onbeingjake

[onbeingjake]

Start at the beginning (earlier if possible)

Episode 1  “The baby or the dog - one of them has to go”

Sometime in the evening of December 14th, 1954, my dad got in his white ‘53 Mercury and drove my mom to Emanuel Hospital. While my birth certificate says I was born at 12:36 AM on the 15th, nobody told my dad until well after sunrise. I’m told that a doctor walked up to my dad in the waiting room some seven hours later and asked, “what the heck are you still doing here?”   I’ve always wondered if that wasn’t also in my dad’s thoughts that day.

I consider this birth story to be a useful abstract when trying to describe my childhood.  As far back as I can remember (even pre-school), my mom regularly told me she never wanted kids and that it was dad’s idea.   And my dad’s one and only recollection about the birth of his only child was that the doctor left him out of the  loop. This kind of weird disconnect was quite common in the mid-50’s. Many if not most of the families in the neighborhood were like mine; fathers completely and totally disconnected from parenting, and mothers wishing they had made different decisions.  I don’t recall a single family where either parent expressed happiness or joy (or even intention) in having kids.  In fact, I only recall a handful of families that occasionally acted like a family – most were essentially DNA platoons.  Boomers were simply a part of our parents’ resumes.  

But let’s go back a bit before the beginning.

A few months before that morning of December 15th, my parents’ spaniel, Blackie, was fed poisoned steak by a neighbor (like I say, it was a great neighborhood).  From the way my parents talked about it throughout my childhood, they were crushed by Blackie’s premeditated canicide.  So, as people do when they aren’t thinking clearly, my folks quickly went out and got a new dog, another spaniel named Sparky (yes, still living next to the same neighbor…).  But hey, a dog was a 50’s family resume requirement. In addition to getting the pup, my mom had also recently become pregnant.  Sparky was a traditional pup, but my mom never quite warmed up to Sparky’s youthful exuberance and intensity.  Fortunately for my mom, this presented her with an opportunity for a colossal lifestyle change – a new lifelong methodology where she was able to (1) identify and then juxtapose two competing, incompatible and undesirable realities, and then (2) establish and decree an insufferable line where one reality must be eliminated.  I always thought of this as her own personal solution to cognitive dissonance.  The new method proved very useful to mom as it evolved and expanded over the years, and became a truly foundational component throughout my parents’ tortured relationship.  As her newfound methodology would be applied to my early life, I  recall at least two times as a child when mom told me that she could not deal with having both the dog and the baby.  To quote her, “the baby or the dog, one of them had to go.” And that’s how poor Sparky ended up in the dog pound.  Clearly my first dodged bullet.  It’s almost comical, really, picturing that particular sequence in the ears of a four- or five-year old kid:  the parental loss of a treasured dog, a pregnancy clearly lacking in magnanimity, and the ensuing dumping of a puppy to the dog pound.  

While it didn’t take much for me to grasp where I stood, I can honestly say that things like this never left me feeling unloved or unwanted - mostly because I don’t ever recall feeling that way in the first place.   In fact, what I do remember as a very young child is spending many hours (sometimes days) alone, analyzing cause and effect, and pondering meaning.  I guess this is where the only-child is a clear winner over kids with siblings; we had no shortage of solitude.   So  the good thing about being in this 50’s family unit was that it wasn’t saturated daily with  hurt and damage, whatever emotional dysfunction it had was just part of the norm.  

On the other hand, I wasn’t Sparky…  

Take away…  the seen and the unseen

For one member of a group/family/company/board/gang to be able to, at will and without warning, set an intransigent and infallible line is an unquestionable game changer for everyone involved.  Almost instantaneously that methodology gets applied to situations of all kinds – everything from what to say, to how to act, to what to wear, to what to think, to what to have for dinner.  Surprisingly, however, growing up in this construct ultimately provided me with a consciousness (even a comfort) for being around situations and people with similar methodologies, and it taught me ways to mitigate the impact of their behavior on others.  It also helped me to watch carefully for any sign of using that methodology myself.

At various times friends or associates have stroked my ego by complimenting me for strengths in project prioritization, consensus building, and synthesizing complex issues.  Maybe some of that’s true, maybe it’s not, but it makes me think about where that might have come from.  My dad was very methodical and analytical, and he may have unwittingly imparted to me a drive to focus on the global view.   But the far more complex thoughts are around my mom’s intransigent “line-in-the-sand” life methodology – which actually may have been more formative and valuable.  That, and her desperate struggle throughout her life to clearly articulate anything of depth, presented me with an incredibly useful and valuable contrast to my dad’s brittle and cold structure.  And even stranger, you’d think that my dad would have been the one to communicate more clearly, while my mom would eschew interaction.  Not so. I don’t recall having a single “conversation” with my dad until I was well into my mid-30’s.  And yet I can recall maybe a half dozen times my mom and I at least tried to go over in earnest some challenge or aspect of life.

There’s a bible line that goes, “…what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”   So I guess in the “seen” world I gained (albeit from a distance) value from my dad’s analytical, contextual and global view.  In many ways those skills are intrinsic to any successes in any life.

And yet, despite the really complex methods my mom came to exploit, I have to  acknowledge that in the “unseen” context my mom ultimately imparted to me an incredible blessing in being able to sense, see through, and accept extreme contrasts.   I hope that’s true, because it’s a characteristic of those few individuals I’ve come to admire over the years.  

[onbeingjake]

preface...

The universe is around 13.8 billion years old.  Planet Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old.  Humans have existed in their present form for about 200,000 years.  I often go by Jake and I’ve been here for 64 years.

Life is so damned cool. The whole idea of “life” existing within a substantially matter-oriented universe amazes me daily.  From what is unquestionably a much narrower perspective, I’ll also say that I’m a big fan of my own life... literally my life. Now I can’t argue that my little actuarially-defined number of decades might be inconsequential in the grand quantum scheme, but, hey, I’m the one living it, and after sixtyfour years I’m beginning to consider myself pretty satisfied with its direction and depth and quality.  This hasn’t always been the case, and in fact it’s really only been the last few years that I’ve come to recognize that satisfaction.

Sound too idealistic? Well, I doubt anyone would accuse me of being a proselyte for positive attitude, and I think it’s sheer naiveté to believe that people are even capable of loving every day of their life.  And I suppose if cornered I’d have to confess to being a “waterglass-half-empty” kind of person.  I guess I’m also not one for fate, where inevitabilities cattle-chute you to a deterministic end (I consider the human mind the Grand Central of free-will).  Lastly, I’m definitely not one who recognizes any link between financial state and personal happiness. So, then, if I don’t see myself as pollyanna, or fated, or affluent, how can I profess to feeling satisfied with my life?   Damned good question.  It’s the same one that brought me to the point of writing.

So an objective for this blog: “To create a memoir (ugh...) that is neither self-indulgent nor outright boring, and yet that provides the reader with at least minimal entertainment and (hopefully) a few useful take-aways.”  I intend for each take-away to be a kind of tributary, and with each successive take-away a convergence of tributaries, ultimately forming a river that delineates my philosophy and perspective on life.  And sometimes that river will be life in general, the reader’s life, or it might be life as in my life.  Maybe all of the above.

For what it’s worth, I recently found a British definition of “take-away.”  “Prepared food that is intended to be eaten off of the premises.”   Works for me.