Believe in Possibilities

When Zach was a toddler, probably three, he used to carry around a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. When I would come home from school, we would often read about the caterpillar who ate endlessly on his way to becoming a beautiful butterfly. Perhaps I loved the book as much as Zach did.

It is hard to believe it was three decades ago that Steve and I read that book over and over to Zach—and I still remember the story. It was such a busy time of life for our family. Zach was an on-the-go youngster. Matt was seven and caught up with Legos and soccer. I was immersed in teaching high school, and Steve worked endless hours trying to launch a small business. Then we hit a bump. A hard one.

During this period of our lives, my young husband used to walk across the empty grassy fields to the east of the small home we had built near an industrial park where he had rented a small space and started a machine shop. His intention was to create his dream job, and he loved designing and building machines. His bliss.

But one morning it was far from blissful. Steve hiked across the field, and he was greeted at the shop door by Devon, his foreman whom he had known for a few years and trusted. The two always started the day with a progress meeting. Not today. Devon met Steve outside and announced to Steve that he was quitting to start his own business effective immediately. He announced without hesitation that he planned to be Steve’s biggest competitor and that he already had plenty of business lined up to make a go of it. Business, of course, that would have belonged to Steve’s shop.

Steve marched through the day in a fog, doing his best to guide the shop while carrying on with his management tasks. That evening he made his way across the grassy field to our home. In a bit of shock. As usual he was met by little Zach waving the caterpillar book up at him. And he read the story to Zach for the umpteenth time. After the kids were in bed, he explained to me how much of a nightmare this had created for him—and for us. That evening he sunk into his comfy chair. Despondent.  Still in shock. Sitting there he could not imagine what he would do. Take Devon to court? Throw in the towel on this business venture?  Go back to McDonnell Douglas?  It would be hard to go on without his lead and someone he had trusted. Someone who left with not only his shop’s business but with many of the shop’s tools. For a few days he was stuck in the muddle and the “not knowing what to do.”

I remember the following weeks all too well. It was January and dark. Oh, so dark. Bills were coming at us faster than money. I was so grateful for my teaching paycheck. Steve was working all day and often much of the night. Sometimes he failed to take his turn reading the caterpillar story to Zach, and somewhere during those days, Zach tired of this book and moved on to another. Steve rarely talked about his struggle and while his situation weighed me down, the weight must have been unbearable for him.

It was well into spring when Steve came home early from work one evening and announced we were going out to dinner. The boys chose the spot, Nello’s Pizza. What followed was a family celebration with Steve explaining he had burrowed his way forward. He told us how a company in Mesa who had one of their airbag machines “kill” a crash dummy, had asked Steve to redesign their faulty machine. When Steve’s new design worked successfully, Talley hired our little company to make similar machines. At last Steve had a clear intention and a wonderful new vision of what our little business could bring to this world. That evening over ooey-gooey-cheesy pizza, Steve explained to the boys how important it is to consider all the possibilities in life. “There are so many possibilities,” he explained.

Zach clapped, which he did often as a child. “Just like the caterpillar!” he said, and we all laughed. At the time, it seemed like Zach often interpreted the world as working like the hungry aterpillar from his beloved child’s book.

Indeed, it was sometime later, when I realized my small son’s wisdom and the power of the metaphor in the book called The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Like all of us, the colorful little caterpillar makes his way forward, eating his way through apples and leaves and then junk food which almost does him in. But this small, amazing creature rises up and spins his cocoon, and prepares for change. After his long struggle, and only after this journey, did the caterpillar grow into something better and far more beautiful—a butterfly. I would have to stay Steve’s little business had the same wonderful transformation.

This is what I wish for all of us. The ability to take all of our hardships, all of the unexpected ups and downs that come to all of us, and to grow from them. To change and to find ourselves better for it.

Happy New Year. May 2024 be your best year yet.

Small, Treasured Gifts

My house is twinkling with Christmas lights a bit early. In truth—I needed light. Here is why. A few days ago, I awoke with tears in my eyes—I seem to cry in my sleep when I am profoundly sad. Of course, the world news has been flooded with images of war, children injured and torn from their homes.

On top of that, I had just finished reading a book gripped in the clutches of war. One that made me aware I was engulfed in war sadness.  After a few decades, I decided to reread the story of Anne Frank. To my surprise I found the definitive edition of The Diary of a Young Girl to be far more powerful than the original story I read in junior high. Many unexpected stories are woven into this version—Anne’s struggles with her mother, her discovery of sex. On these pages I found a girl at thirteen trapped by her circumstances, but a girl who remains caught up in her curiosity and finds great wonder in living. Despite hiding from the Nazis in an annex with her family, Anne manages to grow up anyway and works hard to unearth the insights and wisdom she can capture. I loved that about her.

When Anne faced a second Christmas hidden with her family in the annex, she realized they had no way of buying presents. Being determined to find gifts, she decided to do what she did best—create an individual poem for each person. Her father helped her pull off her surprise, and the poems, received with joy, were small but treasured gifts.

While I love to shower friends with books as presents, I rarely think to give them a poem—and I rarely write poems. For years I suffered from a fear of poetry, oddly called metrophobia. I was certain I didn’t get poems. But slowly poems wove a path into my life. Mark Nepo says “poems are an unexpected utterance of the soul.”  Indeed. Some poems knock you over with beauty or simply change you. How wonderful Anne understood this at her young age.

How wonderful that last week, I received a poem in my inbox.  In class, Karen Raskin-Young had told me, “My son called me a poet and storyteller as if that were a bad thing. I have come to realize that we are all made of stories–and maybe that can be a wonderful thing.” Karen is writing to find out. Here is her poem–

Wisdom Tree

We think it’s the peak,

The lofty top of the tree.

We think, when we get there,

We’ll have everything we need.

We think wisdom shouts from the rooftops,

But we’re wrong.

Wisdom grows

Quietly,

In the roots,

Soaking up

Nourishment,

Digging deeper,

Getting dark

And rich.

Whispering.

Shared with permission of the author. ©Karen Raskin-Young

Soon after receiving this poem, we shared it in my Storycatcher’s class. As Karen read it to us, awe floated across the room. Poems can work that kind of magic.  Like reading Anne Frank again, Karen’s words reminded me that we are always on the search for what life can teach us, and it is often a deep, dark search. It may even pull you down into the depths of sadness.  But eventually we see the glimmers—the hope, the insights, the beauty—and even the wisdom. I love that.

In hindsight I see Anne’s story is one of overcoming in the worst of circumstances. It’s true her family is betrayed and that she dies in a camp weeks before the liberation, but it is also true that she was strong and found her voice, an uplifting voice, and an undying resilience that she bequeathed to millions of us in a diary she steadfastly wrote for us.

Gifts can be small—a drawing, a book, or even a poem. But if they are given from the heart, and if they are wrapped with meaning, or hope, or love, they can be the most treasured gifts. Special thanks to Karen and Anne for their thoughtful words.

Overcoming

Sometimes you slip inside a story that is a huge part of your life, and you didn’t even know it. You might have heard a snippet of it, maybe a dozen times, and not realized how it matters. Here is one I just rediscovered—in a new light. It helped make me who I am.

When I first met Steve Marinella in graduate school, I learned that he had a passion for flying, a passion obvious in the way his eyes lit up and his hands moved excitedly any time he talked about planes. Now it seems funny that after four decades of marriage, I could learn a new and meaningful story about my husband. But I did.

About a month ago he asked me to attend his Air Force Academy reunion. We had never been to one before, but two weeks later we were headed to Colorado Springs. There we were greeted by blue skies, clear views of Pikes Peak, and hundreds of alumni returning to this pristine place of chrome, glass, and fountains. It is here many cadets discovered who they were—or who they cannot become.

For three days we tromped their old school grounds, talked with new cadets, and shared meals with Steve’s friends from his 26th Snoopy Squadron.

This was Steve’s life before I knew him and with the help of his former roommate Rich and his friend Doug, I was able to slip inside an experience that helped define this man I love.

Saturday afternoon we sat outside at the home of one of Steve’s classmates chatting. Rich was explaining how he took prep school to get admitted to the academy. “It was the only way in for me.”  Doug and Steve nodded knowingly.

“It was tough to get in,” Steve said. “I was no high school sports star, so I assumed I didn’t have a chance.”

The training was rigorous, and the cadets were told that half of them would wash out in the coming four years. “Turns out that prediction was accurate,” Doug explained. “When we started, there were 36 new cadets in our squadron and seventeen actually graduated.”

“Remember how afraid we were that we would wash out with all the physical training!” added Rick. They reminisced about the first summer when they were hauled up to Sailors Park and left to “live off the land” for a week. Survival Camp.

“I think each of us had one K-ration to make last a week,” Steve explained.  “We learned to pick berries and find and eat the smallest animals. I lost twenty pounds that summer. I often felt lightheaded when we returned.”

“We were all starving and exhausted,” added Rich. “Then they made us face the Confidence Course.”
“That was hell! Looks like an oversized Jungle Jim now,” Doug said. Then he turned to me. “But it nearly killed a few of us–including Steve.”

After a week of wilderness training, the cadets faced the dreaded Confidence Course. They ran around the track and then spent the day struggling to climb towers and crawl through several structures. The largest, most dreaded obstacle was the Tilton Hilton.  They had to scale all five stories using the ropes on the side. When they reached the top, they had to pull themselves up to walk across logs that formed the roof and then scale down.

Rich managed it. Then as Steve scaled it, he began to feel lightheaded. He reached the top and as he attempted to grab the log, a spotter screamed at him, “Hustle!” But instead, Steve fainted and plunged thirty feet down. His friend Doug would tell me, “There was a deafening thud when he hit the ground. I was certain the fall had killed him. It didn’t, but it broke his back.”

The ambulance carried Steve to the hospital where for a couple of days, he remembered nothing but the excruciating pain and being pricked and prodded by physicians, fearful of paralysis. “When I awoke,” Steve explained, “I kept asking if I could still fly, but they would not answer me. I felt determined to keep going. To be able to fly.”

On the third day the doctors announced Steve would walk again, but not for several months. He had suffered a severe compression back fracture. He needed to lie flat for three months so it would heal. After three months in bed, they thought they could place a body cast on him. Then he could return to the academy.

But Steve surprised them. On the fourth day, he sat up in bed. “The nurses cheered me on,” he explained. “But the physicians told me I was not capable of sitting up—but I did. I just couldn’t lie in a bed for months!”

“You have always been so determined to make things work,” I noted.

“Maybe too determined?” Steve laughed. “I think I drove the doctors crazy.” He explained by the seventh day they had suited him in a complete body cast. “That evening I went to the bathroom on my own and the next day I started helping the nurses—emptying the trash cans. They still wouldn’t tell me if I could fly, but that just made me fight harder.”

Much to everyone’s surprise, on the eleventh day of his hospital stay, Steve was discharged and returned to the academy. Classes started the next week and Steve, in a full body cast, never missed a day. “The cast came off before Thanksgiving and by March I had all the waivers signed for Army Airborne Parachute Training. I felt that this would show my ability to train to become a pilot.” It did. Four years later Steve graduated and headed to Purdue to study aerodynamics and astronautics where I met him. After graduate school, he headed to Arizona to fulfill his dream of becoming a pilot.

I think we had been married a couple of years before I saw a notice from the Air Force to Steve addressing him as “a disabled veteran.”  When I asked him about it, he acknowledged that he had fallen and broken his back as if it were a small footnote in his life. But all these years later I can see now that it was much more. I can see now that this display of grit and determination helped to define Steve as a man. He had a dream, and he was going to hold onto it and do whatever it took. He was going to overcome his “disability.”  And he did.

As for me, living with Steve has taught me how to be a stronger, more resilient person. How to juggle my active inner critic and how to move forward through hardships.  For all of this, I am grateful. Today he is a man wrapped in his curiosity, his passion to fly, and his drive to create new and better machines, many that save lives. He may be a bit too driven, but I continue to learn from and marvel at all he overcomes day by day.