on clancy, our estranged, beloved stuffy

Whatever the opposite of a Christmas miracle happens to be is what has been our reality over Christmas break.

It started as a standard, nondescript Christmas holiday. Despite the pandemic, we masked up and headed south to visit my wife’s family in Missouri. We’ve been more or less holed up at home in Wisconsin for nine months, corona ripped through our hometown this fall, then churned its way through the in-laws in early December. Admittedly, it’s a calculated gamble coming here, but it’s been good to see family — all of whom have been cautious if for no other reason than our request — and to celebrate the holiday with folks we haven’t seen in forever.

What we didn’t expect was to come face to face with an existential crisis. Somewhere between St. Robert and Springfield and Branson, we lost Clancy.

Clancy is my girl’s stuffed puppy dog. But to just refer to him a stuffy is to call the Gateway Arch a local art installation.

When my other twin daughter underwent outpatient surgery to remove a hair tourniquet from one of her toes — another absurd tale for another time — we went to Target to find her a prize for being brave (a term used and reused in our family for whenever one, deservedly or otherwise, endured a trip to the doctor.) We found some stuffies on clearance, including two puppies: one chocolate brown; the other, black. E received the brown Larsen, named for the doctor who looked at the toe and almost immediately prepped for procedure.

I immediately vocalized her displeasure with not getting a prize for being brave — as mentioned, deservedly or otherwise — and I scraped up the money to get Clancy a few days later.

Before long, Larsen became a marginal stuffy in the grand scheme. Clancy, however, became I’s inseparable friend. And Clancy has had the living crap beaten out of him over six some odd years. He’s been spilled on, puked on, the stuffing slowly bled from him. And he’s been cleaned and loved every time.

As the girls have gotten older, though, Clancy has become something taken for granted. When it’s time to go to bed, he started to get left in other rooms and, on occasion, forgotten entirely. Some nights, she’d remember as she ambled into bed. Others, she’d come out of her room an hour or so after being tucked in, wrapped in a blanket, looking for Clancy. But there had started to be those nights when he wasn’t entirely and absolutely essential for bedtime.

We left for Missouri on Christmas Day, as has been custom on even years since wife and I tied the knot 14 years ago. The family has broadened out enough since then that we could no longer stay in the same tiny house in the small, Ozarks town that has served as that family’s nerve center for going on two generations. So we stayed in a nearby hotel.

We always make a final sweep of our room whenever we check out of a hotel. Always.

Except this time.

We made it to Branson, where I dropped the family off at wife’s sister’s place and then checked into our next hotel and unloaded our baggage. And it didn’t occur to me that Clancy wasn’t there. Why would it? I, too, took Clancy for granted.

That night, I noticed my favorite Brewers hoodie was missing. And I wondered where Clancy was. Wife suggested I call the first hotel to inquire. I called, and the young, kind front desk clerk who answered took my information and reported he hadn’t seen anything, but would have their team on the lookout.

I then checked our minivan. Clancy was nowhere to be found. Wife checked for herself. Nothing. And I was despondent, nearly inconsolable.

I called the hotel again the next day and spoke to a manager. Again, nothing, but they noted again the urgency of the matter. I scoured our Branson hotel room, walked the paths I took from check-in to the room, praying Clancy would show up. I left a note with the front desk staff to be on the lookout. There are actual lost dogs who didn’t have such efforts taken to be located and reunited with their families.

Because even stuffed animals become family members at some point. These are elevated from possessions to partners to essential to the person’s very self. We all had them: a doll, a blanket, a toy, a stuffy. And if and when we lost them, we lost a part of ourselves in the process. It is amongst the first tragedies that shatter a child’s view of the world being a happy place.

And, right now, I have a little girl right there on the brink of her first major existential crisis. Neither Mommy nor Daddy are prepared to let her know that the world is a very broken place where heartbreak happens too easily and we too often pay the price for taking valuable and valued nouns for granted. So we’re putting on a brave face.

I called the hotel again this morning. They found my hoodie, but still no Clancy. And while I was pleased to know my item was found, it was of no consolation. I could replace my hoodie. It would suck, but I could ultimately live without it.

As Clancy has been loved and well-loved into his current flopsy, dilapidated form, wife and I have occasionally tried to find a replacement. Apparently, shortly after we found Clancy and Larsen, the company discontinued those particular puppies. I looked online, only to see that what I could find was in the aftermarket, and significantly marked up to boot.

Clancy is priceless, but his replacement is awfully costly. Plus, a replacement will never be Clancy. There isn’t another Clancy, not to her and not to us. Clancy is irreplaceable because he is hers. It is, at its essence, an intimate, meaningful I-Thou relationship.

So, if you happened to be traveling between St. Robert, Springfield and Branson on the weekend after Christmas 2020, and you happened to see a flopsy, beaten up black stuffed puppy dog, would you kindly let me know? There’s a seven-year-old little girl who is desperately missing her Clancy.

And a Daddy who isn’t ready to watch his daughter’s heart break, fully knowing that it may already be too late.

a rambling on faith-based memories

I should be writing my typical Spring Training Day post over at Bronx to Bushville for tomorrow, but I can’t.

It’s been a weird few days for me. If this happens to show up in your Reader feed or social media and you don’t want to read me ramble, by all means, I don’t blame you. Have a lovely day.

I’ve been thinking more and more about my early 20s, about to make a series of less-than-ideal life choices (you know, after having already made a series of less-than-ideal life choices) and finding my tribe for a season.

There’s no going back and in many ways, I wouldn’t want to even if I could. I was a horribly maladjusted human being then: lacking in tact, good sense, fundamental kindness. I was selfish, painfully cynical. Some things don’t change.

I was, and to an extent remain, an Evangelical Christian. (I prefer post-Evangelical, but I don’t even know what that means.) My tribe was the Chi Alpha chapter at UW-Stevens Point, the domestic campus ministries arm of the Assemblies of God. If you go far enough back on this very blog, you will likely find references to XA, and not all of them are laurels.

Those days are long gone, but there was an electricity under the surface, a punk rock energy youth and zeal can only generate. We had our cause: living toward Christ-likeness in our charismatic way, sharing Jesus with others, representing the cause well and not being stupid or cheesy about it. (Can’t win ’em all.) Some days, I feel that crackle in the deepest parts of my mind and soul. On rare days, it is a much stronger pull.

We would network with other XA chapters in the region, those conferences were some of the most powerful experiences — spiritual and otherwise — we had. 2002 was singularly poignant, as we had lost one of our own in a car accident just days before. And by one of our own, I mean to say that was someone I deeply cared about and was too dense, immature and stupid to open my heart to her. And perhaps that, too, was for the best, given the blessings I enjoy now with my family. Regardless, we did the best we could. I wrote an entire book manuscript about it, words that will never be shared outside of those who have seen them.

That was nearly 20 years ago. I wrote something like 16,000 words about those two weeks of my life, when a rogue’s gallery of believers became a grieving, burning family. Is it dusty in here? I need to dust.

I wanted to do campus ministry vocationally, so I went to the XA boot camp a few years later and encountered more incredible people. I spent a year of my life doing an internship with XA at Florida State. This would end up being complete and total folly, but I didn’t know that then, and I met more really, really good people, many of whom I still care about deeply and keep tabs on from the cold afar. All it cost me was everything.

When I go anywhere anymore, I see their faces on other people. I’m that weirdo who double and triple takes in just about any room he’s in, and I apologize if I’m in your company and end up looking off elsewhere for a moment. I’m looking at a memory and that memory is tied deeply to my weathered, scarred soul. It’s not you, it’s me, and there’s a very good chance I’m seeing your face on someone else entirely. Just give me a few weeks or so.

Friends, family and the faith that tied us all together in life for a few years. There was joy and suffering, happiness and pain, loss and life and betrayal and devotion.

And somehow, beyond all of the self-inflicted stupidity, backrooms and back-channels, there is still an utterly absurd gospel message that is the seed for extraordinary life. Foolishness to some, a stumbling block for others, but life to those who hear and respond to it.

I count it a privilege to have lived those years and shared those experiences with you, in Stevens Point, for a time in Minneapolis, those weeks in Springfield, that year in Tallahassee. In no particular order, and to everyone and no one in particular from those years, I thank you, I love you and I’m sorry I was as flawed as I was. I hope I’m less flawed now.

Give up your small ambitions. Would that it were that simple.

PS – 750 words later, I know what started this; oddly enough, it was Eminem’s surprise performance of ‘Lose Yourself’ Sunday night at the Oscars. Watching that ripped the lid off those memories, like cracking open a can of Vernor’s kicked down five flights of stairs. Blame Eminem.

briefly, on the chiefs

My in-laws are dyed-in-the-wool Kansas City Chiefs fans, so we at stately Chateau Sirvio had a somewhat-personal stake in the events last night in Miami. Though I am loathe to watch football, I, like most Americans, will settle in and watch the Super Bowl. After all, this is our civic religious practice.

My wife, the football Luddite of her family, kept leaving the room for nerves. ‘I can’t do this!’ she’d say, only to return minutes later, only to get up and leave again. ‘I don’t know how my mother did this!’ Her mom hadn’t seen a Chiefs championship since 1969 and passed away in 2004. She had her lucky Tony Gonzalez jersey, and her Chiefs fandom was passed down to her eldest and youngest daughters, both of whom probably lost their minds as Jimmy Garoppolo threw the deciding interception. I’m sure Betty, far away and yet so close, did as well.

Kansas City was a sports wasteland when we lived there ten years ago: the Royals had Zack Greinke and nothing else, the Chiefs were in the Matt Cassel-ruled netherworld. We lived just north of the Truman Sports Complex. On good Sundays, you heard the war chant. There weren’t many of those.

Yes, long-suffering produces an elation in championship victory that the titans of sport can’t quite comprehend. The Yankees have done that dance 27 times; the Cardinals, 11. Packers fans lived through the 70s and 80s before the 90s brought about the Wolf-Holmgren Packers renaissance, culminating in back-to-back Super Bowls and a championship. The state of Wisconsin nearly closed down for the Monday after, 29 long years since Lombardi brought home Super Bowl II.

And my Milwaukee Brewers have never taken the whole thing home. There was only one world championship pennant issued in Wisconsin, for the ’57 Braves. Once proud franchises that forget what it means to achieve at the highest level tend to lower their own expectations. The Reds haven’t been dominant in 30 years, yet they are the oldest franchise in professional baseball. The Chicago Bears are a charter club of the NFL and perpetually suck. Fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs have all the braggadocio of Yankees fans and none of the titles to back it up, at least not since 1967.

The Kansas City Royals, themselves a bastion of generational incompetence, showed their roommates the way to glory a few years ago, but the Royals don’t have the heart of the community the way the Chiefs do. (At least they’re not the White Sox, whose 2005 is basically stricken from histories everywhere.)

So those of us who are happy for Chiefs fans finally off the schneid are also acutely aware of our status still on it for the clubs close to our heart. We wonder what it’s like to have that moment of championship bliss.

A day later, I want Gates BBQ. I want a Brewers World Series pennant. And I don’t know what I’ll get first.

hello.

I feel this, as though the author was an observer and chronicler of my life.

Hello.

The Art of Losing Friends and Alienating People

briefly, on thundershowers

This was a thread on my personal Twitter feed from the other night, but Twitter being Twitter, split what was one thread into two. Here is the whole thread as it was intended.

Girlb has been up intermittently for the last hour or so, concerned by the fact that their song-playing owl nightlight to timed out and that she thought she heard thunder and it scared her. Each time, I tucked her back into bed and she’d get back up and come back in.

This last time, I brought her back to bed, went to check the weather outside (some sprinkles and that inimitable precursor breeze) and came back to hear her praying. ‘Jesus, please make a bad weather go away.’

I went in to her room, kneeled at her bedside and asked her why. She prayed again for good weather as I got her special stuffie and blanket. I told her, as I do when there is bad weather outside, that she is safe in this house and that the weather can do whatever it likes, it has no bearing on her.

She replied, ‘I can be brave.’

I leaned in, kissed her and whispered, ‘You don’t have to be brave.’ She looked at me, in the glow of a lullaby owl nightlight, puzzled. ‘Save your courage for when you need it.’

I told her I loved her and she rolled over, still disquieted, but content.

Her nascent faith regularly leaves me in awe. It, as opposed to my own deeply-sprained, shaken-to-its-core variety, is so pure, so ready to seek help because she feels helpless in the face of things bigger that her.

I know the feeling.

2018 has been more or less a disaster on this front. Lots of things are bigger than me and seem to threaten the core of my being. I’ve been the one needing to be brave, with mixed effort and results.

I need that comfort and assurance that I need not have to be brave today.

Let the weather rage. I am safe in this house.