Rusty crapped by the door.

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“Are you writing that down?” His voice becomes mechanical, but not in a mocking way. “Rusty crapped by the door.” Now that I’ve started writing, I get a fair amount of teasing about taking notes all the time.

 

 

What I was really writing down was “I apologize to dogs when they crap in the house.” I was a few steps ahead of the conversation in my mind. I explain my opinion to him. Empathy brings about gentleness. If an already trained dog craps in the house, there’s no point yelling at them about it. I’m sure they feel bad about it, and I chalk it up to my own failure to meet their needs. They must have been really uncomfortable. And they usually already act ashamed, so it’s not like they need the reminder that they’ve done wrong. Animals are sensitive and intelligent. So my policy is to apologize, let them out, clean it up, and forget about it.

 

 

“Yeah, but he should have let me know if he needed to go out that bad.”

 

 

“Maybe he was trying and you didn’t wake up.” I wanted to give Rusty the benefit of the doubt.

 

 

We sit in silence for a moment before he mutters to himself. “Empathy breeds tenderness. Nope, gentleness. Hmm.”

 

 

I had to coax more out of him. He complied. “When I hear things like that, like many things, I ask myself what compelled the person to put those two words together and what made them choose those words. Sometimes I hear those type of things and it’s just a group of words to me. I’ll be reading some aviation books and by the time I’m done, it’s “What in the world did that just say?” I just don’t understand.” We pull into the driveway. “Hey, there’s no footprints headed to the mailbox.”

 

 

The next moment proves that he’s more exultant of words than he realizes. He hops out of the truck, talking to himself more than anything. “I’ll put some footprints out there. Prints of feet, Prince of feet.”

 

Bugger.

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My father was cleaning up from the chaos that the finished Nissan and unfinished Chevy left when I called him over, proud of my welding. I wanted to show off a particularly nice part.

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The reaction was immediate when he saw the neatly pooled rings of metal.

“WOW. Keep it up.” And then, quieter, more to himself, “Bugger. You make mine look bad.”

That’s a special joy. I wouldn’t say that the student is surpassing the teacher, but I’m making progress. Now I’ve gotta get better than him at aluminum.

Unfinished

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Today at work was directed by super effective frantic energy. From the time I go there to the time I left, huge strides were made on the Downs body, a 33-34 Chevy fiberglass shell that we were developing hinging and safety features for. I was elated when we finally got the door swinging after having worked on those blasted mounting plates and the jam. I wish I could say my father was as excited as I was, but he just immediately focused on the next thing without taking a moment to appreciate that victory, a supremely important one for me.

 

 

It was amazing how effective we were being. We got more done today than in the past week combined. The power of deadlines, I suppose.

 

 

My mom walked up at one point just after the first swing, and I forced her into sharing my elation. I got a fist in the air and a halfhearted “Whoo” but that was better than nothing.

 

 

When the guys came to pick it up, they were excited about what we had made. They talked about how cool it looked, and how more and more people were looking for the kind of features that we were designing. It was very satisfying, because for me it had just been routine, but they saw magic.

 

After work, I went to my CR step study. One of the members gave me a birthday present she had been working on since finding out that my birthday had been before last week. It was sweet and heartfelt and I felt totally undeserving. All of the girls wrote notes on the back of an art frame that says “You are loved.” They barely know me, why should they love me? And yet they choose to. It’s baffling to me.

 

 

The Downs body is going to a car show, as is, with all the rough stuff exposed. And I’ll keep walking through CR, and letting people see a bit of my rough stuff.

 

Reconsidering CR, Part 2

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I went back to the Monday night group tonight and it affirmed that I should continue going to Celebrate Recovery.

We heard a testimony from a woman who told a story of hiking between two mountains in Israel. She was taking this path through the desert because she was told there was an oasis in the end. She likened it to CR; even though there may not be any signs of life, and everything still looks like desert, if you stick with it there’s a miracle in the end.

I also had a conversation with Dan, because it turns out that he heard about my blog post. The internet got real small for me that day.

It was really nice to talk to him.

I’m writing the following down so I’ll remember it.
He can tell I’m not a quitter by how many barriers that I have up. In a year, we’re supposed to talk again and see if I’ve figured out why those two concepts are related.
It sounded like an elaborate ploy to me. I mean, if you tell me to attend for a year so I can harass him about that question, then he’s just counting on my stubbornness. He insisted it wasn’t a ploy, though.

I guess I’ll find out this year.

Woogity Woogity

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“It’s just flat not gonna go.” I was quite certain about changing out the reciprocating saw blade for a different style.
“That is absolutely not what you say about that.” He picked up the new blade and walked over to the bench grinder.
“You gonna inflict some positivity on it?” I remained skeptical.
“It’s not whether it will work, it’s what are you gonna do to make it work.” It took a few trips to the grinder and back, but he reshaped the blade enough to make it work.
“There.” He tightened the blade into place. “See if it’s got the woogity woogity.”
It did.

I always wonder about whether that type of fiddling is worthwhile. It just seemed like a worthless distraction when I could surely find another way to expand the hole. After all, he was under the gun for four different projects, and he still took the time to tighten up the sledgehammer after I had noticed it and saw that the head was loose. We hadn’t even known where it was for the past several weeks. It was not important to do. He should have been working on wiring the Nissan. But as soon as he heard something was wrong with it, he pulls himself away to fix it. After all, if something can be improved by your presence, you should do it. That’s just the way he is. Distractable, for one.

Complex

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We had sat in silence for awhile. Not the whole ride, just a few minutes. We had just had a discussion about the theology of a couple members of my writers group, where they fell short, why they might think that way, how they would be perceived. As we got close to home, I decided to be brave and mention something I was actually thinking about, all day, from writers group.

 

“So, another person there told me that some of the stuff I wrote about you was the most interesting of what I brought. That our relationship was complex; it’s obvious how you’ve shaped me since I’m interested in different things than most girls.”

 

He edged to the stop sign, about as aggressively as normal despite the fresh and constant snow. “Hmm. You wrote about me?”

 

“Yeah, kind of, just stuff that I pull from my daily journals. Snippets. Conversations. Interactions. But now I have to deal with the fact that the most interesting thing about me is my father.”

 

“Huh.”

 

We slipped into silence again. We often do. I don’t know if that’s because we are comfortable sitting in silence together or just because we’re alike enough that there seems no point in bantering. Or small talk or, you know, honest feelings.

 

We pile out of the truck. I head to the shop to let my dogs out. He apparently had the same thought, and he always lopes along faster that I do. I can never keep up with him, he’s at the second door while I open the first. He calls into the darkness “INTERMEDIATES!” while I yell “Doggieees.” He calls them intermediates because they own two miniature dachshunds, my sister has a Golden Retriever, and my two weenie mutts lie squarely at the awkward intersection of “too big to be lap dogs” and “too cute to keep off the furniture.”

 

I decide to pursue the matter. I ask “What do you think of that?” and he immediately turns to look at me, and then in the direction that I’m looking. He’s searching for whatever I was talking about, and I remind him. “My writing.”

 

He looks at the floor. “It’s probably more a matter of you being a complex person than our relationship being complex. I don’t think we do complex things. You’re thinking deep on it.”

 

It feels like a victory to hear him call me a complex person. That means that to him, I’m more than just my lack of discipline or the boiling self hatred that I feel defines me. Complex. Complex is good. I can deal with complex.

 

I smile and pull out my phone, tapping away to make sure I remember the quote correctly. He grins and peers over at it. “You writing more?”

 

Always.

Birthday Surprise

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(But not for me)
frankie

This is the second time that my birthday has been celebrated with the castration of animals.
I brought Frankie in to the vet and asked what kind of dog she thought he was. She pondered for a moment, before declaring “Heinz 57. If you want, we can make something up. Call him a Bavarian Hopslinger.” That sounds like an employee at a brewery to me.

Reconsidering CR

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I’m starting to think that Celebrate Recovery might not be the right fit for me. I mean, I’ve suspected that the whole time, but it seems to be becoming more clear. It’s filled with humorless people that have no concept of mental illness or theology and yet claims to be good for both. It feels like an environment for zealots to grow.

The initiation of each meeting must seem cult like to newbies, as we recite our principles and steps and bible verses. The whole thing is getting repetitive, redundant, and obnoxious. Several of the people just seems stupid. I feel bad about writing all of this stuff, because I know it has the potential to do good things for people, and the leaders are all very kind. But it doesn’t feel like the program it should be. At the same time, it’s both too structured and not structured enough.

There’s great gaps in approach and theology that is the natural occurrence of bringing together people with different backgrounds, so I can’t fault it, but some coherence would be nice. The person that I have the most respect for is Dan, but I can’t ever seem to have a conversation with him.

I briefly mentioned wanting to leave to Trudy as we were leaving. She apparently felt the same way, saying that she’s been having some of those thoughts as well. As we hugged goodbye, she mumbled “If you quit Celebrate Recovery, can we still be friends?” I said “Of course.” She’s the highlight of my evening there.

While I’m on the topic of CR, I might as well mention one mildly related thing that keeps sticking to the back of my brain. I had mentioned the program in one of my journals that I had read at writers group, and afterward while I was hanging out with some people, one of the guys turned to me and asked me how I was coping with Grandma passing. I said what I usually do when people ask me that.

“I’m not. Not well.”

“Coping, not doping, right?”

Do I just look like a drug addict? I was thoroughly confused at that moment and it must have shown on my face.

“You mentioned Celebrate Recovery. That’s not usually a program that people just research about, you’ve gotta be on the inside.”

I don’t think we had any more conversation than that, or at least I don’t recall it.

But it’s interesting to hear that perspective about the program. It seems to me that most people going through CR are struggling with codependency or divorce or pornography addiction. I went for depression, I figured it was a free resource and my neighbor spoke highly of her own experiences there. Maybe the location that I go to is an oddball one. He said “coping not doping” like it was a very regular phrase that gets kicked around a lot. It seemed odd to me.

I think it might be time for me to stop going on Mondays. I’ll continue to give the step study a chance.