Nearly thirty-eight years ago I veered closer and closer to an emotional breakdown. Life presented me with challenges I couldn't handle. Even after engaging in my first period of psychotherapy I still did not understand how a clever fellow could make it through three decades and be so ill prepared for such common things as a failing marriage and finding that the arc of my story did not meet expectations I held since I was a teenager.
In the froth of my crises I found myself escaping into emotional isolation punctuated by casual affairs. In neither of these escapes did I need to figure out where I was, let alone where I was going. To put it another way, even though isolation might seem opposite engaging in an affair for me they became virtually the same thing. Neither one brought me into genuine relationship with someone, when what I needed the most was to devote energy and thought to discovering what a relationship is.
That February I escaped from the Washington, D.C., area to New York City. Soon I started feeling that I needed to escape from a pseudo-relationship there. In the summer my employer opened the escape hatch for me by sending me to join coworkers from across the country to deal with a big problem in Huntsville, Alabama. Grateful for an excuse to flee I hopped on a plane from La Guardia and let out a long sigh of relief.
Arriving in Huntsville we all plunged into an intense situation with long hours and impossible demands. The company's generosity (something unknown since the turn of the twenty-first century) kept us fed and housed very comfortably. In return we worked whichever ridiculous shift needed us most in a round-the-clock rush that had us sharing desks with others we would see only as one shift gave way to another.
Let me make a leap here from those old days to today, literally. This afternoon I received a message on one of the current social medium platforms that began, "I am a terrible Messenger friend," because someone had taken an extended time to reply to my recent message. She is wrong. And now we return to Huntsville and the past.
In that pressure cooker atmosphere we were spending a lot of time with our team members. Naturally we would find ourselves at the office sandwich shop with those we became friendly with, the ones becoming our pals. I had three pals there - Craig, a younger straight-laced engineer from rural Illinois by way of St. Louis; Wayne, a closeted big-city gay man fearful of discovery in the work setting; and Kaye, a local woman forced by work to spend much more time with the crew than anywhere else.
With Craig and Wayne I developed friendships that allowed me to open up, to talk about my difficulties while listening to the struggles that each of them faced. The fact that I had problems did not make me unique in this little group. With the help of my professional therapist and these friends, unpaid and unaware of their import, I found the benefit, both relief and comfort, that comes from letting my pals know who I was. The real me.
And I met Kaye with a new desire to be known. So I let her know me as I hadn't with anyone before. She let me know her with a transparency not offered by the women of my past. Our intimacy gave me a glimpse of what might lead to a solid relationship with meaning and significance for both people.
Circumstances limited the duration of our time together. Throughout our time I remained a work in progress, so to speak. Looking back with an additional thirty-eight years of progress under my belt I can see the gap between the way I was at that time and how I wish I had been. I had far to go.
Kaye's willingness to take me as I was, for as long as she could, deserves much credit for starting me on the path that has led me to where I am today. The consistency with which I can love my wife today is the result of steps I first took with Kaye. She was a friend - exactly the friend I needed at exactly that moment. My road hasn't been easy and I have had to review lessons many times. Still, Kaye set me on my way.
Kaye, in any sense, in Messenger or any other way, you are a friend. A good one.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Friday, April 13, 2012
Maybe She Did Work A Day
But does she know what it means to hold a job?
Her husband has told us all she drives Cadillacs.
Her husband, by the way, made nearly half a million dollars a year in speaking fees – what he likes to call “not much” money. He also makes millions of dollars, maybe not every year but most, on investments.
She has worked, exerted effort. She raised children and volunteered in her community. However, she has not been compelled to fill out an IRS Form W-4 – that form one fills out when instructing an employer how much withholding tax to take out of her pay.
It may be wrong to say about this woman that she “never worked a day in her life.” But it is perfectly true that as an adult she never had to get a job. If she ever had to work overtime it was because she was tending to people she loved rather than foregoing time with people she loved. She never had to put up with a boss’s borderline abuse because she couldn’t jeopardize her paycheck or her children’s health insurance. If she needed a vacation she could afford a really nice one without worrying that she was using money the children would need for clothes when the next school year started.
She is a woman of privilege. She is not the person her husband should turn to for insights into the concerns of the vast majority of American women. For those multiple tens of millions of women control over their reproductive organs is very important. For them equal pay for equal work would make a huge difference. For them a car repair is a tougher choice than which Cadillac dealer to call and the color of the loaner car.
If her husband wants to lead us he better be getting advice from someone much closer to our reality than she is.
Her husband has told us all she drives Cadillacs.
Her husband, by the way, made nearly half a million dollars a year in speaking fees – what he likes to call “not much” money. He also makes millions of dollars, maybe not every year but most, on investments.
She has worked, exerted effort. She raised children and volunteered in her community. However, she has not been compelled to fill out an IRS Form W-4 – that form one fills out when instructing an employer how much withholding tax to take out of her pay.
It may be wrong to say about this woman that she “never worked a day in her life.” But it is perfectly true that as an adult she never had to get a job. If she ever had to work overtime it was because she was tending to people she loved rather than foregoing time with people she loved. She never had to put up with a boss’s borderline abuse because she couldn’t jeopardize her paycheck or her children’s health insurance. If she needed a vacation she could afford a really nice one without worrying that she was using money the children would need for clothes when the next school year started.
She is a woman of privilege. She is not the person her husband should turn to for insights into the concerns of the vast majority of American women. For those multiple tens of millions of women control over their reproductive organs is very important. For them equal pay for equal work would make a huge difference. For them a car repair is a tougher choice than which Cadillac dealer to call and the color of the loaner car.
If her husband wants to lead us he better be getting advice from someone much closer to our reality than she is.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Worms
Inscrutable necessities
This morning's bike ride started shortly before the sun came into view over the hills between here and Purcellville. The calm dry air hardly moved. The dry pavement hinted at no overnight rain. A wonderful time to be pedaling.
And apparently the earthworms agreed with me: a great time to be on the road.
Thousands of earthworms had left their homes in the early morning hours and crawled onto the roads I often ride. Most of them were already desiccated* and had taken the twisted forms of commas, question marks and apostrophes - perhaps to punctuate my morning exercise. Others were still their squishy selves, crusted with road grit and struggling to get somewhere. A lucky few were flung from my tire onto various parts of the bike (and one onto me) for a somewhat quicker ride.
Okay, maybe they weren't really lucky, since each of these hitchhikers ended up dead, but let's face it: they were all going to die anyway.
Which makes me wonder: if they were going to die anyway, what the heck were they doing on a dry road in such numbers? I can imagine why a worm would come out of soggy rain-soaked dirt and find that a wet road is pretty comfortable. But what could possibly have driven so many worms out of the ground onto totally dry pavement.
Of course they didn't go to waste, except for the several still stuck to my bike and the one took off my shirt during breakfast. Crows have done a remarkable job of cleaning up the road.
*The Merriam-Webster online dictionary lists definition number 2 for desiccate as "to preserve (a food) by drying." I am thinking of the less culinary specific definition number 1, "to dry up."
Friday, February 24, 2012
Let's Honor the Troops With Accuracy
More foolishness on the internet
One of my Facebook friends, an artistic craftsperson with a generous spirit, recently posted a comment stating that the media has been overly absorbed by the late Whitney Houston and completely ignored a list of eleven names, "all Marines that gave their lives last month." He asked us all to repeat the post as a way of giving honor to the troops.
The post by my friend was studded with the " > " which often accompanies the body of a forwarded email, so I decided to look into it more carefully. So I did a Google search on the first name on the list: Justin Allen. I accepted Google's suggested refinement of "Justin Allen 23" which one could infer from my friend's original post was his age at the time of death.
The first item on the search results was a page at urbanlegends.about.com that mentioned exactly the same list of "Marines" being tacked onto a brief diatribe against Lindsay Lohan with a similar plea that we all copy the supposed tribute to the soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The date of the web page was September 26, 2010 - long before last month.
Like my Facebook friend I support our troops and encourage others to do so as well, even though my friend and I disagree on how best to manifest that support. However, I cannot help but think that eventually blindly copying and reposting inaccurate information will only hurt our cause.
Since the internet provides us with information so quickly we can take a moment to verify that what we repeat is true.
More foolishness on the internet
One of my Facebook friends, an artistic craftsperson with a generous spirit, recently posted a comment stating that the media has been overly absorbed by the late Whitney Houston and completely ignored a list of eleven names, "all Marines that gave their lives last month." He asked us all to repeat the post as a way of giving honor to the troops.
The post by my friend was studded with the " > " which often accompanies the body of a forwarded email, so I decided to look into it more carefully. So I did a Google search on the first name on the list: Justin Allen. I accepted Google's suggested refinement of "Justin Allen 23" which one could infer from my friend's original post was his age at the time of death.
The first item on the search results was a page at urbanlegends.about.com that mentioned exactly the same list of "Marines" being tacked onto a brief diatribe against Lindsay Lohan with a similar plea that we all copy the supposed tribute to the soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The date of the web page was September 26, 2010 - long before last month.
Like my Facebook friend I support our troops and encourage others to do so as well, even though my friend and I disagree on how best to manifest that support. However, I cannot help but think that eventually blindly copying and reposting inaccurate information will only hurt our cause.
Since the internet provides us with information so quickly we can take a moment to verify that what we repeat is true.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Saturday, December 10, 2011
How Small Were We?
Last evening on the way home from the movie theatre my wife and I chose to stop at the Leesburg outlet center to see if Gymboree had restocked its shelves. The day before she had been to Gymboree hoping to find something for her two nieces (aged five and two) and two nephews (ten and eight years old). What she found were nearly empty shelves.
We found stocked shelves and only a few patrons – precisely what my mental health needs while Christmas shopping.
Not being a parent, children’s clothing has never been a priority for me. And though my varied travels have brought me in contact with a wide range of people, never among them anyone involved in designing children’s clothing. In fact, aside from recognizing that children usually don’t run around naked I’ve hardly thought of children's clothing over the fifty years since I stopped wearing it.
It turns out some of it is cute: little girls’ t-shirts that say “Sweet & SASSY” and chest-covering depictions of T-Rex on shirts for boys for instance. Now my mother would have died before letting my sister wear a “Sweet & SASSY” shirt even if “sassy” were in lower case or merely a footnote. And Hiroko wasn’t at all convinced that her ten-year old nephew would like a giant dinosaur on his clothes. I know she is wrong about this, but Christmas is no time to declaim that men come from Mars at a very young age.
But the real eye-opening discovery of my first ever trip to Gymboree was finding such small clothes. At one point I stood thunderstruck that a boy’s shoulders could fit in the narrow gap between the sleeves. Fold one of the little girl’s shirts once or twice and it would fit in a pocket. My hands, nothing noteworthy in my keyboard-using profession, looked huge over the seat of those empty blue jeans.
The young people wearing those little clothes are literally in our huge hands whether we be parents or Uncle and Auntie. Juxtaposing the power in our hands against the delicacy of those tiny bodies reinforces the responsibility to treat them with reverence. For within each of those small frames God has placed a delicate spirit depending upon us and preparing to shape our unfolding world.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Cell Phone Sanity
Would this work?
I understand greed. I'm just not sure why we are so supportive of it.
We all want to talk on mobile phones. Many of us want to surf and do email on mobile devices. Some want to use Droids, some iPhones, some Blackberries. All of that is cool.
But why do we put up with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc, using our airwaves to provide competing services when we could have one system on which any manufacturer's phone could work. The carriers subsidize the phone purchase price to get us stuck with their service contracts, virtually none of which are understandable.
I'd rather have our taxes provide the service and let each of us choose which device suits our need - much the way we choose which cars to drive down the common highway.
Of course without Verizon Wireless and the others advertising heavily some other industry would have to pick up the tab for our TV shows. Maybe we can't win.
Would this work?
I understand greed. I'm just not sure why we are so supportive of it.
We all want to talk on mobile phones. Many of us want to surf and do email on mobile devices. Some want to use Droids, some iPhones, some Blackberries. All of that is cool.
But why do we put up with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc, using our airwaves to provide competing services when we could have one system on which any manufacturer's phone could work. The carriers subsidize the phone purchase price to get us stuck with their service contracts, virtually none of which are understandable.
I'd rather have our taxes provide the service and let each of us choose which device suits our need - much the way we choose which cars to drive down the common highway.
Of course without Verizon Wireless and the others advertising heavily some other industry would have to pick up the tab for our TV shows. Maybe we can't win.
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