Clearing Out the Blog Closet of Unaddressed Topics

I feel a wonderful sense of serenity and well being today. I don't really want to question why. Maybe it's the progressive relaxation exercises I've started doing again, or the eve of the Rose Bowl, or all the chocolate I consumed over Christmas. Sometimes it's best not to question. There are always plenty of reasons to return to being depressed or anxious in life. Today I choose not to remember any of them.

At the end of the year the papers and magazines are full of retrospectives, reflections and recollections (my that's a lot of r's) on the biggest or most memorable stories of the year, the top ten this and the top ten that. It's the creeping Lettermanization of the world. We want everything packaged and classified, cut into neat little bites of information. They say no one reads anymore. We want everything quick and neat and digestible, on platters like holiday hors d'oevres.

To me two of the most intriguing stories of the last year were the Hudson River plane crash and Tiger Woods' fall from grace. The first illustrates some of best human qualities and the second the worst. Let me explain. No, no time to es'splain, let me sum up.

Marie and I watched a documentary on both on Discovery recently. I love that channel, and TLC. With all the soul-destroying junk out there they consistently inspire and illuminate. We love the stories they tell, the people they celebrate. Two of our favorites are the Rolloffs and the Duggars.

In the story of Flight 1549, Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger displayed some the most remarkable grace under pressure imaginable. The force of his training and inner composure are amazing to contemplate. Moments after takeoff the US Airways plane collides with geese and both engines are lost. His mind races through options and the copilot scrambles for an emergency checklist. It's nine miles to the nearest airport and not enough time. The engines won't restart. They're flying, or rather, gliding, powerless, over some of the tallest buildings and most densely populated real estate in the world.

As the control tower tries to clear a runway or guide him to another landing site he realizes there's no time. "We're going into the Hudson," he radios. From 3,000 feet, making a series of critical decisions in the space of two and half minutes, he guided the plane a few hundred feet over the George Washington Bridge, managed his air speed and angle of descent perfectly, and got the plane onto the water without breaking it up. Everyone survived, 155 passengers and all the crew, evacuated in just minutes as the cabin filled up with water. Captain Sully walked down the aisle three times to make sure everyone had been safely evacuated. He was the last to leave the plane.

What struck me as we watched were the passengers, telling their story. They hear a loud bang and look out the window. The engines are on fire. This can't be good, they think. The plane starts to sink in the sky, and soon they are below the buildings and over the water, heading for the bridge. One man sends a good bye text to his wife and daughter. "We're about to crash. I love you." The Captain makes a terse announcement over the loudspeaker, "Brace for impact." The passengers reach for one anothers' hands and prepare themselves to die. One man thinks, I'm not ready to die. I'm not ready for my life to be over. There's so much I haven't done and so much I've failed to do. Many of us would have that feeling, the sense of lost opportunity and regret. On the ground, frantic witnesses think they are seeing a repeat of 9-11.

Moments later the plane hits the water and they realize they are still alive. One passenger leaves his seat and as he heads for the exit door he looks back to see if his body is still sitting. A woman thinks, "I survived, but now I'm going to drown." The water is rising. They climb out over the wing and have to chose between the frigid winter waters of the Hudson or the sinking plane. The temperature in New York was 20 degrees about the time of the crash off Manhattan's west side. Some jump into the Hudson. The water is 36 degrees. Help arrives, first a nearby tour boat and then the 911 crews.

Imagine yourself the next day. You thought your life was over. You thought you would never hold your children again, never taste warm bread or snuggle in a cozy blanket. You would never have the opportunity to redeem yourself or heal wounds or make amends. Your life, though over, would be unfinished, unsettled, and incomplete.

You wake up the next morning in your own bed or your motel room and you realize you've been given a second chance and a new hope. Anything is possible. You're alive, you're healthy, you have your job and your family and all ten fingers and ten toes. Breathe. That's real, sweet air, filling your healthy lungs. Your heart is beating and your eyes are clear. That's your spouse next to you, looking better than she ever has. You get to hold her with your own two arms.

And that's exactly where we all are this morning. We may not have avoided a near-death experience, at least not a literal and earth-shaking one, but every day is a miracle. Every day is a gift. There are a thousand close calls we never even knew about, the red light-running text messenger who missed us by half a block because he stopped at the hallway mirror to check his hair. There are over 150,000 men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan this morning, with families half a world away, who live every breath exposed to mayhem and misery and senseless death, who would give anything this morning to wake up next to their spouse, to have their little ones bounce down the hall and jump into their bed with both knobby knees and pajamas smudged with jelly from yesterday's toast.

We've all been given a new beginning. The plane landed in one piece. We're still here, and anything is possible. A good life. Hope. The opportunity to say thank you, I'm sorry, or I still love you no matter what. We can do a better job. We can love our children more fiercely. We can say good-bye to this world and all those we love in a little better way. We can live with passion and attention rather than indifference. We can wake up and realize what a tremendous gift it is to live and breathe. Nothing is over. We're not doomed. We don't have to be imprisoned by our circumstances or excuses. I think that's the enduring value of heroism and heroic stories. They remind of the great sacred value of life, its precious, fleeting and irreplaceable richness. We're here. We're safe. We're together. Hold someone and remember why you love them so much.

Another story sticks with me for an entirely different reason. Tiger Woods. Here is a guy who had everything: fame, money, success, celebrity, adoration, challenges, two cute kids, a lovely wife, and he endangered and squandered it, for what? Sleazy barflies. Common sluts. Cheap, social-climbing tramps. It as though he loathed himself and his life, and wanted to have the most sordid and risky and senseless secret life imaginable. He was two people, the public face of champion athlete and disciplined warrior, and the private, masked face of twisted pleasure seeker. And he sought his pleasure in the lowest, rankest, most tawdry places he could find. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." But it didn't. He craved depravity and excess and indulgence, and he lost all the most important things he had.

Sexual sin and infidelity are the most damaging kinds of brokenness in a family. Nothing wounds a marriage more than a partner failing the other with a disloyalty to the most tender and vulnerable part of their union. It's hard to heal when you've been hurt all the way to your soul. I did that. In the year we were separated I turned to pornography. I ogled strangers on the street. I had a sick fascination with the dark side of human behavior, an unchecked need to act out and fantasize. It sucks you in. Our culture's view of sex, the way it's depicted on television and in advertising and movies, distorts things beyond comprehension. The Internet has all these dark tunnels of lurid immediacy, waiting to be explored. Three words typed into Google and you are in the grip of soullessness. I succumbed to all that. I chose that over real life, and the price has been awful. Some days, I am so lonely and ashamed I can barely breathe. I have tried so hard to make amends, but how can you make amends for betrayals that hurt so deep, betrayals that are so senseless and stupid? Maybe you can't.

The tabloids say that it's a done deal, that despite all Tiger's efforts at damage control and repentance that Elin Nordgren Woods has packed up and left and hired lawyers, and she doesn't care that he wants to change or go to counseling or plead for another chance. She's probably heard it all before. She knows it's his problem, it isn't about her, and with him or without him she'll have plenty of money and all the privacy she needs. I think she probably did go after him with a nine iron. A lot of women probably wish she'd gotten an opportunity to finish the job.

How do people heal and forgive? How much forgiveness is possible, or even advisable? I suppose anything can heal with time, but it will never be the same. Once, we had joy and real togetherness. These last few days after Christmas have been very gentle and pleasant. and I feel like slowly we're learning to live and get along and focus on the good things. We're communicating better. It helps that Marie is working and we don't have the crippling financial pressure of one inadequate income. It helps we have a new grandbaby to remind us of what is really joyous and important. It helps we came to a compromise about poker and writing and using the computer. We're learning to trust one another in baby steps, not to be so hypervigilant about everything, particularly the time and activities we do apart. We seem more focused on what we CAN do together, the simple things we enjoy.

It's been very quiet between us romantically for a while, and I think that's just as well. We are affectionate but not passionate, positive and kind but not intimate. I think that's right for now. Maybe we can heal. Maybe we can forgive. In the hypercharged world of supercelebrity where Tiger Woods lives, things are too public and too painful for that to happen. Today we are lucky we are not rich and famous. We didn't drown and we didn't die and our sins and faults and ugly undersides have not been displayed to the world in all their lurid detail. So we have a choice. We can lie down together and take a nap and wake up with a kiss. And that's a good beginning. Call it the quiet heroism of not giving up.