Hearing One Another's Stories

Do you ever meet someone and get the feeling they're not really connecting to you, not really interested in your story at all, they just want to sell their product or their program and their sense of mission breathes so strong in them they just can't see you as another human heart with a mission of your own?

I met some fine people today and one man in particular, and I don't want to cause him any hurt or injury so I'll just speak generally. The man burned with an intensity for his cause. He felt tremendous passion for what he had learned and the journey he'd completed, and he wanted you to take the same journey. Now this was a good man and his cause was just and worth his fervor, but at the end of our conversation he didn't know my name, or that the woman sitting next to me was my wife, that we had been separated for nearly four months and had come to this place to seek healing and recovery. These were vital facts, because his cause involved, say it with me, healing and recovery.

We have to learn to hear one another's stories, to take a vital and genuine interest in them, because the intersection and commonalities in our stories is the beginning of wisdom. In sharing stories we begin to appreciate how powerfully God is moving in our lives, beginning with the remarkable gracious gift of bringing us together. I am amazed as I discover each day how if you begin a journey of faith and discovery you will be showered with opportunities and blessings, and the chief blessing is the people you meet. People with incredible stories, people who will offer you bread for your journey. It's a Biblical principle and a fact supported by every teaching and most philosophies that when we are receptive, we receive. The blessings run over us like living water. We meet the lifechangers, the difference makers, the inspirational characters, the talented, giving, remarkable people that fill us with hope, possibility and the audacity of action. The author Tom Robbins said, "We are put on this earth to enlarge the soul and light up the brain," and the chief force in that marvelous unfolding transformation is the great gracious gift of the people you meet every day. Hear them. Be interested in them. Remember their names. Jot yourself a note of what they uncovered for you today, or what they may have needed from you.

I don't want to sound for a moment like I've mastered this. My goodness, what a clod I can be. Every day I have moments where I hurt someone with my insensitivity and my self absorption or impatience, so I have no place to condemn anyone for their efforts. In fact my friend Gretchen chastised me today, rightly, for the fact she's offered me dozens of wonderful comments and encouragements about my blog and beginning these stories, but I hadn't written anything on hers. She wrote, "I know my blogs are not as well written and don't contain nearly as much emotion as yours but they are important to me :)" Of course they are. Her entries are the story of her family, and it is a remarkable story, a story of faith and devotion:

http://gretchenanddougandfamily.blogspot.com/

The Good News in Brief

I don't have time to write much more than a note. Church is at 11 and I don't want to miss it. For one it's a date with Marie, and we'll probably go to the movies or have a picnic after.

We go to Beaverton Christian Church, led by Pastor Clark Tanner. The music is fabulous and the teaching is very positive and Christ-centered. Pastor Tanner is a wonderful man and Friday night he sat down with us, counselling us about our marriage. He talked with us for over two hours, just practical and straightforward, and recommended someone for us to see, a counselor named Matt Howell. We really appreciated the sincerity and compassion Clark showed. It's a church with over a 1000 members and he talked and prayed with us like family, incredibly generous with his time.

Last night I worked at The Battle of Bands at the Buckeroo Grounds, one of my sister's events, serving beer and bottled Mojitos with Kristy's friend Melina. She was a nice lady, married with three kids. She had a great energy and a heart for people and really connected with the folks. It was a lot of fun to work and contribute to Kristy's event. The Concrete Cowboys, a country group from Portland, won the battle, and the crowd was well-behaved and had a great time. I made $147 bucks in tips, and there was a great barbeque stand next door where I got a pulled pork sandwich and a plate of leftovers to go home. Cool, huh?

The two paragraphs above will take turns offending people. The first one will offend people who don't like Christians and the second one will probably offend everyone in some way. "See, he's a hypocrite. Running off to church on Sunday and working at a beer stand on Saturday night." That's silly. Jesus' first public miracle was making wine at a wedding. He regularly had dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes, touched lepers with healing power, befriended an outcast woman at the well. People get this image of Christians as being stuffy and judgemental, but Jesus wasn't. He loved life, and people. "I have come that you might have life," he promised, "and life more abundantly." My favorite Bible verse is, "This is a day that the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." They make it into a song you sing at Bible Camp.

You look around and you see broken lives and a broken world, and untold miseries of celebrity obsession, sports fixation, shameful behavior and lost people, and you might start to realize that all the wealth and entertainment we have isn't making us happy. In fact we are the most depressed nation in history, and ahead of us lies a time of uncertainty and despair. A broken economy. International terrorism. Global warming. World-wide food and energy scarcities. In Zimbabwe right now a loaf of bread costs a billion dollars in their currency. For all the technological know-how and scientific wizardry we've achieved we've made a mess of our world and our lives, and there's a lot of hurting people. Marie and I of course have troubles of own, and of our own making. We're working on that. But somehow all of us have to consider that man isn't perfectible, and the sorrows and concerns we have an ultimate spiritual solution.

It's worth considering, anyway. After all it is Sunday. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go on a picnic with my wife. Best wishes, and thanks for visiting.

My Life II, expanding.

It came to pass. That I reached fifteen. Wary, nervous, tense, guarded. Full of secret shame. I started a journal. My parents read it. Intertwined on my bed. Oddly the worst time. Was when they reconciled. Then we were targets. To be bullied, mocked. Identification with the aggressor. Remember, like Patty Hearst. My mother learned from him. Learned to use weapons. Of sarcasm and bitterness. Their sneers like acid. Reading aloud my secrets. Hopes, resentments spilled out. Exposed like raw nerves. I felt shame and humiliation. Learning again it wasn't safe. To think, create, or feel. Five words, I know. Fine, so sue me. Or get your own blog.

I adored sister Kristy. A pure, sweet child. Love, unconditional and safe. After school I would. Set her on the bed. As she was learning to crawl. It was a game. I would stretch out. To keep her from falling. My arms, my legs. A barrier of protection. She would laugh and giggle, infectious. A silly game. But the message was. "See, you'll always be safe. I'll keep you from falling over the edge." Holding her, reading to her. Was the only safe thing. In a house of madness. Where things could erupt at any time. To this day I love small children. And am irresistibly drawn to them. And they to me. I love to read to them. Invent silly songs. With their names in the lyrics. Give them rides. Make them laugh. I want them to feel safe. And be happy. And not be like him. It's my way of forgetting where I came from.

At school and among people. Tense, intense, nervous. Always smiling ridiculously wide. Bravely covering up. I tried to befriend everyone. Please everyone, straight A's. President of my sophomore class. Earnest athlete in every season. But too full of fear and secret shame to compete freely. Athletes must have confidence, grace, freedom of spirit. I just had effort. And failed utterly. A great disappointment to my father. Who like The Great Santini. Wanted sons in his image. For years he'd carried in his wallet. A newspaper clipping. Of a key block he threw. In eighth grade. His last year of school.

Remember the good times. I ought, I realize. But there weren't any. It was just grim and secret. We buried ourselves in television. The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres. Happy families with problems. That could be solved in a half hour. I stayed away. To church, to friends. Endlessly practicing pass patterns. I would drop in the game. One moment of glory. Newton 25 pass from Elliot. West Linn 63, Tigard 0. In my junior year. It wasn't enough.

Hopelessly shy with girls. And desperate to be gentle and tender. Not like him. God, please don't be like him. On a clear morning at Malibu. In the summer of '73. Mountains rising out of the water. Reflections like glass. This incredible place God had carved. From solid rock, over time. I found Christ, as they say. But even my religion. Was filled with guilt and shame. And I struggled, though fervent. Wracked within with doubt. Over my worthiness, my purity. Don't be like him.

I entered adult life chaotic and ill-equipped. Met a girl. Fell in love. Conceived an ill-conceived baby. Repeating the pattern. A beautiful baby. The first one born in Clackamas Country. On June 1, national Dairy month. My father's birthday. Ironies abound. The Dairy Farmers of Oregon sent a blanket. Inscribed in one corner. As a child Stephanie clutched it. Her favorite, always sleeping with it. With the inscription clutched in her tiny fingers. Till the lettering wore away. My parents finally divorced. Then we did. No chance, really. I didn't have my mother's courage.

I ran, overwhelmed. From jobs. From Responsibility. From conflict. Out of control. No plan or purpose. My twenties were a blur. The Lost Potential. The Straight A student, the writer. Sleeping in his car. Rages, mood swings, gambling. Occasional brushes with respectability. Then more running. I managed fast food restaurants. Sold restaurant supplies. Drove garbage trucks. Saw Stephanie on weekends. Took her to see "Top Gun" thirteen times. At the second-run theater with sticky floors. Popcorn was a 1.80. She was 11, I think. And loved it each time. Probably the volleyball scene. And crisp white dress uniforms She decorated my apartment. Five trips to Fred Meyers. Borrowed art prints from the library. "The Luncheon of the Boating Party." Stephanie danced to Madonna in the living room, in a pink satin dress. Two more chaotic marriages. And more failures and more scenes. Don't be like him. Please don't be like him. Faulkner said, "The past is not dead. It's not even past." Gambling and madness. Sleeping in my car. Somehow I got to 50. It happened so fast. I was a gentle father, I think. Kind and loving, not like him. But inconsistent and often absent. Lost in some fog. Somehow they forgave me. And Stephanie and Roger are the two good things. I've done in a wasted life.

My father died at 68. At heart attack at the back of the semi trailer. Delivering a load of coffee. In Layton, Utah. He had mellowed some over the years. The rough edges worn down. And the anger defeated by time. We saw a high school football game. A few months before he died. West Linn lost to Tigard by 25. Some kid from Tigard ran for 200 yards. A scatback, fast and quick. They couldn't stop him. Like we couldn't stop time. I forgave him a little. He did the best he could. He thought he was preparing me for the world, in his own way. This I read in a book. Legacy of the Heart, by Dr. Wayne Muller. "The spiritual advantages of a painful childhood." I spoke at Dad's funeral. The act of getting up and speaking before people. Trying to convey meaning and hopeful ideas. Awakened in me the desire to write. I quit another job, angry. Delivered pizzas and washed golf balls. And wrote a failed novel. About a redeemed monster who played baseball. I had it printed and sent copies. To my children and brother Mike. It lacked a consistent voice. I am still searching for the consistent voice.

My mother died the year I turned 50. June 11, 2005. I told you before, buying strawberries for shortcake. A sudden, wasted death. Rear ended in her car. Just months after her retirement. Just months after a financial ruin and another deep secret. Another tumbling spiraling failure by one of us. The hardworking tense Newton kids eager to please. With addictions and missteps. A few who overcame in their own way. Death brought us together as she had wished in life. I spoke at her funeral. A beautiful service, outdoors before a wide beautiful meadow. Max and Mitzi lent us their farm. We'd raked weeds to get it ready. I gave the children rides in the wheelbarrow. I tried to convey her courage and devotion. Again I wanted to write. If I could tell this story I would have done one thing worthy of what she tried to teach me. I suppose there's still time.

My life in 3-word sentences

Born in shame. German girl mother. 16 and rebellious. Father long dead. Sacrificed to war. Poor ravaged country. Crisp Khaki uniforms. Hershey bar pockets. Sinatra and Presley. Glamor of America. Mother devout Catholic. Horrified and helpless. Handsome soldier, penniless. Precocious rebellious teen. Fascinated by America. Only an idea. Not a place. Something from movies. Clean hopeful place. Streets of money. And John Wayne. Broad shouldered soldier. Holding a rose. She fell, seduced. Panicked and pregnant. Imagine the scandal. Outrage and embarrassment. Painful for all. Army, nations, families. Covered in disgrace. Not yet 17. A school girl. In plaid skirt. And wool sweater. Riding the streetcar. To sneak away. To the American. Mother wracked, helpless. Though liked him. Pregnancy horribly wrong. No options really. This was 1955. A hasty wedding. Late in September. Wrinkled pudgy baby. Just weeks later. In knit cap. Crying and helpless. The Army hospital. Whispers among staff. The paperwork said. "Mother resident alien." "Father American national." Private first class. A hasty discharge. And slow boat ride. Slower train ride. Across oceans, mountains. Distant and unfamiliar. The colicky baby. And German-English dictionary. Clutched tight, terrified. Her thick accent. The rushing crowds. Hopeless, broke, alone. To join him. Across continents, oceans. On a farm. Sagebrush and dirt. Cupboard with mice. A cramped trailer. Her life now. Far from Presley. Sinatra, Hershey bars. Memories and dreams. A desolate reality. Eastern Oregon desert. Dirt farms, manure. No money, prospects. Husband big dreams. Coarse, angry man. Angry at life. Suspicious and friendless. Hated bosses, races. Authority, rules, banks. Buried his money. In coffee cans. Forgot where they were. A giant chip. And lingering bitterness. Poisoned his life. And ours too. Doomed to failure. By his blindness. Worked furiously hard. But no plan. And little grace. Embittered and angry. Abusive, unfaithful, ungenerous. Life in America. Homesick and alone. Imagine this, friend. How to endure. What possible hope. Imagine the courage. My earliest memories. My mother, alone. Over the sink. Crying and sobbing. In German, alone. How to endure.

More children followed. Five more quickly. Brink of failure. Electricity shut off. Stern foreclosure notices. Creditors brusk visits. Husband a wanderer. Job to job. Place to place. Woman to woman. She finds condoms. Condoms, why now. After six kids. He buys condoms. Presents for them. Notes, phone numbers. Aqua Velva bottles. Crisp white shirts. She ironed painstakingly. Going to town. Angry quarrels, manipulation. Coarse demands, roughness. But always promises. No choice really. Had to go on. She cooked, cleaned. Worked the farm. Amidst two miscarriages. Three in diapers. Three in school. Children wary, clinging. Fearing his rage. Streams of profanity. Belt in hand. Angry, ugly man.

But the bravery! She'd roast weenies. Cooking fire outdoors. Boil bath water. Hand scrub laundry. Kitchen still spotless. Ragged old farmhouse. Sagebrush and sand. Cows were milked. Before school, chores. Each child scrubbed. Handed down shirts. Made it somehow. Endured. Long letters home. Brown paper packages. Wrapped in twine. The crisp handwriting. Real German chocolate. And Eduscho Coffee. Her whole pension. Every other month. She never forgot. Saved every picture. My grandmother, Therese. Met only once.

The children grew. As children do. In 1966, changes. Got her first job. Away from home. At a truckstop. A Umatilla cafe. 1.65 an hour. My sister Therese. Feeding the babies. Drawing their bath. "Be good kids. I'll bring treats." A Mounds bar. From her tips. Quarters in jar. For groceries, gas. Husband building dam. John Day Dam. Hells Canyon Dam. Driving semi truck. Welding, carpentry, explosive. The Alaska Pipeline. Gone then home. Boom then bust. Bring in crops. 8 years old. Driving farm trucks. Backward and odd. Awkward at school. The fear showed. Like a stench.

Trip to Germany. With my mother. At age 12. Just us two. Jet over pole. PanAm to London. Stewardesses showering snacks. Blankets and pillows. Ginger ale rivers. Above the clouds. London, long wait. Lufthansa to Frankfurt. My German uncle. Racing the autoban. Rapid, excited talk. Home and reunion. I spoke little. Just nein, ya. Danke, thank you. Gut morgen Oma. She spoiled me. The miracle Grandson. Grown and handsome. In her eyes. Just like father. Don't say that. I shuddered inwardly. Knowing by then. Coarse sordid truth. Felt his rage. Betrayal, hypocrisy, crudity. Didn't respect him. How could I. Lectures, random cruelty. Puzzling dark memories. Secrets and lies. With the babysitter. While we're away. It never ended.

New resolve then. My mother applied. Granted a scholarship! Manpower, Training and Development Act of 1967. An LBJ legacy. The Great Society. Empowering the poor. Tested for placement. Bright and resilient. Entire day testing. She won grant. Blue Mountain Community. Two year program. Accounting and business. Graduated with honors. Cap and gown. Six proud kids. Hope and possiblity. Finally real job! Pacific Fruit and Produce. Meet our bookkeeper. Rosemarie Newton, graduate. Fiercely intelligent, strong. Determined and courageous. She left him. Moved to town. Pendleton, Ladow street. She took him back. They made another baby. Now seven home. I'm 15, 1970. Kristy is born. Mom worked, drove home in her yellow Volkwagen, said kids, "I'm going to have the baby now. Therese, you bathe the little kids. I'll call you when the baby comes." Nine months pregnant. My brother rode his bike with the banana seat to the hospital. "She has black hair and blue eyes."

Old man gone. Pipeline in Alaska. We wrote letters. Then in Idaho. Another affair there. We called her. Why did you? "I'm a decent person." She told us. A master manipulator. Mom took him back. Ardent love, promises. Loud violent arguments. Shame and humiliation. I hated him. I realized now. A difficult secret. Chaotic, tumultuous life. Tortuous, uncertain upbring. Eager to please. All six Newtons. Straight A students. Eager to escape. Painfully, incredibly sad. All the shame. Hiding, laying low. In our rooms. To the ballfield. Anywhere but here. Ran the mile. A school record. In junior high. Always running further. As far as I could. Four word sentence. So sue me. The rest tomorrow. The Mother's courage. In grim circumstances. Refusing to surrender. Imagine the devotion. Character and will.

What a Man Ought to Give to a Woman

Marie and I are having a tough week. The strain of separation is really taking a toll these last few days. We had several dates last week but this week work and distance and time and money and family tensions have thrown up all kinds of emotional road hazards. Add to that the multinational cellular telephone company that starts with T and ends with Mobile is dropping all of our calls. Here we are trying to have vital, tender, difficult conversations, critical ones, really, and over and over the signal is lost or the network fails or the screen reads "emergency calls only." I highly recommend all of the other cell phone companies. But getting out of a cell phone contract is harder than losing the last ten pounds. (I was doing really great today until I got to the Wheeler Ranch. and Alyssa had made chicken and mashed potatoes, with homemade cookies for dessert, the white, soft kind with lots of buttery goodness. Even though I'd had chicken teriyaki after my workout I had to have some. It would have been impolite to refuse.)

For today I made another list that I wrote for Marie on my trip to Selah to see the grandbabies and my smart, funny, beautiful daughter and become a 4-time gold medal winner in the Backyard Olympics. I'd pulled over in The Dalles about 7 on Friday night, too tired to drive any further. Blogging was an exhilarating adventure in its early days, the night of June 12th, and I slept for a while and woke up around midnight to write half the night, charged with enormous energy and cockeyed optimism, thinking I was certain to be discovered by the blogosphere within a few days and become as famous as The Christian Comedy Lady or the Youtube girl catching a flyball. It could happen. But I'm not quitting my day job, just showing up late once in a while. I did have perfect attendance in May though. Won a free lunch, which they're serving on Friday from the Airport Cafe. I chose the fajita sandwich.

The list that follows is a love letter to Marie, but by this point she is probably so frustrated with me it might not matter. There's a phone message I haven't listened to from last night, and I don't think it's going to be a good one. But this is what I wrote for her, from the delicious quiet at the table of The Motel 6 in The Dalles, on the night of June 12th:

What I want to give to you:

1. I want to give you security, comfort and devotion.

2. I want to give you strength, affection, and tenderness.

3. I want you to know you are loved, adored, and desired. I want you to know how deeply I appreciate your wisdom, courage, heart, spirit and strength. I want to demonstrate to you that you are my heart's desire, my soul mate, and my precious treasure, The Girl of My Dreams, the One Great Love of My Life For All Time and Forever, Amen.

4. I want to gather you in my arms, early, late and often, and tell you how much you mean to me, how beautiful you are, and how greatly and completely I love, desire and respect you.

5. I want to help you and fulfill your needs, to serve you and reward you and express kindness to you, to do practical things that ease your burdens and lighten your heart and take the stresses and irritations of life away. I want my voice to be be a bubble bath for your spirit, a sound that soothes you comforts you and makes you feel safe and renewed.

6. I want to be your refuge, your sounding board, your helpmate. I want to lift you up and provide for you and enrich your life, to give you a fine home and material comforts and adventures and activities that fill you with light and possibility.

7. I want to relieve your anxieties, relieve your fears, comfort and restore you, and inspire your soul to trust and believe in the God that is greater than all things, that God that sustains us and covers us with his mercy and grace.

8 (intimate and personal) I want to make love to you, to embrace you and please you and l**k you, early late and enthusiastically and often. I want you to know I want you and you alone.

9 (intimate and personal) I want to fulfill all your deepest desires and needs: sexually, spiritually and emotionally. I want you to guide me and push me down to the place where you hunger and need to be satisfied and satisfy and pleasure you to your very soul. I need you to know your are my deepest desire and I am eager to woo you and date you, to open doors for you and rise to me feet when you enter the room. I will dress up in my best clothes for our dates. I will take you dancing and hold you close to me, keep my eyes on you, letting the world know by my conduct that you are my celebrity, my star, my constant and unyielding desire.

10. I want to give you my partnership and devotion, to offer you trust, hope, safety, constancy, tenderness, devotion, faith, hope and love. I want my life to be a gift to God and to you, and our lives to be a light to other people.

11. I want to lather rinse and repeat, and to allow you to choose the numbers you want lathered, rinsed and repeated, because you are my one and only and my deepest desire.

12. I want you to have time time with your friends, and for you to have good, positive friends that renew you and restore your spirit, that make you laugh and cry and relieve the cares of your day. I understand the company of women with other women is a sacred thing, a powerful bonding that restores and enlivens and underpins the whole human community. Women united are the fabric of life and the strength of our village, and we are lost without this. Our world needs the powerful wisdom of women united, offering their strong voices to embolden and refocus and revitalize our communities and churches and neighborhoods in a powerful and profound way. The audacity of action begins with the wisdom of women bonding together and uniting their spirits, giving one another bread for the journey. I want you to go and be a part of that, because you have a powerful gift of encouragement and a light within you, a hunger for God that needs to be nurtured and shared. You belong to this family of women and you need time to be with that family, your sister, your daughters, your friends. Don't live a day without this. Don't ever ignore its importance.

13. I want to understand you and to listen, to create time to give you my complete attention and total support.

14. I will forgive and believe in you. I will encourage you always and take good care of you.

15. I will need you and love you with all my heart. I will give you my devotion and tenderness and humor and playfulness. But I will never let you beat me in Scrabble, because I am king.

16. I will know you love me, now and always, and I accept your love and treat it as a great and priceless treasure, always and wherever I go.

17. The exact number of things on this list does not matter, and the length of my list to yours does not matter. The important thing is that we give to one another as completely as we can, and accept all the ways we are still learning and fall backward, the times our patience fails or we grow too tired. You are my beloved and I am yours. We need to make a home again and soon. I can't find my clean socks. I don't remember where I set the paper with the employee stock purchase plan info on it. I love you so much.

--for Marie, from room 212 of The Motel 6 in The Dalles, Oregon, on the way to see my daughter and grandbabies, completed at 5:47 a.m. on Saturday June 14.


Readers, it's your turn. Women, are you getting want you really want from your partners? Men, do you think about your wive's real needs, and what do you do to meet them?

Marie, I am sorry for the ways I've fallen short of this list. You are the true desire of my heart, and I want to bring the best to you, always. Somehow we've got to put together some money and end this hard and discouraging time, and find a way to make our love work day to day in the real world. I love you so much. Now I've got to hustle because I'm going to be late again.

Life at the Wheeler Ranch

Many nights the girls sleep in a big cuddle pile in the living room. They have rooms of their own but prefer to be together, despite the wide age gap, usually falling to sleep with a Disney movie on the DVD. Last night it was "Beauty and the Beast". Alyssa is 18, Tia 9 and Dahlia 4, but they are the best of friends. Alyssa is wonderfully patient with the younger ones, a second mom. My sister Kristy is incredibly busy this time of the year planning The Battle of the Bands and The Ross Coleman Invitational, plus settling in to her new office in town, working 14-hour days, so often Alyssa will cook dinner for the younger ones and see that they get a bath and go to bed. She is firm but fair, even when they wail "I don't want to go to bed," which kids have been wailing since the dawn of time.

The Wheeler Ranch announces itself to the world with 15-foot high gateposts made from three sections of 12-inch steel pipe, welded and set into place by Mark and his brother around the time Tia was born. "Don't run into it," Mark teases, "We dug it deep." At the top of the crossbeam there is "W-h-e-e-l-e-r" in block letters cut from steel and welded along the top of the beam, and on each side of the name piece there is a cutout of a horse and cowboy with a mule on a tow rope. The gate itself is two steel fence sections tied to the posts with twine. They lean on each other and most of the green paint has worn away, just enough gate to keep the horses in the pasture.

It is not a ranch at all except in the bigness of the spirit that resides here, the strength of this happy family and the love for their animals and their place. Just five acres, it is home to 9 horses, 4 cats, 5 dogs, 6 chickens and an untold number of field mice. There was a 900-lb pig, once a piglet Alyssa wanted for Christmas when she was 12, but she was sold last summer. "When they get that big they don't make good meat; they're too tough." With typical generosity and old-soul wisdom Alyssa gave the money to her mother for household expenses.

Tia made me a reference chart of all the animals, their names, coloring, the family member who owns them, and whether they are a girl or boy. One of the dogs is a scruffy looking blue heeler who licks everyone who arrives, usually at the door of your car as you open the door, even before you can get out of your seat. It can be very disconcerting in the pitch darkness of a cloudy country night, to have a cold nose on your hand before you can get your night vision. The first couple of times I jumped back in alarm. He's a very gentle dog, dumb and eager to please. Tia says, "Cole is mine because I'm practically the only one that loves him." The girls feed the stock each night after their own dinner, and they are all expected to help. Even Dallie will toss sections of hay to the horses, wearing pink cowboy boots and a bucking bronco sweatshirt. Alyssa usually wears her green and yellow school color sweatshirt, from the Colton Vikings Equestrian Team, 3-time state champions. On the back it says, "We bust our butts to kick yours." I asked her about the slogan. "The kids in our district thought it was funny and they were cool with it," she said. "But some of the big city kids didn't like it at all." At the north end of the farm there's a muddy pond the home of The Fish, a fat koi who is showered nightly with chunks of bread. He is bright orange and easily a foot long, thick and prosperous as a circuit judge. He's the only one of the girl's menagerie that does not have a name. "We just call him The Fish," Tia said.


One night after badminton and macaroni and cheese the girls took me out to show me the fish and meet the horses. I gave Dallie a ride on the top of my shoulders, the way I used to with her big sister when she was small. I told her the story of one Mother's Day when Alyssa was 4 or 5. Kristy and Mom were having one of their occasional squabbles and hadn't spoken in a few weeks, a great heartbreak to Mom, particularly since she and Alyssa were soul mates. At the time Kristy had a apartment on Dollar street just a few blocks from Mom's place on Orchard avenue. I'd stopped by mom's to say hello, then got the idea to stop by Kristy's and ask her if it was all right if I took Alyssa over to see her grandma on Mother's Day. Kristy said yes, I think secretly relieved to have someone break the ice and end the quarrel. By then it had pretty much blown over and it was just stubbornness and awkwardness keeping them apart. Newton quarrels are often like that. We'll go off in a huff and stay apart more out of embarrassment at our bad behavior than anything else. This day for once I got to be the peacemaker, but throughout my life there were many more times I was the cause of the trouble.

I put Alyssa on my shoulders and we walked down to Sentry market to get ice cream bars and a bunch of mixed flowers, carnations and daisies and greenery. Alyssa and ate our ice cream and chatted, reached her mom's apartment and got in my cream-colored Mazda GLC for the surprise. I remember the look on my Mother's face, the mixture of gratitude and relief and joy and sorrow, a whole lifetime of it on her face, and the incredible comfort this little child was to her. My mother was born in Nazi Germany in 1939. Her father died on the Russian front when she three, and her youngest memories of childhood were hiding in the basement during the nightly saturation bombing runs over her hometown, Darmstadt. Years and years later she would wake up with nightmares. When I was in high school if I came home from a game or a movie, the sound of the door opening would wake her and she'd wake up screaming, "Momma, Momma!" She was back in that bomb shelter, haunted, damp and claustrophobic. On the evil side of any war are a lot of ordinary people who happen to born under the wrong flag. Her father was a waiter in a nice dinner house, earning a living for his three kids. An informant turned him in for an offhand remark he made while serving his guests at the restaurant, and he was handed a rifle and orders to the Siege of Leningrad. My mother's mother held out hope for years that he would come home. She never remarried, and subsisted on a meager pension from the government and old photographs. Her walls were lined with pictures of us, every one my mother had ever sent.

When I opened Alyssa's car door and she ran to her grandma that long history of sorrow was lifted in one remarkable moment. It was the best gift I ever gave my mother. I wish I could tell the story as nobly as she lived it.

I told a little of that story to Dahlia as we walked back from the fish, not the saddest part, just about giving her big sister a shoulder ride like this one and walking to the store for ice cream and flowers for her grandma. "My shoes are getting muddy out here," I said. Dahlia is nearly always smiling, the deep radiant smile of a child who knows she is beautiful and loved, who more nights than not goes to sleep in her father's or her mother's or her sister's arms. "Don't worry Uncle Dale, when you walk on the rocks they will dry the mud up." "That's a good observation" I said. "I know," she replied. Four years old. I am surrounded by waters, and the wisdom of three generations of women.

Tia's Chart


Animal name color owner girl or boy
horse Poncho light brown with black Dally boy
horse Patty dark brown Tia girl
horse Kasey reddish brown Alyssa girl
horse Flint black Mark boy
horse Freckles brown/white, with spots Dally girl
horse Switch brownish red Mark boy
horse Stretch Sorrel Therese boy
horse Santana sorrel Therese boy
horse Reno black/white Kristy girl

cat Tom Cat orange family boy
cat Spider calico family girl
cat Stuart white Alyssa boy
cat Jumper orange family boy

dog Polly brown/white family girl
dog Sadie gray Kristy girl
dog Lula brown Alyssa girl
dog Ausi black family girl
dog Cole gray Tia boy

Close the doors of Cosmo magazine: What a man really wants

I know women are dying to know this, because millions of magazine articles are written on this topic every year, in everything from Redbook to Glamour to Cosmo: What do men really want? Here is the ultimate list, written from the heart of one man to the heart of one woman. It's not a list of demands--it's an invitation to real intimacy, real respect, and real hope in the lives of people. Remember always the blog motto: the secret to finding the love you want is celebrating the love you have.

1. I need you

2. I need to be loved, comforted, and encouraged.

3. I need to be admired.

4. I need to feel strong and desirable. I need your devotion and support and tenderness. As much and as often as possible I need your kind voice and not your harsh one, and the feel of your hand flat against my chest, not pushing me away but rather you drawing near to me and into my arms.

5. I need to be trusted. I need to be free to move out into the world and express myself to people, to be a citizen of the world and a lobbyist for hope and possibility and the audacity of action. I need to work and create and build something, and as I do this I need you to know this drive within me is not one of disloyalty to you; it is out of tremendous LOYALTY to you, the desire to enrich your life and care for you. I need you to support my vision and purpose, my goals and my work, and be the voice of discernment and wisdom when I am discouraged or seeking direction.

6. This is a partnership, a life bond. I need you to be my refuge, my most trusted ally and friend, my sounding board, my help mate. I need you to fill in the abilities I don't have and the cracks I don't fill.

7. I need you to soothe my hurts, boost my confidence and restore my soul. Realize the tremendous power we have to heal and renew each other with something as simple as a gentle phrase or an embrace. We can be bread for one another's journey. We can be the beginning of hope in the lives around us.

8. (Intimate and personal)

9. (Intimate and personal)

---In our own private way we need to tell one another and remind one another and show one another how deeply we desire each other, how eager we are to please and entice one another, early, late, enthusiastically and often. The bond doesn't have to die. The energy of attraction between you and your One True Love can be stronger and more powerful with every ritual of sharing, every meal you take together, every dance you dance. You were born to be passionate and alive and hopeful in every aspect of your life, to hold one another and delight in each other and discover one another all over again. Our culture has it all backwards with its celebrity and youth obsessions: the 100 Most Beautiful People in the world are the 100 who choose each other and embrace one another with devotion and tenderness; the Sexiest Man Alive is the one who reads a bedtime story to your kids. Accept no substitutes: the love you want is right in front of you, a flame waiting to be ignited by the flame within you. Clean up, put on your best going out clothes and go dancing, laugh like hell together and drink a good glass of wine, and thank God you belong to each other. Why waste another day?

10. I need our partnership. I need us to be reunited in trust, hope, safety, constancy, tenderness, devotion, faith, hope, and love. I need our lives to be a gift to God and a light to other people.

11. I need to lather, rinse and repeat, especially 8&9, because you are my one and only and my deepest desire.

12. I need to be with my men friends occasionally, and occasionally to go off on my own. I don't do this to hurt you or to slight you. I do this because a man has to be restored and refreshed by the company of other men. And I need to go off by myself occasionally (even Christ did) because that spiritual practice, that act, allows me to restore my soul and examine where I am and where I need to be.

13. I need you to know and believe and rest in the fact that our love is unassailable and constant and no force of heaven or earth can move it destroy it or replace it. I am yours and you are mine and nothing on earth can change this. You are all I want in the world and what I desire at the beginning and the end of every day.

14. I need you to understand me.

15. I need you to forgive me and believe in me. As a man I can be clumsy, ignorant, preoccupied and maddeningly imperfect. There are times I have been selfish, stupid, stubborn, and ridiculously impatient. I am sorry for the ways I've failed you. I dearly want to please you and be a help to you. Sometimes, you have to ask me for what you need from me. There's a lot I don't know about women, and life, that only you can teach me.

16. I need you to need me and love me with all of your heart. I need your devotion and tenderness.

17. I need you to know I love you, now and always.

18. The exact number of needs does not matter. Whether your list is longer or shorter does not matter. The important thing is that our needs and desire to fill them are given to each other, and we give each day to do what we can, remembering to acknowledge one another's efforts and reach for one another in hope.

19. Men are simple, and our love languages are often cryptic. The old joke about sex and a sandwich is largely true. But all of us have to choose, and choose daily, between love and fear. If we choose cynicism and bitterness and disappointment, these will only increase over time and become a hard shell of unlovingness and hurt. But if we choose devotion, tenderness, acts of service and appreciation, these will be returned to us and increase. Remember that love doesn't divide; it only multiplies.

20. If you are with someone who is cruel or abusive or destructive, then this list does not apply. You need to find safety and begin again, begin by loving yourself. The hurt they have caused you is not your fault.


Ladies, it's your turn: what do women really want?

No time to explain, let me sum up

Sometimes blogging is like a night of binge drinking. You wake up the next morning and think, "What in the world did I do that for?" Neither is a recommended practice. Today I realize yesterday's post requires further elaboration.

Marie and I are fine. Our day was the Something Wonderful of the post--we went to church, had an invigorating workout, had a picnic in the car with the top down in the parking lot of Albertsons, sliced ham, spicy cheese, slices of bread with parmesan and artichoke dip, cole slaw and a York Peppermint patty for dessert. It was a very Abby-like meal, eaten with pleasure, some good music on the Alpine stereo. The large, rich life you want to live is right in front of you, a life of simple and sustainable joys. Then we went to her place for a nap.

And that is where the Something Awful happened, something horrible and embarrassing and humiliating. I was asked to leave. "I don't do crazy. And after the last little incident the two of you had I don't want you in my house." Never mind that the speaker of the above statement has had plenty of crazy of her own. It just hurt to the quick to be spoken to in this way, to be treated like a pariah. So today I feel like one, and I'm licking my wounds. I feel an enormous temptation to pull the covers over my head and sleep till two, or play golf and leave the cell phone in the trunk. Brooks and Dunn, a pair of country singer/songwriters, have a poignant song they do about foolish pride and the decline in the number of husbands and wives. I can hear the song in my head but can't bring out the tune. If any of you know it please send it to the blog, or play it over for yourself and listen carefully to the words. I am surrounded by waters, and haunted by melodies. Today life is teaching me a lesson I don't want to learn.

Something Wonderful and Something Awful

Saturday night Marie and I dressed up in our fanciest going out clothes, went to dinner at Carl's Jr. and went dancing at Out of the Blues in Lake Oswego. Take your girl dancing whenever you can. It makes them mushy and it's good for your hearts, both literally and metaphorically.

We got a room across the parking lot at the Motel 6, far from glamorous but as promised, clean and comfortable. Only trouble was there was a dog show in town and the room next to us had been rented by the owners of two talkative Schnauzers. We managed, though. It was good to be together, to steal some precious hours of intimacy and tenderness. The front desk clerk, Brandon, was another of those people I'm glad to meet, alert and bright and welcoming. It's a little awkward for a married couple to rent a room and he took the awkwardness out of it just by being pleasant and polite in a refreshing and genuine way. He had an uncut goatee and a piercing above his lip, two things that mark him as coming from a different generation and a different culture, but he was one of those instantly likable people. As I often do I gave him a card for the blog. "Cool," he said. "I'll check it out." I like young people and generally get along well with them, with one notable exception, the Something Awful of the post's title.

I don't want to talk about the specifics, because it would just serve to store up more hurt and leave a paper trail that would haunt me later. Everyone has had the misfortune of knowing someone who is very skilled at controlling people with their anger, the toxic and judgemental person who rules a family by their capacity to store and express resentments, to take things to a meaner and more shrill place than anyone else dares. The person who thrives on drama and hurting people, the person everyone else walks on eggshells around. "You don't want to upset ______ ," the family whispers, or often its just a silent understanding that if Nancy/Ashley/Regina makes the slightest feint toward displeasure people will leap out of their way; whole destinies will be changed, friendships discarded, merely to maintain the appearance of calm and peace, while everyone is paddling frantically beneath the surface to keep this illusion of harmony afloat. Good kind caring people will be victimized and brutalized, and that's the silent satisfaction of this cruel and toxic person, the exercise of power and control, the power of meanness and sanctimony and random cruelty. Unfortunately we all know someone like that. Perhaps it is a mother, a sister, or the ring leader in your group of friends. Sometimes it's a boss or the Committee Chair or Precinct Captain. The Queen Bee. Run from this person. Limit their influence over you and don't let them infect your children. If you know a person like this, if you have been hurt by a person like this, please know you are not the person they have made you out to be, and your imprint on the world around you is in no way defined by them or the poisoned shroud in which they have tried to cloak you. Throw it off and take all the good kind things within you to a better place. Don't try to love this kind of ugliness. It simply can't be done or overcome. Let them preside over an increasingly shrinking kingdom that does not include you.

The answer to Gretchen's question

"Wow!" Gretchen wrote. "I don't understand why you two aren't together."

The short answer is, we don't understand it either.

Just a couple of weeks ago I made Marie so angry she tried to tear the skin off my face. The anger and wrongness that brought us to that awful place, that tense and screaming ugliness, is the reverse side of all the wonderful passion we have for each other, and sometimes I'm not sure how we careen from one to the other. We both have demons and hurts and awful insecurities, and at times the love within us was not strong enough to combat the fear. We fought awfully and poorly and often. In her worst moments Marie would speak to me in a hard cold voice that cut me in my most tender place, threatening me with rejection and terrifying judgement and the loss of her love, and in my hurt all the anger and ugly turmoil within me would spill out, and I would shout back irrationally, or panic and run. As human beings we are only born with two fears, the fear of abandonment and the fear of falling, and loss and hurt in a relationship are both at once. God gave us this precious gift, a soul mate, a helpmate, our heart's unending desire, The One True Great Love of our lives, but we've been too fragile and too human to heal it and keep it together. We've been separated for over a 120 wasted days.

By now too we are overburdened with practical concerns. Reuniting our split household is a tentative and uncertain thing, and with 4.29 a gallon gas eating up a good chunk of our paychecks a working separated couple does all it can do just to keep bills paid and feed themselves. We've got to manage somehow. We've got to find a place to begin. The other part is overcoming those first few tense days of being a family again. After the long habit of being apart, just living in the same space poses a challenge all its own: we have to learn to get along without the fear, and handle the little inevitable troubles without the drama and harshness.

Let me ask you, Gretchen: you've been successfully and happily married a long time. How do you make it work? How do people overcome the stubborn and foolish pride that undoes their love? Any of the other blog readers, if you have a something to share about this, I would love to listen. How do we make love work? The divorce rate in our country is somewhere around 50%. The exact number does not matter; it's too high, and reflects unspeakable pain and brokenness in the lives of many people, particularly children. How do we heal? How do we make it better?

Last night Marie and I met at a Wendy's in Tualatin. We had another tense and foolish argument, and this time it was me who was asking the jealous and irrational questions. Finally our talk softened and she reached out to me and held both her hands in mine, and we kissed and forgave each other. We went over to Hayden's in the Tualatin center square, a lovely restaurant beside a beautiful man made lake. Soft lights shine on the water and with the handsome stone buildings that surround it, the park benches and fountains and trees, you could walk around this lake and imagine yourself to be in Italy or France or any of the finest places in the world. The inside of the restaurant holds a companionable bar, and last night Conroy-Debrie were playing. We had a glass of wine and listened to the music and held each other. The band played its arresting rhythms and soaring vocals, with Dub's piercing guitar licks, a perfect complement to a good glass of wine and stolen kisses. Their show ended at 11 and we made our way out to our separate cars. It was June 20, the night before the longest day of the year, Summer's eve, and the night air was mild and smelled faintly of summer. We kissed goodbye, affection turning to longing and desire. Marie cried, because we had to say goodbye again and had no place to go. 120 days, tragic and foolish days. We have something people read about and dream about and write books about, but we haven't found a way to make it work. Marie wiped the tears from her face and got in her car. She had to work in the morning at five and I had a long drive to Colton. I grew drowsy on the way home, listening to blues under the starry night sky and had to pull into the parking lot of the Nazarene Church to sleep a few minutes, got home around 12:30. I wasn't in the mood to write so I played Internet chess for an hour till I got tired enough to sleep without thinking.

About Marie and I, it frustrates me because I can't explain it or fix it. Marie is everything I ever dreamed of and more than I could ever imagine, passionate, intense, giving, wise, strong, sexual, sensuous, abundant, spiritual, deep, exotic, skilled, pleasuring and pleasing, gloriously alive, wondrously loving. I don't want anyone else. I never have. Leaving her was never about finding a bigger, better deal because there isn't one: I'm old enough and mature enough to know she is the Real Deal; it was about ending the madness and our ridiculous fighting. I just wanted to make love and eat together and and work and hold each other and have the long comforting talks we have when everything is all right. I don't want another woman. I just want her. And I just want this part to end, to get to the happy ending if there is one.

A note from the blogster on a slow blog day

I scarcely have time to write more than a note this morning; I've used up my entire allotment of tardies and occurrences at work and can't be late. This morning I couldn't pull myself out of bed to write earlier than six.

When I first started the blog I was filled with overarching ambitions and hopes: I was going to save the world, I was going to be discovered. That initial and ridiculous momentum has fizzled out. It isn't a bad thing to want things like that, but I think I'll settle for a slower and more realistic aim. I just want to write a little every day and be honest, to improve as a craftsman and learn, and share what I have learned. Wherever that leads is okay. The blog has reached 800 visitors, hardly an earth-shattering number but still a positive one, and in the 19 days it's been alive my son Roger and a friend from work, Amie L. have told me they are starting blogs of their own. (I will send you the links.) So at least I've started a small ripple of action in my immediate world, and that isn't a bad thing at all.

I deeply appreciate every person who has taken time to visit here, especially Marie, my family and friends, who have been so encouraging. I have a three-day weekend coming up (I scheduled a day of personal time on Monday) and I plan to write pages and pages and empty the recycling bags of all the scraps and notes I've saved there. Like Jim Valvano says, "never give up, never surrender." Thanks so much for stopping in.

My Visit to Angel's Rest

I haven't written about this until now because I had work to do over it before I could. I went to Angel's Rest the week before last, Sunday June 8, hiked to the top and sat. It was around six in the evening by then and the shadows were lengthening. Near the top I met a climber who reached the top by climbing the face of the rock wall and his face was bathed in exhilaration and sweat. He wore the clamps and pulleys on a belt around his waist, with water and a little nourishment in a small backpack, and his chosen passion had left him lean and full of energy. He said his name was Matthew and we talked for a while about climbing and the reward of standing on this beautiful place. I think of him again this morning and I wonder where he'll be climbing this weekend. What will we climb this weekend, besides a mountain of laundry?

After he left I found a smooth place, a ledge of rock that time had carved into a perfect writing chair, and I sat down to think and be overwhelmed by Angel's Rest and its spectacular view. I ate a small meal I'd packed, a fresh loaf of Kalamata Olive bread and swiss cheese from the deli and some fruit. Then I sat solemnly for a while to reach the quiet and reflective place my surroundings encouraged, tore a few pages of paper into scraps, and began to make a list of the wrongs, regrets and failings of my life, the people I had injured, the opportunities and gifts I'd squandered, the loves abandoned and duties ignored. On each scrap of paper I recorded a different injury and a different loss, and as the shadows lengthened I had a pile of them because I'm old. I gathered them in my hands and read them over, closing my eyes and praying over each one, asking forgiveness from the God who made me and everything I viewed around me and below me, the river, the rock and the majestic earth that stretched far beyond anything I could see, and I was overcome with a humble quiet. I remembered my vanities and selfishness and impulsiveness, my blindness to the needs of my kids and those I professed to care about. I resolved to make amends however I could, and live my remaining days with a richer care. I thought about each individual person on the papers and their role in my life and mine in theirs, sent out a wish of blessing for them, and a prayer to meet them again in some way and give them something better: Abby, Marie, Stephanie, Roger, Doug, my brothers Mike, Frank and Roger, my sisters Therese, Monika and Kristy, Parker, Joan, my three ex-wives, my many lost friends, and all the other coworkers and victims of my careless swathe through life, the fields I've left untended, the beauty I carelessly viewed. I encourage all of you to make a list like that, in your own way, and seek a way to be be forgiven and unburdened from it. I took my paper scraps and tucked them into the bottom of my green recyclable shopping bag, and I've left them there for 10 days. On Sunday I'll take them out one more time and pray the prayers of thanksgiving and grace over them and let them go, knowing that all the days ahead of me are a gift of healing and hope.

I rested there on the rock for a long while, then gathered my things and made my way down the trail in the soft light of dusk. It had been a wondrous day and a glorious reminder of how rich and full of mercy a day could be.

*********

At every turn life has something to teach you, if you are receptive. The most recent lesson for me is about artistry and craftsmanship and the standards of excellence. The night before last Marie and I had dinner with Captain Livingstone and his wife Nancy, and he gave us an autographed copy of his book of photography from 1982, Carmel By Itself, A Portrait of a Unique American Community. The images are so full of life and vibrance, so carefully composed. He told us about one shot, a couple sitting on a log at the beach in the moonlight. "That was actually taken at 2 p.m.," he said. "I underexposed the image by four stops to give it the effect of moonlight. I waited two hours for that couple to put their heads together." Every image in the book is crafted with the same great care, his young granddaughter posing for a sculptor, two Carmel restaurateurs enjoying an elegant picnic on the sand. "They were heavy set fellows, and the chairs you see there kept sinking in the sand. Finally I put the bottoms from some old-fashioned Coke bottles under the legs." Every picture had a story, a moment, a gull lighting on a rock, a horse rearing on it's hind legs. In Carmel he became friends with renowned photographers Edward Weston and Wyn Bullock, and his favorite artists were Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell. "I like the way they captured life and humanity in their work," he said. I asked him about a comment in his biography at the end of the book that remarked on the influence of Ansel Adams. "I met Adams, but he isn't a favorite of mine. He liked dead things, rocks and trees. I want to photograph life." The results were beautiful and evocative, even after 26 years, and it made me realize how far I had to travel.

Lessons resonate if you let them. Yesterday I read a review of a play by an acquaintance of mine, Eric Bartels, who writes for the Portland Tribune. He described in a powerful and literate way how the play failed: the characters were inauthentic, the voice of the playwright a little shrill and off-key. How art could go wrong through inattention. The lesson resonated again last night when Marie and I met at The Tillicum for a drink and a bite to eat and to hear The Conroy-Debrie band: wonderful, wonderful musicians whose every note and harmony soared. Mr Debrie carries 4 guitars and is a master of everything from flamenco to Jimmy Hendrix. The bar was half empty. Even great artistry has to struggle for an audience, and bear the sorrow of an indifferent world.

Marie and I have a date

We hung the "Do not disturb" sign on the blog yesterday. Marie and I had a companionable dinner with Captain John Livingstone (U.S.Army, retired) and his wife Nancy, then we spent the night together at The Peppertree Inn off Allen Blvd and Highway 217. In a peaceful courtyard just off the pool, the room was clean and quiet, and it was wonderful to have an entire night together.

Marie looked elegant and irresistible tonight. She made a stunning entrance at dinner, arriving a few minutes late in a black pencil skirt with a ruffle at the hem that showed off her wondrous figure, and a black and white print blouse. I felt a shiver of delight when I saw her, and another shiver the first time I kissed her neck. Her hair was up with a few little curls dangling down, and every curl had its own music. The shivers have never died, and won't.

My devotion to her and need for her is absolute and indivisible. Remember that love doesn't divide; it only multiplies. No matter how much I love other things, my interests and hobbies, my desire to write, my bright,alive children and grandchildren; my love for this woman will be the exponential force and the dynamic driving energy of everything I do until I die. I live to please her and make her proud. I exercise to be the delight of her eyes. She is the fulfillment of all my hopes and the extravagant reward of a God who loves me far beyond my deserving, merciful and full of grace.

To lie with her again and hold her again, and wake up to the sight of her taking her hair down at the mirror, was far more hope and beauty than any man could deserve or absorb in one lifetime: I opened my eyes as far as I could, and waded out into the River of Life as deeply as I could swim. I felt the exquisite rush of the waters around me, warm and soothing and youthifying. We plunged deeply into them and into each other, and emerged whole and bonded, ready for the sleep of Angels. My hope and my joy, renewed and sealed forever.

Last night was the 16th, exactly two years and 10 months since the night we met. Every relationship has its own mystical, curious numerology, dates that repeat with the irresistible rhythm of the downbeat in a good jazz tune, a harmony played by your guardian angels. I met Marie a week and two months after my mother died and as I got to know and love her I felt she had been a gift from a guardian angel. The gift, and my wonder at its tender mercies, have increased 12-fold over time. We have packed more passion and experience into three years than I ever dreamed I could have, and the three years are not yet completed. If I could have twenty more, or twenty days, I could die a happy man.

I need her. Somehow we have to throw off the circumstances and fears that have forced us to separate places. We need to make a home again, and decorate it with harmony and tenderness, light candles on the window ledges like we did in the glorious first weeks of our fevered rush into each other's lives. A pepper sprout stuffed with melted cheese, and we ate it whole and washed it down with the milk of comfort and desire.

How we fit together in every detail, our ages, our interests, our values and experience, and as two passionate electrified athletes in a dance of joy. Marie is a refuge and her golden hair is an unquenchable flame of hope in my heart, and when this trial ends I never want to be apart from her again.

I would give anything to write and accomplish something with my writing, so that we could be together and live a life where we could work in the same space and infuse our lives with this spirit of shared adventure and intense cooperation, begin the day with a drink on the deck, she coffee and me green tea, taking sips of each other in the quiet of a delicious morning. A walk after breakfast, her hand enfolded in mine, a nap, a game of golf, and 10 hours a day to write and read and discover the voice that lies within me, the good pure true voice that sings directly to your heart and hers. I want it, and that life with her, more than anything. I practiced a little more today and I hope it was a small blessing to you. Thanks for taking the time to read, and please come again.

Close your eyes and feel the wonder

The drive home was lovely and took seven hours. Be like this, the family that takes trips instead of makes time. Stop at the historical markers. Eat lunch in roadside diners where the waitress calls you "hun" instead of McDonalds. The cheeseburgers are better and so is the marionberry pie (a berry developed right here in Oregon, in Marion County, a hybrid of the blackberry known for its juicyness and flavor. In the words of the immortal Casey Stengal, you could look it up.) Be the dad who strikes up conversations with interesting strangers and makes teenaged daughters roll their eyes. If your teenaged daughter does not roll her eyes at you at least twice a day you are simply not doing your job. You've got to give her lots of goofy stuff she can look for and avoid in the man she marries. That's your job for seven years, to be the Dumbest Man in America. Unfortunately some of us never outgrow that part, but in the words of the immortal Mark Twain she will wake up one day in her twenties and be amazed at all you have learned. Enjoy the next 22 years. They are going to be a lot of fun.

I drove straight through to Cascade Locks, the town where I once had a psychotic breakdown (a true and wrenching story I'll have to develop a great deal more insight and wisdom to tell) and it was marvelous to return 15 years later in a state of transcendant health and spiritual peace, in a white convertible with the top down. I passed the baseball field where I tried to begin the salvation of the world by picking up litter (my mental illness, like the rest of me, was really quite tender and poignant, but a wracking terror and sorrow to those who loved me.) Never turn away from the truth. Accept though, that every truth has to be told in its own time. There are so many stories, and everyone of them ends in the same place, a place of grace and redemption and hope. But you have to have courage to not look away or be afraid of what the story is telling you. I'll return to this story later, when we are both more sure of my authenticity as a storyteller.

I stopped at Cascade Locks' famous roadside diner to eat, but the restaurant looked dirty and dingy and no one greeted me when I walked in, and the menu didn't include chicken-fried steak. A roadside diner with no chicken-fried steak? They did have a special on a New York steak, 15.95 with baked potato and salad. 15.95?!!? That's a quarter tank of gas! Yeesh. I decided to leave. Marie and I have a rule that if we don't get a good feeling about a place, particularly a restaurant, particularly if it isn't clean, we just turn around and leave. You only have 10,000 more meals to share with your family and friends. Or maybe 10. The exact number does not matter. In the words of the immortal Joaquin Andujar, a former pitcher for the St.Louis Cardinals with marvelously fractured English, "All of baseball [life] can be summed up in just one little word: youneverknow." And you don't. So don't waste any of those 10,000 meals on bad food, immodest prices, poor service or a dirty dining room. Vote with your feet. And enjoy the soul-nurturing communion that is a good meal in the place you were meant to be. Like home for instance. I paused a moment to read the community posters on the walls (the concert series, the hours of the public library, and a flyer for the Christian Bikers of the Columbia Gorge. I may have to buy a Harley and join. Marie would look sensational in a leather jacket and leather pants, her long blonde hair flying in the wind. Maybe a little too sensational. Youneverknow.)

I wanted to keep driving but I was too tired, and the next exit was a small park with a boat landing and large nearly-empty parking area and I pulled over, put the top up, locked the doors and took a nap. The sun was setting when I woke and I went down to the river to sit and to think and hear God's voice, not an audible voice, but the voice of the stillness and beauty and the river. Some careless fishermen had blighted the area with discarded food containers and poles and plastic bags, and even the sane part of me wanted to start picking up litter again. But this wasn't the time for that. I sat maybe 10-15 minutes enjoying the breathtaking sight around me, a place I could hardly open my eyes wide enough to see, let alone describe with my poor words. I walked back to my car filled with quiet. A husband and wife were dismounting from a beautiful black Harley at the top of the boat ramp. Two interesting strangers. "Where are you headed?" I asked. The man had his helmet in both hands and he looked up and smiled. "Home," he said. "Have a good ride."

And I too had a good ride. The moon was out and the top was down and the music rose in my heart. On the way home I called Marie and told her how much I loved her, and she told me the same and told me how glad she was that have started the blog and we have begun this new adventure together. We have a date tomorrow, to have dinner with Captain Livingstone and his bride at Wu's Open Kitchen, a clean restaurant filled with the smells of delicious food lovingly prepared, and it will be wonderful for all of us to sit and talk. After dinner Marie and I will get a motel room and spend the night together, and I will make love to the only woman I want to be with for the rest of my life. The best part will be when she puts her head on my chest and soothes me to sleep with her voice. I need her. I miss her. I want us to have a home again, and make it a safe place to grow old.

I stopped at a Wendy's in Troutdale and had a large cup of chili and a tall ice tea. The kitchen in this restaurant was sparkling and the entire crew was humming with activity, closing down stations, performing tasks without being asked, working together as if they were on a submarine or an aircraft carrier, in crisp uniforms with a common goal. Think how a smart businessman could transform the tow truck business by infusing it with this spirit, another version of the cowboy way. Everyone in our company works hard. They are friendly and neighborly, and wear a crisp clean uniform shirt, tucked in, with no tails or underwear hanging out, and no droopy pants or surly unkemptness. Someone needs to become the FedEx of towing, and they will make a kazillion dollars. The dispatcher of our towing company realizes that every call is the worst day of the customer's life, with a thousand uncertainties and anxieties on the other end of the line (what will I tell my wife, I hope it won't be expensive, we've got to be to soccer practice by 5:30, oh god that looks expensive) and he is calm and reassuring and polite, like he's talking to a neighbor. The tow truck driver conducts himself like a friend of Mark Wheeler and has a friendly, easy grin. He's a good troubleshooter and solves a fair amount of simple problems without a tow. He has friends in town and steers the stranded motorist to a safe haven ("you need to see a fella I know, Dick Allen. His garage is just over town. He'll have you going in a jiffy.") He offers her a cold bottle of water from the ice chest he keeps on the floorboard, or maybe a banana for each of the kids. There's a way better way to do the towing business, and a smart man could make a lot of money and make the world a better place. The key to getting rich is to find a need and fill it. That's one of the kazillion reasons I write about hurt and hope. The exact numbers do not matter. You get the idea.

This rant isn't random; I accidentally left the trunk popped open on the Vista Cruiser last night (random movie reference for the truly attentive) and it ran down the battery and this morning it wouldn't start. I had 8 more precious hours with the 3 Most Important People in the World, and I foolishly spent most of it in Exasperated Blog Editor mode and Exasperated Tow Truck consumer mode. Do you know how hard it is to get a tow truck to come out and jump a vehicle in a small town, or even a big town, and how harder still it is to get anyone in that industry to be pleasant or presentable? One guy pretty much said, with this much blunt indifference, "Two hours. Fifty bucks." Stephanie was holding Ethan (she's such an attentive, calm mother) and finally she looked up and said, "Dad, why don't you go down to NAPA and buy some jumper cables? Just borrow my car." After 30 years I finally get to borrow HER car, a nifty Honda with air conditioning, a sun roof and power everything. It scoots. (I didn't go faster than 60, Stephanie, I swear.) In Selah NAPA closes at three on Sundays so I frantically drove down the highway to Yakima in a blind search for an open auto parts store, a fruitless bumblebee route through a town I did not know, my head swiveling from side to side trying to sort the surrounding shops, increasingly frantic. The clock was ticking on my promised, discourteous, exorbitant, slovenly tow. Finally I had a brief moment of maturity and wisdom and decided to ask directions. A Mexican woman with three kids passed on foot. I remembered seeing a Kmart before from the freeway on my trips past town. A woman with three kids, she would know where Kmart was. She wasn't confident of her English. She asked one of her boys in Spanish and he pointed for me, behind me, East, ahead and turn left and then right, but his mother interrupted him in Spanish and they pointed me to an easier, clearer way, a freeway onramp just a couple of blocks ahead in the direction I was going. "Thank you so much." I said, "Have a good day with your family." They looked to be on their way to the park, 2 boys and a little girl in a pretty white dress, not much more than two. They all reminded me of my mother with the lot of us, so many Sundays ago. The Kmart proved just up the road, and I bought a box of jumper cables and a bag of trail mix, starved, but now with bread for the journey and no longer frantic. Stephanie called when I was in the store, the tow truck driver was there and fuming, threatening to charge double if he had to return. "Tell him we don't need him," I said. They'll probably run my plate and charge me Eighty, but I just wanted to be done with them. Business, life, and person-to-person daily living don't have to be that way, so mean and adversarial and difficult. Solve the problems. It takes far less energy than contributing to them.

In the blog we are working on a Unified Field Theory of Human Experience. We will cover a lot of ground. The point of the tow truck thing is that it took me so far from what I wanted to experience today, and we all, particularly me, could have done better. Sometimes life sends you a reminder that you are still a work in progress, a reminder too of how much I need my wife. She keeps me grounded. She always knows where the keys are, or how to find them, and never leaves the trunk open or the babies unkissed. Her priorities are generally flawless. We just have to learn how to get along without the fear, without letting hurt get in the way.

I didn't finish my story about the trip home. As I have said before the blog is a first draft of a work of uncompromising genius, direct from my heart to yours. It will be big and messy. You'll just have to keep up.

I don't have time to tell you about Daniel, the clerk at the Shell station in Parkrose, who like my friend Igor at Mall 205 Bally's greets a 1000 people a day and few of them notice the intelligence and awareness and courtesy he conveys in a simple greeting. They both greet a guest like a guest, like a person just walked through the door instead of a wallet and a transaction. It's an attitude, an attitude of grace and aliveness, and if enough of us catch the attitude like a fever the entire country will be transformed by the audacity of action. We'll move mountains. All the litter will be picked up, and much of it will never happen.

The moon was out and it was a glorious night, with the top of the Vista Cruiser open to the stars. On 104.1 "The Fish" I heard a soaring a capella version of "Amazing Grace" that provided the soundtrack for the entire weekend, emerging from the other side of so much writing and such a tremendous gift of love and experience that I feel made new by the glory of what God has given me. I called Roger around 9:30 from somewhere around Mt. Tabor. I thanked him for the incredible privilege of being his dad, how much I enjoyed all his humor and intelligence and heart and promise. I love that boy. He's starting a blog of his own; I'll send you the link. The chills are starting. The hound of heaven is afoot. I can't open my eyes wide enough. I can't type fast enough or write clearly enough, but I try a little every day. And thank you to you and Him for watching over me. It's time to say good night.

The Back Yard Olympics (III)

I encourage you to host a Backyard Olympics of your own this summer, and if you want you can send us the results and some on-the-spot reporting and poignant backstory. Instill friendly competition and laughter into your family life, like Family Game Nights where the winner is declared Undisputed Winner Champion of All Time and showered with a chorus of whoo hoos; kazoos, blowout party rollers (what are they really called?) and confetti optional.

There are only a few rules to the Backyard Olympics. The television has to be turned off and all family members have to participate in the course layout, including grumpy I-know-everything-this-is-so-retarded-you-are-ruining-my-life teenagers. The Backyard Olympics is good for them, like broccoli, and they have to try some and take their own dishes to the sink. Or go to their room hungry and miserable with no electronic devices. If you start traditions like this earlier in their lives you will have less trouble with them, although some is inevitable.

The other rules are simple and fairly flexible. Choose your own events, have fun, and begin the games on the deck with a full-throated "dah dah da da dah dah dah" version of the Olympic theme sung in unison by all participants. Theatrical play by play and excessive celebrations are encouraged. To take the disaster factor out of the golf event, consider using plastic wiffle balls. The rest of the rules are up to you. Do not consult a doctor before playing. The laughter you're about to have is far better medicine than anything they will exorbitantly bill you for. Your health plan doesn't cover the Backyard Olympics, but it should.

I've talked long enough. I need to take a shower. Before I go, these are the first-day results from Applegate Arena high above Selah Washington and the scenic Yakima Valley, where Ethan Joseph Applegate won a platinum medal in all events, watching from his jumper seat, awarded for extreme and superior cuteness. He took it all in with wide-eyed glee and kicked off his baby blanket eight times. Results below, with brief comments.

The anticipation was high in Applegate stadium this Saturday afternoon as renowned singing star and international recording artist Kourtney led the participants in the singing of the Olympic theme from the spacious Applegate deck.

A crackling aura of tension on their faces, in the moment they'd dreamed of and prepared for for so long, the players took their marks in the first event, the Horseshoe Throw. Each player had three sets of three throws each, and as the pressure mounted and the bad bounces of the uncut lawn were endured, the 52-year-old veteran from Colton Oregon emerged as the winner:

Event 1 Horseshoe Throw
Gold Grandpa Golf 2 pts
Silver Kourtney Rose 1 pts*
Bronze Stephanie 0 pts

(Kourtney received the Olympic Committee asterisk for excessive skooching forward from the starting line)

Vowing to avenge her embarassing loss in the horseshoe pit, the strong-willed mother of two, Stephanie Applegate, a 1996 graduate of Centennial High in Gresham Oregon, thrilled the onlookers with a steely-eyed missle into the corner of the goal on the second round of sudden death to garner the gold in "Bend It Like Beckham:"

Event 2 "Bend It Like Beckham" Soccer Corner Kick
Gold Stephanie 3 pts (in second round of Sudden death goal-off)
Silver Grandpa Golf 2 pts
Bronze Kourtney 0 pts

The spirit of the intense and demanding competition was rising as The Games moved to the third event, the golf competition, to be held on the grueling 3-hole 36-yard Applegate Country Club golf links, a treacherous 3-par montrosity with a fence, a testy rock garden and one lazy cat guarding the elusive white kitty litter lid. Players were awarded 1 point for closest to the pin on each hole, 2 points for landing their shot within a club length of the target and three points for the coveted lid-in-one, which no players earned today. Two players were all tied going to the final hole, when the crafty veteran in the Green and Yellow cap with the fighting crabby duck on the front carefully executed his preshot routine and lasered a masterful 12-yard shot within 2 feet of the pin to secure victory. The ever-combative Beaver fan Stephanie had one more try but it bled weakly off the tee, and the gold at Applegate Links was secured:

Event 3 Golf, Historic Applegate Golf Links
Gold Grandpa Golf 3 pts
Silver Stephanie 2 pts
Bronze Kourtney 0 pts

The story of the day in the Bocci ball arena was the plucky comeback of the competition's youngest entrant, Kourtney Rose Silver from John Campbell Grade School in Selah, Washington. Shut out of the top medals in earlier events, Kourtney fought off her disappointment to launch a spectacular bocci throw within inches of the yellow ball on her final toss. Sadly, Grandpa Golf was completely overwhelmed in bocci, having never played the game before and repeatedly stepping into a hole the dogs had dug in the backyard, aggravating his trick knee. Each shot was an agony, and though he produced several fine throws, his distaff opponents were simply too tough in this event. The suspicious skooching behavior manifested in the horseshoe event reared its ugly head in this event as well, but no official protests were logged with the Olympic Committee.

Event 4 Bocci Ball
Gold Stephanie 2 pts
Silver Kourtney 1 pts
Bronze Grandpa Golf 0 pts

Stung by complete failure in Bocci Ball, the wizened Oldster came to the final event vowing revenge on the badminton court, and rode an 11-0 service run in the early moments of the competition to a 15-4 victory, with multi-platinum medal winner Ethan coaching from the sidelines with wide eyes and supportive blanket kicking.

Event 5 Badminton, Team competition, Center Court, Picturesque Applegate Stadium
Gold Boys 15, Silver Girls 4

The final event, singles badminton, was suspended with a 29-29 tie when the second badminton birdie got stuck on the roof. Heroic measures were taken to rescue the errant shuttlecocks, involving a dining room chair and a rake, but by then the competitors were hungry and retired to the living room for snacks and a screening of the Disney epic "Hercules" an inspiring story of true love and heroism in ancient Greece, the birthplace of the Olympic Games. The Olympic Tradition was well served today and all the players should be very proud of their efforts:

Singles Badminton, Center Court,Picturesque Applegate Stadium
Gold Kourtney Silver 29,
Gold Grandpa Golf 29

The Back Yard Olympics (II)

Two guiding principles of my life are:
1) you have to leave room in your life for a lot of whimsy, the more whimsy the better. It's a water-soluble vitamin and if you get too much of it your system just flushes it out.
2) little things don't matter, and it's extraordinary to discover the wide range of things that are far more little than you think. It's better to just go to plan B, and chances are plan B winds up being a far greater thing than Plan A ever dreamed of being, Like the Backyard Olympics.

After Kourtney and I had our smoothies and a grandpa-to-granddaughter chat, we walked across the street to Selah's only fitness business to exercise. At the street corner we had a contest. Kourtney got to have her choice of crosswalks and it was a race to see who would arrive more quickly at our cat-a-corner target. Jaywalking wasn't allowed. Kourtney, being an A student in advanced math and a master of logic, argument and deduction, chose north for her starting crosswalk and won easily, doing a victory dance at the cat-a-corner while I was still waiting for my light to change. In small contests with children, excessive celebration is allowed and encouraged. That's the trophy and the prize, the opportunity to celebrate your own greatness, a much larger thing than we ordinarily think.

At the gym the counter clerk looked at Kourtney and frowned. Why would anyone do that? She's a stunning young beauty at 10, smart as a whip, with the energy and resourcefulness of three platoons of Marines. She should be greeted everywhere with, "Good morning child," which in the language of the global village roughly translates as "you are glorious vision of God's handiwork. It is a joy to behold you today." I often use phrases like this when I meet strangers, and occasionally it backfires. Leave room in your life for a few glorious failures. Make some deliberate mistakes. It will give your critics something to carp about and increase your fame. If you are playing golf with a dear good friend and you don't want your ridiculous male competitiveness to get in the way, deliberately aim your first shot into the marsh, and maybe one or two more. You have surrendered the match and won the great victory of two unencumbered hours with your precious friend, and the exact score no longer matters, for you are now playing a far richer game for a much larger trophy. Occasionally this strategy will backfire and this mis-aimed shot will go dead down the middle, rising like a missle and soaring like a bird, and in that happy accident just accept your destiny and enjoy the round of your life. God wants to bless you today with enormous good fortune and every putt on the lip is going to roll in. Just accept it and laugh like hell at every moment of your ridiculous good luck. Laugh like hell a lot of the time. There's probably a reason you haven't discovered yet. (Okay I swore. That's nothing. I'm glad you don't hear me when I misplace my car keys, which happens a minimum of two times a day.) I am full of words and stories these days; they have waited 52 years to come out and are coming out in a tumble. I can't start one story without interrupting it with two others. The blog is a first draft and it will be big and sloppy. Just hit your first shot into the swamp and enjoy the visit.

"The minimum age to work out at the club is 14," the clerk said. What was the harm, I thought, the gym was nearly empty and a treadmill is no match for Kourtney. Like all ten year olds she is a master of electronic devices large and small and in better shape, after dance class and soccer practice and general running around, than an entire platoon of aerobics instructors. She is an honored member of the 15-mile club. There is a cheerful poster that proclaims so on the bulletin board at Java Jitters cat-a-corner from here, all of the kids squatted together on the lawn outside John Campbell school in bright yellow tee shirts. Lori's daughter missed the picture but she ran 25 miles. Cool things like this should be in the window or on the bulletin board of every business. It is another wonderful duty in the global village.

But some people live by the rule, "I have as little authority as anyone, and I'm going to use every bit of it." They tell perfectly safe parked cars to move, and turn robustly healthy 10 year-olds away at the door of the inn. "This is very displeasing to me." I actually said that to the clerk, in just that way. "I'm sorry." she said, not sorry at all. Kourtney and I shook the dust of our feet from the door of this inhospitable place and returned to the other joys of our top down day. Always be ready with a plan B, and don't be afraid to form it on the fly. Kids know this--they are master of do-overs and just start the whole game over if it isn't any fun, or abandon it all together to have graham crackers dipped in milk. On the way to our beautiful cool shiny white streamlined convertible, the 2004 Chrysler Sebring that has too much stuff in the back seat, I told Kourtney, "It's okay, we'll go home and have the Backyard Olympics."

At the Applegate estate Stephanie immediately embraced the new idea and fleshed it out beautifully. In no time she and Kourtney laid out a course. The first event was horseshoes, along the fence behind Tom and Stephanie's bedroom. The second was entitled "Bend It Like Beckham", a soccer goal kick from the corner of the patio into a small portable soccer goal placed at the corner of the fence. The third event was golf on the treacherous first three holes of the 36-yard Applegate Country Club, then bocci ball along the north fence line that borders Hannah's old house. Hannah, Kourtney's first best friend, has moved away to Yakima so the family could be closer to their restaurant. Already Kourtney knows some of the ultimate sorrow that finds everyone. After bocci ball came badminton on the front lawn. Actually I made a mistake. The first event was the assembly of the badminton net, a team event which was the most challenging and grueling event for our branch of the family where the most terrifying phrase in the English language is "some assembly required." Tom dismantles bombs for a living; he can fix anything in five minutes, but he was 3000 miles away, so the rest of us have to soldier on. Steff called him during the Backyard Games and he was immediately bummed to have missed them; at the post-victory dinner we decided to rename this the Pan American games and schedule the actual Backyard Olympics for August during Beijing Olympics on a weekend Tom is home. Marie called me Saturday night and found my phone--it was in one of the green recycling bags with my notes, the last place I hadn't thought to look. I invited her to the games and she immediately accepted; she has a wonderful spirit of play and that athlete's body, a swimmer, gymnast and district sprint champion in high school. I wish I had time to tell you about the joy of watching her bowl, watching that lithe body stride down the line and wriggle a little dance when she completes a spare. The Applegate games will have to be expanded to two days and will have to include bowling, I've decided. I love to watch her bowl. Bowling is a great game for families, it's enjoyable to all skill levels and there are lots of wonderful opportunities for commiserating, excessive celebration, hugs, fist bumps, high fives and the wiggling of little victory dances.

We assembled the net, without the aid of the instructions we couldn't find, and no where-are-my--zxw##%-words. We found a roll of Tom's electrical tape in the garage and jury-rgged the whole thing together in a way that made perfect sense to us. Tom would have laughed all the way from Pennsylvania. This was the first event, the assembly of the net, and we all won a gold medal. Kourtney had laid actual medals and ribbons from her collection on the picnic table for the awards ceremony. The last event would be the March of Death, a race up the tall hill of their cul-de-sac, Crestwood Drive, about a 300-foot descent followed by a 300-foot climb. That event didn't take place Saturday-- we ran out of time before dinner. And now I have run out of time before breakfast; Kourtney is up and her Rice Krispies smell like the best meal ever served. In Don Quixote Sancho Panza says "hunger is the best sauce." I'll post the results and play-by-play of the Backyard Games a little later, but I did win gold in the golf event with a spectacular pitch to within 2 feet of the hole (the lid to a kitty litter bucket) on the final shot of the round, and Stephanie won "Bend It Like Beckham" with a pressure-packed dead center goal in the second round of a sudden death goaloff. Excessive celebration was required. If you think about it, it ought to be required every day. Find a reason to raise both fists high in the air and scream "yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" today and wiggle a victory dance. Don't leave all the fist pumping to Tiger Woods, although that was an AMAZING putt, 80 feet from the fringe in the third round of the U.S. Open, treacherously downhill and trailing by 3 shots. The exact statistics do not matter. I used to root against him; he's the Barbie of golfers and has everything, but he's won me over. How can you deny that will and exuberance and historic fierce warrior heart? He's an Abby among men. I wish Abby could come to the Backyard Olympics. But right now I've got to go eat and say good morning to my smart funny and beautiful daughter and her beautiful new son. Excessive celebration will be allowed, and I encourage it at your house too.

The Back Yard Olympics

The girls and the little one have gone to bed. The Most Recent Greatest Moment of My Life occurred at 3:06 pm this afternoon, when I got to rock my 10-week-old grandson Ethan Joseph Applegate to sleep for the first time. He was born on
March 24, nine lbs. and 20 inches long. I've come to see him once before but this is the first time I held Ethan. When I came out the first time he was just 10 days old and I was afraid I would break him.

He is the sweetest kind of baby, one who rarely cries except when he wants to nurse, who loves to be held and burrows into your shoulder with a tender sigh he repeats softly till he falls to sleep. I sang him the songs I used to sing to his mother and his sister when they were babies, "Sweet Baby James", "The Pony Man", "The Little Skunk Song" and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." I also hummed two choruses of the Duck fight song. His mother is an avid Beaver fan, but she and Kourtney were shopping on Ebay for wedding and baby scrap book papers and did not notice. At his two-month checkup EJ had already grown to 12 lbs and 25 inches; I'm thinking outside linebacker or strong safety. His room is decorated in rocket ships. His father Thomas says he'll be a firefighter or an astronaut, and sometimes they call him "our little fire-naut."

It is good to have high hopes for a child. It is one of the reasons Marie and I always compliment the babies we see at a restaurant or a store. The positive attention of the village enobles the family and gives them a special place, bread for their journey. I often say, "Enjoy the next 22 years. They are going to be a lot of fun." It's lovely to see a smile of increased pride on the young parents' faces; all of us are encouraged to have our children praised. Peak down at the baby carriers and strollers you see. Ring out your praise for these tiny miracles like music, for they are the pride of our village, and the hope.

In our little family there is a touch of sadness. Though it is Father's Day weekend Army Sergeant Thomas Applegate is away on duty. He's in New England on a security detail at the home of Vice President Dick Cheney. He called several times to check on his lonesome wife and new son; he and his partner were released from their assignment this afternoon and they took a road trip through Delaware and Pennsylvania. He told my daughter Stephanie, "We stopped a this little store to buy a soda, and when we went inside all the food was in locked cases and the clerk was behind bulletproof glass. I think we were in the wrong part of Philadelphia."

I think of other military families and realize we are blessed. Thomas is flying in from Maryland tomorrow and he'll be home Sunday night at nine. I'll miss seeing him and sharing a beer and cigar on the deck when the girls have gone to bed, but there are thousands of wives right now who ache for husbands that are half a world away in terrible uncertainty. Imagine how they feel this Father's Day, with no more comfort than a crackly five-minute call, gripping the phone like letting go would make them drown. Unless there is a change of political fortune Tom will be deployed to Iraq in October of next year. He's committed: "The public only sees the media version; we make progress every day and what we're doing is right." When I talk to him I admire his confidence and his devotion to his job, but I'm no master of geopolitics: I only want that all those young fathers and mothers are able to come home as soon as possible and hug their babies with both arms. I believe you should thank every serviceman you see. It is another duty of the global village. To them I often say, "thank you for your service to the country" and I mean it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with red states and blue states or the signs that you might set out on your front lawn. Their work serves us all at a great price to themselves, politics discarded. In general I don't have a lot of faith in politics--I think all the most significant changes are fueled by ordinary people doing ordinary things with an extraordinary attitude. Politics never changed a diaper. It never nursed a child, or read or sung to one.

Naturally, young Ethan gets lots of visitors. In our little world he is the star attraction and the blockbuster of the summer. Tom's parents have driven west from Montana twice; Tom's military buddies stop by regularly. I got to town around nine this morning, arriving just as Stephanie's mother Kathy and Grandma Beverley and Aunt Ali were heading out, and Stephanie wanted for all of us to go to breakfast. We went to the Waffles Cafe on First Street in Yakima. Like in many small-town best places the food was plentiful and heavenly and served with a smile.

I enjoyed visiting with Kathy and her mother, wonderful after many years and miles to come to a place where we could sit and be a family and old friends, catching up on nephew Robert and Jerry's new bar. Beverly is a delightful woman, full of energy and good humor, the kind of person who picks up friends in remarkable places and enriches herself with years of humor and shared stories. When Robert's brother Joey died of lukemia at 14 she befriended the nurse who treated them and they regularly visit even now. Just today she was on her way to Joseph to visit the accountant she's used since Kathy and I were dating; he's dying of lukemia also, they've been friends for more than 30 years.

That quality of friendship is an art, and reflects Beverly's marvelous ability to enjoy and value people, something wonderful to see and be a part of. She and Jerry have a house in the country outside Castle Rock, along the Toutle River, where the old rascal Jerry can enjoy the view of cougars and bears and the pretty girls inner tubing downriver in the summer. They are refreshing and dear people, as genuine as the day is long. She invited me to come out for barbequed steaks. I suggested this Thursday, hoping to bring Doug and a bottle of Three Rivers Merlot. Norman Mclean wrote in A River Runs Through It, "I am surrounded by waters." I am deeply blessed to be surrounded by so many congenial and warm-hearted people. It is the compensation we get for growing old, if we have the wisdom to accept it.

I've learned that love doesn't divide; it only multiplies. Kathy has long since remarried to a terrific man, Mike Doty, outgoing and stable and good-humored like her father, and they seem far more suited to each other than we ever were. I was so young then, and so unprepared for the responsibilities of family and adulthood, and botched it thoroughly. We had Stephanie right away, I was working as a manager of a fast food restaurant; a long way from the life I'd dreamed of and the writer I longed to be. Kathy remarked today that she was glad I was writing again. It was good to sit down to a meal and be free to enjoy the things we have in common, a love of good company and Ethan Joseph and Kourtney Rose. It made a fine beginning to The Most Recent Greatest Day of My Life. These are the greatest days: at the gym a few days ago I was talking to an old man and he said "I'm happy just to be above ground." I think that's a good start for anyone, and worth far more than we often allow.

If you are a friend of the blog you know I love small towns, and I see a hope in them I believe the rest of America has misplaced. After the breakfast Kourtney and I went to a garage sale on the main street of Selah just down from the Red Apple market. We bought a bag of books for $3, and she picked out a cloth one for Ethan and then a bright satin Chinese puppet. We stopped into a little coffee shop called Java Jitters for a raspberry smoothie with a generous mound of whipped cream. We're on vacation and I'm Grandpa Golf--the calories don't count. The owner, Lori, was at the counter and knew Kourtney by name; she and Lori's daughter play sports and go to dance class together. The question of the day was (good for a dollar off on the drink of your choice) "how many "ones" are there on a dollar bill? Be sure to count both the numerals and the written "one"(s), front and back." The answer will appear in tomorrow's blog, and dozens of other answers will be sought. And tomorrow I will tell you about The Back Yard Olympics, because I need to sleep. Unfortunately my daughter forgot to leave out a blanket and a pillow. God bless her, for Ethan still nurses every three hours and she was just bone tired by ten, when she and Kourtney finished hand painting the coffee cups they'd decorated for Thomas for Father's Day. (Thomas, this information is classified, and if you read this before Sunday I'll have to kill you.) "World's Greatest Dad" they said, and all this time I thought that was me. I'm not bothered: love doesn't divide; it only multiplies. I checked in the hallway closet and found a nice sleeping bag. Thanks for coming today and good night.