It's Whether You Get Up

This Vince Lombardi quote has been on the boy's bedroom door for over ten years now. I hung a poster of it at the foot of my dad's bed when he was fighting cancer. 

He lost that fight more than 7 years ago now, but before he did, he got up many times. 

If I have anyone to credit in my life for what some people call "stubbornness" and I call "tenacity," it's probably my dad. 

He was a tenacious fighter, indeed. 

When he was 13, he broke his neck in a diving accident. You read that correctly. He broke his neck. 

He was in full-body traction for six months. They would come and flip him every two hours and he would stare at the ceiling or the floor. For six months. He was a child.

The doctors discussed his prognosis like he wasn't even in the room, telling my grandparents that he would never walk again. When I asked him, "What did you think when you heard him say that dad?"

Bear in mind this is a 13-year-old kid in the 50s. He replied, "I thought 'Bullshit', I'm going to walk again." 

And he did. He was in chronic pain every single day of his life after that. 

But he got up. He did way more than walk. He was an avid sportsman for years. He hunted, fished, participated in trap shooting and all sorts of tournaments. When I was a very young child he even bowled and played golf.

Playing baseball one time in the back yard with my brother, Brady, I once saw him run the bases, and to this day I both laugh and cry when I think about it. 

Many years later, he was loading an ATV onto his truck when the tailgate failed and it fell on him, breaking 7 ribs. 

He got up after that one too. 

Throughout all of it, he resisted prescriptions of heavy pain medications because he knew later in life, he might really need them, after all that his body had been through. He survived chronic, sometimes excruciating pain, on over-the-counter pain relief. For decades. 

It was a good thing he did, because when the cancer came, it came hard, and it was wickedly painful. The drugs he avoided all of his life, were suddenly necessary for him to survive, and thankfully they worked for him for the last 2 years of his life. 

He made the best of every day he had. Once, when we were out on his little fishing boat at sunset many years ago, I caught him smiling and said, "You look happy."

He replied, "I'm better than happy."

Puzzled, I asked, "What's better than happy?"

"Content," he said. 

When people ask me about "cottage progress" and "how are things going?' and "when will it be done??!" and "how much will it cost?!" they sometimes seem surprised when I'm not overly stressed about the number of delays and detours and issues that have come up.

Big deal. 

I grew up in the shadow of a giant, who was also my dad, and the person who taught me everything I know about "getting up." His bar for surviving adversity and pain was sky high. There was no way that wasn't going to influence me and my brothers. 

They're "Get Uppers" too. 

Don't get me wrong. I know we are taught now that we should not ignore our own suffering and struggles "because someone else had it worse." I get that, but for me, this isn't about diminishing my own difficulties because my dad survived much harder ones. 

My dad found contentment in a life that served him a disabling pain sandwich. 

For me, it's about using his example to inspire, comfort me and push me forward.

It has been a way of coping with the inevitable agonies that have come to me in the form of injury, illness, loss, tragedy, betrayal and/or death. It's knowing that life is definitely going to knock me on my can. Over and over again. Sometimes it's really going to hurt, too, and there is really nothing I can do to about it. 

Except get back up. 

I will survive my cottage project difficulties just fine. I'm starting a new business. This is not a tragedy. It's a challenge, and one that I feel blessed and fortunate to have.

I will survive with contentment, and I will do it in honor of the man who taught me how. 

I will do it like he did. Until I just can't anymore. 

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Bucket Lists

I was never the sort of person who felt like I needed to make a "bucket list." I'm not even sure why. Maybe I was just too lazy to make one! Or maybe it seemed sort of morbid. Or maybe I just didn't know what I would put on one. Maybe I just didn't see the point. 

Then something changed, clicked along the way. We suffered some big losses and hardships in 2022. We also had some big wins and some very good fortune as well. Weird how life doles it out like that, so often. Among the losses came a reminder that life is short, but it can also be sweet, even amid the heartaches and the hardships. 

I decided a bucket list wasn't' morbid, it was just a list of goals and dreams. Who doesn't need more of that? I decided that I can get up and sit on the edge of my bed and cry for the first five minutes of every day, because my heart hurts, in Prague as well as Pierson, Iowa. I decided I should do that. I should do that because I'm the only one who is going to live this life for me, and although it's not perfect and not always the way I imagined it, it's wonderful and completely worth living to its fullest. 

The difficulty and challenges that keep coming at us don't cease. We just get older and hopefully a little better at coping with them, but we shouldn't wait for a magical time when everything is perfect to plan to do the beautiful things in life, whatever that means for you, personally. 

Write a list. Make some goals and dreams come true. Do some of them now. Do some of them next year. Keep knocking them off your list. 

Die trying to do all of them. 

Note: This was originally published back in January, but I felt the need to revisit it.

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A Visit to the Lumberyard-Project Progress

We went to the lumberyard last Friday to pick out exterior finishes for the garage and apartment. It really shocked me how many things we had to decide and how many questions we were asked...just for the outside of the building. 

Soon, Andy's mother will be picking out interior finishes and details for her apartment. 

Building permits, county inspections, contractors are all in a row. 

The clearing of the addition continues. We have contractors coming next week to look at what will be involved in repairing the floors down there. 

Next up: Concrete work for the foundation of the new building plus septic, water and electric. 

So many things to do, but we will get there.

We just have to keep taking all of the identifiable steps. 

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You Never Know-Mickey Baillargeon

When I was young, I had a Fairy Godmother of sorts. Her name is Mickey and she is the mother of one of my very good childhood friends. 

Mickey wasn't the kind of "Fairy Godmother" who waved a magic wand and turned pumpkins into carriages. She was far more magical than that. She had the ability to see people. Really see them. 

She saw me. 

During my elementary school years, I spent a lot of time at their farm. Mickey had a soft spot for me. She included me and all of my spaz-monkey neurodivergence. Good grief, most adults, including my own parents had no idea what to do with me. My sixth-grade teacher wanted me evaluated for "mental disturbances."

He had no idea what was going on in my home. Or that I had ADHD. One of the "most acute cases" the therapist who evaluated me, "had ever seen in her 21 years of testing." 

Mickey knew there was more to my story. She laughed at my jokes and told me I was pretty. Some of the best childhood memories I have are sitting around their kitchen table in the morning before the bus arrived, eating Wheaties with whole milk from the milk house and toast with real butter, listening to all of them talking about what the day had in store.

I used to love to watch her with her husband, Dennis, the hardest working man I've ever known, at the kitchen sink after supper. Mickey would wash dishes and I would often see Dennis walk up to her and pull her close to him. He looked at her like she was a star, the love of his life. She was. I think their eyes actually twinkled when they stared at each other. That's how I remember it, anyway. 

Mickey made me believe in true love. Mickey made want to marry a farmer.

Most importantly, Mickey taught me that you never know how you might influence or impact another person, just by being kind and nurturing toward them. You never know how much you might improve their outlook or build their confidence or teach them about love, if you just resist the judgement, we are fed every day about one another, to make room for compassion. 

You never know if you might be helping someone hang on for one more day. 

She's the reason I tell children they are funny, smart and beautiful. Because I remember how it felt when she told me. I remember the impact it had. 

Mickey is responsible for some of my very happiest childhood memories. I wonder if she knows that? 

Maybe I should go see her and tell her. 

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Play Acting in the Grove-The Children

When I was young, my brother, Brady, and I would play-act in our back yard. We had a few rows of pine trees which separated our property from a swamp. Brady and I would play for hours in those trees, pretending all sorts of stories and adventures. Later, we played "Star Wars" with friends, acting out battles and encounters with stormtroopers. Using pretend light sabers and "the force" to defeat our enemies. 

My kids grew up doing similar in our yard on the river in Wisconsin. They would run around our big yard with their friends and act out stories inspired by their video games and books they loved to read. 

When I came to Iowa with my two, they play acted with Andy's kids in the grove. They dressed up and played out WWII battles and played "Lord of the Rings." 

Never mind that the WWII acting came with real campfires that almost set the grove on fire or that they used my best tablecloths for capes. I loved that they wanted to use their imaginations and could keep themselves entertained for hours. They were all such bright and precocious children.  I would often pack up picnic baskets full of "supplies" and props for them to take outside. 

It didn't even bother me that I'd find my dishes and utensils laying in the dirt the following spring. With the remains of the campfire.

 

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

I imagine children doing that in the grove again soon. As we busy ourselves with clean up and planning of the garden/grove, I see little ones using the shrubs and trees as secret hiding spots and little houses. I look forward to seeing them play-acting outside my window and eavesdropping on their tales and adventures like I did with our kids.

I sure hope that happens. I have missed it so much.  

Hopefully they won't set real fires. 

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