Brobdingnagian Cheerios Box
We’re thinking about moving houses soon. It’s been a great run at our little duplex spot here on Warwick in Minneapolis, but we moved here out of necessity back when I was in school. Five very short years later and we’ve outgrown the space. I’ll have quite a bit to say about it when we actually move, I really enjoyed my Cretin retrospective, and I think I’ll enjoy writing a Warwick one, too.
I know I live in Minnesota and I know stuff like this is normal, but it still comes as a surprise to me when we have a temperature swing like this:
Time to lean into it and do some things outside in the winter weather.
About a week back, I helped decorate the tree at my parents house. It is the same tree my family has had since 1991, and it is aging pretty well. I did notice it was shorter and a little more see-through than I recall — yet I still love to look at a Christmas tree on these long winter nights. It has to look a very certain way, though. I’m extremely particular about the type of lights: I can see the 60Hz flicker of LEDs (if you can’t see the flicker, try looking at them out of the corner of your eye) so I’m a staunch supporter of incandescent lights, the bigger the better. The fact that I notice, dwell on, respond to, take pride in getting these details right, things like color temperature, replacement bulbs, wattages, things that seem insignificant to most — I used to think that was a part of me to minimize, to downplay, to somehow outgrow.
But I love that stuff. I love the details.
Dentistry is a job that rewards extreme attention to detail: just ask anyone who casts gold about getting stone expansion right. Or any dentist who has bonded with a 5th generation system and not paid enough attention to dentinal moisture. I delight in mounting casts and checking their articulation with shimstock — I love thinking through how to build in negative error into restorations, I love how you can refine a tooth prep with different grits of diamonds. I love this stuff. The other day I popped on a rubber dam, preparing to do a quadrant of restorations, and I realized that I was in my happy place. How lucky I am!
So the turning point in accepting my detail-dwelling was reading the essay Hypercritical by John Siracusa, a famously particular software developer and technology writer:
But my scrutiny was not limited to my own artwork or the products of multinational conglomerates. Oh no, it extended to everything I encountered. This pasta is slightly over-cooked. The top of that door frame is not level. Some paint from that wall got onto the ceiling. Text displayed in 9-point Monaco exhibits a recurring one-pixel spacing anomaly in this operating system. Ahem.
…
But much worse than that, it means that everything you ever create appears to you as an accumulation of defeats. “Here’s where I gave up trying to get that part right and moved on to the next part.” Because at every turn, it’s apparent to you exactly how poorly executed your work-in-progress is, and how far short it will inevitably fall when completed. But surrender you must, at each step of the process, because the alternative is to never complete anything—or to never start at all.
Sircausa was describing exactly my life — and yet I had never ever ever had anyone at all to talk with this about, and suddenly here was somebody articulating my own personality back to me, more eloquently than I was able. So, he goes on to point out the value of this critical eye, and of course he’s right. The dearth of those so honed in on details makes them rare and their contributions valuable — as long as they figure out a way not to drive everyone around them insane.
I read a poem called “Pushing the Dead Chevy” in this week’s issue of the New Yorker and I realize that, more and more, I believe in an intensely bright, pinpoint core inside of us, unsullied by the difficulties, failures, and harm from the outside world. It’s a nice thought, enchanting even, but I don’t know how much about people it actually explains.
Do we act selfishly out of a desire to guard that last, unspoiled bit of ourselves? Or does it endure despite our selfishness? Does everyone possess such a core? What happens if that light goes out?
I know of no way to cut through the layers of artifice everyone erects around the shining core of their true selves; as an introvert who would far rather talk with someone I’ve just met about their worst fear than their résumé, of course I wish I knew how to get through to that true person at the center. It is enough, though, to simply remember the core inside that other person. A person who may be trying harder than ever to hide it at this moment, but doing more than usual to reveal it. If only you remember it is there.
A giant lady goldfish with eyelashes driving a racecar on the Thanksgiving Day Parade just made my day.
My father grew up in Rochester, Minnesota when it was considered the best place in the United States to grow up. Anchored by IBM, his neighborhood thrived during post-war prosperity; neighbors got together to make a pool — he recalls them pulling their lawn hoses out to it to fill it at the beginning of the season. Summer afternoons gave way to late nights of playing and inventing every game. Similarly, my mom grew up running about a safe and happy neighborhood, caring for the wild cats who befriended her and her siblings, driving Honda dirt bikes fixed up by her father in the field across the road from where they lived. Come to think of it, I don’t know as many stories as I’d like from my parent’s childhood.
But I can tell you about my childhood: it was the best any kid had anywhere and I would do anything, sacrifice everything for my kids to experience something similar.
I grew up in Woodbury, Minnesota when it was one of the fastest growing towns in the United States. Such building and developing gives any place a palpable sense of optimism. All eyes turn to the future, no decay to overcome but simply dreams to realize. Yet, this was only the backdrop. Like my parents, I whiled away my days outside. Summer looms large in my recollections of childhood. Basketball games to 100, by ones and twos. Kick the can. Pick-up football behind John & Steve’s house. Street hockey in front of Matt’s. Making funny videos at Nils’. Richard, with a pint-size golf course made with neighbors in backyards. Justin’s house perched on a hill, with an awesome classic car in the garage, awaiting a restoration I dreamt of watching. Some truly great sledding hills. My mind wanders the halls of memory, picking up and examining extracted essences of experiences: birthday parties, sunburns, passing the house of a crush, running trails, goofing off on tennis courts, mosquitoes trapped in sweat, playing until you couldn’t see the basketball anymore, and that funny feeling of summer loafing when your friends were gone on vacation and you made plans for when they returned. Kool Aid. Trying to keep the summer alive by playing after school before homework on those warm September evenings.
As Mykala reminds me, I grew up with a truly exceptional group of friends. They gave my youth a shape and a substance and a completely safe place, something I can never lose and for which I am ever grateful. May my children have the same.
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