Tag Archives: family

Apparently they’re everywhere…

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Do you ever wonder if people really spend any time thinking about what they say before words come tumbling out of their mouths? I’ve known the woman sitting next to me for a grand total of 20-odd days and have already been treated to the complete and unabridged version of her medical history… and her father’s… and her mother’s… and at least one sister. Not only do I not want to hear about your colonoscopy, or your sister’s varicose veins, or your father’s chronic halitosis, but I want you to not want to tell me those things. As much as I appreciate you wanting me to feel like part of the group, there’s a level of sharing with coworkers that I’m just not going to go beyond – and you shouldn’t either. Being realistic, you’ve told me details about your family that I wouldn’t be comfortable telling people I’ve known for 20 years, let alone 20 days.

If someone could stop by and install a cone of silence on my cubicle, that would be perfect. I think it would save us all from a lot of trouble in the long run, because all that’s really going to happen is you’re going to keep telling me things that I don’t want to hear and then I’m going to be forced to post those things on the internet. And that doesn’t seem fair to either of us, really.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Just like that…

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I’ve had nine months to think about what this post would look like, but surprisingly it’s not one that I started working on in advance. Now that the day of jubilee has arrived, I find myself at something of a loss for words. How do I sum up the experience that has been finding my eject handle? Is it defined by the statistics? 273 days on the hunt. 91 days of frozen time. 385 resumes submitted. Sometimes I felt like I could count off the hours of each one of those days. Almost a year of complete confidence tempered by false starts and rejections. And then moments of unadulterated joy. Whatever the moment is, it’s not defined by the statistics.

I’m feeling very conscious of those who made the jump before I have. Of how much I miss them and how much I’ll miss a few of those I’ll leave behind. I’m conscious now more than ever of home, of family, and of friends from whom I’ve been too long separated. They say you can’t go home again. I’ve been away long enough to know that everything has changed – and that nothing that matters has really changed. I’m coming home and I’ll take it as I find it, changes and all.

There is plenty of time to go into specifics later. For now, let it suffice to know that tonight I will sleep the sleep of the vindicated. My great experiment in Memphis is drawing to an end. I’ve survived my ride on the crazy train. And I’m coming home.

When I sat down to write, I thought this post would be a valedictory. It seems my nerves are still too raw for that kind of triumphalism. Give me a day or two for the reality to sink in, though, and it’s a fair bet that you’ll be reading posts with some serious swagger.

Deal breaker…

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A few days ago, I was asked why I was so intransigent about not wanting kids and invited to come up with a post expounding on my view of what has been described more than once as a deal breaking issue. At an age when nearly all of my friends have settled in to the routine of child manufacturing and upkeep, it’s a fair question. It’s also a question I approached with some trepidation, because of the inherent risk of causing unintentional offense as I refine and clarify my own thinking on the issue.

While these may not be the best or most altruistic reasons, they are mine… at least my top five.

• People seem hard wired to think babies – their own, ones they pass on the street, any babies really – are adorable. That gene seems to have skipped me. My response is more along the lines of “Ohhhh look… a small scrunched up human.”

• I’ve heard my entire life “having a child will change everything”. That’s great and all, but I like my life. I like the things that are important to me now and I want them to continue to be important to me in the future.

• Having dogs has meant giving up a certain degree of freedom to travel and do things on short notice – but I can lock them in a cage for a few hours and go do what I need to do or drop them off at the kennel for a few days and fly off to whatever tropical place interests me. With a baby, that’s apparently considered “neglect.”

• It sounds selfish, and it undeniably is, but I’m my own highest priority. I’m not wild about the thought of completely subsuming my goals, wants, and priorities to a small human for the next 18-25 years.

• Kids are crazy expensive. I bitch about $200 vet bills and $50 a bag dog food. Want to guess how I’d react to a $500 stroller or thousands a year in private school tuition?

I’m not a militant kid-hater (unless they’re crying in a movie theatre or throwing food at a restaurant). I’m a three time Godfather. My friends’ kids are awesome. But when the end of the day rolls around, I’m not the one with the responsibility for clothing, feeding, and educating said friends’ kids and I’ll be going home to a house not strewn with toys, without crayon on the wall, grape juice stains on the carpet, or crumbs on the couch. Being Uncle Jeff is great like that. It’s having all of the perks without any of the drawbacks.

I just don’t see how this can be a point of compromise. It’s a binary sort of thing – unless there’s a lease-purchase arrangement that could be worked out – maybe two days a week and every third weekend. If there’s any uncertainly at all about the desire to procreate, it seems best to err on the side of caution. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days resenting the hell out a child or its mother for finding myself living a life I was never sure I really wanted. Maybe in my declining years, I’ll wonder “what if I had….” But those thoughts for a few years in my dotage seems like a far better option than spending the next 30 years wondering, “what if I hadn’t”.

For me at least, it’s about risk management. I’m mostly happy with the life I’ve got. As much as I love a good day at the casino, I’m not about to give up a sure thing now to roll the dice on the long shot that I’m wrong about all this. If that’s a deal breaker, I guess it is what it is.

Quality vs. Quantity

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Family time is a good thing. It’s especially good when you live 900 miles away and don’t get to see them as often as you’d like. The trouble is balancing quality time versus quantity time, particularly when you’re use to living alone and doing everything on your own schedule. I love my family dearly, but I think I’ve reached that tipping point where the best thing to do is get out on my own for a little while, decompress from the just-passed holiday and unwind a bit. Now to find a place in Allegany County that knows how to make a rum punch.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Off guard…

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I got a call late this afternoon that one of my second cousins had died early this morning. I hadn’t seen him in years, but had fond memories of him from when I was growing up. I asked how old he was and wasn’t surprised to here 59 or 60 as I knew that was the general neighborhood he would have been in. What only dawned on my after the call had ended was that this guy had was *only* 60. Suddenly that doesn’t seem so old. That’s twice my current age and it occurs to me how quickly these first 30 have gone and that the pace only seems to be quickening. It’s a thought that caught me off guard and one that’s likely to fester for a while. I don’t generally ponder mortality, but tonight I think I’ll make an exception.

Godspeed and rest well, cuz. You will be missed.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Minimum safe distance…

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Sometimes I think it’s a good idea that I live 800 miles from home. It’s the kind of mileage that gives one a minimum safe distance from family. I knew that my mother was going to have a small conniption when I broke the news to her that her second grandchild was also a dog. But I hadn’t planned on the rather blistering email invective that I got outlining all of the reasons why a second dog was a terrible idea and that a lab makes it even worse. I suppose it serves me right for convincing her that she needed to be part of the e-revolution in the first place. Now mother has never really been a big fan of the kind of animals that live in the house, where I have always been the one trying to drag strays home. That’s definitely not something I got from her. The reasons ran from “you’re too impulsive” to those dogs need more room than you have to she’ll destroy everything in your house. The real kicker was arguing that it would have made more sense for me to come home telling her that I got some girl pregnant. So much for logic.

So here I am, sitting here at the keyboard second guessing myself. It’s amazing that at 30 a guilt trip from my mother still has the old magic, no. But the kids seem to love playing together and I know I’m giving them both better homes than many other dogs out there. So chime in here, readers, have I done the right thing?

Smell…

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I’ve hear it said that there’s nothing as powerful as the sense of smell to carry us back to a moment or a place we haven’t thought about in years. I had one of those moments a few minutes ago. In smelling the combination of fresh-cut grass and the exhaust of a not-quite tuned gas engine, I was hit with an overwhelming recollection of my grandfather and his Allis Chalmers B-10 lawn tractor. I don’t think my grandfather was ever happier then when he was tooling around the yard on that mid-60s vintage machine. With that smell hanging in the air, for just a second, I was a kid again and could see people and places I haven’t set eyes on in twenty years. It was really quite remarkable and, I’m not too proud to say, it choked me up there for a minute. Memory is a funny thing like that.

Sense of smell…

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I’ve hear it said that there’s nothing as powerful as the sense of smell to carry us back to a moment or a place we haven’t thought about in years. I had one of those moments a few minutes ago. In smelling the combination of fresh-cut grass and the exhaust of a not-quite tuned lawn mower, I was hit with an overwhelming recollection of my grandfather and his Allis Chalmers B-10 lawn tractor. The mid-60s vintage machine was practically new even when I knew it in the 80s. With that smell hanging in the air, for just a second, I was a kid again and could see people and places I haven’t set eyes on in twenty years. It was really quite remarkable and, I’m not too proud to say, was the best warm fuzzy I’ve had in quite a while.

Thanks, Folks…

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Hey gang… I just wanted to post a quick thank you to everyone for your thoughts and comments over the last few days. It has meant a lot to me. I’m happy to say dad is doing well and expects to be discharged from Hopkins on Monday. With his imminent recovery, I am back in Memphis for a week getting ready for my next trip and trying to catch up the odds and ends of life. I owe a lot of you a call back from this week and I promise, I’ll be getting around to that this weekend at some point. I’m hoping to get back to my traditional ranting posts in the near future, so be sure to stay tuned.

Helpless…

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I’ve never seen anything like, nor done anything harder than this week’s wake and funeral for my cousin. They came from across the continent, family I hadn’t seen in years, to stand in a line around the block for just a hug or a handshake, a moment’s respects, and then to shuffle off into the night. The crush of mourners at the church, filling the old sanctuary to capacity and swelling beyond had a certain dream-like quality. Surely it wasn’t possible that so many people had come there, too. There is something about Bach, played heavily on the pipe organ that has the power to both raise the human spirit and reveal the depths of human suffering. A child-sized casket, stark against the lush green of grass and trees just beyond and the forlorn sigh of a father who would never again set mortal eyes on his son, is simply more than a just or a righteous God would allow. Time may dim, but will not erase, these days and these feelings of utter helplessness at a loss too terrible to contemplate. My fervent hope is that his parents endure this senseless suffering and find peace in their time.