Food is Love

I didn’t realize it until the past few years, but food it a big way I tell people I care about them.

After my marriage ended, the first gal I dated had never been married nor had kids, and so had the dining habits of a bachelor. Oh, she knew how to order sushi and wine in a restaurant; but cook? No. Lunch or dinner to her might be a cheese and lettuce sandwich and a handful of blueberries, eaten standing up at the kitchen counter. The whole process, from preparation to eating to cleaning up took about 10 minutes. I kept cooking meals for her but as much as she enjoyed them, it didn’t mean the same thing to her that it did to me. And my obsession with sharing mealtime and the rituals of its preparation actually became a frustration for both of us – me struggling to speak to her in my language, and her not entirely getting the point of the conversation.

Separated from my children and previous life, I was trying to connect with her via the echo of a ritual that was deep in me. That was my “aha! moment;” the moment when I saw I wasn't simply trying to cook for her.

When I was a child, my family ate dinner together regularly. Likewise, when my kids were small, their mother and I saw to it that we ate together as a family 4 or 5 times a week. It didn’t matter so much what we were eating – could be fish sticks or 49 cent pot pies from Aldi’s, just that we were connecting as a family every evening. For years I was the sole breadwinner and so wasn’t doing that much cooking, but after their mom went back to work and the kids got older I was cooking more while the meals together got harder to coordinate around 5 schedules. So I spent countless Saturday or Sunday afternoons restoring my old house while meat smoked on the grill, bread rose in the kitchen, and veggies from the garden waited on the counter. From time to time I’d brush the paint chips and sawdust off my shirt and knead dough or tend the grill, then climb back up the scaffolding. At the end of the day we eventually gathered around the table with marinated chicken, steamed broccoli, and fresh bread.

There was something obsessive in my instance that everyone be there and that every dish be ready at just the right moment. Sometime showing love takes a lot of work and sometimes it just takes sitting and eating, appreciating what was put before you. If you’re thinking about it right, either part you play is fine.  

I still laugh at the times when it went wrong.

I recall cooking a ridiculously doomed and elaborate meal for a girl when I was in my early 20s. I fell for her in England when we were both visiting BSU students in London. After we returned to Muncie I knocked myself out fixing a dinner for her. A week earlier she had invited me over for lunch and served me hot dogs sautee’d in barbeque sauce, barbeque potato chips, and root beer (I’m not making this up). Hell, with a menu like that, maybe she was trying to kill me. But, trying to speak her language, I made barbeque sauce from scratch and grilled some chicken, made my great aunt’s baked bean recipe, and God knows what else for a quiet dinner together in my little basement apartment on Calvert. The evening was a disaster. Not a loud explosive disaster, but a slow, quiet, suffocating - get me the hell outta here disaster.

I guess sometimes you outta just talk directly to people instead of trying to bribe them with food. Maybe I was afraid of the responses she’d give me, so thought I’d tip-toe to her heart through her stomach. Whatever I was trying to do, it didn’t work. She dumped me and went back to her old boyfriend.

Still most of the time spent cooking for people is a good thing. The times it went wrong are a reality check.

In trying to understand how food became a symbol of affection to me I recognized that gift giving and acts of service are a language of love I was raised on. The Meyers are gift givers. Of the generation of Meyers who raised me – if you were waiting for one of them to say, “I love you,” it was gonna be a long fucking wait. But in my times of need they were quietly fixing my problems or writing me a birthday check they knew I’d spend on something I needed or loved.

Or . . . they were preparing food for me or picking up the check at a restaurant.

And I find it passed down to another generation. My cousin Margaux has a lovely habit of opening her house to a wide circle of friends, presenting meals and events to draw close the people she loves. She learned it from her father – my father’s brother. My oldest son is a self-taught chef of Asian food. I can’t count the nights in the past 2 years Cal cooked me an amazing meal. My middle son Jack cooks for those he loves and recently I’ve found my youngest, Sally cooking for her boyfriend – eggs, lots of eggs.

But we are a younger generations of Meyers. We have no problem saying, “I love you." But that old language of giving in lieu of talking is wrapped up in our way of showing affection.

On Halloween night Micki was to arrive after work. I’d cooked a pot of chili and mixed batter for corn cake. Much of the ingredients for the chili were items I canned from my summer garden. But when a full waiting room kept her unexpectedly late at the office seeing patients, we agreed I’d drive up to Ft. Wayne and save her the trip down to Noblesville. After I set the pots of food on the floorboards of my car and stood to close the passenger door, I froze, staring at the dishes. It occurred to me I’d loaded the food in the car before I’d even thrown clothes in a suitcase.

Hmmm. Why was that my automatic first action? I guess becoming aware of your motivations doesn’t stop the reflex. And maybe there’s no need to stop it. It was me offering perhaps the most important thing I would put in the car besides myself – something I’d made to nourish a person I loved.

So if I’ve cooked something for you, or if you’re one of that handful of people who have been handed a jar of my homemade Sriracha sauce or canned black raspberry jam, or if I’ve dropped off a fresh-baked loaf of bread at your door or a just-picked bag of green beans from my garden, it was a note from me saying, “I love you.”

That’s not literally what I’m thinking when I do it, but I can see now that’s really what it is.

Hamilton County Drivers Manual

For those new to Hamilton County or new to driving, throw away your Indiana Driver’s Manual. What follows is the Hamilton County Driver’s Manual. It will help you better understand local driving traditions.

Stop Signs: Here, stop signs don’t really mean, “STOP.” They just mean slow down a little. Especially at 4-way stops. When the car in front of you takes its turn to pass through the intersection, just slowly ease through the intersection with them without making your own complete stop. True, if each car made a complete stop, children could cross the street and cars trying to cross at the next intersection might actually be able to do so, but the Hamilton County Golden Traffic Rule is, “Do unto others anything necessary to get where you’re going faster.” You’ll find our Golden Traffic Rule* permeates all traffic behavior here.

Speed Limits: In Hamilton County, the speed limit is more a suggestion than a hard rule. Think of the posted limit as the slowest you’re allowed to go. Ten to twenty miles an hour over the posted limit is just fine. This is especially true in neighborhoods. The people trying to relax on their porches and the children riding their bikes or playing basketball in cul-de-sacs really won’t mind you making their neighborhood menacing, dangerous places. They’ll understand how important it is that you shave five or ten seconds off your drive.

Pedestrians/Crosswalks:  Here in our corner of Hoosierland, we see crosswalks as needless government regulation. Fact is, some people are too cheap to exercise in health clubs and others are so rude they actually get out and walk around. Here’s what to do: As moms with strollers, County employees and Monon Trail users are exercising their supposed right to safely cross the street, ease your car menacingly close to them. The effect can be heightened by thumping the steering wheel with your palm and sighing heavily. Once they are just inches out of your way, slam on your accelerator and roar past. This may sound extreme to bleeding-heart newcomers, but it reminds pedestrians that might makes right. So if you’re in a mall parking lot or at a pedestrian crossing and it’s raining or bitterly cold, do not give pedestrians the right of way out of a mistaken sense of kindness. No matter that you’re warm and dry and they’re not. Cars come first here. Always.

ALWAYS!

Parallel Parking: We haven’t gotten around to banning this yet. When people slow down near an empty parking space with their turn signal on, pull up to their bumper so they can’t back up, then honk your horn as if to say, “Get the F’ going!” If someone is already in reverse as you approach, honk your horn long and loud and angrily accelerate around him.

Bicycle Safety: Treat bicyclists the same way you’d treat a parallel parker who is getting out of their car. Accelerate past them and do so dangerously close. Cyclists should know that bike riding is a nuisance because sometimes it slows down a driver by a few seconds.

Car Size: We prefer the biggest cars possible. Smart cars are for pussies. Never mind that we live in one of the flattest places on earth, or that we have not one single gravel road left in the county, or that we have some of the best and safest roads in the nation. Bigger is always better, no matter what. Commuting solo to downtown Indy in a Suburban or Hummer? Of course! And if it costs $80 bucks to fill your tank, that’s not your fault. Just blame Obama. (Around here we blame everything on him anyway.)

Turning Left: Hamilton County is so conservative we’ve made turning left near impossible. But there’s a way around this. When the light turns green, even though it’s technically not your turn, step on it and race out in front of oncoming cars. If you insist on following the rules when turning left, you better take a sack lunch and bring a magazine along. You’re gonna be there awhile. (And remember, nobody is gonna let you in. *refer back to our Golden Traffic Rule)

Roundabouts: We have roundabouts here in Hamilton County. If you're of at least average intelligence and prefer to move forward rather than sit needlessly at red lights, you’ll do just fine. If not, you'll find these irritating, and possibly even their circular shape, confusing. Forewarning: If you hate daylight saving time and spicy food, you’re definitely from Indiana, and therefore will also my be prone to hate roundabouts.

Noise Pollution:  We Hamilton County residents put “noise pollution” in the same category as global warming, evolution, Obama’s citizenship. They’re things that don’t exist. We love loud car sound systems and loud motorcycles. That’s why we don’t enforce our noise ordinances. Fellas, the louder your sound system and/or engine, the more men admire you and the more ladies are attracted to you. Like you, they see the noise as a symbol of your masculinity. Likewise, if you’re a driver who likes to yell a high-pitched, “Wooooo,” out your window at pretty girls, we encourage that here. The ladies just love it and will find you irresistible.

     If there’s a traffic situation not covered here, refer back to the Hamilton County Golden Traffic Rule* for guidance.

Jack & Michelle's Cake

Two weeks ago last Sunday morning as I cleaned the kitchen there was a lone, melting chunk of Jack and Michelle’s cake left beneath the clear plastic deli cover. Green and red flecks of icing and deep black cake crumbs were scattered about on the counter. Micki was sleeping upstairs, as was my oldest son, Cal, and my daughter Sally. The quiet house was mine. I gathered up the cake box and crumbs and walked them out, across the patio and through the fence gate to the trash with my cat Gracie following behind.

I never really know when the emotional weight of something will hit me. It’s often not at the actual moment of change. But throwing that cake box away felt like the ending of something I’d known and loved and the beginning of something new and unknowable, as if as long as the cake was still on the counter, the ending hadn’t ended. I am in the midst of a great leaving of people I love and I’ve barely shed a tear. But the walk back from the trash was the beginning of acceptance I guess. I sat for a moment on the patio beneath the wisteria, scratching Gracie behind the ears with a lump in my throat. As I cooked breakfast alone while Micki and my other two kids slept upstairs, that solitary time helped me imagine the life that lies ahead in this empty house.

On the previous Thursday family and a very small handful of friends had gathered to say goodbye to Jack, my middle son. He and his girlfriend Michelle, freshly graduated from college were heading to Denver to start their lives. I baked bread. Jack and I smoked a pork shoulder and worked together to get the house ready for guests. Jack’s mother brought a salad and the cake.

It was my friend Richard’s birthday and I suspected he might spend it alone working. He’s already an empty-nester. So I invited him to join us. We put candles on the cake and walked it out to Richard on the patio, singing happy birthday. He was pleasantly surprised. After he blew out the candles, I said, “Read the inscription on your cake.”

Richard read it out loud, “Good Luck Jack & Michelle.” We all had a good laugh.

The next morning Jack and Michelle loaded up the last of their things. I hung around in the driveway while Jack carefully adjusted the straps on the bike rack. And then that good-hearted boy and that sweet, dark-eyed girl of his disappeared down the alley toward Denver.

 

Michelle & Jack at the City Market the week before they left.

Just a week before I had stood in Sally’s bedroom doorway with tears in my eyes. She’s my youngest. We were preparing to drive to Muncie to move her into her freshman dorm. For Sally, too, there was uncertainty about the future, and some tears, but we loaded up and got her moved in.

And yet a week before that departure, there had been another. Sean, who came to live in my house when he was a teenager, had loaded up his things and driven out west with his girlfriend to start their lives. There had been a going away party the night before with a spirited group of friends gathered together to send them off.

There is just one departure left. My oldest, Cal, has taken a job teaching English in Japan. This house will cease to be his permanent address on the 23^rd of this month.

Last week Cal and I went out for drinks, then rode our bikes to Richard’s house down the street. Back home around midnight, we each had another gin & tonic and sat in the kitchen taking turns plugging our phones into the stereo and playing songs we each thought the other ought to hear: the National, Madrugada, and Japanese bands whose names I can’t pronounce. At one point as I was leaning on the counter and searching through a playlist on the glowing iPhone screen I turned to look at Cal. He was sitting on the bench with a head full of gin and tears trickling down his face.

“Hey man!” What’s the matter?” I asked.

“This is the end of how things have been. We’ll all never live like this together again.” I gave him a hug and told him I loved him.

He was right, and it’s something I’ve dreaded all summer and so never really let myself dwell on. This summer I grumbled as I washed their towels, bought their groceries, picked up their dirty clothes, or woke often to find the kitchen littered with beer bottles and dirty plates. But that grumbling was little more than whistling past the graveyard – something to focus on to keep at bay the ache of seeing them all go away in the span of a month at summer’s end.

The parenting guru the children’s mother and I subscribed to when they were young often wrote, “You’re #1 job as a parent is to make them not need you. When they go off to live their lives without your assistance, you’ll know you’ve done your job.”

And that’s the bittersweet reality of parenting. Yet, there should be a bigger word, one with more explosive tonnage than the delicate, “bittersweet,” to describe the aching “thud” in your heart when they go.

And this was already a dislocated year for my family, in this first year after the divorce. There was already an absence in the air.

Sharpie tattoo from the going away dinner.

When we moved here Cal was 8, Jack was 5 and Sally was 1. After 18 years, each is leaving on their own journey, one by one over the course of just a month. And I will wake up in this house on the 24^th alone. There is someone new in my life, Micki, and she comes and goes from her out-of-town job on the weekends, but still, for the most part I will be alone here, the last one of us who made it a home. I’m not complaining. I chose some of those circumstances and the others are just life unfolding. I’m feeling my way in the dark. Making sense of it as I go.

And so it is my journey, too, but what the destination will look like, I can only imagine. I strain, searching back at what my own parents went through when I, the youngest of 4 kids, left home once and for all. But I was a far less attentive young man than my own children are, so can’t say I remember much beyond my mother saying, “Your leaving was the hardest, because you were last.”

Sally has 4 years of college ahead of her and so will come and go on the weekends and live here in the summer I suppose. But Cal was right. We will never again live like this under one roof. Other places will become home for them, and this one will remain mine.

Portlandia And Points Beyond

Posted from Delta flight 1228, Salt Lake City to Indianapolis.

It’s a little like a foreign country up here in the northwest. Not quite. But almost.

Monday, Micki’s uncle Bob dropped us in downtown Portland. We walked a block to the Bike Gallery and rented two cruisers to explore the city. When we hit the streets, motorists, pedestrians, and even streetcar drivers were so patient and friendly, we knew we were in a cycling paradise.

We made a B-line to Voodoo Doughnuts. I ordered up a Maple Bacon Bar (a caramel-iced donut topped with 2 slices of bacon) and an Old Dirty Bastard (a classic yeast donut, drizzled with chocolate & peanut butter, then encrusted with Oreo’s). Micki went for “The Dirt,” (think dirt pudding on a donut).  As we settled at a picnic table outside, a car decorated with elaborate, demonic sculptures pulled up. The driver, a slim, middle-aged man in jeans and sandals propped open the door so all could hear KC & the Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty” blaring from within. He donned a monkey mask and began dancing in the street.

Decadent donuts and some dude in a monkey mask dancing in the street: “Shake, shake- shake. Shake-shake-shake. Shake your bootie. Shake your boooootie.”

Yeah, not exactly breakfast in Indiana.

In the satirical TV show “Portlandia,” they say, “Portland is a city where young people go to retire.” Most jokes begin with a grain of truth. There are several grains of truth in that line.

Portland is a city where everyone has a dog or a bicycle, or both. It’s a city where, like its hip sister to the north, Seattle, people are pissed if you smoke cigarettes in public but fine if you’re smoking weed. There’s seemingly a micro or nano brewery on every corner. And across the street is an interesting restaurant of one sort or another that cures its own bacon or grows its organic arugula on the rooftop of their building. And across the street from that is a left-of-center gift shop or art gallery. It’s a town where gays and lesbians walk arm-in-arm or hold hands and nobody cares or stares. Make eye contact with pretty much anyone and they smile back, warm and welcoming. It’s a town where you can take a streetcar around the city center, light rail to the burbs, or Amtrak north to Seattle or south to California. And all three rail systems are clean and well tended. (Where’s the mass-transit stench of stale urine so familiar in Manhattan’s subway or Chicago’s L?) Wanna backpack the forest, hike the Columbia River gorge, ski Mt. Hood? It’s all nearby.

They plant roses in their highway medians and exit ramps, they cover their high-rise rooftops with gardens, refuse to “poison” their city water with fluoride and most overpass graffiti reads something like, “May the world be free of suffering.” They’re on the cutting edge of land planning, environmentalism is a cornerstone, and the organic and local food movements – unquestioned. Portland and Seattle seem not to give a flying-fuck what the rest of America is doing. They’re gonna do it their way.

So for a Hoosier, yeah, it’s kind-of a foreign country. And for this Hoosier, it’s kinda paradise. But no, it’s not the America I live my days in.

 

Chris & Micki on Purget Sound

Micki and I took Amtrak down to Portland from Edmonds, Washington last Sunday morning. A stones throw from the sailboat where we were staying up there on Puget Sound, you could take a ferry to various islands, jump Amtrak to Seattle, or enjoy the lovely, pedestrian-friendly town about the size of Noblesville with its old movie theater showing first run films, killer restaurants and coffee shops lining the streets, and farmers markets and breweries making life just that much happier. Everything is so well cared for, so thoughtfully tended, it’s almost a little creepy. Almost. Simply because it’s so foreign.

Seattle is Portland’s rival for hippest city in America. But no need to fight about it. I’ll happily take a condo in both city’s and just split time between the two.

The previous Saturday we took in Pike’s Market and dined on a deck beneath the 5-story high Ferris wheel overlooking Puget Sound. That night our Edmonds friends, Chris and Janelle, who used to live on Logan Street back home in Noblesville took us to a Sounders soccer game in Seattle. Imagine the number of people who show up for a Colts game showing up instead for a professional soccer game. There were 53,000 people in the Seahawk’s stadium. And not because there was nothing else to do. Literally right next door the Mariners were playing the Yankees in Safeco field.

American football exudes militaristic imagery. Two teams at war in helmets and uniforms. “Bombs” are thrown, defenses “blitz,” from the German war term “blitzkrieg,” and there are “neutral zones” and “trenches,” ala World War I.

 

Micki @ waterfalls along the Columbia River

Not soccer. The fans stream in with scarves, randomly chanting team ditties in unison, strangers picking up the tune and hopping and chanting along with like-minded strangers. Chris reminds me that to most of the world, soccer is a winter sport, so the scarves make more sense elsewhere. But no matter, on this 70-degree day scarves representing the local team are required wear. They’re part of a series of rituals in this sport that are not militaristic, but tribalistic. It is not so much standing on the ramparts watching two armies clash, but more a shoulder-to-shoulder hugging, dancing and chanting ‘round a Celtic or African tribal campfire in preparation for a gang fight. It is both more primitive and more gentile than American football. Earthier. Friendlier. Less contrived.

These are familiar rituals in the northwest. But not so much in my home state. If you’re wanting to flee conservative America, this is your homeland, whether you know it or not. I can’t see myself retiring to Florida and eating the blue-plate special of salisbury steak and overcooked green beans at a Morrison’s cafeteria, but I can see myself retiring here and eating grilled fish & clams late at a craft brewer’s tap room.

On Wednesday I confirmed our flight home and gave Micki the rundown as she headed upstairs with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Fly out of Seattle-Tacoma at 1:00, layover in Salt Lake City, then arrive in Indy at 10:23.” She smiled and shook her head, “No baby. I’m not going back. I’m staying here. You go on without me.”

We both know better. But it’s nice to fantisize about a new life in this foreign land all the same.

At The Foundling Wall

In Medieval times foundling wheels came into use in Europe. They were lazy-susan-type devices built into the outer stone wall of a church as places to abandon babies. Mothers who couldn’t afford to keep an infant or whose lives were too fractured to accommodate it’s tending could leave their child there. The baby was placed within the wheel from outside the church and then the wheel turned, transferring the child safely inside where a priest would find it. It was a way to let go of a precious burden without doing it physical harm.

The wall of the building where these devices were installed came to be known as foundling walls.

During the past two years I’ve written several times about my journey through separation and divorce, making this blog a bit of a raw diary. From the personal comments and emails I get, I know this has made some friends uncomfortable, but this organization of my thoughts and experiences has been a comfort to me, and as it turns out, to others as well.

I have been handed many books and self-help prescriptions from friends during this time, but nothing has spoken more directly to me than Thik Nhat Hans book “Reconciliation.” It’s not necessarily about reconciliation in marriage, but personal reconciliation with the inescapable realities of life.

I dog-eared a page from the book that lists the Buddha’s Five Remembrances and underlined two that struck me deeply:

“All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of a nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I came here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed.”

And,

“My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”

In the Vietnamese temple in Indianapolis where I’ve spent many Saturday mornings in the past two years, we’re called to meditate on a simple counting from 1 to 10 as a way to clear our mind of chaos. I did that for a long time, and still do. But Thik Nhat Hans called for meditating on well-wishing, compassion for others, and letting go of personal burdens. I went time and again to those two “Remembrances.” And so I’ve spent many of those meditation sessions within the towering temple, with the Buddha before me, making small mental journeys to a foundling wall in my mind to give away the things I can no longer tend. The things that are not really mine.

I made up my own rules . . . or ethics about the foundling wall.

The foundling wall is a place where you let go of a piece of yourself, a part of yourself that speaks to your soul, something you built or nurtured with love and diligence – but that has become a painful burden to you, or to others you love. No one can force you to the foundling wall. To have something taken is theft. You have to give it freely. And no one can make the journey for you. You must go to the wall of your own resolve, and you must go alone.

I am a persistent person, often persisting beyond reason and logic. During this difficult time I found myself hurt repeatedly by a two close friends. I kept trying to reclaim or nurture these fractured friendships — beyond reason and logic, blowing on the flickering embers of our connections, offering olive branches only to have them slapped from my hand or left to wither. At the same time I complicated the friendships by forcing my own weaknesses and failings against my friends’ hurtful actions. I eventually realized I needed to let go. I needed to accept that we wouldn’t really be friends anymore, but simply acquaintances. That was a hard thing to do — to accept that two people I loved and had shared so much with would not be my friends any longer.

But there was peace in letting go of those relationships. Yes, there was hurt, but also peace to be found in going to that foundling wall in my heart, ­­­ kneeling down and laying those friendships in that turret-like device, symbolically turning it and letting them go. No pronouncement is needed at the foundling wall, just resolve to love and feel compassion for those you let go.

and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . .

It’s not just a Buddhist calling. I learned it first as a Christian prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

While many parents of the middle ages were no doubt driven to the foundling wall by desperation, others must have had ample time to reflect and understand that while they could physically keep and care for the child, something in the failing of their stars and their circumstances was not enough. I can’t imagine their personal journey. But I can imagine mine.

I am a carpenter of sorts. I build things. There are things in my home that I built with my own hands, like an oak porch swing. I designed it in my own mind, imagining its form, the joints, the flush-finished brass screws to be polished smooth along with the sanding of the wood. It would all be built from salvaged wood, every piece of it pulled from a dumpster or garbage can. The discarded oak chalk tray from a school where I once taught would be the back rail of the seat. A stack of half-inch oak slats pulled from a garbage can would make the seat bottom and the back. Pieces of quarter-sawn oak baseboard from a demolished house would make its armrests. Then I built it. For years my children sat there as I read to them when they were small, or they swung hard and wild with childhood friends, pumping their legs with reckless abandon, laughing, or they curled up and napped there on a long summer afternoon, or cuddled with their first love as a teenager. My friends drank beer in that swing on warm summer nights and many a thunderstorm was watched from that swinging seat while lightening crackled across Old Town.

It’s just an object made from wood no one wanted. How does something like that worm its way into your soul? But in the division of property after the divorce, it will go. It is not mine. I cannot keep it.

It is a small item in the scheme of things, but a precious child of mine none-the-less. And so in yet another way, I knelt at that foundling wall in my heart, the place I take the things I cannot keep, no matter how much I want to. And there I gave it away. It was not mine. Even though I conceived and built it, it was never really mine. At age 53 I am grown up enough  — just barely, to do such a thing – to let go of yet another piece of my identity.

and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . . and count to 10 . . .

But then a miracle!

An email arrived one day that said, “Why don’t you keep the porch swing? It belongs with the house.” She too has been to the foundling wall, the one in her own heart. And suddenly I find myself on the interior, receiving side of the wall while she kneels outside. I had not even imagined the easy return of this thing whose loss I had totally accepted.

But be warned: you can neither count on nor dare imagine the return of things left at the foundling wall. If you are prone to such mystical hopes and magical thinking, as I have been most of my life, then you do not belong at the foundling wall. Best keep clinging against reason to things that aren’t yours ­– that cannot be reasonably kept. Best torture yourself, your family, your friends with your senseless clinging than allow those corrosive hopes of reclamation into your mind.

There are so many people and things I have said goodbye to at the foundling wall these past two and a half years; family members, friendships, and possessions I’d nurtured with love and attached great expectation to. But that trying journey is now in the past. Regular, relatively peaceful day-to-day life surrounds me now and lies ahead as far as I can see. I knew that life once before. And it has returned to me now, in part because of the things I let go of.

Protecting a Neighborhood

Here we go again.

Yet another real estate investor is trying to rezone yet another home on Conner Street. This time it’s Larry J. Ley. He wants to turn the home at 1135 Conner St. into a commercial property. It’s been a residence since it was built nearly 100 years ago.

There’s a troubling uniformity to people who try to rezone Old Town Noblesville homes to businesses. They know little about the place and haven’t a clue what it’s like to live here.

As best I can tell, Mr. Ley fits the mold. He doesn’t live in Old Town nor does he appear to live in a neighborhood where anyone will ever try to put a commercial use up against his own home. In other words, he won’t personally have to live with the circumstances he seeks to impose on others.

Appearing to underline his misunderstanding, Mr. Ley met with the Noblesville Preservation Alliance board recently and promised he would take good care of the house. He perhaps thought if he promised to be a good steward of the home the group would support him. But this isn’t about the preservation of old houses. It’s about families and neighborhoods.

Why does the neighborhood want the home to stay residential? For the same reason such business/residential mixes are banned by deed restriction in every modern subdivision in Noblesville, and from the very neighborhoods where Mr. Ley has homes in Carmel and on Morse Reservoir in Noblesville.

Old Town residents are no different than people living in those protected neighborhoods. Neighbors know each other. Their children play together. Evenings and weekends they might end up talking on someone’s front porch or share a beer around a patio campfire. When on vacation, neighbors feed each other’s pets and watch over their homes. These are the building blocks of community.

Where businesses exist amid neighborhoods, it hard for residents to know the businessperson who goes home each evening to a different neighborhood. No child at the business will play with yours. You don’t share dinners with them and don’t help each other in times of need. Strangers come and go from the business all day. It sits empty at night. The yard is often a paved parking lot with a dumpster that’s emptied in the middle of the night. The business might even buy the house next door and demolish it for more parking. Subtract a second neighbor. And with each, subtract a little sense of community within the neighborhood.

Not much chance this will ever happen to Mr. Ley at his leafy Carmel address or his waterfront home. But he’s still looking to change the rules and the lay of the land for families surrounding the home he wants to rezone on Conner.

There hasn’t been a commercial rezone on the residential stretch of Conner in 25 years, and that last one was done to save a significant piece of architecture from demolition. In those 25 years, another home that was business actually went back to residential. That means there’s been no net increase in business in the residential stretch of Conner in over 30 years.

And that’s not a fluke. It’s the result of 3 decades of vigilance.

Families here have had to marshal their efforts time and again to protect their neighborhood. During the last attempted rezone, 7 years ago, I helped canvass the neighborhood, finding that nearly all residents from Maple to Logan opposed the rezone. I also found that even the businesses already here don’t want more businesses. They already arrive at work many days to find strangers parked in their parking lots. House another business in a tight residential area and see parking woes multiply. That’s why even the Presbyterian Church opposed the last attempt at a Conner Street rezone.

And Mr. Ley is trying to create his new business location at the end of a dead-end alley. Heaven help that block of families on both Conner and Maple who will now have Mr. Ley’s customers struggling up and down this dead-end alley, turning around in driveways and blocking garage doors – something they’ve already experienced in the past. Such things happen in other areas of Old Town where businesses have been allowed to locate among family homes.

What happens if Mr. Ley succeeds in getting a rezone? It would set a precedent. If you say yes to this property, what about the house next door? How could you say no? And then the next one . . .

It’s easy to imagine most of Conner and 10^th – our main thoroughfares gradually overtaken by businesses, gouging a commercial X through residential Old Town, cleaving it into 4 separate pods and bringing businesses up against the private back yards of one side of Logan, Maple, 9^th & 11^th Streets. Bringing business up against those private back yards is something that’s seldom discussed during these rezones attempts. What you do on one busy street will echo to a back yard behind it.

Do that and we’d start looking like Westfield and Cicero, towns that have done an embarrassingly bad job of protecting the calling cards of their small town atmosphere­ – their entry thoroughfares.

And Mr. Ley told the preservation group the house he wants to rezone was in bad condition, suggesting he saved it. I showed the house to a client of mine right before Mr. Ley bought it. I’ve restored 4 homes myself and have a deep background in preservation. I found the house in excellent condition. If it was in such bad condition, why did he pay the highest price paid for a residence in Old Town since 2006?

And though Noblesville’s Planning Department officials told Mr. Ley that they wouldn’t support his rezone request, word on the street is he continues to throw money at the plan. Neighbors tell me he’s hired construction crews who are busy replacing original detail on the home. And he’s hired a local attorney and a surveyor to help him make his rezone case to the city.

But boards of zoning appeals and plan commissions were not created to fix overconfidence or feelings of entitlement or even ignorance. They were created to fix legitimate land-use need and hardship. If hardship exists for Mr. Ley, it is self-manufactured. 

Most of the Old Town families who are rebuilding these neighborhoods don’t have pockets deep enough to hire attorneys every few years to fight to protect their neighborhood. Hardly seems fair, but that’s the way of the world. They’ll have to count on their elected officials to protect the environment where they’re raising their children and the quality of life they’ve worked so hard to build.

Standing In The Doorway

We are experiencing a sea change in public opinion regarding gay marriage. It’s happening so rapidly the dwindling ranks of those digging in their heels against it must feel overwhelmed. Watching and listening to these naysayers has become a curiosity of mine.

They remind me a little of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, symbolically refusing to let black students enter the white school during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It’s similar not just because he was trying to deprive a class of people of their civil rights, but also because it was a bold taking of the wrong moral side of an issue at the precise moment that side began sliding down the slippery hill toward defeat.

Those who oppose gay marriage continue to pull the debate toward broad critiques of homosexuality. Does God approve or disapprove? Is it natural or unnatural? Will it destroy marriage as we know it?

The American public believes those are completely reasonable questions for an individual to ask himself, but they increasingly believe that has little to do with the public debate in a free society. They believe those are issues for personal reflection and personal choices.

I posted a pro-gay marriage comment on Facebook in the past year. An old friend commented, “Nope. The Bible says it’s wrong.”

There’s not much “live and let live,” in that reply. Instead it’s all, “My Bible says X, Y or Z, so I’m just gonna have to insist you obey my beliefs.”

I don’t get that.

We don’t try to regulate what church our neighbors attend, if any, or whether they and their lover are married or not, all of which have social implications. We consider those issues private business. Why treat marriage differently?

When I taught school, it was clear that some of my former students were taught by their parents to hate or at least disrespect Jews, or Catholics, or African Americans. And I shudder to think of some of the dangerous, fringe religious beliefs some people hold dear in this country. But none of that can be made illegal. There’s no way to force other people to accept my view of the world.

The simple truth is, what someone else believes, deep in his heart is none of our business to regulate. Even if we think the practice of those beliefs, like bigotry, are damaging to our culture, at some point you have to step back and accept that as long as the belief does no physical harm nor infringes on another’s rights, it can’t and shouldn’t be regulated.

A question I always want to ask the gay marriage naysayers: If you think gay marriage is bad, why not go ahead and teach your children it’s bad and for goodness sakes don’t enter into a gay relationship, but other than that, why can’t you just mind your own business? Why do you think you have the right to make such personal decisions for other people?

What two consenting adults do with their lives is none of our business, no matter how wrong one’s individual faith might say it is. Christianity teaches that adultery is wrong. Yet it’s not illegal. To control that, you’d have to start meddling in people’s bedrooms. That anyone would want to do that to heterosexuals or homosexuals is at best, bizarre.

This is a fundamental civil rights issue. Which means it’s not as simple as being called to look the other way when you disagree with the exercise of someone’s rights. You sometimes have to openly accept it. That’s the price of living in a free society. We have to tolerate interacting with things we disapprove of. That’s the cornerstone of the Golden Rule: treat people the way you want to be treated.

When civil rights legislation was passed in the 1950s and ‘60s, many organizations tolerated the laws, but wanted to retain the right to prohibit African Americans from membership or service. Gays and lesbians face the same sort of discrimination today. There are those who want to be able to exclude them from association or refuse them retail or business service. In a free society, how can we allow this?

In your personal choices, discriminate all you want. But in the public realm, everyone must be treated like a full-fledged citizen.

Those who oppose not only gay marriage but also broad civil rights for gays remind me of severe male cultures in the Middle East; societies controlled by men who insist a woman cover her face or wear a burka, or forbid they attend school. They actions say, “My moral view is so superior that I will not tolerate you living your life as you see fit. It’s an insult to me. So if you won’t willingly do what I say, I’ll pass laws that force you.”

Which brings us to another puzzling thing about the naysayers. Those trying to insure that government forbid gays and lesbians the right to marry are generally conservative ­– part of a political movement that claims to want to, “get government off our backs.”

        

Mind-boggling.

They don’t want the EPA telling them that they can’t fill in the wetlands on their farm, but they want the government to tell certain kinds of people whom they’re allowed to marry? They apparently want less government involvement unless it’s something they personally want to control. And then, they really, really want control over others.

But it seems apparent that this thinking is dying. And the speed of its approaching death is accelerating. The idea that people went to the polls just a few years ago in California to make sure another adult of legal age couldn’t live in a loving, legal relationship with another adult of legal age seems downright primitive. That’s how much things have changed in just a few years.

So much has changed so fast. And for the sake of good Americans who for so long have felt they had to live their lives in the shadows, it’s about time.

Beyond my personal satisfaction that the electorate is moving toward an opinion I’ve held for a long time, I was especially proud of the recent debate before the Supreme Court. Listening to court recordings of the proceedings on the Defense of Marriage Act, I felt a renewed pride in my country.

We’re so quick to label those in power as uncaring and conniving, but from both sides of the argument, I heard intelligent people making intelligent and emotion arguments for and against gay marriage. I heard Supreme Court justices whittle and needle at those arguments with thoughtful debate; the very way you’d hope they’d challenge any argument. None of these sounded like bad people trying to abuse power or trick anyone. A decade ago, I think the debate would have been less admirable. Even the public face of the opposition is softening. We’ve definitely covered some ground as a nation since the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, an act that was passed with clear malice toward a class of Americans, with the primary intent of depriving them of their civil rights.

However the Court rules on this particular law, the trends of public opinion over the past decade are moving in one direction and picking up speed. So much so, it makes my heart hurt just a little for the naysayers, the ones today, “standing in the doorway.” The world is moving past them with empathy and acceptance for gay Americans. One day people will look back and wonder at this time when instead of opening their hearts with love and understanding, the naysayers dug in their heels and clung to doorframe.