Are you some kinda yogi?

                Our first house was about 950 square feet and was right near our old high school.  We ripped up the matted ‘70s carpet, painted some paneling, and buffed the solid pine floors.  We had three bedrooms, one bathroom, a nice kitchen, two ancient pecan trees, and a garden.  I still miss that neighborhood.  One night, we were playing Wii sports (probably golf) in front of the picture window in the little living room.  I guess the neighbor saw us and suspected we were up to nefarious business because he and his girlfriend came over and gave us a warning.

                “Can y’all PLEASE stop shooting us with those laser guns?!  It’s really hurtin’ my back because I just had surgery.”

                What would you have said?  We agreed to the imaginary cease fire; but we actually just drew the curtains.

                I wanted to spruce up my side of the neighborhood with some bedding flowers in the front.  You know how we segregate our plants; veggies in the back, flowers in the front.  So I bought some portulaca because it’s pretty and pretty drought tolerant.

                 Maybe if grad students had health insurance, I wouldn’t have self diagnosed insomnia.  Maybe if I hadn’t had such a busy life, I wouldn’t have relied on whiskey for sleep medicine.  Maybe if I’d known more about mental health, I would have invested in myself a little more.  Maybe if I hadn’t already been a very regular recreational drinker, I wouldn’t have started drinking every night.  But sometime before moving to the little brick house, I realized my alcoholism.  The night before planting my portulaca, I had my usual night time whiskey.  I’ve mentioned all this alcohol stuff just now to tell you this: I like the next day head fire and stomach ice of a “hangover.”  I’m sure some psychoanalyst might portray this as some sort of self punishment, but I think it boils down to either: I didn’t sleep so I feel emotional and useless versus I drank and passed out/slept.  Insomnia can make you do crazy things folks.

                  It was a humid May morning, Lauren and the kids were still sleeping.  If I went out to do my garden chores, she’d have to get up with Max.  I’d be off the hook for making breakfast. I had all the songs on “Highway 61 Revisited” memorized because I’d finally gotten with the times and I had my very own MP3 player.  I skipped the shirt per my usual routine and wrapped up my head with a bandana.  I try not to look too much like a hippy, but a bandana on the head is surprisingly useful all day long.  Someday, my left knee will quit forgiving me and I won’t be able to kneel down and plant things so easily.  I was oblivious to that then so I assumed the joint destroying pose and got to work on my little garden.  That’s what I like to do: Bob Dylan, sun on my back, dirt, purpose, and solitude.

                Then I saw a different neighbor; a 70’s, chubby, redneck type, friendly, unpretentious, unassuming, and un-afraid to ask questions.

                “You prayin’?”  His face read genuine concern but mainly apprehension.  There I was, a big shirtless supplicant to Mother Earth mumbling along to Desolation Row.  No telling how long he’d been there, at the edge of my property line, watching me “pray.”  I stood up and explained about the portulaca and the drought and the breakfast and the babies.  Neat and succinct.  I had an excuse to be out in the dirt.  My story would check out.  I couldn’t let people start to think that I was earnest about flowers and stuff.  Wouldn’t that seem weak and feminine?  Obviously, the man of the house should be more focused on his career and 401K and maybe a manly hobby.

                “I thought you was doin’ some kinda yogi.”

                Some people pray, some do yoga, some break clods of dirt to Dylan.  Your parents had to recharge somehow while they were giving so much energy to you.  If they were with you constantly, they had to recharge in little fits of secret selfish solitude.  Maybe mom facebooks in the bathroom too long or dad “needs a minute” before supper.  I’m shocked that smoking isn’t more popular.  A seven minute smoke break makes everything better, but I guess there’s a cost to everything.

                Back at that first house, the brick house, we were starting to “really do it.”  I walked the older boys in a wagon to the playground every day.  We grew a surprisingly productive garden.  We hosted friends all the time.  I didn’t have any go to rituals but my daily life had routine.  In the chaos of raising kids and work and school, a rigid routine can be a day-saving waypoint.  If I just remember to start the laundry at bedtime, I won’t have to hear it tomorrow.  If I make a grocery list, I’ll save a trip.  If I grade my papers at school, I won’t take work home.  If I finish my field research, I can write my thesis.  If I practice mandolin, I’ll learn how to play.  If I model correct adulthood, my kids will become correct adults.  I just didn’t quite get it back then.

                Now I have FALK and GALK.  During the cool season, we FALK (fire, animals, laundry, and kitchen.)  This entails making sure the stove has wood ready for loading.  Some days I accomplish this by bringing in a few logs.  Other days I have to work a little harder.  Morning animal chores come next.  Now it’s milking season so I leave the barn with eggs and milk.  I bet there have been about a hundred different occasions when I was just sitting there milking and then I looked around and just laughed at how perfect my mornings are.  Laundry sucks and I don’t even do most of the work.  One of these days when I really have my life together, I’m going to start folding my laundry as soon as I reach in and grab it out of the dryer.  That’d really be practicing what I preach.  K is for kitchen.  I bet it’s the center of your house too.  I love an efficient kitchen well appointed with quality tools and ingredients but the beauty of the kitchen is the anticipation of sharing food with another person.  I guess that’s a good segue into G, G is for garden.  Wanna know a secret?  I have no idea what I’m doing in a garden.  I’ve tried to grow food every year of my life that I had dirt for a garden but I feel like I haven’t really learned anything.  There aren’t easy ways out, life hacks, simple tricks, or even green thumbs.  Wouldn’t it be nice to still be a part of that almost lost ancient verbal tradition of horticultural “culture?”  How many ideas about storing tomatoes have you heard the old timers mention?  How many have you seen on Pinterest?  How many have you tried?  Who’s going to teach my grandkids how to store tomatoes?  Facebook? Reddit? College?  Will skills like that be valued more or less than they are now?  Already, it doesn’t make economic sense to waste potentially profitable time on such quaint and utterly frivolous pursuits. 

                I eat tomatoes, so it matters to me.  I have chickens, they must be fed.  When it’s cold, I must bring in wood.  I’ve just reminded myself that I need to switch over laundry.  This seems so simple; if you want to eat tomatoes, plant a few and tend to them.  Go to the grocery store occasionally when you run out.  But if you want to experience tomatoes, go sample as many heirloom varieties as you can get your hands on.  Find a few favorites, grow them year after year by saving their seeds.  Inevitably, you’ll gently artificially select for some traits and your work will become physically manifested in the very DNA strands of the next generations.  Think of all the family gardens that shaped modern produce over the course of history.  Growing and eating and sharing real food kind of connects us to that past.  But, this is just a tangent and not every “problem” deserves such intense analysis but that’s the way I operate.  If I’m capable of taking tomatoes so seriously, what about raising kids and being married? Admittedly, I’m a little intense and I’ve struggled in my journey into marriage and fatherhood because of that intensity.  I’m talking about more than cloth diapers, sign language classes, and family supper at the table.  That stuff is just me overparenting.  I’m talking about the soul mingling tear filled discussions that end in confusion.  I’m talking about completely baring my entire being to another person.  After half our lives together, Lauren and I get each other more than ever.  Damn, it was hard at times, to be real.  I just knew that the real me wouldn’t be quite enough for her.  Maybe she wouldn’t really understand me.  Maybe there wasn’t really much to understand.  Eventually, we had to destroy bits of each other before we ended up fitting together.  Sometimes that hurts and takes too long to heal. But she didn’t scare easy.  Damn, it is so easy now, no pretense.  I had all those barriers up for no reason.  Sure, we get pissed off and fight and parent poorly still, but we get to be genuine with each other and that really generates peace.  Where did those barriers come from anyway? 

                During every step of my developmental journey I’ve thought, “I’m self aware.  I see the big picture. My perspective is the correct perspective.”  Maybe it’s narcissism. Maybe it’s objectively true somehow.  Maybe it’s the only way my brain can function.  But hindsight doesn’t make me seriously question my earlier naivete. I’m still pretty protective of my younger self.  I look back and see choices I wouldn’t make today but I did make then and I’m protective and defensive.  I’m astonished that we punish people like my younger self so severely.  It’s absurd to try to punish people in order to make them more pro social.  But that’s another story.  What I’m saying is this: I remember each stage of my journey and I recognize those stages in newer people.  Sure, we can all say that, but there’s more.  I’ve been through some existential fiascos in the last two years and to maintain any sense of control, I had to focus on only the bare minimum.  That means, finding deficiencies in myself and addressing them (sometimes obsessively).  My reasoning is, “It was sooo hard to get my kids through early childhood. It was sooo hard to learn to raise a family.  It was sooo hard to build and rebuild and forgive and forget.  Surely my kids’ lives don’t have to be that hard.  Surely I can jump start them somehow before they leave the nest.”

                After the fire, we got robbed.  Over and over.  Here’s a work of fantasy:

Robber 1:  I think to minimize our risk of being apprehended and also to dilute the emotional ramifications to our victims, we should strike only after housefires.

Robber 2: Indubitably friend, furthermore simply adding the loss of more personal property to their inevitable insurance claim will be insignificant in relation to the magnitude of their loss.

Robber 1: Right-O. Unfortunately, I’ll be unable to carry out the entire heist in one discrete action since my vehicle lacks the cargo space to accommodate all of those newly abandoned tools.

Robber 2: Worry not friend.  We simply must return and carry out additional capers every night until the supply has been exhausted.

Robber 1:  Very well.  I look forward to cooperating to accomplish our shared vision.

Robber 2: Likewise friend.