Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 554

He returns

The last time I saw my brother, Jeremy, was more than five years ago. My mother had died and we were settling the bill after the post-funeral lunch. He and I went our separate ways that day, and an address and phone number change a short time later and he was gone.

He has never been the most communicative brother in the world, but five years was a long time to be gone.  Friends and relatives began searching for him a few years ago, and some had even considered hiring a private investigator to hunt him down. There was no trace of him at any of his previous addresses, his employer offered us no information, he had contacted no one who was previously in his life, and there was no sign of him online.

He was a ghost.

About two years ago I admitted to my wife that I had started to assume that Jeremy was dead.  He had probably moved south or west and died in an accident of some kind. Unaware of who his next-of-kin were, the authorities did not know who to call, and so his death went unnoticed.

I had resigned myself to this fact when Jeremy reappeared on Thursday night, about fifteen minutes before I was to take the stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.  I was there to tell a story for The Story Collider, a science-based storytelling organization. I was eating dinner in the café with my father-in-law and grandmother-in-law when he appeared over my shoulder and said, "Don't I know you?"

It made the telling of my story quite a challenge.  I found myself standing on stage, unable to think about anything save the brother who I thought I was dead but was now sitting in the audience, waiting to hear me tell a story from high school that he knew well.  

The means by which Jeremy reappeared in my life is unbelievable, and I am in the process of writing a piece about it for hopeful placement in the New York Times or a similar publication. So you'll have to wait to hear the rest of the story.  The details as to how and why he chose that venue, on that particular night, to make his reappearance, but needless to say, I am happy that he has returned and am hoping that he will stick around this time. 

Gratitude journal: A daughters excitement

Tonight I am grateful for the moment when I step through the door of my home and my door runs to me, screaming, "Daddy!"

She throws herself into my arms and we embrace, and then while I'm still holding her, she grabs my face with her little hands and begins telling me something important from her day. 

Today is was a story about one of her friends at school.  Sometimes it's about the toys that she was playing with prior to my entry.  Other times it's about Elysha. 

It is quite often the best sixty seconds of my day. 

Last time being two

I'm so glad that my wife captured this moment on video:

The night before my daughter turned three years old.  The last time my little one was two years old.

People say that time flies by so fast when it comes to their children.  Perhaps because I mark time so definitively by writing to my daughter every day, this has not been the case for me. 

Three years has felt like three years.

Still, she's growing up too damn fast for my liking. 

A potentially great day ruined by you-know-what

Yesterday was a potentially great day for me.  

To start, Cosmopolitan UK named next book, MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, #1 on their Best Books for February 2012 list  and offered a glowing review.

The cover of the book also appeared publicly for the first time, and it's one that I love. In fact, I have seen a sneak peek of the US cover as well and am  blessed with a bounty of great art for both sides of the pond.

   

The actual UK cover will feature a quote from the very generous, internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult.  Ms. Picoult offered me the best blurb of my life in regards to the book.  It reads:

A novel as creative, brave, and pitch-perfectas its narrator, an imaginary friend named Budo, who reminds us that bravery comes in the most unlikely forms. It has been a long time since I read a book that has captured me so completely, and has wowed me with its unique vision. You've never read a book like this before. As Budo himself might say: Believe me.

A pretty good start to the day. Right?

During the school day, I managed to earn my students' respect in a realm rarely achieved by an elementary school teacher:

Music 

A truly remarkable a cappella group performed at our school in the afternoon, singing a number of Motown hits by Michael Jackson, KC and the Sunshine Band and others.  The kids loved this music, which I thought was odd since they normally make fun of me for liking "old music" like The Beatles, Van Morrison and Springsteen. 

When I questioned them about this after the performance, they explained that Michael Jackson, The Who, Neil Diamond and others are not considered old in their minds (a few admitted that The Beatles were probably acceptable as well).  When I showed them that I have 38 Michael Jackson songs on my phone, they gained an immediate, albeit grudging respect for my taste in music. 

I went on to show them the 67 Neil Diamond songs, the three full albums by The Who, and the handful of new artists like Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Lady Gaga who are currently reside on my phone. 

They left the school that day feeling that I possessed a modicum of coolness, which in the land of ten-year olds is quite an achievement for any adult. 

At dinner last night, I told my daughter that I loved her, and with a piece of bread still stuffed in her mouth, she said, "I love you so much too, Daddy."

Clara has said that she loves me many times before, but something about her earnestness and sincerity last night almost brought me to tears.

It was as if she really understood what the words meant for the first time.   

Later that evening, I felt our baby kick inside my wife's belly for the first time.  Actually, I felt it kick several times. It was jumping around so much that it nearly made Elysha sick.

I still remember the first time I felt Clara kick, and this was just as exciting. 

An unforgettable moment, both then and now.

But the Patriots lost the Super Bowl on Sunday night, and in horrific fashion, so all this good news was wasted on me.  There was no way in hell that I was going to feel at all good just 24 hours after a loss like that, regardless of what happened during the day.

Nice try, universe, but I don't think so. 

Gratitude journal: Unexpected empathy

Tonight I am grateful to my students, who knew better than to tease me or even mention the Super Bowl to me.  Two kids came in offering me a hug, but not another word was spoken about the debacle. 

I overheard one girl telling a small group of kids that it would be unwise to tease me about the Patriots loss, so perhaps there was a bit of fear mixed in with their empathy, but either way, I was grateful for their understanding and compassion on what was honestly a difficult day for me. 

Cowboy Clara

Who taught my daughter about the expression "Yeeha!"?

Same complaint, different decade

I read a post on Roberta Trahan's Idyll Conversation blog the other day that began with this:

How many of you have noticed, in recent years, the near extinction of such social courtesies as the hand-written thank-you note and willingly waiting your turn in line? How many of you are bothered by it? Well, it bothers me plenty. A couple of weeks ago, while waiting in the checkout lane at the grocery store, I was appalled when the person in front of me had the nerve to complain that the elderly lady ahead of him was taking the time to put her change in her wallet before moving out of his way. Really? Have we become so self-centered and accustomed to instant response that we have completely lost our sense of basic social pleasantries and caring for the feelings of others? I had to wonder.

Trahan is certainly not the first to express a sentiment like this.  I actually hear it quite often.

I think it is nonsense every single time.

While I do not appreciate the the lack of civility or the rudeness that exists in this world, I am fairly certain that it has existed in nearly equal measure for a very long time. I suspect that the opening sentence of Trahan's piece could have just as easily been written by someone in 1902, 1912 or even 1972.

Do we really believe that ours is the first generation to bemoan the erosion of social courtesies?

Do we really believe that rudeness of this kind did not exist one hundred years ago?

After all, we don't actually know what civility looked like in 1912. We were not there to see it, and the amount of writing that exists from the era is scant in comparison to today. 

Consider this: If you were standing in line in a grocery store in 1912 and witnessed the same display of rudeness that Trahan describes in her post, what could you do? 

Tell a friend or two perhaps?  Share it with the members of your social club?  Tell the story at a family gathering? 

Perhaps. 

But how might you preserve this story so that I could read it today or even spread the story beyond your tiny social circle?  There was no Facebook, Twitter, or blog to record the moment for posterity.  Unless you wrote a diary and decided to include a description of the incident within its pages and then somehow manage to ensure the preservation of that diary for a century, how would we ever know that the incident ever took place?

I suspect that if we were to return to 1912, we would find the same kinds of rudeness and incivility that we experience today, as well as writers like Trahan bemoaning the "near extinction" social grace.

In fact, I suspect that there is more civility in the world today than ever before.    

What about the civility and social courtesies experienced by African Americans, immigrants and other minorities?  Even if hand-written-thank-you-cards were more prevalent years ago and grocery store lines were more pleasant and polite, do we really believe a society that embraced widespread, institutional racism and rampant homophobia was more civil than today?

How can we even begin to make this comparison?

But even if we were to exclude this kind of civility and discuss only those mentioned in Trahan's post, do we really believe that our great grandparents went to their graves believing that their world was filled with the same degree of civility as the one that preceded it?

Or is it more likely that every generation, upon experiencing a lifetime of incivility and discourtesy, in concert with the human mind's tendency to recall the negative more easily than the positive, eventually expresses a sentiment similar to Trahan's?

Is it possible that we stand in line hundreds of times every month but only recall the one or two instances of rudeness?

Is it possible that as we get older, those one or two incidents begin piling up in our minds, when in reality, they represent a tiny fraction of the time actually spent standing in line?

Then we eventually reach an age in which this pile of memories is so large that we begin to bemoan the loss of civility in the world, when in reality, we experience civility and social courtesy every day.  The vast majority of the lines in which we stand are perfectly civil.  The vast majority of drivers on the road are courteous and polite.  The vast majority of people thank us for our gifts.  

We simply do not remember those moments, because they are so forgettable.  So ordinary.  So frequent, and therefore, so unnoticed.

I believe that the instinct to complain that today's world is not as good as the one that preceded it is almost always short-sighted and flawed.  Memory is at best unreliable, and at worst, deceiving.

Before you go shaking your fist at today's world, remember that the generation before you probably did the same thing, for exactly the same reason.

Gratitude journal: A safe arrival, a game of poker and an honest-to-goodness resurrection

It's been three days since I have expressed my gratitude in written form.

It's been fairly busy and crazy days. 

On Thursday, I was grateful to be reunited with my brother after more than five years apart.  I saw my brother at my mother's funeral in 2007 and then did not see or hear from him again until this week.  Family members attempted to locate him over the past five years without success, so two years ago, I began operating under the assumption that he was probably dead.  His reappearance came as both a shock and a happy surprise. 

I planned on writing a full account of the almost unbelievable confluence of events that led to our unexpected reunion, but I have instead decided to write the story with the hopes of placing it in a newspaper.  I will write a brief account of the reunion in a future blog post but save the details for the newspaper piece. 

On early Friday morning, I was grateful to arrive home safely after almost five hours of driving solo from New York City.  I left the 92nd Street Y in lower Manhattan around 10:00 PM and spent more than an hour in standstill traffic on the West Side Highway before finally getting underway.

The drive through New York and Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway was not an easy one.  In constant danger of falling asleep at the wheel, I pulled off the road at every rest area along the way, parked the car until the glow of a street light, and ran around the parking lot until the combination of exercise and cold temperatures had reinvigorated me.  When I finally arrived home just after 2:00 AM, I was thankful to have made it home in one piece.

On Saturday I was grateful for my ability to play poker, a game which allows both friends and strangers to gather around a table and spend hours eating, drinking, competing, and engaging in meaningful conversation. 

Had I been invited to a stranger's house for dinner and conversation, I would have assumed that the invitee was a lunatic, but add a simple form of competition and the invitation becomes perfectly normal.

This is how guys operate. Give us something to do and we will happily spend hours together without complaint. 

Thankfully, I am a good poker player, so I can usually make some money in the process, though this was not the case last night.

Still, I was happy to play.

No one needs this much room to poop.

These photos really don't adequately capture the inexplicable enormity of this this public restroom. 

It's bigger than my dining room. 

It might be bigger than any single room in my house.   

It's big enough to fit two full-sized portraits on the wall.

It requires two emergency lighting apparatuses.  

Remove the toilet and sink and you'd have yourself a racquetball court. 

What the hell was the architect thinking?

 

She gets ice cream. We get chicken and pasta?

Elysha explained to Clara that the new baby will be sleeping in our bedroom for a while after she is born.

Clara began crying.  She said that she wants the baby to sleep in her room.

"When the baby's older, she can sleep in your room," Elysha said.  "But for now, the baby will wake up a lot at night, crying because she will need to eat because her tummy is very small, and we don't want her crying to wake you up all night."

Please note that we don't actually know the sex of the baby, but Clara insists that it's a girl, so we concede the pronoun to her rather than fighting over it. 

Clara said, "When the baby is crying, you can give her milk and you can give me ice cream to stop us crying." 

Smart girl.  Huh?

Elysha asked, "Well, what if I'm crying?  What do I get?"

Clara thought for a second and then said, "Hmmm… you get chicken."

"Chicken!" Elysha said.  "What if I want ice cream?"

"No," Clara said. "You get chicken."

"What does Daddy get if he wakes up crying?" Elysha asked.

Clara thought again and then said, "Daddy gets pasta."

Had she offered me ice cream, I might have taken the deal and stuck the baby in her room.  But as it stands, she just negotiated herself out of ice cream condolences.