blog – Page 3 – developing dad

It’s ‘Award Winning’ Blogger, Thank You Very Much

Wow. I can’t believe I’m here. I’m.. it’s… just, wow!

Okay. Everyone says to write something down cause you’ll forget about someone and I so wish I wasn’t so superstitious. I mean you can’t explain it. As I stand here it’s like time is stopped completely and is hurtling forward so fast I can’t gather my thoughts. Dammit. I’m rambling.

First off I’d like to thank the bunker. Without you none of this would even be possible. Secondly, I can’t tell you how much of an honor it is to just be nominated. Truly. To my fellow nominees, all of you, thank you. Your excellence has pushed me past where I ever thought my brain, or ass for that matter, could go! I’d like to thank the moms. All of em. Mine. Yours. My kids. Lord knows that men don’t read. It’s a harsh generalization, and insofar as generalizations can be, totally accurate. Thanks for reading and allowing me to be vulnerable in front of the world. And for you dads out there that have shown support, I count you amongst those moms. I’d like to thank my Intro to Web Logging Professor, Punk Rock Poppa, AKA Briton, for nominating me. Your words inspire and your youth confounds and occasionally infuriates, but your wisdom abides. Thanks to Developing Mom, with out whom I’d never have found this outlet. Thanks most to Al Gore for creating this platform that has allowed one small man’s voice to ring out through the world and to be heard by literally dozen’s if not scores of mildly amused fellow scribes. Hat’s off to you sir.

I have been given the Inspirational blogger award. I was nominated by Briton Underwood, the Punk Rock Poppa. I start often with a joke, and the above paragraphs tone is an unfunny man’s attempt at humor. But sincerely, I really am touched that he thought to nominate me. I’m actually truly honored. Further, I’m grateful that he found a blog piece of mine amusing and took the time to investigate more and make me a part of his little corner of the web. A corner rich in community and soaring with talent and truly funny people. Thank you, all!

Without further adieu, I move on to the interview portion of this program…

1. Why did you start blogging?

Because I’d been writing my whole life and harbored a deep seeded fear and desire that my work should be read. I have countless boxes of notebooks filled with my tiny scrawlings documenting my emotional journey through life. Dozens of attempts at fiction writing, novels and short stories started and abandoned. Journals and journals of genuinely thoughtful observations buried in pitiable accounts of petty rage and self loathing. Writings how I understand myself, the world and how the two exist in relation to one another. Having kids made me realize I wanted to open a lot of that up to public view. Blogging was the easiest way to do that.

2. What is the book you have read that has touched you the most?

I haven’t read much since the kids. My brain is half of what it used to be and their just isn’t enough space. But I was a copious reader before then. The titles that have most resonated are A Prayer for Owen Meaney, The Poisonwood Bible, Rule of the Bone and Rushmore. I know the last ones a movie, but it’s the type of movie that plays like a book and is very much tonally what I’d love to be able to do.

3. If you could eat dinner with a famous person who is still living, whom would you choose?

The truth of this one is probably Tony Kornheiser and the entirety of the crew of folks that populate his radio show. I know it’s silly, but I truly love being a fan of this show. Thank god for Podcasting. The list would be much longer and filled with many more fascinating minds if the question were who’s wall would I like to be a fly on. Frankly, a lot of my fellow bloggers seem to lead lives and have families that I’d like to see functioning without having the effect of me being in the group. I suppose that sense of being inside but not present is also a part of why I enjoy films and books so much. Hm… interesting…

4. Where is the one place you have visited that gives you complete calmness?

Two places. One, lying flat on my back and watching the planes come in every two minutes miles overhead in the meadow in Prospect Park. Two, A trail we hiked on a whim off the side of the road between the village of Lake Placid and Whiteface Mt. in the Adirondacks that brought us to a spectacular untouched, crystal clear mountain lake. It’s breathtaking…

5. Are you a bucket list person? If so, name one thing on it?

I’m not. But I’d love to write a novel. Also, I’d like to be able to make a living by writing. So far I’ve made nothing and it’s cost me quite a bit, but a boy can dream.

6. What is the goal of your blog?

A goal sounds like a thing that should drive you, but I’m really more of a process person. I guess if I were to impose a goal onto the blog it would be to provide an account of this time of life for myself and for those who may be curious, my son’s and family mostly, that helps inform the photo’s they have in the future and the ones that were never taken or have gone missing.

7. What is a well day spent to you?

It is a question that just reads terribly. It should say, ‘What is a day well spent in your opinion?’ All of them are well spent. The good the bad. The full of optimism and the ones where tears of rage and frustration gush forth and spew uncontrollably. We’re all going to die. Each of these days, even the most painful are well spent. That or catching a baseball game in the sun.Or reading. A day of reading would be great right about now.

8. How do you start your day?

Groggily. I’m over the hill with little kids. It’s all a bit bleary for a good few minutes. I’m usually awoken by the older boy yelling from his bed, ‘MOMMY!’ repeatedly. As she is usually downstairs with lil man I head in and deal with his frustration over the fact that I’m not mommy. Then we head downstairs and drink coffee by the bucket. I am not a healthy man.

9. What is your favorite holiday?

Thanksgiving. No doubt. Not a thing is even close. Four days off just to eat and drink and visit. It’s just great. Also, any holiday that forces one to stop and note their gratitude is pretty cool.

10. Are you where you want to be professionally and if not, what will you do about it?

No. Probably just keep plugging away, slow and steady. I’d like to find ways to supplement my income. We’ll see. The work I did, and loved, and committed my life to prior to having kids, is not really possible anymore, so I’m curious myself to see what will happen.

11. What is your favorite quote?

“J. Walter Weatherman? He’s dead. You killed him when you left the window open with the air conditioning on.” George Bluth

“I got news for you, Bub. Alcohols the reason you’re here, too.” Lucille Bluth

“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln

“If you want to increase your rate of success, double your rate of failure.” Thomas Watson

This concludes my interview. And before I move on to nominating five more bloggers, I’d like to say once again how thrilled I was to get this award. Sincerely.

Now, without further adieu I’d like to nominate Sippy Cups and Booze, thanks for speakin up for the fellas! Next Life No Kids cracks me up daily. Be sure to follow on FB as well! On to Mommies Drink, thank you for your insight! Nominating Juicebox Confessions is a bit absurd, akin to me trying to punch up jokes for Louis C.K., but she is the writer I hope to be someday, so ignore this if you like, just wanted to give the shout out… Finally, I nominate It’s a Mad Dad World… I dig his outlook..

Finally, thanks to Charlie and Teddy who’ve made me a dad.. They are my richest source of learning and a delightful reason to get up every painful morning. WAY too early1

Thank God I Didn’t Know what I Didn’t Know

I’m reluctant to assume I’m smarter than anyone. This is a discipline as my natural inlination is to in fact think myself smarter than almost every one. By now I’m fully trained and at little risk of making such an assumption. My natural hubris has been fully extracted. At least mostly extracted.
There is one person, though. I haven’t seen him in five years or so, but i spent a lot of time with him. Handsome devil, and fairly certain about all the wrong things. Yup. I’m talking about me. You couldn’t tell me shit I didn’t want to hear. Certainly some that deal with me on a daily basis these days would take great umbrage at my claims that I’m no longer that person. And in those idiot’s cases, they may be right. But to my point, which is a very specific one about a very expansive topic, I know I’m right. You see, what I know about parenthood now, what I know specifically about my experience as a parent is something I was sure I could estimate and get fairly close to correct from my previous perspective.
it wasn’t a COMPLETELY ridiculous assumption. Okay, it was an absolutely ridiculous assumption. But I did have a vast and fairly comprehensive set of experiences working with kids and families and have worked my whole life in caring environments. Which I came to find out was somewhat instructive in putting me in a position to know how to learn to raise kids, but in terms of letting me in on ‘what it’s like’ to have kids, it was of less than no value. That’s right, it actually put me in the hole on that front. Comfy in the hole, smug and full of confidence, unwilling to read a thing on the topic and unable to hear the cacophany of parents ahead of me in the line to get a baby opine on the nature of ~~exhaustion~~, er, parenthood.
Thank god I couldn’t hear them. Furthermore, thank god for that look on young couples faces whom we mistakenly assume would be interested in the topic of ‘what parenthood is like for me.’ For the befuddled and confused look of younger siblings and friends that think that their vast experience with the responsibilities of dog ownership has made it so their won’t really be a transition to having kids. Thank god I sat in judgment of these stupid and selfish folks with kids that couldn’t shut up about how freakin tired they always were but who were missing the whole point of this most basic and primal and profound experience we are afforded as humans. Thank god for the younger workers that can come early, stay late and be obsessed with their work, who look on you so pityingly, reassuring anyone and everyone that they’ll never let a baby change their lives that much. Thank god that we are all of these things that our circumstances allow prior to that moment. If we weren’t these things we might just have paid attention. Believed those folks that we got to at the wrong moment who couldn’t stop telling you about how hard it is. We might have assumed that the payoff can’t equal the investment. We might have chosen the only smart option and taken a pass on the whole thing. Had any of us done so we would have missed this chance to be the sun for these few early years. The chance to be with the most precious and adorable people we’ll ever know. We’d never discover the love that so transforms you as to make even the hardest and cruelest realities of life seem to fit into an overarching meaning that comforts and informs us and provides us with wisdom and understanding we would never have known otherwise. We’d never have learned the thousands of lessons our children teach us. We would never have discovered any of the music or programs or books that we’ll come across decades from now and cry instantly knowing that they are precious relics from that profound moment in time that lasted years when you discovered the meaning of your life.
Thank god I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Thank god I couldn’t be told any of it. Had I known it would have robbed me of my life’s greatest discovery.

The Dozing Therapist and the Online Dater

I had just layered my bandages over the perceived cuts. Once it bled through instead of changing the thing I’d just add another bandage. And another and another and another. Until I had so effectively hidden from what I feared, what was me, for so long that I needed to find that out first before I could understand what I wanted in the world.

I was in therapy for many years. I went initially at the behest of a friend. On the advice of the Chief of Mental Health at the organization I worked at I found a good one. She was in the room and a great guide on the path I took to being ready to take on life as an adult. She helped me find peace. Maybe not peace exactly, but enough peace of mind to be able to get to where I needed to go. Then, she fell asleep on me in session. After the third time I saw her drift off, I knew it was time to move on.

Its a tale I have told before and I repeat it with some regularity and giddy delight. It’s the perfect story to trigger sympathy. Perhaps that’s what I’m seeking when I tell it. Its also completely unfair to Heather was a very good therapist who perhaps had too many starches for lunch on occasion or took an inconveniently timed allergy pill or perhaps honestly fell asleep due to how boringly monotonous my issues had become. Who’s to say. Whats definitely true was that without her guidance and commitment to me and my well being I would likely still be unable to connect with someone so much that we could navigate the challenges of marriage and parenthood and with much difficulty and many setbacks arrive on the other side transformed individually and together.

Had I not gone to Heather I would not have been able to say the things I needed to say to my mother. It was a call that caught her off guard and taught me that my mother is the most supportive and intuitively gracious person I’ve ever known. This is not a momma’s boy statement either. I’d say the vast majority of people that have known her would tell you the same. And her generosity, both of spirit and of her more finite resources are her defining attribute. In the end the complaints I had were of an adolescent nature, and seeing as I was well into my 30’s I should add patience and commitment to her loved ones as defining attributes as well.

Prior to that conversation I had been on Match.com for at least a year. Could’ve been as much as two. It’s a challenge to remember exactly because prior to that call with my mom, where I told her of the things she’d said that had hurt, and said some undoubtedly hurtful things myself I wasn’t really looking to connect. I was more whittling away at who I was beneath all the layers of defenses I’d put on myself. Prior to having an honest discussion about what I thought was wrong with me with my mom I had just layered my bandages over the perceived cuts. Once it bled through instead of changing the thing I’d just add another bandage. And another and another and another. Until I had so effectively hidden from what I feared, what was me, for so long that I needed to find that out first before I could understand what I wanted in the world.

It turned out that during the dozens of first and maybe a few second dates I had over my time intentionally looking for someone else to share a life with, what I was really doing was getting comfortable being myself. What i discovered under all the wrapping was that my wounds were never as deep as I’d thought. That I was not only comfortable in my skin, but I was even capable of being quite fond of who I was. I discovered that what I was looking for did not yet reside in someone else. It couldn’t yet. I had to find it first on my own.

So for the many of you that have shown empathy for me and my sleeping therapist, rest assured that the very act, while unprofessional, did not mean that she was not helpful. She was. Very. And without the times I spent in that place, learning to officiate the constant sparring between my head and my heart, I would never have arrived here. In this place where the act of being myself is becoming less and less discipline and more and more a delight.

Museum Pieces

The exhibit is nearing completion, though there are still a few pieces left to be completed, logged, inspected and displayed.

The exhibition is of my most productive period and will be in permanent residence in the grand hall. The room, the central hub and featured showroom, has been closed to all visitors for nearly four years. That’s how long it has taken to produce and display the items that are to be featured.

There has been a great deal of buzz generated by myself, the curator and a collaborator on this project, but the room itself has been open only those crucial to the process.

The grand hall in the museum of my life will be hosting the display, ‘Our Family, the Early Years.’ It is a permanent and evolving installation.

I’m forever curating the museum of my life. There is endless detritus that is logged once, noted and recorded for historical purposes and donated or outright given to others or placed in the cold, dark, vast warehouse of forgotten details and mementos. Of those items that I choose to display they are ordered by importance and their prestige is evident in how I choose to display them.

This room, this grandest of rooms, will feed me and fuel me through the times that lie ahead. Through times that will so devastate me that they will make me wonder what all this was for. My aim is to curate an exhibit so stunning, so perfectly designed for my audience of one, for me, that I will be so enamored of it as to be unable to wander too far from it. Over time it will hard wire my memories and the feelings that drove me to embark on such an ambitious, albeit not groundbreaking, body of work.

I will wallow in it, work in it and invest energy in keeping it pristine. All of this in the hopes that even in my feeblest state I’ll always know my way back to that room. That room filled with love and meaning and work and creativity and awe and beauty. Its the room that I intend to live in for as long as I can, until the end if possible.

I will marvel at it’s treasures and inspect those pieces that so transformed and transfixed me. When I can no longer manipulate the artifacts of my specific humanity anymore, I intend to nest in them as I did the first time around in order to feel that pride and love and warmth until I die, smiling at what was and what is.

This document is a map of sorts to a memory or two. An artists description of the work in real time to be used by me as a patron of the museum in the future. It will help me access more fully the pieces that are before me. I’m compelled to do this to make up for all those pieces I didn’t log in this way due to exhaustion and the foolish belief that the memories would be so powerful as to never drift away into the ether. Perhaps I thought them permanent in some way, a way that would make documenting it formally a waste of time. Foolish indeed and I should have known better. But, ours is not to wonder why, and so forth…

It is also for you, reader, truly it is. Knowing that you read, and that you are occasionally moved to engage with me has added immensely to my experience. It is also for my wife and our kids. A log of sorts, though I hope an artful one, capturing this time. A fools errand to be sure, and likely a fruitless and hopelessly failing attempt to capture just a piece of its essence for our collective and individual future enjoyment.

Teddy sits in my lap, every night sometime between 8 and 8:30. Bathed and brushed and comfy in his pajamas. He’s my little bedtime buddy. He’ll cry when I pick him up and momma gives him his Elmo doll. A doll too small to be his lovey, but it is what he has chosen and our many attempts to provide him with a larger, more plush and easier-to-find-in-your-sleep or in the darkness of waking at 2AM doll have been shunned. ‘Mo-mo’, as he calls him, is his guy. The rest are discarded, literally thrown overboard, if he notices them. Two dolls other than mo-mo stay in the bed, a floppy brown bunny and a standard issue bear, but they are so untouched as to be unnoticed.

The routines are a dead giveaway now and he cries and lunges for mommy when it clicks for him that it is bedtime. She is a bit more pliable in terms of keeping to the schedule in general and he thinks if he could just get me to hand him over to her, he’d be able to avoid his fate. Neither momma nor I pay any attention to this complaint anymore as it ceases by the time we get to the stairs, a walk of no more than 12-15 adult steps from anywhere on the first floor of our small and perfect little suburban home, and usually not more than 5 steps from where he’s been picked up, in the living room.

Once to the stairs we make a dramatic flourish of thrusting our hands upward, toward the second floor, a show of bravado that he and I enjoy and one that always brings a smile to his face. Thusly we proceed up the stairs, following our outstretched hands and giggling when we get to the top. The theatricality of it all is just plain silly, but if you haven’t seen him do it it’s just not altogether possible to understand how adorable it is.

He is not going to have these cheeks, these bubbly, adorable cheeks, for much longer, but for the time being anything I can do to make him smile, I will.

Once on the landing we turn left to the bedrooms. Theirs one to the right, but we loaded up all our stuff in it when we moved in and now only reference it if something is in there which needs to be extracted or if we need a place to shove things when people are coming over. It is now, and I imagine will forever be referred to by Karen and I as ‘the cottage’. We christened it when it became the place we flopped down in when we’d pushed enough crap to the sides to lay out a futon mattress and it became the place where sick parents slept, or where we’d lie during that glorious long weekend when we had managed to get them napping at the same time. Our room shared a wall with theirs and we weren’t going to risk even the possibility of being the reason they might wake up.

I plop him down and he runs into his room. Once there he looks around for a second spots the glider chair that was initially used for nursing but is now the rocking chair, and makes a break for it. I pretend to be outraged and shocked, every night, that he’s going to sit in daddy’s chair, and he struggles his way up there, climbing like a pro, sits proudly and takes in my displays of shock, both facial and audible, and laughs proudly.

I don’t know if you have access to a two year old, but if you do, spend AS MUCH TIME AS POSSIBLE watching them walk around in pajamas. It’s just awesomely cute.

I pick him up, turn on various, strategically placed little lights, turn off others, turn on a bit of white noise and proceed to work my way through his stack of books until he decides he’s done, or we finish all of them. To this point, we’ve only added and not yet removed any of his books. Little Blue Truck and Goodnight Gorilla are the musts but usually it’s all of them. I’ve dozed off while reading. I always roust quickly enough, but his weight and warmth on my lap, the dim lights and the repetitive pleasantness of the books have a mildly narcotic effect on me.

Once done I sing to him. Usually starting with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then You Are My Sunshine… I may hum from there, I may move to the Beatles. Some Blackbird, some early parts of Hey Jude, maybe some God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. I usually put him down at this time, but yesterday he made me hold him for a bit and kept bringing my hand up to his cheek, so it rested on him, fully holding his face on the outside, while the inside was pressed against my chest while he sat in my lap. If a meaning of life can be said to be a visceral feeling rather than a thought or a defined purpose, this is one of the meanings of my life.

This is one of the routines that evolve early in life that feel like they will last forever, but tend to last a few weeks to a few months before necessity forces them to change or the child simply loses interest and the routine is no longer effective. While I haven’t done a wonderful job of logging them, as I’m doing now, I hope to do more in the near future. Hopefully this is a nostalgic dad’s lament, chapter 1.

I want to go back to the old video’s and photos and jog memories and come back here and record them in detail, as much detail as possible, before they are all gone and I look at the photo’s and see my beautiful boy and remember everything he ever said, but start saying things like, ‘I don’t remember that apartment so much anymore. Was Charlie born yet when we moved in there? Was he only in the apartment for the first year or was it closer to two?’

I don’t want that fate. But it or some more addled version of that state, or some less benevolent version of it is surely approaching. Just as new and exciting and enriching phases of my kids lives are heading this way.

So rather I log my memories, in pictures and in words in hopes that those triggers will trigger in me responses that will transport me in an instant back to that dark room, in our still disheveled, not fully occupied or appointed tiny little house where I can giggle with Charlie over the silliness of him pretending to be a dog named Sonny. Where I can pretend his carrots are puppy treats, a move I’ve stolen from his mother, in a multipurpose front room with makeshift changing stations and an unused fireplace and gates blocking every exit. To the place where my little boy won’t let me take my hand from his cheek. Where he will simply find the hand if it goes missing, and place it back on his cheek as he knows that is what’s needed. He’s right, and its one of the chief pleasures of my entire existence, and I will become a silly nostalgist adrift in gauzy memories and I will lose all currency and relevancy willingly if it will help me to remember this beautiful place of messy, sloppy, crazy love where our family began.

The Lodge Part One; Getting There

Amongst the clearest and most treasured memories of my youth are the handful of roadtrips that I took with my dad, just the two of us. One that sticks out for me as particularly enjoyable was a trip to Pennsylvania where I needed to be on campus early for basketball camp check in the next day.

The day started at the Morgan Manning house for the 4th of July town picnic and fair. Its the kind of tradition I had no idea I’d come to love about the town of Brockport, NY where I grew up.

After hot dogs (Zweigel’s, the only proper hot dog) and my little brother doing the cakewalk and the barbershop quartet of high school teachers we went home, loaded the minivan and got on the road.

On this trip we were in the right mood. We were just relaxed and comfortable and conversation flowed and we talked about life and family, everything and nothing. I don’t remember the details and they weren’t important. We were relaxed, comfortable and alone. It was nice.

It was in fact the counter to my normal level of anxiety. Once when I was 5 or so I was in the bathroom while he was shaving. There were at least 8 of us, often more. As George Bluth said, watch out for hop-ons, you’re gonna have hop-ons. Anyway, with two bathrooms overcrowding was not at all unusual so for me to be peeing while he shaved was not unusual. After a moment of observation he looked over at me, face half covered in thick white foam and half smoothly shaven and said. ‘Are you breathing.’ I wasn’t. He said, ‘it’s okay. Breathe.’ So I did. I’ve always been self-conscious, still am.

We stayed in a hotel that night near the camp. It remains the one and only night I’ve ever eaten at an Arthur Treacher’s. I imagine this was true for him as well. Then we went to a movie. The only thing that lined up with our schedule that was agreeable to both of us was ‘Soapdish’.

For a couple of hours we howled with laughter. A reserved 40-something dad and his jock 15 year old son cracking up at the antics of a cast of eccentrics populating the set of a daytime soap opera. It was downright hysterical, silly and perfect. It was one of the best days of my childhood. It shouldn’t surprise me that the most meaningful and metaphorical journey of my life was a road trip with my dad in a minivan across the state when I was 20.

Side note about my dad; He’s funny. Very funny. It’s a dry sense of humor, not needy, rarely reaching out, but often reactive and precise. I can be manic in my need to get in a funny line at every opportunity, even inventing the opportunities, or sticking a laugh line in as a non sequitur just to get the attention. It comes from a funnier place for my dad. He’s okay letting tons of good enough but not perfect pitches fly past, and then boom, HYSTERICAL. I’ve tried to learn from this, and to some degree I’ve calmed down. He’s such a good editor and knows when funny is funniest. My papa was that way as well.

Fast forward to what can either be referred to as my first Junior year at college or my second sophomore year. I prefer the former, but whatever your druthers.

I, remarkably, was in a night class. I say remarkably because my academic history is littered with classes that I never intended to attend and rarely did. But this was a 3 hour, 1 credit class and I showed up. It was part of a series of single credit, single night classes that were offered in the Human Services curriculum. I’d kind of backed and failed my way into the major, but it was in line with my personal ethics of being helpful to those less fortunate so I went with it. These single night credits were taught by community based professionals in a particular field of service. This night happened to be the Executive Director of the Chemung County ARC. He was a nice if distracted guy who gave us a good history of the movement, the state of the field and the needs going forward. It was interesting and I wanted to get involved.

In the course of the evening Jodi, a less then friendly and somewhat overconfident young woman by my estimation (which was informed by little if any evidence, but firmly believed. Ah… youth) spoke of her experience the previous summer at a camp for adults with developmental disabilities.

It was a camp run by AHRC of NYC, the chapter that was the progenitor of the entire Arc movement. I decided to approach her at the break. Turned out that being male, a decent fellow and willing made me qualified for a position there! Besides, Jodi would be there and I’d at least know one face. Might even get to see another side of her. So the dye was cast and my life turned at that moment and in many ways has never turned back.

After a week or so home from school I was off to the Catskills with my dad. It was a 6 hour drive, one that I’d make several more times over the years. The ride was long and disorienting. I’d never noticed the glorious mountains that buttress and soar over the New York State Thruway as you make your way east across the state. They existed there without my notice for the many trips I’d taken across the state over the years. But when we got off and went onto the local roads it took only a few miles until we realized we were heading to a place neither of us had known existed.

Other than some summer vacations when my dad was a kid even he had never really experienced the vast mountainous region of New York that stretched from the area city-dwellers called upstate and the northerners thought of as downstate all the way up to the top of the world up at the Canadian border. It was the spine of the state and we lived in the panhandle out west.

My dad is from the New York Metropolitan area, so this vast middle, encompassing the Catskill Mts. and the Adirondacks had managed to be avoided. The long looping curves of the valley roads gave way in an instant to roads that seemed to have majestically green, steep, natural walls. It was like the mountains and there fauna were cradling the pavement that now wove a twisting and turning road that revealed which travelers were local as they bore down on the vast amount of out-of-towners there to feed the economy and reconvene with nature.

Finally, out of the hairpin at the Kaaterskill Falls trail head the roads started to stretch back to long and looping as we arrived in the higher valley.

Tannnersville is a small, humble and charming mountain town that would become my nearest ‘civilaization’ for the years ahead. The directions took us right through and up the mountain that hovered over it, all the way to the picturesque stone church at its peak and back down the other side. We took a right at the General Store/Post Office onto a beautiful, meandering river of a small country road that ended at Colgate Lake.

Rather, it didn’t end it turned to dirt and we continued through a tunnel carved through the forest, looking at each other partly worried and partly as Doc Brown looked at Marty at the end of Back to the future… Where we’re going we don’t need roads!

I can’t honestly tell you what conversations were had on this journey save one. I remember saying it and my dad has remembered it too. I told him that I had no idea what to expect. I told him that I was a little nervous but that I was thinking of it as 90 days and I can endure anything for 90 days. I’ve heard my dad proudly retell of hearing me saying that and he always follows it up by pointing out that after he left me that day he knew a change was coming for me. He was right.

I could most certainly endure what lay ahead. I had no idea that it was the start of a journey with as much learning and growing and failing and succeeding as I could stand bottled up in 5 two week sessions of sleep deprived sleep-away camp that would change my worldview, broaden my understanding of humanity, enhance my ability, grow my confidence, open my eyes to a world that was rich and vibrant and dynamic and revolutionary and introduce me to an instant community of friends and acquaintances who would create and sustain magic on a daily basis, all with the aim of righting a societal wrong and providing people with the opportunity to have the time of their lives. It would keep my otherwise antsy and unsteady and frankly dangerous life of excess in check as I discovered that when you are fully engaged in a thing, 20 hours a day is not enough. It was enough to get the work done, at least usually, just not enough of the experience.

I was enjoying all of it, the joy and the pain, the wins and the losses, the new experiences and the vulnerability I was discovering in myself and the world and I didn’t want it to ever end.

We’d drink and sing and dance and swear and smoke and hookup and breakup. During the day we’d bring people that would never have the chance otherwise to the top of the mountain, whatever that meant for them. If we couldn’t we’d not hesitate in getting to work building them their mountain, to spec, because we were delighted to be given the opportunity. We fought and created cliques, then we broke them and cross pollinated. We created a utopian society their and we thought we were the first ones to do it. I’m still convinced we were the best who ever did.

But on that car ride, a ride that was both familiar and different it turned out that dad was dropping me off at the end of a dirt road in a beautifully landscaped world that was designed to make the world a better place. It certainly did that for me. It was the home that would take it’s place next to the big blue/gray house on Clark St. It became my spiritual and literal home. When I’d leave I’d yearn to be back. When I was there, even in the cold, dark, lonely and depressing winters, I never wanted to be anywhere else. I loved her even more then. Even when it was emptied of all the people that made it what it was. It was even more beautiful to me as it sat stoically dark waiting patiently to be enlivened once again. After the departures, after the work, after our irreversibly changed lives, after the love and the struggle and the ultimate experience, the walls were my companions for months on end and I loved them as I had learned their potential.

I loved everything about that place and I still do. The Lodge was where I was able to make mistakes and miracles and to witness transformations, including my own. Where I learned to push myself and accept who I was. It was the greatest experience of my life to that point and would inform all the other wonders that were to come.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Charlie insisted that Grandma, Koba (Grandpa), Daddy and Mommy all sit at attention at the picnic table. We were seated so we were facing him as he prowled the stage that was the landing at the top of the steps leading to the beautiful red Rockwellian shed that he thought of as Buddy the Cat’s house. He welcomed us to the show and proceeded to command our attention by acting out a story about how he lost his doggie. About how that doggie ran away and grew up to be a kitty cat, and how charlie found him by calling his name around both corners of the little house/shed/set. He informed us that his name was ‘Tree Pikwalk’ and that we all had to call for him if he were to be found. And low and behold, after we all gave it a shout, good old Tree Pikwalk, the dog that grew up to be a cat, returned home. We were then instructed by Charlie to clap for his story. When we did it was as if he were at Carnegie Hall and he’d just won the admiration of an initially doubting audience.

We were then instructed to stop. He was now the MC and he welcomed everyone to the show. Clap your hands everybody. Introducing, DADDY! He waved me up and left the stage for me to put on a ‘show’. I of course proceeded to do what the director instructed and told a story. Knowing his preferences I made it a story of childhood pets. In this case I told the origin story of our family pet, Mama Kitty, who was a housemate for almost all of my youth and how her passing at 18, an incredibly long life for a cat, lead to the occasionally odd moment when people came to our house and saw an etched stone slate that simply said, ‘Mama, 1980-1998’. It was a success and with all the generosity of a true fan my presenter and host started the applause and made sure that everyone joined him. It was grand.

I’m envious of his confidence and his constant creativity and in awe of his energy. Thanks to him and his little brother, Teddy, I’m able to somewhat approximate their joie de vivre, The two of them can knock me out physically, but the result of their presence in my life has left me with a verve and joy that I never knew before they arrived.

These attributes, confidence, creativity, energy and joy will be informed by an increasing knowledge and understanding of the feelings and needs of others around them as well as the painful realization that people will sometimes be mean even though they aren’t necessarily mean people. Hell, at some point even they will be mean and not understand why. These are all things to be expected and are key points in one’s journey to aware, conscious and thoughtful adulthood. To be able to feel confident enough to consciously put on a ‘show’ and present enough to attend to the shows of others you love because we are all human and need love and attention. To be unafraid to be wholly and truly yourself despite your fears that it will cause others to judge you. To not be afraid to be judged by those people because you are the things you are and it is okay to be them. To be so entirely comfortable in your own skin that you are able to connect with the world around you and the souls you are fortunate enough to be near in a way that shares with them your fragility and essence. These are the things I see in my son’s that I hope will survive, somehow, the onslaught that is heading their way as they head out into the world without any armor. These attributes that will hold the key to happiness when they emerge on the other side of the chasm separating childhood from adulthood. We are in the bubble now and I treasure my time here, knowing already that it is fleeting.

I just hope that I remember, when it looks its ugliest and I’m compelled to react to the behaviors I know are not reflective of the boys they were, that they are neither predictive of the men they will be. That in order for them to get through the upheaval of adolescence and early adulthood they have to travel roads that are inevitably and imperatively roads I can’t go down with them. I hope I remember that they will carry with them, despite any and all indications to the contrary, their sweet nature, their fragile and vulnerable skin and their need for love and attention. I hope they are able to hear me as I call for them while they are lost, like Tree Pikwalk who grew up to be a cat. I hope I hope I hope.

I hope beyond hope that my little dogs grow up, turn into cats and can put on a show for me of a kind I now put on for my parents, relishing in their approval and attention and no longer bashful about how important and meaningful it all is to me.

Roar. Regret. Try not to repeat.

Toddlers are fighting an uphill battle with their baby selves. As babies they were in 100% need of love and attention at literally all hours of the day. We adults are not equipped, even in those fortunate situations in which there are two of them able to commit to this endeavor round the clock, to easily add this level of work to our lives. As a result nature has made it so we are compelled, through obsessive love and fear, to push through levels of exhaustion far exceeding our experience. An exhaustion that can become just achingly painful. This challenge is met by a force so epic, that has been refined through natural selection to be as powerful as concentrated love. They compel us to scrap all our plans and commit full bore to the job that will see us through to the light no matter how far away it may be with true and profound cuteness. Not just garden variety, either, but a specific blend made just for his parents that plays on every subconscious bias to ensure that we will protect him viciously from the wolves.

And we do. We do everything in our power to ensure this childs safety. At critical intervals where the weight of the task is more than one believes they can stand we are given smiles and tears and laughter and warmth in measured doses to refill our tanks, to power us on past the silly moments we thought we’d never pass. Before you know it that blip in their lives, the part they’ll never remember and the part you’ll never fully forget but will forever edit for perfection, baby world as I call it, is over. And the parent isn’t even aware that it has passed.

The parent still sees the beauty and joy this one can bring. They will see it forever, even when its just an aura, they will know. But for the toddler it’s an impossible thing to overcome. But make no mistake, overcome it they must. For they cannot remain helpless forever. It’s time to see what’s behind the couch and up the stairs and in the potty and on the street. And in order to get the chance to find these things they must create some space for themselves. Some area, even in parents eyesight, to taste independence. So they use natures repellent. Toddler behavior.

Toddlers are legendarily misunderstood this way. They are compelled, and should be. No, they MUST BE. Compelled to poke you and prod you. Pull you and push you. Anything they can do, for as long as necessary to piss you off. and with all the redundancy of love that fuels the baby world it is a high bar that they must clear. But they will. Maybe not when their just getting their legs or when they find their voice. But someday they will finally push you so far that there will be no choice. And like those moms in Target you used to judge so harshly, who you now wish to hug for hours, you will snap. If you’re lucky it’s in the home. But there’s no guarantee. It can, and does, happen anywhere and eventually, everywhere.

I can’t speak to the maternal experience, but as a dad, we’re practically and effectively screwed by the incongruent progress of society and human evolution. For milenia (COMPLETELY MADE UP) us men have been bred to lessen emotions of warmth, and strengthen emotions of rage. It’s really only in the last 500 years or so that that’s started to change. And really in my father’s lifetime when men routinely became involved in any aspect of their children’s emotional well being, other than providing the home and the food to allow for it. Crucial jobs, providing protection from the elements and assuring readily available sustenance. So crucial in fact that it was the essential function of men within the family. But then farming and food and prefabbed homes and suburbia all conspired with some friends to make these tasks far FAR less dangerous and time consuming.

So we men all of a sudden have been domesticated. But we are not yet like the dogs that were once wolves. I’m more dog than my forebears and my sons will be moreso then me, but we are not yet bred to the new societal norm. Nope. We are animals fueled by love, certainly, but also by anger and frustration and discomfort. We are diligent workers at being social, but we do not come natural to it. We have as much instinct still to roam the land looking for danger and food as we do to hug and hold and be held. But we have no outlet for this drive. Until Jr. starts to discover his inner beast.

Then, at least with my boys, we collide. Me and my fading but still evident pile of testosterone and him and his budding desire to get in a fight with me. I can be had. And he provokes brilliantly. And….. boom goes the dynamite. I explode and he recoils, recognizing that daddy is scary. It’s terrible when you see that they know that. Even worse when you know that this aggression by a stronger animal against a weaker one worked. It’s an awful feeling when you see that he to is ruled by the jungle, understands he is in mortal danger (he is not at all. I would never touch him in any way aggressively, but he doesn’t know that yet, and it’s exactly what I intended him to react to.

I go away because my aim was met, but I’m already sick to my stomach. I immediately regret what I’ve done. Yes, meatheads, the commonly scrawled phrase on gym shirts, in what I can only assume is a font called ‘spraycan’, of ‘NO REGRETS’ is absurd, harmful and very very bad. We should all feel regret. Not all the time by any means, but certainly with some frequency. At least as often, say, as you feel like going out for a steak. There is a name for people that feel no regret. The name is sociopath.

So I find myself back downstairs, sulking on the couch imagining a precious little 3 year old curled in bed, silent with fear. I check the monitor a couple minutes after I left and his head is still hidden away so you can’t see his face, flat on his fading Mickey Mouse sheets, shielded by the side of his pillow and his hand, praying that the scary monster, me, can’t see him if he can’t see me. I just want to die. I have won and it is killing me.

This only lasts this long because of my man-ness. This wouldn’t happen to Karen. Sure, she has yelled at her three year old a couple of times by now, like literally twice. It’s not that, it’s the really stupid blindness of masculinity. Or at least of mine, is that when I’m enraged like this, and it is just that, rage, the simplest and most obvious solutions are sometimes lost on me. I’m not being obstinate, I swear. It takes a few minutes, some self-loathing for motivation and eventually the thought of returning to his room, sitting and comforting my scared child and owning my mistaken rage fueled outburst and asking for his forgiveness smacks me in the face. It’s so stinking obvious. And I can see how women don’t believe that we don’t see it, but some of us, some of us with all good intentions, are literally, not figuratively, incapable of seeing that as an option. That does not mean we reject it as an option. Quite to the contrary the second it occurs to us, boom, it’s done. No. We actually don’t see it. Because in this area, the area our emotions fueling socially acceptable, though ethically dubious displays of power and frustration, we’re still evolving.

Unfortunately for my kids, both boys, they may in fact deal with these parts of my personality that the 37 years before they started arriving here didn’t sufficiently get beaten out of my DNA.

So it’s this beautiful, wonderful, motivating regret that puts me right back up in the bedroom, telling my kid, dammit if I’m not a jerk. I mean, I don’t say it like that as that’s such a confounding turn of phrase, so it’s more simple, something like, ‘Hey buddy. YIKES!’ and then I say very clearly ‘I’m sorry.’ Because I am. Because I need him to know that when he is big and powerful, and he very well could be some day, and already is in relation to his little brother in the next bed who wants in on this convo, it is important for him to remember that failure is an option, not a problem. It’s something you can be relieved of by saying you were a jerk when you recognize you were one, and saying sorry to the person you were a jerk to. And I say it until he’s smiling and laughing again. And then I lay into his ass. Cause,you know, it’s a jungle out there.

That’s not at all true. I humble myself as a good role model should. I ask him and his brother if they’d like to skip nap, because you know, I must pay penance, and then we all go downstairs, pop in Ratatouille and hang on the couch giggling and smiling.

A Note On My Recent Behavior

Parenthood first goes about revealing your innumerable flaws and shortcomings. It does this in such a nonstop barrage of situations that reveal your inadequacy that you question not only your abilities, but the universe and its judgment to leave such a precious and wonderful gift in such incapable hands.

You fumble through and with repetition you learn that what feels massive is just a blip and when things that arise that could be massive are dealt with you start to trust that you in fact are the right person and the hospital didn’t make a mistake letting this baby come home with you. You are broken down to your foundation and rebuilt brick by brick. It is a necessary and critical process as it allows you to discard the many silly things you treated with reverence before you knew better and it leaves you with something approximating wisdom.

When I held my firstborn for the first time I became aware of my own mortality. No one told me about this. About sleepless nights and the many changes to lifestyle, sure, but this existential crisis was not something for which I was on the lookout.

I thought about death passively and actively. It was a farmer’s toothpick getting chewed on, soft and tattered until it was soaked and malleable and worn through, splintering and finally turning to pulp to be discarded.

I am empowered by my inevitable death. What felt like a crisis, that I was not going to be able to foster him and his brother completely through a life, has turned into an awakening. It hurts to be sure that I won’t get to see how their stories end. I won’t be there to ensure as happy an ending possible and in fact will rely on them to provide this for me. But between now and then it is my privilege and obligation to do everything I can to stack whatever odds I can in their favor.

From this angle I’ve become a man that is determined to have as little difference between my public and private face as possible. I do this for me, yes, but I also do it for them. My little guys need to see that they are able to be wholly themselves even when the world smirks at them.

The world can seem a hell of a giant thing and when it takes note of you with scorn it can be scary. But you can’t be afraid. You can’t allow the world to so color your opinion of yourself that you decide it’s best to hide behind whatever facades you decide upon which draw the least amount of attention. In fact, once you know fully who you are you can smirk right back at the world as you are equal to it. Primarily because ‘fuck it’. You are. No matter what the world thinks of you it can’t change that unless you enable it.

Secondly, you, me and everyone we know are great. All of us. It may not play out on a stage large enough for the world to see and it may not ever make life easy, but it’s true. Our greatness is innate and the only way we can fail it is to not attempt to practice it and to share it. Do this and the world and its judgments will not only get quiet, they will disappear.

I’m no longer worried that the world won’t like me. I’m going to state loudly and clearly and hopefully eloquently and gracefully that I’m here and I’m not going to be bashful. I’m not going to mute the full throated volume of my love. I’m not going to stand silently if I think a thing is wrong. And most importantly I’m not going to let scorn or judgment from the outside color my impression of myself.

In this way my kids, after revealing every conceivable weakness in my possession, have provided me with this one superpower. Short of the most tragic thing I can now imagine, there is nothing that can break me. They taught me this just in time as I’m heading in to a phase of life rife with inevitable and natural events that are going to test this. But I can tell you that these things, these terrible and awful events will not break me.

My kids have imbued me with resolve. I can honestly say with one hundred percent confidence that I’ll write my book. I’ll share my life. I’ll live out loud for as long as I have breath. I have to. They’re watching.

A Son’s Notes from Parenthood

The parent-child relationship is fraught with misguided and unattainable expectations.

To the parent of a child, pre-adolescent, there is simply nothing that can sway them off the opinion that their child, amongst all the others, is MOST special, MOST handsome and MOST capable of curing cancer, ending war and solving global warming. No one goes so far as to say their child WILL do these things, but most of us wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.

Concurrently the pre-adolescent child can see no more great or benevolent figure than Mommy and Daddy. They may pout and scream and defy, but they are doing so not to the person that stands before them, but rather to the great and powerful Oz… who stands before them. To this child daddy can move mountains and mommy hauls up the sun every morning and puts it to bed at night so the moon can have its turn. To the child there is virtually no booboo that can’t be greatly improved if not cured entirely by the simple act of a kiss from one of these mythic gods known as their parents.

This is as it must be. Fostering a life from birth to independence is an overwhelming feat. Every parent needs to feel that given enough time and patience they can cure all. It is even more necessary for the child who needs to know that the ‘Gods’ know them and will protect them. That they can go out confidently into the scary world, knowing they are being watched and loved and protected by the most powerful beings on earth, their Mommy and Daddy.

With such an inaccurate point of view being reinforced perpetually in both directions it is inevitable that the crumbling of the facade is indelicate. When the child reaches their teens they are likely to have their coming of age prompted by the encroaching suspicion that mom and dad are in fact NOTHING like all powerful and benevolent gods, but are rather flawed and human. The momentum generated by this epiphany pushes that teenager’s opinion right past reality, swinging all the way to the other end of the spectrum, resulting in the firm knowledge that my parents alone are THE most embarrassing and THE most unfit for responsibility and THE pettiest dictators the world has ever seen. [1] Teenagehood is a very dramatic hood. It’s the daytime soap opera portion of your life. There’s no understanding or perspective there. People are caricatures, and your parents are the worst of all.[2] When you can get a break from there arbitrary rule setting that doesn’t consider how capable you are of navigating on your own, you actually feel sorry for them. The way you do for those tiny single-celled organisms that don’t have a brain or free will or the ability to see all the amazing wonder that life has to offer.[3] They’re actually kind of sad with their early bedtimes and late night ice creams on the couch.[4] It’s unfair that you could have been so fabulous without this albatross of a family around your neck[5], and this angers you, generally. But still, they are to be pitied in some way as they’ll never know how deep and meaningful life could be since they’re just not capable of it. But these moments of empathy pass. They are now the enemy, to be tricked and defeated and never to be heeded. What once were gods are now feeble minded and feckless tyrants and it is your job to keep reminding them of their loathsomeness[6].

In a coincidence that is surely one that evolution has deemed necessary, parents discover this idiot kid, this now smelly and gross animal that seems to know less than nothing[7] at almost exactly the same time that it is realized by the child that their parents are not divine entities. This child, once capable of anything, is now capable of only thoughtless and careless behavior that will inevitably leave them penniless and angry. They are certain to make EVERY wrong decision possible. Now, when it is most important that they heed your warnings they in fact are incapable of even hearing you. In fact they have taken on a new language, one you’re not meant to understand, but to your untrained ear it seems to speak only the most vile of ugliness’s and is one that was designed and is now employed to in fact make you understand that this child hates you[8]. You who have done nothing short of committing your best years to this kid! This knucklehead! This jerk![9]

So what was once a beautiful and utopian relationship based on unquestioning devotion and love born of mutual awe is now a war torn landscape covered in mines that while not intended to kill, still sting, often injure and have the potential to maim. This is nothing short of an emotional civil war. The youth is duty bound to secede. If you’ve raised them right and given them what they need, they have no choice. And you, the parent, likewise conscripted to this fate have to provide resistance. It is both your inclination as well as your responsibility to resist with all out total war tactics being implemented. The enemy is at war for something they don’t understand and it is your duty to fight, to fight dirty if needed. You must win the early battles since you know, in your heart of hearts, that you will lose in the end. When all is just about to be lost it is your job as the adult to wave the white flag and retreat.

You will offer council and do your best to respect that the victory was theirs, but you know it was only so because you allowed it. At least by being the one to accept defeat you have now gained some control of the peace. It was not the control you wanted when the war began. But you have to allow that victory has its spoils and the period of detente must also play out through periods of latency, threats of renewed conflict and negotiation to maintain some sway in this new nation’s future as its ability to be self-sufficient and thrive is all you can now hope for.

You start with talks, promising to remove sanctions and provide humanitarian aid[10], but you know your constituents will resist and you make small, easily fulfilled promises at first. You operate through back channels to ensure that this new nation, while still feeling great pride in establishing its independence from you, is provided with what it needs to thrive without it knowing that you are a true safety net that won’t let it fail. You realize soon that your former adversary is in fact making the same mistakes that history shows all new nations make.[11] You learn that this is okay. You learn that mistakes are part of the process and you try to help your former enemy through this challenging time. This relationship, thus established forms what looks like routine. You fund, they spend, you fund, they spend. You come to accept and then rely on its regularity. But change is afoot.

Recently freed from the colonial ranks they are now a free and independent state alight in the world. They are eager to partake in all that has been restricted from them as a dependent state and in doing so they delight in freedoms bounty[12]. New to the world, the lack of security that accompanies the lack of history is not a problem[13]. They have a lifetime of potential to tap and these years are filled with small bets on future greatness.[14] Each gamble easily digestible on its own, but forming an ever more staunch and stark reality that is facing them when story turns to history and security becomes imperative. This adult person, who is free by nature, is now faced with the harsh realities of the ill-advised choices[15] they made when they had no information. More to the point, they face the realities of choices they made before they paid any mind to the now glaringly obvious warnings that their former caretakers warned them of. Realities that they now know were realities forever, and that their parents were struggling with even when this new nation was just a child. Struggles that the parents were generous and strong enough to hide from the child so they could live in glorious ignorance and believe simply that the world was their oyster. Now old, aware and vulnerable, it dawns on them that this rock has been ever present in their life.[16] Their parents. These seemingly odd and eccentric benefactors were in fact the greatest blessing that one could ever be afforded. I was that one. I was the one afforded the most wonderful parents in the world.[17] Parents that laughed at convention because they knew laughter was the only way to overcome. These individuals that chose ALWAYS to make room for more even at the expense of their own wellbeing. These people that put up with endless amounts of your shit[18], not to mention the shit[19] of your brothers and sisters for a period of time that amounts to the entirety of the life you’ve led to this point. It’s superhuman, really. They are not in fact gods only because we have defined gods to be something else.[20] In all other ways they are in fact much much more than merely powerful. They are the personification of love and dedication and trust in your entire life.[21]

Now the pendulum swings back and those giants who controlled all, then fell so far as to be not even deserving of anything but your scorn have revealed themselves, once again defying all reason and equanimity, to be the greatest parents and people that the world has yet seen. Once accepted the evidence is everywhere that the world agrees with you. At least if you’re as lucky as I am, you see this newfound respect and admiration and love of your parents reflected by everyone that has EVER come in contact with them. This is so universally true that if anyone were to disagree there argument would be drowned out by the chorus of good feeling that accompanies the mere mention of the topic.

Likewise, having lived through the battles and learned over a lifetime, the parent can now see that the child is now a man. That he is good and always was. That the acts that felt so much like disrespect and unfixable mistakes were merely needed steps in this beautiful creature of gods journey to become this amazingly talented and loving person you see before you.[22] You are proud and hope that they know that you love them to no end and you believe that ending all war aside[23], the world would be a sincerely darker and less joyful place without them. They are evidence of your love for them, your love for one another and your life well lead.

At no point on this journey, taken together, is there ever anything approaching balance, rational assessment or unbiased understanding. Nope. The child to parent relationship is lacking any reality while simultaneously being the ‘realest’ relationship a person can have. It’s confounding and beautiful and is so entirely out of whack that it is uniformly nonconforming.

Both as a parent and as a son I am so grateful that it’s never normal.

[1] I am compelled at this point to let you know that I’m coming at this solely from my perspective and with little formal education. My observations of the cruelty of teens in the assessment of their parents is a memory of a terribly mistaken young man that wishes he could have gotten to where he was going without ever stopping at this mile marker, but fears he needed to. Sorry Mom and Dad.

[2] Again, I LOVE YOU TWO MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD

[3] So sorry. Again, channeling a jerky, know-it-all teenager I knew once. I’m starting to understand his penchant for self-loathing. Ick.

[4] Now I’m just projecting. You guys have always been night owls.

[5] That’s right. You all knew it wasn’t just gonna be mom and pops, right?

[6] I swear, by the end of this I have restored you to your proper and rightful status as the most amazing people in the world. A sincere belief of mine.

[7] I’m soft-selling it here. Really, I’m amazed I made it out of my teen years, which in my case lasted until my 30’s, alive.

[8] This man, however, adores you. Have I said sorry for my previous behavior?

[9] These are my words. My parents are far better than that and if they ever so much as thought it, they NEVER spoke it.

[10] The need for the aid is real, but you suspect that as many times as not more thoughtful fiscal policy at an earlier time would have obviated the need for support. And in my case, you were right. I owe you like, A LOT of money.

[11] In my case I suspect that my mistakes were not replications of my parents. They’re awesome. Seriously. And funny. Have I mentioned they’re funny?

[12] They drink beer. A lot of beer.

[13] Because of the endless and unappreciated generosity of their parents. Thank you.

[14] Which, even if it does arrive, comes with no promise of wealth. No Promise at all. Like, none.

[15] Pfft! As if I was taking any of the advice given.

[16] Yep. Slow learner here.

[17] Me and like an ARMY of siblings and friends and coworkers lucky enough to be in their presence.

[18] Including your adolescent insistence on vulgarity, despite your obvious vocabulary and facility with language.

[19] Gratuitous.

[20] Blasphemy to make a point.

[21] Yup.

[22] Their sentiments, not mine. Like many others I struggle to accept this, but its so much easier when you can see it through your parents eyes! Thanks.

[23] There’s still time.

My Perfect Age

I was once asked what age I felt would be my best. That is to say, temperamentally speaking, which age would I be most suited to. The answer I gave was that I’d be perfectly suited for 40-55. Middle age. My ideal.

Well, now I’m here and I’m pretty sure I was right. A delightful discovery! Let’s face it, older than that, well older than 65 or so (I was significantly younger when I came to the number 55 being where you left middle and entered old) is fraught with discomfort and loss. While I think my temperament will endure however long I do, I have little doubt that this time will be incredibly challenging in addition to anything wonderful it may bring.

It was a convenient answer for me. I was hovering around thirty at the time and I was single and the meaning I found in life was real but it was an act of invention as it was me and me alone providing it.

I hadn’t yet fallen in love with my wife and learned what it meant to fear more for someone else and their well being than I did for my own. I was empathic in so far as a person can be when they need put nothing before themselves. Beyond that, I was a pretty treacherous sort. Treachery is overstating it, but you know, I wasn’t being my best self. Nope. I’d be someone I could respect at 40.

Turns out I was right.

So now that I’m here I find myself thinking about the end. Death. The final exit. I think about it in a fearful way when i think of my forebears. I think of it in practical and optimal terms, accepting its inevitability when I think of it for myself. And I think of it as the ultimate in accidental tragedy when it enters my mind in regard to my kids. So far everyone in all these scenarios is peacefully and happily healthy and alive. There have been some close calls, but they appear to be in the rear view mirror. They have brought us all closer together and reminded us all to hold on to that ultimate perspective we can lose so easily.

In my younger days, before gaining any perspective on the finite nature of life, I spent years actively ‘hating’ and wondering why my anger didn’t result in the target of my self righteous judgment changing, only to find that the target was me and it had in fact changed me. Not for the better. I heard a person say this week that carrying hate is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. There seems to be a good deal of wisdom in that which could really help me when I lose perspective.

Now, when I’m this busy, surrounded by love in all directions, far enough from the exit to be able to accept it, while close enough to wish it would not come to call for the people that mean the most to me that I’m able to have the strongest hold on perspective. My one and only job is to be happy and make my life one that allows me and those I love to stay happy so that we can go on caring for each other no matter the differences of opinion or frustrations that may creep in to ones thoughts.

The person that this is most difficult with, for obvious and universal reasons, is me. Who, after all, can have perspective on ones self? I try to be easy on me, but those closest know this has always been a struggle. When all this middle life stuff weens and wains, and I’m left without these responsibilities compelling me to move ever onward, what will I do? You see, it seems linear when you’re growing up. You encounter challenges, you learn, you grow, you change and you move on. Right? That’s how it goes? But what will I do when the world that I’ve built, the one that buttresses and supports me, begins to crumble, as it inevitably must. What will I do then?

I hope that I will sit and reflect on the joys my life brought and take pride in the joys it continues to sow as my children become the architects of the meaning of life and I enjoy the fruits of my labors. I fear that I will resent no longer being the builder and master of my world and instead find purpose in complaining and seeking to ameliorate my many pains through the methods I did before I reached that perfect-for-me middle age. Whose to say which way it will go.

What matters now, what matters most, is that I sustain myself long enough to provide a base for the kids so they can wonder how life will go from the comfort of their homes with their own loving families waiting for them to come downstairs so their toddlers can finally give them the checkup they themselves have been giving me three times a day lately.

That’s right. My son is a Dr. and myself and his mother are his only patients. We couldn’t be more proud! It’s time for him to listen through the stethoscope and tell me that my heartbeat ‘feels good.’ Time to give me a shot because, and I have no idea what this means, ‘I have a boo boo on my foot because there is a train in it.’ He tells me to look away when he gives me the shot and to think of ‘rice ream’ (ice cream) so it won’t hurt. And he’s right, it doesn’t hurt if I follow his lead.

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