Rain, again.

For the first time, the rain today doesn’t suit me. This morning I woke happy, actually happy. For a few minutes, I have everything I EVER wanted. Everything. I heard that lonely dissatisfaction that’s haunted me for as long as I can recall stop talking. But now it’s back, the damn rain, the rain and the lonely sadness that I am not willing to accept as my personality because of its otherness. It is entirely separate from me but it lives inside me, feeding off me, and I off it. 

Bone-chilling cold, damp cold, mixed with a pinch of sadness (but not enough to draw real tears) alienates and comforts me.  I tried curing it in a hot bath, but the water grew cool and my mind went wandering, restless, expecting more of me than I had to give.

 Dull sadness yells again. I resist the urge to call someone to stamp it back into the safe place I hide it whenever I need to do anything at all. I wrap myself in a cashmere sweater – thin warmth. It’s tough softness blocks most of the cold, letting in just enough to make sure I remember the chill. Cold grounds me.

When I told Ellie that I’d be working from home and asked if she wanted me to do that she replied with a definitive, “No.”

I shook my head like a dog shakes waking up from a nap. Before making this about me, as I am oft to do, I ask, “How come?”

She says, “Because you’ll miss your friends and be lonely.” Ellie’s generosity of spirit astounds me. Magnanimity in her still takes me by surprise, though it no longer should. This pure person, whose whole life is lived without affectation - she passed right through me and shares that with me. 

Cole just came into my office and looked at me with that quizzical, “humans make this whole thing way more than it is,” expression.  It’s not confusion or pity but wisdom. He’s dying and it’s killing me. He has cancer. He’s been there with me thorough everything, through the Evanston years, when things were really bad, the other year when I only thought things were really bad, and now. Cole never let me be totally alone. He sits atop the couch, just close enough for an introvert to feel him and not feel crowded. I try not to miss him yet. But I do.

Imaginary Friends - or whatever it takes

Today while I was writing, I remembered that I had a lot of imaginary friends growing up. My friends included a diverse cast that, at one time or another, included Major Houlihan who was a character from MASH, “Closet girl” who lived in the huge walk-in closet I shared with my mother, and “Andy” who was the mission commander from the movie Space Camp.

My best and closest imaginary friend was one that looked exactly like me. She was my reflection in the washing machine that took up way too much space in the master bathroom of my parent’s New York apartment. There was a time when I talked to her everyday. I imagined that there was another entire world, identical to ours, but different. She lived there. All this happened through a tunnel, on the other side of the washing machine. A washing machine as a gateway to another world? We work with what we know, I guess. Alice had a Looking Glass.

In that world, nothing bad ever happened. When something bad happened in my world, it went the way I wished it had in her world. I didn’t envy her; I loved her. A place that was perfect and safe should take up infinite space in a child’s world. No one had allergies, no one was sent to their room for “talking back,” no one felt lonely.

In retrospect, I’ve always been a lonely person. It’s not something I would change about myself though.  We’re taught to run from loneliness and solitude, forgetting that it serves a purpose. It’s the time to develop our relationship with ourselves.

My washing machine friend is something I’ve never admitted to anyone. It’s likely I was worried what people thought of me, having imaginary friends WAY beyond the time when it was “developmentally appropriate.” I still talk to myself when I’m sitting in traffic- no one can tell because they think I’m on the phone (thank you to the inventor of Bluetooth).

Hiding my imaginary worlds from others was unnecessary. I am grateful for my imaginary friends, for they taught me how to believe. We all have a parallel self, in a perfect world. It gives us hope to think about how things should be. If we don’t imagine the way things should be, how can we change how things are?

Musings from Sunny and 70 degrees in Northern California

For those of you still following along, I thank you. There are so many days I’ve forgotten to be grateful.

As I keep chugging away at writing (10,000 words not ready for public consumption), I find myself apologizing. I apologize to my father, to myself, to something or someone unknown, and to you, kind readers, for the plethora of typos Brian keeps finding- EVERYWHERE. Apparently, I suck at proof-reading.

I’m sorry that Daddy never saw me grow up. Parents aren’t any more happy than non-parents in the grand scheme. The difference is in moments of sublime joy which only happen when your child astounds you. When our children discover the world, we have a chance to re-discover the wonder of seeing something, even something ordinary, for the first time. This lasts for a brief moment until the next adventure (read as tantrum), but its brevity takes nothing away from its magic.  The thought that he missed out on so many of those moments makes me really sad for him. For that, I am monumentally sorry.

My mother told me that my father was in the play, Our House by: Thornton Wilder. It’s an amazing work, both for it’s modern simplicity and for the sheer philosophical depths delivered in a regular small town – Grover’s Corners. I think because I knew that (and because Kirk Cameron played the lead in Growing Pains), I was aware of it and dove into it more deeply when I’ve seen it staged and read it in English Class.

Consider the question:

“Emily: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?



Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some.”

Based on some of the things I remember my father saying, I believe he was like that.

When I was an undergrad, I took a Hegel seminar spring of sophomore year. My father and I both went to Holy Cross (not the junior college across the street from Notre Dame in case you're thinking of Rudy). Sometimes I wonder if my undergraduate education was really a search for connection with his life and experience. Other days, I am quite sure it wasn't.

I thought a lot of Phenomenology of The Spirit could be summed up in this play. Yet, I digress down a path only Philosophy majors dare to tread (the divine living through a continuous cycle of creating and becoming…I can feel normal people’s eyes rolling into the backs of their heads). For the final paper, I researched Thornton Wilder’s journals and biographies. Sure enough, Wilder read and commented on Hegel. There was I, a silly undergrad, making a connection that made the others in my seminar laugh at me (pretension is sometimes a by-product of studying philosophy), but that was a new idea for many. I came up with a new way to think about two seemingly different things.  This is something his legacy gave me – the chance to think and see what others may not. I’ll spare you the rant on why liberal arts are relevant in today’s world – if you don't see it, I can’t make you.

Phew, enough for today.