Thursday, December 9, 2021

GRIEF

 ESSENTIAL GRIEF


Grief is sacred,

It speaks from the depths of our losses

and the core of our humanness,

It is lovesremorse for not embracing more often

And more fully

Those we have loved and those we neglected to love

while we had the chance.


Grief is holy, 

It is love too late for our beloved

yet just in time for our selves.


Grief is the hearts truth,

It is love itself weeping for itsown loss.


Grief is a healing balm

exuded from our wounds 

to our wounds,

It admits ones true vulnerability and sensitivity

to oneself and the world at large. 


Grief is accountable,

an admission of every selfish 

thought or action

We did or did not take.


Grief is the rightness

that forgives us our wrongs

and though it often comes late it is 

never too late.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN

CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN

I had never given any thought to having children but as our marriage continued to disintegrate, L and I, decided a baby might help bring us back together, give us something to align on. This sounded fine to me. I figured we’d have sex more often which sounded like a good idea to me. With or without love, sex was one thing I was always ready to enjoy.  Men are like that; uh-huh.

We’d been married for just two years when our relationship began ailing.  I was thirty-eight  and Lwas twenty-eight; no one was getting younger so we started trying. Periods were charted and once a month we’d have a brief frenzy of lustful activity for a few fertile days. 

Several unsuccessful years later, after discovering that my production wasn’t the problem, thank God, the doctor introduced fertility drugs into the equation. Even so we remained barren for a couple years longer. Finally after nearly seven years Lill became pregnant. It was exciting, it was bonding, it made us hopeful. Three months later the sonogram revealed that the fetus aborted. I remember feeling disconnected from the event, disconnected from my feelings. L however, was devastated. We stood in the parking lot outside the hospital and I held her. I wasn’t sad, nor did I feel compassion for L.  I realized then that I hadn’t really felt much of anything for a long while.

After the miscarriage L put on a few pounds. We were later informed that this increased our chances of getting pregnant again and three months later we did. 

Nine months down the road as we watched some lame Stephen King made for T.V. film L said, “I think it’s happening”.  We raced to the hospital. The doctor that had guided and supported us all along was out of town on vacation.  This information increased Lill’s prebirthing anxiety significantly.  An assistant night shift nurse checked things out and told us it wasn’t time. We went home only to return a few days later when the real contractions began. 

Lill was determined to give this child a natural birth and so declined any drugs or epidural. We walked the halls all night and most of the day. An unfamiliar doctor assigned to us examined L and suggested that we break her water to speed things up. Exhausted and afraid she acquiesced and moments after her water broke she looked at me and said, “I want that epidural”. Then she yelled, “now!”

It was scary being present and witnessing all that pain and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Time crept by and progress was made very slowly. The epidural fell out three times before the shift changed and finally a capable anesthesiologist placed it properly.  The doctor returned at one point and told us that if Lill couldn’t push the baby out soon she’d have to have a cesarean.  The nurse and I were instructed to put our weight on either side of Lill’s belly and lean in when the next set of contractions hit.  The doctor placed what looked like a toilet plunger suctioned onto the crown of the baby’s head.  I looked at the nurse and when Lill started pushing she nodded her head we both leaned in. I glimpsed something long, thin and wiggly whizz by my peripheral vision. Awestruck, I entered a fatherly trance. I watched this new life squirming in the nurse’s arms; I couldn’t take my eyes off the newborn and the concluding procedures while my exhausted wife suffered the final insult following a twenty-eight hour delivery-the episiotomy. The overwhelming love and affection I was feeling for the baby was something entirely new for me; it was unconditional and would remain so.


Six months later and contrary to the popular myth that one cannot get pregnant while nursing,  Benjamin was conceived the very first time we had sex since Sam’s delivery. The universe works in mysterious ways. Looking back I was convinced that some higher power knew I wasn’t ready for fatherhood prior to when it happened. I was too immature, too self-centered and I’m sure that had a child arrived any sooner I would have fled.  Our family joke was this; seven years for the first child-seven minutes for the second one.

L and I’d been watching Appollo 13 at a movie theater when Sam’s brother Ben began his own launch. In contrast to Sammys twenty-eight hour delivery session, Benny popped out fast and furious, red-faced and fists clenched.  The two boys grew to become close loving  brothers;  something I’d never had with my own older brother.  It brought me a joy that has been with me ever since.  I miss these guys today as they are both through with college and stumbling into self-sufficiency.  My support now for them is mostly financial and I miss those humble beginnings falling asleep on the lazy boy with a babe or two in my arms. I miss cheering them on at their baseball games. I miss them hiding behind the front door, jumping out and attacking me upon my return home from work.  If not for my parenting experience I would never have begun to grow up.  

Near the end of the sixties a popular band, “Blood Sweat and Tears,” borrowed a line I later learned was from the Bible and they used it as the title of their album-Child is Father to the Man. I never understood the phrase back then but it is crystal clear to me now.

Monday, March 16, 2020

AN INVITATION


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When I began this blog back in January 2001, my intention was to post pieces that would  engage you-the reader, provoke dialogue and begin an exchange of ideas.  For the most part, the blog failed to inspire the dialogue I’d hoped for. 

I’m gonna give it another try here and see if some of you will join me in creating meaningful conversations. I would love to hear what you think about what I think. 

To this end I am editing and reposting posts written almost ten years ago in hopes that this time it will engender responses to the prose, poetry and prayers I share here. 

C'mon peeps!  Lemme hear from you.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

How We Frame It;

The events of our lives 
are not nearly as important 
as how we chose to frame them;

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

BREAD



 A Story of Bread


I bought some ready lentil soup from the neighborhood market. It’s awesome. Bought some French Bread and a few other items I needed, checked out and went home. Tasted the soup right away. Yes! 
Put the stuff away in the fridge and notice I hadn’t noticed …the bread. 

Arrrghhh. 

Small upset really. Called them and they said they had it, blah blah and I said  thanks-I’ll be in a little later. Damn. 

You see I have developed a strategy to avoid, crowds and congestion. I do my “to dos” that require things from stores, or dr. appts, grocery shopping , etc. between ten and two o'clock. 

It was three thirty now and I thought I was done “OUT THERE”. That’s hw I usually refer to the world at large these days. With dread like Maynard G. Krebs said, “WORk”.
Okay I thought. I’ll ride the bike. I need the exercise but first let’s smoke a bowl for the ride and listen to Pandora through my hearing aids (ah-technology…can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

Two miles max but of course there’s a good Santa Anna headwind which comes out of the desert and blows all of our smog out to sea. Whatever. 

I make it there of course and they are ready for me. The young security guard recognized me from earlier, smile and made a comment about bread. So of course being a lonely old codger, explained how it was the bread that thought of having lentil soup so…

We went on for a while about our mutual admiration for “fresh” bread. I told him I usually freeze half of the baguette which keeps it pretty authentic once reheated carefully. But then I remembered the most important and relevant thing I learned in all the hours and hours I spent in and out of colleges. 

At S.I.U. I had a roommate from New York whose name was Carol. It wasn’t that he was gay or trans or anything. It was 1968 and he was just weird. Those days you had to be significantly weird to stand out from the rest of us who were doing our best to, well-be weird. 

Carol taught me that if you suck all the air out of the loaf of bread you just bought, twist  and tie it tightly, it will taste like day one for most of the week.

He was right. Thank God college wasn’t a waste altogether!