Son of the Bride

Things change. People change.

I've had people in both my personal and professional life say to me over the years, "I don't do change." Well, they might as well say "I don't do breathing," or "I don't do bowel movements." Now some people don't do change well, and that's a horse of a different color. My son Evan doesn't do change well. He gets all tied up in knots, throws fits and usually ends of up "not doing bowel movements" just to make a point.

But Evan, like any other human on earth is going to have to sort it out because change happens. Last weekend my mom got remarried. For those of you that don't know, my dad, 2 1/2 years ago, died from a very painful battle with cancer. In the process of that battle my mom (and he at the time) moved halfway across the country to Colorado. After he passed she had the difficult, if not sometimes impossible task, of redesigning a life for herself. In short, she had to invent the most difficult change of her life.

But this little post is not about her. I will leave her to tell her own story. In the lead up to my mom's wedding the question of choice always was, "Are you ok with this? Are you doing alright?" In my usual abrupt style, I tended to throw people off balance with an honest and direct remark that, I have learned, was the opposite of what they were expecting.

"I'm thrilled. This is exactly what she wanted."

"What about you?" they would ask.

"I'm not sure you noticed on the wedding invitation, but my mom getting married isn't about me." I would reply to a confused scowl coming back.

There is no place card at the table for Son of the Bride. There's no slot on the program, no set aside moment for giving a "son's toast." And that is as it should be. A person gets married to begin something new, to change, to set a course yet uncharted. And while everyone carefully selects characters from the past to take with them into their new future (of which Son of the Bride would be an obvious choice) a wedding is not inherently about the past.

A wedding is about that indubitable change. That intake of fresh oxygen and the rush of blood to the cheeks at a bride's first dance.

Carolyn's past is full of many wonderful and important things. Many of which I was a part of. Card parties in Steamboat Rock. Endless Thanksgivings giggling to Grandma's antics at the farm. A long lonely drive from Denver to Iowa to put my dad's body into the ground. Countless Christmas Eve and Easter services sitting in the hard pews of the Baptist Church.

But on November 13, there was no solemn monotone prayer, no linoleum tiles. The days of the past were a distant memory and all that existed was the rosy flush of a bride in her first waltz. On this night there was no hospice, no tears of regret. On this night, all there was was change. And the little Baptist girl from Steamboat Rock danced.

Best Friends?

The Defendant:
Evan Richtsmeier, age 3
Crime: attempted fratricide

The Victim:
Grant Richtsmeier, age 10 months
Proof of the crime: screaming his head off.

Scene 1
Me: "Evan, what did you do to Grant?"
Evan: (remorseful gleeful) "I pushed him."

Scene 2
Evan: "Daddy, Grant's crying in the kitchen."
Me: "What did you do?"
Evan: (proudly) "I was riding him and he fell down."
Proof of the crime: Grant's bloody gums recently face-planted into the tile floor.

Scene 3
Wendy: "Evan let's get out your LEGOs." She walks to the closet to get the LEGO container. Evan starts to voraciously collect rubbermaid tubs and boxes in order to build a bunker worthy of Moammar Quadhafi.
Evan: (screaming) NO!!!! Don't pour them out yet! I haven't finished building my wall so Grant can't touch them."

Scene 4
Pediatrician: (innocent fool who thinks that my son is cute) "Evan, who is your best friend?"
Evan: (without missing a beat) "Grant is!"

I have two boys. And maybe I'm the sucker of the year, but I honestly think they just might be best friends. My youngest son, Grant, gets a Xanax-style dose of happiness just by having Evan in the room. He thinks its funny when Evan comes running at him and pushes him into a pile of pillows. He won't eat his carefully crafted bowl of gummable food unless Evan is eating. My oldest son, Evan, has to be held in confinement in our room every morning so Grant can drink his bottle in peace. There are many mornings where Evan lies in bed next to me whimpering about how he just wants to go see Grant. When Grant finishes his bottle without the interruption of Captain Corrupto, Wendy yells down the hall, "Green light, Evan!" And Evan subsequently goes sprinting down the hall so he can see Grant as if he's never seen him before.

Now it is possible of course that Evan has confused the concept of "best friend" with a very similar concept called "interactive whipping boy." Let's be honest, subtle distinctions are not the traditional arena of three-year-olds. Evan has a room full of stuffed animals, but nothing is so dear to him to tackle, throw across the room, yell right in the face of as Grant. But I think there is good news for Grant on the horizon. And that good news is called: genetics. I think that while Evan pretty much picked up an average build from the gene pool of life. Grant, on the other hand, inherited my freakishly tall torso and Wendy's very long legs, which queues him up to be about 6'9" 280 pounds. Give it about 15 years and things are not going to go well for Evan. I have a feeling you get both these boys past puberty and the scales are going to tip in a very distinct direction...

The Defendent:
Grant Richtsmeier: age 15
Crime: attempted fratricide

The Victim:
Evan Richtsmeier: age 17
Proof of the crime: dislocated shoulder, broken nose, dislodged tooth, and the look of shear joy that can only come from getting beaten up by someone you truly love.

The Scene
Me: "Evan, why is there blood all over the floor?"
Evan: "Cause Grant punched me in the face."
Me: "What else did he do?"
Evan: "I think he dislocated my shoulder and busted one of my teeth."
Me: "Grant, what the hell heck is wrong with you? Why would you beat the crap out of your brother like that?
Grant: "Because he's my best friend."

Pretty/Beautiful

It's pretty here. Probably better than that, it's gorgeous here. Pretty is such a small word. Twenty-two year olds are pretty. In fact I saw two of them just yesterday, sitting by the pool practicing being pretty. The young man post-pubescent boy wonder kept strategically adjusting himself so that his eight pack abs would flash golden in the sunlight. His counterpart (who was deperately in need of a Muslim conversion and a burqa) was wearing a two piece bathing suit which vaguely resembled an elastic belt with buttocks hanging out. I think she may have had some back problems because she kept snapping her shoulders back and thrusting her chest at the boy.

Wendy and I debated how old they were and decided that no matter how old they were, they proved without a doubt how old we were. I asked Wendy at what age a person realizes they are pretty. She pointed at them and said, "That age."

Today, I'm sitting on the promenade of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the big island of Hawai'i on the last day of Wendy and I's little kid-free getaway. Wendy left last night because she is a better parent than me (let's be honest folks... it's true). All the while, I am giving myself one more fleeting day to catch my breath, have a clear thought and successfully wind myself back up again for the muscular sprint to the end of the year.

It takes an enormous amount of focus for me during this era of my life to think clearly, to concentrate. It took me a good three days here in Hawai'i, for me to calm down long enough to not constantly be wondering about what else I should be doing, what projects were on the verge of thermonuclear self-destruct, who in my little world was next to be dangerously wobbling near the brink. In short, it took me nearly three days to stop managing.

For all practical purposes, managing is what I do for a living. Sure I manage under the auspices of financial planning, but more tha anything I get paid, to keep a system running, to keep the boat at sea, to maintain a steady course. And the sad thing is, it doesn't take much in the way of ideas to manage things. In fact, most days I find that a good idea makes managing more difficult. An idea causes you to question the system, upend the status quo, push the boundaries, acknowledge the quaking fissures steaming below.

I am sitting on an island that exists in all it's splendor because of quaking fissures. volcanic cracks that exploded in dangerous upheavals creating a once-treacherous landscape resembling something like the dark side of the moon. But out of the heat and tumult came this:






Perhaps this is why, every so often a person must stop managing, stop organizing and think. Why a person must sniff around the dark and dank places of one's life or business and consider the impending chaos that brews below. Thinking is not pretty. You can't wrap up concentration in bikini and put it on the cover of Seventeen magazine. But from recognizing the challenging deep around, from the discovery of threatening lava tubes and cracks, can come something beautiful: an idea.

An idea that threatens the safety of situation normal, and with it carries the possibility of an extraordinary day, week, month, year, moment. The solitude and silence required to think, to truly consider, is not pretty. But ideas are beautiful.

"Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way.
I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the
appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere."

- A. A. Milne