Asceticism and fragility

I posted an essay over on the Patio.  It's one of the ones I mentioned recently that I wanted to write.  With luck I'll get to the other one soon, but these things take time to write.  Damned shame and all ....

"What did you tell your father?"

I got an e-mail from Debbie yesterday.  Debbie?  Why yes -- she wrote me as follows:

I just received a very friendly email from your father, quite out of the blue. Surprised me. He briefly caught me up on family happenings, including Son 1's plans to go off to college at the end of August (Yay! Congratulations!) and then ended with an invitation for me to drop by for a visit and swimming some time this summer.

Very nice, but seems odd, given our separation.  I'd just like to ask what you have told your parents about our going separate ways so that I can respond appropriately to your Dad's email.

Wait ... he what??  Oh, wonderful.  Just bloody wonderful.  Figures, though ...  I replied:

Oh heavens, I didn't expect him to do something like that.  Maybe I should have.

I haven't said anything about it.  I don't remember ever saying explicitly that we were together as more than friends (though it probably wan't a hard inference to make), so I didn't really figure it was any *more* of his business now that we weren't any more.  This means I haven't talked about you at all.  Once or twice he has asked questions that alluded to you and I've just said I haven't seen you in quite some time and left it at that.

Fortunately Debbie is very sensible, and concluded the short discussion like this:

Okay.  Thanks for this.  I think I will put together a brief reply that confirms that we haven't seen each other since the beginning of the year and just say that our paths are taking us in different directions.

So there's not a lot of news in all this -- certainly no high drama -- but I thought I'd pass it along.

The dog ate my homework

Excuses, excuses .... 

Here it is Tuesday and I haven't posted since last Wednesday.  So much for daily.

It has been tough to write daily -- or at all -- while the boys are with me.  In the evenings I don't stay late at work writing: I go home.  Nor do I write at home in the evenings or on weekends: I'm doing things with them.  That leaves lunchtime at work, if it is slow enough that I can afford it.  But not every day.  So I may fall off of my "one-post-a-day" intention when the boys are staying with me ... which means approximately alternate weeks during the summer.  Maybe I can list a couple highlights of the last week.

I finished up my work successfully in Weather City, took Hil to the airport, and got a big, firm hug as I dropped her off.  It was an improvement on last year, when we shook hands.  And we'll be working together on another project this summer, in August.

I got the problems with my storage unit cleared up.  Then over the weekend, the boys and I made huge strides in emptying the unit that still has Wife's stuff in it.  We made three round-trips between the storage unit and her place -- six hours of driving, not counting the time packing the car or unpacking into her garage.  I expect it to be empty and us to be out of it by the end of this week.

It's clear to me that the boys haven't inherited any of Wife's quasi-Egyptian worship of the dead and dessicated past.  Once upon a time I worried that they might decide she represented "normal" and therefore adopt her crazy attitudes.  But listening to them as we plowed through all the junk ... well, it was the same kind of thing they said a couple of weekends ago, but there was more of it.  They clearly aren't on her page.  Thanks be to God.  I'm sure they have criticisms of me too, which is fine -- so long as their sane, I can deal with them seeing my faults.  Heaven knows I have plenty ....

Driving home Sunday I found myself really wanting a drink after all that work but I was able to analyze the feeling, to tease it apart and see what it was made of.  Turns out I was tired.  What I really wanted was a nap.  I couldn't get it right away because I still had to do laundry.  But then I let Son 1 make dinner while I dozed.  Not sure if I truly fell asleep, or if I just went offline for a while and let myself unfocus.  But that was what I actually wanted, ... not the drink.

In almost the same way, I've found that not wanting another girlfriend right now doesn't stop me from fantasizing about one (see, e.g., my remarks about Hil and Elly).  But lately my fantasies have been more about company and closeness than about sex.  The sex itself just hasn't felt that interesting.  Of course probably that's because I'm not getting any so my body is ramping down on desire.  Still, it was interesting to notice.

What else has been on my mind?  I have a couple of posts I want to write for the Patio, but I haven't had any more time for that than for this.  But the boys go back to Wife's place on Thursday night.  Maybe I can pick it up for a while before I retrieve them on the Third.

Seems to me there was something else I wanted to post, but I forget what it was.  Later, I guess.  Lunch is over and I've got work to do ....  (sigh)

Why so upset?

Last night I got a text from Wife that she had gotten a call from Father that our storage unit was threatening to impound our stuff for non-payment of rent.  I’d written the check and mailed it a month ago, so this made no sense; but I called my dad and he read me a card that said exactly that.  This was crazy, so I called the storage unit from my hotel room (I was still in Weather City at the time), got their answering machine, and practically shouted into the phone.  Then I went back to packing, but rehearsed angry speeches to myself for at least an hour afterwards.

Why?  Specifically, why was I so upset?  It’s not like there was anything I could do about it till today anyway.  And I’m flying home today, so in reality it’s not like I can do anything until I get home: I plainly can’t call to yell at them while I’m on the airplane.  And why in fact do I even want to yell at them?  I logged into my bank account on-line, and the check hasn’t been cashed, so it’s not like they mistakenly applied it to somebody else.  But the checks on either side of it – all written and mailed the same day – have been cashed, so it’s not like the Post Office went on strike.  And no business in the world would refuse to cash a check on purpose just to cause a problem for me personally, so it has to be some kind of mistake.  Why was I so upset?

Partly I can still get triggered when Wife accuses me of something: “You said you already paid them through the end of this month! [As if I hadn’t.]  And now if they aren’t paid by July 3 they’ll block our access to the unit and I’ll lose all my things! [As if I hadn’t already told her I was going to empty it this coming weekend.]”  The feeling that I am being accused of negligence or lying hits me somewhere very sensitive and I respond with anger; when the accusation comes from Wife, to whom I am already allergic, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard.

Partly it’s that I felt blindsided.  I really had written the damned check a month ago.  And why was this news coming to me from my parents, for God’s sake?  I felt blindsided, or trapped somehow in a net that made no sense at all.  So I felt panic anf this came out – again – as anger.

I suspect those two factors are the reason: feeling accused and feeling blindsided, feeling trapped in a situation that makes no sense and with no warning.  It’s better today.  I’m embarrassed at having lost it last night, at having shouted at the storage unit’s answering machine.  I’ll drive over there when I get home, and try to straighten it out.

Meanwhile, I guess the moral is that a year of meditation doesn’t stop me from getting angry, nor from taking myself by surprise when I do.

Eating through the weekend

In my last post I mentioned that I am in Weather City for work for a few days, with a woman from one of our European offices.  I'd better give her a name -- and actually her given name is pretty close to mine (IRL), but somehow "Hoseana" is a mouthful and doesn't seem to work too well.  I'll call her "Hil".

Anyway, over the weekend Hil and I didn't have a lot to do.  So yesterday we spent four hours or so tramping around the Weather City civic center, looking at all the cool buildings and the sculpture in the parks and generally behaving like tourists.  Hil had had the foresight to bring a camera, so she snapped a lot of pictures ... "to show my girls when I get home."  (She can't be that old, but she's already a divorced mother of two little girls, aged ... ummm, 9 and 7, I think. That's about nine years younger than my boys, but she has to be more like twenty years younger than I am if I have to hazard a guess.) 

One thing that made the outing a little interesting: I was acutely aware that we were walking side by side, talking to each other and pointing out the sights, and not holding hands.  Once in a while our hands would bump by accident, and we would both pull them up out of the way to make sure it didn't look like it was on purpose.  OK, it sounds like a trivial thing to notice, but I did notice it ... maybe just because (as I mentioned before) I'm a boy and she's a girl.  What is more, I began watching other couples ... or wait, let me say "other male-female pairs" since we're not a "couple".  I saw a few who were not holding hands, but most were.  We were definitely in the minority.

But I was going to talk about food.  We had met for breakfast at the hotel buffet, then stopped for lunch when we were both hot and tired.  When we finally got back to the hotel we both wanted to rest up a bit and agreed to meet at 8:00 for dinner.

But there was no way I was going to be hungry by 8:00.  It was a big breakfast and a big lunch, and I wasn't actually sure I wanted any dinner at all.  Maybe just a salad.  But this began to make me feel awkward.  I didn't want to go out and eat ... but I couldn't very well go out and not eat ... and I felt a little funny about just not joining her at all.  What to do?  In the end I texted her that I was still tired from walking all over town, so she should go ahead without me.  And I figured that -- who knows? -- maybe Sunday would take care of itself somehow.

Sunday (today) she wanted to go shopping at an outlet mall.  Hil says she always loves coming to America because "everything is so cheap!"  (Isn't this what we used to say about going abroad, a generation ago? Well, and the euro is strong right now.)  Since she isn't comfortable driving abroad I agreed to take her to the mall; I grabbed a book and found a bench where I could sit and read ... and watch her bags as she gradually accumulated more and more shoes to take back home.  I'm sure I looked just like any of the other husbands who had been dragged along while their wives spent Sunday shopping.

After a few hours she was ready for lunch.  I wasn't, but hell -- lunch doesn't have to be a lot of food.  We found a food court where I got a slice of pizza and a drink.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon sleeping.  In general I think I've been drinking too much coffee lately, so I deliberately didn't have much this morning and I had a non-caffeinated drink at lunch.  By the time we got back to the hotel I was plainly ready for a nap.  But of course this meant that when dinner-time rolled around, I hadn't done anything to burn off my pizza.

We went to a place near the hotel, where I got a salad and a little sushi.  Good enough, and not too heavy.  Tomorrow is Monday, and we'll meet for breakfast before heading back to the office.  But the thing that puzzles me is, ... Why do I feel awkward (or even embarrassed) about not feeling hungry?  What is it that makes this a big deal for me?  Is it just that I'm overly-obsessed with myself?

I don't know where I'm going with this, so let me just break it down as I type.  Maybe I'll come up with something and maybe not:

• Eating together is a social activity, as much as -- or more than -- it is a nutritional one.
• I could imagine a case where we were working together but nothing more: where we stayed in different hotels, spent all our off-duty time doing different things, and so on.
• But that's not where we are. We are in the same hotel (different rooms!), we rented one car instead of two, and we are spending some (but not all) of our leisure time together.  It is as if we are more than strictly colleagues, but clearly we are not romantically involved.  Are we friends?  Or "business-friends", whatever that might mean?
• When we talk together, often it is about work, or about some neutral topic like our respective experience of international travel.  But we also tell stories about our kids.  We have told a few stories about our divorces.  She's told me that her husband spent all his time on the Internet and only went to bed at 4:00 in the morning, effectively ignoring their daughters; also that she decided to leave when she realized she loved leaving for work and hated having to go home again ... except that she missed the girls.  I've told her ... well, gosh, not as much as I've told you because I haven't had the time.  But I've mentioned that both boys are in boarding school (and that Son 1 is going to college in September); that Wife is crazy; and that I deliberately waited until Son 2 had moved out of the house before telling Wife that I wanted out.
• So somehow it seems fitting that we eat together.  I felt a little embarrassed and awkward Saturday suggesting we not.

• But I also feel awkward if I don't eat much.  Why?  I feel like I am calling attention to myself if I eat less than the other person at the table ... especially because I often eat kind of fast and therefore run the risk of being done long before the other person.
• What's more, I feel like I am inviting a question: "Why aren't you eating more?"  Maybe it's just my father who asks questions like that, but I don't want to have to answer.  I feel like the next moves in the conversation will be: "Are you on a diet? Are you a vegetarian? Are you allergic to this or that food?"  And each of these questions sounds to me like it really means, "Am I (the questioner) under some kind of obligation towards your food, to make sure that it's OK for you? To make sure we go to restaurants that are suitable for you? To make sure that I don't suggest things that are wrong for you?"
• The fact is that I don't want to say anything about my eating that sounds permanent, that sounds like a statement of principle.  So for example ...

• Maybe I recognize that it would be good for my health, well-being, and self-approval if I could eat a little less than I have been eating lately; maybe I would like to pull my belt in by one notch to where it was a few months ago before I had to let it out recently; but No, I'm not on a diet!  Why not? 
• I associate dieting with vanity, and don't want to admit to being vain.  (But really, am I somehow not vain?) 
• I associate dieting with failure, and don't want to set myself up for failure.  (But really, do all dieters fail?) 
• If I say I'm on a diet, then I have constrained my future freedom of action because other people will be able to watch me and think, "Hosea shouldn't be eating that."  (But really, does it matter so much what other people think? And if it does, isn't that actually salutary?) 
• And if I say I'm on a diet, then I risk making other people feel self-conscious in case they are not dieting.  I risk making people feel that I condemn them if they aren't as abstemious as I am. 

• Maybe I recognize that a man who is not thin and who is in his fifties should be careful about cholesterol and heavy animal fats; and maybe I feel ethical compunctions (albeit inchoate and inconsistent ones) about the cruelty with which the food industry treats animals who are destined for our tables; but No, I'm not (exactly) a vegetarian.  Why not?
• Some vegetarians are self-righteous prigs, and I don't want people to think I'm one of them.  (But really, is that all vegetarians, or even a majority? Vegetariansim is pretty mainstream these days.)
• In principle I don't mind the idea of eating meat if it is humanely raised and humanely killed.  (But I don't want to have to talk about it long enough to explain this codicil, and I should still be careful for health reasons.)
• Sometimes it's inconvenient to choose a vegetarian alternative, or I'm just feeling lazy, or there's some other reason that I don't feel like choosing the vegetarian option right now even though most of the time these days that's what I truly feel like eating; but in any event, if I say I'm a vegetarian, then I have constrained my future freedom of action because other people will be able to watch me and think, "Hosea shouldn't be eating that."  (But really, does it matter so much what other people think? And if it does, isn't that actually salutary?) 
• And if I say I'm a vegetarian, then I risk making other people feel self-conscious in case they are not vegetarians.  I risk making people feel that I condemn them if they aren't as abstemious as I am. 

And so on.

That's a whole passel of reasons, most of which are silly or stupid.  The last one in each of the last two sections -- the part about not wanting to make people self-conscious -- is interesting.  When I started this post -- two hours ago (but I let myself get seriously distracted several times throughout writing it) -- that's the one I wanted to explore.  Is it a real reason, or an excuse?  If it's an excuse, what is hiding behind it?  And if it is real, how did I (or we, as a society) get to a place where saying honestly that I'm not all that hungry might make somebody else self-conscious?  Because on the surface that doesn't make much sense.

But I don't have any good, obvious answers for those questions.  And I've taken so long getting to this point that I should probably sign off and go to bed.  Sneaky of me to wind up before I have to do any real work, ain't it?

Why should something simple like food be so complicated? 

Flirtation

What is it that makes flirtation so intoxicating, ... so irresistible?

I have said recently -- several times -- that I don't want another relationship any time soon.  I think I have good reasons for saying so.  All the logic and evidence I can muster support this decision.

But it seems like I can't stop myself from flirting.

A few weeks ago my home e-mail account was attacked by a virus.  I got notes from several people I know -- some of whom I hadn't heard from in a long time -- telling me they had gotten a suspicious e-mail from me and asking about it.  One of these notes was from a woman I used to work with many years ago.  In fact for several years I worked for her.  She lives in Europe now, so it's not like there's any chance of us idly meeting for coffee.  But at the time we got on very well: we collaborated on several important projects, we joked with each other quite a bit, we relied on each other's work implicitly: "No, I didn't look into that, you'd better ask Elly." "Sure, I took care of that, but for the other thing you'd have to ask Hosea."  Then time passed, she had two children (while still working), she and her husband moved to Europe, her husband started fucking someone else and they divorced, ... and so on.  I hadn't heard from her a lot -- maybe once every couple of years -- until this virus attack.  Anyway, she sent me a note; I replied; a few weeks later she sent me a follow up with a little more news; I replied again.  And part of me is standing to one side watching the progress of the conversation.  For one thing, it is speeding up: where it took a week or more to exchange one iteration at first, I got two different e-mails from her both today.  And I can tell that I'm opening up my letters just a little more each time: talking about my relationship with Wife, alluding to the breakup with Debbie, trying to utter a few comforting words about her own failed relationships since her divorce.  Long-term readers will recognize this pattern.  So why am I doing it?  I could write differently.  I don't have to nudge the conversation -- gently, I hope! -- in this direction.  And in reality I've said over and over that I don't want another relationship right now.  So why am I doing this?

Partly I think I enjoy the sense of power and skill that comes from being able to manipulate somebody else in this way.  That came out sounding a little harsher than I meant it, but in one sense what I am feeling is not at all admirable and deserves to be talked about like that.  And of course it's all uncertain: maybe the whole thing goes off the rails with the very next e-mail.  Elly is smart, and so nothing about it is a sure thing.  But I was so shy around girls for so many years ... and then all of a sudden I was married and faithful and therefore off the market ... that I'm only now really getting a sense of what I can and can't do in this arena.  It's a challenge.  It's fun.

And beyond all of that, there is something absolutely intoxicating about flirtation.

At the same time, ... well, I'm writing this from a hotel room in Weather City, far away from my home.  I'm here on business, called in more or less at the last minute to support a project that's spearheaded by a woman in one of our European offices.  (Not Elly!)  I worked with her for about a week last year on a different project, and when her planned collaborator on this one fell through she straightaway asked me if I could fill in.  I said Yes just as fast.  Anyway, here I am now.  We met at the airport, got a car, got lost en route to the hotel but are here now, safely ensconced in different rooms ... why am I bringing it up?  Only because I watched myself (and her) the whole time from when we met at the airport.  I could see myself striving to be my most charming, my most entertaining.  I could see her laughing at all manner of things I said, just as if they were really funny.  I listened to both of us making references to our work together last year, as if to a shared private joke of some kind.  And then I thought ....  I've said over and over that I don't want another relationship right now.  Even if I did, she's not available: she's got a boyfriend back in Europe, and two little girls as well.  (Her ex-husband, the father of the two girls, is apparently no longer in the picture.)  It's silly even to imagine anything going anywhere.  Only ... in that case why were we both being so funny, so charming, so bubbly at seeing each other?  Is it just because we worked well together last year?  Really?  Or is it because I'm a boy and she's a girl?

Is it because there is something absolutely, deliriously, bewitchingly intoxicating about flirtation?

Honestly, that's my bet.  But I had really better watch it, lest the intoxication get the better of me and take me somewhere that's bad for all of us ....
 

Movie review

A couple days ago, Son 1 – who is going to college in a couple of months – went to the movies during the day while I was at work.  That evening, he talked about the movie he saw ("Edge of Tomorrow"), but also about the trailers for coming attractions.  His most gushing enthusiasm was reserved for the upcoming "Transformers 4" which he freely admitted could not possibly have anything going for it as a work of art.  What he said, though, was that "It's got fire-breathing dino-bots! My inner nine-year-old was almost pissing himself!"

 

All right then.

 

 

 

Hard to come home

One discussion with the boys was a little more serious.  Son 1, who has always been fascinated and attracted by the military life and ethos, was talking about the message in Thomas Ricks's Making the Corps, that the Marine Corps is countercultural.  Ricks talked about new recruits on leave after six weeks of boot camp, who find that they have literally nothing to talk about with the friends they left behind, ... often friends whose only ambition is to get drunk or high or laid.  Six short weeks -- no, make that six very long weeks -- and a recruit's values are changed totally.  He can no longer care about the things that sloppy, undisciplined civilians care for.

As Son 1 went on about this, Son 2 said very quietly, "I feel exactly the same way coming home from Durmstrang."

I think I've mentioned that Durmstrang, the boarding prep school he attends, has a strong ethos of self-reliance and doing without.  And so he went on to say, "Whenever I leave campus, ... everybody else in the world has so much stuff! Even you, Dad, even in this tiny apartment, there is all this stuff.  And then I walk outside and everybody else in town has his own little house and his own little car and all his own stuff and the whole city is just so crowded. I'm used to a lot more space, and a lot fewer things to have to worry about."

I don't have any profound conclusions, but I thought it was interesting.  And I want to keep an eye on him as he grows ....

Championship complaining

Oh, I just remembered another fun interchange with the boys, a few days ago.  I was describing one of the senior engineers at work -- a truly brilliant man I'll call Frank, but one with a gift for marathon complaining.  Anyway, I mentioned Frank in the story of my day and ...

Son 2: Is he the one that's always complaining?

Hosea: Oh yes. He could win prizes at it. You could set him up against any world-class complainer.

Son 1: Mom?

Hosea: [pauses, thinks] Yeah, Frank could hold his own against Mom. You know, that's actually a funny image -- suppose Frank and Mom had met and fallen in love and gotten married ....

Son 1: [obvious stage shudder]

Hosea: Well I was just trying to imagine what the household would be like.

Son 1: See, you're trying to imagine what the household would look like from the outside. I'm imagining growing up in it!

Transferrable skills

Yesterday at work we learned we are being sued by a temporary employee who did a few weeks' worth of work for us last year.  No idea why.  But our receptionist came completely to pieces.  She is (or used to be) friends with this woman, but then they had a big dramatic fight about a month ago and now aren't speaking.  And so our receptionist figures this lawsuit is All Her Fault.

She was in tears and pretty well unable to do her job, so I called her into my office and talked with her for a while.  In the process I learned far more than I ever wanted to know about her friendship with this Temp ... and at that I cut her off before she got into any really personal details.  But I learned enough to see that Receptionist is not too smart (this much I knew already), that she reacts 100% emotionally, and that she really has been very foolish in how she handled this particular friendship.  Not that I told her these things, of course!  She was in bad enough shape already, and it's none of my place.  Mixing work life and personal advice is the kind of thing that can land you in this sort of lawsuit in the first place.

But I reflected as I talked to her that I was using all the same skills I developed over the years of living with Wife, calming her down whenever she went round the bend.  So in a sense I suppose they were useful skills to learn.  And yesterday evening, as I drove the boys to spend a week at Wife's place and told them all about it, they chimed in with the very same observation.

Son 1 even added, "When I was taking care of my drunk friends after graduation, I talked to them exactly the way I used to talk to Mom when she started losing it: 'It's OK, I'm right here, I'm not going to abandon you, I'll take care of you.' It worked too."

In many ways I wish neither of us had ever had to learn these skills; but I suppose if we had to live through all those years, it's good that we at least got something useful out of it all ....

Thoughts from the weekend

The boys are both home from school for the summer, and for the past week they have been staying with me.  Yesterday we drove to Wife's condo (with a considerable amount of grumbling from them) and I asked them to rearrange her garage to make more room while I drove to the storage unit I've been unloading lately (here, here, and here) and collected another load of stuff.  And afterwards as we drove back to my place, I listened while they commented on some of what they experience with Wife.

What encourages me is that they recognize many of her crazinesses as crazy.  For years I have feared that they would take them as normal, and grow up living in the same alternate reality she does.  But it looks like living away at boarding school has given them good, sane role models, so they have been able to establish some external, Archimedean point from which to form an opinion.

By the way, I take for granted that they probably have similar criticisms of me, that they just haven't voiced (or that I haven't heard).  That's fine: they should.  Independent judgement is the best kind.  I'm just grateful that they haven't grown up thinking that everything Wife believes must be true.

Some examples, as I can remember them:

Son 1: Why does Mom believe that she has to fulfill all the dreams of both her parents? Her parents are dead. They've been dead for twenty years. Why do they still have such a hold on her?

Hosea: I don't know. They do, for sure, but I don't know why. All I can say is that it looks to me like that whole side of the family feels that way. I don't get it, but for all of them it seems like ancestors are a really big deal ... like they're afraid of being punished by Furies if they don't do what their ancestors wanted.

Son 1: Well I guess I'm glad I take after your side instead, then.
__________

Son 2: You know, cleaning up that garage would be a lot easier if we could just take each box and tell her, "You get to keep one thing from this box: all the rest goes in the trash." But no! She always says, "No, I have to keep all of it. I need that for a sewing project I'm in the middle of." I want to tell her, "You are never going to do any more sewing, let's be honest here. Throw it out and use the space instead." Or maybe she could sell some of it instead ... parts of that coin collection would fetch a few hundred dollars.

Hosea: True. Of course a few hundred dollars isn't a lot.

Son 2: It's more than she's getting out of it now. She never enjoys the collection or even looks at it. But if I suggest selling any of it she says, "I can't. It's an heirloom." I hate to think what finally happens when she dies and we have to go through all that stuff ....
__________

Son 2: I don't understand how anybody can hold onto grudges the way she does. She doesn't just hold onto her own grudges, but she holds onto her mother's grudges too. She was telling me once about when she was six. She used to play with the little Mexican girl next door, and one day that girl's mother said, "I don't want you to play with my daughter any more." And Mom said to me, "So now do you understand why I'm prejudiced against Mexicans?"  And it's like, "No, I don't! What, you hate all Mexicans because one mother didn't let you play with her daughter fifty years ago? She was just one person and you were only six! What does that have to do with anything any more??" Or ... like, she's still mad at our kindergarten teacher.

Hosea: Why?

Son 2: Probably for being a ditz. Which she was. But that was kindergarten -- who cares any more?

Hosea: I think maybe she's afraid that if she ever forgives anyone, she's somehow letting them get away with something. But the way I look at it is, who is actually suffering because she carries around all this anger? Is she really punishing the other person?

Son 2: Well I'm sure our kindergarten teacher doesn't care that Mom is still mad at her!

Hosea: So the only person who is actually suffering from all this is your Mom. And, ... you know, ... "How's that working for you?"

Son 2: Exactly.

There was more and I don't remember it all.  But it encouraged me.  Not because I want them to rag on Wife ... as I say, I assume they have criticisms of me too.  But I just don't want them sucked into her worldview.

The cube

Not sure this belongs in this blog ... it really belongs in a Dilbert cartoon.  But I'm not Scott Adams, so you're stuck with this instead.

For some time, top management at my company has been pushing a "culture" initiative, to get us to behave less like the big company we really are and more like a small, innovative company working out of somebody's garage -- because you can totally expect to have that level of close collaboration when you are dealing with development teams on three continents and logistics networks that circle the globe.

The latest device for pushing this desired "corporate culture" was rolled out in a management meeting today: we were all given "culture cubes" ... these are boxes about three inches on a side, covered with inspiring slogans.  But wait -- it gets better.  The cubes are split into eight smaller cubes and there are hinges allowing you to open them up in a couple different directions, revealing on the inside ... even more inspiring slogans!  Yayy team!  We've been told we're supposed to bring these cubes into meetings with us, and to use them to challenge people in the meetings who aren't behaving in a sufficiently entrepreneurial way.  I'm not sure quite how this is supposed to work.  Do we jump up suddenly and shout, "No! The cube says you are wrong!"?  Or is it more like meditation: "Bring your mind back to the cube ...."?  The mind boggles with possibilities.

For myself, I think that if they wanted us to put cubes on our desks that would improve our ways of thinking and acting, they picked the wrong cubes.  My proposal would look more like the picture below ....

Why did I marry Wife?

I've been reading Ella Price's Journal (OK, yes, I'm kind of bingeing on Dorothy Bryant) and just finished it last night.  If you know the book you may remember that at the end what finally drives Ella over the edge is that she realizes that Joe (her husband) needs her to be weak and sick so that he can fill the role of caretaker for her.  She comes to understand that this is the nature of the (implicit) bargain they struck when they married: she would feel emotions for him (so he didn't have to) and he would take care of her (because she was a neurotic mess).

I got to that part and I had a hard time going forward to finish the last couple of pages.

Because of course that's Wife and me: not 100% exactly, but in large part.  Why would I ever have married someone that I already knew was a neurotic mess?  What did I get out of it?  Well, looking at us as we were back then through the lenses of Ella Price, I can see I got several things:

• From very young, I had always felt weak and shy.  I was terrified to assert myself.  But Wife's illnesses -- physical and mental -- allowed me to be strong. 
  
  I found I could be as strong as I had to be ... really, no matter how much that was ... if I was supporting Wife because she had collapsed. 
  
  I had no time for shyness when I was calling doctor's offices to insist that she had to be seen, or when I was calling insurance companies to demand that they honor the terms of our policy. 
  
  I had no trouble asserting myself when I was telling pharmacies that I didn't care if they were about to close and there were six people ahead of me in line, but by God they were going to fill this scrip for morphine (even though it's a controlled substance that generates a lot of paperwork) because my wife was back home in agonizing pain; or when I was calling hospitals to tell them that yes, I was aware we owed them a gazillion dollars, and yes, I was aware they could take us to court over it, but they were going to have to settle for a payment plan and going to court wouldn't get them their money any faster because you can't squeeze blood from a stone. 
    
• There is also something in that other point too, but it's more subtle -- I mean, the point that Joe married Ella so she could feel for him and he wouldn't have to.  It wasn't exactly like that: I had plenty of deep feelings, and they ranged from exuberant highs to pitch-dark lows.  What I had trouble with was allowing myself to express those feelings.  I think that's why I was attracted to dramatic, flamboyant, "high-maintenance" women ... even in college, to say nothing of Wife and D.  Being with them allowed me to express my feelings, to admit to them.  Maybe, finally, it might even have taught me how to talk about them, though I won't place a lot of money on that last.  (It's possible that I learned whatever I know about it by writing for you.)

I know there were other reasons too.  At one point I made a list of about eight of them.  I don't have it with me now, but I'll find it one day and I can use it to flesh out this post with a Part Two.  And like with any big decision, the reasons span the whole range from subconscious psychological motivations to grand romantic ones.  There was romance there, too.  Once upon a time.  So this post is to be continued.  Still, I was struck hard by those last few pages, and wanted to record them before I forgot.
 

Spiral: follow-up

When I got into work this morning there was an e-mail waiting from Wife, sent last night, telling me she has an appointment with her psychiatrist at 1:00 "tomorrow" (i.e., today).  Glad I called.  Maybe that counts as my good deed for the day....

Spiral?

At the same time that I've had a fairly upbeat visit with the boys, I was having a very frustrating exchange with Wife.  It all had to do with her wanting me to order her some medication that's well over $2000 and my not being able to afford it.  I tried reasoning with her in several different ways and all I got back was irrational, self-centered whining.  It was as if she was totally incapable of engaging with the substance of what I was saying, and just believed that everything I said meant I was deliberately causing her pain out of malice.  I was wondering "How did we get here, when only a few days ago she was fairly rational?"

Then in the midst of all this -- as further proof of her helplessness at the hands of an unjust fate -- she happened to mention that she's been unable to get an appointment with her psychiatrist and so is flat out of her psychiatric medications.  I e-mailed back to make sure she was really saying what I thought I heard -- phrasing it as incredulity that the doctor should be so careless (though strictly speaking I don't really know if she ever actually called his office) -- and she confirmed that that was exactly what she meant.

And of course that explains it.  No wonder she is incapable of rationality.  Of course if she's still like this next week, I wonder whether I can in good conscience leave the boys to be cared for by her under our custody calendar.  This could be a problem, especially since I have to go out of town on business.

So I called her doctor's cell phone.  He had given me his number once long ago, just in case.  I told him what she had told me.  He said he would instruct his office to call her up to book an appointment; I gave him her number, and we were done.  I hope he follows through.  And that she does.  I hope this is enough to stave off what could otherwise have been a catastrophe.  When Wife doesn't have access to her psychiatric medicines, it's not a pretty sight.

Talking with the boys

Before this summer started, I began collecting a list of things I wanted to discuss with Son 1 and Son 2.  Some of them are practical things about shipping Son 1 off to college in a couple months.  But there were a few other things on my mind too, of a more personal nature.

I addressed the first couple after we had unloaded a lot of their stuff at Wife's place and as we were driving back to mine:

Have I ever explained to you why I live in such a small place? and Have I ever explained to you why I don't have an Internet connection in my apartment?

Of course I have explained both of these things to you, my long-suffering readers.  The first one was a topic in this post, and the second in this one.  But they answered (as I suspected they might) that I had never really explained any of it to them.

So I tried to, although I was improvising words as I drove and not typing them out in paragraphs.  And when I had finished, Son 2 said, "So basically you're saying that you want to be a hippie in the woods, living off the land?"

I clarified that I don't have the practical skills to live off the land, and don't much want to acquire them or to have to do that much work.  But as far as the ideal of living simply goes, ... well, yeah, I think that has a lot to be said for it.  He lobbed back, "So you're still basically trying to be a hippie, then."  Son 2 was born in 1998.  I'm not completely sure he knows what a hippie is.  But I let it go.  Instead I joked back, "What was your first clue?"

"Well I don't know.  You didn't use to be like this!"

"That's because I didn't have much choice.  I'd decide that No, I didn't want to buy this or that, and then I'd come home from work and find that somehow we had bought it anyway!"  Traditionally I have tried not to bad-mouth Wife in front of the boys, but they know we used to fight over money a lot, so I didn't think this would shock them.  Anyway, then the conversation drifted off elsewhere.

Then last night we were talking about my dad -- in particular the boys were discussing some of the things they find particularly difficult about him -- and so I ventured one version of another question, one that my current counselor had proposed:

You know, they don't give you a manual when you become a parent [they interrupt with cries of "That's not fair!"] and so a lot of the time I'm winging it. And there are a lot of things I never ask ["Thank you! It's really appreciated!"] because my own dad can be so intrusive. But maybe I overcompensate the other direction. Anyway, I just wondered -- and you can think about this and tell me later if you think of something -- is there something I should be doing that I'm not? Or that I shouldn't be doing, that I am? Because if yes, ... can you let me know what?

All they said last night was "Naaah, Dad, you're doing fine" before they changed the subject ... possibly because I bet I came across as kind of awkward asking it.  I'm not sure if I really said what I wanted to say.  But I should probably wait just a bit before coming back to it for a repeat ....

Clear priorities

Yesterday I got a notification at work that the General Manager of another branch office (one in Faraway City, that I used to do a lot of work with) is leaving the company "for personal reasons."  It said nothing else about his departure.  This guy is one of the best General Managers I have ever worked with: he makes the job look easy and fun, he gets things done, he makes the right choices among difficult options, and he keeps everybody in the plant engaged.  You couldn't ask for better.  So I dropped him a note saying that I had always enjoyed working with him and wishing him well, even though I had no idea where he was going next.

This morning he replied.  After the niceties, the heart of his e-mail was this:

It has been an extremely difficult decision to leave the company, but I feel compelled to do so. I have a unique opportunity to take an extended period of time to spend with my kids. They are fast approaching an age when they will leave to pursue their own interests in life and I have a small window in time to spend with them. Who knows where I will end-up in the long run, but I have confidence that life has a way of working out.

As I said, he makes the right choices among difficult options.  We should all be so wise and trusting.

Graduation

So Son 1 has graduated from high school.  The ceremony was moving and there were no disasters.  He left for the evening afterwards for a post-graduation party, more or less telling us that it was his intention to come home with a hangover.  I told him to make sure that whoever drove him home was OK to do so, or else to call for a ride.  But I wasn't going to act shocked.  Hell, if I'd had any friends who had invited me to such a party after I graduated, I would have liked to go to it too ... although in truth I was probably too shy and priggish at that age to have let myself enjoy it.

As it turned out, I remember distinctly that -- back when it was my turn -- I went home with my parents and we had a quiet dinner with my grandparents.  After they left my father had too much to drink (though he never drank in front of his folks), and his last words to me before he crashed into bed were, "Always be strong."  He was struggling with great emotion as he said it, and I just found the whole scene very depressing.  My grandfather died six months later, so that's probably what had my father upset.  But did any of this have anything to do with my graduating from high school?  Of course not.  On the other hand, I probably would have been uncomfortable if I had been the center of attention too, so basically there's no helping me.  Enough reminiscence.

When we saw Son 1 on Sunday morning he was tired but had no hangover.  He also said the party hadn't turned out to be all that fun after all, because he had ended up taking care of guys who were far more wasted than he was.  At one point the police showed up, telling them to quiet down and move inside because it was late.  At another point, Son 1 helped a friend stagger away from the swimming pool, because he was worried that if the friend fell in he might not know enough to stop breathing ... and drown.  Still later, Son 1 got to unclog a sink that had become stopped up with vomit.  He got a couple hours of sleep in dribs and drabs, but nothing like a full night's worth.  So he was exhausted and more or less glad it was all over.  On the other hand, now he has a high school diploma from a fine prep school.  So overall it's good.

What more is there to tell?  My parents, Wife and I, and Brother and his girlfriend all went out to dinner.  I left early (well, 9:30 but the others were still talking and Wife hadn't stopped talking long enough even to eat much yet) because I couldn't stay awake: I tossed Wife the keys to the van we'd driven there together and walked the dozen blocks to my hotel.  The morning before graduation I had moved Son 1 out of his dorm room; so Sunday we left a couple big heavy items in my parents' garage and then the three of us drove three hours to Wife's condo.  Son 2 was waiting there for us.  (Durmstrang is a damned sight closer to Wife's place than it is to Hogwarts, so he had missed his brother's graduation.)  We unloaded the stuff out of Wife's van, loaded the necessities for both boys into my car (which I had left there a couple days before), and got to my apartment in time to make dinner.  Everyone was tired by nightfall and turned in early.

It was a busy weekend with a lot of driving, but a good one.  And now it's summer.

Prize Night

Friday night was Prize Night at Hogwarts.  (I am writing this Saturday morning, and Son 1 will graduate in a few hours.)  Wife and I drove to town together yesterday, checked into (different) hotels, then stopped by my parents’ house and we all four drove to campus.

In the end, the ceremony was a lot of fun.  At any rate I liked it because I’m a Hogwarts alumnus myself and it brought back fond memories.  Also, we had been notified discreetly by the school that we should show up because Son 1 would be winning a prize.  In four years at Hogwarts he has never been singled out for anything, although he is known all over campus and everybody likes him.  But as the ceremony wore on, there was no mention of him.  They handed out the language prizes, the mathematics prizes, the science prizes, the history prizes, the English prizes, the prizes for highest grades in each of the four classes and then in the school as a whole, the awards for leadership and community service … nothing.  And then the very last prize of the evening was called: the prize for school spirit, selected (unlike all the others) by a vote of all the students … to Son 1.  He grinned a little sheepishly as he walked up on stage to accept a huge engraved cup.  His friends in the audience were chanting “S-O-N-1!  S-O-N-1!  S-O-N-1!”  Wife and I (and Father) all took pictures of him with his cup, before he gave it back to be stored in a glass case with the other school awards.  And we all went out to dinner.

That’s one summary of the evening.  There are other lenses to see it through.  I had forgotten how incessantly Wife natters.  On the three hour drive into town she stopped only when it became clear that I wasn’t going to reply to anything except occasionally in monosyllables; and then she put her seat back and closed her eyes.  Once she was with my parents, however, nothing stopped her but the actual ceremony itself.  The rest of the time was a nonstop commentary: “Well I don’t think he’s going to get one of the academic prizes because his grades aren’t that good, you know it’s not that he’s not smart but he tells me he just doesn’t want to work that hard, he’s always been able to do better in school than he really does but he just won’t apply himself, I know he loves history but he only got a 3 on the AP History exam, and of course he’s never been very good at math, his foreign language skills are OK but nothing to write home about, he loves baseball but he’s never taken up any other sports besides that and you know he’s never been selected MVP, of course he’s never had any interest in student government, maybe he’s just going to get some kind of award for being a good kid which of course he is and of course I love him dearly but he’s never earned any kind of prize for any actual achievement ….”  Clearly her analysis of what prize he might get wasn’t exactly wrong, but dear God it was wearying and depressing to have to listen to it.  Why does she have to run down her own children so much?

Then there was my father, who kept trying to turn the conversation to me, and to compare Son 1’s prize to the prizes I got when I was that age.  I was the kid who kept taking all the prizes for best grades in my class and the school.  But really, all those prizes and a couple of bucks will get me a cup of coffee, that’s about it.  Besides which, I’m not the one graduating this weekend: Son 1 is.  The weekend should be all about him.  I’m here as a proud dad and as a chauffeur.

The less time I have to spend with either of those two, the happier I am.  On the other hand, I suppose I really ought to let it go, and not let them get to me.  The weekend should be all about Son 1.

I am proud of him.