But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.
-Romans 5:15
It's strange to think about that. My dad's entire life his mother has been alive, she has been available for support, comfort, questions, anything a son could need and from now on his life will be unlike it has been everyday prior and it will never be the same again.
My plane landed from Colorado and in 24 hours I'm in Wauseon for the funeral tomorrow.
I'm not sure what to expect.
I wonder how my dad feels.
It's strange how time marches forward.
It's strange how we all die.
I don't know what I feel or think right now.
One night as Travis and I were walking back to the car after a night out drinking as the cold night air swept past us we he mentioned our dad's running into each other at the local bar in Wauseon.
Travis' relationship with his dad is very different from my relationship with mine.
It's strange to think about our dads meeting up and talking.
It's almost like two alternate realities colliding.
Even the fact that Travis' dad told him that he ran into my dad shows the contrast. They communicate to each other about their lives...
He said my dad had had a few and was speaking candidly. I can only assume that my dad was out getting drinks while my mom stayed home alone. Then Travis hesitated and he said my dad told his dad,
"I'm just mad at the kid for living out my dream in the big city."
As we walked my brain tried to process this. This information created so many questions, so many angles and ideas I didn't know how to or which way to approach it.
My small town lumberyard manager dad always had dreams of living his life in a city? He knows everyone in the town, he grew up a few miles out what does this even mean about how my dad has lived his life and how my did will continue his life?
Is my dad happy? Are my parents happy? Did he change over time? Did his wife change over time? Is this not the path he wanted?
Was he just drunk?
Most of my twenties I've spent trying to figure out life "wasting" my money exploring the planet. "Wasting" my time not earning money. "Wasting" my time breaking up and making up with exes.
This whole time I always assumed my parents viewed me as this inefficient wanderer. I assumed my dad was disappointed that I wasn't making serious money climbing a company ladder. Disappointed I wasn't putting a down payment on a house. Disappointed I wasn't married providing them with grandchildren and a daughter-in-law my mom could shop with.
Living the dream in the big city?
What dream?
I'm thousands of dollars in debt
I drive a 14 year old car
I live in an attic with roommates I depend on for cheap rent
I use to go on a date a week with women I felt nothing towards until finally just caving to singleness
What kind of a dream is this?
I'll be 30 in 9 months
When Doug was 30
He was running his own store, married, father of one, and a homeowner.
Isn't that the dream?
To dig roots by owning a home
To be known by a woman
To give birth to the next generation
To lead and answer to no one at work
Doug Adam
1955 1987 00 Born
1973 2006 18 Graduated High School
1982 2012 26 Married
1985 2017 29 Became a father
1987 2020 32 Had me
A dad jealous of his son?
His son having little to show for his 3 decades on the planet?
He was either drunk talking out his ass
Or he knows so little about my life that his big city fantasy is completely disconnected from the reality of my life.
I wonder, if I decide to have children, the conversation I will have with my child's best friend's parent drunk at a bar in my 60's what will I have to say about the life I've lived, what will I have to say about the life they have lived?
In 2048 I'll be the same age my dad is today إن شاء الله, I wonder what I will think of my life as I look back onto my timeline.
And now we board the plane and fly to the Rockies, while they snowboard I'll attempt a few solo summits. I wonder if my dad has ever seen the Rocky Mountain Range.
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
-Thomas Merton
Today is the first day of spring. My favorite day of the year.
The Spring Equinox 2017 in the Northern Hemisphere is 6:28 AM on Monday, March 20
The moment the day is perfectly split half in the dark and half in light another second forward in time and the scale is tipped towards light. The days grow longer and longer until the longest day of the year the first day of summer but not yet. Spring is the time of year when life blooms from death, when light wins the battle against darkness and hope is expressed all around us.
Each day as we move into spring the days grow and grow.
my favorite thing about you is your smell
you smell like
earth
herbs
gardens
a little more
human than the rest of us
― Rupi Kaur
Today is my 44th day of student teaching. That means I only have 26 more school days at Leawood. It's wonderful how 44 days can change a person. I did not know the neighborhood Leawood gardens existed in Columbus and in 44 short school days I've fallen in love with another corner of this beautiful city!
The plants have begun their blooming, their slow and subtle yawn, waking from winter's nap. It always begins at the ground, the low places. Isn't that how all of the best things begin? Maybe that's why they call them grassroots. I notice the small bushes flashing stem tips of green while their big brothers remain bare and bark brown but as the days grow longer the green of the buds seem to climb the heights of all the plant life of Ohio. Until finally even the tallest of our trees upon the highest banks of this wonderfully flat state, paint their branch tips with that wonderful green.
My favorite color green, but not any green. I love the green of the leaf when the sun shines through. It can't be manufactured by Crayola's best scientists. It cannot be fully captured by Nikon's sharpest lens. No, it must be experienced in it's time and season. The right time of day among her sisters in the forest filling the skyward view with that amazing green. I can't wait for those days. But I must, and I like that.
Spring brings with it those chilly mornings and warm sunshine afternoons, the kind of mornings make your coffee mug summon a dancing genie. The kind of afternoons that make the soil feel extra soft as you reach your hand into the Earth's crust. It's these early days of spring that always give me that itch to quit it all and start landscaping again to push the wheelbarrow and dig the soil as I did at 24. It's these kinds of days that make me want to move back to that quiet small hometown and work those long 10 hour days at the lumberyard as I did at 16.
But teaching brings me a different kind of satisfaction from my work. It isn't shown on my body like the sweat, dirt, and muscle aches of those previous jobs. It is a sort of cultivation, not like planting a tree for a client, not like hauling shingles for the contractors, it is different, and it is very good. Watching the students develop from 2nd graders into 4th graders, it is like watching the green slowly paint the colorless forest.
But the cyclical flow of the school year will soon bring me satisfaction and fulfillment for all of my needs. Soon I will see the growth of the students as they learn during the winter and I will work the soil and see the growth of the harvest as they push towards the sun during the summer.
And a life lived with these seasonal cycles, makes all of those nights and weekends of studying and planning very very much worth the harvest of a satisfying life.
I like myself
Find yourself
Happiness is only real when shared
be alone
I don't have a problem being alone
I go on adventures solitary
I go to movies solo
meals as well
What do you have to offer
if you are not whole?
I know what I want
Two wholes together to make a wholer whole
I won't settle
This must be mutually beneficial
I go to battle loneliness
Not to seek wholeness
Patch yourself up
I go because I am particular
Prepare yourself so that the offering of self can be pleasing
I go because I want a connection
deeper than the one mere friends can supply
You can't honestly expect to go like that
It isn't imitation intimacy that I seek,
that is freely offered every Saturday night
Pull yourself together
What is intimacy without friendship?
Who are you?
If you can't answer these questions how can you ask them?
I want to build something
You need to be okay
I want to plant seeds now for a fulfilling harvest
You need to date yourself
I don't want a placeholder
You need to invest in yourself
I'd rather wake up alone
than next to a stranger
or worse, a being I don't respect
Otherness can not fulfill you
How many journies must I take?
You seem codependent
Where is the rubric of wholeness
You seem needy
Do you speak from culture or from knowing?
You keep telling yourself that
Are these organic words or over processed?
I know what you need
Who is the one with self awareness?
I know what is best
Is the goal of life to be independent?
Self-sufficent
You may be the one living your life but I know
We see more clearly than you
Do we want others to be okay in our absence?
Listen to what I said
To be missed, to be remembered, isn't that good?
I have to go now
Are we to be a part of a community
or are we to be completely singular?
I have social gathers
Are we whole humans when we detach?
I have a relationship
Do we need to prove to those around us?
I have a life
You stay here
Stay
Stop forcing it
What are the nights like for you?
Let it happen
Stay put
Stay
This is the way
Stay
I think I'm done for a while. The dumbass romantic in me keeps telling myself the one for me is right around the river bend. The woman who connects with me on an emotional level the woman who sees what I see when the sun calmly sets, the trees bloom or the stars silently display. The one who cares about the planet and wants to see all of it. The one who cares about human rights and wants to fight against human trafficking, child soldiers, sweatshops, sexism, racism, and poverty. The one who becomes inspired by books and poetry, who sees the value in human expression through the arts, painting and performance. The one who is moved to the bones by the same music as I. One I can lay beside know and be known. Home.
But the reality is I go on a date a week with a new woman, she wants to talk about her nail salon, her netflix show, her stories of her friends getting wasted on the weekends. The reality is I keep having sex with women I feel no deeper connection with hoping something within me will stir even just enough of a flint spark to fan into something more. The reality is the few women I have felt this dumbass connection with have broken promises and left, or vowed themselves to someone else.
Each time I feel that voice behind my ear telling me to give up I press it down and I keep hope for one more date, one more person, all I need is to feel those two words we all hope to feel deep within our souls when we think about the person we want to share our lives with, "me too."
Me too.
That moment in the conversation where at last you feel deeply understood. Not simply that your message is being received correctly. Not that my words are understood and placed in the perfect order and phrasing. Something more intangible than that. It is that moment during the conversation when you realize you are not only being heard, being understood but that this person sees and shares the value in those words.
This person doesn't simply think it's cute you want to teach elementary students but she sees the 'why' she sees the hope and the value in education the right every child no matter their neighborhood or home life has to a quality education that cultivates curiosity and care.
This person doesn't simply like the music you like but she feels the music the way you do.
This person doesn't just hear your thoughts on systemic poverty or oppression but feels a fire of rage inside her gut just as you do.
But maybe that voice is right. Maybe it is time to give up. Maybe I'm being too picky. Maybe I'm looking too hard. The dream of finding someone to share life with, to start building something together while in my 20's is slowly slipping through my fingers. A new decade of life is 9 short months away.
Erikson's 6th stage of human development keeps pounding behind my brain pushing back against the voice to give it a rest.
Intimacy vs. isolation - This is the first stage of adult development. This development usually happens during young adulthood, which is between the ages of 18 to 35. Dating, marriage, family and friendships are important during the stage in their life. By successfully forming loving relationships with other people, individuals are able to experience love and intimacy. Those who fail to form lasting relationships may feel isolated and alone.
Those who fail... Those who fail, I don't want to be those who fail, but more than that I don't want to be those who succeed but feel nothing for the person beside them at night after a decade or so of marriage. I refuse to leave this stage of development with isolation. But after 11 of the 17 years finding myself single, growing further apart from my already distant family, and continuing to find less and less interest in drinking beer and watching sports with my squad I'm starting to get anxious.
I'm done.
I think I'm done for a while. I will not surrender to isolation in this stage but for now I will admit defeat. This most recent one has made a mess of me more than I'd like to admit. It was always easier knowing I fucked up the past ones. I treated Whitney like garbage as a teenager not understanding what it means to date another human. I put up walls around Kelly pushing her away in order to protect myself. But this... I did nothing wrong she vowed to another man and in a way I could frame that as the fault being mine. But in the same sense it wasn't. I was the most honest I've ever been to someone with her. It was circumstances beyond anything I could control.
Wisdom is the fruit borne from the seeds of mistakes grown in the rain.
Another season another harvest of wisdom. This harvest hurts a bit more and after I gather up all the fruit from it I will retreat. I am done for a while. A month, a year, a few years, I'm not sure but I'll use this time to sharpen my new skills as a teacher and spend yet another summer healing in the garden. Saturday mornings pulling weeds with the neighbor kids watching new life grow all around me, tasting the many flavors the Earth offers up and consuming the beauty of the flowers and colors of the garden in the middle of the city I love.
But the more you push it
The more it's pushing you back, So,
You can't rush your healing
Darkness has its teachings
Love is never leaving
You can't rush your healing
