Sitting in my home office, listening to the intermittent chirps of hidden birds and the occasional growl of passing traffic, it's clear that this Sunday morning is vastly different than last Sunday morning. My little sister, Michelle, finally found the right guy a few years back. Last March, in a hasty ceremony done right before the world locked down, she married him. Last week, in a beautiful ceremony done before a small collection of close friends and family, she married him right. That's the broad stroke of it; here are the details… Michelle is the baby of the family, my only sister, and a wonderful human being. She grew up with all of us here in Utah, but now lives in Portland. Originally, she was going to marry her fiancé, Jeremy, on my birthday back in April of 2020. As we all know, having a wedding during the early days of the pandemic were a no-no, so she had to postpone the celebration for over a year. The plus side to this was that, by waiting until June of 2021, all of her family was able to get the vaccine and travel in (presumed, comparative) safety. I'm really glad that it worked out the way it did, because if she'd tried to do it in, say, October, I don't know if I'd have been able to attend. Anyway, the trip was short and sweet: Gayle and I flew out to Oregon with my immediate family (my older brother and his girlfriend, my younger brother and his wife, and my parents) on Saturday. We ate a delicious lunch at a barbeque place, which was a bit strange for me and Gayle: We haven't dined in any restaurant in over a year. Fortunately, Portland was still taking the pandemic seriously, so the restaurant was not crowded, there were plenty of spaces between tables, and the servers all wore masks. That helped calm my covid-nerves, albeit only a little. (The issue here is pretty complicated, so I'm not going to go into why I felt--and still feel--that way.) After eating, we piled into the two not-at-all-what-we-ordered rental vehicles (my dad had to drive an eye-wateringly blue pickup truck, while my brother drove a clown-car compact called a Chevy Spark), dropped off our things at a hotel, and then met up with the purpose of our trip. We got to see Michelle and Jeremy's beautiful home--one that had been built about a century ago--and enjoy the rich verdure of Portland. We left Utah when it was broiling in the mid-nineties; we never peaked over seventy degrees while in Oregon, which meant that the evening was cool and pleasant. We met Jeremy's family--brother, sister-in-law, and parents--and enjoyed a pizza dinner with my aunt from New York, too. Lyra, Michelle's enormous bundle of dog energy, frolicked joyfully in the park. We spent an enjoyable evening at Michelle's house, playing games, eating smores, and choking on smoke from the firepit in their backyard. It did strike me as odd that I was indoors, masks off, and acting as if all was right in the world while knowing that things weren't as picturesque as they felt. Fortunately, my oldest son--the one with a severe heart condition that put him at high risk with covid--had just received his second dose of the vaccine the day before. Though he wasn't there with us, it made me feel better to know that he would soon be safe enough to engage in activities like these again. Sunday morning arrived, and with it the many differences between that day and this. We left our Comfort Inn and headed to the New Deal Café where we had a delicious and filling breakfast. We ate outside while the typically temperamental Portland weather teased and threatened us with rain. Fortunately, the wet held off while we ate. The next stop was Powell's Bookstore in the heart of Portland. Those who know me well know that a bookstore of Powell's size and stature is more exciting and enjoyable for me than going to a theme park. Because of covid restrictions, we had to queue outside for a few minutes until we were allowed into the store. It was a magical place, I'm not going to lie. I immediately set out to find their literature criticism section where I looked at all of their Shakespeare-related offerings. They had one entire section dedicated to his plays and another to criticisms, history, and contemporary thought on the Bard. Incredible. I also wandered through the comics, roleplaying games, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and history sections, drinking in the ambiance and reveling in the sheer quantity of book nerdery going on about me. I ended up buying some books that I will get next Sunday, as they are the Father's Day presents my children will give me. I also bought a couple of books that I gave to the newlyweds (who were also alreadyweds, but whatever) and an annotated collection of H.P. Lovecraft's works. Once they pulled me (an hour earlier than anticipated, I might add) from Powell's, we hit the road again, striking out toward the vineyard where the wedding would be held later that day. The drive was pleasant--I read from my book and enjoyed the scenery--and, soon enough, we had arrived at Youngberg Hill. We settled into our rooms, with Gayle immediately snuggling into a nap, and then passed the afternoon with gentle conversation. My aunt and older brother did a wine tasting while looking out over the beautiful countryside; my younger brother and dad and I enjoyed the company. As five o'clock prowled closer, we all got ready. Gayle put on the wig composed of her own hair and the resplendent blue dress she had made for the occasion. I wore a tie. Because the bride and groom are Jewish and having a Jewish wedding, I also put on one of the provided kippah (which I always called a yarmulke) which I wore throughout the night. About ten minutes before the beginning of the ceremony, the Oregonian weather kicked in. The rain came down in fits and starts at first, so we went ahead and gathered on the folding chairs outside. The rabbi who officiated performed a beautiful ceremony…only for the rain to really come down just as the two were declared officially married. As one, we scrambled to bring the ceremony inside the nearby pavilion, where the two recited vows to each other, I read a poem by Khalil Gibran--per Michelle's request--and we all relished the beauty of what was happening. Once the glass was broken beneath Jeremy's foot, the couple went out for some beautiful pictures. The rain had--predictably--stopped during the ceremony, but the upshot was, a beautiful rainbow grew out of the gray skies, allowing for some really remarkable wedding photos. After the pictures were done, we went into the pavilion again to enjoy the meal, the speeches about the lovely couple, and socializing with others. I'm not a particularly extroverted person. In fact, I don't really like parties or social gatherings, especially with people that I don't know. I'm much like Mr. Darcy in that way… Still, it was, for the most part, a wonderful dining experience, getting to know Jeremy's family and friends a bit. Once the meal was out of the way, a dance was had, and then the party really started. Michelle and her friends liquored up very well, frolicked for a good few hours, and then at last said good night. It was an exhausting but fulfilling day, and I only got choked up, like, twice. It was a memorable, wonderful experience. We spent the night in the Youngberg Hill's mansion, enjoyed a delicious breakfast there, and then set off for the airport. The flight home was even less eventful than the flight there. I read more of my book, dozed, and enjoyed the ginger ale (the only reason to fly). Home from the trip, we stopped at Gayle's parents' house, where the boys were being tended. We spent the evening with them, trying (and failing) to get our seven-year-old's tooth out of his face. We then went home to an empty house. The next morning--far earlier than I would normally want--we had an appointment for Gayle's radiation therapy. She also got a hormone-suppression shot, which was painful for her. That Tuesday afternoon, we went up to Salt Lake City, dressed up in Gayle's costumes as Mr. and Mrs. Darcy for afternoon tea at the Grand American Hotel. (This was a long-anticipated experience, one that I had set up for Gayle's big Christmas present.) I've never been to the Grand American, and so I made the mistake of prowling through the parking garage, trying to find the best place to park. I ended up putting us on the farthest-from-our-destination spot possible. Still, we arrived with enough time to get to the Lobby Lounge and begin a ninety minute experience. I can still almost taste that delicious tea…wow. It was really good. Plus the food was delightful. We took some pictures there at the hotel, then went to the Red Butte Gardens nearby, where we continued to cosplay as Regency-era aristocracy. We bumped into some tourists from Philadelphia who wanted our pictures. It was fun to make people smile with Gayle's costumes again. It's…been a while since we could do that.
Originally, we were going to stay the night at Anniversary Inn, but a mix-up in reservations put us back on the road home. We went to the fine-dining restaurant attached to Evermore Park, Vanders Keep, and had another fantastic meal. It really was delicious, and the ambiance was a lot of fun. If you're interested in that sort of thing, I'd really recommend Vanders Keep restaurant. It's a bit more expensive than I normally do, but it's worth going at least once. In our case, I imagine that it'll become part of Gayle's birthday celebrations for as long as the restaurant exists. Anyway, all of this is to say that today is a quiet Sunday at home, made remarkable only by the fact that it's the last time that we're planning on having sacrament meeting in our own domicile. Next Sunday will be (we're assuming) the first time that we return to a church meeting since March 2020. I have a lot of complicated feelings that I'll try to process over the next week as that approaches, but right now, I'm simply trying to appreciate just how different this week is from last week. Thinking about Michelle's smiles and how happy we were out in Oregon still fills me with a fuzzy sense of completeness and happiness. I'm not one who believes that we can only understand things through opposites, but I do think that contrasts can be illuminating. And I can't think of a way to pass the day that's more different from now than what we had then. It was a different kind of Sunday, but one that I hope will live in my memories for a long time to come. My grandmother died at the end of January. I haven't written about it because I've had a lot of conflicting feelings about it. It was one of those She's been suffering and it was her time kinds of deaths, and I don't think that's wrong. She was in her nineties and had been slipping away from us pretty steadily over the past few years.
My grandma gave a lot to me, especially in my early years. I learned piano at her side, I mowed her lawn for a summer or two, and I went up to her house every month to play with cousins and listen to some Bible stories. She was generous and loving and kind--as well as happy and scolding and accepting and impatient. She was, in other words, a person, and a wonderful one at that. When I got word that she was in her final days, I had just stepped off of the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride at Universal Studios Hollywood, which caused more than a passing conflict of emotions. I had to kind of put the news out of my mind, as there wasn't a lot that I could do at the moment and there wasn't really much news at all…just that she'd fallen asleep and was no longer waking up. It took a bit of time for her to finally pass, which was late on Wednesday, 15 January. Earlier that week, despite the logistical problems of the day, my wife, children and I went to the care center to say goodbye. She didn't know that we were there--or, if she did, we had no way of knowing--and for my youngest, he hadn't any real memories of her save the declining woman in a wheelchair that he'd visited with his own grandmother on occasion. While we stood there, looking at her shriveled form, I pointed out that she was a lucky lady, as she'd been able to raise not only her kids, but to see her grandchildren (me) and her great-grandchildren (them). My oldest, who has a massive heart condition, said softly, "I probably won't be that lucky." That's when my heart cracked and I was unable to stop the tears that I'd stoppered while in the room. We said our goodbyes, dried our eyes, and left. We never saw her alive again. Part of what made me struggle so much with the death of my grandmother is embarrassingly selfish, a part that I'm loathe to put into words: I was, when it became clear that she was about to die, more upset that her funeral would prevent me from going to a writing retreat I'd had planned for months than because my grandmother was gone. I can rationalize some of this with the understanding that I have a few coping mechanisms that help keep me going, and attending a writing retreat is one of them. Mental health and self-care and all that. But it was a great frustration that I felt, as it were, emotionally blocked about processing Grandma's death because I was too inwardly preoccupied. Thankfully, we were able to reschedule the retreat so that my brother and I could come along--and, as it turned out, one of my fellow writers' grandmother died the day of the funeral, which meant the reschedule truly was for the best--but I still can't shake the feelings of selfishness and frustration at myself that I harbored during those days. The fact that it's now the ninth of February and I'm finally writing about this says a lot, I think, about how I felt. When the funeral came, it was the bittersweet experience of saying goodbye and nurturing the connections of the still-living, the quasi-reunion around a casket that is the paradox of death. I was happy to see my sister, who lives in Portland, as well as cousins whom I haven't seen in years. During the service, my dad spoke about his mother, playing some of the music that she loved to play on her piano--the soundtrack of my memories of her--and he cried. That was hard for me to see, not because I have a problem with seeing people cry, but because Dad doesn't normally get that emotional. He's a steady guy--marching onward resolutely and with a natural aplomb that I envy. I wept when I heard his tender words, and I listened to the music that he played for us--the intricate guitarwork that he's so well-known for, the gift that his mother gave him and he, in turn, gave to me--and I felt the reality of loss and the hope of living come over me. My contribution was a closing prayer, which I ended by quoting William Shakespeare, asking God to send "flights of angels to sing [her] to [her] rest". We all take solace in different things, I suppose, and I could think of no other way of honoring my grandmother than to share what matters so much to me in one last commemoration of her. The fog-drenched day made our trip to the cemetery more unsettling than is normal--I'm not a superstitious guy, but fog is an uncomfortable thing--and the graveside service was cold, though sweet. As a pallbearer, I got to carry my grandmother's remains to their final resting place. That is one of the great honors of being in a family, and I'm happy that I could help. After the graveside service was over, we returned to the church building for a luncheon put on by my grandmother's old friends and ward members. As we passed her home--sold over a year ago and no longer "Grandma D's house"--the sun broke through the fog enough to let a brilliant sunshine coat the road. That evening, I got to have dinner with my sister, her fiancé, and the rest of my brothers and sisters-in-law. It was another indication of God's goodness, I think, that we could take that time to be together--to use the sadness of confronting the inevitable to grow closer together. This may sound strange, but I've been thinking about Grandma almost every time I've sat down to play the drums. I bought an electronic drum set the week of the funeral; it had arrived on Thursday. It has been a new coping mechanism for me as I've been trying to understand what it is that Grandma left me, which is my own middling talents as a musician. As I mentioned before, Grandma taught me piano (as well as Sister Vest, who picked up where Grandma left off), but I learned guitar thanks to the steady patience and support of my dad. Recently--that is, in the past year or so--I've been composing my own music. I wanted to try to fully compose, rather than finding beats on the computer, so I picked up the drums. I play along with my guitar playing almost every day, striving to improve my talents in this area now. And as I drum, I think about what Grandma taught us about nuance and dynamics, about how to use the instrument to evoke a feeling. When it comes to the drums, that is a harder order to fulfill, but I find it guiding my playing nonetheless. And, since I've only had the drums after she left us, I like to think of this learning of a new instrument as an homage and invocation to and for my grandmother--a kind of rhythmic "thank you" to what she's given me. This remembrance is a poor substitute for the woman: Memories always are. Yet it's now what I have left. Yes, there are items--gifts and paraphernalia, the remnants of living--that will be in the family for subsequent generations. But it isn't about the things; it's about what I choose to make them mean. Occasionally, I will remember the jars of "Grandma loves me raspberry jam" which she would send to me while I was on my mission, or think of her stylized "OK" on the piano book where she would check off the song as completed. I may recall the smell of her home, the descent down the narrow stairs to her basement, the few months where, as a five-year-old, I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa while our home was being completed. It's possible that my thoughts of her will be perpetually shaded by the strands of pine trees at the cabin where I used to spend October General Conference in her company. It may be when I try to tease nuance out of a cheap electronic drum set, or pass by the familiar turns that would take me up the mountain to where Grandma lived. However it happens, I'm confident that I will keep remembering Grandma Dowdle. Lots of tweets and social media posts are showcasing the major personal events of the past decade. I threw together a quick list myself, but thought that it could be worthwhile to go through with a bit more detail. As far as I can remember, here are some of the interesting things that happened in the twenty-teens.
2010 The decade began with me and a fellow teacher doing a short film Winterim. (Winterims will be brought up in each year for the simple reason that they're actually something different in my otherwise pretty consistent teaching career.) This was my second year at the school, but the first year as a full-time teacher. By the time March came along, my second child was born, which was a different experience than the first one--having a wireless baby was new and exciting. Not only that, but the delivery wasn't as hard on my wife, which was great: I couldn't understand how women could have more children when I saw how badly it hurt my wife to give birth our first. With Number Two arriving, I comprehended that births usually don't lay up the mother for a solid week. Of course, that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of hospital stuff that year. Son Number Two had a condition called hypospadias, so he had to have a minor surgery along with a circumcision. Not only that, but Son Number One had his third--and, thus far, last--heart surgery to correct his tricuspid atresia, which consumed the entirety of June. At the time, we lived in our townhome, which fit our family just fine. We kept going forward with work and school (I was taking night classes to get an endorsement in history). I began work on what I thought would be my magnum opus, Writ in Blood. This would consume my writing for a couple more years. Come August, the curriculum I had taught for the past two years shifted a bit, pushing the 10th grade toward a broader swath of history. Instead of going from middle ages to the Victorian era, I now taught from the Italian Renaissance up to modern day. This shift was (so far) the biggest change in my curricula that I've had to adjust to. I'm glad that we did, as I much prefer what I teach now. Still, it was one of the biggest changes in my career. Just before Thanksgiving Break, the school moved buildings. We went from a refurbished bowling alley to a custom made school. Though I've moved rooms a couple of times since those days, I am happy to report that we haven't had to move the entire school again. That's a relief, I must say. 2011 I started this year teaming up with the same teacher as the previous year. This time, we did a Garage Band Winterim, where we set the kids up in small bands, had them compose a song, and then perform it for the parents at Winterfest. This was fun, as it gave me a chance to play the guitar more than I normally do, and the students did--for the most part--a really great job. Most of this year is pretty unremarkable, save for a couple of things. One, I pressed on with Writ in Blood, which remains one of the books that I'm most proud of, despite the fact that it was flatly rejected during submissions and rather ruined when I went back and tried to tinker with the thing. The second is that this is the year that I deeply studied World War II. That gave me a whole new way of seeing this monumental event, which is something that I try to transmit to my students every year, even now. I believe we went to Disneyland this year for the first time with our oldest. He loved it to pieces. 2012 Thus began one of the biggest pivots of my life: I taught the Harry Potter Winterim to nine students. Then, with them, my wife, and my coteacher, we flew out to Orlando to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The class was inexpressibly impactful, and it ended up changing not just how I viewed the book series, but sent me down a path I never expected: I started playing quidditch. This came about because we learned how to play with the Winterim, but the enjoyment of the sport led to creating an actual team. I joined the Crimson Fliers during the summer of 2012, which I pursued for four years or so. I still love and deeply miss quidditch, in part because of its connection to such a special experience (the Harry Potter Winterim specifically, but Harry Potter more broadly, too), but also because the people I met during quidditch are some of the most remarkable human beings I've ever had the pleasure of getting to know. It's a scar--one that will likely remain with me for another decade. I continued working on Writ in Blood as I finished up my history endorsement. Back then, I would go to class on Saturday mornings, take three hours of notes, eat a high-calorie, low-cost lunch at Burger King, then slam out a chapter or two at the UVU library before heading home. I really enjoyed this, as it allowed me time to write. By this point, I had stopped teaching three sections of Socratic Seminar and instead had things like mythology or two sections of creative writing to help round out my teaching day. That sort of flexibility remains with me to this day, meaning I have two sections of Socratic 10 and two elective classes of different stripes. The election of 2012 was a divisive one (aren't they all?) and it was the first time since '08 that I was more than just dimly aware of politics. Because I'm Mormon (you know: a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), there was, I think, an assumption that I'd be voting for Mittens Romney; I didn't. I think about that election a lot--how the GOP tried a nice guy approach and was soundly defeated, so they went with the most vile they could and won--and how the world might be different had Baseball Mitt had taken the White House. At the very least, we wouldn't have to deal with Agent Orange. 2013 This Winterim saw me making comic books with the students. Like almost all of the Winterims of the decade, I taught with another teacher. This time, it was the art teacher, who's also a big comic book fan. It was a fun experience, but in the aftermath of what 2012 had done for me, it wasn't particularly memorable. By the time 2013 rolled around, I was pretty established in my career. There was a reputation at the school to maintain, plenty of stuff to keep me busy, and the addition of our third child--another boy, bringing our family to its full allotment. I turned thirty that year, which meant a lot to me at the time. I think the idea of having finished my twenties with every goal checked off save one (being published) was significant. I think this also gave me a bit of an existential crisis, as I didn't really have a lot else to try to do. Not that this year specifically stands out to me, but I should point out that every year, Gayle and I went down to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, both during the summer and again in the fall with the students. We had family vacations of all different sorts, though I'm hard pressed to remember what we did each year. I do know that in the fall of 2013, though, I got a new assignment: Teaching the Shakespeare class. I remember this specifically because I sat with my newest son on my lap, reading Twelfth Night aloud to him as he slept. It was a pleasant experience, to say the least, but it was all in preparation of teaching the Concurrent Enrollment English 1010 class with a fellow teacher at the school. So it was equal parts preparation and pleasure, I suppose. The Shakespeare class was greatly enhanced by what came around at the end of the year and beginning of the next. Over Thanksgiving Break in 2013, I left the country for the first time: I took a short trip to Paris to better prepare for Winterim 2014. This was surprisingly impactful to me, and I rely on my Parisian experience whenever I'm teaching my students about Les Misérables or French history--especially the First World War. There's something profound about being in the places where history happens, and I'm hopeful that someday--not that I've any idea how it'll happen--I can return to Europe and England. 2014 This was the Winterim that has the largest effect on me, followed by the World Wars Tour (2017) and my first Harry Potter (2012). I and a dozen or so students flew out to England and had a literary tour. We visited the big tourist sites (and sights), including the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, and Piccadilly Circus. But we had special additions: Seeing John Milton's grave, visiting Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare's grave, and the Harry Potter backstage museum in Watford. We saw the Eagle and Child (where Tolkien and Lewis would meet and talk about their fictional worlds that have made such a large difference in my life), Cambridge, Oxford, and many other places that will always live on in my mind as foundational. It was truly a remarkable experience. With that sort of a high, it was difficult to return to the normalcy of 2014. I had finished Writ in Blood sometime between 2013 and 2014, and having spent over three years on a single book, I decided to no longer try to write sprawling behemoths. Instead, I began what is my normal way of working, which is to make a novel that's between 50- and 100,000 words. The first experience I had with that was writing Chelsea Washington and the Pathway of Night, my only attempt at a young adult novel. I'm still pretty happy with it, at least in terms of what I was trying to accomplish, and it really helped set me up with the idea that I can start and end a novel in the same year--in this case, it only took a couple of months. My experiences with quidditch continued apace, and I went to Quidditch World Cup 7 in South Carolina that April. It was wonderful to see so many committed athletes, to try to play better than I had before, and to go through something that I never thought would be a part of my life: Sports. Despite going to England for nearly two weeks, I'm pretty certain we went to Disneyland this year. I know we went at some point around here. Strange to say, it's kind of hard to remember. I do know that it was at the end of this year--right before Thanksgiving, I think--that a couple of important things happened. One, we decided to move out and rent our townhome, thus allowing us to save a bit of money with which to--we hoped--spend on a newer, bigger home. The five of us were feeling a bit cramped. (Also, my calling as Elders' Quorum president had been eating away at me and this would get me out. It's selfish, I know, but that's the truth.) Two, I self-diagnosed myself as having depression. It came about slowly, as I realized that what a lot of people on Twitter were describing was similar to my own experiences. Once I realized that I have some sort of chemical imbalance in my head, a lot of my life started to make more sense. I didn't do anything with this information, per se, but it was an important start. 2015 Winterim this year went to The Lord of the Rings, which involved not only studying the text closely, but having the students try to pull a Tolkien and invent their own languages and secondary worlds. It was pretty fun, and I know that I enjoyed it. Much like the comic book Winterim, however, it hasn't stuck in my mind as strongly as some of the others. This year saw me and a coworker joining forces to tackle the Shakespeare class again, which was necessary because I'm still without a Master's degree. Still, I enjoyed teaching Shakespeare in this way, with the texts being the foundation for the different styles of writing that we were teaching the students. Quidditch World Cup 8 happened (again in South Carolina), which I attended with my team. It was fantastic--the Crimson Elite finished 18th in the nation, which is no small thing, in my view. It also marked the last time that I was to play a tournament with my quidditch friend. I retired from quidditch some time between 2015 and 2016 (I don't remember when, exactly). I don't regret that--it was sweet while it lasted, but it couldn't remain. But that doesn't mean I don't miss it. Living with the in-laws was far from an ideal experience, but it did help the way we'd hoped: We were able to get some money saved up for our own house. While we were basement dwellers, my oldest son turned eight, which meant that he decided to be baptized into the Church. I hadn't really anticipated it happening in my in-laws' ward, but my wife and I bought the townhome in January of 2008--eight or nine months before the housing bubble popped. That slowed down our ability to move on from "Old Place" (as we now call it). That summer was a new chapter (lol, pun) in my writing, as I finally mustered up the courage to ask my wife if I could abandon her for the better part of a week to have a writing retreat. I went in the middle of June and wrote most of what I later called Conduits. I wrote 34,443 words (I made a spreadsheet that kept track of the numbers) and had at last figured out how I can best work: Highly focused, in a single place, where my responsibilities can't reasonably be split in any other direction. Since then, I've had numerous retreats, all of which having done a great deal to help my writing along. Oh, and I also started my annual NaNoWriMo tradition this year, too. 2016 This Winterim was really great for me, as it was a chance to teach about dinosaurs. I teamed up with the biology teacher and we had a great time talking about dinosaurs, having the students come up with their own museum layouts, and learning about the terrible lizards. We even visited St. George for a day or two to see some dinosaur-related things, and we got lost in the Nevada desert with a bus full of kids. We made it home all right in the end, and it was a great adventure for us all. By the time spring rolled around, our renters were ready to move on and so were we. We sold our townhome and, with the equity (not much, but some) from it, we were able to move into a much bigger home. New Place (as we call it) is where we still are, and where I'm writing this now. Our first summer in New Place was a busy one, as we moved in on the fifth of July. We had a lot of settling in to do, as well as adjusting to the new commute we'd have every day. Not only that, but I used a week or so right before we moved to go out to the cabin and have a writing retreat. It's become a staple of my summers, now. By the time November came around, Gayle and I were preparing for another European trip--packing bags, making sure we knew where our passports were, getting schedules settled--and then the election came. It's fair to say that I was much more attentive to the entire thing, and the feelings I had about the election are still raw. We had started listening to the Hamilton soundtrack during our move, and so there was a sense of optimism that I'd been harboring for a few months. When the election came out with Clinton having over three million more votes yet still losing the presidency, I had a really hard time believing that America was on the right track. I've yet to change my mind on that. 2017 The World Wars Tour was supposed to be a really powerful and profound experience--and, to an extent, it was--but there's always an issue with time. We spent far too much of it traveling from one place to another, rather than really soaking in what each place had to offer. I definitely would do the tour differently if I had a chance to try again, but the trip wasn't a disaster by any means. It was, as I've mentioned before, an incredible experience that changed my life. Walking through a death camp, through a battlefield, through a museum of collected artifacts, of talking to a man who saw his own father die on the family room floor because of Nazi shells…it was unforgettable. My Shakespeare classes were changing again--we were doing a "Stage and Page" version of the class now--but other than that, there really weren't a lot of big things going down. My writing continued, with some weekly progress in the form of my creative writing classes, though without any sort of progress on the publication front. I'd finished a couple of other books, though I was still reluctant to edit them in any sort of noticeable way. Then summer came, and I brought my writing group along with for a writing retreat. It was very successful--in that month, I wrote over 77,000 words--and it also brought into the world War Golem, the book that I think is the most prepared for some sort of publication. (Whether or not that ever happens is unknown--doubted by me, believed in by most everyone else.) That summer was also remarkable because it was a Disneyland year. I remember this fully, as I got to visit an old high school friend who lives in California. We had a great trip with the Mouse and my friend, including a visit to Blizzard Entertainment campus and seeing some of the neat things they have there. On the way home, I picked up a copy of It from the Barnes and Noble in St. George. That book, as any frequent reader of my essays knows, has also fundamentally changed my life. 2018 I had originally planned on doing a Shakespeare Winterim, but it fell apart at the last minute and I ended up needing to dust off an old one and resubmit it: Thus I taught, for the first time, a repeat Winterim. Ironically, it was the same one that I'd taught my first year--now almost ten years before. The Video Game Winterim was really enjoyable--we played VR games, students invented their ideas for their own video games, and I blew their little minds with some light theory. I wouldn't mind doing that one again, though not for another year or two, methinks. I'd prefer a fresh crop of students--no double dipping. This year marched along in pretty familiar strokes. We did manage to go to Moab for a family vacation during Spring Break, which was a lot of fun. My second son decided to get baptized. My wife and I kept teaching; I kept doing the things that I'd normally do (going to LTUE in February, for example, as I've done every year since the beginning of the decade--I guess I should've mentioned that in 2010, yeah?). One thing I started doing differently in 2018, though, was writing in my reading journal about the things that I thought about whilst reading a book. I don't do that with all of them, but getting into that habit meant a lot. When summer came around, I decided to reread It, this time with pen in hand. Some of my most honest and profound personal thoughts came because of that experience, which is why I love It. I had my writing retreats--solo (56,000 words) and as a group (33,000 words)--and pushed out War Golems, the sequel (it has a plural on it, see?). I haven't looked at the book since I wrote it, but it's never too far from the back of my mind. I'm still not certain how I feel about it, which is probably a good thing--it's not settled, as it were. One remarkable thing about 2018, however, was that I was accepted to a special training at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. I went there with a coworker and had a fantastic experience. I saw much of the city, the monuments, and the Library, as well as some time in the Folger Shakespeare Library and I got to handle original, 17th century copies of Paradise Lost. It was definitely a highlight of the year and of my whole life, honestly. 2019 That brings us to this year. My Winterim was on fantasy literature, so we got to go to my wife's happy place, Evermore, and I got to enjoy a lot of time in some of my favorite pieces of literature. Both this year's and 2018's Winterims saw me teaching by myself--there wasn't time to pull someone in on last years, and this year's didn't need another set of hands--but I still had a good time. It was not, perhaps, the most incredible experience I've ever had, but not everything has to be. One of my writing group friends suggested that we pool together some cash and rent an Air BnB for a winter retreat, which we did at the end of January. It was successful, despite being shorter than I'm used to, and I finished up a NaNoWriMo book, as well as worked on a novella I've been picking at for over a year. I ended up with just over 15,000 words for the day and a half of work. A surprise came our way when my wife was offered a slightly different teaching job for the fall of 2019. Instead of teaching six classes of eight grade science, she would only teach three classes and spend the rest of the time as a teaching coach. She decided to go through with it, despite her reservations about the new administration at her school. Summer saw us at Yellowstone National Park--which the boys in particular loved; I liked it, despite having conjunctivitis--as well as a couple of writing retreats (75,000 words between the two) getting some of my novella-project taken care of. The new school year started without me teaching creative writing for the first time in almost a decade, as well as a CE class and a Shakespeare class--separate this time. It has been a fairly straightforward year, though the decade has treated me differently than I had ever anticipated. Never would I have thought that I would be a world traveler; not on a teacher's salary--and, strangely enough, I only went because I'm a teacher. My family has blossomed and continues to grow. My oldest now comes to school with me (he's in 7th grade). I have written over 1.7 million words since I got married, with the vast majority of those being written in the last decade. The one great regret--the largest failure of my goals and thoughts about the future--is that I'm still unpublished. I know that everyone has a different path, a different journey toward being published. Knowing that, however, doesn't really take the sting away. I do hope that I can change that…though I don't know how I will. I'm not really sure what the future holds. For now, it's enough to look forward with some hope, some trepidation, some familiarity, some newness. In short, there's a life in front of me. I now only need to go and live it. One of the unexpected lessons I've learned from my kids is a specific brand of nihilism. It's one of those "lessons through observation and repetition" rather than anything they've specifically said. That is, my kids haven't sat me down, looked me gravely in the eye, and said, with a sad, solemn aspect, "Nothing really matters, Dad. Anyone can see. Nothing really matters to me."
Well, they do love "Bohemian Rhapsody", so I guess they kind of have said that to me. But, again, it was never them saying it; it was them doing it. I'm not a particularly good househusband. I don't do a lot of cleaning--except the dishes and folding of the laundry--and I feel like I have a semi-worthwhile explanation for that: My wife is a cosplayer, so the areas and qualities of the messes made very often have to do with patterns, plastic gems, gears, and other miscellanea that I know better than to disturb. There are, of course, other areas of the house that I could do more to keep clean--the family room and my own office come to mind--but I kind of feel like my kids ought to learn how to clean up after themselves, if only to a degree. Every time I try to get them to help straighten up the house, however, is when I get the emphatic lesson in nihilism. I will ask my middle son, Oberon, if he would please empty out all of the garbage cans in the house, replacing them with a plastic bag as a liner. It is not, I would submit, a too-hard requirement for an almost-nine year old to accomplish. Physically, it doesn't demand too much of him. Mentally it's almost insulting. Dexterously, it requires only the most rudimentary of movements. From what I can see, it is not something that assumes too much to fulfill. Yet, despite requests, shouts, arguments, cajolings, threats, pleas, and a host of other air-wasters, it still takes Oberon a good forty-five minutes to an hour. Part of the wasted time is in the form of saying his name six to eight times before getting a response. The first one or two are always in a fair, understandable tone. Each subsequent repetition, however, sharpens the name until it's slicing through the house. By the time he feels the cut, it's laced with frustration and irritation. "What?!" he often snaps back, feeling attacked because, so far as he can see, we're out-of-the-blue screaming his name. For us, we're about ready to walk out on the whole thing and live in filth because who cares? What does it matter? Nothing matters. It's fine. One of the reasons that I don't get more writing done--and this is as much excuse as explanation, from my point of view--is because it's far too stressful to spend too much time in my office on Saturdays. The boys require perpetual haranguing to keep them in line, and the frustration of one parent eventually bleeds into the other and we end up feeling like horrible parents who haven't accomplished much with their one day* off. But it's fine. Nothing matters. It's fine. --- * As M-words**, we don't usually use Sundays as cleaning days. We try to get those chores done on Saturday so that Sunday can be devoted to church and church-related activities. ** I have…feelings about the rejection of the Mormon label, but I'll write about it--if I ever do--another time. Also, yes, I totally just footnoted my footnote. I'm not even sorry, either. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Dear Gayle,
As you know, I like to give my students three pieces of marital advice. Along with the hope that they learn to hate hatred and love people by default, it is the only other part of their tenth grade education that I hope they retain with them. And though there are more ways to make a marriage, these are the three things that I've seen with us night and day for many weary years. The first: Don't sweat the money. Of course, we're doing well, financially, and it's entirely thanks to you. Of the two of us, you have been the larger-earner and harder-worker in our marriage. Even before we were married, you were taking the harder classes in college, working longer hours, and trying to accomplish more. H*ck, you were employed before you had even walked during commencement. You had to get a substitute so that you could attend your own college graduation. And though you're not a money whiz, you've shown complete competence with our finances. I know it's hard on you to be the one who does the taxes. I see that and I appreciate it. The size of the audit that our family would have on the regular if I were in charge of the money is shudder-inducing. Thank you for always keeping us going, giving us small pleasures (a night out, a fun activity, an enjoyable vacation) while also helping make sure that we have a home to live in and food to eat. That you and I share the understanding that money is to be used for our betterment has made our relationship a pleasure. Oh, and about the money you spend on costumes: I know you make jokes to people about how you don't want to say how much your wearable artwork costs, "Not in front of him, anyway," you say with a smile and teasing hands put over my ears…but I really don't care how much it costs for you to follow your passion. I know you know this, but it feels important to say. Back when we were first married, you found a way to finance your Liquid Lead artwork by teaching in the selfsame studio. But even if you hadn't been making money by teaching, I still would have been happy to use our meager budget to get you the supplies you needed so that you could paint. Now that your engineering/science/problem-solving background has fused with your artistic prowess, the only thing I get from seeing you work (and your work) is what, for me, passes as joy. I love to see your focus and drive, and though I don't have a lot to say about your process when you've found a solution for a current problem, I'm happy that you are making progress. It doesn't bother me to be a sounding board, even if I don't reply much. The second: Take irritants and make them endearments. This one always requires conscious thought for me. Everyone has their quirks. And though you leaving open the cupboards no longer irritates me--it's an endearment--I'm still trying to get past the washcloths left in the sink and the trip-ready shoes forgotten by the door. No, I'm not trying to passive-aggressively guilt you into changing. I'm not trying to change you: I'm trying to change me. One thing that was an irritant to me many years ago was when you would notice that I was diving deeper into my depression and you would pin me to the couch until I talked to you. At the time, it bothered me that you wouldn't let me be--and, what's more, that I couldn't keep my pain hidden well enough for you to miss. Now, however, it's something that I understand and appreciate. One of the hardest parts of having dysthymia is, for me at least, the one-two combo of religious-socio expectations of "being the man who provides" and then being incapable of providing a strong support for you. Days where you're frustrated and glum almost always land on the days when I struggle the most with my depression. You're rarely given the luxury of indulging in your own bad days because I monopolize them. I'm sorry that I do that to you. I appreciate that you have learned how to talk to me, especially when I least want to. I know it's hard. And though my depression is an "irritant" to you--and one that you've come to understand and accept, I think, without it becoming an "endearment"--you've handled our maturing understanding of who I am with grace and beauty. Indeed, today marks the first year since I visited a doctor to be diagnosed with dysthymia, a word I never would have learned had you not cared so much about me. To say that I feel unworthy of such devotion and concern is beyond a mild understatement. Thank you for that. The third: Marriage is all give, no take. Back in high school, we had a great health teacher named Cougar Hall. I was in tenth grade--we hadn't quite met yet, as that happy occasion wouldn't occur until our junior year--so my memory is probably fuzzy (who remembers anything of their tenth grade year, honestly?), but Mr. Hall gave this phrase as his (only?) piece of marriage advice: Marriage is all give, no get. I've thought about that a lot and realized that one of the verbs doesn't quite fit for me. So I modified it to the one above. When I tried to use Mr. Hall's advice as is, I found myself unhappy because I would get things from our marriage. I got love and attention and books and other things that mattered to me. Then I would feel guilty, as if I weren't reciprocating sufficiently. Well, I still may be reciprocating insufficiently, but that possibility was exacerbated by the well-meaning advice. So I changed it. It isn't about deprivation, it's about action. I don't disappear--often--without telling you where I want to go. I don't take a writing retreat without planning it out. I don't slip off for hours at a time, abandoning you to all of the roles of mother, caregiver, and housewife. Well, usually. I used to play quidditch, which was pretty much that. But, again, this is a way for both of us to utilize the advice. When we both give to each other, we both gain more than what we had alone. This is, for me, paradoxical advice, because it is both easy and difficult, intuitive and unnatural all in one. This is how I help reduce my own selfishness. And I love that you let me find my own center. You gave me my Fortress of Solitude that looks like a Tudor cottage, lined with my books, in the room with the best view in the house. You made this office for me first thing upon moving into New Place--a pragmatic choice, but also one that made me feel seen and appreciated. You care for our children--no easy task--and, like me, recognize that there are lots of areas where we can improve. We both want our parenting to be the best possible, and we both strive to make it happen that way. And, when we work together, we really do get so much more. So. We have been married for fourteen years today. That October day of 2004 was temperate, a slight breeze stirring the autumnal leaves of Manti. The sky was teeth-aching blue; only smudges of clouds streaked the sky. Our family was around us, having sacrificed a lot of time and energy to make to central Utah so that we could get married in a castle-temple. We were twenty-one. We'd known each other for about five years--definitely longer than the average Utah relationship--and we didn't really know how we were going to make our way through this new phase of life, but we were committed to do it together. At age thirty-five, we have now known each other for longer than we haven't, since we met when we were sixteen. And though we don't have quite as many years married as we did not married, these past fourteen years have been more rewarding (and difficult, let's be honest) than I had the capacity to imagine. Loving you has been the easiest part of my life, an area of inflexible reliance. Your kindness, your temper, your enthusiasm, your joy--the essence of you, Gayle, is something that I feel unqualified to receive. Yet, here we are: Almost a decade and a half has transpired and I have learned the truth in Juliet's words, thanks to you. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea,/ My love as deep; the more I give to thee,/ The more I have, for both are infinite." I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange? Thank you, my dearest heart of hearts, for being my friend and companion throughout the vicissitudes and vagaries of our little time here on Earth. I can imagine no better person with whom I'd want to travel into eternity than you. You are my inspiration, my protection, and my only true love. There has been no other, nor never will be. I love you. Happy anniversary. Steve I'm going to take a few minutes and brag about my wife, Lady Gayle. A few years ago, a comic convention arrived in Salt Lake. I had heard about ComiCon in San Diego. I didn't know much about it, save it looked like fun and kind of overwhelming. When information about the FantasyCon (I think that's what it was called) percolated out and news about Sean Astin (the actor who played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings) was released, Gayle--a major LotR fan--was insistent that we go. In order to prepare for this opportunity to meet an actor from her favorite film franchise, Gayle decided to make a version of Arwen's green dress from the end of The Return of the King. She put it together over the course of a week or so, sewing the dress from a pattern on her mother's sewing machine. Eventually, the day arrived and we waited in line for our photo op with Sean. I was wearing some Ravenclaw robes, since I had had to teach school that day and I didn't want to go to class in costume. (Harry Potter robes are a quick way for a teacher like me to go from profession to hobby with minimal fuss.) As we entered the booth, Sean gave us a fixed, professional smile, said, "Nice dress!" to Gayle, and grinned at the camera. Click. Then we were on the other side of the partition, our five seconds with one of the actors that fundamentally changed my wife's life over, and we stood next to the printer, waiting for our photograph to be printed and put into a plastic bag. That was it. Gayle was all smiles, and though we saw a lot of other cool things at the con, that was basically the highlight. That year, for Halloween, Gayle wanted to make me a Shakespeare costume, something that I could wear when I taught Hamlet or just as a go-to Halloween costume. She had so much fun making it that she decided to make an elaborate version of Queen Elizabeth I that she could wear with me--that way, we were thematic. She spent hundreds of hours sewing the thing, adding beads and decorations all over the place. Even though Queen Elizabeth isn't really in line with the comic books/videogames/geek culture that FanX and ComiCons are all about, people with exciting and unique costumes is a part of the DNA of these conventions. So, the next year, when FanX (that's its official name now) began its annual resurgence, Gayle wanted to wear her Queen Elizabeth costume--after all, having put that much time into it, she wanted to share it as often as possible with the greatest number of people. As we prowled around the con that Saturday, we found ourselves close to where they did the cosplay competition. Curious, we decided to go in and ask them what we had to do so that Gayle could enter the competition the next year. Chatting with the person at the desk, we were about to leave when the guy who runs the cosplay contest, Ro Malaga, wandered past. He spotted our costumes and immediately began to gush and exult (the guy has enough energy to power a city, I have to say) at the quality of her work. "The contest is technically over this year," he said as he eyed the beadwork on Gayle's dress. "Oh, we were only wondering what to do for next year," Gayle said, doing the hand wave she does when she's kind of nervous. "Hold on a sec," said Ro. He slipped behind a curtain, then came back a moment later. "They want to see you. We'll put you in." "Wait, what?" Gayle looked shocked and somewhat terrified. "Now?" "Yeah, the judges are done with everyone else, but they'll check your costume out now." "Uh…okay." Gayle gave me a nervous smile. I just grinned. Together, we went to the judging panel, who immediately started to gush and exult (the standard responses to Gayle's work) about what they saw. They came around the judging table and looked closely at everything, asking all sorts of questions. They decided to place her in the "Master Category", which is the highest level of the competition. This made Gayle more than a touch anxious, since she'd never been in a costume contest before. Anyway, the end result was that Gayle and I ended up on the stage in front of a couple thousand people, showing off her costumes. We didn't win anything (which isn't a surprise, considering what we were up against and our overall lack of preparation), but Gayle's fire for competing in the costume contest had been lit. The next year, Gayle approached it with all of the correct steps this time, putting in online applications and photographing the entire process. She entered two categories: Group (which is two or more participants) and Intermediate (done because the way the categories shook out fit in with Gayle's level of experience better than the Master Category). That night, she and I took the stage together in Group, then she went solo in Intermediate. Because of the quality of her work--this time, Elizabethan-era style vampires--she won first place in Intermediate and second place in Group with me. She was a very happy lady. This year, she decided to try something even further out of her comfort zone by making a steampunk (though, admittedly, it's more crystalpunk, but that's neither here nor there) Batgirl costume. (You can check it out on her Facebook page.) She spent a good ten months on it whilst working on a steampunk Spider-Man for me and a half dozen other projects. The overall process was laborious but enjoyable for her--though, admittedly, the past couple of weeks were really stressful. Yesterday was the cosplay competition. Gayle was nervous. We spent a good forty minutes or so rehearsing her action on stage--she has a minute in which to showcase the costume--before she felt ready to step into the spotlight. My friend, Chris, was there to film us in our costumes, so we had some extra emotional support, too. The biggest concern I had was Gayle's wings. Throughout the day, she'd been occasionally popping them open for photographs and to show more of the details she'd put into her costume. I noticed one of the wires was looking frayed, so I encouraged her not to open the wings anymore, to save them for the performance. When she got on stage and the big moment arrived, she popped open the wings--which worked perfectly. I felt a huge amount of relief, as that had been one of the trickiest parts of the entire sequence. Not only that, but the crowd erupted into massive cheers upon seeing the wings extend. The judges' scores were tallied and, at the end of the night, Gayle came in second place in the Master Category. I was thrilled for her and all of the success that had come because of her hard work. As a husband, there's an implicit expectation that I approve of what she does and I think it's quality work. As far as an unbiased source, I'm pretty far from that. Nevertheless, I have just enough self-awareness that I can take that bias into account and look at something as a piece of work, separate from the artist. In the case of Gayle, I know she does incredible work. It's a given--so much so that I almost take it for granted. The cool and impressive stuff she does is, for me, familiar and common. I see it all of the time as I watch her creates these things that make her happy. So I often don't have a million superlatives to throw at Gayle, despite being impressed at her work. Because of course it's amazing: Gayle made it. So I thought I would take some 1,300 words and write up a brief history of Gayle's cosplaying victories. She's a remarkable woman whose contributions to the happiness of other people's lives is only one of a bevy of incredible attributes of which she is a master. ====
Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! In retrospect, I have accomplished a great deal this summer: I began the season with my two oldest boys enjoying a summer camp, followed by a trip with friends to the cabin to get some writing done. The family came after the friends, and after that cabin trip was over, we took a weekend in Heber where Gayle got to work on some school stuff and we swam in the hotel pool. We celebrated Gayle's thirty-fifth birthday, saw the new Jurassic World movie, and then I set out to finish the novel I'd begun on the first writing retreat. During that time, I grew as a person via a reader-response approach to It, solidifying this season as one in which I understood myself a bit better.
The first week of July saw a celebration for my youngest child (he's five now) and playing Dungeons and Dragons, as well as a photo shoot for Gayle's Christmas present--Gayle dresses up in her costumes and my friend takes footage of her costumes, all of which will be used to make a music video at some future time. The day after that, I was on an airplane, headed to our nation's capital. Washington, D.C. was an eye-opening and exciting experience, especially when I bumped into an old coworker. I learned a lot at the training--stuff that, with summer officially over for me today, I'm eager to conceive of how I can apply it--and I really enjoyed all of the different aspects of D.C. that I experienced. I arrived home on Saturday, 14 July and on Sunday, 15 July, the family and I were in the car, headed toward St. George. We spent the week there, visiting Zion park, going to the dinosaur tracks museum, playing in the pool, and generally enjoying the time together. We came home on 19 July, only to head to the cabin (again) on 23 July. We spent that week in Mt. Pleasant, arriving home in time to prepare for a large-scale Harry Potter birthday party, which we celebrated on 31 July (obviously). The first full week of August saw me and Gayle in Cedar City where I presented at the Wooden O symposium and watching four Shakespeare plays: The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and 1 Henry VI. I start work tomorrow. I write all of this down in part to tell anyone who's curious what I've been up to. I also wrote it to help me remember and appreciate what I have done this summer. The time is fleeting, in part because of how many video games I played (a lot of Overwatch and Jurassic World: Evolution this year) and how many books I've read (I think it's five or six). Part of it, also, is that the lack of schedule is really enjoyable. Indeed, the thing that I don't like about teaching is how abrupt the change is between summer and the school year. One day, I'm able to wake up when I wish, make calls about what to do as the moments come, and generally follow my interests. Then, the very next day, the alarm is set and the expectation is clear. It's the downside of having that very process reversed when the end of May finally arrives. Anyway, I do like my job. In fact, I love it. I've had plenty of places where I worked that weren't a real fit for me, places that didn't use my skills well or where the overall atmosphere wasn't something that worked for me. I'm glad to be gone from there. It's hard to always be forcing yourself to do your job, and when I'm teaching, that doesn't happen. I'm almost always happy to be teaching whatever it is I'm teaching at that moment (except the Age of Exploration: I hate that unit), and, save the early schedule, I am pretty content to be a teacher. That being said, I think summer hints at a maybe-world that I might have had, provided my life had fallen slightly different courses. I know there are hard parts--dark sides, as it were--to every profession. There are dream jobs but the adjective doesn't completely undo the noun: They're still work. They still require things of a person. My dad is a musician. We watched him perform with his cover band (the Salamanders) last night at an end-of-summer event in a nearby city. He did a great job--as he always does--and it was impressive to me how quickly and adeptly he and the entire band shifted from song to song, hardly giving the audience time to clap or catch their breath. He was on his feet, sweating through smoke-drenched Utah air, for two hours straight, cranking out the music. I'm sure it was fun. I'm sure it was hard, too. And so when I picture myself as a full-time writer, it's a weird mélange of fantasy and pessimistic expectation. The fantasy is being able to sit down in my office, slap my keyboard for a few hours, then do something else with my time. I do my writing retreat in part to remind myself that, given the right amount of time and correct circumstances, I can write. I can output a lot. (Aggregate, I wrote more than 120,000 words during the month of June, which is longer than most popular novels. The writing varied between my new book, essays, edits, and personal writings, but that's still a lot of words. We're over halfway through the year, and I have over 400,000 words written. The quality of the words is not something that I'm willing to discuss at this time.) I think about "What if this were my life?" when I sit down each morning at the cabin, tunes blasting, outline in front of me. I put my shoulder down and I push forward. I ignore everything except potty- and food breaks, using this little time I have to get down as much as I possibly can. At the end of, essentially, a week, I had an entire book--longer than its predecessor--written. Completed. Unedited, yes, but finished. What if I had a publisher who wanted another story from me? That needed me to write something quickly? I can say, with a straight face, "You give me a solid two weeks of full-time writing, I'll get you a book." Surely that's a marketable skill, right? But then I look back at my productivity since NaNoWriMo 2017. Because I obsessively (and probably pointlessly) keep constant track of my word counts, I know that, after I wrote that short novel, I was significantly unimpressive with my writing. In my Novel Writing class, I usually have the students strive for the goal of 50,000 words in a semester. It's a huge number, and it pushes the kids further along to try harder. But this last semester, I was unable to really compete. I ended somewhere in the 30,000 word mark--far lower than I've ever done before in that class. Up until my retreat in June, I put down, essentially, nothing. I wouldn't call it writer's block, but it certainly was a stoppage of some kind. I got over it--until it crops up again, I'm sure--but it makes me think that, maybe, I really wouldn't be able to handle being a full-time writer. There are lots of responsibilities that I would have to make room for that I don't when I'm just writing as a hobby. I don't have to worry about deadlines, first of all. There's nothing but internal pressure to do anything with regards to edits or additional drafts. I can jump from project to project like a humming bird, sipping from the inspirational flower that most suits me at the moment. I can decide not to write for a while, if I so choose. I don't have to worry about public appearances, travel, or signings that eat into my writing time. I don't have to figure out how to get myself to write whilst on the road, where there are abundant distractions. So why do I still wish that I could try it? Knowing the uneasiness of money--how hard it is to pay out, how unsteady the royalties are--why would I want to shift? I'm a handful of years from being officially "middle aged", and I know that people have mid-life crises all of the time. I'm not the type who's likely to want to buy a sports car or have an affair, but the view of the future is a bit murky. I may have written about this before, so pardon me if I'm repeating myself: I have a hard time seeing what the next decade of my life is like. See, when I was younger, it was mapped out. Like almost all teenagers, there was a pretty deliberate path set out--high school, college, mission (a Mormon thing, obviously), more college, family, career--with some of the pieces more or less in place while others could be shifted around. But the point was, when I was thirteen, I had a pretty good idea of what I would be doing at age twenty-three. At thirty-five, I can picture the next year well enough…and I worry that what I seen when I'm forty-five is the same view. Will I be content with that? Is that what I want my contribution to the world to be? A long list of students who've passed through my class, maybe-maybe-not being impacted and affected by what we do/discuss, and graying hair? Can I still be a good teacher--assuming I am one now--if I'm no longer as familiar with popular stuff, with slang and music and memes? As I age, my interest in remaining connected to the youth through that type of experience wanes. Will I become a worse teacher as a result? Of course, a year ago, I was not expecting to have had a major summer like this one. In fact, I thought that our trip to Disneyland and visiting some friends in California would be the highlight of this small cluster of years. I didn't think I would end up in D.C., touching early editions of Milton, or in Cedar City, presenting a paper to a bunch of Shakespeare scholars and touching a copy of Cymbeline from the Second Folio. There were great joys hidden in my futurity…so how can I expect what else may be in store? This is one of the strange quirks of humankind: We can recall and record the past easily. While incomplete and sometimes biased (or completely incorrect), our recollections of what's come before are all tied into how we perceive and experience the omnipresent now. But the future? There are plans and expectations, yes, but we can't recall the future. As my summers end and I grow ever closer to my final days--however far away they may be, since I can't see them coming--it always gives me a chance to meditate on what I've gained on the journey, what I'm doing differently than anticipated when I was further back into my own past. This is hopeful, I think, if a little bittersweet. Just like the end of summer. My eleven year old son, Puck, has half of his heart. He's a survivor of hypoplastic right heart syndrome, which is when the right side of his heart didn't form correctly. He nearly died a couple of times in the first six months of life, and he's been through three major heart surgeries to keep him on Earth.
When a body's heart operates differently than normal, it can cause additional trials inside of the body, as the physiology has changed markedly. Those changes can cause traumas that are unknown from the outset. In the case of Puck, it could be damaging his liver. We've known for a few years that his liver was a potential problem. We thought that blood tests alone would be enough to let us know if there were any issues. It seems, though, that might not be the case. A neighbor has a kid with heart problems--and a host of other issues, too, as it so happens--and so the neighbor and my wife commiserate and swap news and stories on a fairly regular basis. Today, the neighbor chatted with my wife and explained that kids Puck's age are having a significantly higher chance of liver problems than originally believed. As Gayle explained some of what the neighbor had to say, a familiar feeling began to creep over me. There's this particular sensation that I get in no other situation save when my kids' health is at risk. A tension builds in my shoulders and a hollowness inside of my chest deepens. I find myself less able to focus on any one thing and, more often than usual, utterly absorbed in thoughts that are thought and forgotten, the mental equivalent of stroking a cat without noticing you're doing it. Then, when the cat jumps off your lap, you're left with fur and a sense that something happened, but you can't quite say what. This is similar to how I felt much of the first year of Puck's life. It eventually became the norm for me--so much so that when Oberon, our second-born, was due to have an ultrasound, I found myself incredibly nervous the day of the actual procedure. When the technician said that she couldn't see anything wrong with Oberon's heart, I felt an immense flood of relief pour out of me. I hadn't realized I'd dammed so much of my worry. Upon hearing that news, I felt physically lighter than I had in a while--a feeling that I hadn't recognized was weighing me down. Now that weight has threatened to resettle. I should point out that I'm not saying anything has happened to Puck so far. He is healthy (sadly, that's part of the problem: the liver problems don't necessarily manifest in poor health) and happy. I'm not announcing anything. Instead, I'm trying to keep that weight off of me. I don't think it's working. Each time I look into my son's gray-blue eyes, I wonder if I'm going to see them close for the last time. I think of Theoden saying, "No parent should have to bury their child." I see the orange-haired Puck, thick-framed glasses tight against his face, and then I see him in repose, the lid to his coffin raised. On an early summer day, these are dark clouds. It makes me want to treat him more gently, more kindly, more generously--which can be hard, because he can make me pretty angry with surprisingly little effort. In some ways, it makes me want to spoil him, because what if he doesn't get a chance to experience anything else? Can I live with a family of four? The thing about these questions is that they're only answerable once the unimaginable transpires. And though there are lots of questions that I really want to have answered, these aren't in that category. Passing through the early years with Puck, his different health concerns and the sundry stresses of finding a career, buying a home, and growing a family were years that, in all honesty, I was happy to put behind me. Yes, there are always mountain peaks that tower over the valleys of despair, but I should point out that I have dysthymia…the valleys are my baseline. So, while there were absolutely wonderful moments and experiences that happened during Puck's early life, they are subsumed by the memories of direness and worry. I don't want to go through that again. I'm not so egotistical as to think that I've passed my Abrahamic test…but I was not-so-secretly hoping I had during the difficult times of 2007-2008. I've often wondered what helped me go through the experience. I'm certain that God was helping me, but my own ignorance helped out a lot, too. I didn't know any different. Puck was our first child, and I didn't know how (comparatively) easy it is to go through the first few months of being a parent when your child is "normal". I think of all the ways that I've plotted out my life. How frequently I do a head count of three. How excited I am for my sons to experience some of the joys of life. I think of how they help anchor me--that their lives have, in a very literal way, saved my own. I don't know if I can survive losing one of my pillars. I don't know if I can handle the regret and self-loathing that would come along with pallbearers and eulogies. I don't want to learn that about myself. I'm too scared. Much like when we first learned about Puck's heart problem, we had to wait a month before getting any explanation about what we could do to help him. We have an appointment with his cardiologist exactly one month from today to discuss the future. God willing he has one. Please, God, let him have one. For my sister-in-law, today was a red-letter day: She graduated from nursing school. My wife and I joined my parents, my brother (her husband), and my other sister-in-law in celebrating, first by attending commencement and then heading out for dinner at a nice restaurant.
Over the course of the dinner, the topic of dinosaurs came up. This is not an unusual thing in my household, but it doesn't normally get broached in that particular company. (The reason is simple: Jack Horner is coming to a conference and give the keynote address next month, and it's happening right nearby. I already have tickets.) Since we were on the subject, my parents had a couple of questions. I had a hard time sitting still. See, when it comes to some of my major obsessions--Shakespeare, Milton, and writing--I have healthy, normal outlets: In fact, I get paid to talk about these things. (Today, for example, I spent my time in Shakespeare class talking about the coat of arms he purchased, the words he coined, and even the geography of the City of London as opposed to London. In other words, I rattled off random trivia about Shakespeare for a solid fifty minutes or so without breaking a sweat or referencing notes.) By having classes that allow me to talk about these major interests of mine, I don't get overwhelmed by unshared knowledge. Not so with dinosaurs. It's only been in the past few years that my interest in dinosaurs has really grown. Part of it is because my sons have a pretty sharp interest, so it's given us stuff to talk about. Another part of it is just…I don't know, I love dinosaurs. I think my brain finally got to the point where I could absorb some of the information that I needed in order to understand them. I know that part of it would have to be my beliefs' evolution on the topic of evolution: Without that mechanism, paleontology is pointless and the explanations unintelligible. So I've been slowly accumulating dinosaur factoids for the past half-decade or so, but I've had few chances to get into anything about them. It's my Achilles' heel. I have some students who deliberately ask questions about dinosaurs that they know the answer to specifically in order to throw off my day's lesson. I can't not answer a dinosaur related question. The fact that I let Gayle talk a little about dinosaurs to my parents was a huge demonstration of my self-control. The funny thing is, I don't often want to talk about dinosaurs in my essays. I don't know if it's because I'm too busy thinking of other things or if it's because I'm not as expert as I wish I were or what, but I'm hesitant to do too much dinosaur thinking here. Additionally, I don't always have a lot of time (like today) to write, and I don't want to throw extra time into the research that my own nit-picky self would expect from such an essay. Thus: impostor syndrome + perfectionism = fewer dinosaur essays. Nevertheless, it was fun for me to gas about dinosaurs to my parents for a few minutes, even if it meant being rude and cutting off people at the table because I couldn't hold it in. That's just what happens when one of my interests is being discussed. Out in a tiny part of the boundary between Colorado and Utah, there is Dinosaur National Monument, a small chunk of geological anomalies that has managed to take a slice out of the deep past and put it on display. It is there that a visitor can see the Quarry Hall, a place where thousands of fossilized bones, all from about 150 million years ago, are on display. Part of what makes the Quarry Hall so exciting is that it's a wall, yet all of the bones are still in the place where they were first discovered. Due to geological spasms (for lack of a better term), what was once horizontal became almost vertical, and since the pre-World War I days, scientists have studied the thousands of specimens available in an incredibly dense chunk of preserved deep time.
Deep time is the phrase used when we talk about things a long time ago--like, longer ago than Star Wars. Human history is, if we're being generous, about 10,000 years old. But when we start talking about how old Earth is and how long ago dinosaurs lived (in the case of the creatures outside of Jensen, Utah, about 150 million years), the human perspective gets swallowed up. I get dazzled when I'm in Europe and I see buildings that have been standing since before America was discovered, to say nothing of becoming its own nation. As I often point out to my students, in America, if something is over 100 years old we put up fences and CCTV to protect its historical worth. In Italy, hobos pee on buildings that saw the rise of the Holy Roman Empire. In other words, calculating the time when these creatures lived is part of the mind-blowing work of geologists and paleontologists. Split Mountain Canyon, which is part of the Dinosaur National Monument, is one example of how the best explanation for what we see is enormous amounts of time. Another example is the gradual evolution from theropod, non-avian dinosaurs to their modern iteration, birds. (That there are non-avian dinosaurs that didn't provide the common ancestors with birds only makes things more complicated…and more interesting.) Only deep time can give the, well, time needed to contemplate and calculate what we see in these formations and fossils. But what was so exciting for me and mine wasn't just the Quarry Hall--although that place is amazing. My favorite sauropod (because I can't just have a "favorite dinosaur", I need it more specific than that) is a Camarasaurus, in part because of her prolific presence at the Quarry Hall. No, for us as a dinosaur-loving family, we had the most exciting time--the "best for last moment"--walking along the trail next to the Quarry Hall. It's an easy walk, especially after we'd practiced hiking on the rugged terrain of Arches National Park the days preceding, that leads down from the road and into a shallow canyon. Because the area is replete with geological strata, we got to walk through deep time, from pre-Jurassic fossilized life all the way up to the Morrison Formation in which the Jurassic fossils are found. Part of the trail is a spur that leads up a narrow--though not particularly tall--cliff-face in which hundreds of unexcavated dinosaur bones are visible. And not just visible. They're tangible, too. The paleontologists discovered the exposed bones, but decided not to excavate the site, in part because there were so many better-preserved examples inside the Quarry Hall (which they no longer excavate at all, having more than enough to work on from what they have been able to find), but also, I think, to help inspire future paleontologists and paleontological studies. To be honest, I think that's why both the hike and the Quarry Hall are visitor draws: There's a transparency that science sometimes fails to exploit when dealing with the public. See, I've been to a lot of dinosaur museums. The more modern ones are always interested in having a windowed lab in which the tools of the trade are on display, an actual lab wherein the painstaking work of fossil preparation takes place. Yet there are always backrooms and storage facilities and drawers filled with more than what we see in the exhibit halls. Not only that, but that's where the real bones are, rather than the cast reproductions that are used to create the dynamic and imagination-snagging poses and tableaus. I don't have a problem with casts instead of real bones being visible to the public--if damage happens to a cast, it's costly, rather than potentially catastrophic--but I know some people, already skeptical of verifiable things (I guess), see conspiracy in scientific processes. To help clarify those processes, as well as encourage investigation into the natural world, the Dinosaur National Monument has a comfortable, clear, and well-laid out exhibit hall that isn't even an exhibit hall--it's a slice of the mountain, preserved for everyone to enjoy and appreciate. Then, if you've the time/stamina (we were there in early April this time, which was the perfect time to explore the place, as it gets oppressively hot during the summer months), you can go down this pathway, this cliff-hugging spur. And you can see the bones. They aren't hard to see, honestly, once you realize how they are differently shaped, differently textured, differently colored than the rock beside it. As we walked up, my wife, Gayle, noticed one bone, then another. Shortly thereafter, we were spotting them all over the place, pointing them out to our boys, and feeling the unique texture of deep time. Other hikers passed us, and we took a moment to help them see that there was more than the dramatic spinal column beneath an overhang, or the clear femur (my guess--and it's just a guess-is that it was a Camarasaurus femur, if only because it was over a yard long) at the top of the spur. The cliff-face was covered in fossilized bones, all there for "discovery" by the monument's guests, all there to touch and taste*. Walking back to the parking lot (where our car would burn the ancient plant life that comprises oil and gasoline), Gayle and I talked about how our fingers were tingling. Not just because we'd spent the last fifteen minutes rubbing rough surfaces, but because we were, 150 million years down the road, reconnecting with life that we somewhat understood and could appreciate, albeit through a process that converted the living into stone. Nevertheless, it was a powerful reminder of how interconnected life is on Earth, how we're all small particles among something bigger, grander, and more involved than any one of us. It was a memorable day, a moment when we touched deep time, and were touched in return. --- * Yes, I "tasted" the fossils. Putting a fossil on your tongue helps you know if you've found a rock or a fossil: The former tastes like dirt and is rough. A fossil, however, will stick to your tongue. Nope, I'm not joking. |
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