I've been thinking about and observing married people a lot lately, for reasons so obvious that I'm going to state them anyway, because that's how I roll: I was married for a long time; it didn't last forever, even though we both promised each other it would; my perception of myself was negatively affected; I'm rebuilding my self-esteem now, and I'm interested in how to avoid that damage in future relationships.
So I've noticed how often married people pick at each other. They deliver small criticisms with frequency in all sorts of conversation, publicly, in front of friends and relatives. Newly married couples do it. Couples married 50 years do it. Couples whose love and partnership I respect and admire do it. It's surprisingly universal, at least in my relatively small collection of empirical data.
And me, I internalized that criticism. I took the blame and built up a lot of resentment towards myself for not being able to be the man my wife wanted me to be, and towards her for not being the woman I wanted her to be. And towards her for not being satisfied with who I was. That's what I want to avoid in my future relationships: that moment when the honeymoon phase is over and the stars in the eyes have faded, when we begin to believe that we have the right to behave in a corrective manner toward this person that we love.
I want relationships with people who are happy with me and aren't focused regularly on ways that I should change. I want relationships with people with whom I'm happy and am not focused regularly on ways that I want them to change. If I'm in a relationship with someone who is not happy with who I am, I'd rather the relationship end than I begin to resent myself or her. I've done the resentment version of marriage. I never want to go back.
Is that impossible? Is it co-habitation, and not marriage, that makes us all snipe at each other? Is it just at root human nature to focus on the ways in which we want other people to be different from what they are right now? Or is it just that I'm the only one that took all those jabs to heart?
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musings. Show all posts
Monday, May 2, 2016
Friday, April 22, 2016
Continued
As I may have mentioned, I went from a monogamous relationship that lasted more than half my life to living single. From that perspective, dating seems like a strange solution to a strange problem. And the problem is not just physical intimacy, but the natural craving for companionship and emotional intimacy. There's not a quick and easy way to find those things, to find someone who fits well enough to make those things with me. So I make more or less random connections, hoping that one (or more) becomes real, that there's someone on the other end who matches up with me in some meaningful way. Every time I swipe right or optimistically send a message to a stranger, sometimes funny, sometimes earnest, sometimes tired and half-assed, I think of "A Noiseless, Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman:
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
And most of those filament, filament, filaments that I launch forth out of myself catch nowhere at all. There's probably a thorough science made of how attraction works in the various online dating apps. Often my magical words and charm are met with silence. Often my profile photo does not inspire anyone to swipe right on me. It is fascinating to me how different we all are, how different our experiences and likes and fears are. I ain't for everybody, certainly. Sometimes, though, the gossamer thread does catch somewhere. Sometimes I am told that I am "easy on the eyes" or that I "sparkle." I sparkle! Me and Robert Pattinson, we're like twins separated at birth!
When, now and then, those threads do catch, I'm stupefied by how quickly all my free time disappears. I always thought I had tons of it until I started filling it up. I'm scheduling casual interactions weeks ahead on my Google Calendar. I'm way behind on my blood donations, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've dropped from a Level 5 to a Level 4 this quarter. My weeks with my son are for him and me, so they're off the table for my social explorations, but still, with half my time I thought I had great swaths of evenings to fill. But in reality I have no time to drive for Lyft, my brilliant solution for additional money to afford my social life. So far I've given exactly 8 rides for a grand total of $37. That's not going to pay for many dates. And it was inevitable, but somehow I thought I'd avoid the pitfall of mixing up which plans I had with which women. Happily, when it finally did happen, all parties were already aware of each other and able to express feelings of awkwardness and hurt without making it more awkward and hurtful. Still. Embarrassing. I need a secretary. I make it sound like I have a harem of women clamoring for my attention. That's not at all the case, but I'm still juggling. I don't know how they do it, the guys who maintain two separate families, each completely unaware of the other, for years. I'd need an entire staff to help me keep up with all that.
So I've had first dates. Not so many seconds. I've been brushed off, blown off, and stood up. Now I'm involved with a woman (she was my second first date, and my first second date) with whom I've gone from "going on dates" to "dating" (we stopped counting after 6). She is exactly the person I was looking for when I started this weirdness: someone who is on board for the open relationship, who values openness and honesty, who derives as much value from this experience as I do. She's learning about herself and pushing her own boundaries, too. It's odd and refreshing and liberating to discover from very early on that it's not just OK, not just acceptable, but downright safe and desirable to be as direct and genuine as possible. About everything. About feelings! Madness!
Madness because still, with most of the people I meet or interact with online, it's all a dance. All of it. It's a performance. It's a manipulation. It's a test to see if we can pretend to be what we're not in order to attract someone we wouldn't. I was told by one of my first dates that maybe in the future I shouldn't tell the woman sitting at a table at a restaurant with me that one of my goals in life is to pick up a woman at a bar. Nope. I absolutely should tell her that. Because if she's not a willing and informed participant in the adventure as I intend to pursue it, then she should know as soon as possible that this particular adventure is not for her. Fair play all around! I'm not hiding a damned thing, and that's incredibly refreshing.
It's all much simpler than I would have guessed when I was conceiving of what it might be, and it's all much more complicated than I thought it would be when I actually started doing it. The feelings are real, and not always under the immediate control of the people who are having them. Feelings in general are messy and riotous and rebellious, and they don't listen to the calm and reasoned logic of the brains that they agitate with their messiness. I've more than once been surprised by the emotions passing through me and the physical sensations in my body when they do. I don't think I've ever before in my life gleefully texted somebody to say, "Huh! I think I might throw up!" because I was stunned to feel something that I thought I had logically processed right out of my soul. Nope! Your heart doesn't give a shit what your head has decided, and your body is more than willing to go along with the example your heart is setting, even while your brain is yelling, "Guys! Come on! This isn't what we talked about at all!"
The beauty of emotions, a beauty I already knew but am now beginning to really understand on a deeper level, is that they are always temporary. Every single one of them, the ones I want to stay forever and the ones I wish would never come back again. They may come and go, and maybe even many times, but no matter what, they will pass through me like a hot or a cold wind, and I will still be here, and still be me, when they've blown on down the road. I'm still here. I'm still me.
When, now and then, those threads do catch, I'm stupefied by how quickly all my free time disappears. I always thought I had tons of it until I started filling it up. I'm scheduling casual interactions weeks ahead on my Google Calendar. I'm way behind on my blood donations, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've dropped from a Level 5 to a Level 4 this quarter. My weeks with my son are for him and me, so they're off the table for my social explorations, but still, with half my time I thought I had great swaths of evenings to fill. But in reality I have no time to drive for Lyft, my brilliant solution for additional money to afford my social life. So far I've given exactly 8 rides for a grand total of $37. That's not going to pay for many dates. And it was inevitable, but somehow I thought I'd avoid the pitfall of mixing up which plans I had with which women. Happily, when it finally did happen, all parties were already aware of each other and able to express feelings of awkwardness and hurt without making it more awkward and hurtful. Still. Embarrassing. I need a secretary. I make it sound like I have a harem of women clamoring for my attention. That's not at all the case, but I'm still juggling. I don't know how they do it, the guys who maintain two separate families, each completely unaware of the other, for years. I'd need an entire staff to help me keep up with all that.
So I've had first dates. Not so many seconds. I've been brushed off, blown off, and stood up. Now I'm involved with a woman (she was my second first date, and my first second date) with whom I've gone from "going on dates" to "dating" (we stopped counting after 6). She is exactly the person I was looking for when I started this weirdness: someone who is on board for the open relationship, who values openness and honesty, who derives as much value from this experience as I do. She's learning about herself and pushing her own boundaries, too. It's odd and refreshing and liberating to discover from very early on that it's not just OK, not just acceptable, but downright safe and desirable to be as direct and genuine as possible. About everything. About feelings! Madness!
Madness because still, with most of the people I meet or interact with online, it's all a dance. All of it. It's a performance. It's a manipulation. It's a test to see if we can pretend to be what we're not in order to attract someone we wouldn't. I was told by one of my first dates that maybe in the future I shouldn't tell the woman sitting at a table at a restaurant with me that one of my goals in life is to pick up a woman at a bar. Nope. I absolutely should tell her that. Because if she's not a willing and informed participant in the adventure as I intend to pursue it, then she should know as soon as possible that this particular adventure is not for her. Fair play all around! I'm not hiding a damned thing, and that's incredibly refreshing.
It's all much simpler than I would have guessed when I was conceiving of what it might be, and it's all much more complicated than I thought it would be when I actually started doing it. The feelings are real, and not always under the immediate control of the people who are having them. Feelings in general are messy and riotous and rebellious, and they don't listen to the calm and reasoned logic of the brains that they agitate with their messiness. I've more than once been surprised by the emotions passing through me and the physical sensations in my body when they do. I don't think I've ever before in my life gleefully texted somebody to say, "Huh! I think I might throw up!" because I was stunned to feel something that I thought I had logically processed right out of my soul. Nope! Your heart doesn't give a shit what your head has decided, and your body is more than willing to go along with the example your heart is setting, even while your brain is yelling, "Guys! Come on! This isn't what we talked about at all!"
The beauty of emotions, a beauty I already knew but am now beginning to really understand on a deeper level, is that they are always temporary. Every single one of them, the ones I want to stay forever and the ones I wish would never come back again. They may come and go, and maybe even many times, but no matter what, they will pass through me like a hot or a cold wind, and I will still be here, and still be me, when they've blown on down the road. I'm still here. I'm still me.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Why
I haven't labeled what I'm doing much. I haven't put it in my OK Cupid profile. Sometimes I think I should, though I'm going on the assumption that the act of online dating implies non-exclusivity in and of itself. I suppose it's best described as "in an open relationship."
It gets raised eyebrows sometimes when people ask me about it, and sometimes furrowed brows. I've been on the receiving end of high fives and fist bumps. Some of the conversations I've had are goofy, and some are thoughtful. A couple of people have mentioned the old adage of "If you love someone, set them free..." etc. One person told me, "It's like that old saying, only you're really doing it. Everybody says it, but nobody really does it. You're actually doing it. That's cool."
And it is cool. But I wanted to verbalize what it is I think I'm doing, and why.
For me, this is about two things most of all: fear and genuine human connection.
I have been afraid, and I have been dishonest because I was afraid. Fear has done more damage to my interpersonal relationships in the past than anything else. And the greatest fear of all? Fear of rejection. I have not been honest about who I am and what I want because I have tried to be and want what I thought other people wanted or expected. It didn't work. I was insecure because I couldn't know what they wanted, so I couldn't know who to be.
An open relationship brings that fear of rejection to the front and center of everything. I am reaching out and asking women to meet and interact with me to see where, if anywhere, it goes. Friendship? Romance? Rejection? It was a terrifying idea to me, reaching out. But now, already, only three weeks in, that particular fear is nearly gone, at least in the online realm of dating apps. I still haven't made that leap in person, but I have no fear of messaging women anymore. I have almost no fear or nervousness in meeting them for the first time. I've been rejected twice after first dates now, and even that wasn't the horrifying, embarrassing, or even mildly awkward experience I was afraid it would be. Both times, it was a "Fair enough. Best of luck to you!" sort of experience, and one of them even told me, "You are a gentleman, and you deserve to be happy!" How terrifying is that?
What I'm learning is that the world is full of an infinite variety of human beings. Some of these may be a good match for me in personality, temperament, humor, and taste. Many will not. If we are not a good match, then what's the harm? None, unless we arbitrarily determine that staying together is more important than being a good match, and then, damage is done to both of us. That's a silly path to take. So peace be with you! Go with God! Fare thee well!
Jealousy, too, is only fear of rejection. If the woman I love chooses to date other people, what shall I choose? To be afraid that she will find someone she likes better than she likes me? No. I can choose to set aside that fear response and look at it from a distance. She loves me. I love her. If we go on our separate adventures, just like anything else we may do separately, we can come back to each other and talk about it. We can each find in other people human characteristics that we do not find in each other, and that is part of the joy. Each person we meet, interact with, and connect with meaningfully will resonate within ourselves a different set of tones, and by discovering the differences in how we connect and relate with others, we discover truths about ourselves we would not otherwise have had the opportunity to bring into the light and examine. We have new pathways through others toward change and growth in ourselves.
That's the real treasure of this weird scavenger hunt I'm on: human connection. For me so far it's mostly been first dates, which is only the first step in developing connection, a first step with its own challenges, but it's a necessary first step. I've told and listened to tales meant to reveal something of who we are. How we tell and hear these tales is the beginning of a kind of connection that we as humans seem incapable of having with the hundreds and thousands of nameless strangers that surround us. It is the first step in humanizing The Other, in turning a Them into an Us, and it's a joy. And with second and third dates, it's an even greater joy to begin to see how that connection can, with openness, honesty, and a rejection of fear instead of a fear of rejection, begin to blossom and spread into something even more meaningful.
And the connection with the woman who started all of this for me has deepened, too. Maybe that's a surprise. Maybe not. When we come back together, missing each other and craving each other's company, we talk. And some of what we talk about is what we are learning about ourselves and each other through this process of opening up, reaching out, and connecting. That, in turn, brings a new and higher level of connection between us. And missing each other, by the way, is a wonderful thing. Being apart long enough to yearn for each other's company is far preferable to seeing each other so much that the connection becomes stale and taken for granted.
The added bonus to all of this is that I'm finding that I really am losing interest in maintaining the relationships I have that don't fit, that provide no real connection, that make me feel bad about myself. And that's a relief. If you don't like me, that's fine. You don't have to. But I don't have to listen to you tell me all about why you don't. That that is a revelation to me says a lot about who I was and who I'm working to become.
It gets raised eyebrows sometimes when people ask me about it, and sometimes furrowed brows. I've been on the receiving end of high fives and fist bumps. Some of the conversations I've had are goofy, and some are thoughtful. A couple of people have mentioned the old adage of "If you love someone, set them free..." etc. One person told me, "It's like that old saying, only you're really doing it. Everybody says it, but nobody really does it. You're actually doing it. That's cool."
And it is cool. But I wanted to verbalize what it is I think I'm doing, and why.
For me, this is about two things most of all: fear and genuine human connection.
Fear
I have been afraid, and I have been dishonest because I was afraid. Fear has done more damage to my interpersonal relationships in the past than anything else. And the greatest fear of all? Fear of rejection. I have not been honest about who I am and what I want because I have tried to be and want what I thought other people wanted or expected. It didn't work. I was insecure because I couldn't know what they wanted, so I couldn't know who to be.
An open relationship brings that fear of rejection to the front and center of everything. I am reaching out and asking women to meet and interact with me to see where, if anywhere, it goes. Friendship? Romance? Rejection? It was a terrifying idea to me, reaching out. But now, already, only three weeks in, that particular fear is nearly gone, at least in the online realm of dating apps. I still haven't made that leap in person, but I have no fear of messaging women anymore. I have almost no fear or nervousness in meeting them for the first time. I've been rejected twice after first dates now, and even that wasn't the horrifying, embarrassing, or even mildly awkward experience I was afraid it would be. Both times, it was a "Fair enough. Best of luck to you!" sort of experience, and one of them even told me, "You are a gentleman, and you deserve to be happy!" How terrifying is that?
What I'm learning is that the world is full of an infinite variety of human beings. Some of these may be a good match for me in personality, temperament, humor, and taste. Many will not. If we are not a good match, then what's the harm? None, unless we arbitrarily determine that staying together is more important than being a good match, and then, damage is done to both of us. That's a silly path to take. So peace be with you! Go with God! Fare thee well!
Jealousy, too, is only fear of rejection. If the woman I love chooses to date other people, what shall I choose? To be afraid that she will find someone she likes better than she likes me? No. I can choose to set aside that fear response and look at it from a distance. She loves me. I love her. If we go on our separate adventures, just like anything else we may do separately, we can come back to each other and talk about it. We can each find in other people human characteristics that we do not find in each other, and that is part of the joy. Each person we meet, interact with, and connect with meaningfully will resonate within ourselves a different set of tones, and by discovering the differences in how we connect and relate with others, we discover truths about ourselves we would not otherwise have had the opportunity to bring into the light and examine. We have new pathways through others toward change and growth in ourselves.
Connection
That's the real treasure of this weird scavenger hunt I'm on: human connection. For me so far it's mostly been first dates, which is only the first step in developing connection, a first step with its own challenges, but it's a necessary first step. I've told and listened to tales meant to reveal something of who we are. How we tell and hear these tales is the beginning of a kind of connection that we as humans seem incapable of having with the hundreds and thousands of nameless strangers that surround us. It is the first step in humanizing The Other, in turning a Them into an Us, and it's a joy. And with second and third dates, it's an even greater joy to begin to see how that connection can, with openness, honesty, and a rejection of fear instead of a fear of rejection, begin to blossom and spread into something even more meaningful.
And the connection with the woman who started all of this for me has deepened, too. Maybe that's a surprise. Maybe not. When we come back together, missing each other and craving each other's company, we talk. And some of what we talk about is what we are learning about ourselves and each other through this process of opening up, reaching out, and connecting. That, in turn, brings a new and higher level of connection between us. And missing each other, by the way, is a wonderful thing. Being apart long enough to yearn for each other's company is far preferable to seeing each other so much that the connection becomes stale and taken for granted.
Bonus
The added bonus to all of this is that I'm finding that I really am losing interest in maintaining the relationships I have that don't fit, that provide no real connection, that make me feel bad about myself. And that's a relief. If you don't like me, that's fine. You don't have to. But I don't have to listen to you tell me all about why you don't. That that is a revelation to me says a lot about who I was and who I'm working to become.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Swimmingly
I suppose an update is an order, and really I should get that shameful obscenity out of the top spot on my little corner of the web here. So here ya go:
You may have heard: I'm dating. This is still a mind-boggling turn of events for me, but how many times exactly can I keep telling you that you met me at a very strange time in my life? I started with Tinder. I did communicate with a couple of women through it, but mostly it was silence. It was crickets chirping. It was the sound of one hand clapping. So I deleted my account. A friend told me, yeah, that's mostly for hook-ups. Even though all the women with profiles say they're not there for hook-ups. But notice that it wants your GPS location, and a whole lot of the women have no profile at all. So: current location + picture only = hook-ups. And I wasn't getting any of those. Not that I wanted those. At least, I don't think I did. A few more tests. (That's a reference to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Mom). (Yes, I just spoke parenthetically to my Mom while talking about hook-ups).
So I started using OKCupid. Because I'd heard of it. And because it also was free. But then I lost my mind and started paying for it anyway? Because I'm easily lead? Because I was in an internet-fueled feverish haze? Anyway, what was I saying again? Oh yeah. Dating. OKCupid. Right.
I was stunned to discover it worked. I made my profile. I answered my questions. I added my pictures. I browsed my "Matches." I sent messages. I got responses. If the banter went well, I asked women out. Some said yes. A couple even asked me out! It was madness. Pure madness.
So now I've gone on two first dates, with a third scheduled for tomorrow. I have my first second date on Saturday. I have no idea what's going on here. And that's OK!
I have to say, my favorite exchanges have been with women who've been on dating apps for a long time and feel qualified and justified in critiquing my approach. It probably has a name, talking about courtin' while courtin'. Meta courtin'? Meta dating? I don't know. It's hilarious. Experienced women love to take me under their wing. I'm a newb. I'm a rook. Ha ha!
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Here's the most amazing part of all of this: I did something that terrified me. And it was fun. And shows every sign of continuing to be fun. And (I notice this is a recurring theme in this blog) the thing that I feared most didn't come to pass. I was afraid that I would be unappealing to women, that I would attract no interest myself and all of my interest in others would be rejected. Looking back over the last week, I see now how silly that is. In the world of online dating apps, where a person is defined almost entirely by his words, I am a man who can use words well. That has appeal. I have appeal. Also, my fellow men have largely set the bar pretty low, as evidenced by the jaded comments women sometimes feel compelled to include in their profiles, like, "Don't message me if your profile pic is your chest or your crotch."
In the last year, I've had a dear friend with relevant life experience tell me that I would be happy again, when I was sure I would not. I've had an amazing, beautiful woman that I thought of as out of my league demand, "Are you going to kiss me or not?" And now I've asked several women out, and they said yes. I've asked one woman for a second date, and she said yes. My self-esteem has gone from completely bottomed out a little over a year ago to bobbing along at a pretty damned healthy level right now thank you very much, and I couldn't be happier about it.
If I keep dating, though, I'm going to have to get a second job to boost my disposable income. This social life business is expensive! But if I get another job, how will I have time for dating? Such a conundrum.
You may have heard: I'm dating. This is still a mind-boggling turn of events for me, but how many times exactly can I keep telling you that you met me at a very strange time in my life? I started with Tinder. I did communicate with a couple of women through it, but mostly it was silence. It was crickets chirping. It was the sound of one hand clapping. So I deleted my account. A friend told me, yeah, that's mostly for hook-ups. Even though all the women with profiles say they're not there for hook-ups. But notice that it wants your GPS location, and a whole lot of the women have no profile at all. So: current location + picture only = hook-ups. And I wasn't getting any of those. Not that I wanted those. At least, I don't think I did. A few more tests. (That's a reference to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Mom). (Yes, I just spoke parenthetically to my Mom while talking about hook-ups).
So I started using OKCupid. Because I'd heard of it. And because it also was free. But then I lost my mind and started paying for it anyway? Because I'm easily lead? Because I was in an internet-fueled feverish haze? Anyway, what was I saying again? Oh yeah. Dating. OKCupid. Right.
I was stunned to discover it worked. I made my profile. I answered my questions. I added my pictures. I browsed my "Matches." I sent messages. I got responses. If the banter went well, I asked women out. Some said yes. A couple even asked me out! It was madness. Pure madness.
So now I've gone on two first dates, with a third scheduled for tomorrow. I have my first second date on Saturday. I have no idea what's going on here. And that's OK!
I have to say, my favorite exchanges have been with women who've been on dating apps for a long time and feel qualified and justified in critiquing my approach. It probably has a name, talking about courtin' while courtin'. Meta courtin'? Meta dating? I don't know. It's hilarious. Experienced women love to take me under their wing. I'm a newb. I'm a rook. Ha ha!
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Here's the most amazing part of all of this: I did something that terrified me. And it was fun. And shows every sign of continuing to be fun. And (I notice this is a recurring theme in this blog) the thing that I feared most didn't come to pass. I was afraid that I would be unappealing to women, that I would attract no interest myself and all of my interest in others would be rejected. Looking back over the last week, I see now how silly that is. In the world of online dating apps, where a person is defined almost entirely by his words, I am a man who can use words well. That has appeal. I have appeal. Also, my fellow men have largely set the bar pretty low, as evidenced by the jaded comments women sometimes feel compelled to include in their profiles, like, "Don't message me if your profile pic is your chest or your crotch."
In the last year, I've had a dear friend with relevant life experience tell me that I would be happy again, when I was sure I would not. I've had an amazing, beautiful woman that I thought of as out of my league demand, "Are you going to kiss me or not?" And now I've asked several women out, and they said yes. I've asked one woman for a second date, and she said yes. My self-esteem has gone from completely bottomed out a little over a year ago to bobbing along at a pretty damned healthy level right now thank you very much, and I couldn't be happier about it.
If I keep dating, though, I'm going to have to get a second job to boost my disposable income. This social life business is expensive! But if I get another job, how will I have time for dating? Such a conundrum.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Be Not Afraid
Have you read "The Rise of American Authoritarianism" by Amanda Taub on Vox? It's making the rounds on social media, at least my social media. It's fascinating. I know nothing about her or the website that published her article, but... wow. Reading it creates in my head the sound of tumblers clicking as they fall into place.
And as these things do, it clicks because it meshes with recent experience in my own life. Not political experience. Nothing to do with Donald Trump, or immigration. But still, it was an experience of fear of The Other taking from me what I see as my own, my right. My experience has no place here, as it is not my story to tell, for the most part. Let it suffice that my "other" is just a blowhard drunkard (read: douche!), not the specter of a horde of inhuman invaders (read: Muslims, LGBQT, atheists, environmentalists, etc.) whose values are terrifyingly foreign to my own experience. Although that particular douche is, in my mind, inhuman. And his values are as foreign to me as they could be. But still!
What I noticed in my own experience is this: the fear was more real than the reality. The possible was more real than the actual. As such, it was not a possibility, it was a certainty. And thus it demanded something from me: a response, a prevention. Action!
Does this make me authoritarian? God, I hope not.
What my own fear experience taught me, though, is a lesson I should have learned before now, because I've had this epiphany before, particularly when I gave up reading What to Expect When You're Expecting about a third of the way through, when little Thumper was still a bun in the oven: the fear experience can be nearly orgasmic. The pomposity of feeling like you're expertly preparing for the thing you fear is also nearly orgasmic.
But! The thing you fear and prepare for is likely not the thing that will happen, and the thing that will happen is likely not the one for which you prepared. And obsessed. And worried. And drove yourself to ecstatic levels of stress and anxiety imagining.
Don't read that book, by the way. If you're expecting, don't expect all those worst-case scenarios. Expect joy, instead. Deal with what comes, if it comes, as it comes. But don't read the book first. It preys on fear. It profits by the uncertainty of the inexperienced and their powerful desire to be ready for whatever experience may be coming.
But! That's the nature of life. You can't be prepared for every possible experience that is approaching you from beneath the curve of the horizon. Besides, if you did know with certainty that the worst-case scenario was actually coming, would that make you any more prepared, really?
And here's the thing: in some of those cases, the fear itself brings about the very experience of which you were afraid.
For instance: the military industrial complex, of which Eisenhower warned us, employs over decades the rhetoric of fear of Islamic fundamentalism (which, by the way, is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity) to help justify and build support for what is largely a gigantic money grab. So for fear of Islamic fundamentalism spreading across the globe and attacking us at home, we approve of putting boots on foreign ground and everything that entails, which engenders a deep hatred of us globally even beyond the existing Islamic fundamentalists and fuels the growth of fundamentalism, providing new motivation for exactly the kind of attacks on American soil of which we were originally afraid. Which makes us more afraid.
Oversimplified? Yes, of course. But to some degree, we fueled, because we were terrified, the growth of the very thing that terrified us, and now we're even more afraid.
So is fear the answer? Is voting for Trump going to make anything better? Instead, be not afraid. Be not afraid of the Mexican immigrant. Be not afraid of the protestor who wants only for his child to have as little chance of being murdered as your child does. Be not afraid of the woman on the bus who has covered her hair out of the same kind, if not the same flavor, of piety that motivates you as a good Christian church-goer. Be not afraid of the sex lives of those that aren't having sex with you. Be not afraid of those who suggest that unrestrained consumerism may, in fact, be ultimately destructive. Be not afraid that the weed will lead to the heroin will lead to the children dying in droves, impaled on the pikes of syringes on every street corner. Do not dehumanize the other, nor fear his values, though they seem on the surface foreign to your own.
Please don't vote for Trump. Forgiving for the moment that he speaks in sentences and thinks in patterns far less complex, sophisticated, and nuanced than even my 8-year-old does, remember always that a political leader cannot defeat your fears. Only you can. Instead of fearing, live. You do you. I'll do me. Let each of us be calm. Take deep breaths. Meditation is good for that. So is yoga. But hey, I'm not militant, so if that's not your thing, that's cool.
And as these things do, it clicks because it meshes with recent experience in my own life. Not political experience. Nothing to do with Donald Trump, or immigration. But still, it was an experience of fear of The Other taking from me what I see as my own, my right. My experience has no place here, as it is not my story to tell, for the most part. Let it suffice that my "other" is just a blowhard drunkard (read: douche!), not the specter of a horde of inhuman invaders (read: Muslims, LGBQT, atheists, environmentalists, etc.) whose values are terrifyingly foreign to my own experience. Although that particular douche is, in my mind, inhuman. And his values are as foreign to me as they could be. But still!
What I noticed in my own experience is this: the fear was more real than the reality. The possible was more real than the actual. As such, it was not a possibility, it was a certainty. And thus it demanded something from me: a response, a prevention. Action!
Does this make me authoritarian? God, I hope not.
What my own fear experience taught me, though, is a lesson I should have learned before now, because I've had this epiphany before, particularly when I gave up reading What to Expect When You're Expecting about a third of the way through, when little Thumper was still a bun in the oven: the fear experience can be nearly orgasmic. The pomposity of feeling like you're expertly preparing for the thing you fear is also nearly orgasmic.
But! The thing you fear and prepare for is likely not the thing that will happen, and the thing that will happen is likely not the one for which you prepared. And obsessed. And worried. And drove yourself to ecstatic levels of stress and anxiety imagining.
Don't read that book, by the way. If you're expecting, don't expect all those worst-case scenarios. Expect joy, instead. Deal with what comes, if it comes, as it comes. But don't read the book first. It preys on fear. It profits by the uncertainty of the inexperienced and their powerful desire to be ready for whatever experience may be coming.
But! That's the nature of life. You can't be prepared for every possible experience that is approaching you from beneath the curve of the horizon. Besides, if you did know with certainty that the worst-case scenario was actually coming, would that make you any more prepared, really?
And here's the thing: in some of those cases, the fear itself brings about the very experience of which you were afraid.
For instance: the military industrial complex, of which Eisenhower warned us, employs over decades the rhetoric of fear of Islamic fundamentalism (which, by the way, is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity) to help justify and build support for what is largely a gigantic money grab. So for fear of Islamic fundamentalism spreading across the globe and attacking us at home, we approve of putting boots on foreign ground and everything that entails, which engenders a deep hatred of us globally even beyond the existing Islamic fundamentalists and fuels the growth of fundamentalism, providing new motivation for exactly the kind of attacks on American soil of which we were originally afraid. Which makes us more afraid.
Oversimplified? Yes, of course. But to some degree, we fueled, because we were terrified, the growth of the very thing that terrified us, and now we're even more afraid.
So is fear the answer? Is voting for Trump going to make anything better? Instead, be not afraid. Be not afraid of the Mexican immigrant. Be not afraid of the protestor who wants only for his child to have as little chance of being murdered as your child does. Be not afraid of the woman on the bus who has covered her hair out of the same kind, if not the same flavor, of piety that motivates you as a good Christian church-goer. Be not afraid of the sex lives of those that aren't having sex with you. Be not afraid of those who suggest that unrestrained consumerism may, in fact, be ultimately destructive. Be not afraid that the weed will lead to the heroin will lead to the children dying in droves, impaled on the pikes of syringes on every street corner. Do not dehumanize the other, nor fear his values, though they seem on the surface foreign to your own.
Please don't vote for Trump. Forgiving for the moment that he speaks in sentences and thinks in patterns far less complex, sophisticated, and nuanced than even my 8-year-old does, remember always that a political leader cannot defeat your fears. Only you can. Instead of fearing, live. You do you. I'll do me. Let each of us be calm. Take deep breaths. Meditation is good for that. So is yoga. But hey, I'm not militant, so if that's not your thing, that's cool.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Age, Wisdom, and Radio Pop
I woke up this morning with the phrase "grammatical relativism" in my head, which makes no sense at all because I had a dream about samurai, with lots of fleeing and hiding and beheadings and blood, and katana that moved through the air like seaweed swaying in an ocean current. Which also makes no sense. But I'm determined to work "grammatical relativism" into conversation at some point today.
If you're keeping score, the blog post proper begins here:
I am grateful that Adele's "Hello" has been supplanted on the radio by her "When We Were Young" not because I don't like the former and do like the latter but because radio repetition can make me react to even the best of songs the same as I might nails on a chalkboard. Not that "Hello" is the best of songs. Or the worst. I'm just saying, Jesus, do I have to hear it ten times a day? Similarly, why can't they play more Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats songs? That whole album is great, but all we get, over and over and over again, is "S.O.B." Why? Why you damned, rich music industry fat cats, with your pinky rings and cigars and...
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Adele. For someone who famously names her albums for her age, and whose latest is 25, she uses a lot of phrases like, "after all these years," "we ain't kids no more," "when we were young," "that was a million years ago," etc. At first, I was like, "Girlfriend, please." Because, you know, I'm a 43-year-old white man from the suburbs who likes to appropriate as my own outdated pop culture tropes that I have no business using.
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Adele. Today it occurred to me: no matter how old we get, there will always be someone older, devaluing our age and experience because they are not as great or as extensive as their own. I imagine in the nursing home, there will always be a 95-year-old looking at the 75-year-olds and thinking, "Punk ass kids. Think they know shit about how things really are..." Hmm. Wait a minute. "Someone" is singular. "Their" is plural. Therefore, my '80s public school education tells me that there is no agreement among my pronouns. I should have used "his," because it is the correct choice both for masculine antecedents and those of neutral or unspecified gender. The judgmental 95-year-old in my imagined scenario is not described as either male or female. I should have said, "[t]here will always be someone older, devaluing our age and experience because they are not as great as his own." But I recall vaguely somewhere some discussion that we are living in a non-binary world now, and assignment of the masculine pronoun when the gender of the antecedent is undetermined is a construct of the patriarchy, meant to keep women and the LGBT (LGBTQ? Are we adding a Q to that now? Sounds familiar...) population oppressed, silent, under-represented. Traditional notions of grammar be damned, much like the rich music industry fat cats! Singular/plural agreement isn't as important as human equality! So bam. Grammatical relativism, right there. Done and done.
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, yeah, Adele. You go on and be jaded and world weary, young lady. Your (or perhaps your songwriter's? Do you write your own lyrics? I don't even know) life experience is as valuable as my own. Hell, more so, because the older I get the only thing I know with more and more certainty is that the scope with which my knowledge and experience can be applied to real life situations becomes more and more narrow with every passing day, week, month, year. Perhaps by the time I'm a 95-year-old in a nursing home, I'll know that it doesn't actually apply to anything in the present or future at all, only the past. Which is pretty damned (like traditional notions of grammar and rich music industry fat cats) useless, actually.
Wait, What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Adele. I give her my permission to sing about the passage of time and the lessons it imparts, even though she is young. Also: I like Taylor Swift. There, I said it. "Blank Space" is a good song, I don't care what you say.
If you're keeping score, the blog post proper begins here:
I am grateful that Adele's "Hello" has been supplanted on the radio by her "When We Were Young" not because I don't like the former and do like the latter but because radio repetition can make me react to even the best of songs the same as I might nails on a chalkboard. Not that "Hello" is the best of songs. Or the worst. I'm just saying, Jesus, do I have to hear it ten times a day? Similarly, why can't they play more Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats songs? That whole album is great, but all we get, over and over and over again, is "S.O.B." Why? Why you damned, rich music industry fat cats, with your pinky rings and cigars and...
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Adele. For someone who famously names her albums for her age, and whose latest is 25, she uses a lot of phrases like, "after all these years," "we ain't kids no more," "when we were young," "that was a million years ago," etc. At first, I was like, "Girlfriend, please." Because, you know, I'm a 43-year-old white man from the suburbs who likes to appropriate as my own outdated pop culture tropes that I have no business using.
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Adele. Today it occurred to me: no matter how old we get, there will always be someone older, devaluing our age and experience because they are not as great or as extensive as their own. I imagine in the nursing home, there will always be a 95-year-old looking at the 75-year-olds and thinking, "Punk ass kids. Think they know shit about how things really are..." Hmm. Wait a minute. "Someone" is singular. "Their" is plural. Therefore, my '80s public school education tells me that there is no agreement among my pronouns. I should have used "his," because it is the correct choice both for masculine antecedents and those of neutral or unspecified gender. The judgmental 95-year-old in my imagined scenario is not described as either male or female. I should have said, "[t]here will always be someone older, devaluing our age and experience because they are not as great as his own." But I recall vaguely somewhere some discussion that we are living in a non-binary world now, and assignment of the masculine pronoun when the gender of the antecedent is undetermined is a construct of the patriarchy, meant to keep women and the LGBT (LGBTQ? Are we adding a Q to that now? Sounds familiar...) population oppressed, silent, under-represented. Traditional notions of grammar be damned, much like the rich music industry fat cats! Singular/plural agreement isn't as important as human equality! So bam. Grammatical relativism, right there. Done and done.
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, yeah, Adele. You go on and be jaded and world weary, young lady. Your (or perhaps your songwriter's? Do you write your own lyrics? I don't even know) life experience is as valuable as my own. Hell, more so, because the older I get the only thing I know with more and more certainty is that the scope with which my knowledge and experience can be applied to real life situations becomes more and more narrow with every passing day, week, month, year. Perhaps by the time I'm a 95-year-old in a nursing home, I'll know that it doesn't actually apply to anything in the present or future at all, only the past. Which is pretty damned (like traditional notions of grammar and rich music industry fat cats) useless, actually.
Wait, What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Adele. I give her my permission to sing about the passage of time and the lessons it imparts, even though she is young. Also: I like Taylor Swift. There, I said it. "Blank Space" is a good song, I don't care what you say.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Divorce, Sobriety, and New Beginnings
One year has passed since Mrs. Rodius told me she wanted a divorce. About 2 1/2 weeks have passed since we signed and filed the Final Decree of Divorce. In about a week, it will have been a year since I had my last drink. 2015 was a helluva year.
In that year, I lost a wife. I lost about half of my time with my son. I lost my financial security. I lost my identity as a full-time stay-at-home dad. I lost my home, and my neighborhood. The best of my losses was the 50 pounds or so I shed, mostly because I quit drinking and spent a lot of time in the first half of the year angry walking, roaming for miles and hours every night after Thumper went to bed, stewing and avoiding fights with my future ex-wife. I put a lot of miles on my shoes in the spring of '15.
At the same time as all those losses, I had many gains, too. I gained a new relationship with my son as we navigate all these changes together. I gained independence and responsibility. I gained a new identity, returning to full-time employment after an 8-year hiatus. I gained a new home, a space of my own, something that I've never had. And most surprising, because I was certain that I wanted nothing to do with long-term romantic relationships for at least a couple of years, I gained a girlfriend.
I don't think I'll blog much about her. I'll tell you now that she lifts me up in ways that I didn't know I needed. She was a dear friend who mentored me through the early days of the implosion of my marriage, who told me often, though I didn't believe her, that I would be happy again. She is an amazingly down-to-earth mother who regularly talks me down from all of my intellectual flights of fancy and over-analysis of everything I do and think when it comes to Thumper and to myself. It was a surprise when that treasured friendship evolved into something more. She likes to give what I like to receive, and she likes to receive what I like to give. She is a gift. She is a gift that I don't want to share with you. So you may never hear another word about her. Though who am I kidding? I talk a lot. She'll probably come up again.
Something else I gained that I didn't think I would, though I wanted it very much for a very long time, is my sobriety. I drank. Too much. Through most of my adolescence and all of my adulthood. Most people who know me, or knew me, would be surprised, I think, to know how much I drank. I was good at hiding it and at functioning well enough. But it was a lot, and it would have killed me eventually, I have no doubt. Now I'm sober, and I don't even miss it. Sobriety is yet another thing that 2015 brought me, including divorce, and happiness, and a new and very different romance. If someone had told me a year ago that these things were coming, I wouldn't have believed any of it.
If you are here looking for advice on how to quit drinking, I don't really have any. I went to one AA meeting. The people there were kind and welcoming. I participated. I stood up and called myself an alcoholic. I cried. I got a hug, and a desire chip, and someone bought me a copy of The Big Book, though I don't know why they call it that. It's really not that big. I read every word, and some of it twice. I never called the number that the person who bought it for me wrote on the inside cover, and I never went back to another meeting. AA just didn't speak to me. I wanted to be done with alcohol, not spend much of my life talking about it. I had no stories to share of waking up in jail after a three-day blackout bender. I hadn't lost everything to alcohol. I don't even believe that alcohol killed my marriage. If anything, alcohol kept my marriage stumbling along long after it should have lain down and died. Most of all, though, I couldn't see myself ever getting past steps 2 and 3. For many non-religious people, the phrases "a power greater than ourselves" and "God as we understand Him" make it possible to reconcile a lack of faith in God with the faith necessary to work the steps. One person even told me that I could make that power and that God entirely symbolic, substituting something as mundane as a doorknob if I chose. But I still couldn't do it. I couldn't conceive of the power and I couldn't admit powerlessness. But reading the book helped, and knowing that I really never wanted to go back helped, too. I'm not denigrating it. It's a stunningly powerful and effective program, and its grassroots development from a handful of people to a worldwide movement is virtually unprecedented. It's famous because it works. It will work for you if you work it, as they say. I just didn't work it.
But I haven't had a drink in a year, and it hasn't been that hard. Outside of the first couple of weeks, especially the sleeplessness, it's even been easy. I don't want to drink any more. I don't know why I don't, but it's a huge relief. Some people I drank with seem puzzled, maybe even baffled that I would never drink again. Like Andre 3000 in Outkast's "Ms. Jackson," they wonder, "Forever? Forever ever? Forever ever?"
Yes. Forever ever. That idea was scary to me before I quit. To never drink again? Unthinkable. But now, it's more than fine with me. It took from me, but it didn't give anything back. What I thought it gave me was truthfully just another way it took from me. I don't want it back. I'm free. You can drink. You can drink when I'm around. It doesn't bother me to be near it. I'm just done. Don't know why. Just am.
And yes, I know the Big Book is full of stories of people who quit, and were sure, and started again, and never truly made it until they did steps 2 and 3 and the rest. And I haven't. And maybe that puts me in jeopardy. We'll see. Right now, I'm fine. I'm better than fine.
And that's pretty much the sum total of my life philosophy as I move from 2015 to 2016. I don't know about next week. I don't know about next month. I don't know about next year. But right now? Right now is good. And that's more than enough. I don't really have any resolutions for the new year. I don't know that I need any. I do have a goal: run the Cap10K in under an hour. That's a pretty big one. I'd have to check the race bibs on my wall to see if I've ever done it before. I've done 10Ks in under an hour, but maybe not that one. It's all uphill for the first half. But I want to keep my weight loss going, and I want to get back the sense of accomplishment that running gave me in 2010, 2011, 2012. I don't know if running will ever again be for me what it was. I don't know anything, really. And I'm keeping my focus right in front of my feet for now. But if 2015, the worst year of my life, brought me so many unexpected and truly priceless gifts, who knows what 2016 will bring?
In that year, I lost a wife. I lost about half of my time with my son. I lost my financial security. I lost my identity as a full-time stay-at-home dad. I lost my home, and my neighborhood. The best of my losses was the 50 pounds or so I shed, mostly because I quit drinking and spent a lot of time in the first half of the year angry walking, roaming for miles and hours every night after Thumper went to bed, stewing and avoiding fights with my future ex-wife. I put a lot of miles on my shoes in the spring of '15.
At the same time as all those losses, I had many gains, too. I gained a new relationship with my son as we navigate all these changes together. I gained independence and responsibility. I gained a new identity, returning to full-time employment after an 8-year hiatus. I gained a new home, a space of my own, something that I've never had. And most surprising, because I was certain that I wanted nothing to do with long-term romantic relationships for at least a couple of years, I gained a girlfriend.
I don't think I'll blog much about her. I'll tell you now that she lifts me up in ways that I didn't know I needed. She was a dear friend who mentored me through the early days of the implosion of my marriage, who told me often, though I didn't believe her, that I would be happy again. She is an amazingly down-to-earth mother who regularly talks me down from all of my intellectual flights of fancy and over-analysis of everything I do and think when it comes to Thumper and to myself. It was a surprise when that treasured friendship evolved into something more. She likes to give what I like to receive, and she likes to receive what I like to give. She is a gift. She is a gift that I don't want to share with you. So you may never hear another word about her. Though who am I kidding? I talk a lot. She'll probably come up again.
Something else I gained that I didn't think I would, though I wanted it very much for a very long time, is my sobriety. I drank. Too much. Through most of my adolescence and all of my adulthood. Most people who know me, or knew me, would be surprised, I think, to know how much I drank. I was good at hiding it and at functioning well enough. But it was a lot, and it would have killed me eventually, I have no doubt. Now I'm sober, and I don't even miss it. Sobriety is yet another thing that 2015 brought me, including divorce, and happiness, and a new and very different romance. If someone had told me a year ago that these things were coming, I wouldn't have believed any of it.
If you are here looking for advice on how to quit drinking, I don't really have any. I went to one AA meeting. The people there were kind and welcoming. I participated. I stood up and called myself an alcoholic. I cried. I got a hug, and a desire chip, and someone bought me a copy of The Big Book, though I don't know why they call it that. It's really not that big. I read every word, and some of it twice. I never called the number that the person who bought it for me wrote on the inside cover, and I never went back to another meeting. AA just didn't speak to me. I wanted to be done with alcohol, not spend much of my life talking about it. I had no stories to share of waking up in jail after a three-day blackout bender. I hadn't lost everything to alcohol. I don't even believe that alcohol killed my marriage. If anything, alcohol kept my marriage stumbling along long after it should have lain down and died. Most of all, though, I couldn't see myself ever getting past steps 2 and 3. For many non-religious people, the phrases "a power greater than ourselves" and "God as we understand Him" make it possible to reconcile a lack of faith in God with the faith necessary to work the steps. One person even told me that I could make that power and that God entirely symbolic, substituting something as mundane as a doorknob if I chose. But I still couldn't do it. I couldn't conceive of the power and I couldn't admit powerlessness. But reading the book helped, and knowing that I really never wanted to go back helped, too. I'm not denigrating it. It's a stunningly powerful and effective program, and its grassroots development from a handful of people to a worldwide movement is virtually unprecedented. It's famous because it works. It will work for you if you work it, as they say. I just didn't work it.
But I haven't had a drink in a year, and it hasn't been that hard. Outside of the first couple of weeks, especially the sleeplessness, it's even been easy. I don't want to drink any more. I don't know why I don't, but it's a huge relief. Some people I drank with seem puzzled, maybe even baffled that I would never drink again. Like Andre 3000 in Outkast's "Ms. Jackson," they wonder, "Forever? Forever ever? Forever ever?"
Yes. Forever ever. That idea was scary to me before I quit. To never drink again? Unthinkable. But now, it's more than fine with me. It took from me, but it didn't give anything back. What I thought it gave me was truthfully just another way it took from me. I don't want it back. I'm free. You can drink. You can drink when I'm around. It doesn't bother me to be near it. I'm just done. Don't know why. Just am.
And yes, I know the Big Book is full of stories of people who quit, and were sure, and started again, and never truly made it until they did steps 2 and 3 and the rest. And I haven't. And maybe that puts me in jeopardy. We'll see. Right now, I'm fine. I'm better than fine.
And that's pretty much the sum total of my life philosophy as I move from 2015 to 2016. I don't know about next week. I don't know about next month. I don't know about next year. But right now? Right now is good. And that's more than enough. I don't really have any resolutions for the new year. I don't know that I need any. I do have a goal: run the Cap10K in under an hour. That's a pretty big one. I'd have to check the race bibs on my wall to see if I've ever done it before. I've done 10Ks in under an hour, but maybe not that one. It's all uphill for the first half. But I want to keep my weight loss going, and I want to get back the sense of accomplishment that running gave me in 2010, 2011, 2012. I don't know if running will ever again be for me what it was. I don't know anything, really. And I'm keeping my focus right in front of my feet for now. But if 2015, the worst year of my life, brought me so many unexpected and truly priceless gifts, who knows what 2016 will bring?
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Perspective
"Tonight, we not only speak to the members of the Greater Jerusalem Baptist Church. We not only speak to Baptist people tonight. We not only speak to the Methodist people tonight. Church of God in Christ, Catholics, or no particular denomination. No particular city. But tonight we speak to the whole nation. Tonight, our message: Drop the hate! Forgive each other!"
I've been thinking about my problems lately, and sometimes feeling sorry for myself for the hurts done to me, and sometimes feeling guilty for the hurts I've done to others.
And then I think, really, things are pretty fuckin' good.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no one actively working to end my existence because of who I am or what I believe.
I'm surrounded by people that I love, who make me smile and laugh out loud almost every single day.
I have such an abundance of clean drinking water, that I expel my bodily wastes into it all the time.
I have such an abundance of food, that I track my consumption with a handheld computer that sends data to and receives data from space just so I don't eat too ridiculously much.
My greatest health concern is trying not to get sick from too much pleasure.
I have a job with health benefits and a salary that allows me not only a nice home and all that food and water, but also the ability to do almost anything I want, almost any time I want.
And virtually everyone I know has all of these things, too.
Clearly, some of these ideas I owe to the incomparable Louis CK:
"You're in a chair in the sky!"
"But, it doesn't lean back very much..."
Ha. Anyway. What was I saying? Oh, yeah.
When I look around, I'm baffled to see so many people so determined to be angry and unhappy. At work and in my private life, there are several people that seem to work very hard at being mad. They look closely for new injustices that have been heaped upon them by cruel circumstance and cruel people.
I hate being mad. I want it to end as soon as possible. I hate lying awake at night going over and over in my mind how angry I am. I'd rather sleep peacefully and wake up rested and refreshed. So I wonder: are there physical differences in our brains such that some people experience anger as a pleasurable sensation? I've always said of some people, "They're not happy unless they're mad," and now I'm wondering if it's literally true. Is anger akin to joy in the brains of some people? Are there studies on this, complete with colorful images of parts of the brain "lighting up" at the opportunity to tell someone else that they said or did the wrong thing, or said or did it the wrong way, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons? And to tell them over and over again, with white-hot rage?
The phrase "righteousness orgasm" popped into my brain the other day to describe the apparently climactic joy in expressing outrage at perceived victimization of a just or innocent person, and we all tend to think of ourselves as at least mostly just and innocent. It can be seen in comments sections all over the internet, and I think it's what Lenore Skenazy noticed in this post on Free-Range Kids. It's an outrage that seems easiest to express in writing, because face-to-face communication allows too much humanization of the offending party, too much explanation of extenuation, too much give and take, to really allow a good orgasmic buildup of righteous indignation.
I know I've indulged in the righteousness orgasm now and again, and even recently. I'm trying though, Lord. I'm trying.
Anyway, now I'm going to go turn my Pandora from Rage Against the Machine back to Lyle Lovett. And tomorrow, I'm told, is Aloha Friday. I've never been to Hawaii, but I have no doubt I can only benefit from more ukulele in my life.
Aloha, fuckers! Namaste, bitches!
Sunday, October 18, 2015
It's Different for Me Now
Driving to work this morning, I heard Dr. David Buss on KGSR talking about dating in the modern age. The gist was that modern technology and communications do not make it easier to find a long-term mate.
I'll be completely, officially divorced soon, probably some time in November, so I've been thinking about dating and mating and finding a match that works in the long term. I thought I'd found The One two decades ago. I was sure of it. But The One is now as foreign to me in heart and mind, as inscrutable, as an alien. I'm sure I am to her, as well. We simply do not speak the same language. It's not her fault, and it's not mine, or if there is fault, it belongs to each of us. But I think fault is meaningless in the end of our marriage. There was no infidelity. There was no abuse. There was the long, slow accumulation of resentment and the inevitable separation of what was once, truly if briefly, a close union of souls. Some of that foreignness comes from the pain of The Breakup itself, the cruelty we inflicted on each other while finally, irrevocably snapping that bond between us. But I also think most of our marriage was the desperate attempt to return to what existed for a few years and was lost through the vagaries of time and circumstance, mostly because we were at our cores incompatible in our personalities and desires. We were friends for a long time, even good friends, close friends. But we stopped being mates, I think, probably some time in the 20th century. We fell in love quickly at the age of 20 with the people we had the potential to become, and we fell out of love slowly over the next 20 years with the people we actually became.
Anyway, that's my paragraph-long post mortem on almost 23 years of daily interaction.
All of which begs the question, whether you call what came before a failure or an indispensable life experience, how does one go about making a new match that lasts and uplifts and continues to uplift over the course of years?
I don't think it's on Tinder. Or Match. Or eHarmony. Or OKCupid. Maybe. I don't know. Dr. Buss pointed out that each of these, and especially all of them in combination, give the illusion of infinite choice, infinite possibility, which leads to a paralysis of choice. It's a world where the next possibility is always better than the current reality.
A friend told me I'd have to go through my "divorce crazies," to go crazy and date lots and lots of people over the next couple of years. To step out of my comfort zone and go wild would be the only way to find out who I am in relation to other people, to find out what I liked and what I wanted. While I can see its value, that idea kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. I said in June or July, shortly after I moved out of my marital home and established for the first time in my life a space that was my own: I don't want to date. I wanted to live on my own, making my own choices for my own sake. I wanted to spend at least a year or two discovering who it is I am alone before I try again to discover who it is I am in cooperation with another person. And it was true when I said it. And it's still kind of true now. But I can see that a time will come, and maybe sooner than I thought when I was just beginning to believe that the end was in sight, the end of something that had become destructive, that I will want to find someone. Someone to spend time with. To talk to. To cuddle with. To help and to be helped by. To uplift and to be uplifted by. And yes, to bone. Bonin' is fun, after all. And making love is an expression of, an extension of, and a reinforcement of emotional intimacy. But more than sex: I will want someone to show my intricacies and to discover her intricacies, with all of the joy and fear and frustration and giddiness and fever and love that comes with that openness and discovery.
Who do I want? The more important question is who do I want to be? I think it's answering the second question that will lead to the answer of the first.
What I will not do is hold on to the past. I have friends who model for me exactly the behavior I refuse to engage in. I will not dwell daily on what I had and lost. I will not dwell daily on what she did that brought about the end, or what she did in ending it. I will not remain mired in the muck of what went before. I can't see anything of value in fighting any longer to keep or regain what is gone. I can't see anything of value in hating her or pitying myself. If you are one of my friends who thinks now that I'm talking to you, then hear this: let it go. It's over. You are only hurting yourself and your kids. Find a therapist. I have a recommendation for you if you want it. She was instrumental for me in seeing things differently. But you have to stop it. There's no point. There's nothing to be gained, only everything to be lost.
That's what I won't do. What will I do instead? I will be honest. Trying to be someone I wasn't didn't work. Pretending to want what I didn't want or to be happy when I wasn't didn't work. That staple of couples counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous, "fake it 'til you make it" only goes so far. Eventually the faking is as destructive to the self as the not faking was to the relationship. So I will tell the truth, even when it's difficult or awkward. I am who I am, and I'm a lot more comfortable with that at 43 than I was at 20.
I will be kind. Bullying someone to make them become someone else is a stupid strategy. It didn't work for her, and it didn't work for me. If I'm dating someone who turns out to have very different priorities than I do, it'll be OK to end things and move on. Better now than later. The ending can be as much of a kindness as anything else.
I thought it would be a long list, but I think that's it. I will be honest and kind. I think everything else is a subcategory of one or the other. Is it possible that the next great love of my life will appear, will draw me to her and be drawn to me, by living my life and endeavoring always to be honest and kind?
I'll be completely, officially divorced soon, probably some time in November, so I've been thinking about dating and mating and finding a match that works in the long term. I thought I'd found The One two decades ago. I was sure of it. But The One is now as foreign to me in heart and mind, as inscrutable, as an alien. I'm sure I am to her, as well. We simply do not speak the same language. It's not her fault, and it's not mine, or if there is fault, it belongs to each of us. But I think fault is meaningless in the end of our marriage. There was no infidelity. There was no abuse. There was the long, slow accumulation of resentment and the inevitable separation of what was once, truly if briefly, a close union of souls. Some of that foreignness comes from the pain of The Breakup itself, the cruelty we inflicted on each other while finally, irrevocably snapping that bond between us. But I also think most of our marriage was the desperate attempt to return to what existed for a few years and was lost through the vagaries of time and circumstance, mostly because we were at our cores incompatible in our personalities and desires. We were friends for a long time, even good friends, close friends. But we stopped being mates, I think, probably some time in the 20th century. We fell in love quickly at the age of 20 with the people we had the potential to become, and we fell out of love slowly over the next 20 years with the people we actually became.
Anyway, that's my paragraph-long post mortem on almost 23 years of daily interaction.
All of which begs the question, whether you call what came before a failure or an indispensable life experience, how does one go about making a new match that lasts and uplifts and continues to uplift over the course of years?
I don't think it's on Tinder. Or Match. Or eHarmony. Or OKCupid. Maybe. I don't know. Dr. Buss pointed out that each of these, and especially all of them in combination, give the illusion of infinite choice, infinite possibility, which leads to a paralysis of choice. It's a world where the next possibility is always better than the current reality.
A friend told me I'd have to go through my "divorce crazies," to go crazy and date lots and lots of people over the next couple of years. To step out of my comfort zone and go wild would be the only way to find out who I am in relation to other people, to find out what I liked and what I wanted. While I can see its value, that idea kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. I said in June or July, shortly after I moved out of my marital home and established for the first time in my life a space that was my own: I don't want to date. I wanted to live on my own, making my own choices for my own sake. I wanted to spend at least a year or two discovering who it is I am alone before I try again to discover who it is I am in cooperation with another person. And it was true when I said it. And it's still kind of true now. But I can see that a time will come, and maybe sooner than I thought when I was just beginning to believe that the end was in sight, the end of something that had become destructive, that I will want to find someone. Someone to spend time with. To talk to. To cuddle with. To help and to be helped by. To uplift and to be uplifted by. And yes, to bone. Bonin' is fun, after all. And making love is an expression of, an extension of, and a reinforcement of emotional intimacy. But more than sex: I will want someone to show my intricacies and to discover her intricacies, with all of the joy and fear and frustration and giddiness and fever and love that comes with that openness and discovery.
Who do I want? The more important question is who do I want to be? I think it's answering the second question that will lead to the answer of the first.
What I will not do is hold on to the past. I have friends who model for me exactly the behavior I refuse to engage in. I will not dwell daily on what I had and lost. I will not dwell daily on what she did that brought about the end, or what she did in ending it. I will not remain mired in the muck of what went before. I can't see anything of value in fighting any longer to keep or regain what is gone. I can't see anything of value in hating her or pitying myself. If you are one of my friends who thinks now that I'm talking to you, then hear this: let it go. It's over. You are only hurting yourself and your kids. Find a therapist. I have a recommendation for you if you want it. She was instrumental for me in seeing things differently. But you have to stop it. There's no point. There's nothing to be gained, only everything to be lost.
That's what I won't do. What will I do instead? I will be honest. Trying to be someone I wasn't didn't work. Pretending to want what I didn't want or to be happy when I wasn't didn't work. That staple of couples counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous, "fake it 'til you make it" only goes so far. Eventually the faking is as destructive to the self as the not faking was to the relationship. So I will tell the truth, even when it's difficult or awkward. I am who I am, and I'm a lot more comfortable with that at 43 than I was at 20.
I will be kind. Bullying someone to make them become someone else is a stupid strategy. It didn't work for her, and it didn't work for me. If I'm dating someone who turns out to have very different priorities than I do, it'll be OK to end things and move on. Better now than later. The ending can be as much of a kindness as anything else.
I thought it would be a long list, but I think that's it. I will be honest and kind. I think everything else is a subcategory of one or the other. Is it possible that the next great love of my life will appear, will draw me to her and be drawn to me, by living my life and endeavoring always to be honest and kind?
Thursday, February 13, 2014
5 Years
I realized today that this month marks 5 years since Thumper and I started driving for Meals on Wheels. Much has changed in those 5 years. He almost never comes with me now that he's in school. We're on our third Director and our second route, and we don't get to see our old friends any more, the clients who made a big deal over him, who let him play with their collectible model tractors, and their grandkids, and their dogs.
Most of our new route now consists of an "independent living facility," a giant apartment complex for seniors where resident volunteers take the meals from me and deliver them to the individual clients. The volunteers are incredibly nice, and friendly, and they're always happy to see the boy when he comes, but we don't get to interact with the clients any longer. When we were looking for a volunteer opportunity, and we were failing to find something that felt just right for us, I doubted that I would do well talking to strangers. We were still dealing with nap times, and we were at the very beginning of our playground adventures where he made me talk to people, and as always, my expectations were nothing like reality. Thumper helped to drag me out of my shell, and I quickly learned how to stand on the front porch of an 83-year-old woman and have the same 45-minute conversation with her this week as I'd had with her last week, and to cheerfully change her light bulbs and talk to the cable company for her. I learned to accept that she would drop off the list, as most of the clients do eventually, without explanation, her story never finished, at least for me.
It's still a satisfying part of my week, Meals on Wheels, but things are different now. The women at the Senior Center where we pick up the meals, those women he still calls "the dominoes ladies" because they play every day while they wait for lunch, are still so kind. They always ask me about him, and always make a big deal when he does come with me. When he was a year-and-a-half, they clapped and cheered for him when he banged on the old piano (the one that disappeared after the renovations from the kitchen fire a few years ago), and they gave him candy every week (he still asks me if Ms. Celia sent me home with anything for him if I mention that I drove Meals on Wheels today), and they gave him stuffed animals at Christmas and Valentine's Day. But the people have changed, again and again, and with Thumper at the ripe old age of 6 1/2, there's almost no one left who remembers when he first toddled through the door and helped me reach out and connect in a meaningful way.
Most of our new route now consists of an "independent living facility," a giant apartment complex for seniors where resident volunteers take the meals from me and deliver them to the individual clients. The volunteers are incredibly nice, and friendly, and they're always happy to see the boy when he comes, but we don't get to interact with the clients any longer. When we were looking for a volunteer opportunity, and we were failing to find something that felt just right for us, I doubted that I would do well talking to strangers. We were still dealing with nap times, and we were at the very beginning of our playground adventures where he made me talk to people, and as always, my expectations were nothing like reality. Thumper helped to drag me out of my shell, and I quickly learned how to stand on the front porch of an 83-year-old woman and have the same 45-minute conversation with her this week as I'd had with her last week, and to cheerfully change her light bulbs and talk to the cable company for her. I learned to accept that she would drop off the list, as most of the clients do eventually, without explanation, her story never finished, at least for me.
It's still a satisfying part of my week, Meals on Wheels, but things are different now. The women at the Senior Center where we pick up the meals, those women he still calls "the dominoes ladies" because they play every day while they wait for lunch, are still so kind. They always ask me about him, and always make a big deal when he does come with me. When he was a year-and-a-half, they clapped and cheered for him when he banged on the old piano (the one that disappeared after the renovations from the kitchen fire a few years ago), and they gave him candy every week (he still asks me if Ms. Celia sent me home with anything for him if I mention that I drove Meals on Wheels today), and they gave him stuffed animals at Christmas and Valentine's Day. But the people have changed, again and again, and with Thumper at the ripe old age of 6 1/2, there's almost no one left who remembers when he first toddled through the door and helped me reach out and connect in a meaningful way.
Friday, May 10, 2013
I Don't Hate You, But I Kind of Do
A few days ago, a friend linked to this video based on an excerpt from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace. I usually sigh and roll my eyes over internet videos longer than 3 minutes or so, but this one is worth every second of its 9 1/2 minutes. I've been thinking about it all week. I can't fathom how I can be so inconstant myself (sometimes deeply in love, sometimes deeply annoyed, sometimes kind, sometimes selfish, sometimes patient, sometimes incredibly short of temper) and yet so unable to remember that other people are no more constant than I. The guy who cuts me off in traffic is no more permanently defined by his moment of selfishness and impatience than I am by mine when I occasionally do the same, and yet I immediately classify him by that action: "Jackass!" If my son learns any obscenities from me, he learns them in the back seat of the car when I'm driving.
These past couple of weeks, I was listening to Alexander Adams read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Hearing Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley gush over each other in their small, quiet months together amidst the chaos of the world around them, I felt even more deeply in love with my wife, more grateful for her as a sanctuary. For a time. But a moment later, despite years of history, I am suddenly, disproportionately annoyed as hell by some inconsequential action. Knowing long before it comes just how the story is going to end (because how can it not? But maybe it won't. But how can it not?), I feel closer to my child and the undeserved luck of his healthy birth. But still, I'll snap at him all day long for small irritations. Why?
I also watched God Bless America this week, a mediocre movie that is just as sensationalistic and dehumanizing as the the pop culture that it purports to criticize. While watching it, I thought, "But there are no people that deserve to die!" even while chiding myself that yes, there are some people that deserve to die. Not Kardashians, certainly, but maybe someone that would kidnap teenage girls, keep them captive for years, raping them over and over and over again, yes? Deserve to die? And yet human. With thoughts and feelings and history and circumstances.
I want very much to be a better man, but for some reason, there is no such thing as ever after.
Mr. Wallace, who not insignificantly decided to end his own life, points out that it is a choice to think of others as just as human as yourself, and yet, I can't understand why making that choice is so hard, and never gets easier, day in and day out. It's a choice that must be made again and again, ad infinitum, and so many times in any given day, it's easier, or at least more appealing, to choose dehumanization.
And why is it so much harder to make that choice while driving, or while tediously working one's way through the grocery store?
I don't want to hate you. I really don't. But sometimes, I kind of do.
These past couple of weeks, I was listening to Alexander Adams read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Hearing Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley gush over each other in their small, quiet months together amidst the chaos of the world around them, I felt even more deeply in love with my wife, more grateful for her as a sanctuary. For a time. But a moment later, despite years of history, I am suddenly, disproportionately annoyed as hell by some inconsequential action. Knowing long before it comes just how the story is going to end (because how can it not? But maybe it won't. But how can it not?), I feel closer to my child and the undeserved luck of his healthy birth. But still, I'll snap at him all day long for small irritations. Why?
I also watched God Bless America this week, a mediocre movie that is just as sensationalistic and dehumanizing as the the pop culture that it purports to criticize. While watching it, I thought, "But there are no people that deserve to die!" even while chiding myself that yes, there are some people that deserve to die. Not Kardashians, certainly, but maybe someone that would kidnap teenage girls, keep them captive for years, raping them over and over and over again, yes? Deserve to die? And yet human. With thoughts and feelings and history and circumstances.
I want very much to be a better man, but for some reason, there is no such thing as ever after.
Mr. Wallace, who not insignificantly decided to end his own life, points out that it is a choice to think of others as just as human as yourself, and yet, I can't understand why making that choice is so hard, and never gets easier, day in and day out. It's a choice that must be made again and again, ad infinitum, and so many times in any given day, it's easier, or at least more appealing, to choose dehumanization.
And why is it so much harder to make that choice while driving, or while tediously working one's way through the grocery store?
I don't want to hate you. I really don't. But sometimes, I kind of do.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Living in Suburbia with a Sociable Child
I was interviewed this afternoon for a potential "featurette" or some such thing in a local fitness magazine. They're planning a Fathers' Day theme for their June issue and are focusing on my stay-at-home dads' group. The focus is dads staying fit with their kids. Or something.
With my up-and-down weight loss/gain history, I'm probably not the best guy to interview about staying fit, and I found myself answering her questions about how the group has affected my life with how I've learned to be more sociable and open to strangers. Much of that has to do with Thumper and his love of talking to anyone and everyone more than it has to do with the group, but some of it is related to meeting new people with a common thread to their choices and lifestyles. There is value in relationships developing from the "we are pre-made friends because we belong to the same group, so we might as well talk to each other" aspect of strangers coming together because of similar choices.
Perhaps some of it is living in a neighborhood with a relatively high percentage of resident owners vs. rental properties, where the same people see each other over the years walking, driving, checking the mail, swimming at the neighborhood pool. Perhaps some of it is Thumper entering the school system, and parents seeing each other again and again at school drop off and pick up, volunteering, and other school events.
But honestly, with no disrespect to friends and neighbors: I sometimes miss the complete anonymity of living childless in Boston. For my morning commute, I would put on headphones and sunglasses, put my nose in a book, and have absolutely zero expectation of engaging in small talk with strangers on the subway. I would go to the grocery store and never run into friends of friends or acquaintances. I was invisible, unknown, anonymous, and it felt safe. Secure.
It could be lonely, too.
Now I have friends, neighbors, acquaintances. I have a network of people that I sometimes help and that sometimes help me. We share childcare. Our kids play together in backyards and playgrounds. We get together for potlucks, drink beer, and watch our kids ride bikes and play the didgeridoo.
Well, OK, that didgeridoo thing's only happened once. So far.
Looking back on the play group, and the journey so far with my son who is so much more outgoing and confident than I remember being when I was a child, I've moved quite a distance from the awkward 13-year-old who was sure that everyone else in school was working with a script that he never received. I chat with strangers at the park. I make small talk with friends in the grocery store parking lot. I introduce my wife to the parents of Thumper's classmates that we run into at the pool, and my heart doesn't stop, the world doesn't end, I only want to hide a little bit, and everything is pretty much all right.
Invisible still appeals to me, though.
With my up-and-down weight loss/gain history, I'm probably not the best guy to interview about staying fit, and I found myself answering her questions about how the group has affected my life with how I've learned to be more sociable and open to strangers. Much of that has to do with Thumper and his love of talking to anyone and everyone more than it has to do with the group, but some of it is related to meeting new people with a common thread to their choices and lifestyles. There is value in relationships developing from the "we are pre-made friends because we belong to the same group, so we might as well talk to each other" aspect of strangers coming together because of similar choices.
Perhaps some of it is living in a neighborhood with a relatively high percentage of resident owners vs. rental properties, where the same people see each other over the years walking, driving, checking the mail, swimming at the neighborhood pool. Perhaps some of it is Thumper entering the school system, and parents seeing each other again and again at school drop off and pick up, volunteering, and other school events.
But honestly, with no disrespect to friends and neighbors: I sometimes miss the complete anonymity of living childless in Boston. For my morning commute, I would put on headphones and sunglasses, put my nose in a book, and have absolutely zero expectation of engaging in small talk with strangers on the subway. I would go to the grocery store and never run into friends of friends or acquaintances. I was invisible, unknown, anonymous, and it felt safe. Secure.
It could be lonely, too.
Now I have friends, neighbors, acquaintances. I have a network of people that I sometimes help and that sometimes help me. We share childcare. Our kids play together in backyards and playgrounds. We get together for potlucks, drink beer, and watch our kids ride bikes and play the didgeridoo.
Well, OK, that didgeridoo thing's only happened once. So far.
Looking back on the play group, and the journey so far with my son who is so much more outgoing and confident than I remember being when I was a child, I've moved quite a distance from the awkward 13-year-old who was sure that everyone else in school was working with a script that he never received. I chat with strangers at the park. I make small talk with friends in the grocery store parking lot. I introduce my wife to the parents of Thumper's classmates that we run into at the pool, and my heart doesn't stop, the world doesn't end, I only want to hide a little bit, and everything is pretty much all right.
Invisible still appeals to me, though.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Son of Atheist Christmas
A long time ago, I fretted about how I would teach my child about religion, or how I would give him a strong foundation in religion upon which he could build or against which he could rebel. Eventually, I accepted that I couldn't really think it into a neat package or plan for how those conversations would develop as he got older.
Now, though, some of those conversations have begun to happen. Yesterday, when taking out the trash, I noticed a small orange tabby cat wobbling around in a panic in our back yard. She tried to escape me, but couldn't move very well. She clearly couldn't make it over the fence. I tried to reassure her, and then went inside to summon the big guns: my wife. She has a history of taking care of cats, including strays. We theorized that this poor kitty had a broken leg, or a dislocated hip, that accounted for her terribly wobbly walk, caught her, put her in a cat carrier, and took her to the vet. It was a family affair, with all 3 of us going, including Thumper. He was very sweet, speaking soothingly and reassuring her, "It's OK, kitty," as we drove.
It turned out that the poor kitty had no chip, had no tags, and had FIV. Her wobbly walk was neurological, not physical, resulting from the ravages of the disease. With our own kitties to consider, we could not take her in. With no way to identify an owner, we couldn't send her home. And of course we couldn't just send her back out into the neighborhood to die slowly and painfully on her own. So we talked about it. Thumper decided that she needed a name, so he dubbed her "Emerson." Then we euthanized her.
Thumper had many questions, some of which went back to the death of our last two kitties, Puck and Tasha. I'm not quite as bad these days as I was in 2010, when I apparently felt like I was undercover here in the religious suburbs, but still, these conversations make me a little uncomfortable. I want him to be able to talk about it, though, so I did my best to answer honestly.
He wanted to know about Heaven, and whether Emerson would be alive again there. He wanted to know what it looked like. I fell back on the "some people believe" version of the story, but didn't commit to anything related to "I believe..." He seemed satisfied and didn't push the conversation much beyond that point.
Today, though, he asked me if anyone could count to infinity. I said, no, no one could count to infinity because it's endless. No matter what number you could count to, no matter how big that number was, infinity would be more. He said, "But God could count to infinity, right? Because He's special." So I asked him, "Buddy, it seems like you have a lot of questions about God, and Heaven, and Jesus. I don't really know the answers, but if you want to go to church or to Sunday school and learn more about this stuff, I'd be happy to go with you." He said, "No thanks." His Mama piped in with finding books about different religions and learning more about the variety of things that people believe about God. He was still uninterested. So I tried to make it more personal, mentioning a friend of his whose family is very religious, and I told him that we could check out their church with them. Maybe he could go to Sunday school with his friend.
No, he was still not interested.
So maybe I was right that without Belief, I can't help him find Belief. But I feel good that we've left the conversation open and have shown a willingness to talk about it and to help him find other resources for learning if he wants to. I suspect that no matter what we do, it'll be wrong in one way or another, but we're trying, and I hope that means a lot in the end.
Now, though, some of those conversations have begun to happen. Yesterday, when taking out the trash, I noticed a small orange tabby cat wobbling around in a panic in our back yard. She tried to escape me, but couldn't move very well. She clearly couldn't make it over the fence. I tried to reassure her, and then went inside to summon the big guns: my wife. She has a history of taking care of cats, including strays. We theorized that this poor kitty had a broken leg, or a dislocated hip, that accounted for her terribly wobbly walk, caught her, put her in a cat carrier, and took her to the vet. It was a family affair, with all 3 of us going, including Thumper. He was very sweet, speaking soothingly and reassuring her, "It's OK, kitty," as we drove.
It turned out that the poor kitty had no chip, had no tags, and had FIV. Her wobbly walk was neurological, not physical, resulting from the ravages of the disease. With our own kitties to consider, we could not take her in. With no way to identify an owner, we couldn't send her home. And of course we couldn't just send her back out into the neighborhood to die slowly and painfully on her own. So we talked about it. Thumper decided that she needed a name, so he dubbed her "Emerson." Then we euthanized her.
Thumper had many questions, some of which went back to the death of our last two kitties, Puck and Tasha. I'm not quite as bad these days as I was in 2010, when I apparently felt like I was undercover here in the religious suburbs, but still, these conversations make me a little uncomfortable. I want him to be able to talk about it, though, so I did my best to answer honestly.
He wanted to know about Heaven, and whether Emerson would be alive again there. He wanted to know what it looked like. I fell back on the "some people believe" version of the story, but didn't commit to anything related to "I believe..." He seemed satisfied and didn't push the conversation much beyond that point.
Today, though, he asked me if anyone could count to infinity. I said, no, no one could count to infinity because it's endless. No matter what number you could count to, no matter how big that number was, infinity would be more. He said, "But God could count to infinity, right? Because He's special." So I asked him, "Buddy, it seems like you have a lot of questions about God, and Heaven, and Jesus. I don't really know the answers, but if you want to go to church or to Sunday school and learn more about this stuff, I'd be happy to go with you." He said, "No thanks." His Mama piped in with finding books about different religions and learning more about the variety of things that people believe about God. He was still uninterested. So I tried to make it more personal, mentioning a friend of his whose family is very religious, and I told him that we could check out their church with them. Maybe he could go to Sunday school with his friend.
No, he was still not interested.
So maybe I was right that without Belief, I can't help him find Belief. But I feel good that we've left the conversation open and have shown a willingness to talk about it and to help him find other resources for learning if he wants to. I suspect that no matter what we do, it'll be wrong in one way or another, but we're trying, and I hope that means a lot in the end.
Atheist Christmas
An old friend of my wife has fretted publicly on Facebook last year and this about the largely secular nature of Christmas for many people who still use the names and traditions that are rooted more in the religious history of Catholics and Protestants. She seems to think that if the winter holiday is going to divorce itself from the religious one, it should at least have a different name from the one that is supposed to celebrate the birth of the Christ, the Redeemer of Mankind.
I'm surprised by the vehemence of her (I think) agnostic grumblings about the contamination of a religious holiday by non-religious, and admittedly commercial attitudes. For me, though, there is no cognitive dissonance in the secularization of a religious tradition. Christmas can be different for everyone, even if we all call it the same name.
For you, it may be a deeply felt religious experience during which you contemplate the grace of God in sending a piece of His divine Self to earth in order to live in a flawed human body, to give his Son the opportunity to choose to live and suffer and die, to subject Him to fear and pain and selfishness and doubt, thus letting His ultimate rejection of those in favor of self-sacrifice and the fathomless depth of His love redeem humanity from its sinful nature.
Wow, that was kind of a convoluted sentence.
For me, it may be about spending time with well-loved family and friends and contemplating the idea that we are all connected, we humans. It is a time to to remember that we can let go of petty disagreements, selfish considerations, and all of the other things that separate us and push us to be cruel and narrow in our focus.
But we can all still call it Christmas, can't we? We can all still listen to songs that are sometimes about Santa and the hopeful, anticipatory joy of children and sometimes about the reverence for the divine love rained down upon us by a loving and forgiving Creator. We can think about what gifts or kindnesses we can give to those that matter to us most as well as the gifts or kindnesses we can give to those that we have never met.
Anyway. Happy Winter Solstice. Or Merry Christmas. Or, you know, any of a long list of names and celebrations that we as humans have stuck here in the middle of winter, which is admittedly not such a harsh and unforgiving time here in Central Texas. I wish you and yours and all of us love and joy. Let me know if you need anything. 'ppreciate 'cha!
I'm surprised by the vehemence of her (I think) agnostic grumblings about the contamination of a religious holiday by non-religious, and admittedly commercial attitudes. For me, though, there is no cognitive dissonance in the secularization of a religious tradition. Christmas can be different for everyone, even if we all call it the same name.
For you, it may be a deeply felt religious experience during which you contemplate the grace of God in sending a piece of His divine Self to earth in order to live in a flawed human body, to give his Son the opportunity to choose to live and suffer and die, to subject Him to fear and pain and selfishness and doubt, thus letting His ultimate rejection of those in favor of self-sacrifice and the fathomless depth of His love redeem humanity from its sinful nature.
Wow, that was kind of a convoluted sentence.
For me, it may be about spending time with well-loved family and friends and contemplating the idea that we are all connected, we humans. It is a time to to remember that we can let go of petty disagreements, selfish considerations, and all of the other things that separate us and push us to be cruel and narrow in our focus.
But we can all still call it Christmas, can't we? We can all still listen to songs that are sometimes about Santa and the hopeful, anticipatory joy of children and sometimes about the reverence for the divine love rained down upon us by a loving and forgiving Creator. We can think about what gifts or kindnesses we can give to those that matter to us most as well as the gifts or kindnesses we can give to those that we have never met.
Anyway. Happy Winter Solstice. Or Merry Christmas. Or, you know, any of a long list of names and celebrations that we as humans have stuck here in the middle of winter, which is admittedly not such a harsh and unforgiving time here in Central Texas. I wish you and yours and all of us love and joy. Let me know if you need anything. 'ppreciate 'cha!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
All That and a Bag of Chips
The title is one of my college roommate's favorite phrases for describing women he found attractive. He also liked to say, "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers!" High praise indeed.
This week's Trifecta Writing Challenge got me thinking about my wife. Here are 333 words:
She is a powerhouse to the rest of the world, a force of
nature, a focused and driven accomplisher of feats. She is that to me as well,
but she gives to me more than she gives everyone else. To me alone she reveals
parts of herself that she protects from the world. She walks in straight
lines, and quickly, but I have come along on the slow meanderings, just us,
alone. That is part of my love. I am elevated.
This, too, is part of my love, though I cannot make it sound
the way it feels in my heart when I become lost in her: the inexpressible ache,
the inexorable yearning to wrap her around me, to be thoroughly immersed in her
as if she were the earth, the sea, the sky. I want to be so completely inside
her that I disappear and she is everything. It is not destruction; it is
transformation.
It’s a silly idea of course; I tower above her. I could wrap
her up more thoroughly than she could me, at least by all appearances. She’s
just a little thing, though certainly voluptuous. Upon meeting her for the
first time, the word “ample” might rise to the minds of some, but both her body
and her being are more than that. Such a small word, with suggestions of “enough”
or even “a bit more than enough,” or “adequate,” “ample” is itself not adequate
to describe her.
There are moments when her soft curves become the whole
world.
When my son has come to me frustrated and baffled by the incomprehensible
machinations of the neighborhood girls, I’ve told him that girls and women are special
and magical and it is the role of boys and men to respect them, to honor them.
He was dubious, but it’s a message I’ll repeat. I could add “worship” to that list, too, but
he’s not ready to hear that. He will learn it in his own time, if he’s lucky.
Monday, August 27, 2012
The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
As a stay-at-home dad, my only child's first day of kindergarten was almost surreal, a strange mix of emotions ranging from giddy exultation to moody navel-gazing. He's gone from this:
to this:
in what also seems simultaneously like a blink of an eye and an eternity. This parenthood gig is stranger than anyone would ever be able to make anyone else believe with just words. There's so much you can't know until you know it.
It was a grand day. Aerie worked from home so that she could be there for drop-off and pick-up. He was confident and excited and walked to his classroom with an elbows-up swagger that looked like this:
We hugged and kissed him and said our goodbyes. He shed no tears and was happy to see the back of us, but he didn't even mind all the pictures. Next year he almost certainly will. Aerie managed to hold off her tears until we were outside the school.
We came home and, of course, immediately posted pictures to Facebook, like all parents with kids in school. Then I ran a load of laundry while working on a database project. When I began to fold the laundry, including Thumper's clothes that seem simultaneously tiny and, compared to those little onesies of days gone by, huge. That was when the emotions finally caught up with me, sitting in the utterly silent house folding the little big man's clothes.
It was just as surreal how quickly the day flew by. I did too few chores, accomplished too few work objectives, and utterly relaxed through a pleasantly surprising (first-time!) acupuncture appointment, which added even more weirdness to the day. I tried it to see if it could help some of my allergies and respiratory difficulties, but when I mentioned some shoulder pain, the acupuncturist immediately resolved in about 30 seconds of manipulating needles in my shins the shoulder pain that physical therapy and 3 or 4 years of exercises have not been able to touch. I can raise my arms above my head without sharp pain in my shoulders for the first time in years. Because of needles in my shins. Weird.
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. End of an era and whatnot. I'm not sure what the future holds for a full-time stay-at-home dad who no longer has to watch a kid full-time. I'm not rushing back into the full-time workforce, though. Aerie and I agree that there is value to having me available, with an early afternoon school release and with all of the sick days, teacher work days, vacation days, and holidays that will come up over the course of the school year, and with the opportunities to volunteer at the school that will also arise. Timing has worked out well with some additional database projects appearing at just the right time through my part-time employer, and there may, with an extra stress on may, be some full-time employment opportunities for me on the horizon. So I'm staying put, biding my time, and waiting to see what happens.
But still, it does sort of feel like Thumper and I, we're walking into the sunset on this whole grand stay-at-home dad adventure.
to this:
in what also seems simultaneously like a blink of an eye and an eternity. This parenthood gig is stranger than anyone would ever be able to make anyone else believe with just words. There's so much you can't know until you know it.
It was a grand day. Aerie worked from home so that she could be there for drop-off and pick-up. He was confident and excited and walked to his classroom with an elbows-up swagger that looked like this:
We hugged and kissed him and said our goodbyes. He shed no tears and was happy to see the back of us, but he didn't even mind all the pictures. Next year he almost certainly will. Aerie managed to hold off her tears until we were outside the school.
We came home and, of course, immediately posted pictures to Facebook, like all parents with kids in school. Then I ran a load of laundry while working on a database project. When I began to fold the laundry, including Thumper's clothes that seem simultaneously tiny and, compared to those little onesies of days gone by, huge. That was when the emotions finally caught up with me, sitting in the utterly silent house folding the little big man's clothes.
It was just as surreal how quickly the day flew by. I did too few chores, accomplished too few work objectives, and utterly relaxed through a pleasantly surprising (first-time!) acupuncture appointment, which added even more weirdness to the day. I tried it to see if it could help some of my allergies and respiratory difficulties, but when I mentioned some shoulder pain, the acupuncturist immediately resolved in about 30 seconds of manipulating needles in my shins the shoulder pain that physical therapy and 3 or 4 years of exercises have not been able to touch. I can raise my arms above my head without sharp pain in my shoulders for the first time in years. Because of needles in my shins. Weird.
Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. End of an era and whatnot. I'm not sure what the future holds for a full-time stay-at-home dad who no longer has to watch a kid full-time. I'm not rushing back into the full-time workforce, though. Aerie and I agree that there is value to having me available, with an early afternoon school release and with all of the sick days, teacher work days, vacation days, and holidays that will come up over the course of the school year, and with the opportunities to volunteer at the school that will also arise. Timing has worked out well with some additional database projects appearing at just the right time through my part-time employer, and there may, with an extra stress on may, be some full-time employment opportunities for me on the horizon. So I'm staying put, biding my time, and waiting to see what happens.
But still, it does sort of feel like Thumper and I, we're walking into the sunset on this whole grand stay-at-home dad adventure.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Goals Met and Unmet
So I'm 40 now. Last year, I set some goals for myself. Some of them I met; one of them I didn't. I'm only halfway to my weight loss goal, mostly because I did not stick to the calorie-counting and limited alcohol consumption. I'm not sure why this is so hard for me, but it's a lifelong struggle. I'll keep struggling.
I'm not going to beat myself up too badly for it, though, because I have succeeded in some ways that I never have before. While I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted, when I stopped losing, I maintained instead of gaining. I ran my first 10K nearly 2 years ago, and I've continued to run, to improve, to decrease times and increase distances, and it's that long-term commitment to running that's new to me. I have, all my life, lost weight, stopped exercising, then gained weight back again. This time I'm keeping regular exercise as part of my lifestyle, mostly by continuing to add running events, 5Ks, 10Ks, and even a half marathon, to my calendar.
Oh yeah, did I mention I ran the 3M Half Marathon? I registered to give myself a new challenge, but at the time, and right through to the time that I crossed the finish line, I didn't really believe that I could do it. I set a time goal for myself that was only a little bit slower of a per-mile pace than my 10K pace at the time, and I thought I couldn't possibly reach that goal, either.
But I did. I ran the whole way, never stopping to walk, and I beat my time goal by 30 seconds.
So looking to the future, I guess it's time to remind myself of old goals, like controlling my calorie intake and especially my alcohol consumption. But it's also time for new goals. I would like to reach my 200 lb. goal by the time the local pool opens for the summer, which is around May 1. I'd also like to be a better father to Thumper. I'm terrible at controlling my annoyance and exasperation. I can see clearly how I'm teaching him to react the same way as every day I see my irritation reflected right back at me. One of the members of the Stay-at-Home Dads group was talking about a class he's taking, called Logic and Love, and it may be that Thumper and I would benefit from something like that. At any rate, I'm tired of being bitchy so much of the time.
This is the year that Thumper will enter kindergarten, and I also plan to start writing now. I'll be staying home full-time for a while even after he enters school, and I'll need to find ways to do that and still earn more money. I've always wanted to be a writer, but I've never actually written very much, so now is the time to establish a more regular writing routine by blogging more often and participating in writing challenges like Trifecta and Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge. To write, and to sell, short stories, articles, and eventually a novel, I have to actually write short stories, articles, and a novel.
So continue to work on my health and fitness, read and write more and watch fewer movies and TV shows on the internet, and try to be nicer to my son. That's where I am right now. Happy 2012!
I'm not going to beat myself up too badly for it, though, because I have succeeded in some ways that I never have before. While I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted, when I stopped losing, I maintained instead of gaining. I ran my first 10K nearly 2 years ago, and I've continued to run, to improve, to decrease times and increase distances, and it's that long-term commitment to running that's new to me. I have, all my life, lost weight, stopped exercising, then gained weight back again. This time I'm keeping regular exercise as part of my lifestyle, mostly by continuing to add running events, 5Ks, 10Ks, and even a half marathon, to my calendar.
Oh yeah, did I mention I ran the 3M Half Marathon? I registered to give myself a new challenge, but at the time, and right through to the time that I crossed the finish line, I didn't really believe that I could do it. I set a time goal for myself that was only a little bit slower of a per-mile pace than my 10K pace at the time, and I thought I couldn't possibly reach that goal, either.
But I did. I ran the whole way, never stopping to walk, and I beat my time goal by 30 seconds.
So looking to the future, I guess it's time to remind myself of old goals, like controlling my calorie intake and especially my alcohol consumption. But it's also time for new goals. I would like to reach my 200 lb. goal by the time the local pool opens for the summer, which is around May 1. I'd also like to be a better father to Thumper. I'm terrible at controlling my annoyance and exasperation. I can see clearly how I'm teaching him to react the same way as every day I see my irritation reflected right back at me. One of the members of the Stay-at-Home Dads group was talking about a class he's taking, called Logic and Love, and it may be that Thumper and I would benefit from something like that. At any rate, I'm tired of being bitchy so much of the time.
This is the year that Thumper will enter kindergarten, and I also plan to start writing now. I'll be staying home full-time for a while even after he enters school, and I'll need to find ways to do that and still earn more money. I've always wanted to be a writer, but I've never actually written very much, so now is the time to establish a more regular writing routine by blogging more often and participating in writing challenges like Trifecta and Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge. To write, and to sell, short stories, articles, and eventually a novel, I have to actually write short stories, articles, and a novel.
So continue to work on my health and fitness, read and write more and watch fewer movies and TV shows on the internet, and try to be nicer to my son. That's where I am right now. Happy 2012!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Being a Boy and Being a Man
I grabbed a book to read while Thumper bounced his ass off at Extreme Fun this morning, and because it's been on my shelf for 10 or more years, and I've never read it, I picked Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.
Now, before you get worked up over the term "Misguided Feminism," I think the essence of the book, that perhaps the author didn't choose to represent in the title because provocative turns of phrase are just plain good marketing, is that improving the academic standing of girls does not necessarily have to come at the expense of boys, and vice versa.
I bought this book years ago, when I was still thinking about the novel that I started to write but never finished as part of my Honors Program Creative Writing directed study in 1996 or thereabouts, a project I was still thinking about finishing in 2000 or so when I bought the book. The idea occurred to me, through the fervor of political correctness that permeated the University atmosphere throughout the '90's, that men in general, and white men in particular, were the villains of the historic and cultural tale that we were told, and how that indoctrination into our own villainy would affect us in the long term. It was supposed to be a novel about the marginalization of men, the irrelevance of men in family and cultural life.
So, anyway, here I am, 11 or 12 years later, a man in a non-traditional gender role, happily married to a woman who is happy with the value of the contributions that I make to our family, trying to teach my son how to be a good man, (despite the accusations of chauvinism that may now and again be raised against me), and I picked up this book. Having finished only 50 or 60 pages, I'm not in a position to say anything meaningful about the book itself, but it's certainly timely as I try to navigate the rough waters of playground etiquette and aggression.
A couple of weeks ago, Thumper ended a thoroughly pleasant play date by punching his best friend in the face. Most play dates or other excursions to playgrounds, bounce houses, and other places where children gather, involve some discussion, sooner or later, about not hitting, about being nice, about not taking toys from other kids. This, according to the book, is exactly the kind of aggressive behavior inherent in boys that the "shortchanged girls in public school" movement believes must be actively "re-socialized" if women are to make significant progress in this society. Sommers seems to assert that that progress has already been made, and then some, but that's not really the point.
Ultimately, though, I don't think raising a boy is so different from raising a girl, as far as trying to teach them to fit into the social order. Do we not all try to teach our kids to be nice to each other? Maybe for boys it's teaching your son not to punch his friend in the face while for girls it's teaching your daughter not to ostracize, or ridicule, or manipulate, or I don't know, whatever the little girl version of not being nice is. I don't believe in the pathology of masculinity, the idea that without intervention, the average man will likely become a predator of women. I believe in the value of teaching my son to be proud of strength and speed and skill, to work to improve these things in himself, to want to play games where scores are kept and winners declared. And I believe that these things can be taught while also teaching him not to punch his best friend in the face, to remind him that he does not want to be hit, or have toys taken away from him, and so he should not hit, or take toys away from, others.
I do not accept that masculinity is defined as a thirst for power and dominion, and that if it is not quelled early, it will develop into a destructive force.
I also hope that he can get through school without feeling marginalized, undervalued, despised, feared, or ignored.
Now, before you get worked up over the term "Misguided Feminism," I think the essence of the book, that perhaps the author didn't choose to represent in the title because provocative turns of phrase are just plain good marketing, is that improving the academic standing of girls does not necessarily have to come at the expense of boys, and vice versa.
I bought this book years ago, when I was still thinking about the novel that I started to write but never finished as part of my Honors Program Creative Writing directed study in 1996 or thereabouts, a project I was still thinking about finishing in 2000 or so when I bought the book. The idea occurred to me, through the fervor of political correctness that permeated the University atmosphere throughout the '90's, that men in general, and white men in particular, were the villains of the historic and cultural tale that we were told, and how that indoctrination into our own villainy would affect us in the long term. It was supposed to be a novel about the marginalization of men, the irrelevance of men in family and cultural life.
So, anyway, here I am, 11 or 12 years later, a man in a non-traditional gender role, happily married to a woman who is happy with the value of the contributions that I make to our family, trying to teach my son how to be a good man, (despite the accusations of chauvinism that may now and again be raised against me), and I picked up this book. Having finished only 50 or 60 pages, I'm not in a position to say anything meaningful about the book itself, but it's certainly timely as I try to navigate the rough waters of playground etiquette and aggression.
A couple of weeks ago, Thumper ended a thoroughly pleasant play date by punching his best friend in the face. Most play dates or other excursions to playgrounds, bounce houses, and other places where children gather, involve some discussion, sooner or later, about not hitting, about being nice, about not taking toys from other kids. This, according to the book, is exactly the kind of aggressive behavior inherent in boys that the "shortchanged girls in public school" movement believes must be actively "re-socialized" if women are to make significant progress in this society. Sommers seems to assert that that progress has already been made, and then some, but that's not really the point.
Ultimately, though, I don't think raising a boy is so different from raising a girl, as far as trying to teach them to fit into the social order. Do we not all try to teach our kids to be nice to each other? Maybe for boys it's teaching your son not to punch his friend in the face while for girls it's teaching your daughter not to ostracize, or ridicule, or manipulate, or I don't know, whatever the little girl version of not being nice is. I don't believe in the pathology of masculinity, the idea that without intervention, the average man will likely become a predator of women. I believe in the value of teaching my son to be proud of strength and speed and skill, to work to improve these things in himself, to want to play games where scores are kept and winners declared. And I believe that these things can be taught while also teaching him not to punch his best friend in the face, to remind him that he does not want to be hit, or have toys taken away from him, and so he should not hit, or take toys away from, others.
I do not accept that masculinity is defined as a thirst for power and dominion, and that if it is not quelled early, it will develop into a destructive force.
I also hope that he can get through school without feeling marginalized, undervalued, despised, feared, or ignored.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Thinking About Four
Thumper will very soon become a four-year-old, a landmark that has me thinking again about all the time we've spent getting here, how fast it's gone, and what's changed since all those trips to the obstetrician, mostly, I guess, because we're just about one year away from kindergarten.
Since the early days, and the days in between, much has changed, and much has stayed the same. I think I was better suited to the first couple of years. Three has been tough, with attitude, attitude, and more attitude (from both of us), as his will has developed into something, surprisingly, independent of my own. Many of our days this year have been filled with moments when he expresses an idea ("I want candy!") that I shut down ("You've already had 2 Tootsie Rolls, a piece of taffy, and a cookie; no more sugar.") causing an angry reaction ("I NEVER get candy! I guess you want me to be mad!") to which I react angrily in turn ("Never? Don't even start with that! You've already had 3 pieces of candy and a cookie just this morning! Seriously? Do we have to do this every time?") Things generally go downhill from there.
As we approach four, though, he seems to be softening, sweetening, changing his attitude, which of course is causing me to change mine. He's running and kicking and trying at soccer instead of throwing himself on the ground and making an unending series of angry faces. I've heard that four is pretty sweet. I'm desperately hoping that it's true. I've waffled back and forth since Thumper was around 1 1/2 years old, thinking I want another child and thinking maybe I just couldn't possibly handle another one. If I'd had another one to deal with while working our way through three, I think someone would've suffered, possibly permanent damage.
Now, as he moves out of three and I move closer to forty, I've been thinking more about taking drastic, mostly permanent measures. I think our family is complete now. I have a stay-at-home dad friend who tells me pretty regularly about his adventures with a 6- and 3-year-old, and man, I am not ready for those kind of adventures. His elder child has reached the landmark that I fear most of all: she has figured out that mom and dad will not kill her or seriously hurt her, and she has decided that everything else is a battle that she can win. Where do you go when you say, "I will take this away from you," and the child responds, "I don't want that anyway?" When you say, "I can outlast you," and she says, "No you can't." I am shuddering at the thought.
Anyway, I hope Thumper actually is moving towards helping me be a better dad, because it's been a long time feeling like I'm really pretty terrible at this.
And things haven't changed that much. He's still pretty danged adorable, even though he's almost four now and not almost two, like he was the last time we went to see the Biscuit Brothers at Symphony Square in June of 2009, which we did again a couple of days ago. The Biscuit Brothers haven't entirely lost their charm, and neither has this job that I mostly love, though maybe not as much as I did when he would stay where I put him and never talk back.
Since the early days, and the days in between, much has changed, and much has stayed the same. I think I was better suited to the first couple of years. Three has been tough, with attitude, attitude, and more attitude (from both of us), as his will has developed into something, surprisingly, independent of my own. Many of our days this year have been filled with moments when he expresses an idea ("I want candy!") that I shut down ("You've already had 2 Tootsie Rolls, a piece of taffy, and a cookie; no more sugar.") causing an angry reaction ("I NEVER get candy! I guess you want me to be mad!") to which I react angrily in turn ("Never? Don't even start with that! You've already had 3 pieces of candy and a cookie just this morning! Seriously? Do we have to do this every time?") Things generally go downhill from there.
As we approach four, though, he seems to be softening, sweetening, changing his attitude, which of course is causing me to change mine. He's running and kicking and trying at soccer instead of throwing himself on the ground and making an unending series of angry faces. I've heard that four is pretty sweet. I'm desperately hoping that it's true. I've waffled back and forth since Thumper was around 1 1/2 years old, thinking I want another child and thinking maybe I just couldn't possibly handle another one. If I'd had another one to deal with while working our way through three, I think someone would've suffered, possibly permanent damage.
Now, as he moves out of three and I move closer to forty, I've been thinking more about taking drastic, mostly permanent measures. I think our family is complete now. I have a stay-at-home dad friend who tells me pretty regularly about his adventures with a 6- and 3-year-old, and man, I am not ready for those kind of adventures. His elder child has reached the landmark that I fear most of all: she has figured out that mom and dad will not kill her or seriously hurt her, and she has decided that everything else is a battle that she can win. Where do you go when you say, "I will take this away from you," and the child responds, "I don't want that anyway?" When you say, "I can outlast you," and she says, "No you can't." I am shuddering at the thought.
Anyway, I hope Thumper actually is moving towards helping me be a better dad, because it's been a long time feeling like I'm really pretty terrible at this.
And things haven't changed that much. He's still pretty danged adorable, even though he's almost four now and not almost two, like he was the last time we went to see the Biscuit Brothers at Symphony Square in June of 2009, which we did again a couple of days ago. The Biscuit Brothers haven't entirely lost their charm, and neither has this job that I mostly love, though maybe not as much as I did when he would stay where I put him and never talk back.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Conundrum
I say that I live in Austin, but I'm actually in the suburbs outside of Austin. Austin is a unique, liberal oasis in the center of the conservative desert of Texas, if you're inclined to think of conservatism as a barren wasteland. I'm not; I was once conservative, though I have more liberal leanings now. But one way in which I never meshed with conservatism was in my religious beliefs.
A few days before Thumper was born, I wrote about how I was pondering his religious education. I have, in the intervening years, come to the conclusion that our conversations about religion will develop independently of my constant over-thinking. But I've noticed lately that here, in my suburban landscape, there are a lot of upper middle-class white folk who are surprisingly (to me) religious. They also make lots of babies. I suppose it's not surprising, ultimately, that there are good Christian breeders here in suburban Texas, but I've been feeling more and more in disguise lately.
"Vacation Bible School" (familiarly referred to as VBS) has repeatedly been suggested to me as a summer alternative for the boy, and church daycare and/or preschool is also a highly recommended solution, even from my south and central Austin friends who are not particularly religious. Apparently it's not uncommon for the agnostic or atheist parents to send their kids to church child care, and hey, they don't indoctrinate THAT much, anyway. The more time we spend at our suburban YMCA (which, Lord God, is a lot of time, because of the gymnastics, the swim lessons, the soccer, the child care while I work out, the cool pool with the splash pad, the free babysitting one Friday a month, the cheap babysitting two Saturdays a month... Well, it adds up to a lot of time, is what I'm saying...) the more I seem to find myself listening to conversations between mothers of four and five kids talking about the dilemma of either home schooling or sending their kids to private school, of church, and bible school, and bible studies, and backyard bible clubs. Forgive me if any or all of that should have been capitalized.
I was even invited to attend a backyard bible club, or Backyard Bible Club, or backyard Bible club, today. I didn't exactly or directly respond to the invitation and immediately felt the degree to which I am undercover out here in the suburbs. Religion is a dominant part of the lives of most of the moms that I've met through the couple of moms' playgroups to which I belong, and I do my best to fly under the God radar. I try not to talk about religion, because as far as I can tell, nothing good can come of such a discussion. At best, I will be stuck trying to explain myself, and at worst, Thumper will no longer be able to play with some of the friends he has made over the past year or two. Making friends has turned out to be one of Thumper's best skills, but still, I don't need to be burning any of his bridges.
So it turns out that, despite all my agonizing over the religious education of my child, I'm an anti-religion snob whose first reaction to the word "bible" is distaste, and there's no chance of me inculcating my child in Christ, though I recognize that growing up without faith is a disadvantage and that without early indoctrination, faith is virtually impossible.
Still, there's going to be bounce houses and ice cream at the Backyard Bible Club.
A few days before Thumper was born, I wrote about how I was pondering his religious education. I have, in the intervening years, come to the conclusion that our conversations about religion will develop independently of my constant over-thinking. But I've noticed lately that here, in my suburban landscape, there are a lot of upper middle-class white folk who are surprisingly (to me) religious. They also make lots of babies. I suppose it's not surprising, ultimately, that there are good Christian breeders here in suburban Texas, but I've been feeling more and more in disguise lately.
"Vacation Bible School" (familiarly referred to as VBS) has repeatedly been suggested to me as a summer alternative for the boy, and church daycare and/or preschool is also a highly recommended solution, even from my south and central Austin friends who are not particularly religious. Apparently it's not uncommon for the agnostic or atheist parents to send their kids to church child care, and hey, they don't indoctrinate THAT much, anyway. The more time we spend at our suburban YMCA (which, Lord God, is a lot of time, because of the gymnastics, the swim lessons, the soccer, the child care while I work out, the cool pool with the splash pad, the free babysitting one Friday a month, the cheap babysitting two Saturdays a month... Well, it adds up to a lot of time, is what I'm saying...) the more I seem to find myself listening to conversations between mothers of four and five kids talking about the dilemma of either home schooling or sending their kids to private school, of church, and bible school, and bible studies, and backyard bible clubs. Forgive me if any or all of that should have been capitalized.
I was even invited to attend a backyard bible club, or Backyard Bible Club, or backyard Bible club, today. I didn't exactly or directly respond to the invitation and immediately felt the degree to which I am undercover out here in the suburbs. Religion is a dominant part of the lives of most of the moms that I've met through the couple of moms' playgroups to which I belong, and I do my best to fly under the God radar. I try not to talk about religion, because as far as I can tell, nothing good can come of such a discussion. At best, I will be stuck trying to explain myself, and at worst, Thumper will no longer be able to play with some of the friends he has made over the past year or two. Making friends has turned out to be one of Thumper's best skills, but still, I don't need to be burning any of his bridges.
So it turns out that, despite all my agonizing over the religious education of my child, I'm an anti-religion snob whose first reaction to the word "bible" is distaste, and there's no chance of me inculcating my child in Christ, though I recognize that growing up without faith is a disadvantage and that without early indoctrination, faith is virtually impossible.
Still, there's going to be bounce houses and ice cream at the Backyard Bible Club.
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