Drinks With Doug

Maybe This Time, They Mean It.

Saturday's weather: Only now a short rainburst has moved in: a little thunder but no wind, rain falling heavy and straight. Once it passes we'll be back to baking in the 90's for a while more.
Saturday's drink: None, except maybe Seltzer water. Maybe a Sam Adams with dinner.
Saturday's question: What ever happened to Mason Reese?

I'll say right now. This is not a fun post, but it is an honest accounting of where I'm at right now. Feeling blue? Tired? Gassy? Enjoy the posted video, stop reading any more, call it a day, and see you soon.



Two long-awaited packages arrived in the mail this week. One was STG's "Peticure" nail grooming thing. It's basically a dremel with some fancy stuff and lots of instructions to make pet owners squeamish about doing their dog's nails (me) feel much better. The battery's charging, and after dinner STG's gettin' herself some nail trimming. I hope.

That was the good package. Friday the bad one came, but one that I had also been waiting on. It was face-down on the floor by the mail-slot; a standard 8 by 11 manila mailer. But I knew, and turning it over to see my father's unmistakable handwriting confirmed that this was the letter (dum-dum-dum!) that had been in the works for some two weeks. Five pages inside, five pages my father must have labored over - with editing from mom - for days. His labor done, mine was now to read it.

It was two weeks ago nearly I phoned the parents to check up, catch up, and have a 1/2 hour of pleasantly passable conversation as part of my son-ly duties. Usually these things drift down the river until I wrap it up with a "...gotta go make some marinara sauce!" or something. Everyone seems happier for it.

But now and again, at unpredictable times but predictably once every 18 to 24 months, it's a bad call. Anger, yelling, often at the outset. This was one of those. I have been dreading these for...well, how old am I? I've never known a time longer than 2 years when I haven't had cause to worry about them, and often feel like shit in the process. Lesson to all young parents out there: do not use your children as garbage dumps for all your crap. They don't want it, but will likely accept it because they love you and feel this is helping. It isn't. It never does.

This time, very soon after hearing the precis of what this explosion was about, I calmly emphasized my continuing and unending love and concern for them both, and wishes for the fortitude to work it out. When one parent, who has angrily dragged me into their problems in the past, again started dragging, I put a stop to it. This time not in a calm voice. No, I would no longer take any part of their relationship. Thats theirs, and I do not want it.

The angry one hung up, clearly to mark me as a bad son. Fine. The calm but confusing one tried to do the...not active dragging, passive pleading maybe?...and again I put an end to it. What I did learn was that a divorce was now likely, and my father would write a letter unloading his soul.

The contents I won't go into, obviously. No need to spread compost around even more. Let's just call it a soul-baring confession of all his apparent failings, atrocities, and unforgivable conduct over the last 49 years of marriage.

Five pages, single spaced, plus a one page addendum.

The content of the letter was upsetting. In most cases, nothing new. In the remainder: nothing I needed to know. But there was something over all that which...I don't quite know. There's something odd about this letter. I'm not sure why he wrote it, why he felt I needed to know it. At moments I doubt I'm even the audience. And worst: I'm not even sure of its voice. I can't say what exactly, but there is an oddness to it all. Oddness, accompanied by waves and waves of nausea and ache.

Most of all I am convinced I am now supposed to say something. Perhaps proclaim my father unfit for the pits of Hell with my mother listening. I don't know. I know mostly that there's nothing I have to say at the moment, and I fear that is only going raise tempers higher.

I'm used to this. I've been disowned...twice is it? You stop counting. I've heard the divorce word a handful of times in the last decade. Maybe this time they mean it. I've been on the receiving end of these eruptions before: they're never good and they always come when your guard is down. I like to think I'm numb from it all.

But I'm not. The evening is approaching and I haven't been able to do a thing all day. Literally: I didn't want to walk, didn't want to drive away, didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to dissolve. "...melt, thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew!" as Elsinore's Prince once said. I could think of nothing else to get away from this renewed worry and ache for my parents; parents whose lives, hanging on this most recent fulcrum, seem to have been for utter loss. It's a rotten thing to carry in your head; worse to have it stuck there.

The rainburst has passed and it's getting brighter outside. So, too, shall it be with me. My big job now is to learn how not to let worry about future storms - and they may be bad ones - interfere with the good weather when it blows in.

I'm open to ideas.