Category Archives: w/r/t love

Apr 17 2012

responsible

“You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince

Years ago. When things were generally tougher. Confusing. And certainly darker. On a foreign porch we sat, parting.

This was something given to me. A little lesson, like a thought or a light. I turn to it all the time, marvel at how it fits into everything.

I honestly can’t remember if we were still on that porch or if this came later. But the porch matters, so in my memory we’re there.

You don’t ever think about what it means to have tamed something, let alone what to do with it. Perhaps due to Shakespeare, we think of taming as something more like refinement, like grinding a gloss onto a stone. But it’s far more simple than that.

Let someone learn to love you, even in the smallest of ways, and you become responsible for her.

Late at night. When things were generally better. Confusing still. But lighter. And she asked me if she should take a chance on me.

This was also something given to me. It was not something I took lightly. I, in fact, asked for time to consider it, to mull over what it would mean to be responsible, forever, for her. She’s not the kind of person you want to let down anyway. But to let someone down and to forget that you’re responsible for someone are two very different things.

In the end, I asked her to take that chance, because by this point I already knew that what was given to me on that porch so many years ago was maybe the one thing I’ve been here to learn all this time.

Though there is, of course, a corollary lesson. If you are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed, then you should take great care in that which you tame.

Or, to put it differently: love openly, but take care with the love that is returned to you.

If you put food in a bowl and set the bowl outside for a stray cat and the cat eats from your bowl, the cat is returning your love. There are millions of bowls and even less risk in starvation.

There are six newborn kittens behind a dresser in our apartment right now. They are there because I chose to be responsible for their mother, because I gave her a bowl of food and she ate from it. They are there because I am responsible for her. Forever. And as I am for her, I am for them.

And though I can’t abide the idea of have ten cats in our little apartment, I equally cannot abide shirking my responsibility.

I go for walks, some days, with the woman from the porch. I will soon be husband to the woman who took a chance on me. I have let them, and others, love me, and am I responsible for them. Just as I am for the six tiny kittens. Just as I am for their mum. Just as I am for our other cats.

Forever.

Mar 9 2012

eighteen

Eighteen years ago today I witnessed the magic that is being the person responsible for making someone else go through the pain of labor. I still get a bit choked up when I think of it: the swearing, the pain she inflicted upon me, the promises to kill me once the epidural wore off, denouncing my character to any and all nurses who stopped by to help. Sigh. What a great day.

I joke, of course. In truth she handled it pretty well. Especially once that epi kicked in. But there was fear, I remember. The fear was real. Too real. Because I was myself only eighteen.

The first few years of my son’s life were tough on pretty much all of us. My parents. Her parents. Us. Even people relatively far away. She and I ended up splitting up when he was only three. There was, I think, simply too much to handle, too many external forces bringing too much to bear upon us and our situation. Not all of it was negative, but we were never really left to figure out who we wanted to be, what kind of family we wanted us to have.

It was tough. And it didn’t get easier for a long, long time.

For my son, though, life was pretty grand almost all the time. He always went the extra mile to make someone laugh. He tried as hard as he could to make people feel better – even total strangers. The times I remember him being less than happy, he was at least content. He showed more faith in the notion that everything would be okay than anyone I’ve ever known, even in situations in which that should be about the last thing he would think.

In short, my son has always amazed me.

Myself, I haven’t been the father that I’d hoped I’d be. The reasons are complex and long and, to be honest, I don’t think I myself fully understand them. But that neither changes nor excuses the fact that I have simply failed to step up to the plate that my own father stood – and continues to stand – up to.

But I know that part of who I’ve become is due to who my son has become now, here at his first day of real adulthood. In several ways he is more of a man, more of an honest human being, than I have ever been. I am proud of him. Incredibly proud. But not as a father. I do not look at how amazing he is as an extension of myself. He is amazing simply by his own choice and the choices of those who really raised him – his mother, her family, my family. The only traits he and I really share are being large, eating everything in sight, and making people laugh no matter the cost. I have many people to thank for making him the man he is today, but I am not one of them.

My son is amazing. He is kind and he is giving. He is funny and he is gentle. He lives his life unashamed. He cares what others think but is not crippled by it. He loves life and he loves his life. And he loves who is in it. He is one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had.

Happy birthday, boyo. You are now where I was when you were born. And you’re already so far ahead of me I can do nothing but feel proud for you.

Mar 4 2012

the fault in our stars: a very personal book review

In just over seven months I will marry a woman who, by the medical estimates available at the time of her diagnosis, is supposed to be dead. Which is to say that, like Hazel, the protagonist of John Green’s The Fault in our Stars, she has a terminal diagnosis. Also like Hazel, she is yet miraculously alive and – against wildly improbably odds – has found someone who can love her not because of her diagnosis, not in spite of her diagnosis, but merely along with it.

Upon learning that I’d never read any of Mr. Green’s books, my friend k practically foisted this book upon me, insisting that I slightly, if harmlessly, abuse my power at the library to read her copy before sending it back to the owning library. (I am comforted somewhat in knowing that Mr. Green’s Nerdfighter community would approve of a moderate abuse of library-power.) So I took it home on Friday.

Saturday morning I opened it. On the first page of the story I read the line that committed me to reading the book in one day, a line that is, absurdly though not inappropriately, a parenthetical:

(Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.)

I was hooked because I used to believe this; and I was hooked because I know it now to be wrong.

Like Hazel and Augustus and Isaac and all their families and doctors and nurses – in other words, like just about every character in the novel – I spend a fair amount of time thinking about two incredibly divergent things:

  1. How amazing and miraculous it is that this person I love and care about so much is still alive, and
  2. What I will do when she’s gone.

Because there is love and there is fear and they are not at all exclusive.

This is the thightrope-line that Mr. Green expertly walks, letting his natural variations in balance lean the novel toward one and then the other and back again and over and over until you really have no idea which is which anymore. You understand that to fear is to love, that you cannot fear anything at all in the world without also loving something. Finally, you understand that it doesn’t matter; you simply have to keep your balance.

For most of us, life is the default: to choose death would by necessity be an active choice. For Hazel, for Augustus, for Isaac, for their families – for Ashley, for me, for her family – the default is death: to choose life is by necessity an active choice. Like Hazel, Ashley takes medicine every day without which she would die. (Unlike Hazel, Ashley’s medicine is not the invention of a gracious author.)

The reason I know the parenthetical quoted above is wrong is that I’ve learned there is at least one thing that is not a side effect of dying, and that is choice. Choices are never bad, never good, never a function or effect of anything other than that the universe created something capable of observing, reflecting, and interpreting it. Choices are the burden of intelligence, the grace of individuality.

Because there is love, and there is fear. And there is choice, which is also not exclusive.

Like Hazel, Ashley chooses to live. She was honestly once asked literally to make that choice, but she continues to make it every moment of every day. More improbably, she chooses, again like Hazel, to love, every moment of every day despite knowing that she is – as Hazel would call herself – a grenade. Someday she may no longer be able to make that choice, scarring all of us who love her so much. That she faces that reality is the truest sign of love I can imagine.

The Fault of our Stars is about a young woman learning that one can choose love and fear, that one does not eclipse the other. It about learning that the human heart is strong and capable enough of being completely okay with both. It’s about learning that love is easy and fear is hard but it’s our choices that keep the rope taut.

It’s also about a grown man finally understand how lucky he is to have found someone who already knew all of this. And who has had the grace and patience to teach him.

Feb 14 2012

for ashley: lost for words

I may not always talk much, but I am a man of many words. Rarely do I have trouble stating clearly what I mean to say. Though of course sometimes I bury it in a footnote. But whatever.

The point is that I know how to say what it is that I want to say.

Which is why I’m so surprised today as I try to sum up how I feel about you. How I feel about my life since you’ve been in it. How I feel about our future, together. This is, after all, our last Valentine’s Day as an unmarried couple. As I’m sure you’re aware.

I’ve tried a dozen times to say it.

I’ve started and stopped.

I’ve done whatever is the blog equivalent of balled-up pages in the trash bin.

I’ve given up.

And tried again.

And all day there’s been one thing my mind keeps turning to, and it’s something that happened long before we met.

Back when I was 17 I helped deliver for a local floral shop one Valentine’s Day. All day I went from place to place with a car filled with flowers, arrangements and cards. I’d pull up to stoplights and drivers in the next lane would rubber-neck at my flora-filled Chrysler LeBaron. Each place I went to, the person who opened the door greeted me with curiosity that quickly broke into a lovely smile. Some people squealed with delight. Others gave me hugs. Most thanked me profusely, though I was not the cause for the flowers. I was merely the messenger. It was a really great day, collecting all those smiles and hugs and squeals. That sort of thing just stays with you and, over time, alters how you feel about just about everything.

And I guess the reason that keeps coming to my mind today is that’s how I feel every day. Every time you smile at me; every time you laugh. Every time you put an arm around me. Every time you tell me you love me. For the past few years these things have collected in my heart and have altered how I feel about just about everything. Except Journey. But whatever.

It’s not simply that my life is better with you in it. It’s that how I feel about my life – even everything that came before you – is better with you in it.

I love you, Ashley.

Feb 6 2012

for katharine: sickness and health

My friend Katharine got engaged yesterday. Today she posted this:

This reminded me of the Monday after Ashley and I got engaged.

This is that post.

I proposed to Ashley early in the morning on April 24, Easter Sunday. By early in the morning I really mean shortly after midnight because I wanted to do it on Easter Sunday yet I could hardly wait to actually do it. So like 12:01 AM. We stayed up late that night. She called her family and she and I talked about a lot of things before we finally passed out. The rest of that Sunday was pretty standard…except for her staring at her new ring all the time. We went to bed early because we had work and school the next day.

But at 4AM the morning after we got engaged, we were in the hospital.

Ashley’d woken me up a few times that night getting sick. Finally, she said she thought maybe she should go to the ER. And if Ashley thinks she needs to go to the hospital, it’s bad. We hastily got ourselves around and a short time later were in the ER. They hooked her up to an IV almost right away – they knew she was dehydrated before they knew why.

Like many nurses before her, the ER nurse had trouble finding a good vein in Ashley’s hand. One of the attempts caused a little bit of blood to trickle slowly down her hand until it covered part of her new engagement ring. Later on, Ashley would come to for a few minutes and apologize to me for that, for having gotten blood on what she said was such a pretty ring. But it didn’t matter, I said. It could be cleaned.

As she drifted back to sleep, her body finally calm and rehydrating, I pushed a couple of stools together, made a blanket of my coat, and slept a little bit. Around 6AM they sent us home. Turns out it was a virus making her sick. The doctor gave her a prescription to help control the vomiting and diarrhea, but the pharmacy didn’t open until eight.

We spent another miserable two hours at home. She was so sick that she was afraid to leave the toilet. But she was so tired she could barely keep herself sitting up. And so our engagement began with me kneeling in front of the toilet and giving her a shoulder to rest her head on while she was sick. She said it was really awkward and it sure as hell was. But it was also just what you do.

I called off work that day and Ashley didn’t go to class. I ran to the pharmacy when it opened and eventually her nausea settled. We both slept for a while and eventually were able to kind of joke about it: ‘Hey. Remember that time I proposed to you and you got sick?’ Hahaha. Hilarious to this day, right? So pardon me, Katharine, if I disagree with your statement.

But, seriously: Congratulations. I wish you and yer fella many, many happy years.

And that he never has to hold you up while you’re on the toilet.

But that if he does, you have the good sense to let him.

And again, congrats.

Jan 30 2012

sometimes i think time’s healing powers are highly over-hyped

One year ago today, our cat, L.G. Nermal, passed away. What’s remarkable it that, after all that time, I still feel incredibly sad when I think about him. Just picturing him there as he was dying almost brings tears to my eyes. In fact, writing this little post is proving to be just as difficult as writing this one was.

I don’t entirely understand why it’s still so painful for me. This isn’t like me. I understand and accept death and dying. This sort of thing isn’t the kind of thing I hang on to. Yet, there it is.

You’re still missed, Little Guy. I hope you can play out there, wherever you are.

Jan 24 2012

less than a million breaths away

“I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s fear, the same basic fear that you and I have that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it…Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it’s all passing away, and so are we, so am I…

And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what – a hundred years? two hundred? – and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished buy my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here…That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.”

That’s from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, and it hit me rather hard today whilst I was eating lunch alone upstairs at work. First it was the bit about the gravestones, which we think of as the final reminder of our footprints on our place. Then that bit about the slow fire drove it in. Maybe it was the events of last night – really thinking about the other side of organ donation – I don’t know. But when I read this today everything around ceased to matter, to even exist. And all I can think about now is how precious little time we get here, and how even by that measure I get even less precious little time to spend with Ashley…and that comes at the expense of some other family who ended up with even less precious little time with their child than they could ever have brought themselves to even try to imagine.

And I am sad for them. And yet grateful. And while those two emotions mix readily in a person’s heart, it takes the mind significantly more time to catch up.

Dec 19 2011

ashley is home!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Woohoo!And, if I may presume to speak for the cats:

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!

Dec 12 2011

how – of all people – Steve Jobs has helped me feel a little less lonely

I wasn’t quite as familiar with Steve Jobs, the public figure, as some other people I know. I remember when we got our first computer, an Apple IIc+, in what must have been 1988, I sat down and dutifully read the instruction manual because I was an awesomely adventurous child. The manual mentioned that Apple had been founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in one a garage and that they named the company Apple because they couldn’t think of what else to call it. For a long time, that’s about all knew of the guy.

I learned much more about Steve Jobs after he passed away. Like many, many other people, I read Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography and, from it, have no problem describing Jobs as a man with a soul but no heart.

To have a soul is required, I think, to believe in things like poetry and music and change and the sheer force of one person’s will. Jobs did all of these things, and I can see his soul shine through my iPhone and iPad.

To have a heart is required, I think, to be kind, considerate, compassionate and honest. Having a soul is self-directed; having a heart is other-directed. At this, Jobs failed. He was a brilliant man with a brilliant vision and a brilliant passion, but let’s face it: more often than not he seemed to care very little for and about how other people felt.

Which is why it’s so weird that I owe him a big thank you for helping me feel less lonely right now while Ashley is in Disney World.

Because she recently acquired an iPhone,(1) and because we share an iCloud account, I can hop on the Find my iPhone app at any point and see what she and her family are up to.

Okay yes. It’s a little creepy. Or at least it would be if she didn’t know I was checking her location. Granted, this isn’t precisely what Find my iPhone was meant for,(2) but yesterday when I had a quick look and saw that they were watching the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom…well, for a moment it was like I was there with her. There’s a part in the show that I find to be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. I won’t spoil it for you, plus there’s simply no way I could describe it with any real effect, but both times I’ve seen it, tears came to my eyes. And both times I’ve seen it, Ashley was with me. And right then, last night, just for a second, I felt what that felt like, instead of just feeling bored and vaguely sad. I felt Ashley right next to me, looking up in wonder. I could even picture her face smiling under the light. And for a little bit I felt somewhat less alone.

Then there’s Photo Stream. For those who don’t know, Photo Stream stores a copy in the cloud of any picture taken on an iDevice for 30 days. So, again, since Ashley and I share an iCloud account, I can see the pictures she takes without her having to send them to me. Photo Stream only syncs photos to the cloud over WiFi, so I can’t see her pictures until after she’s returned to their resort. The other day she took a picture of a gallon of chocolate milk. I have no idea why. Can’t even guess. But it’s exactly what I was looking for, exactly the kind of randomness that is Ashley.(3)

And of course, there’s FaceTime. I love Ashley’s voice a lot, but everyone sounds different over the phone. She says I always sound like I’m waiting to get off the phone, while I think she always sounds a touch put-off. But with FaceTime, Apple’s video-chat, I can hear her lovely voice, see her pretty smile and watch her laugh. That was the highlight of my day yesterday. There’s something about seeing someone, seeing the person you’re talking to, watching her react to what you say, seeing smallish movements of eyebrow and chin, that makes me feel a little less here and a little more there.

And it’s odd that this closeness has been brought about by one of the most emotionally distant people I’ve ever read about. It’s as though he wanted to connect everyone in the world with what they love – music, art, pictures – and the people they care about even though he himself had a hard time connecting with anyone. I’m sure he didn’t create FaceTime or Find my iPhone (though the books mentions that iCloud was something he wanted to make work), but you can believe not a thing shows up on any Apple device out-of-the-box that he didn’t know about and approve of.

He’s caught a lot of flack over the years for a statement he made at a company retreat way back in 1982: “Customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” But he was right. At least in my case. I didn’t know I wanted ways to miss Ashley just a little bit less until I figured out how to use Apple’s devices to do exactly that. And that’s what technology should do: bring us closer to whom and to what we love.

  1. 2011 will forever be the Year of Apple for us. Make of that what you will.
  2. Which seems to be helping porn stars find their stolen phones.
  3. I should point out that it’s only seeming randomness. She always has a reason.