Blessed Are The Weary

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Scott

A gale-force wind rattled outside as I watched Heather lying on the bed.

Exhausted. Spent. Tired down to her toes.

On her, it looked absolutely beautiful.

Mind you, I’m not the sort of husband who takes an unholy glee in seeing his wife drained to the last battery. But I knew what her last three days had been like. An all-day trip to Colorado Springs, an all-night visit by her two grade-school sisters, a dinner trip to Northglenn with them and her father – it had been just about non-stop for 72 hours.

For her to be tired, and only tired, after all that was nothing short of a miracle.

As regular readers may know, Heather has just a few health problems. Which is by way of saying the Titanic had a minor leak. And the two biggest icebergs in a crowded sea have been her Crohn’s disease – a charming condition of the guts that an Occupier wouldn’t wish on a Wall Street CEO – and ankylosing spondylitis, a highly painful condition that hits the back, the hip, the shoulder and the neck in an attempt to fuse any or all of them.

The two have waxed and waned over the years, turning life into a minefield. On one memorable occasion, I came home to find her crawling toward the bathroom – walking was simply too agonizing without help. On another, I had to improvise a bed for her in the back of our car so we could make a cross-state trip home that neither of us wanted to cancel.

“I knew you really loved me when you held back my hair while I was throwing up,” she told me once with a smile.

But the hardest parts were the windows of clear weather among the storms. At heart, Heather is a doer. And when her body would calm down for the slightest moment, she would get busy, fitting as much activity into the time as possible – and invariably put herself in bed for the next two or three days, saying “Why did I do that?”

That’s life with chronic pain. You ride the waves, even as you watch fatigued, well-wishing friends struggle with the fact that this isn’t the sort of thing you get better from.

But somewhere along the line, something changed.

It started with a new medicine, the kind with a price tag that suggests diamonds, gold dust and velociraptor DNA were used in its construction. Slowly but surely it pried the window open a little further, enough to hope … and enough to hope to help.

Hope can be a powerful catalyst. And the more Heather could do, the more she could hope to do – never completely consequence-free, but always enough to keep the next step of the ladder in reach. When it came time to become a guardian for her developmentally-disabled 38-year-old aunt Missy, she never hesitated. And that ability to help someone else as she had been helped just pushed the “hope cycle” even higher.

She still has pain days. Sometimes very bad ones. But now, mixed with them, are the days of mere exhaustion, the after-effects of a time well spent. To be able to work hard enough that you’re tired from it.

It’s an odd blessing to name. But a true one.

I don’t know how long this turn of the roller coaster will last. All we can do is ride. I suspect that’s all any of us can do, holding out with as much patience and faith and endurance as we can until the next chance to climb higher comes.

For now, it’s just nice to know that “sick and tired” doesn’t have to be redundant. That to be tired can mean to be well, or at least well enough to truly live.

Sleep on it a bit.

I know Heather has.

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For Your Own Good

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Scott

There’s a lot for a preschooler to learn – shapes, colors, how to play nicely with other kids.

Now, it seems, they also have to learn how to please the Lunch Inspectors.

I take you now to beautiful Raeford, N.C., home of West Hoke Elementary School. It’s at that school where a young girl arrived with a seemingly innocuous lunch from home: turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice.

Not bad. Sounds pretty good, actually.

But not good enough to satisfy the Lunch Inspectors. A USDA worker at the school said the lunch lacked the full two servings of fruit and vegetables and that she’d have to have a school lunch instead – at Mom’s expense.

And at Mom’s outrage.

“I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats,” the girl’s mother told the Carolina Journal. “It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.”

As a side note, the girl ate exactly three chicken nuggets from that school lunch.

Lot of vegetables consumed there, huh?

Now, I do understand that not every home situation is a good one. There are parents out there who’ll send their kids to school with two saltines and a can of pop – or who can’t send the kids out with anything at all. Situations like that need to be noticed and even helped, if they can.

But this was hardly abusive or neglectful. This was someone coloring outside the lines. No, I take that back – this was someone coloring with an unapproved crayon.

A higher-level state worker later said the lunch should have been passed. But to me, that misses the point. Passing the lunch, short of an obvious problem, shouldn’t have even been an issue. All it did was offend the parent and embarrass the school, without even solving the supposed problem.

But then, I really shouldn’t be surprised. There’s a lot of people today who seem to know what’s best for us. Everyone except us, apparently.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” C.S. Lewis once wrote. “It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

I’m not saying it’s wrong to care. I’m not saying that no one can ever be corrected, or that a helping hand can’t ever be extended. But anything, taken to extremes, can cross the line. Just as too much insistence on self-reliance can become an excuse for neglect, too much insistence on “let me help you” can become a burden.

It doesn’t even need to be the state doing it. We’ve all seen the “helicopter parents,” hovering close lest their child’s foot hit a stone. A recent NPR story found that now many of those parents are now invading the workplace, calling employers to push for their children. One Michigan State study of 700 employers found that a third had received resumes by a parent and that four percent had even seen parents show up at the job interview.

But why not? It’s for their own good, right?

Maybe, just maybe, our society needs a cooling-off period. A chance to remember those preschool lessons about keeping your hands to yourself and doing your own work. A chance to land all the helicopters, official and unofficial, and just let kids have a normal school day.

Don’t act like a turkey.

Save it for the sandwiches.

 

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On the Other Hand

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Scott

As I watched Missy reach for a marker and color in a picture, something struck me. I braced Heather about it later.

“Is Missy left-handed?”

“Yes,” my wife said smiling. “I didn’t realize it either until we started painting together.”

I had to chuckle. For a moment, despite no blood relationship, Missy and I had become kin.

No, I’m not a southpaw. Not exactly, anyway. It’s more like I found the cast-off parts of a left-hander and a right-hander in a yard sale and bought the mixed kit. You can call it partial ambidexterity if you want – or you can just call it a total mess. I’ll probably agree either way.

All I know is, I can write slowly and clearly with my left hand – or fast and messy with my right.

I’ll hit a baseball right-handed. But I throw it from the left.

The little bit of clumsy stage fencing I know starts with my left hand. But my rare attempts at clumsy basketball layups start on the right.

Having a foot – pardon me, a hand – in both worlds does have its advantages at times. I’ve never had to fumble at desks and drinking fountains made for a right-handed universe. But I’ve also been able to play a killer game of air hockey, flipping the paddle back and forth to the confusion of merely monodextrous opponents.

It’s kind of fun, actually.

Especially compared to the life I could have had.

When I was little, I had what my folks described as a bilateral syndrome, possibly an offshoot of my epilepsy. You could draw a line right down the center of my body, and past that line, my hands would lose their coordination.

A lot of work with some very patient people finally erased the line. They built up my dexterity – maybe a little too well, looking at the results. But I’m not complaining.

After all, it fits me so perfectly.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized there’s rarely just one right way to do something. Politically, that’s made me a moderate (and yes, shot at by both sides). Practically, that’s made me a curious person, eager to see what someone else might think or how someone else might approach a situation.

The results can be surprising, just as when I pick up a guitar the “wrong” way. But it can also be illuminating. At worst, I notice a detail about someone that I’ve never known before. At best, I pick up an angle or an idea that makes my own life a little easier. (I still owe a lot to the teacher’s assistant who taught me how to write papers back-to-front for instance, starting with my destination and building from there.)

Life doesn’t seal itself into neat boxes. And I’m glad for it. It means a little more work, but a lot more fun.

That’s never wrong. Even when it’s not right.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t tried any serious drawing in a long time. The next time I sit down with Missy, I may have to follow her lead, see if my left hand has another surprise it hasn’t told me about.

It may end up a mess, of course.

But if it doesn’t, I’ll have to thank her for giving me a hand.

 

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Night Errant

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Scott

After about 15 minutes lying on the carpet next to her bed, I looked up into Missy’s face.

“Feeling better now?”

Nod. Smile. “Yeah.”

I smiled back, hugged her. “OK. Now try to get some sleep.”

It was a situation that was odd and familiar at the same time. Growing up, I used to spend some of my nights in the room of my youngest sister, an imaginative girl with equally imaginative nightmares. I’d stay a bit, wait for her to fall asleep, then quietly decamp for my bed.

I’d even had to deal with it as a pet owner once, when our first bird got night terrors, flipping around the cage at breakneck speed. Remembering that she had always enjoyed my music, I began quietly playing on the piano (to Heather’s amusement). Three songs later, Rocky was completely relaxed.

So I had the resume. But there’s still nothing like your first time as a “parent.”

I use the word in quotes since Heather and I are caregivers and guardians for her developmentally disabled aunt Missy, a wonderful woman about eight months younger than me. It’s a role that combines equal parts of parent, sibling, best friend, and sometimes (it seems) second banana in an ongoing comedy act. When Missy smiles and laughs, the room seems to brighten.

But Missy doesn’t talk a lot. So when something scares or worries her, it can be hard to figure out just what.

And that was our challenge when we heard the moans coming from her room late one night – or was it early one morning?

I went in. Heather went in. I went in. Missy went to the bathroom, had her glass of water, sat up a little as each of us tried to deduce what was wrong. Was she feeling OK? Had the day’s story been a little scary? Was she worried about something?

No clear answer. Just a nod or a shake or a shrug, maybe a smile as one of us came in yet again.

Finally, I called on my old big brother training. “Want me to stay up with you for a bit?”

Pause. Nod.

So I turned out the light. Stretched out on the floor. And waited.

It seemed to be enough.

And maybe that’s true for more of us than just Missy.

Sometimes it seems that we live in a world of fears. Some have names: fear for a job, fear for a relative overseas, fear of a bad situation getting worse. But sometimes – maybe even often – they congeal and combine, creating a layer of stress and worry and doubt that hovers like a Denver brown cloud. It can’t be articulated. It can’t even be completely understood.

But maybe understanding isn’t what’s needed.

Maybe what’s needed is a presence.

A friend. A spouse. A parent. Anyone who can be near and remind you that you don’t have to face the darkness alone. Even if they don’t understand the fear, they understand you. They stand by you.

And having them there can make the darkness a little brighter. Maybe even just bright enough.

“Perfect love casts out fear,” the Sunday School lesson went once upon a time. I know that sounds lofty. But even a love that’s still learning can find enough strength to hold fear at bay til the morning comes.

Often, that’s all we need.

Thanks, Missy. Thanks for letting me be that heart in darkness, that friend in the night.

Sleep well.

I’ll see you in the morning.

 

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Art from the Heart

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Scott

 

I came home from work one night to find my office had become an art gallery.

Construction paper of red, blue and yellow festooned the walls, covered with paint, with stickers, with bits of tape. “Bowling got canceled today,” my wife Heather offered by way of explanation.

And it did explain.

Regular readers may remember that Missy, our developmentally disabled ward, loves bowling over almost anything else in life, with the possible exception of a car radio set to ’11′ blaring the greatest hits of Face. Long before her Wednesday trips to the alley, “I wan’ go bowling” will be heard at regular intervals.

So with a bowling date foiled, something else had to take its place. For Heather and Missy, it was an “art afternoon.”

The result was simple joy, both in the making and in the seeing.

Obviously, Missy’s not the first person to channel frustration into art. It’s well known, for example, that Beethoven’s “Pathetique” came to be after the composer failed to bowl 300 in a crucial league game (the fact that his biographers blame instead his disgust at his hearing loss is clearly a cover-up). You use what you have, transmuting pain or intransigence into beauty.

It’s something I got to see at very close range, a few years back.

In Emporia, Kansas, there’s a coffee shop called the Javacat-5. Local artists decorate the walls with their work, which can be just about any medium, just about any style. One day, the paintings were a vivid, piercing form of abstract art I had never seen, slashes of blue or of red, a sharp internal rhythm made visible to all.

I interviewed the artist, a young woman who had never really considered a career in art before going to school on an athletic scholarship. Her life probably would have stayed a series of win-loss records for the next few years except for one thing.

Migraines.

Crippling ones.

Team sports were out of the question. Any sports were out of the question. And so, she decided to paint out her pain – to take the lights and colors that assaulted her at regular intervals and put them onto canvas.

The results were staggering.

It struck me – and it strikes me now – that if that can become something striking and awe-inspiring, anything can.

Life gives us a lot of excuses to quit. Often very legitimate ones. Physical pain, emotional stress, loss beyond what any person should be asked to endure. Even minor frustrations can add up into something seemingly unbearable, where we want to become 9 years old again and hide under the covers for a couple of hours.

But there’s a power in those moments, too. And if we can find a way to use that power, however difficult it may seem, the moment can be transformed.

The science fiction author Spider Robinson once cited the Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy: “Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.”

No one says it’s easy, any more than smashing atoms is easy. But it starts by not stopping. By finding somewhere else, anywhere else, for the hurt of the moment to go.

That’s how you get piercing beauty on a canvas. Or enduring music from a piano.

Or, once in a while, innocent and vivid strokes of paint on sheets of construction paper.

It’s an experience not to be missed. Especially if it’s been Missy’d.

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And The Winner Isn’t

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Scott

It’s Oscar time again. And I can’t help feeling the statue is well-named.

After all, who but a Grouch could manage to use the occasion every year to concentrate on the losers?

“Leonard DiCaprio, passed over for his portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover …”

“… the first time a Pixar film has not been nominated for Best Animated Feature … “

“Albert Brooks, in a tweet to the Academy, said: ‘You don’t like me. You really don’t like me.’ …”

And this year’s not that unusual.

Oh, sure, once the ceremony arrives, 73 percent of all the Academy Awards coverage will focus on some cute winner’s moment, like Roberto Benigni leaping chairs or Adrian Brody lip-locking Halle Barry. (The other 27 percent will basically say “She was wearing THAT?”) But even then, some snubs will become legendary on the scale of Hatfield-McCoy:

“It all started, son, when yer Uncle Oscar went up to that Annie Hall tramp instead of that nice young Star Wars feller. (Spit) Now git lost and git Grandpa some more moonshine.”

Glory lasts a moment. Especially compared to the disbelief of seeing Alan Rickman passed over again.

It’s a strange thing, this fascination with the losers’ circle. And yet it’s oddly comforting, too.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to reaffirm our humanity.

Most of us don’t get to know what it’s like to be President of the United States, or to go to the Super Bowl, or to raise a trophy while Hollywood applauds in envy and appreciation. Granted, we have our triumphs – many of them far more meaningful over the long term – but rarely on a scale that would get that level of public adulation.

But we all know what it’s like to fall short. To not quite make it. To be almost good enough for something – but only almost.

And when we see it in another, however great or small, it’s hard to suppress a moment of sympathy.

The football fans among us know this already. What got more attention this last week? That the New England Patriots would be going to another Super Bowl? Or that their opponents had been one step shy of a winning touchdown, one kick shy of a tying field goal?

So close. So far. So familiar.

It’s different when it’s someone you dislike, of course. The Germans specifically invented the word schadenfreude for the not-so-guilty glee when an Oakland Raider or a Jersey Shore cast member stumbles. Free target, have at it.

But most people seem to have more Charlie Brown than Darth Vader in them. Enough to create that empathy. And maybe even a little hope: If they can do so much and still stumble, maybe it’s not so bad when we do the same.

And if they can hope for a second chance, maybe we can, too.

So here’s to the Rickmans and the Sam Rockwells and all the others who could be great without yet reaching the peak. Maybe you’re even a little happier for it, in having something still to strive for. I hope so.

Because let’s face it. You guys were robbed.

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Breaking Through

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Scott

Some of you may remember that Robert Heinlein once wrote about a cat who could walk through walls. I figure, this once, that I can match him.

After all, I have the dog who walked through doors. The hard way.

She usually appears here as Duchess the Wonder Dog, as in “It’s a wonder this dog hasn’t given herself a heart attack.” Half border collie, half black Lab and all love, she is easily one of the most lovable animals ever issued four legs.

And just a wee bit timid. Which is like saying that Batman is a little bit driven.

It’s not without reason. Dutch, you see, is a rescue dog, one that was never properly socialized as a puppy. We adopted her nearly six years ago, and through love, affection and the careful application of pizza, she had come a long way.

Until our move last April, anyway.

Suddenly Duchess’s world was turned upside down. There was a new house, rich (to her) with the scents of the four dogs who had lived here before. Room layouts were changing by the day, people were coming and going, we even had an infant niece being brought over once a week to be babysat.

And so, maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised when we came back from a trip one afternoon to find Duchess waiting for us just inside the front door.

“Did you shut her up in the bedroom?” Heather asked.

“I thought you did.”

I went upstairs. And found we had.

I also found a pile of wood shavings. And a Duchess-sized hole in the door.

Duchess had gotten so anxious that she had clawed her way through.

“Oh, Dutch …”

She’s OK now. More love, more affection, just a little bit of medicine. But you can’t experience the Arc du Duchess without it clawing at your soul a bit too.

And perhaps finding a bit of kinship.

We’re a strange species. We change our world more than any other … and often fear change more than anything else could. Something as simple as a new Facebook design can inspire outrage for days; more fundamental shocks can fill letters pages, or council chambers, or the streets themselves.

When I was very young, my Grandma lived with us for a while. On some nights, when she had rinsed out my hair to finish a bath, I would look in the mirror at this face with its drippy, sodden locks hanging down and declare “That’s not me!”

How much of that survives when we get older?

And how much of it must live in the heart of the abused – animal or human – who has been hurt without understanding why?

Perhaps in realizing it, we can fight it a little. Perhaps we can help bring a little peace to ourselves, a little kindness to others. Perhaps at some point, we can actually remember that all of us need all of us, and that love, whether to a fearful dog or a fearful world, is never out of place.

I hope so. I really do.

A hole in the door is easily fixed.

It’s the hole in the heart that needs all the love we can give it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go hug my dog.

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Going Out Of Our Tree

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Scott

Heather has always loved history. And she’s always loved lists.

Now that she’s discovered genealogy, I might not see her again until June.

“Ooh, Scotty!” she calls, staring at a computer reproduction of a handwritten census record from a forgotten generation. “Look at this!”

To be fair, both of us have always had at least some interest in the family tree. Heather knew that John Chapman, aka “Johnny Appleseed” was a distant ancestor of hers; I knew of a 18th and 19th century relative who’d translated the Bible into Sanskrit, as well as a rumored family connection, through the Careys, to Anne Boleyn. And we both had plenty of relations who had caught the bug, whether it was her grandmother visiting old Kansas graveyards or my uncle, a Rochat family expert who once hosted an 80-year-old Swiss cousin as she toured the country … by motorcycle.

So I guess it was somewhat inevitable. Especially when Heather got a year’s membership in an online genealogical service for Christmas. Suddenly, our nights have been filled with Hargetts and Leatherwoods and much more, many with curious stories of their own.

She’s found Southern ancestors who deeded slaves in their wills.

She’s found a relative who was acquitted of murder, after shooting a neighbor who was trying to stab him. (The neighbor’s family, naturally, told it a little differently.)

And while we knew about her Civil War relatives who had been in Andersonville prison and on the doomed Sultana – a steamship that blew up and killed 1,800 people, many of them returning Union soldiers – we hadn’t known that I’d had a forebear who’d fought in the War of 1812.

I felt a familiar curiosity as I peered over her shoulder at the growing entries. It was only later that I recognized the feeling.

Darned if it wasn’t like being a newspaper reporter all over again.

People have often asked me why I got into newspapers. (Actually, these days it’s phrased more like “Why on Earth would you want to be in newspapers?” but oh, well.) And there’s a lot of reasons, from a love of writing to a teenaged hope that the job might score me Bronco tickets some day. (Again, oh, well.)

But at the root, it’s simple. I love telling stories. I love hearing stories.

And I’ve learned that everyone has a story worth hearing.

I’ve told this to middle-schoolers and heard “Not me!” Usually, within about 20 minutes, I can prove them wrong. Sometimes it’s big, like the tale of a World War I veteran or a fifth-grader who organized her school to raise money for Hurricane Katrina. Sometimes it’s smaller, but no less worthwhile, like a child who’s on the staff of her elementary school’s first newspaper. And sometimes, it’s just plain weird, like the man who’d been mistaken for someone else with the same name since junior high school, to the point where he nearly got arrested for what his doppleganger had done.

It’s all lives touching lives, history being made at the personal level. And in a sense, reading and writing about those lives is almost an act of caring, a way of acknowledging that those lives matter, that there’s more to the world than what’s caught inside our own skin.

Ultimately, in knowing the stories of others, we understand our own just that little bit more.

Maybe even the part that reads family trees at 1 in the morning.

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I Now Pronounce Thee …

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Scott

The wedding crowd gasped as my heel caught the tablecloth.

Audra and Anthony had placed two glasses of sand and an hourglass on the table, intending to combine the sand as they would combine their lives.  Now, for a heart-stopping second, it looked as though the sands would combine a little earlier and more violently than planned.

The cloth pulled a glass two inches to the edge, one … and then stopped. Whew.

My first wedding ceremony would not have to be followed by my own funeral service.

It had all started in November.  Two  of my Emporia “theater kids” – children I had directed and cheered on through five years of youth theater and summer Shakespeare in Kansas – were getting married in the New Year. I had made semi-solid plans to go if vacation time would allow, when Anthony contacted me with an unusual request.

“Audra and I were wondering if you would like to be our officiant.”

Floored.

Understand, I’ve never been the type to keep a bucket list. If I had, “perform a wedding” would have been one of the less likely items. Usually, people associate reporters less with holy matrimony and more with unholy chaos.

But these were my kids. And I didn’t expect to ever get a second offer. Heck, I hadn’t expected the first.

I said yes.

And so, with a set of Internet credentials and a lot of goodwill, the show was on.

We should have all known. A good show and a good wedding have one big thing in common – there’s a lot of crises and almost-crises that happen on the way to the first ovation.

Just from my own corner, we had:

* A car that refused to start the day before, nearly stranding the “minister” in Colorado.

* The “tablecloth moment” above that almost made the wedding a smashing success.

* The famous Rochat sense of direction – or lack thereof – that lay quiet on the way to Emporia but switched into full force on the way back, giving me a chance to inadvertently explore every back road between Bennett and Brighton.

There were others – largely in the thousand last-minute things that had to be attended to on the day itself.  I truly believe that Audra should have been a candidate for human cloning that day – or else a Tony nominee for stage manager of the year.

But none of the small panics, real or averted, mattered. When the night came, it was simple. It was sweet. And it did what it was created to do.

“No ceremony is ever perfect,” I had told Anthony beforehand. “And you know something? At the end of the wedding, however much did or didn’t happen, you’re still just as married.”

Now that I think back on it, that’s not a bad preparation for the marriage ahead.

We all know it: many people put far more attention into their weddings than their marriages. But it’s the marriage that has to last. There are going to be just as many crises – heck, probably more of them and more serious ones.

But there are going to be moments of love and beauty, too. And if that love can last through it all – not the momentary thrill, but the quiet, lasting dedication – then that’s going to be what gets remembered.

I think Anthony’s and Audra’s is going to be one that lasts.

Congratulations, both of you. Thanks for letting me be part of this. And please, remember one thing.

Don’t put that hourglass anywhere that your kids can reach it.

Deal?

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Forward With Resolution

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Scott

I opened our Christmas present from my brother-in-law and his wife … and started to laugh.

“Brad, Rena,” I told them, “you guys have to open our gift now.”

They did – and soon joined the laughter. Somehow, in a fit of holiday inspiration, we’d gotten each other the same board game.

“Good taste!” we agreed.

Somehow, it seems a fitting way to enter the new year.

I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Eve festivities.  It’s not really my kind of holiday – I don’t drink, I’m not a huge party-goer, I already stay up past midnight, and the whole year-in-review business, while kind of fun, reminds me too much of work.

But the core of it all – and you knew this was coming – are the resolutions.

Those famous, impossible resolutions.

A lot of us make them. Almost none of us keep them. I’ve seen one set of statistics that suggests a 90 percent failure rate; frankly, I suspect that’s on the low side.

We keep doing it, of course. After all, it’s a new year, a turn of the calendar, a roll of Father Time’s odometer. Perfect time for a fresh start, right?

Until it isn’t.

So why do we blow it so badly?

OK, some of it might be the natural collision of willpower with won’t power. But I think there’s something more.

I think we overestimate our foresight.

I’ve known my brother-in-law for 14 years. We’ve got a good idea of each other’s characters, our likes and dislikes, a little bit of personal history. Armed with all that, we still couldn’t predict that we’d wind up with matching gifts.

If I can’t even anticipate that, how the heck do I go about predicting what I’ll most need to do for an entire year?

Like a lot of generals, we fight the last war. At this point last year, I had decided that my main goal was going to be to write for myself a bit more, maybe even get something published. A worthy enough goal, certainly within my abilities.

Since I’m writing it in this column, you can guess what the result was. And I don’t mean a No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.

But the thing is, the year was far from wasted.

This was the year of a new home, a new family. This was the year Heather and I became guardians for her young aunt Missy, a role that’s led me to be a combination parent, big brother, and friend.  It’s a year where I got to enjoy the role of “Uncle Scott” to my infant nieces and nephew; a time where I continued to write in the midst of an often topsy-turvy industry; even a time where I got to be part of one of the best shows the Longmont Theatre Company has ever produced (he said modestly).  I celebrated at a relative’s wedding and then cried at her husband’s funeral before the year was out.

Almost none of that could have been anticipated on  Dec. 31, 2010.

It’s said that every general fights the last war. I think we do the same with our lives. We think next year will be last year with minor revisions. Sometimes it’s true. More often, there’s surprises.

And in the face of that, all our resolutions and plans go out the window.

Mind you, it’s not a useless thing to set goals. But the best resolutions are those made every morning, not every year. They’re the ones where you can look at the day ahead, look at the life that faces you, and decide “This will be the best day it can be.” And then do your best to make it so.

A year is a long span. As you cross it, remember that each day is a gift.

And  no one else will unwrap one quite like it.

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