Thinking about the past
I’ve been thinking about the past a lot lately.
Little things, mostly — playing Wiffleball in our sloping front yard, imagining the towering maple trees are outfielders and trying to avoid the poison ivy growing in the ditch; helping my brother rebuild an ancient flatbed trailer, shirtless in the summer heat; trying to chop ashes drifting from the burn barrel out of the air as if I was Luke Skywalker wielding a lightsaber.
I remember the smell of Lake Erie and the feel of the mist blowing off of it, moist and pleasant and alive. The extended family would get together there each summer for a fish fry, the kids tiptoeing across the sunbaked sand toward the water’s edge, watermelon juice drying on their faces. We’d go there, too, on the 4th of July. We’d lie on our backs on the steep slope rising up from the beach and watch the skyrockets explode above us, the light reflecting on the water below.
We were little, and the world was big, and death was a word with little meaning.
Now, somehow, we’re big. The world seems smaller. And death is all around.
It’s not just Jim or my brother’s adopted daughter or the almost daily e-mails informing me that relatives of people I work with have died. It’s realizing that my elder siblings are nearly as old now as my father was when he died, and it’s thinking about my mother’s memoir, which one of my sisters compiled and recently mailed to me. I haven’t seen the memoir yet, but it’s got me remembering pictures of my Mom from when she was young and beautiful. The photos are faded black and whites, curled at the edges, and even when I was a child, they seemed old-fashioned.
We’re like that now, my sibs and me. We’ve become boring grown-ups, not running and playing but sitting together in crowded rooms talking about people and times long past. Our parents are gone. We have jobs and responsibilities. All that innocence that infused even the most boring of days with a sense of possibility has dwindled away.
I think of this especially when I talk to LeAnn and Jim’s children, Maddye and Ford. I’m in the midst of writing Chapter 3 of this series, which focuses largely on the kids. And time and again, I find myself comparing my childhood to theirs. For more than half of his life, Ford has shared a home with cancer. Even when Jim didn’t have it, the word was there, hanging over the family like the sword of Damocles. Ford barely remembers a time before cancer.
And Maddye. When I was 17, there was little room for anyone in my life except me. Selfish and childish, I regarded my parents as providers and inconveniences, people controlling my life with rules I didn’t like. Although my dad died just two years later, when I was 19, I rarely regarded him as mortal before then.
Ford and Maddye have always known their father can be hurt.
I wonder sometimes if they have Wiffleball or lakeshore memories — or if their childhoods were so colored by cancer that careless innocence was denied them.
And I wonder — all the time, it seems — how my sibs and I grew so old. In my head, we’re still young and vital. My brother has the trunk popped on his Chevy Nova, and Supertramp is blaring from the 8-track on his Jensen speakers. My oldest sister is there with her husband, hanging out on the porch swing and talking about “The Gong Show,” and my youngest sister has a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a t-shirt covered with a picture of a bassett hound. My middle sister is making a candle inside the kitchen, and I’m outside with a friend, swinging on a rope from one of those maple trees.
Summer was supposed to last forever.
Let’s go back to Blue Rock
In late November, John Clanton and I accompanied Jim and Ford to the hill country south of Austin, Texas, for a party celebrating the release of a literary journal called the Blue Rock Review. A few of Jim’s poems were published in the journal.
I wrote a brief blog entry about it awhile back. Today I was looking through my notes from that trip. I’d been saving the material in case I needed it for a story, but I don’t think I need it. So here it is, mildly edited, straight from my notes to you.
———————
We’re in a stone lodge-style compound in the hill country south of Austin. The place is owned by Billy and Dodee Crockett. Billy is a touring musician. He’s fit and bright-eyed with long dark hair and a crushing handshake. Dodee is some sort of banking or investment executive. She’s tiny with a shoulder-length brunette bob and prominent cheekbones; she bustles around, making sure everything’s in order, while Billy stays out of the way.
The compound includes the main lodge, the Quiet House (a separate guest house) and various outbuildings, all of a type. The main lodge, where the Crocketts live, has a series of balconies and decks, an opulent professional recording studio and a performance hall. The lodge also has a tower overlooking a deep valley. The river ordinarily runs through the valley below, but it’s dry now, and the Blue Rock — a fairly massive bluish boulder in the midst of the river bed — sits there like a tiny island.
Jim is amazed by the silence outside the lodge. It is striking. There’s no noise but the faint whisper of wind.
Jim has been here before. Once, he stayed in a guest room. He looked out the window and saw a deer. He’s not a hunter, and he doesn’t like urban sprawl. We passed a fawn and a doe on our way in. “Some people would look at that and want to shoot it,” Jim said. “I don’t know. How could anyone want to do that?”
Jim is happy here, the happiest I’ve seen him (Ken’s note: Up to that point, anyway). His friends are here. They’re writers, poets, photographers, musicians and artists, and most of them recognize him at once. He gets to talk about his books with his community. People are interested in what he has to say.
The colors of the lodge are all comforting earthtones of gray, tan and brown. A sitting room is separated from the gourmet kitchen by three wooden steps and a row of bookshelves no more than four feet tall. One wall is dominated by a towering stone fireplace, flanked by wooden bookcases. Double glass doors lead out to a deck that extends the length of the lodge. Another high bookshelf, perhaps 10 feet tall, sits opposite the fireplace and just off-center. In front of it, two wooden tables have been pushed together into an L. Copies of the Blue Rock Review sit at the top of the L, stacks of them, and Jim’s books sit in three smaller piles nearby. Nathan Brown’s books sit beside his, and a row of CDs occupy the base of the L.
Nathan is Jim’s closest friend here. He and Jim participate together in poetry readings, here and elsewhere, and Jim’s admiration for his friend is apparent in the way his face lights up when he sees him. Nathan is a photographer as well as a poet. He’s here with his girlfriend, Ashley, and a child.
The bookshelves are packed with a variety of books, CDs, DVDs and knick-knacks. “Christian Theology” and “The Christian Theology Reader” share shelf space with a carriage clock and a few smaller timepieces. An assortment of Penguin trade paperbacks sit there, too, near an oversized shelf filled with art books. Other shelves hold books on astronomy, philosophy, history and more.
Christmas music plays from wall-mounted speakers, and stockings hang from the mantle.
At the top of the lodge’s tower is a room with 360-degree views of the hills, river, wildlife and scrub trees. There’s a comfy couch, a table with an ornate Scrabble set and a pair of binoculars mounted on a tall tripod. Jim’s eyes are drawn to a yellow house on the nearest hillside. It’s a sprawling place, certainly expensive, but unlike the other houses in the valley, its bright color erupts from the earthy landscape. Jim can’t quit looking at it. The house so bothers him that he once wrote a poem about it.
“It’s sad,” Jim says. “I don’t know what it says about me that I come out here and look out on all this beauty, and the first thing my eye goes to is that yellow house.” Even here, in what is to Jim an idyllic landscape, minor annoyances distract.
Blue Rock is an isolated place. Tiny roads wind through the countryside, and directions include instructions such as “turn at the Baptist church.”
Jim is hoping that he’ll be invited to spend the night here. It’s happened before, and he clearly wants to stay here again, but he won’t ask. Too impolite. It’s a measure, perhaps, of his desire to be liked, to leave people with a pleasant impression, that he won’t request something he very much wants even though this may be his last opportunity to get it.
About 3:30 p.m., after driving seven hours to get here, Jim learns that he has only four minutes to read his poetry. It’s the same amount of time Nathan and a female poet get, but it’s not nearly enough. Jim perches on a window seat near the double doors in the book room and leafs through his poetry books, muttering quietly to himself as he plucks yellow Post-It notes from pages and revises his planned reading list.
“Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut,” he says, smiling.
Jim is wearing jeans and the same multi-colored striped sweater he was wearing the day I met him. He’s very slight, like most people here. Few of them carry more than a couple extra pounds, and most are attractive and in their 30s or 40s. They talk about art and lake houses and wear carefully chosen casual shirts — most comfortably untucked — and jeans. The men have short hair, and most have glasses. The women have bob haircuts or longer hair pulled back from their faces. Everyone is well-scrubbed, and their casual looks are calculated and expensive.
They’re all aggressively friendly. They call the books “merch” and make bad word-nerd puns, like “Don’t be-merch your reputation.” Everyone seems to have a camera.
At 4:05 p.m., five minutes after the event’s scheduled start time, the doors open to paying guests. Dozens of people paid $15 a pop to gain entrance. Admission cost includes the readings and musical performances, a copy of the journal or a T-shirt, and snacks. There’s a problem with the audio mix, so instead of entering the performance room immediately, the attendees are diverted into the kitchen and book room, where they surround the “merch” tables. “Twelve of our artists are here tonight,” Dodee tells one. “They’ll sign books here later.”
The guests are almost exclusively white. Most are women 50 or older. They wear bright clothes — banana yellow pants, embroidered Asian vests, lime sweaters, gold shawls. Most wear jeans. One man has a quarter-sized peace sign hanging from a beaded necklace and is wearing blood-red athletic shoes, blue jeans, a gray longsleeved casual pullover and a black formal vest with a silk back. Another woman wears a black velvet longsleeved shirt, black fringed suede boots and tight leopard-print pants, all combined with a green fleece vest with three black bears printed on the back. Others are dressed formally, apparently regarding this as an event destination.
Jim moves among them with a smile on his face. No matter how much success he’s enjoyed as a father and professional, this is where he’s happy. This thing is his. He’ll share it with his family, with those who are watching, but it’s really something for him. He may only get four minutes in the spotlight, but they’re his four minutes. He’s already savoring them, even though the reading won’t be for another hour or so. At the same time, he seems nervous, standing a bit aloof from the crowd.
Earlier, he’d watched as Ford walked out onto the deck and down an uneven staircase to a platform further down the hill. “Ford said he’s going to go find someplace quiet and listen to his music,” Jim says. “He’s not really good at mingling yet. In fact, I think he’s bad at it.”
“I’m not so good at it, either,” I say.
Jim pauses. “I’ve gotten better,” he says. “I think.”
The performance begins. Billy Crockett welcomes people to the Blue Rock. “Somehow it worked out that I just started looking into the western sky about a week ago,” he says. “Have you seen those two bright things in the sky? That’s Jupiter and Venus. Venus is the headlight, and Jupiter is the bright planet, and they’ve been getting closer every evening. I looked it up on the Sky and Telescope website, and guess when they converge. Tonight. Isn’t that fantastic? We’ve got our own little convergence of folks here coming from far away, you know. Whatever orbit you’re in, you’ve found your way here.”
Joining Crockett on stage are Mac McAnally, an acclaimed country songwriter, and Jon Dee Graham, an Austin legend whose smoky voice rings of authenticity. They banter and play music. After awhile, they take a break, and when they return, Jim is called up on stage to read.
He sounds shaky at first. I’m worried that the star power in this room is going to crush him, that he won’t be able to compete with the sound system, the celebrity, the guitar trio. He’s just one guy with one voice.
But Jim wins them over. He tells them a little about his condition, leaving out the terminal part, and warms them up with three quick poems. One expresses Jim’s disdain for Southern rock music, which doesn’t seem calculated to endear him to this audience. Then he busts out his secret weapon, a poem called “On Remembering Poetry.” The poem endeavors to force people to remember it by insisting that they won’t. It’s filled with funny lines, and the audience responds perfectly, laughing at the appropriate moments and making Jim’s face light up like a beacon. He’s controlling this crowd, pulling their strings, making them dance to his tune, and by the time he reaches the end (”You won’t remember this poem. You won’t remember this poem. You won’t remember this poem. I’m not wearing any underwear. You won’t remember this poem.”), the audience is his. They rise up and give him a resounding standing ovation.
Ford is excited when it’s over. “They were playing some crazy country-type (music),” he says to his father, “and you said that stuff about Southern rock, and I thought, ‘Damn, Dad … they’re not gonna like that!”
“Well,” Jim says, “they’re not really doing Southern rock here.”
“I know, but it’s pretty close.”
“At least it wasn’t Lynyrd Skynyrd,” Jim says.
Ford’s reply is fervent: “Thank God!”
At the end of the night, as we’re getting ready to go eat Italian food with Nathan, Jim finds out that Jon Dee Graham loved “On Remembering Poetry” so much that he told Crockett he needs a copy of it. Jim is so flattered he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Graham didn’t bring any CDs to sell, but he has a few out in his vehicle. He gets one and trades it to Jim for a copy of Jim’s poetry book, “Antidotes & Home Remedies.”
Jim talks about Graham all the way to the restaurant. The Italian food is great. It’s a fitting ending to Jim’s amazing day.
Ford Chastain, guitar hero
Spent some time with Ford last night. John Clanton and I wired him up with audio equipment and videotaped a lengthy interview on topics ranging from silly song lyrics to how hard it is to be 15 and facing the loss of your father.
One of the things that struck me was how Ford filled the silences between questions with music.
Throughout the interview, he held his acoustic guitar, hiding behind it as if it was a shield or a barrier, something between him and us. His fingers drifted across the strings even as he talked. A few times, John and I remained silent, watching and listening as he strummed songs by Nirvana and Queen. Some tunes were unfamiliar to us, perhaps new songs Ford was working on in front of us, but all sounded right. He played so softly that we had to be quiet, and each time I asked a new question, I felt a little guilty for interrupting his subdued performance.
He seemed older last night than at any other time throughout the months we’ve known him. Older, more mature, closer to that crossroads of childhood and adulthood than ever. He’s looking more like his father, his brown mane wild, his teeth (newly freed of braces) sparkling in an open smile.
He’s been through a lot, this kid. He can’t remember much before cancer.
Maybe that’s why his music is so mature. Maybe that’s why he suddenly seems grown-up. He has lived in the shadow of cancer most of his life.
But now, he said, he knows it’s real.
Chapter 2 just went up
Chapter 2 of Jim’s story has just been posted on the “Life is real” main site.
This chapter takes a look at Jim’s life through his poetry and through the eyes of some of the people who know him the best. I think it’s pretty funny, at least in places, but two editors here cried a little when they read it. I think that’s a testament to how touching Jim’s life is and how easy it is to care about him and his family.
Let me know what you think.
Welcome
I suspect that many new readers will be joining us in a couple of days, when the first chapter in this ongoing series appears in The Oklahoman.
For those newcomers … welcome! I hope you’ll find something here or in the other “Life is real” blogs that touches you, makes you laugh or educates you a little about cancer, life and love.
Here are a few things that might help you get the most of these blogs:
1) Start at the beginning. Go back to the first blog post (there aren’t that many) and read the rest in chronological order. That’ll get you all caught up on everything so far.
2) If you’re looking for the rest of the post that was excerpted in The Oklahoman, it’s the one titled “Why.” (You can find it under “Recent Posts” on the right side of the screen.)
3) None of this would be happening if not for Jim Chastain, his wife LeAnn and their teenaged children, Maddye and Ford. They’ve been kind enough to invite us into their lives as they face some of the scariest stuff possible, so please play nice. I encourage you to post comments on my blog and the others, but remarks that are hurtful toward the Chastains will be removed.
4) Check out some of the links on the main “Life is real” page. You can visit Jim’s personal Web site, listen to Ford’s music, buy Jim’s memoir and poetry books, read additional stories about cancer and more.
That’s about it. Welcome to the site. I hope you’ll come back often.
First chapter should be out this Sunday
I can never guarantee that a story will run on a certain date — this is a newspaper, after all, and you never know when a major news event will cause a feature to be postponed — but the plan is for Chapter One in the Chastains’ saga to appear on Jan 11.
If you like it, thank Jim, LeAnn, Maddye, Ford and their extended family for giving me so much access to their lives. If you hate it, blame me.
This first story centers on Jim’s cancer battle. Later stories, which should appear about once a month, will focus on his biography, his family, his writing and more. I hope you’ll stick with us throughout the series and post comments on the blogs: mine, Jim’s and Charlotte Lankard’s. Photographer and videographer John Clanton would welcome your comments, as well. You can reach him at jclanton@opubco.com.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
I know it’s a couple days early for this post, but I just wanted to wish everyone a great Christmas and a happy New Year — especially the Chastains.
My Christmas wish is that they’ll be able to spend Christmas 2009 together. Jim thinks things will be pretty grim for him by May. Every time he mentions that, I find myself thinking of the old Frank Sinatra song, “Pocket Full of Miracles.”
“I hear sleigh bells ringing
Smack in the middle of May.
I go around, like there’s snow around.
I feel so good it’s Christmas every day.
Lee-ife’s a carousel. Fee-ar as I can tell,
And I’m riding for free.
So if you’re down and out of miracles,
I’ve got a pocketful of miracles,
And there’ll be miracles enough
For you and me.”
If any of you have one of those pockets, now would be a great time to use it.
We’re all all right
People keep asking me if I’m OK.
“Man,” they say, shaking their heads, “I don’t know how you can do this. I couldn’t do it.”
Martyrdom is seductive. There’s a part of me that wants to milk the sympathy for all its worth, and often I acknowledge that yes, it does suck to spend your working hours confronting your greatest fear, to write difficult stories about the worst part of life, to grow close to someone whom you know you’re probably going to lose. It’s tough to see people hurting. Every day brings another heartbreak, and sometimes it feels as if I’ve paid twice the ticket price to watch only the last 10 minutes of a movie.
It’s easier to say that than to slap my inquisitors with the truth: “I’m OK. Jim’s the one who’s dying.”
This blog is about me, I guess, but this story isn’t. No matter how sad the tale is, I can walk away from it. Jim, LeAnn, Maddye, Ford and their extended family can’t. I’m a visitor in their lives, a voyeur of sorts. I’m that guy at a party who just sits in a corner and stares. I’m watching them. They’re living.
And the thing of it is, they’re living well. I think sometimes that if I was in Jim’s shoes, I’d be maudlin and downtrodden, cataloging all the ways in which life let me down. Jim is celebrating whatever time he has left, and his family is right there with him. They don’t drown themselves in tears and embrace nihilism; they’re too busy laughing and bickering and deciding what to have for dinner or which movie to watch. Jim doesn’t have time to wallow in self-pity; there’s too much to do: writing a second book, going to poetry readings, doing his job, visiting friends, paying bills and doing one-handed yard work. There’s a fat house cat to pet, a panting dog to let out.
How am I? Better to ask, how are they?
From the look of it, I’d say they’re OK.
Thank you for asking. I am, too.
Dunno what to say
I’m facing a quandary. I have stories to tell about Jim, but I’m not sure if I want to spend them in this blog or save them for full-on newspaper articles.
I’ve started writing several anecdotes in this space, but have gone back and deleted them all. Can’t tell that one. It might work for my third story. What about … no, no. Not that one, either. It’ll be perfect for the fifth story.
So I’m sitting here wondering what I can tell you. Oh, here’s one:
I was riding with Jim and Ford in their sport utility vehicle south of Austin, Texas. We’d just pulled out of a fast food joint — Burger King or Taco Bell, can’t remember which — and all of a sudden Jim …
Never mind. I want to save that one, too.
Correction:
Jim’s party is tonight (Dec. 10) from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Full Circle book store at 50 Penn. In my last post, I said it started at 7 p.m.
