Giving It Up For Vacation

(Published in the Janesville Messenger, 6-30-2015)

My father was a dairy farmer, the type of one-man operation that has all but disappeared from our area. From the time of his honeymoon to his retirement nearly 37 years later, he averaged one day of vacation a year. Often, his lone day off would be a trip with my uncles to play the ponies at Arlington Park. My mother rarely received even that limited respite from her responsibilities as farmer's wife and its daily regimen of cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. Any leisure time my parents afforded themselves needed to fall between the morning milking and the evening milking. Their bosses were literally bossies; four or five dozen Holsteins who dictated the work schedule.

 

When I think about my parents' lives, it makes me all the more grateful to have a job that allows me to take vacation, and that we have the opportunity to use that time to create family memories. My wife and I and our two college-age children recently made the long drive out west to visit all five of Utah's spectacular national parks.

I've come to think of vacations as more than sight-seeing tours. They have become the mental equivalent of a cleanse, a detox for the soul. Like a Lenten Season Catholic, I give up things. This year's list was longer than usual: work e-mail, Facebook, caffeine, soda and, um, shaving.

 

Shaving aside, these took some determination. Not checking my work e-mail – and doing actual work – can be a challenge for me. The urge is strong to make sure all is going smoothly with the job that finances these trips. I've written proposals from log cabins Up Nort' and responded to ad agency inquiries standing by the Hollywood sign. But the point of this trip was to be present with my family, consumed by nothing except our time together and the amazing works of nature around us.

 

There are ways to break habits, and as Occam's Razor states, the simplest solution is usually the right one. Once upon a time, I had a tendency to spend weekend afternoons woofing down an entire package of Double Stuf Oreos. At some point I realized that, gee, if they aren't in the house, I can't eat them. So I stopped bringing them home from the grocery store. Likewise, to ensure there would be no succumbing to temptation on this trip, the Gmail application was completely removed from my Smartphone. Ditto the Facebook app, as virtual interactions with friends had become habitual to the point of addiction. Once deleted, however, I didn't give either a second thought. Out of sight was truly out of mind.  

 

Foregoing caffeine had the potential to be painful, and by all rights, it should have been. When your usual daily intake is the equivalent of over a full pot of coffee and/or multiple sodas, you should expect a honey of a caffeine-withdrawal headache, but it never came. It feels like I cheated the system, going cold turkey without adverse symptoms.

 

Naturally, once vacation was over, the e-mail app was re-installed. So was Facebook, though I seriously considered deactivating my account and walking away from it for good. Unfortunately, I feel like I can't, because people would either think I unfriended them or died.

 

Not all of the vacation sacrifices were temporary. My eschewance of soda has been completely maintained; good riddance to aspartame and brominated vegetable oil. And I've only had caffeinated coffee during my regular Sunday morning visits with my mother and brother. Not because I find their company to be sleep-inducing, but because it seems wrong to drink decaf out of the Waffle House mug that I keep at my mother's house. Drinking decaf at a Waffle House (or at my mom's, for that matter) would be like eating a veggie burger at Culver's.

 

As for shaving, I met that one halfway. Let's just say this column might need a new photo.

A Head In The Clouds

(Published in the Janesville Messenger, 8-30-2015)

"The sky is an infinite movie to me. I never get tired of looking at what's happening up there.”

-k. d. lang

When this year's Perseid meteor shower was at its peak, my son Rob and I drove to the countryside, away from the lights of the city. Atop a blanket thrown onto his car, we lay on our backs, scanning the heavens. It reminded me of going to a drive-in theater in the days of my youth, but no outdoor screen ever compared to the vast canvas we were viewing. The Milky Way we were enjoying didn't come from the snack bar.

Unlike your typical B-movie fare, there wasn't a lot of action. The only thing resembling drama was when the odd motorist's headlights found us and wondered why two guys were parked on the shoulder looking at the sky. But our patience was rewarded with three bright meteors and a bonus glimpse of the International Space Station when we were alerted via text message that it was coming into view. Another memory came with it, from about 40 years ago, of a night when my father and I watched the skies over our farm to see Skylab orbiting overhead.

The Perseids aside, this summer has been an amazing one to look at the skies, through fair weather or foul. We've seen double rainbows, incredible lightning shows, and hazy sunsets dimmed by Canadian wildfires. When my wife and I take our regular evening walks, the setting sun always seems to create a new shade of pink, purple or orange shining brightly as we look down the railroad tracks to see the western horizon. And the cloud formations we saw during a stormy evening trip to central Illinois were like something out of a Hubble Telescope photo.

Some Wisconsinites have even been fortunate enough to see the Aurora Borealis this year. I have only seen the Aurora once, but like a major historical event, I will never forget where I was when it happened. Unfortunately, it was in the days before smartphones so I couldn't capture the moment, but the mental picture I took remains clear and unpixelated.

My renewed appreciation for the cosmos may have been spurred several years ago when my son and I camped with the Boy Scouts in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. In the middle of our first night, I ventured out of our tent to answer nature's call. The number of stars in that crystal clear sky, far from any hint of light pollution, absolutely floored me. It was easy to believe Carl Sagan's assertion that there were billions and billions. After a few moments of standing and staring in amazement, it finally occurred to me that I had better get about my business before a bear or cougar spoiled my stargazing.

That same trip also treated me to the most wondrous sunrise I ever witnessed. Our guide had us get up early and hike to the top of a mesa, where eight of us silently watched the day begin as the miles and miles of New Mexico before us emerged from darkness. I am not ashamed to admit that the beauty of it made me weep.

Funny how in a world filled with just about any amazing thing you can think of, sometimes the simplest pleasures are the most satisfying. We look at our computer screens, we look at our televisions, we look down at our phones. Too often, we forget to look up and see the wonders above us.

In Search Of My Father

(This is the first column I ever published, from a 1996 local magazine called "On The Rock.")

I've been thinking a lot about my father lately. It's been almost 11 years since we lost him now. I was a young man when he died, with 23 years of memories stored up. Yet as time marches further and further from the day we laid him to rest, I worry about forgetting him.

I have children of my own now, children to whom Grandpa Lyke is simply a series of photographs. Children to whom Grandpa Lyke is just a name in the list of “God blesses” at the end of their prayers, though his name carries the special addition, “up in Heaven with the angels and God.” When my kids get older, I want to be able to tell them in meticulous detail all out the grandfather they never knew. I want them to know about his subtle wink, his hearty laugh, his huge hands, and his arms that were constantly scratched and scarred from farm work. I want them to know how he would relax by pitching horseshoes when his work was done. I want them to know how he astounded me by reciting the 1957 Milwaukee Braves lineup from memory twenty years after their heyday. I want them to know how he would take us on long Sunday drives through the countryside, never telling us our destination.

I'll never forget him, obviously. Putting these items down on paper will help ensure that I don't. But for every detail I remember vividly, I wonder about what I've forgotten. For example, his voice. I can no longer remember what his voice sounded like. I am hoping that among the things at my mother's house, I can find a recording of his voice. I have always regretted that he wasn't here on earth to see me evolve from a confused kid just out of college to a proud home-owning father with a suit-and-tie job. That he wasn't here to see his two grandchildren, including the one that bears his name. I can only take solace in the faith that I have, that he does indeed know all of this.

After an unemployed summer spent in pursuit of an advertising job, I finally got the one I wanted early in September of 1985. I called home, ecstatic, and when my dad answered the phone, I filled his ear for 15 minutes about what a great job I had just won. When I finally got around to asking how things were on the homefront, he told me that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

I placed myself firmly in denial. I convinced myself that his surgery was routine, and that within a few weeks, he would be home and all would be back to normal. He knew better. The day before the surgery, my family got together. At the time, we were not a huggy, kissy family. So when I left that Sunday, I started to go as usual, with simply a goodbye and a wave. My dad suddenly came up to me and gave me a huge, long hug. I was surprised, to be sure, but it still didn't faze me that this could be the last time I ever hugged my father. It was.

A little more than a month later, his body unable to recover from the surgery meant to save him, he demanded to be removed from all the medical machinery and brought back home. My family and I spent an agonizing four days in our living room, taking shifts staying up with him and holding his hand, as he fought the sleep from which he knew he would not awaken. Finally, at 1:20 pm on Halloween, surrounded by his entire family, a pastor and a nurse, he finally lost the fight. It was not a Hollywood death. His eyes didn't close, his mouth didn't close, his head didn't flop. He just stopped living. His last words had simply been, “last day.”

I do not want to remember my father by the last month of his life. Those details are far too vivid, surreal and disturbing. I want to remember him by the first 61 years and 5 months of life; the 23 years I knew that preceded that final month. And that's why I am so concerned about forgetting those details.

It's amazing, though, the memories you can pull out of storage when something reminds you. Recently, I was reading my daughter a library book, when one of those vivid reminiscences occurred. The book was written by a farm boy who had witnessed his father get badly injured, and nearly killed, when his clothing got caught in some farm machinery. I did not know what the book, a true story, was about when I started reading. But when I read the story, it hit me hard. When I was a teen, I had witnessed something eerily similar happen to my father. He was climbing up onto a tractor when his pant leg got caught in the spinning mechanism that operated our hay baler. When I heard the commotion and turned around, I saw my dad, pantless, straddling this bar that was spinning at God-knows-how-many rpm. I got the tractor turned off and helped him, painfully aware that I had almost witnessed a tragic accident. Amazingly, his pants were ripped completely off him, but his belt remained around his waist. I can't imagine how much that had to hurt. Despite the pattern of bruises all over his legs, he was incredibly lucky. What if his pants hadn't torn free? What if his legs hadn't been long enough to straddle the bar? Too many farmers have suffered far worse at the hands of their machinery.

I have been interested lately in my dad's childhood, which I knew little about. My aunt recently told me where I could find their childhood home, the farmhouse where my dad was actually born. I'm sure I had seen it before, probably on one of our long Sunday drives, but that would have been when I was a child. Now, as an adult, I was determined to really see it. I was armed with an old township plat book and my aunt's description of the house to pinpoint its location. I didn't know what to expect. I imagined that I might see a neglected old farmhouse on an abandoned farm. To my surprise, the farm was still a working operation and the farmhouse was in great shape. I drove past it slow a few times, trying to imagine his arrival on a spring day in 1924.

As I drove away from that farm, I thought about all of the things I would ask him if he were alive. I hope, as my children grow, they will have both the interest, and the opportunity, to ask me.