Broken Holiday

I have never eaten fruit cake.  I have been called one on numerous occasions and I certainly have seen or read about many an infamous fruit cake but I have never actually tasted one.  As my holiday season commences this week I have been thinking a lot about that terrible looking, more than likely terrible tasting, concoction that seems to only bear its ugly self during these times of joy, kind of like egg nog which no really likes but its an appropriate way to start drinking rum long before the noon societal standard.  I have read that the fruit cake is a traditional holiday dessert that really no one likes.  Some interesting facts are that you can mail order them and if the fruit and nuts are soaked in alcohol the cake can last for years.  Sweet...jesus.  It certainly plays a role in the holidays but no one really knows what that role is and how necessary its existence is.  It sits in the on the edge of the festivities, creating an atmosphere of comfort but not really taking part in the party.  This year, I am a fruit cake.  Here I am, one year removed from tragedy and divorce, feeling compelled to fake a happy holiday face for my kids but really wanting to burry myself in a whole until the first sunrise on 2014. I have considered soaking myself in alcohol so that I can "last" another year or so in that form but really I have to figure out how to re-imagine these holidays.  Like fruit cake I am compelled to sit on the periphery of the festivities and apply myself to complete and utter nothing.  On Thursday, I am going to my ex-wife's house, who cheated on me and then left me, to have dinner with her and her dad, who cheated on his wife and left her, married a woman 20 years his junior, who was tragically gunned down one year ago at Sandy Hook.  Also there will be my ex-wife's mother, who was cheated on and left but is now remarried to a man 10 years her senior who is on his third wife and a methodist man of the cloth...He has a pent chance for long winded stories and the inability to recognize that no one is listening. Also there will be my parents, who as of a week ago were not around for Thanksgiving and thus I committed to the treachery I am about to embark on.  Now, they will join the cocktail of familial anarchy.  My mother, I love her, has the inability to see what is around her and creates a "story of her life" that doesn't actually match up to what is real and my broken stepfather who dedicated his life to a dream that didn't pan out and is slowly deconstructing that dream with each passing day.  And me, the once driven, put together, "I will do it different" vanguard of the future...now broken as well.  There was a time when the biggest issue of the season was deciding which parents house we were going to for which holiday.  My ex-wife and I would begin those conversations as early as September.  Then, as the holidays rolled in they were filled with excitement and cheer.  There was the Thanksgiving at her dad and step moms house where we found out our lovely daughter Isabel was on the way.  There was the Christmas' in Pennsylvania with her mother with a house filled with kids and constant smell of warm cookies and other culinary delights.  Thanksgivings at my parents with crowds of people, football on the big screen, and our kids in their best clothes.  There was the anticipation of games and laughter with brothers in law and nieces and nephews.  Coffee after dinner and Carlo and Rossi at 11am.  Candy cane walks in the snow and slumber parties in the basement.  Rosy cheeks, the smell of pine, and piles of wet clothing in the entryway.  I know there was the bad stuff; the inevitable stress with family coming together filled with expectation but at least it was family.  And then it all ended.  A year ago we all came together in a destroyed house that smelled like cat piss.  We gathered to bury one of our own between Thanksgiving and Christmas...and they were not mine anymore.  My marriage was over.  The past the past...just memories that we erase the darkness from.  Just a piece of the two young ones I helped create remains.  And that is all that is left.  I know someday there will be new stories and new family adventures...but today I think it's ok to be stuck, even just for a moment, here. Where is the eggnog?

Set sail.

In college I remember a speech by one of my favorite professors called Landfalls and Departures. The premise of the speech was that life is really like sailing a tall ship; just a series of landfalls and departures. We depart on journeys, some short, some long but inevitably we have to make landfall to refuel, resupply, remake, take stock. I have thought a lot about that speech lately. There is something about the departures and the immensity of the journeys at sea that seem eternal. The ever expanding horizon and thoughts of distant lands lay a timeless path and direction.....but inevitably we have to make landfall again. No ship can sail forever. The last year of my life has been landfall after landfall....or maybe it has been the same landfall but I was unaware of how much baggage, tackle, and clingy barnacles my ship had on it and thus I'm on an extended stop in port. It seems as if just when I thought I would set sail again, something else, sometimes good and other times bad has held me in port...my landfall was not complete. A year ago an affair ripped my life apart, creating a turbulent storm in that vast horizon. An eventual divorce, an untimely death, and the emotions wrapped in both kept me on shore for longer. Finally, this week, the house I built is being offloaded from my ship. Somewhat unexpected because I thought it was an integral part of the ship...even the bridge itself. The place that the captain would retreat to, despite the storm or scandals at landfalls and find comfort in the familiarity of his instruments, his log book, his bunk. But what seems to be the case is that my house is just something else to be unloaded. It appears to be something else that was picked up on the journey. It served a purpose, even became woven into the fabric of the day to day life on the ship. But on land, I guess it is time for it to go as well. I am left with my hull and hopefully some sails that will catch the wind and depart again. There are times when I am not sure if that is the case. How can this ship sail without all of those “important” things? How can I guide the ship without the things that have helped me guide it for years?

In the end, how many captains actually own their ships? Very few. I just sail this thing....and that is my job. I must trust the wind and that the next departure will bring another horizon, another journey, adventure, stories, and idols woven into the fabric of a remade ship. I get to keep a few of the best crew members but when it does depart it will be mostly new. I am not sure where we are going and quite frankly I am scared to death of not knowing....but, we will depart because despite what is loaded and unloaded, ships are meant to sail and I have to trust that that is what I will do.   

Sucks.

Me and my dogs...music, fire...seven years less of my children.  Moments of freedom and happiness.  Moments of the future...faith.  Moments of deep sadness, loss, anger, and everything in between.  The pity party is not in my game but it's hard to not go down that dark and lonely road.  Maybe some spice from Speyside helps but not really.  Often simply sleep, distraction, and a new sunrise is the key.  Juggling...this is life.  Where did you get the idea that if you "do everything right" you will be free from hardship and pain.  Why me?  It is the test of extreme silence...breath.  Times when the normal grey sky of the New England spring feels more like a suffocating pillow on the face....the mud..beneath is spring flowers I am told.  Trust.  Getting tired of being strong.  Want to be weak but can't.  Smile, work, play, sun.  The weight of my tiny tiny world on my shoulders...let it go.  I miss my kids.  When I have them it is so tiring and hard but I miss them.  I want to feel stable.  I want to know but I do know wanting to know is holding onto something I cannot hold on to.  Let it go. Breath.  Surrounded by goodness and opportunity but sometimes it just feels ok to say.... THIS SUCKS.

The Time

The time to step can be any step.  Finding the right moment to step into the dark or into the light is the wrong way to think of it.  Is is finding anything at all?  Is it that active or should we trust that we step without looking?  Faith in your core is true faith.  Faith that your entire being guides you without outside instant influence.  Your being is the combination of experience, knowledge, love, and laughter bottled up and swirling in this body of ours.  The time is perfect.

Breathing

Breathing in the richness of life, a daily exercise that enlivens the soul.  Sometimes that richness is not "positive" or healthy but still part of the layers of life.  Life is certainly rich with heartache, despair, and darkness.  Turn on the news, look around, peer inside yourself...it is there.  However, in life there is balance and ours are rich with goodness as well.  Today I am breathing in the light.
Today, despite the fog and the fraud, there is a buzz inside the soul that makes breathing feel amazingly refreshing. In and out, up and down, the balance is overwhelmingly refreshing.....in and out.