Pandemics make you do funny things.\u00a0 A few weeks ago, I got my old bike out of the shed where it\u2019s been since the kids were young.\u00a0 After cleaning off dust and bird poop and airing up the tires, I went to circle our town\u2019s lake trail.<\/p>\n
I was wobbly at first.\u00a0 Steering and braking were challenging.\u00a0 As I struggled up the hill next to Allison Park, I had to make a sharp turn to get onto the trail in the park.\u00a0 I was lurching toward that when I heard a friendly, \u201cHi Randy!\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandy was having morning coffee with her sister Linda out on lawn chairs.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know whether to wave or turn or yell a greeting.\u00a0 Instead, I drove directly into the post in the center of the trail, partially biffing, causing mild bruises to my arm, leg, and ego.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve gotten better since.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pleasant way to spend a summer morning.\u00a0 I was doing that last week, pedaling on the east side where there are benches to set and look over Sleepy Eye Lake.\u00a0 On the ground in front of one, a young woman was sitting with her elbows back on the bench.\u00a0 She was staring out at the water.<\/p>\n
I know her a little but biked on by as she looked to be purposefully alone.\u00a0 This is speculation, but she appeared to be unhappy.\u00a0 She\u2019s about eighteen.\u00a0 As long as I was wildly guessing, I wondered if it had something to do with a relationship.\u00a0 Those tend to run hot and cold in young adults.<\/p>\n
As I rode on, I recalled a similar setting long ago.\u00a0 A girl broke up with me in college, which caused me to go into a deep funk.\u00a0 She dumped me for a star on the basketball team which wasn\u2019t consolation. \u00a0I was depressed, unable to focus on my work or sleep well. It was darn emotions that I couldn\u2019t control: sadness, melancholy, old-fashioned heartache.<\/p>\n
I walked along a nearby lake early in the morning when I couldn\u2019t sleep.\u00a0 I probably stopped to stare out at the water just like the young woman I biked past. \u00a0There is something about water that can be meditative, calming, healing.<\/p>\n
Years later I found out my lost girlfriend was divorced a couple times.\u00a0 There is a country song that goes, \u201cSometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers,\u201d which fits here.<\/p>\n
But, boy, did it hurt at the time.\u00a0 Young people feel hurt deeply.\u00a0 Things are intense.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just pain.\u00a0 The lows are low, but the highs are high.\u00a0 Falling in love is really like nothing else you\u2019ll ever do.\u00a0 Usually that is more a roller coaster than a shot straight up, emotions spilling everywhere along the way.<\/p>\n
I think a lot of us look back at youth as a great place to visit, but we wouldn\u2019t want to live there.\u00a0 As we age, wild swings of feelings settle down.\u00a0 Some of that is perspective.\u00a0 We can see more clearly that this is a moment, and moments pass.\u00a0 Some of it is finding such fervor exhausting.<\/p>\n
Now from a distance I admire the intense emotions of young people.\u00a0 We need that that in our world.\u00a0 We especially need it now as our country deals with so many perplexing issues.\u00a0 I appreciate young people who want things to be better and don\u2019t necessarily want to sit around and wait for it.\u00a0 Why can\u2019t we eliminate racism?\u00a0 Why can\u2019t we deal with global warming?\u00a0 Why can\u2019t an economy run more equitably?<\/p>\n
If any of those good things is going to happen, it\u2019s going to take work.\u00a0 We absolutely need the vitality of young people.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to suggest they are unrealistic and impractical, head in the clouds, starry-eyed.\u00a0 We can give them a thousand reasons why change can\u2019t happen.\u00a0 Or we can get out of their way.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t to say there aren\u2019t emotions as we age.\u00a0 They are down there.\u00a0 The surface might be calmer, but the waters below churn.\u00a0 The joy that comes from hugging a grandkid is a full and vivid as anything can be felt.<\/p>\n
Things change.\u00a0 There is one change that I don\u2019t completely understand.\u00a0 I was talking to friend Greg Roiger, and we found we shared this: as we get older, we cry easier.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard that from other men, too.\u00a0 \u00a0Tears flow that never did when we were younger.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just big events where one expects emotions to overwhelm.\u00a0 It can be a story we hear.\u00a0 It might be something we can relate to in our family or friends.\u00a0 Or it might be someone we don\u2019t know at all having to deal with tragedy.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t have to be sad.\u00a0 Remember those videos of a mom or dad soldier surprising their child at school after being gone for months?\u00a0 Tears, guaranteed.<\/p>\n
The first time I saw my dad cry he was about the age I am now.\u00a0 My younger brother Dean died of an illness early on a May morning.\u00a0 A few hours later we were outside doing farm tasks.\u00a0 My father was telling me something, and suddenly, he couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t sure what to say.\u00a0 That was okay.\u00a0 It was one of those times where saying nothing was about right.<\/p>\n
I was eighteen and didn\u2019t cry that day.\u00a0 A few years ago, I wrote about Dean.\u00a0 Over the keyboard I felt my throat tightening and eyes moistening as I recalled his battles with blindness and a brain tumor.\u00a0 He won the first, but not the second.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, I was asked to speak at a regional meeting of the General Federation of Women\u2019s Clubs in Sleepy Eye.\u00a0 I was honored to do that.\u00a0 I talked about small town life and raising kids, things that I thought the group could relate to.\u00a0 Near the end I planned to read part of a column I\u2019d written about children leaving home.\u00a0 It was a bit of an older group, and I thought that was something most of them had experienced.<\/p>\n
The story was about the day daughter Abby left for Seattle and her first job after college.\u00a0 She was driving and so literally went out the driveway and turned west.\u00a0 As I got part way through reading that, I felt myself choking up.\u00a0 I had to stop a few times to compose myself to go on.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s one paragraph.\u00a0 \u201cThe day after Abby got to Seattle, I was in church.\u00a0 I watched a couple pews over as a little girl climbed up onto her dad\u2019s lap.\u00a0 Then the girl leaned against his chest. Wanting just to be close to her father.\u00a0 That was Abby on my lap just a few years ago.\u00a0 It was a few years to me. \u00a0It was a lifetime for Abby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geez, I have a hard time typing that now.\u00a0 I was embarrassed by my struggle to get through.\u00a0 Afterwards a couple women told me it was okay.\u00a0 I was still embarrassed but thanked them.<\/p>\n
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Pandemics make you do funny things.\u00a0 A few weeks ago, I got my old bike out of the shed where it\u2019s been since the kids were young.\u00a0 After cleaning off dust and bird poop and airing up the tires, I went to circle our town\u2019s lake trail. I was wobbly at first.\u00a0 Steering and braking …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 10:13:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119446,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119445\/revisions\/119446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}