The Lord of the Rings

 I was feeling kind of down in the dumps the other night; kids were at their Moms, and I was home alone in my empty house.  It happens - often when I'm feeling the sads, I'll turn to some of my favorite things to try and lift my spirits.  This seems harder to do as I get older, I don't know. Maybe I'm growing more curmudgeonly, or maybe my depression has a better hold, but often things I used to enjoy and love don't hold that same spark.  But the other night, I put on Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and sat down to watch four hours of film by myself.

I'll have to go back to my childhood here, and talk about how I loved reading as a kid - I learned to read at an early age, and ever since then, stories have enthralled me and taken me to places I never thought I could go.  I especially loved fantasy and sci-fi books; they always had a certain magic and phantasmic quality that spoke to me.  So early on, I developed a love for A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis and of course, The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.  I knew that there were stories after the Hobbit... the mythical Lord of the Rings.  Lord of the Rings had a real cult status when I was a kid in the 80s - at music stores, there were always these fantastical LOTR posters (always near Led Zeppelin records, weird huh?) that depicted the imposing Gray Wizard Gandalf... with sword and sorcery movies being prominent in the early 80s, and Dungeons & Dragons becoming popular, fantasy imagery was just everywhere, and I was sucked in.  But LOTR eluded me... the sheer size of it was daunting, and the language was dense and deep to a kid... I didn't read it til I was in my teens, but the love of all things it encompassed was impressed upon my soul at a very early age.  So, it became a treasured part of the story library I kept in my head and heart.  When Peter Jackson announced he was making three films in 1999... I was so excited.  I remember watching countdowns on the official website, back when the internet was still nascent! I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters, and I remember from the opening scene showing the battle against Sauron and the cutting of the ring by Isildur... I was hooked. But in 2002, I was battling kidney failure and didn't even know it.  When The Two Towers came out in late 2002, I was nearing the end... when I saw the film, I felt sick, terrible, and my vision was blurry from my illness.  I enjoyed it, but I had this weird sense of dread that I might not live to see Return of the King the next year.  In the time between the films, I was diagnosed with ESRD, put on dialysis, and I had my first transplant just a few weeks before Return of the King came out.  I was alive, feeling better than I had in years... and my first outing after surgery was with my brother to see Return of the King.  I lived, I survived, and I saw the completion of the films.  I loved it - the film was epic, amazing, uplifting, and an ode to friendship, and the strength of love, courage, family & friends.  The same things that had helped me survive my own journey into Mordor, as it was. 

So the film holds a special place in my heart - it's a reminder of that time, what I endured, and what I was able to face and overcome. So watching it every time since has been a somewhat emotional experience for me, personally - not to mention the content of the film.  At the end, when Frodo Baggins has become so weak from the nefarious power of the ring and he cannot continue to climb Mount Doom, his best friend, Samwise Gamgee, says to him "I can't carry it... but I can carry you!" and throws Frodo over his shoulders and climbs up towards the top of Mount Doom, to where the ring can be thrown in its caldera and destroyed.  It's a powerful moment in storytelling and film, and definitely hits me hard.  I've had a lot of people carry me up that hill when I could not go further. In the end, the ring is destroyed, and Frodo and Sam, two small, seemingly insignificant beings, have saved the entire world, with the help and support of their friends.

I sat through the movie, alone, with my dog - watching the story unfold, but thinking of my own the whole time too.  There's been adventure, there's been love, there's been pain, there's been sadness but I've lived through it all.  Sometimes it's overwhelming, and not every day is perfect here and now, but I'm glad I have something like a silly film to not only entertain me and lift my spirits, but to remind me of everything I've managed to accomplish in spite of great odds, and the amazing people that have given so much to get me here.

Back to School

 My kids have been back to school for over a week now; every morning, I get up and I pack their lunches. Some days they've stayed here, other days their mom brings them over to my house before she goes to work, so they can catch the bus here.  But every day, I get the privilege of seeing them off on the bus. It can be a rush in the mornings - especially when I'm getting them dressed, making breakfast, putting together their lunch boxes, making sure their backpacks are set, and getting them out the door and on the bus - but to me, these mundane chores are magic.  I marvel at the fact that I have little people of my own that get on that bus - and later in the day, they get off it, run up to me and just start babbling to me about their day or whatever else is on their mind.  We're pretty close now, my children and I.  I know it won't always be like this as they age, but right now... it's a magic moment in time, and yet again, I'm thankful that I'm even alive to experience it.  

This circle of life thing is a wild carousel; it feels like just a short time ago, I was changing their diapers, rocking them to sleep - swaddling them snugly so they could sleep! And then I think of myself, and I feel the ocean of time wash over me and I remember riding the bus to the very same school they're attending now - only for me, it was 37 years ago.  Prior to my kids orientation, I hadn't set foot in that school in 32 years.  It was recently renovated over the summer - and many features changed.  I noted a new entrance way, and it's safety features... very different from the wide open main entrance of my youth, with a giant, open atrium.  I noted in my mind, sadly, why the changes.  The heavy, lockable doors that separated things were a terrible reminder of the world we live in now.  This will just be normal to my children, going forward - a sad thought to me.  We always wanted a better future for ourselves and our potential children when we were younger, and while we have many new miracles of technology, I do wonder if my kids have a better world than I did at their age.  They're certainly happy, and I'm thankful for that.  But on some level, I do feel society has failed them. Education isn't just about learning facts; it's about gaining insight, and wisdom. It just feels like there's less and less room for the wisdom of whimsy as a child, these days.  I don't have any answers yet, and neither does society at large.  Right now, I am glad that their safety is a priority, at least at that level.  But it goes beyond just keeping a secure campus - our society is less secure.  Angry.  Polarized, energized, desensitized and with out good guiding principles in many ways.  So I do hope in my kids lifetime, things improve. 

Right now, as I write this, I'm waiting for them to come home, and tell me what they did today.  We'll do this all again tomorrow, and I am happy, lucky and fortunate to be here, to be their father and to be given the opportunity to love and guide them.  Cliches are cliches for a reason - so enjoy all the mundane, stupid stuff.  It's what matters.