The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for July 2010

What is A Family

by 2 Comments

I think that one day I will tell my children about the fire that burns in my belly and that they’ll nod their heads in understanding. They’ll smile and tell me that they have that same fire that drives us and they’ll understand what it means to be part of this family in a different way than they had.

Family isn’t always an easy concept for kids to follow. That is because the traditional model that we think of, the nuclear family isn’t really the norm but what many people want the norm to be. I suppose that in an ideal world it would be a father, mother and their biological children.There wouldn’t be adoption because the biological parents of every child would be able to raise them.

But that is not the world that we live in and it is part of why my kids and I had a long discussion about what it means to be family and the different family models that exist. I don’t know how the discussion started. Can’t tell you whether they brought it up or if it was because of something else.

What I know is that at one point my son told me that one of his cousins wasn’t real family because she is adopted. I jumped on him a bit for it, probably was a little bit more aggressive in my response than I should have been. But I don’t think that being adopted means you are any less a child than a biological child is.

The cousin they referred to was adopted as an infant. So I looked at the children and asked them if their cousin had any memories of biological parents. They looked at me with incredulity and said that she couldn’t because she was a baby then. So I said who does she think of her as her mommy and daddy.

As they told me that it had to be the same people as her older sister I asked them to explain why that meant that she couldn’t be real family. They couldn’t and my son told me that he had decided that I was right. I smiled at him and told him sometimes family is more complicated than it appears.

I try to let the kids set the pace for conversations such as this. There is no reason to provide them with any more information than they need. As they grow older we can revisit and fill in blank spots.

My daughter asked me if a person could have two mommies or daddies and I said yes. She told me that she didn’t understand and that it seemed silly. I told her that the most important thing is whether two people love each other and that love is what makes a family.

It is not a perfect answer but overall I am pretty happy with it. It just makes sense to me and I think that it satisfied many of their questions but I was still left with a bunch of questions that didn’t really get answered as well.

There was the “is there medicine that mommies can take to stop a baby from coming” and “why do people not want children” that remain on the table. And let’s not forget the “why do people do something that can lead to a baby if they don’t want one” as well.

I am not afraid to answer or unwilling to answer those questions but given the time frame and constraints of young minds I wanted to try and spread these conversations out a bit.

17" Arms- Sometimes Dreams Change

by Leave a Comment

My children talk about my life before becoming a father as if it is mythology. They tell stories that they have heard the same way that you might talk about Zeus, Hera or Apollo. To them these tales are slightly more real than Superman or The Hulk. They have seen pictures of us but still can’t quite grasp that there really was a time when they didn’t exist.

I understand it because I lived it. I remember the days when I struggled to understand how my own parents could have been around as kids. I remember moments in high school where I just didn’t buy what they were selling, times were far too different to understand me. They couldn’t possibly follow or conceive of what it was like to be a teen in the eighties.

And now decades later I understand how ignorant and naive I was. Now I understand it all in a different way. I recognize that the human condition if you will hasn’t changed all that much. If you dropped me into the 17th century I’d find boys and girls, men and women who had dreams of what they wanted to be, who fell in and out of love, who did everything that I did…just years earlier.

*******

The dark haired beauty has been taking gymnastics for several years now. She twirls, spins and tumbles around the gym, laughing and giggling the whole time. At home she has developed a number of games to play with me. At least twice a day I hear her call “daddy” and I know that I am going to be called up to do something that allows her to hang on me.

Last night she decided to hang from my arms. So she tells me to make a muscle and hold it tight. She walks over and grabs my bicep with two hands and tells me that I am the strongest man around. I laugh because she is trying to manipulate me. She hasn’t realized that I like playing these games with her. Nor is she aware that I am fully conscious of the moments where she wraps her arms around my neck, kisses my cheek and asks for a new toy.

I won’t lie, it is nice to have this beautiful girl do these things but because I am her father I don’t give her everything she asks for. It is good for her to want things and to see that it takes work and effort to get them.

As she squeezes my arm she tells me that she needs to check the other one so I come up with a new pose and ham it up a bit. Now, I am Jack the Powerlifter and as I lift her up I grunt. She squeals with laughter and tells me that she wants to know how big my arms are and then I laugh.

*******

Ten thousand years ago when I was that single guy the kids have trouble imagining I dreamt of many different things. There were trips I wanted to take, girls I wanted to date and goals for my workout. One of those goals was to have 16 inch arms. Don’t ask me how I came up with that number, I just did.

I didn’t just want 16 inch arms. I wanted them to be cut so that you could see the muscles ripple. I remember making the plan to do it. I think that I was a sophomore in college when I came up with the idea. In high school I had been a swimmer and had been unable to do the kind of workout that this required.

Swimming meant long muscular arms-now I was going for a different look. It is funny to write this and see how shallow it sounds. I had other dreams as well, but we’ll save that for a different post.

Anyhoo, as time passed I eagerly marked my progress. I got stronger very quickly, it was easy to gain strength but harder to get my arms to do what I wanted them to do. But I stayed at it and worked hard.

*********

Fast forward to the present. The dark haired beauty takes my hand and leads me to get a tape measure from the sewing kit. We grab it and wrap it around my right arm, it doesn’t feel like my tefillin but that is ok and to be expected they go on my left arm.

I look down at my arm and I see numbers. That 16 inch mark that I wanted way back when has been exceeded. It is about 17 inches or so. A wistful smile passes across my face. The dream that was is no longer. It is not something that I care about anymore, having big arms.

Now I have other dreams of more substance and meaning. There are a few that are tied into the physical. There are goals to be achieved and things I desire. But most of that is related to getting myself back into shape so that I can maintain my health as I age.

So that I am able to dance at the weddings with the kids and play with grandchildren. There are years before those things take place, but now I feel the passage of time. Now I know how fast it goes so I pay more attention to my dreams, those big and small.

Fiction- The Round Up Continues

by Leave a Comment

Periodically I like to try and construct a round up of Fragments of Fiction. Here is a big group of them, but not all.

This Time
I Fell Down The Rabbit Hole
A Song For You
Who I Should Have Been
The Fire Still Burns
I Don’t Want To Live A Life of Fear and Denial
Take a Walk on The Wild Side
The Race for My Heart
Somebody To Love
Letters I have Written- Never Meaning to Send
There Are Places I Remember
Dancing In The Fire
Hope Springs Eternal
Echoes of The Future
Ain’t Got You- Or A Different Sort of Muse
The Almost Warrior
Lightning Strikes Twice
These Pictures of You
Timing
The Lost Soul Mate
The Lonely Road
A Love Song That Needs To Be Written
Instant Messenger
Johnny Was A Hero
I Never Stop Thinking About You
Words on a Page
I Won’t Back Down

Practice Kindness- Blogging and Life

by 2 Comments

A good blogger practices kindness in many ways such as providing attribution to sources for posts. So I’ll try to follow my own advice and blame Kristen for this post. I write frequently about what I try to teach my children and why this is one of those posts.

In what feels like a different life I worked for a general contractor doing both residential and commercial construction. As the project manager my role was to serve as the liaison between the customer and the company. You can call me biased, but the PM was the most important person on the job.

As PM I would provide estimates for the work to be done, serve as marriage counselor for couples who couldn’t decide what color to paint the kitchen or what surface to use for their counter tops. I kept the workers from going crazy when the owners treated them like chattel and often served as the designer for the new kitchen or bathroom. Every day was different and every job was action packed.

So what does kindness have to do with this? Quite a bit. Since we were a general contractor I would often find myself standing on a roof under a blazing sun. When I would climb down I would be drenched in sweat and dying of thirst. I always noticed when people offered me a cold drink or a towel.

These are small gestures that are not required but they go a long way. I carried water in the car, a towel, wipes and clean clothes that I could change into. But even though I was prepared I really appreciated the simple kindness of being offered a glass of water. It wasn’t just the water that was sometimes refreshing but the way in which my prospects and clients treated me.

You might be surprised at how rude people can be. You might be shocked by how some people would refuse to let you use the bathroom. We just spent hours doing hard labor to make your home beautiful and special. We poured our best effort into making it something that you want to show off and you can’t let me pee in your guest bathroom. I am covered in crap from beneath the house and you treat me like I am some kind of criminal. WTF.

So whenever I have workers at my house I try hard to be kind. I say please and thank you. I offer them something to drink and treat them with dignity. And I make a point to teach my children to do the same. You might be surprised by how far that extra step goes. I remember jobs where we had the option to charge someone a little bit more but didn’t because they were good people. We didn’t mind putting in a little bit more time because you were good to us.

I am not going to say that I have never made a mistake or that I have always been good about this. I am sure that there times where I haven’t, but I am conscious of this. Sometimes I was the guy swinging the hammer and doing the demolition. Covered in dust and sweat and wearing goggles I didn’t look like the guy who was better read than the home owner, but I was. I know, that sounds a bit like I am pissed off, insecure or upset.

Not insecure, but upset a little bit. Maybe it is because I was that guy who was treated poorly or maybe it is something else, doesn’t really matter to me. What I know is that what I am interested in is making sure that my children see workers as people and treat them accordingly.

A Child’s Birthday Party- Summertime Blues

by Leave a Comment

In that life that I used to lead before I got married, had kids and settled into the American Dream I used to be a child who would attend birthday parties for other children. I know, that is amazing, different, unique and unusual. No one else did that growing up.

Later on in the days in which I attended sleep away camp I watched friends and other campers celebrate their birthdays at camp. It seemed to me like a very cool thing to do and I was kind of disappointed that my own birthday was in May. So I found it to be surprising when one of the other campers told me that he didn’t like having his birthday at camp, it didn’t make sense to me.

But now as the father of a daughter with a birthday that falls in July I have a different perspective. It sounds a bit counter intuitive, but it can be a bit more challenging trying to throw a birthday party during summer. Since school is out it is not unusual for people to go on family vacations.

So it can become a bit more challenging to find a date where you can get a group of children together to celebrate. It should be noted that I would be thrilled if this were the most difficult of my problems. If the only real challenge I faced in life was trying to put together birthday parties for my children I would be a happy man.

I get it, really, I do. This is sort of a silly problem, but a problem nonetheless. The dark haired beauty is well liked and is fortunate to have many friends. And she would very much like them to be at her party. There is nothing wrong or unusual with that, her mother and I want the same for her.

But as I mentioned before it has been ridiculously challenging to try and find a date where we can get most of them together. I don’t expect to find one that works for everyone and I am not going to even try. But we need to shoot for most and even that has been problematic.

And of course none of this takes into account the cost of putting a party together. During the summer the fabulous California sun and blue skies are not always conducive to birthday parties. It is not inconceivable or ridiculous to say that the temperatures can be anywhere between 90 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

That can make it a bit harder to throw the party at a park, especially when some parents frown on allowing their kids to get dehydrated. 😉

With a little bit of luck this birthday (6) will be among the last where she wants to invite a billion kids and next year we can move into the small gathering of two or three close friends.

But that is a year away so in the interim I have to tear my hair out over trying to find an affordable way to have a nice party that will make the dark haired beauty happy.

Full Circle

by 1 Comment

People come and go in your life and my life or should I say in our lives. Really I suppose that our lives is the appropriate way to say it even if they are two separate lives because they aren’t quite that. Separated that is. There may not be communication in the traditional sense of the word or even that which others would define as such, but it exists.

Such is the world and the way in which things currently are. People, places and things that cannot be explained with logic or rational thought. Matters that should be dealt with such indifference and candor do not apply to affairs of the heart, not now and not ever. It is part of what frustrates and intrigues us. We wish to engage with those we care most deeply about in an open and forthright manner but sometimes do not.

It is not because of some nefarious purpose or chicanery but because we fear to hurt them or those around them. We worry that revealing our true thoughts might be the source of some great offense and wonder what impact that will have. Life has taught us that good intentions do not always lead to a good outcome and though we try hard to do right by all sometimes it is impossible.

And thus we sometimes find ourselves feeling trapped in situations that we would rather not be in. Frustrated because we cannot follow our true heart and feelings, forced to pretend to be someone we are not when all we want to do is grow to become who we wish to be.

Those around us are unaware of the secrets that we are forced to carry deep inside our hearts and the places that should always be filled with sunshine are sometimes filled with rain. Sometimes the solace that we so desperately seek is not truly hidden or forbidden to us. Rather it is cloaked in a garb that leaves it unrecognizable to us as we are now, but open to discovery at a later date.

“Never let go of anyone that you couldn’t go a day without thinking about.  There just might be a very good reason why this person is always on your mind. Sometimes, its the brain that knows too well what the heart tries so hard to deny.”

So there you are standing in the place in which you thought you had left, full circle is what they call it. You look out the window of your heart and see the place that you had started out and wonder how it is that you came to find yourself standing there way back when.

It is strangely familiar and inviting to be there but also disconcerting because you are not who you were when you left. The long journey and experiences you had have changed you in ways that you don’t completely understand. Though you recognize the place and remember the warmth of the sun upon your back you are not sure if you can accept what lies ahead of you.

Others who have stood there before you would say that it is to be expected, this feeling of uncertainty. They’d tell you that if you weren’t nervous or concerned about taking that step they would be worried. Who knew that anxiety would be your friend, but it is.

The little whispers in your ear, the voices that urge caution are proof that you have grown and learned. They bear witness that the scars you wear from your journey are proof that you have done something more than just exist. You have lived and loved. You have bathed in fire and come out the other side.

You smile wistfully at the dramatic nature of the reference to fire, but there is much truth to it. That ring of fire you fell into so long ago never stopped burning. Part of what bothers you is that you believed that once you stepped through you would be able to see clearly what lies ahead. You expect to have gained some prescience that would would allow you to be wise and all knowing.

But that is not how it works. You have gained wisdom and understanding. You know far more than you give yourself credit for and now it is a matter of learning how to trust your gut again. In some ways that is the most important part of the lessons of your journey.

For you full circle means that you have returned to the starting line so that you can make your decisions about the future based upon the learning, guidance, knowledge and understanding that these experiences have provided you with.

There is no magic talisman or panacea that you can use. It is what you always knew would happen, you are the talisman. You are the guardian. It is every trite remark, tired cliche or simple end to the stories you so love. You are the only one that fix what is broken. You know what it is you want and you know who it is you wish to become.

All that remains is to take that last step or is it first step into that place you need to be.