My father’s math is easy—1920 and it’s eighty years to 2,000. Add twenty-six and you’ve got 106, his age he would have been on his birthday two days from now.
My mother’s is a bit more tricky—1924. Take the eighty, just in as dad’s, add the twenty-six, but then subtract the four from the eighty, equaling 102. Also, consider the fact that her birthday is in December, not August, so the math will be accurate in five months.
I’ll say right here that the math keeps me sharp, as if doing this one example of math will neutralize time. I know a couple of calculations will not placate time’s hunger, but we feed the dog whatever scraps we have handy.
It’s not the birthdays but the days of their deaths that I have trouble with. I just can’t seem to be able to memorize them. I have no inclination. The death days elude me. It’s like creeping charley slowly encroaching the stones that mark their graves, blurring the edges, greening the clean lines, last year’s dried detritus muffling and cloaking the sharp etched letters.
It’s not that I’m a bad son (or uncaring brother to my younger brother and older sister, both gone), and I’m not forgetful. Perhaps I’m the rebellious one in the family, refusing to remember, refusing to die. Perhaps I’m having a hard time calculating eternity.
I think it’s best to stick with beginning numbers like birthdays and just add as we go along. The math is kinder. We can all age in grace together, a day and a year at a time. My brother would have been two years younger, my sister would have just turned four years older a week ago. My first wife coming up five years older in October if cancer had not chewed through the lifeline of her chronology.
My great-uncle Charley lived to be almost a hundred. My mother told me he walked everywhere, always active, and even walked for no good reason—he just liked to be out and about. In his brown leather boots he’d step off down the road, no feeble creeping along. Then he was struck down by a car on one of his ambles. I vaguely remember the man, sitting on a wooden porch on an old kitchen chair, the first two fingers of his right hand deeply browned by cigarette smoke.
“You’re in trouble when you stop moving,” my mother always said.
I remember her in her hospice bed, panting out her last breaths, unmoving other than the labor of her lungs. I imagine Uncle Charley chugging down the road, his leather boots sending up poofs of dust, small explosions of effort until the big bang of his ending life. My dad begged for me to break him out of the rest home. “Let’s just take off!” he said. “There’s the door, wheel me outta here. They won’t even notice!” His hands gripped the wheelchair, ready for the big push to outdistance his dementia.
My heart pumps faster when I remember, when I do the math. The open road beckons, out and gone, the hell and gone down the road, rolling free. I stick to the math of birthdays. I find that reassuring. Every year is just a “plus one,” a simple calculation. It’s reassuring, knowing that the way math works, you can “plus one” forever. Just imagining it, maybe that’s as close as we get to eternity here on earth.
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I graduated from high school in the 1970s and survived my 20s during that decade. It was a significant time, especially if we back the time up a little earlier to 1966 or 1968--political assassinations, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, the space program and a trip to the moon. Now, it's a half a century later and I'm celebrating another aspect of the 70s; I've now lived that long. February is that month where I become a septuagenarian, and just passing that mark leads me to some reflection. What I'm realizing is that many of my core beliefs have remained with me all my life and that now in my retirement I find them no less powerful and no less compelling. There is a certain timelessness in that--that what we are is not lessened by time. The times we may find distracting, but inside us there is a timelessness that remains.
I find myself increasingly compelled to listen. Yes, I still have things I want to say, ideas I want to share, but the necessity and need to listen has grown in my life. It was always there. I remember when I was eighteen years old on my high school's "senior skip day," a bunch of us guys got in our friend's old Packard and drove to Sacramento, California, (about an hour and a half drive) to visit one guy's parents and to watch the movie Woodstock. My friend was living with another friend's parents so that he could graduate his senior year with all of us. His parents had moved because of a job transfer that could not be postponed. Part of our excursion to Sacramento was a trip to a local park, which happened to be a gathering place for the homeless, many of them alcoholics. One Black man who called himself "Johnny Walker the shit talker" regaled us with stories, wowing our naive young selves with entertaining stories . . . and then he hit us up for our spare change, which we happily gave him. He asked for us to give, to us as a group and then individually without being pushy. When "Johnny" got to me, he said, "And how about you--you with the wise eyes?" Of course I contributed, but even then at eighteen years old, I realized what the man was saying. We had made eye contact several times during Johnny's story-telling, at a deeper level than that of audience and raconteur. There was the jive, and then there was the humanity. What I was doing was listening, with both my mind and my heart. I was including the old alcoholic in my world, considering him and the moment significant. We need to listen to one another, to include and absorb the perspectives of others into ours. I intuitively knew that when I was young and appreciate the importance of listening and inclusion more consciously now that I am older and have the benefit of my years of experiencing listening . . . and not listening . . . and the ramifications of each.
Researching a situation prior to engaging is increasingly important for me. Listening, of course, is an important aspect of research; in fact, it's primary research. In a world increasingly polarized, I want to bring balance to my decisions and actions. Research is an important way I learn, too. Therefore, by considering all sides of an issue, I can bring a more balanced approach to moving forward in my life, one that involves both intellect and emotions. Even after research and consideration if I find that my perspective hasn't changed, I might find a more positive and integrative way to act or speak. I'm thinking that this approach might seem "old person conservative," but to me it doesn't feel that way. There's a lot of creativity and discovery in considering many possibilities--and then there's the advantage of spending time in that field of all possibilities. Coming to a decision actually erects barriers and boundaries. Why rush to do that?
My family is a powerful defense against alienation and isolation. I am fortunate to be surrounded by my family--my wife, our blended family of three children (in their 30s), and our five grandchildren. I remember in my first years of public school teaching in the early 1980s that statistics determined that single parents or blended families had finally exceeded the number of nuclear families (mother, father, and genetic offspring). My mother was adopted, my son was adopted, and my entire life I've been taught and lived the truth that families are formed in many ways. "Family" is not a matter of blood but of spirit. My wife and I are fortunate to have our children and grandchildren living in the same town as us. However, I also realize that if this were not the case, we would create a family of friends and activities to keep us involved with people and engaged in vital activities. As Bob Dylan sang, "Those not busy being born are busy dying." My family provides me with an easy means of engagement with life--sometimes a bit too much, in fact! Then I pack up and go camping for a while. It's important, though, to live in the present and to not feel that our best years have already passed. I'm excited about my daily activities and my future hopes and plans. Having my family around provides many opportunities for participation in life. Extending family to its greatest scope, when "the world is my family," then how can there be alienation and isolation?
Freedom, variety, and creativity have increased in my life. Retirement has provided more time for me to choose my daily routine, to structure my time more around fulfillment rather than survival. I don't have a lot of needs. There isn't an outstanding list of things for me to buy and do--snowmobiles and trips to the geographic wonders of the world. It's not that I'm against owning a snowmobile or a new Ford F-150, or that I'm against visiting the Grand Canyon or Mayan ruins. The need isn't that great, though. I don't have a Santa's list of things I want or a bucket list of things I have to do before that bucket gets kicked. Possessions or accomplishments are not the ultimate summit of achievement. Fulfillment for me is an inner state, a state of being which cannot be located by gps or deed. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that we cannot find a better world by traveling because we take our old perspectives along with us when we take off. I'm so grateful and fortunate to be practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique twice a day--and to have been doing so for forty-nine years. Being healthy and dynamic is a gift, but it is in many ways a gift that I have given myself by lowering my stress and developing my inner potential by practicing TM. I look forward to meeting the joys and challenges of each day, just as those in business enjoy the market, having first stopped by the bank.
We must be kind--both to ourselves and to others. When I was a full-time public school teacher, I once had a colleague tell me, "I was talking to a student the other day and the student mentioned you and the kind of teacher you are. He said, 'Mr. Kepler is a kind man.'" My response to my teacher-friend was, "What better legacy than that?" I once had a student--a 7th-grader--ask me about gay rights, whether being gay was right or wrong. I told her that many people had debated this question, and after listening to all the arguments for each side, I had finally realized that for me the "right/wrong" debate about others wasn't the most important point for me. What I realized was important for me was the following question: "Do I want to be the kind of person that makes other people suffer, that hurts the lives of others?" I told that young student that I chose not to make others suffer because of my beliefs, whatever they were. I felt this was a good answer for a public school teacher, where children come to school from families with many different perspectives and beliefs. Any parent with any belief would have a hard time condemning me for telling their children to be kind. It was also an American answer, too, because I was telling the student that we have a right to live our lives according to our principles, but others with different principles also have that right in the USA. Nurturing ourselves and others is not just a good idea, I think. It's an essential idea, a survival trait for our species. We are such an intelligent species, human beings, yet we have to temper our cleverness with wisdom. We have to look beyond our immediate desires and fit ourselves and our dreams and actions into the greater wisdom of the world.
What quality of life am I living? A current buzzword is "intentional" living, and although I'm not entirely comfortable with that word, since it seems to somehow and to somewhat disparage spontaneity, I do understand the basic idea that we should think about what we want and what's important to us in order to make choices that will be more fulfilling. Even Joseph Campbell's "follow your bliss" is in many ways advocating an intentional life--if I actually understand what people who are living intentional lives intend the word to signify. Some choices are not easy, perhaps because their impact on others creates complications, or perhaps because some choices require a level of self-scrutiny and honesty that cuts close to the bone--a kind of intentionality noir, as it were. I wonder, though, if the intentional life becomes easier in some ways as one grows older. Energy and activity slow a bit; lifestyle choices and routine expand a bit in retirement; and if one has any level of self-awareness, then experience will impact one's choice and priorities. Since wisdom is knowledge tempered by experience, perhaps an intentional life in one's elder years is simply learning to pause and wait for wisdom.
I think all the above are part and parcel of a meaningful life--being a part of our natural and social world, being true to ourselves yet still honoring and cherishing the differences in others, speaking out for what is true and right yet still allowing for differences in others. Integration of life, integration of opposites, holding the entire world within ourselves and not just one tiny part: this has been my lifetime goal, to live an integrated, balanced life of fulfillment. I feel I'm getting better at this as I go along, and I'm thinking that living the decade of my 70s will be just as exciting as when I lived my 20s. What about the fifty years in between those two decades? Fifty years is half a century, and yet somehow it feels like it's been no time at all. Let me reflect on that a bit--perhaps consciousness exists in time but is not of it? In the end, though, I tend to enjoy and pursue more simple, productive and nurturing activities. It's like Voltaire said at the end of his play Candide. As one translation put it regarding the frenzy of life--"That is very well and good, but let us tend our gardens."
It's funny how things change. When I first moved to Iowa in 1984, it was just my first wife and me. My parents, brother and sister, and all my relatives were in California. Most of my wife's parents were in Washington state. Now, thirty-seven years later, my first wife has passed, her parents, my parents and brother and sister, and all my aunts and uncles except one.
This is not a Father's Day lament, though, about my isolation and old-age angst. I am very fortunate. I did remarry, which was actually a wonderfully funny surprise to us both . . . but that's another story. Over the last sixteen years, there were many comings and goings of our children, my wife Sandy's son and daughter and my first wife Barbara and my son. At times we were alone with our children scattered across half the continent, but on this Father's Day I can say that happily that is not the case.
All our children are now here in town with us, having settled here--along with the children of Sandy's daughter and those of my son and his wife. Also with Sandy's son and his girlfriend, that makes us a total of thirteen: Grandpa and Grandma (Sandy and me), three children and their partners, and five grandchildren, including my son's blended family. On this Father's Day, I am definitely not living in isolation, sitting on my porch and watching other people pass by, walking or driving or bicycling, living their lives while I increasingly dwelling in the past.
I am sitting in my living room at dawn right now, the window open for a while before the day heats up, and just from where I'm sitting I can see the dynamism of my family interactions. Over below the TV table is a galvanized tub filled with odds and ends of toys we've brought over from Sandy's daughter's place. Sitting kind of in the middle of the room is a box full of food staples that we had too much of and Sandy's son is coming to pick the food up. Beside the box of food is a burlap carrying bag that my wife uses for swimming necessaries when she heads up to the city's local lake. Along with towels, she'll stuff it with juice boxes and snacks for the grandkids.
To my right next to the sofa is a stack of books I researched on our local public library's website and then checked out for Sandy. You see, I'm heading out tomorrow to a local campground for a week in our new Airstream Basecamp travel trailer, and I wanted to make sure that Sandy has plenty of reading material on hand. We're planning on Sandy coming to camp with me next weekend, if not sooner, depending on what her business requires. Speaking of reading, I'm on my computer and realize I also have regular communication with my first wife Barbara's family in Washington. It's a big, connected world.
I am surrounded by family, planted deeply in the rich soil of family (even if sometimes we wonder if we're planted alittle too deeply), and am as busy and connected as I can possibly be. This evening when it cools, my son and Sandy's daughter's husband are coming to fix a leak on the roof. When I'm gone camping, my son will keep the garden watered. Later this summer I will buy a big load of firewood, and I'm pretty sure and hope to god "the boys" will come over and help me stack it.
On this Father's Day, I wish to celebrate the idea that "families are made in many ways." My mother was adopted; my son is adopted. Right now Sandy and I are the paterfamilias and materfamilias of our extended, blended family that includes thirteen wonderful souls. We all have many opportunities to create family, and it doesn't even have to be through marriage or partnership. It has to do with reaching out and giving and receiving. It has to do with including, not excluding--reaching out rather than pushing away. I am lucky, I am fortunate. I am so far away from "lonely" that I'm looking forward to a little quiet camping time. It is summer, though, so Sandy and I won't be at all surprised if our little quiet camping getaway is interrupted by the arrival of at least one car full of kids and grandkids. And that will be just fine. Happy Father's Day, Tom.
"You know what I'd really like to do, Tom?" my brother asked me over the phone a few months ago. "I'd like to go fishing with you."
I could imagine it, sitting in patio chairs on the shoreline of the Lake Oroville afterbay, lines in the water and an afternoon of relaxing ahead of us. We wouldn't be following the flow of a Sierra Nevada stream like we did in the old days, fishing downstream from hole to hole with worms, salmon eggs, or helgramites--or perhaps wet fly fishing if we were in the mood. My brother's time for that is past; he probably would be using his walker to safely negotiate the uneven terrain of the shoreline, and his energy level would be just about right for the springtime Mediterranean climate of California's Central Valley.
If it were spring like now, the valley's wildflowers would be in bloom, the grass green, the sky a handsome blue, and the temperatures mild. My brother Pat wanted to share that experience with me, and just thinking about it makes me smile. It's a sweet and happy wish, a simple desire of just sharing a moment together, just an uncluttered moment together in nature. There would be robins, of course, and probably a few bumblebees. There would be the grasses moved in waves by the invisible hands of the wind. There would be the warmth of the sun and all the time in the world, for that is what fishing teaches us--to be right there in the moment, without regrets or anticipation, self-sufficient in the clove of time.
My birthday is in February and my brother's is in March--Groundhog's Day and St. Patrick's Day, if you can believe the chances of that. Pat called me on my most recent birthday, wishing me well and saying that he'd be heading to the hospital for a blood transfusion due to a low blood cell count. I still have the message on my phone. He headed out after my birthday for the transfusion, came home, and in less than a week after his call had died during an afternoon nap. As I've had too many opportunities to say these last years, although it wasn't unexpected, it was still a surprise.
Pat's health wasn't well. After a life of hard work in carpentry and a hard life of drinking and smoking, he'd cleaned up his life these last three years, finding the means to live a simple, stable life. I'm proud of the way he faced his challenges, made the right decisions, and turned his life around. He managed to die after having finally found his inner worth and dignity.
Pat and I were different. He was the itinerant construction worker and carpenter; I was the school teacher who could tell you what my schedule was a year in advance. We would get frustrated with one another, our habits of life and mind being different. Beyond all differences, though, we always maintained our acceptance of one another as brothers. At some point, we just stepped beyond our differences to that unity of family. We were loyal to one another. We might have yelled at one another occasionally, but we never gave up on one another. We gave one another the space we needed, but we did that without ever losing our connection.
Me, Mom, and Pat, 2017
My brother died two months ago, and I think I'm just starting to get myself straightened out. It hit me harder than I would have supposed. Maybe it's an older brother thing, but I've always felt a responsibility for him. How do you protect someone, though, from the cycle of life? I honor my brother's life. He was a kind and gentle soul, who mostly just wanted to be left alone so that he could enjoy the simple things in life. I think he understood the deep truth of the world--that life is essentially happy in nature, as long as you didn't interfere too much and screw it up.
It's spring--a time for fishing and camping, a time of beginning. The pines are pungent with pollen, and the thunderclouds smell of rain. My brother wanted to go fishing with me one last time, and I feel like he's just started that fishing trip ahead of me. He always told me that he thought he'd die first. Pat's talk of fishing was his way of sharing his perspective with me, I think. Pure fishing transcends time by being so completely in the moment. I somehow can feel my brother's happiness, his contentment, and that in my mind I'm sitting next to him, feeling the same warm sunshine. Neither time nor distance separates us--just two souls fishing, our lines wet in the water, just two brothers gone fishing, the moment perfect and eternal.
Today is the sixteenth anniversary of Sandy and my marriage. At the beginning of our marriage when we bought our home, on our first spring together we planted a peach tree in the southeast corner of our lot, replacing a crabapple that hadn't survived the winter. That tree is now sixteen years old, a grand old age for a grafted semi-dwarf fruit tree, and its limbs are propped up by two supporting poles, its profile over the years grown more gnarled and wind-sculptured. But it still grows delicious fruit, and this year was a year of high production.
The website Gardenia describes the Reliance peach tree as follows: "Noted for its cold-hardiness, Prunus persica 'Reliance' is a vigorous and fast-growing peach tree adorned with profuse soft pink blossoms in early-mid spring. They are followed by a heavy crop of medium-sized, freestone, red-blushed yellow fruits in mid-late summer. The soft yellow flesh has a good flavor."
This spring our peach tree was spared from late frosts, so an abundance of blossoms led to an abundance of fruit set and harvest. Usually harvest follows a pattern. First I pick early maturing fruit that we eat for breakfast, added to muesli or yogurt. Then as more fruit matures, we begin a one- or two-week cycle of baking peach cobblers or peach crisps three or four times a week. It's hard to imagine, even for me who has lived the reality, but after a couple of weeks of frequent crisps and cobblers, we get a little tired of the bounty. Then I begin harvesting a bowl of peaches every morning, cutting them up, and then freezing them in around six-cup batches for peach pies. At the end of this season, I had put aside enough peaches for six pies.
Last week, Sandy and I talked about our wedding anniversary. "Don't get me a card or gift," she said. "I just want to do something together."
"How about we bake a peach pie?"
"Oh! I'd forgotten about the peaches! Perfect!"
The peaches thawed to a generous, delicious portion just right for a deep dish pie. Sandy used a beautiful etched, clear-glass pie plate given to us by my mother, and the pie was probably the best-tasting peach pie I've ever eaten, the flavors full yet subtle and the crust light and flaky. Of course, it wasn't just how the pie tasted; it was also how Sandy and I spent our time together, how we shared this experience over an entire year of enjoying and caring for our peach tree.
It's a temptation to make a big symbolic gesture with that pie regarding our marriage: pure, nurturing, a product of shared values and energy. I'll keep it simple, though. It's a good pie, and it's a good marriage. In these times of challenge, I'm looking forward to baking one home-grown peach pie a month to help us get through the winter.
"The Reluctant Dragon" was published in 1983 as a children's book. The story came originally from Kenneth Grahame's collection of short stories Dream Days, published in 1898. The book edition is illustrated by Michael Hague, who also illustrated publications of The Wind in the Willows, also by Grahame, and The Secret Garden, authored by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The publisher was Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
I found this grand book at our local public library.
The tale is one full of whimsy about a lazy and easy-going dragon, a boy, and St. George. For children (and for adults who need the learning), the lesson is that differences can coexist, and that it's a lot more pleasant getting along than fighting. A secondary lesson is that reading and scholarship can be useful.
Michael Hague's illustrations are lush and full of medieval extravagance. Children can view them and not be bothered with all the realism that Chaucer chose to include in the Canterbury Tales. The colors are gilded with the aura of times gone by, and the detail just begs for taking the time to look closely.
Hague's romanticism and lightness also lend themselves to a dearth of realism. For instance, the Boy reads in a bedroom entirely too elegant for a shepherd's soon, both in size and decor. Also, although perhaps appropriate for a children's story, the dragon is not, as it states, one of the earnest dragons. Hague's illustrations paint the dragon as entirely avuncular. That's the only word that fits.
This book, though, is a friendly tale filled with humor in both text and illustration. It's a world any child or adult can enter, and upon leaving, exit with a light step and a happy heart.
Bags packed, I'm traveling to Sacramento today and then back to Iowa tomorrow.
Saying goodbyes is sometimes perfunctory but not when goodbyes are to someone 91 years old.
We never know if we'll see someone again, even with the most everyday partings. Our hellos should always be full of joy and our goodbyes full of appreciation. What is that expression? There is no joy in the small.
Let our hearts be full and the new year blessed with many appreciations of those whom we share our lives with.
In 2008, the Sathre-Vogel family--mom, dad, and two ten-year-old sons--began their bicycle trek from Alaska and the Arctic Circle to Argentina's Tierra del Fuego. The trip lasted about three years, and mother Nancy Sathre-Vogel chronicles the family's adventure.
Quite a journey it was, with desperately difficult terrain, medical emergencies, and equipment failure. Nancy Sathre-Vogel honestly tells their story, including her doubts and weaknesses, the powerful strength of family bonds, and the innocent exuberance of the boys.
Part of the journey's goal was to break the Guinness World Record for the youngest travelers to make the trek, and even though at one point the narrative reveals that over time the journey became more important than the world record, the official quest was a powerful factor in determining how the journey developed.
My personal opinion is that somewhere along the journey, the parents should have sat down with the boys and told them that the joy of the journey was more important than the Guinness record, and that they were all taking the next bus out of Long-suffering Town to a less hostile environment before continuing on bikes. The writer chronicles the family's suffering, their extreme conditions, and after a while I just got tired of the litany of suffering. After all, according to the mom, the journey was more important than the world record. Lots of bike travelers catch a bus or train to skip a particularly unpleasant area.
The sections of suffering aside, much of the book describes the beauty of the Americas and the "up close and personal" experience of traveling by bicycle. I enjoyed the book, for the most part, and admire the achievement of the Sathre-Vogel family. Because the book describes the entire route, it is a good reference source to know what awaits you if you choose to make this journey . . . and it may just convince you that you don't have to pedal every since inch of the journey.
Copyright 2015 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
Yes, I'm retiring at the end of May from my position at Maharishi School as news writer and social media support.
I'm enjoying the countdown, and I'm making plans.
Some have asked, "What are you going to do?"
Well, I plan to continue engaging in life-supporting activities. I'll just have more time and choice as to what those life-supporting activities will be. To answer one question: no, I won't just be sitting around doing nothing. If I'm "doing nothing," it will be the productive "nothing" of meditation. Even in retirement, TM will still be a useful and effective preparation for activity.
Activities:
reading and writing
being supportive of my wife's new business
being a good parent and grandparent
gardening
bicycling and bike camping
I have a few other possibilities, but first I want to focus on self and family. I've enjoyed my job this year, but there are some things I want to do that are more difficult when I have to show up to work five days a week. Bicycling and gardening, for instance. When the weather is right, I want to be able to take off, even if it's a Tuesday or Wednesday. That will be an enjoyable freedom.
So . . . this week and next week. More time for this blog, too. Good thoughts to my co-workers, and happy trails ahead.
Copyright 2015 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
When I was a kid, I remember my dad showing me a ceramic seal he had sculpted when he was a student at Oceanside, California, in his art class.
He showed it to me and my brother when our family was getting ready to travel south to vacation with my aunt in San Diego. It was Dad's introduction for us to the environment where he was raised: ocean, waves crashing upon the beaches, and seals sunning on the rocks.
It was a new environment for a boy used to valley heat and mountain pines. The pose of the sculpted seal was my introduction, touching the lines of musculature in the sculpture, the arched back and the nose pointing to the sky. Later, my brother and I saw these same poses in real-life seals, heard their barking and saw their awkward on-shore flippered shuffling. The sculpture my dad created contains all those elements, created 75 years ago, and now part of the legacy of my dad's time on earth.
This is what came to mind when I learned of Maharishi School's CrowdRise fundraiser campaign to buy a new kiln for the school--not the students now, but my father as a student 75 years ago, given the at-school opportunity to sculpt into being some aspect of his life. I wish I could show you a photo of that sculpture, but it's 2,000 miles away, still in California with my mother.
Seeing Mark Wilkins in his ceramics class, guiding his students as they take clay and shape it into art, provided me with a revelation of the continuity of our lives and how our lives affect our children and grandchildren. When I was in the Cub Scouts, my dad carved a kerchief clip for my Scout uniform. I remember watching him carve and seeing the wolf's head emerge from the wood. It was a magical moment for me, and I wonder how much of my life as a writer, a creator with words, owes itself to moments of watching my parents create, of seeing those artifacts of my parents' artistry--objects my dad sculpted or carved, sketches that my mom had produced while in school. How much of my life as a writer owes itself to those teachers who let me create with words when I was at school?
We now have a chance to help Maharishi School continue its tradition of establishing an educational environment that promotes creativity in all fields of life. A ceramic cup today, a new medical device years later. We have alumni producing such innovations right now. It's time now to purchase a kiln for the next 30 years of creative young students at Maharishi School.
So get fired up about our new kiln and connect with the CrowdRise page. Listen and view a video clip about our ceramics program by Mark Wilkins. We're about 25% on the way to achieving our goal, having only been fundraising for less than a week. Most likely, 75 years from now, someone will be drinking from a mug or looking at a sculpture and just plain feeling good that creativity and expression exist in the world. They always have and always will, especially with a little extra boost from us.
Of course, I trust and respect my niece's judgement, but I'm glad my first impression was a good one. I'm glad niece and fiance came to meet the Keplers. Below are the details that influenced my positive impression (sometimes iterated through negative definition).
He drove up in a mild-mannered, pale blue car, possibly a Toyota or Honda. I didn't pay much attention. It was not painted with flames, though, and it was not a monster truck. I did not hear the bass-booming of speakers before the car appeared.
Getting out of the car, he did not flash about eight inches of underwear because of his low-hung pants. His baseball hat was not on backwards or sideways. In fact, he was not wearing a hat. No facial tattoos or lip, eyebrow, nose, or tongue piercings adorned his face.
He shook my hand, no knuckle bashing. I don't remember his first words, but they were something along the lines of "Hello," or "Nice to meet you." He might have used "Tom." I remember being grateful that he didn't call me "Kepdawg."
He brought flowers for my ninety-year-old mother.
At one point, he stood and looked at displayed photos of my father, commenting on the WWII photos of my dad in Alaska. He had lived in Alaska also. At one point, my niece moved so that her fiance could sit next to my mom and talk into her good ear. (Well, her better ear, anyway--25% with her hearing aid.)
He is a web developer. When I asked the difference between a web designer and web developer, his response was articulate.
Keeping in mind that he will be contributing to my niece's happiness: he is tall, has dark hair, and is handsome. You go, Karen!
When I asked if anyone wanted tea, he didn't say, "Got a brewski?" nor did he say, "What, no booze? WTF?!"
When leaving, he bent way down to hug my five-foot-tall mom. Later, she said, "He's a tall one!"
He was dignified and respectful his entire visit. On leaving, he didn't peel out, burn rubber, smoke the tires. I always thought doing that with front-wheel drive looks kind of silly anyway.
I've only met him once, but I think he has special qualities. My niece and he look at one another as if they share a special universe. There's this special force that surrounds them.
I plan to do my best to make it to the wedding. I hope nobody minds if I show up on my bike!
Copyright 2015 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
Sometimes the best way to express my feelings is to quote my father.
"I'm in pretty good shape, considering the shape I'm in."
"If you're going to do it, do it right."
"Always leave a campsite in better shape than it was when you arrived."
I'd start out with, "Well, like my daddy says . . . " or "My dad says it this way . . . "
Now that Dad has passed away, those moments when I remember how he phrased his thoughts have an extra dimension. I'm not only expressing an idea in a manner that reflects my past; I'm also celebrating and honoring that past. It's a good feeling, an expression of continuity and also of evolution.
I am not my father, nor was my father his, yet there is a connection. Depending on the clarity of our thinking and the purity of our lives, we have the option to take from our family heritage, to nurture the growth of our family tree, to prune, to feed and water, to bring light to our daily living.
Quoting my dad or my mom is a way of honoring that past from which I have come. It's a way of reminding myself of who my dad was and of who I am.
It's like my dad would say, "Where you are is just one step away from where you've been."
Copyright 2014 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
In the time before my dad passed away, he said he was "tired and going home." Often he wouldn't remember where home was and asked where Mom was living, to reassure himself that he had it right in his head.
When Dad said he was going home, did he mean home where Mom lives, or did he mean Home, going through the pearly gates? You know, I don't think it really matters or makes any difference.
My wife has been traveling for a week, visiting family, and I have been doing a good job of being efficient at work, of eating well and keeping the house clean, of generally keeping it together. Yet behind that checklist efficiency is a sense of just waiting, of biding time until we are together again. Then I'll really start living again.
I guess that's what marriage means, a unity. True, physical proximity shouldn't be absolutely necessary, but the whole idea of marriage, it seems to be, has something to do with physical proximity. Not being together makes this more clear to me. We learn this as kids. As we grow older, we don't buy a winter coat and then leave it on the hanger when we go outside in January. There's a certain congruity.
The importance of establishing a sense of unity is central to us all. I think it's why so many snapshots are taken--a desire to establish some enduring connection with geography, people, and experience. It's why Dorothy clicked her red shoes together and said, "There's no place like home." It's why Vladimir and Estragon wait and wait for a guy named Godot. It's why when my dad was in the nursing home, his most frequent question was "when am I going home?"
We want to be in that place where we belong, where we are "in the know" and accepted. We don't want to be a stranger . . . especially in a strange land. We want unity. We are conscious atoms with atavistic memories of the Unified Field. My parents were married and together sixty-eight years. That definitely created a gravity well in the fabric of time and space, an attraction, an aching in the bones.
I'm heading to the airport now to bring my wife home. It is altogether fitting and proper that I do this. But, in a larger sense (and thank you, Abe), we will be recollecting our unity, reaffirming our unity, and maybe just enjoying the pedestrian pleasure of being together. Our small universe is expanding, and the infinite universe is collapsing upon itself. If it's not one thing, it's the other, or more likely it's only one thing, individual and cosmic, husband married to wife, duality become One, and pretty darn happy about the whole situation.
A few times when I was young, I remember Mom and Dad dancing, the big band music swinging and Mom and Dad at one with the beat.
I remember how, hold hands, they would swing back with the beat, away from one another, and then pull and come close again with the beat. A little to the side, a spin, they were elegant while we kids watched, somewhat aghast and somewhat amazed. It was obvious that they had danced together many times and that their bodies were remembering the old times, the old dances, the old sounds. They were smiling slightly, competent and confident in their dance skills.
Dad, I remember, had this look on his face--satisfaction at a job done well, pleasure at how well things were going. In this case, the dancing. He had worn that expression before and would again in the future. It was how his face would settle around the pleasure of listening to a car engine purr its idle after he'd tuned it and adjusted the carburetor. It was the expression he'd assume while before a Little League game he'd do infield warm-up and the team was looking good, scooping up the grounders and firing them to first base. It was Dad's small smile of success.
Mom told me about World War II and how everyone worked together, sharing rides to save gas, helping with the rationing of food and cloth, having a garden in the back yard. Sure, there were conscientious objectors, but even they found ways to help if they could and still honor their principles. There was this sense of unity, Mom said, a willingness to give something up for the greater good that crossed many American boundaries, especially generations--grandparents, parents, and children agreeing on an idea and acting together. It was like a nation dancing to the same tune; toes were sometimes stepped on and some weren't with the beat, but it would be inaccurate to say everyone wasn't in some way caught up by the music.
Out of that war experience came the "modern" era--fragmentation, isolation, cynicism. We stopped dancing together or danced as my generation did, facing one another but not touching. That was the great gift to my parents, that expression on their faces as they danced, that remembrance of the moves they made together, that tactile reassurance that they could swing away and would come back together, on the beat.
I want to say I envy my parents, but that would be too bathetic, proving the idea beyond redemption. My generation--our generation--has to find its own unity, its own common ground, our own music. Then we can dance to the tune we know and remember, our hearts one, that look on our face, a small satisfaction at having done something well.
We are our parents' children, mother and father of our children. Long live the Dance and its swinging beat, a rhythm much like the beating of our hearts.
Copyright 2014 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
"Tom, that train ride to Iowa is a long one, isn't it?"
"About two days."
"Maybe you should take some of your Dad's absorbant underwear with you. He's in the rest home now, and these are just sitting here not being used."
"Mom! They've got bathrooms on the train. I don't need a diaper."
"It's a long ride. Maybe you won't make it to the restroom or will have to wait too long in line."
"They've got restrooms for each car, about six, in fact."
"Maybe for while you're sleeping. It can sneak up on you!"
"I'll be OK."
". . . You know, sometimes at your age you can leak."
"I know, and it's nobody's fault, but I'm really OK, Mom."
"They're nice and padded, too. You said it's a long trip."
"The seats aren't that bad."
"We've got several boxes, so there's no need not to take some in your bag, just in case."
"Honest, Mom, I'll be fine. Maybe next time, OK?"
Meanwhile, my brother is silently laughing his head off. Laughing so hard, I hope he pees his pants.
If you found this entry fun, you might want to read my first book, A Day Out with Mom, to find out what I've discovered about my parents so far. The chapters are short, just perfect for the "reading room."
Copyright 2014 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
"We traveled around in Lake County on our honeymoon,
and my dad stayed at our place to make sure nothing was stolen," Mom says. Before age set in, before the Alzheimer's/dementia, before the stroke, Dad drove some sweet rigs down the highway, Mom sitting beside him. Some of those rides we kids also rode along on trips to the ocean or trips to the Sierra Nevadas.
The photo above was the rig Dad pulled on Mom and Dad's honeymoon. Looks like a great set-up! I believe Mom said there was a cooking station in the back and a bed before it, but it took some arranging to get it all set.
Mom had lived some in Lake County as a little girl. I later lived in the area at Cobb Mountain in my early 20's. Mom and Dad were married in August, so it must have been hot for camping, but the mountains must have provided some coolness from the elevation.
I love the convertible Dad was driving. Anybody know the make and model? Remember that Mom never drove because of her poor eyesight.
This was in 1946. I have this picture in my mind: Mom and Dad newly married, their family waving them off from their new home, the top down, the sun bright and hopeful. I'll ask Mom about it, though. It's a wonderful story--not much money, so that's why they camped. The whole world ahead of them.
We shouldn't just count our blessings; we should savor them, savor our moments of glory.
It's like the words of the Navaho Night Chant:
May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.
In beauty it is finished.
May every day of our life be a beautiful honeymoon, the highway open before us and calling.
This blog post was inspired by Mom's narration from A Day Out with Mom, from the chapter entitled "Engagement and Marriage."
Copyright 2014 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved
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