities, but was powerless to move on. Then, a whine rescued me.

All it takes is two people and a drawer, and you can find hope for the world.

Out in the garage, Kathy and Micah were running sanders over our kitchen cabinet doors, getting them ready for a fresh coat. The Coleman family kitchen has seen lots of action in the last thirteen years. Ah, if cabinetry could tell stories: daughter Elena’s rants and twilight escapes and slashes on the wrists; Micah’s howling girlfriend dramas and heroin and felony and house arrest; Kathy’s toil in nursing school and glad landing as a chemotherapy nurse; my own wrestling with anxiety and depression and hours of joyful, messy cooking. The kitchen was there for it all.

So the sanders’ whine took me to the back window, where I watched my wife and son working in the garage, the light spilling out over the silhouettes of sunflowers. During one tough stretch, they went months without speaking. Micah’s hands were perpetual fists, the veins in his forearms popping. Kathy and I just tried to make it through each day.

Love made visible an hour before dusk.

“Work is love made visible,” Khalil Gibran said. As I received the anointing of Kathy and Micah working away happily together and talking over the whine, joy sat down beside my malaise. No, my spirit wasn’t all better, but hope had taken paralysis in its arms.

I wasn’t moved by a woman and man sanding cabinet doors in a garage. My son had worked his painting job all day. He takes his responsibilities seriously and comes home tired. But he was out with his mom, not because he wanted to put shoulder to wheel for a couple more hours, but because he loves her. That was what I saw: love made visible.

When I went to bed, I kept watching in my mind Kathy and Micah in the garage under gentle light. I have a well in my chest where tears come from, and I could feel my wife and son’s love filling it with peace.

Dear Light, please comfort your people. (Credit: Sigurdas / Wikimedia Commons)

The older I get, the more flummoxed I am in the face of evil. If the world is always going to have rancor and brutality, maybe the best I can do is make sure that one tipsy man in boxers in one house in one neighborhood in one city will never—by God!—hold the knife or make children gather potatoes. That light from the garage, fragile, delicate as a candle flame: if I could just lift it up high enough for the world to see.

P. S. At lunch today Kathy called me. She was having a crazy, frustrating day, but she knew hearing my voice would make her feel better. That’s love for you. A glance at its light, a whisper from its lips, and the world is mysteriously fit for habitation again.

“Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs” Release This Week

Posted on August 17, 2014 by John Coleman

To My Dear Blogging Friends:

Well, it’s only taken eight years and countless drafts, but “Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs” will finally be available on Amazon sometime this week, followed by a Kindle version maybe a week later. I’m really in photographer and writer Mary Birdsong‘s debt for the nuanced cover shot of a butterfly and a couple of observations that helped focus my thoughts–and to wife Kathy for reading the manuscript probably thirty or forty times. A word about spending your hard-earned dollars: of course I want people to buy the book, but understand it won’t keep you on the edge of your seat. If you wouldn’t enjoy page after page of random thoughts a middle-aged man wants to share with his future grandchildren, then . . . well . . . buy “Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs” for somebody who would. (Insert smiley face here!) Peace and love, John

P.S. I admit the process of pushing this rock up the mountain has been consuming lately. It’s slowed down my blogging and reading/responding. Thanks for your patience. I look forward to being on the grid in the days ahead.

Diddy Wa Diddie and a Lovely Daughter: A Summer Rerun

Posted on June 20, 2014 by John Coleman

The key in question–honest!

(Note: the following post originally appeared in slightly different form on May 17, 2013, back when A Napper’s Companion had a dozen readers–give or take six. If you’ve already read this, forgive the clutter. If not, enjoy. Peace, John)

Yesterday. Weird. Wonderful. I had just finished praying, propped up in bed, when daughter Elena’s dog ringtone barked. 8:01 a.m. I had intended to set my Zen bell app for another fifteen minutes, but duty called. Elena (almost twenty-five) locked her keys in her house. Could I zip up and let her in with my key? Of course. I would be there in ten minutes.

“Don’t rush, Daddy,” she said. “My boss knows I’ll be a little late. I’ll be at [mother-in-law] Janine’s,” which is two-minute walk up the street. (As it happened, Janine couldn’t find Elena’s key either.)

Photo Credit: waferboard

So I dressed, fed the animals and, well, rushed, but it still took me twenty minutes to get there. I figured Elena would be on the porch pacing and drumming her fingers on the railing. Nope. She was inside sipping coffee, talking with Janine and cute-as-an-acre-of-daisies niece Shaylee, and so disgustingly not in a hurry that she immediately brought me to myself.

Shamatha—calm abiding. Habit energy’s anxious gravity eased up. I breathed in, breathed out.

“I walked up here, Daddy,” Elena said when we got into the car, “and said, ‘I’m going to have myself a cup of coffee.’”

Elena with Her Handmade Cupcake Piñata

I waited in the car as she let herself into the house, brought back the key, and headed to her car. In the three seconds it took her to get from my jalopy to her (and princely son-in-law Matt’s) Subaru wagon, joy settled inside me. Her ponytail bobbed and bounced; her flowing dress swayed. What a lovely daughter! She seemed in that instant like a five-year-old again—sweetness and light, giddy in the sunshine and wind.

I drove back home to pick up son Micah (twenty-one) and get him to a couple hour’s of community service yanking weeds and slinging peat moss. Along the way I pulled over on South Shore Drive to witness the sun coming through the spring trees on the boulevard.

Micah’s body clock has goofed itself into third-shift mode, so I woke him three hours after he’d gone to bed. In year’s past when he was in the midst of mighty struggles, he would have been a winey little witch, but he got up, ate a bowl of Raisin Bran, hopped in the car, lit a cigarette, and joked with me till I dropped him off. “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!” Boy is becoming a man.

Before driving off, I texted chemo-nurse-wife Kathy, who had told me she expected a crazy day at work. Every now and then I send her what we call a Pocket Note, a taste of gladness she can read over lunch. “Kathy Coleman gets tired and is very busy,” I wrote, “but she genuinely cares about her patients. And that’s wonderful.” As I hit send, I heard the voice of Jack Nicholson in my head: “Well, aren’t you the little ray of sunshine.”

Jack Nicholson (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

On my way to the church, I plugged my snotty iPhone into the car speakers and listened to Leon Redbone’s rousing version of “Diddy Wa Diddie” on You Tube. (Yes, I know about the song’s double entendre, but don’t care. Want a song that’ll make you want to laugh and dance? Have a go.) It was so good I listened to it twice.

And the day went on like this, blessings lining up on the road before me. Micah’s last-minute therapy appointment forced me to abbreviate my siesta, but even this alteration to my plans didn’t take the shine off the afternoon.

While my son unpacked the meaning of life, I perched two minutes east on West 26^th Street on Brick House Coffee Bar’s porch, nursed an iced latte, and did some church work—what a gift to have a flexible schedule and technology that lets me get work done literally anywhere!

I could go on, but you get the idea. “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” That’s how John Lennon would have described yesterday. If Elena hadn’t locked herself out, the day might not have glowed as it did.

Thanks, my dear, for inspiring Thursday, May 16, 2013, to be full of gentle, mindful sanity!

By the driveway

Coming Soon: Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs

Posted on June 12, 2014 by John Coleman

Dear Friends,

I want to share with you the cover of my book, Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs, which, if all goes well, should be released in a month, maybe sooner.

Front cover and spine with a lovely photograph entitled “Devotion” by Mary G. Birdsong

Mary was patient and generous with me in trying to get the photograph just right, and I’m grateful for her talent and spirit. She is also, by the way, a talented writer and editor who has steered me in the right direction more than once. Thanks, Mary!

And now for the back cover:

A rather unconventional back cover, but since I’m the publisher, I wrote what I thought best. The photograph of Cole Martin Thompson was taken by my daughter Elena Thompson. I’ll sneak that credit in on the copyright page.

And I am the publisher. The imprint is Shamatha House, but, of course, that’s me. I wrote in a previous post about how I came to the decision to get Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs (formerly entitled Darwin’s Beetle and before that Oh! Be Joyful) into print via Create Space. In short, here’s the deal: I write a lot, not unlike an old guy making wooden chairs in his workshop. After a long struggle to get this baby published conventionally, I thought, “I just want to get my work in front of people who might appreciate it”–in the same way the old carpenter would take a few bucks for his chairs so that they can live out their purpose.

When Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs is released, I’ll make a big fuss. The paperback will be available on Amazon first, then an inexpensive Kindle version will quickly follow. I’ll keep you posted about my success in getting the book into bookstores. I’m not quite settled on the pricing yet, but trust me, it will be affordable.

That’s enough for now. Peace and love,

John

A Sad Bird Looked Back at Mary

Posted on March 8, 2014 by John Coleman

Mary Birdsong, my photographer/writer friend, has a fierce love for . . . well . . . birds. She, Erie Times-News features writer Jennie Geisler, and I met Friday morning at Starbucks and covered a lot of territory: skunks, writing (of course), the assault on laws protecting endangered species, birds, tuna casserole, and more.

Mary, Jennie, and I all made tuna casserole recently. A harmonic comfort food convergence during a long winter? This one is Mary’s. (Credit: Mary Birdsong)

We laughed a lot, but Mary was swimming upstream. In recent days she’d rescued an injured red-necked grebe, took all the right steps to give it a chance at survival, and returned it to the water. When she checked on it the next day, it was floating. Damn.

This red-necked grebe looked good, but didn’t make it. Watch out for that beak! (Credit: Mary Birdsong)

As Mary talked, I remembered the story of a man who traveled to Calcutta to volunteer with Mother Teresa. He presented himself to the future saint, who took him out to the streets, where they came upon a destitute man curled up on the ground. She asked the new volunteer to pick up the man. As he did so, he found that the man had lain so long in the same position that his skin was stuck to the pavement. As the volunteer held the dying man, Mother Theresa said, “The body of Christ.”

Terrible—and lovely! The story is redemptive only because of the denouement: the man, who left skin behind, died surrounded by love and care. Not alone. Not forgotten.

“You’re the Mother Theresa of birds,” I told Mary. That’s much of what Teresa of Calcutta did. She and her sisters gave the forgotten gentle deaths.

I didn’t blame Mary for being down. Her last three rescues didn’t make it: the grebe, a herring gull, and a turkey vulture, whose story she shared on her blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Sitting on the ground, unable to fly, was a young Turkey Vulture, with some white down still visible on its back and sides. It was huddled at the base of a tree, obviously injured and barely moving around. I called Tamarack Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center, they agreed to take it and with their help I hatched a plan for catching it. Anne Desarro, a park naturalist generously agreed to help and soon arrived with gloves and tarps for securing the bird. I had a box in the back of my truck. After several attempts, we eventually cornered the bird and I wrapped it in the tarp. It calmed down in my arms. It felt much lighter than anticipated. In the process of the catch we both discovered that its injuries were far worse than we first thought; most of its right wing was missing. We both knew that Tamarack would probably have to euthanize it due to the severity of its injuries, but we agreed that I should still take it.

A turkey vulture, soon to be granted a peaceful end. (Credit: Mary Birdsong)

We put it in the ready box, secured the lid and I headed out for Tamarack. When I arrived, the rehabber on duty agreed when I explained the injuries. They deftly and gently prepared the bird for its last.

The rehabber asked if I wanted to stay. I learned many years ago that I should always stay at moments like this. I had a cat named Buster who was one of my greatest delights. He developed cancer and at the tender age of three needed to be put down. Thinking that I could not bear it, I elected to not be in the room with him when they injected that shot. I still regret that decision and will always feel that I abandoned him at his most vulnerable moment. And I learned that love is not selfish.

I said yes and reached out, putting my hand on the vulture’s chest. It was breathing hard. Slowly, though, it became more shallow. Eventually its chest stopped moving. The room was quiet and filled with respect for such a magnificent bird that did not get to live very long. Eventually, the rehabber said to an intern, “you can let go of its legs now.”

As I re-read Mary’s account, I’m alone at home on Saturday. The only sounds here are a warm hiss and crack from the fireplace and Watson making old dog smacking noises with his mouth. I read again: “They deftly and gently prepared the bird for its last.” “My hand on the vulture’s chest.” “Love is not selfish.”

Am I morose for receiving these words as a gift? In my particular vocation I see lots of lasts, so when a mindful, loving, gentle death reveals itself, I close my eyes, breathe in and breathe out. How many earthly endings look like a crushed beer can by a dusty curb? This vulture died with a reverent sister blessing its chest. My joy is gray, but it’s joy all the same.

Joy can be gray. Presque Isle on Lake Erie. (Credit: Mary Birdsong)

Since coffee yesterday, a detail about that red-necked grebe has kept returning. Mary found the bird on a driveway late at night. Who knows why it was there? She said birds sometimes mistake concrete for water. She also said that a grebe can poke out your eye with one swift stab, which is why she approached it from behind. As she drew close, the bird looked back at her—no strength for defense.

The grebe looked at Mary.

On a winter night, a wounded grebe glanced over its wing at Mary. The image won’t leave my grateful imagination alone. Maybe it’s just me, but world news lands heavily on my heart. (I understand that we—the United States—have flown fighter jets to Ukraine to say hello to Putin. Sigh.) The grebe died, but that’s not the point.

All the birds Mary tries to help can end up floating or put down, but each one is still saved. When Mary and her fellow birders tend the healthy and rescue the languishing, they lay a tender hand on creation’s shoulder. This isn’t poetry! When the grebe looked at Mary and she looked back, the planet saw and whispered, “Thank you, bird. Bless you, sister.” I’m sure of it.

Grateful for a dying grebe and a woman connecting? A vast planet? Absolutely! (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A Letter for My Grandson’s Memory Book

Posted on March 1, 2014 by John Coleman

Dear Cole:

Three times today, tears have caught in my throat. They came in bed this morning while your grandmother was still asleep. A cry sat in my chest—the ghost of old grief? I remembered Kahlil Gibran’s words: “Joy and sorrow are inseparable . . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

Some days are just this way, Cole, but they pass.

Tears came again in the truck as I listened to Paul Simon‘s “Father and Daughter.” When your mom and dad got married, your mom and I danced to this song. Before that day, October 2, 2010, I worried that the father/daughter wedding reception dance would be awkward, but those were three of the happiest minutes of my life. Everybody else in the hall disappeared; it was just me and Elena. We talked, I don’t remember about what. I rested my lips on her head. At the bridge, we sasheyed. We worked our big old hips, kiddo. Anyway, as I drove along, Simon sang and strummed, and I remembered and blinked back water.

A picture of flowers? Actually, my soul while dancing with your mother.

And a few minutes ago tears accompanied my Starbucks coffee. I was listening to another Paul Simon tune, “You’re the One” and thought of you:

May twelve angels guard you

While you sleep.

Maybe that’s a waste of angels, I don’t know

I’d do anything to keep you safe

From the danger that surrounds us

There’s no particular danger surrounding either of us, but your face came to mind, and that’s generally enough to get me verklempt.

You cry a lot these days, Master Trouble Trunks. People who love you are always trying to figure out why. Hungry? Tired? Where’s Mommy? Irritated bum? A stubborn little rectum rocket? Sometimes I bet you just miss being inside your mom, where the gentle universe was shaped like your body.

When the gentle universe was shaped like your body.

But I don’t know. Something’s going on inside me; past tears I neglected could be offering me another chance to honor them. You’ll have days like this, too, when you’re either over the moon or in the lonesome valley (or both!) and haven’t a clue why. Maybe there are human equivalents to earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes. Anyway, since I can’t understand myself, don’t plan on me ever explaining the wonderful, goofy person you’re sure to become. I say that in love.

You can bet your life on this, though: for as long as I can, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing right now: loving you with a love that roars silently, that looks into your eyes and sees what blessings are swirling around in your presently gaseous self, that hopes you’ll see in my baggy eyes your birthright: every soul deserves to be held in a grandfather’s agape. Not every soul is so fortunate, and if I’m right about your other grandfather, boy-oh-boy, are you ever in for it.

Look at your mother’s and uncle’s dreamy faces. That’s because of you, you know.

Someday you’ll wonder what your first months of life were like. On one of those crappy-for-no-good-reason days of adulthood, you’ll think, “What the hell’s up with me? Did someone do me wrong? Did one of my relatives keep pinching me? Did a mystery person holding me whisper, “Everybody fusses over you, how cute you are, but listen here: you’re a hideous little dope”? No, no, and no. You’ve had more love directed at you in three months than lots of people get in a lifetime. No kidding!

I actually took this one when you, your mom, and I had lunch one day. You were a happy little man.

Every single day, your mother sits you somewhere comfy, says something like, “Who’s Mommy’s lil bootie bootie boo? Is he going to smile for Mommy today?” then snaps five or six hundred pictures. At mid-morning, a few of the best ones hit the inboxes of people who love you. When your dad gets home, he makes you laugh and squeal. Both of your parents are beyond thoughtful and patient. And pretty much wherever you go, people crowd around you and get remarkably weird. Example: yesterday after lunch your mother and I sang “I Been Working on the Railroad” to you, even harmonizing on “strumming on the old banjo.” The last stanza’s a bummer, so we skipped it.

When you read this for yourself, hear a message from before your memory got started: Your grandpa prays on March 1, 2014, that the crazy, silly love surrounding you now will reside in you after your hair has come and gone, and that it will rise on those days when you are a stranger to yourself and remind you of my eyes, always finding the sacred Cole.

Someday you’ll want to hide your goodness from me. Go ahead and try. I’ll see it anyway.

Love,

Grandpa John

Micro-Post: The World Is Pulling My Leg

Posted on February 22, 2014 by John Coleman

At the Millcreek Mall, Micah and I pass the Food Court and a pet store on the way to the E-cig kiosk. Smells: from Subway to General Tso’s chicken to pizza to a chemical cleaner that’s no match for pet poo.

A couple of kids play with a pup–maybe a Weimaraner, not sure–through the glass. The transaction seems friendly. The kids aren’t taunting; the dog’s having fun, spinning, reaching its paws toward them.

As I wait for Micah to pick up his cappuccino-flavored liquid tobacco, I begin to feel as though I’m from another world. Earth is pulling my leg.

In front of me is an establishment devoted mostly to eyebrows and eyelashes.

“Oh,” I think, “you can get some kind of fabric woven into your eyebrows if you want them darker or you can make a weak mustache sturdy with facial threading.” But an eye-hair business? In this world, gracious, what you can buy!

After Micah pays, we head back the way we came. “Can you believe it,” I say, “a place where all they do is weave fake hair into your eyebrows and grow your lashes?”

“Uh, Dad,” Micah says, “I think with threading they roll thread over your hair to pull it out.”

Ah. Duly noted.

Back by the pet store, the kids are gone. The dog is lying in its cage–looking for more kids?

In this world, animals that we consider friends are for sale. Dozens here alone, like sofas or flat screen televisions.

We sell what can love, fear, even save. And we micro-manage our eyebrows.

Dear World, please stop fooling around. Some of these jokes make me tired and sad.

A Napper's Companion

Tag Archives: Love

Micro-Post: A Birthday Postcard to Loved Ones

A Study of Justice

My Parental Gland

Beheadings, Exploited Children, Uzis, Nudies, and the Hope of Garage Light

“Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs” Release This Week

Diddy Wa Diddie and a Lovely Daughter: A Summer Rerun

Coming Soon: Your Grandmother Raised Monarchs

A Sad Bird Looked Back at Mary

A Letter for My Grandson’s Memory Book

Micro-Post: The World Is Pulling My Leg

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