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.”
December 23 2023
It’s alright to be lonely. There’s nothing to fix, nothing wrong. There is no evil to combat. No drink is needed to numb and escape.
It’s alright to have unmet desire. The ache is neither good nor bad; it merely is. Maybe it holds hands with good.
There’s nothing that needs to be filled. The canyon does not require a bridge.
Sanity is being able to be in want and simultaneously know nothing needs to be done. There we are held. There we discover we are never alone. What a gift it is to feel anything at all.
December 22 2023
Laying in bed next to me, head on my chest, my 5 year old asked me, “Dad, when am I going to die?”
“Oh my boy, my boy, my boy. You and your brother will live forever, through time and past time, under and around it. You will slay countless dragons and hike though thousands of forests. You’ll meet dwarfs and witches and giants and magicians. You, my big man, are at the beginning of forever.”
He asked me a grandiose question and I reply with the same energy. It’s not that he isn’t ready for conversations about mortality — readiness isn’t the point — what I think he’s asking in part is “Am I safe?”
He both is and is not safe, so I convey that concept through story. But if I say “You are and you are not safe,” then I’ve done the same thing as if I said, “Yes, one day you will die.”
Is it true that he’ll die? I think so, yes. Is it true for him? It’s not. For instance, even though he helped shovel soil onto our dog’s body in our backyard after Jack died, both boys often say they saw Jack running beside the car, or that Jack is now in the body of another animal.
Both boys have a sense of eternity, renewal, foreverness. To them, everything is enormous. Adults are giants. The world is endless. The universe is growing.
They are teaching me to live in that space far more than I am teaching them.
December 15 2023
There are a lot of angry men. Some are angry at women, some at culture, the news, some at their bosses, politicians, some at their spouses or kids. They might listen to Joe Rogan or Andrew Tate, a voice from that camp. Others might be quiet, removed.
Kindly I’ll say why don’t you go back to Ohio and confront your father, or go to his grave and get after him there? Boy do they ever not want to do that. They want their rage, and taking it to the father requires them to act and maybe lose something. They stare past me, into a landscape on fire, shaking their heads.
It’s not about throwing the father under the bus. He’s already been there for a thousand years.
Maybe crawl under a tire next to him. Tell him I hate you I love you thank you I’m sorry I forgive you. You don’t even have to mean it! Just dip your toe in that river. See what happens.
December 14 2023
They want to be held.
The younger one seeks it out. He comes to find me, in my chair or on my bed or at the stove. If he’s not at my side I know soon enough I’ll hear quick footsteps on the hardwood floor grow from faint to loud, then there he is.
The older waits for it. He will stay wherever he is — reading on his bed, drawing at the kitchen table, popcorn and a show on the couch, for hours. When I go and sit next to him he wraps his arms around me tight and says, “Where were you? I missed you.”
I need to keep these two moves in mind: receive and go towards. A third move: teach them to do the same. That’s the work.
December 13 2023
When teaching my sons (5yo & 8yo) about any larger concept, sex or death or betrayal or that one day they will have to leave me and their mother to become their own men — if I tell them about these things in a flat tone, or if I am direct and dry in my language, they shut down. I have seen them become guarded. This often leads to never telling them what they need to learn in bits and pieces over time. But if I walk into those concepts by beginning with the words, “Once upon a time there was a king and a queen in a castle near a great woods, and that king and queen had a son….” — my boys light up because the playing field has been leveled. It’s no longer dad talking. It’s generations. It’s our ancestors. It’s mystery. They don’t put that language to it, but they know it’s not simply me. By using story I can tell them about absolutely anything, and they are enthralled.
December 10 2023
Before any religions made their holy books, before verses and chapters and surahs and ayahs and sections and poems, there was earth — the original text. Who we are, why we are, what we are, all surrounds us in living stories of life, death, renewal, love, protection, battle, nurturance, scent, texture. What do you see, my boys? Who are we? What is all of this, and why? What is the Source, the Mystery, the Face? They don’t hesitate. They don’t ponder and articulate. There’s nothing to say. They only smile and run.
