October 18 2023
There’s always been an intensity in me, around me, as if I have canvas sails that only catch hurricane winds and ignore the passing gentle breeze. This is one of those characteristics that is equal blessing and curse.
Blessing — I pick things up quickly and can excel with some ease. I want to learn how to do woodworking or motorcycle maintenance or baking bread, so I buy the tools, read the books, watch the videos, and go after it until I can do it well. I have German and French heritage, engineering and poet energies, problem-solving and abstraction. Mastery of any one thing isn’t interesting. Breadth of skills and experience is alluring.
Curse — All or nothing mentality. It’s difficult to go slowly. Overbearing, overwhelming, overeverything. Addiction knocks at the door, and addiction isn’t concerned with the typical substances; it’ll take anything for a ride — work, relationships, media, exercise, food.
The work is learning how to befriend intensity, to know when to ask it to lead, when to ask it to walk beside me, and when to tell it to stay a few steps behind. It’s in my being, so there’s no destroying it — if I attempt to crush it then it merely chuckles then intensifies. The task is to learn to converse and listen. Negotiation with intensity is a skill.
I was laying on the couch the other night and I hear Murphy from across the room. “Dad! Can I have this book?” He walks up beside me holding my journal, on which he had drawn on the front and back covers with pencil and marker.
Here’s a glimpse into how I tend to go about things. When I decide to buy a journal, for instance, I spend a couple weeks looking around and saving ones I like. When I find one that really tickles me I’ll look into who makes it, maybe find info, if it’s out there, on the origin of the company, what species of trees are used to make the paper, how they produce it, as far as I can go. Sometimes the rabbit hole tunnels so deep that I can find the machinery that makes the paper, where THAT is made, where those machines tend to fail, and how to fix them.
I know.
None of this is necessary. I don’t do this sort of excavation for every purchase, but I do get a kick out of it.
Back to Murphy.
“Dad! “Can I have this book?”
“Oh - that’s my journal!”
The ! at the end of that sentence does not signify the volume of my voice, but maybe the energy. Murphy felt it right away. I saw his eyes widen, possibly some fear, his chin dropping down to his chest. Shame ran down him like a steam from his head to his feet. My heart hurt in an instant. I needed to dam that river.
Sometimes I don’t catch myself in these moments. Thank God I did this time.
“That’s so good pal. Can you draw some more on the inside?”
He looked up, smiled so, so bigly (that’s the exact word for it), and wrapped his little arms around my waist. That shame didn’t stay with him at all. Kids can recover in miraculous ways. I’ll hold onto shame for a week before I can release it.
The notebook does not matter (Midori MD A5 notebook, in case you are a similar notebook weirdo). The words in the notebook do not matter. What matters is Murphy. His drawings are valuable because he is valuable. I shift (not curse) of my intensity towards Murphy in love and away from anger or frustration. Often I monumentally get it wrong, and sometimes I catch myself and get it right. He will never remember that he drew in my notebook, but he will remember a father that turned towards him more than he turned away from him.
And now I’ve got these great drawings, a gift I did not know I wanted. I mean, he’s not good at drawing at all — you could even say terrible, but how great are these?
