Trust

Tags

anger, family, fatherhood, life, marriage issues, Nate, parenting

Parenthood must mean being able to accept that you are a complete and total fool.  I am over qualified.

Remember my last blog, the one where I talked about my son taking a trip to Lake Geneva to meet a friend, then go watch girls they know from summer camp play in a volleyball tournament?

I forget that every teenager at one time or another is going to lie to their parent(s).  Am I wrong or am I right?  All I know is that there might have just been a time or two that I deceived my own parents when I was a teenager.

Paybacks are a… BITCH.

Late Saturday night, Nate called me to ask if he could stay overnight with his friend in Lake Geneva.  It was 9:30, late enough that I thought it best that he did not drive home in the dark, so I reminded him that I did not want to go all weekend without my car and I wanted him home early the next morning.  Bedtime came for me and I rested peacefully knowing that my son was safe.

I was roused from my sleep around 1:30 in the morning by a frantic wife, babbling about how I had made a mistake by restricting our son’s phone so he would not be able to place a call after midnight.  She yelled at me to give her the phone number for our cell carrier so she could change that.

Oh, and then she told me that Nate was calling her from a Walmart parking lot in Grinnell, Iowa, nearly 5 hours away from our home in the western Chicago suburbs.  He was calling from the Walmart manager’s phone.

She kept yelling at me as I stumbled downstairs to get my PC and check the status of his phone via our cell phone carrier’s website.  Nate was telling a fib.  He was not restricted on the weekend.  Truth was, he had ignored my admonition to take his phone charging cord with him.  His phone battery was nearly dead.

His plan was to sleep overnight in the Walmart parking lot.  He needed money.. because he actually had not saved his money as he had told us.  He needed gas because the gas tank was nearly empty.

The girl from camp lives in Grinnell, Iowa.  The things we boys do for love.

Do I need to say that I was angry?  I grabbed the keys to Miriam’s car, muttering threats that the boy would never ever drive my car again.  I also had muttered something not too kind when my wife was yelling from the top of the stairs, something I had to apologize for before I left to go find the prodigal.  It was 2 AM.

I arrived in Grinnell a little before 7 AM on Sunday.  Good thing it was a long drive because I had time to think about things, decide that being angry would only hurt me.  So I found Nate at the Walmart, knocked on the window to get his attention, asked him how he was doing and what he planned on doing.

“I’m going to church with her in a few hours, then head home.  Are you going to make me come home?”

“No, you’re here and even though I probably should, I am not going to ruin this for you.  I am going to go with you to a gas station, fill this car with gas, then give you some cash for food and in case you need more gas to get home.  We’ll talk about this when you get home.”

And that’s what I did.  I was angry, did my best to control the anger, may have even been a bit too nice to him.  We got the gas and the money, I said good bye, and turned back to Chicagoland in Miriam’s car.  I got home at 1 PM, headed up to bed, slept 2 hours.  Miriam was gone when I woke, didn’t get home until Nate got home — at 10:30 that night.

Yesterday I spent some time talking to my parents about it, then talked to Miriam.  We decided on a punishment, then had the talk with Nate last night.  No car privileges until October and future trips will be limited.

OK, looks like I call him my boy, not my young man, for a while longer.

On a positive note — he lied, but wasn’t getting into trouble.  I tried to give him credit for that when I talked to him.

Until next time….

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream

Tags

anger, faith, God, life, marriage, marriage issues, relationships

I need to scream.  I am emotionally spent and I have no outlet.  I need to be comforted and hugged, but the one I thought would be there for me when I need her touch took that away from me a long time ago.. and she is the source of my frustration.

Where do you go when you need to scream?  What do you do?

I want to know.

Do you moan to God like David, at times feeling like God has rejected you?  I can relate.  I pray for relief, for change, and it seems like I am praying for naught.  My prayers feel empty.  I have yet to dance naked before God and everyone, like David did in his celebration.

Maybe that’s the answer?

Naaaaaa.

Do you spill your anger out on the people around you, the poison seeping from your pores, dripping from your tongue?  My mood threatens to turn black when the screams are trapped inside me, so much that I wish I could run from myself.  Instead, I run to a mirror, witness the distressed man that stares back at me, darkness lurking in his eyes, tears pooling.  Often enough, I am able to leave him there.

A bicycle provides escape for a time, each frustration shaved away as the pedals turn beneath me.  There was a time when the bicycle was the only outlet that I needed.  There are times when that is still the case, but more and more the screams stay with me.

I am not a violent man.  I can be an angry man, a man I have learned to fight simply because I know that I don’t handle the angry man very well.  Never am I tempted to strike out in an attempt to release the screams.  I am afraid of what might happen if I did.  I want to be angry with my words, but I don’t like to do that, so I hide my words away more often than not.  So I need to scream.  I want to scream.

I can’t.

I want to scream so loud that it all goes away.  The pain.  The want.  The sacrifice.  The woman who complains and takes, who gives so little back.

In a moment, I will retreat to an empty bed.  I will wake up to a still empty bed.

And I will live my day craving the opportunity to scream.

Some day it will happen.

 

Super Bowl Shuffle

Tags

life, marriage issues, parenting, relationships

I don’t know.  There was a time when I knew how to dance.

Have you ever experienced an emotion that feels like a mutation, a tiny horrid little piece of dust slime that somehow figures out how to evolve into a form of life, then crawls inside of you?  The creature digs into your heart, an uncomfortable manifestation that tries to mimic what it finds there.  No amount of effort will make it go away.  The pain is unfamiliar yet close to what you have encountered before, a bother, an aggravation.

That happened to me yesterday.

It was one of those times when I needed to feel like I was wrong, as a means of justifying how I felt.  I needed guilt.  I needed permission from myself to be selfish.  There are plenty of times when I know I have been wrong, fought with the guilt, knew I was being selfish.  That tiny horrid little evolved creature latched onto those feelings and fed on them.

My wife and I were invited to a Super Bowl party, a small affair with three couples that we know well.  These were people that I like, people I know that my timid wife is comfortable with.  Most years I sit at home, eat my snacks in front of my own TV, watch the majority of the game by myself.  There were years we went to parties together, mostly before children came into the picture for us, but for the most part the Super Bowl has been celebrated in solitary glee.  So when the email invitation came, I asked my wife about it, received an answer that masqueraded as a yes, then RSVP’d that we would attend.  My friend enthusiastically acknowledged, followed up yesterday morning with a text saying that he was looking forward to seeing us.

Saturday night came.  Our 16 year old boy announced that he was staying home to watch the game.  Suddenly, I could see my wife waffling.  Question marks filled our tiny living room.  There was no way she would leave him at home to watch the game by himself.  There was no chance at all that she would consider bringing him along to the party with us.

I was doomed and I knew it.  The boy would watch for five minutes, then retreat to his room.

The guilt.  The selfishness.  Both worked on me.  I still feel both.  I wanted to go to that party.  I wanted to enjoy some time with other couples.  I wanted to enjoy a night where I felt like my wife was doing something with me, enjoying a time away.

She knew I wanted to go.  Time came yesterday afternoon to leave for the party.  She was dressed and ready to go.

Instead, she continued to wrestle with our boy, could not decide what to do.  He got in the shower, yelled at her to go get snacks for him, make something for him to eat during the game, stay home.  I told her that we should just go to the party for an hour or so, then excuse ourselves.  We had said we would go.

She wouldn’t go.  I sat at the top of our stairs and a few feet away from her, my head in my hands.  That tiny horrid little creature was working on my heart.  I was beginning to experience a hurt that I can not describe.  I had felt something like it before, but never mixed with the other emotions of guilt and selfishness and fault.  Neither was I angry.

If I went to the party without her, I would be the only one there without their wife or girlfriend.  They would know why.  If I did not show, these friends would know enough about us to know why.

I stood up.  I told her that I was going.  If she wanted to join me, then she could call and I would tell her how to get there.  I went, told my friends that my wife had decided to stay home with our son, gave her blessing for me to go to the party, might join us later.

I knew she had made her choice.  It is the choice she always makes.  Just once I wanted it to be different.  It needs to be different.  The hurt felt different this time thanks to that tiny horrid little creature.

—-

Today I finally went to the Five Love Languages web site and took the love languages quiz.  Honestly, I hate stuff like that.   But I hoped taking that quiz might help me understand things a little more.  Here is how I scored.  The maximum points for any category is 12:

Physical Touch – 10, Acts of Service – 9, Words of Affirmation – 6, Quality Time – 5, Receiving Gifts – 0

It should be no surprise that as a guy, my highest score was the Physical Touch category.  What that really indicates is that I have a strong need for intimacy, a sense of closeness, something that involves companionship.  Maybe yesterday played on my need for intimacy, closeness, companionship.  I think I have been clinging to the hope that will return, that she wants to show me our marriage is worth saving.  That she wants to be with me.  Instead, she made the choice she will always make.  There was a feeling of finality when I walked out the door to that party yesterday.

Backhand

Tags

abuse, fatherhood, marriage issues, personal

My mind is cycling between clarity and confusion.  I need to write simply to give my mind something to do, a distraction.  The only real clear thought that I have is the assumption that I have held for a long time — in order to finish the race I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I don’t have to win the race, but quitting is worse than not finishing.  I don’t need to run a perfect race but struggling through it is going to produce the character I need to run other races.

But aren’t there some times I am going to step in a hole, feel the pain that mistake brings?   What is the right thing to do about the pain?  Keep running and let the effort carry it away?  Let someone care for it, give me the assurance that I will be able to run again, let me withdraw and recover?

I don’t know.

It is really difficult for anyone to understand the way I am running the race without knowing how the race has gone lately.  There have been some real obstacles in my way.  If my life as a father and husband could be compared to the way I approach an actual race or endurance challenge, then I would break it up into little pieces and take each bit at a time.  On longer rides, let’s a tough 100 mile ride with lots of climbs, I can look at a route map, use my ride computer to control my pace and see how far along I am, and I can literally force myself through even the toughest of rides by riding 10 miles a  time, one mile at a time, and half mile at a time until I cross the finish line.  If all I care about is finishing that is what I do.  The competitor in me always wants to do better than just finishing.  Surviving the race of husband and father may just mean being satisfied with finishing.

I really stepped in a hole tonight, though.  I saw it coming, stepped in it any way.  It just looked too big to run around.

My son is 14 years old.  He is an over indulged, controlling, selfish, ungrateful kid who is given even more power by a mother who wants to control, refuses to do the smart thing by acknowledging that a father and husband deserves respect simply by who he is, and shows that disrespect to her husband in front of the 14 year old son.  The boy challenges me constantly, picks at me.

“Your dad is having a bad day.  He’s angry with you because he is having a bad day.”

No.  Dad is angry because he spent all weekend working to fix the family car, mow the lawn, fix the boy’s bicycle, pick the boy up, drop the boy off, go out late at night to find a battery he needs at 5:30 the next morning — then wanted to watch his football team on Sunday night TV only to have the boy storm in to change the channel in front of him barely a minute after the TV was turned on.  No, Dad is not angry because he is tired or having a bad day.  He is angry because he is being disrespected, then treated like he is being a jerk for being angry.

The whole week has been like Sunday night.  I am stressed.  Very.  Try dealing with a possible foreclosure while dealing with constant 14 year old angst.  Yes, Dad is not having the best of times right now.  But all Dad really wants is a chance to catch his breath, feel like his family is there for him.  What happened to the era when the father came home to a nice home cooked meal, relaxed in his easy chair, was expected to take the time to decompress in his home?

A friend told me today that a old farmer shared a bit of simple wisdom with him before the old farmer passed away — people of the past had children because those children were assets.  They needed to have children, many children, because those children helped around the farm, performed chores, served a purpose.  Children these days are no longer an asset.  They are a liability.

Jeez.  I hope that’s not really true, but as I sit in the midst of this cloud of confusion, I can’t help but identify a little with that statement.  It’s not the way I want it to be and I see the mistake in that way of thinking.  Anyone can choose to look that way.  But holy cow it’s a struggle not to think that way.  The costs are just not looking like they are worth the limited reward. In a lot of marriages, the wife is not an asset either.

Arrrggghhhh.

I backhanded my son tonight as I was driving him home from golf practice.  He was mad because I didn’t get there to pick him up as soon as he wished.  Instead of stopping the fight when I asked, asked him to be quiet the rest of the drive home, he decided to mock instead.  So I backhanded him in the arm.  Hard.  With purpose.  He was not going to stop.

I saw the hole, should have stopped, but chose to jump in instead.  I am not a violent man, can be angry at times, but striking my son or my wife or my dog is not something that is a part of me.  But I did it.

Believe it or not that is where some of the clarity comes in.  The kid deserved it.  But I also know that giving in to slugging him was not the answer.  I should feel bad about it, but I don’t.

It’s nights like this when I really feel Satan tugging at my ankles.  I understand more how he is trying to pull me down, beat me, get me to stop running the race.  I read in the bible recently how Satan had been the Prince of the Air — the guy been raised above all — but his refusal to acknowledge God, denial of God’s sovereign power, disrespect and selfishness and ego forced him to be thrown to the pit.  I can feel him trying to pull me into that pit with him as I give in to the struggle.

I don’t have an answer right now.

Grab a Shovel, Grab a Ho

Tags

at home vacation, fatherhood, marriage, marriage issues, yardwork

Poke yer partner and docey doe.

It’s been a bit of a hiatus for me here, not really by choice but simply by other duties, like Call of Duty, taking priority over writing my blog.  My presence has been made known here, evidenced by commenting on blogs.

Excuse me for a moment while I go remind my 14 year old son that our living room is not a golf driving range.  Again.  The dang kid is up early (for a teenager) so my morning revelry was interrupted as he clomped down the stairs and proceeded to chip a tennis ball into a picture on the living room wall.

What mayest thou be doing home during the middle of a work week, thou mightst be asking?  Last weekend was the annual get together for my side of the family, a trip always arranged by my mother so that my brothers and I can get the rare chance to see each other.  This year’s get together was at the beach in South Haven, Michigan, a short drive from the Chicago area.  I forgot that I took this entire week for vacation, in anticipation that my family would continue with our vacation after the weekend get together.

Miriam appears to have a death wish for our sister in law. WATCH OUT MELISSA, THE SHOVEL IS ABOUT TO COME DOWN!!

That did not materialize.  My daughter is entering  her senior year of high school and is also the drum major for her school’s marching band.  She can not and does not want to miss anything.  This week is the second week of marching band rehearsal to prepare for the school year.  No extended vacation for us.  So here I sit, not a bad thing at all, trying to decide what to do with all of this free time.

Monday I sat and did virtually nothing all day.  I dropped Nate off in the morning for a golf tournament, coached him a little as he warmed up on the driving range, watched him tee off on the first hole and headed home after he hit his second shot.  It was nice to watch.  The kid has a nice tee shot that takes off on a straight rise, not a pop up, with good distance and accuracy.  Not only that, but he asked me to stick around to watch his first tee shot, which was nice to hear, much nicer than hearing a tennis ball carom off of the living room wall.

Yesterday I managed to whack my shin with one of my crappy eggbeater bike pedals, a result of one pedal staying engaged to the cleat on my left foot as the right side slipped violently out, causing the left to push the pedal out and into my shin.  There is a cool looking goose egg there now and it should produce an awesome bruise.  Oddly enough, I was too upset with the terrible performance of the Eggbeater pedals to pay much notice to the injury.

Like I said, these pedals are called eggbeaters because, well, THEY LOOK LIKE AN EGGBEATER!

I hate those pedals.  After buying them a few weeks ago, I was a bit concerned about the lack of ease clipping in to the pedals.  I am used to clipless pedals, so getting used to them should have been a short learning curve.  They still don’t work right.  I have emailed Performance Bicycle, where I bought them, and gave them my opinion of the pedals.  There has been no response as of yet.  When I got their automatic email asking me to give a review of the pedals, I gave a rating of poor and a title of the review called “Beware”.  It was published and is the first review of the pedals.

Now it’s time to put on my yard work clothes, grab a shovel, grab a ho(e), and get some work done out in the yard.  My wife was out front last night at midnight, pulling the grass along the sidewalk.  Sometimes I just plain don’t understand that woman.

“Why are you doing that?  You do know I am going to borrow our neighbor’s edger tomorrow when I mow the lawn, don’t you?  We talked about that.”

She has been frustrated all summer about our yard.  After some 20 years of showing absolutely no interest at all, her attention has suddenly turned outdoors.  I suspect it’s largely due to the influence of our Gladys Kravits-esque next door neighbor, a know-it-all who has no qualms about telling you what she thinks.  She and her husband ignored their lawn for years until he retired.  Suddenly she is a lawn care expert.  My overly anxious wife listens to her and is very worried about what she thinks, enough that Mir goes out to do useless yardwork at midnight.  It’s frustrating for me.  The yard is my territory, always has been, and I do an excellent job.  It’s no fun having a worried newbie poking their nose into my business and screwing up what I have worked hard to produce!

So out I go into the sunlit green expanse of my lawn.  Something tells me the hoe is going to be out there with me.  It may take a hoe to get her to listen to me…..

Something In Common

Tags

marriage, marriage issues

“We really don’t have anything in common, do we?”

When I get that question from Mir, there are only two choices to make – run away or face the music.  This is one I usually face, mainly because for me it’s a non-issue.  There are a number of ways I can react to that question.

I can agree with her.

I can disagree with her.

I can laugh at her.  Mock her.

I can be offended by what her statement may be implying.

Mir and I are not alone with this dilemma.  A friend told me recently how she and her husband also wrestle with the same question, her own husband asking the same question.  My gut tells me  that this is an issue most couples experience at one time or another durng the course of a marriage.  More often than not, I hear it from someone who is going through a rough period with their spouse or. even worse, a separation or divorce.  At this point in my life, I have heard it for the latter reason more often than I care to hear it.  In that context, the question is usually followed or preceded by “I am not sure I still love you or have ever loved you.”.  Oh my.

And that is what makes that question a scary proposition.  In a way, it is an expression of resignation.

In my own marriage, what has changed?  Essentially nothing has changed except for the passage of time and the infusion of children into the mix of our relationship.  Mir has been asking me this same question as long as I can remember.  Twenty some years she has been posing that same question to me.  Why?

We are different.  Duh.  I think you and I, oh blog person, have had this conversation before.

When she looks at me today, does she still see me as she did some twenty years ago?  Is she able to do that, see the man whose touch once made her clothes fall off?  Am I not that same man?

In the beginning, it did not matter that we are different from each other.  That was part of the attraction.  The attraction was what we had in common.

I think back to the very beginning.

Our second date, after I had cooked dinner for her and took her to a movie, a night that was simply a night to experience each other in a very polite, stress free way.  I liked her.  She was different than most of the girls I had dated, her expectation only to get to know me, a very relaxing escape from the sex charged encounters that had preceded her.  That was what I wanted.  And we had that in common.  So I asked her to do something out of her comfort zone, which was to meet me at Waterfall Glen, a local forest preserve, at sun up.  That was easy for me, not so easy for her.  We walked together in the pristine quiet of a crisp October morning, and I asked her if I could hold her hand.  As we walked hand in hand, I learned to really like her.  She smiled.  She laughed.  She liked me.  And we enjoyed breakfast together.  It was a perfect morning.

Our third date was an adventure outside of Chicagoland, to Starved Rock State Park for a picnic lunch.  I decided to test her tastes in music on the way there by putting what was an obscure artist to some in my car stereo, Larry Norman.  She cooed as she heard the music, and sang the lyrics she knew well.  Oh my.  I loved that.  We shared our lunch on a crisp sunny afternoon.  I asked her if I could kiss her there, in the sun next to the river at the park, and we lost ourselves in the most wonderful kisses either of us ever have experienced.  The trails at Starved Rock never saw two people more in love.  That was the day that changed both of our lives.

Until our children were born.  Lord, did that change our lives.  Two reminders of who we are.  Constantly.

But we have nothing in common.,,

Except for that house that we so carefully chose together.

Or the faith that has always seemed to define our relationship.

Tijuana.  Houses built there.  With our children and friends.

Prayers that our son will survive through school.

Countless conversations about the boys who our red haired daughter attracts.

Holding her hand while the doctor tells her what is about to happen to that child she thought she was carrying in her womb.

Playing catch for the two children she did.

Holding her hand and the hands of her six sisters who surrounded the bed of her mother as her mother breathed her last breath.

Comforting my brother together as he mourned the news that his soon to be ex wife delivered to him.

Warm satisfaction as we cuddled in front of our fireplace after a Christmas dinner for two.. and what followed that.

Laughing and working together with our first child, a black and tan welsh terrier, a handsome yet challenging imp of a first child.

We have nothing in common.  Nothing.  Nada.