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This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
*
James: “Sometimes I feel like I am doing penance.”
Edward: “How long was your third great-grandfather governor of Mississippi?”
James: “Four years, 1904–1908. He was a complicated man. But a racist, even by the standards of the time.”
Edward: “You’re not like him.”
James: “After we close, at dusk, I walk around the grounds full of anxiety. It’s like I’m holding something back.”
Edward: “Hey, you’re the only white guy on the staff. Are you thinking about quitting?
James: “While walking around last night, I stopped at the Akoto-Bamfo sculpture and wept.
Humans can learn a lot from sitting on a back porch.
At least, this human did.
He thinks he’s superior, somehow not a part of nature, because he surrounds himself with wire mesh and sits 15 feet above the action in a cushioned chair while watching a parade.
Today, there was a coyote, fox, turkey, squirrel, and a herd of deer: doe, buck, and two fawns.
The fawn in the photo lagged. And then she hinged, chomped, paused, reset, and gamboled after her family.
The mother and father did not need such antics. They’d been there and done that.
Unfortunately, he can imagine himself 50 instead of a month away from 75. Or even, on a good day, with a knee bend or two, 15.
He knows the lies he tells himself.
And wants to believe the lies others tell themselves.
And tell us.
If they can do it, so can he.
But he has friends who are 80 and can’t do things they could have done five years earlier. And he knows what he can’t do today, what he could do five years ago.
He’s a Democrat who thinks Joe Biden has been a good President. Until the night of June 27, he thought Joe Biden was like LeBron James, the exception that proves the rule. At 39, James is playing the game of basketball outside the normal boundaries of age.
Instead, he saw Joe as the formerly great Willie Mays at 41 misplaying two fly balls in the 1973 World Series.
*
He knows what he saw on June 27; he’s no fool.
So now joins with most Democrats who believe President Biden should step aside. (source)
The temptation is for all of us to believe we are the exceptions.
We see ourselves, again, like that fawn.
Fortunately, we can also imagine a different outcome where we see our lies for what they are.
We can imagine ourselves on a back porch, observing how nature works — admitting our yearnings.
Seeing how these can so quickly morph into self-deceptions.
And then thinking:
The other guy lies to us all the time. Probably to himself as well.
Note to my readers: I am torn about the “Should Joe Biden step aside question.” I take one side in this story. Robert Hubbell provides a compelling argument for why President Biden should remain the nominee.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader.
This story was published in Medium’s Fiction shorts. The prompt was to use the word “closely” and to begin with the sentence “They were meant to be forgotten.”
The Washington Monument
Sunrise
Joe: “They were meant to be forgotten — even Washington and Lincoln. Mr. President, thank you for meeting me. We didn’t shake hands last week. Let’s remedy that now.”
Don: “You’ve got a firm grip, Joe. My people can’t ever know about this meeting.”
Joe: “Don, look closely at me. I’m old and tired; I can’t do this anymore. I will soon be forgotten. Just like them, and so will you.
Don: “What do you want from me?”
Joe: “I’ll pardon you for everything. You’ll drop out. I’ll do the same.”
It’s 4:13 AM. I’m always up this early. It’s when I write. However, this morning, I’m also, as they say, stewing in my juices.
My partner Rebecca and I watched last night’s debate between the two candidates for the American presidency. We’re Biden supporters, so perhaps you know what I mean.
When we turned in, Rebecca said she would begin her insomnia routine. She knew she would need help falling asleep. I tossed and turned for another hour or so, helpless.
I’ve been up since 3, an hour earlier than usual. I have no antidote for insomnia.
This story is about hers.
You can adapt it to your circumstances.
I’ll start with a bit of background.
The Context
That’s Rebecca, in the photo, at rest.
She is 72, soon to be 73.
And a biking fiend.
Later this morning, she’ll do another 23 miles in preparation for next month’s Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa. 2024 will be the 51st RAGBRAI.
Rebecca will join 20,000 riders for seven days across southern Iowa, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi. They will bike 434 miles including 18, 375 feet of climbing.
Iowa isn’t Kansas. And it isn’t flat.
This will be her sixth consecutive RAGBRAI. Accompanying her are three friends. Meet the intrepid members of The Wheel Thing at a rest stop in 2023.
Bill, Rebecca, Scott, and Colleen. Photo by Tom.
Each year, Rebecca cycles 800 miles to prepare. She’s now at 585. Fortunately, our community is surrounded by a beautiful circular 11-mile trail. Unfortunately, for those of us not preparing to trek across our state, Trout Run includes many steep switchbacks.
Rebecca was pulling away from me yesterday on one of the steep hills at the beginning of the trail.
Photo by the author
We start together, but quickly, she hits her flow state and leaves me behind. She takes a five-minute break for water and a small energy snack when she finishes the first go-around.
By then, I’d landed and contentedly ridden back home. Rebecca reversed the route, going up where she went down and vice versa.
The Insomnia Cure
Rebecca calls herself a head person. If you know the Enneagram personality system, she’s a number Five. She meets the world through her mind and thinks everything through.
And through.
Sometimes, she finds it hard to slow her thinking down.
After 90 minutes of Biden and Trump last night, she said, “I knew I would need help falling asleep.”
So, what did you do? I ask.
I started with my shoe clip in the driveway.
And then I asked myself which way we went at the trailhead, right or left?
I get 3/4 mile along the river and ask, WHO ELSE IS THERE BUT JOE?
I gently tell myself, You’re not supposed to be thinking.
I see the squirrel.
And Dug Road looks so beautiful. So green. The lighting was fantastic.
And WHAT WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES SAYS?
Again, I tell myself you can’t think about this.
I return to the ride.
Seven miles in, I fell asleep at the top of the steepest switchback.
Photo by the author
Rebecca told me that if she doesn’t fall asleep right away on a typical night, she retraces that day’s bike ride precisely as she remembers it and is asleep by mile two. Last night, it took to mile seven.
Hours later, but still too early, she woke up.
When that happens, I go back to where I stopped, in this case, to the top of that switchback, and continue the ride. Almost immediately, I fell back asleep.
Why does this strategy work for Rebecca?
“When I bike, I leave the world behind.”
That’s Rebecca’s answer to why biking has become a passion.
Now, she’s turned this dedication into a strategy against sleeplessness.
She has trained her mind to return to her latest ride. That’s important. It’s the particulars of the ride, the squirrel, for example, that she focuses on. And if she reawakens, she returns to the exact ride spot where she fell asleep and continues.
Isn’t this a form of meditation? Cued not by a word or mantra but by images of a recent experience.
And not just any experience. But one that has been imprinted in the synopses of her brain through hours and hours of enjoyment.
Ready to be called upon when needed.
When I need to cut off the circle of thoughts, I return to the imagined comfort of my bicycle memories.
Do you have a passion that removes you from the world of trouble?
For me, it’s walking.
The second Presidential debate is scheduled for Tuesday, September 9th.
Patricia Ross, a seasoned therapist, shares a compelling story of personal transformation, drawing from the experiences of one of her clients.
In her narrative, Ross vividly portrays a person who moves from a binary existence to a more complex reality, where he starts recognizing his role in shaping his future.
Gradually, the man embarks on a journey of self-discovery, exploring his preferences and interests, thereby transitioning towards a more enriched, three-dimensional life.
Step by step, he asks why he is the way he is. As he becomes more curious about himself, he becomes more interested in others.
Patricia has written a terrific story, and I loved the three-dimensional metaphor.
Who is that person who looks back at us from the mirrors?
He’s complicated.
In big and small ways.
He doesn’t like the confinement of labels.
When even he sees only a single reflection.
If he’s that way, then you are too.
Silly and, sadly, true
For example, take another gander at that fellow in the mirror.
He doesn’t like in-person shopping because he has a hard time saying no.
Often, his first response needs to be corrected.
But the striped shirt looked good on the window model.
He also felt guilty about buying from Amazon.
Purchasing locally makes him feel superior, like owning a Subaru Forester in southwest Iowa.
Besides, clad in that shirt, he imagined himself looking like soccer great Lionel Messi on the beach in the Michelob Ultra ad.
However, he remembered that Messi, also 5’7″, wears Argentina’s vertical stripe uniform.
I am so immersed in what I’m doing that time flies.
It’s like watching Raiders for the second time yesterday.
Or spending time with my son.
And it’s just happened again.
Time refused to slow down, even when I wrote about wishing that time would slow down.
Is there a lesson?
*
One of my mentors, Mark Lund, gave me advice about 25 years ago that I’ve never forgotten but must continually relearn.
Mark directed my college’s Study Abroad program. I had just returned from my first trip with students to Northern Ireland, proud that I had not spent all the money budgeted for our three-week travel course.
He looked at me and said:
Students pay us for the experience. Your task is to spend ALL their money wisely by giving them the best experience possible.
Photo by the author of Room 306, Lorraine Motel, Memphis, TN
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you
My friend Rick, who lives in the middle of our town, routinely shoots squirrels with a .22 to keep them from messing with his garden.
Taking a more peaceful approach, Rebecca lathers our birdhouse pole with Vicks VapoRub. We’ve never heard our brown and black friends cough.
Two years ago, we built a small screened-in porch in our backyard. The first photo shows the outside view.
Here’s the scene from the inside.
Photo by the author
This perspective has gotten me thinking about my place in nature.
Especially when the skunk showed up.
Our Neighbors
We sit among deer, bats, bees, flies, gnats, beetles, and Mr. Skunk.
He surprised us as we watched him stroll across our yard under our human neighbor Hazel’s deck.
I wanted to rush outside to take his picture, but I didn’t for obvious reasons.
When Hazel, 92, called the police, she was given the number of an animal relocation service.
She called Dan, the city’s Animal Relocation Officer.
Why does our human community of 8000 need a Dan?
This photo will help you understand.
Photo from Palisades Park by the author
Decorah is surrounded by forest and dissected by the Upper Iowa River. The arrow shows you where Hazel and I live. Critters follow a creek bed about two blocks from our home to enjoy our garden offerings and company.
An open borders policy!
Dan traps unwanted animals and takes them outside town.
The skunk escaped two weeks of trapping, but not so for five raccoons, including this one.
Photo by the author
An expectant mother, said Dan, as he took her away. He told Hazel the skunk likely would not return, and she would find a new trapped raccoon every morning. So, she decided to put lattice panels under her deck.
Living with and against nature
It’s not easy living with others, human or otherwise.
Is it?
Exactly who is the intruder?
Is it the skunk? Or us?
In a terrific book, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, Michael Pollan writes about the woodchuck, his garden’s nemesis:
He was part of a larger, more insidious threat: he labored on behalf of the advancing forest. Not only the animals, but the insects, the weeds, even the fungi and bacteria, were working together to erase my garden — after that my lawn, my driveway, my patio, even my house…The forest is normal, everything else — the fields and meadows, the lawns and pavements, and the gardens — is a disturbance, a kind of ecological vacuum which nature will not abide for long.
Before I read Pollan’s book, I sometimes sat on the porch and apologized to the deer I had just shooed away from our bushes. Or the grass I refused to let grow. In the best line in a book complete with excellent writing, Pollan calls our American lawn “nature under totalitarian rule.”
Well, what I do to these guys would put Stalin to shame.
Photo by the author
Japanese beetles were on the leaf of one of our nine little birch trees. A garden shop expert told me it was the beetles or the trees. One tactic involved a solution absorbed by the root system that, over time, will help the tree develop its defenses, like a moat around a castle.
The other tactic was slaughter with a pesticide, think machine gun.
Pollan’s magnificent book is a rationale for what he calls “a middle space between forest and parking lot.”
Nature and humans can live together without us, the ultimate intruders, either acquiescing or dominating.
Twenty-five years ago, two days after I purchased this property, I cut down a healthy apple tree. I didn’t want the rotting apples or the bugs they would attract.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
For a quarter century, I’ve been doing penance. My self-imposed punishment was planting 13 trees and three small gardens.
Come to think of it, not so self-imposed. It’s probably no coincidence that my northeast Iowa community, surrounded by forests, has developed a very environmentally friendly culture.
My community, according to Pollan, has encouraged me to act
Like a sane and civilized human…a creature whose nature is to remake his surroundings and whose culture can guide him on the question of aesthetics and ethics.
That’s my friend Steve on the right. We’re two 74-year-olds worn out after playing catch for about an hour. We solved the world’s problems, don’t you know?
But for me, baseball always reminds me of my father. And my first Little League home run — a low line drive over the left field snow fence at Duck Creek Park. I can still see my left leg stride forward and feel the bat make solid contact with the ball.
My first young adult taste of success.
And the lesson my father taught me about so much more than baseball.
A Big Bat and a Bag of Beans
In the summer of 1960, I was 11 and halfway through my third season of Little League. The Peter, Paul, and Mary song “Right Field” told my story: two weekly innings, the Little League minimum, one at-bat, usually a strikeout, and right field, where coaches always put their weakest players.
My father knew little about baseball except that I loved the game. Every summer afternoon, when he came home from his work as a chemical engineer, my friends and I would play Wiffle ball on a makeshift diamond in our backyard.
I was the oldest of three sons, so my Little League failure was new to him. I’m guessing he saw my sadness and lack of confidence with every strikeout. No father wants to see this in his son.
One day, he came home with an adult-size baseball bat and a bag of navy beans. After supper, he took me out to the backyard and said he wanted me to work on something every morning: holding the bat in his right hand, with his left hand, he took a bean, tossed it in the air, clasped the bat, strode his left leg forward, and hit the bean right at about the height of his belly-button.
“Repetition is important,” he said and added, “Your muscles will remember. Go through the bag, hit the beans toward the garage, and don’t clobber your mother when she’s hanging the clothes.”
That’s my father on the left, around this time. He was an engineer with Bendix Corporation in Davenport, Iowa, and worked on America’s space program. He knew how things worked, including sons.
Photo from a family album
For the rest of the summer, I covered the backyard with beans, never once hitting my mother with that colossal bat. I didn’t know it, but I was building wrist and arm muscles and honing a home run swing.
When the next summer came around, my coaches must have noticed something. They moved me from right field to third base for our first game. And in my first at-bat, bam!
More homers followed throughout my youth baseball career.
The Lesson
Sadly, I never played third base for the New York Yankees, which was my boyhood dream. Eventually, the curve ball would end my budding baseball career. Even my father had no answer for that.
He never said much about the navy bean experiment, and he never sat me down and told me that if I worked hard, I would become a better baseball player. Once he gave me a way forward, it was up to me.
Looking back, he taught me at a very early age what psychologist Carol Dweck calls the “growth mindset.” In my early Little League career, I saw my teammates hitting home runs and thought they were born hitters and I wasn’t. Dweck calls that the “fixed mindset.”
Whenever I encounter a limitation, I instinctively ask how I can improve. That’s the “growth mindset.”
Of course, it’s not instinct at all.
It comes from countless bags of beans since that summer of 1960.
