Ulysses the Brilliant Jackass

In the ninth grade, my Uncle Bob and Aunt Hester returned to the Philippines for six months to care for Hester’s ailing father, while I stayed at home with the world’s most brilliant jackass.  His name was Ulysses, and he was technically a donkey, but our family always referred to the breed by the other name.  It was just more fun to say.

Equus asinus asinus, aka the burro, Ulysses was a local celebrity around my late parents’ apple farm.  Every fourth grade class took a field trip to Quercetin Farms, and every field trip got hitched to Ulysses hay wagon to visit the “last year trees” which would soon be taken out of production.  Inevitably, a student would ask my father the name of his donkey.   “Ulysses, dear...” my father would answer, “...and he’s a brilliant jackass.”

Each year, another group of Mrs. Anderson’s fourth graders would marvel at him.  Area graduates recalled Ulysses climbing onto the school bus in order to open the emergency exit and walk off onto our loading dock.  My father had trained him to bring up the paper up from the township road, and Ulysses faithfully delivered to the porch in return for an apple slice and a thank you.  He stomped his hoof to answer simple math problems:  “Ulysses, how many bushels are on the table?”  Clop, clop, clop, clop.  “That’s right, four!  Now if I fed you one, how many would be left?”  Clop, clop, clop.  “Right again!”  He’d even been written up in a special feature in the Star Ledger by a visiting North Jersey reporter whose family farm bordered our own.

Aside from a long list of parlor tricks, Ulysses had the innate ability to pick the losing contender from a pair of potential candidates.  The spring Top Gun came out, we all laughed at Val Kilmer’s “Iceman” macho character clicking and baring his teeth at Maverick, and we’d spent the next eight weeks clicking our own teeth together and calling each other a loser.  Along the way, we noticed Ulysses began clicking his own teeth together in fake bite--every time one of us said the word “loser.”  

One afternoon, we asked Ulysses who would lose in a bike race--me or my childhood friend Carl--and Ulysses clicked his teeth at Carl.  20 minutes and a lap around the farm later, the jackass started a winning streak that didn’t end for the next 14 years.

Ulysses started his guessing locally by calling the results of a local mayor’s race, successfully picking a crusty old farmer named Willard as the loser.  He was flawless in picking local football teams, gained notoriety calling the Patriot’s one-and-fifteen losing record in 1990, and correctly picked the losing candidates from Dukakis, Bush Sr. and Dole.  Only in 2000 did his record become flawed, but at least he was in good company.  Most of the country thought Bush Jr. was a loser, too.  

This summer, I spent a few weeks back east at Bob and Hester’s, recovering between treatments and catching up on Bob’s first year of retirement.  We spent a few afternoons on the farm, trading watercolor techniques and marveling at effectiveness of the near invisible hearing aids Bob now wears.  On our last day together, I visited Ulysses, still hanging on around the farm in his golden years.  Old, feeble, and near his final days, his long bristly ears still perked up when he heard my voice, and he clicked his teeth twice at me right off.  

“Hey old timer, I haven’t even asked you my question yet,” I objected, but he only clicked his teeth at me again.  I’d planned on asking him who he’d pick as the loser between me and my cancer, but instead stopped and thought better of it.  Ulysses is, after all, still a jackass.

"Man Quiz"

If you're a man who's been together with your partner for more than two years, you know that the days of trying to impress to “get some” are long gone.  Relationships change as time goes on, and domestic roles evolve with each stage of family life.  But every relationship requires active effort to keep alive, let alone healthy.  When a relationship matures past the bedroom, how do we measure up in the other rooms of the house?  The role we play in every room demonstrates the respect we hold for our mates.  

Fellas, here’s a short quiz for you to take stock of your standing:

1)  If the laundry basket is full, I:

a)  throw more laundry on top of it
b)  bring it to the washing machine and separate lights from darks
c)  what’s a laundry basket?

2)  If the dishwasher needs to be emptied, I:
a)  leave my dirty dishes on the counter
b)  empty it
c)  why would my wife need to be emptied?

3)  If the bed needs to be made, I:
a)  sleep in it anyway
b)  straighted up the sheets and comforter
c)  throw dirty clothes on it because the laundry basket is still full

4)  If the toilet bowl or seat is dirty, I:
a)  go in the yard
b)  grab the cleaning supplies and give it a quick wipe
c)  make it dirtier

5)  If I am hungry and it’s dinner time, I:
a)  order out from my favorite takeout place
b)  cook something edible

c)stand at the refrigerator door and look back and forth between it and my wife, hoping she will take the hint.

If you answered A or C more than twice, question 6 is a follow up:
6)  How’s living with your mother these days?
a)  awesome, I love doing nothing around the house
b)  pretty good, but she looks shorter than I remember her as a kid
c)  not good, she still yells at me for playing video games all day

At 94 years old, it’s unfathomable to my Grandma that a man would (or could) cook dinner.  It was acceptable for a man to construct a room, but certainly not maintain it afterwards--this was the infamous "women's work," and surely no willing man would serve his family by preparing a meal or giving his kids a bath.  The expectations upon a modern man include not only professional competency, as was expected in Grandma's day, but domestic competency.  


Simply put, a man today should not be dependent upon his partner to feed, clothe, and dress him along with the children.

In the midst of full and part-time work schedules, regularly examining our domestic roles can avoid fostering the unspoken resentment seen in many families between partners.  Life is simply too busy to place the onerous of maintaining a house on the shoulders of one partner. Men, we didn't marry our mothers, we didn’t marry a cleaning service, and we didn’t marry a drive through window.  At one point, we found a woman who was worth the effort, and it’s really not that hard to show her we still care.

Shrinking and Growing

Around my neighborhood, there are a few families who are comfortable hanging out and talking openly about God, and even though our views may not be identical, I look forward to the times when we can chill together and be honest about our thoughts and experiences. I’m continually seeking to grow in my faith, but find that the opportunities often come in the form of gathering with friends who don’t attend a traditional church...and I’m growing a little jealous of them with each passing day.

Each Sunday, we gather, talk about things that only we understand, then go away and gather again the following week. We collect an offering, watch as personalities occasionally collide, and put on our best faces as we rush out the door to the next great thing. In the face of programs and meetings about more programs, am I really living as Christ intended?

Every Thursday, my family attends a small group study with several other friends. We share a meal together, we catch up on each other’s lives, pray for one another, and study Bible passages to determine how they apply to our lives. We were the offshoot of a much larger group, and set out on our own to make room for newcomers and convene in a more manageable size, but our little group is shrinking.

As my interest in Sunday’s corporate gathering shrinks, my convictions regarding Thursday’s small groups are strengthened. It is in this more intimate setting where relationships mature and understanding is reached. As my friend’s Aunt Hester says, “too many cooks and you end up getting lost in the pot.”

If you’ve read this far, there’s a chance you’ve thought about your role in the world, and asked why you’re here in this time and place. “Why are we here?” ranks among the oldest and most disputed of debates, and it’s a question I love exploring, especially when it’s with someone who moves beyond academics into tangibly demonstrating their love for people hurting or in need.

I sat down at a table this past Sunday with a couple I’d never met, and after a few moments of introduction, was incredibly encouraged by the way strangers with a common faith can immediately develop a bond. Decades apart in age but seated only a few feet away, we both recognized that the question “why are we here?” has a continually evolving tangible answer, as we first take stock of where we are, then find opportunities to serve those who are “here” with us.

Rikki the Pet Towel

Growing up in a tiny Filipino village without most of the things I take for granted, my Aunt Hester was so poor that a family pet was a luxury way beyond her means.  She told me, “ ‘Hester, too many mouths to feed!’ were my grandmother’s words, when I asked about keeping a housepet.”  So she let the subject drop outwardly, but inwardly began to breathe life into the inanimate objects around her.


“A doll would just get stolen, and we could not afford one anyway, so I snatched a finely embroidered tea towel from my grandmother’s bureau, and was delighted when he introduced himself as Rikki.  I would play with him each day, tuck him back into the bureau each night, then fetch him again the following morning, not knowing that my Lola always knew and allowed me to do so.  As if I could sneak something by my Lola!  It was many years later that I learned Rikki was a wedding gift from her own Grandmother, which she patiently watched her little granddaughter tie into doll shapes, drag through the mud, and tuck in with love each night.  As it became more ruined in her eyes, it became more precious in mine. ”


Age, personality, and proximity kept my mother and Uncle Bob from ever being close.  Dad optimistically took this as a challenge, and when Bob and Hester moved back to the states on furlough, Dad was quick to volunteer his time updating their parsonage and allowing Bob to take a rest and take in a few Steely Dan shows.  Dad said he loved the idea of serving someone who served so many, and hoped it would be a springboard toward closeness in the life of his wife and brother-in-law.


During the summer of ‘82, Dad renovated their kitchen, tearing out a wall, tiling the floor, and building the breakfast bar that I would spend hours at for years later.  Toward the end of construction, he spotted Rikki sitting on one of the new countertops and made a mental note--with an updated kitchen, who wanted ratty old rags laying around?


He finished grouting the backsplash on a Friday night, with just a few minutes to toss the last of the construction debris into the backyard burn can before my mother arrived with pizza and cold beer to toast a job well done.  Dad’s optimism had been working, as Mom and Uncle Bob had spent more time together in the previous month than they had in the past 10 years.


That stopped after Mom brought in a gift basket for the new kitchen, filled with cooking gadgets, hand soaps, and a selection of new dish towels matched to the kitchen.  “We noticed the old one was pretty worn, so I picked up some new ones at Penny’s...hopefully the color’s all right; if not, I can always exchange them...”


That was all I remember before Hester turned and screamed, as she saw my father casually toss Rikki into the burn can and head back toward the house.  Rikki never stood a chance, and Dad never stood inside the new kitchen, or inside Hester’s good graces, again.  Swearing at them, she chased my confused parents off the porch and back into Mom’s little Subaru before Dad could unload the beer, and Mom and Dad stayed up late drinking Rolling Rock after trying to patch things up on the phone with Uncle Bob.

When my parents took their fateful doses of tainted Tylenol the next morning to ease their aching heads, it was Hester who was first to arrive when I called in a panic, it was Hester who followed the ambulance to the hospital, and it was Hester who informally adopted me throughout the duration of my childhood.  For me, the sins of the father were not passed down to the son.


Even so, it was years before she let me dry the dishes in the new kitchen, and even longer before I could light the burn pit without first counting the towels.

The Pickers

Every Thursday night outside my little home in Prairie View, a little contingent of faded Ford pickup trucks cruise slowly along, quietly searching.  Every so often, a solitary man will hop out, pull on the heavyweight work gloves which ride shotgun, and grab a random item from a random front yard.  Few people know them, no one is angry when they pick up things from their curbside, no one notices when they quietly roll on to the next community.  They are the Pickers, and Prairie View is one of the last neighborhoods that they cruise before making their weekly pilgrimage to the Lake County Scrap Metals yard just down the way.

In nature, when a tree falls as a result of age or wind-driven forces, it will slowly revert back to the earth from which it came.  Generations of Powderpost Beetles and colonies of Carpenter Ants gnaw quietly, day and night, slipping silently beneath the deadfall’s bark and boring into its heartwood.  Over years, even the most stately hardwoods become spongy and soft, as the combined efforts of endless chewing and moisture penetration turn them back into rich, black humus.

In nature, we have the beetles and ants, but in the suburbs, the Pickers do the lion’s share of large object recycling.  On Thursday nights, all good suburbanites roll their trash to the curb, and with it, the occasional large metal object.  The Pickers roll through, with an interior radar which seems almost magnetically drawn to discarded metals.  I’m continually amazed at how quickly they arrive, and have noticed a weird correlation between the size of metal scrap, and the speed at which they materialize.  Upon moving in several years ago, I rolled the first of a pair of old gas grills left behind by the diminutive previous owner to the end of my short drive, only to see an ageless, unremarkable man loading it before I’d returned with the second one.  I helped him load it, though he didn’t need it, and we exchanged broken pleasantries, each trying to speak the other’s native language.  

His name was Sanctius, which once upon a time translated to mean “saintly,” or “holy.”  We’ve always exchanged waves since, and more than once I’ve traded him a few dollars or cold six-pack for an old Cannondale that never should have gone curbside in the first place.  He’s been amused that a square white guy like me can make a mean tamale, and I’ve been amused to find he knows the words to every Johnny Cash song playing quietly inside the cab of his old Ford.

Last week, during a sleepless spell between chemo treatments, I realized with clarity that I may not last long enough to restore the 1985 Toyota 4Runner I found a few years ago on a Nashville Craigslist posting and bought on a whim.  It’s mechanically sound, but like all old red Toyotas from that era, the body is shot and faded to a sickly pink.  No reason it should differ from its owner.  Better to be rid of it, as it is a mocking reminder of what a healthy body should look like, but doesn’t.

I began with a rusted pink quarter panel I’d removed weeks ago and never got around to, and was in no way surprised to see Sanctius’ brown F-150 quietly roll to a stop moments later.  As I slowly carried the second piece to the end of the drive, his dark eyes held mine for a moment, then looked past me to the detached garage I’ve used for years as a shop and man-cave.  When he looked back to my eyes, there was no hint of joy at knowing he’d found a small fortune in scrap metal and odd parts, just the human concern that one person expresses to another in unspoken empathy.  He backed his old Ford up, loaded what he could, then arranged to return an hour later with his younger brother Christopho to load the rest.

Upon his return, Sanctius surprised me for yet another time.  He knows the look of a man being eaten by cancer, he told me, and he and his brother took a few minutes to pray with me, for strength, for courage, for peace.  It was the peace part that resonated most, for it was the kindness of a stranger that most showed me the true meanings of two brothers named “holy” and “Christ-like.”

I know (of) you

It would be easy to casually remark that Stephen King’s 2006 Lisey’s Story is the long version of the old adage, “behind every great man is an even greater woman.”  But the surface telling of a widow obsessively remembering life with her late husband is also a vessel used to explore the lives we live in public, versus those we choose to share only with our dearest confidants.  Anyone voluntarily subscribing to a celebrity Twitter-feed should understand the difference between Knowing someone, and knowing of someone.  Lisey’s unfolding memories underscore this gap, which King refers to as the difference between love and curiosity.

“When you look at me, you see me holistically,” remarks writer Scott Landon to his wife in a memory.  She cares for his person, and his personal well-being.  As a couple surrounded by followers and fanatics, she cares for the person Scott Landon, not the beloved bestselling writer.  As King brings her to life through his first person account, it’s difficult to know when he is simply providing her character’s voice, and when he’s using her to voice his viewpoint on fame and all that accompanies it.  Both voices proclaim that truly Knowing a person comes from intimacy, and the other, a sense of  knowing-of, is depth-less and trivial.

When we know-of someone in the public eye, what really can we say of them?  We know-of those things a publicist crafts while engineering their persona.  We know-of those things which spill out from tabloids, based on secondhand observations of decisions made in private.  We know-of their image, crafted to make us believe they are our dear and trusted allies.  The relationship is one-sided at its best, and unhealthy at its worst.

Truly Knowing a person is being let in behind their daily defenses.  Knowing is having the key to the little door they live behind, to the room where they think, and feel, hurt and heal...and lock when they head outside to face each day in public.  “I was lost, and you found me, I was burning, and you gave me ice,” Scott recalls to Lisey gently in recalled exchange, sitting together in a hospital room after he has been deeply wounded by an obsessed and unbalanced fan.  This is a couple with full access to each other’s hidden places--not only married, but caring and devoted friends.

As with every man and woman who has left their mother and father behind as boys and girls, they bear with one another’s sometimes literally crazy family histories.  The very burdens which can dig in and hurt us as individuals are lighter when shared between two people.  King uses his couple to illustrate the “leaving and cleaving” aspect of married life--leaving behind parents, families, and all other past histories, and cleaving to one another as supportive friends through all endeavors.  

The tightness of Scott and Lisey’s relationship is one I can see in only a handful of marriages around me; two, maybe three.  I’m pretty sure that it’s the product of a unique mindset, and of a unique pairing of people set aside for one another by design.  I don’t believe there is only one person “right” for another, but I have witnessed that there are “perfect” matches, and not just the ones found on the bestseller’s list.  

Her Morning Walk

On Monday, an exceptionally bright young woman walked to her door, pulled on a light jacket, and headed outside for a walk.  She soon met another person, who greeted her warmly, though she was a stranger.  

“Come, have a seat, and learn about ME,” said the stranger, thrusting out a colorful invitation toward the bright young woman.  
“I don’t know who you are, though,” replied the young woman.
“But I’m so INTERESTING!” said the stranger, again holding out the colorful invitation as the young woman continued on her way.

She walked briskly along for several more minutes when a second anonymous stranger greeted her in a similarly familiar way.
“Hello, old friend,”  the second stranger called to her warmly.  “Stop a moment, and let me tell you how USEFUL I am!”
The young woman paused.  “Thanks, but I’m not really in need of anything today,” she replied, continuing on her walk.  
“If you change your mind and need anything, I’ll be there for you--like a trusted friend!”  the second stranger called out from the increasing distance.

The bright young woman had nearly forgotten the morning’s two odd greetings when a third stranger approached her suddenly on the sidewalk.  
“My best friend ever!  It’s so good to see you on the sidewalk this lovely day.  Let’s get caught up.  Tell me all about yourself!”
“Have we met?” asked the bright young woman courteously.  
“Not officially, but I’ve seen you on the sidewalk dozens of times,” replied the completely anonymous random stranger.  “You walk by here all the time on the way to somewhere interesting and useful.  I’d love to know all about it, so that I can tell you all about the completely relevant and beneficial attributes that a completely trustful random stranger with my unique mission statement and helpful service-minded attitude can offer.  You probably didn’t know HOW helpful I can be to you.  Let’s be friends so I can tell you all about ME, and then you can check in on me and see what I’m doing all the time.”

“Maybe some other time...like when I really need something,” the bright young woman replied, and stepped off the sidewalk to hail a cab for the return trip home.  
As she opened the door to the cab, she noticed the third stranger already talking to another person on the sidewalk.  Neither looked up as she closed the door and settled back in the seat.  

“Where to, lady?” asked the driver, with a hint of accented speech.

As they drove along together, they traded the small talk that cab drivers, doormen, and hairdressers make to put others at ease.  They drove past the second and first strangers, both talking to their new unknown best friends, and telling them how useful and interesting they were.

The bright young woman thanked and paid the cab driver, then walked up to her front door in the late morning sunshine.  Within minutes of stepping inside, she had forgotten taking a walk at all, and carried on with her day, unaware of the strangers still greeting their new best friends on the sidewalk outside.