English&More

The grey long-haired cat from next door runs for the tunnel he’s created in the thin leaves of the deer grass in the front yard. I have startled him–nothing else is moving in this heat. I would follow him if I could.

Summer has arrived at last. I could stand perfectly still and sweat. Today, though, I am moving boxes from the garage to storage and I am soaked with myself. If I give it an hour or so, think only of the shower I will take afterward, I can do this chore. This is how summer passes: I negotiate with my body, promise it future reward for present discomfort. As long as I’ve lived in the Central Valley heat, I’ve done thus. My body is quick to forgive–it lives in the moment. But I remember, and I’m ashamed to mistreat it so.

I worked 13 years for an ice company. Summer was measured from Memorial Day to Labor Day and every day between was a Wednesday–there seemed to be no end to demand. I would step into the freezer and steam would coalesce around me. Later, when I stumbled upon the works of Andres Montoya, his iceworker persona resonated with me. It was the way the iceworker spoke up for those who don’t speak, who aren’t allowed official speech. Montoya’s iceworker was a champion; my experience was the opposite: long demeaning hours away from family, corporate disregard for employees, the Rockwell image of the iceman and cart, children running behind for ice chips, hiding the predatory nature of business. One summer, on a Sunday, there was a massive blackout in California. I was at my then girlfriend’s apartment with my kids when I was called in to work. I was told we were helping people keep food fresh and survive the heat, but we were getting top dollar for every bag sold. Meanwhile, I lost time with my family. When they fired me several years later, none of those sacrifices mattered.

My body has long forgotten those iniquities. My whole life has moved on–I have a career so different now that I wonder how it happened. I used to think I would leave the Central Valley and never return. Many of my friends did so, but I didn’t. I married, raised kids, went back to school; now I have a new career and friends here. I like that I empower people in my job, instead of contributing to their continued servitude. I like that I’m valued for my intellect and critical thinking skills instead of punished for them. My new job is like a grass tunnel–a retreat from the capitalist blast furnace. I no longer have to negotiate with my body to get up for work.

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Last week a letter arrived for my son from the National Guard. I did the same thing with it that I’ve done with the others, the Army, the Marines. I buried it in the kitchen trash. I even arranged the trash over it on the off chance he’d see his name and fish it out.

My father used to ask me, “When are you going to join the army, sweet boy?” I know he knew how much it needled me; I was always visibly uncomfortable. I never had the rejoinder that would shut him up. He was a tall man, fit and robust–I was a teenager and shy and my spirit cowered in his presence. He’d ask, “Where’d you get that hippie philosophy?” in a sneering voice. “Stuff I read,” I’d say, which only made it worse. He’d go on and on. He’d been a general’s guard in the Korean War and he credited that time with turning him into a man. He collected guns and one of his prizes was a Russian Luger he’d gotten off a prisoner and which he’d brazenly smuggled out of Korea. He even collaborated on books about the conflict.

Once, when I’d said something about the “enemy” being human, he said, “Down the barrel of a gun, those gooks ain’t human.” He held up an imaginary rifle and let off a few rounds. I remember vividly where my dad and I were when he said that, the smell of the restaurant, the look of the fake plants behind my father’s head. I was so stunned, I just sat there. I kept thinking of my girlfriend, who he’d met. She was Korean, adopted by a couple here in the states. I became sick to my stomach. I kept wondering how it could be that she wouldn’t be human–what circumstances could ever make anyone not see her as beautiful, full of life, human.

The war machine is getting better at dehumanizing the enemy. The latest move is to separate soldiers from their targets. War by drone, or by long-distance imagery. It is impossible for me to watch the footage of the Reuters reporter gunned down by US helicopters (you can watch the video on WikiLeaks and read the Reuters story). I start, but it overwhelms me. And the New York Times is reporting that 23 Afghan civilians were killed by, as the army puts it, “unprofessional” reporting from drone operators. We fight more and more via remote video and what then separates the “enemy” on the screen from the video game “enemies” my son’s generation spends so much time conquering?

Ironically, when my father passed away, I inherited his gun collection. They are all safely locked away and I made sure every gun had no ammunition in it. But they belong to me–me, who has never knowingly allowed a real gun in my house in my life. I remember when I was a kid my dad cleaning the guns (religiously) every weekend. He’d show me how to hold them, how to check to see if they were loaded, what never to do. He wanted to teach me to value them as he did, but we moved to California and I developed a hippie philosophy. I did not carry his values forward.

I have talked to my son about my actions. He’s seen me throw away the Army letters. He knows what all of this means to me. I have checked the box denying the Armed Services the right to send my son literature via the school or to use school records. A lot of good that does, apparently. I also preview my son’s video games and movies. But he is 17 now. I can’t shield him forever–and I’m aware that I am probably not shielding him now. I remember being that age. I just hope, if someone ever asks him to target another human being, however much they might seem like game avatars, he’ll say no. If asked why he won’t, maybe he’ll say, “My dad taught me.”

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Ten years ago yesterday, in the chapel on the Presidio at San Francisco, I watched Lorraine Suzanne Shenefield approach me down the aisle. Our daughters and my son were our attendees; two of our best friends, Jim and Annie Compton-Schmidt officiated. In the audience were some of our closest friends and family—my father, for one, who I would not see again before he passed away and Lorraine’s mother who is also departed now.

Later, we had our reception on a cruise yacht on the bay. Most of the day is a fog to me now. I remember things through the photos we have, except for one key detail: Lorraine was stunningly gorgeous. The boat was great too–we saw a whale and drank too much and there were fireworks over the bay later. It was a magical day.

Magic is the result of hard work and dumb luck. We’d worked pretty hard to anticipate any problems, but the taxi that was supposed to pick Lorraine and the girls up from the spa where they had their hair done never arrived, so she desperately flagged down a passing limo for the ride from downtown SF to the Presidio. I’d practiced my vows (we wrote our own) over and over, but I was so nervous I didn’t quite say them right. Among the other lucky things, the fireworks were for the Bay to Breakers marathon that weekend, an event that ran just past the Victorian B&B we were staying at, as it turned out. It just felt like things worked that weekend.

Ten years later, some know that things aren’t quite so lucky for Lorraine and I of late. We separated the end of February this year. It is not as though things are over; we are in counseling and we are working on our issues. We see each other several times a week. But I had to cancel some grand plans for our anniversary and there is pain and hurt on all sides. Our relationship is a struggle.

I’ve always been most attracted to Lorraine’s courage and independence as much as anything. But that’s a two-edged sword. Joni Mitchell sung it best: “You don’t like weak women, you get bored so quick, and you don’t like strong women ’cause they’re hip to your tricks….” I’m difficult, she’s difficult–we’re high-maintenance! And in many ways the stressors we’ve faced have been extraordinary. Our blended family was never perfect and we’ve suffered from lack of money and lack of communication and lack of, well, you name it.

But we went to dinner last night and there was magic. There’s magic in her kiss, in our connection to each other. There is magic in the way she smiles, in the way we hold each other. She is still stunningly beautiful. I love her and I believe she loves me. The hard work we face now is in pulling it all together. The future, like that day ten years ago, is mostly fog. For one night, at least, there was magic again. With a little work, a little dumb luck, maybe another ten years.

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Is anyone’s life free of stains? Not mine; in reflection, I turn up the rug and all that’s been spilled over the years has dried in accusing layers. My house is dirty. I have not kept it well.

Of course, this is a conceit. My viewpoint is a choice and, like most depressives’, it evidences a strange sort of narcissism. Woe is me, etc. It is a viewpoint that feeds on itself too–that recognizes its own conceit as further evidence of the dirty house, of the general worthlessness of the beholder. Self-knowledge does not necessarily improve the depressive illness.

And illness it is. I take medication to improve the serotonin levels in my brain. Serotonin is a chemical that we know a lot about and nothing about at the same time. It has been linked to sudden infant death syndrome and regulates a variety of cardiovascular and endocrine functions, muscles, and breast milk production. According to WebMD, “Of the approximately 40 million brain cells, most are influenced either directly or indirectly by serotonin. This includes brain cells related to mood, sexual desire and function, appetite, sleep, memory and learning, temperature regulation, and some social behavior.” Clearly, if there’s something wrong with my serotonin, it would explain a lot.

Except, like most advances in science, the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know. There is no way to measure serotonin levels in the brain or even to be certain exactly how increasing serotonin levels affects mood. Scientists aren’t sure if reduced serotonin levels cause depression or the other way around. One theory holds that a suppression of brain cells from stress causes depression. The theory suggests that increased serotonin in the brain stimulates the growth of brain cells and that these new cells are what mitigate depression, not the medication itself.

It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. My current depressive illness has something to do with stress, which I don’t handle well, but also with shock. The triggering event itself is not important to this post, but I am in deep grief and shock and this has triggered a downward spiral of emotions. I must have killed off or suppressed quite a few cells to feel so uninspired by the world around me. Suddenly all the stains are visible: layers of them.

I’ve been here before. It will pass. I’m exercising more, practicing yoga breathing, distracting myself. It’s the AA way–fake it ’til you make it. Last night my son had some friends over and I busied myself driving for pizza, taking my stepdaughter to work and back, ferrying about. All their conversations were animated, excited. They barrel forward toward an uncertain future with their brain cell factories at full production and they are high on the serotonin of youth, the dance of friendship, the courtship of possibilities. I could learn something. My son, after dropping a pizza slice on his shirt, exclaimed to his friend, “That’s gonna stain!” And with that they took off laughing, grabbing a broom to sweep their treehouse.

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Driving home from the store this afternoon, I passed a crew working on some part of a closed lane of the road that had been recently repaved.  Hard at work, bent over as only a small child can bend, fat diaper butt in the air, was a little boy digging at the asphalt, his watchful dad nearby.

I flashed back to my daughter when she was just a baby–I used to bundle her up, strap her in the car seat and go to work at the ice company in the middle of winter for one or two deliveries each week.  We were a small outlet–this was 1989 or 90.  I was the only employee/manager through the winter and I delivered dry ice several times a week and wet ice even less.  I remember setting her in her seat near the rear of my pickup, wedged under coats and propped up carefully, to watch as I hoisted the 50lb blocks of dry ice from their bins, cut them into strips on a band saw, and loaded them for delivery.  I talked to her and tried to make her laugh so she wouldn’t cry from being cooped up–she hated car seats.  Sometimes, after the delivery, we just sat together in the truck and I watched her sleep or played with her to hear her laugh.

I didn’t do that with my son–the ice company was much bigger by then and I took him to work sometimes so he could walk in the huge freezer, but I worried more because I had employees then and more machinery.  It just wasn’t safe.

But now they are both grown, or nearly so and all those times are in the distant past, it seems.  I turned to my son the other day and realized with a shock that he was almost as tall as me.  He will be 17 in December.  I can’t fathom that.

And soon, tonight, I will have to pick him up from his friend’s house.  The friend is a girl, but he’s not calling her a girlfriend.  They text each other 40 billion times a day and were  in constant contact while she was in South Dakota over the summer, but they are not labeling the relationship as of yet.

I’m afraid for him, the same way I was (still am?) afraid for my daughter and stepdaughters–love is an awful and transcendental feeling.  And hurt is inevitable.  The first love so often does not last.  It belongs to the realm of human rites of passage which must be endured, which must, in fact, consume us wholly and thrash us and lift us up and thrash us again.

I too am going through a rite of passage. I can’t save my son; I couldn’t save my daughters.  It is my lot to sit helplessly by while they tread this path, to take them in my arms when they sob the tears of inconsolable loss, to try to make them laugh and live so they will love again, and maybe even lose again.  And that little boy, working so hard beside his dad will grow up and never remember any of this day except, perhaps, the residue, the aura of a real love that will never let him go.

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• GeoCaching this morning. #
• Found one of three this morning. In baseball, a good avg. #

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