Author: Fred Blahnik

NOTE:  The following narrative is excerpted from the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love”, written by Mary B. Blahnik and extensively edited by Fred Blahnik.

 

My new “career” was poised to change dramatically yet again……and it would forever thereafter be referred to as motherhood.

On May 16th, 1940, Jimmy warned of his pending arrival. My placenta had already ruptured previously, but Jimmy understandably decided to wait a while longer for a warm, sunny day to make his grand earthly debut. The “Icemen Days of May”–well known to the ethnic Czech people clustered in our immediate region akin to ants in a colony–were at last over.

In the darkness of the morning on May 17^th, Dad drove over to our close neighbors Souceks in order to call Dr. W. B. Grise so he could inform the good doctor his medical assistance would soon be required. Mama came to be my midwife, and Jimmy was triumphantly born at approximately 10:00 a.m. on a Friday morning with a swelling–or exaggerated bump—prominently displayed on his head resulting from his contumacious refusal to cooperate with the birthing process.

Dad beamed proudly and rivaled any peacock in flamboyance; the brand new father now boasted a slightly greater than eight pound son. Jimmy’s birth served to somehow validate Dad in his own eyes; he seemed to feel it made him just as good—in some instances perhaps even better–than many of his neighborhood friends and acquaintances……dare I say unspoken competitors? My naturally humble husband now stood more erect, there was a new steeliness in his eyes, and he walked with a decidedly new bounce in his gait.

The name James Peter had been waiting patiently for our firstborn if the youngster turned out to be a baby boy. That name was in honor of the newborn’s deceased Grandpa Blahnik—James–and an uber-proud Grandpa Peter Snyder, since this was his first grandchild.

The sun shone brightly that day, Fred was planting corn in the fields, and several neighbors stopped by to see if our new baby had arrived yet…..and then to pointedly inquire what sex the infant was. A new era had inauspiciously dawned on the nondescript Blahnik farm northeast of Austin, Minnesota, even though the buildings and fields and trees appeared exactly as they had the day before…….the week before……the year before.

No, things would never again closely resemble the way they had stood previously at the carefree “Blahnik Boy’s Place” in the days and weeks and years which followed this landmark birth.

Incidentally, during that mid-twentieth century era babies born at home were weighed on a small household scale which had a ring at the top for the “weigher” to hold onto, as well as a hook at the bottom for attaching to the baby’s diaper to suspend the infant in mid-air while it was being weighed.

Jimmy spent his earliest months in a baby buggy we bought from our neighbors immediately to the south–the Watkins. As he grew older Jimmy graduated to a wooden playpen Dad’s nephew Earl Ondrick had designed and built. The contrivance could be folded up conveniently to shuttle around our house and yard as needed.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins watched admiringly at each new accomplishment Jimmy mastered, since he was the youngest member on both sides of our expansive family and represented the hopes and dreams and promises of an entirely new generation.

As Jimmy grew a bit older and could skitter around outside by himself, he soon developed a wanderlust feeling on nice temperate days. Quite frankly, the impish little fellow could no longer be implicitly trusted when left alone outside.

One bucolic Sunday afternoon little Jimmy disappeared from our farmyard. Dad and I searched desperately to find him……in vain; Jimmy could not be located anywhere, and as a first-time and probably overreacting mother I was rapidly approaching hysteria!

Finally, we spotted a Lilliputian set of footprints in the dusty field drive that led over the railroad tracks to Fred and Catherine’s place. Sure enough, we followed the tracks in that direction–and found Jimmy perched in their kitchen, serenely munching on one of Catherine’s delicious cookies just like the cat that swallowed the canary…..and wondering what all the fuss was about!

Yet another time, those telltale miniature footprints led me to our neighbors’ house across the road from where we lived—the Larsons. Alice Larson later confided to me that Jimmy showed up on their front doorstep—totally “out of the blue” and not scared in the least—and loudly and belligerently demanded, “WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?!?!”

A true Casanova was unmasked that day, and I had a minor epiphany and realized with a somewhat sinking heart that Dad and I would be sharing living quarters with a natural-born lady-killer from that point forward.

By this juncture in my life, I had finally learned to partition my time so that I could be—simultaneously–a successful homemaker and a doting mother.

 

 

• With life comes risks; you cannot have one without the other. Happiness—the unquestioned currency of life—is best measured by how one chooses to address those aforementioned risks and how much you allow said risks to dictate the trajectory your life will follow. Bottom line, you can be as brave or as cowardly as you want to be. You can live loud and brazenly like a lion or silent and timidly like a field mouse. You can roar in menacing fashion or you can go hide inconspicuously in a darkened corner and eschew any and all risks. No one else can determine the level of courage you choose to employ during your journey through life. That decision–easily the greatest and most transcendent decision any of us is ever asked to make–is entirely up to each individual. Thus, if you don’t like the direction in which your life is headed, for God’s sake don’t blame fate for it; blame yourself instead. You can exist at a stunningly rudimentary level analogous to a single-cell amoeba or you can proudly carry the banner of supernatural consciousness forward as a member of the human race. But you cannot do both at the same time; you cannot straddle this fence indefinitely; you ultimately have to choose between the two…..

Heaven on Earth (Part 1)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

5-4-10.

Just left the dentist’s office on North Broadway. Absolute shithole, that fuckin’ place is. Verbally accosted once again by the resident ugly dental hygienist regarding her ultra-strict oral hygiene regimen. Fuck you, too, you deplorable wench!!! I have far more important things going on in my life right now than brushing my teeth for thirty minutes each and every day and restructuring my entire waking schedule just so it revolves exclusively around my molars and incisors and gums……

Stop down at Silver Lake for a routine circumnavigation. And as I begin walking.…..my anger, consternation, and worries begin to slowly slip away…….yes, slooooowly slip away…..…

NEW GOSLINGS!!!

This year’s goslings are here, as though by legerdemain and sorcery–six new families of them by my best count. They weren’t present on Sunday, just two days prior, when I made a similar trek around the man-made lake. Cute, adorable, fuzzy little goslings pattering about in the lakeside grass…….or swimming in teensy convoys with their proud parents leading the way out in the middle of the scenic body of water….…or just resting in lush foliage while their mothers busily forage for food……..

And I am a boy again, back when our Blahnik family used to raise Toulouse geese on our medieval farm north of Spring Valley and the arrival of goslings in late April and early May was like an unofficial passage into the exciting season of virgin life……

I continue walking, marveling at the tiny little fuzzballs dutifully chasing after their mothers, fuzzballs that just three days earlier were still encased in eggs before the enchanting call of nature mysteriously summoned them to hatch…..and to be alive today.

By the time I arrive back at my car–1.8 miles later if one is to believe the lakeside signage–my mood has changed dramatically. I look up, and the sky is a beautiful hue of blue punctuated only by a few rogue cirro-cumulus clouds racing to stay ahead of a doggedly pursuing but eternally frustrated zephyr. To my right a mother is pushing her daughter on an old-fashioned, towering steel swing-set, while the little girl beams and hollers excitedly as she flies ever higher. Just across the street from me a man is intently mowing his diminutive lawn, the raucous purring of his push mower not an unwelcome sound on the pregnant spring air. I glance once more at the gorgeous lake scarcely rippled by a brisk spring breeze, and take a deep, invigorating breath of fresh vernal oxygen.

5-4-10…….a good day to be alive indeed.  

After a bumpy start, life is good today!!!

But then again: Isn’t it always???

• …..it is NOT about how the story begins; it is about how the story ends!!! Yes, it always boils down to the ending—the ending—THE ENDING!!!!!   Always has, always will. The ending is paramount. Everything in between is basically longwinded and irrelevant and merely serves as a prelude to the climax—a junior varsity game leading up to the main event, a bland tray of hors d’oeuvres preceding the mouthwatering buffet, a junior matador making a complete ass of himself before the illustrious toreador finally enters the bullring. The process is immanently boring. The long-awaited solution? Rapturous and exhilarating!!!…..

The Old Farmer

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

The old farmer knelt down and dug a dandelion up by the roots with one of those forked, divoting devices you can oftentimes buy on sale at Mills Fleet Farm for $4.99 plus sales tax.

He then moved on to the next plant, and the one after that, and the one after that. This is the same old farmer who used to wage a pitched battle against quack grass, Canadian thistle, and wild mustard in the sprawling fields on his one thousand acre farm. This is the same old farmer who used to pay no heed whatsoever to the acre of land immediately surrounding his house; his eyes were trained solely upon the other nine hundred and ninety nine acres he depended upon to make an honest living off the land.

But things changed when the old farmer moved into town.

Yeah, you might say things changed an awfully lot for our grizzled farmer friend then…..

You see, now he had time on his hands—yes, lots and LOTS of time on his hands–to make sure everything was ship-shape and wholly up to snuff around his tiny manor situated on the far edge of a boringly ordinary, bucolic village. And thus that is how the old farmer spent the preponderance of his time now—constantly on the prowl around his bantam-sized lawn, on the lookout for any signs of mole activity, making sure his grass was adequately watered, and always—ALWAYS!!!—keeping a sharp eye out for any rogue dandelion plants that may have furtively snuck onto his property in the dead of night.

Those dandelions—Those fuckin’ dandelions, if you will!!–they were his declared and undisputed enemy now. Unlike in the past when he farmed a thousand acres and his list of horticultural foes was somewhat lengthy, the only one that captured his attention currently were those scurrilous, uber-aggressive dandelions; why, the fuckin’ things were forever conspiring to take over his front lawn!

But the old farmer would be goddamned if he just stood back and helplessly watched them do that.

NO FUCKIN’ WAY, JOSE!!!!!

Maybe—Probably!!!—he would just have to work a little bit harder and devote a little more time in order to thwart the weeds’ dastardly progress.

Hence the old farmer walked to his miniature yard shed, swung open its creaky door, and with a painful grunt stooped over and grabbed his five dollar divoting device.

He had more work to do this afternoon!

Yeah, a lot more work and a lot more hours before he could claim ultimate victory over this newest foe, these fuckin’ devious dandelions, the toughest and most persistent nemesis he had faced in his not-short lifetime.  Truthfully, the damned things were working overtime and then some just to spoil his long-awaited retirement.

The nerve, yes, the unabashed NERVE of those persistent, yellow-topped bastards!!!!!

Well……he just needed to invest more time—However much time was needed; ya hear me?!–in this newest crusade of his and ultimately outwork the dandelions, I guess.

And our crusty old farmer thereafter had an epiphany and realized with abject depression married to a sinking heart that he would never be able to find the peace of mind he was seeking in his lifelong battle against the land, a force of nature—No, what am I saying here—NATURE ITSELF!!!…..a sublimely proud entity which of course collaborates at all times with its throng of tenacious denizens to stymie anyone or anything who might be entertaining hubristic, grandiose notions of conquering same.

• If opportunity knocks on your door, irrespective of how shabbily it may be dressed or the inconvenience of its timing, for God’s sake—Answer the damned door!!! If you don’t respond—And quickly!—to an unexpected overture, rest assured your visitor will move on to the next residence, and then the next, and then the next one after that, with the exact same offer he is presenting you.  And rest assured of this:  Someone will eventually open their door and embrace the stranger bearing unknown good tidings, and when that happens I don’t want to hear one fuckin’ utterance coming out of your mouth decrying your “bad luck” and how the odds have always been stacked against you.  True opportunities rarely come gaudily and obviously attired like NASCAR race car drivers; they are majorly more discreet than that.  But that doesn’t mean they are invisible and do not exist. To the contrary, they are very real. The simple truth is, you had your shot and you opted to pass on it.  So live with that fact.  Accept it.  The opportunity you passively rejected went to someone else and you will not see it again in your lifetime.

• …..what are you waiting for exactly?!?! Is there a better time to do what obviously needs to be done?!?!  Huh?!?!  Well…..is there?!?!  I think not too!!!!!  So get your ass in gear right this minute and do what needs to be done!!!  Enough already with the goddamned all-day procrastinating!!  That important job is waiting for you and, trust me, time by nature is NOT a very patient entity!  Hence just go and do the work now and get it over with, lest someone else or—more likely—fate intervenes and denies you the opportunity.  Yes, distilled down to its barest essence, that is actually what this whole thing inherently represents:  An opportunity, and if you don’t grab it by the horns right now and wrestle it to the ground and pin its shoulders to the mat you will then have a lot of explaining to do to Someone far greater than myself or exasperated family members…..

• The general acceptance of this truism notwithstanding, things are NEVER “meant to be”. People—typically two—must make a conscious decision to render them in thus fashion.   Accidents “happen”; life does not.  Decisions are made by discerning individuals; they don’t just fall haphazardly out of the sky.  The workings of fate?  Well, yes, of course, but the bus of fate requires a driver just like any other, hence you may as well commandeer that temporal vehicle and take your rightful place behind its steering wheel in order to influence the direction in which it is headed to the utmost of your ability.  A million unsavory extraneous things could happen while you’re piloting the bus, but by taking firm control of the wheel you will have succeeded in eliminating one potential pitfall so I guess the number now stands at 999,999.  Forget the scale; that’s an improvement.

When “Home” Is No Longer Home (“You Can’t Go Home Again….”)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

 

—Thomas Wolfe

 

I went “home” last weekend after a long while away, but the place I stopped at to visit was no longer home to me.  It had changed; I had changed; more likely, we both had changed over the intervening fourteen years, and those weren’t just picayune, subtle changes either.  No, these were highly significant alterations I’m talking about, and the words “subtlety” and “nuance” do not belong anywhere near this conversation.

I really don’t know what I was expecting.  I guess I was probably thinking I would feel an emotional attachment to that place, an emotional tether that would exist forever—albeit in varying, gradually diminishing strength—but a connection that would nonetheless remain with me until the day I die.  I was wrong.  I didn’t feel any such thing.  I didn’t feel anything really.  The old place was different.  It didn’t look the same, feel the same, seem the same.  Everything about its appearance was different from what I remembered, but that wasn’t all.  Setting aside the “look” part, please take note of the fact those other observations reflect directly on me and not on some small, sterile piece of ground situated in the southeastern toe of Minnesota.

No, the issue speaks directly to me and my reaction to what I was witnessing at my old domicile.  You see, the original farm has undoubtedly changed significantly in appearance and texture over the years, but I have changed more.  Without question.  Without doubt.  Everything changes over time, inarguably, but human flesh and blood and human emotions–and especially human perspectives–change more than all the rest.  These distinctly human things change markedly more than the soil underpinning our earthly existence and all of those non-carbon-based objects surrounding us.

I couldn’t go home again because I am an immeasurably different person from when I left that rustic place as a callow lad.  I am completely different, so to call that place home now is a laughable misnomer.  It was home to me at one time, true, but it is no closer to being home to me now than I can rightfully claim 1976 is the year in which we are presently living and breathing.  That isn’t true, of course, and the place I left somewhat reluctantly a half lifetime ago no longer comes close to resembling the place I would now call home.  As Thomas Wolfe noted in his brilliant treatise, changes are occurring all the time—many of them unbeknownst to us—and inasmuch as it is impossible to turn back the clock and undo past changes and experiences, the “home” we think of in the past is as illusory and imaginary as sipping a pluperfect elixir from the Fountain of Youth.  You simply cannot return to something that doesn’t exist anymore.  You cannot go back in time and relive parts of your youth purely because you are not satisfied with some of the outcomes that derived from your behavior and some of the choices you made at the time.

The word “home” is a cruel misrepresentation, an apparition—-a lie really.  Home is where we happen to be at any given moment in time.  Obviously home is liberally interpreted to represent the location where one was raised as a youth, but that place began changing—or rather continued changes that are eternally ongoing—the second you left it.  And thus nowadays you don’t recognize it anymore.  Not at all.  Not any part of it.  That “home” has disappeared for good.  That “home” is gone.

Gone forever.

How can you go “home” to a place that no longer exists other than in your heart and in your hazy memories and in some nostalgic netherworld your brain has invented as an antidote against the bad times which occasionally rear their grotesque head in today’s frenetic world?  You cannot.  That type of feat would require a time machine, and of course those cryptic, esoteric things only exist in the fertile imaginations of sci-fi writers and lunatics.  The home of your youth is no more accessible than the body of your youth, and fifty pounds added to one’s flabby gut, five hundred terrible night sleeps punctuated by severe insomnia, and five thousand well-earned gray hairs later spent floating downstream on a relentless temporal river mean that wish is no more likely than finding forty eight ounces of pure gold in the malodorous depths of a cesspool.  The revered home in which you grew up decades ago is a thing of the past, and since the past is wholly inaccessible so too is that utopian place where you were raised and quite fantastically morphed into a responsible adult without realizing such a transcendent process was even occurring.

But majorly more profound than anything else, people change over time, and those dear souls who constituted “home” back in my youth are no longer the same ones I knew then either.  Oh, they inhabit the same bodies as before and their voices still sound the same and they still sign their names exactly the same as before (albeit likely a trifle more tremulously with the passage of time) and they ardently profess to hold the same core beliefs and morals from when they were much younger, but trust me, those are not the same people I grew up with.  Those individuals are only shadows from the past.  Scepters.  Holograms.  Ghosts.  Time has changed all the people I remember, some to a surprising extent and in a surprising fashion–not always for the better.  If a chunk of limestone left exposed to the elements over a period of forty years suffers significant degradation over that same time span, why then would you expect something as fragile as flesh and blood and human emotions to be capable of resisting a similar natural onslaught?

The plain answer is:  They don’t.  Human beings change a lot over time, yet the most ironic aspect informing this dynamic is that the most significant change occurs inside their bodies, not externally.  And when I say inside, I am referring to within one’s brain—within one’s psyche, where the machinations of consciousness are constantly evolving and devolving and churning about and processing new stimuli every minute of every hour of every day and forming new conclusions and opinions based upon that new information, sometimes odd and convoluted ones—and not the more obvious fattening in one’s midriff and the frustrating hair loss and the embarrassing flaccidity over every square inch of one’s outer body surface.

They change; you change; the world around us changes; change is the only constant informing a life spent on Earth.  Well, change and the Arrow of Time.  People—each person currently alive—represent the chief variable, and change and the infallibility of passing time are the omnipresent constants which work non-stop to shape our earthly existences.

David Bowie perhaps said it best in one of his more famous songs:  “Time may change me, but I can’t change time…..”

A big amen to that sentiment.

And a big nullity to sincerely believing that you can ever return to the home of your youth. That place—that “home”–started disappearing the second you left it, and the disappearing act has only accelerated since that pivotal day in your life, although the patch of ground you left behind –if it could speak—would say that it does not view the urgency of time in the same light…..

• It isn’t better; it just IS…..inasmuch as I have no control over the situation at hand and must thus play with the cards I have been dealt from this point forward. The reality of the moment—that’s all it really boils down to.  There is nothing more complicated about the situation I am currently facing than that, and nothing more one really needs to know either.  Nuance is a cute little game played by whiners and dreamers and lifelong politicians, but the real world—“the Big Bad Wolf”, if you will—squashes such people akin to rotten pumpkins if they refuse to step up to the plate and respond to roll call when their name is inevitably called.  And it will be in time, believe me, if not sooner then later; no one is spared an accounting!  So you better suck it up, grit your teeth, and prepare for that seminal day to come lest you prefer the afterlife to your current life…..