Episode 30 - Engaging with the Culture

I met Joi Razinha, known professionally as Tamra Henna, in high school. I had a couple circles of friends, one that smoked, drank, skipped school, and got into other miscellaneous teenage hooliganism, and one that was artistic, academically successful, and sat on the edge of the pool talking about Sylvia Plath and whatnot. Joi was in that second group, although she told me she maybe would’ve preferred to be in the first.

After reconnecting on Facebook many years later, as high school friends are prone to doing, I first saw Joi belly dance at a hookah lounge in Addison, I believe, around 2013 or 2014. I had never seen it before and had no idea how to react. She hung out and chatted with me between dances, and I realized that she was not the shy, quiet person I thought that I remembered from high school. She was smart, funny, and charming, and I’ve loved watching her adventures through the lens of Facebook ever since. As she says, I could do a whole series of episodes on her and her life.

Thank you so much, Joi, for the time and energy you brought to this project. If you like the result, we should definitely collaborate again. Hearing smart, thoughtful people talk about what they’ve learned and how they’ve learned it is the best way to grow, and looking into universes in which you yourself don’t live is the best way to expand your worldview and develop your compassion.

You can find Joi at:

tamrahennabellydancer.com

Instagram: TamraHenna_Official

TikTok: TamraHenna_Official

Facebook: Joi Razinha

Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. Music from Audiio: “Welcome to Us (Instrumental)” by Sebastian Kauderer; “The Slowest Journey (Instrumental)” by Good Weather For An Airstrike; “Bang Bang Bang (Instrumental)” by Moarn; “Acceptance (Instrumental)” by Frankie Orella; “Intertwined (Instrumental)” by As Tall As Pine Music; “Enter” by Christopher Galovan. Music from YouTube: “Arabic Wedding (arabic instrumental)” by Boris Skalsky; “Sahara Rains” by Hanu Dixit; “Shesh Pesh” byJR Tundr. The song “Ya Tamra Henna” was originally performed in the 1957 film by Fayza Ahmed, and this version was commissioned by Joi Razinha from, and performed by, Matias Hazrum. Other music was made by me on Ableton Live, except for the tabla and the outro music, which I put together from instrument loops on Soundation.

Here’s the transcript:

Joi: Well, it's funny that the name of your project is Caterpillar Goo. And that really made me smile when I saw it because, I think I had seen recently the whole thing about how, when a caterpillar transforms it essentially disintegrates and comes back together, and I resonate with that quite a bit actually, and I kind of feel like I'm always in a state of goo. I'm not sure if I've ever actually become a butterfly. I'm just always kind of gooey. Maybe that's not the same for everyone, but for me it's true. I'm always changing and trying to figure out who the hell I am just in general.

If you don't have any experience with belly dancing, it's okay to look at the dancer. It's okay to interact with the dancer. The whole point, if you're ever at a place and a belly dancer shows up, is for the whole evening to be more fun. No matter if the dancer doesn't look like what you expected them to look like, or if you are weirded out because you're not used to that, it's just all about having fun and enjoying the moment. I like it when my audience interacts with me. I want them to yell and scream and applaud, and they can tip, and they can get up and dance with me. I don't want touching or anything like that, obviously, but I want interaction. That's really one of the biggest things about being a belly dancer is that you are there to facilitate the party. And there is not a worse crowd ever than one that is I not looking or just refuses to be into it. It just sucks every bit of energy out of you. It is so hard.

I've done a lot of shows, and I've had a lot of people tip me in a lot of different ways. Depending on where I'm at, in the nightclub where I first started, in the beginning, they did not allow anyone to touch the dancers. So you could not accept tips in your costume. They could hand it to you, but it was mostly, they would come out on the dance floor, and they would do a money shower and they were allowed to dance with you a little bit, but the bouncer would escort them away from the stage if they stayed too long. That was awesome. I felt like such a rock star back then. But other places where I danced, where it was maybe a smaller restaurant, I would accept tips in my costume. And usually what I do is I tell them where I want them to tip me and, side of my hip, maybe I'll have an arm band, and I'll point to my arm band if… Maybe I'll let them do it in the front of, like in my strap. But a lot of people go straight for the front of the bra, and you just have to block it off. But, mostly it's Persian grandmas want to shove $20 bills down your bra, and I'm like, okay, I guess this is what we're doing now.

I've had very, very few incidents where people were really handsy, or I've had real problems. Occasionally you get somebody who decided they want to dive down the front of your costume to give you that whole dollar that they had in their hand. And you know, it's like, you just get really good at evasive maneuvering. But mostly people are respectful. The worst problems I had were probably with 20 year old college girls trying to twerk on me.

My dad is a Muslim, he's a white guy, and back in the seventies when everyone was converting to Islam, that's what he did, and him and my mom got divorced when I was really young. I was about two. And so I never, he wasn't in my life a lot because he went off and did his own thing. Spent some time in Bangladesh I think. And then got married again and married a woman of the faith and then went off and lived someplace else, and just wasn't a very present person in my life after that. He's lived in Turkey and Cyprus and places like that.

But I think the fact that he became a Muslim kind of in the back of my mind peaked my curiosity about the Middle East maybe. And so the story is that I was signing up for classes at community college in Austin and there was a course called Mideast Dance. So there was a connection there and I think that's what kind of peaked my interest. But I quickly realized that you're not going to connect with your Muslim family member by becoming a belly dancer. That's just not the best way to do that. And he's very religious, and there's a lot of tension in the Middle East between people who are very religious and people who are more secular, and the dance is definitely frowned upon in religious communities in the Middle East, because it's not how traditional Muslim women would behave, right?

So yeah, I started taking Z-Helene's class and, her name is Z-Helene, and there was, they used to have a show at the Student Union, and so that was where I went and I kind of saw my first actual belly dance show, and I was so enamored with, you know, the ladies were beautiful, and their costumes were sparkly and everyone's dancing and everyone's free. And, you know, I'm 19 at this point, 20, and I just thought it was amazing and it was so different from what I had been around growing up, that I was hooked. I really wanted to do that thing. And I really fell in love with it. I fell in love with the music, actually, is what happened. And it really did change my life. I mean, obviously it took me in a direction that I never would have gone if I hadn't taken that one class.

So yeah, I took a couple semesters with Helene, and her style was really a lot different from what I do now. She's a very American, hippie, goddess kind of thing. And as I started studying the dance, I kind of became a little bit more interested in how it related to the cultures that it came from. And, so I wanted to do more of the Arabic style. I loved the Arabic music. I wanted to use that kind of stuff and learn.

I had a job at a hardware store off of 29th Street. And I was a cashier for a couple years and one of the guys that worked in the paint department, people would come up to me and say, hey, do you know Jonathan's girlfriend is a belly dancer? And I was like, yeah, whatever, because this is Austin. And like the hippies used to dance at Eeyore’s Birthday Party in their patchouli and their broomstick skirts. And they were like belly dancers. And I was like, that's not a real belly dancer, you know, I'm just like, yeah, right. Whatever. And when they would go to Jonathan's house and see his girlfriend, they would go, hey, this other girl, she's a belly dancer. And she would go, yeah. Right. Whatever.

So then we met each other, and I don't even remember how we met, and she's probably been the biggest influence on my life. We're still best friends, like 26 years later. She was dancing at the Student Union. She was teaching through the Student Union. She started doing workshop productions and things like that. And I was just kind of her tag along buddy. I would do whatever because I was broke and she would let me come to things if I worked for her.

So I just, I was doing it as a hobby, really, only. And there were a couple of restaurants that I started dancing in, in the late nineties. There's a place called Ararat, a restaurant called Ararat on North Loop. And that was one of the first places that I gigged at. And then there was another little Persian place called Best Middle Eastern.

So I danced at a couple of places, but it was really intermittent. And, then in 2001, my ex and I ended up moving back to Dallas. And that really changed my life as far as actually becoming a paid gigging dancer and really, teaching and all of the things that I've been doing for the past 20 years.

I started working, Dallas had the clubs, it had bigger nightclubs, it had a Greek restaurant, it had a Lebanese club called Al-Amir, and it had Persian nightclubs. So it had things that Austin did not have. It had nightlife and it had paying gigs. So I started dancing in the clubs and either… I think I did my first professional gig in Fort Worth at a restaurant called Byblos, which is still around. It was New Year's Eve. He probably couldn't get any of the local dancers. And I was probably cheaper than the going rate because I didn't know what I was doing, but that was my first paying gig.

And then after that, a good friend of mine that I ended up dancing with for a long time in a professional troupe, she got me a job at Al-Amir, which was the prestigious club. It was where all of the Arab families went, and it was a really great international club. She got me a job there, and I started working on the weeknights when it was slow because you gotta work your way up in this business. And I think it was 50 bucks on the weeknights, and sometimes I wouldn't even dance because there was not enough customers to dance for.

But then the weekend shows were amazing. And it was a three level club and there were, it was packed with people. We had bouncers that would walk us through the crowds to the stage and it was just amazing. And so yeah, I danced there, actually danced at Al-Amir. That's actually the job that I've had the longest, my whole adult life. I worked at that club from about 2002 until I moved here to Ohio in 2021.

I have a website it's tamrahennabellydancer.com. I have an Instagram. It is TamraHenna_Official with an underscore. So my TikTok is TamraHenna_Official. And I'm on Facebook as Joi Razinha. And if you, I'm less politically vocal on Facebook than I used to be because I've been Zucked a few times and I figure I'm going to lose my privileges if I say anything more about what I really think about things politically on Facebook anymore.

Rod: I'm glad you said the Tamra Henna part, because I was going to ask you that. Where did the name come from?

Joi: Tamra Henna is a movie character, and she was in this movie. She was a dancer. She danced with the family circus, and It's kind of an Egyptian My Fair Lady story, like rich guy comes to the circus, makes a bet that he can take this girl and make her acceptable to society. And the dancer that plays the role, she was actually a dancer and an actress. She was one of my favorite of what they call Golden Era dancers, the dancers from the ‘50s, like the Golden Age of Egyptian cinema. The title of the movie is Tamra Henna. And the song is “Tamra Henna”. And the character is Tamra Henna. And I loved the song and the dancer so much that when I decided to pick a name, and this was back when it was the thing to do to pick an Arabic name if you were going to have a stage name or some kind of stage name, I decided that I would pick that name because it's a fictional character, and I figured I'm not passing myself off as an Arab woman. I'm naming myself after a fictional character so anyone who hears the name, who is of the culture, knows that's not my real name. And the song's a great song. I still love to dance to it.

Rod: With the belly dancing, what was it about it that resonated with you? Like how, how did it get it hooks into you so fast and deep?

Joi: Honestly I think it was the permission to move and to be kind of free. And I think that's what really draws a lot of people into it. And unfortunately it does tend to draw a lot of people who've had, you know, trauma, bodily trauma in their lives and have not been able to express themselves physically because it's so much about personal expression and expressing your sensuality, your… it's not so gendered as it used to be, but like when I started it was all about expressing your femininity and the whole goddess angle, and being a woman and yada yada. As of 2022, we've kind of moved past that somewhat and realized that both people who are male and female and everywhere in between, like to express those sides.

But I think back in the day, it was definitely marketed quite a bit towards women and freeing, kind of give a space to express yourself, physically and to dance and be sensual. And to feel beautiful. And I think that's initially what drew me to it. And there's a lot of orientalism in that as well. Like it's exotic, it's sparkly, it's a persona that you can put on. I think the thing that really kept me was definitely the music. It was deep and complex and it really struck me. And then when I started learning about how did people move to this music, it was also really different from any dance form that I had seen before. And I think that just kind of captured my imagination and really pulled me into it.

As you go along, you start creating, not necessarily a persona for yourself, but in a way it kind of is a persona for yourself. And I became a belly dancer, and that's who I was and what I was. It's not spiritual, but it is. It's very, very physical. For me, it was the way to get in touch with my body, and it's like that for a lot of different people.

Rod: I get the sense that you think deeply about how you engage with belly dancing as a white person.

Joi: I do. I definitely do more now than I did. I mean, there's racial bias everywhere, and it's just when you have people that start pointing it out, people who are of other races and say, hey, this has been our experience in this community, it's really kind of, it was a challenging time, and I think it still remains a challenging time. When you're a white person engaged with the world in general, you really look at it one way and then you have an idea of how the world is. And then when you start hearing other people's experiences, then hopefully you realize that it's not the same for everyone.

It's really easy as a white person to get sucked into, “I'm so put upon; nobody likes me because I'm white,” and I've seen that conversation happen. I know how people get sucked into the resentment of woke culture because I've seen it happen within the belly dance community. I have felt it within myself and had to wrestle with it and go look, this is not the road you want to go down. This is not going to uncover a part of your own personality that is good, so check yourself. But it's easy to do. And it did make me take a step back and try to be a lot more introspective with how I'm engaging with other people, with the dance form, the cultures.

And so I did have to be… I don't think I had to be; a lot of people have chosen not to. But I became a lot more introspective about what it means to be a white person in a space that is not mine. It's not my culture. I think a lot of dancers who spent a lot of time in this space just assumed we're getting these jobs and we're gigging, and it's because, always it's because of our ability or whatever it is that we have that is appealing to the audience and to the venue owners, whoever's hiring us at the time. And so we assume that we're getting jobs because we're the best person for it. And a lot of other people having found their voice online, were able to come in and say, hey, I'm a dancer, I'm a black woman. Or I'm a man, or I'm a trans man, or whatever, and I'm trying to get jobs. And I can't be hired because of racial biases that exist and people who are gatekeeping and who have a lot of say on who gets to dance and who doesn't. And sometimes it's because there's racial bias in the owners of the venues, and they tell you as a scheduler that they don't want certain kind of people. I know I have been told, I did the schedule for Al-Amir for many years and other clubs, it wasn't just there, but I've been told so and so looks old, don't have them back. I've never been told specifically, we don't want black dancers, but black dancers on the schedule have felt like they weren't welcome.

And I heard that from people who were in my community who said that that was the way that they had always felt. There's a lot of racial bias, all over the world. Anti-black racial bias all over the world. It's not specifically a white American thing. I've seen other biases, size biases, people being told that dancers were too overweight, too old, too this, too that, whatever it is. And some of it was in the professional spaces, where I was more familiar, and in other situations it was members of the community, say a teacher would make comments to her students about who looked right, or dancers being too dark for this or too light for that, you know, just whatever.

And so I think people started talking about the biases that they had experienced in this dance form. And it caused a lot of consternation, and a lot of people weren't ready to hear that maybe some of the things, the ways that they had behaved themselves, were problematic for other people. And there's a lot of controversy around it. I think that there are a lot of people who felt like it went too far. There was a lot of talk about canceling certain people, and some people needed to be canceled because they had really hurt a lot of other people and didn't really seem to care. But it's really interesting because it's kind of a microcosm of the same conversations that you may have seen happening in our culture at large over the last year or so. It happened within the community on a smaller scale, and with everyone being home and being online, people were talking about things a lot more.

So it did make me have to think about what was I doing? How was I engaging with other dancers? How was I engaging with the culture? You can't help the skin you were born in, on either side, but you do have to recognize how have I benefited, how have we benefited I should say, from being the right color or at least not being the wrong color.

And do I even really need to be practicing an art form that belongs to a different culture? And it took me a while. I never thought that I would give it up, but I really thought that if I'm going to do it, I need to be thoughtful about it. I've engaged with the communities personally for a long time. I worked in nightclubs that were owned by Lebanese and Syrian people, and I heard the conversation from their end on what are they looking for in entertainment, so I understand why am I making the entertainment choices that I am making. I don't present the dance form as a cultural exercise. It is very based in the traditional styles from the Middle East, but there's also an element of Las Vegas showgirl happening. And for some people, they feel like it invalidates the, like a lot of people want it presented as, this is a thing that I have learned, and it's an academic exercise, so I am doing this dance from this region and I'm, you know, and it's very specific. Whereas I come from the entertainment side of it, whereas I kind of know what the traditions are, but they've asked me to do fire. So, which is not necessarily traditional, but my boss is saying, hey, we want the New Year's show this year to be like, what can you do to make it bigger than last year?

So it's a real balancing act trying to stay somewhat traditional and always be respectful of the cultures that I am interacting with, but understanding that Friday night is Bollywood Night at the Arabic nightclub and the crowd wants me to dance to Bollywood music. And so I do, because they tip when you do it, because they're happy that you're dancing to music that they like and enjoy, you know what I'm saying? So it's real interesting. But if I posted a video of myself doing that, somebody online who has been studying belly dance and has some really, ideas about, what is appropriate and what's not, and are you being orientalist and are you doing all of that? They may look at that completely without context and go, what are you doing? You're just contributing to the muddying of the waters. And as an outsider to the culture, I have to understand what I'm doing and make sure that I'm not going too far, if that makes sense.

The teaching world, the hobbyist world, and the professional world are sometimes really different. And a lot of people made their living as dance teachers and had studios and taught a lot of people and put on a lot of big workshops and made money and produced other dancers. But depending on what area of the country you were in, you might not have any real opportunity to engage with anyone from any of the communities where the dance is native to, or where the dance is from. So if you're in some small town somewhere and there's no one who's from the Middle East, but you like belly dance because you were exposed to it, like you could open a studio and teach everyone that you know how to do this dance. And no one has met a single person from the Middle East.

So I think in a lot of cases, that's where there's some divorce from the reality of engaging within the communities and just a bunch of Western people, in a lot of cases a bunch of white people, doing a dance form that they can tell themselves a lot of different stories about that aren't necessarily true. Like there's a lot of incorrect history of the dance and how it came about and what it was for. If you've ever done any Googling of the history of belly dance, and I don't know why you would have, but if you ever do, there's a lot of stories out there that it was goddess worship, or it was birthing rituals, or it was this or that, or the other thing.

And none of those things are true. Belly dance is not thousands of years old. It's from the turn of the last century. And it kind of came out of, what we see today as being placed on the stage entertainment in nightclubs and in the movies and things like that, kind of came from the cabarets that were started in Egypt in the early 20th century, late 19th century, mostly early 20th century, but was kind of a result of colonization. There were nightclubs because people wanted to see Western style shows. And they were kind of catering to their own culture, but also trying to emulate the colonizers, perhaps, in putting these things together.

And then you get the movies which were heavily patterned after Hollywood. There would be musicals where, or any movie, didn't matter what the movie was, had to have a belly dance scene because it's what, people wanted to see stuff like that. So there was a lot of cross pollination even back then, but what we do today came out of that time. So what was happening before then, the dances that were the entertainment that was happening in people's homes, at weddings, at gatherings and things like that looked a lot different than what we see today.

And so, no, it wasn't thousands of years of birthing rituals and, and goddess worship, but when you're in a little town someplace or some place in California or whatever, it sounds really cool, right? It sounds great. And it's appealing to your customers who are middle aged housewives, and it sounds really awesome, and I want to worship myself like a goddess, or I want to take part in this dance that's as old as the pyramids. And so there's a lot of stuff going around out there that we made up. And now it's possible to be confronted with somebody who is from North Africa and says, wow, that's a bunch of bullshit. What are you doing?

So we're being confronted as Westerners with our own colonizer ways, I suppose. And it's not always fun. It's not always fun to hear. So it's been a tumultuous time within the community. And I don't know how that really has changed what I'm doing. I think it has caused me to think more about how I've benefited from my own privilege and to really examine, am I doing anything to help people who haven't been, for whom it hasn't been as easy to participate, am I doing anything to help those people feel more welcome? Am I making sure that the choices that I make don't stray too far and go into the realm of disrespect.

But I've been doing this for a really long time. I can do something else, and I guess that's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm not ready to do something else yet. Gigging is an addiction, truly. Performing is addictive, and steady income is addictive too. This year I'm turning 50. How many 50 year old belly dancers gigging in clubs are there is the question, and the answer is probably more than you think. But you know, there are younger dancers coming up and you don't want to be asked to leave, so it's better to leave on a high note. I don't quite look my age yet. And I can still teach, and I think I'm not too bad at that. I've done okay with the teaching, and I'd like to do more of it. I can still do it physically. I can still do everything that, almost, that I used to do before. I don't have any physical limitations yet. In this business, it's more about, does your client perceive you as being the right age to be entertaining them? Because ageism is a thing, yo. Everyone at the nightclub is still 21 and I’m not. But I do have to start thinking about what do I do when I'm not a dancer anymore full time. What do I do with that? So it's like the next chapter. And do I try to stay a dancer as long as possible? Or do I just chuck it and open a restaurant?

So I've talked about what I've been doing, but I really haven't talked about how it changed me, I guess. Like how did I change from being a really, really shy teenager to, I don't, I'm not shy anymore. I was really shy, or maybe I wasn't shy. I think maybe it was circumstantial. Um, you know, it's, I was always the new kid because we moved a lot. So I never had really the opportunity to make friends, you know, and this is when I'm going to get emotional. So just bear with me. So when you come from a really shitty situation, you, I personally don't want to bring that, like I don't want to burden other people with that I guess like how do you talk about it? I just wanted to go to school and get away from it. And I certainly didn't want to make school life for the friendships that I found there about my personal drama, I guess, so it was just like, I don't have anything good to talk about. So I'll just be really quiet.

I guess that's kind of where I was at at that point in time. And really, I, I don't know that dance changed me. I think it just drew it out what was already there, if that makes sense. I think maybe if I hadn't had the experience of becoming a belly dancer and having all of the different experiences that I've had through that, I might have stayed more reserved. I don't know, or just would've gone a different direction. But this was really a way for me to figure out who I was and who I am and really just express that. And like I said, I don't think I'm different. The transformation has been in allowing me to become who I am. It's like the butterfly isn't any different from the caterpillar. It's just the final form. It's the same DNA, right? It's just whether it's able to figure out how to fly.

Episode 029 - And The River Churned Opaquely

I decided to try something different this time. I wanted to experiment with turning short stories I wrote into audio, and this is the first of several, I hope. The hard part for me is always asking other people to do something for me, like sitting for an interview, or in this case reading the story out loud into a recorder.

As I explain in a conversation with Flora after the story, I met Anne McQuary virtually in 2007 when we were both writing blogs, largely about our thoughts, feelings, fears, joys, frustrations, and laugh out loud moments of parenting. While I’ve never met in what I happily still think of as the real, physical world, we were blogger friends and then Facebook friends, and when I thought of someone to read my story, she immediately came to mind. I asked her, and amazingly, she said yes. And she killed it! She didn’t just read it, she performed it, and the result still chokes me up after dozens of readings and listenings. I couldn’t have asked for better. Thank you Anne! If ever I can return the kindness, let me know, though I’m not sure I’ll live up to the standard you set.

The story itself is a meditation on returning to dating later in life after divorce. I’ll resist all the things I want to say about it and let you have your own experience with it.

Thanks also to Flora, for getting on the mic with me and always encouraging me to be myself, try new things, and to commit the time to get it finished.

Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. I made the outro music on Soundation. The three other songs came from https://audiio.com/ and include “Building a Treehouse (Instrumental)” by As Tall As Pine; “Early Hours (Instrumental)” by Andy D. Park; and “Giving It All (Instrumental)” by Marshall Usinger.

Here’s the story:

“And The River Churns Opaquely” by Rod Haden

Madelina shifted her weight to the right. Her entire left leg, from her buttock all the way down into her calf, was dead. Well, not dead. She imagined dead doesn’t hurt. Sitting on the ground was not something people her age were meant to do. She could feel the blood returning, and it felt both better and worse at the same time. If she got up now, she would shamble and stagger, but if she waited much longer, she‘d have to ask him for help to make it upright at all. Dating was not something people her age were meant to do either.

“Let’s walk down to the bridge,” she said, stealing a sideways glance at Franklin’s face. He was staring across the river, not quite smiling. His thoughts were far from here, she supposed. He turned then, and his eyes snapped into focus on hers. Now he grinned, and she blushed. She couldn’t say why. He looked so different just then. Not younger, really, just… something. She couldn’t name it.

“Perfect,” he said, holding her gaze a moment before she looked away. The water was quick. Its red-brown surface was opaque and stippled with rushing debris.

He rolled awkwardly to his hands and knees, grunting. He paused there, staring intently down at the space between his thumbs. “It’ll take me a second,” he said simply. “I’m not the man I used to be.” He gave a short laugh. She thought she heard something else. A fart, maybe. She wondered if she imagined it. “I suppose I never really was the man I used to be!” He laughed again and lumbered up to one knee, then onto his feet. If he had farted, he made no sign that he was aware of it.

Madelina wondered if she should roll as he had done. She wasn’t at all certain she could get herself up and keep her skirt down, gracefully, modestly. She tried to remember how she got down there in the first place. Maybe she could reverse the process. She wished she had suggested a different spot for a first date. She loved to read here, in the sun, before the divorce. Nothing felt like hers anymore. She had wanted it to be hers again.

“May I give you a hand, lovely?” he asked. He set his feet at shoulder width and bent his knees, as if preparing to lift a great weight. She wondered if she should be offended at the implication. He reached out to her.

“Lovely?” she thought, and took his hand. She rose almost effortlessly. “Oh!” she breathed, and blushed again. “You’re stronger than you look!” He chuckled, and she caught herself. “No, I mean… not that you…”

“Yeah, I guess I do all right, once I get a solid foundation under me. And you’re light as a feather. You make me feel quite strapping, actually.”

His large, brown eyes held her as firmly as his grip. His bald head shone wetly. She suddenly felt the humidity herself, and a flush of heat. She brushed the back of her skirt. It was damp. She hoped it wasn’t muddy. The flooding of the week before had receded, but the riverbank was still saturated. It was foolish of her to bring him here to sit in the grass in a bright yellow dress like she was 20.

She could hear his breath. His face was still bright with that nameless something. It seemed like she had seen that face before, that she recognized him from somewhere. He released her hand and turned toward the bridge. He bent his arm, and she threaded hers into it. It was comfortable. Their feet moved in easy synchronicity as they strolled slowly along the bank.

“I’m sorry,” she said, touching his elbow with the fingers of her free hand, “for bringing you here. I should’ve suggested a coffee shop or something. I haven’t really done this in a while, you know.”

“Regret nothing,” he said. He has, she thought, a reader’s sense of language. “It’s beautiful here.” He breathed in. She felt his chest expand. “It smells like a fresh start. Everything’s been scoured clean.” He turned his head toward her. “Was there much devastation?” he asked. “In the flood?”

“Some,” she said. “But the bridge held.” They were almost underneath it now. There was no traffic passing above. The bank was slick as it descended to the water. They stopped on the last patch of grass before the mud, looking down. The water hurried, thick and rough. At the edge, waterlogged branches and unrecognizable detritus snagged in a tangle.

“Look,” he said, and slipped free of her arm. “There’s something there.” He took a few steps forward, moving slowly, planting his feet deliberately on the treacherous surface, step by step. “What an odd shape it is.” He crept forward, each step intentional.

“Setting his foundation,” she thought. She stayed where she was.

“It’s a stone,” he said at last, stopping and turning back to her. “A headstone, I think. Let’s take a closer look.” He held out his hand to her, but she was too far to reach him. Emulating his technique, she stepped slowly, slowly, setting her feet, glad of her sensible shoes. At last their fingers touched. They gazed down at the stone. It was chipped and rough, like slate, and half buried in the mud. She wondered from where it had washed up. He gripped her hand then, firmly. She didn’t pull away.

Our baby, Hope

Lost before she lived

Loved fiercely and forever

June 3, 1973

He squeezed her hand, shifted it from his right hand to his left, and squeezed it again. He slipped his freed arm around her waist and held her like that. She pressed her thigh against his and felt his warmth through the damp fabric of her skirt. He was solid, rooted to the ground. He didn’t move. They stood like that for a long time, saying nothing.

Episode 028 - Claiming Death is Valuing Life

It’s been a struggle staying active and healthy and creative as this pandemic stretches on and on and on, and I just haven’t felt much like writing or creating or editing and adding music to the audio I recorded with brooks back in January. Often the basics have felt like just too much work. But here it is! Just in time for new surges in hospitalizations. Death is sitting right down on the couch with us and eating our snacks these days, so we might as well talk about it.

So although I often thought of Eddie Izzard’s bit on “Cake or Death” through the making of this episode, let’s all have a bit of cake AND death, shall we?

My thanks, as always, to Flora, whose steady support, love, humor, and real talk have made this pandemic so much better, at least for me. I don’t know about you.

Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. All other music was made by me on Ableton Live, except for the outro music, which I made on Soundation.

The podcast story on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross that I reference in the intro is Radiolab's “The Queen of Dying”.

Here’s the transcript:

brooks: My name's brooks kasson. I don't know what else to say, except that I'm a Scorpio. I guess I should start, the origins, not that I knew at the time, stretch back to when I was 32 years old and I joined for some inexplicable reason, I joined the Austin Memorial and Burial Society. So I have been a member of that for 40 some odd years. And I'd get the newsletters, and they were always interesting to me. And that particular organization now is called Funeral Consumers Alliance of Central Texas. And Nancy Walker is the Executive Director. She's fabulous. Fabulous.

And it may have been her that introduced me to Jo Jensen, who was an Oncology Chaplain at Seton at the time. And I had, all within a matter of a couple of weeks, I had heard about Death Cafes, and my ears perked up. And then the topic came around again. It was about 8 years ago. I met up with Jo and told her that I was interested in starting a Death Cafe, and I think that had occurred to her as well. And somehow we met up, and we decided to start or to hold a Death Cafe. Of course, neither one of us had ever been to one, but we were both interested in it, hers with the end of life process with her patients and me by whatever fluke, natural inclination I suppose. And so we found or went to the Death Cafe International website and learned a little bit about the origins of Death Cafe.

Voiceover: From the early 1980s, Swiss sociologist and anthropologist Bernard Crettaz and his wife Yvonne worked together studying the rites and rituals of death. After her death in 1999 and his retirement in 2002, Dr. Crettaz held the first of his Cafés Mortels, a salon of sorts that he facilitated gently with only a couple of rules: participants must always exhibit deep listening and rigorous honesty. The purpose was to pierce the taboo of speaking openly about death. Dr. Crettaz continued to host his Cafés Mortels until 2014.

In 2010, Jon Underwood, a web developer in the UK, was working on his own collection of projects about death. In his research, he read about Café Mortel and decided to hold an event in his living room in Hackney, London. He established the current Death Cafe model, built a website, standardized protocols, and spread the idea globally, with thousands of Death Cafes currently in existence in dozens of countries. A key innovation in Jon’s model was the addition of tea and cake to every Death Cafe event.

brooks: And traditionally, and of course I jumped all over this one, you served tea and cakes at a Death Cafe. Very British, very European. And I was already attracted to that idea. I grew up in the military and the first, in, when I was 4 and 5, we were in England right after World War II. So I have that European love of tea and pomp and circumstance kind of way imbued in the early neurology and preferences of me.

And I went out to the Salvation Army and bought dozens of tea cups and saucers, and of course made a big production of the whole thing. And we ended up in that first, and we advertised it, we spread the word, and we had like 50 people show up, way too many to do a Death Cafe effectively, but nonetheless, it was very new. And so we ended up with, Jo and I broke the group up into two circles of 25 people each, and then each one of us facilitated a circle.

And I think we had two or three meetings in that mode. And then it became obvious, a big circle was too much to handle and have any kind of intimacy, so we changed it to four tops. So we had four people in a group and then Jo and I would move around from table to table and just kind of sit in on the conversation. Every meeting I baked homemade brownies that were chock full of pecans and extra chocolate chips in there, and people brought their own water or tea or whatever it is they wanted and ate chocolate while we talked about death. If you're going to talk about death, you have to have chocolate. It is just part of the deal. And the format that we used there was a talking stick, and we used, had prompt cards, like a deck of cards with some questions on it that people could use for, to get their small group begun.

Rod: For you to have 50 people show up on your very first one, clearly it had some resonance in the community. I mean, it must’ve met a need that wasn’t being met elsewhere for it to immediately just jump off like that.

brooks: I agree.

Rod: What do you think appealed to you? You said you joined the group about funeral information when you were 32. What do you think it is about death and talking about death that connected with you?

brooks: Aside from the fact that I'm a Scorpio, and I'm constantly in transformation, which means that I'm involved in a process of loss on a very regular basis. And I'm very aware of that. I can't answer why I joined it back when I was 32, except that it was interesting to me.

You know, it's not like I've had a near-death experience. I can't tell you it's something glamorous like that. And it's not that I had my favorite childhood friend die in front of me. None of that. I didn't experience death in my family in any unusual way, other than losing grandparents, and then eventually in my 60s losing, my parents died. So the only thing, I mean, I'm just making up stuff here. All I can pin it on is just my natural inclination to focus on the loss piece.

I grew up in the military. My dad is, was, an officer. So that whole mindset, and I come from a long, I mean, my mother was second generation military as well. So I come from my long line of warriors and that's all about following orders, doing just what you're told to do, and killing people. Now, you don't want to inspect the killing people part. It was never talked about. The first dead body that I was presented with was from my father's mother, and I didn't want to look at it. So I didn't, with the open casket. So I didn't. Avoiding, avoiding, avoiding was how I was brought up with the topic.

OK. So here's a, maybe a better answer, especially in this culture. We, where it's a consumer culture. We are about getting things; we're not about releasing things. And all I know is that I've never been interested, for instance, in the beginning of life process. Didn't want to be a midwife. Didn't, wasn't particularly interested in birthings, but am very interested in the letting go piece, partially because it feels in this culture so off balanced, because we don't look at losses as a part of the process. It's something to be avoided. It's something be not talked about, run away from if you possibly can, or buy your way out. And I absolutely disagree with that. As I've aged, claiming death as part of my life is, and owning it, and keeping the topic current, is all a really important part of valuing life.

Rod: Really the one Death Cafe that I experienced personally with you was on Zoom. I feel like I kind of missed a whole dimension of it with the cake and the tea and everything. That seems like such a valuable piece to it. Do you miss that aspect of it in the COVID time?

brooks: Well, that's a great question, because to be honest with you, when it became apparent that there weren't going to be in-person gatherings, I thought, do I want to give this up? And the answer was absolutely not. And especially in these times with the topic being so prevalent and ubiquitous. I forced myself to learn the mechanics of Zoom, and I wondered would I be able to hold space electronically with people being little squares on the screen? Would I be able to create intimacy under those conditions?

But let me back up and say too, Rod, that every Death Cafe, even mine, from month to month, every Death Cafe is different, and every facilitator runs their group in a different way, so there's a different flavor. There's a nurse in town who started a second Death Cafe, maybe a couple of years ago. I don’t know whether it’s still going or not. But again, presumably because of her background being a nurse, the flavor of, and I never went to one, I just, Heather Black, that's her name. I just had lunch with her once. And her offering in a Death Cafe, I think, was more practical things, your paperwork and the physical things that happen.

So as you perhaps recall in the Death Cafe you went to, my interest is more in the emotional, spiritual, transformative aspect of death. And it's really important to me to hold that space so that people can fall into that kind of intimacy. The topic is such a taboo and delicate topic that it really, whatever entry door is available, it’s important to open it because again, the topic is so not discussed in our culture.

Rod: Did you shape yours intentionally to be what it is? How did you prepare to start? How did you know how you wanted to run it?

brooks: We became, if you can imagine, a circle of 25 people for the first few events down to a table, 8 or 10 tables of 4 apiece, automatically the intimacy has increased. Right? So, not that I thought about that at the time, it just became obvious that we didn't want to do the big circles. So we switched to the talking stick and the smaller tables, and then eventually Jo had retired, she’d gotten tired of co-facilitating, and so I had the choice of, do I continue this on my own or not? And I wanted to, so I moved, wondering if it would survive, but moved the venue to here to South Austin, and began more like what you experienced when you came to the Zoom meeting.

So the most I've ever had, the biggest number I've ever had here in South Austin is probably 15 or 16, maybe 14, right around in there, crammed into this small room, people sitting on floors and so forth. But typically the numbers tended to float around 8 to 10, sometimes as few as 6 if it was raining and snowing outside or whatever. But it stabilized in a smaller group. Now what I'm using is what you experienced, is what's called the Conversation Cafe format.

And so I'm finding that, and just briefly what that is, you go around, and you open the circle by going, each person says their name and why they're here and what they expect at the beginning. And then the body of a meeting is open to open discussion. And then right before the end, you go back around the circle again. It's like a closing of the circle, and everybody says, this is what I got out of the meeting. And that's a good way to recall what it is, but it also lets everybody else in the group know that their place and their offerings are important to the group as a whole. And with this format that I'm using now, there's so much richness, Rod, and people discover things about their own beliefs and talk about their own fears, and sometimes, much of the time, for instance, it doesn't have to do directly with death, but it always has something to do with loss.

Rod: I was curious who tends to come. Are they typically people, I guess not, typically people that are dealing with a recent loss of a loved one or something like that?

brooks: It tends to be people of age that are aging into this part of our lives. And there are some young people that come that have insights that just blow me away. It could be that they're dealing with their own health issues perhaps, and sometimes not. Sometimes they're coming because, I don't know exactly why, but they're interested in the topic and/or there's not very many places that are open to the public that you can have truly safe, intimate discussions.

And so people are certainly, aren't required to talk in Death Cafe. On the other hand, in my opinion, they showed up for a reason, and I'd like to know what it is, so I'll do what I can to help them feel safe enough to speak. It's not about voyeurism for me. It's about participating in a group and in a topic that is delicate and difficult to talk about. So for me, at least, the structure is helpful in establishing the safety.

So people come as they're able to, or as they're drawn to, or as they want to. And sometimes they'll come like two times and then skip a time or two, come eight times in a row, that sort of thing. It just depends on where they are, and sometimes they'll be gone for six or eight months, and then all of a sudden they're back again. It's wonderful, I think, to have that kind of continuity and familiarity for me.

Rod: How has going online affected your turnout? I would think that in the time of a pandemic that people would be flocking to it.

brooks: Yes. And I think that certainly has drawn people back. And I have to say that the numbers have stayed stable, kind of where I was talking about,  in and out of a dozen or so. But the other thing is at this stage of the pandemic, people are Zoomed out. I mean, they are just, enough of the electronic communication and connections, which is why I do my best to keep the electronic piece in the background and make intimacy a priority. So in order to do that, some structure is, in my opinion, is absolutely necessary, and so is the safety of not cross-talking, not having somebody want to fix if I break into tears or something. The scariest thing is to have somebody want to fix me or make me stop. But my emphasis is when somebody is indeed having a breakdown of tears and emotions that they are allowed to do that and begin to recognize their own strengths in being held energetically in the group.

And so I talk about that at the beginning of every meeting, that these are the parameters, and that silence is really important. So that for instance, if somebody makes an offering of an incident or whatever, then I ask that before somebody else speaks, and you could be all excited about, Oh, I have this other experience that's similar to that, that I want to talk about, but before they speak, I ask them to take a breath or two. And so what that does is that it allows the offering that has been made to land in everybody. And it helps make the gifts of people's feelings and experiences sacred.

Rod: You’ve been doing it for 8 years you said?

brooks: Seven and a half. Yeah. Come I think next June it'll be eight. Is that right?

Rod: How do you think it’s impacted you? How do you think it’s changed you to be doing this for so long?

brooks: It surprises me every time I say the number of years. Like really? Because it seems so ordinary. And I look forward to it because every single time, Rod, every single time, I have not been to, I have not experienced a crummy one, and every single time I come away feeling satisfied, like I've had a really good meal. And as a Scorpio, it's important to me to experience life in as much, with as much juice as possible. So I get a regular dose of that, which I absolutely crave and love and love to offer it. I do it for other people, and I do it for myself. I would not do this if it did not feed me. I'm too old for that kind of stuff at this point. And I never wanted to be and am not so inclined to be Mother Teresa anyway.

Rod: Where do you see it going from here? What do you think it would take for you to feel safe to do it in person again?

brooks: That's a good question. I will have to feel safe being in a closed room. And what I'm finding very interesting about COVID now is how different people have different levels of fear and safety around this particular virus. So, as we both know, there's people that don't come out of their house, and they still have their groceries delivered to the front door, and they spray them with Lysol or whatever before they bring them in. And then there's those that insist that there's no such thing as a virus, and they refuse to wear a mask. There's just all levels of how people deal with this. So I really won't know until I know, and part of it will be, am I comfortable being in a closed room?

And I wouldn't say, because I don't think it's a reasonable answer to put a pencil point on when there's a virus, then I'm going to do this, I mean, a vaccine, then I'm going to do so-and-so. I don't know that. I'll know it when I get there.

Rod: Have you developed any relationships out of it?

brooks: Oh, absolutely. Oh, sure. Sure. These days, of course, there's not much meeting outside, but I've had lunch with people and continued relationships or telephone calls or whatever, that sort of thing. I mean, seven and a half years is a long time to have a thread of a person in and out one's life. And so, yes, that's delightful.

Rod: How do you handle it if somebody dies, if there’s a regular who’s been coming, you said people come because of, they age into it. Have people come and gone?

brooks: Well, in fact, that has just recently happened. And so my way of handling it has been to reach out and talk to the spouse, which I was doing before the spouse died anyway. So it's more like a continuation of that. Or regular members, for instance, whose mom or dad's died, then I will express my own personal feelings and sympathy around that. But there's no like group collection and send her some flowers. There's none of that sort of thing going on.

Rod: Do people come with misconceptions about what it’s going to be? Have you ever had anybody say that was…?

Brooks: No, and I'm glad to say no. and part of that reason is that everybody that I know of, almost, has come because of a referral. So they come knowing a little bit of something about it, and maybe what has prompted it is the death of a parent or a pet or something like that. And I also, because I'll email them back and forth ahead of time, because especially now that we're on Zoom, I know who's going to show up because I send out a notice that Death Cafe is going to happen, and then these days, what I say is, if you want to come, you need to email me back and let me know that you're coming. And that way I have the chance to communicate with a newcomer and let them know how I run the meeting so that they can think, well, this isn't for me, or I'm intrigued. I think I'll show up. It's very important to me to maintain, to create and maintain the sanctity of the group, which I could do certainly when we were in physical proximity. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm careful about, for instance, not sending out the Zoom invitation to my full email list, because I want to know who's coming and that they are committed to a certain protocol.

Rod: You said a lot of it comes from referrals. Is that mostly how you, I don’t know if market is the right word, but mostly word of mouth, or do you, have you developed any relationships with hospitals, hospice?

brooks: Nope, Nope. It's all word of mouth. Yes. And I'm clear that although there's plenty of grieving that happens that this is not a grief group. I mean, I'm not qualified to run that. I don't have a social worker's license or whatever.

And I guess I would like to emphasize, it's not all about death. What it's really about is living. It's really about how do we be alive and hold in us and in our awareness, the fact that we will not be here forever. That's the entire point is that it's that kind of wholeness that I'm most interested in supporting, because it's so lopsided in this culture.

Rod: Well, I really appreciate your time. I think you were nervous about doing it. I hope you found it a comfortable experience.

brooks: Thank you. I did. I did indeed. Rod, thank you so much for asking and for prompting me to speak about what I love to do. It's been a delight.

Episode 015 - Survival of the Collaborators

Will Taylor and Strings Attached shows have been a semi-regular part of my post-divorce life, and it was at one of their shows when Flora and I first held hands. We even had our first kiss that night. They are a wonderful part of the Austin live music world, and their skills with every instrument and every style of music, plus their improv and collaborative abilities, make them a joy to watch and to hear.

You can find info about their upcoming shows at StringsAttached.org, and you can find out more about their community service and outreach work at StringsAttachedCares.org. And if you're looking for a curated Spotify or Pandora playlist of local Austin music, and want to help these artists keep generating income from their work, go to WePlayAustinMusic.com.

Thank you so much to Will Taylor for sitting down with me. 

Our theme music is "Start Again" by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. I made our outro music on Soundation. All other music in this episode is from Will Taylor and Strings Attached:

2:06    "Brand New Me"

8:43    "Feel Again"

12:27    "My Name Is Truth"

20:24    "God Only Knows"

24:50    "Overjoyed"

28:38    "Secret of Life"

33:29    "Tigris"

Transcript:

If I think of my past as a child growing up, I enjoyed the process of play with music. Playing. That’s why we’re called players. Musicians are players. We play.

Yeah, I got into music through elementary school, it being presented as an option, and just fell in love with it. But so you’re spending time, like there’s a piano over here right now. I’m looking at that piano, and I remember as a kid, I would just disappear into that world of sounds and try to make things happen just because it was fun, because it was enjoyable, and that whole culture around creating something that didn’t exist before, in the air. So yeah, I started very early, and I can remember just disappearing in the activity so much. Even by myself.

You spend a lot of time by yourself if you’re doing traditional, like let’s say classical music or jazz. A lot of time alone, so you have to get used to being alone, solitary, you know? And then you get rewarded, because you can take that skill and then bring people together, play with others with that skill on a high level, collaborative level. It’s not like painting where you’re just, that’s it, you’re alone. Fell in love with playing with other kids in orchestra and string quartets, and just everything around that, like I said, the whole culture, the conversations, the meeting people that are passionate about that. You just connect, so it’s an activity that can fuel you for a lifetime, easily, if not several lifetimes.

And now I realize it even more than then how much of a practice it is for things that you need to know to just enjoy life and communicate with others. There’s so many lessons built into it. When I say music, I mean the study of music and the activity of doing it with others. So I enjoyed that solitary process and then also the process of working with musicians. It’s a natural high like none other.

I love rehearsing, too. Just getting people together and … Something might sound like crap, and then working through the difficulties. So that’s the other opportunity that music can provide to people that are willing to study it is how to navigate problem solving, how to navigate communicating with people that don’t communicate the way you do, and they are not understanding how you’re trying to explain a musical idea with words. And sometimes it helps to not even talk about it. You just play, and you find your way. And it can bring up a lot of, it can trigger people. It can get people angry, you know, if … So you have this opportunity on how to learn how to communicate non-violently in a way. A lot of musicians don’t learn it. 

And there’s just so much behind the scenes that has nothing to do with playing your instrument to make that music happen, psychologically speaking. Navigating personalities and making people feel treasured or loved or appreciated that then will contribute to the group dynamic. And just by picking the correct words, Joni Mitchell talked about this a lot. She’s like, it’s just this so delicate, paper-thin thing that you’re always aware of when you’re producing an album or you’re working with your band. Just the wrong choice of words, and then it’s ruined, or it’s tainted, and then you’re … there’s no getting back from that.

So that’s one of the things that the music journey can bring. There’s so many things. And then just the act of performing can be a meditation in itself. You are practicing, when you perform, being in the present moment. The more that you can be in the present moment when you’re performing with your musicians, generally the more joyful it will be. And then you’re given the opportunity to just accept things as they are. So a lot of musicians don’t get that. They’re so focused on perfection, and I was this way too for a long time. I would get upset on stage. I would make faces. And it’s only in like the last 4 years, maybe 5 years, I’ve started to try another way, just to smile if a mistake, or something goes wrong. We just smile. I still, I’m not perfect. I still might get triggered. “We rehearsed that! What the heck? What are we doing?”

But it really, music, because you’re in rhythm, it’s different than regular life. When you’re playing in a band, and you start playing, there’s a commitment that happens. You just, “OK. We’re on this. We’re going. And everybody’s on board until this piece is over.” You know? So, what other areas of life are like that? If you’re talking to somebody, you can stop and think about what you’re going to say. But in music, you’ve got to stay in the rhythm. You’ve got to stay in the flow. Not “got to,” but you have the opportunity to really be in the present moment. But most of life is not like that.

It can just be fun, too. It can be just playful. The whole playful aspect of it, when you lose yourself and you forget, you kind of lose your identity. You’re just playing and hearing sounds. So I’ve been playing music for, been a musician since I was 10. So that’s 39 years. And it’s one of the things where, yeah, I can, my thoughts will stop, or they’ll just focus on that one thing, and sometimes I won’t remember maybe a song go by. Sometimes I’ll find I don’t remember what happened during that time. You just sort of disappear. It’s what meditators go for, or they’re hoping that might come up is that your brain activity starts to calm down a little bit.

There’s a magic spot that occurs. So when you’re practicing, you’re really pushing. You’re pushing your comfort zone. You’re continually trying to raise the bar in little incremental, just teeny little bits. And then when you perform, you back off into a comfort zone where then that’s where the magic occurs. You don’t want to be on stage, “I’m going to go for it. Risk!” Like that. It’s just a little bit back behind that. You still might have this playful, like, “Let’s go! Let’s do it!” But it’s … the stuff you really know well, that’s where you’re like watching your hands and you’re, “Wow! What’s going on there?” You know, the magic.

And the songs that you know really well, too, this is the ironic thing, too. I used to be like, when I was a kid, “Ah, I don’t want to play that song again. We’ve played it so many times.” Or like, say, James Brown’s “I Feel Good” or something. But then I notice later on, “Hmm.” With the band. Some of those songs that we’ve played a million times, those are the ones where the kind of the little magical things start happening. There’s familiarity, where everybody’s just sort of watching and observing, and then it moves into that playful zone.

So yeah, it’s a two-step process. Practice, and then perform. The performance zone is where you get to let go, hopefully. And you hopefully find musicians or attract musicians who can do that. And some of them you find that you don’t even have to talk about it, just, that’s what happens. So it’s really cool. And those ones you stay with a long time. I have a few that I’ve played with a long time, and constantly just new people coming in. That’s what makes it, that’s the uncertainty piece again that makes it not boring, that makes it interesting and challenging and juicy is when I find new musicians to collaborate with and try to meet them wherever they are, find their unique gift to the project.

There’s no destination. It’s always, it’s change. You know? That’s the thing. The one thing you can count is change, so it’s never, for me, it’s never an arrival. I used to have this fixation with, if I speak about my music career, “One day, I’ll have enough time to do what I want to do and spend a lot of time being in the creative mode, and I just need to get all my financial stuff in order and all that. I’ll have a platform where I can, one day I’ll get there.”

In our culture, western culture, we’re taught to strive, to push hard, that struggle is necessary to get there, to get to the other side where you can do what you really are here to do, what is your calling. “We’re going to make it happen. We’re going to strive. We’re going to work hard.” That’s what I did for a long time. And I still see some beauty in that, actually. Because you don’t just accidentally write a symphony. But some people might say you do, I don’t know. Some people might. I don’t think Beethoven accidentally wrote a symphony. I don’t think Mozart. I think that tradition of writing music, or like the Sistene Chapel. There’s the tradition of study, of studying with a master, studying, going to school, learning the basics. And it’s not easy. So there’s a struggle there that results in something.

OK, so that’s transformative. Creating something that is left behind. This is another thing that’s been coming up for me, is we humans want to leave stuff behind. We want to leave things or creations. And for me, what has been coming up is at my current age, almost 50, it’s really becoming important. “What do I want to leave behind, and what can I do that is beyond just me?” You’re creating something from nothing. It’s just thought turning into things. And left some things behind. Left some arrangements, left some new works of music that some people might enjoy. 

This relates back to that, again, like one day, if I work hard enough, I’ll be able to relax and just do music. Because I’ve been just working for 30 years to get to that point. Do I want to keep up this push, push kind of, strive, push the envelope? How much of it do I want to keep, and how much of it do I want to relax and enjoy witnessing life? Observing life a little more. Enjoying my relationships. Enjoying getting to know people. So there’s this question mark. Why do I want to spend a lot of time writing music and pushing the envelope at this point in my life right now? It’s kind of there.

And there’s so many different genres and flavors, and you get to … I try to see the worth in all of them. And I used to be, as a kid, I was very opinionated. Classical music was the best thing. Or straight ahead jazz was the best thing. Only the music that had the tradition of study. Folk music, eh. Rock and roll, no. But later on, I definitely learned to appreciate fiddle music and folk music, so it’s great. It’s been a great ride. It still is. It’s just ongoing. It’s an ongoing transformation. It does not let you down. It throws uncertainty at you all the time. So you have an opportunity to take that lesson and then go, “Well, what other areas of my life am I being thrown uncertainty? So I could take it over there, too.” With a relationship, or … It takes you down those roads, if you want to.

Sometimes we just have one or two rehearsals, and then it’s “Boom. Go.” Jazz musicians are used to doing that a lot. Classical musicians as well, but especially jazz musicians. They’re used to playing on the spur of the moment, playing something they just heard off the top of their head, just going for it. So there’s that creative alchemy that occurs when things are on the edge. So I try to get musicians that are comfortable with that space, comfortable being on the edge, comfortable being pushed a little bit.

They also, musicians I have, that I work with, they have to be able to work fast. They have to think on their feet, because stuff just happens. You can’t stop, again. So a lot of times, I’ll be in rehearsal, and a couple of the musicians I work with, have worked with for like 25 years, 20 years, will say stuff, and the new people will, they can’t follow it. They’re like, “What are we talking about?” So it’ll just go like right over their heads. So I’ll say something to them, “Why don’t we go back to that chord, and … ?” So you got to be quick on your feet with the musical language.

There are so many choices now for an audience member, for somebody who is a music lover, that it’s really hard to keep regulars coming. It just requires an immense amount of push, immense amount of marketing, which I resent. I hate it. I’m still doing it because people show up. 

So, 20 years ago, that was easier. I’m making peace with that, but I’m thinking about it all the time. I don’t want to have two jobs. I don’t want to have marketing and music. I want to get back to just music. Look, I don’t think Beethoven was, not that I’m Beethoven or anything, but was dealing with marketing. He probably had somebody that was helping him with that, his benefactor. So I’m trying to at least get toward that, where I have hired help. And I do. I have hired help right now, but it’s still not enough. I’m still having to do most of the marketing myself. That’s what modern … it bothers me all the time. 

If I was just spending five hours of my day writing music, practicing, what would my music look like? But on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, like the Buddhist way of looking at it, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? There’s a million other people. Why should you get to do it? Because I want to! Because I’m here! What makes you … ? So then I go back to, “Well, I have a community, so maybe I do deserve it, because I … or maybe it is worthwhile, because I do have, built a community, and they enjoy it, and so I’m bringing something that’s greater than myself to a community. So then I should do it. I should spend more time on the music, less time on the marketing.” I mean, it’s ridiculous. 

With music, you have two worlds. You have the music business, and then music. And they are completely different things. Completely. Here’s an interesting thing. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at the music business because of necessity. You know the mother of invention thing again. I’ve gotten to the point where I have a club in Austin that want to bring me in as a partner, and I was pretty excited about that because we have an opportunity to build something that you could duplicate and take it to other cities or … and it could become an asset. That’s the first time in my music career that somebody has seen my worth as a businessman and is willing to … So it’s pretty exciting, but again, it’s not what I wanted to create. But it’s fine. I’ll take it. Santana owns shopping malls. That’s one of his … he invests in those strip centers. He’s been doing that for years so that he can do music. Anyway, that’s the new world of modern music making, making it. Willie Nelson, Dale Watson has a couple bars.

I guess I’m struggling now with deciding how I want to, what do I want to do? Again, because I’ve got more time coming up after raising kids for … How long have I been raising kids? 22 years, 23 years. What do I want to create next? But I do feel like, again, looking back, when I’m most happiest is when I’m on a mission that involves a lot more people than just me. If I’m raising money, or if I’m doing a music project that’s a benefit, I have all of a sudden this endless well of energy. So I was listening to this podcast recently, and the guy said, he said, “Nature’s way of punishing humans that are just doing things for themselves is depression or pain, anxiety, or whatever.” If you’re out there working toward a mission, working with a mission that is about something that’s just huger than you, just gigantic, then Nature rewards you with energy and passion and all this. I’ve noticed, just looking back, that that’s true. Some of the projects that I have exhausted myself on are free ones. And as long as there are people there with me, and I’m not alone, have collaborators, the energy just appears. The universe rewards you.

So I’m thinking, “Well, what can I do next musically?” And I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire for that, to bring people together. So one of the things that I’m, one of the many projects, is there’s right now in the world we live in, cover music, taking very popular music that people are familiar with and redoing it is very popular now. It’s a very popular way for artists to get known and make a lot of money. So I thought, “Well, why don’t we harness the power of covers and give all the money to somebody, or give all the money to a good cause?” And I’ve got the relationships with Strings musicians and play with musicians in town, and I can bring all that together. So that’s something I’m really excited about. And that’s something that’s totally within my skill set. So one of the things I’m doing is I want to do that one by one. I want to talk to all my musicians about that mission. Instead of sending out like a blanket email, I want to meet or talk to each one on the phone and see how they resonate with that and build an orchestra of musicians that will do this for good, for no pay. For nothing. And I’ve already got a few that are willing to contribute arrangements and scoring and the recording. I mean, everybody just starts coming together.

There’s nothing that’s completely selfless out there. Right? I mean, we enjoy helping others because it makes us feel good. But if you’re going to feel good, you might as well bring some people along with you, then why not? Then you have more to give. You have a well to give from. If you’re just struggling and in survival mode all the time, then you don’t have anything to, you don’t have any resources to then help others.

But I really feel like this could be the time when people wake up, more and more people wake up. People are waking up in the time of where we are with the current things that are going on in our American climate. In other words, instead of operating from the survival of the fittest mode, which Darwin taught us. What does that mean? Is it everyone for themselves? And everyone making a little pile to then at the end of life they have some pile they can live off of? That was the old model that my parents followed. What’s the new model going to be? Could be helping each other and living off the simplest way that you can live, and really survival of the collaborators. So, that project which I’m talking about, bringing the orchestra together, where I know every musician, and I get to know, talk to them one at a time, that’s an example, people coming together and doing it for just for the love of it and to give it away.

But it’s all about we have only so much time, so I want to just be writing music and then going on walks, spending time with family. But right now, the whole day is split between marketing and barely writing music ever. Barely ever. And I’m actually mastering and mixing an album right now. Because I don’t have the money to pay somebody $100 an hour. I can do it. I know how to do it. A lot of musicians have that skill as well. But it’s in the back of my mind. Maybe it’ll happen. Or do I need to push and make it happen?

But one thing that I’ve found that really works is house concerts. So there’s an endless supply of venues when you connect with people one-on-one and bring their family and friends together for a house concert. So I don’t do much with clubs in Austin. I have one show a month at a club, and that’s it. And then the house concerts are just amazing. There an amazing way to connect with people in an independent environment. We did two this weekend, and I don’t have to worry about the turnout, because the host is doing that. For a house concert, a lot of people ask, “Well, how much space do I need?” Enough for 20 people. 20 folks or more, and it can be inside or outside, either one. We did one last Saturday, it was outside. We had 80 people, right by a pool. I brought a little P.A. system and some lights. It was magical. The sun went down. It was gorgeous. But we require a minimum of 20, and that may go up as the years move on. I’ve got another friend who requires 30. And so you just go out, and you enroll or get your friends excited about it. It can be like a potluck, you can bring food, or you can provide hors d'oeuvres and drinks, and everybody has a great time. We usually have a meet and greet for an hour, and then we do an hour concert, and then people hang out afterwards. And we’re all friends at the end. We’re strangers at the beginning, and at the end of the show, we’re all friends. I encourage you to check that out. You can find out about Strings Attached house concerts, just Google “Strings Attached house concerts,” and it’ll take you to a landing page with information on how to sign up for that. We travel all over the world, not just Austin. Working on one for New York City right now. So it’s a lot of fun. So it’s a great model that seems to replenish itself. It seems sustainable. Whereas the club model in Austin is soul sucking. I have the responsibility. This one club I play at, I fill it up, but let’s say if I was playing two or three of those a week, it’d be ridiculous. There’s no way to sustain that in Austin. It’s done. The way Austin used to be in the ‘70s, it’s gone. It’s gone. There may be other communities in America where it’s like Austin was in the ‘70s, so I encourage musicians to not give up and maybe find places like that.

I use every opportunity, every time I’m performing, to put it out there. I plant the seed. I’ll say it once at every show. I try to, at every show, just as an invitation. If you see a concert like this, if you see us playing in your living room or your backyard, if that’s something that seems exciting to you, come up and say hello to me. And then people will just come right up to me, and then we’ll actually even, sometimes I’ll say, “Let’s pick a date,” right there, and make it happen. And then I have mailing list cards that people fill out so I can follow up. And then that just grows, every show. It just grows and grows and grows, new people, new people, new people, all the time. And you’re just following up, following up. There’s endless number of people.

So I’m excited. There is plenty of opportunity. We’re in a great time. But the big question mark is, how to get back to just doing mainly music. That is my big question mark. I think it’s learning to live as simple as possible. I’m willing to live out of a trailer if I have to. I don’t need a house. And start from there.

Am I good enough? That’s come up. Definitely. A lot. It still comes up. You know, the questionable voices in your head. Absolutely. But then when you see what people that aren’t even close to your level are doing out there, then you get that answer right away. Because I’ve spent so much time doing it. It goes back to my 9 years old, I was playing professionally at age 16 or 17, so I was already good enough to play in the symphony. I got into the Austin Lyric Opera at age 20. So there are jobs available if I want to do that model, be a highly trained musician, I was already doing that. 

I do definitely come from that tradition of people that have teachers. They aren’t just stumbling into this. This is a craft. This is a mastery that takes 10,000 hours. I do struggle with seeing people that don’t follow that. I struggle with it. I have some judgement about it. But there’s a lot, like in this culture of endless shelf space, digital shelf space, anybody can do anything. Throw some words up, it’s a song. Yeah, I struggle with that. I struggle sometimes, but then I feel the feelings and go, “That’s a waste of time. Why do I need to do that? It’s going to happen anyway. So just go back to your thing. Do your thing. Have fun with it. Connect with your people.” 
But gosh, the environment that we’re in is, everybody can do it now, so then we’re flooded. Everybody’s trying to do it. I’m competing with a lawyer who is doing this on the weekends, you know? But it’s all good. Everybody can find their tribe. There’s enough people on the earth.

I feel like I’m on a good path. I feel like I’m really onto something. I really feel fulfilled in the relationships I’m building with musicians, with volunteers, with fans. Because if I get more people involved with me that really see the mission, and then that can reverberate out even more. It’s like an amplifier. I would love to get more people on board that get it and feel a strong love for it, and that I don’t need to explain a lot. I would love to see that, that kind of quick transformation, because it can happen quick. I’m just speaking to the music right now.

I like for things to be exciting, and sometimes I don’t know what to do about boredom. You know, there’s boredom. There’s this drive, and this must’ve been from childhood. You know, drive. Be in an adventure. Life’s an adventure. Yeah, let’s go! Let’s do it! You know? That’s part of being a musician, pushing yourself. But there’s a lot of boredom in life, and being kind of like trapped. It’s like, no matter how hard you try, there’s still an element of life, you’re just trapped. Sometimes you can’t make shit happen. You’re just there. So I’m sitting with that idea. This was how I was feeling before the podcast. I’m excited about the podcast, because see, that’s uncertainty. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a thrill to it. That’s great. But then, what about after the podcast? You know?

And Stevie Wonder said it, I want to be free. I’m really working on being free. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it. But then I’ve seen Stevie Wonder, age 68, 69, or whatever, and he’s touring these big arenas. He’s got a big machine behind him. And I don’t know if that’s free. He’s got people taking him around. Maybe it is. Maybe he’s giving all that money to a good cause. Probably is. What does it look like for him to be free?

I don’t know what a rut is. I’ve known boredom. I’d rather get in the car and go to Barton Creek, or go meet up with some people, meet some people. If there’s any rut, that’s the rut I feel in my life is I want to connect more with people and meet new people, because studying music is such a solitary activity. So at this point in my life, I love connecting with people. I love meeting new people and finding out about them. That’s exciting. So that’s one way that I get out of a rut if I’m in a rut, or I feel bored. But at the same time, I want to challenge myself. “Well, maybe you’re supposed to be sitting here today not doing anything, not driving downtown and trying to meet somebody and hear music. And maybe you need to sit with that for a bit.” I don’t know.

The chase, you know? A lot of it’s a chase. Chasing uncertainty. But isn’t it funny? Because there are some people that are happy to just sit in their chair at the end of the day and watch TV. And that seems like death to me, sitting and watching a TV, or being on a screen for a long period of time. I mean, watching a work of art, that’s great. Movie can be a work of art. But coming back and doing the same thing every day? Ah, no. I don’t want to do that. But yeah. We’ll see. We’ll see what comes next. That’s what’s exciting about life.

Well, I’ve got this project called WePlayAustinMusic.com, which is two playlists I’m curating, and the idea is, what if thousands of businesses, restaurants, bars, coworking spaces, if they were playing Austin music all day long, day after day, and that multiplied across, like I said, thousands of people, thousands of business in Austin, celebrating the diversity of Austin music, and all those plays through Pandora and Spotify generated interest in Austin musicians and music, and generated some income? Wouldn’t that be cool? And it could work that way. Again it’s called, “WePlayAustinMusic.com.” All the information’s there.

And all our shows are at StringsAttached.org. We do house concerts on the weekends. We play once a month at the Townsend. And I encourage you to follow us on Pandora and Spotify. Just look up Will Taylor and Strings Attached. There’s a lot going on.

You can check out the outreach work we do, which is StringsAttachedCares.org, where we go to places around Austin and bring vibrant musicians and get people to sing along and play with us, memory care centers, retirement homes, schools. We get kids that have never seen a violin or a viola to get to see that and touch it firsthand in elementary schools.That’s StringsAttachedCares.org.

Episode 014 - Invisible Baseball

We're back for more! Our season 2 opener is a special story to me. My brother first told me a version of this story when we were on a more-or-less annual road trip across the state to watch some football. We live about 25 miles apart, but we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like. Busy work and family lives often get in the way of adult relationships. But when we find ourselves in the car together for hours at a time, we do a lot of talking and catching up. When he told me about invisible baseball, we both knew that it was a story that should be captured in some way. So over the next several months, I asked him now and then if he'd be willing to sit down and record it with me. We finally made that happen, and I really like the result. I think you'll like it, too.

Thank you so much to Rik Haden for sharing this story, for being so open and willing to share his memories, his emotions, and his perspective on the impact of aging on an entire family.

Music in this episode includes:

"Nasty" by David Szesztay

"Keep It In Your Heart" and "Saturday Afternoon" by Lobo Loco

"Sals Piano Solo" and "Sals Place" by Blue Dot Sessions

"Something (Bonus Track)" by Kai Engel

Baseball audio from August 16, 1958, New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox.

Transcript:

Meg’s father was living in Springfield, Missouri, and we as a family had gone to visit him there on his 80th birthday with the intent of talking with him for the first time about moving to Texas so that we could be closer to him. But the unfortunate thing that happened is, on that trip he became very ill and had a health emergency that landed him in the hospital there and was, proved to be life threatening at the time and ultimately resulted in emergency medical intervention and surgery. And so at the end of that summer then he moved to Austin, but he disembarked the plane on a stretcher and then was immediately transferred to a true nursing home. I think his first year living here was in 3 or 4 different rehab facilities just in dealing with certain things to get them back to that level of independence.

I think it was maybe in the fall of that year when Hayley was in 2nd grade and Gage was in kindergarten that then he recovered to the point where he could move to Beckett Meadows. I’d call it an assisted living facility, but it was most definitely not a nursing home. There’s a nursing home component to it, but… Feels a little bit like a hospital because it's full of sounds and smells and things that you might associate with a hospital. But on the whole, it felt more like apartments, but specifically designed to the purpose that they're supposed to serve. They took good care to make it a very livable place at this particular place. There was a central courtyard where all of those rooms that are along those corridors either had a window to the exterior of the property, looked out over the parking lot and grounds to the outside, or they looked back in on the central courtyard. And that interior courtyard was a really well-kept, beautiful place. There were always fresh flowers planted there in pots. There was a gazebo there where somebody could go and sit in a protected space to the interior building, but open to the sky and fresh air and all of that. 

We didn't always go as, entirely as, a family necessarily, but Meg would at least see Ed at least once a week. But it was more often than that most of the time, and surprisingly the kids wanted to go most of the time. And so there was an Activities Director there that would arrange a Valentine's Day concert and 4th of July concert. Those sort of things were happening in the evenings and we were regulars at, because the kids loved it so much and it also made, it was an interesting break in routine, or whatever.
 
I think they both were a very bright light in his life, in the last stages of his life where there wasn't a lot going on for him except for, for Meg and his daughters and his grandkids came to see him. But I think they also were very much so for a lot of people that we just got to know, got to meet there. It was, it got to the point where any time we brought our kids, there were a seeming dozen or more people who would all be clearly happy to see them, talk to them about what was going on with them at school and whatever. And then most to the point I guess, this community of older men that were living in this facility that would, that had a history in baseball that exactly dovetailed with Gage’s newly developing passion and love for baseball.

One of the big mysteries about Gage is where his just absolute devoted love and passion for that sport came from. We weren’t a baseball family by any means, and most players now that I encounter now, Gage has known thousands of baseball players at this point in his life or played against that many at least, there's always a dad that played baseball or uncle at a high level in college or double A ball or something, or at least it was father and son grew up going to games together. And there’s just none of that in our history or his history or even in his mother's family history to explain why as a 5 year old, he was already asking his Mom, “Can I play tee ball? When can I start playing tee ball?” It’s like it was something that he always knew was in his future and at the center of everything he did for the rest of his life. We had no idea at the time how central to our whole family's life baseball was going to become and how many weekends we were going to be driving all over the state of Texas and sometimes all over the country just to take this kid places to give him the opportunity to play the game for the thousandth time or two thousandth time.

When he started playing tee ball, we thought we were like any other family. We were just trying different things out with their kid. He was taking kung fu. He’d taken a few ballet classes. But through all of the things that he was kind of trying out at the time, he was like, “Baseball is my thing.” Or tee ball at the time at least. And when he started asking us about it, he was too young to play most places. Meg, always faced with a challenge like that, just finds an answer. And so she started checking around every little league in town that offered tee ball and found out what age they would take him, and finally she got in contact with somebody who was actually at the little league that was appropriate for our neighborhood, said, “Well, we don't take kids ‘til 6, but bring him in and let's see if he has the basic aptitude and just fundamental physical build and attention span to be able to participate with the older kids.” And so she went and did that, and he started playing tee ball at 5 with 6 year olds.

It's a silly enterprise to begin with, you know? It’s putting a bunch of kids out on a baseball field, mostly more for the entertainment of the parents than the actual kids, because half of them don’t want to be there, the second half want to be there, but they don't have the attention span last beyond the first general moments of the game and then it's all just after that about the coaches and the parents trying to corral and continue to make the game happen. And it so it becomes this sort of bizarre, scripted enterprise where it’s like, “OK, we can get from action to cut if we can just corral these kids and keep them focused long enough to...”

The thing is, at the time, I didn't recognize that Gage didn't fit that paradigm exactly. Every tee ball game that he played in, took him from beginning to end of the game. And he's kind of a math kid, because from the very beginning, the thing that for him that the game was all about was like that there's just a logic to it, and the beauty that he appreciates, and that it's a numbers game and it's a mental game and everything. And even from that age of 5, he was totally invested in the idea that it was one, two, three strikes, you're out, one, two, three outs the inning changes, and then the seven innings, and it's all this thing that builds up, and it's always what he’s been interested about.

And so that stage of his life, when I look back and remember it, was just, it was so electric and intense because there was just so much to learn. Just to be entering the game, and for me to be entering it too, because not coming from a baseball family, really, the way that the whole first years of him playing the sport, for me was learning everything that he was learning. There is so much more to it than I ever knew at the time. Like I had no idea at that time how much Gage and I both had out there ahead of us to learn together, just about this thing that was going to become the absolute central passion in his life.

He left little league very early. I'm just not sure exactly how it happened. We were totally conventional tee ball parents and little league parents and had no background whatsoever or any knowledge about select baseball and club baseball, which is apparently something that everybody in Texas or any baseball state knows about, but we didn't know about at the time. Somehow Gage found out about it, that there was this other stream for playing baseball that was much more serious and there were professional coaches and professional coaches who played at the collegiate or professional level teaching kids to play baseball in essentially academies. He found out about that, and he realized that they were approaching the game the way he wanted to approach the game. He didn't want to play with a bunch of kids who half cared about it. He wanted to play with a bunch of kids that were serious. And so somehow, I still to this day don't know where it came from, but he learned about tryouts for a club baseball program that wasn't even in our area. He found out about tryouts for an 8U coach pitch team and convinced his, convinced me pretty easily I guess, but then convinced his mother somehow, which is still astonishing to me how he pulled that off as a 7 year old to go to those tryouts. And we didn't understand at the time, even the age rankings. I didn’t have any idea at the time that when I took, I think he was like barely 7 when he went and participated in these tryouts, that I was bringing probably the youngest kid they’d ever seen to their tryouts. And so I just sent him out there and didn't realize, I had no idea that I was sending him out to actually try out with a bunch of 9 year olds. And so ultimately, Gage did, went through that tryout process, was selected to play on this competitive 8U team, convinced his mom with an earnestness that I think is beyond most 8 year olds I’ve ever known, that it was important to him and important enough for us to support him in it and at least consider it. 

And then for Gage, that was, absolutely he took to it right away, loved it, but it was being dropped out of the frying pan into the fire. So he went from that little league, to being coached by a coach who was a semi-pro baseball player in New Jersey. So it was like, New Jersey coach, serious, competitive baseball and Gage just dropped right into the middle of that. And just immediately committed to it and committed to doing the absolute best he can from the beginning.

And so then, suddenly in that period of life, like every minute with him was, “Can we practice? Can we throw? Dad, can we play catch? Dad, can we play catch?” And we spent like all this time, like if we went to the mall, he wouldn't want to go into the mall. He would try right away to convince me that Meg and Hayley should go in and take care of whatever business we had to take care of and that he and I should play catch in the parking lot. Because he's just learning to handle a glove and throw a ball and throw it well. Already at that age, they're telling him, “No, not rainbows. We want you to throw it on a rope.” And so here's this 7 year old trying to learn all that to fit in and be competitive with these other boys who had been doing exactly that since they were, probably the moment they were able to walk, their dads were teaching them how to throw a ball on a rope, you know? 

It's interesting because Meg, has, when Hayley was young, Meg started a practice of writing letters to the kids that she keeps in books. Her ability to see the future and see the value that certain things will have in the future and kind of anticipating that present is remarkable. And you know, she's a very much “stop and smell the roses” kind of person. I'm always like, “Let's keep moving. There's a schedule. There's a goal. Let's go.” And she's like, “Well let's stop for 2 seconds and look at this tree.” And so in that sort of wisdom that she has, she started writing letters to the kids from, I think, Hayley maybe at the age of four. So for Gage, that's an even younger age. And in Gage’s book, she has the first, his first mention of baseball sort of captured in a letter that she wrote to him and she even wrote at the time that she didn't really know where it was coming from and that it was just his, it’s just completely internal and from his own place.  Tied up into it is the two things that have, have seemingly always been present for Gage and are still totally present in his life now as a 17 year old are his just love and what he calls respect for the game of baseball. And then his, secondly, his love and respect and just comfort, like remarkable comfort level with senior citizens or the elderly, just older folks in general from the, from this same age.

We visited all of their grandparents, and so he had a relationship with all of his grandparents. And both of our kids have always had a very deep love for their grandparents. Gage has just always had a sort of unexplainable different connection with grandparents, though. But not just grandparents. Also the friends of grandparents. We would often go to spend a weekend with Meg’s mom and stepdad at the, we just always refer to it as the lake, and it’s a community where it was a lot of like-minded older people who were spending whatever time they could there, fishing, boating, that kind of thing. And there’d be a ton of kids and grandkids, cousins, you know, all of that. There would always be tons of children around to play with, and Gage was always, always, always more interested in being with the grandparents, the older people. Whether it was playing cards or frying fish or fishing itself, it was just, he was always more interested in being with the older folks than kids his own age.

And I think that that's, I mean that's just the way that he lives his life now. That's even more true now than it ever was. But it's always been there. And it’s just a comfort in conversation. It's funny, I remember times just looking back on him just sitting in a lawn chair next to Grandpa, or his Papa Ed, or his Papa Jack, and especially Papa Jack and one of his friends, sitting in a chair between them, and just looking at him and going, you know, he looks, it just looks the same. That looks like three old guys there, sitting there talking about their childhoods fishing where one of them is actually six years old. There's been many instances in my life where you could look at Gage sitting with a couple of old guys like that and just think that's an old man that got put in a young man's body.

So he had, I think that that may partly play a role in these relationships that he developed with seniors at these facilities is, it was a place that he could go where he got a lot of positive feedback for the stuff that he was interested in and wanted to talk about. And guys wanted to talk to him about stuff that he was interested in.

And he just had this group of guys who wanted to know how he was doing, and interested in what he was learning as he got past tee ball into the coach pitch and then eventually started playing club baseball, they’d want to know where he was playing and always had stories to tell him about Shoeless Joe and I mean, players that played so long ago that Gage really should have no interest in them. And most young players still like, you know, even the high school players that he plays with now, I would bet that half of them had no idea who Shoeless Joe Jackson was or you know, they might know the big names, but they wouldn't know what... But Gage can tell you Babe Ruth's shoe size. And the reason that he can tell you that is that when he was 6 years old, he had a conversation with one of his Papa Ed’s neighbors who told him, “Hey, you know the remarkable thing about Babe Ruth? He had tiny feet.” And that's something that Gage has remembered his entire life since and has become something that it's somehow part of who he’s become. And it’s something he can tell you right now. So he can tell you things about the game and the history of the game that he has no business really knowing. I think all of that goes back to that time in his life and those old guys that he used to sit and chat with at Beckett Meadows.

And I can, it's another one of just the beautiful memories I have of Beckett Meadows that there was one of those times where I think Meg had gone up to get her dad and prep him to bring him down. And I happened to look over at the end of the porte cochère, the entrance to this place where they always kept rows of rocking chairs on the other side where you’d see residents sitting sometimes. And I think it was new that year too, they’d also got a dog for the residents. So there was this yellow golden retriever, old, slow-moving dog that lived at the place But that dog was often sitting at the rocking chairs just looking for anybody to pet him for a minute. I mean, he just lived for that. It’s like going back to him with Papa Jack at the lake. I looked over and he's sitting in a middle rocking chair between two other old guys in rocking chairs on either side of him, just rocking with the same cadence and petting this old dog. And I walked over, and sure as shit, the 3 of them were sitting there in their rocking chairs just talking about baseball.

But you know, so Gage was an extremely active kid that required a ton of space, loved going to this place, was always energized when we went there. His sister, the same thing: always happy to go visit, liked the place, but the difference between the two of them is that she had a personality that allows her to sit down in a small space and carry on conversations. And she could do that. Gage, you had like maybe 10 minutes of that with him. And then he was just, as he always did most places, he was sprawled out on the floor and like flopping and kicking things over. He's just always been a boy that required a good amount of clear space to be in or something was going to get knocked over or broken. And as parents at the time for Meg and I, it was like almost always a constant stress in our lives. By the time we get to Beckett Meadows and he's starting to play baseball and all of all of that is kind of going on around it, that's just a little bit more of a window into what it was like to try to manage him at the time.

And so the way that that segues into Beckett Meadows and Ed was that the place to be able to do that was in that courtyard that I described, this sort of carefully landscaped, delicate, full of beautiful flowers and flower pots and elderly people sitting, watching in the gazebo. And Gage unable to sit beyond the first 15 minutes in Ed’s room while Meg took care of just like regular business. And so it was just always, “Hey, can we go throw? Can we go throw? Can we go throw?” And so that became a part of the routine there was, visit Papa Ed, throw a little, visit a little more, throw a little, visit a little bit more. But the only place that we had to really go, because the parking lot  wasn't conducive. And so we just, we needed a way to be close but for him to blow off some steam and then go back to the sitting and visiting and then go exercise, and then go back to sitting and visiting.

And so what I tried for, I don't know, 3 weeks or a month or whatever, was to go into that courtyard and throw with him. And in the beginning when he wasn't, when he couldn't throw that hard, it was like, even if a ball was a little bit errant, it wasn't going to cause too much damage. But then even in the course of the first few weeks, he was learning and developing so fast it, right way, “OK, now this kid’s throwing harder, and if he does go wild or something, it's going through a window, or it’s breaking a flower pot or something.” And it became such a stressful thing for me because, and because  it’s also a very quiet environment too. So you don't want to be, like I’m trying to contain this kid but also allow him to spend time with his grandpa, but also not be disturbing to residents who might be sleeping or whatever. It just, it became a very stressful thing for me to play catch with him in this courtyard to the point where it was just like, what started out as fun wasn't fun anymore because I would just spend the whole time every time he threw the ball going, “Man, there’s, what are we going to break, or is anybody upset?” You know, like every minute waiting for somebody in administration to say, “Hey, you can't freaking do that here. It’s a confined space.”

And so somewhere along the way, and honestly I have no idea of where the, what put this thought in my head other than on top of all the rest of it, Gage has always been very imaginative kid. He’d play a lot of, especially when he was a toddler, he’d play a lot of imagination games, having to imagine whatever. And so I knew he was perfectly capable of role-playing and imagination games, and I think that I had read something where it was like athletes talking about the power of visualization in the sports that they play. And it's always fascinated me because there's certain athletes that will, who write a lot about that like mental practice is almost effective as actual physical practice. Which is like a fascinating idea, right? And I think that I may have read something about that at the time, and I thought, you know, well if we could just like visualize this, if we could imaginary practice playing catch, maybe he's still getting something out of it and then I don't have to worry about the damn ball and all of then stress, and then we'll go to the park later, and we'll throw a real ball, but at least maybe while we're here at Beckett Meadows, we could just imagine playing catch. And thinking that there was no way he was going to buy it, a kid that's like so interested in throwing a real ball, I figured he'd just blow me off. But I suggested it one time, explained to him why, you know I was concerned about breaking a window or something, and he totally bought it. It was just like, “Oh, sure.” And so we started. I just put the ball off to the side, and we started playing catch with an imaginary ball. And I mean, it sounds so silly, but it actually works. It makes me think now more about the idea of the visualization to train in sports, because once you stop, and if you take it seriously and you stop, and you imagine like a real timing and a real, you're going through the real motion and you’re not just, it's just, it's not that much different I guess because your brain can make it up.

Real glove. Everything but the ball. He had a coach that said, “If you set,” I mean said this, even to 7 year olds that, “You're not going to set a foot on my ballfield unless you're wearing a ballcap. You're not a ballplayer if you're not wearing a baseball cap,” was one of the many tenets that his first coach had, and man, Gage took that serious as a heart attack. Still does. I don't think you will ever see him throwing a baseball without a baseball cap on. And so, both of us in baseball caps, gloves. Sometimes, if he'd had a practice or a game or something, he’d be in his full-blown uniform out there playing catch with no ball. But it was surprising to me how convincing an experience it was even for me because even like when you're playing imaginary catch, you'd even snap your glove closed on the ball when you imagine that it came into, because you don't want the imaginary ball to fall out of your real glove, so you've got to close on it.

And so that is like sort of, that's the innocent beginning of it was just me trying to manage my young son in this field, not have something disastrous happen, not cause something embarrassing for my wife, not get ourselves banned from this facility. You know, all this stuff in my mind, we just started playing imaginary catch. And then that's where for me, the, you know I may get choked up going forward from here, because that's, following this point in the story is when this grows into what for me is still one of the most beautiful experiences, beautiful memories, of my entire adult life, I think that maybe this is a story that's more transformative for me than Gage, because I think it was just such a natural part of his whole life. But I do think what happens after this, with imaginary catch, changed me maybe in a way that I don’t even have an understanding of now. Like I can’t say how it changed me, but it’s such a present memory in my mind that I know that it had as much affect on me as any of the other major events in my life.

So, we got in the habit of playing imaginary catch, and I think that there were, probably happened 1 or 2 weekends where there happened to be some residents sitting in the courtyard just enjoying some sunshine while we're playing it. And there’s 2 men that I, I can’t name them. I dont’ think we knew them. But there was a couple of guys that took an interest, enough so that I started to notice that when we started to play imaginary catch, they would turn up. And so then, it was never anything that we thought of. There was no plan to it. There was just particular sunny Saturday where we were out there doing that, and these guys came out where they could look on while we were playing imaginary catch, and then Gage made a pretend throw to me, and this was the first time it happened. One of the old guys just out of the blue all of a sudden said, “Whoa! Boy, he really hummed that one in there!” And so suddenly somebody else was seeing the invisible ball, somebody had seen it. So then he responded to that and started imaginary throwing the ball harder. And so then I imaginary started catching the ball as if it were thrown harder. So now I'm like, “Oh whoa, jeez, that one stung!” That kind of thing. Which of course feeds it even more with a 7 year old. And so then it just started growing from there and was just amazing. Other people would begin to participate, and it went from being a game of catch to a full-blown game. I'm not sure how it happened, but it was like we set up in a catcher and a pitcher position, and Gage would then be pitching to an invisible batter, and the residents would be the one that determined what happened with a particular pitch. I’d set up to catch for Gage, he’d get up there and he’d fake pitch, and it'd be like, “Oh, that was just outside!” And we would take those cues, and different of the residents would say different things. Like it just, it was just this amazing, unplanned, organic thing. And then, of course, it caught Hayley's interest. She wanted to participate. So she would come out and join us, and then we'd have a batter too. And then once you have like a real batter, not imaginary batter. It got so wild. It was so fun, and so… And so pure and beautiful.

And it just, that is what now what I'm talking about when I say, “Yeah, well, when Gage was little, he used to play invisible baseball.” My 7 year old son pitching an invisible ball to my 9 year old daughter, and these old guys who had loved the game and understood it well enough that they would call out in sort of an old fashioned play-by-play like you were listening to an old game on the radio. “Oh, she hit that one deep!”  And Hayley would run the bases, and as she was running the bases, rounding second, somebody would call out, “Oh! Held up on a triple!” And then she would know to stop at third base. And then, we put in an imaginary runner for her at third, and she'd go back and hit again, and her brother would pitch.

And that, I don't know how long that lasted. I think the end of it was just sort of as organic as its beginning. I don't know if a couple of the key spectators just got to a point in that stage of their life where they just couldn’t come out anymore, and that took some of the magic out of it, or if it just got routine enough for everybody that that took some out of magic out of it. There was no definitive end to it. There was no day where it was like, “OK, no more invisible baseball.” It just sort of, like most things in life, just sort of petered out without a real moment of closure. But it’s absolutely something that obviously affected me in an emotional way. Still does. That just is absolutely one of the most magical things that I’ve experienced.

I don't share this story often, and I’ve never, I don't think I've ever shared it in this much depth, but from time to time, where, when I talk about it just anecdotally, usually it’s to make the argument against accepting the perception that these are just depressing, stress-filled, dark places. Usually if I'm bringing this story out for any reason it’s to convince somebody that even though when you walk into an assisted living facility like that or even a rehab facility, although it's is a little more difficult to find the beauty in those places, it’s still there. That's what I came to know from that experience is that you got to get over the hump. You got to get over your discomfort. You got to get over your perception that what you're seeing is, because of the filter you're running through it, that it's automatically depressing. Look past all that. Because it would've been very easy, a very easy mistake for us to make based on the first days of those visits to say, “This is going to be hard on our kids.” Right? And I think that probably a lot of parents do that. It’s a very natural parenting instinct to say, “I need to protect my kids from seeing older folks in pain, seeing some of the indignities that happen in those kind of places.” It would be a very natural thing to say, “I need to shield my kids from this.” But that was one where we did sit down and have a conversation with one another about, “Should we or should we not involve our kids in this experience that we know that we are going to have to go through? Do we involve them or not?”  And we decided, “Yes, we do.” And that's probably the best parenting decision we’ve ever made, because there is vibrant, real life still going on there that can be participated in. I've had this conversation a number of times with Mom and Dad too, because now that they've moved here, they're often saying, “We just don't want to be a burden.” But because of that experience and because of invisible baseball and so many other wonderful things that happened to us in that stage of our kids’ lives, I know, and I tell her all the time, that it's, you’re not a burden at all. You're having a difficult time appreciating how much value you still bring to all of our lives. And you know, it’s understandable. I understand her point of view because I think that I would feel the same way in her shoes. But the thing that I know is that all of these people that we've met and kind of struggled through that last stage of human life along with have brought so much more value to our lives and to our kids’ lives than any effort it took to participate in the last stages of their lives, that I hope that our own parents can begin to be convinced of that. I believe that Mom and Dad are starting to hear it, but I also hope that anybody who's proudly made it beyond the age of 70 in our lives or in anybody's lives know that it's just the beginning, and every day they wake up and spend time with their grandkids is valuable and appreciated. I've got 2 kids that feel it 10 times beyond even what I feel it. So there it is. “Invisible Baseball.”
 

Episode 004 - The Quiet Man

Rod Haden

I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season! I certainly am. Time is flying and my days are packed. This week we have a conversation with my father, Rudy Haden, a man who has fascinated me ever since I was a wee lad. He's that special kind of quiet that invites others to project onto him whatever they want him to be. Getting him to open up about his past, present, and future, and what he thinks and feels about all 3 was a very special treat for me. I've known the man for 45 years and heard some stories when we talked that I have never heard before. He is my role model for what it means to be a man, a father, and husband, and though we are very different from each other, I couldn't have asked for a better teacher. Thanks, Dad!

Transcript:

I don’t move around very good. I’m in pain quite a bit. It comes and goes. It comes and goes. Some days it’s worse; some days it’s not. It doesn’t seem to depend on how much exercise I get. Some days it’s painful to exercise; sometimes it’s not.

I sit and try to meditate, and it does nothing for me, but when I’m really quiet, or when I’m just totally listening to music, it’s like somebody plants knowledge into my head. I know and I understand things, which I had no idea before. So my meditation is basically checking out and listening to music.

Early on in our marriage, I was in an apprenticeship program, tool and die maker. I had to really concentrate at work. And it’s not easy for me to relate to other people, but I really worked on the journeymen. I would constantly hang around them, and ask them questions, and ask them the best way to do stuff, and I got in as I guess a favorite pupil with about 3 or 4 of them.

So that when I’d come home, I was exhausted, and I would lay down on the floor and play a Beethoven record or something with earphones on, and Robbie would get so pissed off at me because she was making dinner and taking care of the kids, and I was checked out. She didn’t understand that that’s the way I did my meditation.

I’ve been in and out of a lot of churches. My parents were married in a… I can’t think of the religion right now. Reverend Grace. I remember the name of the preacher that married them, and that was there. The guy wore a collar, but he wasn’t a Catholic. But he was deaf. He ministered to the deaf people. He was deaf himself.

He was in the deaf community, and in the basement of his church is where they held all the deaf fraternity meetings.It was based on the Masons. Only it was all deaf men. It was called the Frat. That was what my mom and dad called it. The Frat. We’re going to the Frat. When they went to Frat, the women all sat outside in the waiting room. The kids played on the floor. And when the big meeting was over, they’d throw the doors open, and everybody would go in and have a big social event.

And then my mother’s side of the family was deep into the Reform Christian Church, and I went to a lot of Bible schools and Sunday schools and stuff in that until I was about 3rd or 4th grade. And then I felt like I needed to get hooked up with different churches, so I went to a Methodist church, I went to a holy roller church with a friend, and I went to a couple of Catholic services. As a teen. None of that stuff stuck with me. 

Just because there was so much religion on my mother’s side of the family, I don’t know, I just felt like I was supposed to do it. In order to be accepted by them, I should have a church, but I never could find one. And I came away from it having no respect for organized religion because the main thing they wanted, no matter what it was, they wanted money up front. Seemed like everything was driven by the collection plate. If you were a big donor, you got a lot of attention. If you weren’t, you didn’t get much. And that’s what really turned me off. 

My dad was born on the farm in Kansas, and he was sent to the Kansas State Home for the Deaf and Blind. My dad was born deaf, they think because in the early days when they had the traveling doctors going around the frontier and the farms and stuff, my grandmother evidently had a lot of morning sickness, and the doctor prescribed quinine. Well, later on they found that quinine did stuff to the unborn child. 

My mom came over on the boat from Holland witH her mother. And my mother, we don’t know if she was born that way, or it was some kind of sickness or something that she got in Holland or on the boat or what, but ever since she was a baby, she was deaf. Then my mother was, because she was deaf mute, she was sent off to the school in Colorado Springs.

The strange thing is that the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind insisted that deaf people learn to lip read and speak, and so my mother was pretty good at lip reading and speaking. And they were discouraged from using sign language, so if you compare the deaf people now that use sign language to the old people that use sign language, now it’s all really broad and all over the place, and the older people, their signs are all close in and secretive about it, where now they’re just flamboyant about it. Their signs are all over the place. 

And my dad, the Kansas School for the Deaf and Blind weren’t that way. They were teaching them to do stuff and sign language and be able to be self-sufficient. 

See, in my dad’s side of the family, all the people learned sign language, the hearing and the non-hearing. So I had no idea whether they were hearing, any memory of whether they were hearing or not. On my mom’s side of the family, I had one uncle that learned the deaf sign language, learned the deaf alphabet, and he could do that. He was the only one that made any effort to sign to my mother. All her other brothers and sisters didn’t because she had been sent to school, and they were told that she was to learn to lip read, and so they would talk to her. But the thing of it is, it’s really easy to ignore somebody like that, because all you do is turn away. Turn around, they can’t see your signs. They can’t read your lips. So, whenever there was an argument or something, it was easy just to walk away from that.

My dad’s family had a big get-together once every summer. They came from all over the place. They were Kansas, Nebraska, western Colorado, and they’d have these big, long picnics on the weekend, and there were aunts and uncles and cousins. I didn’t even know all the cousins I had. But I never just seemed to fit in.

He worked in a factory. He started out in a printing shop, a paper cutter. Cutting stuff for the print shop. Then ended up in Shwayder Bros./Samsonite, cutting stuff for the suitcases and plastic tops of card tables and chairs. And my mom worked there on the assembly line putting stuff together. And my Uncle Jim and Aunt Julia also worked in the same factory. Shwayder Bros. hired a lot of, I guess what they called the handicapped people. 

Clarence, he was a rancher. He raised horses, and at one time he had a riding stable up on Lookout Mountain just above Denver. And they had 2 boys, and the youngest one, John, he had a pinto pony named Ruben. And they taught me how to ride. And I could put the bridle on Ruben, lead him over to the fence, they had a rail fence, and I’d climb up the rail fence and get on him. And I was, what, 5 years old.

John would go off hunting. He’d go out, he had a rifle, and he’d go out shooting magpies. I had no idea what magpies were. I was determined I was going to follow him one day and see where he was going, and I’d see these cow patties in various places, you know. So I thought cow patties were magpies, and cousin John shot them. I couldn’t have been 4 or 5 years old. And then he, one time he put his rifle in, we had a, there was a kind of a mud room entrance to the farmhouse, and he left his rifle leaned up against the thing, and he had a thing in the chamber, and I went up there and was messing with it, and I inadvertently pulled the trigger. And it shot a hole in the roof. My Uncle Clarence was really pissed off at John for doing that.

My bed was in this big room where the radio was. There was no TV in those days. It was during the war. World War II. I remember there was a big old tree in the backyard. When I wanted to get away, I’d just climb up in that tree and sit up there all by myself. Could see the whole neighborhood. 

I don’t remember when I realized that there was a hearing world and a deaf world. You never knew. I mean, you could talk to some people, and you had to sign to some people, and some people were talking and signing, and you know, there was no distinguishment. And a lot of the deaf people could read lips. I don’t know when I realized that. I suppose it happened to me some time in high school when, you know how high school gets. How clannish and cliquish it is, and some kids are favored by the teachers, and some aren’t. I realized I was different. During high school, I was really aware of it because people would kind of shy away from me. If I tried to be friendly with somebody, they wouldn’t necessarily because I was a child of dummies. That’s what deaf people were called in those days. They were deaf and dumb. The deaf and dumb part came from deaf and dumb, couldn’t speak. But the dummy part carried on as not being intelligent.

And then in high school, I don’t ever, in junior high or any of those, I don’t ever remember having a parent-teacher conversation. Nobody ever, none of my teachers ever contacted my parents, even when I wouldn’t do my homework or my grades were down. There was nothing. They just passed me along. And in high school, I signed up to take a Spanish class, and I was discouraged. I should take English. I was going to sign up to take some math classes, and I was discouraged. I was to take a general math class where the big thing was to learn how to write a check and keep a bank account and pay your taxes. There was none of that geometry stuff. I didn’t get hooked on that stuff until my senior year in high school. I finally got into an algebra class. 

And I hated high school. I just didn’t fit. Didn’t know how to talk to girls. I had no experience with girls. When friends come over, it was really awkward. If somebody came home with me, it was really, really awkward because of my parents. My parents would try to be friendly with them, but they didn’t know how to deal with it. And so they just dealt with me away from my house.

I really got big into leatherwork because I had an Industrial Arts teacher, Mr. Landon was… he taught Print Shop, Leather Shop, and Woodworking. And I took all those courses. Originally I thought I was going to be an Industrial Arts teacher, then I thought about getting a degree to be able to become a forest ranger, but there was no way. I couldn’t figure out how in the hell I was going to go to college to do that. Although it was a lot easier to go to college in those days than it is now. The costs weren’t so damn much. 

 And I was really into skiing, through the Boy Scouts. Some of us in the neighborhood learned to ski. It was scary in the beginning until I learned to parallel ski. Once I got out of the snowplow thing. I got fairly good at parallel. I never was Olympic quality, but I could do alright. I just loved the freedom. Just felt free. Riding up to the top of the mountain and letting go. And then after I got out of the Navy, I really went into it for a couple of years. In fact, that’s how I met Ruth, my first wife. We met through a friend, and she was really impressed with my skiing. I took her skiing every weekend. She was really into that. And then somehow we ended up getting married.

I really got into skiing, and it was a really good friend that we skied with a lot. And he said he was going to join the Navy. At that time when you turned 18, you were eligible for the draft, so I turned 18 in 1955, and that was right between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, that period. His argument was, “If we join the Navy before we turn 18, we get out on our 21st birthday. Plus the Navy will send us to school.” He laid it out, you know, that we were going to end up getting drafted for 2 years anyway, and there was this opportunity, and I felt, “Yeah, this is a good idea.” It wasn’t all that analytical, it was it felt right. And so I did it. So we joined the Navy. We took tests and everything, and both of us qualified as machinists.

Yeah, I was out in ‘58. I rejoined in ‘61. I was out for 3 years.

I remember going and applying for this one job, and the guy interviewed me and said, “No, you’re too young. You couldn’t do all that.” And then that was the end of the interview. He didn’t believe me. And at the same time, I was going to night school, it was late ‘50s and early ‘60s recession. And you’d work for 3 months, and you’d get laid off. And you’d work for 3 months and get laid off. 

And then when I had such a hard time with all the on again, off again jobs, and I don’t know how I found out the Navy came up with a need for my particular skill. When I got out the first time, I was a second class petty officer, and they… I found out that I could go back in as a second class petty officer, got assigned to a ship in San Diego. We started, originally it was all those old diesel boats, and we worked on those all the time. And then the nuclear subs started to come in. Some of us were cleared to work on the nuclear subs.

So then I was going to make a career out of it. And I just remember getting a call, the piping over the com. And I just remember, “Petty Officer First Class Haden, report to the quarterdeck!” And I thought, “Oh crap! What have I done now?” I go up there, and a guy hands me, you know, he served me with separation papers, and I opened them up and looked at them, and it was, you know, legal language about… I showed the officer, and I said, “I don’t know what to do about this.” And he said, “Well, the first thing you ought to do is get a hold of the chaplain.” 

I knew things weren’t really good with us, but I didn’t think they were that bad. It was a real slap in the face getting served. I was just dumbfounded. “I don’t know what to do now? What?” I had to ask some officer who was probably a lieutenant junior grade or something and was probably 23 years old or something, you know, “What do I do now?”

So I made an appointment with the chaplain and talked to him, and then he got her and me into counseling. And it broke down and went to divorce. It was really traumatic. I had no idea what to do. I was at a loss. And that chaplain gave me options what to do. “Well, you can just not contest it and let her have the kids and stay in the Navy.” And I thought, “Crap, I’ve seen too many of those guys. I ain’t going to be one of them. I want a relationship with my children.” He just gave me all these different options to think about. If it’s something physical, like a computer or a computer program or a piece of machinery or a car or building or something like that, I’m very analytical. But when it comes to feelings and interactions with people, I’m more intuitive. One of my big things that I’ve known over the years is that when a door opens, you look to see whether you want to go through that door or not, whether it feels right or not, and that’s pretty much the way I’ve gone. From being a piecemeal machinist to a maintenance machinist to a tool and die maker to a numerical control programmer to a software developer, and that’s where I was until I retired. But all of those were, a door opened and I went through. There was no analytical thing about it. Did it feel right? Yeah, that felt like it was a good thing to do. 

And then when the divorce happened, I had already... You know, I was committed for another 4 years. And the padre, the chaplain, said, “You know, you could file for custody. If you get custody, you could get an honorable discharge for hardship.” And I just felt like, “Am I good enough to be a father to those kids?” And I just had the feeling, “Yeah, you can do this, but it ain’t going to happen anyway, but what the hell. Go for it.” And I’ll be damned if it didn’t happen. And I thought, “Oh crap. Now what do I do?” At that time, Harold had just gotten a divorce, and he was a single father with 2 kids. He had this big house. And he said, “You could come live with me, and we’ll help each other out.” And so we did. 

And it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But at the time, more than resistant to it, I was confused by it, scared of it. What am I going to do now? What am I going to do with the kids that I love so much? I had heard so many terrible things about split families, you know, kids bouncing back and forth and back and forth, loyalties, mothers saying bad things about the father and the father saying bad things about the mother, that at one point I thought that if I ever have to get divorced, then I’ll just let go of the kids, not be in their life. Well that was dumb-headed. I realize that now. Just so many things happened there that I had no clue. I had no idea what I was doing. Just taking it a day at a time.

And then when I got out of the Navy the second time, because I worked on nuclear submarines, I had a top, not a Top Secret, but a Secret clearance, so when I came out, I went to Rocky Flats, which was the big nuclear plant. They made triggers for the atomic bomb. And I applied there, and they said, “Well, it’s probably going to take about 6 months to get your clearance through the FBI.” 3 weeks later, I got a call says, “You’re hired.” 

I was a maintenance machinist. We just went around fixing pumps and stuff, generators. And they opened up an apprenticeship, and I was close to 40 years old. The cutoff date was 40. And I took the test, I went into the interviews and took all the tests and everything they gave us, and there were 2 of us that were picked for the apprenticeship, and I went into that. So I went into the tool and die shop, and that’s where they made all the tooling and everything for the equipment, the nuclear stuff. It was all classified stuff.

Well, when I got… finished my apprenticeship, I became a journeyman, and I worked nights. But during that time, they brought in a milling machine that was numerically controlled, and all those old journeymen, they had no clue about that thing, so I really jumped on that, and I learned all about how to manually program it. And so whenever they wanted to put something on there, why, I was assigned to do it. They had other numerically controlled machines all through the plant. Well, there was an opening there for a programmer, and I applied for it and got it. And in the meantime, during that time I had taken some nighttime college courses on FORTRAN and drafting programs through The University of Colorado.

You know, you get out of marriage and everything, and all you’ve got is work and little kids, and you just figure you need something else. That dating thing was not analytical. That was totally gut. I kept seeing it in the paper and throwing it away, seeing it in the paper and throwing it away. And I read it and thought, “Aw, what the hell. I’ll try it.” And I was ready to give up on that because I had 2 or 3 bad dates. I remember going and walking down the steps into her garden level apartment. And opening that door, and thought, “OK, this is a good one.” And we went out, and the rest is history.

It was such a whirlwind. We were going to get married at 6 months or something. I didn’t think it was right to get married right away. The divorce wouldn’t even be final until March. So then we thought, “OK, in the summer. No, let’s get married in June. How about Spring Break?” And I thought, “My God, this is soon!” But I’ve been following her lead for years. I just know that it sure as hell worked out. Here we are, almost 50 years later. 

When Mom and I met, she was determined that she had found me and that I was the guy, and she was going to marry me, and I had just 2 years ago gotten out of a marriage. I didn’t even know who the hell I was. I had 2 little kids, was living with my brother in his basement, and your Mom was determined we were going to get married, and she was going to have 2 kids. And then we got married, and she was determined she was going to have her own kid. And then she had her own kid, and then she determined that she wanted another one. In those days, it was all the hippie thing, you know. You replenish yourself. So I’d already, I was the husband and a wife, and we had a boy and a girl, so when I got married again, I said, “OK. One more, for Robbie.” But then she was Empty Arm Syndrome or something, and she was determined she was going to have you. And so we had you. Best thing in the world.

After I worked at Rocky Flats for 7 years, I got laid off because they were cutting back, cutting back on nuclear bombs and everything. So they had to cut back on the staff, and they ended up closing Rocky Flats because it was so contaminated. For a long time, I had to go in and be monitored by medical once a year because I was exposed to americium and some other chemicals I don’t remember. I’d go in, and they’d take blood. I was exposed, but I was never contaminated, so I was alright. 

I knew that if I was just a piecemeal machinist, I’d be doing that 3 months on, 3 months off thing for the rest of my life and never getting out of debt. And so I just followed the path. I knew that I had, because the layoff from Rocky Flats, the Bomb Factory, I was back in that mode of working in small shops for short periods of time. And I knew that I was going to get into numerical control. I wanted to. But my goal was the eastern boundary of Colorado, anything west, and the southern boundary of Colorado, anything north. And all I kept getting was this crap in Texas! And they kept offering to bring us down here for a weekend, for a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and put us up. And I thought, “Well, what the hell. It’s an opportunity to get out and spend the weekend on somebody else’s dime.” And I came down here, and I was interested. They were interested in me.

Because I worked so hard at it. I spent a lot of time self-educating. The computer has been the best damn thing in my life. Although I got a lot of enjoyment out of my kids. Just enjoying watching you do things and try things and being assistant coach for your soccer team and watching Rik at swim meets. I was a timer and a stroke judge, and I also shot the gun. Starter. It was either sit in that stupid tent, or else go out and participate. Mom just really enjoyed sitting there, and I enjoyed watching how the thing worked and keeping track of Rik’s times.

Yeah. I got involved in Scouts because of you. They fill out those papers, and I’d very carefully fill them out so that I didn’t raise any flags to where they’d want me to do something, and then when you guys went into Webelos, I said, “OK, I can do it for a year,” and the next thing I knew, I was a Scoutmaster. I seemed to get all the misfits. We had some strange kids in our troop. 

One of my favorite memories is that Ford Escort you had, when I taught you how to put new brakes on it. We went through one wheel together, and then I showed you how to do it, and then I said, “OK, you’re on your own now.” And then watched you do it on your own. It was big. 

Ruth was a very outgoing person. Early on, her dad was a senior forest ranger, and it entailed being lots of parties and groups and cocktail parties. And it’s pretty much the same with Mom now, Robbie. I’m just also-ran. I just tag along. We go into groups, and she’s willing to talk to anybody, and I have a hard, hard time. Especially with people I don’t know. I can open up like to you. I can have a conversation with you, or I can have a conversation with Rik. You get into a group of people like Rik’s New Years or Christmas when he has people over, I have a hard time talking to those people. Some of them I can talk to because I know them, but I can’t talk very long. I don’t know what to say. My brain just does not work that way. I’m very very shy. I had a hard time in my jobs too. I just never really fit into those kind of groups.

But the thing of it is, my brother Harold went through the same experience, and he didn’t have any trouble. My cousin Jimmy and my cousin Elaine. Man, Elaine was really into it. I mean, she could talk sign language with the fastest of them. And I couldn’t. I could tell that people automatically slowed down when they talked to me, and I would say, “What?” a lot, and they would spell it out, and then I would understand what the sign was. But deaf people don’t like to spell things out. And so, it was easy for me to check out because if you’re not looking at somebody and reading their signs, you’re not conversing with them. So you’re looking over here. They’re signing, and you’re not paying attention. And it’s a cop out, and I realize it now, 70 years later.

If I had nothing in common with, I’m at a loss. Walk up, you know, Robbie can talk to store clerks and have conversations, and I don’t know what the hell to say other than, “Have a good day.” I don’t know how to deal with those kinds of situations.

My mom was good at it. And my dad too, just talking to people. My dad carried a little pad of paper and a pencil in his shirt pocket, and he had no qualms at whipping that sucker out and writing, talking to people. And my mom would talk to them and try to read their lips. Biggest problem she had was that once people learned that she was reading their lips, they would exaggerate everything, and she couldn’t understand it.

Best thing I ever did was get hooked up with your mom. She’s given me so much love and stability. We still have our rough edges. Mostly it’s me not talking to her enough. That’s because she’s lost all her friends in Dallas. It’s become more important to her to be more interactive with me. I have to cope with it. One of the things is, this iPhone here, I couldn’t live without it. See that? 10:30? This one here. 10:30. It’s my alarm clock. It means “Get up and talk.” When I get up out of bed, it’s time to get up out of bed, because I slept in as long as she will tolerate, and I have to talk. Sometimes I just go on down the hall, saying, “I’m walking, and I’m talking. I’m walking, and I’m talking.” And then we’ll get in a conversation, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. This one here says, “Get up for PT” which is physical therapy, “and talk, and have a happy face.” Because she’s convinced that those girls will work harder with me if I have a happy face with them. The therapists. So that’s how I’m learning to cope with that stuff.

Big thing that we have is that she’s the balloon, and I hold onto her string. I keep her grounded. But every now and then, I have to kind of float with her. To keep me in the world. Not let me crawl in a hole. To give me love.  And it works. It works for us.

In Richardson after the stroke, I was pretty much isolated, just me and Robbie and my therapists, and the therapy ran out. Robbie over the years before that had been talking about someday we need to move to Austin to be with our kids and grandkids, you know. And then when I was in in-house rehab, I just realized that maybe that’s what we ought to do. And then it was a whirlwind.

I had nothing more there. She had all her friends and her contacts and her woo woo stuff was all up in that whole area up there. When we came down here, she had a, she’s still having a rough time, but she had a really rough time in the beginning, mostly with the driving thing. Over the years, I’ve had to map things out for her. And I still do that. I map out where she wants to go. I’m really proud of her, because she’s got to where she’s really moving around a lot.

Big events in my week are physical therapy, and now that’s about to stop and I have to do it on my own. I have to force myself to do it. It’s too easy to blow off. Mom will say, “Let’s go to lunch,” and I blow the rest of the afternoon off, which means I don’t do the exercises I should. I’ve got to do it, got to get myself on a regimen. You know the old saying, “Use it or lose it?” With me it’s really true. If I don’t do it, I’ll lose it. My walking is worse than it was 6 months ago. Although I try. I just don’t seem to be able to get the rhythm good enough, fast enough. And Robbie’s really patient with me. She just walks along at a slow crawl, either behind me or by my side.

She does a lot for me. She’s walking a narrow line about doing stuff for me and not doing stuff for me. She has to decide what I really need her to do and what I can do on my own. I try to do my own laundry, but she’s pretty much grabbed a hold of that. When she hears me kicking the bucket down the hall, she runs out and grabs it and does it, but she leaves the shirts and pants for me to hang up, which I can do. I can fold the other stuff, too, but she has a need to do something. So it’s a fine line on what she wants to do and what she wants me to do.

I’ve had a couple of times since I stroked. I thought my family would be better off without me, but then I realized that’s not true. Robbie would not be better off without me, even though she has to do so much of the physical part of it. I still keep track of the finances and when things need to be paid, the mortgage and utilities, and I give her moral support. I keep reminding her that she needs friends, and she needs to make them. She’s found a couple of lady friends that she really likes that she has coffee with on Wednesdays but I really wish she could find a clan. I just have to keep reminding her that she needs to look and not give up on it. So I can’t give up. I still got to hold that string.

The biggest thing is that she got all her talking and communication with all those people she had up north, and now she depends on me to do it, and it’s difficult for me. I try hard to do it, but it doesn’t satisfy her needs. People project onto me that I’m stuck up and antisocial. It’s not true. I just don’t know how to be social. It sounds like a cop out, you don’t know how. Of course you should know how. I read all kinds of books on how to do it. I can’t do it.

I don’t know if I can pinpoint things. It’s just a path. Some of it’s rocky and some of it’s grassy and easy going, and some of it’s a struggle to climb up, but I’m just on this path. Hadens are resilient. I don’t know whether it’s in genes or whatever the hell it is. It’s there. My next goal is make it to 85. Try to talk to my wife whenever I can. Enjoy my kids and grandchildren. I’m satisfied with my life.

 I don’t know how you’ll make sense out of any of that.