I’m fascinated by the way my own neural network lights up as I’m recalling a past experience or attempting to capture a moment in high definition. Last night, I had a dream come true, a reenactment of movie nights that never happened. I was feeling all the feelings of the present moment, and speeding up the shutter speed of the film camera.
My two kids were in my house watching a show together. Just that. In a much deeper and darker time, but I felt it both as a joy and a sadness. Why we didn’t get to do more of it? They were 7 and 9 when I divorced their mom and was spit unceremoniously out of the house.
My heart was happy last night. There was nothing to it. Daughter scrolling TikToks. Son slinked back in the red comfy chair. “You guys up for another one?” I asked, hopefully, at the end of the first hour. Both kids nodded.
A shared experience. It’s one of the things I crave in life.
November of last year I took myself to Santa Fe, New Mexico to go snow skiing. I would’ve liked for my best friend in Albuquerque to go with me like he did the year before, but he was “done with snow skiing.” I needed a bit of distance from my girlfriend who had also claimed she didn’t like skiing.
The snow was lovely. The days and nights were inspired. I wrote a lot. New Mexico has a tonic effect on my spirit since I was a kid. Now, it’s even stronger. My favorite sister lived there for the last seven years of her life. I would visit every Winter. She had moved on to cross-country by the time I was driving up to snow country.
This time on the lift rising up above the village I was conscious of my emotional fragility. I changed the music in my AirPods. I skied a few nice runs in the early morning chill and breeze. I could remember all the trails. The bowl where we had such epic moments, me and my college friends. The out-of-bounds trails. And Tequila Sunrise, the trail that busted my best friends knee on the last run of the day.
“Let’s take it easy, we’re tired,” I yelled.
“Sure!” John yelled, skipping dangerously off the edge to the Black Diamond.
“Last run, dude! Seriously! Fuck!”
And 500 yards down the hill he would go down. Years of rehab. A new “dead man’s” patella. And, well, heck, he’s back to skiing again. But the moment was awful. The terrible end to an amazing few days of friendship and New Mexico with my sister and his sister. They both lived in Santa Fe.
And so it goes. My mind was flipping back and forth from the present semi-joy and the memories of all the other past overlays. The chemistry in my brain was active and bringing all sorts of short movies of my past journeys down the mountain.
I also noticed I was lonely.
Talking to strangers on the chairlift up was a partial solution. But what can you really talk about? I wanted to be in a shared moment. I wanted to share my thoughts and feelings with someone. That would’ve been a stretch too. Everyone wants to tune-out. AirPods in, bliss descending.
I took the last day off and enjoyed a late breakfast and a day wandering around Santa Fe and dropping into places where I could jot down a poem or fragment of a story that was percolating in my mind.
Last night, watching the show The Boys, I was in a perfect moment. We didn’t talk much. But for a few hours we were a we again. Here I was. In my newish house. And my kids were home. A night at home watching a show. How perfectly mundane is that? And how perfect as a single father who has still not satiated his contact time with his kids. I probably never will fill that void. Perhaps when I am overrun with a grandkid or two.
I don’t really want to go snow skiing alone anymore.
After that Christmas I took my daughter with me to Santa Fe. My girlfriend was invited, but she declined and regretted it later. It was a perfect trip. I had an enthusiastic companion. We overskied on the second day. On the third day I let my daughter sleep in. We were cooked. We had a late breakfast and did some wandering around Santa Fe.
The year before my daughter and I had skied for three days and my girlfriend came up for the last weekend and we all drove home together. It was pure bliss for me. The photos of that trip represent all that was great in my life. Why, a year later, would my girlfriend decline a redo of a trip that I put up there in my top-ten highlights?
I can’t figure out what’s going in other’s minds or hearts. That miss, my girlfriend opting-out of New Mexico, was a bigger harbinger than I could understand at the moment. There was a distance, a pulling away, that was happening. I didn’t really get it in that moment. I did love the time with my daughter. But, I wanted to share my love of New Mexico and my daughter and all the ghosts that are still hovering around the sacred grounds. Some instinct or fear caused my girlfriend to pull back.
Maybe she knew it. Maybe she was protecting herself from the pain of losing me, even as she was the one exiting the carnival of happiness. Somewhere deep inside her, our travels with my kids were tinged with depression and regret about her kids not being with us. Odd, however, when her son was the companion the mist of sadness was present and mixing pain into the narrative of New York.
This last trip, a few weeks ago, was free of all regret. I didn’t long for my daughter or my girlfriend. I was engrossed in my creative project. Exploring and breathing in the city. I expected more ghosts. I stayed in the hotel we’d stayed in with my girlfriend and her son. I knew I was not going back to a girlfriend in Texas. I was going back to confirm: yes, I had broken her heart.
I’m not saying I was ecstatic in New York alone, however. I was thrashing about for some meaning, some connection, some purpose, that never really came. I knew I was decompressing from my Catskill adventure camping trip. My body was exhausted. I slept a lot. Ate three times from the Mexican bodega across the street from the hotel. I was full of enthusiasm and unrest.
Part of me wanted passion, sex, and excitement. Part of me wanted a different girlfriend, a new partner, a more compatible hippie-ish woman. Something was disconnected with my girlfriend. Something was unrepairable. I had enough responsibility trying to support and restrain my wayward son. I didn’t have the bandwidth to troubleshoot her malaise. That was her responsibility. And as I asked for repairs and modifications according to Brené Brown’s work, I was not seeing any movement or improvement.
Last night, with both kids chilling and being horrified by the show, I was having a happy moment. Not remarkable. Just time. No big conversations. Just time.
Exactly what I lost in the divorce. Time. Of course, it would’ve been a lot of misery with my emotionally unavailable wife. We didn’t have any of the Love Language information, or Brené’s Vulnerability TED Talk. I was doing my best. I was drowning in my pain, my inability to bring my sexy wife up and out of her dark anger. She was mad. She was anxious. She was unavailable.
I got to rewrite over some of my old tapes of loss last night. I recaptured a few hours of time with my kids as kids. Just spending time as a family. No pressure. No worries about the future rehab. Well, at least, not in my mind. I can only imagine the freaky-dark show would provide a welcome distraction for my son. Perhaps he will accept my offer again tonight, to continue our shared Boys experience.
the new ending: > next | index
