August 6: Conkers, Living in the Moment, Miraculous Day

Ford tells a story of something crazy Zaphod did as a child . . .

"What's all this?" said Trillian.

"Ancient history," said Ford, "when we were kids together in Betelgeuse.  The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky trade between the Galactic Center and the outlying regions.  The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them.  There was a lot of trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic defense shields known to Galactic science.  They were real brutes of ships, and huge.  In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun.

"One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one.  On a trijet scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid.  I mean forget it, it was crazier than a mad monkey.  I went along for the ride because I'd got some very safe money on him not doing it, and didn't want him coming back with fake evidence.  So what happens?  We get in his trijet which he had souped up into something totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of weeks, bust our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers.  A wilder thing I have not known.  Lost me a year's pocket money.  For what?  Conkers."

I think we've all done crazy things as kids.  Probably not as crazy as storming onto the bridge of a megafreighter with a toy gun, demanding conkers.  For those of you who don't know what conkers is, it is, according to Google, "a children's game in which each child has a conker on the end of a string and takes turns trying to break another's with it."  It's a British thing.  A conker is the seed of a horse chestnut tree.  So, basically, one kid is trying to smash the other kid's horse chestnut on a string.

I don't know about you, but that game sounds like it's the recipe for some bruises and smashed knuckles.  Of course, kids really don't care.  It's all about the thrill of the game.  Living in the moment.  No concerns about visits to the ER or eye injuries.  Just smashing conkers.

Today was all about following that rule--living in the moment.  At this moment, I am sitting in a hotel room in Mackinaw City, almost in the shadow of the Mackinac Bridge.  We just got back from a day on Mackinac Island.  First stop on the island this morning was the Butterfly House and Insect Museum.  Imagine walking through a room where all different types of butterflies are zooming and fluttering around you--blue and orange and yellow.  It took my breath away.  Then I toured Fort Mackinac with my kids.  After that, my daughter pushed me through a Haunted Theater while behind me my son kept yelling, "I don't want to do this!  I do NOT want to do this!"  And then, to make it a true Mackinac Island experience, we stopped and bought some fudge.

I really tried to live in the moment today, pushing all of my worries and fears away.  I had a wonderful time, and the three biggest joys of the day were:  1) seeing my son marching at Fort Mackinac with the soldier actors; 2) hearing my daughter laughing in my ear as she pushed me toward an immense haunted rat; and 3) holding my wife's hand on the ferry ride back to Mackinaw City.  Those are going to be core memories for me.  Ones to which I will return on days when happiness is in short supply.

I have to thank both of my sisters for these moments.  They are the ones who made this whole trip possible.  My summer vacation this year would have consisted of me driving to McDonald's, buying a pop (that's soda for all my non-Yooper disciples), and sitting in a corner booth to write in my journal and read.  Both of my sisters, Bev and Ruth, have seen me through some hard times, and, when the chips are down, they provide blessings to raise me up.

Those are my lessons of wisdom for today.  Living in the moment.  Pushing away the worries of tomorrow.  Loving the people in your life.  Knowing there are people who will always go the extra mile for you.  All of these things.  Miracles.  All of them.

Saint Marty had a miraculous day.

August 13: Green Heron, McDonald's Breakfast, Living in the Moment

I positively ruined the dinner of a green heron on the creek last week.  It was fairly young and fairly determined not to fly away, but not to be too foolhardy, either.  So it had to keep an eye on me.  I watched it for half an hour, during which time it stalked about in the creek moodily, expanding and contracting its incredible, brown-streaked neck.  It made only three lightning-quick stabs at strands of slime for food, and all three times occurred when my head was turned slightly away.

Dillard has a habit of discovering things like giant water bugs sucking the life out of frogs and green herons hunting for breakfast.  Perhaps it's because her mind doesn't seem preoccupied with everyday worries about work or school or brake jobs.  She is totally present in the moment at Tinker Creek, open to anything that happens to cross her path.  In the passage above, it happens to be a hungry green heron.

I'm sitting in McDonald's right now, having breakfast with my family.  It's something we do every Saturday for a couple hours, just to get out of the house and talk without distraction.  No television.  No piles of laundry or bills to pay.  We just claim a table and try to solve the world's problems.

I don't know if that's exactly the same as what Dillard does at the creek.  There's a certain amount of living in the present on Saturday mornings.  Plus, we aren't so focused on the little things.  It's more about the big picture, thinking about next week, next month, next year.  Concerns.  Hopes.

Plus, there's a lot of green herons who come into McDonald's on Saturday mornings to feed, if you follow me.  This morning, there were a lot of bicyclists because of a race happening today.  I haven't seen so much spandex since the 1980s.  From what I could tell, they were all carb loading before they hit the trails.

The weather in the Upper Peninsula has taken a turn to the misty and cool.  Some rainstorms are supposed to move in this afternoon.  It's the kind of day that makes me want to take a nap as soon as I wake up.  A good book day.  A sit-in-McDonald's-all-morning day.  Perhaps we will come up with a solution to world hunger over our pancakes.  Draft a Middle East peace accord on some napkins.  Write the first paragraph of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on the back of a receipt.

Saint Marty is living in the moment, with all the herons around him eating their McMuffins.