A Day in the Life of Chaos

Within the Bauer family there seems to be some kind of right of male passage established by my father and now being continued with my son.  I am sure every family has their own "requirements for membership."  For my father it was learning from his father who was a machinist building complex parts for Hughes Aircraft.  While his exacting father was often disapproving in his ability, my father's striving to please my grandfather taught my father many skills.  In my case, as I reached junior high school and continuing into high school, it was a directive by my father to take Shop.  I resisted and I complained.  I was an actor, a thespian.  I was a debater, an intellectual.  How could I be expected to take shop?  My father insisted and usually when this was the case it was a battle I would ultimately lose. In junior high school it was the "Industrial Arts."  I learned the names of tools and made boxes out of tin.  I spent a semester continuing an unfinished shop p

Four years ago when I turned 40 years old I flew back to my home in Alaska for the 25th anniversary of my high school graduation.  How quickly the years passed.  In retrospect it seemed simply a flash of light or a blink of the eye.  Life is really that way, it is a jumble of experience interwoven into a blanket that covers our lives.  Each fiber makes the whole but unless it is a pretty pattern we scarcely recognized them once they are fixed to the rest.  Someday the blanket will cover our heads and the life that we once were will vanish underneath. I ventured back to that 25th year reunion largely because I knew a friend of mine from high school was going to attend.  She was a person that could have been a relationship but in the end never was.  Some how divergent personalities, insecurities and the web of experiences kept us apart.  Our words crossed paths over the years, yet seeing her in Alaska was the first time I was face to face with her since I slept on the floor of her apar