Manual Labor and a few Log Blogs

So I'm not so good with the blog thing from home. Sorry. Blame it on an inconvenient Internet connection, plenty of distractions, and an inclination for manual labor.

Sometimes I wonder if I chose the wrong career. Maybe I'd be more suited to construction or landscaping or plumbing. I enjoy my job—most days—but given the choice, I'd dig holes in my yard or paint a wall or organize the garage before I'd proofread or edit or write (which is partly why you get long gaps in my blog on the weekend).

There's something very satisfying about physically laboring to complete a project and seeing tangible evidence of your accomplishments at the end of the day. In my job at the end of the day, I can look in my e-mail box to see a number of messages sent, I can look in my file to see articles edited, I can look at my calendar to see meetings attended, and occasionally, I can look at a page of something I wrote (or rewrote). And every three months I can see an 8.5x11 magazine with four score pages or so. But when you're building or fixing or cleaning, at the end of each day you can see something sizeable and tangible that other people will use or admire. And when your wife or daughter asks you what you did today, you have something to show.

Yesterday (Memorial Day), one of the young men I work with in church was doing his Eagle Scout service project; we took a dozen or so boys to a nonprofit mountain resort and dug holes and poured concrete while installing a Frisbee golf course. As I drove down the canyon at the end of the project, I realized we'd been at it almost six hours . . . and I loved it. It was cool to create something that thousands of people will use. It was satisfying to dig into the soil and batter large rocks to get them out of the way. It was pleasant to look up from my labor and see pine-covered slopes, cascading waterfalls, towering mountains, and vast snow fields still decorating the surrounding peaks.

Granted, much of the satisfaction I gain from manual labor would likely disappear if I did it all day every day. But still, I think there's something to it. It's in my genes; my father and grandfather and great grandfather (and several generations before that when most people didn't have "careers" outside farming) spent their work lives fixing things and making things and doing things. I feel like most days I don't do things; I think about things. Thinking is good—don't get me wrong—and I enjoy the "life of the mind," but sometimes I wish I did stuff instead. I think that's especially an issue in journalism, where we spend a lot of time writing about people who are doing things, and at times we—or at least I—feel like we're spectators of life. (An interesting thought just occurred to me; maybe this has something to do with why we sometimes have problems with activism among journalists, a lack of commitment to objectivity. Maybe journalists get frustrated just talking about people doing things; they want to be making a difference as well . . . just an idea.)

Anyway, enough of those rambling thoughts. Obviously, I like to think, so a thinking job is probably good for me. But on occasion I look out my window and wonder if I could find fulfillment in a career that would take me outside to do stuff . . .


The Weekend's Log Blog:
[Good stuff that happened]

Friday: My younger brother became a dad at last (see photo).

Saturday: Lizzy, Caroline, and I had a "light party," which involved taking all of our toys with lights and music into a dark basement storage room and trying to keep them all going at the same time. It was a delightful half-hour of cacophony and flashing lights. Caroline even liked it (see other photo).

Sunday: We planned our young men campout to the Escalante area: I'm very excited. Slot canyons, water falls, mountain lakes, petrified forests . . . it will be awesome.

Monday: After years of looking (off and on) we bought a loveseat and finally moved our old couches to the basement where they belong.

The Log Blog

I've been listening lately to Desolation Island, one of the Master and Commander series (the two I've "read" so far have been great books—nice character development, good stories, engaging writing, great sense of ocean-going adventure). Near the end of the book there are a few quotes from the ship log, recording in brief form the latitude and longitude, weather, and crew's activity for the day. Thinking about the ship log has made me think about this little record of my own, which is, by definition, a log itself.

So far I haven't recorded much statistical information about my daily life in this log (other than yesterday's embarrassing revelation of my late shower), but I'm not sure such statistics would be terribly compelling to you, my millions of adoring fans. However, I did run across the other day a blog that has got me thinking about a daily log I could make that might hold some interest for you, if not just serving as a good exercise for me.

Dan Lawyer, who I don't know, is keeping a blog called 365 Days of Gratitude. In it, each day he writes about something he is grateful for. An intriguing idea. As I've thought about it, I remembered someone who told me that during her mission for the Church in Haiti (where I also served), she had a goal to have an adventure every day. It was her way of keeping her spirits up in a challenging situation. Also a cool idea.

So my thought is this: In the log part of my blog, I'm going to try (see how long it lasts) to highlight each day something that's cool. Not necessarily something that I'm grateful for (although that will likely also be true), but something that is "virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy" (Article of Faith 13).

It's that old "good news" thing . . . an attempt to mention something positive about each day. I'll also attempt to do so briefly, although as you have likely noticed, "brief" is not my greatest quality. And I may from time to time enhance my log blog with other stats/highlights of the day.

Anyhow, day one: The recently acquired glowworm toy that has a remarkable ability to make Caroline happy when she's sad (and which has, as a result, gone through many sets of batteries in its short life).

Still in PJs...

So this morning a little after 9 a.m., I'm doing dishes when the familiar squeel and rumble of the garbage truck seeps in through our archaic swamp cooler and our old-and-not-soundproof windows (so said the vinyl window salesguy), and Christine calls from the other room, "Do we have the garbage out yet?"

Oops.

I rush to the window to check the truck's direction. Whew. It's headed down the other side of the street, and I've got a few minutes yet.

Check the garbage under the sink. It's on the full side. Pull the bag out and head to the garage without getting a twist-tie. Push the garage-door-opener button. Throw the bag in the garbage can and begin wheeling it out to the street. Feel terribly exposed to be caught in the bright sunlight on my driveway . . . in pajamas.

People at the chapel across the street are preparing for a funeral. I see cars but no people. I look down the road and see blurry figures (I don't have my glasses on yet) walking toward me on the sidewalk a few houses away. I tell myself (but don't believe myself) that they likely can't tell from that distance that my clothes are not blue slacks and a short-sleeved dress shirt. The shuffle of my slippers must give it away. I hear a car start in the church parking lot and realize I must have been observed. This is the downside of living so close to the church.

All the while, inside my head, I'm defending my attire to all of the scoffing glances I am probably receiving: "I got up at 6 a.m., honest. I've changed a diaper, dressed a child, read scriptures, prayed, watered the garden (all two plants), inspected a couple of trees, waked another child, called work to tell them I won't be in until 1 p.m., set the table, eaten, fed Caroline, and washed a ton of dishes. I just haven't gotten around to the clothes part."

And I didn't get around to the clothes part until noon. This must be what my wife feels like every day—only I think she manages a shower earlier than noon somehow.

(Christine, by the way, was also busy this morning, making a cake for the funeral luncheon and getting Lizzy ready for the day [a long process] and getting herself ready to attend the funeral at 10.)

Hope

I just became aware of a foundational belief I have that I have never acknowledged consciously. Kind of a strange thing to suddenly confront something you have been assuming to be true without consciously choosing it.

My daughter Caroline (age 3) has severe cerebral palsy. Without going into a lot of detail, a sudden (and unexplained) loss of blood shortly before birth led to a lack of red blood cells to carry oxygen to her brain for an unknown period of time. The reduced oxygen caused severe brain injury, which resulted in her condition. [^^This picture is Lizzy with Caroline when she came home from the hospital after a couple of weeks in intensive care.] She is now at about a 3-month-old developmental stage, she is fed by a g-tube, and she has frequent seizures (multiple each day, although recent treatment has reduced that number... currently between 0 and 3 a day, a major improvement).

Today Christine took Caroline to her first day of preschool at the school for the blind (although her eyes function normally, it is unclear how well Caroline sees, or interprets what she sees; hence she qualifies for this school). Christine called me at work to say things went fairly well, although Caroline has been quite sad lately, and she was fussy through the preschool session. Christine liked the preschool teacher and aids, who didn't seem to mind the fussiness (which is good news since Caroline is often fussy).

The school nurse was there, instructing the teacher and aids how to use Diastat, an emergency treatment (a form of valium) for stopping long seizures. We have twice had to use Diastat, but each time the treatment still didn't stop the seizure and we had to take Caroline to the emergency room. I mentioned that to Christine on the phone, and she said one of the aids had seen it used effectively multiple times.

This revelation made me wonder (again) about Caroline's seizure activity. There are various things about her seizures (like the ineffectiveness of Diastat and their general persistence despite numerous treatment strategies) that have made me think her seizures aren't entirely normal. (Though what seizures are normal?) This thought then led to another thought, which relies upon my previously unacknowledged belief about things: Someday I'll understand exactly what is going on in Caroline's head and I'll know why diastat didn't work for her and what about her seizures is different than other people's seizures.

This belief in a future revelation of knowledge about Caroline's condition is not a hope for a medical cure or a faith in the abilities of doctors or scientists to understand the brain better in my lifetime or hers. Rather, it's a belief that after this life I will be able to converse with God and with a now-communicative Caroline about her experiences here. It's a faith that God will someday make it all known to me, and that someday—when my own capabilities for knowledge are vastly increased—I will understand the complexities of the human brain and I will comprehend in minute detail all of the things that are wrong with Caroline's brain and how each of those problems explain her various symptoms, from seizures to fussiness to inability to eat. It's an expectation that someday I'll understand what caused all of this.

Furthermore, it's a hope that one day I'll know exactly what she was thinking while all this was going on. That I'll know whether she understood what was happening around her and to her and whether her cognitive abilities increased during her life and whether she comprehended what we said to her and whether she was spiritually nurtured and whether she felt deep emotions and whether those emotions were generally positive and happy and whether she knew she was loved and prayed for and wept for and cherished ever so deeply.

And more than that, it's a belief that one day I'll hug her and she'll hug me back. That we'll talk and laugh and play together. That she will share her insights and humor with me and she'll listen to mine. That she and Lizzy will be best of friends, loving each other as sisters only can. That she will understand and show gratitude for all that Christine did for her—all the time spent holding and consoling and cleaning and feeding, all the stress and worry and love of a mother for a special child. That all of us will get to know the talents and personality and brilliance of this wonderful member of our family who is so closed to us now.

So much of Caroline is a mystery to us now. Doctors and therapists have been able to shed so little light on what is really going on inside. Her abilities to communicate are almost nonexistent. She smiles at times, and laughs. She startles and cries. We can get a sense of things she likes and dislikes, but we're not always sure.

I believe that there is ever so much more to this beautiful little girl than I can sense now. And this underlying—and previously unacknowledged—belief is that someday I will understand it all. The answers will come. It will make sense. And we will all find peace together.

Poetic Moments?

Does anyone else have poetic moments? I described in yesterday's post what was, for me, a "poetic moment." But I've thought since then that the idea of a poetic moment may not communicate to everyone.

For me, a poetic moment is a moment in which my observations take on a certain quality inherent in great poetry. It's an aesthetically beautiful and poignant moment which could be painted through well-honed verse or even portrayed on canvas. It's a slice of life, cut such a way as to make you think differently. To juxtapose dissimilar things, to bring a hitherto unnoticed fact into sharp relief in a way that causes reflection.

The beetle did that for me. Something about his steady track through the sand surrounded by the footprints of teenage boys, his quiet, slow progress amid the loud rushing of four-wheelers, his tiny legs pushing him upward on mountainous dunes, moved me to ponder and observe.

I was reminded last night of another poetic moment I had a few years ago. I was attending a conference in San Francisco, and before heading out for lunch, I had ascended to my room on an upper floor of a high-rise hotel. I took a moment to look out the window at the jumbled skyline of the city: towering buildings the proportions of matchsticks, surrounded by lower, but still tall, structures, outlined by black city streets filled with honking cars way below.

As I surveyed the muted gray-brown scene on the overcast day, my eye suddenly caught a speck of brilliant color. It was a kite, bright red and diamond shaped, flying above the mid-range towers but below the tallest ones. It seemed so out of place—peacefully propelled by God-sent wind in this rushing, hectic man-made urbanity, and I wondered at its origin. I watched it for a moment, and soon I was able to trace its string, curving down to the roof of a building where someone stood holding it.

I was struck by this scene, it's contrast in color and activity. The juxtapositions were poetic to me, and if I'd been given to write verse, I would have done so. But I was hungry, and I contended myself with a few minutes of observation before reluctantly turning away and heading for the lobby where I found two acquaintances and joined them for lunch.

Sometime during our meal, I commented that I'd just had a poetic moment. One of them queried whether I wrote poetry, and they both seemed puzzled by my explanation of the moment as being poetic in and of itself, without need for written verse. These were two seasoned magazine editors, older and more well-read than I. Both have an eye and ear for things aesthetic and both are much more talented writers than I. Yet they didn't seem to grasp my meaning, thus making me wonder at my use of the term.

And so I wonder again . . . does this idea of "poetic moments" exist outside my head? Is this a creation of my own imagination or do others have similar moments and understand my description?