The Answer really is '42'

On Christmas Day, my family went to the home of some very dear friends of ours... we have no family in this area, and it did not so happen that we had extended family visiting for the holiday this year, so our friends asked us to spend the afternoon with them.  After an delicious and voluminous meal, we settled down to play a game called 42.

For those of you who are in the seriously deprived state of not knowing what '42' is... it is a trump-based game played with dominos, which has origins here in the south (particularly Texas), and it is a slowly dying pastime.   Our friends are some of the very few people I know who play the game, or have even heard of it.  It's a wonderful game, simple to learn but difficult to master.  Legend has it that it was invented by the son of a old-time Baptist preacher-- he was not allowed to play cards, but he was allowed to play dominos, so he figured out how to play games similar to Spades or Bridge, but using "dem bones" in place of playing cards.

Like many such games, when you discover someone who knows the game, you will also discover inevitable differences in how the rules go, or terminology used around the game table.  These differences are slight, and when we first began to play with our friends, I had to adjust to their terms and variations.  The other day, as we played, one of these terms sparked a flood of memories for me, and now they flood into this blog....

First the necessary-but-hopefully-succinct explanation of the phrase... as you play 42, one of the legal bids is to go "nello" (low), which means you are betting that you will not catch any of the tricks in the hand.   Your partner does not play, and the two opponents try to make you capture one of the 7 tricks.  When you choose this bid, you must designate what the "doubles" do:  either they are normal, which means a double-six captures any domino with a six on it; or they are a suit of their own, in which doubles capture other doubles of lower number.   This choice is a crucial part of the strategy of going 'nello'.

So, why did this affect me so?  I learned the game at the knee of my grandparents in West Texas, and they always used the two phrases "doubles catch doubles" and "doubles catch their suit" to designate these options.  My friends do not use these phrases... but each time someone goes nello, when they say whatever might be said to indicate their choice, my brain always echoes the West Texas Translation into my internal ear.

And that inner voice is the voice of my Grandma.  Clear as a bell.  I can see her face, and hear the tones of her voice as she responds to the "What're your doubles doing?"

It's a very strong and pungent memory.  As so much of my memories and recollections of her and my Grandpa fade over time, this has not.  I was extremely impressed at how it resonated in my mind and soul.  It was as if she sat there at the table, an impossible fifth player in a 42 game.   It was always a treat when she bid nello.   She would hem and haw and bemoan how she was going to get set and she had no business going low with these dominos... and 9 times out of 10 she would take us all to school.

If she did happen to get set, however, her facial expressions as she played the 'losing' domino were often hilarious beyond measure.

Obviously, the memories I built around that table with my grandparents were forged in titanium, built to last a lifetime.  I was struck by the fact that they were built around a table, playing a game we loved.  As I write this, there are 3 young ladies across the coffee shop from me are gathered around a table, sharing stories and laughing gayly.  They are even having a wealth of fun and enjoyment trying to take a group selfie (which action I would personally consider a living hell), and everything about them and their interaction with each other makes me smile inside, for I know memories are being made this day.

I miss my grandparents.  I miss making memories with them, and I miss the way my Grandma would say "doubles catch doubles".

But then I think about... on Christmas Day, we returned to our home with time to spare in the evening, and my sons and I gathered around the table and played a game, one we love.. and as we battled the SuperVillains with our super-heroes, super powers and captured villains, we were making these titanium memories.  I already cherish these times with my sons, and I know in my heart that, in the future years as they go off to colleges, adult life, and their own families... I will have moments where I can hear their voices, and see their faces, and feel their love.

As we enter this upcoming year, if you resolve to do anything...  make time to be with those you love.  Put the devices away and talk, or better yet.. play.  Go buy a new tabletop game and learn to play it.. or dust off a game you've not played in years.

You won't regret it.   Titanium memories are powerful stuff.

Rites of Spring(ing) into Summer

The Welch clan arrived at camp yesterday, pulling into our 'summer place' shortly after breakfast.  This year, we brought along a cousin who had never been to camp before, and as we neared the totem poles, my boys began to teach him the traditional chant that is belted out when a vehicle enters the hallowed grounds of Indian Acres.  We had it timed perfectly, but just as they began the chant, a deer sprang out of the woods on the left, bounded across the road behind the totem poles, and disappeared down the strand of trees that line the main road.  It was a delightful way to start our 2015 camp experience, and we have decided it is a good omen.

Since we always arrive in Maine nigh upon the summer solstice, I've never really seen the break of winter into spring... but from all that I've read, the season between the snow melt and "summer" is often compressed.  As evidence of this, we often see folks around Fryeburg doing various chores that might have already been tackled in parts further south; yesterday it was workmen at the Fryeburg Fairgrounds painting the chain link fence.

In a like manner, 'spring' chores are done late at camp... since our 'spring' actually breaks when folks actually get here, and start sprucing up the camp for the summer.   Concurrently with the Fryeburg Fair-Men, some of the counselors were wielding their paintbrushes on the fences around the totem poles.

Tom Sawyers and Becky Thatchers hard at work.

The counselors and staff work very hard for many days before the first camper ever steps off a bus or van.  The gusto with which these chores are tackled speaks to the love that most of the staff have for this special place.

For the Welch clan, 'spring chores' consists of getting our cabin habitable, transporting a mountain of bags and boxes into the cabin, and carving out temporary room for the kids

Temporary digs.

until they move to their cabins next week.  Stuff left over the winter is hauled out of storage, and there is the pretty-much-required discovering of missing/broken items, and the subsequent fattening of the Walmart list.

The chair is dead, Jim

Froagie's!

Once the cabin is squared away, then the boys are off to play.  The day included Ga-Ga, tossing a baseball, an ill-advised dip in the STILL VERY COLD Saco river, a trip to Froagie's for some ice cream,
and some games on the picnic tables outside.

Nerds Outdoors.  Margaret Mead was somewhere
off to the side, taking notes on creatures
out of their habitat...

One of the best things about camp is the life lessons that it teaches these young men and women; in addition to the skills they learn at the various activities, they learn all the important "wet-ware" lessons that are essential to a well-lived life.

Day One included such a lesson... work hard first, play hard second, go to bed the best kind of tired.

Spring has sprung.  Summer is nigh.

Let Camp begin.

Life is a written journal, not a Word doc.....

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it-- Omar Khayyam  (Poem #545, Rubaiyat, Fitzgerald translation)

A few weeks ago, in his weekly sermon at Frisco Bible Church, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Wayne Braudrick posited a hypothetical question: in essence, were the opportunity given to you, would you go back and edit your personal history?   Would you change your past to clean things up, or to enhance something, or...most of all... to correct a regret?

I immediately thought of 'the moving finger' quote, which I first learned of from reading, of all things, the novelization of the Star Trek original series by James Blish.  The episode 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' deals with a time paradox, when the Enterprise is cast back in time to the 1960's and is spotted in Earth's atmosphere by an Air Force pilot.  They lock the tractor beam on his plane, but it breaks up from the force of it, so they beam him aboard.  They then learn that they must put him back somehow, as he has a significant contribution to history which had not occurred yet.

I won't spoil how they solve it, but in the novelized version, after they do, Spock says "And thus we have revised Omar", referring to the quote above.

Would you revise Omar in your life?  What regrets do you hold?

I am normally of the mind that hanging on to regrets is a great disservice to one's self... and yet it would be intellectually dishonest to say that I don't have things in my own life that I wish I had done differently, things that creep into the corners of my mind occasionally, especially during times of solitude or reflection.  It's natural for these things to poke at you, raising conjectures of what might have been if different choices had been made, if one had possessed future knowledge in a past moment, if... if... if....

The dark side of this natural happenstance, however, is when these thoughts become IF...IF...IF.IF.IF.IF.IF, for obsessing over regrets leads down a path of despair, and dissatisfaction of the present moment of you.  These memories serve a purpose as a learning tool, to help you make better decisions in the future, but no one is defined purely by their mistakes.

They are defined by what they have become in spite of the mistakes.

Every single, precious, human being is a masterwork of many variables, variables that consist of both what they are (their genetic makeup as a work of God), and what they have learned (the choices they make, with the free will God grants his children).  The summation of these variables is what makes you unique... there are just too many variables involved for there to be even the remotest possibility of anything other than.... you.  Or me.  Or anyone.

Each one is a singular artistic masterpiece, painted or sculpted, and weathered by the time of our decisions and experiences.

So, consider your regrets:  would you want to 'edit' them?

I do not. (Mine, not yours.  You're on your own for yours)  Yes, I have regrets; things I wish I had done or not done, or choices I wish I had made differently.  Some of these things caused pain in the moment, and can still cause some pain in the reflection.

But I would not revise Omar.  The 'moving finger' has writ my life so far, and although I hope to learn and become better from what is has journaled of me.... I would not cancel a single line.

No more hiding! (AKA.... 'Make it so')

"His not-abundant confidence was further sapped by the sudden loss of his hair, starting in his teens.  [Sir Patrick] Stewart employed a series of hats, comb-overs, and simply walking with his head down to avoid detection.  "Wind was a nightmare," he remembers. 

Then a pal did an intervention.  Stewart had a Hungarian director friend who invited him for lunch one day.  After eating, the Hungarian and his wife disappeared into the kitchen.  They emerged with scissors, and the Hungarian   placed Stewart in a bear hug while his wife snipped off his remaining wisps of hair. 

"My friend took my shoulders in his hands and yelled, 'No more hiding!'",
"Captain Fantastic",  (Article about Patrick Stewart), Mens Journal June 2014 

In our modern culture, I sometimes shake my head, (my smoothly shaven chrome-dome), at the amount of money, time, and emotion expended by the men of our times.... in order to retain some vestige of a full head of hair.

Now, I have always been of the mind that this is a wide, wide world, with lots of people in it... and room for all kinds of tastes, interests, etc... if someone wants to spend their hard-earned money on Rogaine, or implants, or toupees... who am I to judge?  And yet....

When I read this article in Men's Journal, about the utterly magnetic Sir Patrick Stewart, I felt a desire to write about this incident from his early years, and how perfectly it captured my feelings on male baldness, and to share that to my brethren of the Human Race.

I will praise You because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well.  (Psalm 139.14, HCSB)

Here's a news flash:  you were designed... your incredible special person created by a loving God, your inevitable, inexorable code laid out in double-helical artistry that resulted in a perfectly unique masterpiece.   And guess what?  That includes your head, and every single follicle thereupon....

Like Sir Patrick, my hair began its Exodus while I still had a "1" at the beginning of my age.  I often jokingly relate one of my favorite anecdotes about how I knew the moment of the beginning of the end:  when the smoking-hot hairstylist at the hip hair place in Austin told the cashier to charge me half-price because the cut didn't take very long.... (OUCH).  Yes, I struggled with it at first, but before long the ethos expressed in Psalms sank in... and I realized that I was sculpted this way.  

So, I make a call to all the would-be William Shatners of the world... look at your head... ixnay the ug-ray, and love yourself.  As you were made.  

But... (shout-out to Dr. Wayne Braudrick here).. in that Gordon Gekko voice of yours... you say "Men without good hair won't succeed in our society".  To wit:

• It will hurt my love life:   Bullocks.  If the woman you woo won't love you without hair, move on and find one who will.   You want a mate/lover/SO who likes you for WHO YOU ARE.  Women respond to confidence.  Trust me on this.
• It will impede my career advancement:   I will grant that this is a possibility... but the business world also sees and knows when a man is working too hard to put back what's not there... everyone knows.... just so you know.
• A lack of hair means ridicule:  Bullocks again.  The world is changing, and bald is the new sexy.  For whatever it's worth, the tide of  popular culture is turning, and the bald male celebrities are not seeing their "Q" ratings suffer... not like they used to... 

When it boils down to it, gentlemen... confidence is sexy.  

     Accept and like yourself... exactly like you were made.

          Hold your bald(ing) head high.  

               Embrace the way you were lovingly crafted.

No more hiding!