Visiting Son1 and Dorcas

Yesterday morning, I visited Son1 in his apartment, now almost two weeks after Wife vacated it.

Partly I was motivated by morbid curiosity: what did the place look like? Partly I was motivated by an acquisitive itch: did she leave behind anything I wanted? And partly I just wanted to be sociable. Normally I don't see my kids very often.

The place looked more jumbled than usual, but a lot less crowded. Most of the furniture was gone out of the living room, and all the nice bookcases. The living room rug was still there, and I know that came from somebody in Wife's family because at one point (back when we all still lived together in a house) one of her nephews tried to extort it out of her. Lovely family. Son1 remarked that there is literally no place in Wife's new digs where it will fit. 

Of course we talked about Wife, and how she reacted to the move. (I notice in passing that half the time Son1 refers to her by her name, instead of saying "Mom." He still says "Mom" once in a while, but the change is striking.) Son1 said that he thinks part of the long-term therapy which she needs is to have all her useless, ancestral junk stripped from her, so that she has to reconstruct her life without it. I didn't say anything specific, but I was thinking that this was exactly what D and I thought way back during the Housecleaning From Hell in December 2008 and January 2009, that I've described as "Second date." (The account stretches from here to here, but you can pick this one as a good solid example of our thinking.)

We talked about Wife's drinking. He thinks she has accepted the designation of "alcoholic" because it gives her an excuse: if she's an alcoholic, then nobody can expect any better of her. I remember how bitterly she hated her own father's alcoholism, and how long she denied that her mother had the same problem because she didn't want it to be both of them. If she's now decided simply to accept the same diagnosis herself, that's a huge change. Of course it has been decades. (Her mother died in 1994. I think her father died in 1978.)

I don't remember all the other things we discussed. For a while we talked about trivia like our respective work, or unusual air travel.

In the end, I did go and look at the wreckage left in what had been Wife's room. One bookcase was still there, with a few books randomly strewn across it. There were a few (the minority) that looked interesting and weren't garbage; Son1 said I could take them. Apparently the criterion for which books to take was "What fits in the truck?" because Wife had done no packing or sorting before Son2 arrived to help load the truck.

Among the contents of the shelf, I found notebooks that Wife had kept. I didn't take them, though now I wonder if I should have. They seemed to be laid out according to one or another psychological theory for dealing with instrusive thoughts, and the entries were dated. This one dated back to 1993. That one dated to 2011. (The layouts were different from one to the other, I should add ... probably she was working with different therapists during those years.)

What I found most remarkable was the amount of guilt that I saw expressed in her notes. When writing in her own journals, she could freely admit that her infidelities caused me pain, and that her crazy overspending caused me distress. She could admit that they were wrong. But then those admissions triggered automatic thoughts of total worthlessness that made her mind spiral out of control. Apparently she was trying to learn ways to stop the automatic spiralling.

But I guess she never did. At any rate, she never got to a point where she could admit to me that she knew what she had done, and that she knew it had hurt me, and that she was sorry. If I were in the room, she'd fight me.

Those journals were a remarkable discovery. I still don't really know how to feel about them. And I wonder if I should have taken them, or if it is better to let them be swept away with the juink?

           

Looks like a big year

It looks like this is going to be a big year.

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I went to the Ecosophian Convention in June. That was big, right there.

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I mentioned a while ago that I'm back to work on my book. My goal is to self-publish successfully this year. I don't expect to make a lot of money at it, although it would be nice if Fate proved me wrong. But it explains an obscure, niche topic. The natural audience is probably not large, and I've never been very good at publicizing myself. The goals that I hope to achieve include:

• proving that I can set and achieve a long-term goal;
• learning about the self-publication process, so I can plan to publish some of the other stuff bubbling in my head;
• opening up the possibility for my sons that they can achieve things in life above and beyond holding a regular job, because it is always easier to do a thing if you see someone else do it first. (To be clear, my own father was rather weak on the "holding a regular job" part, so that was the first thing I wanted to model for them!)

But there is more. Turns out that the world doesn't revolve around me. 😀

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Wife moved from living with Son1 to living near Son2. Son1 and Son2 organized the whole move between themselves, and are handling the aftermath.

Son1 will be moving in with Dorcas soon. Son2 proposed to Beryl.

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Debbie has had multiple spells of atrial fibrillation. Already this year she has had a device inserted into her heart to help regularize its behavior, and she is on medication to help with that as well. We still talk regularly every Friday afternoon, but more and more those conversations tend to drift over to talking about death. She's still making plans for the future, but more and more she talks about wanting things to be in order by the time she is no longer there to order them.

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Because Debbie has been thinking about death, she has been pushing our Unitarian Sangha to establish a Care-Taking Council. I wrote about the very first steps ... setting up an exploratory committee to review the idea ... back in 2025. But most of the activity will take place this year.

Also related to that, this spring our Sangha held its first ever Day of Mindfulness. We are slowly stretching out of a fixed and unchanging shape that we've held for some 20 years.

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Marie's favorite nephew was arrested by TSA. Turns out he was on a cruise with his parents (Marie's sister Cuñada, and her current husband). TSA explored his tablet, and found pornography on it. Some of the pornography involved subjects below the legal age of consent. This translates to five years in prison—automatically—without the possibility of parole. Marie is beside herself—partly at the fate of her nephew, of course, but partly because of the nature of the offense. She has not said so, but my guess is that years ago (before we got back together and she started to re-evaluate her attitudes towards sex), she would have approved of such a law. Today she hates it because it endangers Nephew. There are probably other complexities as well ... Marie generates emotional complexity effortlessly.

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I'm in a fight with my professional organization. I don't know why I care, and some days I don't. It's not like I'm working any more. My membership expires this month. Maybe I'll just let it go. Still, if I do, that's another milestone for this year.

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At the end of June, Schmidt wrecked his car. He described it this way:

"Driving to town for groceries and prescriptions.  Just a mile or two out of town, got distracted trying to let a wasp out the window, drifted just enough to hit a mailbox that (due to prior vandalism I suppose) was anchored with steel and concrete like a damn skyscraper and totally wrecked the car.  Flipped, rolled, slid... good thing I'm in the habit of doing only 60 on that part of the road!  Seat belt & air bags did their job and I crawled out the (pulverized) passenger side window with just some cuts and bruises.  Somebody came along just as I got out and used his cell phone to call 911 -- I was still dazedly trying to collect myself and wondering how to use my phone without  my glasses (knocked off and god-knew-where).... Cue EMTs, Highway patrol, tow truck -- tow operator finally found my glasses for me (way in the back of what's left of the car) so I can see again."

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My former boss wrote me that he is afraid of being laid off, because the huge company that we both worked for is doing lots of business except not in his country.

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Numerologically, 2026 is a "1-year" because 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 10, and 1 + 0 = 1. According to John Michael Greer, 1-years are: 

"Ruled by the Sun, this is a number of new beginnings and opportunity. This is a time of practical action and constructive change.  It's a good time to take direct action and to start new things in motion, so long as they aren't complex or evasive. Move ahead forcefully during this year."

All-righty then!

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Have I forgotten anything? Maybe. Probably

Is there more that I don't know about? Gosh, I hope not!

           

Proud, I guess?

Last weekend—well, Monday actually—Wife moved out of Son 1's apartment to go live by herself near Son 2.

I told you this was coming in this post and this one, both from a few months ago.

Anyway, it finally happened. Nobody told me anything about it. I learned a little bit by texting the boys and asking things based on my assumptions ... whereupon I learned that my assumptions were all wrong and they were several steps ahead of me.

In this whole operation—well, up until this morning—the only thing they have asked me to contribute is money: not work, not thoughts or planning or suggestions, not decision-making, not physical presence (even if only to manage Wife) ... nothing else. And the cash was specifically intended for her first-and-last-month's-rent deposit in the new place. For what it is worth the sum they asked for was too small to cover that. I guessed that they would probably need more, so I buffered the amount I gave them ... and it turned out to match what they needed very closely.

Other than that, they handled it all. They organized a plan whereby: 

• Son1 moves in with Dorcas. (Remember that Dorcas owns a condominium free and clear.)
• Son1 sends to Son2 the money he would otherwise have spent on rent. 
• Son2 uses that money to pay Wife's rent ... and the apartment is rented in his name, not hers.
• Son2 stops in to check on Wife from time to time, to make sure she has food in the house and isn't drunk off her ass or doing crazy shit.

They also worked out a complete plan for the move.

• Wife had filled two storage iunits, plus she had her stuff all over Son1's apartment.
• Son1 rented a 15-foot U-Haul trailer for the weekend.
• Son2 flew to be there for the weekend.
• The two of them spent the weekend loading the U-Haul with as much stuff as they could make fit.
• Sunday night they put Wife on a plane to Son2's town. I assume Beryl met her at the other end and gave Wife a place to stay, because otherwise Wife would have been completely helpless.
• Monday morning, they drove the truck to Son2's town. It took all day.
• Tuesday they unloaded the truck. I guess they returned it. Son1 flew home.

Today I got a note from Son1 (copying Son2, so everything was above board), asking if I can pay for Wife's rent for one month, because she had so much junk left over that he will have to keep his apartment rented another month just to clean it out. And he can't pay two rents at once. I said, yes, I think I can.

What do I think about all this?

• On the one hand, stereotypically, I think I'm supposed to feel bad at being treated as a source of cash and nothing else. What am I, chopped liver?
• On the other hand, I can see that my body has deteriorated over the years. I have nowhere near the energy and strength that Son1 and Son2 have. This is just a simple fact.
• On the third hand, and related, I'm relieved not to have to deal with the consequences of Wife's crazy accumulation and hoarding yet again. Been there, done that. 
• On the fourth hand, it feels truly, truly weird that there was a major event involving Son1, Son2, Wife, and lots of work ... and I was left out of it.

I asked if it would be helpful if I came down to order pizza or something, while they were working. One of the boys (I think it was Son 1) said it would be better if I stayed out of sight. So I dropped it.

Then the next thing I knew, Son1 was texting that he had gotten home safe and sound a couple of days later.

So how do I feel, in the long run?

I'm glad that they can plan something this complicated together, and that they can see a common perspective well enough to agree what to do. Son1 is 29, but turns 30 later this year; Son2 is 28. I think back to when I was 30—or 28!—and I'm not convinced I could have been this mature about planning the relocation of a parent. Nor am I sure that Brother and I could have seen things similarly enough that we could have worked together so well. Actually I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have.

So I guess I'm proud of the boys: for their initiative, their diligence, their common understanding, their ability to work out and agree on the details (better than many professionals I've worked with), and their commitment to see it through.

I still feel really weird at not having been involved at all, but perhaps I just need to thank my lucky stars. Besides, it's in the past; so after a while I'll forget. Right?

Meanwhile, please pass the brandy.