Happy Birthday Maurice Sendak

Today would have been Maurice Sendak's 85th birthday. I miss the man who took me Where the Wild Things Are.

Weekends in March

Dear Reader,


I ventured out to celebrate a good friend's 60th birthday this Saturday. Per form, the weather proved to be cold and blustery but there are plenty of things to do on a Saturday in March when you don't have to be anywhere in particular. So, giving my friend his choice of where to have lunch, we found ourselves at the Rathskeller, sitting in the Kellerbar under the mounted moose head with the sun pouring in through the high windows. Between the spirits and the sunlight, one could forget the outside temperature hovered somewhere barely north of 30 degrees and a twenty mile-per-hour wind whipped through the streets. We ate a good meal of less-than-healthy food, drank, and discussed work, politics, and the general state of humanity in the modern age for a couple of hours under the roof of the building Vonnegut's ancestors designed then gathered our coats and set out on the downtown of Indianapolis.

From the house of Vonnegut we made our way to the Eiteljorg to catch the Red Black exhibit. For those of you who aren't Indianapolis natives, the Eiteljorg is the local museum of Native American and Western history. It's a lovely building that (by design) seems to rise out of the ground, kiva-style. The exhibit, like many good museum installations, left me feeling enlightened and troubled. My Cherokee heritage has always been a source of pride however, learning that my people kept slaves reinforced the realization that native peoples are just that - people. They have all of the same flaws and shortcomings no matter what their genetics.

From inspecting the past we made our way to the big downtown mall to discover another of the mega bookstores, Borders, is closing up shop in downtown Indianapolis. It was my wakeup to the fact that the chain had gone bankrupt. Had I waited ten more days I would have missed the entire thing and been left knowing something had been on the corner of Meridian and Washington Street but unable to remember what it had been. We shopped the remnants and it felt a bit like attending an estate auction while the viewing was still underway in the parlor.

I have the distinct feeling birthdays shouldn't come in March. It's too depressing a month, filled with rain that wanted to be snow but didn't make it and ceaseless, restless wind. Even the ground is wet, swollen and sick with too much rain. A lot of people would say the month of my birthday is just as inappropriate, January is a frozen and unforgiving month of bitter cold and driven snow - equally depressing. Still, I think March is worse. It's the season of promises on the brink. Of hints at warmth that turn out to be misleading; the weather version of red herrings. This March has come in like the proverbial lion but, in the hearts of every Hoosier, we know there's little guarantee she'll leave like a lamb.

I don't mean to leave you depressed! Looking at the facts, the days are getting longer and the average temperature is climbing with each day. Spring has arrived, harbinger of summer's long, languid afternoons and temperate nights. All is not lost - it's just a bit uncomfortable for a while.

The Sea of Life

Dear Reader,

Over the weekend I went to a birthday party. It was a celebration of my niece turning 18 and watching her I could almost see her looking expectantly toward a brand new life in the big, wide world. I remember that time of life. I remember standing in the tiny bedroom of my suburban Indianapolis home, looking out the south-facing window late at night. Over the asphalt shingles of suburban sprawl I could make out a single beacon – the flashing red light atop a water tower that stands in Gustafson Park. I'd stand, elbows resting on the windowsill, and watch the light flash out a message only I could interpret.

"The magic is out here." It would flash. "It's waiting on the edge of the night, just beyond the farthest you've ever travelled."

On a cool autumn night, the first breath of approaching winter would waft through that window and I could feel myself changing; turning away from the stale world of childhood and toward the hopeful dreams of adolescence. In that instance I knew the magic was out there. All I had to do was put the safety of home behind me and embrace uncertainty. I became a boat straining at its moorings, drawn by an unseen current that would carry me away from the harbors of my life and onto the open sea. That's what eighteen is – it's being filled with yearning, it's sailing beyond the reach of parental lighthouses and relying on your personal compass. My personal voyages on the Life Sea have been fraught at times. Disappointments, betrayals, and failures are the reefs and rocks that lurk beneath the waves but the glorious feeling of being the helmsman of your own life makes the risk worthwhile.

So, as I write this I sit in my half-disassembled office in a building that will be closed down in forty two days. For over a year I've been heading toward this day – the day when out of the hundred-plus people I worked with only twenty five are left. The facility seems huge and any time I venture into the hallways I'm left feeling like a widower rattling around a big house that used to be filled with life. Each empty office houses a ghost. There's the polite and old-fashioned woman who used to work in Inventory, the guy who could have been the original absent minded professor, the guy who acted as my guide for the first two months I spent at the company, and a hundred others moving silently through the empty hallways. I wonder how long they'll linger once the doors are locked. I wonder if the next tenant will sense their presence and get the shivers.

I'm staying behind to the end. At the end of the week my desk will be moving on, heading for its new job in California. I, on the other hand, will be bunking with the ghost of a former coworker. We'll share stories of the way it used to be for awhile and then I'll get back to work and she'll take her chains out to the foyer for a good rattling. Sometimes the open sea plays tricks on you and you have to sail on, always heading forward, always charting the course toward the magic.