Thank You, Stephen King

Cristin Bruggeman is going to be a successful novelist in the not-too-distant future. Who knows – maybe she’ll even be famous with adoring fans anxiously awaiting her next work, adapted movies, and the whole nine yards.

Cristin is my daughter, and her potential to become a great writer is one thing I like to believe she inherited from dear old dad. But she is way ahead of her dad in realizing that potential. She is wrapping up rewrites on her second novel and has interest from at least one publisher. And she already has an idea about her next project.

Dad, on the other hand, still has little more than “concepts.” If things continue on their present course, “potential” will be dad’s only claim to fame.

I’m not going to delve too much into the reasons why so many years of potential have gone unfulfilled. It’s all in the past anyway; can’t change that. But it is a source of embarrassment and sadness. For a long time, I suppose, I was just uninspired, or too busy with other things like working for a living. I know that there was a time when I decided that I just wasn’t good enough, so why bother trying?

And for some years closer to the present day, I guess I looked at all those lost years, reasoned that there just wasn’t much time left, and figured there was no point in trying if I hadn’t been able to budge myself to write – really write – for the majority of my adult life. It’s like a lot of things in recent years: I’ve been in a “it’s almost over anyway, so why bother?" mode.

That’s a bad mode to be in. It affects everything in your life, and not in a good way. I thought about that a bit earlier this morning while looking at my utterly disgusting naked form in a full-length mirror (damned hotel). But I got over that pretty well after I returned to the miracle of clothing. Still, I really need to do something about that disgusting naked form, while there still might be time.

Enter Stephen King

I have never read one of Stephen King’s books. I should slap myself for that. Maybe I was just never interested much in his particular genre of horror-mystery (or mystery-horror… whatever). But he is a self-made master of the novel, and to have not read at least some of his work is a kind of literary heresy.

A few years ago, Cristin gave me one of his books as a birthday gift – not a novel, but a book he wrote about writing. I was appreciative, and I took a cursory look through some of the pages. Then it found a place on my bookshelf to collect dust along with my Russian-language texts and a few other assorted books that I thought I’d like to read but rarely have found time for.

A couple of months ago I took some small steps toward renewing my interest in writing. Maybe it was a New Year resolution thing (I don’t really remember) or maybe it was the encouragement of a friend and a feeling that I’d like to reward that encouragement with some real effort – finally. I took a serious look at my old story ideas that had been collecting virtual mold and even came up with a few new ones. After doing a little survey, I settled on one to start.

But my first foot forward was still not finding solid ground. I pumped out an opening scene and then went blank, a victim of my own writer’s block, work demands, and the lure of the Internet. As I wrote in a recent blog post about writing, I was still finding it very hard to get myself moving with the requisite sense of urgency.

About a month ago, I took that Stephen King book off the shelf and started reading. The first half of the book was a partial autobiography of King’s early years. It was interesting, but not riveting. I made slow progress with the book. But the second half has hooked me.

In the second half, King gives so much great information and advice about writing that I’ve been almost stunned. I only have a bit left to read, and I’ll probably finish it before I depart Frankfurt for Denver (I am flying to Frankfurt now). As I’ve been taking in all of King’s ideas and sage advice, I’ve resolved to do three things: 1) boil it all down to a bullet list of the things I need to put into action and keep in mind as I write, 2) create an effective writing space once I return to Kharkiv, and 3) decide who my “Ideal Reader” is.

The Advice

King discusses obvious things like the need to read a lot and write a lot (I’ve been deficient in both areas), notice what’s good or bad in other writers’ work, develop vocabulary, avoid bad constructions, and be correct but not overly anal about grammar (which I know I am – anal, that is).

He also showed me a lot about story vs. plot and how one can get so focused on outlining a plot and sketching characters that the real story gets lost. And he gives a great formula and some practical rules for doing the first draft and then the second. He talks about writing the first draft quickly with the “door closed,” letting it stew for a month or two, and then going to the second draft with the door open. Great advice.

King introduced me to the idea of the “Ideal Reader,” one particular person for whom you sort of unconsciously write the story. The Ideal Reader is the first person to read the draft when it’s ready and the one you trust most to give you the kind of feedback that helps you to make effective corrections. I think I know who my Ideal Reader is, but I have to stew on that a bit.

Anyway, Stephen King’s advice has come to me at just the right moment, a moment when I’m getting more serious about my writing than at any point in my life. It’s true that I’ve let way too much time go to waste, and there’s no telling how much time I have left, but hell, I could have been hit by a pineapple cart when I was 27. So who can say really how much time any of us has. Might was well get busy.

So, I am very thankful to Stephen King. And in gratitude, I fully intend to start reading his work as soon as I can download a few of them to my Kindle.

And I am especially thankful to – and proud of – my prodigal daughter, Cristin. Maybe someday, if I work hard and apply myself, dad can walk in his daughter’s footsteps.

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Side Note: For those who think I might be siding with a "liberal loon" for displaying my appreciation for Stephen King's talents, I want to be clear that while his political views are almost 180-out from mine, that has nothing to do whatsoever with his mastery of the writing craft. He and I would argue until the cows come home about politics, but that has nothing at all to do with the craft of storytelling in print. We shouldn't refuse to acknowledge genius just because we don't like the person's political views.

And So It Begins

The alarm goes off at 2 a.m. Yes, that’s right – two frickin’ o’clock in the early morning. Even birds aren’t dumb enough to wake up this early. I have a second alarm set for 2:15, just in case I’m too numb to respond to the first one.

This was one of those moments in which you simply can NOT oversleep. And I had put in a pair of brand-new foam earplugs when I got into bed. The airport hotel is not exactly a place of divine silence, and I am easily distracted when trying to sleep. I’ve been using earplugs at home almost every night to combat the various noises that attack my bedroom and improve my odds of actually sleeping. I’m addicted now.

I am starting out on another trip to visit family and friends in the USSA. My flight from Kyiv to Frankfurt is at 06:30. It’s 04:45 now, and I am all checked in and relaxing in an airport priority lounge. Here it’s actually quite calm and relaxing, a far cry from the normal hub-hub of the departure concourse with lots of people, lots of noise, and terminally uncomfortable seats.

As a result of opening some premium accounts at my Kharkiv bank, I got a Priority Pass card, which give me access to the business lounge. I need to send a thank you to my personal account manager at the bank. There are only a few people here, the food and coffee are free, it’s nicely air-conditioned, the rest rooms are clean, and the seats are comfortable enough that I can even lie down if I want. Nice!

It’s early Tuesday morning in Kyiv. I’ll spare all the flight details, but by the time I arrive in Denver, get a rental car, and finally make my way to my friends’ home, this part of the trip will have taken about 24 hours. But at least it is starting out nicely in this lounge, and I have a 10-hour direct flight from Frankfurt to Denver, which is nice also. I’ve definitely had longer, and worse, trips, so this will be a piece of cake.

But back to that hotel.

I took a short hop from Kharkiv to Kyiv’s Boryspil Airport Monday afternoon. The airport hotel is only a 10-minute walk from the terminal, but the humidity in Kyiv yesterday was high enough that a soaking-wet sponge would actually suck moisture OUT of the air (and the same this morning), so I worked up a bit of a sweat walking there.

The Boryspil Airport Hotel should be regarded as a last resort. It’s cheap, and you get what you pay for. The basic rooms are small and have no air conditioning. Mine faced the setting western sun, and when I got there the drapes were open. It was hot and stuffy inside. Somehow, the humidity manages to get into the room, but the cooler outside temps do not. More sweat.

This immediately called for an open window (glass door, actually), and a trip to the restaurant for a salad and a couple of glasses of wine. Calling it a “restaurant” is being kind, but it sufficed.

The bed is adequate for one normal sized person, which I am not. But I made due. I had to take a cold shower first and then kick off most of the covers. But with the drapes closed and earplugs in, I managed to sleep for a few hours.

The shower is a thing of wonder. Anyone wider than me would NOT be able to fit into the shower stall. And even someone smaller than me would find it difficult to move around comfortably while taking a shower (children and dwarfs excepted).

At one point, I dropped my soap. It was impossible to bend over to pick it up until I finished the shower, pried myself out of the stall, and was able to reach in from outside to pick it up.

But at least the water temperature was, well… warm. For my before-bed shower, I wanted cold water anyway. But for shaving and showering in the morning, hot would have been good.

Despite the humidity, I chose to walk to the terminal instead of waiting 15 minutes for a shuttle bus. It was quiet, light was just starting to break, and the birds were finally waking up (lazy critters that they are).

Check-in, security and passport control were a breeze, and here I am. It’s 05:40 now. Boarding begins in about 20 minutes. Time to finish my latte, hit the head, and make my way down to the gate.

I’m off.

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Note: I have not had enough coffee to cast a keen editorial eye on my work, so if there are mistakes in the above text, I disavow any responsibility... for now.

The Heart is Where?

An old saying holds that “home is where the heart is.” But sometimes the larger question is, “where is your heart?”

I started thinking about this last weekend as I was contemplating my early June trip to visit family and friends in Colorado. For most of my adult life, “home” has meant Colorado. Whether it was Fort Collins during my college days, metro Denver for many years thereafter, or my mountain home in Bailey for the three years before I came to Ukraine, Colorado was the place I always returned to, the place that beckoned my soul, the place I happily called home.

But recently, I’ve not been so sure.

The “Home” that Wasn’t

I grew up in eastern Massachusetts, and although it was the only home I knew in my first 18 years, I never felt like I completely belonged there. I left as soon as possible for navy adventures in places like Guam, California and six years in Japan. And while none of those places could take on the mantle of “home,” I still didn’t really feel a home connection to the place of my birth. In my early years, I could call Massachusetts “home” for lack of a better alternative, but it never had any genuine meaning for me.

After I established myself in Colorado, I would – I could – never again link Massachusetts and home in the same sentence. When my parents referred to my visiting them as “coming home,” I would always refer to the place I grew up as “there,” "your place" or “coming for a visit.” It was always important to me to make it clear that their “home” was not mine. I spent two years back there in the mid-1990s when my father was sick (my mother had already passed away), but I always thought of that as a temporary situation, sort of like living in exile. After my father passed away, and as soon as I was able, I hightailed it back to the mountains.

The Home that Was

I fell in love with Colorado while finishing my degree at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. That small city hadn’t yet become the overcrowded, traffic-ridden mess that it is today, and living there felt perfect. I had a motorcycle and a bicycle, and “Fort Fun” was perfect for either mode of two-wheeling. I could hop on my Silver Wing and zoom off into the mountains on the spur of the moment. It was the ultimate feeling of freedom and being close to nature.

Fort Collins itself was beautiful enough that one didn’t even need to be in the mountains. Bicycling along the Poudre River – or just about anywhere else in town – was a joyful, near-nature experience. During my almost three years there, I was a runner; from spring to fall (and sometimes even in the cold of winter) I ran several times per week, never less than four miles and often as much as eight. I had a 28-inch waist, and I was in the best shape of my life.

In Fort Collins I had marvelous friends and more wonderful experiences than I can count. We were always doing something fun, from summer dinner parties and barbecues to dancing at local clubs or going off into the hills. It was truly one of the best times of my life. But of course, our college days usually feel like that.

Moving to Denver after graduation and getting into the regular working grind did take a bit of the luster off everything, but even living in that city was far better than city life just about anywhere else. Denver was a newer city, younger and more vibrant than anything on the East Coast, and at that time it wasn’t so crowded. Coloradans seemed to have a good sense of values, something that meant a lot to me. And perhaps best of all, the wild nature of the Rocky Mountains was always just a short drive away.

And to take advantage of that wild nature, I became a four-wheeler, first with a tough little Ford Bronco II and later with a couple of great Nissan trucks. I splurged on a new mountain bike and put a lot of miles on it over the years, both on the many metro-area bike paths and off-road in the mountains. Although I didn’t run as much anymore, I became a regular at several health clubs, and for a while I played a lot of organized softball.

At the health clubs I developed a great circle of friends with whom I had a lot of wonderful times and made many memories. Some of those friendships have been the longest-lasting in my life, persevering to this day even though I’ve been largely absent for the past eight years.

Perhaps best of all was my three years living in a mountain retreat home in Bailey, a little hamlet nestled in the foothills southwest of Denver. I’ve written a lot about that place, so I won’t go into great detail about it except to reiterate that it was the most peaceful place I’ve called home in my entire life. I had nature all around me all the time. It was almost perfect.

And even before I had that house, I always had the mountains nearby for camping, hiking and just experiencing nature in all its beauty. Colorado had always been good for my soul.

“Home” Away from Home?

For the past eight years, I have lived full-time as an expatriate in eastern Ukraine. With a completely different culture and language, and a climate more like Massachusetts than Colorado, it’s hard to say that Kharkiv is really “home.” Yet somehow it has managed to keep me here far longer than I ever would have thought.

Perhaps what keeps me here is just that I’ve grown accustomed to my life here, the work I do, the people I know. I mentioned in my post, Ten Years of Ukraine, that during my first visit I had the feeling that I could live here. Needing a change, I went with that feeling, and I am still living it. But I still can’t truly equate Kharkiv to “home.” Something is missing.

Maybe this is the curse of being an expat: you never have a real sense of being “home.” Not feeling grounded, at home, in their native countries is a big part of what sends expats off to seek fulfillment elsewhere. Sure, there is that romantic notion of going off for great adventures, but I’d wager that what sends most expats off to other lands is a feeling of detachment from what they had always been told was home.

And this brings me back to my original question: Is Colorado really home for me anymore?

Homewrecking

During my visits to Colorado in recent years, I’ve seen changes that sadden me. But in truth, it’s been happening longer than just the past five or so years. Metro Denver has turned into an unsightly sprawl of suburban homes and retail businesses, busy roads and masses of people. Always more and more people. The main roads into the mountains, which were crowded enough 10 or even 20 years ago, seem to be absolutely choked now, especially on weekends.

Increasingly, these people fill up the cities, and a number of them move into wilder areas, creating little communities where there used to be wildlife – wildlife that still feels that these areas are their homes. When a mountain lion, faced with shrinking habitat, wanders into some new crackerjack-box housing community in the foothills and makes off with someone’s precious little chihuahua, poodle or pomeranian, they immediately call for the authorities to track down and kill the cat. Bears who scrounge garbage barrels where there used to be wild glades of berry bushes are labeled nuisances and either relocated or killed. The people talk about “living close to nature,” but when nature does what comes naturally, they want to extinguish it. Hypocrites!

Admittedly, I also was a migrant to Colorado from another part of the country, so my rant against all these later migrants might seem a bit hypocritical at first glance. I understand that. But I loved Colorado from the beginning, and I never wanted to change Colorado to "suit" me. When I lived in the mountains and had elk, deer, foxes, and even lions and bears around, I was ecstatic. I was careful with my trash to avoid conflicts with the native residents, especially bears, and I viewed myself as a guest on their land.

During my first years in Colorado, drivers seemed to be pretty polite and considerate. But as an increasing number of people migrated from other places (especially Californians), not only have the snow and mountain driving skills of the population diminished, but road courtesy has been replaced with four-wheeled idiocy and an “it’s my road, get out of my way” attitude.

Over the decades, Colorado – and particularly metro Denver – has veered to the political left. It’s amazing how many people from other states, especially California, became dissatisfied with the mess liberal government policies made of their states and decided to escape to Colorado. And then once in Colorado, they supported the same kind of fiscal and social actions that had eventually rendered their previous homes unlivable.

Nowhere has this more apparent than with the way illegal immigration has been handled. In the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s, we had to put up with the increasing phone message, “Press one for English, presione dos para Español.” And it got worse as self-checkout lines at supermarkets began doing the same. Legal immigrants didn’t need that; it was done for the benefit of people who had broken the law and crowded into the country illegally. Businesses and even the government (at all levels) were (and are) enabling lawbreakers. Denver and other cities became “sanctuary cities,” governments that defy federal law and allow illegal aliens to be protected from prosecution for their law-breaking.

And why not? The federal government doesn’t care about the immigration laws anyway. The United States is supposed to be a nation of laws, but more and more, government – from federal to local – seems to believe that laws only apply against their political adversaries. It sounds like Ukraine.

And, yeah, Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational use of marijuana, which a lot of more conservative people think is a step toward drug hell. But I am more ambivalent about it than anything else. To be honest, being more of a libertarian, it makes sense to me to legalize and tax it.

But that aside, maybe this leftward move is the way the majority of people living in Colorado want it now. Perhaps the movement of people from other places has permanently changed the Colorado I have loved. It could be that I just don't fit in there anymore.

Often, I think that when the time comes for me to return to the U.S. (and I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately), Colorado might not be the place for me anymore. Maybe some little mountain town would still be OK. But I have my doubts. It’s occurred to me lately that perhaps Wyoming, Montana, Idaho or Utah would better suit me now. I don’t know a soul in those places, but maybe that doesn’t matter.

Where is the Heart?

We equate the heart to our feelings of love, generally meaning love for the special people in our lives. When we say that “home is where the heart is,” does it mean a place that we love? Is it about loving gorgeous mountain vistas, pastoral countrysides or the awesome power of an ocean coast? Or is it about our closest people, the ones we love most, being in that place?

If it is about the people, then what does my complete disdain for Massachusetts in my early years say about my relationship with my family? I guess that answer is pretty clear.

Colorado, perhaps, was both about love for the place and the people closest to me. At the beginning of my Colorado life I got divorced, and although there were a few short relationships along the way, there was never anyone who took my heart and kept it, and gave me hers in return. Once I thought there was, but I was wrong.

Friends filled the gap partially, but even the truest of friends can’t be all that you need. Long, dark nights alone still leave a void – a void that makes the heart want to search for something more. And a wanderer is born, an expat.

Family for me now is my two daughters, whom I do love with all my soul, and the beautiful families they are raising. But divorce in their young years, followed by living in different places, created a bit of a chasm. And now their lives are all about their own families, which is as it should be. One lives in Colorado but may well leave for another place in the near future. The other lives in Europe. So in the family respect, the Colorado cupboard is more or less bare.

Colorado still holds a significant spot in my mind and soul, but I am not sure that my heart is really there anymore.

And the same is true for Ukraine. I have friends, very good friends. But they are just friends, and there is still that void. That empty place should move me to pick up and expatriate to some other place. And I have thought about that: Ireland, Argentina… who knows? But maybe I’ve just become tired of searching. Maybe I’ve given up. 

It makes no difference; all I know is that when I look objectively at my life here, I can’t honestly say that my heart is here. Every time I allow myself to believe that perhaps my heart has found a home here, I get jolted back to the reality that it hasn’t.

It seems that my heart is not anchored to any particular place or person. Maybe I've become too accustomed to the void. Maybe my heart has died.

Knowing it by Heart

In a few days, I will be back I Colorado, the place in the world that I know the best. For a little more than two weeks, I’ll spend time with both my daughters and their families, as well as those long-tenured friends who have never given up on me even though I’ve been little more than a Facebook presence in their lives for the past eight or nine years.

I’ll enjoy the drive back and forth between the Denver and Colorado Springs metro areas, and I hope I’ll get up into the mountains a time or two. With any luck, I might even get to do a bit of camping and recapture those priceless memories of opening up to spirit in the Rocky Mountains.

And in the process, I’ll really pay attention to how I feel there. Is Colorado still the place for me? Or has it been just a Season in my life (I suppose places can be “Reasons, Seasons or Lifetimes," just as people can be)? Maybe I will find that, despite all the changes, Colorado is still the place where I belong. Or perhaps I will realize that I need to find a new “home” – if there is still time.

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My Mother

I first wrote this post in June 2015. I wanted to highlight it again this weekend, as Sunday is Mothers' Day. Unfortunately, because of a glitch in the Blogger software, I've had to repost it and remove the original post. Anyway, here it is.

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A month ago the United States and many other countries around the world celebrated Mother’s Day. It’s a day to recognize mothers for the crucial part they play in our lives. Last year, Father’s Day (which is celebrated this month) moved me to write about my own father. Now it’s my mother’s turn.

Starting at the End

My mother has been gone for a long time – more than 20 years. She died fairly young after being ravaged by diabetes. I was not there when she passed away. In fact, I had not been there at all during her illness. At that point in my life, money was tight and traveling from Colorado to Massachusetts was not an easy undertaking. So for the several years that she was mostly bedridden, I did not see her, did not see what she was going through, and was not a part of the gut-wrenching process the rest of my family went through to care for her each day.

We spoke occasionally on the phone. She tried to be upbeat and not let me in on how she was really doing. But I knew. It was clear that she was weak and tired. When I was finally prepared to go east for a Christmas visit, my mom convinced me to put it off. “The doctor says I’ll be a lot better in the spring,” she said. “Why don’t you come then so that we can have a nicer visit?”

It was what she wanted, so I agreed to wait. Sometime in March or April, she went into the hospital. She went into a diabetic coma, and although she came out of the coma before she died, the hospital was the last stop on her journey of life. In mid-June I got a phone message from my father in his uniquely weird style: “I’m calling to tell you that mother has expired. Call back when you can.”

“Expired?” What was she – a bottle of milk?

So finally I flew east – not for a visit, but for a funeral. It was open-casket, and she looked good. My aunt, her older sister, told me it was the best my mom had looked for a long time. Apparently undertakers can work wonders.

The only other thing I remember from the service was my father breaking down in tears and saying, “She was too young to go” (my father was a fair amount older than my mom). I was more shocked by his small emotional outburst than with her death. I had never seen him show much emotion in my life, and the relationship between them had always seemed “sterile,” that is, I never saw any displays of affection or signs of love between them. It was something that I know was a major disappointment in her life, and it saddened me as well.

The Saddest Thing – I Didn’t Really Know Her

What saddened me more after she was gone – and still weighs on my mind – was that my mom and I were not as close as we should have been. Looking back, I realize that I really didn’t know her, at least not like a son should know his mom.

It seems as though all I have are a small collection of childhood memories, but very little from the period after I left home. And in thinking about her, I find that I imagine more than I can actually count as fact. For all his faults, my father clearly had a greater impact on me, even if much of that impact was not positive. On some level, this seems wrong; I should be able to point to more in my mom’s life that made me who I am.

A Kind Heart

I think there are three things about my mom that are undeniable. First, she was an innately kind and gentle person. Other family members have always said this about her. Her two sisters knew her this way from their childhood together, and I’ve heard this kind of sentiment from my cousins as well. A few years after my mom passed away, one of my daughters lamented the loss of her “nana,” saying that she had been her favorite and most loving grandparent, and she couldn’t understand why the “best one had to go first.”

I remember her mostly this way as well. Of course, every mother gets frustrated and fed up with her kids’ behavior and lashes out with a little yelling from time to time, but she was mostly pretty patient with my sister and me. One of my most lasting memories is of those times when I was sick with chicken pox or something similar and had to stay home for some days. She would get me books to read and sometimes would sit and read with me. She knew it made me feel better.

Even when I was an adult, her approach was more patient and understanding. When I decided that ending my marriage was the best thing (and it was), my mom calmly tried to talk me out of it, hoping things could work out, but she never judged or spoke harshly (unlike my father). Like all parents, she wanted her children to have happy lives, but she also understood that it doesn’t always work out that way. Maybe her own unhappiness in marriage helped her to understand how I felt.

Searching for Her Spiritual Self

Secondly, she had a deep sense of spirit. Her problem, I think, was that she never found a way to express that spirituality that really worked for her. Unlike my father, my mom liked going to church. The only time my father had been in a church, that I knew of, was for a wedding. But my mother went as often as she could, not just to be seen as so many people do, but because it gave her something that her soul needed.

What I didn’t like about that as a child was that she made my sister and me go to church as well. We had to attend Sunday school and then sit with her in the service. Mostly I dreaded that, but I have to admit that, over time, I did get a certain spiritual feeling from it as well. But like her, I found that the church experience merely stirred my need for spirituality, but did not give it any real sustenance. It raised more questions than it provided answers.

Once, when a war had broken out in the Middle East, my mother was very concerned that it might erupt into something worldwide. She collected my sister and me in her bedroom and had us all get on our knees to pray for peace. At the time, I really didn’t get it. But that was just how she reacted to the situation.

She spoke of God and spirituality on other occasions, but she never found anything that really gave her peace. It seemed like she was always searching for that kind of spiritual understanding and peace, but it eluded her. Ironically, her name was Grace, and this seems to be what she was searching for all her life.

Sometimes I think that if she had had a chance to become acquainted with some Eastern spiritual practices, she might have found what she was looking for. She may, in fact, have found it at the very end. My aunt told me, after she had died, that my mom told her she was at peace, not afraid of death, and ready to be released back to the creator.

An Unhappy Life

The third thing, which is related to the second, was that she seemed to live most of her life being sort of lost and unhappy. It was clear that she was unhappy in her marriage to my father and, thus, in her life overall. But it apparently went much further back than that.

My mother never spoke much of her family life growing up (just as my father rarely discussed his upbringing). But my aunts later told me that it had not been pleasant. I know very little about their father, my grandfather, who died before I was born. But apparently their mother was an alcoholic and not an especially nice person. My grandmother died when I was about 12, and I remember her as an awful and disgusting woman whom I truly hated having to visit.

When my mom was a teen, she had to suffer the regular embarrassment of going to the store for her mother’s “bottle” and carrying it home in a brown paper bag. It fell to her because her older sister (by two years) was too strong-willed and simply refused to do it, and her younger sister (by five years) was too young. As she walked home, it seems everyone she passed knew what was in the bag and who it was for, and this was humiliating for her.

On the other hand, it was clear that their difficult family life created a close and strong bond between my mom and her sisters. Our extended family was based on those three women, their husbands and their children. We all got together often, and it was always fun. I loved my aunts, and my cousins were always great company.

Summer vacations together and especially holiday gatherings really perked my mother up, and she enjoyed herself in those moments like she rarely did in her normal home life. We rotated Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations among the three family homes, and my mom was a fantastic host, cooking up a storm and enjoying every moment of it. Those were rare islands of joy in her sea of melancholy.

Honestly, I don’t know why she married my father. But it happened. As I understand it, my mom had a romantic streak, and despite her family life, she was optimistic and, as I mentioned, a kind and friendly person. But living with my dad seemed to have taken something out of her. The two of them settled into a humdrum existence and, by all outward appearances, a loveless relationship. I believe this was a major source of her sadness.

As a young child, I do recall that she was loving to my sister and me. But as time went on, it seemed that she was less able to express her love even to her children. The emptiness of her marriage just seemed to eat a hole in her heart. Little by little, she closed up and became more depressed.

I won’t go into many details of her depression. But looking back, I can see that she pretty much gave up on having a happy life. She made one attempt when I was a teen to go out with some new work friends and have some fun, but this resulted in an ugly scene with my father. Shortly after that, I found her on the living room floor, passing out from too many sleeping pills. She recovered from that, but the embarrassment she felt from that incident just pushed her further into a state of joylessness.

When my girls came along, they were a source of real joy for her. You couldn't have found a more adoring and attentive grandmother. It was like they opened up a conduit for her real nature to come out. It was nice to see her doting over them (on the rare occasions that she got to see them) and seeming really happy.

But she got to spend precious little time with them as we all lived far apart, and visits were expensive, and rare. So she continued to contend with her usual life.

In her later years, just before she got sick, she seemed to be doing better. Perhaps she had found some kind of satisfaction or even happiness, or maybe she just accepted her life for what it was. I don’t know – we never talked about it.

Strangers, in a Way

And that’s the point: I didn’t know, and we didn’t talk enough. After I became an adult, I faulted my parents – both of them – for a lot of things. I went off to faraway places to live my own life, and I made plenty of my own mistakes. I suppose I blamed my parents for those as well. I was angry, and while I didn’t shut my parents out completely, I certainly didn’t let them into my life much. This probably hurt my mom, though she would never have said anything about it.

I guess no one could ever accuse me of being a “mama’s boy.”

So here I sit with memories of the woman who raised me, a woman who left long ago. The memories are mainly good, because that’s how I want them to be.

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The Smile Muscles

What if our mothers were right?

How often as a child, when you were upset or unhappy about something and walking around with a frown, did your mother say to you, "If you keep frowning like that, your face will become stuck that way"? It always sounded like a cheesy, "motherly" kind of saying, but maybe they understood better than we realized.

The other day, I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror. I suppose I was shaving; I mean, there aren't many other reasons why I would just stand there naked staring at myself in the mirror. As my mind wandered and considered things besides standing naked in front of my mirror, a pleasing thought came to me, and I felt myself smile. 

But then I had a bit of a shock: the face I was looking at in the mirror didn't seem to be smiling back. I had a thought, an emotion, that should have led to a smile, and on the inside I felt like I was smiling. But the face I was looking at barely cracked a smile at all. It seemed halfhearted at best.

So then I got serious; I stared intently at the mirror and worked harder at pulling my face into what appeared to be a real smile. It almost hurt. To achieve the appearance of a genuinely happy smile in the mirror, I had to really put some effort into making those facial muscles work. But in real life, I never feel like my face is working that hard. 

The conclusion then was that perhaps I never seem to be smiling in real life, even when I think I am. I wondered what other people see when I think I am happy and smiling. Do I come off as dour and unhappy all the time? When I pull my face into what seems to me like a real, happy smile, does it look to others like just a slight upturn of the lips - more sad than happy?  Do my "big smiles" just look to the outside world like little more than small cracks in an otherwise stoney and emotionless face?

I really wondered about this, and it made me consider the possibility that, just as the other muscles in our bodies can become weak and less responsive when they don't get exercise, so too our facial muscles probably suffer from atrophy if they don't get used enough. And if this is the case, then probably I just haven't had enough occasions to smile over the past years, and my smile muscles have become weaklings. I think this is true for a lot of people.

We all know people who seem to smile all the time with big grins that are happy and full of life. Maybe this is because they keep their smile muscles in great shape. The muscles are strong and can easily pull the sides of the mouth and the skin around the eyes up into a huge, natural-looking, happy face. And they probably don't feel like they are putting any real work into it at all. 

The big smilers are like the guy at the gym with the six-pack abs who has been doing crunches and sit-ups every day for so long that he can just knock out five hundred of them in a couple of minutes without working up much of a sweat. The big smilers can spend the whole day smiling and their facial muscles never get tired. 

That's actually a pretty good way to be. 

But for most of us, life seems to have gotten us down often enough and for a long enough time that either our facial muscles just become weak because we don't communicate emotion at all, or the frown and rage muscles get all the work and become the stronger group. Certainly, that's not so good.

So, if my reflective revelation has taught me anything, it's that I need to work on those smile muscles more. I need to add the smile muscles to the list of the other muscle groups that need my immediate attention: upper body, lower back, abdominals, legs. As I think about it, perhaps the smile muscles are no less important. 

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