Interlude in Silence Before a Challenging Day

Without a focus on the divine life is trivial, distracted and not in a place of balance. We can allow ourselves to think that this errand or that cause has meaning but if we don’t have a tie to the deeper well our lives while busy will become arid places. Today my hope is to be in the moment struggling to stay connected with the universal.

Aspergers and the Rink Revisited-Beat Down Epiphany

A week ago after another nothing hockey game Primus was on his way off the ice. The game had been chippy. Geez the boy’s team has averaged less than a goal a game, well less than a goal every three games in reality and the scores are usually double digits to zip. Frustration was high on the team. Eventually this was going to boil over.

As I understand one of the 15-18 year olds (I don’t know which team) called another of these testosterone driven boy-men a “homo”. A player on our team also offered up the “finger” during the end of the game handshakes. Then a punch flew. Within seconds the ice surface was a donnybrook. I was at the gate letting players off the ice when all hell broke loose between the boards. Players were in clumps of twos and threes all wailing on each other and engaging in pro wrestling moves picked up off SyFy network. I swear to God I saw the camel clutch come out of retirement. (And yes I know what the camel clutch looked like I represented the Sheik years ago).

Until helmets and gloves come off a hockey fight does not pose that much relative risk for injury in a normal youth game. The greatest risk comes if you end up on the ice and parts of your arm and leg get exposed to errant sword-like skates thrashing about.

My problem was that from the gate I could not see Primus. Eventually one of the other dads, a team representative holding a coaching card pulled Primus off and led him to the door where I was standing. At that point the whole of each team was trickling off the ice. I ordered Primus whose helmet was half off and who seemed to be nursing a whack to the solar plexus region over to our locker room door.

Between one of the team mothers and me we used our outdoor scary crazed adult voices and sent the players into each of their respective locker rooms. It was tense and it was daunting because some of these kids still wanted to go at it. On skates these kids were way bigger than we are but with the right tone of psycho in your voice you can make almost anyone cowl and cower.

After the kids were in the locker room the coach came out to find me to tell me my son had been suspended for two games for fighting. I was a little pissed because the buzz I had gotten from people who had seen the fight was that he had not started the fight he just responded in self defense. Of course I was talking to parents from our team.

It became clear when the names of the others on our team and the numbers of the players on the other team were know the refs had simply done what refs are wont to do, suspend the big guys. Six players on each team got two game misconducts. Our goalie deserved it and so did one of their players whose number I heard mentioned. However there were a number of other names and numbers I had seen involved that got nothing in the way of penalties they much deserved. Once you are like Primus six foot one inch tall and 200 plus pounds you get tagged for whatever crap happens near you on the ice.

As a father of a child with ASD this situation gave me fear because of one thing, his lack of proportionality. When an aspie gets hit and harassed his tolerance level is way high. Primus with his version of ASD puts up with it, puts up with it, puts up with it and then he blows. I know Primus’s tolerance level is far higher than mine but I also know that when he goes he goes all in. Apparently from the coaches it wasn’t that way this time. Primus and the other kid had each other in a headlock and were just trading shots but it never got close to totally nuclear.

When I finally had the chance to talk to Primus I began my commentary with the phrase “I am not proud of you but neither am I angry with you. Fights happened in hockey. What happened?” What came next was, as all things are in these situations, so filled with mixed messages and emotions that it was hard to respond with anything other than an “I see”.

According to Primus as he was coming off the ice the melee commenced behind him. He words, “Dad, I looked behind and saw one of my team mates getting a beat down. I couldn’t ignore that.” Holy shit Batman, my kid-the universe until himself-made a choice based on what was happening to another person and came to that person’s aid. As a Dad I view this response as a huge, really, really huge milestone in personal development. He didn’t know who it was but it was “his team mate” and he wasn’t going to let that beat down happen.

Sitting stunned I mulled over what to say next. Eventually I offered this. “Primus, you have Aspergers, you know that. You also know that you have trouble stopping your anger once it boils over. Right?” Nodded agreement happens here. Me continuing, “You always have to think about consequences. In this case you got involved in a fight not of your own making, most likely started by someone on your team that you don’t even like or care about. You put yourself at risk and it cost you. There are six games left this season and you have thrown away a 1/3 rd of them. Does that sound like the best and most rational course?” A head shakes no.

As I continued I told him that it was okay to use his size, to make clean but board rattling checks and to defend himself if someone was acting with a real intent to injure him. But I also told him if you get into a fight in this day and age being who you are you have already lost. Then I ran down the list of good plays I had seen during the game that day and told him that I was proud of him for who he is. Period.

All I can say is that the feelings I get from this are truly conflicted. I see the danger but I see the growth.

Several nights later when he and his fellow suspended team mate stood at the glass watching their team play without them, they talked nonstop for the entire game. This is a child that three years ago wouldn’t say hello to a next door neighbor he had known his entire life if he saw them outside in their yard. Killing time at the rink today he talked in extended conversations with three or four team mates. Wow.

This is one suckfest of a season if you measure in wins (if only there was one) and losses. But if you measure it in Primus’s building bridges to a world outside himself it is pretty darn awesome.

Of Books and Beach VIII Glowing Waves and Trust

Nature is present in beach world at every moment. All the artifices that humankind employs cannot deny nature its due. No matter how modern and wonderful a structure built of sticks and wood is, or even if that mansion is made of the newest composites sand will pound the cracks, edges and crevices. Eventually those countless grains will erode the façade enough to create a way in. People tracking in and out of the house will also bring with them the sand from the alley ways, the beach and from the street. Sand is nature at its most elemental.

Moisture is another part of nature that will not be denied in beach world. No matter how efficient the air conditioning the humidity will find its way in too. Any pillow used down at the shore will become a rock within a few weeks. Soaked with sea air those feathers become leaden, it is just the way it is.

If you go out into the ocean you have to risk crab bites, kelp and various sediments thrown at you by the churning waves. It you body surf your snot will mix with the saline water. If you don’t respect the water’s power you will die. ‘Nuff said, swimming can equal death in a rip tide. But once and again you will be greeted with a moment when nature will show you a moment of wonder.

One night when Don and I went for the 25 block each way walk of cosmology, that is we would smoke four or five cigarettes apiece and talk about the meaning of life and what the universe is really composed of. On one of those kinds of nights we saw a once lifetime thing, luminescent jellyfish.
On that moonless night as we walked down the strand the waves seemed to shimmer as they crashed. At first the odd light was very, very faint. But as we walked further the waves grew brighter. There was no natural illumination of the water that night. As wave after wave crashed we had trouble believing our eyes. The Atlantic was glowing.

Don and I walked down toward the water’s edge. As we reached that part of the beach where the waves had already hit and then receded it looked like lightening spreading out in all directions. Faint electrical pulses shot off in every direction from where our feet fell.

We stopped and with our toes gently poked at the sand. There were hundreds of silver dollar sized jelly fish lying in the shallow ¼ inch of water that remained from the last wave. Any pressure on the sand near the jellyfish and they lit up with little lightning strikes heading out in ever directions of their little circular bodies. We stopped and really looked out at the waves hardly trusting our senses. Each time when the waves crashed the jellyfish lit up all down the length of the crest. There was a cool mint green light that spread out as the water rolled and roiled along the shore’s edge.

We had to stop and step back to insure we understood what we were seeing. It was something so unexpected on the Jersey shore that we didn’t believe our own eyes. We didn’t trust our visual sense. We simply had to let nature be what nature would be and let it show us what was true and real.

I don’t know who this fits in with Section 8 of On Caring-Trust. This section focuses on trust. In some ways it might be possible to try and tie trust to our doubts about our experiences that night but it really doesn’t work. I guess in this case the story stand alone. The analysis too stands alone.

Trust is in the way the author first structures his discussion a bit of a misnomer. It is a continuation of knowing and honesty. I trust the other to grow in his or her own way and to make mistakes. Inherently I have certain knowledge that mistakes will be made or divergence from what I view as the path of growth will occur. But if I am honest about growth being the goal I will allow these things to happen.

I must know and have faith that I learn and grow from experience and mistakes. I must be secure in my judgments. If I am always second guessing my choices then my trust in the other to likewise learn and grow will be tentative and tainted. Trust requires I have a sense of balance as to what is an isolated problem and what requires a course correction in the other’s growth.

The other having knowledge that we are allowing this process is liberated to grow. Trusts frees the other to make choices and then to return and discuss the resulting experience and be subject to examination and potentially criticism. Risk and unforeseen consequences may follow but growth requires choices be made and experiences accumulated.

A failure to offer trust, to be overprotective means we are not being responsive to the needs of the other. This stifles growth. If we wish to dictate every course of behavior and outcome we are really trying to protect ourselves from pain and disappointment.

Trust is not an abdication of responsibility. It is not undertaken indiscriminately. We do what we can to insure that the conditions exist where trust is warranted. We offer opportunities to learn and experience but we watch to make sure the other is not unnecessarily at risk in trying to grow. This is a delicate balance.

Of Beach and Books VII-Kurly Kustard and Honesty

Dear Reader,

Please be aware that I am not slacking off in pursuing my guide to Milton Mayeroff’s On Caring. What is actually occurring is that I am working on this piece in a roundabout way. I have had to go back and listen to the music of the era to put my mind in the right place spiritually to conduct my ramblings. You might want to listen to these tunes first to get you in the mood of the time. Open a second window in the background and let ‘em play while you read on.







Over three months between June and Labor Day 1974 in a physical space that was at most 20 foot by 15 foot my world was changed, rearranged and reoriented. Four people occupied that space for those three months, Nan, Larry, Andy and me. We were the Kurly Kustard crew. Larry and Nan would shape my world for years to come. I didn’t know that in June of that year, but foreknowledge wouldn’t have changed the facts.

Before Labor Day came I would fall in love helplessly and hopelessly with Nan. On the other hand Larry would show me that the world was broader than I ever thought it could be. He would teach me that decency and personal integrity count, I admit now that these were lessons I learned only when the biggest part of our friendship was in the rear-view mirror.

In addition to our four bodies the Kurly Kustard operation also contained a soda fountain, an ice cream novelties cooler, a pretzel oven, a double sided soft serve machine and a slush puppy dispenser. There was a cash register too. If the electricity went out you could operate that puppy with a crank and on occasion I did.

The store façade was about three foot high on the board walk side but on the inside it was just two foot high with a raised floor behind the aluminum counter. As a result of this differential we were always looking down at our customers and bending over to serve them their desert treats. From 10:30 a.m. to about 11 p.m. or midnight we purveyed sweets, ice cream, pretzels, soda and other refreshing eats slightly stooped over. When you walked the back door and walked down the wooden steps to the beach level your feet hurt from the concrete floor and you back ached from being bent over all night long. Just stretching at midnight after a full shift outback and in the misty ocean air was a release.

Kurly Kustard did not have air conditioning. Although we were only a couple of hundred yards from the Atlantic the pretzel oven corner of the store would get up to 110 F for hours on end. When it was a busy night each time a row or two or three pretzels would drop out the machine they would sell. On those kinds of nights the person working pretzels lived in their own little replica of hell. Over the course of the night despite drinking endless soda from our personal cups, Heroin, Morphine, Marijuana and Cocaine (novelty items the boss was never able to see in his beach sundries store located next door) you lost pounds. By 10:30 p.m. your clothes were drenched in sweat. You prayed for a breeze to wend its way around the whirring custard machines, the containers of sprinkles and bubbling fudge dip and the oven itself. Cool air rarely got that far. If the heat got too much you walked into walk in cooler and literally chilled. You stayed there until you refreshed enough to get back in the mix.

To break the monotony of the machine noise, that omnipresent electrical metal rumble and hum, we had a cassette player to play tunes. It was not a Dolby noise reducing cassette player. It was what was scrounged up. My guess was that it came from Radio Shack, it was Larry’s. It had one speaker. The noise coming through that cone roughly approximated the sound from an A.M. radio played through the front speaker of a 1963 Ford Falcon. In 1974 we were so used to this sonic quality. We chipped in and book two tapes from the really overpriced record store on the main drag through town. (Hey it was the beach, EVERYTHING was overpriced).

Two of the three tapes we shared were by David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory. These were the ones we bought. He was what was hot and on the only radio station that mattered, WMMR. Our summer’s soundtrack was provided by David Bowie and another tape was an odd mixture of Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits II thrown together by Larry. It shouldn’t have fit it, but it did. The tapes played nonstop. The tape got worn, the tape stretched. The music warbled as we played ‘em at maximum volume through that Radio Shack tape machine. The slow distortion and destruction of the tunes didn’t really matter we knew all the words to every song. Our loud singing covered any defect in the source material with our own partially semi defective singing. Some favorites emerged. First and foremost was….

Life on Mars

It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Bowie was sui generis. Nobody and I mean nobody was like him at the time. The rock press was filled with speculation on his sexuality, bi-, gay or straight? We searched the lyrics for meanings overt and implicit. But that voice was so beyond what anyone else sounded like right at that moment. For my mind only Marc Boylan of T.Rex was pushing the same boundaries.

With a vocal styling that was camp, dead on and nihilistic all at once, Bowie enthralled us. His voice was so perfect for 1974 as we waited for Richard Nixon to resign. Like Bowie wrote in a song he handed off the Mott the Hoople we were all bored with that revolution stuff by then. We all just wanted to smoke pot and fuck. Nothing else, our hormones were so out of control it is amazing our button fly jeans didn’t just burst with a staccato ricocheting of their metal fasteners.

Kurly Kustard’s crew was an interesting mix. Larry was a co-op student at Drexel working in physics and hard theoretical science. I have hung out with physicists over the years and the joke was that they all wear oversized shoes so as not to fall through the fabric of the universe. I mean they know nothing is solid. But Larry wasn’t like that he was a down to earth guy. He was struggling with bug lust just like I was. He obviously was smarter than most but still he liked beer and pussy as much as the rest of us.

Andy was younger that Larry, Nan and I. He seemed to have a bit of a dark side. Seemingly he was headed to that place in life were the strange turns ugly. I can’t tell you for sure he didn’t end up a preacher of the Gospel but I wouldn’t bet on it. While the rest of us would smoke pot Andy would eat almost anything that came his way in pill form. All of the rest of us had tried acid once or twice and had pretty much said fuck this pill shit. We stuck with good old Columbian.

But there were days when Andy was so jittery, so shaky that you knew he was as Lou Reed put James Dean for a day just speeding away. But back then the credo was do you own thing as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else so we didn’t feel any need to intervene. We shook our heads a bit and figured his parent’s would bust him but we didn’t meddle.

Andy’s stories always had the edge that something was being left out. They got murky at points and you could only assume that something had happened there and the reality had gone really wrong or whatever had been done was beyond the pale of what any of the rest of us would have been involved in. The rest of us might be criminals because we bought and smoked weed but were didn’t steal or strong arm anyone.

Still Andy had his good qualities. Andy loved Bruce Springsteen. In 1974 he was quoting all the songs that would be on Born to Run two years before the album was even out. He would always be humming and singing a lyric from Jungleland.

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance
And disappear down Flamingo Lane.

Larry, Andy and I we were all the products of working class dads and moms. We heard the stories about the hard times and struggle each meal when we said we weren’t going to eat scrapple, broccoli or kale. The depression stories got old. This was the 1970s the world was ours for the taking. It was America on the upsurge. We were punk assed kids expecting to do better.

Nan wasn’t like us she had grace that you didn’t find in the homes of South Jersey factory rats. We were scruffy. She was beautiful. We were all asses and elbows incompetent and she exuded cool. Our tongues tied at moments when she was funny and fired off that quick quip.

She was a beauty and proud of her sensuality. She wore amber aviator shades that just said “I am hot”. She wore tube tops promoting those perky puppies of hers. When she bent over to serve ice cream the Dad’s lingered a little too long at the window for the Mom’s liking. If you watched you could see the come on let’s go tug on the hand, the sleeve or the shoulder material. Nan’s cup was Heroin. Mine was Morphine. We were toxic together.

From the first day we worked together at Kurly Kustard there was some kind of connection between us. I may be wrong but I thought there was. We laughed at the same shit. We riffed about right and wrong and the injustices being inflicted on us by our evil overlord. When I looked at her she had a golden aura. Teen love/lust does stuff to your vision. Mostly it stuffs your head up your butt. Still, she was one of that less than a handful of women I ever really fell in love with, God’s honest truth. For me the time I tried to be in her life was disastrous, but it was a memory.

There were moments of absurdity at Kurly Kustard. For example there was this French Canadian dude that insisted on trying to pay me in Canadian funds. No bank in 1974 Ocean City would take the old Canadian one dollar bills with the Queen on ‘em. I refused when the folding foreign money was offered to accept it as currency. I stood my ground and demanded he pay me in American script.

Let us call this guy Jacques. Jacques had the Canadian currency in his right hand. When it clear I was not going to accept these bills he pulled out the America cash from his pocket with his left hand. That left mitt was the most deformed hand I had ever seen. It was Hunchback of Notre Dame deformed, twisted and gnarled and it was clear the sucker had gone through this exercise on purpose. He knew I wasn’t going to take the Canuck money and he wanted to make me deal with his weird two thumbed left hand. Arrgggh. Another life lesson learned. People will screw with your mind on purpose.

We had celebrities come by. I remember waiting on John Facenda the voice of NFL films. Man his voice was as deep when he ordered a coke as when he was describing the Packer’s greatest game. Other people were working at the stand the night Princess Grace came by. I never saw her but everyone who had been at the store made sure I knew they had. I saw Princess Stephanie but not Princess Grace and she was on the beach in a bathing suit. Nayh, Nayh, Nayh Nah.

As I have been writing this I have come back to one image again and again. In the pale blue light on a low volume boardwalk day Nan stands near the front counter. With her hair pulled back and with her hands on her hips she is looking at the late afternoon ocean. Her hair blows a little because it is a sea breeze coming in and she is smiling. A quiet moment standing there absorbing the remains of the day in almost a Buddha like stance she remains an iconic image, mistress of the beach world universe. I think what ultimately kept our connection alive for years after Kurly Kustand had ceased to even exist was an innate honesty. When you care honesty matters, (as always I have to have a segue into the analysis of On Caring).

The author spends a little time of this section laying some background down before he gets to the role of honesty in caring. He tries to make sure when we are considering honesty we are not focused on something that is not the honesty he is talking about.

“In caring honesty is trying to see truly”. Honesty is not imposing an image on the other of what you want them to be or what you dream they are inside. To be honest in caring means stripping away the illusions we impose and the other asserts as reality and see what is true “even when the facts are unpleasant”. The illusions that must fall include my illusions about who I really am and what my real motives are. The question must be repeatedly asked, do I really want the other to grow or do I want to manipulate the other for my own selfish needs? If I work at honesty in seeing the other and seeing why I am caring about this particular other when I make mistakes the error will be easier to correct.

You cannot be there for the other if you are not genuine and thus you cannot pretend to be something you are not. I may not be perfect but caring doesn’t require that I exist without imperfection and flaws, only that I continue to look inside and honestly perceive what my real motivations for the other and myself are.

Like everything in this little book the concept of honesty seems so intuitive, so easily understood. But to take the time to look inside yourself to see your actual motives is as hard a task as any I know. I think to do this we have to give ourselves space, a moment for a mental breath. Creating this space may require time or it might require us to silence our mind’s never ending make work thoughts. Maybe it will require both but I think the effort will be worth it.

The Joy Found in a Notecard

In bright colors my cares evaporate.

Brilliant hued exotic flowers shout celebration to me,
of life, of wonder and of full awareness.

Peacefully I lay down in a their radiant bed,
I am cradled with delicate petals and stems.

As I breathe in the fragrant air I am freed
from the normal,
from the monotonous sameness that others relish.

Nestled softly here I
Have hope that today
and tomorrow will be allow me to be
all those good things inside of me that I know I am.
Have the patience and honesty to grow
as each of these blooms has grown
into something radiant and beautiful beyond words.
Have humility that I am as frail as these blossoms
and as short lived in eternity.
Have trust that there is something greater.
And have the courage to face whatever will come.

There is no guilt in taking a respite in this beauty.
There is no crime in experiencing joy.

In bright colors I find a constancy of love.

Of Books and the Beach VI- Water-skis, Myopia and Camp Sunshine

On those mornings when I wasn’t lying on the beach and when the sun was shining and when I wasn’t too wrecked still from the night before I engaged in the one physical endeavor of my life that might qualify as sport. Might is emphasized here. I water-skied.

At the time there was a triumvirate that was my real social circle, Don, Bill and me. Don had the boat and the skis and was my faux cousin. He was the grandson of one of my father’s best friends. Bill was my cousin but he was actually related to Don. Don and Bill if I remember my tables of consanguinity correctly were second cousins. These tables are important to a family from Kentucky. If you know them well you also know who you can sleep with at family reunions without going directly to hell.

If it was a calm morning wind and mental wise we would all jump into Don’s car and head over to his father’s place. There we would transfer cars and grab his Dad’s boat and set off for the Great Egg Harbor. The Great Egg Harbor lies between the mainland and the barrier island that is Ocean City. It amazes me that we didn’t just scrap this most days because of the time involved. But when you’re 19 time is forever and definitely relative.

The first time we headed out I didn’t realize what a bunch of fuckups I was throwing in with. I felt okay with the prospect of being in a boat because I was a decent swimmer; I had been swimming since I was five. Had I known that we were heading out with bogus equipment and two guys with a bit of a sado-masochistic attitude I might have hesitated.

If you have never water-skied I got to tell you there is a bit of a learning curve. On a normal pair of skis you kind of bob about in the water and get pulled along in a crouching position. Normal skis have a small fin on the bottom of them to help keep your feet aligned in a straight path. The crouching position brings with it a spray that aims directly at your anus. When skiing on the estuaries of an ocean this can best be described as a high pressure salt water enema, really.

Everyone who starts skiing has to endure to a greater or lesser degree this saline high colonic. However that assumes you are skiing on normal water skis. Banana skis are not conducive to getting upright on a 1st time out for the novice water skier. About 2 foot long and 1 ½ wide using banana skis is kind of like setting out with garbage can lids tied to your feet. Have you ever seen a Bendo® toy figure? Yeah my skinny legs were kind of like that all akimbo and twisted in the wrong direction as I tried to get up again and again. It took two or three days of saline colon washing before I got to actually to “ski”. But I did and I got better over time.

Maybe determination was something my move to beach world gave me. I wanted to be normal despite my myopia. I wanted to have fun behind the boat. My friends were willing to give me the chance. Despite the aquatic violation of my lower bowel system (really this was quite memorable it you haven’t figured that part out yet), my aching ankles and my wrenched forearms and wrist (sore from way too tight a grip on the rope and not anything else thank you) being part of the three loons or whatever we three tanned northern wahoos called ourselves was important to my growth.

What was really important was that Bill and Don were willing to invite me into this world. They didn’t really know me from Adam when I first got to Ocean City except that I came across as a snot who was out of his element. But Don who was so mellow back then, clearly had the patience to let me sort out how I fit into this whole picture. You know that the act of waiting for me to get ready, to start and to watch me fall 25 or 50 times could not have been fun except to a sadist. But for whatever reason they thought it would be fun to get me up onto skis. It was this and a hundred other acts of kindness that bonded me to them for life.

It can’t be said that waterskiing on the Great Egg Harbor didn’t have its downside especially for the normally sighted. People who voluntarily go to nudist camps are not people that I and most probably you would want to see naked. We are not talking super models there to remove tan lines. We are not talking Christian Bale and Jude Law engaged in a Women in Love wrestling match. What we are talking about is older people with names like Miriam and Floyd who while their naughty bits and pieces might be pleasing in the dark are downright scary in the light. In fact Floyd has a restraining order against a disabled guy with one leg goes by the name of Ahab and carries a harpoon. But these naked folks do have that certain lack of inhibition that lets them lay about on the dock out by the edge of open water ostensibly to soak up the rays while getting a cooling breeze off the water.

So there I would be on those full bananas tooling along the mainland side. I’d be jumping the wake, skiing sideways and trying all kind of goofy stuff. It was a blast. But routinely Bill and Don would take the boat a little too close to the sandbar. The problem with that side of the water was the shallow over near Camp Sunshine. As we whipped over by the shallow water the feel of the bay’s surface changes. I don’t know causes this, maybe it is because the water is so much shallower the drag on the skis is different. Every time I rode the skis over near the sandbar I would trip, stumble and go down. After I dropped the rope the guys in the boat would have to circle back slow to retrieve me.

Now a slow pass by Camp Sunshine didn’t mean shit to me. My vision is 20/50 with glasses and without them the world is a Monet painting. To the guys in the boat the situation was much different. As they would slow to almost a stop to make sure I got the rope and got ready to be pulled to upright all the naked folks over on the dock would stand up. Floyd, Miriam and three or four others would stand up and wave. When I say wave they would really wave using anything that would swing.

Sputtering profanity Bill and Don would threaten me with abandonment if I ever fell in front of the nudist colony again. Like I cared, but then again with my vision I don’t have to have the vision of naked Floyd surgically eradicated from my memory.

Don and Bill’s patience on those days we spent on the water was immense and gracious. Their efforts to help me get up onto the skis provide a good segue into Section 6 of On Caring. Repeatedly and with only good natured kidding they gave me chance after chance until I finally got up into a crouching position on the skis. My struggles to get up and actually ski probably cost them two or three mornings of their lives. But they were friends and they cared. I don’t know why they cared but they did. Maybe it was the brotherhood of the beach, or maybe they thought they were helping a fellow social cripple, a dorkus maximus.

Patience is the focus of Section 6. Patience means we give space to the other that person you wish to aid in growth. Impatience steals the time that is necessary for growth. Being patient is a necessary component of caring. Patience does not require action but it does require awareness. Patience is not passive; it is a state of watchfully allowing another to grow and develop. Patience is not just time focused but also context focused.

Allowing another to make the errors and take the wrong paths that lead to growth is a balancing act. Tolerance and knowledge are the watchwords. The tricky part in this balancing act is letting the other learn by trial and error but having the honesty to confront/approach the other when by making the wrong choice again and again nothing has been learned.