Biting off more than I can chew

 I had this amazing idea earlier this year. I suddenly realized that in 1985, I was in the vicinity of my father from January 1st through December 31st. Why not write about the whole year, just like I had done for 1984?

I was excited and rushed in, looking forward to the discoveries I would make on that journey.  I had forgotten that one-third of the way through 1985, an atomic bomb went off on the road that I was traveling. On April 3rd this year, that story came to an unexpected halt. I was innocently writing and then realized there was a river of depth I was unprepared to cross. Ever since then, I have existed on the banks of that story, pacing around like I had something to do before crossing, but the reality is, I have no idea how to cross the water.

Photo by Quasi Misha on Unsplash

I have to turn around and consider how to do it. I conveniently remove my responsibilities by saying it is not my story to tell. Deep down, I know there is plenty I could tell without taking liberties that do not belong to me.

I know it is because the story is fragmented, which I do not understand. Thirty-nine years ago, I skydived into adulthood in a land I did not understand. My scars have stories I have not thought about enough to tell. I know that I should, but I do not know how.

I have not given up. I am just sitting here by the fire, resting and considering how to cross this river. I do not give up. My tenacity might be complicated and indigenous, but it pushes back with equal force. You will see me on the other side of this. I will do it in my own time.

Three years later

 In the season of eternal status, where spring would always give way to summer in the most predictable ways, as it was in the 1920s, the 40s, the 60s, and here today in 78, it did not seem to change. I got off the bus that came down the hill every day, and I knew what to expect. 

The summer pressed on. Inside of me however an awakening was underway. I could tell that behind the summer music, things were never going to be the same. A bouncy and complex jazz run had laced the airwaves and it boasted sharpness. There were signs that time was moving, which also meant that changes were in the wind. 

The late summer movies gave way to the atmosphere of the fall background. The smell of new clothing, and paper, and the hum of fluorescent lights overhead in a building constructed in 1906 gave way to gravity that could never be denied. In a moment you can learn so much about yourself. 

As the leaves changed color, we were mobile again for the first time in two years. The freedom brought about uncertainty. As I look back on this, I realize that this was a small example of a phobia that could return to me in 1991 and in 2022. Sometimes it takes a long time to find the answers to your questions.

I woke up, and things were new. I was new. I was in control now. I was viable and it was great and weird at the same time. In only 4 seasons such as this one, things would be more different than anyone, anywhere could ever imagine.

Three years later, we are on the 36-month merry-go-round. Everything always looks the same. But somewhere on the piano keys in the smoke-filled VFW hall, the player makes a fatal slip of the hand, and a wrong note echoes off into the night. With that, there is a shockwave promising change we did not see coming or even could have imagined. It will look like freedom for sure. It will write books and songs and people will be born. But it is not freedom, it is worse than death, and we will live to regret it.

Three years after this, on a subzero morning, reality is stifled for a moment and my brain even paints what I think I should see. Suddenly, the parachute opens and tears me back from my manufactured vision, forcing me to see how unfair the world is. Innocence notwithstanding, crushed you will be whether you deserve it or not. There it is, my ride is here.

The bridges of the Intercoastal Waterway slap the tires in rhythm with the music and the hot summer breeze. Everything is different. There is sand in my bed and sand in my dreams. There will never be a feeling like the one I feel now. Never. Here there will be nothing but bridges and they are everywhere. I would never trade this for anything. 

And then three years later, the sun rises over the severity of the Adirondacks and I see it as if it were my first time ever. I start the days slowly, resuming what the bitter cold day took from me back in 84, but soon, my impulse takes over and I am living nothing short of an action thriller, that sometimes I lose minutes or even hours of understanding about where I am or what I am doing.

Raw survival instinct kicks in and coupled with the life I have lived the last three years, I know I have something rarely ever imparted to anyone. The ride gets faster and more wild; that is when we jump and succeed. It is a new day and that is good, but things turn dark the following year and I find myself out on the fringe again, more than ever now.

It has been three years since I journeyed north, and it was time to go south again. The things you do when you have completely lost yourself and your mind. It was here that I was destroyed at the wall of creation in a violent blast! Rage coursed through me and revenge was all I could think of. But as the hours passed, I knew it was all me. The ride had to stop here and now, and somehow, it did. Big painful changes had to be made. There were so many of them. Some still hurt today.

What happened next defies who I am and yet defines who I am too. The one thing that I feared the most, the one thing I never did, denounced, and would never be a part of, I accepted, embraced, and watched it unfold like a novel that I was reading and not actually living in.

Three years later, Neil Young's Harvest Moon came out and in the notes of the music, I could feel that everything up and around the bend, was about to change. It changed in a very big way, forever. 

It was a very dark day three years later, standing at the bedside of my father learning that time was up, this was all we would have. It wasn’t right but it was happening anyway. The days that followed were even darker, I was sure I would never see the light of day.

Three years passed and I found myself in a whole new life despite not moving from where I stood. It was timeless and daring. Voices came in over the stratosphere warning that the end of everything was coming. We could never make it back. Suddenly I woke up in a dark parking lot, music was playing and change was in the air. As soon as I heard the music, I knew.

Three years later, Warren was gone, Johnny was gone too and I had a beautiful son. Everything was new and it made everything else that came before seem like it had all been a movie that I had been watching in a dark theater on a sunny afternoon. 

Three years later, there were two beautiful boys in my life. It kept getting better. Late in the year, affliction came knocking. Undiscovered country to navigate, to fight, and to survive.

Three years later, I sat in the hospital reading Are You My Mother to Noah hundreds of times, praying that he would be able to read it too someday. I walked the basement of the hospital with Liam exploring, spending time with him, hoping that soon we could be together again.

Three years later everything changed in the war. Where we were stationed, and how we were equipped. New normal. 

Three years later I am still climbing out of the mire of a life lived in a defensive posture. Never figured it out but I knew where to go.

Three years later I got perspective on the trails. I was starting to learn that discomfort is a diploma and one we should not deny. The biggest trial was coming. 

Three years later I fell on the dying grass that was recently only lush and green. I could not get up and I could not move. Everything that I was got turned upside down and spilled all over the ground. I did not know how to put everything together. A spaceship descended from the sky, and a woman got out and lifted me to my feet. She looked at me and asked, what would you do if you were not afraid?

Three years later I am sitting here writing this. I never noticed this unique rhythm that has played out here. Some days, I feel like I have come a long way. Other days I feel like I have not moved in 30 years.

The awful truth

 After the storm, the shelter doors open. It has become normal to live today as though this were a different planet than we had traveled to 20-something years ago. If not for written words, how could we ever remember who we are?

Sometimes you need the 18-year-old from 40 years ago to help you get a foothold. I feel fortunate that I can still communicate with him. The contrast of what a 17 or 18-year-old needs to go through today compared to 40 years ago is like a planetary difference. 

My concern is that, as a society, we have tried to minimize emotional pain by taking away the true meaning of relationships. But the depth of the emotional attachment in relationships is just as constant as the force of gravity itself. This means once our relationship is coming to an end, the inevitable pain and desolation are still there today just like it was 40 years ago. The problem is, as a society we have tried to pretend it wasn’t there and in doing so we are making it feel like it’s only happening to that one person. It has never happened to anyone else ever before in the history of the world. In doing so, we are not there for our younger ones.

As the Crawford family was getting ready to hike Mount Katahdin in Maine in 2018, having walked 2000 miles from Georgia, they did a lot of talking about how important it was that children are familiar with discomfort. I believe this to be 1000% true. When Liam was very little, probably about 27 months old, we were camping at Donna‘s brothers. The older kids were down by a little brook that flowed through the low part of the property we were at in the woods. I was keeping him in my sites while I talked with a couple who were visiting from Connecticut. Liam was very good at sprinting. He suddenly bolted down the hill through the brush towards the stream towards the other kid's voices. I was instantly out of my chair running at my absolute full speed towards the brush and the stream where he had disappeared. As I neared the bottom of the hill I tripped. Not wanting to be slowed down by stumbling, I vaulted myself through the air almost Superman-like, parallel to the ground that was sloping below me, and caught Liam just before he fell into the water. I walked back up with Liam in my arms, to where I had been sitting at the table. The woman I’ve been talking with shook her head and looked at me. “I’m gonna tell you what, I have never seen anybody in my life move as fast as you just moved.“ It was nothing talented. For lack of a better term, I would have to quote Woody in the Toy Story movie, Who described Buzz Lightyear’s flying as simply “falling with style.“

My point is, that my life has been a series of jumping in the dark without ever knowing if there was a place to land,  yet having some blind faith that there would be. I wanted something different for my children, and in doing so it made me the classic helicopter parent. If you would ask me in my 30s if I would ever do such a thing I would’ve told you that there would be no way, yet there I was. I never realized how important it is for a child to feel discomfort. It was only after I stopped being overprotective did I noticed that my son was amazing at figuring things out. Like me, he had to experience them though. 

One of my children is very good at gleaning solid lessons from other people's experiences. As you might guess, this only goes so far. The deeper valleys of coming of age still lie in wait, like snakes on the trail ahead. It is at those moments that I wish to regress to my overprotective parent status. Old habits die hard. I have to remind myself that here, the refinement arrives. I fear that modern culture has done a major disservice in trying to erase that refinement, and in doing so has left so many people in a 15-year-old-like mentality for the rest of their lives.

This came with a particular generation, but I am not blaming them solely of course. My generation, Gen X, is responsible for that generation. What did we do? What happened from the mid-80s to the year 2000? MTV stopped playing music. The Internet happened. It would be an excellent scapegoat to blame social media but during the formidable years of millennials, It didn’t really exist until later. It makes me wish I had met the Crawfords 20 years earlier, or at least the idea of what they symbolize. Their thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail had nothing to do with suggesting that other families should do the same. It was a reminder to look at the people in your family and understand what each one of their gifts is and allow them to show each other who they are. They showed that in doing so a level of discomfort is experienced based on decisions and it strengthens them and gives them the resolve to take on challenges, to express their gifts, to succeed, to not be afraid to fail, and to live.

As a parent, I now crave balance. I really do value what I have. We all know the awful truth is that hindsight is 2020, and inevitably I can never stop the wish but I had done things better. I know I’m a good parent, don’t get me wrong. I think I am just expressing the depth of love that all good parents have when they see their children grow up so fast. It takes more than a lifetime to learn.