No Regrets, Here

Two of my brother-in-laws have been diagnosed with cancer in the space of two months.  While SuperK has a distant relationship with the oldest brother she is quite close with the other who is much closer in age to her.  She's doing a great job in processing through this but it's going to be a process.  For me what this death and dying stuff always does is make me reflect on life in general: who I am, how I got here, where am I going, will there be a college football season this year, and the like.  The death of my parents sure fired this off and the fact that my body is in the early stages of balkiness is keeping it rolling.

I was musing on the fact that here I sit in Southern California after a life in the Midwest and on the East coast.  To my enduring surprise I fit in very well here, enjoying my presence immensely, while remaining at my core a West coast immigrant.  No one ever asks if I'm a native, saying instead "So where are you from originally?" When I was in high school I choose to go to a school in the east as did every single person in my class.  Nobody picked the west.  My core personality has been shaped by my Ohio upbringing and Philadelphia schooling and I'll always be that kind of guy: cynical, spare in my words and actions, striving to achieve.  Yet here I am and glad to be here and certain as certain can be that I'll never leave.  After mom and dad died so did my trips back home and, yes, Ohio will always be "home."

These deaths and illnesses bring up some "What If?" thoughts.  What if I had gone to college out here? Would I have stayed or would I have always felt out of place - as out of place as I do now, and that's saying a lot for a state where so many people are from somewhere else.  And when I say "out of place" I don't mean unwelcome - I mean an immigrant, a dude from somewhere else.  It seems so self-evident to me that I would have fallen in love and never left yet I visited several times in my early years - both for pleasure and for work - and felt so out of place that I decided I didn't like the vibe.

In my morning Quiet Time I always go over a Gratitude List so that I never, ever forget how blessed I am.  A big category is Friends.  And when I look at the people locally that I count as my biggest, closest friends they're mostly from somewhere else.  Is this because I'm drawn to the familiar or is it because I'm that kind of person and that ain't never gonna change?

In a way this makes a kind of sense, my insertion into my new home.  California is a lot more nuanced than it may seem on the surface what with the pictures of beaches and movie stars and Yosemite.  I always thought of a grinder as a banker in NYC or a lawyer in Chicago but I see people in the entertainment business with just as much fire and just as much of a work ethic.  Trust me: you don't get to be a rock star by tossing TVs out of hotel windows and sleeping with sexy groupies.  You practice all the time and play to empty bars for tip money.  I get to go to live theater here and the brilliance of the acting leaves me with my jaw ajar.  These actors are not just moving around and intoning lines of dialogue.  They're inhabiting a character.

Still . . . as an alcoholic I'm a bit of a sybarite.  I like pleasure.  I like to feel good.  This is a state with perfect weather and an unbelievable variety of food and natural beauty galore and an airport that will jet me direct to almost anywhere in the world for a reasonable price.  Gone are the days of strapping on work boots and driving through sleet for four hours to stomp around some filthy manufacturing plant.  It's a lot easier to walk outside into perfect weather, mountains peeking over the horizon to my left, the smell of the ocean a short ten minute drive away.

No regrets here, just reflections.  I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time so here I sit: relatively happy, somewhat content, monstrously blessed.