To my Classmates: I thought I would take a few minutes before the warm afterglow of our reunion disappeared in the rear view mirror and share a few musings that the weekend brought to my world. First and foremost, it was entirely my pleasure and honor to be somehow dubiously anointed chairman of the reunion committee. To think that somehow 40 years after the fact that I would rise from the outskirts of the social strata to find myself standing before you all and proffering a monologue is quite a stretch for me. Funny how things come full circle. Working with the committee members was truly memorable and these people all deserve a giant thank you for their collective efforts. In my effort to keep my opening monologue brief, I only grazed the perimeter of the concept of what these reunions have been to me experientially over the decades. I’ve attended them all and as I stated, the slow segue from our young, over-inflated egos and need for affirmation giving way to our present lives, hurtling through the 3rd quarter of our lives at breakneck speed – it’s just been such a warm and fuzzy experience for me to witness. All I saw, over and over, were people engaging each other’s eyes. There seemed to be no concept of who drove up in what, what you were wearing, minimal exchange of business cards, who’s dripping with diamonds and who is dripping with tattoos. It all matters not. At the forefront was who is healthy and who is not. Who has the most life challenges and is there any way I can help. Who has walked the toughest road and how can I acknowledge that effort and be of support. It warms the proverbial cockles of my soul. Additionally, I had the pleasure of working with Roger Schramm on the memorial poster. He and I have the shared experience of being “downsized” out of our corporate lives recently. An interesting, sometimes a little scary, and definitely sobering experience at the age of 58. We are at an age of virtual unemployability no matter how polished and shiny a resume. Yes, we’re THAT old. There are few options beyond building a new company and starting yet again and frankly, it’s not how I had things planned. Building the memorial together however makes you remarkably grateful that we at the very least are present and have the ability to press on to a new adventure. So many of our compadres would certainly like to have had the pleasure. I’d like to take a moment to share a personal epiphany I had a number of years ago and encourage you all to act. I think it would be great at our next reunion if we could share some of the results. I went to Glover Junior High. Don Adams was Vice Principal. Don Adams was an imposing figure – probably early 40’s, big honkin’ guns on him, and he could hack your ass into next week. I had the great misfortune of finding myself in the business end of his paddle on more than one occasion and I might add that I deserved every stroke. On one particular occasion, I found myself in his office with 3 other people from our class. Probably caught smoking in the boys room or some such foolishness, but he hacked the other 3 and finally it was my turn. Last was always worst because he got all jacked up smacking the first 3. After he delivered my just desserts and I’m leaving, he calls my name and motions me back. I walk back with all my cocky 9th grade attitude and he says, “close the door and sit down…” I close the door and sit down and he plants both hands on his desk and leans over to me and after a moment of silence for effect, he takes a deep breath and says “Dick, why do you hang with such fools? You’re so much smarter than that. Now get the hell out of my office.” Some 25 years later, I sang at one of those people’s funeral after he was beat to death homeless under the freeway. Another died in a traffic accident high on heroin and cocaine. Funny what Don Adams saw so many years earlier. I didn’t heed his advice for a few years but did eventually. I managed to grow up and marry the most beautiful woman that ever graced the halls of Shadle Park High School and she still keeps me around to this very day – my 35th anniversary. My life has been – for the most part – exceedingly blessed. I drove by Glover a thousand times thinking “…one day I’m going to stop in there and thank Don Adams for waking my dumb adolescent self up.” I never did of course and then one day I read his obituary. I don’t remember the specific circumstances but I just recall he died far too young and I never stopped to thank him for the profound impact he had on my life. From that day forward, I have made it my quest to make sure every person whose life intersected with mine that had a positive impact on my world knows that I am grateful and that they made a difference. I have since been on a letter writing campaign and I have written literally dozens of letters to uncles, past loves, piano teachers, mentors, brothers and sisters, and of course my parents. I make sure and thank them for all that they contributed to my psyche, my emotional growth, my ethics, my morals, my view of the universe. I thank them for making me laugh when there wasn’t anything to laugh about, for making me think on my own, to problem solve and to persevere. One specific example that I am so glad I thanked my mom for – when I was a young man, in my 20’s, I had launched my first businesses, Deanette was finishing her postgraduate work and life was rolling nicely. I had a collection of friends in the legal and accounting professions and as we were all trying to spread our young wings, I found myself faced with a moral dilemma. Honestly, I can’t recall the specifics, but I remember going to my mom’s house and talking with her about it. It was a situation that I could have leveraged to my financial advantage and no one would have known but myself that it was a little slanted. My lawyer and accounting pals had no issue with leveraging a project to their advantage – turning my upbringing from a world of black and white/right and wrong – into a sea of grey. I presented this moral quandary to my mom and she did what she always did. She patted me on the knee, 3 times – always 3 times. She said “Honey, there is only one thing to do and that’s the RIGHT thing to do. ….and you know what that is.” I have carried that single statement with me my entire life. I live by that credo. I have experienced many, many disappointments in my fellow human beings and their willingness to shuffle the deck or put on a different shade of glasses dictated by a given situation. To me it has always been black and white. So how does one thank their mom for such advice? You write it down – you share how profoundly it affected you and you make sure she goes to her grave knowing that the important things stuck. So I encourage you all to do it. Do it now. Handwritten via snail mail is always best but email will work. Facebook will work. Maybe we can share some of these letters at our next reunion. Do it now as this brings me to chapter 2 of this novella. The Last Time. I’m working on a book that I hope to publish one day called The Last Time. It was inspired by another epiphany I had on June 24th, 2001. The day before my daughter got her drivers license. Reader’s Digest version of the story is that as my wife and I have chosen to live in a rural environment on some acreage, we committed to always making sure our kids didn’t feel left out. We spent many, many hours in a car both driving and waiting. The last day of my daughters 15th year, I took her and a handful of friends to town to the mall for a movie. I’m back around 11 p.m. to pick them up. It’s early summer, a light rain falls, I have half hour or so to kill in a totally vacated downtown. I got to thinking about “The Last Time…” This would be The Last Time that I pick her up and drive her home. I could savor this time. I could anticipate it, embrace it, enjoy every second of it. This also got me thinking about all of The Last Time’s that you cannot anticipate. The Last Time you say “…now I lay me down to sleep…”, The Last Time you pick one of your kids up and put them on your shoulders, The Last Time you cut up someone’s meat, The Last Time you read a bed time story, and the list is endless. The Last Time you run or snow ski because your knees just won’t do it any longer. There was The Last Time I watched a movie with both my parents – or shared a meal with them. You didn’t know it was The Last Time, it just came and went and you realized much later that that would never happen again. So, with that, we never know when The Last Time may come. So write letters. Make sure the people that have helped shape your world know that they made a difference. It is such a simple yet such a profound thing to do and you will be rewarded handsomely for your efforts. This reunion will definitely serve as The Last Time some of us will be at a reunion. Our memorial poster will grow and the circle will most definitely get smaller. Lastly, I want to share this. For better or worse, you are all indelibly woven into the fabric of Richard Palmers world. Our mutual continuums collided when we were young and here they are cautiously brushing up against each other again. I like to share little slices of literature, as I read non-stop. I was at Costco one day and picked up a book by Richard Russo - a novelist unknown to me - called Bridge of Sighs. Great photograph on the cover and if youre not aware Ill let you Google it and save you reading my feeble description here. I was going to be standing on that very bridge in Venice within a couple short weeks so I had to get this book. Im lying in bed reading and I come across a couple paragraphs that just so eloquently and succinctly summarized what I was feeling at that particular time in my life. I was new at the empty nest thing which I did not embrace with much grace and Deanette and I were heading out to Italy for an extended stay and this little passage moved me to such a degree that I have shared it with many of my contemporaries. Odd, how our view of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred doors, choose to enter one, where we’re faced with a hundred more and then choose again. We choose not just what we’ll do, but who we’ll be. Perhaps the sound of all those doors swinging shut behind us each time we select this one or that one should trouble us, but it doesn’t. Nor does the fact that the doors often are identical and even lead in some cases to the exact same place. Occasionally, a door is locked, but no matter, since so many others remain available. The distinct possibility that choice itself may be an illusion is something we disregard, because we’re curious to know what’s behind that next door, the one we hope leads us to the very heart of the mystery. Even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary we remain confident that when we emerge, with all our choosing done, we’ll have found not just our true destination but also its meaning. The young see life this way, front to back, their eyes to the telescope that anxiously scans the infinite sky and its myriad possibilities. Religion, seducing us with free will while warning us of our responsibility, reinforces youth’s need to see itself at the dramatic center, saying yes to this and no to that, against the backdrop of a great moral reckoning. But at some point all of that changes. Doubt, born of disappointment and repetition, replaces curiosity. In our weariness we begin to sense the truth, that more doors have closed behind than remain ahead, and for the first time we’re tempted to swing the telescope around and peer at the world through the wrong end – though who can say it’s wrong? How different things look then! Larger patterns emerge, individual decisions receding into insignificance. To see life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy. Or so it sometimes seems to me…. The man I’ve become, the life I’ve lived, what are these but dominoes that fall not as I would have them but simply as they must. Richard Russo - Bridge of Sighs We’ll be sending out Winey Wednesday announcements and if this thing heats up as we hope it will, perhaps we could do something more substantial quarterly or semi-annually or some such. Again, it was so lovely to see you all and I wish I had had more time to catch up with more of you. Be well and please stay in touch.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 04:53:52 +0000
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