I’ve lost my job and I’m back to living my best life. Anxious about money, but perhaps that’s the lens my mom gave me. After the divorce from my dad, she was anxious about money 100% of the time. Paralyzed in some aspects of her life.
The sad story is this: I wrecked my mom’s New York City dream.
Me. Single-handedly. Fucked up her dreams.
We got to talk about it several times during her long life. She died at 88, several years ago. She never blamed me. She might have resented me. She had her quirks. Like most of us, inflicted by our parents’ bullshit. Same story here, I’ve let my son’s fuckups fuck me up.
I was blessed with the gift of health, sunlight, and life today. Amen.
I also attended my favorite workout class. At the first intersection from my house, I had the memory of all the times I turned left. Up the street about 7 miles to Whole Foods Market. The job. The $16-an-hour job. The reason I currently have COBRA for the next 18-months, regardless of what the administration does to healthcare in this country. I’m covered.
Thanks Jeff Bezos and dumb store leader. I appreciate you.
I’m a little panicked about money, I can admit that. But it’s not my anxiety, it’s my mom’s. I can examine it, pull it out like a tapeworm, and unlock the shame and fear that comes from worrying about money. I don’t like to worry about paying bills or health insurance, or having to get another survival day-job.
I’d rather not.
But, for alternative plans to materialize, I have several URGENT requirements.
Job.
Cash flow.
Sell something.
Rent my house and move somewhere cheaper, snowier, and higher for the next few months. If I Airbnb it, I guess I could come back at any time. Ho hum. I’d rather not contemplate getting my house back. My son is still moving out, in progress, but I’ve almost got the quiet back. The three year saga has taken a turn. I’m crossing my fingers, clipping the advice ideas as they pop into my mind. Best of luck to you, son. Growing up is a bitch.
And. Then. You. Die.
(ba-dump-dumb-dumb)
Some things have to happen in the next few months or I lose my way. It’s up to me. There are plenty of things I could sell. But I don’t want to lose them. I get it. I understand my son not wanting to sell his guns. “I just got them how I want them.”
I understand.
Just as my mom had secured a condo in the West 70s in NYC, I was fucking up at prep school number one. Reboot. She kept the apartment, sold the family mansion on the lake (thanks dad) and we all tried again.
I fucked up again. This time it was more serious. More mental. More critical.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Corollary: “What nearly kills you forces a human response.”
This is the spiritual reboot most humans are seeking. Evangelism. Buddhism. Scientology. (Nix that last one, that one is pure made-up bs.)
The human response to great tragedy is emotional. Emotions are well articulated in creative work. Song. Dance. Poetry. Performance. Fiction. Memoir.
Trying something undone is part of the trick. Try it. Jump into it. Go with me, into lightspeed. I’m hyperfictioning my way out of this mess. My mom is smiling now. Of course she is, she’s just ONE:MOM. That is the universal energy of MOM.
Okay, this is the part that’s going to blow your mind.
There is only ONE:CAT and ONE:DOG. They were provided for our soothing and comfort. Here’s how I discovered this: cats.
Back to cats.
<begin aside> The title of this chapter is the title of a book of poetry I wrote before the internet expanded our worlds. It is still here, in pieces, in Pagemaker 4 format. There’s no current software that can open it. Oh well. I’ll hire someone on Fivrr to decipher it, if I get the inkling. <end aside>
Do you have an epic memory of a pet? Cat or dog, does not matter. Mine is of a Sable Burmese that lived to be 18. My companion longer than any non-blood relative. Through college, my father and sister’s sequential deaths, through my first marriage, and even the birth of both of my kids. Peter Lake was beside me.
He died tragically, when my then-wife closed the dryer door to fluff up the old load. He was asleep in the dryer.
I have never cried harder and more uncontrollably. Pets bring that unconditional love that is so hard to find in same-species relationships. For me, my CAT:ONE is Peter. What I have come to understand is this: my two cats today, Sid and Hunter, are new expressions of the universal CAT:ONE. There are not two cats. I have two cats, that’s true. But the spirit, the ghost or god inside of both cats in my life (and all the cats in the universe) is ONE.
Hunter, the other day confirmed it. He is Peter Lake. Just as Sid is Miss Trip. In their current timelines, they are my “two” companions. They are one thread, one spirit, one cat in all of time and space.
(Whew, we need to take a break after that one.)
Today, I did not turn left. I did not go back to the menial labor job. Even as I am still worried about money, in the same way I was when I took the job eight months ago, I have evolved a bit since then. And a number of things in my life, this physical John life, have changed.
The loving woman (part deux) moved home to San Diego. My son flew and fucked up again, and ended up back catatonic in my music room. Fuck. And all along, all through it, Sid and Hunter have been guiding, conforting, and warming me.
Last night, when my son, finally appeared ready to leave I hugged him. “I’m really going to miss you. It’s been hard. But there have also been good times. Today, breakfast, was lovely.”
“Awww.”
He did the sorority girl thing.
In many ways my son is more of a sorority girl than my daughter is, and she *was* a Pi Phi. *Is.* He was raised by a damaged mom and a dad who crashed and burned after being asked to leave. The divorce nearly killed me. It could not have been easy to watch. Perhaps that’s the resonance that is keeping my daughter at a distance. Or fear of entangling herself in her brother’s mess. She’s keeping me in the dark about most of her life. Sad trombones.
We have time.
Until we don’t.
“If I die today,” you say. I say. We say, trying to get a handle on what’s important in our lives. Well, I have got the answer. That’s the point of this entire book. The title of this book is the answer.
Amen.
return to index | this might be the final this novel** in progress:
