Never Far Away

Life goes on. At least that’s what they tell us. Actually, by repeating the phrase back at other people, it helps make them feel better about you that you are feeling better—but you’re not. You’re just moving with the flow, swept up in the momentum of life moving forward.

In the fall, I found out a private school nearby needed people to come in at night and help some of their students during a time slot called “guided study.” I told the director a bit of my story and how I would try to make it through the first week, but that there were “no promises.” I did. And then, I made it through the next week, and the week after that. We are now in the month when the students I’ve met across weeks numbering in the 30s are looking forward to the end of the trimester and going home. I did better than I thought I would.

Maybe the reason I managed to do the “life going on” dance had to do with a young man I met my second week of tutoring. He needed help with his statistics assignment. I hadn’t done statistics in decades, especially statistical word problems that required solutions relevant to terms like median, standard deviation, mode, and variance. I had to draw “pictures” to figure them out. He said to me, “why are you drawing pictures?” We both learned that he was visual and this offered us a window into understanding his learning style.

The next night, I was asked if I wanted to work with him one-on-one. I said I’d give it a shot. We’ve been meeting four nights a week (and Sunday nights, too) since late September. I’ve learned that he likes order and routine. I’ve tried to create that five nights a week.

My days are spent working on other things. I’m writing a book. A week ago, I drove to Waterville and then, Oakland, and offered a new seminar I’ve developed, The ABCs of Medicare. I began my week by sending out another newsletter for the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund. Yes, life goes on. But you are never far away.

Springtime has dawdled this year, taking its sweet time getting here. Those of us who live in the Northeast have learned patience with the seasons—those who haven’t must contend with their constant carping (that does nothing to speed along seasonal change). At the very least, they’re always going to be disappointed. I’ve learned that life can be disappointing. Grief and loss are excellent instructors.

Spring is also a time of year that reminds me of all the previous beginnings of baseball dating back to the time when I was probably five or six and learning that baseball seasons all have starting points. These always correspond with spring’s arrival.

These (spring) memories are never far away.

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Absurdity Illustrated

Wheaton College holds a special place in our hearts. It’s where Mark spent four formative years between August, 2002, and May, 2006. We made the 180-mile trek (from Durham, at the time) probably close to 100 times to visit him on-campus.

I’ve been reminded often of late that there are many people who don’t know of Mark’s baseball exploits at Wheaton and before that, at Greely High School, in Cumberland, Maine. In high school, Mark was also a defenseman in hockey, and one of the captains of the team as a junior and a senior. The barefoot-walking, vegan superhero, who didn’t seem enamored of “doing sports” while making videos and blogging his way across the country, was once quite an athlete.

Back when I was driving up-and-down (and sideways across) Maine, retraining the state’s workforce in my nonprofit role, I regularly touched on “transferable skills.” Mark’s death and the subsequent focus on his life and our memories of him reminded me on Wednesday that his laser-like focus and discipline he drew upon “doing sports” transferred readily to that next creative chapter in his life, when he walked away from the diamond.

Professor Charlotte Meehan played an integral role in Mark’s literary and creative development when he showed up at Wheaton. She organized a wonderful reading in his honor on Wednesday at the college. More than 50 people filled the May Room in the Mary Lyon building to hear selections chosen by Meehan of Mark’s work. These were read skillfully by former professors, his college baseball coach, the sports information director, friends and classmates, and other faculty. I closed the reading with a selection from my 2014 book of essays, specifically, “A Northerner’s Journey Crossing the South.” Continue reading

We Showed Up

There’s a huge advantage to living nearly halfway across the country from the rest of your clan when you are 21 and you are a brand new dad. This formative experience fosters deep bonds between you and the other two members of your unit.

Being so young and suddenly thrust into the role of parents forced the two of us to become really clear about our lives and our love for one another. Yes, I suppose we could have gone in the opposite direction, but what we lacked in money and resourceswe more than made up for in devotion to one another and our newborn baby boy, Mark.

When I look at photos of the two of us from the early 1980s, I’m struck by a couple of things. First, I’m amazed at how young we both looked. This was the stage in life when many people our age were getting started on a career, and contemplating what grad school to apply at. For the two of us, it was cobbling together enough cash to pay our rent, keep one of our two clunkers running and on the road, and later, how best to sync our dual work schedules so that Mark could have a parent home, spending time with him and nurturing his spirit.

On the steps of our duplex in Chesterton, IN (circa 1986)

After I fell out with the God people in Hammond and Crown Point, Indiana, I landed a job working in a prison. While Westville Correctional Center sure as hell wasn’t glamorous, it offered decent wages and even more important for our young family at the time—access to health insurance and our first HMO. Continue reading