Tag: #Love

  • Summer Camp and Growing Up

    The wife and I got back from dropping the kid off at her all girls Summer camp. It’s a sleep away camp and she loves it. I can honestly say that she looks forward to it all year. When she gets home from camp, we get a month, or maybe two, before she starts talking about how she can’t wait to go back.

    This year, unlike the previous two, the kid wanted me and the wife to come into camp, so she could show us around, and this way, we’d know what she was experiencing, and put a place to the locations she had told us about. You see, the two previous summers, the kid has wanted to go into camp alone, and do it all by herself. We were and still are, all for her independence and if this is the healthy way that she starts to break away from us, we’re all for it. Still hurts a little – we want her to still need us, but the right thing is that she needs to become her own person, independent of us.

    So, this year when she wanted us to come in, we were a tad taken aback. We weren’t going to say no to this invitation, but still a little surprised that the third year in, now she wanted us to see it.

    Growing up in Texas, I barely knew anyone who went to a sleep away Summer camp. There were Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps, but those usually took place over a three-day weekend, and were about getting badges and stuff. Sleep away camp was about having fun, or at least that’s what TV and movies made it look like. Besides, sleep away camp seemed to be something that only happened in the Northeast. Down in Texas, we spent three months sleeping in, watching tv, riding bikes through the neighborhood, and playing until dinner time. Oh, and trying to stay out of trouble.

    So, I was curious what camp is like.

    And what I learned from my daughter was nothing. I could see it dawn on her as we parked the car and started to cross over the river to get to the camp that she had made a mistake bringing us. She got all tense, wouldn’t talk (and our kid loves to talk), and when we did ask her a question, she would only give us one-word answers. She wasn’t behaving like herself. When we got to her tent, a group of her friends came running up to her, and they all started hugging, laughing, and talking about what they had been up to – the kid returned to her normal self. She is a good kid and pulled away from her friends to show us her tent and we helped set up her bed, but the wife and I could feel her was desperate to get back to her friends. So, we gave her a hug and a kiss, told her to have fun, and watched her run off to her friends.

    I still have no idea what the camp is like.

    Which isn’t true, as the councilors and the staff were great and did show us around, and made us feel very welcome. But I didn’t get to see the camp from the kid’s perspective.

    And as the wife and I drove back to New York, I told my her my theory why it was a mistake to bring us into camp. See, I get that kids want to share stuff with their parents, and our kid is no different. But that camp, for the past two years, had just been hers. We had dropped her off, and she crossed that river by herself, and everything we knew about camp, she had to tell us. We stayed on one side, and she got to go to the other. It was her private place that only she knew about, that she had experienced alone – it was her thing, not ours. I think she had her first realization that in life there are some things you don’t want to share. That you want to keep all for yourself.

    That’s true for me. There are things that I have experienced that are mine. That I hold onto and I cherish. They’re not nefarious experiences; they’re just mine, and they make me happy.

    The kid is beginning to build those memories for herself now. Which is good. She’s growing up.

  • Still Dealing with It (Unedited)

    (This isn’t a review on The Pitt, though I might do one at a later date. Anyway, I just wanted to state that at the start.)

    When my daughter was born, I discovered that all of my emotions were right at the surface. It didn’t take much to make me cry; my baby girl holding my finger, or falling asleep on me would cause a gush of joyous tears out of me. But I also began to notice that commercials that had to do with parents and kids would make a big softy outta me. I even cried watching a Simpsons when Marge sang a lullaby to Bart. I wouldn’t call this state sensitive, nor thin skinned, but it was a state where I felt that it was very easy to tap into what I was feeling. Maybe everything didn’t make me cry, but I was able to feel everything. I learned to control it, but “control” isn’t the right word – I learned to work with it, might be a better description.

    The only other time I felt that way was when my mother was in the hospital, and the fear of her death made me and my whole family exist without much of an emotional filter. When the doctor confirmed that she was, in fact, going to die and there was nothing that could be done to save her, what littler filter we had dissipated. One moment we would be normal and having a conversation, and then something would snap, and we would just explode in tears – just loud painful sobs. Then it would pass, only soon at any moment we would again break in sobs, tears of grief. After she passed, we all dealt with her death in our own ways; each person’s mourning was their own. We were there for each other, but we all took different paths in dealing with it.

    For me, I just tried to plow ahead. I had a kid to take care of and a family to provide for. I was left feeling sad all the time for about two years. Not so many tears after that first year, but on special days, holidays, birthdays; the sadness would return, but anger started showing up for me as well. I have been trying to work through my anger and sadness. I through myself into art, creative outlets, and putting a few additional pictures of my mother up around the home. It’s been almost seven years, and talking about her doesn’t hurt anymore, which I know is a sign of progress.

    But there are a few areas that I know I have been avoiding, or not processing well. One of the oddest manifestations of my avoidance is that I pretty much won’t watch medical shows. Anything with doctors or hospitals, I will come up with a reason not to watch it. I won’t even watch reruns of M*A*S*H or ER. And I know 100% why, and it’s because I don’t want to relive any of those feelings of watching my mother slowly die in a hospital bed.

    But I am a huge ER fan, and curiosity got the better of me and I started watching The Pitt, and sure as shit there is a story line about an elderly father not wanting to be intubated to stay alive, and his adult children over rule his wishes. The show didn’t shy away from showing the pain and discomfort the father was in, as well as showing the confusion, guilt, shame, and fear of having to make end of life decision for your parents.

    The situation in the show was not exactly like the one me and my family went through with my mother, but it was painfully close enough. And as I watched the story unfold, the vice in my head kept telling me to shut it off, it was late, go to bed, you have an early morning, reliving your pain won’t help… But I pushed though it. I let myself go back there. Feel it again; the fear and pain, and numbness and rawness and confusion – sometimes not knowing how I was going to survive this. How was I going to keep living without my mother? How was I going to live with this loss, this pain, all of this that will never go away?

    I sat on my couch at 1am and just cried for a while. I don’t even know if the show was that good, but I know I let something out that I haven’t been acknowledging existed in the first place. I have been dodging that final week of my mother’s life. That week where she was in a hospice bed with a morphine drip, and it was my mother but it wasn’t. She wasn’t there, and we just listened to her breathing with everything and nothing passing through my head. I sat there watching her dying, and we all spoke to her, but she was never going to respond back to us. I just wanted my mom to touch my hand and tell me that she loved me, but that moment had passed. All I could do was watch and wait, and it was so painful.

    I am still processing, and a dear friend did say to me that we never stop processing losing a parent; it just becomes a part of who we are. I think they’re right, and I love them for their honesty with me. I still have places and emotions I need to work through. Recesses that refuse to come into the light of day. I know where they are, and what they are. Just not always ready to deal with them yet.

    I will.

    In time.

  • Happy, Yet Not Secure

    The other day, I was trying to explain to my wife how I feel most days, which is happy but completely insecure. And this, is a vast improvement over the last couple of years.

    The insecurity is not whole heartedly an emotional insecurity. It’s a financial and general safety insecurity. When I have written about our financial situation, I have always tried to be as honest as possible without betraying any personal information – and the honest assessment of our financial situation is that we are in debt. The debt (credit cards, car loans, and student loans) is manageable, but also just large enough to delay us from making sound investments in our future. Though we have made progress, it does feel like this debt will never be overcome, and because of that, the feeling of a disaster being around the corner is always with me. A disaster that will ruin us, or set us back for years. This is the feeling of insecurity that I have daily.

    But I can honestly say that this is the happiest I have been in a very long time. It’s been a little over five years since my mom’s passing, but it still feels recent. It’s difficult losing your mother, and I did have an especially close relationship with mine, and with her gone, everything felt sad. No matter what I did, or my wife did, or the kid did, there was the tinge of sadness always right at the edge of everything. It’s taken awhile, but the joy has started to return, and it’s fully based in an appreciation of the love that is around me. For that, I am grateful that I do have friends and a family to share with.

    Yet, I am left with this dualism in my life; there is so much love and joy, but also I can’t shake the feeling that I have sand underneath my feet. At best I can say that these feelings exist in a balance; nether one is stronger than the other. And the truth is that I often have to force myself to appreciate the joy and love that is around me.

    I believe that being happy is a choice. But security? Do I have to earn that?

  • Short Story Review: “That Girl” by Addie Citchens

    (The short story “That Girl” by Addie Citchens appeared in the February 12th and 19th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Derek Abella

    Oh, it’s so much fun reading something that reminds you how powerful a short story can be. In a very deft, strong, subtle and powerful voice, Addie Citchens presents a complex and compelling narrative, as well as a fascinating character in Theo. “That Girl” is the type of story that, at the same time, inspires me to keep writing, and also reminds me how high that bar is to create something inspiring.

    I could say that this is a story about first love, but that description would be disservice to all the elements and themes in this story. Maybe not love, but it is about the discovery of passion and desire where it never existed before. Of kindness, and menace, and doing something that’s been deemed wrong but at the same time awakens the knowledge of the larger world around you, and how could that be wrong?

    Citchens’ takes us on Theo’s journey, which begins during her summer before she goes into ninth grade. One hot day she meets Shirlee, an older girl who should be going into eleventh grade but is still in ninth. This first section perfectly works at setting up the whole story, showing the desire, motivations, and direction of the characters. And the world these characters occupy is a place where violence is always just below the surface, and these girls are aware of it, and how powerless it can make them. It is easy to understand how and why Theo finds Shirlee’s kindness and understanding so intoxicating, especially for a girl who feels isolated in her loneliness.

    As I have been thinking about this story, and there are so many things to talk about, but I have been marveling at Citchens’ language, and her structuring of this story. Reading the piece, I never felt like a word was wasted. The language was pared down to the most essential and powerful. I was on Theo’s journey, and it would take time, but never did I feel like my time was wasted. (I can’t explain it, but I felt like Citchens respected the reader more than any writer I have read in a very long time.) And the structure of the story was in the mold of the “hero’s journey” but never for a second did it feel contrived or predictable. This was a brutal, at times, but honest journey that laid out it’s points so well, that when the story concluded, I knew the choice that Theo had to make, but I was still left heartbroken for her.

    And there are layers and layers to this story. I haven’t touched on half of them; mother’s and daughter, religion, sexual assault, growth and confidence, generational abuse… But also love, compassion, validation, and just listening… But I don’t to spoil this work, and ruin the magic spell that this story is. Addie Citchen’s “That Girl” is the best thing I have read in a long time. It is technically well crafted, beautifully written, and I love the character of Theo and wish I could learn more about her journey in this world.

  • Personal Review: WandaVision (Spoilers!)

    (You are warned! SPOILERS AHEAD! And this is a long one.)

    So, I finished WandaVision last night, and nothing was ruined for me; No internet troll, no idiot fanboy friend, and no spoiler reveiling headline. I was able to watch, and enjoy what unfolded. Just like our ancestors of old.

    The first thing is that I am really surprised at how much I enjoyed WandaVision, as it made me look forward to Friday night. The group of people who put this together did a great job of keeping the story well paced, revealing this mystery piece by piece. I wasn’t sure at first, to be honest. The first two episodes moved slowly, but as the show progressed, it did feel like a runaway train, building speed, and you knew it was headed for a crash of a climax. I keep thinking that at some point I will get tired of superhero shows/movies, because Martin Scorsese is right; you know the good guy always wins, so there is nothing really at stake or in peril. Yeah…

    …But what I enjoyed most was that this was a superhero story about grief and mourning. I think when it comes to “big ‘splosion movies” like Hollywood makes, not a whole lot of time is given to the emotional toll that these trials and losses have on the characters. (I remember when Carrie Fisher said that Princess Leia was the strongest character in Star Wars because Leia was captured, tortured, watched her home planet get destroyed which killed her parents and family and friends, got in a shoot-out, still had time to empathize with Luke’s loss of Ben, and then went on to help lead the attack on the Death Star which caused her to, yet again, face imminent death. And through all of that, she never broke down. That’s an emotionally strong character.) When you think about Wanda, that character has been through too much grief; parents, brother, and her partner in Vision. How would a character with unlimited power deal with all of that death? As she went through the stages of grief, why wouldn’t she use her powers?

    Grief doesn’t make sense. As I watched this show, it made me think about how I have grieved for my mother. Clearly, if I could bring her back I would do it, but I know that will never happen. But I do sometimes find myself having the fleeting thought that I might still get a phone call or text from her. It’s a thought that enters my mind, only to be quickly dismissed by logic, but it lasts long enough for there to be a catch in my throat, and that sad sinking feeling in my stomach. My grief doesn’t stop me from functioning, because my kid makes me keep going, but my grief is always below the surface. It’s a sadness that always seems to be in the back of the room, just out of the corner of my eye. It holds me back from being very excited about anything, or opening myself up to any deeper emotions, or even the joy of looking forward to something.

    And that is the thing that WandaVision did for me. When I figured out this was a show about Wanda’s grief and how it had manifested itself, I didn’t run from it. Watching this show was admitting that it was going to bring up things in me that are still raw. Two and a half years after my mother’s death, I can talk about it, but I’m still not ready to feel that pain again. Watching Wanda and Vision say goodbye to their boys, that hurt. Watching Wanda and Vision say goodbye to each other, oh that hurt as well. But what hurt most was watching that red energy field contracting; the inevitable visual end, the looming death, that was moving toward them. That image for me was how my mother’s death felt. As she lay almost comatose in hospice, we all knew death was coming. We couldn’t stop it, and as every minute ticked by, we knew it was getting closer. I would have done anything to stop it. But I couldn’t. That hurts still.

    WandaVision ended up being something more than I thought it could be. What I thought would be a one note joke of being trapped in old TV shows, or a vehicle to set up “Phase 4” or “Phase 5,” actually was one of the better shows that I have seen a in long time. There was something at stake, and there was peril. Sure, that bad guy was defeated, but the grief survived. Grief can be a gift, as it does show us who and how deeply we truly loved, but if grief is not confronted, it can destroy us.