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Insomnia and Ducks, Redux (Part Deux)

Behind Schoolhouse Falls, Pantertown, North Carolina
My Dad Behind Schoolhouse Falls, Panthertown, North Carolina

Well, dear reader, it happened again.

I opened my damn mouth, wearing a law school sweatshirt, and I had another conversation about stealing ducks at 4:00 AM at the very same gas station that you may recall from the infamous post Insomnia and Ducks.

Let me explain.

I have been under a fair bit of stress over the past 5 months.  My partner, friend, mentor, and chair of the tax controversy team at my firm abruptly announced in mid-November that he had been battling a rare, aggressive form of cancer, and he was retiring.  Effective two hours before he told the rest of our team, and two and a half before he shared it with the rest of the firm.  Sadly, he passed away at the end of December. 

So, here I am, a neophyte partner now in charge of the team, the robust client base, and not the most straightforward area of the law.  (Ask me about the different types of innocent spouse relief, the super special estate tax lien, or the centralized partnership audit regime, I dare you…)

Suffice it to say, I have had a full plate…two full plates, at that…and sadly the daylight hours have not proven sufficient to meet the task of said platefuls.  And that brings us back to the damn ducks.

If you recall from our last anatine-related[1] saga, the not-so-diminutive antipode to the protagonist of the tale (your faithful author/photographer), who we dubbed “Kyle”—not because we were protecting the innocent, but because I was to flabbergasted to remember the leviathan’s real name, and giving him more than four letters seemed an awful mean trick to name the kid—saw my sweatshirt and asked the question that still haunts me to this day:

                “Is it illegal to steal ducks from the park?”

I just wanted caffeine, Kyle.  As I noted in the last post, Kyle continued: “Ducks.  From the county park.  Is it illegal to take them?  I mean, they’re just sitting right there.”  I wrote then that the sentence “They’re just sitting right there” would “be etched in my brain until I take my last breath.”  I had no clue how prescient that statement was.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

At 4:00 on the dot, the gas station computers reset themselves.  I’ve experienced this before, and it takes about five minutes for the registers to come back online.  I just had to keep my mouth shut for five minutes, but being my mother’s son, although I had the ability, I lacked the capacity to make small talk with the androgynous emo cashier, Jeremiah.  His name was Jeremiah.  I looked this time.

“You know, there used to be a Paul Bunyan-sized lad who worked here.  I think his name was Kyle.  He once posed the strangest question I have ever been asked.”

Jeremiah looked up, interest piqued.  “What was that?”

“Kyle asked if it was illegal to steal ducks from a park.”

Now, dear reader, I had expectations of dear Jeremiah’s reaction.  He could have chortled and said, “Oh that rapscallion, Kyle.”  He could have been a vegan and have been mortified.  Nope.

“That’s actually a very common topic on the internet.  Depends on the type of bird and where you take it from.”

Sonofa….

I was not so much surprised at this factoid, because there is a lot of weird stuff on the interwebs—but by the simple nonchalance that Jeremiah (a) knew this, and (b) would so casually volunteer such knowledge without a punctilio of compunction.  Punk.

Perhaps there was lead in the giant octopus tattoo on his right arm.  For humanity’s sake, I hope this is the case…or that he steals the wrong bird from the wrong park and the book is thrown at him.

Come to think of it, I have a lot of law books.  They’re heavy.  If Jeremiah or Kyle try to steal my duck, I’ll finally have further use for that gigantic civil procedure tome that is gathering dust on my bookshelf.

If you take anything away from this, talking to others is inadvisable unless you are ready for the consequences.  I should have been practicing social distancing.  You really can never be too careful.

[1] The term for something related to ducks is “anatine.” Derived from the Latin word “anatina,” which is a diminutive form of “anatis,” meaning “duck,” anatine pertains to ducks or is characteristic of ducks.  This term is often used in contexts such as biology, ornithology, and descriptive zoology to classify and describe features, behaviors, or habitats that are specific to ducks or duck-like in nature.  Also, it happens to relate to pre-dawn gas station attendants curiosities.

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Drawn to Top Withins

Top Withins, near Haworth, West Yorkshire, England

“Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. ‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.”

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 1

The firs no longer remain.  Instead, two sturdy hardwoods stand out against the rolling moors, the waves of grass that undulate in the constant wind, and the low heather and bilberry bushes that cling to the edges of the path as you crest the first hill and spy the trees and ruins in the distance. 

Top Withins in the distance.

Top Withins is a singular place.  It is almost chthonic, seeming to have risen from the earth itself, rather than being built from the stones on the moors that engird it.  It is a destination that pulls you towards it.  It stands out on the horizon, nothing taller than the shoulder-high stone walls, themselves worn and rent in many sections by wind and rain and years of them. 

The inscription on the side of the farmhouse, what remains of it, notes that the Earnshaw home in Brontë’s novel bore no resemblance to what once stood there.  But that is not the point of the solitary building and the trees atop the moor.  You cannot help being drawn towards them, even though the countryside, the constant sideways spitting rain, the chill that permeates you all warn you to stay away. 

There is no warm hearth to welcome you there.  And yet, you cannot help but be drawn towards it.  The trees grow larger, the farmhouse becomes more distinct, and the pale paths carved into the meander their ways to the doorstep of Top Withins.  It is a gothic place, haunting and foreboding, but there is something magnetic about the place, as if it were the center of something. 

The path draws you closer.

I am reminded of the Wallace Stevens’ poem The Anecdote of the Jar, in which Stevens places a jar on a hill, and suddenly that jar becomes the center of its world:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,   
And round it was, upon a hill.   
It made the slovenly wilderness   
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.   
The jar was round upon the ground   
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.   
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,   
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

In the same way, the moors rise up to the shell of the farmhouse and its sentinel trees.  The location has captured the imagination of numerous individuals over the years, both before and after it was immortalized by Emily Brontë. American poet Sylvia Plath was fascinated by Top Withins.  I visited Plath’s grave in the churchyard of St. Thomas A. Beckett in nearby Heptonstall, where her husband Ted Hughes played as a child. 

Sylvia Plath’s headstone.

Plath wrote two poems, Two Views of Top Withins and Wuthering Heights, recorded numerous journal entries, penned an article in the Christian Science Monitor, and mentioned the shell of the farmhouse that so fascinated her in many letters.  I understand why the place fascinated Plath, why it inspired Emily Brontë, and why I am drawn to it every time we go to England.  As Plath noted in her 1961 poem, Wuthering Heights:

There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.

This fragment of Plath’s poem captures the singularity of Top Withins so perfectly.  The only things that rise above the grasstops and the sheep are the resolute stone walls that possess no life themselves.  They are like ghosts.  One questions how the farmhouse ever stood, ever housed a family.  If they were ruins from their inception, this would, perhaps, be comforting.  It is no wonder why writers and poets are pulled towards the solitary beacon on the horizon. 

How can something so foreboding be so inviting?  It is this gothic tension that drew me in the first time I hiked to Top Withins with Anna sixteen years ago, and what drew me back to it this last trip.  I did my best to capture the atmosphere as I hiked between the heather and bilberry bushes that engird the paths up the winding way to Top Withins. 

The trees and the ruins are really like the jar on the hill in Tennessee.  The paths rise up to it, and the moors encircle it.  Admittedly, it would be a beautiful walk if the farmhouse and its two tall trees were never there, but then it would be just another idyllic moor.  Because they are there, because they exist and feel as if they have existed and will exist eternally, when you first catch sight of Top Withins in the distance, you are within its dominion.  It is the center, and it will fascinate you and draw you closer.

Until next time.
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The Circularity of Time

Cairn on Hallin Fell, July 23, 2006
Cairn on Hallin Fell, July 21, 2022

Do you remember where you were July 15, 2006?

I do.

I was on an idyllic hill in the Worth Valley (Haworth, West Yorkshire, England), looking across to the home where my mother-in-law grew up, and the home where her parents lived at the time—once a crumbling pig barn (an “ostlerhouse”) that my wife’s grandfather built into a beautiful home, stone by stone.  I found myself on the hill with a singular purpose, one which I carried out on one knee. 

I proposed to Anna that morning, on that hill, where she came as a child and picked berries and ran around.  Sixteen years (and two days) later, I found myself on the lawn of that ostlerhouse, with the field over my youngest sister-in-law’s shoulder, as her future husband proposed to her. I looked up to the garret that Anna’s grandfather was building before he died and saw the champagne bottle we used to toast the engagement set in mortar at the cornice. I pointed it out to my future brother-in-law, and he understood perfectly the meaningfulness of this place and the circularity of time.

On July 23, 2006, I found myself at the base of Hallin Fell, the highest point on Lake Ullswater in the Lake District (Cumbria, England).  I was younger then, not even aware that I should have been daunted by the steep hike to the top. 

Having reached the top, standing next to the cairn and looking at the panoramic views of Ullswater towards Pooley Bridge, I was breathless—both from the scramble to the top (an elevation change of nigh 1,000 feet) and by the sheer beauty of the landscape.  I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.  Truly breathtaking.

At that moment, I swore two things to myself. First, I would never forget that view. Second, I would never climb Hallin Fell again.

Two days shy of sixteen years later (July 21, 2022), I woke up at 5:30, put on my hiking boots, grabbed my camera and tripod, and set out to break my second promise.  I left the hotel, walked about a mile to a churchyard, and stared up the path through the bracken ferns at my Everest. 

A part of me could not believe that I was going to climb that damn fell again, and a part of me knew it was inevitable.  I was here, the cairn was at the top, and not even weak and wobbly knees (and a shoddy left ankle from an unfortunate fly fishing accident a decade earlier) would keep me from revisiting that view.

There were cows in the field at the base of the hill the last time I made the trek up.  The paddock was empty that morning, sixteen years hence.  I hiked alone, which provided me with the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts (and, admittedly, to catch my breath ever 100 yards or so). 

So much had changed since the last time that rocky ground was beneath my feet.  Marriage, law school, my first job, a son, graduate school, a daughter, my current career as a tax attorney—and countless other minor and major events, lives, and circumstances that had shaped who I was at that moment—those very events and circumstances that had made me break my solemn oath to never climb that damn fell again.

As I knew I would be, I was rewarded by my disavowal of that promise when I reached the top.  Breathless once more, I looked around, and it all came back to me. 

I was standing in awe at the base of the cairn with Anna and her parents sixteen years ago. 

I saw the rock I sat on with Anna to catch my breath and take it all in.  I sat on it again.

In the distance, I saw the seventeenth century church (built on the foundation of a twelfth century church) with the ancient yew tree, the gnarled branches of which we had walked betwixt and between, casually laughing about how nothing in America had any real history.  Not like this. 

I looked in the opposite direction, and I saw the faint outline of the Roman road running across the top of the fells.  Mirabile dictu, indeed.

I took in the panorama once more, and remarked to myself that my self-betrayal had, indeed, been worth it.

As I was standing with a hand on the cairn, looking across the length of Ullswater, I had the fleeting thought that I would be 53 in sixteen years.  I am old enough now to understand that even if I had, at that moment, sworn never to never climb Hallin Fell again, it would have been insincere and pointless. While my legs will carry me, when I am in the Lake District, I will climb to the cairn every time.  Next time, I might even let Anna and the kids come, too.

I took pictures when I first climbed to the cairn with an old point-and-shoot camera.  They remain some of my favorite photographs, and they are what inspired me to become a photographer.  With my wonderful Fujifilm X-T30 and multiple lenses, I took hundreds of photos in the hour or so that I watched the sun alight different parts of the valleys and the lake below.    

I looked at the photo of the cairn on my phone, and I found the exact spot where I had taken it.  I framed the picture, and I pressed the shutter button with great nostalgia—an unspeakable ache for home. I felt this ache, because I knew I would once more have to leave the cairn, the Lake District, and England. 

Yet, as I looked around me, I felt that nothing had changed in sixteen years.  The top of Hallin Fell was as it ever was and ever would be.  The knowledge that it would be there for me the next time I sought it out gave me unspeakable comfort.

When I returned to reality (America), the first photographs I edited were from that hike up Hallin Fell.  I pulled up the sixteen-year-old photo of the cairn, the first photograph in this post, and I found the photo I had taken just days earlier.  I cropped it, touched it up, and made it monochrome like the prior one.  I exported it and compared the two side-to-side. 

Sixteen years passed between the two photos, and yet the circularity of time and the top of the fell remained constant.  I looked more closely at the cairn, though, and I realized that in my absence a few more layers of stones had been carefully added to the top of the cairn.  I realized at that moment that nothing—even that fell top that I previously thought was immutable—is untouched by time. 

I hope that it does not take me sixteen years to learn if more stones have been added in my time away from the cairn.  I hope that Kemper and Nora will not protest the hike when I tell them that we’re going to see something remarkable.  I hope that as they climb it, they swear to themselves that they will never do it again. And I hope that once they reach the top, they understand that this is an oath that they are bound to break.

Over and over again.

Yours truly on top of Hallin Fell with Lake Ullswater in the distance. July 21, 2022
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Publishing and a Slice of Serenity

June 10, 2020.  That’s when I last posted a photo and an update.

My daughter was two then.  She’ll be five in August.

It is incredible to see how quickly life changes in what seems to be a matter of moments.  Instead of plaintive posts accompanying my photography exploits, I have been busy writing sarcastic legal articles on taxes.  Shortly after my last post, I created a blog—Briefly Taxing—and I have thrown myself into that full bore.  It’s a labor of love that brings together my two post-graduate degrees—an LL.M. in Tax and a Ph.D. in Sarcasm. 

In August of 2021, the blog caught the notice of an editor from Bloomberg who asked me if I would be willing to write an article for them.  Not only was it an honor to be asked to write for them, I was, perhaps, even more thrilled that the editor had asked me to write because she liked my style and humor—and not despite my frolics and detours into esoteric and generally unrelated subjects.*  So far, I have written five articles for Bloomberg, and I have a few more in the pipeline.

I churned out the articles, some of which I loved writing—like the one about the Michael Jackson estate tax case—and others I wrote begrudgingly because I was asked to.  At the end of the day, though, I was writing, and people were actually enjoying my snarky take on tax.

If you’ve ever read a legal article, you’ll know that they are as entertaining as waiting for paint to chip off a wall whilst you wait for the elderly lady two customers in front of you at the DMV to explain to Felicia, the crusty old municipal employee who is counting the seconds left in the minutes until 5:00 PM, why her license should be renewed despite her advancing blindness.  My articles, most of them at least, are not dry or plodding.  As Emily Dickinson might have said if she were a tax attorney, I tell all the tax—but I tell it slant.

Despite my success and my productivity in the land of the tax nerds, I miss the introspection of this blog.  We went to Maine (the land of my forefathers – well, at least my father) with my wife’s family last July.  I forgot how beautiful the coast Down East is.  This photo was taken in Acadia National Park on top of Cadillac Mountain.  There is something I find extremely innocent about it—something that brings me a sense of peace.  In the chaos of my law practice, the slice of time captured in this instant is precisely the type of serenity I need.

It’s good to be back.

*As evidenced by the following footnote in a later Bloomberg article:

FN71. That is, of course, unless “Uncle Sam” is an actual beneficiary of the estate in question and not the anthropomorphized personification of the Federal government, which has come to resemble a wizened older gentleman in a white top hat, engirded with a blue ribbon, itself emblazoned with large white stars, pointing towards “you” in a 1917 recruitment poster for the U.S. Army created by created by James Montgomery Flagg, which image was repurposed and made all the more famous in World War II. Interestingly (for me at least), the first reference to Uncle Sam in literature was in the 1816 allegorical book The Adventures of Uncle Sam, in Search After His Lost Honor by Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy, Esq. The tome—Fidfaddy’s sole work—was a satire on the policies of the United States leading up to the War of 1812. Fidfaddy appears to be a nom-de-plume, as Mr. Fidfaddy, himself, concedes when he answers the rhetorical question, “who is Tid Fid Faddy?” The good author pivots and replies, “Aye, but honest friend, what is there, in these degenerate days that does always pass by its real, deserved name?” The Adventures of Uncle Sam, 6 (repub. 1971, Liberty House).

And to answer your question, I will be adopting this moniker going forward…

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Insomnia and Ducks

Backgrounds-66

Insomnia is awful.  I have been having trouble sleeping, even before I was sent off to self-quarantine upstairs last week (a lovely little coronavirus scare to keep me on my toes), and so I couldn’t employ my go-to coping mechanism of going into work at 2:30 in the morning and writing, whether it be one of these posts—which I know have been few and far between—or any of the panoply of novels, short stories, or legal articles that I begin only to get distracted by another idea or topic like a young racoon chancing upon his first shiny bauble.  (Apologies for the Faulkner-length sentence.)  It sucks.  (There, some Hemingway to balance it out.)

As a consequence of my insomnia, I got out of bed, perfunctorily showered, and dressed for work.  I must have been feeling a bit plucky, because I chose a golf shirt rather than a button down and a tie.  (Mind you, I haven’t seen an actual client in months, but I like to keep up appearances.)  My office is both a greenhouse (on account of all of the plants) and a meat locker (on account of the schizophrenic/bipolar air conditioning in the building).  I throw on a sweatshirt, thinking nothing of the embroidered “University of Florida Law School” emblem just over my heart.   This, it turns out, in hindsight, and with the gift of retrospection, was somewhat of an error in judgment.

I tiptoe out of the bedroom, lest I wake Anna, get in my car, and realize that I still have the ambient music playing that was supposed to lull me to blissful sleep.  (Lies.)  Let me tell you what—if you have never experienced cellos and formerly-soft synthesizers decibel levels higher than front row at a Kiss concert, because the last music you played was Social Distortion unnaturally loudly, because you were at the office until 9:30 working on an appellate brief, because the boss is a procrastinator.  But I digress.

I arrived at the gas station to get my coffee, as I am wont to do.  I always enjoy getting to the gas station before 3:00, because that is, apparently, when the shift change for the sheriff’s office happens.  So here I am, likely with a caked line of drool down my chin, at 2:45 in the morning, in the company of seven large deputies.

“Morning guys,” I say, recognizing some of them from my previous pre-3:00 AM trips.  In unison, almost as if they had trained for this exact moment, they all nod at me slightly, in sort of an acknowledgment that yes, I may pass without incident.

Unfortunately, they were bogarting the coffee station, and I did not feel like further disturbing them (the nods were enough), and so I made my way to my old crutch—the energy drink.  I bought one (read three) and before the door to the cooler even shut, one of the employees, who is a bit slow on the uptick, approaches me, rather sheepishly, I might add.  I think nothing of it until Carl opens his stubbly lips.

“Do I remember you saying you were a lawyer?”

Shit.  Why am I my mother’s son, who must make friends with everyone?  Damn you cordiality.

“That’s right,” I say with a smile on my face, which was 67% genuine, which counts for something.

Carl proceeds to tell me that he inherited a bar from his mother.  (Let me tell you, this context made Carl’s character a whole lot rounder and believable in the pantomime that was my pre-dawn frolic and detour to get coffee.)  We go through the steps of recording of a promissory note (there’s really only one step…you hand it to the clerk and pay $5), and I thank God I took the Virginia Bar as well as Florida’s, because in Virginia, the sadists they are, the Bar examiners test secured transactions.  Without that knowledge, I would have been lost.

Carl shakes my hand, genuinely appreciative, and I feel a bit schmucky for my inner monologue being so glib.  With Carl satisfied I make my way up to the counter with my one (read three) energy drink, and that is where I meet Kyle.  Kyle is about seven and a half feet tall and not narrow.  (I happen to be a subject matter expert in want of narrowness.)  I hand my drinks to Kyle, he scans them, but before the kindly, pasty young ogre hands them back to me, I apparently must pay a toll or solve a riddle.

“You went to UF Law?” he asks, staring at my chest.

I look down and see that this, indeed, is my post-grad sweatshirt.  Shit again.

“Yep.”  Ok, now give me the drink, I think to myself.  Transaction complete.  I don’t need my receipt.  I don’t need to show ID (or empathy).  Give. Me. The. Drink.  And then Kyle says the single most unexpected thing I have heard in some time.

“Is it illegal to steal ducks from the park?”

“What’s that?” I ask genuinely.  Yep, wasn’t ready for that one.  Hell, perhaps the ambient music worked, and I am dreaming.

“Ducks.  From the county park.  Is it illegal to take them?  I mean, they’re just sitting right there.”  They’re just sitting right there.  That sentence will be etched in my brain until I take my last breath.

I crane my neck to look Kyle straight in his duck-thieving eyes, and I tell him that if he has to use the word “steal” it’s probably not a good idea.  In my most judicious voice, I tell him that I would advise against it.

In the back of my mind, though, I’m thinking to myself.  Well, hell, if your lumbering butt can catch a duck, it’s yours.  Abscond with the sucker.  I guarantee you that no one’s going to believe the provenance of that duck when you tell them the story of how you, with agility and aplomb, caught a duck with your bare hands at the park.

And then I think to myself, is it really any less conceivable than what has happened to me in the last seven minutes?

But seriously, insomnia.

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The Angry Ibis

SSA Photography (302 of 400)

(Yes, this is a beautiful, if not cantankerous crow, but the ibis is skittish and I don’t have a long telephoto anymore…)

Taking up work at home has interesting advantages, as well as obvious drawbacks.  The munchkin, a two-year-old ginger girl with a heart of gold, weeps openly when I go upstairs to the office.  As you might imagine, this rends my heart.  The minion, a seven-year-old, decries the fact that I don’t take him fishing every seven minutes whilst I am home.  As you might imagine, this gets old.  Nevertheless, I love them both, and having the opportunity to see them more often has been a blessing.

My sleep schedule has not changed too radically, as I still wake up in the wee hours of the morning to write.  What has changed, is my company.  Instead of the irritable Vietnamese cleaning lady and the security guard that we all refer to as “Lurch” or the “Parking Nazi,” I have been visited daily by a beautiful, but very skittish, brown ibis that perches in the birch tree outside the office window come about 3:00.  He is either terribly lonely, horny, angry as hell, or schizophrenic.  I haven’t quite figured out which it is.  I have a sneaking suspicion that he is not lonely—though he might just be a racist—because he chased a white ibis away when I was walking Deacon yesterday.

His calls are monotone and shrill.  They sound like, as I imagine, a professional mourner may have sounded in an ancient Roman funeral.  “Aye-e, Aye-e, Aye-e.”  How this hasn’t woken up the minion who is highly sound-sensitive is beyond me.  He let me and the munchkin (duly muzzled for the endeavor) get a bit closer to him the other day while he was on the bank of the lake, and I think that he is more comfortable on dry land than he is perched in a tree.  I never took an ibis, a wading bird, as a tree-mourner, but there you have it.

I think it’s a fairly perfect metaphor, however, for where I am right now.  I am in a whole new roost in the converted “office” upstairs, which doubles as a guest bedroom, a TV room, a hermitage, and an observatory.  Like the ibis, I find myself disgruntled in the morning, and I often wonder whether he has been displaced by the virus, too.  Similarly, like the ibis, I find myself isolated, but not necessarily by anyone’s fault but my own.  I am enjoying this social distancing so far, but even I, an inveterate introvert, miss my people.  Perhaps the ibis is calling to a friend at the other end of the lake, and the two are masters in social distancing.  Lord knows I have the time to figure this out from my perch in the observatory.

 

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Social Distancing from an Expert

KempPathGarrapata

It is that brief interval of time at 4:37 AM, between laconically tossing a peanut butter pretzel in my mouth and the first satisfying, ultimately ephemeral crunch, the mysteries of the world unfold themselves to me.  Sadly (for purposes of my own enlightenment), this reflectory period lasts but an instant before I nosh the pretzel into the verisimilitude of mastication and metaphor.

I wrote yesterday about my partner, my wife, an extrovert in exile during this period of revelatory self-distancing.  It is with great patience, a master’s degree in early childhood development and developmental risks, two years of teaching early childhood special ed, five years of teaching elementary ed, and two years of being at home raising the munchkin, that Anna finally reached the point of taking a razor blade to her bumper and the sticker that said “My child is an positive citizen.”  I cannot say that I blame her.

Children, on the whole, are enigmas.  Take for example, my firstborn.  Although I graduated from college, law school, and a post-doctorate program with pomp and circumstance, this little imp is smarter, by measure, then I ever was.  If and when he discovers nuclear fission, I pray that he uses it for good and not to get back at the three-year-old girl who dared to challenge his story that he discovered gold in North Carolina.

Our mayor has issued a conditional lockdown order, that those who could work from home must work from home.  Eager to initiate my obedient, pajama-clad workdays, I was soon informed by the Man that, much to my disappointment, I was not “dispensable” to the team.  Given my history with law firm politics, the fact that I am indispensable  should give me the ultimate reassurance.  Nevertheless, I found myself seeking out the hypochondriacal assistant who works at the other end of the office, in order that I might expectorate (with some gusto and propinquity to her) the post-nasal drip that has developed from all of this damn oak pollen.  Sadly, she had heeded the order, and was working from home.  My throat is tickly, and my spirit is spurred to action—which action, I might add, inevitably culminates (in my mind) victoriously, whilst I am in my pajamas.

Never one to be considered in apparatchik, I find myself in an uncomfortable situation.  On the one hand, I want to continue at work until the City shuts the power off (a threat that the Jacksonville Mayor actually voiced).  Yet, on the other hand, which hand I have carefully and diligently weighed, I want a good, long, peaceful nap.  I am not sure whether I am better served to try to sleep under the hollow in my desk at work, or in the loft at home.  Something, well, two things (children) really, tell me that the hollow was good enough for Mr. Toad and is good enough for me.

I hope everyone here in America and across the pond is doing well and are happy and healthy, albeit malcontent and ever so slightly disgruntled.  (For my Yorkshire readers, I am not quite sure of the kind antonym for “well chuffed,” but I imagine that is where you are right now.)

Good luck, Godspeed, and if you need lessons on social distancing, I am offering a master class tomorrow evening with a concentration on using biting sarcasm to establish a safe personal distance between you and your antagonist.  Attendance, as you may imagine, is severely limited.

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The Extrovert in Exile

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I saw a funny Facebook post the other day about how self-quarantining and social distancing was, for introverts, the culmination of their life’s work.  I saw one today that said, “Check on your extrovert friends; we are not OK.”

For a self-described hermit, who has been practicing social distancing since at least the age of twelve, I have a lot of extroverted friends.  It’s not my fault.  I am like a magnet for social people.  I have tried valiantly to wear my scorn and antipathy on my sleeve, but they all brush it of as bluster and introverted bravado and then want to talk about how funny it is that I pretend that I am a hermit.  An hour later, when they are done talking at me, I have already crawled into my mental hole, and they tell me what a good listener I am…a vicious cycle, indeed.

I even happened to marry one – a kind, beautiful, chatty-Cathy of an extrovert.  Before amiable-Anna stayed home with the munchkin, she had been a professional extrovert, paid to talk to little people and to teach them how to become social butterflies, themselves.  She was an elementary school teacher.  If you sit down and think about it for a minute (any longer and the already impish introvert in you will get really steamed), elementary school is a not-so-subtle indoctrination into extroversion and general gregariousness.  The few of us who resist, and resist with some steadfast conviction, make it out relatively unscathed…only to be substantially scathed by middle school…

So, it comes to pass that my dearest, chatty-Cathy wife was thrust back into the teaching fray in the midst of the pandemic.  She is home, stir-crazy, with the munchkin and the minion, the dog, two cats (one of which is delightfully antisocial and crotchety and a bit of a spirit animal of mine, though I won’t readily admit it), and 17 goldfish.  Interestingly, the term “stir-crazy” likely originated as a slang term for “Start-crazy,” referring to the notorious 19th century British prison of Start Newgate in London where prisoners were isolated as a form of punishment.

So here she finds herself, committed to house arrest for the greater good, in the hacienda de hoosegow, an extrovert in exile, which is, perhaps, the most apt term.  Like Napoleon in Elba, she is so close—yet so far from her social network of moms and coffee dates and general social frivolity.

I cannot understand her angst and longing for social interaction.  Apparently talking to me is not enough for her, even though talking to her is often more than enough for me…  I don’t pretend to understand how the extroverted mind works, but even though I am loath find comfort in a flock (the very root of “gregarious”), I understand that chatty-Cathy, amiable-Anna needs socialization.  Therefore, I arranged a playdate on Saturday with my assistant and paralegal, the only two people I can stand and who, likely, did not have the plague.  This playdate for Anna was a tacit understanding that I understood, and, I dare say, even condoned her socially-accepted, normative, “friendly” tendencies.

She enjoyed herself thoroughly.

It is Tuesday, and I am still recovering and recharging.

So, hug your extrovert in exile.  Let them know that this too shall pass.  And then, gird your loins, because they are going to want to talk about it…

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What Fishing Has to Do With Selfishness

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There is a line from the musical Wicked that goes, “Something has changed within me.  Something is not the same.”  I love the musical now, but the first time we saw it up in Richmond, Anna had to drag me to it.

Selfishness is a funny thing, and it is something that I’ve been dealing with in the latter half of my life.

When reflecting on the demise of Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West), Glinda (the good witch) wonders, “Are we born wicked, or do we have wickedness thrust upon us?”  I can safely say I wasn’t born selfish, no more than anyone else is born selfish from a purely evolutionary, survival of the fittest standpoint.  I had a generally selfless mien as a child.  I was affable and kind, funny and sweet, too smart for my own good, and generally a good kid.  Then I wasn’t.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment the shift happened, but I can recall episodes where my selflessness was chipped away.  Over indulgences, bad relationships, weight gain, stress, disappointment, guilt, shame, self-loathing—they all chipped away at this rock of selflessness that I had prided myself on possessing until it was nothing more than a pebble.

My mother-in-law wondered where her daughter’s happy-go-lucky spouse went.  My mother, who is never one to beat around the bush, told me on the phone that I had become, in a word, selfish.  I did not receive these observations well at the time, though I now see that they were completely accurate.  My distorted notions of self-preservation and keeping everyone else on the outside of the chaos within drove the selfishness like an engine.  When I began to let myself heal, however, I recognized in some small part the change that had taken place so insidiously.

Even when I emerged from my darker days, before Nora was born, I did not shed every negative habit.  I slept a lot.  I did not want to be “social.”  I hid behind my self-diagnosis of introversion with fierce conviction.  I joked about my general misanthropy.  Once again, I was using humor to defray attention from the insecurities, but this time, I was also using it to distract from my selfishness.

Then, just as quickly as it had come, it left.  No warning.  No lead up.  No working at it in earnest.  I cannot say precisely when it happened, but I can point to the exact moment that I recognized that something was awry (in a good way).  We were in North Carolina, perhaps the second day of our trip, and Kemper wanted to go fishing.  Hit wanted to go fishing the moment we stepped foot on the property, but once again, I was tired, and I promise to take him later.

I was always promising to take him fishing later.  The trouble was that later seldom came.  Finally, I had had enough of his incessant entreaties, and I knuckled under, and we went fishing.  It was cold.  It was raining.  I was grumpy.  And he was having the time of his life.  Something clicked, though I didn’t recognize it at the time, and I just went with the flow.  We fished for about two hours in the rain, because that’s what my dad would’ve done.

This post goes hand-in-hand with my gratitude post of a couple of weeks ago, because gratitude and selflessness go hand in hand.  I took for granted the time with my kids, my wife, my family, and even with Zoe.  When I found Deacon online and read his back story — about how he had been taken for granted, left out on a chain, and neglected — I thought back to Sadie, our rescued Golden retriever I had as a kid, when I wasn’t selfish, and when I didn’t take anyone or anything for granted.  She had been abused and neglected, and she was the sweetest most grateful dog I have ever known.

I know we gave Zoe a good life, and I am comforted by the fact that she was loved, despite my selfishness and ingratitude.  But I wonder what our connection would’ve been like had I had this epiphany earlier.

Anna looked at me on Monday, three days after we headed taken Deacon home, and acknowledged the change.  She didn’t say that I had been less selfish lately, or that I had been a better husband because of it.  She said that she noticed that I had taken Kemper fishing the first time he asked.  I didn’t say it do it later.  I got up from the ground, where I was petting Deacon, and I took him fishing.  Because he enjoyed it, I enjoyed it.  That, I think, is the opposite of selfishness.

 

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For whatever reason, I am drawn magnetically to people who have had a rough go of it, and who have come out the other side.  Some people coast through life, while others of us have traveled a bit more of a rocky road.  The same is true for animals.  Growing up, we rescued a golden retriever who was severely abused.  It took Sadie years to trust, but when she did, it was that much more rewarding.  In many ways, the love she gave was more unconditional and genuine than any other dog I have ever known, even Zoe.

When we lost Zoe six months ago, I wasn’t sure that we would ever find another dog that fit our family as well as she did.  She was great with the kids and the cats, and she was an absolute love.  Still, she hadn’t come from a bad life.  Though she was a rescue, her family gave her up because she had outgrown the apartment they lived in.  They gave her up for a better life, and we gave that life to her for ten years.

There was no question that we would rescue a dog if we were to get another one.  So, when Anna told me that she was ready to start looking, I eagerly began looking for lab or golden to fill the void left by Zoe’s passing.  When I read the profile for “Smokey,” I knew he was the one.  Though he was only 18 months old, he had spent most of his life on a 2-foot-long chain, being fed every other day.  Though he was still a puppy, he already had gray on his chin, a sign of his tough life.

The amazing people at WAGS rescued him, treated him for heartworms, and saved his life.  When I spoke with Kathy, the head of WAGS, I knew immediately that he was the right fit for our family.  It wasn’t until I met him, though, that I realized that I needed him as much as he needed me.  My life has changed inexorably in the past five years, but I have a long way to go yet.  Now, I have someone to share that journey with, to heal with, and to thrive with.

By 3:30 this morning, Deacon and I had already walked 2 ½ miles.  It was dark, frigid (by Florida standards), and nothing could have compelled me to put on my sneakers and go for a walk.  When I got up from bed, I heard his tail thumping in the crate, and my mind was already made up.  For him, I would brave the 37 degree morning.

People (and dogs) come into your life for reason.  Some challenge you, while others enrich you.  I’ll always have a fondness for Zoe.  She was our baby before our real babies came.  She loved unconditionally, and was the sweetest dog that we could’ve asked for.  Like Sadie, however, Deacon is damaged goods.  Perhaps that is why, in the three days he has been in my life, I have grown so very fond of him as quickly as I have.  We’re cut from the same cloth, and I think he knows that he needs me as much as I need him.

If you’re looking for a pet, please rescue.

I cannot recommend the WAGS organization enough.  Go to https://wags-rescue.org/ to see their available animals.