Dallin Malmgren's Blog, page 36

Home alone…

This is not my house.

The beginning of June brings two blissful events into my life practically every year:  the school year ends, and , less obviously, my wife leaves me.  Wait, that is not as bad as it sounds.  I love my wife.  We will have been married for 35 years on August 27th, and I’m hoping for another 35.  (Well, let’s be realistic:  25.)

The first week after school lets out she likes to go up to Dallas and spend some time with her mom and dad, and her sister.  Now she has the added attraction of Zack and Kallie and beloved grand-daughter Harper.    Her parents are getting on in age and Karen does a million little things to help them out when she visits.

The first week after school lets out I run a tennis camp with my friend Kyle.  It goes from Monday through Thursday and lasts two hours each morning.  So I have to be there.

I dropped Karen off at the airport  last Monday at 7:30 a.m. and will pick her up this Monday at 10 a.m.  That means that for a full week I am at home alone!  She asked me as she got out of the car, “Will you miss me?”  I said, “Of course,” and then I drove away with a huge grin on my face.

I don’t know why the prospect of an empty house is so exhilarating to me.  It’s not like I go crazy and indulge all the bad habits that are festering under my reserved demeanor.  Routine stays basically the same…might stay up a little later, might watch a little trashier TV.  If anything, I become more reclusive than I usually am.

No, that’s not entirely true.  We have lived in our new house since last August, and in all that time I think we have had guests over (not counting family) one time.  I love my new house and I talk (okay, brag) about it a lot.  And people tell me they’d like to come see it.  Now, when Karen and I entertain, it usually becomes a stressful situation.  (Perhaps that’s why we don’t entertain much.)  Karen wants things to be just so, house has to be spic and span, etc.  I am, well, I am not like that.  So, with her gone for a week, here was my chance to fulfill my social obligations in a basically stress free environment.  I had three guys over for a barbecue and Spurs game on Monday night, a group of tennis coach friends and I played a round of golf and barbecued on Wednesday, and my reading group met here on  Thursday evening.  For all three occasions I served essentially the same menu—sausage tortilla or cheeseburger, guacamole & chips, potato salad (Costco), and fruit salad.  All evidence of visitors was gone by Friday at noon.  (Well, I’m sure Karen will find evidence, but she has a better eye than I do.)

But no, I don’t see Karen’s being gone as a chance to party.  That’s not it at all.  Truth is, I was completely socialized out by Friday morning, and I don’t think I’ve spoken with anyone (except the three guys I played golf with this morning) since.  What I love about the empty house is the freedom.    I prepare whatever I want to eat and clean up when I’m ready.  (No, I’m not a slob, she healed me of that long ago.)  I don’t worry about putting the Breathe Right strip on to muffle my snoring.  I don’t wonder if I flushed twice and put the lid down.  I fall asleep on the sofa without meaning to.  This co-habiting is a tricky business, and if you don’t pay attention to what your co-habiter is feeling, you probably won’t   co-habit for very long.

But we’ve made it 35 years, so I think we’re going to last.  And this is why:  it usually kicks in on the fourth or fifth day—this year it was Saturday morning—but I always realize I want her home.  I miss her.  I have an acquaintance whose wife died a few years back.  They were both in their fifties.  I ran into him about six months after it happened, and I hadn’t heard about it.  I couldn’t believe it.  The man was devastated.  He looked haggard—his loss hung on him like an albatross. After six months.   I’ve thought about it, and I get it.  The two shall become one.  How do you go back?

I get to pick Karen up tomorrow morning.  I can’t wait to see her.  Another thing I like about the Home Alone week is that I know she will be dying to see me.  (Her family can get a little crazy.)  I think this week is good for our marriage.  In fact, I would highly recommend it.  When is the last time you were home alone?

Mowing the lawn.…

Rosemary from my yard.

Just did it this morning.  It’s a menial task, but someone’s got to do it.  It takes around 45 minutes at my new house.  It used to take about two hours for my acre in Cibolo, and that was with a riding mower.  That was a god-awful job, with dust and rocks and weeds and little tree stumps sticking up here and there.  I’ve noticed that the people who bought the place have given up on the empty half acre, opting for the “wildflower” look.

Is mowing the lawn a man’s job?  It is and always has been in my family.  So is taking out the garbage.  Now laundry, that’s a woman’s job.  My wife thinks that our clothes stay nicer and last longer if she launders them—no argument from me.  I think I do more cooking than she does now, but that’s another blog entry.  I have driven by homes and seen a woman mowing the lawn.  I always wonder where the man is.  I picture him inside in front of the TV with his feet up, drinking a beer, and I speculate about a sullen marriage.  (Yes, I realize that in these times it is far more likely there is no man of the house.)

When my sons were teens living at home, I used to try to rope them into mowing the lawn, but I wasn’t very successful.  I’ll bet that together they haven’t mowed ten lawns in their lives.  They both used the same ploy.  They’d get on the riding mower and run over some protruding rock or root or stump, making a horrible clank.  The repairs invariably cost me more than hiring someone to do the lawn would have.

Do people mow the lawn the same way?  I break it down into sections, and then I do laps from the outside in.  The first three laps I do so the grass is shooting inward, toward the unmowed grass.  Then I reverse it so the grass shoots outward.  Of course, I do this in hopes of keeping grass off my driveway and porch and sidewalks, but it’s not that effective.  It mostly just depends on which way the wind is blowing.  My sections don’t follow any geometrical pattern, just the way the lawn is shaped.  One of my sections might be a trapezoid and one a rhombus.  (Okay, I think I just made those terms up.)  My largest section takes 12 laps and my smallest takes 5 with a couple of extra zips.

What do people think about when they mow the lawn?  I know I never thought about actually mowing the lawn until today.  Sometimes I do songs and sometimes I just space out mindlessly—if I have one recurring thought, it’s how much longer is the damn job going to take?

There is one thing I do like about mowing the lawn—the mockingbirds.  I guess they eat bugs and worms, because whenever I mow they hover around the yard and swoop down when I uncover a new swatch.  I suspect every high school English teacher has a warm place in his/her heart for the mockingbird.

Karen has a special thing for weed-whacking.  Not for doing it, but for having it done.  For her, a mowed lawn without it is like peanut butter and bread without the jelly.  And she wants peach preserves—none of that grape crap.  Personally, I think a man’s lawn should reflect his character, and God knows I’m a little rough around the edges.

But there is something civilized about a freshly mowed lawn.  (When I was young, that was my brother’s idea for the name of a rock band:  The Freshly Mowed Lawn…nah, I don’t think so.)  I guess it is Nature’s haircut.  There’s something pristine and orderly and controlled about it, and it smells nice too.  As I sit on my back porch looking at my freshly mowed lawn, it just seems to meld in to the rolling fairways, tee boxes, greens and sandtraps that lie beyond it.  Now that’s real civilization.  I’m a lucky man.

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Mowing the lawn….

Rosemary from my yard.

Just did it this morning.  It’s a menial task, but someone’s got to do it.  It takes around 45 minutes at my new house.  It used to take about two hours for my acre in Cibolo, and that was with a riding mower.  That was a god-awful job, with dust and rocks and weeds and little tree stumps sticking up here and there.  I’ve noticed that the people who bought the place have given up on the empty half acre, opting for the “wildflower” look.

Is mowing the lawn a man’s job?  It is and always has been in my family.  So is taking out the garbage.  Now laundry, that’s a woman’s job.  My wife thinks that our clothes stay nicer and last longer if she launders them—no argument from me.  I think I do more cooking than she does now, but that’s another blog entry.  I have driven by homes and seen a woman mowing the lawn.  I always wonder where the man is.  I picture him inside in front of the TV with his feet up, drinking a beer, and I speculate about a sullen marriage.  (Yes, I realize that in these times it is far more likely there is no man of the house.)

When my sons were teens living at home, I used to try to rope them into mowing the lawn, but I wasn’t very successful.  I’ll bet that together they haven’t mowed ten lawns in their lives.  They both used the same ploy.  They’d get on the riding mower and run over some protruding rock or root or stump, making a horrible clank.  The repairs invariably cost me more than hiring someone to do the lawn would have.

Do people mow the lawn the same way?  I break it down into sections, and then I do laps from the outside in.  The first three laps I do so the grass is shooting inward, toward the unmowed grass.  Then I reverse it so the grass shoots outward.  Of course, I do this in hopes of keeping grass off my driveway and porch and sidewalks, but it’s not that effective.  It mostly just depends on which way the wind is blowing.  My sections don’t follow any geometrical pattern, just the way the lawn is shaped.  One of my sections might be a trapezoid and one a rhombus.  (Okay, I think I just made those terms up.)  My largest section takes 12 laps and my smallest takes 5 with a couple of extra zips.

What do people think about when they mow the lawn?  I know I never thought about actually mowing the lawn until today.  Sometimes I do songs and sometimes I just space out mindlessly—if I have one recurring thought, it’s how much longer is the damn job going to take?

There is one thing I do like about mowing the lawn—the mockingbirds.  I guess they eat bugs and worms, because whenever I mow they hover around the yard and swoop down when I uncover a new swatch.  I suspect every high school English teacher has a warm place in his/her heart for the mockingbird.

Karen has a special thing for weed-whacking.  Not for doing it, but for having it done.  For her, a mowed lawn without it is like peanut butter and bread without the jelly.  And she wants peach preserves—none of that grape crap.  Personally, I think a man’s lawn should reflect his character, and God knows I’m a little rough around the edges.

But there is something civilized about a freshly mowed lawn.  (When I was young, that was my brother’s idea for the name of a rock band:  The Freshly Mowed Lawn…nah, I don’t think so.)  I guess it is Nature’s haircut.  There’s something pristine and orderly and controlled about it, and it smells nice too.  As I sit on my back porch looking at my freshly mowed lawn, it just seems to meld in to the rolling fairways, tee boxes, greens and sandtraps that lie beyond it.  Now that’s real civilization.  I’m a lucky man.

Ascia … my dear mom

Ascia, Christmas 2001

  (The following is actually a chapter from my never-ending, self-perpetuating autobiography called My Forty Pages–way more than that and still growing.  I hope to put it up on my website someday.)

As distant and estranged as I felt from my father growing up, so I seemed attached and connected to my mother.  Not in a cloying, spend-lots-of-time-together way–in fact, I don’t remember ever spending much time with my mother.  But somehow, my mother got me.  There was one stretch, somewhere between grades five and ten, where she had a spy planted in the midst of my life.  No matter what prank, misdeed or devilment that I performed, my mother was aware of it before the sun went down.  My sisters swore their innocence (and how would they know, anyway?), and my brother’s loyalty was beyond question.  Truth is, I didn’t mind her peephole into my life since she observed my deeds more with bemusement than moral reserve, perceiving the antic inside of the crime.  No, if I truly displeased my mother, her response was always the same:  “Wait until your father gets home.”  (Terrible words, future mothers!)

Ascia was not a Mother’s Day kind of mom.  The maternal streak did not run that deeply in her.  I have often wondered how Ascia would assess her own life.  I suspect she would express disappointment.  I believe she felt called to greater things than being housewife and mother to a husband and six children, which is an accurate if cold assessment of her accomplishments (albeit she left most of the actual housewifing and mothering to Dowanee, my live-in grandmother).  Ascia was a dreamer, not a doer.  In fact, I believe I share a hidden trait with all five of my siblings–we ascribe to (but would never acknowledge) an underlying belief that we are somehow superior (intellectually? morally? spiritually?) to the common masses–that we are of a higher ilk.  We got that from Ascia.  Come to think, my dad probably shared that conviction–he was always attributing things to our Tartar blood–so it’s a recessive gene!  (Lest I appear a raging egomaniac, I’d like to state that 60 years of observation have taught me that the trait is delusional–but present nonetheless.)

 

Raskelnikov comes to mind.  In my mid-twenties I went on a Russian literature jag.  I read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, the stories of Chekhov, even some Solzhenitsyn.  I loved their extremism–the extremity of their depression, of their joy, of their aspirations and their cataclysms.  And in retrospect, I realize that I was bonding with my mother.

 

A second topic of wonderment regarding my mother is what she actually did with her time.  I just don’t remember her being around very much even though she was always there.  (Dowanee was the omnipresent one.)  She was a voracious reader, she loved to play bridge, she enjoyed the company of her neighborhood friends (“cronies,” she called them).  I don’t remember her gardening much, but she must have because we had lots of plants and our yard was well-maintained–I’m sure we wouldn’t have hired someone.  Perhaps the reason I don’t remember her being around is because I avoided her even more than she avoided me.

 

There was nothing she liked to do more than outrage and shock.  My parents did some entertaining–cocktail parties, Christmas parties, barbecues.  Those of us who were home would dutifully greet the guests when they arrived and then be banished up to our rooms while the grown-ups partied downstairs.  I remember there would be intermittent burst of wild raucous laughter, and I knew it was inspired by something my mother said or did.  She was no great beauty–her features were Slavic, almost homely–but there was something about her face that held your interest.  She would meet your gaze with a vivacity, an audacity, a composure that was daunting.  There would sometimes be fights between my mother and father after these parties ended.  I believe my mom was a tremendous flirt, and my dad would get jealous.

 

She didn’t confine her outrageous behavior to her own social circle.  She loved to corner our friends and engage them in “soulful” conversations.  Her best trick was to steer the conversation in a certain direction, set her victim up, and then  drop a bomb.  Her favorite target was girlfriends:

Mom:  So, Karen, Dallin tells me you minor in art.  What do you do?

Karen:  Well, I like to draw.

Mom:  Oh, yes.  Dallin’s old girlfriend–Lou, did he tell you?  She was a

guitar player and a singer.  She was fantastic.  She sang right here

in this room.

My friends either loved her or feared her.

 

She was, sadly, a bad grandmother.  Our first family reunion was in Seaside, Oregon when Bethany was seven years old.  Beth had spent very little time with either grandparents on my side since they had moved to the West Coast before she was born.  My old friend Randy lived near Portland, so he came to visit for a day and brought his six year old daughter Alex.  My mother, responding to some self-perceived slight from me or Karen or Bethany, proceeded to shower all her attention and affection on Alex.  Bethany was devastated.  I’m sorry to say that both of my parents were crappy grandparents, their overlying attitude toward all their grandchildren being one of apathy.  My dad used to say that people didn’t really interest him until they were old enough to hold an intelligent conversation.  By time most of my children were, he was dead.  One of Ascia’s crowning gestures came at a Christmas we celebrated in Texas.  Some of my family and some of Karen’s family were present.  Nathan and Zachary eagerly opened their gift from Grandma Ascia.  They each got a box of condoms.  Nate was fourteen and Zack was twelve.

 

I think she took all her pent-up familial love and diverted it toward animals.  You never met a woman for ooohing and aaahing over creatures–dogs, cats, ducks, and birds.  She hated zoos.  She considered it her ministry to care for any stray, lost, mistreated or just out of sorts animal that appeared on the horizon.  She was effusive in her affection, and that’s the only place I ever saw it.

 

She was a hard woman, a difficult woman, but I loved her and she loved me.  When I was up, she would consider it her duty to put my world in perspective.  I remember her favorite catchphrase:  “Life is not all la dee dah.” But in times of duress, she was always in my corner, both defending and prodding me forward.  She raised us to be independent—my siblings are scattered across the planet and wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Ascia went out on her own terms.  She had said for the past few years that being an “octogenarian” was plenty for her.  One day she took her dog Tut out for a walk, got tangled in his leash, and fell and broke her hip.  She decided not to recover.  My sisters who lived on the West Coast contacted those of us who didn’t, and we all gathered to sit by her deathbed.  I remember when I walked into her hospital room, fresh from Texas.  She looked up at me, the ghost of a smile flickered across her face, and she said, “I have AIDS.”

 

We took shifts sitting by her bedside as her consciousness faded, as her breathing became more and more shallow, as her face became skeletal.  When Karen and I were alone with her, we blabbered in her ear about Jesus and God’s love and eternal life.  If anything registered, she sure didn’t show it.

 

But I don’t think she would have.

TAKS me no questions…and I’ll tell you no lies

Standardized testing is strangling education.

Four straight days of testing this week.  I asked my seniors if they knew how lucky they were–come to school at 12:50 every day, two or three or four shortened class periods, and home again.  To top it off, Monday was Senior Skip Day (hmm, why do I feel guilty capitalizing that?)

For the rest of us, it’s not such a good week.  Just getting ready for it is a pain.  We teachers have to go to not one but two mind-numbing training sessions to administer a test in which we pass out the test materials, read the bold-faced directions, monitor the test by going up and down rows switching from one sitting perch to another (two teachers per classroom), escort kids to the bathroom, and return the test materials to the counseling office at the end of the test.  It’s probably worse for our students, who face a constant bludgeoning of test-related content in their classrooms, TAKS remediation for those who come up short, and nonstop exhortations to put forth their best effort as the test days approach.

Then comes the actual test days.  I always volunteer to do the reading and let my partner teacher deal with the distribution and collection of test materials.  I read almost identical, word-for-word directions for three straight days and wonder if anyone is actually listening on that third day.  The kids begin the test.  And I sit.  Now the challenge actually begins…how do I occupy my mind for three plus hours when all I can do is sit or move up and down classroom rows?  It used to not be so bad.  One year I wrote limericks for every single kid on my tennis team (and read them aloud at the team party a month later).  I’d compose them in my head, then surreptitiously jot them down on 3 x 5 cards I had stashed in my back pocket.  Nowadays, our school administrators and people from across the street are peeking through the rectangular glass window on our classroom doors at least every 15 minutes (and notating what each test monitor is doing!), so I can’t even get away with that.

I have become a fashion analyst.  Did you know that it’s right around 50% the number of kids who wears jeans to those who don’t?  (The number goes up in jeans’ favor in February when they take the ELA TAKS test—cooler weather.)  Only about 10% of kids wear actual glasses now.  Hollister is winning these days—but not by much.  Seems like Aeropostale is gaining favor.  And the guy who invented flip flops is doing better than the guy who invented earrings—if you go by the girls at my school.  (Oops…or “the girl who…”—didn’t mean to be sexist.)  Finally, yes, it has become socially acceptable—I would call it a “trend”—for boys to wear socks with sandals.  (My wife shudders when I do that!)

I have sat there and willed kids to have to go to the bathroom just so I can walk him/her down the hallway, wait outside and visit with other teacher/escorts while he/she does his/her business, and then walk him/her back to the classroom thinking I’m getting paid $300 + a day to take a kid to the bathroom!

                Have I started to rant?  Truth is, I used to kind of look forward to the TAKS test days—you know, break up the routine, less stress than actually teaching, different daily schedule, different kids, etc.  But now the TAKS test days are just the tip of the deluge.  Next week we’ll begin with some of the pre-AP, AP, and IB testing.  Week after that, I’ll have one of my classes for 4 and ½ hours while the freshmen are taking their STAARS tests for three straight days.  After that we continue with pre-AP, AP, IB, and EOC tests.  To top it off, we have the audacity to give our own students a final exam for the classes we teach.

I’m happy to report that my school district is one of many that has signed a petition to the Texas Education Agency protesting the proliferation of testing that has strangled public education.  I hope the educationists  listen.

Have you found your calling? Or, I ain’t no Stephen King…

Early days as a writer. Check out that computer system.

This is my first blog entry in a month.  Dang.  I was supposed to do one once a week, every Sunday.  Another resolution bites the dust (see my first blog entry).  What can I say?  Life happened.

Except that is a cop-out.  It’s not like I have been so inundated with the cares of this world that I have not had time to think about my blog.  I’ve had lots of ideas, like The Masters… or Our Easter Curse… or My Hunger Games disappointment…  Heck, I even got a page and a half on Coaching a sport… until I faded away.

Stephen King says a writer writes.  That’s his sole criteria.  When I was younger, I read an interview with him where he explained his regimen:  he writes for three hours a day 362 days a year (he skips Christmas, his birthday, and the Fourth of July).  I think I had already had my first book published when I read that interview, but I wanted to be more prolific, so I decided that for one summer (teachers have summers off), I would adopt his schedule.  I think I lasted about six days.  I just didn’t have three hours of writing every day in me.

I am a late bloomer.  When I was 29 years old, I was working as a supply clerk in a hospital, Karen was pregnant with Bethany, and it finally hit me that I was going to need to be employed for most of the rest of my life.  Supply clerking wasn’t very challenging, and it didn’t pay much.  So what did I want to do?  I thought I’d like to teach and I’d like to write.  I went back to college, became an English/Education major, and graduated in two and a half years.

I am not a writer.  I am a teacher who writes.  There is not a doubt in my head that teaching has been my calling.  Finding your calling is very important because it gives structure and purpose to your life—and it pays the bills.  Karen was called to be a teacher too.  We’re lucky because being teachers fits marriage so well.  My son Zachary has found his calling, and I believe Nathan is finding his.  I suspect that Bethany is still looking…but she has started back to school, which is a good step.

This has been my 31st year of teaching.  I intend to teach two more.  So, you see, I’m transitioning.  And I learned in Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing (best book about being a writer I’ve ever read) that he made up all that writing regimen stuff—it was a lie!  So maybe there’s hope for me.  The urge to write is growing stronger and stronger.  And I’m not doing that badly.  I have a website with three of my re-worked novels available as eBooks, I’ll have another this summer, and I’ve written ten (now eleven) blog entries since the middle of January.  Because that’s the bottom line—like Stephen said, a writer writes.  It’s all about the pen meeting the page.  There’s only one thing I need—you.  A writer longs for a reader.  The train to my next calling is leaving the station.  Hop aboard.

Dallas to San Antone…

Me and Harper Leigh, Nov. 2011

I hate that drive.  I’ve had to make it way too many times in my 28 years in Texas.  My wife’s parents and her youngest sister have lived there most of that time, and now Zack and Kallie and darling Harper Leigh are there too.  Besides the familial visits, we used to have to go up there three or four times a year when we were on the USTA junior tennis circuit.  I know every inch of that entire stretch of I-35.

It is 251 miles from my son’s house to my house if you believe Google Maps (which I don’t).  Maybe in Texas that doesn’t seem like that long a distance, but I grew up on the East Coast—you could do four or five states in 250 miles.  It is true that traveling by car is much easier after the children have grown and gone.  You only have two people’s needs to assess, and if you haven’t learned to get along by this time, you shouldn’t be traveling together.  Besides, my wife has devised a perfectly cohesive arrangement for this particular trip—she sleeps and I drive.

The drive home is always the worst, probably because I am usually more anxious to get home than I am to get there.  (I don’t travel well.)  My latest system to manage my discontent is to leave Zack’s house extremely early (around 6 a.m.) on Sunday morning.  That way we don’t usually run into any heavy traffic and I can make it home around 10 a.m. and still feel like I have a Sunday to live.

But the real key to the journey is to break it down into parts—250 miles is just too long to contemplate as one continuous drive.  I’m afraid I’d give in to despair and crash the car into a stanchion.  So Phase One is the Dallas skyline.  I actually like the Dallas skyline.  That sparkly ball is pretty cool, and there’s something Gatsby-ish about the greenlight building.  Next comes the giant giraffe in front of the zoo.  You can’t actually see him in the dark, but I always catch him on the way in.

After that I have to gut it out to the Owens Corning tower in Waxahachie.  I admire a sound product—Karen and I still use the casserole dishes that we got as a wedding gift.  The next phase is Carl’s Corner.  I really miss the old billboard that was painted like a semi and had Willie and Waylon and two other guys (anybody know who?) looking over it.  I heard a rumor that Willie was arrested at Carl’s Corner once.  He’d been playing poker with Carl and fell asleep in his car, too stoned to drive it home.  I don’t know if that really happened or not.  (When I drove past this morning there was a Toyota Corolla pulled over on the grass—I was tempted to stop and check for Willie!)

Next comes the Hillsboro outlet mall.  The first time I saw that place I was astonished anyone would build such a large mall so far out in the boonies.  I was right.  Now it is practically a ghost mall.  The following check point is the Old Czech Bakery in West, which I have always intended to stop at, but never have.

Please, someone, tell me why in all of my countless trips I have never seen one iota of human activity on the Brazos River as I pass over the bridge coming into Waco?  No boaters, no swimmers, no floaters, no fishermen—no one even skipping stones!  It looks wide enough and deep enough.  Baylor University is next door.  Is there a city ordinance?

I like Lorena because that was the name of the girl in McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.  I played golf in Salado once.  Robertson’s Beef Jerky ranks right up there with the Old Czech Bakery on my Meant to Do list.  And I am always fascinated/aghast at how commercial Austin continues to spread itself north.  Today I felt like I was entering the outskirts and the sign said I had 19 miles to go.

By this stage of the trip I have abandoned my phases/check points/areas of interest, along with my cruise control, and I’m just pushing it to get home.  Although, I must say that the ridiculous fake longhorns next to the car dealership outside of San Marcos still crack me up every time I see them.  Who came up with that idea?

Thank God I now get to turn left at New Braunfels instead of gutting it all the way into Cibolo.  A small mercy, I know, but precious.  Today I made it in 3:51.

Spring Break…

Taking time to smell the roses, 2004.

…is my third favorite holiday of the whole year. It is like a flotation device thrown to you just as you’re about to go under in the sea of the second semester. I don’t care anything about calendar dates—spring officially begins on the first day of Spring Break. The air smells different on that first day. There is new life and hope and comfort in it.

I even enjoy the week before Spring Break. You get the most agonizing of the four TAKS tests out of the way. We always put on a high school tennis tournament on the Thursday and Friday before S.B., partly because we get a lot of schools to enter, but mainly because it feels like S.B is starting two days earlier.

How we spend our S.B.’s affords us a microcosmic view of the stages of our lives. I can recall the S.B.’s of my youth. The goal was to jam-pack as much partying, carousing and just plain hard-living as I could into those nine glorious days. I could measure the success of my S.B. by the amount of sleep deprivation I was suffering at the end of it. I also remember a briefer, more contemplative phase. There was a float trip on the Current River in Missouri with two other guys—we saw lots of wildlife and hardly any other people (not many people were crazy enough to float when it was still so cold). We took turns swigging out of a whiskey bottle around the campfire, telling stories and listening to noises from the forest we knew nothing about. I haven’t seen the two guys I went floating with in forty years—but I remember them.

Then there were the family years. We wanted to do something the kids would remember. Often it involved going to visit a relative, since we were poor and travel is expensive—a brother in New Orleans, a sister in Missouri, Karen’s family in Dallas. Some years it would be people visiting us and trips to Sea World and Fiesta Texas and floats on the Guadalupe. Naturally, we also had ambitions for our S.B’s—we were going to paint this or plant that. I was going to get a jump on the next summer’s book project or screenplay. I think we always did better in the area of vacationing than in the area of accomplishment.

Then came the tennis era. S.B. meant a ZAT (Zone Area Tournament) in Houston, or a Champ Major Zone in Dallas, or a Super Champ Major Zone in Austin. It was fun, and we certainly spent a lot of time with our kids, but, in retrospect, we probably did more of the tennis circuit than we needed to.

Now we are in the post-children era. I am sitting on the back porch, watching the golfers go by. I just fixed myself a drink and I’m writing this. Happy as a clam. Karen left today to spend some time with her folks in Dallas. I’ll join her (and see my darling grand-daughter) on Thursday. I love my wife passionately, but there’s something about spending a few days at home alone that almost makes me giddy. Do you see what I’m talking about S.B. and stages of life? I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed S.B. more!

Yes, I’m aware that not everyone gets the S.B. holiday. They should. In fact, if I didn’t get one I’d probably find a way to invent one. Those people who talk about making the day after the Super Bowl an official federal holiday are crazy—it’s Spring Break that needs to go national.

In case you’re wondering about my other favorite holidays: Christmas is second. Why is a no-brainer—it’s Christmas and it lasts sixteen days. And my number one favorite holiday; year in, year out, never-changing, never arriving soon enough, never lasting long enough? Easy. Summer Vacation!

The Out-of-Towner…

Cactus from my yard

I missed a blog entry last weekend—I’m trying to do one every Sunday.  I have enough self-awareness to know I’ll miss a few here and there (and to not beat myself up about it—guilt has never been a strong motivator for me).  I’m blaming the out-of-towner for last weekend.

Every year I take my tennis team on one overnight trip to play in a tournament that is too far to commute.  The last several years it has been College Station—before that it was Corpus Christi.  It used to be a one night trip; now we leave on Thursday after school and get back some time Saturday afternoon or evening.  My reasons for making it a one-nighter were cost and the fact that I didn’t want to deal with possible teenage misbehavior for two full nights.  My reason for making it a two-nighter is that I no longer trust myself driving at 5 a.m. on Friday morning.

My kids love the out-of-towner.  It gets talked about long before and long after.  I only take eight boys and eight girls, so the competition for those final spots can be fierce.  Most of the girls pack like they are running away from home.  I’m blessed to have a school district that provides me with a mini school bus, so I don’t have to maneuver my way around a strange town in one of those long cheese wagons.  The bus is always packed to the gills with kids and luggage.  I usually have two or three sets of parents caravanning behind me.

I think I understand why the kids love the trip so much.  It means two and half days of non-stop camaraderie.  It involves joyous decisions, like who goes in what room and where we will eat and who plays at what site and what time is curfew.   I usually have at least one new “relationship” spring up on the out-of-towner.  There’s a 50/50 chance of it being warm enough to swim in Texas in February, and there’s always a few maniacs who will swim regardless of the temperature.  In these days of instant communication, you bring along anyone you want who is not on the trip.  (On this past weekend, one of my players texted his girlfriend 150 times in one evening.)  Tennis against mostly people you’ve never played before.  No parents for two days (unless they come—most kids don’t want them to).  What’s not to love?

Of course, I dread the out-of-towner.  And it’s not because I don’t have any fun.  Most of the time the trip is quite enjoyable.  But it carries a huge responsibility with it, and that responsibility falls on me.  Sixteen parents have entrusted their children to me for more than two full days.  I carry their lives in the school bus.  I drop them off at various tennis sites and assure them I’ll be back to check on them as soon as I can.  I’m responsible for their behavior in the restaurant.  And at night I have to make sure everyone is in the bed he/she is supposed to be in, doing what he/she is supposed to be doing (sleeping).  For me, the best part of the trip is pulling into the school parking lot on Saturday with everybody safe and sound.

The worst that has happened on the out-of-towner was one year in Corpus when a boy was horsing around on a bed and cracked his head against the night table.  Of course, he and his friends didn’t even want to tell me about it, but he was bleeding a lot so they finally decided they better.   They brought him to my room and told me what happened.  He was a little pale and it was a deep gash, but the bleeding had stopped.  I took him to my female chaperone’s room and consulted her.  We agreed that since the bleeding had stopped and he hadn’t lost consciousness, we’d forego the Emergency Room and keep an eye on him throughout the night.  In the morning he felt fine.  When I went through his room at check-out, I discovered the towels they’d used to stop the bleeding.  When I saw how much blood I almost passed out myself!  Thank God the boy was my own son Zachary.

I don’t know how many more out-of-towners we’ll do.  (I invented the phrase “teenagered-out” after this last one.)  School districts are changing, tightening things up, counting beans more carefully.  I have two more years until I retire, and I’ll schedule the out-of-towner both years if they’ll let me.  I think the benefits I observe on the trip far outweigh the potential risks.  I know my kids come back with memories they’ll cherish the rest of their lives.  It seems worth it to me.

Death is not the end…

Old gravesite located at The Bandit Golf Course

… and how a dog taught me that.

I am not a pet person.  Karen and I do not have a pet at this point, and that is by my preference with her reluctant assent.  But I don’t expect it to last too long.  I have observed and recognized and even come to respect an undeniable truth:  a beloved pet is as much of a part of the family as a son or a daughter.  Doesn’t compute with me, but I’ve been around my sisters enough…

Karen and I have had three dogs, four cats, and several unmemorable rodents.  We had most (but not all) of these pets while our children were still growing up and at home.  Another stone cold truth:  if you’re going to have pets, you’re going to be confronted with death.  We lost one cat to a coyote (the screams were horrible!); another just disappeared after squirreling a check for $98 out of me (long story); I had my favorite dog, Honeybun, put down by the vet in her 17th year—it was the compassionate thing to do, but I’ll never forget the mournful, confused look on her face as the vet injected her.

But my most meaningful confrontation with death came earlier, before I met Karen, when I was a carefree college dropout hanging around campus in Columbia, Missouri.  I had acquired a dog I didn’t really want.  Her name was Schnook, and she was one of those ratty-looking terriers.  I got her because a girl I found attractive was moving out of town and couldn’t take a pet with her.  I figured I might meet up with her (the girl) further down the road.  Brownie points.

Schnook was an obnoxious dog.  She was hyperactive, and she craved human attention.  When I’d get home from wherever I’d been, she’d be so excited she would almost wet herself.  Actually, I think she did a few times.  And she would jump all over me.  I’ve never bonded with animals too well, and Schnook’s excited fervor would wear pretty thin on me.  In a few darker moments, I can remember kind of punting her to get her away from me.

Schnook created other hassles, too.  Every six months or so, she’d go into heat, and then we’d have all these neighborhood dogs hanging around on our front porch.  Every so often a fight would break out, with two male dogs barking and biting and cussing and spitting.  Schnook’s most devoted suitor was a big German Shepherd.  Not too many other dogs messed with him.  Still, I cannot believe that it would have been possible for this huge dog to have sex with the rat-like Schnook.  Man, I hated it when Schnook went into heat.  (Another confession:  I was too broke/air-headed/unorganized to go to the trouble of taking Schnook to the vet to be fixed.)

I have to be grateful to Schnook though, because she taught me that death is not the end.  It happened on a fine spring day.  One really good thing about Schnook was that girls thought she was cute.  That meant when I took her to the park on the Missouri campus, she would run up to girls and they would pet her and ooohh and aaahh—Schnook actually initiated a couple of relationships for me.

Is there anything quite as nice as a spring day on a college campus?  On this day, we were headed for the park and Schnook was as excited as I was.  No, I didn’t have her on a leash.  I rarely did (Dylan’s song If Dogs Run Free was popular at the time), and she usually stayed near me.  But she had the occasional habit of chasing cars.  When one went by, she raced out between two parked cars and SMAK!  Schnook went sprawling, and the guy didn’t even stop.

She was hit bad.  I felt so sorry for her I scooped her up in my arms.  I held her close and she gave me this look that’s hard to describe—I guess it would be cornball to say there was pure love and forgiveness in that look.  Then I felt—literally, FELT—actually FELT—her spirit rise out of my arms, and I was holding dead, lifeless flesh.  Schnook was gone.

I buried her on a hillside in the woods overlooking a stream.  It’s one of my favorite spots in Columbia, Missouri.  And I came away from that experience with an incontrovertible truth:  death is not the end.  I can’t claim any expertise on what happens afterward—I have my own beliefs and I hope you have yours.  But it doesn’t just stop there.  I’d bet my life on it.