Milestones

12 January 2010

A colleague of mine will celebrate her 35th anniversary working for the Corps of Engineers tomorrow. Thirty five years.

 

I turned forty years old a week ago.

 

Next week I will have been working in plan formulation for the Corps for three years.

 

My wife and I celebrated five happy years together last Friday. And we have been married ten years. (That was a joke. A JOKE, guys.)

 

All of these celebrations, coming as they have in short order, have made me think about the milestones in our lives, and about the expectations that come with them. Did you accomplish what you wanted to in your thirty five years of labor for the Federal Government? Did I complete my dissertation by the time I reached forty? Have we traveled to the places Kathe and I dreamed of when we got hitched? Do I understand the process well enough after three years to be comfortable with my decision making?

 

We humans use milestones to help us reflect, to look backwards, and to evaluate. It is a positive thing to note accomplishments and see where we our plans have come to fruition. But I have also found myself a little discouraged recently. Fortunately, a friend pointed me in direction of a new blog this week... written by a woman who suffered the death of her seventeen-year old daughter and the death of her marriage in a six-month span. The theme of the blog is "Do Over"  (www.thelifeilove2010.blogspot.com). She sees the new year as an opportunity to make changes in her life - a real honest-to-goodness 'do-over' - the kind we used in kindergarten when the sun was in our eyes and we missed the ball. She brings an upbeat approach to a time in her life that would bring just about anyone down. She, however, is goal-oriented and focused and.... happy.

 

She confesses to having the sad times, but is determined not to let the sad times define her.

 

One of the continuing themes in my writing is perspective. I tend to get wrapped up in the stresses of my life, whether the dissertation, the research, the job, the marriage, the teaching, or whatever among the thousands of things that are competing for my attention, and focus on the details of the stress (I even took a break while writing this to deal with a minor project related crisis, and got so frustrated that I punched the chair....). What I then find is that once in a while, I see a picture or a vignette of someone's life that reminds me of the larger picture - what is really important in this life. Helping others. Acting with compassion. Pursuing justice. Doing work - with my own hands - that I can be proud of. Singing. Smiling. Forgiving. Loving.

 

So I dropped the ball on all of these things. And now that I have missed the ball....

 

Do Over! I think I'll start today.

Red Letter Day

15 Jan 2009

I came into the Project Management Community of Practice workshop here in Sacramento, sat down and started to fill out the name plate as we were instructed to do. All across the room were people from different districts of the Corps of Engineers - from Huntsville Alabama, to the Alaska guys from Anchorage. To my left sat a guy from Walla Walla District, to my right was a guy from the Far East Division - he was representing the Korean District.

 

They had provided four markers for the entire class, so we were sharing back and forth. Ted, the PM from Korea, smiled and said "You know, in Korea, you never write your name with a red pen. You only do that for people who are dead."

 

Even now as I write this, three days later, I have no idea what the proper response is (other than to slowly put down the red pen). He chuckled about it, and said, "Just something to be aware of if you are ever in Korea - it is a very strong custom."

 

It got me to thinking about how many things would be easier if they simply color coded different elements in your life. I dated the wrong girl for a very unhappy period of my life. My parents had a difficult line to walk - they could express their displeasure with my choice and risk alienating me, or they could be as accepting as possible and be there to pick up the pieces. And work very hard not to let me know the mistake I was making.

 

Color code those days black, and I'd have known.

 

I found out tonight that a dear friend died this week. Gilberto, my friend from Antigua, the guy who took care of me and watched over me while I was in Guatemala, fell from the ladder and died while picking an avocado. He was a gentle, quiet man who laughed kindly at my silly jokes, who tended the flowers in the garden, and who has been my friend since I first visited Antigua in 1995. I miss his laughter, and his easy smile.

 

Once, when I was leaving to run some errands, I told him that I'd be back in about 15 minutes. Two hours later, I showed up. From that point on, every time I left, he'd joke about me being back in "15 minutes". The joke never got old, and he'd laugh with me every time. I loved him, and I miss him.

 

His name is engraved in red on my soul.

Touching

The social rules about touching were suspended, just for a week.


I am the product of two very different emotional paradigms. My father's family is fun-loving, but not emotionally demonstrative. They show love, rather than express it in a touchy-feely way. My mom's family, by contrast, had hugging lines, and everyone got grabbed both coming in or going out the door every time. Very demonstrative. 


So I grew up with two different senses of how personal interactions work. Most of the time, that meant that I had a deep-seated desire to be touchy feely and a deep-seated sense that it was inappropriate to be that way.  The way I have come to terms with it is to have a handshake to fill the gap. A good handshake, but just a handshake.


And this past week, all of my internal social rules about touching were suspended. 


My father in law had a brain tumor that left him more and more weak. Last Saturday we visited, and he was in bed, his breathing assisted by two tubes in his nose. Big Ern has spent the past two weeks passing between two poles - pain and unconscious, unable to speak or to express anything but discomfort.


His wife, Barbara, was with him there the whole time. Our visit Saturday was the first time she had left his side – my wife took her grocery shopping. I stayed with Ernie.


At first I read to him, but that did nothing but agitate him (don't know whether that was the voice or the source material). So I held his hand. I straightened him up on his pillow. I caressed his head. I touched his cheek. I put my hand on his shoulder.


I touched. And for a moment, it seemed like the fear that gripped him passed, if just for a short while. Somehow, the rules that we have as a society were relaxed, just for a while, to provide comfort to someone who was in pain.

And I don’t mean Ernie.


My father in law, Ernest Earl O’Hara, retired Major in the Air Force, veteran of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, died Monday morning, around five o'clock AM. 


In the aftermath, the rules remained suspended as we as a family dealt with our sadness. 


My sister in law is a wreck. As in a trainwreck. She is battling demons I don’t even want to think about, and she did not make it to my in-laws to say goodbye. She spent most of the trip sobbing uncontrollably. 


I hugged her. I held her hand when she went to view the body. My hand was on her shoulder as she touched the face of her father. apologizing to him for not coming in time. The rules relaxed, just for a while, to provide comfort to someone who was in pain.


I haven’t somehow lost my inner Scot. I am still every bit as uncomfortable with the intense physical contact. I still worry that it will be misunderstood. I am not going to go around the table, laying on hands, nor will I try to hold hands with the person next to me when I sit down.



But I am beginning to question our rules. The prohibition on touching is not a cultural universal. I am beginning to wonder whether what we are seeing in terms of violence around us is not based in pain. If maybe the abuses we see would not be alleviated by the calming effect of taking someone’s hand. 


We live in a society with sensory overload. The sounds around us are so much that we shut them out with iphones and ipods. We protect ourselves against aromas by using underarm protection and mouthwash and we place our city dumps far away from where we live. We eat foods that have been carefully processed from animals that have been kept away from anything that might make them taste different. We have a sterile society.


And we don’t touch. And when we do, it is momentous.


You see the end results of peace accords. The symbolic handshake. You see the winner of the pageant hugging the runner up and the conflict of emotion there – ecstasy and sadness and excitement and comfort. 


Yes, far too many times has touch been abused, and resulted in one person exerting domination over another. That is not what I am suggesting; not what I want. But I am doing a re-assessment of my own inner struggle with reaching out. 


Because I know the effect that the simple smoothing of the brow of a man with whom I had a complicated relationship – I know what that did for me. 


I know what happened when, just for a moment, the rules were suspended.