(Note: Although some of the articles here are not specific to men, for me they represent a father's view of parenting. Not to say both of we parents disagree or even have differing ways of dealing with these problems, it's just that we dads most often help with determining "boundary" issues i.e., This far and no farther. kinds of things. With this in mind I put these articles on the Men's Page.)
And...I know this stuff should be in chronological order so it would make more sense, but it's not.....in order that is. The newest stuff is at the top. I just ain't that organized. Like I know this next thing should be under "Fathering"....but; here it is anyway.
Picking up Pennies
I remember a friend of mine telling me that he no longer picked up pennies. Being a child of the Depression, not to pick up a penny is like ignoring a gift. A penny is still found money to me, and I note that one hundred of them still make up a dollar, and it is still possible to buy something with a dollar.
Way back when I was a kid, I know you've heard this one before but here it is anyway, a Pepsi cost five cents, same as a candy bar. This was fuel and if I had a dime, it went a long way. A quarter, my weekly allowance or a serendipitous gift from Grandma, was grounds for a celebration. So naturally, a penny was one step closer to getting somewhere.
Though it takes more than a hundred times more steps to a Pepsi and a candy bar today, it's still a step as far as I'm concerned and I don't see bending over to pick it up as some kind of humiliating statement about my financial condition. I think that even if I were driving a Porche and saw a penny in the gutter as I hauled my way out of it, I'd still pick it up, just on principle.
Maybe there would be a kind of freedom in not picking one up, a sort of statement to the Universe, or at least my own poverty consciousness, that I don't need that "stinking penny" and can get along just fine without it. I can afford to pass it by and leave it for someone less well off.
Maybe. But I bet if I did that I'd consider I was saying no to a kind of magical reminder that I am being taken care of in so many small ways all the time that to overlook the metaphor at least, would be ungrateful. To whom? You might askI don't know, but that's part of my belief system, that there is more going on here than any of us can fathom, and I don't want to give that up either. Just like, despite our relatively low financial status, I don't want to give up spontaneously handing a down-and-out person that buck or two (or more) now and then, not knowing, or caring, if they are conning or really needing. I guess I consider all of this to be pieces of the "social contract". I need, and seem to always get, they need, and I will try to pass it on. And I'll take that penny as a reminder that life is best when it flows to me and through me.
12/01/08
Postscript: Maybe we will all be picking up pennies again for
awhile. I have a gut level feeling that that would be a sign that we are
coming back into our senses about reality.
Being of No Consequence
Clothes off the rack fit me perfectly
no need for special alterations.
I am in every way
average
my "IQ" right in the middle
where it should be.
I couldn't be Albert Swietzer
I'm not self-sacrificing enough
and not self destructive enough
to write a great American novel
full of angst and dead desire and
unmet dreams.
No, I'm afraid I'm one of those
ignorance-is-bliss people
one of those grimly smiling folks I use to see
dancing to Lawrence Welk
on black and white TV,
people I used to scorn
for what appeared to be
their empty-headed happiness.
This is what comes of seeing so many
of my heroes, the angry disruptors of
the status-quo
wind up looking just as foolish
as the polka dancers
and without a grain of joy to show for the journey.
What was all that strum and drang about anyway
if it wasn't going to result in an opportunity
to experience some peace of one's own
like watching the juncos feed on a snowy day
or the cat curled up in the warm spot in front of the wood stove.
If the only consequence of my having lived
is at least a .500 batting average of happy progeny
it will be enough.
The juncos will go on feeding
the cats will seek warm spots,
the dogs, cool.
and the stream of Life,
uninfluenced,
will go on.
And that is enough.
Fathering.
(This is an older piece, but I thought I'd leave it up in case any other discouraged fathers happen by.)
This being a parent is getting me down. Not the part about being a parent of a person who is making a life for themselves, maybe even a kid who is grateful for the start they were given and feeds this back to me (us) now and then, that's the rewarding and fine part. No, it's the crashing and burning one, the one who keeps throwing away opportunity after opportunity all in the service of one more chance to get high..........that one.
I guess the honest word here is, gets me "angry".
I don't know, I have empathy for anyone who screws up over and over again. I really do. I know how much I messed up my life and, in the process, the lives of others, so I stay away from the judgmental, blame game most of the time. But my patience is running out with our middle daughter who continues to go the drug route blowing jobs, living circumstances, new starts, offers of help; everything that is handed to her by well meaning friends and relatives. And all without a thought, without a care in the world about the money she owes and the obligations to those who have gone out of their way to help. In short, she displays all the behaviors of a dedicated addict including a well-honed talent for lying and manipulation.
Oh, she's a fine actress this one is. We've always known that she had a natural talent for selling a story. In fact, she is so good, she needs no training for the stage at all, except to learn when to relinquish it. She's got "innocent" and "remorseful" down, and "determined-to-succeed" too. She can actually pull off "making it" for a bit as well, but let time go by, say a month or two, coupled with the freedom to choose, and off she goes with the next scum bag who offers to get her high in trade foryou name it, all her money and/or a bit of sex thrown in. Though none of us who have been around her for long can understand how anyone would want to have sex with someone who smells so bad she can create a wide space around her in an instant. She refuses to bath on any regular basis you see.
"The patience of Job"? I ran out of that about a month ago. Funny, running out of patience came, not as a result of a big thing, but because of cumulative effect. I had told her to be sure to check the oil of the car she is driving. She had been driving it for a month or so and I know she isn't the type to take responsibility for maintenance. "I will! I will!" came her feeling-oppressed response. But I knew she wouldn't do it, so I got her older sister to coerce her into popping the hood and checking the stick. Result? Just two quarts in the crankcase. "Take her to the store, get the oil, show her how to put it in and watch her pour." was my directive. There was no point in requesting she do it on her own so it had to be this way. I didn't want to deal with a blown engine on a car she owes us for. Throughout the process she was resentful and difficult.
Subsequently she lost her job, didn't show up for work on time and then not at all, and has since disappeared from the radar. We don't know where she is or what she is doing. One thing is sure, she isn't checking the oil. And I've had it.
I know that "mothering" is a different feeling, a different "process" perhaps. It does come with the male territory that we tend to draw boundaries, lines in the sand, more often. Mothers tend to smudge them and circumnavigate them in the name of Compassion, and I have certainly done some of that myself. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's just enabling. I find myself drawing deeper lines now, no mitigation. I don't know if it's age, I expected I'd get more "Budda-like" as I got olde........rmore apt to see the failings of youth from a longer range perspective, and, in fact, I have moved to this about a number of things with our kids and World turmoil in general. But I have run out of "fuse" with this one. It's now down to sink or swim, and frankly, I hate to admit that I think this, but I do; even "sink" as an inevitable outcome, is on the table.
Note 04/25: Yesterday was Elizabeth's birthday and most notable for a phone call we received at 10 AM, a phone call we've gotten at least twice before with different cast members: "Mr. Prosapio, do you have a daughter named Honor Holly............?" It was the Parametic calling from the ambulance taking her to the hospital after she slammed into a light pole doing 45 mph. (She had dropped a cd, reached down to get it while turning the steering wheel and stepping on the gas. Honor is "famous" in the family for her inattentive driving habits). Broken knee cap, broken ankle, knocked out front teeth, she is also famous for distaining seat belt use. She had been high on cocaine for three weeks straight "But I wasn't high today dad." Perhaps this is the only way for her to seek "enlightenment".
Now in a cast with braces on front teeth, which may or may not re-root themselves, she will be recovering at our house, Whoopie! and then, when on her feet, literally, be put into a drug treatement program.
Postscript: Which, just about a month later, kicked her out for non-compliance.
Happy birthday Elizabeth!
Planning
When you get to a "certain age", not sure when this started for me but maybe it was when I hit 70, I began thinking about "handing off", setting up things for when I am no longer here. Like this morning. I was making some changes on our web site and I thought, not for the first time, "I've got to show Elizabeth how to do this so she'll know how to make changes after I'm gone."
Weird.
But there it was, that thought about a future without me inserted itself into my consciousness as if it were an obvious thing to do. And I find that I do that a lot. Well, maybe not a "lot", but often enough and about many daily living things. About oil changes, bank accounts, bill payingall the little essentials of life that I handle and, when in the midst of "handling", find they are accompanied by the awareness that I need to train Elizabeth on how to do them for the time when I'm not here any more.
I know this is an intelligent thing to do but I'd really rather not be further crowding my thinkingespecially since this serves to remind me of my mortality, and hell, I calculate, hope at least, that I have maybe twenty years left on my run.
'course, you never know when the show will be cancelled, so you have to have a bag packed right?
We never think this way until we hit this "certain age", at least I never did. And what is most surprising is that I am not "surprised". These thoughts seem natural even though unwelcome.
Clearly this is some kind of genetic survival mechanism, 'cause there aren't any precursors, no deaths of close friends or relatives, no war going on close to home, no terminal illness. Our dog is dying, but I didn't have these preoccupations when our first dog died three years agoand I was "only" 69.
Well, I'm still going to shoot for that good twenty, still going to live each day as fully as possible, not as if it's my last, just as it is. And meanwhile, like it or not, my awareness of the fact that the journey has a termination will keep me tying up loose ends. As has always been true, I've never wanted to leave a mess for anyone else to clean up.
Expulsion from the Garden
During our hands-on tenure as parents we have had to toss two of our kids out of our house. The third just had to be "encouraged" to move on, no heart draining drama or coercion necessary. So far these expulsions have worked out very well for at least two of the three and certainly for us.
The oldest, who floundered around for a time, getting into two bad relationships along the way, is now well into successful independent living. The middle one has just begun to dog paddle her way into doing it "my way" and seems already to have matured well beyond where she was just a few weeks ago before banishment.
The youngest, who actually wanted to leave and then plunged into out-of-control alcohol addiction, is quite capable of living on her own and is working to achieve the financial means to do it. So obviously God had it right. It was just the entrepreneurial chroniclers who recognized a good thing when they saw it and made it all into an act of betrayal and thus a guilt trip upon which a money making religion could be founded.
Some parents never get the message however. You know the stories; "My son is driving me crazy. He just can't hold a job and keeps coming home to live with us." "How old is he?" "Thirty seven."
Right.
Last week we watched a documentary on Africa's "Lost Boys", refugees from the genocide in southern Sudan. "God Must Be Tired of Us" is worth seeing. Our middle kid is whining about having to ride the bus and then walking three blocks to get to work everyday. We won't let her have the car we set her up with because she can't afford the insurance or the gas for that matter. The boys in "God." Have walked over 1000 miles just to get away from those who would murder them. They would love to be able to walk anywhere to a job.
Probably the only solution for us as parents is to pull out of the drama altogether. And so we have. No doubt we will not allow drowning, but we will try to ignore signal flares and hysterical calls for life boats. It's great seeing our oldest continue to move through all the surfs of life and there is a certain mix of pride and relief when we hear that the other two have survived another day without resorting to a homeless shelter or being arrested. We'd rather hear about soaring successes at "the Universities" of course, but for now we'll settle for the occasional phone call which assures us that each is, "Still alive mom and dad!"
Call Somebody..!
The day started up ordinarily enough, it had been cold as hell for three days and, as a result, the two inch line I used to connect our water hauling tank to our 1600 gallon holding tank became blocked with ice so that we couldn't get water into our system. I disconnected the line from the tank and dragged all fifty feet of it into our "mud room" to thaw overnight. By morning the line was clear and I was able to get about three hundred gallons downloaded. The next problem was heralded by the dreaded observation made by Elizabeth; "The water pump seems to be running and running for no reason."
The only reason for the water pump to run would be that someone is running water somewhere in the house. Nobody was.
"Damn!" was my characteristic response. Action to take: open the pump house and check the pump. It was running all right......and running.and running.....and; etc But there was no water pressure in the house. This was not a good sign. It meant there was a leak somewhere in the two and one half foot high and sixty-foot long crawl space under the house, and my worst nightmare was that I would take down the insulation wall that separates the pump house from the rest of the house and find water pouring into the foundation. There was no other possibility. I had a passing fantasy about calling a plumber and paying out in the neighborhood of $300 to fix the problem, anything to avoid what I knew I'd find......and sure enough, when I turned the flood lights on I saw a muddy swimming pool under the length of the house and, about twenty feet away, a steady pour of water from somewhere under the kitchen. The icy water was only about three or four inches deep but unless I could get to the concrete shelf that runs around the outside of the foundation, I was going to be very wet and cold as I crawled my way to the site of the leak. Right about then Elizabeth called out; "Why don't you wait and get Tim to do it?"
Our "middle daughter" has been cultivating an Internet relationship with a young Marine for over a year. He had arrived from the East Coast for their first face-to-face encounter the day before Christmas. Tim is a nice, dedicated, naive, intelligent 21 year old, shiny new Marine. While I was contemplating my under-the-house crawl, they were off somewhere shopping.
For a moment I considered that the Tim solution might be a lot better than the Plan "B" alternative; the pricey plumber. But then there was the other factor; I am still an able-bodied "do-er" around here and am very reluctant to resort to "rescue". This is a pride thing of course and thus was an even stronger motivator to get it done myself than the urge to buy my way out of the travail or wait for a Tim solution. So under the house I went. I managed to use two strategically placed cinder blocks that kept me about an inch above the cold, wet and to get me to the two foot wide concrete shelf, then I dragged myself and my tools to the problem area. I had a PVC (plastic pipe) connector, a couple of plastic "elbows", the saw and a re-chargeable flashlight. I used my knife to cut through the sagging plastic water barrier and pulled out the soaked insulation.and there it was, a short rubber connector with screw-clamps on each end, had pulled apart. Not a major deal to re-connect.
Right about then the new re-chargeable flashlight went dim and then out.
So much for new technology. Give me a good battery anytime.
I was able to feel my way through the re-connect and the tightening of the clamp and then dragged myself and the rest of the stuff out of the "hole". All in all it took about an hour not counting anxiety time.
Winter is a tough time around here and not many in America have to think about dealing with these kinds of issues. But there is a huge satisfaction in overcoming the hurdles and "rescuing" the family under adverse conditions. A guy, no matter what age, needs these kinds of victories now and then just to stay vital. Well; maybe just to feel "needed" at least.
And I didn't have to call in the Marine(s).
Jerry Todd and Me
When's the last time anyone "waggled" at you?
How about the last tine you shouted out; "Dog-gone!" or; "By gum!" And I'll bet it's been awhile since you uttered; "Jumpin' Jupiter!"
I admit that I do hang around with people who still say things like; "Gosh!" and, if provoked; "Dang!" (Elizabeth favors the latter.) and actually I find it really refreshing to hear this kind of language in the day of attempts to make the "F-word" as ubiquitous as "uh" or "whatever!".though I am prone to bursting out with one now and then. Particularly when provoked by current politics.
This minor venture into the archeology of language comes about as a result of my re-visiting the early readings of my youth.
Edward Edison Lee who wrote under the nom de plume Leo Edwards, spoke to me when I was a kid. His books are little known today except among collectors of kid fiction on eBay I guess. He wrote in the '20s to about 1940. There were several series of books available then but the big sellers for boys were "The Hardy Boys" and for girls, "Nancy Drew". Both of these were conceived of by Franklin Dixon and turned out by his "fiction factory" stable of writers for Grossett & Dunlap beginning in the late 20's.
Being a left-handed kid, the only one in the neighborhood, I liked the role of being different so I didn't choose the popular stuff, I liked the Jerry Todd books. Actually, that's too sophisticated a reflection, I chose them because my mother found them in second hand bookstores and we could afford books that sold for about ten cents a copy.
New ones sold for fifty cents.
The difference between the Hardy Boys books and Jerry Todd was simply this; Leo Edwards actually communicated with his readers by printing their letters in the back of his books and encouraging correspondence through his "Freckled Gold Fish Club", so you could actually talk to the guy who "knew" Jerry Todd and this certainly hooked me. Wow! An adult who actually talked to kids! And not just any adult, this one was a writer of books, and not just any books; books for and about kids.
I thought Jerry was real of course. And all the characters were exactly who I wanted to be and who I wanted my friends, my "gang" to be. A "gang" of kids back then was in no way equivalent to the gang(s) of today. Then it just meant a bunch of boys who liked to play together.
Another engaging feature of Leo's books was the map of Jerry Todd's town, called "Tutter" pasted inside the front and back covers of his hardbacks. (There were no paperback books in general circulation then.) This fictional town existed somewhere in southern Illinois and was populated with an unlimited cast of interesting and mysterious kids and adults. The Jerry Todd gang would undertake large adventures, as in "The Oak Island Treasure" where Jerry and the gang get an old barge (from dad's brick yard) and turn it into a show boat for a touring "magic" show for the small towns along the little canal bordering the town. And all with the support of parents! This was unheard of in my day as a kid. Parents and kids lived separate lives. And, by the way, we kids thought that was, to use a favorite adjective of the day; "Swell!"
That meant; "Kull!" back then.
Re-reading this stuff now I know what has drawn me to Kiellor's "Lake Woebegone" myths, it's just another version of the Midwestern ambiance I grew up with. That something existed even in the collection of neighborhoods of the little big town that grew into the city of Chicago where I spent the first twenty years of my life.
Of course the "gang" of today wouldn't produce the kinds of adventures that the Jerry Todd bunch encountered in the pages of Lee's books. Nobody died, nobody did drugs, and nobody was stabbed, shot, or violated in the common unspeakable ways of today's realities and fictions.
There were knocks on the head and villains of every stripe, but none to match the quintessential evil types evoked in a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings story. And a Jerry Todd adventure was so much easier to read and connect with than "Last of the Mohicans" or "Treasure Island". They were the equivalent of the comic books which came later and, because there were no pictures to distract, were much stronger stimulants to the imagination.
I probably won't read any more of this little collection and I won't recommend them to my granddaughter's to read, I'm sure they would find them too simplistic compared to "Narnia", but it has been a pleasure to re-visit the books that started me reading and, in some subtle way, helped form my appreciation of the power of dreaming and of the worth of making those dreams come true. In my own way, I've been living a Jerry Todd life all these years and I have "Leo Edwards" to thank for his part in launching it.
...this piece prompted good friend poet Mike Cooley to send this memory:
I just read the three articles you wrote and sent yesterday (Saturday). I enjoyed reading them. I can relate to the concept of "neighborhood gang". I lived in Carlsbad until the fourth grade (10 years old?). The house we rented was in a neighborhood where about every other house had kids living there. I suppose that was the height of the baby boom. We did things like build massive two and three story tree houses in the cottonwoods that grew along the flood plain of the Pecos River. We built secret "forts" in places along the river where the salt cedar was so thick you could get lost trying to find your way through. We built soap box cars using old wagon (Red Flyer) wheels or baby buggy wheels and ropes to steer, and soap box scooters using old roller skates. The kind of skates that had steel wheels with ball bearings inside and required skate keys. When they were on your feet, you could glide about five feet before having to push with the other foot. They were just enough of a "skate" that your feet could come out from under you and you'd crack your ass, elbows or head on the sidewalk. They were good for "gliding" downhill. The skates, skateboards and wheels they have today hardly make any noise and will carry you about 50 yards with one push off.
Speaking of skateboards, I still have a hard time driving past the University campus and seeing students riding or carrying their skateboards to class. It makes them seem so young and immature. I remember Delbert (can't remember his last name) who used to roller skate to high school in Hobbs. Today he would be labeled "a nerd". Everyone used to make fun of him. He was not part of the popular crowd. He never showed that it bothered him, but looking back, and knowing what I have learned from clients who were "different" in adolescence and high school, it probably hurt him terribly. (Hell, he probably works for NASA now as an aeronautical engineer and has a 6 figure income. Or, he probably retired at 45 at $75K per year and hires out as a consultant for $500 an hour.) I wonder. . . can you carry your skateboard into class with you or is there a skateboard rack outside?
Getting back to the Carlsbad neighborhood, we used to "explore" and play below the hydroelectric dam when they closed the spillway. We used to try to catch catfish that were trapped in isolated pools in the low water. When they were about to open the spillway, a horn would sound, and we would have to run like hell. One day while hunting for fish on a low water day, I saw the fins of a fish sticking out of the water and went to capture it. Just as I reached for it, I saw that it was not a fish but a Water Moccasin (very poisonous) going over a submerged branch. Scared the shit out of me. I ran for about 50 yards. I think I ran on water that day.
One night I was in trouble for something that seemed unfair and decided I was going to run away from home. I went out the bedroom window, sneaked down to the river, and climbed up into our tree house. From there, I could watch the semi-pro baseball game still going on across the river. The field was lit by those big, high stadium lights. When the game was over, the lights were turned off and it got really dark. I heard or imagined all sorts of dangerous creatures creeping up on me, so a climbed back down and made my way along the dark path, from memory mostly, and went back home. Climbed back in the window and no one ever knew I was gone. Again, I was no older than 10.
Those were such different times. We were unsupervised by adults most
of the day during the summers ("Be home by dinner"). And, there
were so many things we did that could have actually killed us. We rode the
soap box "cars" and scooters down the hill in the middle of the
street at what seemed like 50 miles an hour. There were poisonous snakes
living along the river, especially in the cool salt cedar groves. We found
several "camps" where hobos lived. There was a railroad track
that ran along the river, just out of the flood plain. It was sort of like
the bosque in Albuquerque, but not even 1/4 as wide. We used to build rafts
and paddle over to islands and through the different channels. The river
was much deeper than the Rio Grande is in Albuquerque, when the spillway
was open. But, that was our playground. Parents, nowadays, would absolutely
freak out.
A Hobby?
I frequent the Albuquerque "Hobby Lobby" store now and then, most often to see if there are any interesting frames for my photography (I find them there and in antique/junk shops) and often I'll detour to the aisle where the model planes, boats, cars and trains are stocked.
I was a bit of a model builder when I was a kid.actually a huge overstatement, in those days, the 40's, models were sheer hell to put together if you weren't totally obsessed with the idea. I wasn't, especially since most models had to either be almost completely carved out of balsa wood or put together with thin sticks covered with thin paper. The main body of a plane for example, was shaped into the basic outline, but beyond that you had to carve it into the finished piece. The alternative was a body made up of small, thin sections of wood, which were joined by long rods of wood to form the wings, body and tail. It was just like constructing a real plane, at least one that was fabric covered, and it was a nightmare for a non-detail type of kid like me. I'd get about 50% through the process and a rod would snap or wouldn't stay glued, or one of the thin sections would break in half and it was almost impossible to put those sixteenth of an inch thick pieces back together again. I just couldn't stick with it. Literally.
I really admired those who could do it and felt somewhat "less-than" over this issue for a long time. There was the rare kid who could actually do that stuff well and they were the envy of the rest of us slackers when it came to model building. Of course we also thought this kind of kid was a little weird, like the "geek" of today. Still, we marveled at the finished product and secretly wished we could match it. But no matter how often I determined to "..really stick with it this time!" when yet another model plane showed up under the Christmas tree, I just could not complete one of those things. It was an area of failure in my young life that I had a hard time getting over. Even as an adult, I carried with me the idea that if I had just manufactured more patience, I could have completed one of those Mustangs or P-51's. So, even to this day, I walk down that path amongst the enticing models of WW ll planes, ships and 40's cars and think, "Hell, these are just plastic snap-together things, how hard could it be? This is so much easier than what we had to do in the 'old' days. Snap it together and paint it. That's it, no problem."
So last week I finally decided to spring for it and bought two model cars. Both boxes claimed that they were "Level 2", which, I discovered, perhaps a bit late, means between a-monkey-can-do-this (Level 1) and do-not-attempt-without-a-degree-in-building-teeny-weenie-stuff that takes forever.(Level 3).
I had another motive for embarking on this endeavor; our middle kid (Honor) and I have never hit it off. 'Course, she hasn't hit it off with anyone in the family or in society at large, but I thought I'd give it another go with a shared project. We would build model cars side by side, hers would be just the kind of car I could see her liking, a '70 Pontiac Firebird, with stripes, etc. and I would build one of those old collectors fantasies, a 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster. (This was the very classy and esoteric car that was driven in one of the "Topper" movies of the late 30's.)
Upon investigating the parts and detailed instructions, I discovered that the "snap-together" thing was sort of misleading. This was not going to be a "snap" by any means. Though nothing had to be carved, every single aspect of these cars was available (and necessary to the successful outcome) and it all had to go together just so.
Shades of the 40's, this was not just putting a car together; this was BUILDING a car......from the bottom up! Springs, shocks, front end, rear end, engine, oil filter, starter, car, distributor, turbo (in the case of the "Speedster") fan, fan belt housing, floor, seats, rear view mirrors (inside and out) bumpers, radiator, grill, all the chrome "goodies"the whole car in other words. And they wanted it all painted in appropriate colors too. This we weren't going to mess with. My goal, and I thought it might be shared, was simply to build the basic car(s).
And so it was that I unexpectedly re-visited the frustrating nightmare of the model buildings of my youth.
Problem(s) first encountered; I expected that when it said, "snaps together" that would be what happened when you pushed the little nodules into the little holes. But no! Nothing "snapped together". Nodules and holes were only '"indicators". Everything had to be glued! AND, some things didn't even get glued to a designated spot, that is, it wasn't a tab-to-slot fitting. Sometimes it was just a glue-it-there-and-make-it-stick thing.
That meant that you glued something and then went away for awhile to watch a movie till it dried before being able to move on to "Direction #2" "#3", etc..
(Noted kid losing patience with parent close on her heels.)
(Also noted, kid seemed to have more patience than parent at this point. Probably due to having a more recent association with things glued in school.)
With my patience running on empty, the Speedster was a LOT more detailed than the Firebird what with modern uni-body construction techniques and such, I abandoned the complicated 30's fantasy (no wonder they only built a few of those things, with no shocks it must have ridden like a tank, but the good thing was, it was one less set of parts to glue on ) and took over the relatively easier stick-it-together Pontiac while kid toddled off, happy to be off the hook, to watch TV. Her main hobby.
I struggled along for a while, and got most of the thing stuck together. Then, noting this had become MY project, put both shells back into the boxes and admitted defeat in all quarters.
I'm staying away from the model aisle from here on out.unless it's one of those all-metal, fully formed things and all that's required is to snap on the wheels.
Either that or I'll contract with my grandchild who is going-on-ten and maybe she can do it all. I'm not proud, after all, the instructions claim that, "Any ten year old can do this." If I'd seen that I wouldn't have even gotten started.
Things that Move me.
Part of it was the times. It was Christmas Day 1989, the Berlin wall had just come down and the people of East and West Germany were rejoicing, for the most part, Europe was relieved, the World felt saner. It took Leonard Bernstein's poetic soul and the huge ego to do it, and, of course he did. He determined to bring all the old "enemies" together in one big celebration in a way all would embrace; a giant of a performance of Beethoven's 9th. He gathered the Bavarian Radio Chorus, the Berlin Radio Chorus (of the former East Germany) the Dresden Philharmonic Chorus, the Orchestra of the Leningrad Kirov Theater, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the New York Philharmonic. And to make sure everyone got the message, he re-named the 9th "The Ode to Freedom". It was, and remains, one of the most moving musical moments I have experienced. Was it "overdone", probably. But hear the ovation at the end. Or, if you're lucky enough to come across the video, see the audience erupt in joy. Oh yes, it was done exactly right!
Today I watched my daughter subtly keeping time while listing to music I love and loved her for loving what sings to my heart. (It was the Basie band this time.) Tears rose as I was moved by both her rhythmic time keeping and the music that called to both of us. But I couldn't tell her any of this. My expression of love would have been so "junky", so.....no, not "un cool", just not how I wanted it to be communicated. So I wrote to her about it later.
I know, you might be thinking that I just didn't want to be "vulnerable" in person. But then you are probably a female reading this. Most males would understand exactly.
Later that night I was sitting in front of my TV watching, no experiencing! Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" performed by the San Francisco Symphony. I cranked the "surround sound" up full and the tears rose again. Such deep beauty, such emotion! I've listened to Stravinsky before but never been so immersed in it. The depth of the Russian soul so broadly expressed, dark, thick blood, layers of consciousness so complex they cannot be plumbed by words, only carried by the power of music.
The cards I received last Father's Day got me going too. The one from my oldest was one of the "cute" ones talking about how I used to make "healthy" peanut butter sandwiches for her. (She didn't like them at the time of course.) But the really touching part was that she Fed Exed the card to get it to me in time.
Only missed by a day.
And the one from my current "oldest", Lia, the time keeper, included, "I am so proud to have you as my dad. I couldn't have asked for a better father."
And from my second-in-command, Winter, "When I was little I looked up to you so much..now that I'm grown up, I still do."
The "I love you, but let's not get too mushy about it." hugs from my youngest.
And the TWO "Love you dad!" hugs from our, hopefully now over it, "problem" daughter from whom I never got even one in all the years she fenced me out.
Daughter love, great music, what gifts.
Yesterday, as I walked up the trail from our tipi I looked up and saw our house and smiled. I found myself appreciating all Elizabeth and I had created out of our relationship with each other; this home, how we've supported this land and all the people who we have encountered and encouraged over the years. All of it contributed to that smile that was a reflection of the warmth I felt inside. And, even if Elizabeth and I have had a "rough patch" when I listen to the strains of "Our Love is Here to Stay" that's all it takes to melt my heart back into harmony with hers. It's then I can look into her eyes and see in her the warmth I fell for so many years ago.
And this morning, as the first rays of the sun began to light our land, I took the camera out to see what might be spotlighted and there, under a juniper, was a claret cup glowing like a red coal in the shadows.
All of these seem to be of one fabric to my soul. Perhaps it is that my daughters, music, the beauty of the Earth, my love for Elizabeth, all have finally become more precious to me than ever. At this time of my life there is no competition.
Well, I'll include the Packers in there too for you sports fans.
PostScript: OK, maybe not the Packers who are not rewarding fans by
playing well enough to deserve us.
Back When We Were Poor
My mother never liked to talk about the early days when we lived in the very poor South Side of Chicago(for those of you who know the city it was 59th and Aberdeen) she hated to remember the hard times, the things that brought her "down". This was in the mid thirties, the midst of The Great Depression, and almost everyone was "poor". Certainly everyone we knew.
I was often baby-sat by Mrs. Lyle, an old black granny who lived next store. I remember her vaguely as a kind, warm presence in my life. I remember too that the floor slanted in our apartment, the third floor of a wooden house. And I remember that times were hard, but I can't tell you how I knew that, I guess I just "read" the atmosphere around me.
We moved when I was about four or five to what we thought of as a much better place, a mixed neighborhood of single-family homes and apartments. Blocks in old Chicago neighborhoods are set up as long rectangles with two and three story apartment buildings on each of the four corners and single family houses along the two long sides along the street. We lived on the second floor of a two-story building that was broken up into six four-room apartments.
These were neighborhoods of mixed economic levels but not mixed races. Chicago was highly segregated at the time. Second only to Jackson Mississippi according to the Urban League folks I met many years later.
I grew up in that apartment building and always thought of it as the only home I knew. After my folks moved to the newly developed suburbs south of South Chicago (Oak Lawn) and achieved their dream of owning a house, I was just an out-of-town visitor to a place my sister grew up in and the one she considered to be her only home.
That old apartment had its share of memorable "problems" that came with the territory back then. We had mice with which my father had an on-going battle until he came up with the solution of ground glass and plaster to fill in favorite mouse holes. But we never won the battle with the giant water bugs that crawled in the garbage at night. I could hear them crackling around in the paper bags under the sink and I never got over the creeps about it. I was always the first one up in the morning and to get into the kitchen I'd pre-position a kitchen chair under the chain for the ceiling light so I could, in as few steps as possible, leap up on it and switch on the light to scatter the bugs so I wouldn't step on any.
We lived on the second floor and had a water heater down in the basement, where the rats lived, which would, if my father forgot to turn it off after a bath time, heat up the first floor water to steam which, when they flushed their toilet, would erupt making them very unhappy. This didn't happen often, but when it did there would be a lot of yelling and carrying on between my father and Mr. Harms who subsequently got a mean Doberman which he kept chained up on the first floor porch and made my daily trek past him a nightmare adventure involving more stealthy approaching and leaping than even the roaches required.
My mother never liked talking about that place either.
I didn't spend any growing up time in the suburban house my parents bought and enlarged. But over the years of visiting I never saw a cockroach and though there were mice now and then, they were the country type and much more polite than their city cousins. They always seemed to stay in the garage.
There was no Food Stamp program back then, and my family wouldn't even consider going on what was called "Relief", so we made do with whatever we could put together. My mother's father was employed in one of those "safe" jobs for The Chicago Transit Authority so food wasn't a problem for them. My father's father had a small barbershop which brought in a few dollars to keep things afloat and my grandmother raised all the vegetables in a huge garden in a vacant lot next to the rented house they all lived in. Of the three brothers in the family, my father was the youngest, the oldest laid brick, the middle one did dry wall and my father picked up a bread route for Wonder Bread on the south side of Chicago. For a time my mother rolled cigars in a little basement shop to bring in a buck or two.
My first job at about the age of 9 was "candling" eggs. Basically it was looking at the eggs with a light behind them to see if they had been fertilized. I have no idea what it paid, I'm sure it made no difference in the overall family income. Later I sold lemonade to factory workers at a place in the neighborhood. I'd make it up in the morning, squeezing two dozen lemons by hand, there was no such thing as frozen juice, and then adding as much sugar as we could afford. I'd fill up a gallon glass jar and get some glass jelly glasses, then pile it all into a wagon and truck it all carefully so as not to spill the cargo, on down to the alley behind the factory a block or two away from our apartment building. I don't think this was an important asset to the family economy either, but it did awaken an entrepreneurial spirit in me which remains alive to this day, and which I passed on to my kids.
Over the years I've had a variety of jobs ranging from Zoning Inspector, to commercial pilot, to D.J., therapist, tool and die designer, director of advertising and even a western hat model. I've owned five houses and had a score of apartments in different parts of the country and walking up towards our home nestled in our small forest of pinon and juniper the other day, through the fields of flowers, passing our kiva and sweat lodge and seeing our tipi with its "flags" flying in the west wind, I thought; "Hmm, not too bad for a poor boy from the south side of Chicago."
My mother visited once and didn't like the isolation much. Said she wouldn't have wanted to live "way out here away from everyone." She didn't like it that we had mice now and then either.
I'm "poor" again, economically speaking, living on Social Security and Food Stamps, but rich in so many ways I haven't been before. Not even when I was making the "big bucks". I am in a healthy and warm relationship, we own our home and owe no one. We're both healthy and secure on our ten acres in the midst of hundreds..........and no water bugs.
Just a "Darkling Beetle" here and there.....but that's "wild life" to us.
Oil and Vinegar
In the middle of eating a salad today I came upon a feeling that has accompanied me from time to time; it's a regret that I never really let myself know my father. I'm not deeply sad about it, I just regret that in real time, in tangible time, not in imagination or wish filled thinking or delusion or prayer, but right smack dab in the middle of living life I never really tired to bring him in close enough so that he could share himself with me.
Not that he would ever say something one of my contemporary men friends might..some sort of "I feel such and such." a sharing of deep feeling. It wouldn't have had to be that way at all to be a genuine moment between us. No, it would have been as simple as me saying, "Sure!" when he said, "Hey Dick! You want to put some of this olive oil on some salad."
That simple.
Raised by an uptight mother who felt that there were right and wrong ways to live life, even down to eating, olive oil and vinegar on a simple lettuce and tomato salad were a bit too down and dirty, spoke too much of the peasant life she felt my father's parents came from.
I'm exaggerating of course. I'm trying to make things more simplistic than they really were. My mother ate my father's salads all the time, she ate the Italian food his family fixed and fixed a lot herself. But there was a certain spice she peppered reality with when it came to food that let me know at an early age that it paid to be fussy when it came to eating anything my father ate.
Maybe it was just that she wanted to keep me as an ally and tried to make sure there was always a distance of some sort between my father and me. She didn't try anything new, I shouldn't either. This was not communicated in spoken language of course, it was a feeling transmitted by a more powerful control tool.
There I was eating the salad I had just tossed with oil and vinegar, a thing my father always used to make up and which I never ate, maybe I was a fussy eater then anyway, and thinking, "Gee, I wish he could be here so we could share this salad together. He would know then that I really loved him."
In other words, I feel a tinge of fear that he might have though that I was rejecting him in rejecting his salad.
Did I mention that I was raised to be guilty?
Now; there is a place for a good and healthy sense of guilt. I know a bunch of people who could use a dose and I don't just mean teenagers. But there is a line between how much guilt is a good thing and when the line is crossed and it becomes much more than a nuisance. In fact, it begins to be crippling.
Each of our daughters is burdened by a degree of guilt, one with way too much, one with far too little and the rest range in between and are doing OK with the portion they've been given.
Too much and you are responsible for everything. Everything going wrong that is. (You are never responsible for things going right by the way.) Too little and you are responsible for nothing. In fact, everyone else is responsible and you have had no role in the action at all. At the one extreme life is hard for the one burdened, at the other, everyone else has to put up with the one who carries nothing at all.
Most of my life has been spent at the former end of the stick. This was not my father's doing; and in a sense, it wasn't totally my mother's either. Being the first born, I just sort of took it on as my lot in life, when bad things happened, it was, somehow, either my doing or my job to make it better.
"Somehow."
I never could and I never did of course, but that's how I felt. There's still some of that left in me; a cop drives by and I check everything, the obvious things of course, but then there's also the mental checklist of anything I might be cited for. All the guilty pleasure thoughts and angry fantasies and downright crazy internal journeys that might be written across my face. This all happens in a millisecond and isn't a dwelling spot, but there it is/was and is still..a part of me.
.and there I was eating a salad my dad might have prepared, feeling guilty that I hadn't enjoyed a little mix of oil and vinegar with him.
Only in my imagining do we share it now, and this memory as well; I actually did prepare a big spaghetti dinner for him once, cooked the sauce all day just the way my grandmother taught him and me. He liked the sauce and thought my Italian sausage was too hot. I don't remember if he fixed the salad or not, but I'm sure we both ate it.
We were oil and vinegar all right, but in the end he's as much mixed up in me as the salad he, and now I, tossed up.
Yep, I still miss him.and, damn it........them.
Just a Line.....That Changed Everything.
"I'm sorry."
That's all my father said to me. And with that all the years, decades really, of missed opportunity to connect, were over.
We were on the edge of the Snake River canyon. It was the last day of a four-day trip that my mother had forced my father to take with me. I was visiting my folks in Chicago en route in my '64 VW to Moab, Utah where I was to meet my then wife. From there we would drive south to El Paso where we were living. I wanted to show her the Red Rock country of southeastern Utah first.
But my mother was insistent, "Go with him Tony. You've always wanted to see that part of the country and you never spend any time with your son. Just do it!"
"Oh I donno." And then would follow all the usual avoidances my father used to stay in one place.
But something was different this time. When he got stubborn he simply could not be moved, but there was some creaking of the wheels that my mother sensed and on the day I was ready to walk out the door my mother had packed a suitcase for him and all but carried him out the door to the little beetle.
And off we went.
My father never was a big talker. At least, not to me. He told jokes that were really stories about his life as a musician whenever we had people over. He'd have a couple of "Tom Collins" and off he, and they, his musician friends, would go. He was very funny and great to hear as he told the tales of life-in-the-music-business.
But talk to me.never in my life. It's not that he ignored me, it's just that we didn't relate about much of anything.
I assumed this was normal since none of my friend's fathers talked to them either. As was true of their fathers before them. That was just the way it was. Of course, this was long before TV and Father Knows Best or "Leave it to Beaver" where the "hero" father did a lot of talking to his kids. Such a thing was unknown in real life.
At least in my real life.
But there we were on the road west.and not much passed between us other than map directions, comments on the weather, and gas mileage computations. That was the real father-son communication then.
The second night out we camped somewhere in Iowa. My father hadn't been camping in many decades but he was up for it. I still have a picture of him blowing up the air mattress inside our tent. That night a bit of a rain storm came up....I should mention that we had heard what sounded like air-raid sirens about an hour before but we figured it was just the town doing a 'test". That wasn't unusual in those days and certainly not unusual in a small town.
That's what we thought anyway.
As the rain intensified and the lightening increased, we only noted that the tent remained dry, mostly, and weren't too concerned about it.
The next morning we learned that the sirens had been tornado warnings, which explained why the rain seemed to be horizontal for a while. From then on my father suggested motels whenever he sighted the smallest cloud anywhere in the sky, my encouragement to "camp out" notwithstanding.
"I'll pay for it." he'd say, so I went along with it.
By the evening of the fourth day he had more or less recovered so I was able to steer us into a very nice campground at the Snake River Gorge and it was there we cooked a hot dog meal over a little fire and sat gazing at the spectacular scenery as darkness came on.
It was then that this extraordinary thing happened. I felt this arm go around my shoulders and thought for an instant that someone else had come into the camp, but it was my father who hadn't spontaneously touched me this way for as long as I could remember, and who accompanied this gesture, with; "I'm sorry."
"For what?" I asked quickly, wanting to assure him, assure him because I knew how much it took for this man to say such a thing.
"I was never there when you were growing up...but I had to work a lot you know, and....."
I stopped him as quickly as I could. I didn't want him to feel hurt about this and I wanted him to know that I knew how big a thing this was for him to do.
"I know, I understood." And I did. I understood it all along. I felt no resentment about any of it. I did want him to know me in the present moment, that's what was most important to me.
We sat in silence awhile longer and then I said, "I know things were tough and you had to work a lot. That's just the way it was."
"That's right." He replied. "I had to string a bunch of things together just to make the rent."
And we talked about those hard times, and a few good times.but the rest of the conversation was just about making talk, the "healing" of whatever had grown between us was accomplished with that one line, "I'm sorry."
Sometimes, that's all it takes.
Passing on Wisdom
This may be simply another aspect of the angst I'm going through these days, wondering, once again, if anything I write is worth a damn. Wondering if the pictures I shoot are worth the paper to print them on. Wondering if anything I say in the pursuit of trying to make a difference is worth uttering.
Wondering.
I'm wondering too if anything I say to anyone in the attempt to pass on "wisdom" is really going anywhere. In particular I wonder about our 21 year old. Sometimes I think that just when I've got something I can pass on to her that will really help her move on in her life and avoid unnecessary pitfalls, to use a football analogy, it turns out to be an incomplete pass. "Ineligible receiver downfield!" would be the call.
Fourth down and time to punt.
It does seem pointless to try to help others miss the potholes sometimes. It's as if every person has to go through a requisite number of self-selected hells in order to really get it. You can't hire a proxy to do it for you and there's no sure way to look ahead for a possible alternate route. Go to all the card readers, astrologists and fortunetellers you can find and no amount of "magical revelation" will change the choices. Nope, you can't get from here to there without passing though the SWAMP of.....whatever it is that comes next, ranging from a tattoo to a terrible relationship, a bad marriage, a couple of kids, a divorce, an addiction to one thing or another, a car crash or two, the loss of one or more good jobs, betrayals (of you and by you) and sundry turns and twists of Fate.
No way to protect yourself or, most frustrating of all, your kids, from going through all of it. As a greeting card I got for Elizabeth says; "They say you learn most from your most difficult experiences.....what a stupid system!"
My experience both as a regular run-of-the-mill therapist and a Tarot Card reader has shown me over and over and over again that no matter what I can see about the road a person is traveling, and no matter how clever I can be about trying to urge them to attempt a different path, they will go where they must go....I guess so that they can experience just exactly what it is they must.
And I suppose, if there is anything to the idea of "destiny" each must proceed upon the road, the Quest, that will teach them the lessons that have to be accomplished. Is it Karma? Fate? Genetics? I don't know. What I do know is that you might as well try to stop a run-away train as turn anyone from a path they have determined to take in the name of that double edged sword called "free choice". The outcome can be clear as a non-polluted day for you and I, but the subject of our anxiety will not want to see it, or will deny that such a thing could possibly be visited upon them.
Like aging I suppose.
With all of that lined up I guess I feel like Turgenev's "Superfluous Man" since I can't effect a change in anyone else's life, what's the point of mine?
This whole piece is a "process" of course and I will come out the end assuring myself that I have indeed made a difference in some lives at least with whatever I have undertaken, and I, like George Bailey, will in the end, have played a vital role in this little game though my own myopia keeps me from seeing it.
I know this much, after I've encountered someone and have thought, as they go on their way, that I may have helped them find a turning point, I can stay with that fantasy a lot longer than I can as I watch my kids, on a daily basis, fumble away the wonderful wisdom I just passed on yesterday, just as I thought we were on our way to a score.
The Greatest Dad in the World!
A guy actually said that about me once. And I knew he wasn't being facetious. I wish I could remember what I said about raising our kids that he was responding to. The closest I have come to feeling good about being a father can only be described as "adequate".
And that's about it.
"Good enough." I guess is what that means. "Just about right." or "As good as it ever gets."
Words to that effect.
How do you get to be "The greatest dad in the world!"? I've got the picture in my mind and it's Robert Young doing "Father Knows Best". Or my old friend Rod playing with his kids, or the about half dozen guys I know who seem to do it really well. By "do it" I mean they are really present for their kids every time I see them. It's a full time job for them. And they really seem to pull it off.
Of course I do wonder if they are like this all the time or if I'm just getting the public performance, 'cause frankly, I'm measuring my self against them and they look a hell of a lot closer to the "Greatest Dad" than I do any time of the day or night.
Working with men all these years I have heard some real nightmare stories about dads, theirs. I didn't have any stories like that to relate about my dad. He was a benign presence in my life, when he was around.
I've got a picture of the three of us, my mother, dad and me, caught by one of those sidewalk photographers who used to catch folks unawares and then sell them a print for a few bucks. This was a going concern in the 40's when most people didn't have cameras of their own.
Anyway, there we were, the three of us strolling along and my dad was holding my hand. If I didn't have this picture right in front of me I could not say if my dad ever held my hand in my lifetime. I have no memory of that ever happening. But there it is, and I don't look at all uncomfortable with it, nor does he. So it must have been a very natural thing to do.
When I look at this picture, then I can conjure up a memory of my dad holding my hand often and I feel warmed by that feeling. I can only do this if I have this magical photo to stimulate this feeling. My body has no built in memory of it at all.
Knowing then that my memory of my dad is made up of patches of truth and patches of made up material, I could put together a collage of my dad as "the Greatest" because, in reality, he was pretty good. Mainly because he let me experience life without a lot of criticism or direction. Of course, maybe he was just not involved with me much. He worked nights and weekends, so we didn't spend much time together. But that seemed ok. I mean, nobody's father spent much time with them when I was a kid. Parents had their lives and we kids had ours.
And we liked it that way.
We played baseball on our own. Played football on our own. Had little 'gangs", not the dangerous kind, just groups of kids running amok playing "Cowboys and Indians" or "War". Grown-ups were not involved, nor wanted.
I think I would have felt invaded if my father suddenly took an interest in what I was doing with playtime.
So, for me and for the times I guess my dad was "just right".
I, on the other hand, still thinking like a dad of those days, don't feel "right" at all with how things are today. My dad training manual said, "Just be there when they need you and keep them responsible for cleaning up."
You know, "Make a living, keep them safe, and then launch 'em."
I can do that. I'm good at that. But this new model? The get involved in their lives model? I'm not good at that at all.
So, maybe that guy who laid that one on me was the kind of kid I was. The product of a love-'em-and-leave-em-alone dad who, by my standards if not a "Greatest" was "Good enough."
And just to bring that one up to date, how about "Way Good
Enough!"
