A landslide of the heart

I woke up around 9:30, called a couple of my favorite people, my best friend Eileen and my brother Frank, then straightened up my ridiculously messy room. I discarded the embarrassing collection of papers, old mail and wrappers, took wine glasses to the sink and washed them, folded the clothes and put them away. I unpacked from my Christmas trip. I feel lighter and more whole. I still haven't made the bed.

It took till 11:30 to finish the chores. By then I was massively hungry. In the kitchen I found two slabs of sourdough bread, cut off a half-inch slice of ham and four pieces of swiss cheese with some mustard and assembled a sandwich. I'm a big boy. I like to eat.

I took the sandwich to my desk and lit a candle. It's mealtime, and a candle invites the sacred. A person should never eat alone so I opened the blog to write a post. You are my company today, and I treasure that.

There's something about the combination of a long trip, calling special people, doing chores and eating a massive ham sandwich that makes you reflective. I particularly like this song and this version of it, "Landslide," performed by the Dixie Chicks in a live performance somewhere in Europe (Sweden, maybe? Not sure about that part.)

The song touches me and stays with me these days, for a variety of reasons. The beautiful clear voices. The crush-worthy lead singer. The tender strains of the mandolin. And of course the lyrics and their message:

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older, too

We all have songs that become touchstones, windows into our hopes and soul. It's magical how music can do that, lift us to the best part of ourselves, express our sadness, longing, meaning and need better than we can ever hope to. This song plays in my Pandora nearly every day.

I was singing the chorus in my halting tenor as I did my chores, feeling a tremendous comfort.

I AM getting older, but getting bolder is a choice, I believe. A lot of people face their advancing generations and become more careful, which I think that is a tragic, disastrous, calcifying mistake. My grandpa was a vigorous man who built his own house with his own hands at 63. He got a little help with the plumbing and wiring, but structure and the carpentry were all his. Then he retired and sat in a chair. He got Alzeimer's. By the end of his life he couldn't recognize his wife of 60-plus years.

Getting older makes me think of the journeys I could take, the choices I might make and the direction they could start me toward in my life. It's exhilarating to see possibilities instead of sameness.

A list in forming in my head, and this is the first time I've sat down to put it to paper, albeit between bites of enormous, delicious ham sandwich.

These are choices I could make, some of them mutually exclusive. All of them will alter my path in marvelous ways, while certainly a few wouldn't turn out at all. It's wonderful to feel at 62 there are adventures to be had, that I can grow and learn and discover and make changes. I can pay more attention to the road I travel, the souls I touch along the way. Robert Frost said, "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Frost's poems have been cited and recited so much that the metaphors have been worn out by less subtler minds, leaving a road with potholes and a crumbling stone fence at its edges. In "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening" and "The Road Not Taken" he talks both about how one path closes another and the subtle seductions of merely giving up, letting yourself sleep, lulled by the rhythm of the bells on the harness as the snows fall.

Sorry for the mock profundity. Just trying to learn to write pretty. This is my list so far, with items that are both little and big in their scope:

Learn to play guitar (that's on everyone's list, I think. It'd be nice to play a song or three, sing them one day with my granddaughter,)

Join a writer's group.

Take a cross country trip. Read the historical plaques. Hike the Grand Canyon. Stop for pie. Flirt with the waitress. Attend college football in various towns and write a blog about it.

Own a place of my own, my own apartment, a 600-square-foot trailer, something. I've always wanted an office and a study, three bookcases, a good chair and reading lamp, a cherry wood desk like the one I had before the last time I was homeless. (Another story, preceded by bad choices.)

Get a job at Eastern Washington University, something simple, be a janitor or academic advisor or part of the landscape crew, attend classes one or two a quarter. It's close enough to my grandkids I could go to soccer games, far enough away that I wouldn't intrude on their family,

As an exercise, write a novel about Cullen Bohannon's journey East.

Open a bookstore, a coffee shop or a brew pub. I'd want it to be a shoestring business where the chief purpose was to have a pot of coffee on and talk to people. I had the thought earlier this week that a sense of community is disappearing from our lives, that no one is really good at it anymore except women, who seem to make and keep strong friendships in their lives that make a difference. Eileen is a whiz at it, whole communities of women in her life that support each other and have rich, healing, joyous conversations. I'd like to be a part of a place that fosters that for myself and other people, a church without a collection place or a ponderous pastor. Main street is gone in America, killed by Amazon, Walmart and the invention of the smart phone. All we have left is Facebook, a sad substitute.

The trouble with working in a bar or convenience store is that you are surrounded by smokers and drunks while you're not drinking.

Continue working at the bakery and save money for my retirement.

Get an online degree in counseling and establish a practice in a small town.  Base the therapy on the principles of Carl Adler, "warm, positive, acceptant."

Buy a motorcycle, learn to ride and maintain the bike. I am a ridiculous shell of what a man should be--I can't fix anything. I'd like to learn from the ground up. It'd be my Walden. I'm sure it would be good for me as long as I didn't hit a tree.

Take a long motorcycle trip with my brothers, although they are complete clowns and would probably steer me into a tree trying to keep up with them.

A risk I'm willing to take, because I'd much rather die with boots and helmet on than in a chair.

"Mary Jane's Last Dance" is on now, so I think I'll get up and dance. Gotta work off this ham sandwich.

I have been bruised by the roads I've taken, and I have been shaped by them. I don't regret any of my travels, even the ones I found painful and costly. I realize I have to choose carefully from this point forward. I only have time for a few more journeys and the miles are precious.

Disaster reorders our lives in marvelous ways

Henry David Thoreau was the first blogger. He set a very high bar.

I don't like reading my old posts, not at all. They sound whiny and glib and inauthentic. This is a different time than all the times before it, however. For me blogging is chiefly about developing a voice and learning to see in clear, genuine ways. Capture details. Be in the moment with experience. If I ever write about a woman/love interest again, please shoot me. That's tedious.

At the bakery where I work the pan line forms the beating heart of the make-up department. The pans come together on a conveyor under the roller with a steady tap. Tap. Tap. Tap Tap Tap.

Jack and Mario run the divider, the section of the work that includes the dough divider, a lift that carries balls of bread overhead, the roller, and then an electronic eye that drops the formed loaves into pans.

Names are changed here to prevent me getting nabbed for an immediate trip to HR.

Jack's the veteran of the group, the steady hand who commands the middle. He watches the bread line with his thumbs under his armpits and his legs spread wide, calmly until something goes wrong. He's serious, a man of average height with a Lincoln-shaped beard who used to work on a sub tender in the Navy. "Know what Navy stands for?" he asks, quickly providing the answer, "Never Again Volunteer Yourself."

Jack's an iconoclast and a skeptic. At the shift meeting he piped up, "It's my Friday. I've got my sarcasm face on so don't mess with me today."

I asked Jack about the tap, tap, tap, that it sounded like a heartbeat. He said, "When I first got this position I learned to listen for the sounds the pan line makes. If it's not making them  I know something is wrong." I suspect working on the sub tender was the same way. Men who are good at working with machinery understand the beating heart of it.

I came to the bakery at the end of the summer. I'd been driving for Uber for two years until one Saturday morning a young woman with no insurance backed blindly out of her driveway and plowed into the side of my car, missing my face, shoulder and ribs by about five inches. The passenger door collapsed but held, and my passenger wasn't hurt. I'd picked her up from the airport and we were about two blocks from her house. She was lovely about it.

Just like that, I had smashed car and no job.  Uber insurance only covered a third of the cost to fix it after a $1000 deductible and a cynical lowball of the claim, so I was stuck. My sister lent me a thousand dollars that got me through September. I didn't even ask her. "Pay it forward," she said.

I starting temping to keep afloat, until one day I got an assignment at the bakery shipping depot with a team from production. It was a great night. We worked in a sweat and plowed through 20 pallets of frozen bread, dating it and loading it into trays. It was like football practice. The positivity and teamwork were infectious. Three people, supervisors at the plant, said to me, "You're doing great. Are you looking for a job?"

I applied online the minute I got home, working four more times as a temp while I went through the screening and interview process. For the first time in ages I had a home, a place where the standard was simple, just work as hard as everybody else and be appreciated. They feed us lunch every day, steel-cut oatmeal at the steam table before shift. An army travels on its stomach.

When the worst possible thing happens, or what we think is the worst possible thing, it can be very liberating. Disaster reorders our lives in marvelous ways. It got me a home and a place to work, good money to travel to Idaho for Christmas and spend too much on presents.  I have dreams now. I could get my master's in counseling, or buy a motorcycle and take a cross-country trip with my brothers (be a hell of a book) or get my own apartment, my own kitchen to dance in, my own reading corner with three bookcases. Money is opportunity and choices, beginning with the opportunity to pay it forward.

Idaho Christmas

We keep on repeating the same lessons until we truly learn something from them.

Real human connection is the most valuable thing on earth. Our culture is starved for it. Technology, consumerism get in the way.

Most of us don't go to church anymore, and after Amazon and Walmart there is no Main Street. Structures that bound us together don't exist.

Talked to a young woman tonight. She and her boyfriend are getting evicted from their housing share as unauthorized guests.

Both have jobs, but together they don't make enough for Portland rents or $2500 in move-in costs.

They want to buy a rundown RV and live on the street. "Even if it has mold on the roof," she said, "I just want a place of my own."

Drove to my daughter's home in Idaho for Christmas. Got there on Christmas Eve around six.

The front window looks into the office, and at the piano I see my youngest granddaughter.

She's a picture of concentration, back straight, a ribbon in her pretty hair, playing "Up on the Housetop" and "Silent Night" in a beginner's cadence.

She's so focused on her notes she doesn't see me, and I watch her from the window for both songs. Snow shrouds the fir trees in the yard.

This is the most tender memory of my life.

You think you are doing one thing or another, until you discover your real life is about something entirely different.