Category Archives: Accepting

Eating Dinner in La Mesa

Posted on by under Accepting, Family

It had been a couple years since my mother was confined to a nursing home due to a stroke.

I was visiting her, as I had been off and on. With her in San Diego and me in Maryland, the visits had to be planned and scheduled based on when I could get time off and when I could get decent air fare.

University Blvd. in La Mesa, California, just down the street from my adequate hotel.

After a long day of being with Mom, I was ready for some time to myself. I decided to have dinner at the relatively new farm-to-table restaurant in La Mesa. Mom had taken me there just before her stroke, so I knew she would have approved.

It was an easy walk from my two-star hotel up La Mesa Boulevard to the restaurant. The place was busy, so I opted to eat at the bar. The bar there has both  indoor and  outdoor seating, and the outdoor stools were less crowded. This being the San Diego area, the dry air was brisk but not unpleasantly cold. I didn’t mind.

It was just me for dinner. I had been working all day to keep Mom engaged and to understand her way of communicating post-stroke, which isn’t easy. I was ready for just letting myself enjoy the moment.

I ordered a margarita for starters, something I usually order in California but hadn’t yet this trip. The bartender was competent but, to be frank, inattentive. She seemed preoccupied by something — perhaps just focusing on her job. But her customers seemed to be an afterthought.

The inattentive barkeep eventually took my dinner order — the vegetable risotto that I’d had when I ate there with Mom. It’s very good and one of the least expensive options on the menu.

I also ordered a glass of red wine to go with it. The margarita was doing it’s thing, but I really thought the wine would be a nice addition to the meal.

When the meal arrived, I enjoyed it while listening to the local news program on the bar TV and observing the bartender and the two women chatting across from me. The risotto steamed in the cool evening air. It was just what I needed.

Except that I could have used a bit more. I could have used some companionable conversation from the bartender, or a fellow diner. It is unsettling to be a paying patron at a restaurant, eating alone, without anyone really taking notice.

I mean really noticing. I can understand a fellow patron not being all that interested in engaging. But the bartender’s job is to tend the bar, yes? Tend to the customers who have arrived at the end of God knows what kind of day for a drink and a meal. Some consideration would be appreciated. Maybe I just didn’t look like the type. Who knows?

Everyone is dealing with something. Bartenders are no different, it seems.

I finished my meal more drunk than I had intended. But the twilight walk back to the motel was pleasant and uneventful. Past the local social services office, past the mini-mall with the Mexican joint and the nail salon. Back to the barely adequate hotel that nonetheless feels safe and peaceful at night.

I got a good night’s sleep.

Just a Paycheck

Posted on by under Accepting, Career, Purpose

A comeback that is 25 years in the making can hardly be considered “snappy” but here it goes.

The first three years after I graduated from college, I spent in food service. And one day, on a day off, I was at a function with my now wife and some of her co-workers. I was sharing a conversation I’d recently had with one of the cooks at the restaurant I was working for at the time. I’d asked if he cooked much at home and he told me that most days he just makes a sandwich and has a beer.

One of my wife’s co-workers, who had some experience in running a restaurant, said something along the lines of “Well, he most not be a real cook, because the real cooks I’ve worked with continue to create in their kitchen at home.”

At the time, I didn’t know what to say. She was older, presumably more experienced, and I was not one to argue.

But in the intervening years, I have learned that, for many people, a job is…

Just.

A.

Paycheck.

It would be wonderful if we all could be gainfully employed in an occupation that we find ourselves uniquely suited for, that gives us companionship with colleagues and the satisfaction every day of a job well done.

But not every job is the perfect job, and not everyone has the privilege in their life of finding something that even resembles perfect. The laws of supply and demand remove many of our choices to somewhere beyond our grasp.

In the meantime, the bills have to be paid and there are mouths to feed. There is trash to be collected and sewers that need to be unclogged. There is vomit that needs to be cleaned up, roadkill that needs to be moved out of the road, asses that need wiping.

As I’ve said before, there are some people of a certain political point of view who say that everyone should be grateful simply to be employed. And I will allow that being employed has merits in an of itself. But the gratefulness is a stretch when the best you can say about your job is that it is just a paycheck.

So yes, there are certainly some “real cooks” out there who are passionate about preparing food. And then there are others (probably many others) for whom the work at the stove and the plating of the food is just a means to an end. When they clock out, they’d rather not think about it until the next shift.

And it would be best not to confuse one for the other.

There’s a fine line between “work[ing] like a soul inspired until the battle of the day is won” and “hanging on in quiet desperation.” Most of us take comfort believing that there are working heroes, who pour their soul into their occupation day in and day out (lots of TV shows about that). But if you peel back the curtain a bit, the reality is far more bland and nuanced, and we should neither think better of ourselves for it nor judge others (or ourselves) more harshly.

There. A not-so-snappy comeback.

The Better Path

Posted on by under Accepting, Family

There is a fairly famous poem called “Desiderata.” You may have seen it before. The first lines are “Go placidly amid the noise & haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.”

Desiderata

I found a large framed copy of this poem recently as I was packing up my mother’s apartment. A little over a year ago, my mother had a stroke that requires her to live full time in a nursing home from now on. I remember this framed copy hanging in the house I grew up in, so it meant enough to Mom to have kept it for a long time.

My mother is a person of many contradictions. She can be both generous and cold. She is often critical and just as often accepting. She is relentlessly critical of some people but is capable of acceptance and forgiveness.  She voted for Trump but also has spent an unknown amount of money to support children in developing countries and also children with developmental disabilities in this country. She has done many things in her life but complains that she’s not accomplished anything.

The poem exhorts us to be the best version of ourselves and not worry overmuch about what might have been. “You are a child of the universe,” it says, “no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

And maybe that’s why mom has this framed copy, as something to reflect on when it all seems too difficult, as a way of reminding her to stop once in a while, take a deep breath, and try again. Perhaps we all have things that we put in place to remind of to strive for better and not succumb to the darker impulses. It might be a poem, a book, or a song. It could be rosary beads or a religious artifact. It could be a special picture or movie.

The thing is, even though the poem was parked in my mom’s closet and not hanging on a wall, the fact that she still kept it tells me that she is, at 84 years old, still in the process, as are all of us I suppose.

I’ve said before that knowing one’s parents is complicated, especially for those of us who have our parents in our lives for over five decades, and for those of us who have parents who have been difficult to understand.

So it can’t be said often enough that stopping once in a while, taking a deep breath, and trying again can lead us to the better path.

It Is Hard to Be Kind to Your Parents

Posted on by under Accepting, Family

It is hard to be kind to your own parents.

Wait…I know that sounds harsh, especially on Fathers’ Day, so let me unpack that a bit.

I think there may be a reason that the Bible tells us–in fact it commands us–to honor our fathers and mothers. Think about it. Why would the ancient Hebrews need God to come down out of Heaven and tell them to honor their fathers and mothers? Is it perhaps because it is not an easy thing to do?

Kindness has been defined by some as empathy and respect for another person.

Me and my dad, 1974.

Me and my dad, 1974.

Empathy is the ability to really be inside another person, as much as that is possible. You can do it with siblings and peers. Can you really empathize with your parents?

Parents, by definition, are of an older generation. They are shaped by social and economic forces that did not shape you. They try to pass their “values” down to you, but out of context, those values can be quaint to the point of being meaningless.

Also, parents change over time just like anyone else. Their parenting styles evolve, their belief systems evolve. No matter how much we’d like them to remain the same person we knew as children, they are not, and neither are you.

My mother used to say that each child in a family is raised by a slightly–or sometimes wildly–different person. That would mean that my view of my father and mother is different from that of my brother and two sisters. And it is. My brother, who is younger, is much angrier at my folks than I am, for good reasons. Some writers publish childhood memoirs, only to hear from brothers and sisters that they didn’t remember it that way at all.

Parents also have privileges or struggles that we often don’t have. This can make us sad or angry at them. It can make it very hard to be kind. So how, exactly, are we to empathize?

As for respect, that is also complicated. Respect is something that must be earned from another person. To demand respect because of your position, age, wealth, or any other reason, results in bullying and hypocrisy.

Am I saying that parents must earn our respect? Yes, I am in a way. We cut them a lot of slack, because they are our parents. But ultimately, they have to earn that or risk losing everything that a family is supposed to stand for.

So, it is hard to be kind to one’s own parents. We do it anyway, because we are expected to–by our society, by our culture, by God. But let’s not reduce it to greeting-card sentimentality and phony familial relationships.

Let’s be honest about how hard it can be, and then forgive ourselves for not always being very kind.

We’ve Stopped Fighting, My Transgender Son and I

Posted on by under Accepting, Family

We’ve stopped fighting, my teen-aged transgender son and I.

Sure, we still go at each other over the stupid little things in life, like who gets the bathroom first, or not cleaning up in the kitchen. But it feels like the transgender thing is a done deal. It is no longer the silent animosity that poisons our personal atmospheres. He needs my support, doubly so since things will never be simple for him.

It was time to end the war.

I don’t know what it was, exactly, that tipped the balance. Since my child came out four years ago, I’ve been reading and listening and learning what I could about transgender. But a few things recently seemed to strip away for me the distractions and get right to the heart of it.

And it was as if a switch had been flipped, like I had crested the ridge of a mountain and could now see clearly the view from that height. This is not to say that the rest of the journey will be perfect. Only that this milestone is behind me now. Behind us.

He may not have seen it quite yet. Or maybe he senses a subtle shift in my approach, my tone. I know that he thinks I should’ve accepted all this years ago.

But I didn’t accept it at first. I was heartbroken, and grieved instead for my beautiful daughter who now does not exist. My now son shares her memories, but he also carries with him those years of anxiety, self-doubt, and self-hatred. And the uncertainty about whether I supported him and loved him.

We are lucky to have avoided the suicide that plagues so many families of trans kids. I hate to consider how close we may have come.

What do all parents try to teach their children? To believe in themselves and to not waste effort trying to be someone they are not. I couldn’t convey that message to my own child if I continued to oppose who he sees himself as being. For him to believe, I have to believe too. Without that, I look like a hypocrite.

Today we have an appointment with a surgeon who will remove my child’s breast tissue. This was something I was very conflicted about, but now, by taking this step, I am moving beyond just passive acceptance. I am putting my support and commitment into action.