There’s so much I want to talk here on the ol’ blog, much of which concerns issues that touch other people’s lives and, therefore, is best discussed on this pseudonymous corner of the web where real names and search engines don’t co-mingle. I will get back to the “Alienation” thread before too long, but I don’t want to overdo it on the dark stuff. While there’s plenty of dark stuff to go around, that’s not the sum total of where I’m at these days.

For example, there’s this thing that happened the other night.

The oldest child who still lives with me (you’ll recall that one has already fled the nest for college) is now a senior in high school. Can you believe that? Child #2 is a freakin’ senior in high school. And get this: we still have a night time routine when it’s time for him to get to bed. Yeah, he’s old enough to where I don’t set any kind of bed time or anything like that; rather, *he* has decided on his own that he wants to get to bed by a certain time in order to be as ready as he can be for the next morning’s early rise for school. He’s an introvert; he doesn’t go out to spend time with his friends, and even the friends he spends time with in the evenings online (playing video games or the like) also typically get to bed a somewhat reasonable hour, so my son is always home on school nights and when it’s time for bed, he still opts to do a nighttime routine with me.

True story!

Our nighttime routine no longer includes reading him a story like when he was younger, but we do play a game of cards and chat for a bit, one-on-one, without his siblings or other distractions to dilute our connection. For reasons that aren’t quite clear to me, these conversations of late take place over a game of Uno. This is NOT the game I would prefer for him — he’s a senior in high school, for crying out loud, and it’s time to master how probability works! (Poker, anybody?) — but this is his game of choice to wind down the evening, so we play a hand or two of this,

If you’re not familiar with Uno, think of it as Crazy 8’s with a couple cards having additional properties (like, say, using 4’s to act as a “skip turn” card). Not really all that challenging, but it can still be fun.

Whenever I win, he accuses me of cheating, and whenever he wins, he brags about his superior skill in a faux-haughty voice. And I do likewise when I win or lose. This is our tradition, and it’s part of our language of comfort and, ironically enough, trust.

However, at one point recently, I was beating him game after game after game, and his insistence that I was cheating started to take on a tone that suggested he might really believe I’m cheating (like I would ever want to cheat my kids at cards. Really, guys.)

The thing is, I do know a little bit about card magic, and the idea that I could use those tricks to change the outcome of the game is not entirely out of the question. And I started to think… what if I *did* stack the deck? How would I do it?

By the way, for those who are not familiar: Stacking a deck involves sorting it into a specific order and then keeping the cards in that order even though you might appear to be cutting or shuffling the deck. That kind of thing. There are all kinds of methods to accomplish this.

So, if I wanted to stack the deck and make it entirely obvious that I was so very much stacking the deck… what order would I do?

Would I want to beat him very slowly? Set it up so that every time it’s his turn, he has to draw all three cards before he gets one he can lay down. I draw a card every so often, but only to prolong the game. End the game with me playing my last card (and thereby winning the game) only after he is holding *every single card from the deck that hasn’t already been played.*

That would be funny.

But,, no, I think it might be funnier to stack the deck such that he has all wild cards (some of which would be “pick up 4” cards) except for one or two banal cards which match the color of the first card to be flipped over.

He’s looking at five wild cards and a good first and last card to play. He thinks that no matter what he plays first, he can’t lose. But, whatever he plays, he never gets control of the game back. Because I deal myself nothing but “Skip Turn” cards of every color, and if he hits me with a “+ 4” as his first card, the top four cards available to be picked up are also “skip turns.” Whether he plays one of the regular cards I dealt him or a wild card (regardless of whether it’s a wild card that forces me to pick up four additional cards) I simply play one skip turn after another until my hand is empty, and he’s left holding his entire “winning hand” less the first card he played.

Heh.

It’s funny to think about. But, I didn’t do it. I’m not going to do it. Our little ritual is a quiet few moments every day where we get to refresh our connection with each other. I like that, and I don’t want that to go away while I can help it. I certainly don’t want to jeopardize it with a practical joke that might call that trust into question. He’ll be flying the nest soon enough, and as will become evident when I return to other topics here, that connection could make all the difference in the world once he flies.

But, still.

It’s kinda funny to think about.

Three days ago or so as I sit down to write this, my friend Sweet Jane succumbed to terminal cancer.

She had been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer when her youngest child (of four) was three months old. Statistically speaking, she never should have gotten breast cancer — she did all the things and had all the attributes that put her in the lowest possible risk group of women for breast cancer — but having gotten it and having detected it so late into its growth, statistically speaking, it was extremely unlikely she’d live long enough to see her youngest child’s fifth birthday.

Having lived long enough to watch her oldest head off to college and her youngest turn 11, it’s fair to say she won her battle with cancer. She won it every single day for over eleven years. She was there for her children during most of their formative years, she worked in special education when treatments didn’t interfere, she was on her kids’ high school PTA, she volunteered to raise funds for cancer research, and she pursued all the bucket list-type things that people who know they are dying realize they need to get going on. She was a force of nature, and now she is gone.

This is not her story.

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When my then-wife Penny and I were expecting our first child, we attended the various parenting classes that hospitals often have for mommies and daddies to-be. The hospital also had a parent/baby group that met once a… week? Month? I think it was monthly. Anyway, they started a new group every one or two months or so, which meant that in each such group, new parents whose babies were at roughly the same stages of development would all get together in this big, friendly classroom-type room and share their gripes and joys and questions and concerns, all while sitting in a big circle on the floor with their little babies lying (laying?) on their blankies in front of them, and a medically-trained expert in maternity and infant health issues would facilitate the discussion and answer questions.

I say this was a parent’s group because that’s what the hospital called it, but that was, quite frankly, a bald-faced lie. It was a mommies’ group. Because they called it a parent’s group, and because Penny and I actually were partners in the truest sense of the world at that time in our lives, I showed up to that first class.

“Ohhh, it’s so nice to see a daddy join us!” The facilitator and other moms cooed at how nice and supportive it was of me to attend. I felt very welcome. Then, we all sat around in a circle, shared stories and concerns about what the babies were doing or not doing, what the mommies’ bodies were doing or not doing, and then the mommies all freakin’ unloaded on the daddies like they were all a bunch of no-show, absentee do-nothings who helped not at all and understood nothing.

So, that was the last time I attended that noise.

And, I get it. Mommies gotta get together and vent to others who understand their woes. Fair enough. Employees gotta gripe about their ignorant bosses and kids gotta commiserate that parents just don’t understand. So, Penny would take our baby with her to this big ol’ mommies/babies class, and the group continued to meet for quite some time.

Before long, Penny started to get to know a few of the other new mommies in particular who lived in roughly the same area as we did. This was how she found herself in this emerging group of friends that included Sweet Jane and three others. They had a lot in common. They were all bright, they were all a little older than most new moms, they all worked, and they all had brilliant, successful husbands. (You’re allowed to laugh at that, by the way.)

Soon, the Mommies organized a backyard barbeque for our families to all meet, and the men also hit it off. The cookouts became a regular thing, and then there were the kids’ birthday parties (which, of course, were all within a month or so of each other), Halloween trips to the pumpkin patch, and so on. As the kids grew up, they became each other’s first friends outside of day care or next-door neighbors. The kids would often have sleepovers at each other’s houses.

All five of our families welcomed our respective second children into the world at around the same time, as well. So, that was fun.

Three of our families had an additional round of kids, once more at roughly the same time as each other (Sweet Jane and her hubby were a little bit ahead of us), but it was at this time that the cracks in my marriage to Penny had become too much. It was at around this time that I started this blog to talk out-loud about the problems in our marriage to you, my kind readers, rather than poison the proverbial well with Penny’s and my mutual friends. It was another year or so before our impending break-up became known to our friends.

We never made an announcement, as such. Never posted on Facebook that this was happening. But, as we were preparing to move into separate houses, both of which would be just a few blocks away from one of the other families in our little Mommies group, we had to let everyone know what was happening. We told them that it was amicable. We still would be doing things as a family, and we wanted to continue all the activities we’d been doing as a group all this time.

Except.

One of the other families had decided to relocate to California at around this time. So, there was that.

And Sweet Jane had her fourth kid, and then… well, her diagnosis.

When a cancer is labeled Stage 4, that means it has already spread to other parts of the body. You can try to cut it out wherever you can find it, and then radiate and poison the hell out of those areas and hope that it doesn’t come back, but once you’ve hit Stage 4, it’s coming back. With breast cancer, it’s going to come back fast and it’s going to come back deadly. Once you’ve got Stage 4, you’ll be considered a “survivor” if you manage to live another 5 years after the diagnosis, and that’s a very rare thing when it started as breast cancer.

Anyway.

Sweet Jane’s family, understandably, had to circle the wagons and deal with the matters at hand. The family that was moving to California understandably did what they could to offer encouragement to Sweet Jane but were otherwise focused on building their new lives in California. And the other two families, why, of course it’s absolutely understandable that they would be offering as much support to Sweet Jane as their spare time would allow.

Penny and I were dealing with our own issues, and so when we extended our offers of help and support, we weren’t entirely shocked when the only response we got was mumbles that there was already a battery of people standing by, but they appreciated the offer.

And I guess we weren’t entirely shocked when, despite repeated attempts at organizing a family pizza night with the other Mommies family who lived just a couple blocks away, they were too busy with their oldest who had behavioral issues or the twins or their jobs or helping out Sweet Jane or mumble, mumble, mumble. It was all understandable. But we’d get together soon.

Here’s the thing. Divorce is contagious. There have been studies that prove it. I think that most people have an innate suspicion that this is the case, even if they aren’t actually aware of the statistics. Divorce is no longer ostracized in American society the way it once was, but it’s nonetheless still… a source of unease.

So, it’s all perfectly understandable.

And when Sweet Jane’s cancer was in remission, and her husband didn’t reply to my comments on his Facebook posts or that one phone call here or that one instant message there, why… well, I’m sure he had other things on his mind.

And my oldest did have over his friend from that Mommies family who lives nearby for a birthday party sleep-over once or twice (maybe more?), and I think he was also invited to sleep over there once or twice, and I’m sure the boys saw each other at school, but they, too, drifted apart. And when I noticed the pictures on Facebook of the barbecues they were hosting in their back yard…. well, okay. That stung a little bit.

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I’m not always great at returning phone calls. I’m not always great at replying to e-mails. Or Facebook messages. So, I know that sometimes it just happens, and it’s genuinely not intended as a slight. I know this. And I feel bad for every time I’ve done it to others.

This is not a “woe is me” post. (Woe am I?) It might be an apology. It might be me just processing a shitty situation.

There’s a thing that locals sometimes refer to as the “Seattle Freeze,” and I’ve been feeling a touch of it ever since Penny and I got divorced. That’s not entirely fair, of course. I do have friends here. There is even a family that my family occasionally gets together with to go see movies and share a meal, and if I have to be the one to initiate the invitation most times, well, I guess that’s just the dynamic and it is what it is.

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The last time I saw Sweet Jane — in fact, I think it may be the only time I’d seen her since her diagnosis and my divorce — she saw me at the nearby supermarket and excitedly said hello. It was almost comedic in nature: I was there with my then-girlfriend who was visiting from out of town, and Fae wandered off very naturally so as to not invite any potential awkwardness. This was several years ago, and Fae and I never really acknowledged publicly that we were together.

Anyway.

Jane caught me up on her goings-on, and her warmth and genuine happiness to bump into me was really kind of awesome. She was such a shining light.

…and on more than one occasion, the thought has crossed my mind that if it could bring her back to her family, I’d trade my life for hers.

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Note: I wrote the above pretty much exactly is you see it now, all in one sitting and while I was in a particularly morose mood. Recognizing how dark that last sentence was, I decided to wait before publishing this little missive. I have spoken with a friend or two about it, and one kindly informed me that what I was feeling (or, at least, part of what I was feeling) when I wrote this was “survivor’s guilt.”

I am now reading this several weeks later, and I have since attended Sweet Jane’s “Celebration of Life.” I’ve decided to let this version of the post stand — abrupt ending and all — but there is a little more I need to tell you about Sweet Jane and the Mommies. More on that soon.

I begin writing this post just past 3am on the last night my oldest stays at my house before he heads off to college. If all goes according to plan, he’ll be back here at some point before the official end of the semester — this year’s COVID-19 pandemic has seen every college in the U.S. either shorten or eliminate its in-person, on-campus activities for this Fall semester. But, even so, it won’t be quite the same. This is still his house (well… this is still one of his houses, anyway), but the situation will be different. He’ll be a semi-autonomous adult.

More on that later.

I’m posting here because I want to share this letter I just handwrote him, sealed up, and placed in his computer in his backpack. I imagine he will not likely see it until well into his trip, possibly not even until he unpacks in his dorm room. I’ve had over eighteen years to prepare this letter, and I failed miserably because, like any foolish college student, I waited until the night before to do my homework. It’s full of grammatical errors and, well, I’d word things a lot differently if I were to allow myself a few more hours, but I have work tomorrow after I see him off, and I can always mail him a letter to his new campus address in the days ahead. Right?

Still, here’s my first (and final) draft:

Dear Ben,

There’s a strange power in the situation you are about to find yourself in. You will discover you need more toothpaste, or a special kind of eraser, or snacks for your dorm room, and you get to go out and buy those things. Or not. You get to look for an on-campus job and you get to figure out what kind of schedule to ask for. You get to put up posters — or not — without having to worry about your brother or your parents or what-will-your-Grandpa-think-if-he-sees-this-on-your-wall? [sic]

If you’re unhappy, you can change something. If you like the way things are going, you can keep on going there.

It’s kinda cool. Now, more than ever before, you are the boss of you.

I hope we have helped prepare you well for all this. I have no idea if we have. But, I do know that you’re smart, you’re capable, and when you pursue something with enthusiasm, you are unstoppable.

You are a natural leader. You have charisma. I hope you use these super powers of yours for good. I hope you will continue to be kind, but without compromising yourself. I hope you will continue to defend what is right, without sacrificing yourself. I hope you will remember to have faith in yourself. And, even though I do sometimes worry (it’s a thing parents do), it’s not because I don’t have faith in you. I have plenty of faith in you. I just sometimes worry that you might forget that you can do this. “You got this,” as the saying goes.

You have a big brain. Use it!

And, remember the two most important technologies available to you. They will not fail you:

1) “Looking for things.” And,

2) “Asking for help.”

I love you, Ben. That will never change.

Now, go have fun and exercise that big brain of yours!

–Dad

I’d post more tonight, but it’s time to get to bed. I have to get up in a few hours to see him off. Besides, I’ve got something in my eyes.

My Dear Sons:

Sometimes, I am guarded about what I say to you, or around you. There are so many ways to say the wrong thing.

We are told as parents in this day and age that one shouldn’t praise a child for being smart or talented, for example; this could give children the idea that being good at something depends upon some innate quality over which they have no control. Rather, the parent should encourage the child by praising their effort. Talent without effort gets one nowhere, but effort even with only a little bit of talent can take one far.

And so it goes. Am I encouraging you the best possible way? Am I saying, “No,” when I should? If I keep reminding you to do your homework, am I setting up a situation where you will only do what needs to be done if someone is prodding you to do so?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I am second-guessing myself every time we have an interaction. Far from it. A lot of what I do and say around you flows naturally. Most of our conversations are a simple means to and end: will you please unload the dishwasher; it’s time to turn off the TV; yes, I’ll sign that form for you to take to school.

But when we do talk about something consequential, what will you remember? How might it change you, even if you don’t remember it?

Here’s what I remember from my own youth: I remember my mom frequently telling me that I can be anything I set my mind to. I remember my paternal grandfather instilling me with aphorisms like, “If an appointment is worth making, it’s worth keeping,” and “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” I remember Cousin Tony’s more colorful aphorisms, delivered with gusto: “Remember to KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid,” and, “It takes less work to do it right the first time.”

I remember the occasional conversation with my father, where he would encourage me to consider that the other side of a given argument often had a valid point of view. More than once, he pointed out that most people see the world as black and white, when it’s really shades of gray.

But, there are also some conversations that are indelibly stamped upon my memory even though they did not contain easily repeated catch phrases. I don’t recall how the topic came up, for example, but one time, my father cautioned me that most people don’t choose their career path. Rather, they just fall into it. It was a disheartening idea as I recall, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that conversation was at the end of a long, difficult day at work which left him contemplating the futility of his job at the time. But that one conversation, with its mood of quiet desperation, has stuck with me and given me pause more than once.

How many conversations did I have with my father about serious topics? I really have no idea. He was certainly accessible. But, I was a kid. I was more likely to have the Big Conversations with my high school and college friends than I was with my father. How many of those conversations did I initiate? How many did he initiate? How many just happened? I truly don’t recall. What I do recall was that my father was thoughtful, and careful to point out that things weren’t always as simple as they seemed.

And yet, if you were to ask my sister, she would have a completely different set of recollections. She remembers that our parents annoyed her. Profoundly. She remembers how, when they learned she might be interested in nursing, they got her books on nursing. How insensitive! Didn’t they realize that she hated books? (Yes, of course they did. They tried to build positive associations with books. But, what she saw was them tying her negative associations with books to the things she was interested in.) She remembers that when they tried to reward her for getting good grades, how unfair it was because I got more rewards because I had better grades. Yet, when they punished her for bad behavior, that was also unfair because they didn’t punish me… even though I wasn’t the one sneaking around smoking cigarettes and the like.

It’s funny how things work out. As I write this, your Aunt is a force to be reckoned with in her career, she has a brilliant and awesome husband, and it seems to me that they are doing a fantastic job of raising your cousins. She has a penetrating intellect, a wickedly sharp sense of humor, and at the same time, she is as warm and caring as anyone I know. My sister is a wonderful person with a rich, fulfilling life. But, her memories of our parents are strained, and their relationship will likely never be fully reconciled.

My highest priority is to help you boys to develop the tools you’ll need to make the best decisions you can. I want you to be able to learn what you need to learn in order to do what you need to do. My highest wish is that you grow to become healthy, happy, well-adjusted men who make the lives of your loved ones and your communities all the better because you are a part of them.

If this happens, then I suppose it won’t matter if you remember me disapprovingly. And, if this wish isn’t achieved, then no amount of fond memories will make any difference; I will have failed you.

Even so, I can’t help but wonder: what will you remember of our days together? When you are raising your own children, what will you remember of what I say to you today? Of what you think I did right? Of what you think I did wrong?

At this particular moment in my life, I am wrestling with a number of rather large decisions regarding my work, my love life, where I live, and how I spend my time. Every one of these choices will have an impact on you in some fashion. Each choice, ultimately, is a calculated risk. I need to make each decision with care, based upon stone cold logic, educated guesses, and more than a little bit of hope.

Twenty years down the road, you’ll all be making these same kinds of decisions for yourselves. I can’t help but be curious: who will you be then? Who will I be then? And what will you remember of this time?

Whatever you remember of me ten, twenty, thirty years down the road, I hope it will include that I tried my best. Whether you remember me as being generally happy or generally sad, as too hands-on or too aloof, I hope that you will remember that I’ve always been here for you, and that I genuinely love you.

Ever yours,

Dad

 

If you’ve read any other entries here at It Never Rains in Seattle, you’re aware that my marriage fell apart largely because it was strictly platonic, and I wanted a complete marriage while my then-wife… didn’t. At least, not with me.

While my marriage was not my first long-term relationship, I was also no stranger to the single life before getting married. I’d gone for long stretches of time without a romantic partner, and by the time I was married, I had spent many years living on my own as well as many other years with roommates or housemates who were lovers, or platonic friends, or indifferent acquaintances. It was a shame that my marriage turned out to be more of a roommate situation than anything else, but I did not dread going back to being single if it meant that there would be once again room in my life for easy solitude (something not available to me during our marriage) as well as the possibility of romance. Or, at the very least, hot monkey sex.

Commenters on this blog cheered me on, in anticipation of the joys that the single life can bring. And I looked forward to it. And now I’ve settled in quite nicely, enjoying creating a new definition of “home.” I get to enjoy time with my kids, and time by myself. (Granted, sometimes when I’ve had the kids for a long stretch, the first evening without them takes a little bit of adjustment.)

I’ve enjoyed quality one-on-one time with good friends of mine, I’ve attended some small parties, and I’ve even hosted a time or two. I’ve certainly enjoyed exploring a new relationship with my girlfriend, who is as stimulating in intellectual conversation as she is in, um, non-verbal communication. It is often frustrating that she and I live so far apart; our visits in person are far less frequent than either of us would prefer. Yet, I have to say that I also enjoy living in my own place with my own ebb and flow. I can cook when I want to, and I can order take-out when I want to, and there’s really only one person who sets the menu in my house. When I don’t have guests over, anyway. Or the kids. Well, you get the idea.

Single life agrees with me. At some point, I may find myself blending my household with another’s. When that happens, that will be awesome, too. But for now… yeah, single life is working out just fine.

Except for this one thing I never expected.

As you may recall, I had torn the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my knee during a freak knitting accident toward the end of the marriage. Penny and I were still living together. I had surgery to repair the ACL, which left me without a functioning right leg for a week or two, and that first week of convalescing was truly a drag. And while Penny and I were facing the strain of losing our house and our marriage, she nonetheless made sure my pain meds were handy and that appropriate food and beverages were within easy reach. She kept the kids from jumping on the bed, and gave me time to rest undisturbed. We still had our high-stress moments, but hey, that’s what married people do.

Flash forward a bit to this past Christmas season. We’ve moved to separate households, settled into new routines with the kids, finalized our divorce. By this time, we live about half a mile, maybe a mile away from each other. It’s the holiday season, which means my employer is in “shut down” mode. What better time to schedule some necessary but non-emergency surgery than when I can’t work anyway because of this shut down? (I’m paid hourly, so I’d prefer not to take time off for surgery during normal working weeks.)

The surgery in this case is to repair an “incarcerated umbilical hernia.” That’s a fancy way of saying my guts were trying to escape out my belly button, and that had to be stopped. So, yeah, it’s necessary. But it won’t become an emergency unless and until my guts actually manage to escape. The trick is to have the surgery before that happens.

Building a bionic belly button is nowhere near as involved as cannibalizing your hamstring in order to rebuild your knee. By all accounts, I’m told to expect to take a week off of work, but that really, I should be back on my feet (and eating real food) later the same day of the surgery. Very good.

BUT, because the doctor wants me to have general anesthetic, I must have someone drive me to and from the surgical center. You’re not supposed to drive just after you’ve been knocked out with narcotics, apparently. And they also insist that I have someone sleeping over in case anything happened and I needed help (and couldn’t take care of myself) that first night after the surgery.

That’s what one might call a “non-option”.

If I could have gotten away with it, I would never have even told Penny about the surgery. I find myself increasingly disinclined to have her involved. But, I need her to take the kids during the days that I otherwise would have had them for the first few days after the surgery. A good friend of mine is kind enough to take me to and from the surgical center, and he even joins me for pizza and a movie after I’ve had a brief post-surgical nap. So. Work taken care of, kids taken care of, and transportation taken care of.

But no, I do not have anyone stay over with me that first evening. My girlfriend lives out-of-town, and I don’t want Penny involved, and most of my friends are married with their own families to tend to, while my relatives live just about anywhere in the country but here.

My recovery moves along generally fine, although I notice my blood pressure getting a little spiky for a while. It’s this last point that brings up a very real consideration: what if I were to have a heart attack during convalescence? Hmmm?

As a forty-something guy, I’m not as vulnerable as an eighty-something might be when it comes to sudden illness or injury. But even so, the single life doesn’t mean the same to me as a forty-something as it did when I was in my twenties, either: I’m more at-risk, not so much because illness or injury is more likely, but because immediate intervention is less likely.

Believe me, I don’t sit around worrying about this stuff. I have so many other unlikely scenarios to obsess over. Rather, I mention this because it’s an interesting revelation to find that singlehood at this age is different from when I was fresh out of university.

Fortunately, there have been other, more pleasant surprises about re-entering the single life in my mid-40s. For example, the sex is much better….