Twenty-eight

“I lay back down on the bed and crossed my arms behind my head, staring at the ceiling as if I expected it have all the answers. Not surprisingly, the ceiling refused to divulge any hints, although I became convinced that it was simply being selfish and keeping them to itself.”

--from “Alpha Team Alpha” by Stephen Hentchel

Dear Stephen,

Happy birthday! I wanted you to know that I was thinking of you on your birthday, even though… well, I won’t even say it. I’ll always be thinking of you on your birthday.

I wasn’t sure of the best way to let you know that. I considered driving to Battle Creek to see you, but it just didn’t feel right. Instead, I spent the weekend doing things that remind me of you. I went to the zoo. I drank a Smirnoff Ice while watching a DVD with the commentary on. (They seem to have stopped making the black cherry Smirnoff, which makes me really sad. I got the new passion fruit kind instead. It’s not as good.) I even went to the Bittersweet bakery. You know, the one you wanted to go to on New Year’s Day that time? It’s pretty awesome in there. Sorry we didn’t go when you wanted to.

I also went for a long run outside, hoping you would come to visit me like you did back in January. I think I might have felt you again on that stretch of the path between Balbo and Monroe. Was it you? Why do you like that spot in particular? I can’t blame you, I suppose, especially on a bright sunny day. The lake sparkles and there are no trees to block the sun.

It was so, so windy while I was running, though. I have to ask: was that your doing? I don’t know why, but I feel like you have some control over the weather. I still think you are responsible for that torrential downpour that V and I drove through on the way to your funeral. I wouldn’t be surprised if that icy, ever gusting wind was your handiwork as well. I know you would find my suffering hilarious. It was you, wasn’t it? Jackass.

I don’t know; maybe thinking you control the weather is my coping mechanism. Maybe it’s not you at all. Maybe it’s just me being a tiny bit crazy. I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out. I don’t really understand where you are. You’re still so real and alive and vibrant in my mind and heart that my brain can’t comprehend the idea that you are not anywhere. You have to be somewhere. I tend to think that the somewhere is above me, in a general sense. I look up to talk to you. And I look to the sky for the weather. So you controlling the weather is something that makes sense to my troubled mind.

What else can you do? Can you internet surf? I hope you’ve been reading your facebook wall. There are so many people that love and miss you, Stephen. The best I can hope is for you to somehow know that. So, I believe you can control the weather, and I’m also choosing to believe that you can read your facebook wall. If that makes me a little crazy, so be it.

I wanted to watch My Fair Lady this weekend. We watched it on VHS that time, and sadly I got rid of all my VHS tapes last summer. So, I had to go looking for the DVD. No luck at Target, no luck at Borders, and no luck at the first Best Buy I visited. What is wrong with these stores? Don’t they know that My Fair Lady is a classic? After some online searching I found a copy at a different Best Buy across town. When I went to pick it up, I found the cutest little coffee shop! So thanks for getting me out into a new neighborhood. I will always think of you when I go into Peet’s Coffee. (Guess what else? The My Fair Lady DVD has an audio commentary! I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ll let you know if it’s good.)

I also put together a badass Lego robot this weekend. It’s no Yoda, but he’ll go on my desk at work and remind me of you every day. He’ll stand right next to my Lego model of Lucius Malfoy accidentally giving Dobby a sock. (Yes, I have one of those. Shut up.) Check him out:

I wish I could call you to wish you a happy birthday. I think I’ve done that every year since the WMU days. I’m trying to remember all your birthdays past, now. The memory of your 20th birthday is a great one. If I’m not mistaken, that’s when we went to see The Core. Surely you remember how we bonded over that movie? “Augh! One is not a prime number! AUUUUGHHH!” Nothing has ever brought us together like bad math.

Well, I take that back. Bad English also brought us together. It was my bad grammar that led to our last phone call. Remember? You just had to point out that I should have said “Me, neither” instead of “Me, either.” I’m glad you did, though. It was so great to talk to you that day. Thank you so, so much for being so impressed that I had run 20 miles that morning and that I would be running a marathon three weeks later. So many people congratulated me, but something about your reaction was so genuine that I will never forget it. You were truly impressed. It won’t be this year, and it may not even be next year, but I promise that someday I’m going to run another for you. And it’ll probably hurt just as badly, so you better damn well be with me every step of the way. I know you will be.

So how do birthdays work, where you are? I bet that you’ve been thinking to yourself this weekend how awesome it is that you get to eternally remain your devastatingly handsome, in-Navy-shape, 27-year-old self. Well, let me just burst that bubble right now. I don’t care what reason and logic say. To me, today you turn 28. And each year on your birthday, I will close my eyes and picture how you would look a year older. Be good, and I promise that you will age gracefully. But if I feel you laughing at me too many times, you may be a candidate for premature baldness and liver spots. You’ve been warned.

I feel like I could talk to you forever, Stephen, but some piece of my heart is telling me that it’s time to end this. Tears are coming to my eyes. So much about this is unfair. You should be celebrating today, feeling what it is like to be 28. You’re 28 on the 28th today. You should be on the phone with everyone you know, gloating over your golden birthday, and insisting that you get to celebrate when it’s your birthday in any time zone. Instead you are… somewhere else. I don’t know where. But somewhere.

I wanted to get you something. I can’t send you the Lego robot, unfortunately, so I thought I’d write you something. I’ve never been much good at fiction (and I wouldn’t want to steal your forte anyway), so I’m trying something different. Here is your birthday Haiku:

Ode to Stephen

Stephen Hentchel was a guy
who I met at Western Mich.
He was a jackass.

Still, he was a friend,
always good for a laugh and
loyal to a fault.

We fought sometimes, too.
Oft in jest, but oft for real,
though never lasting long.

He sat with one knee up,
slept with his head on his arm,
and drove a minivan.

He loved bare necklines.
He made me feel so pretty
like no one else has.

He hugged me so tight
when I saw him the last time.
I’m so grateful now.

Hearts broke when he died
and today we feel his loss
all over again.

Still I am quite sure
that wherever he is now
he is milking this.

And he is with me.
Now and then I feel him laugh.
I love you, Stephen.

I will always be thinking of you, Stephen. Not just on your birthday. You are everywhere I look, and you remain so alive in my memories that most days I have a hard time remembering that you are gone. You are somewhere. I know it. And I’ll never stop wondering where that is and how you are.

I miss you madly, love you deeply, and am with you always.

Also, I hate you. So much.

Hugs, Stephen. Happy birthday. Give ‘em hell, for me.

Katie

Spirit of Law

“Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? … Is it the intention of law-makers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit?”

-- from “A Plea for Captain John Brown” in Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau

I am not a politically minded person. While I do my best to stay abreast of what is going on in the world and in my local community, I outwardly admit that most conversations about politics go completely over my head. I am aware that there are nuances and details and jargon related to politics that I don’t understand. I also know that I could understand better, if I put in a little effort. Yet I don’t usually bother.

In many cases, my reasons for not bothering are simple lack of interest or laziness. But part of the problem is also that when I do put in the effort to understand what is going on, I am left repeating Thoreau’s lament above. He says, “Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit?” I say (somewhat less eloquently), “Wait, seriously?”

A recent and perfect example of this was Rahm Emmanuel’s effort to persuade the courts that he met the residency requirements to become mayor of Chicago. The basics of the situation were as follows: Rahm Emmanuel was a long-time resident of the city of Chicago. When Obama was elected president, Rahm accepted an appointment to be Obama’s chief of staff. He and his family moved to Washington D.C. He later left the chief of staff post so that he could run for Chicago mayor, and moved back to Chicago a few months before the election. While he was in Washington, he rented out his house in Chicago.

There is a Chicago law that states a residency requirement for those who wish to run for mayor. The law says that a mayoral candidate must have lived in the city of Chicago for at least one year leading up to the election. The only exception stated in the law is for active duty military personnel; if an active member of the military resides in Chicago before service, then lives elsewhere on military service, then immediately returns to Chicago after service, the time spent elsewhere still counts toward the residency requirement.

It seems cut and dried, at first glance. Rahm did not live in Chicago for a full year leading up to the election, and he is not a member of the military. So, no mayoral bid for Rahm, right? Not exactly. Two things made the situation more sticky.

First, Rahm argued that while he was not an active member of the military, he left Chicago for the sole purpose of serving his country, with every intention of returning afterward. He still owned a home here. He left possessions in his house. He’s said for years that he wanted to run for mayor. He never left the city for good.

Second, there is the question of the definition of being a resident. While I can’t find anything official that gives a definition, the general idea being spouted by the news was that you just have to have a legal address here. No need to actually live at the address. If that’s true, it seems that Rahm could have indeed met the requirements, given that he owns a home within the city limits. But, he rented out said home, and thus the address was not legally his.

This is the point where I got really annoyed with this situation. This was the major point of contention? The fact that he rented out his house? Everything would be ok if he was not collecting rent from someone? Wait, seriously?

I really wanted people to get out of the word by word text of the law and try to think about the reasons it was made a law in the first place. The idea, I would think, was to make sure that all the mayoral candidates knew the city and were committed to Chicago. I believe that is true of Rahm Emmanuel. Even his opponents would be hard pressed to argue that he doesn’t have a long-standing connection to this city.

And what’s more, the writers of the law even took into account that there are service-related reasons that could pull someone away from the city temporarily. The most common of these reasons would be military service, and I imagine that is why the law reads the way it does. Should the writers of the law have taken into account the remote possibility that a potential mayoral candidate would serve as the one-and-only chief of staff to the president? I guess, maybe. But I have to believe that the spirit of the law was to make exceptions for those who leave to serve the country.

The question of Rahm’s residency went through court after court after court. He was approved to go on the ballot, then the decision was overturned, then he was approved again. Rahm ended up on the ballot. Regardless of my opinions of Rahm’s agenda, which I won’t even bring up here, I think this was the right choice. It followed the spirit of the law, if not the exact words.

I return now to the fact that I am not all that politically minded, so I am aware that there may be some flaws in my arguments above. But my point was not really to argue for Rahm Emmanuel. All I’m saying is that I’m with Thoreau. I’d like to hear some more common sense coming out of the mouths of lawyers and politicians. While I understand that the laws are all that we have to go on, I also think it’s important to remember that law-makers won’t always be able to anticipate every situation to which the laws might apply in the future.

I would also like to say, for the record, that I think the editorial style guide that we use at work should be interpreted with the same flexibility and common sense. But that’s another story, for another blog.

Cousins

“Danny is as near to a brother as I ever had, same age and growing up, same weight and strength. … In childhood I can remember no picnic, no circus, no competition, no Christmas without Danny beside me as close as my own right arm.”

- from The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

When I was growing up, my group of friends changed constantly. I haven’t been in consistent touch with anyone from my childhood, and I’ve often thought that it is sad that I don’t have any lifelong friends. But lately, I’ve realized that I’m wrong about that. I may not have school or neighborhood friends that have been around consistently since my childhood, but always, always, there have been my cousins.

I refer mostly to my mother’s side of the family. My mom has two sisters and a brother, so there are four of them in all, and there are seven of us cousins. I don’t have many non-school-related memories of when I was young that don’t involve at least a few of them.

First, of course, there was always my sister, Laurie. We’ve had difficulties in our relationship at certain points, but we had our share of fun together, too. Christmas Eve was always a big event. We’d spend several days prior planning out a list of activities we would do during the night on Christmas Eve, as we obviously were not going to sleep. We’d camp out in my sister’s room (she had the bigger room, but I’m not bitter…) designing 10-foot Christmas trees and making up alternative lyrics to Christmas carols. Until about 11pm, when I fell asleep. I have a feeling that Laurie was usually up much later.

One of my mom’s sisters, Judy, lived about a 10-minute drive from us. We spent many an afternoon and weekend at Aunt Judy and Uncle Don’s house with our cousins, Kim and Mike. I often refer to Kim as my first friend. We are almost exactly the same age, and we were friends almost since birth. It was always fun for me to hang out with Kim. She was the epitome of 7- to 13-year-old cool. She had a sit-n-spin, and a trampoline, and a NKOTB sleeping bag. And most of the time, she was willing to share those things with me. Kim has always known what she wanted and almost always made it happen. She’s had her life planned out since age 8. I can remember listening to her tell me what her wedding would be like, how old she would be when she had her first kid, everything down to the last detail.

This was all bewildering to me at the time, but now I regret not taking notes. Kim is now 28 and has everything she said she would: a husband, a child, a house, a doctoral degree, and a career. I don’t know how she does it, but I am proud of my first friend and I aspire to learn to make things happen for myself the way she does.

Mike is Kim’s younger brother. Even though he is a couple of years younger than us, and a boy, he was often forced (or bored enough) to play with us. What I remember most about Mike on those afternoons is that he was always willing to take all the crap roles. We’d pull each other around the driveway in a wagon, pretending that one of us was a king or queen in a carriage, one of us was an attendant walking alongside, and one of us was the horse pulling the carriage. Mike would take his turn as the horse, then we’d stop to change roles, and somehow Mike would end up being the horse again. He always took whatever cards he was dealt and didn’t complain much, so long as we agreed to pretend that his name was Bo. (He had a weird fascination with the name Bo.)

Later on, I always appreciated that Mike stayed interested in things like my school plays. He came with my aunt to see me play the lead when I was a senior. He even told me afterward that he liked it (though he also criticized my dart throwing). Mike is now all grown up and much taller than me, though he remains “little brother Mike” and a head shorter than me in my mind. He still takes a lot of the crap – his wife and I poked a lot of fun at him when I saw him a few days ago – but he’s made his own way. He remains one of the most likeable people I know.

My mother’s brother, John, lived in the next city over. John and my Aunt Tina have one daughter, Jennifer. My childhood memories of her are not as strong, mostly because she was a good bit older than us and not so much interested in being pulled in a wagon or listening to NKOTB. She always seemed a little bit larger than life. I can remember going to one of her swim meets once. I was sitting next to Kim, and Jennifer walked up to us in her swimsuit and swim cap. We just stared at her. “It’s me, guys!” she said, but it didn’t seem possible that we knew someone big and important enough to actually be swimming. I know Jennifer a little better now, and she’s fun to talk to and has two sons that are fun to watch and play with. But back then, Jennifer was someone I thought I would never be old enough to be like.

Now and again, we’d venture across the state to visit the third sister, Janice. Jan and Garry’s older son is Josh. Josh is just a year older than Kim and me, so the three of us would kind of congregate at family gatherings. Because he was older, and he was a boy, and he lived farther away, I think Josh felt left out of the circle sometimes. He was bigger and stronger and faster than us and tended to always win every game. When winning got boring, he would make trouble instead. This often took the form of stealing something from one of us and refusing to give it back, or telling on his brother. When trouble started, you wanted Josh on your side.

The troublemaker side of Josh still lives on. He’s still a big joker, though the jokes are not so mean any more. But the always-the-winner Josh is the one I still see the most often. He casually wins all the 5Ks he enters and starts training for another Ironman race less than a year after finishing the first one. Yet he is completely supportive of those of us (read: me) who are just happy to finish a triathlon or a marathon. I’ve grown to really appreciate that about him.

Last but not least, there is Kyle. Kyle is Josh’s brother, and was always the little one. The kid definitely knew how to use that to his advantage, though. I can remember one time that we were allowed to go down into Josh and Kyle’s basement. We each got to choose a bottle of pop. (A rare treat – Aunt Jan and Uncle Garry had pop in glass bottles!) Kyle downed his immediately, and then started asking for sips from ours. Josh warned me not to give him one, because he’d drink the whole bottle. But Kyle worked his aren’t-I-little-and-cute routine on me, and I handed over the bottle. He downed the whole thing. I can’t say I wasn’t warned.

Kyle was always a ridiculously early riser. If he had not accomplished at least three things by 10am, he would say the day was wasted. He’d be outside and working on something before the rest of us even opened our eyes. He maintains his lead on all of us, even today. He leapfrogged the rest of us, in a way; he had two kids before most of us had any.

These are my cousins. Fixtures of my childhood and my only true lifelong friends. I have so many memories with all of them. When we were young, we had a cottage by the lake somewhere in northern Michigan. At least once per summer, we would all go up there together. We would anxiously watch the thermometer until the exact moment it hit 70 degrees, because that’s when we were allowed to go swimming. We would ride along the dirt roads in a golf cart singing “Do-Wah-Diddy.” We’d beg my dad or my Uncle Don to take us across the lake in the speedboat to the store where we could get push-ups and ring pops. We’d sit in the screened porch playing the board games that were stored in the hall closet with the huge wooden door.

There was one bedroom – the brown room – that had 6 beds in it: a double bunk bed and a single bunk bed. Kim and I would sleep on the top double, Mike and Kyle on the bottom double, Josh on the top single, sometimes Laurie on the bottom single (until she graduated to another room and/or got sick of us). One of the adults would read us a story from The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss. We’d listen as they read off all the names that Mrs. McCave wished she’d given her sons, and we’d all hope that we weren’t the unlucky one to be called Oliver Bolliver Butt.

On the fourth of July, we always had Olympics. We’d do sack races other silly events and proudly wear our cardboard medals. (Josh always got the most golds.) It was so interesting to me to watch a video of the Olympics years later, because the video showed me struggling to keep up, often coming in last. This isn’t surprising really, seeing as I remain completely unathletic to this day and also spent much of my early childhood a bit behind the curve due to being an extreme preemie. But the funny thing is, I don’t remember being last. They must have occasionally let me win.

The cottage was sold years ago, and for that and many other reasons, I don’t see my cousins as often any more. For quite a while, our one yearly fixture was our Thanksgiving football game. We’d run around Jan and Garry’s front yard, sort of tossing the football around, but mostly trash talking each other. What I loved most about the game was that everyone played together. Even me, who can’t throw, catch, or run in a straight line. Josh and Mike would try to invent plays that I could handle, and never get mad when I failed miserably at them.

The game evolved over the years to accommodate significant others that came and went and small children that came along. As more and more of the babies come along, I have a feeling that the football game will fade away. But if it does, I’m also sure that something will come along to replace it.

There weren’t a lot of constant friends in my childhood. But always, always there were my cousins. And always, always there will be my cousins.

Those Girls

“Take Sissy. She was bad. But she was good. She was bad where the men were concerned. But she was good because wherever she was, there was life, good, tender, overwhelming, fun-loving and strong-scented life. He hoped that his newly born daughter would be a little like Sissy.”

-from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

I am socially awkward. That is an abrupt way to begin a blog post, but to begin with such a blunt, uncomfortable statement seems appropriate, given the topic. The fact is, I have a very hard time keeping up a conversation with strangers, and sometimes even with people I know well. I enjoy being around people, but I am usually quite satisfied to sit and listen. Coming up with interesting things to say can often feel like a lot of work to me.

This has always been true for me, as far back as I can remember. I remember feeling an odd mix of excitement and fear each time I started at a new school or went to a new camp. There would be others who didn’t know each other, I thought, and maybe this time someone would pick me out of the crowd to be her friend. But it always ended the same. The camp would start, groups would form, and while most anyone would allow me to hang around, I was never really in the inner circle. I was just watching from the fringes. It was not that I was bullied or shunned. I was simply ignored.

For years, I struggled to understand why I couldn’t be one of those girls. You know the type, right? They are the girls who are instantly comfortable in any situation in which they find themselves. They bubble over with fun stories, infectious laughter, and interesting ideas. Every other girl instantly wants to be friends with these girls. They are like magnets. I guess the simplest way to put it is that they are popular.

I really tried to emulate the popular girls, particularly when I was in elementary school. (You know, before “popular girl” became synonymous with “bad girl.”) I did the very best I could to be outgoing and talkative. But I just never held anyone’s interest for long. Deep down, I felt so full of life and wanted to share that. I wanted to laugh and tell stories and entertain people. I wanted to be one of those girls. But I just couldn’t do it. I always ran out of things to say too soon. I came to think of myself as dull.

I don’t mean to imply that I never had any friends. That is not true at all. But I was certainly never popular. I always found my niches, but my feelings of social dullness and mediocrity became so ingrained that I felt like I blended into the background no matter what I did. To some degree, that was the truth. I was the lead in the school play; I was the drum major of the marching band; I was valedictorian of my class. Still, at least 75% of my high school graduating class had no idea who I was. I just wasn’t memorable.

By the time I left for college, I had given up on the idea of ever being one of those girls, but I did still entertain thoughts of being friends with them. I lived in the dorms when I was a freshman, and each floor tended to function as a sort of unit, similar to a school class or a group of campers. Those girls identified themselves quickly, and I tried, equally quickly, to introduce myself to them and become a part of their circle. I failed miserably at it. At the end of the first week, one of those girls came around and asked the entire floor whether they would like to go in on a pizza order. The entire floor, except for me. I don’t think she left me out intentionally. She just forgot. But at the time, that did not really make it any better.

I found my niches, again, eventually. I started going to church. I joined the marching band. I made friends with whom I am still close, to this day. As my world got bigger, the group of people I interacted with got correspondingly bigger, and there was no longer a popular group. I forgot all about those girls.

Still, sometimes I remember those feelings of dullness and invisibility. In certain situations, it all comes back in a rush. I remember a class discussion in graduate school that really got me thinking about it again. We read a section of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell that contained a small test. There was a long list of surnames, and the idea was to read through it and count the number of names that belonged to someone you know. It didn’t have to be a close friend, but you had to have actually met the person. If your count was high enough, you were considered a “Connector,” and therefore someone who could take a small idea and help it catch on.

I scored quite well on the test. I went to a large high school, then a reasonably large undergraduate university where I was involved in several organizations. Then, I spent a year working for a large corporation. I had met a large number of people, and I usually remember a lot of names. According to the test, I was a Connector. However, I told my class that I really believed I was an exception to the rule. I know a lot of people, I said, but they don’t know me.

I have no idea how my professor or the rest of my class responded, but I do remember one of my classmates telling me later that she was surprised I felt that way. She apparently spoke of me often to her boyfriend, because when he came to visit, the first question he asked when they came to a program barbeque was, “Which one is Katie?”

I’m not sure how to end this post. I would love to say that the story above changed my mind, and that it taught me that I’m not dull and socially inept after all. But, that’s not true. I still struggle with this, and still wonder why I still get left on the fringes when groups form. I guess the important question to ask is not why it happens, but why it matters so much to me. I have a lot of good friends and it’s not that I feel completely isolated. And sometimes, I do seem to manage to make myself appealing and memorable. Why do I care that when I’m on a trip with a big group, I end up spending most of my free time by myself?

I suppose it’s because I spend a lot of time alone, anyway, since I live by myself. And I really do like to spend time around people, so I wish I know how to take better advantage of my opportunities in that sense.

All I can do is try again tomorrow.