June 18, 1981

Fathers are rarely remembered for what they really are. Rather, youthful memories of ol' dad are an amalgam of nuances, of seemingly insignificant traits, of personal habits. Being a generation apart while simultaneously being so physically close, makes it impossible for children to clearly see fathers. Expectations, hopes, and demands cloud vision.
My father impaled himself on my memory when I was a lad not by being the able breadwinner, the concerned parent, nor the sagacious elder. Instead, he was the shirtless guy who mowed the yard, the band of his undershorts protruding from his jeans, making a gleaming white ring about his midriff. He'd get to the end of the first pass across the lawn and, while turning the mower around, he'd grab the back of his jeans and pull them up. The band disappeared. But after a few steps his pants would begin to inch down and there it was again, that elastic ring, easing out like the first rays of dawn.
My father will always be the man who displayed his underwear waistband to the neighborhood every Saturday afternoon.
He will also live forever in my mind as the man who piled his green beans, mashed potatoes, corn and roast beef into one vast mound before forking it into his mouth. We siblings would exchange slow looks of repulsion, our eyes narrowing, our upper lips rising in disgust. Between mouthfuls he spoke words which to this day ring clearly in my ears, "It all goes to the same place." With such logic we could not argue.
My father is the guy who used his middle finger for discipline. The side of my head is a lumpy tribute to the strength of his stout digit. He was not one for spanking, he merely confined his bent middle finger with his thumb, holding it there like a set mouse trap, before loosing it smack against my crew-cut head. The thump of discipline continues to reverb.
Dad was also the guy who pinned my arms above my head on Sunday morning before he shaved, and scraped his course stubble chin on my stomach, making me crazy with laughter. It tickled and it hurt at the same time. It was wonderful. And he always knew when I had had enough.
I do not know my father as a businessman, or an official in the church. It never dawned on me that he worried about paying bills, that he had personal failings as well as successes. He was not a man with definite opinions about politics, or morality, or social change.
To me he was the blue-eyed, slightly balding man with the white elastic waistband, who ate his beans with his mashed potatoes, and alternately tickled me and thumped me.
His effect on me is only now becoming apparent. Last weekend as I walked the yard shirtless behind the lawnmower, I found myself periodically hitching up my pants. It struck me there was a white band showing.
For dinner my beans were piled close to the mashed potatoes. As I scooped them up together, there was a collective gasp of revulsion from the short people, their faces contorted in disgust. I couldn't help myself, the words simply fell out, "It all goes to the same place." Aaron smirked. I reached over and thumped him with my middle finger.
To all those fathers, they who deserve more credit than we ever give them, we wish Sunday to be a worthy day.... ~T.Stucky

June 4, 1987

Scientists, theologians, and poets have struggled for centuries for an understanding of life. Moralist ponder life's beginning and its end. We guard against aborting life almost as vigorously as we guard against euthanasia.
Life is sacred, something to be preserved, and yet it remains a mystery. Scientists explain it in terms of amino acids and electric charges. Theologians discuss its worth in terms of destiny.
Poets are neither so basic nor so eternal. Robert Browning wrote,"I count life just a stuff to try the soul's strength on..." Keats called human life, "the war, the deeds, the disappointments, the anxiety, imagination's struggles, far and nigh..."
But poetic phrases don't explain life -- life defies grand exaltations. When the pretense, scientific verbiage, theological summations, and poetry is striped away what remains is a steady stream of insignificant events. Taken together, these easily forgotten experiences form life.
Life is trying to remember the last time you changed the oil in the car. It is telling a joke and forgetting the punch line. Life is a wedding band that has cut off the circulation in your ring finger.
Life is a lawnmower that won't start, a fight that will, and a payment plan that won't end. It is a bruised fingernail, a weak knee, a tennis elbow. It is tripping on the family dog and spending a week in the hospital recuperating. Life is placing a wreath of flowers on the grave of a grandmother.
Major events give life ambition, but the trivial give it texture and definition.
Life is defined by carsickness on a vacation, a scar on the foot, a new shirt on the first day of school, a solid hit at the baseball game. Life is scoring a long touchdown and having it called back for a penalty, having a home run curve foul, missing a shot at the buzzer.
Life is sitting on the bench thinking about getting into the game. It is the bad-hop grounder that chips your tooth. It's the pain in your lower back when your playing days are over.
Life is hail and snowdrifts and lightning flashes and being forced into the basement by the wind. It is mornings in coats and long johns and it is shirtless afternoons. It is watching a thundercloud billow over a ripe wheat field. Life is finding out your camping tent is not waterproof.
Life is finding that special person who laughs at your wit even when you're not funny. It is sitting up late at night with sick children. It is a kiss before supper. Life is making mistakes and feeling so sorry your bones ache.
We are all so busy with the process of living we sometimes fail to recognize life.
Life is wondering how you would look with a different hairstyle. It is longing for the days when you had hair. It is standing in front of a mirror gazing at your own reflection. Life is wondering whose life it is you are leading.
Life is a difficult, glorious enterprise, which brings bruises and bliss. Thomas Hobbs called it "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." But perhaps it's just solitary enough to make us appreciate a friend, just nasty and brutish enough to make us enjoy the tranquil evening, just short enough to make us delight in the time we have.... ~T.Stucky

June 8, 1989

Sunday evening, during a brief interlude in the deluge, the dog took us for a walk. Streams of runoff bubbled in the gutters, mirror puddles reflecting the neighborhood, full oaks and maples shook themselves int he north breeze, sending off a cool spray. In the distance, thunder complained about its workload.
After months of dry, of parched winds sweeping topsoil from exposed fields, of listening to arid predictions the Midwest was on the verge of becoming the Great American Desert again, it was a delightfully soggy day. But, being Midwesterners, we couldn't express our damp joy by giving in to our urges and splashing like Gene Kelley in the brimming gutters. (Garrison Keillor said, "here in the Midwest, having a good time is considered okay provided you don't let it happen again.")
That Kansans have long been cultivating their stodginess is confirmed by a Dr. Karl Menninger observation printed in 1939. Whether his conclusion was the result of witnessing a couple and their dog repressing their desire to gambol in the rain, or whether it resulted from a friend's failure to chuckle at one of the good doctor's jokes is lost to history, but sixty years ago Dr. Menninger wrote, "Kansans have gone off the deep end with desperate seriousness, and in so doing earned for themselves the name of being humorless, puritanical people, incapable of joy and grudging in their attitudes toward those happier than themselves. This is not a pretty reputation and naturally one shrinks from accepting this description of oneself and his friends and neighbors. Oddly enough, however, we do accept it almost unanimously and meekly endure the opprobrium and ridicule of other states. This I believe to be due to a humility of self-distrust so great as to be crippling to our energies."
"Humorless"? "Incapable of joy"? "Begrudging the happy"?
Well, we may be a trifle listless, but that's because we labor so valiantly. We may be somewhat lackluster, but that's because we recognize the shallowness of luster. We may be prosaic, but that's because we recognize the limitations of poetry.
But to suggest we have no sense of humor and are unable to muster a sense of joy makes us...well, sad. Certainly such sweeping claims are nothing to laugh about. There's nothing in our genes which prevents us from having a sunny disposition. Nothing in our makeup which precludes chortling, giggling, or even loosing a horsey guffaw. We're having as good a time as folks in any other region of the country, we have simply refined the ability to have a good time without making a show of it.
On the west coast or the east coast you can witness people having a grand time everywhere you go. At the beach they laugh loudly. In bars they hug and slap each other on the back. At parties they carelessly cavort as if they'd never had so much fun.
We Midwesterners know an insincere display when we see one. These people are not having a good time, they're not humorous, they're not happy. They're just good actors, playing a role, pretending they're bit players in a beer commercial.
We Midwesterners know that when you're truly happy nobody knows it but you; that the best way to express bliss is to act as though it's just another day at the office. In so doing, we don't make those around us who are not having a great day feel worse. We Midwesterners are considerate with our joy.
So walking back to the house, filled with the glory of the day, we held our dog, and our emotions on a leash, not wanting the neighbors to feel bad - because we felt so good. ~T.Stucky