Serial monogamy

Ah, the old days.  Here are my kids before PUBERTY!  Wow.

Here they are skiing with their uncle, who I think may be the guy on the end of the two rope in the picture, but it's hard to say at this point.

This uncle has recently moved in with his father, my father in-law, after ending a relationship with a woman named Lena.  This is not new.  JD has a Modus Operandi which is predictable due to repetition.  He is a serial monogamist.

JD met Lena in the parking lot of the legal firm next door to the house he was selling.  One minute JD was busily buying a home in Fairfax and the next thing he was dating Lena.  Then, weeks after we moved him into this new house, he was renting his house in Fairfax to someone else and moving in with Lena.  Lena had a farm and JD always wanted to farm.  They set up what we used to call a "truck farming" operation, selling vegetables and knick-knacks at "Lena's Farmstand."  Not "Lena and JD's Farm Stand.   A couple local papers ran features about Lena and "her business partner, JD."

Lena's parents met at Birkenau or some similarly horrible Nazi death camp and still have the tattoos to prove it.  They are also old and half-demented.  Lena's mom, to put it charitably, is somewhat needy.   She complains constantly and can be very demanding.  I suspect, after her life, she deserves to be waited on, but it makes it hard to keep her in nursing homes.  Lena takes good care of her parents, who have to live in separate nursing facilities for some reason that just escapes me.  Lena tried to explain it to me, but it sounded like a matter of principle, and I couldn't figure out how matters of principle match up with issues of dementia.

Lena and her family are Jews, and Democrats.  JD is a Fox listening, Limbaugh chanting, no-listening-to-reason, America-love-it-or-leave-is, Bush-will-go-down-as-the-most-under-rated-president-in-history conservative.  My wife's family is full of great people whom I love, but they all come from small rural communities around here -- Clarence, Shellsburg -- and Jewish culture, let alone Democratic Politics, are simply alien.  Nana had Lena and JD over for supper and served her best PORK ROAST!  Oops.

I grew up in Wichita and some of our family friends are Jews.  The best man at our wedding is a Long Island Jew.  I think you have to capitalize Long Island Jew.  I like, and to a significant extent, "get" Judaism.  The deal with Lena and her clan isn't that they're Jews, although that has created some fascinating dynamics at holidays.  The deal is that to some degree or another, these people are all channeling "Rain Man."

We had a gathering out at the farm and we had a fire out in a grove of walnut trees.  Lena became obsessed about the kids throwing walnuts.  At the trees.  Not at each other.   "Who's throwing walnuts again!"  Her brother Jack, who is reportedly an engineer or something in California, asks Lena's permission for everything and reports "they are throwing nuts again!"  The man is pushing 50!  It was all surreal.  Good thing I hadn't quit drinking yet.  I sat and got quietly smashed by the fire.  Intoxication and inertia were all that saved me from throwing walnuts willy nilly.

We could just never really figure out what made this couple tick.  Then, as quickly as harmony began, dissent began to break out.  JD and Lena came to events but they didn't stay and JD looked uncomfortable, as though his pants were full and he couldn't escape.  Lena was, it turns out, coming along, as a matter of principle.  She also began pulling relatives aside, or calling, and talking about how JD is leaving her because he won't quit drinking and she's worried about it.  She doesn't realize, or maybe it's another social cue she missed, that JD has moved on, as he always does.  We all knew Lena was temporary.  They always are, these women.

Marcia, who was pretty and Southern and drank excessively, to the extent it bothered JD, Tina, who lasted a really long time and went hunting and fishing and was the ultimate gal pal, and now Lena, Jewish Farm Stand Operator in rural Iowa, all kicked to the emotional curb, started furiously, ended predictably.  One wonders if JD is pondering his fate, sitting on his father's deck, his boxed belongings piled in storage.

This is a family ravaged by depression and emotional distance, which culminated in an awful divorce, the recriminations from which have lasted thirty years.  Casualties have included Robyn's brother Greg's estrangement from his father, Robyn's series of difficult and destructive relationships (I do not count myself among them, although she may feel differently sometimes), and, alas, to JD's seemingly mindless repetition of the same pattern: infatuation, haste, distance, detachment.  Over and over, world without end, Amen.

Robyn has talked to JD a little.  JD says Lena is exaggerating the drinking issue.  I would have said the same thing six months ago, about myself.  LeRoy, JD's dad, is not a big drinker and will probably comment if JD gets back to his six beer a night consumption pattern.

Truthfully, I have a good deal of love and respect for JD.  He has been very kind and he is a good man, who loves his nieces and nephews and would do anything for us.  It's sad to see him act out the same play, over and over, with different players.

Today I am grateful for the ability to make new mistakes.  The same ones over and over get old.  Do something NEW and dumb today!

Throwing our sticks up in the air, watching ping pong balls come down. . .

Penguins don't come to crossroads in their lives.  They mill about and their spawning involves a lot of walking.  But sometimes I just pick pictures and these penguins match my mood.  So there.  St. Louis Zoo.  Penguins.

Nancy (the friend, not the unfortunate former wife) is looking for a new job.  I just took one.  Kevin is looking around his house wondering "what next?"  We are all at cusps in our lives.

For me, the real cusp has come as my Mom became less competent.  As her feedback has been more uneven and less approving, I have had to make mental shifts.  I think my detour into drunkenness probably had something to do with my discomfort at losing her approval.  Of course, she approves of me in principle yet, but she resents that we all have a life she still longs for and feels as though I steal from her - sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally.

I'm not minimizing the loss of a very dear friend.  Diana's death is definitely a passage for me.  An opportunity to learn death and life in a different way.  An "opportunity" to grieve anew.  But I didn't use her as an excuse to drink.  Much.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . . .

--William Butler Yeats

I think about this verse a lot.  It's part of Second Coming, an important American Lit kind of poem to know.  There is something reassuring and terrible about entropy.  It's something we can depend upon.  Every penguin takes his last dive into the sea, and few of us penguins recognize that last leap for what it is.

When we get to a cusp, the proper thing for us to do is to throw our little bundle of sticks up in the air and watch as the sticks come down to the ground, in a new pattern.  During these times it is proper to pay close attention to how we, ourselves, feel about the sticks, the new pattern, and other things, too.   We are sending ourselves messages all the time and we must take the time to listen.

Captain Kangaroo used to say the wrong word sometimes and Mr. Moose would yell, and millions of  ping pong balls would fall from above, off camera, creating chaos.  Captain Kangaroo would shake his head in a long-suffering way as the millions of balls bounced around.  Mr. Moose would console him.  I think Rabbit was behind it, somehow.

After time, only a few balls were still moving.  Things calmed down.  Inside my head, I can feel more stillness.  I am seeking less noise in there.  I am seeking more balance.  

I am seeking the next thing.

Waiting for something to happen

It was a wonderful party.  Friends, family, adopted family, students, all gathered to eat food, drink too much and celebrate the remarkable life led by our dear friend Diana.  We didn't have a ceremony planned  but each of us took a shovel full of dirt, laid it at the foot of a hemlock tree planted in her honor, and said a few words about what Diana meant to us.  It was very moving and truthful.  Then we drank shots of tequila.  Too damned many.

I had some really good talks with some really good old friends (you know who you are!) and we connected in a way that I think DP would have been very happy with.  We are connected by our long mutual journey together, which does not end because Diana's did.   I woke up on Sunday with a sore head and the feeling of a life well-missed.

Now I'm sitting, preparing to go to work and continue disentangling myself from 13 years of work at the same place.  I've pretty much announced to everyone and am now in the process of trying to finish everything I started.  Good luck!  My boss is running around trying to find folks to do what I used to do (somewhat gratifying) and generally needing my help keeping the transition orderly.  No problem.  He has helped me a good deal and he has it coming.

What's harder is saying goodbye to clients.  I have been thinking about keeping a small caseload, but then I think about giving up my Saturday mornings to do this and I begin to hedge.  The result is I think I'll take about TWO.  I want some down time soon.

My new boss says we're going to be doing a month of training of squad leaders (I forget what they're called) and then 140 "members" (enrollees, Americorps folks) arrive July 8, the day after I turn 50.  It's going to be a big start up from scratch and I'm going to be training them, I guess.  Jodi, boss in question, is bringing in a counselor from another site to help.  Can't complain about that.

Why the inflatable monkey?   Why the hell not?!  I saw him from the monorail at the Fair last year.  Friends, you just can't have enough inflatable monkey pictures.

Space

It's puzzling.  We have all, I think been through the range of emotions as our friend Diana passed away from her relentless cancer.   When I got home and logged on I learned that she had passed away yesterday morning.

This is not surprising, since the night before I listened to the long spaces between her labored breaths.  The phrase "labored breaths" has been overused, but it certainly applied.  She was working very hard to live.

Now I'm trying to decide how I feel.  How do we interpret this new world without our old friend there to comment, smirk, prod, support?  I think we must each carry a little more of the weight now that Diana is not shouldering her portion here with us.   There will be a memorial and we'll come together again and celebrate her memory.  Our memories of her will come with us on our journeys.

For my part, I have been struggling with hiding from death for a long time.  I hid from my father's death by being far away.  My Mother's deterioration just added insult.  I avoided the funerals and ceremonies of others who died because I couldn't resolve my grief and anger.  Over time, as Dad died and folks supported me, I came to understand this part of life a little better.  I'm proud to say that I didn't shrink from Diana's death the way I once might have done.  She provided me an opportunity for me to heal my own wounds by being present for her physical ones.  It was easy.  I live here and her life was already a regular part of mine.  Nonetheless, I am forever grateful for my opportunity.

Now the world is strange, new and unfamiliar.  It's rhythm is disturbed for a moment and the Universe takes a deep breath, then exhales.  For a moment all is silent.  Stillness, like a measure and a half pause in a great symphony.

Then a bird chirps on a slender branch.  A child rolls over in a morning bed.  Somewhere someone sips a cup of coffee.  Life continues.

Heavy sigh.

This is a sample of my father's impossible handwriting.  This is his legible version.  He wrote longhand on legal pads and as he wrote in a hurry all the lines began to blur and smooth out and become illegible to all but the initiated (me and Mom and probably his parents).

Our dear friend Diana is working harder at passing away, now that we have all said our pieced and spend our time.  It is now her turn to do business with entropy, or Fate, or whoever is in charge.  It makes me think of saying goodbye to my own father, something I'm still doing, really.

When things were bad, he would sometimes rage or argue, but often he would just sigh.  It was a long, drawn out affair, this sigh.  It started with a deep and luxurious intake of breath, followed by a slow, expressive exhalation, drawn out for maximum effect.  I remember those sighs so well that sometimes I find myself channeling them.

When he died, Dad was with Mom and her best friend Frances.  They were talking quietly on the other side of the room and Dad was breathing in a labored way.  Mom told me that at one point, he took a very deep breath and let out a long sigh.  It was his last.

I know exactly what that sounded like.

New guy

"Can you call me, please, Sam?  I can't find my wine.  I think they may have confiscated it." 

Mom's voice on the voicemail, confused, irritated.  It came in while I was doing therapy so I called her after an hour or so.  Mom suspects I do this, but she can't prove it.

"You have wine, Mom.   In Marion Assisted Living places have to keep the wine in the nursing station."

"I don't want to live here.  I want to go back to Wichita.  I want a second opinion!"

She hates this place.  She wants to go back to her house, her woody back yard garden, the goofy neighbors and all the Latino people walking around.  There were little guys on backwards tricycles with coolers between the front wheels ringing bells and selling Mexican ices.  She had a big deep porch and lilacs and peonies that came from Aunt Zella.

I'll go over tomorrow and visit or take her out and she'll be pleasant and tentative, trying to remember what she was mad at me about.  Trying to remember what the next thing was going to be.

I don't want a second opinion, I want a different one.

Once, when I was still miserably married to Nancy I was sitting on the front porch, contemplating divorce, entropy and dandelions.  There were a bunch of 10 year old boys from the neighborhood playing army and one by one they all died horrible dramatic deaths, until finally they were all lying across several late July evening front lawns.  Sweaty little corpses, still warm, holding perfectly still.

After a little while, one boy began to stir.  He had a crew cut and a striped shirt and he raised his head up and looked around him.

"I'm a new guy, now, okay?" he called.  

That's what I need, I thought.  I need to be a new guy now.

Mom's battle has no tag team mate waiting to give her a rest and she's not going gently into that good night.  She wants a goddamn glass of wine without asking for it.  Not much to ask, now that I think of it.

Prom pictures for the Crawley women

Caitlin has always been our plan maker. She once planned a Summer Birthday, because she got sick of January ones. She was 7 years old and happily had a minor celebration of the January date, waiting for the real party in June. The weather that June was very cold and we tried to de-escalate her but she continued planning, inviting all her friends to a "water party," when the temperatures outside were consistently in their 40's. On the June day she'd planned for her birthday a heat wave descended on us and things went off without a hitch. I learned not to underestimate the power of my daughter's determination.

That being said, Caitlin has been thinking about Prom since the first day she ever put on a princess dress. And that was a very long time ago. What follows are the usual pre-prom photos including her boyfriend, Nathan, who seems to be a pretty good egg. She came home sober and happy, and that, my friends, is as good as parenting gets.