Of adversity and raising a son

I stopped speaking to my Father at the end of seventh grade. At best he was an example of what not to do do as a Father. My most salient model of being a Father came from a Uncle who lived within thirty minutes of my mother, brother and I. From him I took this: Do some of the cooking, purchase a leather chair in which to listen to classical music force your children to think about saving money and "a good job."

The day to day relationship between a Father and son is something for which I had no real life experience of value. So I made it up as I went along with my son. Using my mother's relationship with me as a starting point. There were limits to this, however, because my mother often worked two jobs and had long commutes and so had little time to spend with us and no time to play.

In retrospect a part of my relationship with my son was me vicariously living out the Father-Son relationship from the perspective of the Son. I bought him all the things that I wanted when I as a child. A glaring example of this was I bought a train set for him when he was maybe a two years old. He had no interest in it, but I set it up and watched the trains go round and round.

To the extent that I am a strong man, with a good sense of self I attribute to living in poverty for a while and close to poverty for a long while. Adversity and the lack of things forced my brother and I to turn inward for satisfaction. This stands in absurd contrast to my son who had sushi at the age of six and had an X Box, Playstation and Gameboy all at the same time.

My son has never faced adversity or real challenge. He has never had to eat buttered rice for dinner for a week until I got paid. This is a good and a bad thing. It is a bad thing because he has not been made to realize--in practice, not just intellectually--what is important. It is a good thing, because, I'm here to tell you that eating nothing but buttered rice for a week is no fun at all.

Unfortunately the conclusion of this has no solution, at least yet. It is something that keeps me up just about every night and is one of the two things to drives and propels my desire to live. I will find a way or make one.

Not blogging for a long time is quite like not talking to a friend for a long time. You want to do it, but you feel that since its been so long you have to block out an hour to make that phone call. That then makes the call daunting, so you put it off and so it goes.

I've been wanting to re-start for a while, but who wants to spend an hour an the phone, so this is going to be a short call just to let you know I've been thinking about you and we should get together soon.

My last entry heralded the Change America Banquet, which succeeded beyond my expectations. College Tribe made some money for its scholarship fund and folks from all over the country got their drink on. Check out the pictures here, and the next time I share an event, you know to be there.

Between the Ball and my last Blog I spent a week in the Hospital and suffered through another brush with the unpleasant. This time it was Septic Shock, which led to me being quarantined (which explained why the food service people left my tray outside my room)

The ordeal started with what I thought was a bladder infection (albeit from hell). The pain was frightful, the kind where you think to yourself, "this just cannot be real." Over the last eight years my illness has made me familiar with pain and I've developed a few coping methods of coping with it. First, I'm thankful that I'm experiencing the pain and not my son or partner (she does not like to be called wife--another blog entry for another day). This then leads to the chant of "Thank You," where I give thanks that the pain is with me and not with them.

For the first time, however, this did not work. The first ten hours in the hospital were an absolute challenge to my will. At one point I had not slept in 30 hours and two 12 year old doctors were trying with disaterous results to place a Aterial Line in me. In addition to repeatedly unsuccessfully sticking me with a huge needle the procedure required a sterile setting, which included a plastic bag over my head. While I'm sure there is a medical term for this, for all intents and purposes it was a bloody plastic bag over my head.

Forty five horribly unsuccessful minutes into this I lost it and started screaming "Abu Grave!" My partner stepped in and found a grown up doctor who gave me some wonderful drug that put me under. When I woke up various things were sticking out of me, but there was no pain and I was on the way to recovery.

While recovering I decided to change my life. This is a decision that I have made many times before and never completely followed up on. Over the years I've come closer to living the life that I truly want, but have never made the absolute commitment to it.

So this is me following my bliss.