The facade of summer

 There is a time of great forgiveness. A time in which it is deemed the hard times are over. The power of the sun makes us second guess the dark and uncertain of our overall existence.

A common saying, to “ make hay while the sun shines” is more profound than it may seem. It is real courage and real power to do what must be done because incredible imbalance awaits. To be a person who sees it all is a great gift.

I’ve been through 4 completely different lives now and can honestly say I have walked both sides of the barrier. The scars, even though they are scars, in latter years have graduated to trophies. It is odd how much chaos can fortify you and bring peace in a world losing its gravity.

Like a fiery aircraft landing in a jungle, the destination will come. All of the days struggling and all the days coasting, they suddenly make sense, like geometric calculation. I would like to say I always knew, but really, no one could. But in my heart, there was something, yet, I could never imagine.  You just know.

When the rain comes

 

A great cup of coffee, raging fire, sound of light rain drops on the forest. And a four-day-old earache, relentlessly slapping me, trying to pull me out of this moment. I hate pain. It works hard in so many different ways to take center stage in my life. This morning I am engaged in an all-out battle with it. 

The rain holds off for about 3 hours but then inevitably yields a forecast too bad to be wrong. It is a great sound, rain on the canopy, and the crackle of the fire. We had to retreat from the warmth of the fire because of the rain. Now it only provides sound and visual effects.

I knew this was coming. Don’t act surprised. The song The Rain opens up days passed in my life. Rainy days usually. My childhood, my sisters.

It would be a crime to deny myself this sensory experience. The sounds of the rain are quadraphonic (surround sound for you millennials). It is a testament to our creator's power. The world can grow on one drop of rain at a time, and the same drop can wipe everything out of existence.

My pain has now been squelched by anti-inflammatory drugs and antihistamines. It was getting to the point where it was all I was.

The age differential between us and people who stopped having children by the time they were 30 has been fascinating. At 50, those people talk of downsizing and retirement and taking more seasoned sort of vacations. When you start having kids around 40, it is a different world. At 55, I was thinking about an Appalachian trail thru-hike in the next 5 to 10 years. 

A year ago, I got Covid. When you live in so much pain, denial is a wonderful ally. A year later, I am acutely aware that I have long Covid. My energy is tapped right out. But, you know me, my rage and fight inside is relentless. Even this, I do not accept.

So the pattern emerges in my existence: a pattern of denial and rationalization. As a young man, this was a far more damaging quality, today, a mechanism for survival.

It’s funny the things we hear in the rain. I suspect there are no hiding places. Rightly so. It is like a journey to a land where pain and age exist. During our stay, those circumstances would be the only ones we would have to deal with. 

The rain ebbs and flows as it wishes, setting the rules as it sees fit. Really, why fight it? In 2018, I recall Ben Crawford saying as he was hiking the AT with his wife and six kids: “When it first starts raining, it feels like such a betrayal. But, eventually, you begin to barely notice it as you somehow become part of it.”

The awful truth

 After the storm, the shelter doors open. It has become normal to live today as though this were a different planet than we had traveled to 20-something years ago. If not for written words, how could we ever remember who we are?

Sometimes you need the 18-year-old from 40 years ago to help you get a foothold. I feel fortunate that I can still communicate with him. The contrast of what a 17 or 18-year-old needs to go through today compared to 40 years ago is like a planetary difference. 

My concern is that, as a society, we have tried to minimize emotional pain by taking away the true meaning of relationships. But the depth of the emotional attachment in relationships is just as constant as the force of gravity itself. This means once our relationship is coming to an end, the inevitable pain and desolation are still there today just like it was 40 years ago. The problem is, as a society we have tried to pretend it wasn’t there and in doing so we are making it feel like it’s only happening to that one person. It has never happened to anyone else ever before in the history of the world. In doing so, we are not there for our younger ones.

As the Crawford family was getting ready to hike Mount Katahdin in Maine in 2018, having walked 2000 miles from Georgia, they did a lot of talking about how important it was that children are familiar with discomfort. I believe this to be 1000% true. When Liam was very little, probably about 27 months old, we were camping at Donna‘s brothers. The older kids were down by a little brook that flowed through the low part of the property we were at in the woods. I was keeping him in my sites while I talked with a couple who were visiting from Connecticut. Liam was very good at sprinting. He suddenly bolted down the hill through the brush towards the stream towards the other kid's voices. I was instantly out of my chair running at my absolute full speed towards the brush and the stream where he had disappeared. As I neared the bottom of the hill I tripped. Not wanting to be slowed down by stumbling, I vaulted myself through the air almost Superman-like, parallel to the ground that was sloping below me, and caught Liam just before he fell into the water. I walked back up with Liam in my arms, to where I had been sitting at the table. The woman I’ve been talking with shook her head and looked at me. “I’m gonna tell you what, I have never seen anybody in my life move as fast as you just moved.“ It was nothing talented. For lack of a better term, I would have to quote Woody in the Toy Story movie, Who described Buzz Lightyear’s flying as simply “falling with style.“

My point is, that my life has been a series of jumping in the dark without ever knowing if there was a place to land,  yet having some blind faith that there would be. I wanted something different for my children, and in doing so it made me the classic helicopter parent. If you would ask me in my 30s if I would ever do such a thing I would’ve told you that there would be no way, yet there I was. I never realized how important it is for a child to feel discomfort. It was only after I stopped being overprotective did I noticed that my son was amazing at figuring things out. Like me, he had to experience them though. 

One of my children is very good at gleaning solid lessons from other people's experiences. As you might guess, this only goes so far. The deeper valleys of coming of age still lie in wait, like snakes on the trail ahead. It is at those moments that I wish to regress to my overprotective parent status. Old habits die hard. I have to remind myself that here, the refinement arrives. I fear that modern culture has done a major disservice in trying to erase that refinement, and in doing so has left so many people in a 15-year-old-like mentality for the rest of their lives.

This came with a particular generation, but I am not blaming them solely of course. My generation, Gen X, is responsible for that generation. What did we do? What happened from the mid-80s to the year 2000? MTV stopped playing music. The Internet happened. It would be an excellent scapegoat to blame social media but during the formidable years of millennials, It didn’t really exist until later. It makes me wish I had met the Crawfords 20 years earlier, or at least the idea of what they symbolize. Their thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail had nothing to do with suggesting that other families should do the same. It was a reminder to look at the people in your family and understand what each one of their gifts is and allow them to show each other who they are. They showed that in doing so a level of discomfort is experienced based on decisions and it strengthens them and gives them the resolve to take on challenges, to express their gifts, to succeed, to not be afraid to fail, and to live.

As a parent, I now crave balance. I really do value what I have. We all know the awful truth is that hindsight is 2020, and inevitably I can never stop the wish but I had done things better. I know I’m a good parent, don’t get me wrong. I think I am just expressing the depth of love that all good parents have when they see their children grow up so fast. It takes more than a lifetime to learn.

吃苦: No I'm Not Afraid

 Someone told me the other day that I am the kind of person people write books about.  There is no doubt there have been times, especially in Port Aransas, in which I can see that.  I have this lingering wonder what the name of my book would be called. "Blind Date" is what keeps coming to mind. Why? In 1984 I read a book, from the late 70s called Blind Date. The book was about a Russian who immigrated to the United States. The things that stood out in that book were the wild shifts in the main character's life, just like mine. 

A friend from Russia eventually makes it to New York and invites him to his humble little studio apartment for dinner.  Our main character notices that the recipe has an odd taste and inquires about what is in it.  "I found the Smiling Dog brand canned meat at the grocery store just like they have back home in Russia," says the host proudly. In the 1970s there was a brand of canned dog food called Strongheart, which featured a German Sheppard seemingly smiling.

At some point later they go out to a bar in the city.  They are speaking Russian at a table in the corner when a patron approaches and inquires about what language they are speaking.  His friend replies, "We are speaking Eskimo!" The patron steps up on the stage in front of the microphone and says, "I wonder if one of these gentlemen would be so kind as to say a few words in their beautiful Eskimo language for all of us?"

The friend walks up to the stage and then passionately swears a blue streak in Russian. The bar crowd is mesmerized until a man from the back of the bar who obviously understood Russian explodes in a fiery rage and chases the two men off the premises. 

I am not totally sure why I feel I identify with the main character who was not the person who cooked dog food and swears at innocent customers. But in many ways, my life has felt like a blind date. If anything, my life has been one of endless improv. So why would I not be willing to step out into the unknown?  I am absolutely going to take those steps: LLC, catering license, food stand license.  You know it's worth it.

Holding one of those Asian cleavers makes me wonder if I should work out with small weights to condition muscles in the arms and hands, these things are really heavy. At my age, I do not have time to fool around with slow culinary programs.  I watch these CIA boot camp cadets handling spoons, bowls, and knives like they are taking a drag off a cigar they know will probably explode in their faces. They are so unstable. That is not me.  I am and have been for over 30 years the "act like you know" guy. I think I have done a pretty good job overall too.  "And so you see...That is, as they say, is that." Gosh! Who even wrote that line for Trek 4?  Acted out by Catherine Hicks.  I guess she did that as good as anyone ever could. I digress.

Most importantly, I earned my confidence in cooking.  Many missed marks in texture, appearance, or flavor have been the building blocks to the successes. I have in effect 吃苦, known as Chi Ku. Translated means 'eat bitter" or "eating bitterness". It means to endure hardship with a good attitude and the wins will taste much sweeter. A Chinese "no pain no gain" if you will. But more so, to endure through the trials that you change the threshold. My favorite chef, (don't tell her I called her that) June Xie referenced this when talking about her father. She said that he suggested if you do not have enough 吃苦, your small challenge will make you feel broken.

It is a beautiful thought really. I would not trade the difficult times for anything, it is from them that I truly learn. I knew this all along, but I got to see the exploded view of this 4 years ago when the Crawford family from Bellvue, KY hiked the Appalachian trail with their 6 kids ages 2-16. All of the stereotypical "cautions" were inflicted upon them, which were hardships in themselves and I would dare say, far more injurious than any mountain, storm, or unfiltered water could ever be. It was that these children were not sheltered from every single thing their parents could anticipate. No, these are rare specimens of parents, yes, rogue copies that made it off the assembly line, not following "the man" programming routines. They allowed their children to experience discomfort because that is where the learning truly happens.

OK, I get it. The 吃苦 is an intricate part of the journey. Burning steak, having pork belly not produce a beautiful crackling, having the hollandaise sauce never come together, yes no matter how much I stir it is separate ingredients spinning around in a bowl. So, getting licenses and insurance is also a part of this. Getting up in front of 165, 6, 300, or more people and serving them IS ALL THE SAME JOURNEY. It is 吃苦, and it is needed and required to be where I want to be. The bottom line is, that it is supposed to feel uncomfortable! I think about the difference between the first live cooking class and then the next. Amazing what a little shaking in your boots can do...Well socks, we don't wear shoes in the house.

I will not back down. I am still in the game. I am 吃苦.