Enough already

On a Monday last September, after my employer had decided to eliminate my position but three and one half weeks before the Zoom meeting they scheduled to tell me, when the calendar hinted at autumn but the Vermont weather did its best to convince you it was still summer, I sat outside in a circle with ten coworkers on the first day of our annual staff retreat. With sunglasses on to block the sun and our respective opinions of the retreat, we listened to the instructions of a storytelling workshop trainer before taking ten minutes to draft our personal stories to share with the group. 

I followed the trainer’s storytelling prompts down the hall to the left and straight back to my childhood. To Q-Bert on the Atari. To candy cigarettes and baseball card bubblegum on the walk home from the local pharmacy. To two new outfits for school every fall. To made-for-TV movies about nuclear fallout. To family road trips to campsites or grandparents’ houses. To the day our family bought a CD player and my sisters and I each got to pick out a new CD. To the black and white TV in my parents’ bedroom that had 13 channels—14 if you counted the UHF channel. To the Dukes of Hazzard.

I was most definitely a child of the 80s. And as a child of a minister and a child care provider, I was also a member of a lower-middle-class family. The family that only bought used cars, whose vacations were only ever road-trips to campsites or grandparents’ houses, who could only afford two new outfits for school every fall. The family whose budget meant superfluous gifts were out of the question, even if I desperately wanted to upgrade my generic orange Chevy Corvette Matchbox car with the official Dukes of Hazzard General Lee one—that gorgeous, orange 1969 Dodge Charger featuring the Confederate flag and all of its implications none of us white suburbanites yet understood. My parents did their best to provide for us, and come Christmas time and our birthdays, we were certainly more fortunate than some children. But I still went to school every day feeling unprepared to face the gauntlet of abundance and judgment.

When my classmate, Jacob V, bragged about Super Mario Brothers and asked me if I also got the new Nintendo console for Christmas, I said I was more into baseball cards while silently convincing myself that Q-Bert and Pitfall 2 were as good as video-gaming would ever get. When Jacob teased me for wearing the same pair of jeans as the day before, I lied and said he was mistaken. When he called my bluff and said I should mark the jeans with ink so I could prove the next day that I owned more than one pair of jeans, I agreed, and then spent the evening trying to remove the ink mark from the denim. When the boys in my class started playing Dukes of Hazzard with their respective orange General Lee matchbox cars, I pretended not to be crushed after Matt W. told me I couldn’t play with them because my Generic Lee wasn’t enough.

The storytelling trainer’s prompts were so powerful, it seems, that with my sunglasses now blocking watery eyes, I ultimately landed in a childhood moment I hadn’t thought of in over 30 years: a quiet time of independent play with my Cabbage Patch Doll—as I said, my parents did their best to provide for us. I’m roughly 8 years old and through the powers of imagination, I have stepped into the shoes of a lower middle class parent struggling to provide for his child/doll. It’s Christmastime and I’m explaining to my child/doll through very real tears that all I can afford to give her is a small pillow.

“Simply having a shameful Christmas time.”

This repressed memory has no doubt been lurking in my subconscious for at least the last 7 years, feeding my parenting insecurities, nudging me almost daily to diligently save my pennies so my family is never without, while also quietly pushing me to give my child as much as I possibly can so that he’s never without. So that he has enough.

When it was my turn to share my personal story and these memories with my coworkers, I struggled with how to conclude the story. We all struggled, really. Ten minutes isn’t a long enough time to draft a personal story that’s both compelling and cogent. This was my rationale when I ended my story with a punchline about striking out Matt W. on three pitches in a Little League baseball game. And this was the rationale I told myself when my boss’s personal story about ensuring a healthy work–life balance ended with her seemingly advocating for an unhealthy work–life balance. And so I left the retreat that day, eager to finish crafting my personal story, completely baffled as to how to end it, and wondering if my boss was maybe trying to tell us something. And then.

Three and one half weeks later, I signed on to a Zoom meeting where I was told “it’s not us, it’s most definitely you,” and I found myself staring down the barrel of unemployment, cursing the can of repressed memories the storytelling trainer had opened up, and fighting off visions of giving my child one small pillow for Christmas. On cue, my old friends, anxiety and depression, showed up for an unannounced visit; they truly are the worst houseguests. And I became terrified the ghosts of my unknown future were going to send me spiraling into a melancholy state of Generic Lees and ink-stained Levis and of never being enough. But … a funny thing happened on the way to my 40s. 

At some point during the trials and tribulations of my younger Benchly (see nearly every previous blog entry), I managed to snag myself a healthy relationship with an extraordinary woman. How, you ask.

Well, dear readers (read: reader), while I was busy lamenting gifts I did not receive as a child, I overlooked the ones I had been given: compassion, honesty, respect, and love. Each of these gift-wrapped treasures from my parents laid the foundation upon which I’ve built my entire life. They enabled me to cultivate and nurture a relationship with the Mrs. for the last thirteen years so that, as I lay there on the cold, hard gurney transporting me to joblessness, Mrs. Benchly’s calm and confident bedside manner eased my worries, evicted our uninvited houseguests, and, faster than you could say “Possum on a gum bush!,” nursed me back to confidence and straight to LinkedIn.

On a conscious and oft-subconscious level, these presents have also been at the forefront of nearly every parenting decision I’ve ever made. From how to talk to Baby Benchly about his adoption, to listening to and valuing his opinions, to cautiously allowing him to interact with the world and find his place in it. And combined with the gifts of storytelling, creativity, and curiosity my parents also bestowed upon me, these presents helped me face this career transition head-on and to quickly land a new job at a righteous organization four weeks and four days later. (Thus far, the work–life balance has been appreciated!).

I still don’t know how to end this story. I suppose that’s OK. As a parent, I have really good days like when my son is given a gift and offers to share it, or when he volunteers to donate some of his toys so less fortunate kiddos can enjoy them. And then some days I don’t necessarily want to write home about, like any day he’s had a case of the “Gimmes” and I’ve been short with him in response.

Fortunately, no matter what, each day always ends, a new one always begins, and with it an opportunity to start over. It’s calming how episodic parenting can be. You just have to make sure you freeze the frame every once in awhile so Waylon Jennings can help you appreciate the parenting challenges you’ve overcome, the loved ones who helped you along the way, and the moments when you can admit to yourself that who you are and what you have to offer are enough.

It might be well if you would ask yourself

Are you better off than you were four years ago? Statistically speaking:

It doesn’t look good.

But, but, of course the unemployment rate and deficit spending increased! COVID-19, baby! Blame COVID!

Fair enough, but consider that, after adjusting for population size, US deaths this year were more than 85% higher than in Germany. 81% higher than in Canada. 28% higher than in France [http://bit.ly/MakeAmericaGreatAtDying]. Sure, UK had it worse but give them a little slack. They’re a sardine-can of a country with 725 people packed in per square mile (compared to 87 people per square mile in the US) [http://bit.ly/YouAreMyDensity].

So blame COVID, yes, but maybe it didn’t have to be this bad? Maybe the person leading our country could have led differently? Seriously, if Justin Trudeau were our leader and we had the same rate of death per million people as Canada, 237,800 more Americans would be alive today [http://bit.ly/BlameUS]. I’m going to spell it out and change the color for emphasis (and to pad my word count): TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-SEVEN THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED!

That’s a lot of grandparents comically trying to figure out how to Zoom with their grandchildren. It’s the mother who never got to hold her newborn. It’s the husband who texted his wife from the quarantined bedroom to say he was struggling to breathe. It’s the Angel from Montgomery. Hell, it’s Herman Cain.

Kamala Harris by Baby Benchly © 2021.

So it goes.

When you are cavalier with death, you’ll be familiar with it, too. And now we’re all familiar with it. And in some ways, that’s not the worst of it.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg once opined that “the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle. It is the pendulum. And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back.”

Two weeks ago, we saw the pendulum swinging at full force. Rioters attempted to lay siege to the Capitol because, for four years, the most powerful person in the world fed them a steady diet of misinformation, conspiracy theories, nationalist intolerance of “other,” distrust of journalists, and a propensity for hate, and then encouraged them to walk to the Capitol and “fight like hell” because “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” [http://bit.ly/TrumpSpeechTranscriptGrossDontClick].

Was this the amplitude of the pendulum? We can hope. But the damage has already been done. And this was not the only riot of the last 4 years [http://bit.ly/OhPleaseDontEquateCapitolSiegeWithBLM]. Because this most powerful person in the world had helped launch what Leslie Odom, Jr described as:

“A rebirth of a nation’s hatred.
Red, white, and blue.
Is black in there, too?”

We were never out of the racism woods to begin with—it’d be #fakenews to say otherwise—but these last four years, and this most powerful person in the world who built his campaign of fear based on racist birther and Barack HUSSEIN Obama conspiracies (emphasis most clearly not mine) have erased decades of progress. Racism was always the hidden underbelly of our country. The most powerful person in the world just decided to embrace and cultivate it.

So are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

No. But look on the bright side.

Facts may be cool again. The Nostradamus-wannabe QAnon is muffled and so, too, is the outgoing commander in chief. People are quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. (Oh, wait, that was just a one day thing? And they still hate Colin Kaepernick? Never mind.)

Most importantly, today, our nation’s children look up to the second most powerful person in the world and see a woman of color and a hint of HOPE again. And they look up to to the most powerful person in the world and see … maybe not the best this country has to offer but, for the first time in four years, they’re also not seeing the worst.

So maybe you’ll be better off tomorrow than you were today.

It’s a start.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

Awhile ago, we started teaching Baby Benchly the Golden Rule (what he calls the Jesus Rule). It spans many religions so I’m sure you’ve heard some variation of it:

Christianity: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Judaism: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”
Islam: “As you would have people do to you, do to them; and what you dislike to be done to you, don’t do to them.”
Wiccan: “That which ye deem harmful unto thyself, the very same shall ye be forbidden from doing unto another.”
Hinduism: “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self.”

You get the point. Unfortunately, as is always the case with a 5-year-old, it didn’t go as we planned.

In the kiddie pool in our backyard one day, Baby Benchly asked me to splash him in the face, so I did. Then he tried to splash me in the face. I told him I didn’t want to be splashed in the face and he said, “But I want to follow the Jesus Rule. I wanted to splash you so I told you to splash me first.”

Nope.

When I picked him up from child care last week, he had a bunch of sand in his hair. I asked him what happened and he said another (much much younger) kiddo tossed sand on his head. I asked him how he responded. “I tossed sand on him because of the Jesus Rule.”

Nope.

The Jesus Rule had become the Baby Benchly Rule: “Do unto others what they just did to you.” It was at this point that we tried to clarify the language in the rule; to simplify it: Don’t Do Bad Things to Other People. Even if They Did Bad Things to You. We accompanied this rule with a discussion of another “Jesus Rule” (Jesus Rule #2 if you will), one with an infamous Benchly household backstory: “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”

We’ll see how this is interpreted.

We’re doing our best in these challenging days to raise a child who values and aspires for kindness above all else. And that brings us to the poster.

Mrs. Benchly and I felt compelled to make this poster. It resembles many of the ones we’ve loved seeing pop up around town. There are significant statements declared in this poster that seem obvious to me. They probably seem obvious to you. And yet, they are statements that are currently in question. Not because people openly disagree with them but rather because our society’s actions and/or inactions have shown that people disagree with them. They are self-evident truths, that still need to be said. And so it goes.

To my Black friends, your lives matter. I say Black lives matter because our society silently (and sometimes vocally) says otherwise. I say this to you because I know our country has guaranteed that your pursuit of happiness is embedded with countless more landmines than mine.

To my immigrant friends, my refugee friends, our country is at its best when it welcomes those who come here to seek a better life. Fear of the unknown breeds contempt; one of humankind’s most disgusting feelings, which has manifested its ugly head countless time in recent history, most notably behind the Japanense-American internment camp barbed-wire in the 40s, and most recently in the harassment directed toward Muslims and Arab-Americans after 9/11, Mexican-Americans in the last decade, and Chinese-Americans this year. The antidote to this contempt is understanding and it’s my hope that our country one day understands the many wonderful cultures in this world and then walks the walk of Lady Liberty by truly welcoming the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

To my women, LGBTQ, Black, and immigrant friends, you deserve every freedom, right, and privilege I’ve enjoyed my whole life. “To be free from violence and discrimination; to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; to be educated; to own property; to vote; and to earn an equal wage.”

I can’t believe I have to say this but we owe every major advancement in our world to science and anytime we turn our backs on it, current and future generations suffer.

To the many same-sex families in my life, I believe we are at our worst when we use religion to justify oppression. Love is what makes a family. It is indefensible for anyone to hide behind cherry-picked Bible verses*, personal insecurities, or fear of the unknown, to willfully prevent others from loving and being loved, to condemn them for doing so, or self-righteously pray for them. Love is love.

And finally kindness. It’s everything. It’s the Jesus Rule. Treat others like you’d want to be treated. Don’t be mean. It’s not that hard, people. Honestly, it feels good.

If you were repeatedly pulled over on your way to work, or stopped and frisked on your walk to the bookstore, or had the government actively making it more difficult for you to vote, all because of the color of your skin, you’d be upset. Of course you’d be upset. And if these and other subtle and not-subtle-at-all actions had been happening to you and your family for decades, you’d feel like your life wasn’t valued by the rest of society. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone stood up for you and said, “you should value your life because your life matters to me”? I mean, a time machine to help prevent 400 years of oppression would be nice, too, but talking about it is a start!

If you couldn’t marry your boyfriend, if you couldn’t adopt a child, if you couldn’t visit your soulmate in the hospital, if you were fired for a job, if you were disowned from your family, all because of who you loved, you’d be upset. Of course you’d be upset. But wouldn’t it be nice if society woke up one day and realized, hey, you should be allowed to love who you love and not be punished for it?

This isn’t rocket science (which is also real). It’s simple. Love and be loved. And be kind to others. We believe this in our house. Well, two of us do. The third one is still working on it.

*This is harsh, but yes, Bible verses are cherry-picked. I’ve yet to see someone pray for the sinning homosexuals in the same breath as they pray for the sinning bacon- and shellfish-eaters, for the sinning woman talking in church, for the sinning beard-shavers. Come on, people! The Bible condones slavery! It says the aforementioned Muslims and Wiccans should be stoned to death. Hell, I’m technically supposed to be stoned to death for writing this paragraph. But what if, instead of picking and choosing what to follow, we simply followed one rule? Jesus Rule #3: Love one another. I’d like that world.

Our last crusade

“The cup of a carpenter.”

For as long as I can remember, and as most certainly confirmed by the remnants of my blogging years, I’ve romanticized the idea of finding my soulmate, settling down with her, growing a large family together, and aging gracefully into our third act, surrounded by a dozen grandBenchlys who are gobsmacked by my 2nd-grade-level magic tricks, bemused by my bad jokes, and susceptible to giggle fits whenever in my company.

A friend once told me I’d be a good dad. I wanted to be a grand one.

I had visions of greeting the grandBenchlys by lifting them up, turning them upside down, and joking that I was hoping some spare change would fall out of their pockets. I planned to take them to their first baseball games, as my father had taken my children, as his father had taken me. I’d even help them to understand the infield fly rule, calling it just the tip-of-the-iceberg proof that baseball was the chess of athletics. I’d take them on train rides. I’d keep the candy bowl filled in the kitchen. I’d let them stay up late.

A friend once told me I’d be a good dad. I wanted to be a grand one. The Caucasian Russell Huxtable, father to Cliff, grandfather to Rudy. Adored by the live studio audience that was my family.

“We named the dog Indiana.”

For as long as I have been chasing this holy grail dream, fully realized in my head, it was all going to start with a daughter named Eleanor.

In these daydreams that peppered my life—before I became Grandpa Benchly, after we became Mr and Mrs Benchly—we were going to have a girl named Eleanor. (We would have named her Agatha, but Mrs Benchly vetoed that idea by way of assigning that name to our dog.)

I don’t know why Eleanor, to be honest. Eleanor Bartlet? Doubtful. Eleanor Roosevelt? Maybe. Eleanor Rigby? Possible. All I know is, she was going to be Eleanor Elizabeth (ee for short), the first in a long line of  quirky, imaginative, precocious daughters with no brother in sight. I’m also not sure why I could never imagine having a son. All I know is I was fully prepared to be surrounded by an armada of powerful Benchly women. And then the strangest thing happened. The armada was built, just not how we expected it.

Over the years and through marriage, we became the proud aunt and uncle to a long line of strong, phenomenal, precocious nieces—eight to be exact—with no nephews in sight.

“At my age, I’m prepared to take a few things on faith.”

The last of our nieces, Niece #8, joined the world around the same time Mrs Benchly and I realized that a daydream should never be mistaken for a map with an X marking the spot. She was born after we had begun to come to terms with that word that does not mean what you think it means. After we had composed an email with the subject line “Interested in adoption.”

Six months later, we took a leap of faith and two years after that, Baby Benchly, a curious, brave, precocious boy, arrived to say we had chosen wisely. And boy, had we ever. These last five years sitting front row to his motion picture have been pure joy.

“Indiana, let it go.”

It’s a funny thing what happens when you finally take a sip from the holy grail.

For the last five years—though it has, at times, felt like 700 years—Mrs Benchly, Baby Benchly, and I have been anxiously awaiting the next ship of our armada to set sail. Eleanor or not, we were convinced we were a family of four ready to not be three. You could even say we were so focused on what we were seeking, we began to ignore the boundaries of our own mortality. Months stretched into a year and then more and eventually, we could no longer ignore the arithmetic in our head or the achy joints in our bodies.

You see, no cups in our home give everlasting life.

Yesterday marked Baby Benchly’s fifth birthday, which is fitting. Because five years ago today we sipped that holy grail and today we’re ready to let it go. To publicly acknowledge the illumination that we’ve known in our hearts for some time now. We are no longer reaching, grasping for that cup. Instead, we’ve turned around to embrace and celebrate that of which we are so proud: our beautiful, strong, one-of-a-kind, three-ship armada.

What a difference a day makes

10f7f-20150218_172313It was snowing gently the night I left you at the hospital.
You had entered the world against better judgment;
broken the lease on your nine-month efficiency
and landed in a winter they’ll talk about for generations.
You were nestled on your mother’s chest in a ward
too full for fathers, not regretting your decision,
but definitely second-guessing it.
And I stayed as long as the nurses let me.
How brave it was of you to come into this world,
to put your faith in a mother and father
who were just as scared as you.
How sweet you were
to let us wrap our arms and hands around you
as a promise that we will hold you always.
It was snowing gently the night I left you at the hospital.
And I drove slower than normal,
and slower still through intersections.

I do not think it means what you think it means

There are approximately 7.2 billion people in the world today. At some point in our world’s history, one of those 7.2 billion people studied the other 7.2 billion people in the world and determined that the females in the bunch were giving birth to 255 people per minute.  Four and one-quarter babies every second.  In the time it will take you to finish this paragraph, more than 130 little Aries kids will have unhappily come into this loud, bright, scary, cold world; more often than not born to happy parents proud of what they had accomplished. Forgive me if I’m dwelling. I wrote this paragraph after spending a few days in Philadelphia, dealing everyday with the consequences of overpopulation, of men and women who couldn’t keep it in their pants: thousands of similarly-dressed parasites involved in the same deeply-meaningful conversations about careers and love and the world’s problems; all while fighting for the last stool in the bar, the last parking spot on the street.
 
Three and one-half years ago, Mrs. Benchly and I invited 100 or so of the aforementioned 7.2 billion people to gather outside by the Maine seaside in their Autumn Saturday Best. After the familiar “Once Upon  a  Time” melody serenaded all 7 of the beautiful  flower girls, and with the sun shining down upon us, preparing itself for one of its more memorable sunsets, one of our friends, a man of the [friendly] cloth, informed the other 99 or so guests that “marriage, marriage is what brings us together today.” She was not The Princess Bride, I was not Westley, but ours was indeed true love, passionate and pure, which ultimately became a green union of yellow and blue built confidently as if by Masons, sealed with a kiss and a vow that “we shall keep together what share of trouble our lives may lay upon us. And we shall share together our store of goodness and plenty and love.” After a seemingly endless journey to find love, a journey at times so disheartening and soul-crushing that it inspired Papa Benchly to say­—a month before I met Mrs. Benchly—that some people were just not intended to find love, this was the ending promised to us by Hollywood and its subsidiaries. When we said “I do, I do, I do,” we were signing on the dotted line of our Happy Ever After contract. This we believed, because how many married folks remember the fine print of their vows, anyway?
 
Our honeymoon was, cliché or not, perfect. We ventured to the Pacific Northwest in the autumn, with raincoats in tow, and returned home two weeks later nearly sporting suntans. Mrs. Benchly rearranged our travel itinerary so that I might browse the hallowed grounds of Powell’s Books. On. Our. Honeymoon. Love. On more than one occasion, I walked around a park taking pictures of flowers. Again, love. We returned home to our dog, Agatha, the best dog in the world who smiles when she greets you and who falls—into your body and asleep—when you ask her to “snuggle.” For our first anniversary, we ventured to Germany in the autumn, and two weeks and 1400 pictures of sunsets, castles, and mountain peaks later, we returned home with those same unused raincoats folded neatly in the same spots in our luggage, two metaphorical foreshadows thinking to themselves, “should we be worried?”
 
We suspected there might be a problem before there was one. Mrs. Benchly told me her fears before marriage, before law and God said we should try. If you were naïve, as I was then, you would say, as I tried to say then, that we were prepared for anything. But you wouldn’t be prepared, as we weren’t, because when you prepare for anything, for your share of trouble, what you’re really doing is praying to whomever will listen (wishing, really) to ensure your store of goodness and plenty and love. Isn’t that what Grandpa made you believe you’d get?
 
After a year, I wasn’t nervous. Maybe I was a little bit concerned, but that’s not the same thing. But then we entered a university study at the hospital because it gave us free access to expensive medicine. And then the study ended and we found ourselves stuck in congestion on life’s highway surrounded by lanes of traffic flowing freely until we moved into  them; two Michael Boltons watching their loved ones speed by them to their full-house destinations. And then we went back to the hospital (sans university study) because it gave us access to expensive medicine. We placed our checks in their hands like tokens in a slot machine; hospitals and casinos are not all that different. And then the treatments ended and we found ourselves staring at the same mile marker, faced with a realization that our dream of a life without pain was sold to us by a con artist.
 
There isn’t really a good word for our current reality. I keep coming back to the word that does not mean what one might think it means. It applies in a sense—our reality is not one either of us ever envisioned for our future—but the word still doesn’t mean what one might think it means. Even so, I can’t help but use this word. I use it to describe the reality that has been written for us. I use it to distance ourselves from this reality; to pretend that we’re characters in a beloved movie just two hours and one wheelbarrow away from a happy ending. Because then, when I can imagine our life existing in such a script, I don’t mind so much the countless scenes in the lives of those around me. The lives whose scripts don’t feature the word that does not mean what one might think it means.

Up Up Up Up Up Up

“[I]f you follow your heart, you’ll find your purpose and end up proving you were right all along.”

—Overly optimistic Benchly, May 21, 2009

I wonder if any of you have seen the original ending to the movie Sleepless in Seattle. The director, Nora Ephron, decided to cut the final scenes after a test audience nearly went so far as to cut them for her. As you know (or if you don’t, get ready to be spoiled), the theatrical version of the film ends with Sam and Annie meeting at the top of the Empire State Building where they introduce themselves and slowly exit the observation deck, neither able to hide their love-at-first-sight astonishment. Cue the credits.

What you may not know is what happened in the scene that originally followed. After cutting to black and a line telling us that 12 months had passed, we’re shown Annie, Sam, and Jonah eating breakfast in the kitchen of the Seattle houseboat. Sam is reading the newspaper, and Annie, while placing her cereal bowl in the sink, asks Jonah if he’d like more Kix. Jonah replies that he is full and runs into another room to turn on the television. Sam places the newspaper on the table, walks over to Annie, gives her a kiss as he places his bowl in the sink, and says he needs to balance the checkbook. Cue the credits.

So how does that make you feel? Disappointed? Relieved that Ephron ended it when she did? Desperate to find the lost scenes on the Internet? If so, let me save you the trouble. That scene was never filmed. It was never filmed because it was never written. And it was never written because Ephron knew better than to mess with the love story formula: Despite the obstacles of X and the efforts of Z, A and B live happily ever after (unless, of course, they were created by Nicholas Sparks’s imagination). Ephron may have taken an unconventional route in placing the Meet Cute at the end of her film, but she knew that once she had established their Happy Ever After, the only thing she could do next was cut to black, or, at the very most, a shot of hearts on the Empire State Building.

Another movie that followed to a T the same formula of X and Z and A meets B at the end was the tiny, near-perfect French film Happenstance. Some of you have seen this movie. Some of you haven’t. And only the most devout readers (read: reader) of mine might recognize it from the afore-quoted May 21, 2009 blog entry. Like most all of the entries leading up to it, that entry dealt with my struggles with relationships and my path in life. What sets that entry apart, though, is the fact that it was the last of its kind. And it was the last of its kind because it came just 9 days before I met the future Mrs. Benchly and found, with her, my Happy Ever After.

I bring this up today, in my first(!) entry of 2011, because I’ve begun to wonder, should I have followed Ephron’s cue and ended this blog with the above quote? You could argue that this blog has been more than just an outlet for my frustrations and joys with dating and relationships and the single life, but you’d lose that argument in as much time as it would take for one to quote my ninth blog entry. This explains, I think, why this blog has been so quiet for so long: Benchly’sWord, though occasionally home to a non-love-life-related insight or two, has always been about my path to love. And now that I’ve found love, my writer gut is telling me to cue the credits, or, at the very most, a cheesy musical montage featuring clips of previous scenes. But, as a writer, I need this creative outlet. So, what’s a blogger to do?

Like most of the questions I’ve posed through the years, I haven’t had a solid answer to the question of what should become of Benchly’sWord. Until today. Now that I can see clearly, it’s silly to think how long it’s taken me to figure out the next logical step for this blog, but I’ve been under the writer’s block weather for over a year: after a 7-month bout with Engagement Brain, I fell ill with a seemingly never-ending case of the Newlyweds. I still have most of the symptoms, but I’ve slowly been able to manage them, at least enough to be productive. And so it is that I can announce today my solution to my writer’s block:

I’m going to write a new story. In blogging terms, I’m changing directions. In movie terms, I’m writing a sequel. Sure, the sequel may have traces of the original in it (because, people evolve and so do relationships and I’ll want to document those changes), but this story won’t be about my path to love. And it most certainly won’t be about reading a newspaper while eating breakfast. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it’ll be about. Maybe it will be about creating a home. Or a family. Maybe I’ll find out Darth Vader is my father. Maybe Fredo will break my heart. Or maybe a shark will follow me all the way to the Bahamas to settle a personal feud. Who knows? What I do know is the first act of my life has been written and it’s time for the curtain to come up on Act 2. The lights are flashing. Please take your seats.

An Absentee Voter

Today is Election Day. It’s a day when millions upon millions of Americans will record their voices with their #2 pencils, sharpened by hope; and it’s the rare day when each voice is as loud as the next one, even the silent ones. It’s a day when men and women will vote for their dreams, and the dreams of many men and women will be crushed. And it’s a day when your mind is warmed by feelings you have rarely felt since your childhood; when you think the world can be a better place and you can make a difference. It’s a day that often reminds me of the first time I ran for public office. Earlier this year when I announced my ultimately-brief candidacy for lieutenant governor of Vermont, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought it was my first attempt at politics. That’s because not many of you have known me long enough to know that it was actually my second political dance, the first happening nearly 25 years ago.

In elementary school, lives were made by how well you fit in and, conversely, lives were forever scarred by how much you didn’t. And, in elementary school, you didn’t fit in at least once a week no matter how hard you tried. I remember bumping into Jennifer Person* on the school bus, hearing her complain that I had given her an instant cooties infection, and holding in the tears long enough to step off of the bus. I remember the shame I felt when Jacob VanRyan* accused me of wearing the same pair of jeans two days in a row. And I’m still sheepishly embarrassed whenever I think back to the day a substitute teacher incorrectly read my name during roll call—replacing my last name with my unconventional middle one—and traumatized me to the point of seriously considering changing my legal name.

Elementary school was war and every day was a desperate battle to survive embarrassment, irrational or not. It was the front lines of recess and gym class. It was the pulling rank in the cafeteria. It was the mutiny of friendships. It was the daytime bombings of spelling bees. It was the better funded and supplied (read: dressed and ice-cream-cone-holding) popular officers and the underfunded lower-middle-class privates who pretended they didn’t want to buy ice cream. It was the general teachers executing those who didn’t do their homework. And if you were lucky enough to survive the day, you retreated to your bunker at home, distracted yourself with toys and comic books, and did your best to avoid talking about “what you learned” in school because what you learned was that life isn’t fair. And who wants to hear that answer?

By 6th grade, I resembled a shy Corporal Upham kid doing his best to avoid being caught in any cross hairs. After 5 full years of surviving, I was getting pretty good at it. Considering all of this, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one surprised by my whimsical decision to enter my name into the running for my 6th grade homeroom’s representative to the elementary school’s student government. Why on earth would I volunteer for such a dangerous social mission as a school election, you ask? Truth-be-told, I vaguely recall doing so because it appeared that no one else was going to run, which made me all the more distressed when I discovered that I would in fact be running against the four most popular kids in my class.

After the shock of my announcement wore off, my self-appointed campaign manager friend and I mapped out my campaign strategy (I decided to play the “I’m a great listener” card) and began polling constituents, which, in elementary school terms meant we asked our classmates who they were voting for. After the primary dust had settled, it was painfully obvious that I was going to need three or four more votes to win. I don’t remember much else of the campaign season; I have a hazy recollection of one or two of my opponents bringing in cookies. But what I clearly remember is what happened the day of the election.

In the hour before the polls opened, my classmates and I were in the music room, learning how to play xylophones. My friends and I (read: The Party to Elect Bungalow Benchly) sat in front of the alto xylophones while my opponents played the bass xylophones. Our teacher’s ultimate goal was to have us learn a song, but this became next to impossible when all four of my opponents began fooling around with their bass xylophones. After ignoring repeated requests from the teacher to behave, all four were sent to the principal’s office. Jackpot.

On the walk from the music room back to our classroom, my campaign manager implored me to take advantage of the recent turn of events by calling out my opponents on their immaturity and irresponsible behavior. My campaign committee went desk to desk to remind voters of my clean record and a few classmates mentioned their temptation to switch parties. When my four recently-disciplined opponents returned to the classroom, it was time for us to give our speeches and it was time for the class to hear my voice.

Each election day, in the voting booth, with pencil in hand, I think of platforms. I think of campaign promises. I think of issues carrying more weight than they probably should. I think of bribes. I think of mudslinging. I think of lies and half-truths. I think of scare tactics. I think of racism and sexism. I think of Nazi/Hitler/Communist/Death Panel name-calling. I think of lack of substance.

Each election day, as I prepare to vote, I’m reminded of that fateful afternoon in elementary school and the excitement I felt at the possibility of serving my classroom. I’m reminded of my opponents. I’m reminded of the election-cum-popularity contest. I’m reminded of the emotions I felt after the results were announced. I’m reminded that I lost by three or four votes. And I’m reminded that I opted not to sling mud at my opponents in my speech.

And then I write down the names of those whom I feel would best represent me in their respective offices. I vote for intelligence. I vote for responsibility. I vote for experience. I vote for ideas. I vote for change when need be and I vote for the same when things seem to be working. Lately, though, I haven’t wanted to vote for anyone.

*Actual name.

The Wedding Planner

And here’s the second post from our private wedding website. Enjoy!

It’s been 5 months since I last posted on this website and we’re 3 1/2 month away from The Great Wedding Day of 2010 so you can be sure that quite a bit of planning has happened since I last wrote. Rather than spend the next few days telling the story of each and every step of the planning process, I thought I’d sum it all up with a list of the lessons we’ve learned thus far on our quest to get married:

1. While dessert is typically reserved for the end of a meal (unless you eat at Skinny Pancake where you can pass off dessert as your actual meal), in the meal called Wedding Planning, you actually get to eat your cake pretty early on in the process. My fiance and I tested wedding cake samples at the bakery at which she held down a part-time job in high school and when thinking about the best parts of the planning process, this step most definitely takes the cake. We designed our cake both inside and out, we ate more cake than should be allowed in one sitting, and we got a great price with the old friendly It’s-Who-You-Know discount. When the stress of planning a wedding starts to get to us, the perfect antidote is a moment spent imagining the next time we taste wedding cake.

2. Everything in the world is Made in China. My fiance and I spent days upon days driving from store to store, Internet searching from site to site, looking for kitchen appliances, sets, houseware stuff, and dishware made in the USA and were disheartened to find limited and mostly discouragingly-expensive options at every turn. The biggest disappointment for me was when we selected a dish pattern that was both traditional and hip only to discover that Pfaltzgraff had moved its manufacturing overseas. In the end, we decided to skip registering for dishware altogether and keep the plates we had purchased secondhand for the wedding reception. Speaking of …

3. I’m having fun planning a wedding on a budget and searching for shortcuts and work-arounds and cheap alternatives, while still guaranteeing a great celebration. From the save-the-date cards to the invitations to the reception dishware to the party favors to the cake toppers to the ring designs to this website, we’re definitely making this wedding our own. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible without a lot of help, which brings me to …

4. Our loved ones. We have been given an amazing gift in life by being blessed with the love of so many wonderful people who have all helped us throughout this planning process. The advice, gifts, energy, creativity, volunteered time, and all the other countless contributions we’ve received since February have made our goal of planning a wedding in 7 months not only possible but, for the most part, stress free. But speaking of stress …

5. When it makes Mama Benchly cry, you can rest assured that compiling the guest list is the most stressful part of the planning process. Finding that balance between what we want and expect from our day, what our families want and expect from our day, and what we can afford our day to look like is a delicate dance. And we all know how much I love to dance.

6. Getting a puppy while planning a wedding is probably not an accurate example of “good timing.” We love Agatha and now that we have her, we can’t imagine our lives without her, but having her around has definitely complicated the planning process a bit. For instance, it’s tough to concentrate on the task at hand when there is a super tired and cuddly puppy resting her head on your lap.

7. Most every wedding-related decision you make carries with it a worst-case scenario that isn’t all that bad and, in most instances, is something that will fade away over time, but the choice of photographer will affect you positively or negatively for the rest of your life. Considering the fact that finding a photographer who is qualified, creative, with a similar vision, and affordable is next-to-impossible, and it’s safe to say that choosing the photographer is the most difficult step of the process.

8. I’m not exactly known for dressing up, and I’m most definitely not known for wearing rings, but it was pretty awesome to see myself in the mirror wearing the suit I’ll be wearing on my wedding day, and it felt incredible to try on my wedding ring.

The Road Unexpectedly Taken, at 1 a.m.

Note to readers: I apologize for my absence these last few months. As most of you know, I was a bit preoccupied planning my wedding to the now nicknamed Mrs. Benchly. I didn’t have much time for blogging and what little time I had was spent crafting an update or two for our private wedding website. But now that the wedding is over and there’s no need to worry about paparazzi crashing our wedding, I thought I’d share with you what little I wrote. And then, once I’m done with that, maybe I’ll start writing again. I’m overdue …

Imagine that you and your girlfriend (you know, the girlfriend to whom you are “practically engaged”) have decided that you want to get married in Maine in September 2010, 8 months away from the current pre-engagement calendar date. And imagine that her parents have called the two of you at 8 p.m. on a Friday evening to discuss, on speaker phone no less, a potential waterfront wedding venue 5 hours from you that they discovered earlier that day and which they strongly encourage the two of you to see for yourselves in the immediate future, which is parent-speak for “yesterday.” After consulting a calendar, you realize that unless you visit this venue in the next 48 hours, chances are such that you won’t be able to see it for another month, and just in case you dared to think that this decision was an obvious one, remember: your girlfriend’s good friend is driving in from Syracuse in 21 hours. With all of that in mind, what do you do?

For me, the whimsical-to-a-flaw boyfriend, the decision was easy: pack overnight bags, do a quick Internet search for a reasonably-priced hotel located in the area through which you’ll be driving at 1 a.m., leave home by 9:30 p.m., check in to the hotel, sleep for 6 hours, get up early, meet up with said girlfriend’s parents, tour the wedding venue, and return home in time for the arrival of the Syracuse friend. For my responsible, realistic girlfriend with a sweet tooth for whimsy, the decision required a few minutes of careful consideration before she ultimately decided that my whimsical plan was the only option for us. And that’s how I found myself listening to my girlfriend sleep while I fought through my yawns to be able to see the mostly-deserted 1 a.m. Maine roads. And that’s how my fiance and I ended up at the Harpswell Inn in Harpswell, Maine 13 1/2 hours later. And that’s how we discovered the site on which our friends and family will gather 8 months from now to witness and celebrate our marriage.