That was the text my wife sent to me around 9:00 pm Saturday night. The words wrapped me up like a warm blanket. It was a perfect "pull" - a quote from a movie perfectly insinuated into the context of a real life event.
The quote is pulled from Dr. Seuss's famous scene in the Grinch. You know the one, the Grinch, at his grinchy best, believes he has frustrated the Whos in celebrating Christmas by stealing all the physical trappings of the holiday, only to be perplexed by the fact that they celebrate none-the-less.
The entire quote is:
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?
Saturday was my birthday. And I suppose like a lot of people, the celebration of my own birthday is a bit more complicated for me than is the celebration of someone else's birthday. It all works its way back to expectations really. Mine are that no fuss be made. I would much rather spend the money, time, and energy planning a party for one of the kids than I would spending it on myself.
So Saturday was always going to be a kind of muted affair. As it turned out this year, the muted affair happened to coincide with the annual meeting on the grid-iron between the University of Michigan (boo, hiss) and the Spartans of Michigan State University.
I was raised in a Green and White household by a decidedly Green and White mom. Both of my brothers are graduates of MSU, I live 10 minutes from MSU's campus. I take more than a passing fan's interest in the outcome of these contests. I admit, I am a bit of a fan.
So, in my mind, the idea that my birthday and it's self evident promise of "indulging Dennis" falling on the day of the UofM/MSU football game made me see
visions of hot-wings, cold pop, and couches when I imagined how I might spend my day. Such was the quiet fantasy I maintained until about Tuesday of the week before my birthday.
Then, of course, Jeanine, my wife of 19 years and the organized one of the bunch reminded me of...duh...duh...duh-duhhhhhhh
...the camporee.
We talked a bit about the importance of this event. Pretty much the last thing my 10 year old needed to complete this year to be able to cross over into Boy Scouts this Spring. It was a no brainer that he and I would go. He and I would go.
I am not an outdoor person. Sure I love to golf and to coach baseball, and to cook out. Those are all outdoor activities. But hiking? Canoing? Chopping wood? Carrying stuff? Sorry, but to my old and comfortable butt, these activities sound like work, not recreation. Throw on top of that my allergies, which are nearly legendary, and you do not have the makings of an Eagle Scout in me.
Case in point - the camping equipment. It is stored in the attic above the garage. It has not been touched in exactly 9 years. We took it out once to celebrate my son's FIRST birthday and then packed it all away in a gigantic Tupperware bin. Two years ago I moved it from the garage to the attic thinking to myself "Note to self, when we sell this house 20 years from now, remember to get this stuff out of the attic - it'll likely be worth something on E-Bay as it is all in pristine condition..."
On Friday, I borrowed a ladder to fetch the gear from above the garage. My allergies, sensing something was brewing, decided to remind me how much I hate dust and fiberglass and conspired to create an itch so powerful that I sincerely thought about just lopping off both hands at the wrist. But, I survived and the gear, undisturbed in the last 20% of my life...made it safely down from the attic and into the car.
Just let that thought soak in a minute. I was 36 the last time I had this stuff out. On the Friday before my birthday, I was still 45. 36 is 80% of 45 - I think. Life is screaming at this point that I am not destined to do this. This is not my purpose. The very fact that I have not touched this equipment for any recreational purpose should establish my lack of credibility in building a fire with sticks or wiping with leaves.
"But," I reminded myself "...my son was counting on me to do it; my wife was expecting me to do it." So, on I went.
The local scout master is a great guy and was good enough to pick my son up early that morning so I could take care of a few appointments Saturday morning and then head out to the State Park in the early afternoon. The schedule was such that we would stay over night Saturday and return Sunday morning. Just long enough to miss every part of the game and related commentary. Swell, I thought, grinchily. Just swell.
So Saturday, after a drive through what even the hardest corners of my grinchy outdoor heart conceded was some spectacular Michigan autumn colors, I showed up at the park, alone, wondering if I could set up the camp and retire to my inflatable mattress in time to follow the game on my smartphone.
As I drove the lane down to the campsite, there passed me a group of boys so rough and tumble; so scratched and dirty and obviously outdoorsy that I actually smiled as they walked by. The last one in line, arm looped over his buddy's shoulder and walking along laughing without a care in the world caught my eye. He was handsome with blond colicky hair going wild in every direction. Filthy - yet he looked somehow familiar. It wasn't until I saw him waving at me that I realized it was my son.
My grinchiness abated somewhat - I was delighted for him, and torn for myself. "He loves this" my grinchy outdoors heart told me. And at the same time, my rational brain was telling me "he loves this...", meaning "you better get good at it, Chuckles, because welcome to your future - he loves this."
I smiled my big smile and hollered out the window at him secretly hoping the extra volume in my voice would be mistaken for unrestrained enthusiasm rather than a disguised and uncontrollable cry for help. My mind was racing,
"...I don't know the first thing about any of this stuff...." I thought, "...when I was a kid we went camping with my dad and he shaved using a mirror stuck to a tree and his hunting knife! A HUNTING KNIFE!" Quickly, my mind racing, I reached into my pocket and found "Old Sven", the Swiss army knife I bought after seeing a movie about a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness. It was there but was about as dull as a lint covered JuJubee. "DAMN!" I thought, "Good luck shaving with that."
I waved to Michael and his pals and then drove into the campground. The parking lot was at least 6000 feet from our campsite. And, Scouts being Scouts, no driving through the campsites was permitted. You loaded up and hiked into your bivouac. A quick check of my supplies did not yield any surprise inclusion of an automatic heart defibrillator, so I resigned myself to making several small trips at the end of which my muscles felt like I was a gun bearer on African safari. The cooler of pop, juiceboxes, pudding, yogurt and 40 pounds of ice seemed like a good idea in the Meijer parking lot - but that was before I knew I was "hiking in" to my campsight.
So, having made camp without a soul in sight, I was confident a) that my heavy wheezing, unobserved by any live humans, had none-the-less scared off any wildlife that might otherwise want to come and add the vision of me to the tales they told their woodland buddies, and b) I could struggle in solitude, unobserved and unjudged, with the giant bin of camping equipment - none of which I had any idea how to assemble.
I looked around me and observed there were several scout tents already assembled. They were cute and efficient. Little one or two man tents all ship shape and sides as tight as a snare drum.
I unpacked my tent - filling a space about 13 feet by 13 feet - it looked obviously larger than the run of the mill tents. Adding to my joyous outdoor birthday adventure was about a 20 mile an hour "breeze."
I wondered, half-way through my "no holds barred" wrestling match with the tent, what would be easier. Smoothing out this tent in a 20 mile per hour wind, or smoothing out a giant octopus on a 13 x 13 foot patch of white hot concrete. Every corner of the tent lashed at me in the wind like the tentacles of an angry beast. The zippered door opened wide and rose up all at once as if to gobble me up and end the fight there and then. Resolute, I grabbed the bag of stakes in my teeth and with my trusty red mallet, I rolled, squashed, and smoothed my way around the fabric, pounding, hammering, and cursing until I subdued the nylon devil and had it staked firmly to the ground.
"Not so tough," I thought smugly looking at my handiwork.
"Idiot" thought the wind as it promptly snapped one of the tent poles holding the tent up.
"It's my birthday, you sonofabitch." I thought as I watched the listing corner of the tent swing lazily in the breeze.
"I know," said the tent. "Go Blue."
The listing tent now standing large over my campsite like some kind of billboard for woodland incompetence, I urgently set about creating the rest of our campsite, knowing after my two hour battle with the nemesis tent, my son and his pals would soon be back in camp. Not having any outdoor skills at all, I wanted to finish work before they had a chance to actually see me in action.
"After all" I thought, "...we could have some disaster out here and, God forbid, if it comes down to eating people, they will eat me first realizing that my only discernible skill really is in mediating employment disputes."
So I attacked the listing tent with the only duct tape I could find and raised our lodging once again. Seeing it there, amid the small, perfect tents erected by my son's scout friends, I was reminded of the old WWII photos from Pearl Harbor. Here were the bombed out hulks of America's largest ships scuttled in the attack, surrounded by smaller, undamaged, sea worthy vessels. In both images, it was easy to see at a moment's notice that something had gone horribly wrong.
My spirits were lifted when my son returned with his pals and was both excited and impressed with his impression of my handiwork "Lookit our tent!" he screamed. "It's huge!" Yes, it is sad but true, the boy has as little sense of the outdoors and structural integrity and camping as do I. He did not for one moment realize how woefully pathetic my construction skills were. He bragged and bragged about how much space we had all the while other scouts were quietly asking me "Dude, why did you bring such a huge tent out into this wind..." Fortunately for me they had good graces enough and were kindhearted enough to not raise the issue publicly.
So, first order of business taken care of (shelter), I sought out facilities to take care of another order of business. "Where's the Bathroom?" I asked.
"Follow the path until you smell it" someone said.
The path led back through the camp on off into a clearing next to a beautiful, tree lined lake. My dim expectations were buoyed when I saw a clean, well maintained structure on a cement pad, about 100 yards from the field where we were camped.
I opened the door and reached for a light switch. Despite my fumbling and reaching, no light switch was obvious so I brushed passed it urgently wanting to address other pressing matters. I rushed to the nearest stall and cast open the door. Taking in that tableau, my first thought was:
Thank God there was no light switch.
The bathroom was actually the fanciest primitive latrine I have ever been in. But....how can I put this delicately...you remember how much was made last campaign season about the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig..." Well, you can put cement, and boards, and fresh paint, and stall doors around an open pit latrine, but the moment you lift that lid and are looking down into an open pit latrine, well it's still an open pit latrine.
"It's my birthday," I thought. "All I wanted was to ..." Well...it doesn't matter what I wanted to do, I sure as hell wasn't doing it there. It's just not how I imagined spending any part of my birthday.
So I walked back to the camp, my thoughts occupied by a) a mental note to eat and drink as little as humanly possible until we broke camp the next morning, and b) actually a wonderful, loving memory of my own dad, who was camping with me when I was about 7, and a time I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night at a campground where the facilities were called "rustic."
I can distinctly remember going in there, him holding the flashlight for me and me taking care of my business. He then handed the flashlight back to me as he washed his hands at which point I shined the light down into the latrine. He laughed out loud, took the light gently and said "Denny, for God's sake don't shine the light down there..." He and I laughed often about that moment for many years after that.
When I got back to camp, it was obvious that my son and some of his buddies (and their dads) had helped square things away with the tent. I was moved by their kindness. My spirits lifted by their generosity, and the fact that they did not judge me for my lack of woodmanship. Perhaps, I thought as I watched the kids making camper pies for the grown ups, they won't actually eat me first.
We settled into our chairs and ate the dinner the boys made over an open fire. Later there were skits, and laughter, and warmth all around. I noticed that I was not sneezing, my hands weren't itching, I did not die of a heart attack lugging anything.
Then as the sun set slowly on a cloudless Michigan evening, and in that gloaming moment when the first few stars winked in to ensure all was well and good with our scout troop, I realized that I never once missed watching that football game. I had no great longing to know the score or to count coup over my friends who were Wolverine fans.
Michael came back from a canoe ride and in front of God and everybody told me he loved me, wished me a happy birthday, and gave me a hug and a kiss. I realized at about that moment, I had had perhaps the greatest birthday of my adult life.
About a minute later, my wife, as if knowing the exact words coursing through my brain, texted:
"...it came without packages, boxes or bags..."
She knew. How she knew is probably part of how she is a great mom. But she just knew.
Later that night, we snuggled into the leaning cavernous edifice that was our tent, giggling like a couple of campers - him with my iPod and permission to run the battery down to nothing, me with my smartphone and finally catching up on the headlines from the game, my son said to me "Thanks, Dad, for sharing your birthday with me. I think this is my favorite night ever."
He's a good kid, and Halloween and Christmas are coming so who knows if it will long remain his favorite night ever. But that night, and the fact that I let him pee in the woods rather than go back to that latrine, may just hang with him as a good memory for a long long time.
And that will be the best birthday present I could have imagined.
So thanks for coming by my blog today, a little longer than what I try and post but there was just perhaps a little bit more that I needed to say. Here's hoping that whatever you do this week, you do so immersed in love and laughter, and are lifted aloft on the warm currents of a family's love.
Dennis
