Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies

For more than three hours I sat at a small table with my laptop, listening to nine other people do the thing I’ve never had the courage to do—enter the infamous lair of Dungeons & Dragons. The horrifying role-playing board game my younger self feared would lead my children down a cultic road that would either corrupt or enslave them, possibly even leaving them addicted to creativity, imagination and a love of story.

Silly me.

The Warriors, ranging in age from nine years old to forty-four, were brave. They were talented. They were thrown together by chance. And I, embedded as I was within their small entourage, witnessed the timeless clash of good versus evil. When it was over, I came away with one thought in mind.

What the heck just happened?

First, allow me to introduce the cast of players who meet up by chance at The Inn at the Edge of the Woods. The name has a lovely ring to it and sounds like a charming B&B I might want to visit some time. No. This is a creepy Inn at the edge of creepy woods. None of the players should have stopped in at the inn. If they were smart, they’d have sought out a Super Eight instead which would have been a lot less scary.

The first visitor is Kithri, aka Katy, an ancient druid (Celtic priest) who apparently is a poor money manager. She owes her guild a lot of cash and needs work. I don’t know what she looks like in this fantasy story, but in real life she’s smart and pretty. It is simply her character who is lousy with money.

Next is Jade, aka Allie, the pirate, who announces to the room of strangers at the Inn that she is “very undeveloped, so I might not be helpful at all.” Perhaps this means she’s no good at swashbuckling but great at theft. She needs a new crew, wants to go on a sailing adventure, and also needs to make money.

At this point, I think what the whole team needs is a good financial adviser. Hopefully one of those is about to enter the dining room.

Now we meet Zadath, aka Tully, who plays the role of a barbarian, a big and gray Goliath animal. Definitely not a typecast for this fifteen-year-old with her gorgeous head of red hair and sparkling blue eyes. But she did growl really well. I was almost convinced. Zadath is an ex-soldier, a drinker, in between jobs and – you guessed it – looking for work.

Apparently, this Inn is a magnet for the unemployed. Good luck getting reimbursed for their rooms and supper.

Next through the door comes Vaelopria, who had to spell that name for me. AKA Juliet, who in real life is called the Animal Whisperer, Vaelopria clatters into the Inn with hooved feet. The attractive centaur is a ranger on the run from her herd. Betrayed by her brother, she ran into the inn to hide out. She is the first to arrive with spare change in her pockets, if centaurs had pockets.

Now we meet the half-ork brothers, Norris and Boris, who may still hold a grudge against their parents for those rhyming names. Norris, who goes by “Chuck,” is played by Dan and in real life is the husband of Katy/Kithri as well as the father of Boris aka Will. Norris stopped by the Inn for a pint and was shocked to see his brother Boris there, perhaps because Boris is underaged.

This is already starting to feel like an episode of The Young and The Restless if it took place in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

So Norris, or Chuck, is a wandering monk, but not the religious kind. Instead, he’s a martial artist skilled at harnessing mystical energy for combat. Which explains why instead of praying for the creatures he encountered on this ominous evening, he flew through the air, landed a reverse roundhouse and sent the misty green zombies’ heads flying.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now to his brother, Boris, who in real life is a space entrepreneur renowned for co-commandering a C.A.R. through portals where he and his enormously talented Commander save the universe on the daily. Boris is a fighter who fights with a great sword. Boris wants a dog. He went into the forest in search of a wolf, saw the Inn, and stopped there to get some sleep.

Major mistake.

At this point, I began to wonder if the Inn was really a “Dungeon” and questioned where all the “Dragons” were. I did not have to wait long. Osborne, aka Iain, a minute but heroic paladin, arrives. Osborne, a knight renowned for his chivalry, is . . . duhn da da duhn . . . dragon born. Finally. Osborne has apparently just returned from another incursion and stops by the Inn looking for shelter and entertainment. “I saw the lights,” he says. Of course. Dragons are drawn to bright things.

Interesting that our knight in shining armor is also dragon born. Am I the only one who thinks that’s an oxymoron? We’ll see how this plays out.

And finally, the Racoon, aka Jessica, the wisecracking genius who brings comedic relief throughout the entire adventure. Racoon is a rogue, a quintessential scoundrel. She likes to make the rounds at local Inns to steal from stupid drunk people. She knows that The Inn at the Edge of the Woods also has the best stew around. She shows up intending to steal, but this Inn doesn’t have enough guests, so mostly she’s here for the stew.

Now to the staff. Vester is the hired help at the Inn. Anonda runs the bar and is the wife of Glen who is not a people person. Poor choice of occupation, in my opinion. The couple are retired adventurers. I had no idea that was an actual paying gig. They “gathered their loot” as it was explained to all the other guests, bought a place away from civilization, and opened it up for strangers and zombies, as we shall see.

So, to summarize. Pirate Allie/Jade has lots of loot, is rich, and because of that she gets to sleep in her own private room. Centaur Juliet/Vaelopria wants to stay in the stable, naturally. Fighter Will/Boris is afraid he’ll get murdered if he sleeps in a shared room. He and his brother/father Norris/Chuck/Dan decide to sleep in the same room. Hope that works out. Rogue Raccoon/Jessica is waiting to see who gets the nice rooms because they obviously have money that she is willing to take off their hands. Everyone else sleeps on the floor in front of the warm hearth.

Only, on this night, no one sleeps. At all. Or gets a refund.

This is where the dice come in. All six or eight or twenty of them, I don’t know. I lost count. Every player brings their own specialized set of dice to the event. They’re weird looking and also strangely pretty. They’re not cubes. They look like Temu versions of cubes. Close, but no cigar. From what I could tell sitting across the room from where the action was taking place, every die had a purpose and was rolled to determine things like “perception” or “strength” or “levels of intelligence.”

Apparently no one arrived at the Inn with any awareness of how smart or strong they really were. Instead, they had to rely on chance by rolling numbers ranging in size from, I suppose, zero to as much as 23. I think I heard 23 announced once. Right away everyone cheered and said, “Great! The bad guy is dead.” So, from now on I plan to avoid the number twenty-three. Just to be safe.

The Dungeon Master, aka Lee, casually referred to as the “DM”, shared the story of the Inn with its guests. His daughter, Moira, the musician of the family, provided an ever-changing background of sound effects and musical accompaniment. The DM explained that he would give the group a scenario to react to and then the reaction reacts to their reaction. I think that's what I heard. I was still busy trying to make sense of the dice.

With every piece of the plot, the guests followed the square on the board representing them and decided on a new plan of action. Usually that meant rolling one of the specialized dice to determine how well the assault played out. “You’ll either attack or cast a spell. When you roll your damage, let me know,” the DM said. “I’m not keeping track. This is so you can enjoy combat.”

Enjoy combat. Hunh. I think I saw Boris swallow hard at that one and look at his brother/father, the non-religious monk, perhaps wishing his father was more spiritual and less gymnastic. I don’t think Boris enjoys combat. Not if he’s afraid of being murdered in a shared room.

All of that information overload led to a popcorn break because warriors require sustenance. I didn’t eat any because a) I’m not a warrior, and b) I don’t like popcorn.

When they returned to the table, all hades broke loose. As soon as the cheese board was presented, the hostess, Anonda, asked some of her guests to go upstairs and invite an old woman in one of the rooms to join them for supper. The red-headed barbarian, the centaur and Osborne the paladin volunteered, but the woman’s door was locked. Vaelopria, who has no manners, kicked the door open with her hooves and the group found the guest dead in her bed.

This is exactly what Boris was afraid of and probably why he didn’t volunteer to go with the others.

The diminutive knight, renowned for his heroism and chivalry, suggested that they kill the dead woman. Clearly, he forgot to roll his die for intelligence points. Though the other guests were seated downstairs drinking ale and chowing down, they listened to the drama playing out upstairs and offered free advice.

Boris said to be sure that the old dead woman isn’t a zombie. Racoon said to remove the head because maybe that kills zombies? I’m not sure. The DM rolled his eyes. “Kick the door open, find a dead woman, dismember her, as you do,” he commented sarcastically. Then he instructed the whole group to roll their die to determine their levels of intelligence. A little late for that one, I think.

Let me explain. No, let me summarize. The woman is not dead. She is creepy, though, has a raspy voice, weird eyes, and frightens the murderous group who broke into her room with these terrifying words: “I hunger.” Well, maybe you had to be there. She follows up that acknowledgement with, “The children come for the kine.” Then she attacks the centaur, the barbarian, and the knight. She’s pretty tough.

But here’s how this battle and all the others following throughout the long, dark, weary night played out. Orva, the comatose guest, jumped at the paladin, tried to bite him, but didn’t succeed. “Roll your three twenty in and add your dexterity bonus,” the DM directed. The paladin attacked Orva with a mace, rolled his d20 and added a mace number from his cheat sheet. 1d6, got a five plus 3 equals 8 damage points. The centaur can now kick the old woman. Rude. She rolls a 16 which only allows for a smack on the face. The centaur rolls again, gets a 1d6, adding a strength of 9, and was victorious. “That takes her out,” the DM announced. “She’s gone.” And the peasants rejoiced. Racoon now says to remove the entire body, not just the head.

At this point, you may be weary, realizing that we’ve only just begun. Every round at the table takes six seconds in D&D time and thirty minutes in actual earth time. My back was beginning to ache where I sat at my little table, typing, typing, typing.

Allow me to hurry things along here. You’re welcome.

Tonight’s episode is reminiscent of the old game of Clue, where strangers attend a banquet in a creepy inn, suspicious at first of one another, and eventually must pull together to discover who the real killer is and work as a team to defeat the enemy. I took thirteen pages of notes during this initial encounter. Oh, yes, you read that right. This three-and-a-half-hour episode was only part one. Part two will be difficult to pull off as the members of our little heroic entourage live in two different states separated by two thousand miles.

While the Gang of Three were fighting a dead woman, they also searched her room to the enjoyment of Racoon, but the dead woman woke up and got creepy while her belongings were being ransacked, so who can blame her for defending her dead self? The frightened trio ran downstairs and described what was happening. Everyone wanted to call the cops. I didn’t hear about any D&D cops in the introduction, so, as I suspected, they were on their own.

The couple who owned the Inn were shocked by this turn of events, and right on the heels of their shock an earthquake took place, apparently. The building began to shake and disintegrate causing the DM to jump into action.

“Roll a dexterity saving throw for me!” he ordered. “Unless it’s bubbled in your proficiency, then it does something unintelligible.” I think he explained what it does, but it was unintelligible to me. Sometimes I couldn’t hear very well from my little table. The barbarian rolled a 10. “Roll a d4,” the DM said. She got a 2 and a picture frame fell off the wall and smacked her in the head. “Take a 2 damage,” she’s told. “Scumbag,” she says. That’s what she gets for standing under a picture frame.

Now everyone “runs” outside and here the story takes an ominous turn. A river of misty green, highlighted by glowing green eyes, rushes down from the mountain, headed straight for the Inn and certain destruction of our band of roguish heroes.

Time for another popcorn break. 

Really?

Afterward, the DM summarizes everything they’ve experienced thus far, which begs the question, are these guests the brightest and best if they’ve already forgotten the trauma they just experienced? Just saying.

“What do you guys want to do?” the DM asks. No one asks me. I want to go get some chocolate. I didn’t get any popcorn. Racoon wants to know if the windows are zombie proof. They’re thick and cheap, she’s told. Boris wants to order another round of ale and move a table in front of the door. Centaur believes the green, misty zombies are after one of the guests and suggests that the group sacrifice someone. “You first,” her mother, Kithri/Katy says.

The centaur sighs and pushes a table against the door while Kithri snarls in the corner of the room. Despite their best efforts, the Inn is compromised and the creatures push their way inside. This is what the DM tells them. If you ask me, I think the DM is a double agent.

The pirate suggests that everyone go upstairs so they’ll only need to barricade one floor of the Inn. Racoon and the paladin agree and go upstairs together so they can better view the chaos down below. Boris pulls out his crossbow and takes up a position at a window. Table stackers roll their d20 for a strength save. 10 and 19 plus five. Chuck Norris rolls a 12 and adds 2 proficiencies on top of that. Racoon gets her bloomers in a knot and declares that she wants to kick some old lady. “Bam bam bam!” she yells.

I check my watch. One hour in. Gonna be a long siege.

The redheaded barbarian throws an ax because she moved 6 up and 3 over on the board. She attacks with a 1, 5, 4, or 7 and did not hit. The ax clatters out of the way. I think if she’d just thrown all six of her dice at the green-eyed goblins, she’d have done more damage.

The DM would have let everyone roll at once now that the security of the front door is in question, but no one has religious training. Then why do they even have a monk? The monk rolls his wisdom score, gaining a 10 which is possibly a perfect number. However, he gets no credit for it since we all know he’s not skilled in religion. The team guesses that if someone can light a candle and is willing to sacrifice a hit point, it might satisfy the creatures and keep some of them at bay. Boris volunteers. My hero.

The centaur gets under a table and shoots with her longbow, rolls her attack and is rewarded with a 10 and a 14. She hits, adding a dexterity bonus to the damage. “2 points of damage over here,” the DM declares. I don’t know. It looked like more than to me. The pirate hits a zombie with her pistol. Shooting isn’t very efficient with the undead, I presume. Pistol whipping gives more points of damage perhaps. She rolls a 13 which hits and winds up with 5. I don’t know why.

Upstairs, Kithri the druid is in wolf form. Her speed is unknown, but probably a 16, according to the DM. “I’m biting to attack!” the wolf says, before asking how far a wolf can jump. “40 feet,” she’s told. She growls menacingly but chickens out. I mean, if I was a wolf I’d have jumped 40 feet in the opposite direction.

Hoo boy. You have no idea how hard it is to summarize 3-1/2 hours of combat into one readable blog. My speed on these keys is 140 wpm which, I believe, should give me 26 points of attack. In the future, that’s what I’ll negotiate for.

Basically, the Inn is in utter chaos. The barbarian got wiped out and took 6 points of damage as well. “Why do they hit so hard?” she cries. “They nasty,” her mother/Racoon says. Someone with a blowgun rolls a 5 which is not enough because Zombies ain’t afraid of blowguns. Norris attacks using his monky martial arts. “An 18 will hit, roll 6 and add 4 to it,” the DM, who is not a mathematician, tells him. The non-religious monk flies through the air after rolling his die four times, landing with a thud which crushes the skull of a zombie. “I double killed him!” he says in victory. The DM nods and replies, “What you notice is there’s less of him left than there is of some of the other undead.”

Which made me laugh, but no one else did. War is serious, I guess.

It was all pretty messy after that. One by one, the green misty creatures who infiltrated the Inn were taken out by the whole crew until only the warriors and the Innkeepers were left inside. I lost track of Zester the capable servant early on and suspect he escaped through the back door, never to be seen again. But since I don’t have a die to roll to support that theory, we’ll never know for sure.

There were breath attacks, kidney shots, and 15-foot cones of fire from the dragon-born knight. This paladin is the youngest warrior at nine years old, but I don’t doubt one bit that he can exhale a 15-foot fire blast in a breath attack. I watched this kid lick ghost pepper sauce off his finger earlier that day and he didn’t even flinch. Or drink water afterward. He really is part dragon.

Orva, it turns out, has a perpetual mission to spare the Inn and perhaps the entire fantasy world by making a deal with the green-eyed, misty undead annually, but struggled with her plan this year. Which is why the river of zombies flowed out of the woods, hungrily searching out fresh brains. I think. It makes as much sense as whatever the truth actually is.

But, in the end, they all did their part to destroy the green underworld. As the final enemy hit the ground, a green vapor dissipated and his body zipped away back into the Fay Wild which I cannot explain because I don’t even understand what it is. But I can tell you it caused a sense of distress to the warrior crowd. I felt it, too. I thought once they killed everyone that I could go home and get some sleep. But, no. I had two more pages to type.

A final discussion about how to bring the outside threat to an end led to the obvious question, is there even a winner in this game? Do the zombies stay dead? Does the green mist cause respiratory failure? I think if everyone threw all their dice into the air and ran out the door, we could rest up and call it a night before the demon tree in the woods could turn all of us into Chow Mein.

Dawn approached, walls were popping, floorboards creaking, swords were flying, hundreds of undead bodies were strewn everywhere. It was the Alamo all over again. But at least the green mist disappeared as the sun peaked over the distant hill. “So, we survived the haunted barn?” someone asked. I never heard that the barn was haunted. “Yes,” they are told, “and you can loot the bodies. But you won’t be blessed if you burn down the building.” Well, duh.

So, what have we learned? Following a 3-1/2 hour game, I reduced thirteen pages of notes down to seven for a total of more than 3,700 words on this Word document. All eleven participants, including the DM, the sound technician and the scribe survived what can arguably be called the most disturbing and terrifying night of their lives and yet, as far as I know, no one had nightmares afterward.

For myself, when the dust settled, my eyes were bloodshot, my fingers cramped, my back was aching, and I wished desperately that somehow I had learned to enjoy eating popcorn as a child. All in all, as I packed up my gear, I reasoned that I had suffered about seventy-five hundred points of damage during the entire altercation.

That’s the last time I bring a laptop to a gunfight.

Secret Identity

I have a confession to make. 

I’m not who you think I am.

I know you’ve always thought of me as mild mannered. An average homemaker. A failed farmer. Even a conspiracy theorist. A little too sensitive at times, and a bit naïve at others. Perfect. That’s exactly what I wanted you to think. You can’t have a successful psyop if everyone knows your game plan.

But in keeping with my dedication to humanity, I think the time has come to reveal my true identity to a select few. It doesn’t come without a lot of soul searching. This is a risky move. Some of you will be unbelievers and that’s okay. I can handle it. Just know I’m doing this for you.

I am the Commander of a time traveling spacecraft. Last week, during a critical and dangerous mission, my Co-Commander and I saved the planet Jupiter from certain destruction. You can see how significant to the safety of the galaxy we are. We alone are bringing you world peace. You’re welcome.

We entered a portal in my exquisitely equipped C.A.R. (Cosmic Aircraft Ride), encountered alien resistance, neutralized the enemy, safely exited the gravitational pull of the King of Planets and, most importantly, we did not die. This is a key point.

Assignments and destinations are the responsibility of my Co-Commander. Only after saving Jupiter did he inform me that the King of Planets is arguably the most dangerous planet in our solar system. Its gravity is so strong it can pull in other planets, moons, comets, C.A.R.s, and anything else it wants to, which only makes it stronger. You could say that gravity is its superpower, increasing its air pressure. Frankly, I don't know why we needed to save it. It sounds like a despot planet to me.

In simple terms, if you ever decide to go there yourself, it will turn you into a squashed pickle, my co-pilot informed me. Or a prune or a raisin, he said, or a craisin which he likes better than raisins. Also, “Jupiter possesses The Great Red Spot, a non-stop storm which has been raging for more than three hundred years. It’s so big it’s literally the size of Earth and could gulp Earth and it would be gone. The End. Kaput.”

That’s a direct quote.

I was briefed about all of this while we were enjoying a cold one from Starbucks immediately after completing our last assignment. Visiting Starbucks is the way we defuse our post-combat stress. This is no luxury. Oh, no. It’s absolutely critical for the health of our nervous systems. The expense is even tax deductible if you itemize on Schedule A. Probably. Potentially. I’ll have to get back with you on that.

After his disclosure, I turned to my associate and calmly said, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MADE ME GO THERE! WE COULD HAVE DIED!” He only smiled, reminiscent of his grandfather whose favorite phrase in the face of potential disaster was, “It ain’t nothin’ but a thang.”

I’m done with Jupiter. Still, in the overall scheme of things, it was just another day at the office.

You’re probably wondering how we became secret agents who are indispensable to the survival of our planet. Let me be clear. We did not choose this dangerous path. No one does. It chooses you. I reference your skepticism over the entire premise. It merely proves that you were not chosen. Sorry about that.

Still, I’m glad you asked. You’re probably also curious about the identity of my Co-Commander. To the world he is but a modest thirteen-year-old boy posing as my grandson. But to the universe and beyond, he is a boy genius. More knowledgeable about space than Elon Musk. More logical than Rob McLeod. More courageous than me. Slightly. Only slightly. Actually, that one’s a toss-up.

We discovered the presence of the portal to inner and outer space quite by accident one afternoon while driving my C.A.R. through our local car wash. Don’t laugh. Superman had his phone booth. We have a car wash. But it’s no ordinary auto spa. To the uninitiated, the blue tinted suds smothering your vehicle may appear to be innocent, but the truth is those clever little bubbles are covertly stealing your memory of the entire experience. Be careful in there.

I would have never believed this prior to that unfortunate incident four years ago when I forgot to close the sun roof on my Tahoe while riding helplessly through the tunnel of terror, but now it all makes sense. Aliens made me do it, they with their memory stealing, brain scrambling, baby blue bubbles. Don Ho was right. Tiny bubbles make you feel fine. And stupid.

Anyway.

I’ve lost track of how many missions we’ve been on since we discovered the portal. But it’s a lot. We’ve gone deep into the center of the earth. Traveled to distant galaxies. Taken out aliens both inside and outside the portal. You have to. Those outside the portal may have the appearance of everyday cars and trucks, but they’re manned by aliens who know we’re there to interfere with their hostile plans.

We have weapons, of course. To the casual observer they appear to be constructed from cardboard, but if we exposed the nature of the rare earth material we use that makes my Blat Gun as light as a feather and more lethal than a Bunker Buster, then you’d want one, too. And trust me, you’re not qualified to carry one. You’d shoot your eye out.

We also have aluminum grenades that do double duty as walkie talkies, to use earth terminology. Mind you, we have to make sure it's in the correct mode of operation before we hold it next to our heads. That could ruin your day.  Recently, my Co-Commander, code name W.I.L.L. (Wickedly annIhilates Loser aLiens) designed a multi-purpose machine gun with a semi-automatic mode. Technically, it has plasma capabilities that even the American military has never heard of. I don’t know what those are, but it does have a really cool scope.

Even though we’re a great team, we’ve had our disagreements. One of the most common has to do with my vernacular. It’s not quite up to snuff. During combat, I often get terms like “interstellar” and “stratosphere” mixed up. It’s an easy mistake.

I asked W.I.L.L. about my grasp of cosmos vocabulary and he acknowledged that it’s lacking. “Maybe so,” he said tactfully. “Maybe in that specific field.” This is where the point of contention occurs, though. In the heat of battle, while alien tentacles pull us down and sublimation covers the windows of our C.A.R., all heck breaks out inside our spacecraft. There’s a lot of screaming.

But W.I.L.L. always knows exactly what’s going on. “I’m turning it on to burst mode!” he yells out. “Sublimation is occurring!”

I didn’t know what burst mode does to combat sublimation, so I broke the question down into its individual parts. “What’s sublimation?” I asked, while I obliterated another extraterrestrial with my Blat Gun.

“You’re the Commander and you don’t know what sublimation is?” he said, as he blew up an alien’s body like a child eating a jelly donut. Eww.

“Rude,” I responded. “Don’t be insubordinate. Remember your rank, Sergeant.”

That’s back when he was just a Sergeant. We had a disagreement about that, too. He insisted that he was just as important as I am and even questioned why only I was a Commander. He thought, since he sat up front beside me in the co-pilot’s chair, that he should be the Commander, too. Naturally, the logic of my response was impeccable.

“I’m the Commander because it’s my C.A.R.” I insisted.

Of course, these were top secret deliberations, but in the end I decided to promote him to Co-Commander. Because he’s awesome. And because he’s the only one who knows exactly how our weapons work.

Also, he alone has, supposedly, read the entirety of the three-hundred-chapter Commander’s Handbook. I’m still on chapter three. I’ve had other things to do. But since I’m a little bit behind, I decided to ask him recently whether or not there are multiple solar systems in our universe. I was curious. W.I.L.L.’s reaction was utter astonishment.

“Did you even read the back of the Commander’s Handbook? Did you even read the cover?”

Well, of course I read the cover. And I’ll read the back when I get there. Frankly, though, this is just more evidence of insubordination. If this continues, my only recourse will be to demote him. Privately. I might not even tell him when it happens. He intimidates me a little.

So, there you have it. The honest truth about how I spend my time now that I’m retired. I’m saving the world one extraterrestrial at a time. I’m ready at a moment’s notice to respond to one of W.I.L.L.’s unexpected text messages, “Do you want to go on a mission and kill some aliens?” 

You know I do. I’ve wanted to ever since I watched Lost In Space when I was a kid. Will Robinson was the obvious genius behind that family of astronauts. And now that another W.I.L.L. has emerged in this battle for supremacy, I’m as committed to the mission as he is. 

Just as long as we stop at Starbucks afterward. It's for my health.

With thanks to Scouse Smurf for the rare footage seen above of an undisclosed portal to outer space. Or a car wash. The original photo can be viewed by following this interstellar link: Day 299 Car Wash | Scouse Smurf | Flickr

Blanket Forgiveness

I meant well.

I knew the first year anniversary was coming up. I wanted to send her one of the many blankets I’ve knitted and keep on hand in the guest room closet. Each of them has a little leather tag that reads, “A Warm Hug.” That’s what you need when you’ve lost the love of your life. When you’ve just made it through The Year of Firsts. You need a warm hug. Actually, that’s only one thing you need, but I wanted to send it to her and let her know that I know.

Boy, do I know.

Except I have this problem with procrastination. I might need therapy to get to the bottom of this. Here’s the thing. I don’t like wrapping gifts, mailing letters or mailing boxes. I have actually written and addressed stamped letters that I never mailed. What is wrong with me? We’re talking stacks of Christmas cards, handwritten and sealed in envelopes, that I found in a drawer on the Fourth of July because I never mailed them in December. Since I didn’t finish writing all the cards I wanted to send, I didn’t end up sending any of them.

See? People like me keep therapists in business.

But my dear friend lives in Florida and, since I have no plans at the moment to drive back there, I had to mail my warm hug to her in a box. This required extra effort. I had to package it and tape up the box and address it and follow through by actually taking it to a UPS store.

I know, right? Blister producing, sweat dripping, muscle cramping effort. You'd have thought I was about to dig the Erie Canal.

Please understand. I really wanted to do this. But I knew who I was dealing with here. The person I was dealing with has a mysterious phobia about mailing stuff. So I prayed. I actually had to pray for motivation to follow through on my heart’s desire. Motivation that would turn out to be greater than the inclination to stare at a blanket on my shelf and wish I’d sent it when it mattered.

I am pathetic.

But God is not. He listens to weird prayers like that, and one afternoon motivation struck. I got up like a woman escaping a coma and found a box for a blanket and tucked in a handwritten card and taped it and labeled it and put on my shoes and drove it to a UPS drop off.

I was so happy! Not only did I get up off my keister and do something for someone I love, but I did it in a timely manner and it was on its way, just like that, flying off to Florida to surprise my heartbroken friend. A warm hug en route. I could hardly wait to hear when it arrived.

But.

You knew there would be one, right? I woke up in the middle of the night three days later with a terrible thought. Isn’t it weird when that happens? Why didn’t I get that terrible thought three days sooner in the middle of the day when I could do something about it?

I knit a lot of blankets because I can’t afford the kind of therapy that I really need. Knitting blankets is therapy for me. They also provide a rotating color palette for my living room. I’ve used and worn out a number of these homemade throws by now. Including one lovely green one that was folded on a shelf in my guest room closet in case I decided to repair the hole that appeared in the middle of it after a few months of use.

Oh.My.Gosh.

A cold sweat swept over me at three a.m. Which shelf did I take that blanket from? Why was it separate from all the other new blankets waiting in queue to be sent to someone else after another motivational prayer? Surely I didn’t send my grieving friend a pilled blanket with a hole in the middle of it that smells like my feet? As a surprise????

That’s a terrible surprise.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been nudged on the shoulder by God and brushed it off like it was a pesky gnat. That still, small voice that I’m learning to lean on now that I don’t have Rob’s quiet voice to question my sanity and decision making is often a little too quiet.

I know what you’re thinking. “You’re blaming God for this foul up?” You bet I am. I heard Him say, “Are you sure you put a tag on that blanket?” when I was about to seal the box. But I always tag my blankets. What He should have said was, “Inspect thine blanket for holeyness.”

I think God should have been more specific.

Lying in my bed that night, I hoped I was wrong. I hoped it so hard that I refused to search the other stack of blankets for a damaged one. I hoped when my friend texted the next week that my thoughtful gift had arrived that she would reassure me it was perfect because, after all, at that point this was all about me.

I have never been so embarrassed in my life. When I told a mutual friend what happened, and once she stopped laughing, she said through her tears, “You sent a homeless person blanket to your grieving friend?”

Yeah, I did. And it smelled like my feet.

I forewarned my Florida friend that she might be receiving a sub-par present from me and asked her to let me replace it if that was the case.

            You’re so crazy, she wrote. That’s one reason I love you. 

And when my worst fears proved to be true, and I couldn’t stop apologizing, she wrote this.

Let me put my gift together for you:

The card had a hummingbird. My grandmother loved them and had collectible hummingbird plates.
It was a knitted blanket. I still have a couple of different ones people have made for me. I love blankets.
It was green, like Mike’s soft fuzzy blanket.
It was from a dear friend.
It was from a friend that knows the pain and heartache of losing her spouse.
It was connected to many things in my life. It was so thoughtful, and brought memories along with it that you didn’t even know about.

Like I said, she’s a dear friend.

So, God’s answer to my prayer for motivation was interesting, because I have never been so motivated as I was the day I kept my promise and packaged up a NEW blanket and mailed that one to my friend, too. It had no holes, no body odors, no pilling. And she loved it.

It was one of those humbling times in life when, despite your best efforts, you screw things up. And yet, in the end, it all turns out beautifully. I don’t know what my friend ended up doing with the first blanket, but she really loved the blue color of the next one. It also arrived on another difficult day in her life, a day when a second warm hug mattered.

I’m just relieved that this one didn’t smell like my feet. 

Poetry in Motion

I miss you, baby. I miss having you here so I can call you “Baby.” Sometimes I close my eyes and remember what it was like when you walked up behind me and put your arms around me to kiss my neck or my cheek or my lips, pulling me into your arms. And then I open my eyes and the room is empty. I thought memories are supposed to comfort a person. Mine hurt.

But sometimes they make me laugh. I’d rather be laughing. We laughed a lot, you and me. Not that I was ever as good at laughing at myself as you were. I remember the night you woke me up from a sound sleep, laughing so hard that you were shaking the bed. As usual when you were cracking up, you couldn’t tell me what was so funny for at least twenty minutes. At that point, all that was left for me to do was make you a pot of coffee and get up. Which I would have done if I drank coffee and it wasn’t one o’clock in the morning.

When the story finally came out, you told me your back and waist were so itchy that you got up to put lotion on your skin. But you didn’t want to wake me. You always tried not to wake me. So, that night you didn’t turn the light on in our room, and by the time you realized you’d just rubbed liquid hand soap into your waist and back instead of the lotion standing right next to that bottle of soap, you had to get in the shower to wash it all off. And that’s when you started laughing, all the way through drying off and climbing back into bed.

Nobody I know has ever laughed at themselves better than you did. You were always my hero, but you never took yourself as seriously as I did.

Except when it came to the responsibilities you accepted and the way you cared for your family. Then you couldn’t be swayed or distracted. You took it personally when anyone questioned your character or motives. You hid your feelings a lot, but when it came to the things you believed in and stood for, everyone knew where the line in the sand was with you.

I knew you so well. I didn’t even know how well I knew you until I lost you. There’s a lot I didn’t know until that happened. I didn’t know until after you passed how much you loved writing poetry even though you wrote a lot of poetry to me and about us. Thank God I kept all of it. Now and then I run across something you wrote at exactly the moment that I need it. It’s almost like you’re still writing poetry to me from heaven.

About a year ago, or maybe three years ago, I don’t know—time is irrelevant at this point—I heard someone, probably another widow, say that she knew that her husband held her in his heart even though he’d passed. Sometimes in the years since you left, due in large part to the immense silence that you left behind (not exactly the keepsake I would have chosen), I’ve wondered if you remember me at all. I’ve remarked many times that I know you’re really happy living with Jesus now and that there’s such freedom in that existence that you’d never want to come to live here again. I’m sure that’s true. And anyway, how can I compete with that? I can’t. Thoughts like those lead to a lot of sadness and tears and you’re not here to wrap your arms around me now and tell me that’s “goofy.”

Somehow, on that very day when I questioned whether you left everything behind, including all memories of our life together and perhaps even me, I ran across a Valentine’s Day card you wrote to me in 2018, three years before you passed. There was a sweet note from you on one side and a poem you wrote on the other. 

You see, yesterday was five years since Katy and I drove up the mountain to the hospital in the middle of the covid craziness to give you what you told the doctors you needed—freedom from your broken body and the life support that held you captive. We sat at your bedside all afternoon and evening until, at three in the morning, after I’d been in a chair for fourteen hours holding your hand with Katy seated on the other side of your bed, I began to fail. I’d only been out of the hospital for a month and was still on oxygen. I ended up kissing you goodbye while you were in a coma and leaving to get some sleep. I never saw you again. You passed before I could return.

And I’ve felt so guilty about that. I’ve worked through it over and over again, knowing you were too pragmatic to expect me to stay so long that night that I’d end up being re-admitted to the same hospital I’d just been released from because, while I waited at your side, my oxygen level was dropping. It makes sense on paper that I left to get some rest. But in the arena of life and death, why couldn’t I have just stayed so you’d know when you took your last breath that I was there with you?

So, that poem. Here’s what you wrote three years prior to that terrible last day.

As I wake each morning and hear you softly breathe,
I feel your warmth beside me and I never want to leave.
So as the sun lifts higher beckoning each day to start,
Though I rise and leave you sleeping, you’re carried in my heart.

I found out later from the stories I watched and read about people who’ve had near-death experiences, that when the soul separates from the body, your senses become multiplied beyond imagination, especially when it comes to what you can see. People reported that they could see not only the medical team trying to resuscitate their body, but they saw things and people outside the building, in other rooms in the hospital, even in other buildings, simultaneously at times.

When I heard that, I realized that when you rose you saw me sleeping at Dan and Katy’s nearby cabin. And when you left us, you carried me, and all of us, in your heart with you. I realized that you never wanted to leave us. And that you knew I didn't want to leave you that night. I know it sounds crazy to even worry about such a thing, but that’s part of grieving. There are too many questions, too many why’s, and too few answers on this side of heaven.

You continue to love us and know us from where you are, baby. And there’s this other amazing mystery, too. I know that “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our sins. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

It's all written in the present tense. Which means I’m already there, baby. I’m already there with you. I’m just trapped right now by time and limited vision, but from the freedom of your perspective, according to Ephesians chapter two, we’re together, raised up with Christ, and seated together with Him. That really helps.

So, happy fifth heavenly birthday, as some call it. Or heavenly arrival date. Although, since you live outside of time, you probably don’t know it’s been five years today. I just want you to know I carry you in my heart, too. And I can’t wait to call you ‘Baby’ in person again, outside of time, raised in Christ, face to face with Jesus.

I love you. I'm so glad you loved writing poetry.

Sorry, Not Sorry

My favorite son-in-law bought his wife a state-of-the-art time saver for Christmas. What a great guy.

In a move that has to make Elon proud, Dan and Katy now own their very own AI robot. Sort of. Technically speaking. I googled it. It’s probably true. 

All while my own primitive version of the same robot sits in a corner of my house, sulking and gathering dust. Proof again that she has character issues.

You may recall that my little robotic floor sucker was not programmed to follow rules, obey orders, or even speak English. My little Roomba thinks she’s in charge, yelling at me in Spanish from somewhere deep inside the drapes she’s just swallowed or within the echo chamber under my bed anytime she gets into trouble, like it’s my fault.

Seldom does she have a coughing spasm in the middle of the kitchen floor where I can plainly see her and rush to her aid. Nope, she thrives on drama. She sabotages herself in places that camouflage her so well she can claim both abandonment and unemployment while she gets away with taking a long, winter nap.

Like I said. Primitive.

But the new and improved version, which is so awesome it should have an upgrade to its name, would never think of playing dead under my daughter’s sofa. Katy's Roomba, which she named Janet, has her own garage right in the center of the house, which makes her a member of the family. She came equipped with an app that actually mapped out Katy’s entire home, sorting it all into work zones. Now, anytime my daughter wants the hallway vacuumed, for example, she just opens the app on her phone and Janet quietly gets to work.

Quietly. What a profound concept. I’ll have to wake up my Roomba and mention that to her. I don’t think that'll be a pleasant conversation.

I was inspired by Katy’s decision to give her Roomba a lovely name like Janet. It’s pleasant and makes me think of spring breezes and a tranquil, English garden. So, now I’ve named my Roomba, too. I call her El Diablo. Turns out I do speak a little bit of Spanish.  El Diablo makes me think of chaos and frustration. It’s appropriate.

I don’t think El Diablo grew up in a home where cleaning was a priority. She vacuums in a pattern I’ve previously described as Two-Year-Old Scribble, creating random pathways across my floor, bouncing off the walls and randomly shooting herself into another room like she has ADD.

While Janet, on the other hand, exhibits a bit more finesse. She hums a happy tune while she vacuums in a straight line, the way decent human beings should. When Janet reaches the far end of the work zone, she pivots slightly, makes a 180-degree turn, and vacuums all the way back to the beginning. Back and to, back and to. It has a nice little rhythm to it. Back and to until the room is methodically and entirely cleaned. She sticks to a logical plan.

And here’s the kicker. Janet, unlike El Diablo, even mops. Yes, you read that right. Janet.Mops.The.Floor. And should the inconceivable happen, let’s say she were to misread her internal map and accidentally suck up a drape, shutting down her motor, Janet has manners. She’s also multi-lingual. She speaks German and Italian and Portuguese and Japanese and Spanish and probably even Swahili. But my daughter wisely requested that Janet speak to her in a language she could understand.

English.

The Queen’s English.

When Janet has technical issues, she doesn’t throw a temper tantrum like her inferior cousin from south of the border. Nor does she blame my daughter in Swahili, because Katy doesn’t speak Swahili. Here's the way Janet describes her predicaments.

Please, mum. It appears I have swallowed a drape. Canst thou release me forthwith from my unfortunate dilemma that I might serve thee better, and continue to sucketh up dirt and muddy messes from thine floors?

Verily, verily, doth she speak thusly to her mistress, the fair Lady Kathryn.

I watched this magnificent creature at work in my daughter’s house for the first time last month and, I'll admit, it left me with a meager amount of empathy for poor El Diablo. You probably saw this coming. 

I, too, am now jealous of my daughter’s robot.

But, I have a confession to make. The last time I asked El Diablo to spend two hours bouncing around my living area like a teenager wearing headphones, she sucked up all the fringe on my rug. In plain sight. At least this time I knew where she was when she took her lunch break. You gotta find the glimmers where you can.

While I was untangling the fringe from one of her little brushes, she suffered a debilitating injury. I broke off one of her feet. She is now an amputee and, I assume, limps when she cleans. I don’t know for sure because I’ve never turned her back on since that terrible day. I’m afraid of her temper. 

So that’s the truth. That’s the real reason she’s sitting in a corner of my house gathering dust. And also this. I'm two-timing her.

I have a new house cleaner. She’s not AI. I think she’s from California. She’s friendly and cleans my entire house, top to bottom, in ninety minutes, far more efficiently than El Diablo ever did. And just before she gets in her little blue car to drive home, she rolls my trash can up from the street, just because she’s nice. 

El Diablo never did that for me.

I call my new house cleaner Susan. Because that’s her name. And the best part is, Susan never yells at me in Spanish. Or English either. Also, she never swallows my drapes.

So, Sayonara, El Diablo. It’s been real.

Also, sorry about your foot.

With thanks to Chris Bartle for permission to use his exquisite capture of Roomba's true psychosis. I think his machine is still more advanced than mine. The original photo can be viewed by following this link: Roomba Long Exposure | 45 minute exposure of my Roomba clean… | Flickr

Gravity

I don’t look at trees the same way now. Or hawks flying in the air, in the lucky off chance that I actually recognize and can identify one. I pick up random feathers outside my front door and place them on my windowsill, thinking they’re a reminder that you’re close by. I have a collection of dimes that come my way one at a time, all stored in my truck’s center console, “Yankee kisses,” a friend told me in explanation. 

The evening clouds floating across the sky, backlit by nature’s color wheel, pulse in an open invitation to wonder about the miracle of their temporary artistry. A hummingbird feasting on the daily purple blooms outside my window stops me midstream and I pause, my fingers hovering above the keyboard as I watch the tiny bird who hovers, feeding from my flowers.

Are you watching me work the way I watch birds fly, Baby? Are all of these things reminders that you see me and we’re less than a breath apart now?

It’s not as though the colors seem more vivid when I watch the rhythms of life play out beyond my picture windows every day. In truth, everything beautiful took a back seat to the vibrancy that was you when you were here. I hate to admit it, but there’s a tarnish over the world now. Or maybe that’s just a haze that I look through. We loved the mountains, you and me. But when you died there, I knew I’d never forgive them. Now I dream of being near the ocean because its restless yet calming waves echo the longing in my soul for the serenity I lost.

Something has changed in me. I never used to give a thought to heaven except on Sunday mornings as we all sang hymns about a place I’ve never seen and can’t imagine. I believed in it, of course, but I couldn’t identify with it yet. Now I want to know what you’re doing there.

If there is a fourth dimension to living, I guess I’ve found it. Or rather, it has found me. I’m not making that up. Our thirteen-year-old grandson is captivated by the concept of space and time and tells me that time is the fourth dimension. That seems logical since time is invisible, untouchable, elusive, even restless. We can’t capture it or slow it down. It lives outside of us but traps us within its mathematical boundaries.

I guess.

I’m no mathematician.

I think time is the invisible veil that stands between the two of us, baby. You’re outside of it, free as a bird, wholly alive, living out the eternity mankind longs for. While I remain trapped within its parameters, my feet held to this ground by another invisible force—gravity.

You escaped gravity, Baby. Way to go. You’re amazing.

So, the waving trees and their blowing branches. Jesus said we see the effects of the wind, but we don’t see the wind itself. We don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. We can’t control it. But we know it’s there because we watch the breeze ruffling the leaves.

Everything important is invisible.

I guess this sounds like the ramblings of the woman who loves and misses you. All true. But the moment I knew you escaped the gravity that still holds me down, I began looking for you in the open sky above, searching for you as if by peering at the atmosphere overhead I could spot a tear in its fabric and see you peeking through.

Not exactly Biblical, but since Jesus used a lot of word pictures to try to get his points across, I guess I’m in good company.

Something has changed in me. I don’t just see this moment or that sunset or our grandbabies and children the same way anymore. And I wonder, while I'm staring off into the distance, if your face is inches away from mine wishing I realized you are looking back into my eyes.

Maybe you are.

With many thanks for Nina Canela for permission to use the beautiful artwork seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link:

GRAVITY | ENB + ReShade (my own config) | Nina Canela | Flickr

Questions

I have questions. They go beyond easy answers. Beyond political motives. If they’re that hard to explain, what am I doing analyzing them here as if I can figure things out?

I don’t know. It’s just one more question.

My heart broke two days ago like that of many others when a good and kind man was murdered in public. I assumed people across the board would condemn this brutal act. Some did. Many did not. To my shock, many people on various platforms celebrated the death of a thirty-one-year old husband and father of two. Members of Congress decried a request for one minute of silence to pay respect, yelling in opposition and making fools of themselves.

Which is ironic. Charlie Kirk was murdered for upholding our First Amendment right to free speech, a right guaranteed to every one of us across every persuasion. Even the right for congressmen and women to vehemently object to a request to come together in silence. Instead, they opted to exercise their right to free speech over simple respect for a dead man.

Kindness sometimes leads a person to limit their rights in deference to someone else. Love does that, too.

The same thing happened in a gathering of the EU when a Swedish member of the European Parliament yielded the majority of his speaking time to request a moment of silence on behalf of Charlie Kirk and his family. As some members stood quietly, the majority of the cast of characters exploded in anger like out-of-control school children.

A man was brutally murdered and they refused to acknowledge it. How is that kind of behavior from public officials even human?

And yet. In countries like Spain and Germany and South Africa large gatherings of people lit candles and prayed together. They held photos of Charlie inscribed with condolences in their languages. I didn’t know his influence spread that far. Actually, it was worldwide as leaders across the globe and on every continent expressed their horror and disdain for the cowardly act of violence that took his life.

Like many, I learned he’d been shot via an email I read on my phone. He was still alive at that point and I prayed for his recovery, searching the internet and TV news programming for any updates. It looked bad and soon enough came the word I and others most dreaded.

I’ve spent the last several days trying to put my finger on why this has hit me so hard. I’ve been hit very hard a few times in my life. The most recent was when my beloved husband died more than four years ago. That’s a wound I will live with for the rest of my life. But this shock resonated differently. I finally realized the last time I felt this way was in 2001 when our country was attacked by terrorists we’d never heard of. The horror that spread across the U.S. when the towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and the 4th plane went down in rural Pennsylvania was a jolt to our sense of security.

Barbara Walters hosted a television special soon after entitled, “Who Is Al-Qaeda And Why Do They Hate Us?” Because most of us in America had no idea who they were or why we were on their radar. We found out why they hated us. We’ve never forgotten. But that was an enemy from without. Now, within, we are falling apart. And yet it’s so difficult to identify why our country is so divided and how to repair the damage. You would think the way forward is through open debate and respect when viewpoints differ. But that requires actually listening to each other.

There’s a good reason that Abraham Lincoln, another martyred man, quoted someone else who was also hated for the things he said. “A house divided cannot stand,” Jesus warned.

We are a house divided.

Are those among us who champion free speech, no matter how vitriolic it is on either side of the aisle, hated for preserving this freedom? Was Charlie hated because he valued the exchange of ideas and invited people into open debate? Is free speech so dangerous that it must be controlled by a partisan government or else stand by while its proponents are put to death?

Someone wrote this week that, “Words are not violence. Violence is violence.” I agreed at first. But reading between the lines and searching the gray area between black and white, now I’m not sure. There are plenty of words currently being slung around that lead to hate and violence, most of them by an irresponsible media. Just ask any Cuban refugee what an authoritarian regime really is. Or an immigrant from China if the Chinese party-state is fascist.

If we’re going to use nouns, we need to know what they actually mean. And we need to be aware of the tremendous impact and influence social media has, particularly on young people. Perhaps this is one reason Charlie Kirk reached out to this demographic. Because he knew that words can tip the scales and lead to violence when there are no alternatives to hatred.

I’ve watched many of the debates and speeches Charlie gave in the last year and a half. Like Charlie, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ and conservative in my world view. And like him, I don’t hate people who see things differently than I do. If I learned anything from listening to Charlie, it was the importance of hearing others and respecting their right to believe as they do and say what they want. As long as it does not lead to violence.

I’m afraid for our country. In addition to knowing first hand his family’s grief and the theft of his life, this is why I feel so distraught by Charlie’s assassination. If it happened to him, it could happen to anyone. It strikes at the heart of the American experiment. Between the Bill of Rights and the modifications that followed, there are twenty-seven amendments to our Constitution, and the first one, the premier right listed by the founders of this remarkable country, is the right to free speech and assembly.

Plenty of people have died in the last two hundred fifty years to protect that right.

And now there’s one more.