(With Apologies to Chuck Klosterman)
I had long hair once. For about three hours.
It could be argued that I had long hair for somewhere in the neighborhood of five to eight years, but that all depends on your perspective. It didn’t seem long at the time, which would have been somewhere between six and twelfth grades; it just seemed normal. It was never exceptionally long, but that’s just how we wore our hair back in the middle of the 1980s, especially if you were someone like me who had the kind of incessantly curly hair that every stylist to ever point a pair of scissors at my head fawned over, despite how much I hated it. I mean, really, DNA? Had it been asking too much for hair that could be stylishly feathered back like freakin’ every other person in my high school wore theirs?
My go-to stylist during these time was Jan, the woman who did the haircutting for my mother, my sisters, and me for probably all of the early life years spent growing up in Elk River. (My father had been pretty decisively bald by his early 30s, so he only needed my mother to dig out a pair of clippers stored in an old ice cream bucket on the bottom shelf of the bathroom closet every month or two to keep him looking respectable). I got the same cut every time which probably led Jan into thinking I was a fairly easy to satisfy customer, which is why we probably got along as well as we did.
One time, in high school, when she asked her standard haircut preface statement of “You want to do anything different this time?” I impulsively mentioned I might like it a tiny bit longer in the back. I kind of liked it when I could see my hair starting to grow down below my ears just before haircut time was due, and thought it might be cool to try that out as a starting point. Maybe it would even compensate for the fact that I literally had no other options of what to do with that curly brown demon that live on my head.
It turned out that Jan and I had two dramatically different ideas of exactly what “a tiny bit longer in the back” looked like. Basically she mulletted me.
I had never heard the term “mullet” used in reference to a haircut at this point in life — truth be told, I didn’t cross paths with that vocabulary term until Billy Ray Cyrus broke through with “Achy Breaky Heart” and I had asked someone exactly what in the hell he had going on with his hair. When Jan spun me around to see the mirror, I tried to contain my shock. It was a very nice and skillfully-crafted curly hair mullet. It made me look like I could have passed for a saxophone player in Tina Turner’s live band, but it was not at all what I had in mind.
Since I wasn’t the best at self-advocating at this age — a skill I probably didn’t really lock down until my mid-forties — I told her it looked fine. I talked myself into thinking that it was really mostly pretty close to what I wanted, but just a little longer. I’d get used to it. Probably. People would be surprised when they saw it, but that’s how it always was with new haircuts. After a day or two, maybe a week on the outside, they’d get used to it as well and it would just become normal. I should have known enough to put all of those rationalizing thoughts aside as soon as I saw my mother’s wide-eyed reaction. To her credit, she didn’t say anything critical, although she was a teacher and it’s entirely possible she was ready to let me move forward with this Me Decade affectation and see what it would be like down inside the hole I was digging for myself.
I honestly don’t remember if either of my sisters ever saw it. I would have to think at least one of them did, but when we got home I probably went straight to my bedroom, put on some music, and did whatever nerdy things I would have been doing back in those days to pass the time until dinner. That’s when my father would get home from work. That’s when the real reckoning would take place.
I walked out to the table feeling much more sheepish than I tried to look. I took my place opposite my father and began the usual dinner rituals like nothing in the world was the least bit different. When he finally looked up and noticed my haircut, he paused what he was doing only long enough to consider the sight in front of him before uttering a single syllable:
“No.”
I tried to tap into the collective cultural knowledge rock and roll had taught me about rebelling against my parents, but only mustered a half-hearted, “What?” in my defense. Half-hearted because (a) I had absolutely expected that reaction, and (b) I was immediately relieved because of it. He may not have known it at the time, but he was giving me the out I didn’t realize I wanted so badly. I wouldn’t ever have to leave the house and risk anyone seeing me like that, but I had been blessed with the rock-and-roll rite of passage of having my father tell me I had to cut my hair because it was too damn long.
It might have been that very moment, or it might have been after dinner was finished, but it was within the half-hour that my mother had out her home hair clippers kit and had me neatly de-mulletted and ready to be seen in public again. I don’t even think I had put up much of a fight. To this day I believe she completely understood precisely how much of an accidental favor I felt my father had done for me.
Never in my too-damned-close to fifty orbits have I ever lived anything that even closely approximated a rock and roll lifestyle. I’ve never smoked. I’ve never taken any drugs stronger than valium, which was prescribed, and all it did was give me a hopefully short-lived reputation for nodding off during staff development sessions. The amount of alcohol I’ve consumed in my life likely wouldn’t match the liquid volume of a case of beer. I’ve been single my whole life, and the number of women I’ve been involved in with serious, honest-to-God relationships could be counted on one hand.
But that’s just the sex and the drugs. I have always lived and breathed the rock and roll.
Not just rock, though. Rock, pop, alternative, metal, power metal, progressive metal, progressive rock, Christian rock, classical, classic rock, holiday music, show tunes, blues, modern blues, adult contemporary, modern bluegrass, electronic, folk, hip-hop, soul, rap, hardcore rap, soundtracks, scores, easy listening, jazz, punk, power punk, noise pop…the ABCs of music.
And of course, ABC stands for Anything But Country. I’m not denying anyone’s right to listen to and/or enjoy country music, whether it’s the old school Grand Ol’ Opry stuff or the thinly-veiled sexual assault glorifying bro-country of the post-millennial age, but it’s just never been a path I’ve explored, or even found all that compelling. Even if I grew up in what was basically farm country, the only people at my school who even listened to country music were the kids who all worked at McDonald’s and seemed to buy matching t-shirts every time Alabama came back to play at the State Fair. So as much as I hate to fall into the category of cliché, anything but country is all too apt of a descriptor for my musical taste.
I collected records like trading cards, then graduated to cassettes, then stepped into the real future with compact discs, which ended up with digital files both downloaded and streamed. It’s kind of astonishing to stop and think of how so much of the favorite music I’ve had in the past fifteen or so years wouldn’t exist as it does now if not for math.
I didn’t have the long hair, or even the cool hair for that matter, but I wore my way through a constantly-evolving collection of concert t-shirts. I easily spent more time in ninth grade reading album liner notes than I did assigned novels. I was never shy about rolling down the windows while driving through the high school parking lot to let the outside world know what album I had jammed into the cassette player of my parents’ snot-green Mitsubishi subcompact. I spent dozens of hours at the St. Cloud record stores mining the discount bins for the next great surprise album that would help me define my college years. After getting my first desktop computer, I tried to teach myself the how to use the database tool in ClarisWorks by creating a comprehensive listing of the albums in my music library, including with notes and ratings.
So I never needed the long hair to prove to anyone I had the musical bona fides. They were in my blood, and they’d been there for generations, lying dormant and waiting for the right push to be sonically activated.
Which didn’t happen until I reached the ripe old age of seven.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Crowdsourcing Accountability
Over the summer I wrote a few blog posts giving an overview of what the process is like, at least for me, when it comes to writing a book. In the spirit of continuing that theme, I have some more to say tonight.
It's crunch time now. In a good way.
There really isn't any bad news here, but there are some challenges on the horizon. Basically for the rest of October, any time I have that isn't used up by school will be dedicated to working on revisions for the manuscript I wrote this summer. I took the first month of the school year off from even thinking about it, then started working on edits over the past couple of weeks.
I spoke with Carrie recently to get her take on the new manuscript. Long story short, we're now looking at a time window within a few days of Halloween as a target to get the new manuscript out for submission. Why Halloween? Maybe it will clear that up if I reveal the current title -- "The Living Side of Dead." Who knows if that title will end up sticking, but that's what we're going with for now. It's very much a ghost story, and shows the influence of many scary sources.
Revising is a lot of work. Our plan is to take it on in parts and keep the momentum moving consistently forward: me working on the changes we discussed as she provides feedback and going back and forth until it's nailed down, then moving onto the next issue, and the next, and so on.
The whole thing is head-spinning right now, to think that an idea I had just over six months ago could be a manuscript on submission in a matter of weeks. It's not going to be easy, but I know I can meet that approximate deadline. I know if I decide to do the work, I can get there. I'm thrilled I have the chance to do this and it's very important to me to justify the confidence Carrie has that I can pull it off.
It's pretty lonely work, though. Leaving school right away, pounding down a sandwich to keep from starving and then spending the bulk of the evening parked in front of the laptop. Of course I'll take some breaks along the way in there -- do some reading, take some walks, see a movie or two, maybe hang out with some people just to get some air. But it's isolating work, and a lot of it in a short time.
So, if anyone reading this wants to offer some support along the way, feel free. Maybe just some random bits of encouragement? Maybe thinking up an incentive to push me harder? Something or anything to keep me motivated and keep my brain firing on at least most of its cylinders? It's going to be a long rest of the month. Whatever anyone can think of to help me focus, I'll take it.
Because here's the thing. I have my own reasons for wanting to be done by the end of October, and one of them is pretty big. As some of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as its known in the writing world. I've done NaNo several times over the years, though I haven't in the last two.
But this year, even after spending the summer putting together the draft of a whole new book? I have an idea brewing that I really, really want to try out. And it would be really tough to start writing one book at the same time I'd be trying to finish another.
Twenty days left in October. I'm super anxious to see how this unfolds.
And now it's time to get back to work.
It's crunch time now. In a good way.
There really isn't any bad news here, but there are some challenges on the horizon. Basically for the rest of October, any time I have that isn't used up by school will be dedicated to working on revisions for the manuscript I wrote this summer. I took the first month of the school year off from even thinking about it, then started working on edits over the past couple of weeks.
I spoke with Carrie recently to get her take on the new manuscript. Long story short, we're now looking at a time window within a few days of Halloween as a target to get the new manuscript out for submission. Why Halloween? Maybe it will clear that up if I reveal the current title -- "The Living Side of Dead." Who knows if that title will end up sticking, but that's what we're going with for now. It's very much a ghost story, and shows the influence of many scary sources.
Revising is a lot of work. Our plan is to take it on in parts and keep the momentum moving consistently forward: me working on the changes we discussed as she provides feedback and going back and forth until it's nailed down, then moving onto the next issue, and the next, and so on.
The whole thing is head-spinning right now, to think that an idea I had just over six months ago could be a manuscript on submission in a matter of weeks. It's not going to be easy, but I know I can meet that approximate deadline. I know if I decide to do the work, I can get there. I'm thrilled I have the chance to do this and it's very important to me to justify the confidence Carrie has that I can pull it off.
It's pretty lonely work, though. Leaving school right away, pounding down a sandwich to keep from starving and then spending the bulk of the evening parked in front of the laptop. Of course I'll take some breaks along the way in there -- do some reading, take some walks, see a movie or two, maybe hang out with some people just to get some air. But it's isolating work, and a lot of it in a short time.
So, if anyone reading this wants to offer some support along the way, feel free. Maybe just some random bits of encouragement? Maybe thinking up an incentive to push me harder? Something or anything to keep me motivated and keep my brain firing on at least most of its cylinders? It's going to be a long rest of the month. Whatever anyone can think of to help me focus, I'll take it.
Because here's the thing. I have my own reasons for wanting to be done by the end of October, and one of them is pretty big. As some of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as its known in the writing world. I've done NaNo several times over the years, though I haven't in the last two.
But this year, even after spending the summer putting together the draft of a whole new book? I have an idea brewing that I really, really want to try out. And it would be really tough to start writing one book at the same time I'd be trying to finish another.
Twenty days left in October. I'm super anxious to see how this unfolds.
And now it's time to get back to work.
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
A New Way to Live
My sister Erin’s death happened long enough ago that instead of being able to automatically call up how many years it’s been, I have to remind myself of the dates involved to do the math. This October 5th, the difference between 2017 and 2004 makes for thirteen years.
When you lose someone, there’s a period of time — I’d say a month, give or take a few weeks — when everything about the loss is so new with so much related activity that you don’t completely have time to process what’s happened. The visitors are almost continuous. The to-do list keeps growing. The many things that need to be taken care of serve as a kind of distraction. Eventually though, those things are resolved. The visitors are less frequent as people return to the attention their own lives demand. The items on the to-do list get checked off, while fewer new tasks are added.
The aftermath of a death isn’t something people talk much about. It’s uncomfortable, knowing that even though we’ve paused our everyday lives to help friends and loved ones deal and cope and survive the immediate shock and the abrupt redefinition of their lives, there’s only so much we can do to help.
I was in this outsider position not long ago. Very recently a friend of mine, someone I’ve known for a good number of years and have worked with, lost her son. Everything about the life her family had been leading changed overnight.
I went to see her at the visitation to try and be supportive, but felt tongue-tied and hopeless after waiting in line to see her and her husband, knowing there wasn’t anything I could say that would change what happened or make things even slightly better.
The part of the visitation that stayed with me the most was seeing her other two children there. I’ve never met them, but between the times she’s mentioned them and the dozens of pictures I’ve seen of them on Facebook, I’ve put together my own rough ideas of what they’re like: The high school daughter, wide-eyed with a graceful, glowing smile, always surrounded by friends; the middle school son, looking ready for any opportunity to charge his way through discovering and experiencing whatever he can about life; both of them with enough of a glint in their eyes to hint at the potential for low-grade mischief just beneath the surface.
When I saw each of them at the visitation, I felt like I’d been stabbed. So much of the pain and confusion I had to navigate during the time Erin was sick, and after she was gone, came surging back. I knew my friend was experiencing a pain I couldn’t relate to, but I also had a pretty good idea as to what those kids were feeling. Losing a sibling far earlier than you should reasonably expect is a singular kind of pain. Your brothers and sisters are the only true lifelong companions you get. You expect they’ll always be a part of your life, in some manner. When you lose one, it's like losing a limb — you’re off balance, and you feel as if you might not ever be whole again. You have to adapt. You have to start over. You have to find a new way to live.
When Erin died, I had no road map, no context for what I was going through, no idea what it was supposed to feel like, or what I could expect, or how I was supposed to come back from it, or even if I ever would. The whole world and my place in it was a collection of empty pages, and I had no tool to write with or any idea of what to say.
So today, for the benefit of those two kids, and to commemorate the death of my little sister — which she will always be to me even if she was thirty-three when she died — I’m going to share what I’ve learned about surviving the loss of a sibling. Erin’s biggest fear was thinking the day might come when we would forget about her. Sadly she’ll never know how wrong she was about that. If I pass on what I’ve learned about life and death to some others going through the very first stages of a similar experience, that might be another way for her memory to live on.
All right, kids. Here we go. I could write thousands upon thousands of words on this subject, and have literally written the book on it, but I’m only going to address certain points, mostly the ones I wondered about when I was at the same place you are now. Take this for what you will, and maybe it will help:
*It’s okay to be sad. Sadness isn’t bad. You won’t always feel it, but it won’t ever be far away. It’s coming from the love you have for your brother, even though he isn’t physically with you anymore to receive it.
*It’s okay to laugh and have fun and enjoy your life. Doing this isn’t being disloyal to his memory in any confusing way.
*Every new thing will hurt for awhile. Every time you have to face all of this from a different point of view, it will hurt. I promise this kind of hurting isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those new hurts that come along are going to be a part of how you hold onto him, and keep his memory fresh and whole.
*You won’t ever completely stop hurting, but you’ll hurt less. Time really does heal. You’ll miss him and you’ll think about him every day. Thirteen years after losing my sister and I cannot think of a day she hasn’t at least crossed my mind. Most of the time when she does, I smile at the memory.
*You won’t forget what his voice sounded like. You won’t forget how he laughed.
*You could very well always have things you wonder about, all the universal “what-ifs” that might not ever be answered. When things happen later in life, you’ll have times when you’ll wonder what he would do or think or how he’d react. Those questions won’t go away, but you’ll eventually learn to be okay with knowing you won’t get satisfying answers. You’ll have enough in your memory to fill in the blanks on your own.
*As time goes on, you’ll discover that you remember some of the tiniest, most seemingly random things about him with extraordinary detail.
*Don’t be surprised if you catch yourself eventually developing some of his habits or mannerisms. My laugh gradually evolved to echo qualities of my sister’s that weren’t there before.
*When you catch up to his age and even pass it, he’ll still be the big brother.
*You’ve gone from being the three of you to the two of you. The relationship the two of you share is probably going to change. That’s what happened to me and my other sister. However you would describe the brother/sister relationship the two of you have today, it’s going to amplify into something new and stronger, because no one else on Earth will ever completely understand what you’re feeling about this the way the two of you will share.
*It’s okay to talk to him when you need to. If doing that feels awkward, go out at night and say or think what you need to while looking at the stars. Trust me, it works.
*It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to move on. Moving on does not mean leaving him behind.
*He will always be a part of your life. I don’t mean that in a well-meaning, comforting-thoughts way. I mean the time you had with him will be a constant presence throughout your lives.
*You can still love him.
*There is a new normal waiting for you, and for your family. It might take some time to find it, but it’s out there.
*Finally, despite everything I’ve said here, I have to tell you: There is no one road map. What I went through and what you’re going through are unique experiences in many ways. There’s only the path that’s going to unfold in front of you, and the new situations that present themselves, and whatever you need to do to handle them. But that’s okay. No matter where you go or what you do in life, you are always going to carry him with you.
When you lose someone, there’s a period of time — I’d say a month, give or take a few weeks — when everything about the loss is so new with so much related activity that you don’t completely have time to process what’s happened. The visitors are almost continuous. The to-do list keeps growing. The many things that need to be taken care of serve as a kind of distraction. Eventually though, those things are resolved. The visitors are less frequent as people return to the attention their own lives demand. The items on the to-do list get checked off, while fewer new tasks are added.
The aftermath of a death isn’t something people talk much about. It’s uncomfortable, knowing that even though we’ve paused our everyday lives to help friends and loved ones deal and cope and survive the immediate shock and the abrupt redefinition of their lives, there’s only so much we can do to help.
I was in this outsider position not long ago. Very recently a friend of mine, someone I’ve known for a good number of years and have worked with, lost her son. Everything about the life her family had been leading changed overnight.
I went to see her at the visitation to try and be supportive, but felt tongue-tied and hopeless after waiting in line to see her and her husband, knowing there wasn’t anything I could say that would change what happened or make things even slightly better.
The part of the visitation that stayed with me the most was seeing her other two children there. I’ve never met them, but between the times she’s mentioned them and the dozens of pictures I’ve seen of them on Facebook, I’ve put together my own rough ideas of what they’re like: The high school daughter, wide-eyed with a graceful, glowing smile, always surrounded by friends; the middle school son, looking ready for any opportunity to charge his way through discovering and experiencing whatever he can about life; both of them with enough of a glint in their eyes to hint at the potential for low-grade mischief just beneath the surface.
When I saw each of them at the visitation, I felt like I’d been stabbed. So much of the pain and confusion I had to navigate during the time Erin was sick, and after she was gone, came surging back. I knew my friend was experiencing a pain I couldn’t relate to, but I also had a pretty good idea as to what those kids were feeling. Losing a sibling far earlier than you should reasonably expect is a singular kind of pain. Your brothers and sisters are the only true lifelong companions you get. You expect they’ll always be a part of your life, in some manner. When you lose one, it's like losing a limb — you’re off balance, and you feel as if you might not ever be whole again. You have to adapt. You have to start over. You have to find a new way to live.
When Erin died, I had no road map, no context for what I was going through, no idea what it was supposed to feel like, or what I could expect, or how I was supposed to come back from it, or even if I ever would. The whole world and my place in it was a collection of empty pages, and I had no tool to write with or any idea of what to say.
So today, for the benefit of those two kids, and to commemorate the death of my little sister — which she will always be to me even if she was thirty-three when she died — I’m going to share what I’ve learned about surviving the loss of a sibling. Erin’s biggest fear was thinking the day might come when we would forget about her. Sadly she’ll never know how wrong she was about that. If I pass on what I’ve learned about life and death to some others going through the very first stages of a similar experience, that might be another way for her memory to live on.
All right, kids. Here we go. I could write thousands upon thousands of words on this subject, and have literally written the book on it, but I’m only going to address certain points, mostly the ones I wondered about when I was at the same place you are now. Take this for what you will, and maybe it will help:
*It’s okay to be sad. Sadness isn’t bad. You won’t always feel it, but it won’t ever be far away. It’s coming from the love you have for your brother, even though he isn’t physically with you anymore to receive it.
*It’s okay to laugh and have fun and enjoy your life. Doing this isn’t being disloyal to his memory in any confusing way.
*Every new thing will hurt for awhile. Every time you have to face all of this from a different point of view, it will hurt. I promise this kind of hurting isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those new hurts that come along are going to be a part of how you hold onto him, and keep his memory fresh and whole.
*You won’t ever completely stop hurting, but you’ll hurt less. Time really does heal. You’ll miss him and you’ll think about him every day. Thirteen years after losing my sister and I cannot think of a day she hasn’t at least crossed my mind. Most of the time when she does, I smile at the memory.
*You won’t forget what his voice sounded like. You won’t forget how he laughed.
*You could very well always have things you wonder about, all the universal “what-ifs” that might not ever be answered. When things happen later in life, you’ll have times when you’ll wonder what he would do or think or how he’d react. Those questions won’t go away, but you’ll eventually learn to be okay with knowing you won’t get satisfying answers. You’ll have enough in your memory to fill in the blanks on your own.
*As time goes on, you’ll discover that you remember some of the tiniest, most seemingly random things about him with extraordinary detail.
*Don’t be surprised if you catch yourself eventually developing some of his habits or mannerisms. My laugh gradually evolved to echo qualities of my sister’s that weren’t there before.
*When you catch up to his age and even pass it, he’ll still be the big brother.
*You’ve gone from being the three of you to the two of you. The relationship the two of you share is probably going to change. That’s what happened to me and my other sister. However you would describe the brother/sister relationship the two of you have today, it’s going to amplify into something new and stronger, because no one else on Earth will ever completely understand what you’re feeling about this the way the two of you will share.
*It’s okay to talk to him when you need to. If doing that feels awkward, go out at night and say or think what you need to while looking at the stars. Trust me, it works.
*It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to move on. Moving on does not mean leaving him behind.
*He will always be a part of your life. I don’t mean that in a well-meaning, comforting-thoughts way. I mean the time you had with him will be a constant presence throughout your lives.
*You can still love him.
*There is a new normal waiting for you, and for your family. It might take some time to find it, but it’s out there.
*Finally, despite everything I’ve said here, I have to tell you: There is no one road map. What I went through and what you’re going through are unique experiences in many ways. There’s only the path that’s going to unfold in front of you, and the new situations that present themselves, and whatever you need to do to handle them. But that’s okay. No matter where you go or what you do in life, you are always going to carry him with you.
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