Like Pinches of Empathic Cinnamon

She touched Angel Cakes and cried out. She had tried not to touch her by pulling her sleeve down over her hand, but her hand slipped out as she grabbed the elf named Angel Cakes from a shelf to move her to a chair.

"Oh no!"

Beatrice froze after she said it.

"What's wrong?" asked Bryce.

"I touched Angel Cakes!"

"Are you sure you did?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Dad, I need cinnamon!"

"Why?" I said.

Now, at this point I was in the middle of something semi-important on my computer and not really paying attention.

"Because I touched Angel Cakes. She'll lose her magical powers if I don't sprinkle cinnamon around her!"

Again Bryce tried to make her feel better. "Are you sure you touched her? Maybe you didn't."

"I did, Bryce! I did!"

"Beatrice, look up where the other spices are for the cinnamon," I said.

She looked. "Dad, I don't see it. We have to hurry!"

"Bea, the elf will be okay, just keep looking."

Of course, Mom had to be the one to come downstairs and find the cinnamon, which was actually in a place neither of us would've looked, which I realized afterwards was where we always kept it and I should've known. But again, I was doing something semi-important on my computer (making a new Christmas music playlist actually -- hey, that's important).

We had just gotten back from Thanksgiving at my sister's house and the shelf elves had appeared again in our house, coming out of elven hibernation at the North Pole since last Christmas. According to shelf-elf lore, or our daughters' version of the lore, you can't touch the red shelf elves with your hands or they'll lose their magical power. The others you can touch with bare hands, just not the red ones. Which is why you have to sprinkle cinnamon around the red elves, so they can get their magical powers back. The cinnamon is like a super-vitamin. After a little research, though, I didn't tell the girls that they must also write an apology letter to Santa Claus if they touch one of the elves. It's stressful and creepy enough that the elves move around every night with all our shelf-elfing shenanigans. No need to stress out the girls about being in hot water with Santa.

Even after that semi-traumatic shelf elf event, what I'm the most happy about are two things. The first is the fact that my family loves the holidays and we're all in with decorating and the festive and loving sentiments of the seasons. Even Bryce who fights it a little here and there when she'd rather be playing Minecraft, Roblox or watching silly YouTube videos. And I even broke our decorating tradition this year by hanging lights outside before Thanksgiving. Mercy me. That nearly caused a rift in the space-time continuum, but then we sealed the deal, or unsealed the universe, by listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving in addition to decorating early. Also, Beatrice just calls out to Alexa, "Alexa, play classic Christmas music!" Right on, Bea. In my defense, however, we're having a string of winter storms now, which we need, and I wouldn't have been able to decorate outside right after Thanksgiving like we usually do. They both also helped pick out gifts for a family experiencing domestic violence that we're again adopting this year.

The second thing I'm most happy about is the fact that our girls long to be with extended family and friends, to share continuous friendship, love and gratitude without selfish agenda or emotional baggage. Well, sometimes there's a selfish agenda when gift-getting is involved, but hey, they are still kids. However, they don't have the purposeful and painful distancing that comes with time and experience, when relationships can and do go awry and forgiveness is conditional. And although we are those adults with those experiences, we continue to foster positive growth and compassion for all, to be aware of our own feelings and their fluid context, as well as those of others, and encourage our girls to do the same. Our daughters remind us to look at extended family and friends and see wonderful human beings, people doing their personal best or trying to (including us), even if we don't always see eye to eye (and we sure as hell don't always see eye to eye), and every day our hearts and souls are a little fuller with them in our lives.

Even if it's only in little dashes year after year, like pinches of empathic cinnamon to keep our magical powers intact.

The Act with the Artist

"Poets, priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
And no-one's jamming their transmission..."

-The Police, De Do Do Do De Da Da Da

The tape recorder had a single speaker with monophonic sound. That's all we had, but it worked. My sister and I rode in the back of the truck, a camper shell around us, and we played Michael Jackson's Off the Wall cassette over and over again while our parents drove us to the coast for summer vacation the summer of 1980. The album had been released the year before and it was one of our mom's favorites, too. Growing up she had given us our love of music, from rock and roll to soul and rhythm and blues to pop and more.

So many fond memories throughout my life related to music. And many not-so-fond either. Music that's inextricably linked to our living, reminding us again and again of where we've been, what we've seen, what we've done -- and what we hoped for and still do.

Then came the allegations in the early 1990's that Michael Jackson sexual abused children. The news sadden me then, and yet I continued to compartmentalize it from my memories of his music, even after growing up with sexual abuse myself.

Why would I stop listening? His musical talents have nothing to do with his fallibility and his alleged crimes. Right? I reconciled in my mind over time and never felt bad about listening to his songs again and again since. And yet, I would never fully forgive the man who abused me, never wanting to associate with any memory of him.

How many perpetrators have we had throughout history -- from painters to writers to musicians to politicians to religious and sports figures -- all of whose brilliance many still celebrate today?

But then my wife and I had children and every year they get older the above gets harder to reconcile. Because they're going to ask us -- why?

• Why do I keep listening to Michael after what we now know? (The same for those who keep listening to R. Kelly after what they now know.)
• Why do people still revere presidents who sexually harass and bully (note the plural here)?
• Why do people still go to church after priests and ministers sexually assault women and children?
• Why do I still watch football when the NFL goes light on players who commit domestic violence so they can keep playing to win (and make money)?

The list goes on and on. And even I bang my head against the wall with split indifference and well-meaning bias, trying desperately to understand the why of others and myself.

So, why do I still listen to Michael Jackson? My wife has decided she can't do it anymore, and now I find myself removing his songs from playlists, even the playlist we made for Bryce when she was born (we did one for Beatrice when she was born and one for us when we got married, but Bryce's is the only one with a Michael Jackson song).

As I've written before, I didn't have any evidence when the sexual abuse happened to me, but my mantra is still clear and definitive: I believe survivors; I am a survivor. Yet, what I grapple with is how I and others compartmentalize some of these examples over others, and how we will answer these same questions from our children when they're older. Will I forgo any and all forgiveness for those who fail around me, especially when the complexity of failure crosses over into abuse and assault? Or will I continue forgive some without forgetting and without associating the act with the artist? Or is forgiveness ultimately a death that gives us life renewed without compromise?

They will ask us soon enough.

The Friend in Family

She asked me to dump the turkey carcass into the green can. The clippings can. The one for grass, weeds, branches, etc.

“Are you serious?” I said.

She smiled and said, “Yes, why?”

“Why would you put the turkey into the clippings can?”

“Because it’s organic; I do it every year.”

I thought about it for a minute. I didn’t think that was right and would swear that if the trash collectors caught it, they’d tag her can. A tag that read something like This is a notice of non-collection because your can is contaminated. 

“You all right? You need me to walk you through it?” she said.

Now she was just being a smart ass and trying to be funny.

“No, I’ll go do it.”

And I did. I dumped the carcass out of the plastic bag it was in and on top of the branches and grass before. I stared down into the can and thought, There’s no friggin’ way they’re taking this.

“They’re going to tag your can,” I said when I came back in the house.

“No, they are not. I told you I do it every year. You going to be okay?” Again, my sister shared her cute snark. She leaned in to give me a fake supportive hug and I moved away.

“Ha. I’m good, they’re just not going to take it,” I said, smiling.

“Yes, they will. It’s just turkey bones. You can put those down your garbage disposal.”

I laughed. God, you really sound like Dad, I thought. That would break the garbage disposal.

A while later, the Mama (what I lovingly call my wife), looked it up online and sure enough, you don’t put turkey carcasses into your clippings can. Even my sister’s son, my nephew back from his second year in law school, agreed.

“So,” my sister said to me, “go dig it out then.”

“I ain’t digging anything out,” I said.

We laughed. It was funny. And I still thought her can was going to get tagged.

A day later we packed up our things and headed home. It was another very nice Thanksgiving with my sister and her grown children. We also got to visit with my newborn Great Niece, my niece’s baby girl, and she was such a delight. The newest member of our extended family, today.

We’ve been going to my sister’s for Thanksgiving the past five years now, starting the year after both our parents passed away. It’s very important to my sister and I and our families, even if we only see each a few times per year. Since we were children and for most of our lives, we've been very close.

The year our parents died was a rough year for us all, my mom leaving us four months after my dad due to a health complication we knew nothing about until it was too late. And then there was the in-between time before she passed that went okay until it didn’t when my mom stayed with my sister, before we had taken her in and then I returned her back to Oregon. And then there was the six years before that when my sister and I didn’t speak at all. Plus, the way before then of violence and abuse, and the since then of other extended family relationship ups and downs.

Both the Mama and I have the loving memories of big family gatherings during the end-of-year holidays and multiple times throughout the year (even daily when we lived near each other). But then, family fell away and moved away, new family was added and old family taken away. Maybe we see each other a few times per year, if that. (The women in my life have always done a much better job at keeping in touch with extended family than I have.)

Trust and empathy are vital to nurturing any relationship, as well as the reciprocal investment of communication and time. And yet over time, life happens, we fail each other, and even the seemingly best intentions can and do tear at the fine family fabric. We’re hurt. We resent. We retaliate. We cut off. The friend in family is lost. Sometimes forever.

The Mama and I have been listening to Dr. Brené Brown of late, a research professor who has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. In Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice, Brené Brown shared a conversation about forgiveness she had with a rabbi. She’d been doing research about forgiveness, and the rabbi told her that true forgiveness can only transpire when something else dies. Not literally a person or thing, but a manifestation of something, letting go of resentment for example. Literally letting it die.

This is the first year in my grateful long life to date that I've accepted I can no longer hold onto any resentment for being hurt. That I can no longer beat myself up for my own past transgressions, or that I can keep judging others because I don’t feel they’re being their best selves (because maybe they are), or because there are those who I don’t see eye to eye with (because sometimes we don’t). I just can’t do it anymore. I've really needed to let those things die. It doesn’t serve a work-in-progress healthy heart and spirit at all, and it doesn’t help me to be a better parent or husband or human. There are so many more benefits to channeling my energy into me being my better self and sharing that with others. God knows it's taken long enough to get here.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t boundaries on how I handle any relationship going forward post whatever traumatic event, and what I want our children to understand about betrayal, heartbreak, personal responsibility and forgiveness. Forgiveness is a feral animal, one that is unpredictable and not easy to tame, even when you feel like it’s ready to give itself up to you, and for you. And forgiveness doesn’t mean that all what ailed a relationship makes the relationship whole again. It just means all what ailed it is finally dead.

Trust and empathy take time to build and rebuild, and a lot of continuous reciprocity to sustain, but without forgiveness, there can be no friend in family.

With this apocalypse between them

How do I tell them that one day they may not speak?

That no matter how close as sisters and friends they may be with one another growing up, one day one of them may leave, to return but to never live here again, and how this will start an irreversible chain of events. Events that will propel the one who stayed into the cold vacuum of space where no one else can see; where no one else can know. Where black ice and rock will collect and grow...

Years will pass while the Mama and I love each of them proudly, marrying their hopes and realities to our own pasts, their futures, until one day the one who stayed will hit a wall at full speed, while the one who left will try to tear it down. Misunderstandings, mistrust and betrayals will then cause a rift in the entire family; the rubble of the wall too heavy to clear.

And at the same time, somewhere deep in space, all that black ice and rock will become something behemoth that one day falls back to earth. It will reenter the atmosphere close to the speed of light, under the cover of night, and lay waste in its wake, boiling oceans and cratering continents. Fires will burn uncontrollably for seemingly a millennia. The sky will be a perpetual ceiling of gray ash.

With this apocalypse between them, one day something may happen to the Mama and me, we may get sick, and there will have to be a coming together, a temporary reckoning in order to take care of family business.

We will tell them both, "She's your only sister."

And one will say, "That's not the way it works."

And the other will say, "I never did anything wrong."

And we will both say, "But she's your only sister, and we love you both."

And then the first one will say, "But blood does not trump the healing reciprocity of forgiveness. I can only do for me, not for both."

And I will think, you're right, it does not, and you can only do for you, as your sister can only do for her. Nor does any of this require a Hollywood ending where uplifting music will play and hugs and tears abound. But I know we will still love them both no matter what. 

In the shadowy distance, a green shoot will spring from a dry, blackened crater.

So how do I tell them all this some day?

And do I?

A Brief Tale of Blue Genes

It's time once again for Fatherhood Friday. Fatherhood Friday is hip place at Dad-Blogs.com for dads and moms to share stories, ideas, photos and movies with one topic in mind – fatherhood.

***

It’s four in the morning and as I lay in bed tossing and turning over a million different things, one of those being that someday Bea will ask me what happened with my father.

Not the man I call Dad today but the man I share genes with, my birth father. She’ll come across something I’ve written, an old photograph, and then she’ll ask questions about him, why I don’t talk about him, where he lives now, what happened to him, to us.

She’ll ask and I’ll tell her a brief tale of blue genes.

***

The last time I saw my birth father I was 13 years old, my sister 11. It was visitation day; I don’t remember what time of the year together. I only know it wasn’t hot or cold. He came to our front door dressed in a faded flannel shirt and blue jeans. He might have worn a cowboy hat. I’m not exactly sure, but I see it on his head. He held a grocery bag full of dirty carrots pulled from his garden.

Eternity. My sister stood slightly behind me, one hand on my shirt. I don’t remember what I said, if anything.

Then he said, “So, you don’t want to see me anymore?”

I nodded slowly. My sister pulled on my shirt. I must have said something to prompt his question, but I was too scared to even think.

He pushed his cowboy hat back, set the bag of carrots down and said:

“Goodbye kids.”

And then he left. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.

***

My childhood memories of my father aren’t pleasant. He drank a lot. Smoked a lot. Beat my mother a lot. Fooled around with other women a lot. Ignored my sister and I a lot.

Although he never touched us, we feared his violence; my sister and I would hide in my room while he ranted, boozed and abused my mother. Twelve years my mother lived that hell, nine of it with us in tow.

I raged quietly, impotent, nothing I could do to stop it. I only had the fantasy of heroic intervention – the skinny, asthmatic, bookworm, introverted nine-year-old boy beating his dad to a pulp.

There were less than a handful of quintessential father-son moments: the building of my tree house, the actual building I only recall through photographs; the watching him build his alcohol-powered planes, constructed with balsa wood, tissue paper and the paint sealer called dope; the day I took my training wheels off my sweet purple bike with the banana seat and he pushed me up and down the street.

There were also the fleeting moments of forgiveness when he’d apologize to us all and say he would change, but never did. Alcoholism became the disease that justified the abuse.

Even after we left him, he did have visitation rights for a few years and those were almost as unbearable as living with him. Those visits always felt forced, as if he were doing someone he didn’t like a favor of watching us for a few hours, sometimes for the night. We had nothing to talk about, nothing to share, nothing in common.

Except for blue genes.

***

(The following segment is from a previous post last year titled Daddy K takes the long road home)

The road to fatherhood began abysmally for me – from abusive biological father, to abusive first step-father, to self-abusive anxiety-ridden depressive teenager (me), to self-abusive anxiety-ridden depressive young adult (again, yours truly), to self-abusive anxiety-ridden depressive angry resentful deceptive longed to be liked poor excuse for a contradictive man and husband (marriage #1), to brooding on the brink of finally mastering control of my life with a pre-Mama A saying stand up and get it together or get out.

Stand up and get it together. Get off the ground. Let go the legacy of anger and fear. Have hope. Have faith.

(No worries, I've always had a good heart, there were good times along the way, and I had good father I'll talk about in one of my next postings).

Which is why The Road by Cormac McCarthy had such a profound effect on me last year when we listened to the audio book during our Southwest trip (and I just found out it's going to be a move this year). It was one of those defining moments that filled our hearts with choice.

WARNING - For those of you who haven't read it and plan to, do not read on because I've got a spoiler coming.

The Road is a post-apocalyptic story of a father and young son trying to survive a horrific world gone mad while traveling on a road to the coast, a road of hope. Sadly when they reach the coast and can't find any civilized civilization to speak of, hope is all but lost. The father is very ill and dies, leaving the boy alone.

Then, out of the darkness, a man offers his help to the boy. The man tells the boy he needs to come with them, because they can help him. The boy is resistant; he doesn't want to leave his dead father and he's unsure of the man's motives.

"Are you one of the good guys?" The boy asks.

"Yes, I'm one of the good guys," the man answers.

The boy takes his hand and they walk off.

Stand up and get it together. Get off the ground. Let go the legacy of anger and fear. Have hope. Have faith.

Be one of the good guys.

***

Three decades have gone by. A week ago I learned my birth father has lung cancer. He’s in treatment but his prognosis isn’t good.

Apathy, contrasted with my ghostly childhood memories, filled me with a contradictory sense of inaction and empathy.

It’s a surreal feeling – not really caring or motivated to do anything but understanding the shadow world you share with your father – the blue genes.

Unconditional forgiveness portends remorseful reciprocity. In other words, you have to own it and own up to it in order to find redemption and solace with those you’ve wronged.

My birth father didn’t do that with me, and although I didn’t have to do that with him, my conditional forgiveness was given.

That was enough for me to heal and live my life and finally become the father he never was.

Jesus washed the feet of his betrayers, but I will not wash the feet of my father.

He should make peace with his.

Bea may never understand why I feel this way, but if we bring her up her as well as we plan on doing, then that’s not such a bad thing after all.

Maybe tonight I'll sleep better.

Daddy K keeps the music alive – pa rum pum pum pum

"And the three men I admire most,

The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost,

They caught the last train for the coast,

The day the music died."

--Don McLean, American Pie

My brain is made up of jingles, ditties, drumming rudiments, witty aphorisms and simple nutty sayings; if I didn't keep the upbeat musicality of the bouncing red ball, I'd have a whole lot of nothing. Much of that comes from my lovably crazy dad, and I do hope to pass that along to Beatrice (much to her future chagrin).

There have been more than a handful of times when the music died, however, filling the silent void with cynicism, anger and resentment. I've seen too many good folk, me included, decide that life just isn't giving them a break, that God isn't listening, particularly during the holidays and during a rough year for many folks in the heartland and around the world.

God is listening – listening for us to make the choices that make us sparks of divinity and universal intervention; listening for us to make the differences in our world.

I was raised a Christian and no matter the iteration of my faith today, I embrace all that is Christmas – the hope, the love and the rebirth of choice. (And my favorite Jesus is the little baby Christmas Jesus.) One of my favorite childhood Christmas shows was The Little Drummer Boy, the story of a poor boy who had no gift to give baby Jesus except for his drum playing. The greatest gifts are those of passion and conviction that come from the healthy heart – inhale, a metaphor for the love and acceptance I never got from my biological father, and exhale, the strength of unconditional forgiveness I have yet to fully give.

I played my drum for him, pa rum pum pum pum

I played my best for him, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum…

I've become more of a deist of late, one who believes that God gave us the instruments to keep the music alive, to beat the healing heartmeld drums of ourselves and others.

My cousin Dori wrote a wonderful post about being active and present in the world in order to make it a better place, to focus more on loving and less on spending. As new parents (and even before the little honey Bea) we are active and present and focus on loving to keep the music alive. If each family that has enough gives a little to families that don't, this world would be such an amazing place and we could truly celebrate the miracle of Christmas every day. I believe it already is and the bad news media doesn't convince me otherwise.

Christmas is a choice. Choices are miracles that fill cold winter skies with well-lit hope. Celebrate the miracle of yours and rock the house.

Then he smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum

Me and my drum.