Demented Unicorns

It was a few years ago when I wrote a Friday’ Note regarding the Hillcrest Kickball club.  A short story about the start of a kickball game in the neighborhood as a means of getting my kids out of the house.  Wouldn’t you know their friends came out of the woodwork to join in the game and munch on popsicles (the unofficial snack of summer kickball) my wife supplied.  Most of all it was about kids being kids and having fun.

Fast forward to this week and chatting with a friend who’s daughter is experiencing high school sports for the first time.  Turns out during this week’s game the coach called a timeout.  Keep in mind that their team was winning at this time, but not winning by a large enough margin to satisfy the coach.  So during the timeout, the coach made the players run sprints.  Middle of the game, on the visiting court, while winning, had the team run sprints.  Then after the win continued to yell at the team about their poor performance.  Then left the team with the following, “get ready for a workout tomorrow morning, it’s not going to be pretty!”   I am not a participation trophy kind of person and I firmly believe that if you are going to be involved in an activity to give it your all.  I'm also not against discipline, but this coach and many like her was way out of line.

This ‘all or nothing’ approach and year-round, single sport engagement is killing or has killed kids sports.

It doesn’t matter if it is soccer, volleyball, softball, competitive dance, football, lacrosse, basketball, etc.  What the parents say about their kids is, “This is my son’s/daughter’s last season, they have no interest in doing this again.”  And from the parents, “I’m so done with (insert sport here).  Done with the travel, done with the year-round, done with the coaches thinking all kids are going pro and done with other parents.  Just done.” 

With that as a background, I remembered the Demented Unicorns.  About a decade ago we were at a friend’s house. They have three boys, all of which played select soccer.  Turns out that our friends were looking forward to taking the summer off from being the Team Parent, Shuttle Driver, Manager, etc.  That is when their oldest came to his mother and said he and his gang wanted to play the summer indoor league.  Suzanne was less than thrilled.  She laid down the law.  “I’m not going to do any of the organization.  I will not be the team manager.  I will not do any of the paperwork.  I will not collect the team fees.  I will drive you to and from games, period.  If you want to be in the league you have to do all of that.”  Surely that would be the end of that.   There is no way a middle school boy was going to do any of that.  Summer was going to be soccer free.

A couple of days later her son had the team paperwork complete.  Entry form, player waivers, fees all collected and submitted.  They were in the league.  The team roster consisted of middle school dudes who just liked hanging out together.  Two kids who played select soccer, three kids who had played soccer years before, one kid who was a basketball player who never played soccer and one kid who had never played in an organized sports league in his life.

Suzanne said, so do you have a uniform?  Her son smiled and said, “Wait a minute” running up-stairs.  He came back down dressed in the team uniform.  Pink Socks, pink shorts and a pink shirt.  On the shirt was a Unicorn with googly eyes and the words “Demented Unicorns”.  Suzanne just shook her head, “Ok, when does the season start?”

Off they went to the first game, no coach and 7 boys head to toe in pink, like an oversized collection of Pepto-Bismol bottles with acne.  Someone stopped them saying, ‘Where is your coach, you have to have a coach’.  Her son replied, “That isn’t a rule of the league.” He was right.  This self-managed collection of pink bubble gum pieces went on to win their first game.  They went on to win their second game.  For the third game, Chris and Suzanne both attended, fully content to sit in the stands with zero responsibility other than enjoying the action.  Early in the game, the ‘basketball player’ team member scored his first goal, turned, pointed at the kid who had never played a sport before and yelled, “You have got to score, it is such a blast!”  I believe that was the same game that the opposing coach (a select soccer coach) left without shaking hands after the Demented Unicorns racked up their third victory. 

These kids, playing for themselves and having a 14-year-old boy snickering pink humor moment had a season to remember.  It wouldn’t have mattered if they won or lost.  They were playing because they wanted to hang out together and have fun.  But they did win.  The Demented Unicorns won the summer indoor soccer league. 

They won it all!  In so many ways they won it all.

Note:  Characters in this note were based on real life humans and any resemblance of actual occurrences is more than a coincidence.  Some of the names may have been changed because I have difficulty spelling. 

Post-it Note Planning

We were munching on onion rings at Scotty P’s, our go-to hamburger joint, when Sarah asked, ‘Dad, can I see the where we are going next year?’  What she was asking for was the yellow sticky note listing where we planned to travel to each year.  I reached into my wallet and pulled out the note, crisply folded in half with my microprinting and handed it to her.  Just scanning through the locations listed by each year gave us a sense of being closer to our next adventure and inevitably would bring up stories from the past trips.

I don’t recall the specific conference call I was on, but I do recall my mind wandering to faraway places with dirt trails and scenic vistas.  Places I wanted to introduce my girls to and expand their horizons.  The previous year we had journeyed through Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands and my favorite park, the Grand Tetons.  I had placed an emphasis on introducing them to these iconic parks and seeing the wildlife, mountains, and beauty of too many sunrises for golden hour pictures.

Grand Tetons circa '08

As the conference call went on I was thinking of all of the possible places we could go and then the project management side of me kicked in.  I thought about how old the girls were and how many summers we would have for family escapades before college and grown-up life gets in the way.

USS Arizona '12

What I had on hand during the call was a yellow sticky pad.  I started to doodle out ideas of what national parks to see and when to see them.  I organized my thoughts, jotting down the years on the left side of the note, then the age of the girls at that time, followed by the places I hoped we could travel to.  The last column listed which holiday, Thanksgiving (T-day) or Christmas (C) we would spend in Pittsburgh.

Yosemite Stars '14 ~ 1:00am

Zion NP '15

I’ll admit the yellow sticky travel planner was as much a selfish wish list to see some of these places (Yosemite, Sequoia, Volcano National Parks) as it was a core feeling of wanting to share former adventures (Grand Canyon, Zion, Glacier NP) with the girls.  Over time the order of trips shifted around as family schedules often do under the principle of ‘best-laid plans’.  The vision and the purpose of the yellow sticky note stayed the same, to have a family fandango through parks that offer wide-eyed, never-ending journeys.

Yellowstone NP '16

Havasu Falls GC '18

Over time the yellow sticky travel planner has turned into the national park pinboard collection in our family room.  A collection of park pins reminding us of where we have been and hope to visit again.

The pinboard is nice, but I still keep the yellow sticky in my wallet.  During some conference calls, it comes back out .......  and I smile. 

Come to think of it, this note is full, where is that Post-it Note pad?  It's time to make some plans.

That’s not my mom.

If you’re looking for the feel good, light-hearted, quirky Friday’s Note or a set of scenic pictures then this edition is not for you.  You might as well turn back now until my next posting.

I'm sure what I'm about to share isn't a unique experience to me or my family.  Truth be told, I'm just writing this for myself.  Perhaps trying to make sense of the senseless. 

For the last couple of years, my mother has been getting forgetful.  Given that she is 89 and lived on her own until this past January. She was still doing well.  She had her weekly pattern of laundry on Tuesday mornings, card games Wednesday afternoons and Mass every Sunday.  Each time I called she quickly recognized my voice and would engage Jill and the girls in conversations as well.  Sure, some stories would be repeated occasionally, but by and large, she was doing well. 

For me that changed in a measurable way this past Thanksgiving as we visited for the holiday.  While still engaging with everyone and knowing Jill, the girls and me she often struggled to come up with names of other family members.  It just so happened that her condo building was replacing the elevator this January. Living on the third floor, she would physically not be able to climb the stairs multiple times a day. Thus, my sister and brother-in-law had my mom move in with them just after Christmas.  When speaking with her on the phone after that I noticed she had more trouble coming up with names of my brother and sisters.  She would eventually get the names, but it required effort.  

It was even more pronounced when talking with her on my birthday in February.  It was then I decided I needed to visit again.  Waiting until the next Thanksgiving would simply be too long.  As I was trying to find a time to go to Pittsburgh for a visit, my sister texted the sibling gang and asked who might be able to stay with mom when they were going to visit my nephew in Virginia.  My other sister was going to be out of town on business and work had my brother swamped as well.  I figured I could work remotely and visit with my mom at the same time.  So, I talked to Jill who encouraged me to go and I booked a ticket that very night.

My brother-in-law and my siblings filled me in on incidences showing mom’s progression. For instance, at times she believes she is staying at a boarding house.  Her great-grandchildren who live on the same street are two little boys that she often can’t name.  And most days start as Sunday with her getting dressed up and waiting for my brother to take her to Mass.  A real-life groundhog's day. 

So now being in the ‘burgh again and seeing first hand her memory decline was real and pronounced from just this past Thanksgiving, the last time I was with her.  I took over the duties my sister and her husband had been performing. One was to remind her to take her two eye medications, one for both eyes twice a day and one for left eye two times a day.  I had to reminder her again and again that she already did her drops earlier. 

Then there were two observations I made that really showed the impact of the memory loss.  The first was when I was sitting in the sister’s dining room (my office for the week) and I was on a conference call with my headset on.  Just prior to the call mom walked in with the mail. Nine pieces of mail: 5 letters and 4 cards (it was special election nightmare time in western PA).  During the next thirty minutes of my call I watched as she studied each piece of mail and then set it aside.  Then as she worked through the last piece she would start over again, rereading each line of content on each letter or card and creating a new stack.  Again and again, she would do this through my half hour call.  


That is when it hit me.  


That's not my mom.

The same woman who balanced her checkbook to the penny every month of her life was now befuddled by the daily mail.  "No mum, you already put your eye drops in this morning."  So I settled into the pattern of the week.  “No mum, today is Wednesday. Rob will come on Sunday to take you to Mass.”  I would then make the two of us breakfast, then jump on my conference calls, then take a break for lunch.  

Here is a picture I snapped of my lunch buddy for the week.  “No mum, you already took your eye medicine earlier today.”

As I would work, mom studied the newspaper, never seeming to get to the end of the paper.  “Brian, I don’t understand these directions. They make no sense,” she said as she was looking at the eye drops again.  “Mum, you put in the eye drops earlier today.”

The second observation came when mom and I went out to dinner Saturday night.  She studied the menu intently as if she had to. As if without reading every word describing the dish she wouldn’t know what it was.  The waitress came asking what drinks we wanted.  That question threw my mom.  The waitress looked at me as if to ask, ‘is everything alright?’ and my return nod responded, ‘please be patient.’  After having the waitress come back I ordered for the two of us to help both mom and the waitress.  When waiting for our dinner we were talking, and I was telling a story and mentioned Jill.  Mom said, “Jill?” with a quizzical look.  I could see her working on the name as if she was parsing through each letter one at a time.  I said yes, Jill, my wife.  She then responded, “Your wife?”  She then asked, “Well who am I married to?” My Dad passed away in 2009. I said “Bob.  Robert Steele.”  That was met with the same quizzical look.

I said, "It's ok mum."

"No It's Not" she sharply said in frustration. 

This was the low point of the trip. 

Later that night we got back to the 'boarding house.' "Yes mum, it's time for your eye drops..... that's ok, I'll help you with the directions."

A little later on she then shuffled over to me and I looked up.  She cupped each side of my face and saying, “I love you. I wish you didn’t live so far away.”

Now that is my mom!

My sister and brother-in-law got back from their trip.  I was then helping to move the family room couch.  When we tilted it back my mom sitting across the room gasped, “Oh… pick up that hundred-dollar bill under there!” and I looked under the couch at the two dust bunnies and otherwise bare floor. When I looked back at her, she had that wry ‘made ya look’ smile on her face.  She is still in there.  Somehow age has just put a cloud over the memories… or as they say in Pittsburgh ‘It's partly cloudy in Allegheny county.’ Sometimes the sun comes out and the memories and thoughts are there and sometimes they are not. 

For those of you now needing a more uplifting story of my mom feel free to read this older post.

                            http://fridaysnote.blogspot.com/2013/03/bracketology.html

My sister called last Saturday.  She said to me, "Guess who picked UMBC (16 seed) over Virginia (1 seed)?" 

Yep – my mom!

The Big Guy

It was December 2004.  We had arrived early, very early to the Mall in order to beat the lines.  The kind of planning that new parents do when trying to coordinate seasonal iconic activities with the time of day the kids are most likely to behave.  The strategy had seemingly worked and we were fourth or fifth in line to see Santa. We had arrived so early that guest of honor hadn’t yet made it to his throne.  He was still over at the styling salon where the ladies paid elf like attention to grooming his snow white whiskers.

The wait for Santa was starting to take it's toll on the girls attention span, especially Sarah our 18 month old.  Remember this was the pre elf-on-the-shelf era so there were only so many, ‘you don’t want to be on the bad list’ threats that could be used at the 11^th hour.  Well along came Santa and to my surprise Santa ‘worked the crowd’ coming down the line saying hi on his way to his place of honor. 

This giant man, with coal black boots, velvet red pants and broad suspenders over his Santa casualwear playful shirt.  Sarah stood silent, not understanding exactly what was going on.  After Santa passed on down the line Alex leaned in coaching Sarah, ‘Don’t you get it, that’s the guy you have to be nice to!?!

Like many families in this area, we followed this Santa to the various locals that he would visit each season.  Such a wonderful gentle man.  Year after year we added to our collection of pictures with Santa, never missing a year.   One year we did call it close and squeaked in a visit around 3pm on the 24th.  Fifteen years of collecting pictures and saying hi to the nicest man on the planet.  We were sure to make our reservation this year, since Santa was now taking full advantage of technology of the internet and text based scheduling. 

Then we received the notice this week that that Santa had to travel back to the North Pole due to a medical condition.  Days later the note came out that the Big Guy had passed on.   For a person we spent on a few minutes with each year, it was like some pure happiness had been taken away.  Happiness in big, broad suspenders and white whiskers.  Throughout north Texas posts of "RIP Santa" flooded social media.  I'm not sure why, but that didn't sit well with me.  I prefer to think of it as our city has been transformed into Sombertown and Kris Kringle has been temporally delayed by the Winter Warlock.

These are just few of the yearly Christmas pictures we collected over the decade and a half of visiting The Big Guy.  Pictures covering circa 2004 to 2016.

Calypso

It was the only piece of mail this past Saturday.  An unassuming 3 by 4 inch envelope addressed to Jill.  I didn’t recognize the name on the return address, I just figured it was part of the 2017 graduate thank you card parade that has been marching through our mailbox the past couple of months.  Turns out it wasn’t a graduation card, but rather a note stitching together the past and present.  I put the card on the kitchen counter where Jill could easily find it when she returned.

Later in the day I noticed the petite letter had been opened.  The card containing a kind note, thanking Jill for her donation and a picture of a young woman, who I didn’t recognize, in a cyclist outfit.  Jill then provided the back story. 

A few weeks back, Jill had been reading alumni news from her high school and noticed there was a story about a former Bishop Lynch student who was also a Texas Longhorn, both of Jill’s educational roots.  With that kind of fabric commonality she clicked on the link to the article thinking the young woman’s last name seemed familiar.  

She read the article about the woman joining the group of UT cyclists biking from Austin to Anchorage, the ‘Texas 4000, fighting cancer every mile’.  (http://www.texas4000.org/)  Then it hit Jill, the tie to this young woman.  The kind of realization that jolts your memories, feelings and emotions swirling together and heightening the attention, making you lean in to read the article closer.  She read further, the bio went on to explain that Madeline, the young woman, rides for her older sister Calypso, who she didn’t have chance to know.  She was a year old when Calypso passed away at the age of six. 

Jill said to me, “You remember the little…..” and before she could complete the sentence I responded, “I do”.  I had pieced things together and knew exactly where she was going with the story.

Jill was one of the many team members at Children’s Medical Center caring for Calypso and the family. 

The deeper tie to Jill and I is that it was in service for Calypso, while she was in the midst of her battle, that had Jill on the phone with Judith.  Judith, a Make-a-Wish director, and mother of an old friend of mine from high school.  Judith had just recently moved from Pittsburgh to Dallas.  They were patching together activities around Calypso’s wish.  During the call Jill liked Judith so much that she asked if she had a son she could marry.  Judith’s response was, her sons were married, but his son’s friend needs a wife and he lives in Dallas.  To which Jill replied, ‘If he is tall, nice and Catholic give him my number.’  Fortunately for me, Jill was a little older by this time and had excluded other criteria for a mate that would have eliminated me from further consideration. 

It was Calypso who was the initial stitch that led to Jill and I being tied together.  All these years later, on an otherwise standard Saturday afternoon a card arrived in our mailbox from her grown sister keeping her memory alive. 

You just never know how things will unfold and the impact one person, even a six year old, has on those that she may not even know, but are fortunate enough to be within her ecosystem.  I keenly remember the day that Calypso passed away.  I had just reached my desk at work when the phone rang.  It was Jill and it was terribly difficult to understand her.  I just listened.  I had no other concept of how to deal with such overwhelming raw emotions or how to provide support over the phone.  Jill ended the call with, “I want to bake cookies for a living, no one dies baking cookies.”

Please consider expanding your ecosystem by supporting Madeline in her efforts to honor her big sister.   http://www.texas4000.org/rider/2018/unassigned/madeline-schill/

Wake Up Call - 2017 Picture Review

Throughout any given year I take quite a few photographs.  Really I take a lot of pictures.  The number of pics grows exponentially when we go to national parks.  So you can imagine the number of pictures that I snapped last summer as we celebrated the 100 Anniversary of the National Park Services with a blow out trip to 5 National Parks and three National Monuments.  Through this Friday's Note entry I offer two avenues of sharing photographs I've taken.  The first is a link to a video I assembled of our family visits to many national parks over the past decade.  I fully admit it's a little like a home movie, though it is a nice chronology of my girls growing while visiting some pretty incredible landscapes.

National Park Service 100 Anniversary Family Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6teLUurM1U

The second avenue of sharing the photographs are the following top 10 pictures from that trip.   These are some of my favorite landscape pictures from the trip.  The first picture is of the Tetons from Schwabacher landing, not Swashbuckler landing as I had said for a day or so.  The back story for getting this picture is convincing the family to get up at 4:45am in order to drive to this location to get the 5:20am rays of sunshine against the mountains.  As we pulled into the parking area, already populated by a dozen cars and a mini tour bus, I managed the, "see I'm not the only crazy person!"

The second photo is from the same general area, but a little further down the river.   The water at this location was clear and calm making the reflection nearly as sharp as the mountains themselves. 

 The next picture was the following morning, yes another 4:45am wake up call and 40 min drive to get to the location of the Mormon barns at the southern end of the national park.  The early morning light against the barn framed by the mountains is one of the best 15 minutes of picture taking that is possible.

 This picture is inside of the chapel of the Transfiguration.  The picture shows the panoramic view behind the alter.  I would find paying attention to a homily a little difficult with this being the view.

 The lower falls of the Yellowstone river are twice the height of the Niagara falls.  The falls are the entry point to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  The power of the water pouring over the falls is impressive.  The view from Artist Point absolutely never gets old.

 In the southern half of Yellowstone is the Grand Prismatic Spring.  I was thwarted in my attempt to scale the hill on the far side of this oversized hot spring since the park had that road closed for work.  So this picture is from the boardwalk that takes you out onto the bacteria fields that surround the hot spring.  The different colors are the various types of bacteria that grow at different temperatures.

 In the northern end of Yellowstone is the Mammoth hot spring. This snapshot is just a snippet of the overall hot spring mountain which is constantly changing as various paths get clogged and flows redirect.  These changes were very evident in comparing the views from multiple years apart.

 At the top of Montana is a stunning park title Glacier National Park.  While the park is down to approximately 25 glaciers, down from 150 glaciers a century ago.  This picture (yes getting up early yet again) is of Goose Island on Lake St Mary as the first rays of sun light up the clouds and far mountain tops.

 Glacier National Park has a single road that bisects the park (east to west) with there being a size limit on the vehicles allowed to navigate the road due to the narrow lanes and sharp turns next to sheer rock walls.  While parking at one of the pull outs to take in the scene I notice one of the iconic red tour buses pass us going up the mountain.   Luckily I was able to take this picture as the bus crosses over the falls.

 On the west side of the mountain range is Avalanche Creek.  This is the a classic view of the crystal blue milky stream that cuts through the moss covered boulders.  I have basically the same picture from back in 1996, but that picture was taken in August and the water was a lot lower and less striking.

One of my final favorite pictures is from Mount Rushmore.   I played around with some manual focus in order to get a little different view of old Abe.  I was pretty pleased with how this turned out.  It's nice having a portrait figure stay so still for his picture. 

Well, that is it for my retrospective of favorite 2016 vacation pictures.  Look at it this way, you didn't have get up early to enjoy these views.

India Kaleidoscope

I could say that this Friday’s Note has been a year in the making, but it would more accurate to say this note has been more of year of putting it off.  This week is the one year anniversary of my trip to Bangalore India.  Since that trip, my friend Gopala has repeatedly inquired as to when my impressions of India would make their way into a Friday’s Note.  I was going to write a note just about the 18 and a half hours of air travel just to get there, but that story I think I’ll save for another day. 

I think my delay in writing about India has been my inability to focus on one aspect of the experience.  To attempt illustrate my collage interpretation of the Indian subcontinent, I’ll take a kaleidoscope approach to explaining the aspects of the trip.  Each piece of the adventure tumbling into place, forming a pattern that is uniquely Indian.

The Traffic

The first aspect of the trip to tell is the experience of riding through the city.  After the initial 4am airport to the hotel drive, where the driver tooted his horn as a means of carefully running red lights, my friend Chris looked at me and said, “I made a tactical error by sitting in the front seat”.  From that point forward the front seat was mine allowing me to take all the snapshots I could.  The word traffic doesn’t seem adequately explain the challenges of traversing the city.  Every means of land travel is fair game (cars, busses, motorcycles, ox, foot, bicycle, scooters) and the sweet molasses movement is orchestrated by friendly use of horns and a high beam flashes language.  Here is a typical front seat view of the traffic and the family of five making their way to school.

The other thing to convey isn’t just the vehicle traffic, but the sheer condensed nature of the city of 13+ million people.  The immediate proximity of 21^st Century office/shopping districts with areas of economic struggles was striking, at least to me it was.  My suburbia background didn’t prepare me for the differences.  With that said, I have never felt so guilty of taking a picture as I did with the following snapshot during one of our trips to the office.

 Truth be told, this picture could have been taken in any metropolitan city in the world.  The traffic of people passing by the needy made me think of the number of times I’ve walked past homeless in Dallas. 

The Food
The food during the trip was one of the many very pleasant surprises and made me feel silly for lugging a couple dozen Cliff Bars in my luggage across the planet.  There would be no need for that nutrition backup plan.  The morning started with a choice of a dozen different juice choices.  While a festive green color, I didn’t have the courage to try the Bitter Gourd juice.  For lunch the local work team brought in a ‘box lunch’.  The only similarity between the typical USA dry turkey sandwich box lunch and the meal served in India was that the food came in a box.  However the India version of the box lunch was much more of a suitcase lunch, with enough food to feed my entire family for a day.  All freshly baked, warm, flavorful and inviting.

The Colors

Another sensory explosion in India was that of the colors.  They are vibrant, alive and welcoming.  We were greeted our first day with a fresh flower petal design laid out for our visit. 

Later in the week, our colleagues escorted us to a shop famous for scarves and local attire.  The store was like being inside a rainbow.  The following snapshot is my friend Gopala behind the counter helping us sort through dozens and dozens and more dozens of the softest and most beautiful fabrics.   The shelves in every direction was a textured painting of potential.

The following picture is part of the arbor flower display at the hotel prepping for a wedding.

 

The Graciousness

While the colors, food and traffic certainly impacted me, it was the people who left the deepest impressions.  The first thing that stood out to me regarding our office environment was that I was the oldest individual in the building.  Second, the staff's energy and age reminded me of EDS of the early ‘90s with most people being under 30 with their future careers still at the incubator adventure stage of life.  More importantly than our staff’s youthfulness was their eagerness to be helpful in any way. 

It is very difficult to explain the continuous support we were afforded.  Politeness coupled with broad smiles is such an engaging way to go through the day.  It wasn’t just an occasional talk that was positive, but rather every interaction.   Every single experience. The hotel staff, our driver and our work teams all approached us with a desire to assist us at every turn.  At the close of the trip, Gopala and Hema invited us into their home ,where Hema had prepared the most wonderful meal and she smiled as she said 'I cut back on the spices for you.'  Always eager to make sure we where taken care of. 

Looking back, I shouldn’t have waited so long to share my experiences, but sometimes the memories need to fall around and collide until they form the right pattern.  I close this note with the following picture that I snapped while we were stuck in yet another traffic jam.  I imagine the girl was thinking, who is this guy taking my picture and I wonder where in the world he is from?