#gratitudeNow:Fathering Discomfort

I've touched on this before in my blog, but my feeling around my dad are rather complicated, because he was a great and terrible presence in my life.

My dad was a narcissistic, antisocial monster, who emotionally abused and abandoned me, and who did some astoundingly terrible things to my family, including emotional blackmail, embezzlement, fraud, and manipulation.  He destroyed my grandparent's family business, stole money through fraud from my ailing grandmother, cheated on my mom multiply over the course of more than 20 years, and faked having leukemia to coerce the family into giving him pity, money, and resources.

He was also a genius.  And, he did many great things for me in my life.  I had a stellar education, travelled the world, and materially, wanted for very little for most of my childhood.  

When I was in my early 20's, much of his machinations began to come to light.  I went from yearning for his approval and attention up through high school, being confused about what was even real about him during my college years, to an outright seething hatred and resentment for him as an adult.

I flew overseas to deal with his ill health when I was in my late 20's, and discovered through a series of misadventures that he had faked having leukemia.  He was deported back to the states not long after, and spent the next 15 years in a state of decline.  He was on the edge of homelessness, saved from it only by the good graces of my aunt. and some effort on my part too.  

Despite his change in circumstance, he still continued to play games, manipulate and toy with everyone around him.  He remarried multiple times, conned many people, and got to me in all sorts of ugly little ways for a while yet.  

That's him.

I used to be fairly saturated in anger for him.  Eventually I did make my peace with who and what he was.  The last time I saw him alive was back in February 2006.  

He died three years later.  I went to the funeral, spoke at it.  

Since then, I actually have to struggle to remember when his birthday was, what year he died.  

As I'm sure you can imagine, all this makes father's day problematic for me.  But that's not the end of the story.  

During my first marriage, I was a father myself.  I was the step-father to my ex's son from her previous marriage.  He was a good kid, and we connected easily and well.  I taught him a lot of things, and we were a huge part of one another's lives.  When his mom and I split, we kept in contact, and nurtured our relationship.  I took him out for his first beer.  We went on a trip to New York together to see The Blue Man Group.  We were in each other's lives.

He married into a very religious, very conservative family, and things began to get a little weird.  He would post these very cringe-inducing things on Facebook about Caitlyn Jenner, and about homosexuality.  

It became a problem between us.  We negotiated a careful detente, and then broke the heck out of it.  Two years ago we had a throw down over Facebook over something, and that became it.  We were done.  I texted him a message on his birthday, months later, and got a very terse reply, "Thank you."

I have a general sort of weirdness around holidays to begin with, that I work hard to overcome.

So, here's the funny thing.  

This past weekend, over father's day weekend, Missy and I went to visit my girlfriend, Alissa in Chicago.  Her kids got to spend part of it with us, and then the rest of it with their dad.   I had good connecting time with the kids, who love me, and whom I love very much.  And mostly, the fact that it was father's day came and went without it meaning much of anything to me.

Later still, as we were traveling home, and I read Facebook, I saw this great outpouring of sentiment, good and bad for the day, including people looking to express all sorts of painful feelings about the day there.

And I made the conscious choice not to add to that.

Why?  Because it doesn't serve me.  A huge part of my practice is recognizing that I am not my thoughts.  Also, that pain and suffering are a part of life, and that they're transient, like all experiences.

There's this thing I'm always going back to, time and again, a quote of the Dalai Lama's.

"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot.  When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy."

The thing about that quote is, it's not perfect.  I think there are other words than "fault" that fit there better.  One in particular, that I learned from The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck really jumps out at me: responsibility.  It may not be my fault my dad was so awful, or that my stepson and I don't have a relationship anymore.  But it is up to me, it is my responsibility to decide what I'm going to do about it.

And what I've picked to do, what I consciously do about it each day is this: nothing.

My dad was who he was.  My stepson is who he is.  And I am who I am.  That's not to say that who I am doesn't change.  I'm in a near constant state of change.  I have no idea whatsoever if my stepson and I will ever be on good terms again, and that's okay.

It's not that it's not sad, nor painful.  It absolutely is.  I'm very glad that I got to raise him for as long as I did, and that he mostly came out the other side of that okay.  Who he is now as an adult, that's not my responsibility.  That's up to him.  

In the meantime, I have other things going on in my life, other connections which are vibrant, valuable, and which tap that call to nurture and be nurtured that's inside me.

I want to say, too that I don't begrudge anyone for wanting the validation of others, and posting how they feel about the day, their dad, or being a dad.  I'm not better than them, nor worse than them.  I just embrace my responsibility for my feelings in a way that works for me, and that's very different.

I hold no universal truth about this stuff.  But I do know myself a whole lot better than I have before.  I'm grateful for that. 

#gratitudeNow:My friend Gram & the speed limit

This morning I woke up, jumped out of bed, and startled to hustle about.  I had a lot to do this morning, and was obsessing over some things.  Financial stuff, business stuff, day job stuff, health stuff.  My mind was a whirling storm of must-do's, shouldn't-do's, wants, expectations, all sorts of shenpa.

I took some time in the shower to follow my breath, and detach from my thoughts, to observe them.  Slowly, the storm in my head began to settle.

I reshuffled my priorities, realizing I could work on Project Drummond tonight, and that I really wanted to pack my lunch.  That's because hunting for keto friendly food near my office is a pain in the ass.  It's also expensive, and I like having the control over what I'm eating.  That way I can make good choices before I have to eat.

So I resolved to make myself a leftover salad.  Roast beef, cheddar, romaine, lettuce, tomatoes, and some olive oil, salt and pepper dressing.  

I used my awesome kitchen scale to measure everything in grams.  That was amazing, because my scale does grams easily, and every food in my carb tracking software, Carb Manager Pro, seems to have a listing for it by gram.  It was SO easy.  As you can see, with a 2g breakfast, and a 7g lunch, I'm totally rocking staying inside my 25g limit for the day.

The nice part of that whole process was I got to focus and slow down even more.  I chopped vegetables, tore lettuce, weighed ingredients.  While I was doing all this I most certainly was NOT thinking about all the storm-tossed-items I'd awoken to.  It's not that I was consciously avoiding thinking of them.  Rather, I'd put them aside to be in the moment.

There's this saying of the Dalai Lama's I quote all the time that everyone should meditate for 30 minutes a day, unless you really don't have the time.  In that case, he advises, you should meditate for an hour.

It's true.  As I sit writing this, I'm calm.  Yes, I have a lot to do today, yes, it's going to be busy.  And I will deal with what I need to do, one thing at a time.  But I don't have to worry about that now. 

I'm present, here.  (Except for a tiny pleasure seeking shenpa about how good that salad's going to be!)

#gratitudeNow:Scarfing down memories

On Saturday, before Missy's birthday party, I was running around doing some errands.  I stopped in at a grocery store to pick up some things.  As I got in line to pay, I saw this elderly woman in front of me.  She had a kind face, a gentle demeanor, and was wearing this beautiful Chanel scarf that very much reminded me of my grandmother, Phyllis.

Phyllis loved scarves.  She often wore these very fancy Hermès scarves.  She didn't do so to be fancy or pretentious, but just to inject a little style and class into her everyday life.  My grandmother was a character.  She had a zest for life, a certain panache and flair that made even the tiniest, quietest little moments special.  

I hadn't thought about her in a while, and seeing that woman's scarf reminded me of her, powerfully.  It made me very happy.  So, I decided to strike up a conversation as we waited.  I complimented her scarf, told her how it reminded me of my grandmother.

She told me that she too, was a grandmother.  She said that generally, being a grandmother was a good thing, except of course, for the age, and how the past is gone, and the future coming on all too soon.

I was wearing shorts at the time, and pointed to the tattoo on my leg, which is the first stanza, first verse of the Tao te Ching.  I explained to her that maybe there was a different way to see things, that there's no such thing as the past or future, just this very moment, right here, right now, and that that moment goes on, without end, forever.

She brightened up, and said she'd never thought about it that way.  She smiled at me widely.

That reminded me of my grandmother too.  

She felt good.  I felt good.

It kind of set the tone for the rest of my day.

#gratitudeNow:Really Good Noodling

A friend of mine, let's call him the UggaMugger, was lamenting to me this morning about it being the anniversary of his breakup with a Very Bad Ex What Did Gaslight Him Much.

U.M. said it was a bittersweet moment.  That in reading past journal entries, it was plain to him now how very badly he wanted to make things work, and how very much they did not, in fact, work at all.

I shared a thing about my own life that's similar.  I have some big relationships that I used to have, which I don't anymore.  One in particular used to be very painful to me.  This is with a family member who I've had a cataclysmic break with, over their intolerant attitudes, specifically around LGBT folks.

I shared this thing with U.M. about my experience, and theirs, that I want to hang on to, because I'm grateful I understand it.  Hence why I'm sharing it here, with you, dear reader.

There's this scene in the movie The Matrix, where Neo, newly freed from his unwitting imprisonment in the matrix, returns there with Morpheus and Trinity, to visit The Oracle.  As they travel in a car, they pass a noodle place he used to eat at.

Neo scoffs, because he loved the place, they had "really good noodles."  But now laments that none of that was real.

As I told my friend, this is poignant and related to us both.  Why?  

Because your experiences, your past, they’re yours.  They make you, you.  They’re not fake, not false, not to be thrown away.  You build upon them.  You can’t help but do it.

The path to this moment travels through all the moments prior to it.

That's a good thing.  Or it can be.

#gratitudeNow:Key toe

About 7 weeks ago, I started doing keto.  That's short for the ketogenic diet.

It's a high-fat, low-carb diet.  It means you stop eating refined sugar, grains, and starches.  Out with the french fries, candy, pizza, and such, which isn't surprising, and also with most fruit, which did surprise me.

In with meat.  Lots of meat.  And cheese, and eggs, and oh my bacon, so much bacon. And lots of veggies, just they have to be the right kind of veggies.  So broccoli and cauliflower are good, but you gotta not go crazy on the carrots or tomatoes, because they're high in carbs.

I know, I know.  It sounds sort of, well, bat-shit crazy.  

It's not though.  It's no fad either.  The diet's been around for over 30 years, has some good hard science behind it, too.  I've read up on it some.  Basically, you're doing a sort of body hack, that puts your body into ketosis, making it use fat for fuel, instead of carbohydrates.  

It reminds me of this scene from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper where Woody Allen's character, a health food restaurant owner named Miles Monroe, is brought out of suspended animation in the distant future.

Dr. Melik: Well, he's fully recovered, except for a few minor kinks.
Dr. Agon: Has he asked for anything special?
Dr. Melik: Yes, this morning for breakfast. He requested something called wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk.
Dr. Agon: [ laughs ] Oh, yes. Those were the charmed substances...That some years ago Were felt to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies? Or hot fudge?
Dr. Agon: Those were thought to be unhealthy, precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
 

While I'm not eating hot fudge and cream pies, I sure do eat a lot of steak.  And it's working.  I'm down somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty pounds so far.

Plus, I'm coming to understand some of the subtleties.  This morning, I kind of made up a recipe, for a strawberry breakfast smoothie. (1/4 cup of heavy cream, 5 whole hulled strawberries, 2 packets truvia, about a half cup of ice, and add in water to reduce thickening.)

It was delightful.  

Some of the nice folks in the various online keto communities I frequent don't call keto a diet,  but refer to it as a Way of Eating.  (With the very unfortunate acronym WOE.)

That's ironic because I mostly am having no woe whatsoever.  

It feels great not just to be losing weight, but to feel like I understand not just what to do, but why and how.