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The Tramp. Charlie Chaplin's classic character. Seemingly forever making his way from one set of experiences on to another. A life of un-sedentary misadventures. And that's where I've wound up once more, also.
I've had to find out the hard way that my training and experiences in regard to working with adults in the mental health field, do not necessarily translate into something that can also work with some children. And neither is my academic background as a student of secondary education pedagogy, plus time spent teaching middle schoolers, very adaptable toward helping young people with severe special needs.
There is much more that could be said about what happened but I'll keep those thoughts to myself. I believe that I was giving it my best, and I can hold my head high about that. I'm a very hard worker, I always give something not less than my greatest effort. A lot of people will attest to that. But as friends have reminded me in the past two days it's not a perfect world. I have to try to remember that.
In the meantime, I'm trying to keep hold to my faith. Trying to cease questioning myself about if I am not thankful enough, because I truly believe that I was thankful and still am. Is all of this some kind of test from God? Is He wanting to see how well I hold up under the pressure of it all? Is He entertained, by watching me holding on by my fingernails for the past few years?
I know. What I'm going through right now isn't peculiar to me. A lot of people in recent years have had to struggle. Many are having it even worse off than I'll ever know. There again, I should be thankful. For the time being I still have a roof over my head. I'm not feasting every night but neither am I starving. I have my beloved dog Tammy (who is lately determined to drive me batty with her new ball that she keeps getting stuck underneath everything!). Mental issues aside I am in very excellent health for someone who will be 51 next month. Some don't get to say such things. So I suppose on a level playing field, I'm doing all right, more or less.
I just wish that I could once again have a career with meaning and purpose that would provide for my needs. I'm not interested in being "wealthy". It doesn't take much to make me happy. And I'd seriously love a real crack at having that.
Actually I've had it for a very long time now (I think 2006). I just haven't done anything with it until this week...
Some friends suggested that I "increase marketability". So I'm putting myself out there in a way I might have not done before. In assembling this I've become a bit astounded at all the experiences that have been racked up over the past decade or two. In spite of having manic depression - or maybe because of it - I've wound up with a pretty impressive skills-set and collaborative history. I also uploaded and included a portfolio of some of my video work, bits of which have never been seen by a wide audience until now (I'm particularly fond of the "Wacky Dead" clip).
So for like the third or fourth time in my life I am entering the field of education.
I promise that I won't read "The Call of Cthulhu" to second graders again.
(No, seriously, that's what happened.)
Looking forward to taking young minds full of mush and molding them into critically thinking members of society. Or playing a small part in it anyway :-)
There are many who possess far greater wisdom than I can ever contain in the few cubic inches of mind absent depression or mania. And those who admit to knowing me will testify, Dear Reader: I have shared many matters I wrestle with on Facebook, hoping that among beloved friends some can lend a measure of that wisdom.
At first, that's where this was meant to be: posted on Facebook. But maybe this time I should cast a wider net. Perhaps some of you who read this blog can provide the answers I seek.
Here it is: Should I want to have children? Why should I want to have children?
Do I have the right to bring a child into this world?
It is no secret that for the vast majority of my life I have wanted to be a father. To be entrusted with a child or children who can be born and live and grow and find their purpose and see that their father and mother love each other very much and most of all find their own relationship with God. To be the parent who goes looking for presents to be found under the tree on Christmas morning. To explore the world and see it anew through the eyes of my children. To watch them learn and laugh, just as I will discover again for the first time what it is to learn and laugh. To do my very best so that they have a better life than I ever did, and to never doubt that they are loved and cherished. To have that home filled with love and joy and thoughtfulness.
And increasingly I wonder if I should want that at all. If I was wrong to have wanted that and if I have wasted time in chasing after it.
It comes down to four reasons why I am haunted to ask those questions. And maybe some of you can give comfort and encouragement. And the truth. Especially the truth. No matter how painful it might be to hear it.
First of all, let us be frank: The world is a cruel place.
And with each passing day it becomes even more cruel. I see in my own country how it is that anger and hatred, and craving power over others, and hypocrisy and corruption are becoming like virtues. How much of what made our culture great is becoming eroded for sake of carnal pursuits and perversities. How it seems that only those who give in and compromise on their convictions and principles have a chance of "making it" and being successful.
Why should I want to subject a new human life to that? How will I answer him or her, if they ask why did I bring them into existence in such a place? To have a life where they will be hurt by others over, and over, and over again. Where they will be used and abused and exploited and betrayed and bitterly disappointed by the boundless visions of man's inhumanity to man.
Second, and this is a big one: How do I or can I tell a child that he or she is going to one day die?
Once upon a time, the fear of death immobilized me. Almost literally. That was when the depression first began and after losing a number of loved ones in the span of a few months. I became obsessed with staving off death. Even forever, if it was possible. And that was the mania part of bipolar disorder working its malevolent magic: casting a spell of delusion over my rational understanding of how things must be in this realm held captive to entropy.
The thought of dying doesn't disturb me anymore. Indeed, there are some days when I think I would rather welcome death. To be free of the memories of griefs and hurts and abuses: those inflicted on me but mostly those I have inflicted upon others. Which has oddly made wanting to be a father even more tantalizing. It would be a chance to fill up my life with good memories instead. And be driven to give my sons or daughters a happy and fulfilling childhood that they will never someday look back upon with regret and anguish.
And that must be selfishness on my part. To use having children as a rationale for escaping the ravages upon my own mind and spirit.
What do I tell a child when he or she asks if they will die someday? How do I respond when they ask why did they have to be born, just to one day perish? And if they are endowed with any of the inquisitive nature I had in my own childhood, they will eventually ask that.
How do I tell a son or daughter that they are going to die and there is nothing I can do to stop it but I was going to make them live and die anyway?
Third: Dare I possibly condemn a child to have a mental illness?
Bipolar disorder is a funny thing. We know there is a genetic component but when it comes to getting expressed there is quite a lot of dancing about. I am now persuaded after research that my great-grandfather on my paternal side had severe mental illness. So did his daughter, my grandmother. Grandma Knight definitely demonstrated significant periods of depression. Dad never showed any signs whatsoever of mental illness: indeed, he might have been the most "normal" of our family. Grandma Knight had four grandchildren and when her genes and those of my grandfather are diagrammed out, there was a 25% chance that one of those grandchildren would have mental illness.
Looks like it skipped over Dad, from my grandmother and her father, and landed on me. None of the other three grandchildren have had indicators of mental illness.
With a one hundred percent confidence that I carry the gene for bipolar disorder and having long known that it is an active part of my life, well...
Dare I risk passing that condition on to my children?
Their odds of developing it might be less for them than they were for me. But even so, to have any mental illness is to jeopardize the chance of a normal and productive life as most people enjoy. It's certainly something I've never gotten to know. More than a decade and a half of my life has been spent on medication and deep counseling and some involuntary hospitalizations. All while trying to grasp and claw at some semblance of enduring happiness.
Don't my potential children have a right to that happiness? How dare I risk taking that away from them?
And then, fourth, the harshest consideration of all:
How can I give life to a child who will have doubts about God?
When I mentioned "hypocrisy" earlier, I must count myself the worst of the lot. Because for all of my belief in God, and doing my best to serve Christ with what talents He has given me...
For the most part, I believe God is there. But I also confess that I doubt God has ever heard my prayers, that He ever will hear my prayers. I confess that to me, God is not the all-loving, all-caring Father. And I am very jealous of those who find joy in His love and grace, when it is that I cannot have that.
Because to my utter shame God to me is a cruel, manipulative and indifferent bastard (yes, I am trying to hold back the anger toward Him). And I am exhausted of seeing Him bless others with love and families and purpose and joy. When the only consistent elements throughout my life since childhood have been a mind turned against me, a mother who was more abusive than I realized until recently and only now have I begun to address those wounds, hopes of a future with purpose and satisfaction falling to ashes in my hands...
(And if I as a parent carry on the cruelty and manipulation of a previous generation? But that is something I'm not yet ready to delve into. Maybe it's better that remain buried. As a character in a recent movie said: "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That's the only way to become what you were meant to be.")
Ever more so, I am losing my faith in God. Because God has never had enough faith in me. Certainly not enough to extend the shot at a fraction of the life that seemingly everyone around me has to one degree or another.
And if this is "life" to be thankful and joyful to Him for, then I would rather that He never have created me in the first place. He can banish me to Hell for all eternity, if this is the only existence that He will ever grant me. I can't even trust that He would give me a new and whole mind if I go to Heaven. An eternity with a mental illness? Where is the joy in that?
To doubt that God is there or worse, to be unable to escape believing that God is deaf and indifferent to our prayers, is a kind of Hell all its own. And there are some who are going to tell me "Oh Chris, you should be thankful and joyful all the same! God gave you life and forgiveness of your sins. You were made for God's pleasure and to Him you are perfect. You are the clay, not the Potter and not even the Potter's wheel! Who do you think you are to tell God that He messed up? You have Christ and isn't that enough?"
No. It's not enough. Because despite all that scripture teaches, the God I have seen and come to know is a God who does play favorites. He blesses some and curses others and if you're on His sh-t-list, there is nothing you can do about it. And I'm not only referring to the jealousies of my own life. Too many in this world suffer while others have seemingly have... okay, not everything but certainly the things that matter most. Innocent people get thrashed and stomped upon and denied even an iota of something to be thankful for. So what reason do they have to be thankful to God?
Once, I could be and was thankful to God. I could pray to Him. Not with requests or for something "good", but merely to thank Him and to praise Him for what I did have. Now I recognize that, maybe it was being hopeful when I had no reason to be hopeful. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.
Is that all God is? Merely "wishful thinking" on our part? Is there even a God at all? Or are we deluding ourselves? Have I been deluding myself for twenty years and more?
What do I tell a child? That God is there and that He is listening to him or her? When my own heart harbors even a sliver of doubt?
How do I tell a child that God is good, when he or she keeps praying and in return hears only silence from a Father who is aloof and removed from our cares and concerns save for a select few? What if that child believes that God loves some but He has to have a reason to hate others... and they are it? Because that's what it has been like for me all too often.
How do I tell with a sincere and faithful and thankful heart that God is there for my children? What do I say when they tell me that God isn't there for them?
How do I dare consign a child to that kind of anguish and torment? Because if that is all that there ever was for me, I would rather have died in the delivery room. And there would come a day when my children will tell me the same thing.
My doubts about God are not dispelled. And I'm not going to pretend anymore, for the sake of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, that "everything is fine" between He and I.
Perhaps God might grant an infinitely deeper grace to my children than He has to me. Perhaps they might know a love and joy from Him than I ever have. I would hope that He would.
And then again, He may not. There is no guarantee that He would do that either.
If I were to have children, I would have to be brutally honest with them in all things. Including about God. And though I do believe He is there, the faith in Him being all-loving and all-caring is practically absent. There will be no lies or delusions or distractions from either my faith or my lack of faith... and I do want to have faith. A real, abiding and enduring faith in God. But if there is not...
To lie to my children like that would be the cruelest thing I could do to anyone.
So, with all of that being said:
Should I trust God? Should I dare to plot something so irrevocable as giving existence to a human soul in this wicked and evil world?
Do I have any right at all to be a father?
Whoever is reading this and thinks they have something to share, please do so. The comments are wide open on this post. Feel free to use your own name or an alias or to be anonymous. Maybe some among you have answers that have eluded me in spite of all searching out my heart and mind and soul.
If you do, I would very much appreciate it.
(And very special thanks to "N.G." for having a listening ear and proofreading this post at least three or four times before I hit the "Publish" button on it.)
In the wake of last week's tragic incident in Tuscon there have been reams of pages written about human nature, with one spin or another on the subject.
I haven't read anything that is as poignant and beautiful as what Monsignor Charles Pope - pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian - has composed on his blog hosted by the Archdiocese of Washington.
One of the rights our modern age demands is the right to declare that certain lives are not worth living. In utero testing sometimes reveals the possibility or even the certainty of birth defects. Abortion is often recommended to mothers who carry "defective" children and sometimes that recommendation becomes pressure. It is said that almost 90% of families who receive a poor pre-natal diagnosis choose to abort.
And yet there are so many stories of people who have overcome enormous obstacles and who live full and rich lives. Some are missing limbs, others are blind, still others struggle with disease. Some have overcome poverty and injustice, others paralyzing accidents or great tragedies. And they are living witnesses to us that we ought never be the judge of what lives are worthwhile and what lives are “not worth” living. It is true that none of us would wish to be born missing limbs, or blind or in poverty, or with chronic conditions. But we must reverence those who are, learn to appreciate their gifts, and summon them to courage and greatness.
We must declare with great certitude that there is no such thing as a life not worth living. We say this not as some politically correct slogan but rather with firm conviction that every human life is willed by God. We were willed before we were made for the Scriptures say, "Before I ever formed you in the womb I knew and I appointed you..." (Jer 1:4). None of us is an accident nor are our gifts and apparent deficits mistakes. We exist as we are, the way we are for a purpose, a purpose for us and for others. We all have an irreplaceable role in God's kingdom and show forth aspect of His glory uniquely. Every human life is intended and is worth living because God says so by the very fact that we exist.
It's well worth reading in its entirety. Not only because of the good padre's own articulation but also for the videos he has included demonstrating several individuals who have triumphed in spite of the physical obstacles they were born with.
(Big tip o' the hat to Mike Casteel for this terrific find!)
Matthew Warner is the thinkin' dude behind Fallible Blogma: his journal of faith, politics and fatherhood from a Catholic perspective. I have been rather enjoying Matthew's insights, and one item in particular is well worth passing along to all two of my own blog's regular readers. It's a list of seven steps to take for a holier life, as observed and articulated by Mother Teresa (in the photo). You'll have to visit the link to see Matthew's compilation in earnest, but they're seven measures that I'm gonna commit to trying to keep in mind on a daily basis...
1. Slow down 2. Make some room 3. Open your eyes 4. Put great love into the small things 5. Do not tire 6. Remember: It's faithfulness, not success 6. Leave the rest to Jesus
Good things to remember, whether or not you are Catholic. And I very much appreciate Matthew for putting this together :-)
...got to meet Cecil L. Cline, the project manager for the Saturn V rocket program (he also worked on the Polaris and Poseidon missiles and the C-5A Galaxy transport plane in addition to many other engineering marvels) and received an autographed copy of his book A Soldier's Odyssey.
Right now TNT is running Titanic. I was just telling Lisa how I saw that movie on the day after it came out, and how these teenage girls were leaving the theater in tears before the show we were going into started. I told the ladies in line with me then "Wow, must be pretty powerful." And then those ladies were in tears as we were leaving the theater.
Me? I cried once during Titanic. It was during the first time we see the ship going full-speed underway, and something about those engine rooms, how incredibly accurate they were to the real Titanic's power plant, watching those steam turbines in all their grimy, beautiful detail...
...I cried at that. I didn't cry at the romance.
"You're heartless!" Lisa said.
"No," I replied. "I'm just a historian."
This is gonna be some household when the kids come along, I'm telling you :-)
"Trees will tap dance, elephants will ride in the Indianapolis 500, and Orson Wells will skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner before State finds a way to beat Houston."
-- Dave Kindred writer for The Washington Post April 4th, 1983
It became, and remains to this day, the defining sports moment of the modern era.
It was twenty-five years ago tonight, on April 4th, 1983, that North Carolina State won the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, in what has become regarded by many as the single greatest basketball game ever played and one of the biggest upsets in the history of athletics.
It also produced some of the most memorable sports images to be ever televised or photographed.
What can be said about that game that hasn't already over a quarter-century? Nobody was expecting the Wolfpack of NC State to take down Houston. Guy Lewis's Cougars - dubbed "Phi Slamma Jamma" - boasted Hakeem Olajuwon and Clive Drexler. The entire team was already playing like NBA pros. They were ranked #1 in the nation. And after crushing Louisville in the semifinals of the 1983 NCAA Tournament, the Houston team was practically being laureled by most sports reporters as national champions even before tipoff. Writers like Kindred of The Washington Post were stepping all over themselves trying to describe the inevitability of Houston taking it all.
But nobody cared to tell any of this to a scrappy team from Raleigh, North Carolina that had been nicknamed the "Cardiac Pack". Nor did it seem that anybody thought to pass the word along to a cetain Italian kid from Queens.
Long before the start of the 1982-83 basketball season, North Carolina State's head coach Jim Valvano was telling his players that they possessed a lot of talent, and that they had the potential to bring home a national championship. Valvano believed it. The team believed it too. In spite of a rough regular season, the Wolfpack persisted and won the 1983 Atlantic Coast Conference championship.
And then NC State went to the Big Dance. The Wolfpack kept winning. Against Pepperdine, UNLV and Virginia the 'Pack achieved victory only within the last minute of each game after trailing for most of the time. And it wasn't long before everyone started to stand up and take notice of NC State and its sensational coach...
So it was that events converged on a showdown in Albuquerque, New Mexico - appropriately enough at The Pit, legendary for its hostile design - on the night of April 4th. Jim Valvano's North Carolina State versus Guy Lewis's Houston. Cardiac Pack against Phi Slamma Jamma. Irresistible Force meets Immovable Object.
The whole world was watching. Including a certain young boy in north-central North Carolina, who had been cheering for State since he could remember and was tuned-in to the game on WFMY along with his family. And truth be known, as much as we have always been faithful NC State fans, we were wondering how they could pull this off, too.
Most of y'all know how this went, and if you don't or if you need a refresher tonight ESPN Classic is running a half-hour special about the 1983 NCAA Championship game. In the final minute Derek Whittenburg and Sidney Lowe brought State within sight of victory by bringing the score to a 52-52 tie (after gaining a comfortable lead at halftime only to watch Houston sap away at the margin). State's Thurl Bailey passed the ball to Whittenburg, who with seconds left in the game threw what became the most televised air ball in history.
The ball was short, and that would have been the end of it for State. Except that sophomore Lorenzo Charles swooped down from seemingly out of nowhere and slammed a dunk with two seconds left before the buzzer.
The final score: North Carolina State 54, Houston 52.
The Pit went wild with pandemonium! To say nothing of what was going on in countless homes and restaurants across the country. Millions of people had watched the impossible: Phi Slamma Jamma had been defeated at its own game.
And Jim Valvano could not control himself: he leaped from his seat and began a frantic rush up and down the court, looking for somebody, anybody, to give a hug to. It has became the most iconic moment in the history of college basketball, and one of the most famous ever in sports.
Here it is, courtesy of YouTube: the final glorious moments of the 1983 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship game... and the first wild moments in the birth of a tradition that would come to be known as "March Madness":
It's hard to believe that it was twenty-five years ago today that all of this happened...
And it's even harder to believe that this month marks fifteen years since Jim Valvano was taken from us at the all-too-young age of 47, after a year-long battle with bone cancer.
Jim Valvano was one of my all-time personal heroes, for more reasons than I can possibly relate in this space. And it's one of the greater regrets of my life that I never got to meet him. Valvano was always larger-than-life and after the Wolfpack won the championship in 1983 he became an inescapable presence. He went on David Letterman's show and even appeared along with friend Dick Vitale in one of the final episodes of The Cosby Show (Valvano was one of the "V and V Movers" in the episode where Cliff is trying to move a grandfather clock). After his time at NC State, Valvano also became a well-respected commentator for ABC Sports and ESPN.
But in spite of all of his new-found fame and the thrill of victory, Valvano never lost sight of the things that mattered most. And his animated personality never diminished, even after receiving the prognosis in 1992: "Hey doc, you forgot to use the flash", Valvano joked the moment he saw the cancerous dark tissue on his x-ray.
It was a humor that Valvano maintained during the length of his battle. During his speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards, he dismissed a teleprompter's notifying him that he had 30 seconds left to wrap things up. "They got that screen up there flashing 30 seconds, like I care about that screen," Valvano said on live televison. "I got tumors all over my body and I'm worried about some guy in the back going 30 seconds?"
The day he passed away, a lot of people cried. Including me. And I've always wanted to go pay my respects to the man and all the good things that he stood for.
So since this is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest moment of his career, yesterday afternoon I set out for Raleigh...
On a good day, it's about an hour and a half's driving time between Reidsville and Raleigh. I like going there, but given how gas prices have been soaring lately it's become harder to justify going out that far. But this is something that I'd made the choice many months ago to do, and as it happened I had some free time yesterday to make a short day trip for this.
I left Reidsville at 12:30 yesterday afternoon. For early spring it has been unusually cool this past week, and I had to wear a long-sleeve shirt and jacket. My route had me getting onto Interstate 40 in Burlington, then heading east toward Raleigh. I stopped at the new Lowes Foods in Burlington (the one near the new shopping center with the Target and Best Buy) and found just what the occasion required: a single red rose, adored with lilies. The girl at the register said that my wife was "going to love this!" I had to tell her that "actually it's going on a gravesite", and I shared with her what I was doing.
"You're driving all the way from Reidsville, as high as gas is? That's sweet!" she told me.
I got onto I-40 just after leaving Lowes Foods. And according to the directions I pulled off the Internet, it would be another fifty miles before I left the interstate. But it turned out that the directions were off a bit, and I ended up bewildered somewhere in Cary (I think it was Cary...). I stopped at a gas station and asked for directions toward Glenwood Avenue, and the guy told me to take a right and keep going and "it's only two miles away."
I never found Glenwood Avenue. But I can't help but think now that maybe it was providential, because I wound up driving through the campus of North Carolina State University. After going through downtown Raleigh on New Bern Street, I stopped at a pharmacy and asked if anyone knew where Oakwood Avenue was.
"Go back down New Bern, take a right onto Raleigh Boulevard, and then a left right there at Oakwood. You can't miss it," a woman told me. She also asked "Are you looking for anything in particular?"
"A cemetery," I told her.
"Okay well you'll definitely see that," she replied.
Finally, at around 2:30 yesterday afternoon, I arrived at Oakwood Cemetery...
Founded in 1869, with a large amount of acreage devoted to thousands of Confederate veterans who are buried there, Oakwood is easily one of the most magnificent and beautiful cemeteries that I have seen in this part of the country. It is also wonderfully maintained, and the staff there was glad to help me find the spot I was looking for. "Jim Valvano is buried up there. Take a left and look for a large black marble marker," one of the groundskeepers told me.
It had already started to rain by the time I approached Raleigh. It had begun to fall even harder. The rain was washing the pollen out of the air and from the surfaces, leaving a sickly yellow residue to drain away. By this time the thermometer in my car was registering an outside temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
And finally, in the Cedar Hill Section of the cemetery, there it was...
The groundskeeper wasn't kidding: Jim Valvano's grave is positively big. But it's not necessarily ostentatious. One of the things that I thought when I saw it for the first time was that even his grave marker, in its own way, spoke volumes about the man that it served to honor.
I took those photos from one of the little roads that criss-cross the cemetery. By the way, if you ever visit Oakwood please be very careful and alert, because the driveways within the cemetery barely accommodate one vehicle, much less two at a time. And the only entrance to the place is large enough for one car at a time, period. So as you approach the entrance on Oakwood Avenue, be aware of any cars trying to leave the cemetery too.
Along with the rose that I'd bought on the way, I had something else that I wanted to leave at Valvano's grave...
It's, I guess it's called a "graveside note": something that I created in Photoshop yesterday morning. At the top of it is a color photo of Valvano surrounded by his players, taken moments after North Carolina State won the national championship in 1983. And then there was something that I wrote that was inspired by Valvano's words at the ESPY Awards, and which are also engraved on his tombstone:
Dear Coach V, You made us laugh. You made us think. You made us cry.
And you made us proud.
On the 25th anniversary of your greatest victory, from all of us who will remember that night for the rest of our lives ...
Thank you.
I then placed the note and the rose on Valvano's grave...
The rain was falling harder by then. I finished up with my personal honoring of Valvano's memory, and then started to leave. Here's one last picture I took...
And then I said my goodbye to "Coach V" and left. I felt immensely satisfied that I was finally able to do this, and honor the memory of the man who inspired so many with both his witty humor and profound wisdom.
I know of no better way to wrap this up, than to post the video of Jim Valvano's speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards, along with perhaps the most famous words he gave from the podium that night...
"To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."
