What do you see when you look in a mirror?  We can’t see what other people see, a mirror reverses an image, so when we look at our own reflection it still is not “real” or “true.”  My parents tell me I was a beautiful baby, a beautiful little girl, a perfect child, a good kid, all the accolades one would expect loving parents to spill all over an obedient & well-behaved child.  As a teenager, like most I suppose, I rebelled, quite a bit more than they expected or certainly anticipated, but still, despite my “bad” phases, there was still a moral compass in me that always tried to steer me back to GOOD.

I was brainwashed in a way to believe, truly in my heart, that all this goodness was going to “GET” me somewhere or something.  When I was younger, I had no idea, where or what, only that there seemed to be some reward ahead of me for all the “perfect daughter-ness” I possessed.  I waited.  I made terrible choices and many mistakes.  I was a super successful college student and a really hard worker, a very caring, despite my youth, mother, and still I waited…for what I am not sure, but for something more than what was.  Through every heartbreak, sadness, disappointment, terrible choice, and bad decision, there always remained hope, anticipation for whatever the universe had in store for me next.

Over the years of my life, since I left home at 17, I grew more and more discouraged, that no matter how hard I worked, how kind I was, how good I was, there was still this GOAL that I could not achieve.  This unattainable something else that would come to me for all these hours of breathing.  Sometimes I would stare at the reflection in the mirror, this girl,this woman, looking back at me who had no idea what she was doing but only that she had to keep going through the motions of this so-called life because the alternative was nothingness.  I went through periods of really high highs and really low lows; often knowing what I was working towards or reaching for, and other times being utterly clueless and just going through the motions .

When my sister got engaged I was wrought with depression.  Why was she getting what I always wanted?  It felt sickening to be so envious of my sister when I should have been so happy and excited for her.  I wanted somebody to love like that too, and to love me like he loved her.  I felt awful for feeling awful.  When my daughter got married and left home I grew so tired…I had no idea what my purpose was.  I had raised a human to adulthood and did the very best that I could and I felt empty…total nothingness.  I drank and smoked my way through many weeks and described myself as feeling like I had been cut from my neck to my knees and had nothing in the middle.  It was maybe the lowest I had ever felt, and to be clear, my experiment in 1985 at being married and playing house was a really, really low time.  Then one morning I just felt better.  I looked in the mirror and felt like me.

That lasted for a time.  I can’t say how long because before long, I was back in my high-low mode…being blissful one day and feeling confident that the world was mine, and like turning off a switch I could then go to feeling unsure and unfulfilled and uneasy.  I thought about trying antidepressants, not because I was “depressed” but because I felt unstable.  Like everything about me was precariously balanced on the head of a pin, like all my parts and all my wishes and all my dreams and all my successes and all of my failures could just spill into the abyss at a moment…but I realized one day that if I tried drugs to find a balance, and they did not work, then I would be left feeling hopeless.  I always had hope I would “FIND” myself.  I always had hope that I would discover my true image, the me I knew who I was but could not see.

Over the last few months I have noticed I look in the mirror less and less.  I’ve stopped asking that image “what am I doing?” and I have stopped asking that image “what is next for me in this life?” because somehow I suddenly and unexpectedly find my life fuller and complete.  When the beautiful face of the boy I love lights up when I walk into the room, I see in his face that he sees something in me I do not see in myself.  When the daughters of my daughter wrap their little arms around my neck and kiss me with wet slobbery lips and look into my eyes and smile with their whole bodies, I see in their faces that they see something in me I do not see in myself.  Maybe that is the truest reflection of myself I could wish for, love in the eyes of those I love.

What is our goal as humans on this earth, living this life, now?  I think ultimately all we want is to love and be loved…sure we want ‘stuff’ and ‘joy’ and the basics like food, shelter, and clothing, but when those actual “needs’ are met, what else is there…companionship, friendship, and love.  That’s really all there is.

Sure, we all have behaved badly at times to those we love, but to be good and deserving of love we have to love back.  We have to act towards others as we want others to act towards us.  I have tried, truly, for all of my adult life to be a loving person.  To be kind.  To follow that golden rule of doing unto others as I would have them do unto me…it seems rather simple, but so many people just don’t get it, ever.

Only a few times in my life have I been treated without kindness from one to whom I was good, or at least I thought I was good.  I try to err on the side of forgiveness if you know what I mean…I try to live with the belief that most of us are inherently good, that most of us are genuinely nice, that most of us are basically honest and truly compassionate…but, there is always a but, there are circumstances some of us find ourselves in when we don’t get what we give.  Mountains get made out of mole-hills and an inch turns into a mile and little tiffs get blown way out of proportion.

I have been told over the years by men in my past that happiness comes from within not without…and one of my father’s OTHER creeds, of his three rules of life, is Happiness Wants What It Has…but I have often found my disposition too influenced by outside stimuli and not holding true to me, my insides, my thoughts, my beliefs, my framework for living…But here we are- summer is over- it is October today, and we are in a new season…it makes me think of that song from RENT, Seasons of Love:  How do you measure, measure a year?  In daylights, in sunsets  In midnights, in cups of coffee  In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife  In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes How do you measure, a year in the life?  I feel ‘happier’ and more content this first day of October, than I have felt perhaps in any first day of October in my life.  Is it because I finally Got Love?  I finally GET what it is supposed to be about?  I finally have my within in line with my without?  I have no answer to my questions…but I got love and I suppose that has made all the difference.

“Make plenty of deposits in your karmic bank.”  This is one of my father’s three creeds for life.  I have believed it to be a universal truth for all of my life.  I have over the last couple months seen firsthand the results of what happens when one does not live by this motto…when people act purposefully unkind, when people make withdraws from their karmic bank instead: When people do harm to another without thinking through the consequences, When people kick others when they are already down, When people have only their own interests in mind and not the best interests of another.  I have a very high pain threshold, for myself.  My tolerance to pain both mental and physical is quite strong, but when my loved ones are hurt or are hurting I am like a mamma lion ready to rip out a throat.  When I am in lioness mode I am fierce.

Today I am in lioness mode.  I am angry that someone who has shown me great kindness has been purposefully treated unkindly by others. I am unsure how to handle myself.  Where is my level of responsibility to protect those I love?  Am I partly culpable?  Years ago I heard Eddie Vedder talk about how Pearl Jam is a religion, and he says there is only one commandment, don’t be an asshole.  I have, since I heard these words, every night as I fall to sleep, silently asked myself, “was I an asshole to anybody today?”  It feels good to admit it and ask the universe for forgiveness when the answer is yes.  It is seldom yes.  I try very hard to make my father proud by living his creed, not just uttering the words mindlessly now and again.  I try to make plenty of deposits in my karmic bank.  This belief in “being good” if you will, generally keeps me from violating this one commandment for how I choose to live my life.

My life and my lifestyle has been vastly different since the 5th of July.  I’ve made different choices about how to act and what to say, how to behave and how to blend in, how to protest or object and how to agree and participate.  I am becoming a different version of myself and I feel, deep in my core, that the essence of who is me had been in hiding for so very long due to choices I made and now as I near my 45th year of life, the very me that is me, seems to be blooming.  I feel more “myself” these two months than I have felt in my entire adult life, perhaps because I am finally feeling like I do not have to think THIS way, act THIS way, agree THIS way, look THIS way…perhaps it takes a certain kind of love or a certain kind of acceptance in a relationship for one to be who one is.

As a result of this new found freedom to be, I find that each day I WANT to be a better version of the me I was the day before.  There may not be a RIGHT way or a WRONG way to act, but indeed by behaving in a way that is as authentic as possible, one knows that one is on the good path…I want to do for my Darrin what Samantha did on Bewitched; crinkle my nose and fix things.  I want to call Endora when I need back up.  I suppose if one does not understand karma and the implications of being an asshole, then one can’t see that behavior that makes a debit and not a credit is a really bad choice.  Can I blame these people for behaving with selfishness and unkindness if maybe they do not even realize that they are acting in these ways?  A baby throws food from her high chair as soon as she has the manual dexterity to do so, and only stops doing it when she learns it is wrong…maybe if a person is never taught about karma and debits and credits they just simply do not know any better…My lioness mode has waned during these minutes of writing and now I just feel a little sad on behalf of someone who deserves nothing but happiness.  I can’t make anybody see my way, I can’t make anybody act the way I want them to act.  I can only be accountable for my own debits and credits but I can say a silent prayer tonight, when I analyze my asshole-ishness of the day, for those who do not understand, to see more clearly in the morning.

The see-saw that my Dad made when I was a year old is still in use, next door to where I live now, by my grandchildren and our neighbors.  He welded the steel frame and used a huge board from a job site and it has been painted as needed, always orange, ever since.   Our back yard in Deer Lake Park, back then a quiet wooded neighborhood with maybe 60 of us children in the whole place, was often filled with kids on the see-saw, and for such a simple “toy” if you will, it got the most use.

It is not hard to see-saw but it takes two to work together and it is all about balance.  One can’t always get to be up while the other is always down, one side can’t have ‘more’ or the other side can’t go down, and it has to be even in the middle when you both get on…up and down, fast or slow, it does not matter, what matters is that these two who have decided to become partners go at a similar pace and maintain equilibrium.

Sure, sometimes it can be intense and fast, updownupdownupdown, and sometimes it can be quietly mellow and slow, U p D o w n U p D o w n, truly it matters not the speed or the force it matters only that balance is maintained.  It is really, when you think about it, the first ‘team’ sport we as children play…two people have to work together to make this see-saw work and when one wants to get off the other has no choice, it ends.

I find lately that I am fighting the need to be a “team player” that I want things to be the way I want them to be, and want things to go the way I want them to go, and want things to be balanced in the direction I think they ought to be maintained…but that is not how real life works and I fear that if I don’t understand soon that COMPROMISE has to be part of BALANCE, I am going to find myself missing out on what can become a very happy life…I don’t want to look back with regret I want to look forward with joy.  In order to do that I MUST learn to see-saw again, to stop being so alone in my way of thinking and my way of doing and to be part of a pair again…up and down, together.  Like that lyric I so love; it’s not always rainbows and butterflies it’s compromise that moves us along. 

I read a book years ago, decades maybe, by this name.  Oprah told me to and so I did.  For a long time I read everything she said I should.  I don’t remember many details of the story at the moment, other than that it was a story told within a story…and I loved the idea; two totally different tales being told at the same time…and this morning, I was watching my new friend Joel Osteen and tearing up from his message, as I know as truly as a day is long that it was a message for my new friend to hear, and really HEAR, not just listen to, and it got me to thinking about how life and love and relationships are truly stories within stories, being told at the same time, and with totally different views and details and “truths,” ergo, totally different but yet the same.

Remember that slumber party game called Telephone?  One girl starts a story and then we whisper it to each other down the row of sleeping bags and strewn blankets and bodies and when it gets to the last girl she says aloud what she has just been whispered…and it is NEVER what was started and FREQUENTLY something different in words and concept than the start.  Life is like that in a way, at least for me right now…I hear stories and I hear explanations and none of them are ever what I hear when I go right to the source.  What I know is true is what I hear when it comes from the mouth of the man I now love.  I can listen and pay attention as is my nature to what others tell me and what others tell me from what they heard and from what others tell me from what they heard from others who knew somebody who knew somebody…but nothing carries as much weight or value to me as what I hear from the mouth of the man with whom I now share my life.  That much I know is true.  What matters is the truth that comes from him.

I have struggled for years with trying to make others see that EVERYTHING is about perception and pretty much nothing more.  How I perceive an event or a statement is my own, regardless of the action or concept, it is how my brain processes the information that matters…just like your brain and your perception will process YOUR way…we base everything on our own lives, pasts, wishes, damages, celebrations, successes, and failures.  All we do when we hear things is use our own wealth of knowledge to process and make an assessment…I know this much is true.  What you tell me and what somebody else tells me can all be valid and can all carry some truth and perhaps some embellishment but the fact of it all is that no matter what I am told, and no matter from what source, ALL that I hear still gets processed by my brain and filtered by my framework and perceptions and so all truth becomes “something else” the minute it goes from one brain to another.

That is just a fact that I see as a truth in my life right now.  I can only make my choices and my decisions based on what I hear and know and discover as it then filters through my own beliefs, judgments, philosophies, and understandings…my perception of how things are and who people are is still the ultimate filter because what anybody does or says has to do with only them, nothing to do with me.  I am in love with a man who for some reason everybody wants to tell me a story about…I am done listening.  I am going to only hear the stories that come from him…events and what led up to them, how he handled them and how he didn’t.  Much like many of the events of my past…many people who knew me during the darkest days of my life surely have an opinion and have heard things about what happened to me  and around  me but only I know what is true, what the story within the story is.  How we act towards one another in EVERY situation is our own choice.  I know this much is true.

The words seem rather simple and clear, and yet, in relationships, I have repeatedly over time fought the voices in my head and the warnings of my gut and tried to shove the doubt, and really all semblance of reason out the door because of a desire to be, I guess above all, part of a couple.  I have said it and written it so many times, I really do not mind my aloneness, and yet over and over I have been unreasonable and totally neglected to follow my instincts and stayed in or tried to make work, relationships that had no hope of success or promise of happiness.

Was it reasonable at 24, after getting news that my boyfriend had cheated on me with a girl who was a clerk at a donut shop, to try to forgive and forget and “make it work” even though every time I looked at him I pictured him kissing this other girl and making a human with her and could never un-know what I knew??  Was it reasonable at age 26, after finding out that my new hippie scientist 44-year-old boyfriend was never going to want to marry me and never going to want children and did not believe in using the word love, to stick in a relationship with him anyway even though the things that I really wanted out of life, were never ever going to be had with him??  Was it reasonable 18 months ago, after finding out that this person who had captured me with written words, was not at all in “real” life like he presented himself to be and was never going to treat me with the kindness and desire I needed, to keep breaking up with him and then “trying to make it work” each time when he promised it would get better and just to please be patient??

NO, NO, NO…um, no, none of it was reasonable.  I had been in love just five times, in my whole life, before now.  I had loved my first real boyfriend, I had loved the man I was married briefly to, and I had loved the three men mentioned above…that’s it.  I look at this man in my life now, number Six I guess he could be called…the sixth and the last man I will love.

My head and my heart and my gut are in agreement.  I believe I have found true love.  When I least expected it and was rather certain it just was not going to ever happen for me, it happened. I have no doubts.  I have a few concerns but they are totally not the same thing.  The first week I was in love I asked customers of mine, ‘do you think it is possible to fall in love that fast?’ and this customer told me that she went on one date and then got engaged and her husband chimed in that he “just knew, she was the one.”  I think that the whole beyond a reasonable doubt thing is very much valid when it comes to matters of the heart…matters of the court, well, a brilliant story telling lawyer can make you question what you are thinking, but in love, in real true love, I think that there comes a moment when you stop being worried and scared and doubting or questioning and you just know that THIS feels good and right and like it is and was supposed to be.  That is where I am now, right here right now, there, in that zone of confidence and security and certainty.  I never, not once ever, expected to feel like this again…I thought maybe I was done and that I had missed the boat so to speak.  I was consumed this spring and this last year, and to be clear, over time in all of my adult life, with more sadness than a woman should have to stand, but then in early July, everything was different, like when Dorothy walks out of the door into Oz.  I am nervous about a few things and there are some issues that I struggle with, but I have no doubt that I have found a person I was supposed to find, and I don’t think it is a bit unreasonable.

I have been on a 24 day long first date.  Anybody who ever followed or read any of my blogs knows that I have a propensity to fall hard and fast when it comes to matters of my heart.  I don’t know why; I mean I love my life, my house, my job…blah-blah-blah, I’ve written and said it all before…I don’t “need” anybody, but I have wanted, always it seems, to like the idea of having a somebody.   I don’t have any REASON at all to want anybody in my space or in my life, but what does REASON ever really have to do with love…Mr. Ex, with whom I spent 15 and a half years too long, and with whom I should have just been friends and neighbors, used to argue relentlessly with me about the word LOVE, that it can’t actually be defined and therefore is meaningless and should not be used.  And the most recent ex which started off so positively and turned into a total clusterfuck of awful last year, well the word LOVE got thrown around a lot, but turned out to be positively meaningless: that whole ~actions speak louder than words~ business that we know we should pay attention to…Well here is a news flash…from the time of my very first butterflies in my belly and tingle at the base of my spine at 14 years old when I felt those first pangs of LOVE, I have used those feelings for that boy as my barometer for what I am feeling and if it is any good at all…nobody in my adult life ever gave me the tingle at the bottom of my spine like that boy with the big green truck all those yesterdays ago when I was still just a girl really, until now.

I have met a person who rocks my world.  I have met a person who reaches for my hand in my truck and I lose my breath.  I have met a person whose smile lights me up like a Christmas tree.  I have met a person who I have laughed more with in 24 days than I have laughed in 24 years.  I have met a person who sits on the couch and plays the guitar and drums for me and makes music in my life where there was none.  I have met a person who I felt so totally connected to within hours  of our  first meeting that I thought I had to be imagining things…that THIS was impossible, that THIS was too good to be true, that THIS was silly to feel so much so fast so suddenly so unexpectedly so profoundly so purely…that it had to be unreal, but it is real.  I feel like I have waited my whole life for this and I feel a little sad too, why didn’t I know him 27 years ago…I might have been spared a lot of tears and pain in this wonderful life.  The “spine tingle” as I have called it these 31 years, has been my barometer for what I am feeling, because as we all know, our brains can trick us and our hearts can lead us down really twisty gnarly paths that look so great until you get a bit farther down them…but the spine tingle, that is the realest real thing I can use to determine what I am actually feeling not what my brain or heart wants me to believe.  I might get my heart broken into a million little pieces, which worries my mother terribly…she just wants me to be happy and loved and adored and she thinks I am so close to perfect that she can’t understand why I seem to have failed over and over in my life in these situations and have this inability to find somebody who thinks I am as fabulous as she thinks I am…  I might get my heart broken into a million little pieces but why on earth would I let fear keep me from another try at love…whether it lasts 24 days, or 24 months, or 24 years, isn’t it really all we need?  I wrote, not all that long ago, that I had only been in love 5 times in my life but was dearly hoping for six…well that wish has come true.

This last winter when I started to see the therapist to deal with all the months of awful which left me more broken than I ever thought I would heal from, she had me listen to a poem called Sweet Darkness and the last line goes like this:  anything or anyone that does not bring you alive, is too small for you.  I felt a little bit dead for a lot of years…the wee-ones fill me to overflowing, but that is a different kind of joy, a different kind of filling.  I have been brought more alive in 24 days by this man than in the last 24 years.  My parents both have struggled mightily with my inability to find contentment in my life…“Happiness wants what it has,” has been beaten into my head my whole life, and now I finally get it, I once was blind but now I see.

Yes, I stole it.  Falling usually hurts.  Falling frequently  involves breakage.  To say that we “fall in love” sort of could be a bad thing, so I am Falling Up, frankly I already Fell, not falling, I’m up.  I have had butterflies in my belly since the night of July 4th, well, 2:47 in the morning of the 5th if I wish to be pedantic.  I have been known to be overly optimistic in matters of my heart.  I guess because I think of myself as kind and deeply loving, I just assume that most others are generally good in nature, pure of heart, and coming from a place of friendship and love when interacting with me.  I’ve been forced to remove my rose-colored glasses too many times and shovel the wax out of my ears…by this I mean that when we are newly in love or in like or in friendship, we can be so blinded and deafened by our dreams and wishes that we do not see or hear what is real…delusional maybe is the best word.  I know I was…

If I could erase the last year and a half, maybe I would, however, I do believe that everyone, good or bad comes into our lives for a reason, that we have lessons to learn from every relationship and that if we are open to the belief that we are in fact always evolving, and like me on a constant “mission” to be better, to evolve, to look at things from a different perspective than I did before, well, we have to accept that relationships end, often badly, so that a better one can be found and nurtured and blossom.

I have had the best 173 hours of my life.  To be clear, I have had many hours of awesomeness in my life, many times, but THIS particular bit of awesomeness is not something I have EVER experienced.  I knew within minutes of meeting this person face to face that he might be MY PERSON.  I felt it in my belly when we first spoke on the phone.  I sensed it a little bit when we first started our text conversation on the 4th of July.  I don’t know how I knew it or why I thought it, but I did.  I think it is so beautiful that 173 hours of some kind of wonderful has magically erased the last year and a half of a whole lot of awful.

We decide how to act and what to do hundreds of times a day.  We decide who to text, call, think about.  We decide who to smile at, be kind to, or ignore.  We decide what to eat, what to drink, or not.  It is EASY to say that we wish for things to be different, but in fact it is only each of us, as the individual in possession of that glorious principle called Free Will, who makes the choices that puts us where we are, right this second.  There is a line in one of my favorite movies of all time, Steel Magnolias, where Julia Roberts character says to her Momma that she would rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special…I love that line…mostly because it is really a definitive statement about free will; making a choice to have the life you are in desire of and not necessarily the life that is simple or best.

I have tried in my life, in my past, to be quiet and passive about my feelings, but I learned years ago that for me, it is better to tell or write to a person about how I feel, or what I am thinking, and to be clear, than to do nothing.  The outcome I desire isn’t always achieved by this forthrightness, but at least I know that I have done what I can to express myself, my wants, my wishes, and thus I am making a choice to share my feelings.  Sure, at times they are not reciprocated, or there is a compromise to be had and a balance is found, and other times no balance is found and things end…but to have feelings and choose not to express them, is not me, does not work for me, and simply does not feel good for me.  It is my choice to express myself when I feel things.

I’ve been a bit baffled and perplexed this past year by many of my choices and by many of the choices that others have made.  The last two weeks I have been thinking a lot and to be clear, growing confused, as I am prone to do, about what makes people do or not do what they do.  What guides behavior and human interaction other than free will?  If I call somebody then it means I want to talk to them.  If I visit with somebody it means I want to see them.  If I tell a person how I feel it means I want them to know how I feel.  If I order salad and not a mushroom Swiss burger then it means I want to stick to my points and my better diet.  If I spend money on a new ipod because mine broke it means my music pumping through my house is more important to me than the $245.  My actions & choices are all I can do to try to bring to fruition the life I desire.

A week ago I decided to give up my afternoon coffee habit.  I was a person who used the expression, only half jokingly, that I would walk around with an IV pole and just have a constant flow of coffee, if I could.  But, for some reason, I decided that getting a headache every afternoon at about 2 o’clock and “needing” coffee, was a habit I did not want anymore, so I stopped.  The day I decided to quit smoking I did not say aloud that I was going to try to quit smoking I said aloud that today is the day I will smoke my last cigarette, and I did and it was, it was a habit I did not want anymore, so I stopped.  Free will is an extraordinary thing.

I can complain about wanting to fit into my skinny jeans but if I overeat or don’t stick with my better diet, then the complaint is meaningless because I am choosing otherwise.  Somebody can complain about not having money but if he still buys two packs of cigarettes a day then he is effectively saying that he would rather smoke than have the $5,000 that year.  I can complain that my weeds in the driveway are driving me crazy, but if I choose to play on the computer or write and not pull weeds then I am essentially saying that playing on the computer or writing matters more to me than clearing the driveway.   EVERYTHING is or is not because of how we choose.

I have had a number of situations occur since March that have “shown” me my choices are good and right for me.  That is all that matters; my choices have to work for me and your choices have to work for you.  I have learned so much about who I am, what I want, what I need, who I like to be with, who I don’t, what matters to me and what does not.  I would not know so MANY of these things with SUCH clarity and certainty if I had not made the choices I made that let me experiment with life in such a way that I can determine what is good for me and what is bad for me.  It seems so simple now, to look back and say to myself “oh I should have paid attention to those red flags, I should have followed my gut instincts, I should have let the stories and actions speak to me and not paid attention to the spoken words” …but I did not follow my instincts, I made choices and now I know more about myself.  I learned, by the choices I made this last year, that I actually can live with a person, that I actually don’t love being alone as much as I thought I did, that I am more adaptable than I realized about some things and less adaptable than I realized about others…by making the choices I did make, I learned.  Next time I will do better, or not, but I understand more about myself than I did this time last year, and I will understand more about myself tomorrow than I do this morning.  The choices we make every time we decide are what shapes us, constantly alters our state of being on this planet in this universe at this moment.  Becoming a better version of me, a little bit more with every choice I make…yes I am pro-choice.

J.  Not Jay, Not John, “just J” is what I have heard him sometimes say.  My Dad can do anything and fix anything and make anything and well, you see…I have not, as far as my memory goes, ever had an experience of needing help or something constructed or created or fixed or modified that he has not been able to fulfill the request.  He is what some would call a “handy” man, be it engines, houses, plumbing, electrical, earth…he just does stuff.  I have however never seen him throw or catch a ball.  I saw him ride a bike once when we were little and rented bikes on Martha’s Vineyard.  He is the least lazy person I have ever met and the most regimented in his habits that I will ever know.  He wakes up at the same time every day, has his two breaks at the same time every day and eats the exact same food every day.  We are VERY unlike in this way.  He loves to work and does not relax well, at all.  He does not do “recreational” activities.  These are two of his traits that I am trying at this time in my life NOT to copy.

My father had no desire to go to college but the story goes that his father very much had a desire for him to go to Villanova, as was expected, and after one semester or one year, my Dad either quit or flunked out and the familial tale is that my BigDad shook my father’s hand and said, “John, we have fulfilled our obligation to society, you may go” and at 19 my Dad hitch-hiked to Florida and got a room to rent and a job as a mechanic in a garage and got on with the business of being a man.  He lived and worked in Florida, was later drafted into the Army, and had the good fortune to be sent off to Germany and not Vietnam.  When he got out of the Army is when he came back to Long Beach Island, where he had summered most of his life.  My mom was a local and he was a city boy but they fell madly in love and that story is its very own tale…

My father is a master carpenter, a true craftsman, but is so humble that no one would really ever know his level of perfection and skill unless they worked with him.  He has always made me want to be “better” and I am not sure what that means exactly, but it is what comes to mind when I think of that question, “what kind of feelings do you get when you think about your Dad?”  …and my answer to that question always is that he makes me want to be the best version of myself that I can possibly be.  I know how to do, or at least try to do well, a lot of things that are not traditionally “girl” things to do, and I am sure it is because I had a Dad who taught us ‘stuff’ and because we did not want to disappoint him, learned to do a lot of things that I guess sons would generally learn.

My only regret or wish about him and his parenting is that he had taught me to play the drums. He did throughout his youth and teens and I sure would have loved to know how.  He did however instill in me a love of music and the knowledge that it is, more often than not, best played loud.  There was ALWAYS music in our house growing up, speakers in every room and outside, and I find that that is the case here, in my dream house, that he helped me build, there is almost always music playing and there are speakers in every room and outside.  Some of my fondest memories from childhood are associated with music; we had a jukebox filled with 45’s in our playroom and my Dad had a wall of albums and our house had more stereo equipment than any of our friend’s houses and whenever our mother was not home the music was WAY louder than when she was.  That playroom with the giant Peter Max poster, wall of painted penguins, and checkerboard floor was a place where lots of joy was shared and my life long love of music begun.

What is interesting, to me I guess, is that in general my Dad and I seem to have so little in common…he lovingly refers to me as his ‘Lefty, Liberal, Pinko, Commie” daughter and I have said time after time that the only thing I have in common with any of my family is that we love many of the same people.  We do not agree on social issues or fiscal issues or global issues of almost any topic, and yet, when I think about disappointing him, I feel a physical ache.  But to be clear, no matter how much I love the man and dearly wish to make him proud, I will not vote Republican ever, will not willingly listen Rush or watch Fox, and will never ever ever NOT be pro-choice.

I know many people who no longer have a Dad, my Dad lost his own father just this past winter.  I know many people who had a dad who was a total asshole or who was lazy or who treated their mom badly or well you know blah, blah, blah…lots of people have BAD DAD stories.  I do not.  Years ago I wrote a thank-you note to my Mimom and Bigdad for Father’s Day, thanking them for my Dad.  It seemed like the only thing to do, to at least give thanks for a really great man who just so happened to be MY Dad!  I read a quote decades ago that “the greatest gift a man can give to his children is to love their mother” and if this is one of those universal truths, then in addition to ALL the other WONDERFULNESS that is J, he has given my sister and I the greatest gift in the universe, because he sure does love her.