Photo by the author of the spot in front of the Lincoln Memorial where King gave his speech
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to America 60 years ago this week. Watch the 17-minute speech from this link and read the transcript here.
I’m a 73-year-old white man who started high school in 1963. I do not remember watching, reading, or talking with anyone about this event. Not a word by my parents, teachers, or friends. Nor do I recall a class discussion about the civil rights movement at any point in the four years of high school.
From 1967 to 1971, I attended St. Ambrose, a small Catholic liberal arts college in my hometown of Davenport, Iowa. Everything changed. Many of my religion, philosophy, sociology, and history teachers brought civil rights into my life. A young professor took us to Chicago one Saturday morning to attend Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket. Muhammad Ali, unable to fight because he refused induction into the army, spoke to us in our school’s chapel.
John Howard Griffin, a white journalist, darkened his skin with medication and traveled throughout the South as a black man. He wrote about his experiences in Black Like Me and lectured about this in the St. Ambrose student union.
And Keith Fernsler, a sociology professor, assigned King’s dream speech.
Drip by drip, my eyes were opened. You might even say I was awakened to what it was like to be Black in America.
I have never recovered from that experience.
Being woke is about being alive to the lives of others.
I did not stop loving my country when I discovered its flaws any more than I stopped loving my parents when I began to see their imperfections.
Today, I find it impossible not to seek out the voices of those on the margins of our societies.
The margins in a Democracy ought to be thin places. Hard to see.
Walking through life with eyes open is the only way to see them.
Listen to Martin’s timeless message.
There is nothing to fear.
Only one American urging us toward the better angels of our nature.
You should paint like a man coming over the hill singing.
Whoever painted this took that advice to heart.
I asked my friends Scott and Nancy, who know everything and everyone in our small town. They are the prototype connectors Malcolm Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point.
They gave me the artist’s name, Tatiana Schaapherder, who lives in town.
When I asked Tatiana about this mural, she said
My sponsors gave me one word: Community.
She told me, “I wanted my painting to show all the people of my town coming together, with the tree in the middle representing growth. The cardinal on the right is the town bird and high school team name. The robin on the left honors the building owned by the Robins Nest Cafe.”
“Have you done any more murals in Clarinda? ” I asked.
Photo of Tatiana by the author
Mamá Montaña, she said.
This is Mamá’s story. It’s the story of people coming together to make street art.
It’s the story of Community.
The Artist
You’ve already met Tatiana. Currently, she is in her 4th year of college studying Art Education. Born in Clarinda, she has traveled widely, including Tanzania, Japan, St. Croix, Germany, and, last year, Costa Rica, where she got the idea for Mamá Montaña which means Mountain Mama.
She has painted 16 murals in three countries, including for her accommodation in Costa Rica.
When I asked why street art, she said
It’s my favorite art because of how transformative it is to space.
The Building
This is Mamá’s space before Tatiana and Chelly.
Photo by Chelly Kendrick
The building is owned by a local realtor and rented by Chelly Kendrick, who moved back to Clarinda two years ago from Rapid City, South Dakota, to open Kendrick Station, a spa, beauty, and personal care business.
Chelly asked the building’s owner about painting the outside, and he said, “That’s fine; just don’t paint the brick.”
Because Chelly had also traveled to Costa Rica, when she met Tatiana, she felt comfortable saying, “Follow your vision for this space.”
Here is that vision.
Photo by Chelly Kendrick
The Patron
“Can I borrow your building as a canvas?”
Trish Bergren, Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum Director, has asked several local business owners this question. Carnegie helped pay for Mamá Montaña.
She told me finding an artist with a vision that honors the space was challenging but that once she met Tatiana, she looked forward to “watching her fly.”
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Beckie Finch, Executive Director of the Clarinda Foundation, catalyzed The Community Tree Mural. She worked with the building owners and approached Tatiana with the one-word idea: community.
Now, when she walks by The Community Tree mural, she thinks
When we think of growth, roots, beauty, peace, change, or an interpretation entirely personal, our mural represents community, our community.
Now, when I walk by, art mimics life, the life of our community.
Two days ago, my partner Rebecca and I met 18 friends in a small town about 40 miles from home for two days of biking, kayaking, and dining.
Our friends traveled for five hours and booked rooms at the Stone Mill Hotel. We met them in the hotel’s breakfast room, just inside the two doors you see in the photo, early on the second day. We reserved space for the night because we’d be biking all day.
I noticed the yellow convertible when we pulled our red car into a parking space across the street from the hotel. What a funky little car, I thought. So, I snapped this picture.
Early the following day, before anyone else was up, I sat at a table next to the two windows to the right of the green doors with my MacBook Air, writing a Medium story. It’s about 6:30. I know coffee and breakfast fixings will be ready soon. I hear someone in the little preparation room I had noticed the day before.
I looked up from my Mac and outside and saw the little yellow car back in its slot. Maybe its owner was the breakfast guy I noticed the day before when I snuck a banana before mounting my bike. I had seen him quietly moving around the room while our group finished breakfast.
Sure enough, when I checked the coffee carafes, there he was. I followed him back into his cubicle and asked, “Is it your yellow car?” He looked over his left shoulder and said, “It’s an old guy trying to be young.”
When he returned with the decaf carafe, I offered that I also liked his personalized license plate. He looked at me, “Are you interested in a story.”
Bobby’s story
Twenty years ago, he had purchased his first Mazda Miata, another yellow convertible. This was a few years before his first wife was diagnosed with cancer. She didn’t like the car and wouldn’t ride in it until she got very sick.
It took the cancer five years to kill her. Bobby took care of her at home. When the pain permitted, she learned to like short trips around town in the little yellow car with the wind caressing her face.
Bobby drove the little car headlong into another car two years after she died. “It was neither driver’s fault, just a crazy intersection,” he said. “Our cars were totaled, but we walked away with cuts and bruises.”
Today, Bobby is retired, lives with his second wife, and manages the hotel breakfast room for two hours every morning.
A few years ago, he bought another little yellow Miata with a license plate that honors his first wife. His second wife of 15 years, whom he met online, also doesn’t like little cars.
Photo of Bobby by the author
In case you can’t read it, the quote by Robert Louis Stevenson off Bobby’s right shoulder reads:
To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.
*
When our group filtered into the breakfast room, Bobby enlivened our pre-biking time with a constant chatter that was absent the day before.
Yellow is the least popular color for American cars. (source) Very few Americans own sports cars and even fewer convertibles, particularly in Iowa and Minnesota.
Ten days ago, the class of nine had just settled into seats when our teacher Jay described the theme of the three-day photography workshop*.
Most students were like me, with thousands of photos on their phones — 7,293 for me — and little fundamental understanding of what we were up to when clicking.
Jay’s three-word introduction resonated with me. I taught Politics to college students for 40 years. In the first meeting of all my classes, I would tell them that successful politicians create compelling stories about what matters most to their constituents.
Our class’s first activity was a visual critique. Jay put up a photo and asked us to list the first thing that came to mind in our notebooks. After nine different opinions, he offered the second insight:
Every photo-story idea is correct.
Similarly, I suggested to my students that the objective truth of a politician’s story was often irrelevant to its success as a political strategy.
So armed with a few insights from Jay, including holding my camera close to my body, I’ve wandered my community this past week searching for visualimages that yearn for a voice.
That helps me understand my life.
The Fullness of Time
The first photo was taken last Thursday at the opening ceremony of Nordic Fest. Norwegians founded my Decorah, Iowa, community in the mid-19th century. You can read the official story of the three-day festival honoring this heritage here.
But my story is about time slipping away. Nordic Fest happens the last whole weekend in July. For a former teacher, the beginning of August meant the end of summer. It still does.
Summer just blinked itself away.
I feel the same about my life in this little corner of Iowa.
I took this photo yesterday at daybreak. It reminded me of my first early morning walk 38 years ago in my new community.
Photo by the author
My first day in Decorah had been hot and humid, so the following morning offered fog that lifted from the dewed ground.
On that first morning, I could not see all that would become: marriage, a child, an academic career, travel, friends, students, a divorce, a blossomed mature relationship, and retirement. And so much more. The fog was the story.
Yesterday, the sun slowly burned away the low-lying cloud. By evening, I could see the movement of my life beyond its details. Clouds on the ground hide — clouds in the sky illuminate.
This is what is meant by the fullness of time.
Photo by the author
The Everyday Mode
However, before that enlightenment, life intervened. First, our downstairs toilet, which had been sputtering, died.
Photo by author
Thirty minutes on YouTube convinced me the problem was the fill valveunder the red cap. Ace Hardware, two blocks away, had a cheap replacement valve. But the ten steps the DIY Replacing All Internal Toilet Parts channel laid out suggested it would take about an hour.
So instead, I walked another block to our go-to plumber. Amazingly, Mike was between big jobs and met me back at the house. Ten minutes later, he had replaced the blue flapper piece after announcing fill valve was healthy.
Thankfully, the toilet was repaired before Jonathan and Irene arrived. That’s seven years old Irene below, standing before her namesake at our local Co-Op.
Photo by author
Jonathan is Rebecca’s son, and Irene is one of her seven grandchildren. They, daughter-in-law Suzanne and newborn Alice were visiting from Houston, Texas.
Yesterday was full of what psychotherapist Irving Yalom** calls the everyday mode, how things are in the world. Toilets need to be fixed, and grandchildren must be entertained. Most of our days are filled with daily details. Often they are problems that must be solved.
Much of our time is gobbled up, doing the things that move us from A To B throughout the day.
But there’s another perspective, what Yalom labels ontological. This is not about the how of life but the miracle that life is: my life and yours.
Mortality
A leaking toilet is one thing; the finiteness of life another. Whenever something comes to an end, like this summer, I briefly move from everyday mode to ontological. That’s why I took the Nordic Fest photo.
I ask myself, how many summers do I have left?
Fortunately, we live next to a cemetery.
Photo by the author
Whenever the everyday mode gets too much, I wander around this place. Thinking about death forces me to follow my how many summers question with this one.
Please take a look at what’s in our freezer today: slivered almonds, a pound of Italian sausage, Oatmeal bread, grated parmesan cheese, a quart of homemade chicken broth, and a half pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia that won’t last the day.
I trust you.
However, we lock our doors to keep burglars from coming in and stealing our Cherry Garcia. As you know, crooks no longer have to invade homes to steal something valuable. A month ago, I wrote about a guy who stole my debit card information in Washington, DC.
This creep took $41.34 from me, reimbursed by the credit card company. In today’s world, personal information theft is more costly than Cherry Garcia burglaries. (source). It probably has or will happen to you. And to me, again.
A few months ago, a friend Mark (not his real name), received a payment book for a Harley Davidson Motorcycle purchased in his name with money borrowed from a Cincinnati bank. Mark estimates he spent 30 hours on the phone filling out reports with Harley Davidson, the bank, and his local police department. Eventually, he signed a form from the bank that released him from the fraudulent loan.
Mark has yet to learn how the villain got his full name, address, social security, and login number for the credit agency. But he took a straightforward step to ensure this did not happen again. Instead of 30 hours, it took him 30 minutes. He suggested I do the same, and yesterday I did.
I went to each website of America’s three credit reporting agencies, linked below.
I created an account for each, with a username and password. I then followed the well-marked steps to freeze the credit reports issued by each of these agencies. There is no cost to freezing your credit. No unauthorized party can open a credit line using my personal information.
Tomorrow, if I want to borrow money to buy a new freezer to store more Cherry Garcia in my garage, I will log in to each and lift the freeze for the day. I can even schedule a freeze-pause ahead of time.
And then, I will purchase a security system for my garage.
I heard the trucks this morning at 4 AM for the first time in a few months. Early morning 4–6, is my precious writing time.
And street sounds during the summer are my alarm clock.
The photo explains why my ears were alerted.
The three blobs are the cerumen wax from my right ear. The little speck? Read on.
Yesterday, a nurse irrigated my ears for the 64th time in my 73 years.
The work is done once a year, usually in the summer.
The first time was when I was eight, at the Northwest Davenport Clinic on 4th Street, just down from the railroad tracks.
I don’t remember what the nurse looked like. But I recall her showing me the large mass of wax at the end of what I would learn was a cerumen spoon. And all of a sudden, the clinic came alive with sounds, including my mother exclaiming: “you got that out of his ear.”
And the sound of my natural guardian angel placing the dime-sized globule on a tray. And the train choo-choo’ing several blocks away.
I’ve loved nurses ever since.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know I’ve had 65 summers since my first ear cleaning and 64 nurse cleanings.
In 1983, a doctor jackhammered my compacted earwax. The crime scene was a clinic in Bloomington, Illinois. The suspect was an older physician.
Like many contemporaries, I’m always on the lookout for ageism. The problem was not my doctor’s age but his unsteady hand.
There may be a link between accumulated years and a job’s physical requirements. At 73, I’m inclined to favor it’s a person-by-person issue.
Even with my ears cleaned out, my balance is not what it used to be, so I’ve stopped climbing the ladder to clean our gutters. But my 75-year-old neighbor Al reshingles his roof with aplomb.
Could most 80-year-olds manage the demands of the American Presidency? I’m doubtful. Can the person Joe Biden? He has, and thus he can.
But enough about doctors and men. This story is about nurses.
With some repeats, I’ve had about 50 different nurses in 64 cleanings. Everyone has been a woman. Today, 13% of American nurses are men. Rebecca’s son Jonathan is a nurse practitioner. Maybe I’ll have him or them someday, but not yesterday.
She walked into the room following a soft knock and a courtesy pause.
Fortunately, my chair was next to the door.
She laid the tray of instruments next to the sink and said, “I’ve warmed the water.”
Which melted my heart.
“Do you like cleaning out ears,” I asked.
“I like to see the immediate results of my work,” she said.
So true, I thought, and rare in my former profession, college teaching.
She was a float nurse, not my doctor’s nurse, who had competently cleaned the last few years.
As Diane placed a towel over the left shoulder, she said to stay sitting in the chair as she was short.
“Let me know if the water is too warm or cold,” she said as she gently placed the syringe in my ear.
Four squirts in each ear usually do the job, with one or two checks with the otoscope. A little water always spills. I always ask to see the build-up. Occasionally, a little piece hangs back.
Nurses that love this work are perfectionists. With a surgeon’s touch, Diane used the q shaped cerumen spoon to lift that tiny “4th” wax piece out.
My father died in 1993, but Cousin Jim talked to him three years ago. Jim retired from careers in human resource management and college teaching. Jim is one of the most rational and thoughtful people I know. And he’s had diabetes since he was 16.
On the day Jim talked with my dad, he was home alone. His wife Linda was out shopping. Knowing his blood sugar was low, Jim was in the kitchen headed toward orange juice in the refrigerator when he collapsed and lost consciousness.
He estimated that he was on the floor for three minutes before Linda arrived and revived him. During those moments,
I went to a very crowded place. Lots of people of all Different races and ethnicities wait in a crowded line. I got in line, and gradually, we moved ahead to what I can only describe as Gates. At the gates, I was met by your dad. He told me that I must go back. “Your work is not done,” he told me in a commanding voice.
Three years later, Jim considers this event one of the most vivid of his life. He says today that my father’s words were explicit and directed at him. And that they influenced the way he lives. Jim’s experience was as natural to him as the orange juice Linda used to bring him back from where he was. Linda still thinks it was low blood sugar, period.
What do I believe? The late theologian Marcus Borg wrote in The Heart of Christianity of thin places “as anywhere our hearts are open.” A thin place can be religious, for example, a sermon, or secular, like nature.
Several days ago, at 5:16 am in southwest Iowa, I took this photo of the quarter moon that had just become visible behind clouds and trees. Borg said thin places can be anywhere.
But we have to look.
When we see, we connect to something beyond ourselves. Borg calls it “The More.”
I stopped at a convenience store yesterday to buy the summer’s first sweet corn. That’s the farmer’s maroon truck at 3 o’clock. When I pulled my car up, the corn lady was over by a pump talking with a big, bearded guy whose dog was lying on the car’s hood while he pumped gas.
I bought four ears of corn. And then walked over and asked the fellow if I could photograph his dog. He said yes, and moved behind me so my subject would follow him for the proper pose.
When the canine stood up, I saw Cotton’s rag.
I grew up in America in the 1950s. My dad always stopped for gas at a Standard Oil service station on Locust Street run by Cotton. Red-faced Cotton never wore a hat and had fair hair. He seemed to be my dad’s age.
Cotton would pump gas, check under the hood, and wipe windows. His red, white speckled rag hung out of a back pocket. It squeaked as he scrubbed the front windshield.
His business had two pumps with just enough room on each side for one car. A hose was laid across the concrete that announced a customer with a ding ding. I never saw anyone but Cotton service our vehicle.
Dad and Cotton seemed to be friends. They always chatted. My dad was an engineer and knew cars inside and out.
And then, suddenly, we stopped getting our gas at Cottons. I didn’t ask my dad what happened.
Clothes don’t make the man. The man makes the clothes. And that matters.
“What butt?”
That’s what my partner Rebecca said when I asked her to take a picture of my behind.
I didn’t want to ask my friend John. He’s got the opposite problem.
I’m taking a three-day photography workshop at our local college. Most of the other students are women my age. Tomorrow, we are taking portraits of a photo partner. Maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.
And my 31-year-old- son’s backside is even smaller.
So I’m stuck with me for the photo op.
You see the problem, don’t you?
My normal-sized photography instructor says a picture is worth 1000 words. I’m putting his theory into practice.
Did you know men lose 5% of muscle mass every decade after 35? (source)
That’s 20% for me thus far. For my keister, that’s .20 X 0 = 0.
Soon my fanny will be in negative numbers.
Why does this matter?
*
In Fall 2022, Rebecca wanted to take this photo of me from her grandson Elan’s Bar Mitzvah. I look presentable, don’t I?
Photo by Rebecca Weise
Yes, that’s a Jerry Garcia tie. Thank you for noticing. I’ve got a little collection.
Photo by the author
I never listened to Garcia’s Grateful Dead. I don’t like Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. But I love the funkiness of Jerry’s ties.
I wore a tie daily when I started teaching at Luther College in 1985. During that first year, at least five men across campus, including two in my department, Political Science, asked why a tie. At first, I was surprised by the question. Then, irritated.
In the first faculty meeting, I looked across a room of 150 faculty, 70% men. Ten years from retirement, Harland Nelson in the English Department sported a bow tie. And a couple of guys from Accounting looked like business executives. And me.
College faculty are as vulnerable to peer pressure as any other group. Eventually, some of these people would decide my tenure fate. My concession to the informal dress police eventually became the Garcia tie that debuted in 1992.
As you glimpsed, I still wear Garcia’s five years after retirement.
I like to look good. And this desire is fueled by an incident that occurred 50 years ago.
*
My best college buddy, Barrie, was married in 1972. I attended the wedding but was not one of the groomsmen because when arrangements were made months earlier, we expected I would be in basic training with a low draft number. Why that didn’t happen is a story for another time.
I came to Barrie and Mary Ann’s summer ceremony bummed at not being integral to the action and dressed in a ratty ill-fitting sport coat. My girlfriend, Donna, was a bridesmaid, so I sat alone in the steamy church feeling sorry for myself. And vowing never, ever to be underdressed again.
So ties tend to my higher torso. And shirts usually fit, especially now that my aging muscle mass has dropped from a medium to a trim size with a better sleeve fit on this 5’7″ frame.
The problem is the lower torso. Doesn’t this look like an x-ray of me?
If I wear pants with my actual waist size, 34″, it looks like I have a tail. But a slim fit, stretch fabric, 32″ waist pant that sits just above my hips swaddles my backside without cutting off circulation.
So the low-rise jean look in the first photo seems the optimal solution to my disproportioned torsos.
Should clothes matter to the older man?
I have a friend, Harland. He’s the bow-tied, Professor of English I mentioned above. Harland just turned 98. He lost his wife, Corinne, three years ago. He lives in an Assisted Care apartment and still drives his Prius to Thursday breakfasts with other retired faculty. For formal occasions, I still see him clad in a bow tie. But his everyday uniform is a button-down Oxford shirt and khakis.
The uniform fits the man. “That’s Harland,” I think when I see him.
During my first years as a college professor, I was stubborn about my Jerry Garcia ties because it was a look I chose. I didn’t know Harland at the time, but I assumed, as the only bow-tier, he had faced the same pushback from some of his peers. Yet, he persisted. As did I.
My ego has now traveled south in retirement, lodged in my bottom. After experimentation, I finally found a reasonable solution for my aging body.
Photo of the Winneshiek County Fairgrounds two days before the 2023 fair began
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Last night, my partner Rebecca turned on the big attic fan. It produced a deep humming, white noise, perfect for sleep. In the 1950s, my parents put a large fan in my bedroom before they bought the first air conditioner. It made the same sound. I still recall my father coming into the room early to turn the fan switch from high to low — a soft hum that eased us to morning.
So I woke this morning refreshed and thinking about beginnings — and A Beginning.
Beginnings
I’ve always loved beginnings.
Maybe it’s because I’m firstborn. I was there at the start of my parents’ family. I absorbed the specialness of it all. Everything was new, possible, waiting to be experienced.
Seventy-three years later, I arrive at basketball games early to watch warmups. Can I pick out the starters for the visiting teams? How do the coaches interact with their players? Does one group have more energy than the other?
An exciting part of the six Bob Dylan concerts I’ve attended is watching the crew set up the stage after the warm-up act departs.
Every instrument is placed in a precise place. Because Dylan is famous for changing playlists, I delight in watching the same ponytailed guy replace one piece of paper with another on whatever surface will be closest to Bob. When all seems ready, the crowd quiets. Waiting. Even the memories give me chills.
Rebecca and I attended a Marine retirement ceremony two weeks ago at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. Rebecca’s son-in-law, Colonel Jason Schmidt, was retiring. I took this photo a minute before the ceremony commenced.
Photo by the author
*
A setup crew of young soldiers had placed all 50 state flags on their bases. The tallest made sure the crescent tops were positioned correctly. One top kept sagging, and he kept tightening until it finally obeyed.
About 15 minutes before the start of the ceremony, a Marine quartet played eclectic music. Every musician acted with fidelity as if her task was the most important in the world. And the perfect beginning to Colonel Schmidt’s final salute as an active duty Marine.
I took the opening photo the Sunday before this year’s Winneshiek County Fair. I love fair time. We live four blocks from the grounds. The streets are bursting with energy. Tattooed carnies walk by our house. Groups of teenagers stroll past in the early evening.
We are bikers, and The Decorah Trout Run Bike Trail borders the grounds. We watch the farm kids, and their parents bring animals into the buildings the week before the fair.
However, I don’t visit the swine barn because what I most look forward to when seeing the fair is this:
Photo by the author
*
A Beginning
As I’ve gone through life, I’ve learned that there are beginnings and then Beginnings.
I will co-teach a Life Long Learning seminar on Death and Dying this fall. This will be my 51st year of teaching. I retired from 36 years on a college campus in 2018. But my first teaching job was with 44 sixth graders in 1972. I had extended my college deferment one year to get a teaching certificate to stay out of the Vietnam War draft. By then, the need for inductees had abated to put me out of harm’s way.
So I’ve always thought I became a teacher out of circumstance. Without a low draft number, I would have done something else. I never felt I was natural-born.
And then, last Sunday, my sister-in-law Linda showed me this photo at a family gathering.
A photo of me and my younger brother Peter from a family album.
*
That’s me on the left, with my little brother Peter. When Rebecca saw this photo, she said, “I’ve seen this teaching gesture by one of your hands many times.”
Here it is in a Life Long Learning seminar I taught in the fall of 2022.
Photo by Rebecca Weise
*
And again, one year earlier, from our apartment in Timișoara, Romania, when I was teaching an online course to Romanian students.
Photo by Rebecca Wiese
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A New Beginning
There’s no date on that photo of me and Peter. I’m guessing 1955 when I’m six, and Peter is four. We grew up in an era when children were seen and not heard. Who knows what that gesture of mine meant? Or who it was directed at? Maybe my left thumb hurt.
But here’s the thing. I’ve always felt comfortable in front of a group of students. Something was there from the beginning. I didn’t see it.
A talent I thought I had created out of whole cloth was, instead, uncovered.
What difference does this make?
Confidence.
I was not a good student until I was 27 and in graduate school. Most of my colleague teachers were always among the best.
I felt like I didn’t quite belong for half a century.
I might have begun an alternative story if I had seen this photo 50 years ago and taken more chances throughout my career. Less tentative, more decisive.
I eventually became a confident teacher. But I felt I had to outwork everyone else. There’s nothing wrong with this.
Except it builds a habit of defensiveness.
I’m now trying to break with the help of that confident, youthful gesture.
