“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t mind!”

Last night I was talking to Son 1 over dinner. (You remember that he's working about an hour from here and still sleeping on my living room floor.) And out of the blue he said that on his way home from work he'd figured out how to answer one of Wife's chronic complaints.

"She's always saying, 'You spend so much more time with Dad [that's me] than with me. You must never want to see me!' And the next time she says it, what I'm going to tell her is, 'Look, I live with Dad because his place is an hour closer to my work than your place is. But if I had my own place, I'd see him less often than I see you.'

"And I think that's true. Because if I lived on my own I'd still try to see her once a month because she gets so clingy if I don't — also to make sure she's doing OK and not drinking and stuff. But I'm pretty sure you wouldn't mind if I didn't see you anything like that often! When I was in college we only talked if we had to work out the planning on something."

"Or if you needed money," I added.

"Right, but except for tuition that happened less and less often as the years went on. Then we'd get together over the holidays and we'd talk nonstop for a while. But if I lived on my own you'd probably be fine with my seeing Mom [Wife] and not seeing you."

Was he speculating? Was he asking? I'm not sure. In a sense what he was saying sounds pretty bad: I wouldn't care enough to see you if I didn't have to because I live with you, and you wouldn't care enough to want it any other way. It's a hell of a message. 

And the worst part is that he's probably right. Oh, not because I "don't care" ... I mean ... not exactly. But I don't think I would feel as needy as Wife. I don't think I would feel as forlorn, as bereft, as abandoned as she would feel if I went for a few months without seeing either boy. That is to say, I enjoy both of them. I like to talk to them. I think it's great that Son 2 got in the habit years ago of calling each of us [Wife and me] once a week to check in and talk about what's going on. Sometimes the call lasts 5 minutes, and sometimes it lasts 90. And it's a habit his older brother never acquired. As I say, I like it. I always feel good after talking with him. But if I had to go a month or two without anything more than brief emails sharing jokes, I wouldn't take it personally. I wouldn't mourn. I'd just figure that was how it was, and go on about my day. 

What accounts for the difference? Probably several things. 

- One is that I have a job, so I already have regular contact with other people. 

- I volunteer once a week. (Of course Wife goes to church once a week, so maybe those balance out.)

- When I have the time I write long letters to Marie, though I don't know if Wife has anyone similar in her life. (A few years ago the boys said there was some guy at the other end of the country who would call her daily with his problems, so maybe she gets some of her social needs met that way.) 

- And I'm just better at accepting a new status quo than Wife is. That is, she finds it easy to feel trapped by the status quo, and to believe that The Way Things Are is The Way They Have To Be. But she still hates it. Me, I can adapt to any new status quo and find a way to be happy in it. Hence the new six-word memoir I thought up two months ago, "Sooner endure than confront or change." (Hence also why I realized that it would take desperate measures for me to become sufficiently uncomfortable with my car troubles to buy a car. Fortunately last week I had no car available at all — my dad's old car was having more engine troubles — so I had to walk to and from work each day, three miles one-way up a steep hill. Last Sunday I went out and bought a new car.)

There's one last element that's a little different from the others, because it involves how I see the boys. Wife always felt rejected by everyone, even at times when I was trying to tell her I loved her; and so at some level I think she saw the boys as two people who at the very least were guaranteed never to reject her because it was their job to love her. And her whole approach to child-rearing was built on continuously reinforcing the bond between them and us (or her).

My idea was different. In the first place, I figured that the primary obligation ran the other direction — that we owed the boys more than they owed us. (I pause to note that Plato says the same thing in the Laws.) But what we owed them — in some ways our only job as parents — was to teach them to be self-supporting, independent adults in their turn. If we achieved that, nothing else mattered; and if we failed at that, everything else was just window dressing. So whenever I could, I encouraged them to go out on their own and do things for themselves. It's part of why I insisted they go to boarding schools for high school. It's one reason I was willing to pay through the nose for them to travel abroad with People-to-People as grade schoolers. I have tried hard to be consistent about this one point, even when I had to fight with Wife over it and even when it hurt to see them not need me any more. But I reminded myself that if they didn't need me, that meant I had done something right. 

Maybe I should hear Son 1's remarks as vindication. Maybe I should treat them as a compliment, because they imply that I'm not weak enough to fall to pieces whenever he's not there to hold me together. Maybe I should acknowledge that I really like my solitude, and that — much as I love him! — he's not wrong to think it will take a while before I really miss him. 

Or maybe what he told me is every bit as bad as it sounds, and it's a sign that there is something wrong with me. I recently read that failing to keep up your social contacts is as bad for your health as smoking a pack a day. Maybe I should spend some time meditating on that for a change. 

Maybe I should say "Fuck it all," pour one last shot of tequila, and go to bed. Night-night, all.

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A young man very angry with the world

For three weeks I was out of town on vacation; then for another week I was again without a working car (I finally bought a new car last weekend). So it had been a month since I had attended my Tuesday night Sangha when I finally did last night. 

It was good to be back. One of the long-term members reported that his sister died last week, suddenly, in the big city about two hours away. She was younger than he was, which gave him pause on top of his normal grieving. And he said that since then a large number of synchronicities had been tumbling out of the woodwork at him — apparently meaningless coincidences one after another after another. 

Later, as we discussed something else, he explained further that his sister had been born as his younger brother Barry, grew up as a man, had kids — the works. But they were never able to talk. Barry always answered questions with just a word or two and always seemed very angry at the world. But about ten years ago Barry traveled to Thailand and came back as a woman ... and as my friend's sister she had a totally different personality, much more open. My friend said that he had more and deeper conversations with his sister in the last 10 years than he had ever had while she was his brother in the years before that. 

As I drove home I remembered my father said more than once that when he was a young man he was for many years "very angry at the world." I know I've questioned that. Isn't anger something that flares up in an instant and then dies just as fast? Isn't it more likely that he was afraid of the world for all those years, and that he concealed his fear (as we often do) behind a mask of anger? 

But last night I wondered something else. Did he secretly want to be someone that the world wouldn't let him be? That "someone" might have been a woman, or it might have been a man who didn't have to do all the masculine posturing that was required of boys in the 1940's and 1950's. A man who could love the theater and music and cooking without being ridiculed as effeminate ... a man who could even have had sexual contact with other guys in his youth without obsessing over it for the rest of his life. For the record, my father did love the theater and music and cooking. I don't know for a fact whether he ever had sex with another man; but it's a hypothesis I've come to over the years to explain things about him. 

For example: When my brother and I were growing up he was always terribly concerned that we turn out "normal" (heterosexual). He insisted that "gays recruit". And he had a specific scenario in his mind that he would talk about over and over, that sometimes a young man has a "formative early experience" that makes him think he's gay when really he isn't. All of this sounds to me like he was wrestling with his own memories. What's more, in many contexts he womanized almost aggressively ... not (I think) because he wanted someone besides my mother (whom he worshipped) but as if he were trying to prove something. See, I'm as straight as the next fellow!

What would he have been like if he had had the opportunity to become someone totally different?

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I bought a car

I'm writing this a few days after the fact (and back-dating the post), and I'm not going to say anything terribly interesting. But I've written you about having car troubles for the better part of a year now. (See especially this post here, for example.) And always somehow I've put off dealing with it for another day. Oh, I've collected information here and there, but I never organized myself to do a serious car hunt.

But yesterday it all came together, when I clicked on a button inadvertently on the Consumer Reports website and five minutes later got an emailed offer from a dealership an hour away on a new 2019 model I had been seriously considering. The offer was a really good price on that particular model -- doubtless because they want to get the 2019's off the lot to make room for the 2020's and it's not a sexy color.

Who cares? Son 1 drove me down there today. (At this point I had no working vehicle, and I had been walking to work for a week. Three miles each way. Uphill. Sorry, I'm getting distracted.)

Anyway, I test drove it. And two-and-a-half hours after we walked onto the lot, I drove out in a brand-new car. It is the first vehicle of any kind that I've bought since Wife and I bought a minivan in the summer of 2002. It is the first four-door sedan I have bought since December 1987 when Wife and I bought the car that finally gave out on me last year. It is the first vehicle of any kind that I have bought without Wife's pressure, initiative, and help -- ever. And it took me only 150 minutes (or ten months, I guess, depending how you look at it).

For most people this would be a minor accomplishment. They would have done it sooner and gotten on with life. But for me it feels like a really big deal. I recognize also that I had really good luck, and I am grateful for it.

I'm almost 58 years old. Do I still get to tag this post with #adulting?
  

Reflections on vacation

As I write this, it's October. But back in July -- when I have dated the post -- I sent the following letter to Marie as a follow-up to our vacation in New Zealand. I think it speaks for itself.
__________

Hey sweetness!

 

I didn’t know where this was going to go at first, but it ended up being a restatement of the idea I proposed last week that part of why we go on vacation is actually for the sheer trouble and inconvenience of it all. (And anyone who has ever been camping will have numerous examples to hand! Yet people still go camping ….)

 

It’s not great – in some [many!] ways I think it may be too precious by half – and I welcome suggestions for improvement. All I can say in its defense is that – dear heavens, but it seems like our conversation has gone on for too long a stretch without any poetry! Maybe I’m just failing to pay attention or maybe I’m counting wrong, but it felt high time to do something about it.

 

=======

 

There’s rhythm in the hum of day-to-day,

Of coffee, emails, work to do and done –

A kind of verse, a poem in its way,

That sings us on our road from sun to sun.

 

So breakfast rhymes with breakfast, task with task,

We go to work each day just like before.

The tune so charms us that we never ask

If out beyond this round hides something more.

 

There’s comfort in this song of somnolence.

To break it off is pain and irritation.

Disrupting habits leaves us fraught and tense.

And trouble is the hallmark of vacation.

 

But now and then this inconvenience

Is just the balm, the medicine we need,

When by good fortune it can jar us loose

To break the crust of our too-daily selves.

 

Put down the phone.

Wade through water, not through words.

 

Go feel the breeze.

And listen to the birds.

    

Why do we travel, 2

I asked this question five years ago (https://hoseasblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-do-we-travel.html), and I'm going to ask it again: Why do we travel?

I'm writing this from New Zealand, where I am traveling with Marie and (some of) her family for two weeks or so. Right now she is on a helicopter tour of Franz Josef Glacier, which didn't interest me enough for me to fork out the $200. Yesterday we visited a refuge where we saw some endangered kiwis. And so on. And so again I wonder, Why am I here? It's not to learn about kiwis, because I could learn far more about them from books or the Internet. So why? 

I asked Marie, and between us we came up with at least one provisional answer: we travel in order to be inconvenienced.

Because travel involves a lot of headaches. It involves inconvenience on a massive scale. But that very inconvenience pulls us out of our comfort zones, out of the little bubbles of Habit that we build around ourselves as part of daily life.

When I get too far into a rut, it is as if I stop noticing things: stop tasting food, stop seeing colors, ... all because it is routine. That's not literally true, of course, but it becomes possible to answer the question "What's happening?" with "Nothing — just the usual." You can't do that when you travel because nothing is as usual. The food is strange, so you taste it. The sights are strange, so you see them. 

Robert Pirsig talks about the difference between Static Quality and Dynamic Quality. We travel because the very strangeness of things breaks a hole through which we can see Dynamic Quality if we but look. In a sense, the inconveniences and nuisances are the point of the whole thing. 

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