Enjoy the Ride. It May Be a Long Time Before You Experience Another Pandemic, if Ever

I have two fathers, both equally important to me, and both no longer living in this realm.  My real father's birthday was a couple of days ago, so perhaps that is why I woke up thinking about him.  I never realized how much I loved him until he died.  The only way I've been able to describe that love and connection is to say that it is woven deep into the fabric of my soul.  Overall, despite him leaving my mother when I was only two, he was a good dad.  I spent every summer with him, and in that short time each year, he made sure the family spent a lot of quality time camping in the woods of northern California.  I was never spanked and seldom yelled at.  Most importantly, I knew I was loved.

Yet, my dad failed.  All of us dads do, I'm sure, in our unique ways.  I know my children probably feel the same about me.  Still, for whatever reason, I need to write about one of dad's failures this morning.  For all I know, it could be him prompting me, saying, I'm sorry.  If that is the case, there is no need.  I accepted his short comings when I became a parent and realized just how difficult parenting is.

Still, for some reason, at this moment, I have the need to write about how I was hurt.  What that has to do with COVID-19, I haven't a clue, other than this is the moment I'm in, and this is the place I decided I would record my thoughts during this time, whatever they might be.

I woke up remembering the time Dad came to visit for my high school graduation. Junior high and high school were not pleasant experiences for me.  I was extremely shy and picked on.  I did not want to participate in graduation at all, and I only did so because my dad wanted to come. Graduation was an odd experience for me because high school caused me great pain.  I was nobody.  Nothing.  Zero.  Zilch.  What was I commemorating?  Invisibility?  Or even worse, being bullied?   I did have some really good friends.  However, although we went to school together, we were friends outside of school.  Our connection did not need that atrocious space to exist.  My real social network, where I felt valued, was work. So,  I only did the whole graduation thing for Dad.  And it was very odd indeed.  I wasn't an excellent student.  I would receive no awards.  There were a thousand of us, and I would quickly walk across the stage and get my diploma and that would be it.

I lived with my brother Lloyd, who was and is an artist.  He has dedicated his entire life to making art.  We lived in a two bedroom, second floor apartment in a suburb of Dallas.  I can't remember if he had gallery representation yet, but if he didn't, he was still showing in major exhibitions in Dallas, which is no minor accomplishment given the size of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area.

Heat.   It was hot the week I graduated.  Unusually hot.  Our apartment sweltered.  Dad and my sister Kim, who came with him, slept in the living room.  I can't remember on what.  The apartment was cramped, stifling.  My brother's Mustang had no air conditioning either, and so there was no reprieve on the road.  We took them to see the sights--all the places that meant something to us, like White Rock Lake and the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, but there was no reprieve there as well.  The Dallas Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum and the Ft. Worth Museum of Modern Art were cool, but after the long, hot drives, we walked around shivering in our own sweat.

In short, it wasn't a pleasant experience, especially since it started off with a fight.  The argument might have actually been graduation night, but I don't think so.  It was probably the evening after that.  I had been excited to walk Dad and Kim over to my work, a Braum's Ice Cream store, a block from our apartment.  Outside of my small group of friends and Lloyd, it was the one place I felt valued.  I loved that job.  I worked thirty to forty hours a week while still keeping up moderately good grades in school.  I paid for a decent part of Lloyd's and my groceries and rent.  I was basically an adult while still in high school.  And the people there treated me good, which is all I really expected out of this life--to be treated like I belonged.  And besides, we made decent hamburgers and damn good milkshakes.  So, I took everyone over for dinner excited to introduce my dad to my world.

Things went well at Braum's.  Everyone came over and said "Hi" to my dad and sister.  I was proud of my life, my co-workers, and my family.  One of my two managers gave me a graduation present and I opened it.  It was a shirt that I didn't like, but I knew it came with love, so I valued it.  This is great, I thought, not near as bad as I imagined it might be.

Then we got back to the apartment, and my dad felt the need to give me life-advice:

"You know, it's okay to enjoy a job like that now, but you don't want to get stuck living this way for the rest of your life."

What the hell?  As much as I love my dad, and I truly do, thinking about that still makes me mad, so I won't record the fight that ensued.  But here's the thing.  My dad flew all those miles to attend a graduation ceremony that meant absolutely nothing to me, and then in one single sentence rejected my entire support community.  The nice people.  The ones who didn't judge me.  The ones who valued me for who I was, not some damn stinking future potential.

That's why this came up today.  We are not stuck.  COVID-19 did not derail life.  Whatever you're experiencing right now--that is life.  If you're not comfortable with it, you're not comfortable with existence.  My dad, for all of his good qualities, was not comfortable with living.  He didn't enjoy us for who we were.  He had plans for us, and we disappointed him greatly.  We didn't become the people he imagined we could be.  Ironically, I think it's because he felt he had disappointed us.  In his mind, somehow his not being there for us was the reason we were deficient, and so he felt tremendous guilt.  Somehow, because he chose to leave his marriage and his children behind,  he felt he needed to correct his past by correcting our present and future.  That is a pretty human reaction--the need to feel that those you love so much have somehow been harmed by your absence.  I understand that.  It's also complete bull crap.  Not that we didn't love him or miss his presence.  Not that he wasn't worthy of inspiring us.  It's just that no matter what mistakes you make, life finds a way.  My step dad did a marvelous job filling the role of father.  He didn't replace him; he didn't even try, but he was there.  By assuming we were damaged by his absence, my real dad did more damage than assuming we were whole.

  

The stupid thing is that I had absolutely no plans of working fast food the rest of my life.  I was already looking forward to college--community college, yes,  as a first step, but college all the same.  But what if I didn't want to go to college?  What if it just wasn't for me?   Is a human's worth one's occupation?  If it is, a lot of humanity is having their value diminished very quickly right now.

Of course our vocations are not our worth.  We know that.  Yet, in normal times, we live as if we believe that were true.  Now is a time to reckon with the meaning of life, whatever that may be for each of us.

For me, it is this: 

We are here to learn the true meaning of a paradox.  Namely, that individually we are not all that important--we all come into and leave this world all the same--and yet simultaneously we are all of infinite value to our creator.  

Those who get that paradox make happy millionaires.  They also make happy custodians.  Happy fast food workers.  Happy grocery store tellers.  Perhaps even happy bums.  Although admittedly, the easier your basic needs are met, the easier it is to be happy because you have less to worry about.

Those who get that paradox make happy extroverts.  They must also make happy introverts because although I'd rather not be shy, if I had to choose the most fitting of the two labels "happy" or "sad" for me at this point in life, I would choose incredibly happy.  I think I know myself pretty well.  I have no problem writing through hard stuff.  At one point I believed I had come to terms with the fact that life had no meaning at all.  I have lots of poems that record that perspective.  I'm not one who has to like what he's observing, just one who wants to be truthful in facing reality, whatever that might be.

I no longer believe life is nothing.  I believe it has value beyond our mortal capacity to comprehend all of our little daily interactions with the world around us that are teaching us to be a little closer to divine.  

I also know, like my father before me, I have probably failed to give my children what they really need.  Perhaps even the same way.  I hope not.  That would be kind of sad and tragic.  Although, it would also be slightly funny too--to try so hard to not repeat the mistakes my dad made, and then grandly repeat them anyway.  Ha!

Anyway, what I want to pass on to my children is this:   

Live for yourself, not me or your mom.  We did the best we could at each stage of your life, depending not only where you were at, but more importantly, where we were at.  When we struggled, you got to pay the price for our insecurities.  Your children will experience the same. Still, as much as I hated my dad focusing on my potential, I do know you have divine potential, and this life is just God's way of making sure you recognize it.  Not by becoming something you aren't, but by becoming something you already are, but haven't rediscovered.  Perhaps that's what I get that my dad did not.  Our job here is to become who we already are.  Not that we don't grow, but that we grow based on who we were before we were born into this world.  Only you and God know who that person is, and so only you and God know all the intricate steps you must take along the way to complete your journey back home.  And the meaning isn't in how quickly you discover it, or what others think of you along the way, but that somewhere along the journey, you understand a simple principle that Satan works very hard to distract us from, which is as follows:

 You are of infinite worth, but then so is everyone else, so lighten up and enjoy the ride.

What's good enough for my children is also good enough for anyone else who is getting through COVID-19 the same way I often do, by spending far too much time online.

So to any reader out there:

Enjoy the ride.  It may be a long time before you experience another pandemic, if ever.  Use this time as a tool to help you unfold and examine who you already know you are but haven't yet had the courage to claim as your birthright:  you as the you yourself desire to exist.