Passages

I'm tired this evening. Sad, and restless, with a disturbing sense of unfulfilled promise.

The immediate cause of this discomfort was our weekend trip to our alma mater on the occasion of the death of a college friend by her own hand. Suicide is always difficult for survivors to work their way through -- and I say that having observed it way too many times, including two of my husband's siblings. This particular suicide is especially hard to understand, as the victim was widely known in the region for tenacious environmental advocacy. That she could care so deeply for and work so hard on behalf of all the planet's creatures, yet dismiss the value of her own life, is something I have a hard time resolving in my own mind and heart. That she could have been in such emotional pain is painful to all those she left behind.

Such an occasion, of course, brings together people who in happier times never quite get around to connecting, and this was no exception. So a few of us, friends of four decades who have gone our separate ways but maintain a cosmic connection, gathered to reminisce about our friend, catch up on each others' lives and retrace our steps in old college haunts. We were surprised how small the bar district really was, how many bars were packed into it, and what a short walk it actually was from our dorm-- an entirely different experience on a Sunday morning in 2009 than what we recalled from Saturday nights in the early 70s.

We stepped into the dorm where we'd met all those years ago, noting the remodeling of what had been a comfortably shabby common area where students in our era convened to play cards, organize lawn volleyball games and debate issues of the day, into a far more efficient, but far less inviting, lobby space. We walked across the campus, remembering classes we'd taken (or skipped), adventures we'd plotted.

Forty years gone by in the blink of an eye. And for me, little more than an eye-blink accomplished.

So as I struggle to understand my friend's choice, I'd better appreciate that she actually made lasting contributions to wildlife habitat in our state and living conditions for her fellow citizens.

That the friends with whom I reminisced, a nurse and physician, have quite literally saved people's lives.

That my dues for the space and resources I've consumed thus far remain to be paid. Time draws short to get it done.

Everyone gets a trophy

Back in the dark ages when I was 16, most teenagers took drivers ed in school. I was among them. I sat in a classroom listening to a teacher talk about the various rules of the road in the state driving handbook, spent the requisite number of hours in a driving simulator, drove an actual car once or twice, took a test and emerged with a valid driver's license.

To celebrate, I was to take the wheel - my dad in the front passenger seat next to me - and drive the family to a restaurant for dinner. We got maybe six blocks down the street when Dad ordered me to stop, reached over to grab the key, turn off the car and order a change of places. I spent the next several weeks driving around a nearby parking lot under his watchful eye and only when he thought I was not a danger to myself and others did he let me drive on public streets again.

The state may have pronounced me good to go and issued a driver's license, but I didn't know how to drive.

I thought about that this week as Otis and I completed a series of dog (and owner) obedience classes. In seven weeks, Otis was to learn to heel, sit, sit automatically when I came to a stop, lie down, turn left and right, stay, wait and stand still (as in, when the veterinarian is examining him). The final class concluded with presentation of certificates and photo opps for each of the dogs with a mortarboard supplied by the instructor.

So, a freshly minted dog school graduate, what can he do? He will sit when I ask him to, stay (sort of) for a short while, lie down about every third time I ask and only if I have a treat. He won't wait at all, and we only really accomplish "heel" by my managing the leash.

We've made progress, but if he was driving a car, I'd take the keys away from him.

Which only continues to prove that just because you have a piece of paper doesn't mean you know what to do with it.

What a difference a week makes

So much for glorious November weather. I guess winter really is on its way.

Weekend gift

In our town, where early November is as likely to be rainy, gray and cold as it is to be balmy and bright, we've been blessed the past two weekends with an exceptional display of the latter. Sunny skies, temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s and light breezes stirring leaves of exceptional color have been Mother Nature's gift for us to enjoy before winter sets in.

And enjoy it we have. The nearby hiking trail has been filled with joggers and moms pushing strollers. Neighbors cordoned off our block last night, setting up tables for a chili cook-off and a firepit to gather 'round, and inviting residents to bring their lawn chairs, Crock Pots and coolers of their favorite beverage for conversation and calorie-consumption under the stars.

Otis and I have taken in every moment possible of these moments of autumn glory. My iPhone camera cannot do justice to the splendor, but it will have to do.

And in any case, with everything else that's gone on in the world this week, most of it punctuated by sniping both from words and bullets, it's a lot more pleasant to consider.

Birthdays

Anyone over the age of 21 knows that time passes at different rates of speed based on your age. When you're a kid waiting for Christmas, the month of December is at least two centuries long. If you're the mom organizing the family's holiday observance, it's about two days. And by the time you're my age, the whole dang year from one Christmas to next seems to fit within one 24-hour news cycle.

A related concept is the different rates at which we age. I trudge along from one year to the next, and so do the people around me every day. But people I don't see frequently, particularly young'uns, remain frozen in time, shocking my socks off when I'm forced to face the reality that they, too, have taken a few journeys around the sun, just like me.

Such has been my pondering through the month of October, as my son turned 30, the son of a dear friend turned 16, and Grace Slick, lead singer of late 60s psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane, turned 70.

The fact that my son has reached the age of distrust -- a reference no one under the age of 50 today will even recognize -- is not a surprise, since I do see him every so often, mostly when he is out of quarters for the coin laundry or food in the refrigerator. The fact that the past 30 years passed so quickly is cause for wonderment -- it really was just yesterday he was on my shoulder, being burped -- but not a nerve-jangling jolt.

The fact that my friend's son is 16 is more of a shock. To me, he's a bump in his mother's pregnant belly. At most, he's the precocious grade-schooler at a long-ago Saturday evening picnic/party, not a teenager with car keys and license to use them.

The fact that Grace Slick is 70 -- s-e-v-e-n-t-y -- is utterly beyond my mental grasp. She can't be 70, jowly and white-haired, as her "today" picture on her Wikipedia page suggests. No, she's the sultry, outspoken ex-model who made men drool and whose distinctive vocals on White Rabbit and Somebody to Love provided the backdrop to my discovery of beer as a college freshman.

If she's 70, what does that make me?

Running out of moments to live in, that's what. Time to get busy.

Ugly moment

Driving home from work this evening, I came to an intersection two blocks from my house -- one that's on my daily dog-walking route -- and encountered quite a scene. A dozen or so otherwise normal looking people, including a few children, were gathered on the corner waving signs that commanded the attention of passersby.

"God hates fags," said one. "God hates Jews," proclaimed another. "Jews killed Jesus." "Obama is a beast." "Bitch burger" (huh?) And "God is the enemy."

I'm not sure what God hating Jews and gay people has to do with Obama or burgers of any sort. I've made enough trips around the sun to know that it's a phenomenal waste of time trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. But I work in communications, so I can't help but try, when I encounter an organized effort such as this, to figure out what action the organizers hope to inspire. For the life of me, I can't fathom what they were protesting, why they were in my neighborhood, or what onlookers to this scene were supposed to do with this mish-mash of foulness, other than dismiss its perpetrators as hateful beings.

It scares me to know that people like this are out and about in society, and that they bring children with them to pass the revulsion along to succeeding generations. I'm less charitable than another small group that had gathered on the opposite corner with hastily hand-drawn signs noting that "God loves everybody, even these guys."

But I also believe in free speech, even when it's offensively spewed. So I'll support their right to spew it

But I took another route for my evening walk with Otis.

HS Reunion: Clueless in Topeka

I attended my 40th high school reunion this past weekend. It was my first-ever -- I was a new kid in a class of some 650, was shy, quiet, relatively studious and decidedly not cool, so my memories of that time are not particularly fond.

But a high school reunion is something everybody ought to experience once, and by now enough time has elapsed for life and gravity to have leveled the playing field. Plus, as a practical matter, by the 40th, you're kind of looking at a now-or-never situation.

So I went, and came away with one overarching realization: I've been absent from the moment for a very long time.

This is a picture of my high school, one that doesn't do it justice at all. It's a fabulous building, designed in 1929, built during the first years of the Great Depression and opened in 1931.

It's testament to the value the citizens of Topeka placed on the education of its young people in the 1930s. Its young white people, anyway -- the elementary school that became the focus of Brown v Board of Education is less than a dozen blocks up the street....

As I took the tour of the building arranged by the reunion committee, I saw it not only through fresh (albeit bifocaled) eyes -- I saw it for the first time. It's got interior details to die for -- marble and granite, millwork, great wood beams and doors. A 2,000 seat auditorium as fine as any you might on the register of historic places.

I spent three years in that building, walking those halls every school day, attending assemblies, pep rallies, plays and concerts in that lovely auditorium, and didn't notice the beauty around me.

Not a bit of it.

Mr. James has his work cut out for him.