Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get all new-agey on you. I just happened to see this horoscope while I was working on the sudoku next to it in the newspaper. I’m not into astrology. I’m more into Astro from The Jetsons.
But that horoscope is all wrong. I don’t want new friends. I just want to see my old friends more often. To share a laugh or three… and perhaps a beer or three. To swap stories of happiness… mixed the occasional tale of woe.
I don’t really think there’s such a thing as “new friends.” When they’re new to you, they’re just acquaintances. They haven’t earned their friendship stripes yet.
The bonds of true friendship can only be forged over time. Through thick and thin. Old friends know where you got your scars, and they know how to keep a secret. They’ve learned to accept your foibles and flaws… or at least overlook them. They reach out. They show up when you need them most.
With old friends, you can go months, even years, without seeing them, and still not miss a beat when you finally do catch up. Now that the pandemic is finally – blessedly – subsiding (masks off, but fingers crossed), I’m looking forward to reconnecting with some old friends.
We are called to assist the Earth to heal…indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.
Wangari Maathai
How much better would our coronavirus response have been if we approached it as part of a larger family of life? How many wars over borders wouldn’t happen if we realized that we are all brothers and sisters? How many species would’ve been saved from extinction?
We can make the earth a better place… accent on the “We.”
Last Sunday was Mother’s Day, which really cheats moms out of 364 days per year of the respect they deserve. But it’s better than nothing.
My mom died young (she was 33 – I was 3), so I’d like to start my own little annual celebration called “Other’s Day” to honor all the folks who stepped into the Grand-Canyon-sized breach after my mom passed away.
The list is mostly women, yet it starts with a dude… but not because I’m trying to reinforce any sort of patriarchy. My dad had to take on both parental roles starting when his kids were ages 6, 5, 3 and 2. No easy task. He worked sporadically (at best) but was mostly a stay-at-home dad back in the day when “stay-at-home dad” didn’t really exist as a role, and certainly didn’t have the street cred it has now. God bless him.
We spent several childhood summers living with my Aunt Virginia and her family in Houston, Texas. She and her husband (Uncle Don) had five kids of her own, yet somehow managed to add my three siblings and me to the mix for three months of the year without missing a beat. God bless ’em.
We were as well-behaved as the kids in this clip…
My other Aunts – Pat on my dad’s side, Inez and Rosetta on my mom’s side (the Italian part of the family, in case you couldn’t tell by the names) also provided room and board (which included heaping helpings of love) whenever we’d head back to New Jersey for a visit. God bless ’em.
My sister Jeanne had to take on a lot of extra responsibilities as the oldest child (and oldest female) in a motherless home. Heck, she drove my older brother and me to high school every day for two years… which may not seem like that big a deal until I mention the fact that our Catholic high school was 60 miles away from our house. I’m no math whiz, but that’s a 120-mile round trip. Every. Friggin. Day. In a hooptie car, no less, like an ancient Chevy Bel-Air with the rusted floorboards and no heat. God bless her.
In grade school, the school “lunch lady,” Mrs. Rinke, used to surreptitiously slip us the peanut butter sandwiches that were leftover from lunch as we were heading to the public library after school. It was an unspoken acknowledgement that she knew cash was tight at our house. In hindsight, I’m not sure those sandwiches were really “leftover” at all… she probably made them specifically for us out of the kindness of her heart. God bless her.
In high school, I spent a ton of time at my best friend Mark’s house, often staying there for the weekend instead of making the 60 mile trek back to our house. Mark’s mom Dixie (if that isn’t an Arkansas name, I don’t know what is) put up with our high school shenanigans, offered wise counsel (which we usually promptly ignored) and treated me like a member of the family. God bless her.
After college, when I was living on my own in my sparsely furnished studio apartment (ah, the benefits of a meager radio station salary), there was Billie Jean (not the Michael Jackson one). She was (and still is) heavily involved in outreach for the church where I attended Sunday services. She quickly picked up on the fact that I was a “stray” in Cincinnati (my nearest relative was 600 miles away) and started inviting me over to join her and her family, not just for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but also for random family outings. God bless her.
Later, when I went from on-air DJ at a tiny station in Oxford, Ohio to glorified errand boy for a cluster of corporate conglomerate radio stations in Cincinnati, I needed a cheap place to stay (ah, the benefits of trading one meager radio station salary for another). My friend and co-worker Kate let me stay at her townhouse. In exchange for watching her dogs when she went out of town (she was in national sales ), I got my own bedroom and bathroom on the first floor, home-cooked meals, and my “rent” was so dirt cheap it was laughable. The townhouse was a half-mile from the stations too, so I could ride my bike to work. I was able to pay off my college loans and credit card debt and finally get on decent financial footing, all thanks to Kate’s kindness. God bless her.
There are several other “Other’s” who should be celebrated… the myriad folks who were kind to our family over the years. But I’ll wrap up here because my memory ain’t what it used to be.
Yes, Mothers deserve more kudos than they get… but for me, so do the Others.
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
Kurt Vonnegut, in his book A Man Without a Country
But May has been a real Mother of a month. And last year was a bear… heck, the pandemic was just the cherry on top of the crap sundae.
One of my best friends from college had a stroke a year ago. He’s made great progress since then, but he’s still not 100%.
The same day my buddy’s wife told me about his stroke, John Erhardt, a guitarist/pedal steel player in two bands whom I adore (Ass Ponys and Wussy), passed away at age 58 after battling mental health issues. Four days later, the 18-year-old son of a friend from my radio days passed away after battling depression and anxiety. And Scott Hutchison, lead singer/songwriter for the brilliant band Frightened Rabbit, took his own life on May 9th of 2018 after battling… you guessed it… depression and anxiety.
It seems a cruel twist of fate that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Then again, maybe not. It’s an uncomfortable topic, but mental health challenges are a reality for millions of people.
The more we talk about it, the easier it is to break the stigma, and the easier it becomes for those in need to reach out.
A year-plus of pandemic isolation certainly doesn’t make it easier to deal with underlying mental health issues. But spring is a season of hope, right? So if you’ve got some hope to spare, please share it. And if things seem hopeless, please reach out.
The worldwide web (remember when we called it that?) is wonderful for helping us connect. It also can be infinitely overwhelming and a colossal waste of time. It’s all in how you use it. Don’t just be a looker, be a learner.
“You can’t expect somebody to become a biologist by giving them access to the Harvard University biology library and saying, “Just look through it.” That will give them nothing. The internet is the same, except magnified enormously.
The person who wins the Nobel Prize in biology is not the person who read the most journal articles and took the most notes on them. It’s the person who knew what to look for. Cultivating that capacity to seek what’s significant, always willing to question whether you’re on the right track, that’s what education is going to be about, whether it’s using computers and internet, or pencil and paper and books.”
It’s not just the ol’ interwebs we’re talking about. It’s what we read, what we watch, what we listen to. It’s easy to stuff your senses with “stuff”… but the key is knowing how to sift. You can find whatever you’re looking for… so what are you looking for? This concept doesn’t just apply to learning; it applies to life in general.
Artwork by Austin Kleon
The Noam Chomsky quote came my way via the James Clear 3-2-1 newsletter. The Amy Krouse Rosenthal tweet was highlighted in Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter. Both are worth your attention. And if you have yet to read Amy Krouse Rosenthal‘s books Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, seek them out.
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