Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Ball-Less

Rene Uhbaduh said that all my meanness got cut off with my foot. She was wise for her years, but maybe a little low. I sometimes feel that my balls were removed at the same time. If nothing else poor body image, not that I ever was a pretty boy. But the Planet had body issues of her own, both before and after childbirth. Add latent evangelical Christian backgrounds and children to the mix there wasn’t a lot of naked, grape sharing time to be had. Perhaps a more intact me would been more amourously aggressive which might have been just what the doctor ordered for the Planets evangelical prudery, and the conflicting emotions in me combining the reverence for the sainted mother of my recombined DNA and the object of my burning lust. Then again maybe not. What may be a concise summation of the 14 year marriage to Judith Janet Planet?

As the daily trip upon the South Shore wore down my body and soul, so did the ever growing divide between our orbits. At first there were huge upsets about finances, household chores,and time for each other. Unfortunately many of these raged silently within both the Planet and myself. Like volcanic activity, only occasionally bursting forth from either one or the other, but rarely simultaneously. In retrospect it seemed neither of us wanted a confrontation, and there was so many other things to do. Work schedule kept me away long hours each week day, and the satellites growing and becoming mobile filled the Planets daylight hours.

Another aspect was playing out, the ramifications of which I was not aware of. The Planet herself came from a fractured solar system, a state of affairs I was unaccustomed to having come from what was, if nothing else, a more outwardly stable orbit family. More of the old school of stay together because of the kids, and then stay together because we have nothing better to do. Which arrangement is of greater or of lesser value is beyond my judgmental capabilities. The Planets Paternal Planetoid had contracted cancer. The conflicting emotions that were playing beneath the Planets surface were in full eruption interuptus. If such emotions were attempted to be shared with me, I obviously missed the signal. So they remained below the surface and festered.

I busied myself with trying to stay ahead of the ever increasing out flow of income, weekends of landed gentry maintenance activities and praying the Planet wouldn't be to demanding on social commitments allowing me a few moments rest on my days at the ranch. I found pleasure spending time with my sons, the Planet had it up to her polar ice cap by the weekends and felt no more time of hers was necessary with the little moons. She lit out of there Saturday mornings like a comet with a mission. Usually missions of the gapping maw of senseless consuming I would discover.

Within a year the Planet called for some counseling. So it was off to the counselors we went. We had three sessions together with the counselor, after that the Planet was chosen to attend on her own because Sigmund's brother French felt she was emotionally blocked. Well, that was it for that counselor. It was back to spinning within the vast emptiness of space for the both of us.

Can you hear a Planet scream in space.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Pain

Pain becomes part of life. Everyday takes into consideration the number of steps, or better to say the minimum number of steps to complete a task. But I moved blindly from day to day, searching to find an accommodation between my workaholic ways, and my new responsibilities. The stress that I felt, and the pain that I felt grew and grew everyday. It had been hard to feel good about myself for years. Accomplishment in a career that seemed to be slowly killing me, and the new weekly regiment that left little time to enjoy the things that I thought I was working for. This is not an uncommon feeling for many of us. Yet the increase in economic compensation was steadily losing ground to the economic demands of the Planet and the satellites. Any mention of receiving an accounting from the Planet was greeted by a flood of defensive maneuvers from Janet. I was unaware, and still am to this day, of the depth of emotions any mention of expenditures elicited from the Planet.  She was on a different operating system from the one I was on , and there was no finding an interface between the two.

Perhaps it was the Planets way of dealing with an empty life. For some  having a home and two satellites would be a fulfilling challenge. The opportunity to be a stay at home mom to some would be the most precious of gifts. The most ideal situation that this existence can bestow some would say. So many in our time cannot affords that luxury. The chance to be there through the early years long after maternal corporate leave runs out to many is an unattainable extravagance. Apparently it was. Yet there is so much to do and to experience watching the growth of a new human, who would choose to turn them over for ten hours a day to well investigated strangers. Good references or not you still never really know.

But the planet was an adrenaline junkie as well. She thrived on the company of others. The challenges of a career creating and transacting commerce is a drug all it's own. The appreciation of peers, the social interaction of others, and the feeling of a job well done is a reward we are all bred for these days. It is how our society bestows perceived value on us all. Although much lip service is given to the value of the interplanetary family unit, the rewards are not at all apparent externally. It is a value that can only be felt within. I can only speculate that the Planet need more exterior assurance than she received from within, and to my shame from me as well.

So to the planet it was like being cast adrift in space with no communication other than the arduous tasks demanded by the new moons. A vast emptiness that needed to be filled with the only tool she felt were available to her.

Credit Cards.  

  Credit Cards can be a blessing. Used judiciously they can facilitate immediate gratification, help retailers and governments keep track of your spending, and even make a profit for those that issue them on the juice especially if you get a little behind for a month or two.

  They can also become toxic when used on a planetary scale. When you add to the mix the legalized pyramid schemes commonly known as Multi Level Marketing, the dreaded MLM, it can only set the stage for a disaster of global proportions.

  While the Planet was gestating satellite number two, she began to dabble in that most insidious and ever present grandmother of all MLM schemes, Our Lady of the Pink Cadillac. Mary Kay.  Well the planet began to nibble at that bait but birthing took priority. But after young Addison was orbited, The Planet bought into Pink Caddy dreams with a vengeance.

Now I am sure that thousands of woman have made this work for them by building their business a little at a time , reinvesting their sales to resupply their inventory, and slowly build their pyramids. This however was not how the Planet operated.

  Judith Janet Planet not only needed to buy monthly inventory at levels that would put her on pace for her ultimate dream, regardless of the existence of any sales at all, but she also needed to have people do the housework, and care for the satellites as well. The Planet, a true aficionado of self help books, had read that to achieve success you had to live your life like that success had been achieved already. Step one of business plan apparently was to run this enterprise on credit cards till it was in the black.

  However the only black on the horizon was the black hole our unwholey union was spinning into.


Yes , unwholey.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Postpartum Planet

     Perhaps postpartum depression will last a few moths in many new mothers. But on a planetary scale and by my count it can last thirteen years. All the doctors and all the pharmaceuticals could never, it seems set the Planet on her axis again. Perhaps it was the Planets attempt to overcome the overpowering dynamics of hormones and brain chemicals that made planetoid number two more of a cry for help than another manipulative deception of the Planets. Perhaps, like the hair of the dog for a hangover, nature called for another satellite to cure the bodily imbalances brought about by the first heavenly un-docking maneuver. However speculating on the Planets motives and machinations as I was quick to learn were a fruitless endeavor.

   Co-dependence has often been described as: "when I die your life will pass before my eyes." So it is with planets and moons. The planet thinks that it is doing all the work by supplying the gravity that keeps the moon in orbit. Meanwhile the moon thinks it is doing all the work with the constant rotation and falling into the Planet while supplying tidal motions of the oceans that keeps all things in flux and balance. In fact both are doing their part in the order of things. Neither able to stand back and appreciate just how codependent they are. Who is to say whether this is a healthy or unhealthy state of affairs. It just is.

   So was the Planet from the very beginning trying to pull me into economic orbit only to cast me off at the first advantageous opportunity? Was I so dense and out of touch that I didn't notice? Was I so intent on playing my new role that I thought, as well as my DNA told me I was supposed to, and apparently I was destined to play that I failed to take the hint? Was the Planet even aware of the why and wherefores of her actions and inability to act? Where we both just fulfilling our perceived roles while both ignoring where we all were headed?

  So many questions that even hindsight cannot answer. As was made apparent from the very first visit to the marriage counselor, the Planets communications were shutting down. Enter denial and I ordered the same. The Planet shutdown communications with that marriage counselor. Thus begins a search for an answer. Unfortunately as with any answer the right question has to be asked. The endless trip down the South Shore was in it's infancy as was this galatic crisis. Was it a gibbous or a waning moon? yet all planetary considerations move at their own speed.

   The Planet remained silent.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Pink Mist

The fact of the matter is children and Planets are not owned. We just become voluntary care takers for each other and those that have been placed in our sphere of influence. Often I found myself woefully lacking. But push on all parties did to try to keep open lines of communications. But storms in Indiana often bring down power and communication lines. Bring them down it did. Slowly at first. One could say the Planet's and my infrastructure would be deemed structurally deficient.

Unfortunately at this time no such inspection had taken place.

But it would.

Then there was the SS line and it’s daily reminder.There was a palpable quiver up my spine upon my first of many daily arrivals from Hoosiervillie. What I saw on the first commute on the first morning of what would become a sixteen year ordeal should have been warning enough. The manifestation in the world of the harbinger of bad things from a dream ten years previous should have been heeded.

I dreamt in October of nineteen eighty, before the world had been subjected to Ronny and the Rayguns that I was boarding a train. The platform was high up on a huge wood framed trestle. Up and up I climbed until I boarded the train. It took off like a roller coaster giving all aboard the ride of their lives. On an on it went tossing us like clothes in a dryer. Then it stopped in a huge high grass prairie. The train to return home was on the other side of this grassland. As I walked towards my train home my feet got heavier and heavier. Then my legs felt like they were in cement. I could no longer pull my legs through the high grass. I was stuck and would never get my train home. There is no going home.

So on this first morning of the first commute when I pulled in to the station I saw where that dream train ride had begun. I felt I was in another world. How true it was . It was the Planets world now. I had changed many things already. There was much more to come.

But on this morning as my train arrived in Chicago and I came face to memory with the scene of that ten year old October dream which became my October nightmare all rolled into October 17, nineteen hundred and eighty. The day of the pink mist.

As I worked through another day of pain I counted all the good things that had happened to me in the decade since. Although there stood a reminder of a prescient dream, I counted my blessings on that December nineteen hundred and ninety morning. Things in my world couldn't have turned out better.

  Or so I thought

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Owners Manual

I would have to say that like any story there are usually at least three versions.  That's because in any relationship  each person is having a minimum of three within that commerce. First there is how one projects themselves to you. second there is how you perceive that projection. Third is who that person really is, which that person might only be marginally aware of. With the sudden rush of life changes that happened in a short span, perhaps neither I nor the Planet had a clue who or where we were.

It was certainly a huge change for the Planet. One might say it had global implications. The ravages of child birth on a body are something that a male cannot, never will, and has no reason to want to imagine. Empathy has it's limits. Perhaps I was even less empathetic than some. After all I wasn't consulted on the commencement of the parenting. Girl friend soon to be wife stops taking pills without warning is a guaranteed pregnant Planet. Although I never brought it up and rarely thought about it, perhaps that was the first of the constantly multiplying three hundred pound gorillas that inhabited mine and the Planets universe.

I certainly love those little sputnik's.

So within two years my reality had altered. The inventory of  my life's concerns multiplied, I might add, in many wonderful ways. To have two healthy sons, a new home to live in, a dog (hound from hell though she may have been), and a spouse who would always reply “I love you too”, I figured I had achieved the American dream. Of course the implications of always hearing “I love you too” were lost on me at the time.

Daily travel from the heart of Indiana was a minimum of one hour each way, and that only after the Planet had gotten her brand new leased Jeep Cherokee. Because to travel the wild and woolly SS line usually made commute door to door a minimum of two hours each way. Driving not only cut that time to half but it also freed me from the mercy of the SS schedule, which gets sparser and sparser as the evening wears on. Miss a train and you now add an additional hour or two of away time at the best of times.

The separation by time and geography may not seem like much, and there are many that make the same a part of their business day. We all have to get to where the most advantageous commerce can be transacted. That's why we are able to outsource so many of our jobs. The lure of cheap labor has always been the motivation for expansion and colonization. Thus Indiana was always a perfect source for the Chicago area. Since most industry jobs are gone from Indiana, over the years I saw the numbers of people boarding that last inter-city electric rail line increase ten fold from what it had been at the outset.

Perhaps they were drawn out there to the Planet. Gravitational forces still have a many mysteries for us all.

Funny how easy it is to fool yourself into believing that everything is all right. Sometimes when you have the least amount of time and are the busiest, there is absolutely no chance to mull over whether you are happy or not. As crazy as those years were, I know now as I knew then that they were happy years. I can only speak for myself, because I now know that I can only be sure of, and responsible for my own happiness. Enjoy the journey because if enjoyment is contingent on an outcome, joy becomes a rare commodity.

Journeys there were many. Every day was a journey and as it becomes routine the weeks make you weary and months make more mundane occurrences a blur. Being one of the landed gentry in Hoosierville, yet spending most of my waking hours in the cement canyons of a major rust belt city often made me feel a bit disjointed. Having grown up being able to walk to the corner store , corner restaurant, corner bar, corner of the universe made me even more sensitive to the vacuum of the Indiana population density. But what population is there feels much the same about Chicago people as Chicago people feel about them. Us against them proliferates on the planet, whether you bring your own Planet or not.

For a city boy surrounded by the contrasts of the natural beauty and industrial scars of northwest Indiana, with it's lack of urban diversions, cultural diversity, as well as it's just plain sub suburban environment left me at a loss for diversions. Maintaining a household with expansive yard and home repairs kept me occupied over the weekends when the call of commerce didn't take me away. The constant demands and search for a balance between family and career eluded me mercilessly.

To make matters worse , as any new parent will tell you , children do not come with an owners manual.

Neither did the Planet.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Formula for a Family

Formula for a family:

Talk about living together.

Significant other does not buy pills. Claims it was because she didn't have the money. Red flags should have started waving before my eye's. But they didn't so....

Have one hell of a wedding and honeymoon.

Learn to breathe.

Baby numero uno.

Honeymoon ends.

Enter the orbital adjustments of being a stay at home mom and no longer having a career. The spin of the Planet’s general disdain, that many career women have for stay at home moms, which though not immediatly apparent, was ever seething beneath the Planet’s crust.

The Planet latter claimed on our first visit to a therapist that she tried very hard at being domestic those early months, but just could not stomach it. If she was being domestic I did not notice. Perhaps another instance of my insensitivity.  But then it is very hard to tell with the bedlam brought about by a new newborn in the home. Only time I had to think was when I was at work, so I can only imagine what it was like having bee's live in her head those first couple of months.

It soon became clear that downtown is no place to raise a baby. Of course I may not have noticed, I was busy working while knowing that I was now the sole provider for three. Many would have found it comfortable to live on what I provided. But the Planet was not many. It was clearly time to find the picket fenced home sweet home for our family and I was fortunate enough to not have to drive us deeply into debt to accomplish this. Just what I considered a manageable mortgage on a home. I did so want to keep the Planet happy.

The Planets remedy.

Buy house move to another state.

Quote the Planet, 'I did not know what I was going to do, but I couldn't go on like this".
Was this first clue of postpartum depression or of plan to divorce when cash flow was adequate.
But first other global changes needed to be made. The Planet lived for change.
Change the company I had worked for for eleven years and work for the company the Planet used to work for. Fewer friends for me and even fewer old female consorts I suppose.

 Four months later: Supprise! Stop taking pills=baby number duo. The Planet had decided to get this birthing and fetching up business out of the way in one fell swoop.

Viola-family.

These are the surprises I was learning to live with within the Planet’s realm.

So much in life can be looked back on with the epitaph of it seemed like a good  idea at the time. Motives for all parties are often muddled between what is said to be wanted, what others think is wanted, and what is really wanted. Often the latter is as hidden from yourself as much as it is concealed from others. Clarity is a hard commodity to purchase for the currency itself is often a mystery.

Within months there were ripples of dissatisfaction for all concerned. However with communication between myself and the Planet not being what it was either perceived to be or certainly what it should have or could have been, we were indeed traveling in a void. It is the things we try to fill that void with that in the long run become truly problematic.

The few months spent living in the downtown hi-rise were indeed a blur. By living so close to work the temptation was always there to stay a little later than necessary and still get home at a decent hour. Of course the job still had it's peculiar hours and work schedule and I was rather busy with the transaction of commerce. It was also possible to pop home if there was something that needed my attention. However I do not recall  many occasions where the Planet called. The Planet stands alone and it is up to you to know the call is there. I know that now. In reality it was only three months with young Clark that went by in downtown land, but from some reason it seemed much longer. Much longer for the Planet as became apparent. I had apparently made all the mistakes that really counted by then. The next thirteen and a half years were merely a relationship in it's death throes. Nothing passes quickly with the Planet. Geological time is marked differently than our perception of time.

So what were the reasons we moved to that distant and dark land of the Indians. First of the Planet wanted to be close to her family. She wanted the help with our first son Clark. Even though it would mean an almost four hour journey on a daily basis to my enterprise. This from my accustomed less than half hour daily jaunt. Could this have been in the Planet’s design as well?

But I wanted the Planet to be happy.

We also got a great deal on a house on the big lake.Home life was like living in a vacation home. At least it was for me.

Originally the plan was for the Planet to pick up her career after Clark  got a couple years under his belt. With the arrival of Addison that seemed to be on hold but I was under the illusion that the basic plan would be maintained. But the Planets appetite for consumption was only just beginning. The Planet had cast off two satellites within eighteen months of each other. A prodigious feat of creation. The little asteroids where perfect as asteroids can be.

What more could one ever expect from Judith Janet Planet. Much more was indeed in the offing.

The Planet would make good on that assumption in spades.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Caring for the Planet



       The wedding ceremony, the honeymoon, all seemed like a dream. Things were as marvelous as could be. Of course that was my view then and for years that was what I thought the Planet thought. I know now that I have never had any idea what the Planet thought. I know now it was foolish of me to presume such a thing.

Upon our return to our real lives we both went on with our careers. Although with the Planet's delicate condition our once rather party time relationship had to be curtailed. The wining was no longer an option for the two of us. But we still did a lot of dining. We both knew that our restaurant days were numbered with the approach of the Planets number one satellite. Perhaps this was where the seeds of resentment started to set in. The storms that were to become the Planets repertoire perhaps had there beginning there. But the  Planet was ever stealthy. If storms were brewing their was nothing appearing on the radar. After all the Planet was still careening in her single purpose orbit. I didn’t know it was decaying already. The honeymoon was over.  There was a nursery to get together. Shopping and decorating to be done. The Planet was nesting and I thought I was helping. Or was I? It was all a blur.

It was months of breathing classes, realization that we were soon to be parents, responsible for a new life. Both working . Preparing. But still two scared not so young kids diving into adulthood. Real adulthood. No instruction manuals come with pregnant women or children We only had our own parental experiences to go by. Those of course were on the receiving end of parenting. I was raised by people who had there training pre WWII. The Planet was raised by folks who had post WWII raising up. This detail would be very significant in our family life.

Birthing is a bloody business. But what happens during the gestational period ,as I found out years later, sets the stage in a world were there is no such thing as forgiveness. Apparently much can go unsaid and resolution is to be implicitly denied. Known or unknown. As we all know it is what you don't know that gets you. The Planet never speaks.

     If I ever meet the guy or gal who thought it was a good idea to have the father in the room for the labor and  birth of their child, I would I would smile and accept their opinion as just that. Well at least that is me, but I was in the same mode I would be in throughout our decaying orbit, Whatever the Planet wanted I would try to provide. In a hospital setting there is no more useless feeling than that of a prospective dad being there. I guess we have a value as a target while the mother is in labor. A woman who spends so much time claiming it's her body and she has reproductive rights, sure changes her tune when in labor. All of a sudden it's all you, the fathers fault. Like I'm the one who didn't buy the birth control pills and failed to tell anyone. Well she's in tune with her body. She'll know if it's her time to be catching for real. Those were thoughts I never shared. It was always unsaid. But through that experience I only loved the Planet more. She was magnificent. After twenty some hours of labor her Amazon OB GYN acquiesced and they did a cesarean section.  Clark was born healthy and happy, mother was sedated, and I finally went home and got some sleep.

It's what we don't fear that gets us every time.

About Me

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Purveyor of paralogical compliance to verbally mediated reality, artisanal smut, with a pinch of full time flâneur tossed in to taste.