Curmudginations

The older I get, the less I understand—and the more okay I am with that.

TL;DR: My brain went for a walk. Here’s where it ended up.

The committee in my head has not been allowing me to concentrate on any one topic at the moment. The boys clearly have their own ADHD issues.

Rather than fight the team, I’ll let them take over.

Here they go…

Ex Bad Wife Dreams
(Just waking up and making some notes.) I’ve been married a time or two. Can’t even admit how many “twos.” Sometimes, I have a dream about one of the exes. Sometimes good, sometimes not, and I refer to them as “ex bad wife dreams.”

When I think of the mental anguish, the time, the agita, the emotional and spiritual trail of dead bodies in my wake, I can only put my head down and note, “What was I thinking?”

The most recent ex bad wife dream might have taken place in San Diego, and somehow I was there, but I wasn’t there, and I was late getting to dinner, but at the wrong restaurant, and then…I don’t know what other non-sequitur. Not even sure where the ex-wife fits in, but it felt like one of them was there. I woke up startled, with my heart racing.

Gordon Livingston must have had me in mind when he wrote in his book, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. He talked about how we marry the unresolved versions of our own nonsense. I must have had bucketfuls of nonsense, hence the bucketfuls of exes.

For many years after I graduated from Rutgers, I had the same recurring nightmare: because of a history course I took but never attended, I didn’t pass, and therefore didn’t have enough credits to graduate, and therefore didn’t really graduate.

I finally decided I couldn’t take this anymore. So I located my diploma, framed it, and hung it in my office—no more nightmares.

Maybe I should frame divorce decrees.

Or maybe I need to cut myself some slack and not turn today into an unholy mess before I’m even vertical.

Watch What You Say
Jensen was maybe four years old. The three of us drove down the hill to the nearby tennis club for an evening with our friends (and Jensen’s bestie at the time, Kelly). The plan was for Kelly and Jensen to swim, then we’d all have dinner.

When we arrived, we noticed a large bouncy had been set up for the kids. (A bouncy was a very large inflatable house where kids go in, jump around, and no doubt toss up what they just ate.)

Jensen asked if she could play in the bouncy. We told her she could, but it was going to be either the bouncy or the swimming, because we wouldn’t have time for both. And we, of course, wanted either of those to happen before dinner.

So it was off to the bouncy for Jensen and Kelly.

Later, driving back up the hill, with Jensen fastened in her car seat, we heard her angelic little voice from the back seat:

“Today was fuc^%ed. Kelly and I played on the bouncy and didn’t get to swim.”

The reaction was predictable—I was in tears laughing, and Traci was smacking my arm and chiding me for Jensen’s appropriation of my language. And not only did Jensen know the word, but she used it in context perfectly, with the appropriate amount of indignation attached.

Oh, the pride I felt.

And you never know what’s going to stick.

Now What?
I often think about the moments immediately after Emily was born. Fingers and toes counted, baby swaddled in her striped cotton cocoon, the earlier din and activity in the delivery room had all subsided. Nurses left the room one at a time, followed soon by the OB/GYN. Emily’s mom was exhausted and nearly asleep.

I picked Emily up, walked to the other side of the room, and as I turned around, realized there was no one else there—just Emily and me.

A wave of panic coursed through me. What am I going to do?

Then, just as quickly, the answer calmly appeared: you’re going to figure it out. You’re a father now, and this is the first of many decisions you’re going to make when it comes to your daughter.

It only took a minute, but I found my way out of the room and reunited with the drowsy mom. Decisions about “what to do” when it came to Emily were never easier, but they were never quite so panic-filled again.

Maybe Not...
When I was a freshman in high school, I met with the school guidance counselor. As I recall, he was working toward his Master’s and thus was administering the “Kuder Preference Chart” to everyone with a pulse. The test is designed to help match skills with career pathways.

I was 14 and had never really thought seriously about a “career.” Still, the idea of studying medicine always appealed to me. At that point, I had yet to come up against a math or science course I couldn’t handle, so becoming a doctor still felt real.

The counselor studied my results for a long time, which I assumed meant neurosurgery, maybe NASA, or perhaps a Nobel Prize somewhere down the road. Instead, the closest I got to an actual result was the teacher informing me, “A screwdriver in your hand is a deadly weapon.”

Ha-ha. I’m sure the testing helped his Master’s quest. It pretty much destroyed my personal quest for medicine. Even at 14, I was able to discern that high school wasn’t the place to learn what you couldn’t do. It should have been about discovery and possibility.

It was the first of a litany of reasons why MMI Prep, for me at least, was little more than a ticket-punch on my way to college.

An Observation
A few weeks ago, I was opening a package and managed to practically take the tip of my finger off with the knife I was using. This isn’t the first time I’ve caused major bloodletting with an otherwise innocent kitchen tool (see above). But jeez, looking at it now, you’d think the accident happened yesterday. My finger is still a mess. Makes me think of how damn long it takes for physical cuts and bruises to heal now.

But what I’ve also noticed is how, at my age, the mental cuts and bruises heal very quickly. Maybe it has something to do with the idea that as we age, we just don’t let the little things get to us as much.

Maybe we don’t have the time to deal with a lot of stupid shit any longer, either.

And Yet Another Observation
The weather is finally beginning to warm up, and my morning meditation is outside. It’s delightful—sunny, but still a bit cool. As I was sitting, making what must be the one-millionth attempt to wrestle with my monkey mind, I thought maybe if I just focused on the bird sounds, I’d be able to ease into my meditation. Listening to the birds, wondering what they’re saying to each other.

They’re no doubt talking about last week’s Curmudg column.

Or, they’re just chatting. And as I thought more about birds and how they communicate, I thought about how birds came to be, which led to how anything on our planet came to be, which led to the infinity of space, which is the very definition of “awesome” and “far out.” And I thought of how, in the trillions of miles of the great beyond, this planet of ours came to be, and how incredibly amazing and fortunate we all are.

And here we are.

Now what?

It makes the wonder of our kids that much more wonderful.

It makes the wounds that won’t heal that much less meaningful.

Looking for more Curmudg during the week?
Notes features Mudge of the Day, WHAT I’M READING every Sunday, random observations, and occasional throwbacks to older columns that still feel a little too relevant.