53 years and 2 weeks

Dear Blog reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. Last week my weekend was blasting by like a firework with a frayed fuse at a smoker’s convention; some sleeping in. I took care of some miscellaneous work items. I worked on a couple of bicycle issues. I went to my favorite toy store; Bicycle Garage Indy. There was the ride to the fireworks party in Fishers on Friday evening. Actually, it was the almost bike ride that had to be aborted ½ way there. We lost a pedal; one of four on our bicycle built for two. The lovely Miss Beverly was quite the trouper. It was my right pedal that went A.W.O.L. So she had to provide 2/3 of the energy to get us home. I peddled with my left leg, my right held out away from the bike, useless.

Undaunted we put the bike up and got into the car and went to the party anyway. We were able to get the pedal reattached on Saturday and the lovely Miss Beverly and I rode to Pendleton on our tandem. We had a delightful time camping beside the inflatable jousting pit. It was so much fun watching the little gladiators climb shakily up on the padded three foot tall pedestal armed with the over padded jousting sticks. We quickly figured out that the victor was usually the heaviest, the stoutest. Nimble is good but gravity keeps your butt on the pedestal.

History will debate who challenged who. I remember the lovely Miss Beverly asking if I wanted to do it. She remembers me saying let’s go get in line. Thankfully, no fun Nazi’s had posted “you must be less than 50 years old to ride this ride.” The line was long. Cousins had to take on one another. Siblings had to establish their pecking order. Daughters had to take on dads. And there was one strange bout between adult sisters; one a fun loving bundle of joy, the other petrified on the three foot perch, too scared to enjoy the evening. Then it was the lovely Miss Beverly standing opposite me. We on our perches; getting our feet under us. This was no David and Goliath story. I could tell that the wonderfully fit Miss Beverly would toast me in a marathon. It was time to reach out, shove, and tumble the lovely Miss Beverly off her tuffet.

Sunday was reserved for Amish child garden pursuits, a bike ride and 45 minutes of my Elmer Fudd imitation trying to kill the ground hog. This ground hog had put a serious dent in our green bean crop. The final straw was biting off the hot pepper plant and finding it too hot he just left the decapitated piece of hot pepper lying on the ground by its headless self. Enough of that. Finally, I set the trap and came in to type this blog. The long weekend is nearly over. I have too many pursuits to get them all done.

That is why I will have to finish the rest of this blog later in the week. That weekend besides being filled with great joy and fun also showed the passing of a very important milestone for yours truly. My father was 53 year and 14 days old when he passed. I crossed that threshold last weekend. I must admit that I was a little wary as I pedaled a bicycle built for two with one foot. We made it home unscathed. But for a while I cursed myself for not taking the advice that my imagination had generated over the 26 years since my dad’s farm accident. I had imagined that I would stay inside of the house; never leaving as the day to the milestone approached. I was going to take no chances of getting into a car accident or a tree falling on my head accident. I had imagined that I would forego showers the week prior in order to make sure that I did not slip on some soap and break my head.

In the 26 years since his passing, I have often missed the advice that dad would have given me. Advice honed and perfected by more experience and the opportunity to listen to his parents for an extended period. Our relationship was just starting to move into a different phase when he died. I had ran from the farm upon graduation from high school. I had started to create a career. My marriage to the lovely Miss Beverly, while young, certainly appeared to be something that could be built into something that could last. Finally, for the prior 10 months the reality of starting a family was very real for Bev and I. It all coalesced around a visit home two weeks after Ben’s birth and 2 weeks before that fateful August afternoon. Ben had been very cranky. Bev and I were sleep deprived and had no idea of what we were doing. We were visiting the farm for dad’s birthday and quickly deciding to bail on the annual family pilgrimage to the Cincinnati Reds farmer’s night game. What were we thinking? How in the world could we even consider taking a 2 week old on a 2 hour trip, climb up 30 rows into the red seats and sit there in 80 degree temps only to haul our diaper bags, baby and exhausted selves 2 hours back home?

Saner heads prevailed. We removed our rose colored glasses, and I was explaining to dad that it wasn’t going to work. We would hang around until the family left. We would head back home to Lafayette. I remember saying that it was harder than we expected. We didn’t know why Ben was fussy and would do anything to get him to stop but Bev and I were at our wits end. Dad looked out the car windshield and said, “Don’t worry. You’re doing fine. It is just hard at first. It won’t last forever. The ballgame wasn’t a good idea. Next year.”

Thankfully, the same advice works in several situations. So I have held onto it and replayed it over and over through the years.

In the years, that we were working out the path back to closeness from striking out on my own. I remember that I would look for any sign that dad had lost a step. Had he reached his apogee? Had his start stopped its rise? Lloyd Sharritt was a bear of a man. He had spent 30 years since the army fighting the weather, cows, and government programs to create a pretty good dairy farm. He could stand at the end of an elevator in a hayloft in 100 degree heat and unload 1200 bales of hay a day and be up at 5:00 a.m. the following day to do it over again. He was stronger than I was when I left for college. I wasn’t doing anything to get stronger behind a desk. In my mind, the only way to surpass my father would be through his fall during the course of life.

So I watched and I watched. After 26 years, I imagine that saw it in his eyes on that August day. He looked tired. Maybe he couldn’t be a bear forever.

So now at 53 years and 14 plus days, it is his eyes that I think about. Was he tired? Did he know that he had lost a step? Was he past the top of the hill? I had thought that for a lot of years leading up to the mile marker. Shoot, it could have been the lost step, the tiredness that prompted him to take the shortcut that cascaded out of control. I used to think that.

Not so any more. As I have been warily watching the milestone approach, I have caught myself looking out of windows with the same eyes.

There are a few things that I am good at. I can be a good husband when I am not in a selfish mood. I can ride a bicycle a long way day after day. I can give my children room to launch and blossom into great adulthood with some effort. I can write a pretty good blog on a regular basis. I am no slouch at work and can grow a good garden once all of the groundhogs have been thinned out. And in spite of some issues with organized church, I have a relationship with God and Christ that takes a bit of time to maintain.

It is a list that brings me fulfillment and joy. There are things on that list that are easier than others to do and tend to. For me, the look of tiredness comes from the knowledge that the list makes my life full and there is no empty space to fit something else in. After 53 years and 2 weeks, my life is a delicate balance. After 53 years and two weeks, I have practiced and honed the list; dropping things that I really didn’t care about (learning Spanish) and adding those things that I do care about. In order to do anything else will require letting go of one of these things. Doing one of them a little better will require letting go of one the other things that I care about very much. There is no room in the inn.

So I hope that the look in my father’s eyes was one of the knowledge of a full life. A life so full that nothing can be added without some subtraction. I don’t know because there was not time that day to ask. But thankfully, by teaching me to take one day at a time, he knew the answer would be revealed.

Take care.

Roger