September Eyes

September 20, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

We’ve all heard the expression, “the eyes are the window to the soul.” It’s a rather absurd notion – not because of its veracity, but because of a lack of alternate windows. As if one could discern intent through an open mouth or wide nostril. Just look at the face. What social cue could you ever glean from its other orifices? Without the look me in the eye mother-son interaction, I can picture a young mother staring into her son’s ear to discover truth like a scientist into a microscope.

Take the literal interpretation and my general silliness away, I get the allusion. They eyes are amazing in what they can relay nonverbally. In fact, I got smacked by several sets of eyes very recently.

This month is September – Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I knew that before, but now that I work for CURE Childhood Cancer, I really know it. It’s been busy! This is not a complaint, I love my job. When this month ends, I will have been doing it for a year and I can no longer imagine doing anything else. In fact, I recently told my lovely wife that the only thing I would rather do than this is write for a living. She quickly pointed out, “You do write for a living.” Of course, she is correct. What I meant was crank out three best-sellers a year like James Michener while sitting on a beach sipping fruity drinks with paper umbrellas. But yes, I daily get to write on a topic about which I am passionate – children with cancer.

And I get to meet the most amazing kids: a thirteen-year-old who has been fighting cancer more than half his life and a girl who donated her twenty-first birthday to our organization because she’s been dealing with cancer and its side effect since she was two. For September, I read the stories of 120 incredible kids and I made this collage to use on social media.

Those eyes. Those windows. Those souls.

Sweet, innocent babes forced to fight like no man should have to. Their September eyes stare at me. I see their eyes even when mine are closed. I can’t look at it without getting a chill because some of those eyes are gone. I won’t tell you which ones, but this cancer beast is vicious. We comfort ourselves and talk about eighty percent cure rates for childhood cancer. But that leaves twenty percent who don’t survive. Children who die… 1 in 5. Kylie was in that 20%.

And I step back, and I remember those carefree days before I knew these facts. Before I realized that children die from cancer. Back when I thought it was a disease for seventy-year-old smokers. How foolish and naïve I was.

Happiness is a kind bedfellow of naivety.

In this dreamy state I see little Kylie skipping toward me dressed in her blue ballet leotard, lugging a huge backpack on her shoulders. The weight on her back forces her to stoop slightly as she approaches, giving full view to the rolling acorns on the sidewalk. She stops to smash one under her heel. The sound makes her giggle. Another acorn squished. A squeal. Then another and another until she realizes I’m waiting. She looks at me, smiles, and hoists up her backpack to sprint the remaining distance.

“Hi, Daddy!”

“Hi, Baby. Let me take your backpack. It looks heavy.”

She deftly swings the burden off her back and into my waiting hands. It is heavier than I could have ever imagined.

“You take it for good,” she says.

And then she is gone. She is gone and I am still holding the weight.

20% – 1 in 5

We must do better. How can we not? Innocent September Eyes depend on us.

Today is the day we are sharing Kylie’s story in an effort to raise money for research that will lead to a cure. If you can, please share this burden with us by clicking here

“What the Hell?”

August 16, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

I was raised in a home with clean words. To be honest, I never understood the notion that a certain subset of words are “bad” while the others are not. Who gets to decide? I suppose it’s up the parents when you’re in a family. But boys love to muddy their hands in life’s gray areas and their tiny brains perk up when told something is wrong.

As for words, there was such allure when I heard one deemed naughty. The offending word simply had to be repeated. My recitation would start quietly at first – in the shadows of my room where the word bubbled out, tasting heavy and wrong as it escaped my throat. I would stand in front of a mirror practicing my elocution and intonation like a Shakespearean actor rehearsing lines. As I adjusted to the word’s weight and volume, at some point, it didn’t seem “bad” anymore. It was just a word. Inevitably, this word seeped out during normal conversation and I found myself on the wrong end of the word police. Yes, I’ve tasted soap a time or two.

I’ve raised my family in a home with clean words – we called it our little bubble. We’ve never had trouble from the kids; rules-followers who are like their mother. Sometimes a word has escaped when something heavy dropped on my foot, but I’ve mostly toed the line in the bubble – even though I still have a problem with the word-regime who decides such things.

But there are times in your life when June Cleaver-esque words such as heck, dang, and darn just aren’t strong enough. When events swirling around you are so far beyond comprehension that the only thing you can say is, “What the hell?”

“What the hell?”

I’ve woken up to such news a time or two in my life. Natural catastrophes or tragic events don’t cause this reaction. Bad things happen, I’ve come to accept that. Unfortunately, crime really doesn’t even surprise me anymore. This world is full of bad intent. No, what causes this reaction is the shocking revelation of the darkest side of humanity. People infused with hate cause it.

It’s all you can say when incomprehensible evil flashes across the news.

“What the hell?”

Are there really still white supremacy rallies? Where did the people with tiki torches come from? Who knowingly drives a car into people just because they disagree with him? What the hell is happening here?

This is all mind-blowing to me. I walked around in a funk all day trying to digest what I had seen and read. But I couldn’t. It’s like a brussel sprout: you can lube it up with all the butter you want and you’ll never get it down!

Hate of that scale is un-wordly. Hate like that doesn’t belong here and that is why “What the hell?” is the only way to describe it. Because that’s precisely where it comes from: hell.

Evil like that demands immediate condemnation, not flippant, non-committal words offered in 140 characters or less. There is a wrong side… and it’s obvious. I would like to propose a very simple definition: If you consider yourself superior to anyone because of a genetic difference, you’re on the wrong side. Actually, let’s make it simpler: If you consider yourself better than anyone…

Evil like what we saw last weekend can’t win, can it? We live in a democracy. We choose what wins by either accepting or rejecting its premise. In order for evil to win, we have to give it power over us. And now, I’m haunted by the obvious question, “Have we?”

***A disclaimer for my dear mother. Please rest easy. I’m only implying the use of the word as a curse. It’s just wordplay. A title tease to get people to read. I’m trying to cleverly use it in more of a Biblical sense – as in the opposite of Heaven.