June 24, 1982

June 24, 1982

Scientists, theologians, and poets have struggled for centuries for an understanding of life. Moralists 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 exhaltations. When the pretense, scientific verbage, theological summation, and poetry is stripped 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 homerun 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 snow drifts 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 a mistake 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 hair style. 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 that brings bruises and bliss. Perhaps Thomas Hobbes defined life best—“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”... ~T.Stucky

June 9, 1982

June 9, 1982

The weeds are green and abundant, the sidewalk is littered with skateboards, bicycles, and popsicle sticks, and the air is filled with the sound of breaking windows.
It’s summertime at the Stucky house.
In the two weeks since teachers handed out grade cards and sent their charges home to harass their parents, three windows have been shattered. The hasty explanations rendered have gone from the slightly believable (I was just throwing the ball against the side of the house and it slipped.) to the unbelievable (I don’t know who broke it, but I’m sure it wasn’t me.) to the incredible (I don’t know how, it just broke.).
It’s summertime at the Stucky house.
The kitchen floor is sticky with kool-aid dropped from paper cups. The chain on every bike has come off at least once. The short people have begun discarding summer toys. The latch on the front door has been broken off.
It’s summertime at the Stucky house.
We have already gone through twenty books from the Pretty Prairie library—everything from “Blaze and the Indian Cave” (“It was good, Blaze and his owner rode around with their cowboy friend Jim and he asks if he can camp out in an Indian cave and they like the…”) to “How Doofus the Dragon lost His Head” (“Pretty good. It was sorta funny, but he really didn’t lose his head, he fell into a field and then they hid him in a hay stack and…”). We have made feeble attempts at banjo lessons (“My fingers don’t stretch that far.”), guitar lessons (It hurts my fingers.”), and tennis lessons (“This racquet is too heavy.”). Baseball practice has been missed three times. We have already heard “There’s nothing to do around here.”
It’s summertime at the Stucky house.
A mosquito bite caused Carly’s right eye to swell shut. A damaged ankle made it difficult for Emily to walk. Aaron fell off his bike and wounded his knee. Allison has a cut on her head. The dog has been in heat, attracting every male canine within a two county radius. Four Mississippi kites, a prairie falcon, two cardinals, three turkey vultures, and “something weird” have been spotted in the evening sky.
It’s summertime at the Stucky house.
A host of hamburgers and two chickens have already been burned on the barbecue. Each of the short people has already said numerous times, “Tell me, dad, why do hamburgers and chicken legs end up looking the same when you barbecue them?” More than a dozen glasses of iced tea have been spilled at the supper table, two popsicles have melted on the front porch, three lady bugs have been loosed in the living room, two tennis balls have been misplaced, a can of “Off” has been depleted, two baseball mitts have been left out in the rain, and a wheel has fallen off the lawnmower.
This is only the first week in June. The air conditioner has not been turned on yet. The rodeo is still a month away. And already the first day of school is poised on the distant horizon like a brimming pot of gold….~T.Stucky