Dad

This was my Dad:

(OK, so it's a crappy picture.  What can I say? I'm old, and this was the quality of photographs when I was a little kid.  Wait & see what your iPhone photos look like compared to the holograms of the future.  But I digress.)

Regardless of the picture quality (or lack thereof), it's not a very flattering photograph.  It is, however, accurate.  My dad? Not a "fun guy."  Truth be told, he was a cranky alcoholic who was emotionally abusive to his wife (my mother) and unavailable to his children.  On Christmas, he would wake up first thing in the morning and head straight for the basement where he would turn on his "Hi-Fi", open his first beer of the day and camp out.  We kids opened our presents upstairs, to the talents of Benny Goodman and Les Brown creeping through the floorboards.  We knew better than to go into the basement, especially on Christmas.

All of us kids knew the rules. Don't bother Dad if any of the following things are true: it's after 5pm; he's already had a beer, it's a holiday. -- The rest of the time he was a pretty swell guy, basically from 9-5 on weekends.

But here's the thing: I loved my dad. A lot. Probably a lot more than he would have deserved, if evaluated objectively on paper, if such a thing is even possible.

Beyond that, I admired him. It's not a stretch to say he was a Mentor in my life.

It has been one year since he died, of Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 92 years. (Of course, it had been quite some time before he died since he was the "Dad" I remembered, robbed of his brilliance & wit by the Alzheimer's.)  As is perhaps inevitable for these sorts of morbid anniversaries, I find myself reflecting on my life with Dad.  In particular, I wonder how I have come to regard him with almost mythical status and reverence, when in truth he was probably a near-total asshole to most of his friends and acquaintances for most of his life.

My sister and I (since we are the only two left) tend to blame everything on the Alcoholism, so maybe that's how I've tidied up all his negative qualities: put them in the big bag with the "A" on the front (sorry, Hester, not this time) and throw it in the closet.

Because the assembly of Dad's remaining qualities is godlike: a self-made millionaire genius who lived simply and taught his daughter to be a courteous, responsible, contributing member of society. He valued integrity, honesty, humility. He supported my athletic endeavors (which I likely pursued as much in solicitation of his favor as for their own sake), regardless of my skill level or fickle choice of sport: swimming, track, gymnastics, ... the specifics didn't matter.  It was the effort that mattered. Books over TV. A walk around the block every night before turning in.

I also remember my dad as a sea of calm in my otherwise anxiety-filled world.  I'll save my mother's dissection for another time, but suffice it to say that she was a very nervous person.  As a married woman now myself, I look back and wonder how she ever managed to raise four children, essentially on her own, while remaining married to a man who spent at least the first ten years of their marriage insulting and belittling her, yet still expecting her to share a bed at the end of the day; it makes my skin crawl to think of myself in her shoes.  Nevertheless, I recall "mother" as a shrieking bundle of nerves with a short temper.

One day when I was about 8 years old, my older sister accidentally stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake as she was pulling into the driveway, and her Camaro sheared the porch right off the side of the house. My dad & I hurried outside, and my dad just calmly laughed at the chaos (after all, no one was hurt).  We were all grateful Mom wasn't home.

Another example:

When I was about 12 years old, I started getting allergy shots for my hay fever.  I went to the doctor's office three times a week to get my little poke in the arm, and every time, without fail, I would have a terrible reaction to the shot: I ended up lying across the sofa in the doctor's waiting room, my head on my mother's lap, sweating and shivering and blooming with hives, as my mother fretfully wiped my brow.  Finally, after about an hour, the nausea would pass and we could go home.

One day, my mother couldn't take me to get my shot, so my dad took me instead.  As I walked back to the sofa after getting my shot, preparing for the onslaught of the next hour's horror, Dad stood up and said, "OK, are you ready to go home?"  I was stunned into silence and, afraid to contradict my father, mutely nodded.  On the walk home (Dad walked everywhere), he talked about this and that and not once did he ask me how I was feeling.  I remember feeling flush and a little itchy but nothing like what I went through with my mom.  When we arrived home ten minutes later, I was fine. -- This was a magic trick of the highest caliber.  I got my shot, but I didn't get sick.  How did he do that?

Maybe that was the day I decided to become my dad.  I don't really know when it happened.  But I am him, or as close to him as I can possibly be.  Every day, I see something of him in my world: I regale in the glory of the human body as I run through the woods or cut through the water at the YMCA. I'd rather read a book than watch TV. I get goosebumps when I hear really good music. I can't always explain why I think a college education is important for its own sake. I get really pissed off when the tool bench is messy or my favorite hammer isn't where it belongs.

   

I am also the dark side of my father: I am sullen and antisocial. I am an addict. I do not suffer fools gladly. -- Of course, because I am my father's daughter, I don't really think too harshly of any of these traits.

In the harshest light of hindsight, though, I have to confess that I squandered my limited time on this earth as might have been better spent with my father.  Some of that is a consequence of our age difference: by the time I was 30, he was 75.  By the time I was 35 and just starting to figure out the conversations I should be having with him, the shadow of dementia was already upon him.

I have so many things I want to ask him now. So many things I want to discuss with him.  I want to know what he thinks of the Lance Armstrong scandal. And the continuing crisis in Afghanistan. And whether he's proud of the life he helped me make for myself, so very far away from where I was born.

In the end, I guess I have to trust the tools he gave me to help me answer these questions for myself.  And though he would chastise me for my sentimentality, I have to say, "I still miss you, Dad.  And I always will."

On being a "broken" woman

Today at work, I was discussing a project with a male coworker and asked him how long he thought it might take.

"Forty minutes, tops," he confidently replied.  He then proceeded to tell me how & why it would only take 40 minutes, but I missed that part of the conversation because I could see one of my female coworkers standing behind him, frantically waving her arms, shaking her head "No", while repeatedly flashing either the peace sign or the number "two" at me.

I knew instantly what she was trying to say: "There's no WAY he's going to be done in 40 minutes! Two HOURS, at least!"  Alas, I understood this, but I also understood that she was correct.  However, I also understood that it was futile to argue with him -- he genuinely thought he could do it in 40 minutes. So, ignoring my friend, I nodded along with his story and said, yes, forty minutes, and he wandered away to some other project.

He was barely out of earshot before my female friend exploded. "He's AWFUL!!  He does this ALL the time!  He's never going to be done in 40 minutes...," etc.  I also nodded peacefully along with her rant and, as she wound down, replied, "I know. I'm planning on two hours minimum. It just doesn't do any good to argue."  She stared slack-jawed in response.

"This is my new philosophy: The Emperor has no clothes," I said. "It doesn't do any good to fight.  It's just best to give up and accept what is."

She whispered in awe, "You're... broken!"

And I am.  I am a broken woman.  I, the rebellious hellraiser who defied authority at every turn, despised mindlessly law-abiding citizens, and loved belting out Steve Earl's "Fuck the FCC" at the top of her lungs -- I, am a woman whose spirit has been broken.

I never thought it possible, and had anyone suggested such a thing to me as recently as a couple of years ago, I would have thought them crazy, as if they couldn't truly know me and still say that.

But it happened.  And I'm not even sure when.  It seems to be only in the past few months, and yet I cannot trace the change to any particular event or Life upheaval. 

Now, I simply accept.

Things simply are.

There's no sense fighting the things that are: the inherent corruption of politics; most men's inadequate nurturing and caregiving skills; my dogs' desire to destroy any new plant I put in "their" yard; the mailman's refusal to step even one foot outside of his delivery van, ... I could go on.  But why bother?

Maybe I've spent so many years -- decades, really -- banging my head against the same wall and seeing no response, no change in the world.  Maybe, on a more personal level, I'm working to improve my marriage.  Heaven knows the topic of marriage is ripe with opportunity to inflict change and to battle wills between not only partners, but also friends and family.

My marriage is a subject worthy of its own page, or hundred.  Suffice it to say that, after 15 years together, I have laid down.  I'd like to think it's from some achievement of zen-like consciousness, but perhaps it is only from sheer exhaustion.  The exhaustion of waiting for an accurate ETA for my husband to come home from work. Or expecting that hiking pole he left in New Zealand and never bought me the replacement for. Or the tools he regularly takes to his workplace then leaves there, so I am left using my boot heel as a hammer. Again.  -- Now there simply is no hammer.  No anger, no resentment, no residual fury over how many times he's done this before.  It doesn't matter.  It simply is.

I do not know what will come of this pathway. On some level, I feel that a part of me has died.  I give up, I go along. I try very hard not to care what happens in my life on a day-to-day basis.  That can't be any way to live, right?

But it is certainly easier, and god knows other people around me seem to enjoy getting their own way most of the time.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of my friends haven't even noticed the new laissez-faire me.

Furthermore, when I confess my conversion, friends are, almost without fail, mortified.  Is not "broken" synonymous with "weak"?  Maybe. But perhaps it's the first step in being stronger and creating change.  If I accept that my vote in a presidential election doesn't actually count, perhaps I can devote that time and energy toward some smaller more immediate cause, whether that's improving the life of my dogs by taking them for a run (which I also accept creates joy in their day) or offering to babysit for my friend so she can attend a yoga class.

I still enjoying singing "Fuck the FCC," so maybe my rebel soul isn't quite dead. And on some level I enjoy seeing all the facades fall away when a truth is called by its name; it's frequently shocking and painful, yet difficult to deny.

I also know I will not change the world by my small realization. My tiny little life doesn't matter. I am not going to be the world-changer my liberal arts education prepared me to be. Those are a few of my more recent truths.

Regardless of the outcome, my forehead is finally healing from no longer beating it against that same brick wall. And my eyes are dazzled by purity of a reality stripped of its embellishments.

Introduction

If you believe Google (oh, and I do -- I really do), there are over 150 million blogs out there. So I'm guessing I can't be the only person to wonder what business I have writing down my thoughts and sending them out into the great collective world consciousness.  Fortunately, statistically, I am also probably not the least well-equipped person to blog, either.

Allow me to introduce myself, as simplistically as possible: I am a married, employed, childless woman who lives in Alaska.  I love dogs, and reading, and hiking, and running, and travel.  And eating -- oh yeah, I'm a foodie.

But the most currently defining objective fact about me is this: I am 46 years old.  The Middle.

I am neither young nor old.  I have friends and relatives in their 20s and in their 60s. I remember TV and music and current events from a time most of my younger coworkers never knew and, frequently, couldn't imagine (a "party line," what's that?).  I observe my body succumbing to aging changes, yet still feel vigorous. I still cannot conceive of my own death -- not really -- though my own mortality is increasingly perceptible. 

I have lived long enough that I have experienced profound personal changes in my own life and the lives of loved ones: marriage, birth, death, suicide, cancer, recovery, addiction.  And I've watched decades of Life go by enough to perceive trends, to realize that some things really do not ever change and are not worth fighting, and I realize I have so much left to learn.

And so that is my perspective, the perspective of this blog.  I hope.  I don't have an agenda, or an axe to grind. Some days I may write about my morning run. Or my dogs. Or grammar and punctuation (apostrophe-misusers, your days are numbered). Or Alaskan politics (probably not). Or how middle-aged American women disappear off everyone's screen except advertisers and other middle-aged American women. Or I may rant for half a page about Autocorrect.

One of the "How to Blog" help sites -- which quickly overwhelmed me so I stopped reading them -- suggested not to try to seem like an expert.  Well, I'm certainly no expert on "What It's Like to Be a Middle-Aged Woman," except in my own life.  So, if you're reading, you can take all this with a huge grain of salt.  Or not.

In any case, I look forward to writing -- for you, for me.  From the middle.