When kids are young, they are full of dreams and grand ideas.
They tell us they will grow up to be football players or super heroes or
firemen or singers or even Barbie Dolls. Eventually adults reason these
dreams out of them. Parents and society demands more practical
thinking. Sure, children are raised to believe in grand horizons; Santa
Claus, and ends of rainbows with pots of gold coins, and the tooth fairy, but
it’s not a perspective they’re allowed to sustain for very long.
We don’t raise our children to be greeters at Wal Mart or welders or
car parts salesmen or longshoremen or even signature counters. Not that
there is anything wrong with these professions. Deep down, we parents are
as idealistic as our kids. I would have loved to have The Boy become a pro
basketball player or superhero, and The Girl would have made a better actress
than Lindsay Lohan and been far less crazy.
Somewhere and at some time our kids are drawn to the kinds of
professions and lifestyles they see around them and, one day – and we never
know when that one day is – they begin to think in terms of comfortable and
obtainable choices. Seemingly gone are
the childhood dreams they thought were not only possible, but also practical.
And as parents we applaud when our kids say they want to be a lawyer or a
doctor or engineer because it makes sense to everyone and there are centuries
of documentation that these are wise professional choices. Everyone
involved feels OK with this.
But something is lost somewhere, isn’t it? What transpired from our children’s simple
desires to exceed expectations in their careers from the time they hit junior high
school until they have to choose a respectable college? Is it just simply growing up? I believe it’s something more. It’s teachers and parents and television that
encourages – and expects – our kids to have their feet planted on the ground
and choose a lifestyle and profession that fits better into making a buck and
raising a family.
When I was nine, my teacher asked the class to tell her what we
wanted to be when we grew up. I wish I knew the old Woody Allen joke back
them, “Anyone but me,” I would have answered. Instead, I told her I
wanted to be Mark Twain. My teacher attempted to correct me and said,
“You mean you want to be a writer like Mark Twain.” I said I was sticking
with the Mark Twain goal and I think I was sent home with a note for my parents
telling them I was a silly, silly boy – and not a very good writer
either.
The truth was, I wanted to be Mark Twain. I read about him in
the Encyclopedia and the life he lead, with grand adventures and storytelling
and his biting wit. It seemed like the perfect life to want to
live. My mother, god bless her soul, encouraged me to be Mark Twain and
gave me Reader’s Digest versions of his books to look through and told me
stories about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. I even ran away from home when I
was 11 to live like Tom Sawyer – an event that led to fewer stories about life
on the Mississippi.
It only seems that much more paradoxical that I ended up in the
business that either found me, or one that I found. If politics is a
science – and it seems so far from that – then it’s awfully strange that I
would have decided to spend the past 34 years practicing it. I craved a
creative outlet and went after a science instead. Does that make sense? My business is
stultifying and the only time I find it interesting is when it’s in trouble and
creativity is needed to crawl our way out of it.
To boil up some interest in my business I concocted a series of
diversions. I created other businesses, took my show on the road to
faraway places and even had times when I allowed myself to revel in my
accomplishments. But it was never enough. I never stopped searching
for something better or something different. Foolishly I spent my time
and effort on small tweaks to make my businesses more acceptable, never
stopping to think that, in all my efforts to enjoy more what I did from 9-5
(more like 11-9), I forgot I wore the Ruby Slippers. The answer to my
search for something meaningful in my work life has always been to write.
I was just afraid of losing my position as a provider for my family or, perhaps
as importantly, afraid I wouldn’t succeed.
Now, 45 years later, the little kid in me is coming back (some would
say the little kid never left, but those people obviously have cooties).
I write a bit each day and when I’m not writing, I work out plot lines and
character development in my head. As typical of me, I have a few books
rattling around in my thoughts (and the blog), but I think I need to have the
multiple intrusions to keep my mind from slipping from its anchor.
I guess it’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’ve wanted to be
a writer. I’ve been saying it for decades, but doing little about
it. The interesting fact is the only time I write is when I’m not talking
much about it. These cycles come and go. I have more than 400
pages of a novel written that I began in 2003. Most of the 400 pages were
written in a few months and the other pages where written in tortured moments,
in paragraphs at a time (and sometimes only a single paragraph survived).
I have stacks of other pages of other ideas lying around, unfinished and
orphaned. But they are like old friends that I visit from time to time
and it’s good to catch up to a thought or a feeling I had when I wrote those
little odds and ends.
There has been speculation about where I’ve been and where I’m going
over the last five years or so. I admit to being one of those
speculators. Deep down, I think I chose a journey that would scratch the
itch of those childhood dreams that I never completely allowed to be reasoned
out of me. Perhaps it was my mother’s continued insistence that I never
settle for anything less than my silly dreams that kept this childlike attitude
going against all normal and rational thought.
I got hooked on a profession that covered other aspects of my life
that I so wanted growing up: being a good father, husband and provider. I
like to think I succeeded at most of those desires, even though I spiked the
ball prior to crossing the goal line. But I wouldn’t trade what I was for
my kids for anything or any novel because I know I was at my best when I was
present for them. The only person I wasn’t always present for was
me.
Because I kept my deeper desires unknown to so many, the
contradiction is laid bare and it’s confusing to some. It’s difficult to
explain to people that I want to tend to my own garden when there are so many beautiful
gardens surrounding me; some that I helped shape. To keep the
metaphor going for an excruciating moment longer, I’ve allowed what I want to
do to be strangled by the weeds left unattended in my garden to make sure that
everyone around me could grow. At more than half a century of living, I
think it’s time to let me do my own growing.
Books are written and read in chapters. I think it’s done that way because our life
is lived in chapters – we have our youth, our teenage years, the college years,
young adult years trying to join into the next chapter, the adult years. And then we have children and careers and a mid-life
crisis or two. Somehow we re-group and
begin to want to figure out how to live the life we long ago wanted for
ourselves. Maybe I’m at this chapter now
and I so much want to peek at the end to see how it turns out. Why don’t I just write a good ending?
