A Midsummer's Freetime

One of the strangest and greatest things is to have extended family that are good friends. Even though you may only see them once or twice a year, the intervening miles and months may serve not to disunite you, but rather to give you a larger body of new stories to share with each other. The holidays and summers spent together seem to sire plentiful shared memories and inside jokes that bond you more tightly to these blood kin. At present, I am sitting at my uncle and aunt's house near Houston, TX (in Humble, TX, for those of you familiar with the greater Houston area), with all of the cousins from my dad's side here. We have convened here a couple of days before our family vacation. My dad's side has been taking family vacations every summer for as long as I can remember. We've been to Branson, Hot Springs, Gatlinburg, Mobile, and Pensacola before, but most of the vacations have slid (too quickly) by us at Gulf Shores, AL. My dad's siblings and parents liked Gulf Shores for its beaches, family atmosphere, and proximity to us. We spent either 6 or 7 consecutive summers in that lazy beach town. For the first time in many years, we are not going there, but instead our vacation will carry us to Galveston, TX, where the beaches are not as pretty, nor the water as clear, nor (somewhat thankfully) the atmosphere not as "family-oriented." The reason the older adults chose to switch was this: it's closer. It's closer to everyone, but much closer to my aging grandmother (who is disliking long car rides more and more), and it's much closer to my dad's brother and sister-in-law, who have skipped out on the past several trips (though still sent their kids). We are hoping to get everyone to come and enjoy.
Another change from previous years is a good one: we're renting enough property that everyone has their own bed. In the past few years, we've been renting a house for the week. The houses claim to sleep x number of people, but this number includes people sleeping on the sleeper sofas, which have grown increasingly uncomfortable as we boys have grown up (yes, we boys have always been given the sleeper-sofas-and-no-bedroom package while the shorter and lighter-weight girls have gotten the big-bedroom-with-its-own-bath deal). This year, the parent-adults have a smaller house for themselves, and two condos for the kids (we range in age from 15 to 22) - one condo for the boys and one for the girls. This means I get both the luxuries of my own bed and a lot more privacy than in previous years. And since, as of last year, obtaining potables became legal (read "easy"), we kids enjoy ourselves as people our age do with a bit more freedom than in past years. Last year, our first year of legal libations, we sat on the beach at night (at Gulf Shores) and raised our spirits, since we were sharing a house with the parents and the beach was out of night-time visibility. This year, we can enjoy our potation in the comfort of our own condos, while the adults can pretend that they don't know about it. And vice versa: we can pretend that we don't know what they're doing over there. All in all, I'm really excited about this vacation. I think we are in a position to have a very fun week. Which is good, as this will be my last week before I start medical school. I'm looking forward to making new memories which will knit us tight together until our next family gathering.

As I mentioned during my opening blog, this summer's workday has secreted me away for hours at a time at Arkansas Children's Hospital. I chose to take this job over a lab position with the State Highway Department in order to gain experience in pediatric medicine. I had already worked in an emergency department, a general medical/surgical unit, and a nursing home. These had shown me different faces of modern medicine. I learned several things: while I enjoyed the excitement that the emergency department occasionally offered, I feared I would burn out on it; most hours spent in a hospital are not effulgent or exciting, but rather spent providing care that requires more patience than skill; while in the hospital, patients and family greatly appreciate small things - like smiling faces and cups of ice water. I learned how to get vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) on a wide variety of patients. I was taught how to change sheets without taking the patient out of the bed. I also learned that I do not want to go into geriatrics: people who are sent to nursing home all too often release any will to live, spending their remaining months, years, or decades anxiously awaiting death. These people, who may have lost function of body and/or faculty of speech, can still somehow pose this question to you (the one paid to provide the care that keeps their body alive): "Why are you forcing me to live like this? Why can't you just leave me alone and let me pass away?" I greatly respect those who can see this day after day, and still offer compassionate help to our waning elderly; however, this is not for me.
In hopes of experiencing the other extreme, I applied for and was offered a job at Arkansas Children's Hospital as a Patient Care Technician. This is basically a fancy, newer name for a nurse's aid. I have really enjoyed it. These children still have the will to live, and to recover from whatever ailment brought them into my professional life. And they have parents and family to support and encourage them through it all. I could happily make a living helping these kids get back to being kids. The one big thing that I did not expect (though in retrospect seems as though it should have been rather obvious) is the amount of the job that was spent dealing with the parents. Most of the time, the patient was not really that concerned with their own body's malady, but rather much more concerned with playing games, watching a movie, or "no needles." It was normally the parents who were the ones bearing the weight of worry. This worry, when paired with the exhaustion of caring for a sick kid and trying to get sleep, could sometimes make dealing with them less than pleasant. Thankfully, this was actually only rarely the case. Most of the time, the parents just needed the reassurance provided by the numerous medical-looking people who were continuously checking on their child. All in all, working at Children's has been a very good experience for me. I have not really learned much new in the area of medical care, but I have had a chance to see pediatric medicine from behind the nurse's desk. I may have found my professional calling.

There are few things in this world that give me more joy than getting together with friends (such as my brother) and playing music. Being able to connect with another person on this level where you can feel what he or she is doing and what is about to be done is indescribable and somehow transcendent. The two, or four or fourteen, of you are part of one big entity that is influenced by each, but seemingly controlled by a will of its own. To be truthful, this does not always happen, nor did happen very often at all in the early days of my musical career. But, as I've grown as a musician, and as my brother and I have played together more and more, reaching that level of musical nirvana has come more and more easily. We still do not attain it every time, nor do I touch it with other musicians as often or as easily, but we still get together and play in hopes that it will come. I think that we would continue to play even if we knew that we'd never play before an audience.

Today, I got the opportunity to help a local business. The local business is Diamond Bear Brewing Company, Little Rock's only brewery. This small brewery does not employ enough people to easy run their bottling line, so they get volunteers (such as myself) to come in and help out. During the three hours that we ran the line today, we bottled close to 400 cases (24 bottles per case) of ale and lager. My specific job was to load new, empty bottles onto the conveyer belt. While this job was most definitely not mentally taxing, it did afford me something we studious-types all too often neglect: manual physical labor that allows the mind to wander. I found myself thinking about the people who would be drinking this libation from the very bottles I placed onto the line. Will they be enjoying this brew with friends while watching a sporting event? Will they be sipping it over a stay-in dinner and a movie night with a significant other? Or will they be using it to drown out some bad memory or unfortunate circumstance? I can only hope it's not the latter. Which brings me to my point: alcohol in and of itself is neither good nor bad, in much the same way that food is above (outside) such moral evaluations. Too often in the recorded history of Western Man, moral depravity has been attributed to the presence of alcohol. Alcohol itself does not lead to good or bad actions any more than food does. Yes, the misuse and abuse of alcohol can be harmful to more than just the drinker, but so can the misuse and abuse of food. Those who abuse food can harm family finances (both through direct food expenditures and food-related health problems), harm themselves, and kill romantic relationships. While food abusers typically don't become physically violent, they can be unbearable to be around. There are many people throughout the world who use appropriate judgement where alcohol is concerned, enjoying it without harming anyone. However, there are some for whom alcohol becomes the most important thing, and some who find it near impossible to use moderation where alcohol consumption is concerned. Just as with those who cherish their midnight ice cream pint more than their spouse, these people harm those who care about them. It is my personal belief that many (if not all) of the temperance movements have had as their catalyst a relative of the alcohol abuser who could not admit to himself (or herself) that the blame lay with the abuser, not the substance. And now, having completely strayed from my original topic - my enjoyment of the infrequent bout of manual labor - and found myself in the middle of an only slightly coherent rant, I leave you with a quote from Benjamin Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy."

A lack of foresight and/or good long-range planning can easily result in much more total work. When I first started playing around with car audio, I was 16. I was much more concerned with functionality than aesthetics, so most of the wires that I ran were not very well concealed. The stereo worked as it was supposed to work, so I was pleased with it; the visible wires did not detract from my enjoyment of my toy. A couple years later, while I was upgrading my stereo equipment, I began to notice just how visually unappealing all of those loose wires were. This time, I took care to hide the wires. But, since some of the wires were already run from the previous installation, I did not completely re-run these wires. Instead, I did only the amount of work necessary to hide them. This involved first splicing more wire into the line to add enough length to be able to hide them. Then I tucked the wires into the center console, through the bucket seats, and into the plastic rims around the doorframes. This made for very little visible wire, and the stereo still functioned properly. As I added on to the stereo, I continued hiding the wires in the same way, running through the bucket seats. A few months ago, my parents expressed to me their desire to "get my [18 year old] car in a little better shape before I went off to medical school." They wanted to have my seats re-uphostlered. They'd already had the engine, alignment, tires, brakes, and rotors fixed or replaced during the previous year and a half. Now they wanted to get the inside looking as well as the outside. (Side note: my parents had really wanted to replace my car, but I'm quite fond of it. It's a 1988 BMW 325 - the cute, old, boxy style. And while it's not new, and it has it's quirks, it's mine. It fits me well. Sure, it's only got ~128 horses, but it gets me from here to there in relative comfort and style.) When I carried my car in to get an estimate from the upholstery business, and schedule an appointment with them, I noticed that there were a lot of car seats sitting around the shop without cars attached to them. I was then overtaken with the realization that the seats of my car would most likely be removed from the vehicle during the re-upholstering process, and thus the wires that I had run would be a hinderance to this process. I had never thought about removing the chairs while I was running wires. I passively knew that the chairs could be removed, but didn't think of doing it myself. Then, I realized that there was a very good chance that the workmen would not know how to put the wires back together again after they'd ripped them out. So, if I wanted my seats redone and my stereo to still work correctly, I would need to pull the wires out and re-run them after removing the seats. Now, after having spent about 3 hours outside on a rather warm summer day, I have managed to pull the wires out from the point where they enter the doorframe to the back of the head unit (the thing you put CDs into, push buttons on to change the volume, etc.), remove the seats, re-run the wires, and replace the seats. And my stereo still works. In not thinking of ever need to remove the seats (indeed, in not recognizing the seats as removable entities) , I put myself through a lot more work than would have otherwise been necessary. Rather than running the wires once, I had to run them, remove them, then re-run them. But that's life and it's done now.

Isn't it strange how a story or movie can both entertain us and leave us questioning areas of our own lives? I recently watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," which left me wondering this: if I knew a relationship would probably end (and possibly badly) would I still choose to live through the relationship, or would I forgo the experience altogether. As with many of life's questions, this one is multifaceted: would I be willing to give up the good memories to forget the bad; what effects would the relationship have on future romantic contact; and am I sated with a transient companionship, or am I seriously looking to find a life-long mate?
To wholly forgo the experience of the relationship would prevent all of the harsh words, hurt feelings, and heart-broken moments, but at what cost? There must have been some good times for the relationship to have taken firm enough root to engender any deep pains. Would the elimination of the bad memories be compensation enough for the loss of the good ones? While the pain of a relation's demise can be excruciating, is it not also exquisite? While in the throes of this pain, I've never questioned my existence, nor have I pondered any of the "deep" questions that fall upon us in times of life's occasional monotony. While I'm not intentionally masochistic in my romantic pursuits, I know that the pain and the pleasure are both part of the relationship. I would rather feel something- anything - than nothing at all: hot and cold water are more pleasing to my palate than lukewarm. Or, in the words of some famous dead master of the English language (a guy who shook a spear) "'Tis better to have loved and to have lost than never to have loved at all."
But how will this love affect my future relationships? There is the possibility that it could leave me cold and bitter towards any who would try to enchant my heart. For this to happen, I would have to the hope of finding what my parents, grandparents, and so many others around me have found: lasting love. Giving up hope is out of character for me, making this improbable. What is more likely is that I will gain both experience in connecting with another person, and a better view of who I am and what I want/need in a companion.
The most tricky of the sub-questions is the last: am I satisfied to have a relationship that I know is likely as transient as the pimples that plagued my high school visage, or do I need something I believe to be more enduring? At this point in my life, I still have many years ahead of me. I am entering four years of intense schooling with very little time for anything else, and a few after that in which I'll have even less free time. I cannot honestly believe that a relationship will [definitely] stand up to that gauntlet. I find it more satisfying to rest my mind in the belief that each relationship will last as long as God intends it, and that there will be one relationship that will last from my [one and only] wedding until death's bells toll. For where I am now, a companionship that is potentially evanescent is sufficient.
While any relationship I have may end badly, I think I would rather have the full experience of the relationship than play it safe and guard myself against heartache. Without the dark, the colors on the silver screen are never as bright and vivid. If I knew for a fact that a relationship that I am in right now were doomed, I would still want to live every moment of it. I have enjoyed every moment of it - both the fun/easy and the more difficult - and I will continue to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.