Belated Veterans' Day

My Grandfather

            So I know I’m a day late to be posting about Veterans’ Day, but I didn’t have much time yesterday.

            Veterans’ Day is a bit of an odd holiday in our family. My grandfather on my dad’s side was in the army as a paratrooper. While he was at war, my grandmother was pregnant with my father. Unfortunately he got spinal meningitis before my dad was ever born. For those who aren’t familiar with the disease, it made him process thoughts on a very elementary level. Consequently his mother was the only person allowed to see him while he was hospitalized. Not his wife or his child.

            In fact, we didn’t even know he was alive until we got a call when I was in high school letting us know that he had passed away. It’s an awfully sad story.

            Fortunately the sad story has a truly amazing story that has resulted. My dad grew up without a father. I don’t know what that would be like, but I have to imagine it’s incredibly difficult. Despite his upbringing, my father has become one of the most incredible fathers I have ever had the privilege of meeting. Without any personal frame of reference, he has been the guiding force in my life and the strength that has kept me grounded during my most difficult times.

            Here’s to you, dad. Thank you for always being the for me. Thank you for being the best father I could ever imagine. Thank you for everything you have done for me. I can’t imagine life without you and will never be able to thank you enough.

Family Friendships

            So clearly I didn’t get around to posting earlier in the day. It’s after midnight but we will just call this my Friday post. I’m done with finals but I am now visiting my sister at Auburn before taking a trip out to Colorado during my one-week break.

            My sister and I are very different people. She’s an extreme extrovert has seen more friends in the past 24 hours than I could ever hope to know. I’m much more of an introvert as is probably fairly evident. We both tend to have gifts that are quite different than the other’s talents and interests.

            It’s been interesting to watch our relationship change over the past few years. We used to struggle communicating, and we had difficulty getting along many times, but as we’ve both gone off to college we have really grown to be better friends than we have to this point in our lives.

            I’m spending the next few nights with her here in Auburn, and getting to see life through her eyes. At least for one night, it’s been incredibly fun. I’ll keep tonight’s post short because it’s so late, but as I’m settling down, I feel incredibly lucky to be spending time with my sister, one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met and one of the people I trust most in this world.

            Here’s to you, Leslie. You’re the best. Love you.

World Series and Slow Pitch Softball

          As most people know the World Series is going to game seven tomorrow night. I’m actually writing while watching the game, and it got me thinking about how much I miss the game. I played from the time I could walk until this past May when my collegiate career ended. My first word actually was ball. I still carry a baseball in my backpack to class. I can’t help it; it’s been one of the things I love most for as long as I can remember.

            Now that I’ve stopped however, I have more of a love/hate relationship with the game. I can’t stop thinking about how much fun I’ve had over the years, but it’s hard to watch baseball on TV sometimes, much less relive my own experiences playing. Giving up something you love so much is incredibly difficult.

            A common saying I heard circulating the sport is that “sooner or later everyone plays his last game.” Like most sayings, this one has an entirely different feel from the other side. My senior season began with a return to Nashville to play Vanderbilt in our opening game of the season and ended with my last Ivy League start, a game that I actually pitched on a broken toe. Both are wonderful memories.

            As difficult as leaving baseball is though, it comes with several true blessings. One of which is that I am now playing slow-pitch softball with my dad. We actually played last night and run-ruled a team 15-1 in four innings. Pretty fun for the first time I’ve ever had the privilege of playing on a team with my dad.

             I guess it’s just one more transition I’m making in my life. Changing cities, changing schools, getting a job, moving out, why not start playing sports with my dad again? The loss may sting for months or even years, but for the rest of my life, I’ll be able to look back on playing softball with my dad and know it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. I have my memories from baseball. Now it’s time to make some new ones.

            Here’s to sports, family, and lifelong memories.

Aging and The Family Tree

            For some reason the idea of aging has never really bothered me. My mom says I’ve been forty since I was five, so maybe it will start to bother me then. Earlier today, however, I had an experience that really hit home.

            My dad’s mother came to visit this afternoon and brought some old family pictures that she wanted my mom to scan and make copies. Having the capability to see several generations of your family in a few photos immediately in front of you can really make you feel small. I had heard about a few of the people, but for the most part, I was looking at complete strangers.

            After seeing these pictures I went to my mother and discovered that she had pictures of her side of the family as well, and hers were significantly older than my paternal grandmother’s. In a matter of seconds I could literally trace the majority of my family tree since the invention of the photograph.

            So many of my relatives already gone, yet they were sitting right in front of me. It shook me to the core. As outdated as the people appeared, the pictures were in pristine condition.

Great Grandmother - 1927

            Hopefully later rather than sooner I will be in those photographs, or three-dimensional digital imagery, whatever people invent next. These pictures were a bridge through time, and somewhere down the road, a picture may be all that’s left of me as well. It’s an uncomfortable thought for anyone, but it’s not without its own silver lining. In the midst of all the turmoil life throws our way, we are increasingly capable of documenting ourselves, whether it’s through pictures, books, art, or the internet. My ancestors left me a 5x7, why don’t I do my part? Why don’t I search for that way to endure, to transcend time? Maybe it’s through writing, and maybe it’s not, but I will keep searching.

            Here’s to time, the single force humans may never overcome, but our efforts are filled with beauty.

Mother's Family

Father's Family

Family, Friends, and What's Important

Like most people, I struggle with loneliness. I’ve never been an extreme extrovert, though I spent most of my time at college with lots of people around me. Since I have come home from Brown, however, loneliness is an emotion that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. I went from having a huge number of people immediately at hand to having none.

            I had a long talk with my parents about loneliness last night after dinner. The only way I knew how to vocalize my struggles was in three tiers. Most immediately, I am no longer living with my family. Instead of a walk down the hall, I have a thirty-minute drive when I want to see them. Next I have my friends, most of whom have left town for work or grad school. Though I spent college surrounded by people, my high school experience was significantly less social. It would be easy to blame it all on other people or internalize it and absorb the fault myself, but like most things in life the truth is somewhere in the middle. As a result, I have only a scattered few friends left in town and not much time to see them. The one that I’m struggling with most, though, is losing my characters. When all else has failed me in the past, I drew, I painted, and I wrote. I got to know and love my characters, and now that I am in grad school and working, they have been a necessary sacrifice. It’s hard to swallow, but it is the reality of my situation.

My father, based on Facebook profile pictures

            It wasn’t until last night that I realized my parents had been leading me to the solution for the past couple months. My father goes through phases in which he adopts different sayings. Some are ridiculous and you can’t wait for them to pass (currently he can’t get over saying, “Wheels Up” before holding out his fist for a pound). That being said, my dad is an incredibly bright man, and most of his sayings are very wise. One of his recent sayings has been, “When it’s important enough to you, you will find time to make it happen.” I never really put much thought into the saying until recently.

When my mother suggested that I start keeping a blog, I was fairly skeptical. I’m not a techie, I didn’t know much about blogging, and I’ve never written much besides fiction. As anybody who knows me would tell you, I’m a bit of an art purist. Abstract art makes my skin crawl and archetype plots bore me to tears (sorry, Stephen King). Neither is bad, the message simply is lost on me. Consequently, I needed more than a little convincing before typing out my first post.

While my dad is fairly left-brained, my mother is the opposite. Only after talking to them last night did I realize I needed to combine their logic to find my solution. My dad was right; I needed to make time, I just didn’t know how to balance grad school, work, and writing. My mom made the solution accessible and introduced me to a new art form in blogging that is surprisingly cathartic and caters to my time restraints. Instead of Elizabeth from my first Sunday Stories post (which you should read if you haven’t yet, and let me know what you think), I’m exploring myself. After all, fiction characters are really just a projection of their author. I’m just being a little more explicit.

            So here’s to family. Here’s to friends. And here’s to figuring out what’s important and making time.