Nature vs. Nurture at 2:43 a.m.

What no one ever mentions about breaking a habit is that it usually breaks part of you.
I realized this the other night, at 2:37 a.m., when my daughter was up crying again for the third time in as many hours. My wife and I take turns usually, but this time, we both sat in bed, pretending to sleep and waiting for the other to make the next move. In the end, I woke up with a bundle of infant in my face. I guess, having actually fallen asleep while pretending to fall asleep, that I won the stalemate.
After blessing us with several months of quiet nights, I think my daughter has figured out that if she cries long enough at night, she’ll end up sleeping with Mommy and Daddy in the Nice Bed, with the dog to boot. This is where the “habit breaking” comes in. It’s one thing to quit smoking – it’s another thing to have a habit breaking that breaks your habit in the process. I can deal with nic fits, but listening to your child scream for you in the dead of night is heartbreaking. There’s a reason a baby’s cry is as effective as it is. It, unlike the parents that hear it, has evolved through the course of thousands of years to be as annoying and heart wrenching as possible. It’s brilliantly designed to provoke a response in those who hear it.
With her head now resting comfortably between us in a warm bed, Evelyn fell asleep right away, and didn’t make a peep for the rest of the night. Chalk it up to baby intelligence to figure out that by doing what comes naturally to them that they can make it work out to their advantage. The next night, Evelyn cried again at 1:30 a.m. or so, and Karla turned off the special anti-SIDS mattress (a glorified air hockey table with a sheet on it) that constantly blows cold air on her in an effort to combat the unthinkable. After that, she was quiet for most of the night. Even last night, the second in which the mattress was turned off, she was quiet for the most part.
Nature vs. Nurture. It’s usually an easy choice, except when its 2:43 a.m. and you’ve got to be at work in six hours.

Hammering out "The Passion"

Last Sunday, I was feeling particularly motived to get into the spirit and essence of Easter, so my wife and I watched Mel Gibson's "The Passion." The last time I'd seen it was in college five years prior, when it was in theaters. I don't remember being particularly impressed. In fact, I wrote a column about how much more it made me question the Hollywood system as opposed to contemplating my faith. My biggest complaint at the time was that the flogging scene was way too over the top (perhaps a deliberate measure by Mel Gibson, who is perhaps not known as a particularly subtle director).
Sunday night, I was impressed at how detailed the movie was. I hadn't noticed that the first time. It was like watching deleted scenes from "Braveheart" that had Jesus in them. The sounds (believe me, I've seen "Braveheart" enough to notice this) seemed particularly similar. In the end, I was impressed at the merits of the movie, but still not as moved as countless thousands others had been when they first saw the movie. If anything, I found more entertainment in the story about the guy who dressed up like the Devil and went to screenings of "The Passion," interrupting the movie by saying things like "I never said that!" I'm not sure if this happened, or if it was urban legend, but it still makes me smile. It's just such a snotty thing to do.
My experience with the movie contrasted greatly to my experience in church that morning. It was Palm Sunday, and the story of Jesus's betrayal an execution was read in a simply way by a series of readers, and broken up with an interspersed theme that the congregation sang. For some reason, I was really moved by this, and fought the tears that I hope were hidden behind my glasses. I looked over at my wife, praying she wouldn't see them. She didn't. I managed to control myself, and soon, the tears and all traces of them had evaporated.
Why had I found this more meaningful than the multi-bazillion dollar re-telling of the same story with special effects and Aramaic splendor? It baffled me. Perhaps Jesus's story is best told in a simple way, without the overblown histrionics, pomp and multi-million dollar marketing blasts that inevitably taint any movie that Hollywood touches.

With all of this in mind, I wrote this Sunday evening to be read during Good Friday services this Friday.

Luke 23:33-34

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

Crucifixion is not an easy death.
It kills not through the loss of blood through the wounds on the hands and feet, but through heart failure or asphyxiation. There is absolutely nothing merciful or quick about it. After being publicly mocked and flogged, the condemned was forced to carry a several-hundred pound cross to the site where he was to be killed. Once there, he was hung upon the beams using nails or ropes. On the cross, the condemned could do nothing to avoid the jeers of the crowd, their insults, their contempt, their spit, their hatred. With arms held fast on a cross beam, the condemned could not even so much as wipe the sweat from his brow that stung his eyes under a hot, mid day desert sun - let alone fend the crows that would soon be feeding on his corpse.
Any mercies granted during crucifixion are merciful only in context. If a prisoner was thought deserving of mercy, both of his knees would be broken so that he would suffocate faster.
According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus died after six hours on the cross. The historian Josephus called crucifixion “the most wretched of deaths,” as it was possible for someone’s crucifixion to last for days. Only in context is six hours on the cross merciful. Cicero, the Roman orator, said that crucifixions “rarely took less than 36 hours.” After death, the condemned were left to rot in the sun, on the beams where they died, to serve as a message to those the Romans ruled.
Jesus knew all of this in advance, just like we know about the electric chair and lethal injection today. Unlike today’s methods of legal execution, there was no attempt at small mercies, no pretense of trying to avoid that which is “cruel and unusual.”
Jesus knew this - and yet forgave those who gave him, an innocent man, “the most wretched of deaths.” It is the ultimate turning of the other cheek.

"In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire"

For as long as there have been wars, there have been soldiers coming home to lives interrupted, faces changed and children grown.
Writing about an upcoming event for the “Yellow Ribbon Program,” which seeks to help returning veterans and assist their families while deployed, I couldn’t help but think that the troops returning from today’s battlefield are the latest in a long line of those who have had to readjust to a life that changed in their absence.
Ernest Hemmingway knew this readjustment. The author, who had been wounded as an ambulance driver in World War I, wrote a story called “Soldier’s Home” in 1925, nearly seven years after the “War to End All Wars” had ended. The story deals with a young man named Krebs and his readjustment upon returning home. Even though the book was written more than 80 years ago, it’s hard not to think that the same issues confront returning veterans today.
“By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men from the town who had been drafted had all been welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a great deal of hysteria. Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over.
At first Krebs, who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it.”
It would seem natural that returning to civilian life would be a difficult adjustment after experiencing the intensity of a combat zone. Memories of war linger for years. This is nothing new. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the former Supreme Court justice, found this to be the case years after his Civil War service with a Massachusetts militia.
“We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. . . we have felt, we still feel the passion of life to its top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire.”
The men and women returning from today’s battlefields have stories to tell. Their books are not yet written, their history not etched in stone. But unlike soldiers returning from previous wars, efforts are being made to ensure the soldier can once again adjust to the civilian lives they left to defend. It is up to all of us to help with this readjustment process. We simply cannot afford to fail those who have given so much.


This column was first published in the April 9, 2009, issue of the Lakeville Sun-Current

The meaning of "courage"

If I see one more article connecting the phrase “Patrick Swayze” and “courage,” I am going to barf.
In case you haven’t heard, the former “Dirty Dancing” star (and “Donnie Darko” standout) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer recently, and has been making himself known on the talk-show rounds. While I sincerely hope that Mr. Swayze, whom I have nothing against personally, as I do not know him, makes a full recovery, I take umbrage at the notion that what he is doing is particularly “courageous.” In order to beat cancer and stay alive, he’ll have to fight it. He doesn’t have a different option to meet that goal. Of course, he could give up, and be all whiny about it, which would also not be courage.
Let’s get one thing straight – courage is what you delve into when you make a decision to do something dangerous when you have other options and could choose to remain safe. Courage is charging a Japanese foxhole to throw a grenade in it. Courage is running into the burning Twin Towers to face immolation. Courage is making a picture-perfect water landing on the Hudson River in a jet (which is highly, highly NOT recommended in any manual). Courage is NOT about choosing to wear a daring dress to the Oscars.
What has happened to the word “courage” is the same thing that has happened to the word “survivor.” You are a survivor if you made it into one of the Titanic’s lifeboats. You are a survivor if you had to eat the dead from a plane crash to survive. You are NOT survivor simply because you’ve won a game show of that title (are you listening, Richard Hatch??). You are NOT a survivor simply because you know all of the words to the Destiny’s Child song and can somehow relate to it.
In a world which, until recently for us anyway, was predictable and soft, throwing around words like the two I wrote about probably gave us a sense of being part of something larger than ourselves. Personally, I think our great-great-great grandparents, the ones who fought a hard life after likely seeing at least one person they knew die during childbirth, would laugh at our notions of what is considered “courage” and “survivorship” today, and eat wimps like us for breakfast. Most of what passes for either these days is likely a laughably pale imitation of what the actual words used to mean.
I think, as the world spirals downward chasing the dollar, that we will see a bit of this begin to change, as more and more Americans start to lead lives closer to the conditions of their great-great grandparents. It may be a bleaker existence than the ones we would have hope for, but I’m looking on the bright side – I look forward to the day when “courage” is defined as something larger than Jennifer Aniston’s attempts to find a stable mate after she turned 40 years old.

Blah blah blah

I think I would have made a good peasant.
At this point in time, I think it’s safe to say I’m overwhelmed by the amount of technology that is competing for my attention. When I come in to work every day, I’ve got voicemail to check, person and private e-mails to be read, an inter-company communication system to sign into, a Facebook to check, etc. etc. It’s hard to keep up with them all, and frankly, I wish I could stop trying. I don’t think human beings are meant to be stretched from so many angles when what they are supposed to be doing is using the technology to “enhance” their lives.
Remember the late 90s? Before everyone and their dog had a phone? I remember very clearly seeing adds for AT&T’s latest creation and finding that I wanted the on-call, on-the-go lifestyle that was portrayed in the ads. Now, nearly a decade later, I find myself in a love/hate relationship with the same technology, loving the fact that I can call for help if I need it, and hating the fact that I feel available all of the time. Oh yeah, people say, you can turn off your phone. But you know what? You’ll just have to listen to the voicemails, sometime or other. Or not, I guess, now that I think about it. But knowing my personality, and how I like to have things finished, I couldn’t stand turning on my phone and not clearing the little “Voicemails” tape-loop icon off the screen. Damn that tendency of mine.
I haven’t done a good job keeping up with my Myspace account. In fact, I still have yet to make any sort of announcement on it that my wife WAS pregnant, let alone had a baby two months ago. It simply seems like too much work, with another system to sign into to check messages from another set of friends who use one of several communications methods.
My point is this – no one who uses this stuff is a bottomless well of worthwhile-reading-creativity. Even Shakespeare would have run out of things to say eventually. So whom are we kidding? Has society become so self-absorbed as to think posting a message about running to the store is something other people want to see? Granted, the curmudgeon in me is writing this column, but sweet Jesus, give me a break. I like keeping in touch with people, but I refuse to constantly update my status or, worse still, Twitter. I simply don’t see the need for any of what boils down to “social busywork.”
So, I don't want to Twit, Tweet, Twoot or whatever the latest trend it. I don't want to Buzz Up a story about the Octomom (a subject for a blog entry in itself). I just want to keep in touch with friends and family. But I could never imagine how much work keeping up with that would entail given the myriad of ways there are to do it.

Left Behind

Last night, as I was sitting in a comfortable living room watching the Super Bowl, my phone beeped to let me know I had a text message. I ignored it at first, laughing with friends as we played several spirited rounds of “Scattergories.” A few minutes later, I flipped my phone open. What I read took my breath away.
“Mom n dad are in. (A family friend) killed himself.”
I could feel my face slacken as I digested the message’s terrible content. The person in question was the young son of family friends. He’d gone off to college this fall, having shown us all in the years since his birth that he was an incredibly talented person. Now, there are only questions. After I read this text message, I could not help but to stare at my seven-week-old daughter and wonder what it could possibly be like to comprehend that she could one day be taken from me by her own hand. I cannot possibly fathom how parents in this position can go on after such a terrible event.
I am no stranger to suicidal ideations. Even as an eight-year-old, I was fascinated by the sheer drama in the concept. This grew in romanticism as a depressed teenager. I never seriously considered, planned, or tried it, but I knew it was an option, which, in my darkened state at the time, brought me a measure of cold comfort. Only now, years later, do I look at that behavior and realize how impossibly hurtful it must have been to my parents. I understand now, after having the smallest glimpse of parenthood, how hard it is to not be able to comfort a child. In the eyes of a parent, getting a kid through high school cannot be that far removed from comforting them in the middle of the night as an infant, and when that can’t be done, it’s painful for both parties.
When someone commits suicide, they take their own life - but they also take parts of other people’s lives with them. I know our family friend’s parents will never be the same. I know the boy’s two sisters will likely never be the same. I can imagine that they will be haunted by the thought of “Why? Could I have done something to save him?” for the rest of the lives. Will they be able to look back at the boy’s life without a case of “Monday morning quarterback,” wondering if otherwise trivial events could have taken him one step further down the road to the unthinkable?
My thoughts are with a beautiful family today; a family that has gone through many things together, only to be faced with a situation no family ever should.
The first thing I am going to do when I get home is kiss my daughter. And never let her go.

Coping with the present through bad acting and special effects

I was reminded this weekend how much some of us look to the future to get to the present - even if those futures will never exist.
My friend Bryon visited this weekend, and brought with him a huge box of books, several of which were old Star Trek technical manuals. I know, I know - they sound like real page-turning stuff to you non-science fiction types out there, but back in the dark ages of high school middle age, they were godsends. I get asked a lot why I like Star Wars and Star Trek, and after years of wondering, I've finally come up with a good answer.
In science fiction, the last, as the Bible verse goes, come first. Unlike real life, the beautiful and the popular do not matter. In a usual science fiction story, the unlikely (Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins) end up heroes, and everyone gets a chance based on their ability, not where they rank in the social scheme of things. Once the playing field has been tilted, the former-nothings usually get a chance to do something great an extraordinary (blow up the Death Star, destroy the Ring, etc.) It's a complete disconnection from the way things work in the real world, where ideals are often sacrificed in the name of pragmatism, and the bold and the beautiful often come out on top.
Neither Bryon nor I were bold OR beautiful during high school. I think it would be safe to say that we were both Luke Skywalker-types who had our heads in another place and were waiting for the time when we'd be able to show the world what we were capable of. We were nothing special in the eyes of our peers, and so we retreated into a world that didn't exist. Some people say that punk rock saved their lives. For me, it was Star Wars, and the music of John Williams. It was a reminder to me of the power of imagination over circumstance, of how dreams can influence reality, and finally, how the small and rise to topple the might.
For nearly two years, I lived, ate and breathed Star Wars. I listened to the music every day on the cold bus that drove me to school. During study halls, I drew amazing technical drawings of the various technologies that made up the movies. I spend every day of the summer of 1994 watching "The Empire Strikes Back," memorizing the dialog and developing a taste for dark sequels. Needless to say, as enjoyable as these skills are, they don't translate to popularity, good grades, or even good posture. It's a complete case of escapism - an escapism that in some small way drove us to chase our dreams. Bryon recently earned his Green Beret, and I've been a journalist for nearly three years now.
I've toned it down over the years. I don't pester friends to sell me their older brother's attic-bound action figures anymore. I don't bring the "Imperial Forces Technical Manual" with me everywhere I go these days. I don't imagine myself as an X-Wing in every "Death Star" trench-looking hallway I find myself in. Real life has taken over my previously lofty orbit, for the most part. I try not to spend too much time imagining how cool it would be to have a jet pack, like Boba Fett.
But if you find me not paying attention or staring off into the distance at some random instant, it's quite possible that I've slipped the bounds of convention and put myself into a "long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."