One of the suggestions that I've learned over the years which still retains an incredible amount of power - it would contain an incredible amount of power if I bothered to heed its wisdom from time to time - is to "Love people for who they are and not who you want them to be."  Intellectually?  Makes a lot of sense.  Emotionally?  A little hard to swallow when all of the idiots who are clogging up the path that I want to take won't get out of my way.

It's not fair to anyone to have that load of expectations heaped upon their furrowed brows.  People are fallible and flawed and they're inevitably going to fail us.  I shouldn't put that pressure on anyone.  I know I'm not doing it right in the eyes of millions.  When I disappoint someone simply by existing I think: "Hey, I'm doing the best I can."  I don't like it when someone is pissed that I'm not falling in line with what they want me to do.  I try to change my behavior if I can make someone else's road a little wider but I'm not going to have much luck changing who I am.

We had a cat that didn't like to be held.  She'd hop up on your lap if she was cold and wanted to warm up but even then she'd do whatever she could to stay just out of reach of your grabby hands - I swear that animal had a tape measure somewhere.  Otherwise, she was fine curled up on the carpet.  Every now and then I'd pick her up and try to forcefully hold her in place.  She stayed put - she wasn't stupid, she knew who was the bigger of the two animals - but it felt like sitting with a coiled spring in my lap.  I knew that the instant I released any pressure that she would be out of there.

That's what it feels like today when I try to make someone into something that they're not.

Delusional Seaweed

Delusion:  A false belief that is resistant to confrontation with actual facts.

I'm a typical guy.  I have a typical totally delusional impression that women view me in a certain light.  I'm delusional but not stupid - I realize that I make my best impression when the lights are turned off, leaving me in complete darkness.  I know that I'm invisible to any human female who's under say 35 if by "35" you mean "45."  Fair enough - I'm old.  I get it.  I was pretty much invisible to these women when I still had black hair and a lot less wrinkles and liver spots and such than I do now.

Still, I'm pretty sure that when I blow into a room I turn some heads.  I'm just sayin'.

One evening at my dad's retirement home - where the average age, the average age of the residents appears to be one hundred and forty-three - I was joined at the banks of elevators by a woman who lives there.  We had some time to talk - the doors on the elevators are programmed to give a little more time to the little less spry.

"So . . . are you a new resident?" she asked at one point.

I did laugh out loud.  I take myself way too seriously but not nearly as seriously as I used to.

The Pivot

Pivot:  To turn on an exact spot.

I've been mulling over . . . well, just about everything.  I mull at great length and with great passion.  It's more fun mulling than actually doing anything.

Anyway, my trip home has me considering moments of great influence and import in my life, when things changed in a big way, a permanent, earth-shattering way, for better or worse, never to be the same ever again.

Let's take a look at these pivots or should I say PIVOTS!

1.  Leaving home for college 650 miles away.  A major pivot, a huge pivot.  Probably number two in the pivot countdown.  Let's call it the AC/DC of pivots.  I was never the same after leaving my safe, loving, conservative little Cape Cod house where I could sneak upstairs and smoke dope undetected.

2. Getting kicked out of optometry college.  Excuse me, "resigning" from optometry college, after a long, slow, inexorable slide into alcoholism.  The few governors that I had on my drinking and using were released - to the great glee of my parents - and I roared into oblivion for the next 8 years.  A total loss.  A total waste.  I can remember sitting in the dean's office - Dean Hubbard, a caricature of what you would imagine a dean to be - when he finished up his "ok, we're done here, you can go away" speech.

3.  Getting sober.  THE pivot.  The Black Sabbath of pivots.

4. Getting married to SuperK.  A monstrous pivot that was followed by 20 years of slow, steady, pleasurable growth - nurturing a relationship, advancing a career, getting soberer and soberer.  This was really more of a period than a pivot, when you think about it.  It wasn't like the other pivots which were more along the lines of stepping off a cliff where  I went from Here to There in a blink of an eye. 

5. Leaving The Old City.  Our stuff was in a truck somewhere when we boarded a plane, leaving for good.  Probably number three in Pivot Lore: the Judas Priest of pivots.  

Now, my latest trip back.  It felt different, you know?  Final.  I'm wandering if it's another big pivot.  I feel like I'm Here now and that I'm no longer There.

Hard to tell in the heat of the pivot.

Seaweed: Visitor

Seems like this is what I was supposed to do this trip.  It hasn't been fancy - sit with dad, mostly in silence when the TV wasn't on, tuned to a sports contest that didn't hold my attention, a few comments passing for conversation; lunch with my sister; meals with The Big Four, the guys that I'm still in regular contact with; walks in my beloved, wooded, childhood park, glorious in autumnal splendor.

I didn't force the meetings.  Didn't force the marginal folks, the ones who are still loved but not active in my life anymore.  Not going back to Vacation City with any simmering resentments or boiling disappointments.  Didn't try to make anyone be someone that they're not and didn't feel bad when I didn't live up to someone else's expectations of who I should be.  Didn't try to make The Old City into something that it mostly definitely is not.

It was a pretty good trip.  I'm glad I finally approached it as a visitor and not as an ex-pat - it kept the frustration level way down, as in: "Why do I care so much about this place anyway?  I don't live here anymore."

I think this low-key approach really helped me with my family interaction.  Dad enjoys it when I'm there although to me our interaction is insipid and shallow.  The helping part is just being there.  He actually concluded our final day by saying: "Well, Seaweed, this was fun." Yowser.  The man is not doing anything to me.  He just doing what he knows how to do.

Love people for who they are and not for who you want them to be.

The Smell Test

I'm actually somewhat impressed with my efforts this trip - not controlling the world is a pretty good idea.  Not trying to get to certain meetings to "see" everyone - most of the meetings have turned over almost completely and the people that I recognize . . . well, it's only for a few minutes, anyway.  It's just too hard to catch up on six months in a crowded, noisy room in a few minutes.

I'm happy to say mid-trip that I'm usually not unhappy with myself when I crawl into bed at the end of the day.  Don't get me wrong - I have plenty of defects still in place that need plenty of attention.  They manifest themselves often.  But I give it a shot, a good, honest effort.  I think my behavior passes the smell test most of the time.  I think my speech is somewhat commendable a lot of the time.  My thinking?  Yeah, well, the phrase "some of the time" comes to mind.  Much better but much improvement needed.

Stuff Drifting By

Acceptance:  A receiving of something offered, with approbation, satisfaction, or acquiescence; especially, favorable reception.  

I believe that I'm doing the best job yet of not running the show on this trip, and I'm referring to The Show, as in: everything!  Just sitting in mu canoe, rolling down the stream, watching stuff go by, not judging, not commenting, not controlling, and - most importantly - trying not to talk at all.  That talking with my mouth stuff just gets me in trouble.  As a general rule people aren't interested in listening to me talk.  It irritates them, for some reason.

It's not good stuff and it's not bad stuff - it's nothing more than stuff drifting by.

I'm making a few plans and breaking a few plans but mostly I'm trying to handle whatever drops in my lap.   Lower the expectations, raise the level of acceptance, and life rolls by a lot more smoothly.

Look Left - Go Right

A great tearing away is in process at the moment.  A shift has occurred.  I no longer am anything but a visitor and I finally feel content with this.  At peace with this, anyway.  I don't want to come back and make people uncomfortable.  My in-laws are totally at a loss and/or uninterested in engaging with me.  I got stuck with my brother-in-law for a few minutes and neither of us knew what to do.  Check that - I knew what to do.  Clam up and get away.  The time to make an effort is in the past.  A couple of times I just lied so I could get away from them so all of us could do what we wanted to do which was get away from the other person.  It felt like a kindness, not a deception.

Of course, on one of the evenings I said that I was going to stay in my hotel room and watch a football game instead of joining everyone at the country fair for a demolition derby.  I waited for everyone to clear out and then drove over by myself to buy some crappy but delicious fair food to eat and wander contentedly around, taking in the sights, enjoying the autumn evening.  Not five minutes into my jaunt, in the middle of this large, jam-packed fair, I hear someone say: "Seaweed.  You decided to come anyway."  

My brother-in-law.