October 20 2024
I was sitting at the table with Waits after dinner. Half eaten plates of food, legos, scraps of paper, my head resting in my hands. Waits is both perceptive and nurturing. I wasn’t hiding my emotional cards, but the softness in his tone when he senses a shift tells me, a 41 year old man, that it is safe to say what I feel.
“Dad, you’ve looked sad today.”
There is a line here, a boundary, and it can be sort of nebulous, especially when emotions are steering the boat. I want to let Waits in, to let him see a vulnerable and emotional father, one who doesn’t have it all together but can still be relied upon and trusted. I don’t want him to have to take care of me. He doesn’t need to be caring for an adult man at 9 years old. So the move is how to show him where I am and not put him in a place where he has to be a caretaker, to be something he is not and should not yet be.
“Well pal, I’ve been scared. And that’s ok. Some days I’m scared and some days I’m not, and even when I’m scared I know that the three of us are in a good place,” I told him, my arms now resting on the table. He’s looking at me, taking apart legos.
“Have you cried?” he asked me. “It always helps me when I cry.”
“You know pal, I haven’t cried. I’ve wanted to cry, but the tears won’t come,” I said.
“Do you have an invisible friend?” he asked, eyebrows raised, a brightness in his face. “I talk to mine a lot and he helps me cry sometimes. Maybe you need an invisible friend!”
“Waits you’re right. I think that’s what I need.”
He grabbed some nearby paper and one of the 38 pencils that never make it back to their home.
“I know what he should look like. And I know all the things you like.”
For 10 minutes he drew, talking through all of the elements.
“His name is Cristafre.” (He said “Christopher” and spelled it the way he spelled it which is perfect.) “He wears a stocking cap and has a walking stick. This is his portal. There’s a tree because you love trees. And there’s a lamp growing out of the tree because you love to make lamps. And there is music because we are always listening to music. Everything is made out of wood. Oh and that’s a rainbow. Just because.”
• • • • • • • •
The tears still haven’t come. I don’t know why. Maybe the feeling of being scared has temporarily closed something in me. Could be a number of things. I don’t have to figure it out. What I know is that it's good for me to feel what I feel, stay present with it, not numb myself, listen to what it might have to teach, and let others in so that I don't shrink away into aloneness and the spiral of victimhood.
And here's my boy, giving me the gift of a new friend and the gift of his vulnerability of how he opens up to another.
September 20 2024
The father will be a bad father because the father has a shadow. This is unavoidable and archetypal and important. It is never an excuse for intentional bad fathering — that is cowardice.
But part of the father’s mythical place is to be a bad father. Oedipus’s father King Laius was a murderer. Abraham went to kill Issac. God betrays Jesus. This stuff is written across time.
I will be a bad father because I cannot truly see my boys. They are too similar to me and I’m unable to see myself as I am. When they anger me I am seeing myself in them, but rather than recognizing that and grieving it, instead I pout or yell or blame.
I will also be a bad father because I am scared of being a father. I am absolutely terrified and I want to leave and run away and hide. But I choose to stay, believing that I am a good father even in my bad fathering. I have to know this. I have to be reminded so that I don’t put too much pressure on myself to be something that I cannot be. That’s why I need other men around my boys who can mentor them in ways that I cannot. Mentors don’t need to worry about putting food on the table or fixing the roof, and they can see the bright goodness in my boys and can call them to more in the places I cannot.
So I lean on my brothers. I cannot do this alone. Help me live into my goodness as a father by seeing what I cannot see and saying what I cannot say. Tell me when I am showing my teeth when I should be weeping. And whisper again and again that I cannot and do not have to do it all by myself, that it’s not all on my shoulders. That’s a burden no one can bear.
September 17 2024
My boys, when wounded, need stories swimming in the currents of their bodies so that rather than becoming the wound, becoming a woe-is-me victim of the concrete world that causes their knees to bleed, instead they can reach into those river currents and pull out a story they heard at bedtime about a boy whose finger was cut and when he dipped his sore finger in a pond his finger turned to gold. Or a story about an orphan boy who was deaf and rejected by the village and then received his hearing after he took a hard fall and knocked his head against the ground.
They won’t recall these stories as they are bleeding on the sidewalk or after they are mocked on the playground by that dumb jerk kid Rusten that every parent wants to bop on the head hard enough to instill a little fear but not hard enough to involve the cops. Sorry I lost the plot here a little.
Those stories and images and ancient wisdom teach my boys what to do with the wound. If they don’t have stories then they become the wound. The wound wants to ravage them, tell them they are weak, that they have no agency. Story, however, plants the seeds of something so magical and mystical that when they are grown men they will know how to weep over and love their wounds.
That is enough to get my tired and sometimes lazy ass into their bed and tell them a tale as they drift into sleep.
May 1 2024
Yesterday after school I let the boys watch YouTube while I laid on my bed and watched YouTube. After that my oldest kid, who is 8, was all pissy and grumpy for the rest of the evening, which in turn I became pissy and grumpy at him. It’s as if I gave him a bucket of sugar and was then angry at him for being hyper.
April 24 2024
My mother died 28 years ago today. I was 12. I am 40. The song of grief never ends, but the tone most certainly shifts. Grief is dark and empty and bright and full.
The tune begins with cacophony, cymbals clashing, timpani drums, trash can lids, a baby crying, trees falling, all asynchronous and chaotic. Then silence. Total unknowing. Then it progresses into a minor key, and that could last a year or two or ten. Could be a single E minor chord or something more dissonant. There are a lot of factors and no song is the same. Maybe more silence, or maybe you can’t hear the tune for awhile, or you forget it or block it out. A tonal shift to a major key occurs after a year or two or ten, and it’s spring time, and the baby’s cry turns to laughter and then into the giggles of 6 and 8 year old boys being tickled on a bed.
The song never ends — and for me, 28 years into the music, I find myself singing, teaching my boys the tune, and dancing.
March 17 2024
I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, “It tastes sweet, does it not?”
“You've caught me,” grief answered, “and you've ruined my business. How can I sell sorrow when you know it's a blessing?”
— Rumi, just out there in the 13th century dropping absolute bangers
March 16 2024
They know without knowing that you don’t have to travel across the world to an ancient ruin or a holy well to experience something sacred. You don’t have to buy tickets to the game or flights to Paris. They know — just kneel down and touch the moss in the cracks of the sidewalk. “Dad, it’s the earth’s pillow!”
Sometimes when we’re walking I see them as my sherpas, or little monks in robes, showing me the ways.
March 9 2024
The three of us spend a lot of times on screens. I look at my phone a lot. The boys look at my phone, the tv, and the computer screen. If I were to write out an essay about that, you’d likely nod your head and relate.
It’s 6:44am. Waits just woke up and walked out to me on the couch. We sat for a minute, him on my lap, and I felt him squirm towards the computer. Last night he and Murphy made new skins (characters) in Minecraft and I know Waits is pining to play the game with his new skin. So after just minutes of being awake he’s on the computer — because I let him. Then Murphy wakes up and comes out. Same thing happens.
You know how it goes. You feel bad about it, you feel ok about it, you have seasons with boundaries and fewer screens and seasons where it all falls apart. It’s ok.
But this isn’t about that.
This is about something ancient, mystical, vulnerable.
Sometimes, after we brush our teeth and after “Murphy, go pee. No, right now. Murphy go pee. MURPHY GO PEE IN THE TOI TOI RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR I’M GOING TO PUT YOU ON THE ROOF.” After all that we get the drum off of the wall and climb into bed together, Murph on my right and Waits on my left, all of us on our backs looking up and out into the dark. I start a beat, my story beat. BUM, bumbumbumbum BUM, bumbumbumbum BUM. I speak. “We welcome the story into the room. We say, ‘Welcome, story’ and ‘Thank you, story,’” (the boys say it with me). They are quiet. They are listening. The story comes in, having traveled for however long it’s been told, sometimes hundreds of years, sometimes thousands.
“Once upon a time. Once under a time. Once around a time. Once behind time. Once when people weren’t doing hard time. Once, there was a brother and a sister who were orphans in their village…”
At work in the shop I wear headphones and listen to myths and fairytales being told by great storytellers. The Orphan Boy and the Elk Dog. Faithful John. The Firebird and Princess Vasalisa. Iron John. The Spirit in the Bottle. The Maiden Tsar. I’ll listen to the same story 10 times in a week, allowing it to get into me, work me over. Doesn’t matter if I’m paying full attention — sometimes I can’t, but I know the story is seeping in.
Then I bring the story home. No need for notes. No need to tell the story precisely as I heard it. The boys don’t require that, neither does the story.
“The orphan girl, the sister, was beautiful and lovely and helpful in village. The orphan boy, the brother, however, was deaf in both ears, and therefore was not as helpful in the village and not wanted by the villagers.”
When I first started telling stories to them the words came out all janky and disjointed. I was nervous, aware of my monotone voice. Aware I was mixing up details. Just keep practicing. It’s all practice. You’ll get better. Let the spotlight be on the story. Let the drum create the rhythm. Allow the story to do its work as it’s done for generations. The boys need a good story, not a good storyteller.
Their breathing deepens. Not yet asleep, they are envisioning the characters and the landscapes in their imaginations. No screens to tell them what to see or where it’s going. They ask questions. They tell each other what they are hearing and seeing.
I tell them of an orphaned boy that goes off on a quest to find a spirit animal in a mystery lake in order to bring that spirit animal back to his village for good fortune in farming and hunting. The boy faces trials, fears, the unknown. He meets strange characters, obtains a magic belt, a medicine robe, and half a herd of spirit animals. The boy grows from timid to bold along his journey. He goes through an initiation, stepping from boyhood into manhood.
Deeper breaths. One of them drifts into sleep, one is on the cusp. I keep drumming, keep speaking, even a few minutes past the point where they are both asleep to let my voice and the story inform their dreams.
I crawl out of their bed, go to my room, hang the drum back on the wall, and thank God and the story. Then I sleep.
Oh yeah but first I look at my phone for 20 minutes.
February 25 2024
Murphy was inconsolable. I don’t remember what it was about. He’s 6, so it was something typical for that age, which means it’s typical for me at 40 as well, whatever it was — not getting what he was wanting, not feeling understood, tired, scared. We’re nearly the same. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, the earth is 4.5 billion years, humans are 300,000 years old — and Murphy and I have 34 years between us. He and I are a microsecond apart. To think any of us are any different from another is both true and as close to not true as you can get.
I was inconsolable as well come to think of it. Murphy expresses it with tears, stomping, crying, yelling — maybe I’d come to peace more quickly if I had the courage to do the same. But I have cowardice in me, so I shove it down, inwardly pout, play the mental victim, and slowly seethe over the course of days and weeks and lifetimes.
Standing over Murphy, his body wrenching, I feel my own anger and frustration. At him? At futility? At being a parent? I begin to heighten, matching his energy but not his way of expression. It’s all subconscious for me at this point. He’s frustrated, I’m frustrated at his frustration.
Then, in a moment, I remember that I’m powerless. Ugh. I forgot. I’m not in control. It’s so obvious when mere seconds ago I couldn’t see it. I get down with his body on the ground where he’s yelling and crying. Man do I understand. My boy my boy, I know. I want what I can’t have too. It’s the worst. I love your tears and I love your writhing and I love your flailing.
He’s just like me. He wants to be heard and understood and wanted and to have someone join him. I can’t control him, and the more I try to control him the more I set him up for a restricted and constrained life, and I do not want that for him. I want him to be free.
Let’s eat a cookie, pal. Sometimes that helps.
Ok dad.
February 9 2024
2024 HUMMINGBIRD MIGRATION UPDATE: Two rufous hummingbirds spotted in Texas & Louisiana and one ruby-throated in Texas.
January 14 2024
At the end of last month I crossed the threshold of my 4th year of sobriety. How wild is that. Here are some brief reflections on the past 1,460+ days.
+ My understanding of addiction has broadened and softened. My association with the word addiction before I got sober was limited to something like “not being able to stop drinking or drugging” and “only a small minority of people are addicts”. Now I see addiction as something like this: anything I return to repeatedly that disconnects me from what I’m feeling or experiencing. While I am no longer drinking nor do I ever think about drinking, I do see my addiction pop up when I’m feeling lonely, scared, or anxious in the forms of eating sugar, using my phone, and watching a ton of tv. Those are three of my addictions I’m aware of now, and I have no doubt there are others I go to and don’t realize it. When I feel sadness, I want to feel something other than sadness, so I’ll eat a sleeve of Oreos. It disassociates me from the sadness, but within an hour the sugar rush wears off, my awareness of the sadness returns, and the next day I have diarrhea. I call it my poo poo hangover.
+ My desire to flee from the emotions that I don’t want to feel through my addictive processes is a tremendous signpost for me, if I am willing, to allow the emotions to exist, to sit with them. It’s not bad to feel lonely or scared, just in the same way that it’s not bad to feel hungry. I can sit with those feelings and allow them to be my teachers.
+ Sober drunks are fantastic people. Being in AA has put me in rooms with people I would have no reason to be with otherwise. It’s such a unique array of people. Before I got sober I assumed AA meetings were filled with stumbling, down and out people who had a hard time getting their lives in order. That was a shortsighted assumption, and it was also true. I just didn’t know that so, so many people, and me, were stumbling, down and out people who had a hard time getting their lives in order. Some people in the rooms are tremendously wealthy, some have nothing, some are highly educated, some didn’t finish high school, and so on. Name your category of people, and they are in those rooms.
+ Listening to the stories of others in AA every week, without passing any judgment or responding to to their stories except to say, “thank you” and “glad you’re here” and “keep coming back” has been a gift, one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.
+ To have people listen to my stories every week, whether I feel like shit or I am feeling strong, has kept me sober. I absolutely cannot do it alone.
+ Being sober has little to do with refraining from substance use. Living a sober life to me means taking things day by day by being grateful, keeping track of where I am resentful and contemptuous, making amends with those people and places where I can, remembering that I’m so powerless (which is different than lacking agency), that I can daily turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand God and receive care from God/people/the earth/art/silence/etc. It’s about not drinking and it’s also about living as fully as I can, becoming more truly me every day, little by little.
+ I am a better father because I am sober. My boys, to their young memories, have not seen me drinking or drunk. What they have seen is a more engaged father. I’m more present, attentive, slower to rage. They have also seen a father who is an addict and they help me spot those places and give me the opportunity to let go (if I’m willing to do so). For instance, Waits came into my room the other day and told me I’d been on my phone too much. I looked up from my screen and said, “What’d you say pal?” What an annoying kid.
+ A year ago I changed my sleep schedule to go to bed when the boys do (between 8pm and 9pm), which allowed me enough rest to wake up between 4am and 5am. The morning hours before the boys wake have become sacred to me. I used to put the boys to bed, go drink til 11pm, then wake up in the morning feeling lethargic and annoyed and rushed. I still feel those things sometimes, but very rarely.
+ I miss celebrating with people with drinking. And that’s ok. It’s ok to miss parts of it. I miss bars, too.
••••••••
I’m a grateful man. I have everything I need. Some days I feel awful, most days I feel wonderful and filled with wonder. Life has not gotten any easier since I stopped drinking, but the ways I engage the tough parts and the beautiful parts have dramatically shifted. Thank you to any of you reading this who have always had me in your corner. Thank you to those of you who have abstained from drinking in solidarity with me at times when the people we were with were drinking. As a good friend of mine says, “I cannot do this alone, I need all the help I can get. I have an excellent chance of not picking up a drink today because you’re in my life, so thank you.”
