Participation Trophies

 Let me tell you a little something about Millennials. 

   As a teacher I meet a lot of them.  As time goes on I realize that few can claim to really know more Millennials then me and my colleagues.  And honestly, as a teacher I feel we have more of a daily right to be annoyed with them as a whole.  

   I often hear people complain they’re shallow or callous, distracted or lazy.  They’re entitled.  I can see where those people are coming from.  What they’re missing is the fact that they’re also far more emotionally intuitive, worldly, authentic, discerning, and awake.  These kids come into a world with it all at their fingertips, and just as easily and obviously slipping from their fingers.  They are raised by a bunch of dinosaurs who complain about the very behaviors some have wallowed in for decades - many who are still essentially grappling with the fact that the only constant is change.

   I hear people grumbling about the “differences” between this generation and theirs, citing participation trophies and some lost art of spanking as somehow related our troubles.  They just don’t seem to ever look in the mirror as they do this.  The violent fury they learned early is so deep it’s right there in their angry words, disgruntled thoughts and tortured souls. 

   These kids may have been rewarded for participating, and they do get discouraged quickly in a world that prizes only the elite, unnatural, or extreme.  This kids inherited a world built as a house of cards, on the backs of turtles, saved by a dead man on a cross, or a fat guy purported to eat grain of rice a day.  We hammer children into seats for hours during the most energetic time of their entire lives.  We shove endless piles of random “lessons” their way, argue over STEM or arts, script or coding, analog and judge whether they interpret those lessons exactly the way they were expected to.  Who learns like that?  We’re miserable and grow even more miserable when they won’t tolerate misery.  Ours is a ghost world we keep trying to sell them, but we charge too much and we give too little.  Whether it’s in the name of science or religion, our time is up.  We failed big time.

   But theirs is now.  And failure is how challenge and evolution work.  Is a participation trophy such a bad thing?  Is there something wrong with rewarding those who show up?  Is it wrong to value presence?  Effort?  We all have an inherit existential choice, and we made ours consciously or unconsciously for us.  Is it no wonder they value their own immediate gratification?  This generation doesn’t need your dusty old God or your minute incremental successes.  This generation knows there’s only one thing anyone is ever guaranteed, and that’s right now.  Isn’t that all we’ve left them?

   It sounds dire, but it’s not.  This generation doesn’t wallow. This generation doesn’t wait.  This generation gives back what it’s given in energy, attention, and love.  These guys love beauty and they see it in more than Barbie dolls or gas guzzlers.  They follow no canon or even movie that doesn’t grab them.  They’ll grant you the respect you deserve, and they judge that for themselves.  This generation sees right through the lies you’ve told yourself.  And they open up just as much.

On the road again…

Anybody else feeling like this?  I honestly didn’t anticipate the panic I’d feel waking up to the first road trip of 2021.  But it was palpable.  I don’t like to succumb to fear but my goodness is the universe ever nagging at me about it!  I physically feel my knees shake the moment I even contemplate going to the attic (where I fell 2 stories the beginning of last year from).  And then there’s Covid.  And vaccines.  And Breakthrough Covid. 

   But this morning, it was more than that. It was car accidents.  And lakes.  Horseback riding - and I’m just swelled up and teary eyed trying to gulp it all down! We cautiously came around to planning this trip just because we knew we had to get out of the house.  Just knowing we were going to had relieved some of the claustrophobia. But I’m running statistics and equations in my head trying to mitigate the safely of me, my wife, my mother-in-law, and most of all, my children.  Equations I’ve been able to set aside for the most part just knowing we were all sleeping under the same roof each night. But now…

   This isn’t me.  I jumped out of planes for Pete’s Sake!

   And yet, here we are on the road again knowing we’re not going home later (we brought our own pillowcases!)  My wife has been amazing with me this year.  Year and a half.  It’s been probably the bumpiest ride of our relationship - testing boundaries and tolerance and love. We just discovered Pandora (It’s like the regular radio used to be!) We’re singing and discussing lyrics to songs we haven’t heard in a while.  We’re looking at mountain scenes I remember seeing with her decades ago.

   I haven’t really been up here in a while.  Used to come all the time for Uncle Dany, and later my dad.  Both of them are gone now.  Amy and I went to colllege up here.   We made Kody traversing these roads from all directions.  And here we are now living the dream we designed way back then.  It’s a lot like we’d hoped. And a lot we never really saw coming. But, from here, life just kinda looks different.  

   But, it’s not bad.  There’s much to do.  Lots of experience and challenge and growing and most of all love.  Good intention.  Change.  Evolution.  Cautious optimism.  It’s just you never really know what’s around the next bend.  There’s much I’m not saying. Everyone is in a different place. Guess we’ve all kinda sustained a common trauma.  But I’m starting to feel I can breathe again.  And for now, I think we’re all a little more aware - one breath at a time.

Eyes Wide Open

Dad always said he loved when I would write.  He said I could somehow always make him feel, and anybody who knows my dad knows that wasn’t always easy.  But as far as a eulogy, this is the best I could do after Amy insisted I remove all the inappropriate jokes.

Understanding how Dad thought or felt was often reserved for those quiet 1:1 moments, of which I had many.  He wasn’t an over-sharer.  In fact one of the blessings my wife afforded me was the practice of reviewing safe and possible conversation topics prior to visits, not that I was very good at compiling, but it always helped.  

This last year nurses would call very often to ask me about what kind of man Dad was.  I started to just routinely joke that he was a pretty entitled white guy, just because I know that was the part they were struggling with.  My dad would get frustrated and angry if he wasn’t able to contact me, and on more than one occasion, he’d deal with this problem by throwing his phone.  Bad news is he wound up moving around a lot which left more in house phone lines to navigate. Good news was, there always seemed to be new phones to throw. We joke now when we’re dealing with 1st world problems that we’re just gonna go throw our phones just cause we like irony.  But that was only when he was helpless, or frustrated, in pain, angry or depressed, and that was the best that he could do sometimes at low energy.  But nobody should ever feel low energy.

 

I guess that was part of what we needed to face.

I had a complex relationship with him.  I both loved him and at times, resented him, both fairly and very unfairly.  I admired and I judged him.  I was struck by his generosity and furious at his selfishness, sometimes moment to moment.  I know him as a sap and a hard ass.  In some ways he was immensely intelligent and stoically stupid.  He was 8 steps ahead of anybody in a game of chess, but he rarely knew who he was playing.  I’ve built so much of who I am out of him - both his warning and example.  I am the teacher I am today as a result.

Growing up many times my dad was criticized for giving me too much freedom as a kid.  There were times those critiques were mine!  My dad saw how life makes us strong.  He believed we learn from experience.  And he didn’t have an ounce of patience.  And he knew full well how much was out of his control.

One time while teaching me to jump my car I found myself standing on its bumper in a corner hunched under a bunch of hanging bikes, holding cables in each hand to connect them to the battery when my dad warns me to “not touch metal” or the bled battery acid could “explode.”  I stood there stupid paralyzed trying not to let my knees buckle when it dawned on him what he’d done to me and we both just laughed and laughed...

But that’s the kind of life he knew and that’s the kind of life he gave me.  And in a lot of ways, that’s the kind of person I am.  I’ve learned that you don’t teach subjects.  You teach thought.  You teach language.  You teach access.  Teaching is all about facing your mortality because it’s not about answers or even questions.  It’s about facing your fears.  It’s about the unknown.  It’s about progress.  

We tell ourselves stories about why or what.  We narrate our lives like we’re heroes or victims but real life, love, art, magic, and intimacy stems from knowing full well all sides.  I watched him succumb to the silliest of obstacles, and brace through some of the worst hardships.  I knew both his staunch acceptance and his clumsy desperate embrace.  I didn’t learn those things as much from my mother. I learned them from 4 decades with him.

He’s woven into my existence, my thoughts.  And I always know he tried his best.  It couldn’t have been easy.  And he never questioned or guilted me about my boundaries, even while we all struggled through this paradigm shift of social etiquettes.  He accepted it like he accepted everything, quietly, bravely, and mostly alone - with the occasional broken phone to clean up.  He forgave me my lessons, and I forgive him his.  I eventually learned how to hold my own in his presence, but was more than flattered this last year when we’d talk and he’d go from rage to calm in one simple (successful) phone call and then thank me for just being there.  And I hope that it matters I was there for that last moment; the one we will all face one day.  The one we worry about our entire lives.  

He struggled in life, but not in death.  We all did.  We all do.  But through him, I know how.  And that’s all we ever really have to offer each other.

Thanks Dad.  I love you, and I know it’s okay.  

Ali

Frozen and Frozen II: Flirting with Heaven

The hoopla that Frozen caused back in 2013 with it’s 3 second reveal of a gay family was illustrative of the static we’re still experiencing in today’s world.  But the evolution of this story line is a worthy pursuit in it’s own right. 

Between the aftermath of Frozen and new Frozen II the world has been complicit in the transformation.  And even the real life homophobia that squashed the real storyline (Spoiler Alert: that Elsa is simply gay) couldn’t stop the deeper, more powerful realignment this world so desperately needs.  Allow me to explain.

The statement (Elsa is gay) is both glaringly obvious and astoundingly infuriating, depending on your point of view.  Entering a story from the point of view of the white male as he gazes upon the ice cutters in the beginning of Frozen is a fitting initiation, as we all tend to see things from that vantage point in no small part due to a long skewed media depiction steeped in patriarchy, homophobia, and fear.  The movie carefully crafts the characters of the very real, and adorable Anna as well as her stunningly stereotypically beautiful sister with her long blond hair and graceful figure.  We’re committed the moment Disney tugs our heartstrings using the age old show in of orphaning these sisters.  That was it.  This generation, the United States, indeed much of the world was by that point hooked.

I don’t think the next part will be a stretch for most people I know.  Elsa’s conflict, namely that of figuring out how to conceal it, and not feel “it” leads her into a situation known all too well to me, and my kind.  The ice queen must hide her true nature, her powers, from the community she was born to, not because she’s malevolent, but because other people’s understanding and fear make them see her as a threat, and indeed, in turmoil, in fear she accidentally becomes a threat.  The rest of that story is about how Elsa leaves to regroup, finds a kind of power and contentment in solitude, but is brought back through family obligation and love.  The twists and turns here I found brilliant and I believe I was not alone in this.  The love interest, that was rushed into becomes the real villain, and the true love is built upon through Olaf (the young, loyal and innocent snowman willing to melt for Anna), the fierce, musky friend Sven who gallantly rides his reindeer into the storm to save Anna but isn’t able to, and even in the beautiful final twist where Anna must preform a real act of true love for her sister, Elsa. (Why did we all accept it had to be a kiss?)

The parallels to the internal conflicts of the queer community were obvious and beautifully culminated in the moment that Elsa too learns the way to resolve all the problems, love.  It’s so simple, but so poetic as she has been outed, feared, persecuted, and supported so that now she, (and indeed we all) can see love really is the answer.  

And that’s where we left off in 2013.  Christians immediately started boycotting the movie.  The gay community began chanting the simple but obvious motivation for coming out we were finally woke enough to recognize as a virtue: love is love.  Love wins.  And the musical scores were criticized for their complexity and it was said that children would never fall in love with the non-repetitive refrains.

Alas, they did.

It wasn’t long before Let it go was belted by every little girl and older woman regardless of the difficult pitch.  Boys loved it too and Frozen quickly became to most popular multiple Oscar winning Disney movie of all time.

And that’s when the whispers started.  

Rumor had it that Disney would soon reveal two of  its major characters as gay.  Rumor had it that a new Captain America and Elsa would be the newest animated members of our Queer Community.  

And then the very real backlash settled in.  White supremacist power began to surge among the fundamentalist Christian communities.  The Me Too Movement lead to a collective pitying of the toxic male.  Trump somehow managed to become president.

It became clear, no one could just come out right now.

But this generation began to see with crystal clarity things had to change if we were to go on.  The environment is threatening the longevity of the very generation coming to power.  Children like Greta Thurnburg became overnight heroes the way we used to promote Justin Biebers.  Trumpets are not the majority but enough of them could steer us into a swirl of hate humanity itself might not escape and each side feels dig into their positions which are crafted and manipulated.  We exist now within a very robust bubble difficult to just pop.

But there is another current leading many.

Truth found it’s way back to the goalpost.  Political discord no longer divides communities, but families, couples even.  Finding a way to communicate honestly, and accept your adversary for their perspective has become a matter of all  life or all death.  Anger, exaggeration, isolation - these are no longer sustainable at all.

Next comes Frozen II.  

Here we enter the “happy ending” for all our favorite little characters.  Leaning a little more toward Anna and her oblivion, we get that Elsa is back in the castle, and Sven is gearing up to propose.  The only character conflicted at all is Olaf who appears to be facing the very existential crisis we are all about to endure, for which he questions and blamed himself about for entirely (a good first step!)

We glimpse a kind of typical evening as these characters are all grappling with their one lives while keeping each other company.  That’s when Elsa is woken from her sleep by a woman’s voice she describes as a “Siren.”

This is where it all gets a bit muddy.  See the characters are all growing up.  The audience has grown too.  Sven and Anna are about to marry.  Is Elsa destined to be the tragic spinster third wheel creating quirky ice sculptures for children at parties?

There are these powerful moments in succession from this point on: Elsa’s belting of “Into the Unknown,” the moment she quells the tornado, and damage done by a fire salamander, even her taming of the ocean horse; they all lead her to Agamemnon, the river of ice, the glacier, but ultimately, just another island only she feels comfortable in.  

I could not have experienced this any other way than the way I did.  The relatable story, the history, the triangled passageways and slippery tunnels.  The anticipation, the falling, all came together in the ultimate disappointment.  

Now, I lost my mother as a child the same way Walt Disney did.  The Disney orphan has tugged on my heartstrings more than once.  But the “discovery” of her mother’s voice after all this searching... it was like watching the electoral college name the minority winner, Trump, President of the United States.  It was sad, confusing, unsatisfying to say the least.

But they had no choice.  There was no other way to bring us all together.  They had to disappoint both sides in order to find a place where we can all meet.  He who is without sin caste the first stone.  And that’s when Anna, facing the bottom, facing death, depression, isolation, that’s when Anna faces hell.

Even as Elsa happily danced through her ice cave facing images of her past and time traveling back to sin of her grandfather; even as she came to understand the universe as something she could read and communicate with; she could not change that moment.  All she could do before she froze was send a message back to Anna.  Elsa, indeed none of us, can endure alone.

And Anna, facing a world without anyone now, orphaned, abandoned, betrayed, and left, Anna emerged from her hell one foot in front of the other as she took Elsa’s message and just did the next right thing.

Because here right matters, right?  Right is a tightrope we walk carefully tripping and holding each other each step of the way.  At this point Anna is poised to right the universe and use the signs, the advice, with the help of her friends and enemies all at once to surrender everything she knew, to right a wrong.  Her action pleases the universe, thaws her sister who rides back to save Arondelle, and together the sisters bridge the gap.  Together they’re love is a kind of fifth element.  Love sustains.

There is a girl in the north that Elsa winds up leaving Arondelle to be where she “belongs,” but this relationship is tamed and quelled by a lack of attention, and the downplayed connection that you do to mourn the loss of if you understand all this, but can just overlook if you’re not ready to see it.  In the end, the important thing is that Elsa appears happy as she gallops across a reflective iced ocean that reflects us all at once.  

Expectation

Expectation really rots the root.  

My dad just died this week and I’m inundated with people writing, texting, calling and coming to console the best they can.  It’s funny because I keep hearing stories from people about how they either had to make agonizing decisions for their loved ones in this very complex modern age, or they lost a parent.  I already lost a parent though, so the medical stuff knocked me for a loop.  But the parent thing - is different. It’s even different with different parents. And different - whether it’s death, or the unknown, newness or thought - lends perspective.

My dad and I had a complicated relationship.  My uncle nailed it once when he told me what the exact problem was.  One word: expectation.  

And. He. Was. So. Right.  

Nothing takes you farther away from life than expectation.  

When you’re in a relationship, you start expecting something (Maybe it’s an action or a thing of some sort? Maybe it’s a role or a comparison?) Maybe we can’t help it.  Maybe it’s natural.  Thing is, without intervention, you may rarely receive this thing at all let alone receive it exactly as you’d dreamed it up.  Think about all the possibilities out there that might happen. What are the fundamental chances your exact expectation will just come to be?  

You may have choices.  They may not be choices you prefer.  Sometimes, we don’t even see our choices because we develop habits and routines and personalities around how we handle these situations.  We decide to get pissed, or communicate needs, or judge, or walk away, nod, hug or handshake. Ignore.

Even in a moment or a conversation, if you’re expecting anything at all; you missed it!  You’re already thinking about what you’re expecting, so you’re not really there.  There’s a time for everything and thought is great but thinking is not being.  Expectation usurps experience, and what is life but a conglomeration of experiences?  Life is empirical.  God, angels, answers, progression - come through the moment you all too often miss because you were so focused on what you thought would, or should, or could happen.  You are not God.  Not fully.  No god thinks.  God knows. For what it’s worth, the one expectation that I’ve come to embrace, is that.

Womansplained

“WOMAN!” I call out to my wife in the other room.

“Stop calling her that.”  My woke son responds.

“What’s wrong with calling her a woman?”

“You’re being misogynistic.” 

I blink for a moment, a bit stunned.  “You don’t object when I call you a man?”

“You don’t call me a man.”

“You’ve never heard me say `Hey man?’  You don’t even notice, do you?  I wonder why.”

[He appears to be rethinking his position].  “Oh yeah, I guess you do.  Well that’s sexist.”

“Maybe.  It’s called `The Universal He.’  See we normalize the masculinization of everything - at least everything positive and that positions us - women - as what’s called ‘The Other’ or something not positive.”

“Yeah but she has a name ya know!”

“I know she has a name.  She’s my wife.  And I would understand if there was some doubt that I knew her name there might be some reason to construe this as misogynistic or sexist but I have to say, I think your critique is touch misplaced.  You’re acting like she’s offended by me.  Truthfully, it’s not your place because I know she’s not.”

“Oh I get it, I’m mansplaining.”

“You are.”

“But why is it that every time a man explains something it’s mansplaining.”

“It’s not.  It’s just when a man thinks he’s explaining something that a woman already knows, or is better positioned to understand, that’s mansplaining.”

“I can’t win.”

“Sure you can Kody. All you have to do is venture out to the world knowing that you don’t always know everything, and listen. You do that and you’ll be light years ahead of most other white guys I know. It’s the burden of your current social location.”

“Hey mom,” he says with a mischievous grin. “Aren’t you ...womansplaining?”  

“I hope so my good man. I hope so.”

Remote Learning

There are these truths that I find myself repeating over and over to students and parents of remote learners which I thought might be worth gathering and trying to organize.  One thing this pandemic has taught me to do is to value my own contribution to this world in a way that is counterintuitive to many white women like me.  We are often not poised to feel confident in our thoughts but these axioms do not seem harmful, and others have found them useful to consider.

Remote Learning is probably here in some form or another to stay.

First thing first we must face the facts.  Remote learning is a new reality.  It may currently be your only option, and that may be temporary, but biding your time and ignoring Meet after Zoom, after text, after email, after phone calls from teachers, from teacher’s aids, from school staff and from school administration is only going to further delay your own evolution.  Students procrastinating their studies, parents procrastinating their parenting need heed these facts.  Vaccines maybe on their way but they won’t be for everybody, and their protection may not even last.  And even if there are enough of us to achieve a kind of herd immunity, the kids cannot yet be vaccinated.  And even if next year they can, or numbers go low enough it is possible, even likely that a new set of circumstances could put us right back in this position.  Especially, if enough of us refuse to evolve past our fears.

Face your fears.  This one keeps coming up for me.  Fear of speaking.  Fear of turning a camera on.  Fear of the accidental unmute.  Fear of having often a written recording of even the most mundane interactions.  Fear of the pause.  Fear of remote status.  Fear of losing remote status.  Everywhere you look there is fear both ways.  Life is and has always been full of fear.  Our kids were facing an epidemic of anxieties before any threat of of any coronavirus.  They know the reigns will be theirs soon, consciously or not.  What tools were we giving them?  What direction were we headed?

See the bigger picture.  The complacency we felt before was not real.  Society was falling, not flying.   But hope is not a choice.  It’s a necessity.  Things could not have continued the way they were going.  We would not have survived.  The environment must be paid attention.  Oppression based on social location is unjust.  An unjust society breaches the social contract and will not endure.  Sustainability of power is key - in your world, in your family, in your relationships, in yourself.  Everyone needed to stop and think about what they were doing.  Humanity was put in a time out.

So embrace the chaos.  Chaos is nature’s way of righting wrongs.  It’s natural.  Don’t be consumed by the storm.  Be your own storm.  Take this time to dig deep inside yourself, and your family dynamics.  Put yourself in therapy (we could all use a little therapy).  You can do it via Zoom!  Journal!  Journal until your hand gets tired.  You’re living through a global pandemic.  This is the stuff history is made of.  Read.  Explore.  Experiment.  Grow.  If we’re going to make it we’ll value the way we did.  And why not?  You busy?  You got someplace else to be?

Have patience.  This is a biggie.  Everything - every little thing requires patience.  All too often in life we are reacting as opposed to acting.  Adults do what they believe they need to do as opposed to what they want.  Students are punished as opposed to understood and supported.  Technology can be frustrating but in each frustration there is opportunity to learn and grow.  Ironically the world won’t crumble if your wifi drops.  We’ve all come light years from where we started.  Students on government aid are now issued school laptops.  Access to the web has almost become a right.  When that access is glitched, attention is paid.  We are becoming more and more energetically connected.

So take your time.  Learn to value the coincidences.  Listen to the lessons your life is teaching you.  What are you doing?  What is it you are trying to learn in school?  Why?  What are you working towards?  Teachers are not babysitters.  They are resources.  You are your own resource, including your questions.  Subjects are all languages whether it’s English or Spanish, Mandorin, mathematics, science or coding.  You progress with your peers not just to see their faces, or to navigate the consuming nuances of social interactions and be safe until your guardians return.  You are there to progress yourself.  You must actively learn to connect and communicate.  If not, that’s sus.

Value connection.  After all this time this one may be the easiest.  It’ll feel weird and it’ll take careful thought and consideration, but sooner or later, we’ll be together again.  And this time it’s going to feel different.  This time, we’re going to talk about what we’re really feeling.  We’ll be armed with more evolved vocabulary and we’ll value the pause.  We had no choice.  We all went through this together and it changed our trajectory.  I’m really looking forward to it.  We’ll stop thoughtlessly shaking hands with strangers, and finally we’ll all embrace as friends.  

My Story

It’s so crazy who is allowed to tell their stories.  

I miss my uncle.  I remember him regaling us nightly with captivating stories from his adventures at work.  He was always the hero of these stories, and he perhaps as a result became my hero.  The love and comfort he provided me? - was honestly what saved me from feeling completely broken off this world.  He was dynamic, and loving, authentic, and smart.  It took about a year for me to even feel anything but grief after he died.  That was two years ago now.

How about this pandemic, huh?  I’m just gonna say it: I’m kinda enjoying myself.  I mean it’s all in the perspective, right?  Gotta find silver linings.  No more waking up at 5AM to not exercise and make breakfasts; driving 3 hours a day in commute.  Now I wake at 2 even when I’m so tired and battle week long migraines from staring at screens.  And people are dying.

Feeling alone.  Lucky, but still we’re all profoundly isolated.  Facing demons.  I’m personally trying to rethink everything so I can emerge like a good white woman should (biodegradable laundry detergent on subscription, reusable plastic sealed in happy bees wax, glass jars everywhere again...  There’s even talk of composting.  But there’s little escape suddenly from control issues, power issues, tempers.

I have no physical prowess.  I used to feel strong but I no longer feel even that gender dysphoric compensation.  I’m long passed wearing anything but flats, my hair is what it is and the answer to which “lines” would be the ones to grace my face?  Turned out to be wonder lines.

As a teacher somewhere I realized I am not the “expert” teacher.  I am the relatable support.  I’m a Special Education Generalist, which means I’m an expert of nothing, but I know how to learn.  This works only if I’m honest.  Only if I stay ethical.  That means no lying.  That means facing the fallout of every mistake.  Asking for forgiveness.

See, this is Hell.  Realizing this I started to feel crazy.  Friends go with you so far, but in the end - it’s party banter.  It’s become much, much more for me.  I began to see that if we choose our own realities than I must have chosen this pandemic.  Smh... stupid!  But then I had to really think - was that true?  All this suffering I sometimes “see” - am I creating that?  Choosing that??  Energizing that???

A “friend” strongly suggested therapy.  So this has been fun.  My wife and I had similar childhoods.  We both emerged siding with patriarchal judgments as opposed to apathetic feelings.  But there’s a lot there for both of us.  I’m all about truth because it took me so long to uncover it, but, like packing up my uncle’s house felt, there are these boxed issues all around me: grief.  abandonment, isolation, rape.  

So I’ve come to learn, that I have control issues.  My property became my boundary.  2020 became the year I became an expert.  All those floundering years of college when I majored in philosophy and learned the nuances of epistemology - I knew the only thing to fear was that nobody knew.  Everyone is fallible.  Nobody cares enough.  

Maybe it stemmed from my issues.  Maybe it’s energized by thought.  There is nobody I trust.  There is nobody, anyone, always trusts.

So I face the fears.  I have rules.  Boundaries!  I have power over my wife and children.  (She’s gonna lose it on me when this makes it’s way to her!)  But I did.  I do.  Thank God.  She empowers me.  

So do they, my beautiful boys.  I haven’t screwed them up yet enough to ruin that.

We are hunkered.  We are remote.  We have schedules.  We adapt.  We learn.  We are thriving despite...

I think maybe therapy has lead me back to this creative drive.  I have no illusions of grandeur.  I do have an intense appreciation for the process.  The only way to face a world-wide epidemically-proportioned fear of death is to live.  Access the only thing we ever know we can - the moment.  Face the issues.  Employ patience.  Find something worth anything to leave behind if it comes to it.

So I’m reaching out.  Sharing my truths if I can.  Trying to do no harm (really tripping over that one!)  Attending the questions.  What if there are no homosexuals in Heaven?  What if pride really goeth before the fall?  Maybe everything I’ve come to have faith in is bullshit.  What if it’s not?  How far can I stretch my solipsistic existence?  With all the power I can muster, what can I trust?  How can I grow to become trustworthy?  Do my stories have merit?

I’d be nothing without her.  I’d have zero access to me.  That really wasn’t a choice I made.  It was an amazing connective discovery.  Having children expanded it.  Maybe this is Hell.  Does that mean we give up?  I say no.  Am I right?  

Tears don’t callus.

They say children who’s parents die when they’re young cry more readily.

I think about things like that - especially before or after therapy.  Been in and out over various things mainly because we evolved as a result of our disposition to connect.  

And that’s what an orphan (even half orphan) understands.

Old wound.  Feels like a Scarlet letter sometimes.  Can I ever put my story down?  Just be ...alive ...in a moment?

So I strive to connect.  I reach out all the time.  I’ve learned the wisdom of closing doors but I never keep them locked.  I pause.  I reflect.  I listen to the universe’s messages now.  I love my new faith.  I come back when I can.

The cover of the jacuzzi blows over me in my morning meditation.  

Scares the shit out of me because it felt like a reminder of the inevitable.  Time could be up.

Worked.  That’s just what I needed to get out of my narrative and experience a moment.

Listen to me... jacuzzi.  People are dying out there.  What have I to complain about?

You have a right to be happy.  

Does feel lately like I’m getting pinned to a cross.  I see anger, I assuage anger... I’m not allowed to be angry though.  I still apologize before I’m sorry.  But I am sorry.

Nanette.  What genius.  What dynamic unfolding of the wisdom beyond?

Just shared a unique perspective on my grandma with her estranged daughter (my aunt).  Very likely a mistake because she may focus on some small unintended slight not appreciate that I’m on my journey too,  But I tried my best to convey it honestly and without harm.  Keeps me growing.  Reflecting now I can see possible purpose in my truth if it in anyway sparks a thought of forgiveness between them.  Perhaps that might help heal the decades of strife they shared.

Decades they shared.

I cry again.  Drop of hat.  Hot fresh tears pouring over my first wound.

Tears don’t callus.

You know what I mean.

I’m from...

...sizzling concrete streets and cracked fire hydrants.  I’m from metal fire escapes, stoops, bent Cat Tails and heavy grating and metal doors.  

I’m also from old tire swings, and padded pine beds, warm cow flop, blueberries, and Lilacs.  I’m from rustling rivers, icy country lakes, sunk and sticky mud.  I’m from Snapple Facts, bagels, and pizza, and bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches.  I’m Everything by the Bangles, Bon Jovi, Family Ties verses Growing Pains, Empire, Jedi, Deanna and both Crushers.  I’m from Zapped, The Lost Boys, Point Break and Reality Bites. I’m Before Sunrise.  I’m My Dinner with Andre.  I’m Contact.  

I am from Astoria, Queens; Auburndale, Bayside, and Franny Lew.  I’m from West Bubblefuck in the Catskills.  I’m from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and the Wayne County Fair.  I’m from lawn mowers and weed wackers, cut grass and chopped wood.  I'm the Fourth of July and Christmas, broken plastic face masks, eggs and shaving cream.  Carnivals, St. Patrick, and Steuben Day Parades.  I’m the sweet songs of a thousand crickets.  Smoky cooking fires, sparkling touchable bright white stars.  I’m from late night conversations on hills, and basements by TV light.  I’m mythological. I’m a star in a constellation.  I’m the cold crazy of a Polar Bear.  I’m the warmth of a glowing full moon.

I’m from the Boomers’ Tony and Laura, Tony and Marianne, and later, just from Tony.  I'm from my Dynamic Uncle Dany and my Granny, “The Boss.”  I’m Pudding Face from wind pudding and air sauce and the Good Stuff Restaurant, a mother bird feeds her young, and everybody and his brother.  I'm from Pinochle, Mille Bourne, Candyland, Clue.  I’m  Curious George hanging by his tail and the monocled Monopoly man.  From Pong to Pitfall,  BASICA to Windows.  I’m from cheap cigars, Half n Half pipe tobacco, Schaefer Beer and Marlboro Lights.  I’m charcoal art class, drafting class, and cutting class.  I'm from Great Adventure, the Greatest American Hero, and Great Falls, Montana.  I’m from the under the boardwalk.  I’m from the smell of bacon, spinach with eggs, ham swirls, garlic and onion powder, Polly-O Mozzarella Cheese, grandma’s meat balls and deep, deep, deep dish pizza without onions or mushrooms.  Really, I’m from Native American Tarot Cards, skinny dipping, and Jesus.  I’m from a 2x6 kiddy pool with 5’ inflatable plastic dolphin.  I’m from flight school and the Top Gun Soundtrack.  I’m from the tracks.  I’m from trees, rocks and rooftops.  I’m from all the inner and outer crevices of all of it.