Vision and Confidence

As I grew up I would look at a disabled person, a handicapped person, crippled, as weird, ugly.  

That was possibly the hardest thing I have ever written. It makes me cry to say that today but it is true. I don’t know why. I don’t think I was a bad kid. 

I certainly was not the class bully. Just the opposite. I was a wimp. 

I might have always been one of the tallest kids, but other kids saw me as a wimp. Worst of all, I knew they were right. 

Perhaps when I would see someone disabled I saw a reflection of myself in them. I wasn’t whole and I was weird and I was ugly too. 

I am not completely sure where that lack of self-confidence came from. How did I lose touch with my self-worth? I had two parents who loved me and cared for me. They gave me a great life and they afforded me the opportunity to achieve a pretty comfortable life for myself and my family as well. 

A friend of mine, a psychologist, says “If you have had a parent or a teacher in your life, you are messed up.” It’s true. Parents teach us what they know, and what they know isn’t always perfect. It’s just life. I know that today.  It has taken me a long time to realize that. 

My parents were great. They loved me. The gave me a good life, but they had their problems too. And just like their good qualities gave me a wonderful life. It was their bad qualities that most like taught me not to love myself. 

My brother and father had a great relationship. He was far more connected to him than he was to me. He didn’t love me less. We were just not as connected. 

Is that it? Is that all he is guilty of? Did that really lead me to feel so unconfident my whole life? 

If not him then who else? My mother? Mom? How could that possibly be the case? She loved me so much. She adored me. I knew that. I always knew that. There was never a doubt in the world. To be loved so completely and unconditionally is perhaps the most amazing thing a person can feel. 

But I did cling to her? And she let me. She never pushed me to be strong, to be independent. Or did she? I honestly don’t know. How could anyone want a kid clinging on to you constantly? She must have.

So why the lack of confidence? What was so bad?

I know there is an answer to that question but sitting here today I really don’t know what it is. I hope to find it on this journey, as I write this book. I have learned a few things already but there is so much more to learn. 

When I was young, and perhaps my entire life, one particular disability had the biggest impact on me. The blind. I think I was scared of blind. 

I can not remember where this was or who the person was but I have a clear image of a man. Perhaps he was 60 years old. My age today. He was clearly blind. He eye sockets looked as if something traumatic had happened to them. I am not sure if his eyes were there but if they were you couldn’t see them. He didn’t wear sunglasses to hide his eyes. 

I remember thinking, “What’s wrong with this guy? How can he not wear glasses? Dear God that is horrible.”

I was horrified. But today I know it really wasn’t his face. It was the thought of what that must be like. To go through life like that. For a kid with no self-confidence, no sense of his true worth as an individual, the thought was perhaps one of the worst things that I could imagine. It would have been a clear outward manifestation of just how weird I was. I could never survive that. 

What is interesting, as I picture his face today, I don’t see it as being particularly sad. In fact, as I sit here and really focus, it is possible there was a slight smile on his face. 

He likely had no idea I was looking at him and grimacing. Perhaps he knew that happened a lot, I am not completely naive, but likely he wasn’t aware it was happening at that moment. 

There perhaps is a small blessing in losing your eyesight, in there somewhere. You cannot SEE the prejudice around you. I am sure you feel. You hear it. You know it’s there but you don’t see it. I wonder if that is true. 

If I am lucky, I will find out. That’s how I try to approach things these days. It’s not easy. Every day, every hour somedays, a new challenge to living life presents itself to me.  

The lessons we learn in life

My father came to me in a dream last night.

He had apparently helped me get a job I think it was in a bank. At the end of the first day of work, I walked over to where he was sitting with a colleague. In my dream, their images were both somewhat vague and unfocused. I am not sure who she was but it was definitely my Dad that sat across from her. He was sitting up straight and he wore a suit and a hat; a fedora.

I remember thinking, it’s been eight hours since I started work that day, time to go home. I walked over near them to retrieve some unknown personal item that was on a shelf in the table that sat between them I told them I was leaving. Then, as I tend to do, I made a joke. “Are we really supposed to work this long every day?”

My father leaned into me and suddenly he was there. He was no longer vague or unfocused. He was real. It was the face I knew so well even though I have not seen it in a dozen years. And it was no longer a dream. He was alive and he was right there. His facial features were crisp and clear. I could see the small capillaries in the skin on his face. I saw his teeth which had been discolored with age. I could smell his breath. I recognized the smell. It wasn’t a bad smell. It wasn’t a fresh smell. There was the intensity on his face that I also know so well. He was angry. He was embarrassed. He was disappointed.

He said “Damn it Chris! There are people working here!” I could literally feel a mixture of anger and embarrassment in his voice. “You need to sell something!” Then his features softened a bit and in his eyes, I could see compassion and love. “I love you and I am worried about you.”

And then he was gone.

Again.

His message to me was so clear. Get off your ass and stop whining about things you cannot control. Be thankful for what you have. You are lucky to have it. Things could be a lot worse.

I could feel his love and concern for me. I could feel how important it was to him for me to always do the right thing.

And I could feel his disappointment in me.

Again.


Dad’s older brother, Herbert, enlisted in the US Navy in March of 1941. He lied about his age. He would not turn 18 until October of that year but for some unknown reason, he couldn’t wait. We were at war and I imagine he felt compelled to join the fight.

In late July or early August of the following year, Herbert came home to Toledo to visit his family. His younger brother, Bud, my Dad would have been there to greet him. I imagine how proud he was of his older brother, Seaman First Class Monnett. They were still using the unique spelling of our family name, without the “e” on the end as the result of some unknown fallout between my grandfather and his siblings.

Herbert was out defending the country, fighting Nazis. I don’t know if the purpose of Herbert’s visit was a send-off for my father, who had just enlisted in the Navy as well,  or if the visit was the catalyst for my father’s decision to enlist. Either way, like his older brother, Dad lied about his age and enlisted in the US Navy on August 18th, 1941, seven months before his 18th birthday.

Dad was a patriotic man and I always knew him to have a strong sense of duty. The Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor in December and the pull to join his brother in the fight must have been tremendous.

Shortly after Herbert’s visit, Dad was shipped off to boot camp at the Naval Training Center in Great Lakes Illinois. He could not have been there more than a few days when;[ his father received the following telegram:

“WASHINGTON DC AUG 25 1046P
ALFRED ALEXANDER MONNETT

1105 MIAMI ST (TOLEDO OHIO)

THE NAVY DEPARTMENT DEEPLY REGRETS TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON HERBERT ROLLAND MONNETT SEAMAN FIRST CLASS US NAVY IS MISSING IN THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS DUTY AND IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY THE DEPARTMENT APPRECIATES YOUR  GREAT ANXIETY BUT DETAILS NOT NOW AVAILABLE AND DELAY IN RECEIPT THEREOF MUST NECESSARILY BE EXPECTED TO PREVENT POSSIBLE AID TO OUR ENEMIES PLEASE DO NOT DIVULGE THE NAME OF HIS SHIP OR STATION
REAR ADMIRAL RANDALL JACOBS CHIEF OF NAVAL PERSONNEL

Herbert’s ship, the Destroyer USS Ingram, had been operating in the North Atlantic off the coast of Canada. They were chasing a German submarine that was believed to be in the area. It was foggy and they collided with an oil tanker, almost five times the size. The collision set off the depth charges on the back of the ship. It sank in 25 seconds. Only 11 of the crew of 175 survived. Herbert was not one of them.

I don’t know how my father felt when he heard the news. I can only imagine. Over the years he recounted the story about received news of his brother’s death while he was in boot camp many times but in all the times he told that story, I don’t recall him once talking about how he felt. About how Herbert’s death impacted his family. Whether he was suddenly scared to go to war or did it strengthen his resolve. Herbert had been killed in a freak accident. He had not died at the hands of our enemies.

We never discussed any of that. Worst of all I don’t have a single recollection of me asking him.

We didn’t talk about feelings; at least not with Dad.

On the 20th of August 1971 my grandfather, Alfred Alexander Monnette died suddenly. My dad went to Michigan for the funeral I don’t think my mother joined him nor did my brother or I. The stated reason was probably that we had school or it was too expensive for us all to go. In hindsight, my guess is that it would be an emotional event and we don’t talk about emotions. At least not with Dad.

Following his death, my grandmother, Edith Perkins, came to live with us in Yorktown, Virginia. She was 76 years old and was apparently suffering from some form of dementia. I barely remember her. She was there for such a short period of time. As I recall the story, she started saying to my father things such as “Bud, who is this strange woman in the house?” referring to my mother. Before I knew it she as gone. Moved to a nursing home somewhere in Newport News.  If we visited her, I have not a single memory of it. I was 12.

Years passed without a single memory or mention of my grandmother. My parents didn’t talk about her around me and I never asked. I am my father's son after all

More than a decade passed, maybe two before I finally asked my mother, I couldn’t ask Dad, “What happened to grandma?” “She passed away several years ago.” “What happened?” I asked. “Oh dear, she was old.”

In fact, she was 88.  She died on August 1, 1983.  I was 24. In all that time there was never a mention of it or if there was I have not a single memory. I know I did not attend a memorial of any kind. As with her husband, my grandfather, I do not know if she is buried or if she was cremated. I imagine they were both cremated. The cost of a burial isn’t something that Dad would have wanted to spend. I have no idea what became of their ashes.

Emotions are not something that my father was comfortable with and especially not painful ones. A lesson I learned well from him.

But as with anything, you can change, and as I would learn the hard way much later in life, nothing provides more leverage for change than pain.

Through A Different Lens

I recently found an old photo album of my parents. As I went through it I found so many great images of them in their early years. I even found a photo of my grandfather as a young boy that had to have been taken in the late 1800s. I know it is him because my father had written on the photo “father” with an arrow pointing to the boy.

I love this image of my mother on her wedding day. I know it’s their wedding day because I saw other images of her in that dress at what was clearly their wedding. In this shot she appears to be standing in their new home. Again I am able to piece that together from other images in the collection. In one, they are standing outside next to a very modest home. They are holding hands. Mom looks beautiful in her white dress, still perfect from the wedding. Dad has his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up. They almost certainly have just come from the church or the wedding reception to see their new home. They are 22 years old and they are beginning a brand new chapter in their life.

This picture makes me smile every time I look at it. I can see how happy she is. I imagine how excited they both must be. I wish she was here to tell me more about that day. How she felt standing in her new home with her new husband.

Knowing my father, and seeing him in the other photo, I can’t help but wonder if he is worried about things? How will he provide for his new family? Can he afford the mortgage payments? Will the Navy send him off to war? There is no one who was there that day to tell me the story.

Over the years since my children were born we have captured literally thousands of pictures, Countless pictures of happy times. All the wonderful memories captured in photographs. Our lives have been good, although when I look back there have been dark and difficult times as well. Those are not captured anywhere in the photos. Those are the memories that live between the photos of Christmas’ together, birthday celebrations, and weddings. Those are the times we try to forget. Like a deep cut, the wounds eventually heal. The scar that is left is a constant reminder of the pain. Those are also the times that have had some of the biggest impacts on our lives but I have talked so little about them with my children. Probably because I actually know so little about the real reasons myself.

This has led me to new project. One that has pulled me away from this blog and even my photography a bit. I started writing a memoir. My story about some of the more impactful things that have happened in my life. It is a rather overwhelming challenge for a guy like me. I have never been a writer, although the fact that I am writing this I guess suggest that I am a now. Far more challenging is the fact I spent most of my life avoiding any discussions of feelings. So to try a tackle such an ambitious project is a bit scary for me.

I wish I knew more about what my father was thinking when I was a boy. Why he could never share his feelings. I wish I had asked him to tell me more about his childhood when I saw him break down in tears recounting the punishment he would frequently get from his father when he misbehaved. I wish I knew my Uncle Herbert who died in the war when he was 19. What was he like and how did his death at such a young age change my father?  I wish I knew if the stories about my grandfather, my mother's father, and my “Aunt” Clem were true.

And I wish I knew what happened between my parents so many years ago when I was a baby, or perhaps before, that nearly tore them apart.

There are so many things that have shaped, in some way, who I am today that I will never know.

So I decided to write a memoir for my children. To tell them the things that I never told them. So perhaps they can understand just a little bit more about the events that have happened in our lives. That has shaped who they are. So maybe, together, we can learn something.

And perhaps I am writing my memoir to be understood and to do that I must first understand myself.

Leaning down the mountain

Last weekend I went skiing for the first time this season. It was February. That is the latest first day on the slopes for me in the last ten years or more. I normally start thinking about skiing sometime in the fall and can’t wait for the snow to start falling. This year was different. I wasn’t excited. There was no sense of urgency. In fact, for my birthday last month, my buddy Jeff and I spent the weekend in the mountains with the plan of skiing. We never did.

I met Jeff 15 years ago and skiing was one of the passions we connected on almost immediately. He is a fluid, graceful, confident skier who grew up racing as a young boy. I had only been skiing for a few years when we met. He was always patient, willing to stay with me on the green runs while at the same time encouraging me to try the easier blue runs. He would watch me snowplow down the mountain with my skis in a giant pizza shape and encourage me to bring my skis together, point my chest down the mountain, and lean forward. “You are fighting it,” he would tell me. “Just relax, and lean into it a bit. A little speed will make it easier.” That is easier said than done. Trying to convince your frightened brain that it should relax and lean into it is counterintuitive; at times physically impossible.

For the last 15 years, we were on the slopes together every chance we got and my skiing has improved significantly. I will never ski with his confidence or grace but I am a reasonably confident skier. So when Jeff and I woke up in Silverthorne, 30 minutes from several great ski resorts and opted for breakfast and a Bloody Mary at the Arapahoe Cafe in Dillon instead of skiing we both knew that something was up.

On a typical ski day, all I can think about as I get ready is standing at the top of the mountain, with amazing views of the snow cover Rocky Mountains set on the beautiful blue background of the Colorado sky. I think about the sound of my skis on the snow. I think about pushing myself to go harder and faster. I love the feel of my legs working hard to hang on to an edge in a turn, ignoring how ugly my skiing really is, all the while envisioning myself skiing like Bode Miller.

Last weekend I could easily have opted for the Arapahoe Cafe again. In fact, I am pretty sure I suggested as much. All I could think about was the hassle of getting there. Traffic. Parking. Fighting to put on my boots and then clopping along awkwardly with my skis over my shoulder on icy sidewalks, certain that any minute I would slip and fall. Then waiting in line with countless others for a chairlift to the top. The Bloody Mary seemed so much more sensible.

Marilyn encouraged me. “Let’s just give it a try. We don’t have to stay all day,” So perhaps a bit begrudgingly, I put on my skis for the first time in almost a year. And for the first time, I was afraid.

I wasn’t afraid of being injured. No, I was afraid that I couldn’t ski. Not because of my physical conditioning or my abilities as a skier. Those are both fine. I was afraid that I might learn, that as my field of vision has continued to narrow over the years, this might be the season when I finally knew it was time to hang up my skis for good.

My visual acuity is actually as good or better than many people but that doesn’t tell the real story. My problem isn’t one of focus. When I look at an eye chart in the doctor’s office I can see the characters I am looking at with reasonable clarity; the characters I am looking directly at. Surrounding characters are less clear and if you move too far from the center they are completely gone.

Macular degeneration is a slow, progressive disease. It happens so gradually you are hardly aware of the changes. My vision is no different today then it was yesterday. And it was no different yesterday then it was the month before. Yet, it is unquestionably different today then it was last year. I find myself frustrated because I can’t find a utensil I am looking for in the kitchen drawer. It’s not that I can’t see it. It’s that Marilyn moved it. At least that is what I tell myself. It’s unfair to her, I know, but I used to be able to find things more easily.

Two weeks ago I sold my motorcycle. The last one I will ever own. A decision that I had been putting off for some time. I hadn't ridden the bike in probably a year but I couldn’t bring myself to let it go. I had it listed for sale but I wasn’t very aggressive. I didn’t ride it, but I didn’t want to sell it. On a motorcycle, things happen a lot faster than a car. There is so much more to watch for and you can frequently be nearly invisible to other cars and trucks on the road. I knew it was time to stop riding and I didn’t want to wait until the day that I found out the hard way. So I sold it. 

As I put on my skis for the first time in the season, that thought was on my mind. Is this the year I sell my skis too?

As we approached the top of the mountain on the chairlift that morning I suddenly realized that the lift was about to abruptly dump me off with two skis strapped to my feet, something that I have down countless times. But for just a moment I thought “what if I fall just getting off the lift?” I didn’t notice the beautiful mountains around me. Images of Bode Miller were replaced with the Three Stooges or the Keystone Cops on skis.

We started out slow, on the green slopes, with all the beginners. I felt so awkward as I started down that first run. If Marilyn had asked me if I wanted to quit and get that Bloody Mary I would have jumped at the thought. As I approach each little dip on that first run I forced myself to lean down the mountain, to trust my muscle memory. To let my legs and my body worry about skiing and focus my mind and more importantly my eyes on the terrain and the other skiers around me. I carefully manage my speed for the first few runs, pushing myself a little hard each time, making sure that I wasn’t skiing faster than my eyes could capture all the information I needed to be safe. I did what my buddy Jeff encouraged me to do. I relaxed, leaned into it, and skied.

By the end of the day, I was comfortably skiing at 35 mph, well below my best speeds in excess of 50 mph, but I was skiing. That’s when I began to notice for the first time that day just how beautiful the Rocky Mountains can be.

No this isn’t the year. That day is coming but not this year.

When the day finally comes and it is time to hang up my skis for good, I hope I can do the same thing. Relax and just lean into it. I know that will make it easier.

How to live forever

I have no memory of this day. The shot was probably taken somewhere in Italy, when I was between Kindergarten and the second grade. I have no memory, yet I know it was a good time in my life. I know it because you can see it on my face. And I know it because my parents provided a good life for my brother and me. We were not rich. Far from it. Our father was a Navy man. Mom a legal secretary, I think, but that was probably much later in life. We never had the big house on the corner or the fanciest car in the driveway.

We had so much more.

We had a mother who loved us more than any person could. And a father who wanted nothing more than to provide a better life for his children than he had known as a child. It’s a time when I was probably as close as I could be to my true authentic self. I am sure I felt loved, safe, and secure.

I have no memory of this day and very few real memories of even that part of my life although I can feel them inside me. Deep inside. Just out of sight. I can see the shapes and colors. I can feel the memories but there are no details. Maybe a little like my vision today in a dimly lit room.

For so much of my life I lost touch with the young boy in that picture. Life has a way of changing you. Without notice it seems, gone are the days when you feel so safe and secure. Not a care in the world. A complete sense that everything will be fine. They are replaced with a desire, a need, to prove something to your parents, to your friends, to yourself. You change maybe for the better. Maybe for the worse. Who knows, but by the time you are an adult you’ve changed. I think that happens to us all, doesn’t it? Hopefully that’s not just my paranoia speaking.

I think of my children. They had a good childhood. Their mother and I were not perfect parents, but we loved them with all our hearts. I tried to be there for them when I could and to provide a good life for them. Hopefully just a little better than I did as a child. Their mother adored them. They were the center of her life.

I imagine they felt safe. Secure. Like the little boy in the picture.

When they were 14 and 11, it ended abruptly. I will remember for the rest of my life the day we told them we were getting a divorce. My daughter literally laughed. She thought it was a joke. After all, her father was always saying crazy things. No way their world could be coming apart so suddenly. To this day, the memory of her laugh brings a flood of tears to my eyes.

I look at the picture of me as a young boy. I see how safe and how happy that little boy feels. I remember that look in my own children’s eyes right up until that day. Then I think, maybe I wasn’t able to do what my parents did for me after all; provide a better life than they had known. I have worried about how I may have screwed up their lives, sent them on a tangent that would completely derail their future.

What I can see today, is that try as I might, I wasn’t able to. Oh, I am sure they have ghosts in their closet just like all of us. They will have their own self-discovery time in their lives when they will look to reconnect with that young boy or girl buried deep down inside them. Perhaps it won’t be as deep, and they will get there much faster than their father even started looking.

I am so proud of Jonathan and Jen. Their father threw a serious monkey wrench in their lives, yet they are such remarkable young adults. I love them with all my heart.

I hope the day comes when I will be able to meet their children. To see at least a little bit of what their lives will be like. How their parents have provided a life, maybe just a little bit better, than theirs; probably a lot better.

I can’t help but reflect on how hard my father’s life was as a child. I can’t imagine. And all he wanted to do was provide a better life for his children.

Perhaps, in some way, that is what immortality is.

Maybe I am just not a skier, anymore

My wonderful friend Jeff and I were talking about age last night. He is 3 months younger than me yet we have a very different view on our milestone this year. He started referring to himself as 60, six months ago. I am still shocked that I am not 45.

I want to get up and go to work. I want to do what I do. My job isn’t a glamorous one. Certainly not one I dreamed of when I was in college, or ever for that matter. I doubt there are many, if any, that say “boy that’s what I want to do when I grow up.” The job isn’t always the greatest experience but many times, maybe more than most, I find myself challenged, learning something new, being stretched in some small capacity. It’s exciting, invigorating, How could I be 60? I must still be 45.

Every now and then I have to tell someone my birth date and it just catches my breath to say 1959. How is that possible? That’s old. I am not. Maybe all that has changed is my perception of what 60 is. When I was young, 60 was old, far from your prime physically, maybe a little out of touch with current trends or technology. Today I see 60 as experienced, comfortable, confident, less afraid about the small stuff, and maybe more aware of the big stuff.

To celebrate our birthdays, Jeff and I are planning to go skiing today. I like to ski. No, I love to ski. I didn’t learn to ski until I was 40 but when I did I was hooked. I skied every chance I could and every year my skiing got better and I became more comfortable and confident on steeper and steeper terrain. I am a solid intermediate skier. Not the best or the fastest but I am ok.

For the first time, I am not that excited about skiing. What if I can’t see well. I know I will have to ski slower than before. I think I know why I am not excited. It isn’t my fear of being hurt. It’s because I am suddenly aware, that my skiing will only get worse. Right now, I am the best skier I will ever be for the rest of my life, and I am just ok. What’s the point. Better to do something else today maybe.

I have a Harley Davidson Ultra Limited parked in my garage. An amazing bike that I love to ride. Marilyn and I have had some amazing times to together on that bike. It’s for sale. I don’t ride. I can’t or at least I shouldn’t.

Add to the list that I will never again fly an airplane, a passion that I was so fortunate to explore for a number of years.

Jeff asked me the last night, “Have you ever tried dictation when you write? It might help you.” It can be frustrating for me at times trying to find the cursor on the screen or, if I look down at the keyboard for a moment, I am an average typist at best, and then look back at the screen I occasionally get lost. Dictation is an intriguing idea that would help with the physical act of writing.

I can’t do it. Not yet. I have only two rules that I try to stick to when I write. The first is, I write about me. My thoughts, emotions, my experiences. I try hard not to write about others. What can I really know about someone else and besides, my goal is to learn about me.

The second is the hard part. What I write has to be as authentic and as truthful as I know how to be. What I write may not be the truth, but it is what I believe with all my heart. And sometimes, the truth about me isn’t comfortable. So no, I can’t dictate. Not yet. The thought of hearing my words, or worse, someone else hearing them is just too scary. I need to write them quietly, privately, safely if I have any hope of authenticity.

It sounds so silly to write that. I am not going very deep at all in what I write. This is mostly surface stuff. Without question, there is more there. Like an iceberg, you can only see so much. I want to go there and learn more about the iceberg but the thought of it scares me and keeps me from going too deep. What if I don’t like what I see?  It is safer to stay on the surface.

But there is so much to learn below.

Maybe I need to learn how to use dictation so I never get to the point where I say I used to wonder what is below the surface.

And maybe it is time to accept that I used to be a pretty decent skier. I used to be very comfortable handling a fully loaded 1,000-pound motorcycle on some treacherous back roads. And I used to be able to fly a plane.

I don’t think that means the best is behind me. Perhaps it is just below.

Let me take a look.

The Views From The Peaks Are Always The Same.

I recently met with my retina specialist. Same story; slow but steady progression. The good news is that my vision can be corrected in my left eye to 20/20 with my glasses, although that is just in specific spots. Every time Dr Lalawani looks at my scans or looks at the back of my eye she says the same thing; “I don’t know how you are able to see so well Chris.”  Large portions of the center of my retina are apparently so thin that you can see right through it to the blood vessels behind; Geographic Atrophy she calls it. I have a few remaining islands of photoreceptors that allow me to see in small areas and by scanning the scene in front of me I am able to assemble the complete image in my head. She tells me I am fortunate that I have the mental capacity to do that. It is the only way I can function as well as I do. A quick scan of her waiting room and I know what she means. Even as I am about to turn 60 I am well below the average age of her patients.  I can see the compassion and the sadness on her face. She is has been with me on this journey since the beginning. She knows far better than me what lays ahead.

My doctor and I talk less about my medical condition these days. Her counsel is more about pragmatic issues such as the need for long-term disability insurance. Her biggest concern for me now does not seem to be my vision, with current medicine, that future appears clear. “You are very social and independent Chris. I worry about you being isolated as your vision continues to deteriorate.”

I had a therapist tell me once that when it came to relationships my attachment style was such that when I moved on, I never looked back. Like the quote from the movie The Gumball Rally, ”The first rule of Italian driving. What’s behind me is not important.” As cold as that makes me seem, I know that has been true about me. There is far too much evidence for me to deny it. Looking back over the years I see a long list of friends, wonderful relationships, that I have somehow lost. It is one of the things I dislike about myself the most.

While I wish they were in my life today, I know that I am a better person for each and every one of those relationships. I carry with me the memories of so many good times and those experiences are some of the most influential in my life. The bad memories in my life have left an impression, but not as big as the good ones. I am not sure what that says about me.

It is an area where I think my brother and I are very different. I have spent a lifetime chasing the highs and, if I was to guess, I would say he spent more time preventing the lows; I could be wrong. I have had some great high times over the years but boy, have I had some incredible lows. After 60 years now I think I have come to only one conclusion. It may be worth it but it certainly is not the easy way.

Today, I have a handful of close friends from Oregon to Florida that I am so blessed to have in my life. We don’t see each other as much as we would like. I worry that maybe with time some of them will just disappear from my life altogether. For the first time in my life that thought scares me. It scares me because I spent nearly 60 years never looking back and when I look back now I see the valleys more than the peaks.

But maybe,  that is just what the view is like from the top of a peak. Everything is below you and it can be scary.

I need more Christmas ornaments

I started writing this blog as a way to get to know, to actually study, myself. These are not easy for me to write. What makes it so hard is the fact that I have chosen to share my words with anyone who cares to read them. Not only does that feel very risky but it forces me to really study my feelings to be sure that I am being honest, or authentic, about what I am writing.

One thing I have learned is, that as the subject of my writing, I am perhaps the one least objective about what I write. When I look back I sometimes struggle to remember or understand events that were so significant in my life. Time and life has a way of filtering or distorting the past.

My mother-in-law, Lenore, is a wonderful woman. From the day I meet her she warmly welcomed me into the family and I have always appreciated her quick wit. Besides the love of her daughter, we also share a birth date. On January 13th I will be 60. Lenore will be 88. You are not supposed to love your mother-in-law but I love mine.

She recently moved into a memory care facility as she battles with the growing shroud of dementia. I can see the confusion and the sadness in her eyes when I speak with her as her short-term memory slowly slips away and is replaced by confusion. Her sense of humor still comes through as she talks about breaking out of the facility but it is clear to us, and to her, that this is a progressive condition. That the slow steady march of dementia will eventually completely rob her of her memories and her personality.

My brother Mike, born on Christmas day, is the only person who has known me for almost 60 years now. Likely, no one will ever know me longer than my brother. Today he faces similar challenges as Lenore. We don’t talk so I am not sure what he feels but I imagine he is scared. I wonder if he even knows. I hear he is angry. He is angry about liberal politicians and press, gun control, and me. As his memory slowly slips away I can’t help but wonder when the memory of me will completely slip away as well?

I love the podcast, Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell. This summer he did a fantastic episode entitled “Free Brian Williams” that completely challenged the way I thought about my understanding of my past. Using the backdrop of the events on 9/11, Gladwell talks about the accuracy of our memories. How they are shaped by the events around us and the distance of time. He makes a very compelling case that the memories we are so sure about today may not have actually happened the way we remember them. I see it with some of my friends when I talk about it with them. They vehemently defend that their memories of an event are rock solid; “I can remember so clearly…” I have no doubt their memories are crystal clear but are they accurate? Are they complete?

I think about the memories of my childhood, of my mother and father who passed away many years ago. There are the vague memories and then there are the ones that are just so clear and vivid. I can’t help but wonder how those have been shaped over the years by emotions, time, or changes in my own brain’s chemistry.

Like most, my family had its dysfunctions but for the most part, I grew up feeling safe and secure. I have been very fortunate in my life. I have had so many wonderful experiences. Growing up in a Navy family meant we had the opportunity to live in many different places. I went to five different schools before I graduated from high school. Over the years I have lived in 25 different cities and three different countries. I have had so many rich experiences as a result. The downside is it is difficult for me to answer the question “where are you from?” I know a lot of people, however, our relationship, in most cases, is in the context of a specific time or place in my life.

My wife, Marilyn has had a very different path. She has lived in only three or four different cities, and in the Boulder area alone for nearly a quarter of a century. When Lenore moved into the memory care facility just before Thanksgiving, she moved out of the house Marilyn’s childhood home. She has four siblings and a long list of friends who have known for many many years.

As she was going through the Christmas decorations today to put up the tree I overheard her saying to a friend that of all the ornaments only two were mine. After all those experiences how is it possible that I only had two ornaments? As I thought about that, it occurred to me that I actually have very little in my life from my past. I have very few material things, and there are very few who knew me as a young man, let alone a child. My parents are both gone. My brother and I don’t speak and as his memories slip away, that perspective will be gone as well.

I am left mostly to rely on my own memories of the past. Unsure of how they have been shaped over time?

So while I started writing this blog to study myself, I think I share it as a way of, somehow, keeping my memories alive; keeping me alive. A way to help Jonathan and Jennifer get to know their father a little better. So someday, when they are approaching their 60th birthday, and I am long gone, there will be more than a faded memory, distorted by time and brain chemistry, of who I was;

or, at least, thought I was.

A Love Story

On August 4, 1914, a young merchant marine from the tiny village of Lussinpiccolo in Austria Hungary, today Croatia,  arrived in the US on a small freighter, the S.S. Lucia. His name was Julius Hector Pacori or Pacoré, we are not sure. US Immigration changed the spelling to something far less ethnic sounding. He was 17 and his ship had just been seized by the United States Government when we entered World War I.

Jules, as he was known, made the U.S. his home. He married a woman from Philadelphia and got a good corporate job that provided he, Jenny, and their four children a comfortable life.

As a young child, I knew my grandfather as a warm and loving man who was larger than life. I remember fondly, him sitting in the breezeway of his home in Connecticut, smoking a pipe, or perhaps it was a cigar, lost in the opera performed in his native tongue, Italian.

Jules was from the other side of the Atlantic. My father’s father, Alfred, lived  in Detroit and was from the “other side of the tracks.” On his draft card, his previous residence is listed as the Ohio State Reformatory. He never spoke to his siblings. Their relationship so strained he even changed the spelling of our name, adding an E to the end, in an attempt to prune the family tree from our branch.

Alfred and his wife Edith were born more than 120 years ago. It was a time when, if you had a hard life, it was hard! Then, they lost their oldest son Herbert at 19, when his ship sunk in the war.

My father, also named Alfred, or perhaps he was still known as Bud those days, met Julie in 1944. I imagine she saw him as a quick witted, handsome “man’s man” who knew how to take care of himself, and his woman. He would have been attracted to her strength of character, her heart, and perhaps the more cultured air about her. Like her father, she loved the Italian opera. He would have enjoyed swing music like Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. They both loved to dance. She was the type of woman that a young man from the other side of the tracks dreams of meeting. He may have been the guy you hope your daughter never meets.

They had known each other for only a couple of weeks before he was deployed for another two years at sea. They wrote to each other constantly and when he returned they got married on July 6, 1946. It was love at first sight and it lasted a lifetime; just shy of 60 years when she passed away in Jan 2005.

I have written here about what a hard man my father could be, yet as hard as he was, Dad was no match for my mother. He used to say proudly, “I’ve got your mother right where she wants me.” Truer words have never been spoken.

He wasn’t very expressive about his love but there was no doubt where Julie stood in his priorities. I remember his exact words to me when I made the mistake of complaining to him once about something she told me to do. “Your mother has been with me for more than 30 years and she will be here long after you move on. You don’t want to ask me to chose between the two of you!” There was never any doubt in my mind of his love, for her.

Yet, as can happen over 60 years together, there was a difficult time in their marriage. It was sometime between when Mike was born and I was born. I don’t know if it was the dozen miscarriages my mother said she had as they tried in vain to have a second child, the pressures of a young Navy family trying to make ends meet or an “indiscretion” by my father that he alluded to many years later. Whatever the cause, by the time I arrived, seven years after my brother, my mother clung to me perhaps more tightly than my brother. Perhaps that was because as the first born son, my brother had a special connection with Dad.

While I have no doubt they loved us both, I was hers. He was Dad’s.

I have countless stories about my father. Mostly because he was, without question, a colorful man. The stores about my mother are far harder for me to tell without choking up, even today, 14 years after she died. To this day I can’t make it through the song Always by Patsy Cline without crying. I can still hear her squeaky voice singing along. To say I loved my mother is unquestionably the biggest understatement a guy can make. Even now, when something big happens in my life I have a fleeting thought that I have to tell Mom about it. I miss her so much.

In the summer of 2004, my mother had a stroke and they moved to Oregon to live with us while they were having a small home built nearby. They never got that house.

Another, far more devastating, stroke in October of that year sent my mother to a nursing home. Every day for three months, my father got up in the morning and drove there to sit next to her, to read the paper to her, and watch the news with her, even though she was totally unresponsive. What else could he do? He knew no other life than the one with her.

On the afternoon of January 20, 2005, she suddenly smiled, reached up, and patted my father on the cheek as if to tell him she loved him and everything was going to be okay.

She died in her sleep that night.

My father was devastated. At times he could barely function. I had never seen him so vulnerable. So raw. I remember him telling me once, “I don’t want to live.” I knew he meant it.

He lived with me for the next six months before he moved to Texas. Almost every night I would come home and sit with him to watch TV or just talk.

After 46 years, I finally got to know my father; to understand what an amazing man he was. He lived his entire life with what seemed to be only one objective, to provide a better life for his wife and two children than what he had known. He joined my mother two years later, after more than delivering on that commitment.

I have often wonder if that time spent getting to know my father was, in some way, my mother’s plan all along. And that when she smiled and said goodbye to him that day, was it because she knew that her work was finally done?

I wish she was here to help my brother and me now.

How I Remembered I Like to Dance

I was perhaps 11 years old. We were living at the Naval Training Center in Bainbridge, Maryland. My father was the General Manager for the Chief’s Club, a pretty good gig for for a guy like Alfred, or Jerry as his friends knew him. And for some unknown reason, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap was playing a show at the amphitheater at the Naval Base. Mike really, really, wanted to go. He would have been about 18.

My parents agreed, on one condition. “You have to take Chris.”

I wonder if that's the real reason we don’t speak today?

I was too young to remember the details but I remember two things that night; my brother was pissed, and I saw my very first live music show.

By the time I was a teenager, music was a big part of my everyday life; Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Grand Funk Railroad, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. The list went on.  I remember saying, “But Dad, it says, ‘To Be Played at Maximum Volume’,” after he yelled at me for playing David Bowie so loudly in my room.

I didn’t see a lot of live shows as a young man but in my mind, I played in countless. I typically played lead, not Gilmour. I was the one playing Blackie, not Eric. I can tell you what it feels like to play the most amazing guitar riff in front of thousands; yet while I own two guitars, I can barely play two chords. 

Through junior high, I played clarinet and saxophone but never as good as I was on the guitar. I spent a short time in the chorus and learned I wasn’t a vocalist but man can I sing the blues with a Stratocaster in my hands. And one thing I knew for sure was that I loved to dance, although I did not attend a single prom or take my girlfriend dancing, even once.

Ten years ago this month, as I was about to turn 50, I left my wife of 16 years, my 14-year-old son, 11-year-old daughter, and I moved in with a woman 15 years younger than me.

How did I get here?

She loved music more than anyone I had known. You could see it on her face and in how she moved when listening to music. She turned me on to some great new music and she turned me on to the music I had loved so much, so many years ago. She introduced me to that young guitar player I once knew. Her love of life and music was intoxicating.

Together, we were so much less.

How did I get here?

It all started when I stopped playing Voodoo Chile.

Now 10 years later, as I am about to turn 60, I see how truly blessed I am. I have my two wonderful children in my life, a good job, a comfortable home, there is almost always music on in the house, I get to see a lot of live music with friends

And dance with my wife.

How did I get here?

It all started when I picked up my Stratocaster again.