The Crackpots and These Women

Thanksgiving gave me the opportunity to think about women quite a bit.  I was home with my dad's family for the holiday and was lucky enough to enjoy the holiday with three generations of women, including my brand new niece, Keaghan.  It also included Keaghan's mom, Kendra, Keaghan's great-Aunts, Ingrid and Miggie and Keaghan's Grandma, Sandi. Unavailable for participation was Keaghan's grandma-like person, my Momma, Judy, who is in the process of becoming bionic. The men were there too, but this blog isn't focusing on them.  And not because I don't think that men are important or equal of wonderful.  This is not meant to open a debate on gender roles and traditional gender assignments.  I am not man hating or man-excluding.  I understand with absolute clarity ideas of gender, sex and sexuality spectrum's.  Men are wonderful.  I love the men in my life, I used to be married to a man.  One of my dogs is a man-dog.  My favorite being that ever existed was male. But, for me, the holidays are about the power of "these women".

 The first woman I thought about was my Momma because I had my first taste of what she pulls off almost annually, offering people a Thanksgiving feast that is nothing short of totally fucking amazing.   She couldn't participate in the Turkey-Day madness this year, but she was with me in spirit.  In fact, I was so inspired by the taste of throwing a Thanksgiving, that I am proclaiming here, that next year, I am going to try my hand at doing the whole thing myself. It's funny, I had always thought of it as this chore that I wanted nothing to do with, but I realized this year that it is a Rite of Passage for me to accept the responsibility for these traditions from my momma, especially because she is still here to call in a panic when I mess it all up. 

I thought even more about mommas and women as I watched my sister who is breast-feeding Miss Keaghan, who is two weeks old.  Actually, I watched her simultaneously chase after two 17-month olds (my twin nieces), carve turkey and breast-feed all at once because that is what women do, especially at the holidays; 100 things at once without blinking.  In one night I watched her: finish making a dinner for 9 adults & three children, take pictures with said children in not one but two different holiday dresses, breast feed, try and eat dinner, change diapers, breast feed, participate in conversations, dry tears, breast feed....she was so beautiful, so graceful in the total overwhelm of a life that is what life is for young families.  It wasn't anything exceptional, yet it was absolutely the most magnificent choreography I have ever borne witness to.  

Then there was my aunt Miggie, my Dad's sister.  She has begun coming down more often, to be with Sandi and my Dad during my Dad's illness.  I think that is what women instinctively do, they pull the circle together, around the family, when hard times come.  She spent almost the entire time rubbing my Dads feet, trying to control the swelling.  She is a master at this having done it for my grandpa and grandma during their transitions and also, most recently, her sister-in law who passed last month.  I listened to her tell story after story about family members.  The whole time she sat in the same spot rubbing my Dad's feet.  Letting him know he is loved and sharing her healing energy with him.  She promised me that if it does come time for my Dad to leave us, my Grandma Harris will come for him and even though I am usually not a believer in things like that, after watching these women during Thanksgiving, I am sure that is true.

I think that woman are the greater point of the season, after all.  These women. Your women.  All women. They aren't mentioned much in the songs or in the symbolism.  We are told Jesus is the reason for the season and we look for Santa Claus, but I would like to offer that they are not the entire point.  Jesus does not get here at all without his Mom and Santa would not be able to find the keys to the sleigh, let alone get around the world delivering the presents, without Mrs. Claus. When I called down two days before Thanksgiving it was my Sandi-Mom, out of breath trying to care for my Dad, clean house and get the Christmas tree out, so that pictures could be taken.  That's what first provoked me to consider the ever present amazingness of these women. She sounded tired, but determined.  In fact, I think that should be the catch phrase for all of them....tired, but determined to do this....to create and sustain life.  Because that is what women do.   

This poem says it better than I can.  So I stole it.

Thank you, to all of my women.  I love you. Happy Thanksgiving & Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am kind of an asshole about Christmas.  Probably not even kind of.  For most of my adult life, I have been a complete asshole about Christmas.  If it is possible to have arguments "against" Christmas, I have had them and have spent the last 20 plus years insisting on making them to anyone within range.  In my defense, my arguments are all valid and totally well thought out.  They even vary and range from environmental: the holiday season is a huge drain on already drained resources.....the lights, the paper, the fuel-related travel and package shipping....it is a ridiculously wasteful time of year; to financial: that the mass-market feeding frenzy of consumerism and stuff-buying is everything that is wrong with Western culture; to philosophical: the tiny issue of patriarchal religions basically stealing ideas from Goddess-cultures and flat-out making up holidays based on zero factual evidence. I have had my hands full with reasons not to buy in to this season. Throw in the years I spent on drugs and I have probably managed to dismiss, if not totally miss the holidays my entire adult life.  Even when I was around for Christmas, it was not without some self-righteous caveat about drowning polar bears or starving Hondurans or gifts wrapped in newspaper.

I know.  Total asshole.

But not this year.  This year I am selling out or buying in or whatever.  This year, I am Celebrating.  I am watching every movie, listening to Christmas radio, decorating the house, my office, the car, the dogs.  I am going to every cookie/holiday/work/neighborhood/tree-lighting/parade I can find.  I am having at least one of every holiday concoction Starbucks and Peets can come up with.  I am building a ginger-bread house.  I am tree-trimming and light-lighting and snow-finding.  I am wrapping presents and buying things people absolutely do not need in any way.  I am making Jenner wear antlers and taking ridiculous selfies with him and Rain and Birdy in front of our massive tree.  I am baking cookies for Santa and staying up till the wee hours of the night on 12/24 looking for Rudolph.  And most important of all, I am going to believe.  Whatever anyone is selling, this year I am going to Believe. In. It.  Elves, Oil-Buning Miracles, Virgin Births, Flying Reindeer, Angels named Clarence, Ringing Bells, Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Tiny Tim's New Legs, 34th Street, all of it.  I'm in. I am totally in.

Here's why.  Here is the why of all whys.  When given the choice of picking either joy and fluff and miracles or joyless, harsh, reality.  I say, pick Joy.  Life is going to give you enough times when you don't get a choice.  When your only option is joyless, harsh, reality.  Situations that just do not have any light; so, when there is a choice in the matter, pick the fucking light.  Even if it is light you have to make up and string up.  Even if it is light that you think should be turned off to save energy, just go with it. Go with the Joy behind door number one.  The light at the end of the tunnel.  Give yourself some time to be soft and gooey and full of too much hot chocolate.

See, the holiday season in this country is the agreed upon time for all of us to be less of an asshole. I think maybe that is why we have tried to start celebrating it earlier and earlier. We make things pretty.  We engage, kindly, with people we normally wouldn't.  We care about other people having enough, we donate time, we buy into and tell stories with one common thread and that thread is the greatest gift anyone can ever give anyone: Hope.  The Earth makes us slow down with colder weather and less light.  We admire trees and ache for snow.  Frankly, we become better versions of ourselves.....or we have the opportunity too.  And we get the chance to make memories and to use our time wisely.

And time.  Oh my goodness, the importance of time.  While, I try not to regret too many things, because it is a useless way to spend energy, every once in a while I get a cold blast of a reminder of all of the time I missed either in my addiction, or even worse, so caught up in my own world that I just assumed I would always have next year.  Here's the thing about next year.....it doesn't always happen, and even if it does, it is going to be vastly different than this year, the one happening right now.  Kids will be older, loved ones may be in different places, wars could start, people you think will always be there will die.  You may lose your job or win the lottery or get a dog, or get a tattoo, or get sick; the point is you will not be the same next year.  You are not the same as you were last year....nothing is really the same as it was last year, it can't be. And I can tell you the worst sadness in the world is to reflect upon years past and think: "I wish I'd bothered."

So.  This year, I am bothering.  From now on, I am bothering.  I am checking out of all intellectual reasoning for the next six weeks.  42 days of Jingling Bells, Cookies, Yelling out Happy Holidays to EVERYONE, and hopefully, with enough belief, a miracle or two. I hope you will do the same.  Don't miss stuff.  As brilliant as your arguments may be, they don't stand a chance against the need to create a time of Hope, so when the sleigh comes by, just get in and enjoy the ride.

And they heard her exclaim as she wrote out of sight:

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
AND TO ALL A GOOD LIFE.  xoxoxoxoxo

I'm sorry, Mr. Williams

I owe Robin Williams an apology.  Like most people, when I heard about his death, I had a reaction, a first-thought-wrong (AA speak) reaction and upon further processing….and a little guidance (this time from my other-Dad, Bob…and thank Saul I have four parents because I am far too much of an asshole to be able to be handled by just the two originally assigned), I realize I was way off-base.  

Mind you, my first thoughts were not based out of surprise at all.  I work around real-deal mental illness all-day, every-day.  Life demands balance and Robin Williams got far too high to not have lows of equal caliber.  All you have to do is look at the range of his movies to see that his incredible humor and affair with the magical in life was always challenged by the deep sadness that comes from seeing life for what it is on the flip-side of magical.  It can be brutal here and that brutality can eat away at you until there is nothing left but empty.  All you really have to do is look in his eyes…even when he is mid-riff during his best comedic moments to see the pain that he was in.  So, no, I am not surprised that this was his ending scene.  Not at all.

My asshole reaction, the one that said: “How could he do that to his kids?” “He had so much life left to live!”,  was not based in understanding at all…..it was based on the selfish feelings of a daughter who is facing the end of her father’s life.  The feelings that drive the magical thinking that has created a world where if someone does not want the remaining years of their life, then there should be some type of donation program for those that do.  The thinking that said: “fuck you Mr. Williams….what did you have left? Ten maybe fifteen years?  I’ll take them….let Keith have them."  The thinking that said: “What about Zelda, Mr. Williams?  How could you do that to her?  How could you leave before it was actually time?” It never got to the level of asshole thinking where you go on TV and call someone a coward….but it was heading there and for that I am deeply sorry.

In my defense…it only took one sentence from other-Dad Bob to help snap me out of it.  He said in his super-intense-especially-when-he-says-things-quiet-and-looks-right-in-your-eyes way: “if you were his daughter, would you really have wanted him to continue living in that much pain?" Whoosh.  Deep inhale.  Gulp.  Me, meekly: “no”. Then with more conviction…”no…not for a minute.”

This is the thing about mental illness including addiction which is absolutely a mental illness…they are called illnesses because they are, wait for it, illnesses(!) and really are just like any other disease.  They are progressive and chronic, they have stages; sometimes they can be managed and other times they can’t.  I have spent years thinking about this, working in it, and I have his same disease, every day, so if I get to be a fucking expert on anything….this is it.  This was not a “long-term solution to a short-term problem,” this was a person who had fought a valiant fight, someone who had sought treatment, someone who, when faced with his disease and the choices that come with living with something chronic and debilitating, decided to be done.  When the same thing happens to someone with terminal Cancer, we support them.  When the same thing happens with AIDS we understand.  What we need to get as a culture and as individuals is that the same thing happens with diseases of the mind.  Sometimes the treatments don’t work, a lot of times the side effects of the treatments, when they do work, make life not worth living and it is not up to me or you to decide that someone, when they have given it their best effort, whether it be with Cancer or Depression should not get to decide to be done. Like other-Dad-Bob alluded to, perhaps we should do what we would do with any other terminal patient and instead of forcing them into isolation with a knife and a rope and nothing left but their own pain, help them transition in a way that is peaceful. The implications of which are far too stunning for any of us to probably ever fully digest; but I think are worth thinking about all the same.  

When I take the emotion and judgement out of my response to his death I can  recognize that Mr. Williams simply (not that there is anything simple about it), died from end-stage depression.  It was a life-long disease, that he tried to manage, and did with some success….but in the end, like with many other diseases, the illness consumed him and took his life.  The real tragedy is that he had to make final choices that left him exploited and vulnerable to a sick-society that apparently needs details about the positioning of his body.  That he died alone.  I am no better.  I too, “like to watch things die….from a distance (Thank you, Tool), and read all about things that are none of my business.  Things that are private.  Things that you would not share at dinner about your family members, but do about Mr. Williams because he died of something we don’t understand so we are fascinated by it.  Trust me, had he died of end-stage lung Cancer, we would be sad but certainly not privy to the position of his body & the marks on his arms.

And before anyone jumps on me as supporting suicide, let me be clear; this is not a missive that should send anyone with a notion that life is really-fucking-hard running to jump off of the next available cliff. You do owe it to yourself and the other people in your life to at least try and fight what is fightable. There can be hope.  Same with any other disease.  But I don’t hold it against Keith for making a calculation that the best choice is to let the Cancer win…and I don’t blame Mr. Williams for doing the same with his disease.   I have his same disease.  I know the darkness.  The demons.  The exhaustion from fighting and having it recur, fighting and having it worsen.  Fighting and fighting and fighting…Gratefully, for me, sitting on my borrowed deck in Jenner, looking at the Pacific Ocean, well-medicated and well taken care of, I cannot even fathom being done. But I am not Robin Williams.  It was not my life he was living...it was his and I do not get to judge when or how it came to an end.  I was not Mr. Williams, in that final moment when the battle was lost.  So I am sorry, sir. I can be an asshole.   I hope you have finally found some peace.