In the Garden 7/19/2005

July 19, 2005

Morgan stepped outside through the sliding glass door in the living room carrying a small plastic bowl filled with vegetable scraps down to the compost bin in the garden.

I missed my chance yesterday and today I wanted to be certain that I caught him down in the garden. When he reacheed the chicken coop I stepped outside.
As I walked down the sloped path to the garden he looked over his tomato plants. It would be better if he was sitting. Yesterday, he was sitting down on the retaining wall built from railroad ties that would have been perfect.

Reaching the bottom of the slope, I walked along the narrow gravel path at the base of the retaining wall. When I reached the spot across from the bed where he was tending his tomato plants, I stopped and brushed the dirt from the top of the railroad tie and sat down. Neither of us has said anything yet.

For a moment I watched as he pinched small yellow flowers from the vines of the plant. We still hadn't spoken. I watched awhile longer.

"So what’s with the attitude," I said.

He continued tending the tomato plants.

“I don’t have an attitude,” he said without looking up at me.

I waited a few moments, but he just kept picking flowers from the tomato vines. It was obvious he wasn’t going to say any more.

"I’ve been troubled by our relationship for some time," I said. "At first I found it depressing but now I’m starting to feel resentful. I’d like to put a stop to that as soon as possible. "

He stood up straight but didn't look at me. He began tamping down a small section of the gravel path with the toe of his black canvas running shoe

We didn't speak. His jaw tightened, his eyes got puffy, but he didn't speak.

I could say something to challenge or provoke him but I don’t. I wanted him to talk to me on his own. I didn't want to lecture him. Besides, I didn't have anything to say.

He slowly walked to the edge of the garden bed beneath the eucalyptus tree. He examined a branch hanging down at eye level. One of the squirrels scampered across the top rail of the fence. A scrub jay landed on a branch half way up the eucalyptus. From the far side of the garden his five chickens started making their way towards us, stopping frequently to peck at unseen insects between the brown pebbles that cover the garden path.

In the raised bed to my right, he has planted strawberries. The bed to my left is filled with cabbages he let to go to seed. In the bed behind them beets grow in front a row of pole beans. The pole beans grow up a tall double arched trellis strung with a geometric web of twine that is easily mistakable for an Andrew Goldsworthy sculpture.

Slowly he meandered away from where I was sitting and toward the white coop that housed his chickens. He stoped behind the bean trellis. Constantly looked down at the ground he continueed to work the small stones in the gravel pathway looking up only occasionally to examine a leaf, a flower, or a fruit growing on one of his garden plants.

I built that coop. I built these beds, these paths, brought the soil and the stones down the slope in a wheelbarrow from the truck parked in the driveway in front of the house. I built the slope, carried the railroad ties on my shoulder, set them on top of each other, drilled holes in them, pounded rebar, backfilled with dirt, put in water lines, planted flowers, pulled weeds, watered, planted flowers again. Now he thinks its his.

He reached the chicken coop, the edge of the garden, the far end of the yard. I knew him, knew what he was thinking, knew what he was going to do. I pulled the brim of my cap down low over my eyes. I listened to the birds. The morning breeze was cool. The sun risind above the hills east of Hollister warmed the side of my face. It was going to be hot today, but at the moment it was still pleasant. The sound of the wind moved through the trees, the smell of the air, the cool breeze reminded me of Lake Arrowhead, reminded me of the Aspens along the Snake River, the prairie and the jagged grey, snow covered peaks thrust up against the blue sky. I knew what he was thinking.

I watched through the corner of my eye as he walked slowly to the far bed where earlier in the summer he harvested his potatoes, the bed closest to the dirt path that leads up the slope to the house. I knew what he is going to do. He stooped down beside the garden bed and grabbed a handful of dirt. He examined it closely and let it fall through his fingers. He straightened up, swept the toe of his shoe across the gravel path a few more times and then silently walked up the slope between the flowers growing beside the path and went into the house.

Persig, Mythos and Logos.

11/21/04

"If you were riding in an elevator similar to an elevator found in any modern skyscraper, it would take only twenty minutes for you to reach the upper levels of the troposphere," I said.

We had just crossed the low rolling summit of the Gabilans and were headed down the highway into Prunedale on our way to Rana Creek Ranch to buy native plants for the slope in the backyard.

"Of course," I went on, "when you got there, you’d be dead because at that altitude the troposphere doesn’t sustain human life."

“Which one is that?” he asked.

"The one closest to the earth, the one that keeps us alive. Did you know that when you look up and see the flat anvil-head of a thundercloud you’re actually looking at the top of the troposphere."

I’d been reading A Short History of Everything and this was a display of my new scientific knowledge.

"If there was no atmosphere and you got hit by a raindrop, it would pass through you like a bullet. ‘Course if there was no atmosphere there wouldn’t be any raindrops."

I continued. "Human’s can only survive comfortably on four percent of the earth’s surface. If the earth were only fifteen percent further from the sun, or just one percent closer, it would be uninhabitable."

"So what’s you’re point."

No point. I was just making conversation.

I was happy that he was going to Rana Creek with me, I liked talking to him. I hadn’t lately, and I wanted things to be like when I went to Santa Rosa to visit him.

"Well if there has to be a point, I guess its don’t ride up in an elevator for twenty-minutes or if you do, don’t get out. No, actually, I guess the point is that life is incredibly fragile."

“Is there a problem with having to drive thirty-miles to buy plants indigenous to San Benito County so that you can bring them back and plant them where they used to grow wild?” he asked.

When we got to Rana Creek Ranch the gate was closed. We parked along side Carmel Valley Road and after a few minutes we decided to climb over the fence and walk up the dirt road to the nursery. I wasn’t concerned because I knew the manager. We walked a long way up the dirt road that ran up a small valley filled with large oak trees, green grass, and horses. As we walked, one of the horses came toward us and walked slowly up to Morgan. This was all that Morgan wanted.


At Jamesburg the road to Tassajara turned to dirt. We passed a painted wooden sign that announced the monastery was closed between September and May for the monks “silent period.” That was unfortunate because the best times to be anywhere along the coast were October and April.

It’s hotter than hell out here in August, I said.

We passed another sign that said the road was impassable in winter. Though the road was wide and smooth here, I heard it got treacherously narrow before reaching the monastery.

Morgan was reading a paperback book as we drove up the canyon lined with oak trees with long ropes of moss looped through their branches. I reached over and turned the book so I could see the cover. The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. For some reason we had a number of C.S. Lewis books and he was reading all of them.

So my plan was to bring you up here with nothing but the clothes on you back and a copy of The Silver Chair and then drop you off at the front gate of the monastery.

When you’re ready to come home you can ask someone who’s coming out to give us a call, and we’ll come pick you up. If we’re still alive, I mean.

I thought about how in feudal times the second son was expected to join the priesthood, and how as a second son I had thought of becoming a monk or at least a hermit, and how much that reclusiveness was a part of his nature. I wondered if medieval monarchs had some insight into the nature of sibling birth order and its relationship to personality development.

“Did you finish Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?” I asked.

Yeah.

So what do you think it was saying?

He didn’t say anything. He was waiting for me to start talking so that he wouldn’t have to speak. This was the way he avoided conversations. I waited silently.

I don’t know, he finally said and then was silent again. This was also what he always did. I don’t know. I dunno. He had been saying this since he learned to speak.

So how does what Persig said compare to what Ayn Rand said? He had been obsessed with Ayn Rand and Nietzsche since high school. I didn’t think he could pass it up.

When I was reading Ayn Rand, I felt bad because I couldn’t build a motor.

What does that mean?

Her main characters where always guys who created things, a railroad barren or a guy who built motors.

“Utilitarianism,” I said. People are supposed to be productive and make a contribution?

Sort of, he said.

And if you’re productive, you’re good? You’re successful? A hero?

Something like that.

And if you’re unproductive and don’t make a contribution?

You’re a piece of crap. A parasite.

So being a human being has no intrinsic value then.

I guess not, but it’s more complicated than that. She’s into exponential growth. You’re supposed to grow exponentially and in order to have the freedom to focus on growing exponentially, you have to produce. The more you produce, the more freedom you have, and the more freedom you have the more time you can devote to growing exponentially, but it really doesn’t end up anywhere. It just goes on and on, gaining freedom, growing exponentially, gaining more freedom, growing more. What’s the point?

Remodeling 9/09/04

Outside the bedroom door, she rattles around in the hallway, opening cupboards, washing dishes in the bathroom sink, making coffee, getting ready for Regis and Kelly at 9:00. She turns off the faucet. It’s quiet. She turns it on again. The sound of water running through the pipes rushes through the house.

It’s going to be hot again today. I go to Windmill Market and come back with Calistoga’s for myself and beer and ice for Ray and Sam. It’s almost eleven, Miller time. I put the beer in the small Styrofoam cooler they keep outside in the shade behind the addition. I cover the bottles with ice. Last night, I drank their last beer, so I feel obligated to fill the chest.

I take the two quart bottles of Calistoga water into the house and carry them out into the garage where the refrigerator is located.

She’s there, standing beside the water heater and the furnace in front of the refrigerator with the door open; thin, frail, and always underfoot. I put the two bottles on the kitchen table in the middle of the garage and wait as she timidly organizes jars and containers in the refrigerator. She places a finger on her chin and steps back to admire her work.

Can I put these in there?

I slide past her and place the two quart bottles on the top shelf.

Her trembling, withered hand follows a short distance behind the bottles as if to guide them to the correct location.

I place them on an empty shelf and step aside.

She reaches in and touches each bottle feebly, moves each one an imperceptible distance to the right or to the left then once again takes a step back and inspects her work.

“There now,” she says and closes the refrigerator door.

Red Sox and Yankees 10/20/04

He jumped up out of the chair in the family room where we were all watching the Red Sox and the Yankees in the sixth game of the American League Championship Series.

"So how much have you been working on it?" he yelled as he crossed the room. "This is the way it always is."

When he reached the entryway he swung his fist violently into the wall, stopped, and turned to face me.

"You always think you know everything, but you don’t know anything," he yelled. "You think you’re always right but you’re actually always wrong."

He stormed out the front door slamming it behind himself.

I sat up on the couch where I had been laying. A moment before, Valerie had asked Morgan if Sam, one of the carpenters, had given him any good ideas about how to put a finish on the secretary’s desk and bookshelves he had built in the alcove where the fireplace had been.

"No," he said.

"So is it done then?" she asked.

"No," I said.

That’s when he jumped up out of the chair.

Valerie was sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room that had once been in our kitchen.

"You shouldn’t have said anything."

"I didn’t think I had. Have you seen the selves? He has nails underneath them holding them up. Is that finished?"

The front door opened and Morgan walked back in. As he entered the family room, I awkwardly stopped speaking. I thought for a moment, and then said, "I wasn’t saying anything I wouldn’t have said in front of you."

I don’t need to hear anything from you.

He walked quickly through the room and down the hallway. I got up from the couch and followed him out to the garage that was now part cabinet shop, part kitchen, and part warehouse for boxes filled with things that had once filled our house.

"Hey, if you don’t like living here you can just get the fuck out," I yelled from the doorway.

"Oh, I knew that was coming," he said.

"You knew it was coming because it’s true."

Later, Valerie and I lay in bed in the darkness.

I don’t like when you two fight,

I wasn’t fighting.

You were both angry. He looked just like Matthew used to look when the two of you would argue, punching walls, and doing the gangster thing with his arms.

It’s different than it was with Matthew, I said. Matthew always hated me.

He doesn’t hate you.

Yes he does. I was just talking about bookshelves.

He was talking about me. He hates me, and I don’t understand why.

Well maybe….

I interrupted her.

I need to go to sleep now.

A Certain Slant of Light September 5, 2004

Sunday afternoon, Labor Day Weekend, 101 degrees. I’m sitting in the blue chair in the corner of the master bedroom. The late afternoon sunlight comes through the window on the other side of the room. It shines through the thin, oval leaves of the Fichus standing in a small plastic pot. The leaves cast pale shadows across the grain of the oak floor.

There is a certain slant of light. We searched the Internet in the library of Sonoma State looking for the poem by Emily Dickenson. It was October. The grant had just expired, and I was visiting Morgan in Santa Rosa. He was trying to find a theme for a project in his photography class. As we drove around town or sat in restaurants, I suggested topics. I described them to him enthusiastically even though I knew that he would never use any of them.

The existential despair that sunlight evokes in autumn, have you ever felt that?

No.

I wonder how much of myself, I project into him.

You feel hollow and get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Capturing that light, that’s the project. Evoking that emptiness using nothing but common images, a wall, an empty chair, an old man photographed from behind, all evoking meaninglessness and futility just because of the way the sunlight falls across a surfaces.

That was when I told him he needed to quit his part-time job as an assembler at R&D Industries so he could focus on his education. Surprisingly, he agreed and said he would tell his boss the next day. After work the next day, I went to meet him to make sure he told his boss he needed to quit. I was waiting out in the car. He came out and asked me if I wanted to meet Tom, his boss, and Tom’s wife. That was surprising too. Walking across the parking lot, I asked him if he told them he was going to quit and he said he had.

And they said what?

That they understood. That getting an education came first, that I was a good worker, that they would miss me, but that I was doing the right thing.

Driving south through Santa Rosa on 101, I asked him what he had said to Tom.
He said that he told him that he had been talking to his dad a lot lately and …..

That was all I heard. I liked hearing him say he’d been talking a lot to his dad lately. Morgan didn’t talk a lot to anyone, especially me.

Building the Fence 7/31/04

I tap a large nail into the side of the fence post and rest one end of a redwood 2 x 4 on it. I hold the other end up to a second post. I check the level and nail the board to the post. It's a carpenter’s trick for nailing boards when you don’t have someone to hold up the other end for you. Over the summer, I used this trick a lot.

"I can’t work with you," he said. "You make everything twenty times more complicated than it needs to be."

I play this over in my head. I hear his voice. I see his face. I watch him as he walks away.

I check the top rail of the fence to see if it's level. It’s off by a quarter of an inch. I put the board down beside the post and try to pull the nail out with my fingers. It's in too far. I pry it out of the post with a claw hammer, move it down a quarter, then up an eighth, then a quarter.

This is taking too long. I need to work faster. Just nail it in, just not so deep.

I tap the nail into the side of the post. Gently this time. I rest the far end of the 2x4 on it. I check the level. It’s off by nearly half an inch. Then the nail falls out and the board drops to the ground at my feet.

“You make things twenty times more complicated” plays back in my mind like a song you can’t stop singing to yourself.

Can You Grab Me a Cold One? 7/7/09

It’s hot outside. I’m raking granite baserock away from the house to create a level bed for a flagstone patio, digging out rock hard clay to make a walkway to the garden. I put the sprinkler on and let the water soak down into the dry adobe so that it’s easier to dig. It’s late morning. The sun beats down on me. My t-shirt is wet with perspiration.

I stop digging, lean the shovel against the stucco wall of the house and walk over to the sliding glass patio door. I have a small bottle of mineral water sitting on the door jam and every few minutes I stop raking and digging and take a drink. This time when I pick up the glass bottle, it’s empty. I look down at my shoes. They’re caked with mud.

Inside the house, I can hear someone in the kitchen moving things around inside the refrigerator. Its probably Ella. She’s old. I’d ask her to get me a full bottle of water, but its easier to take off my mud-caked shoes, go in the house, and get it myself. The refrigerator door closes. I hear footsteps, and I wait to see who appears. In a moment, Morgan steps across the kitchen, places a package of sliced meat, a package of sliced cheese, and a bottle of mustard on the counter beside the sink, and then takes a loaf of bread from the cupboard.

I’m glad its not Ella. I won’t have to take of my shoes and go inside. I reach through the open sliding glass door and hold the small empty bottle in front of me at arms length.

“Hey Morgan, can you grab me a cold one?”

He turns and looks at me.

“I’m not your slave,” he says, turns away, and begins making a sandwich.

I’m stunned. I lean into the family room through the open patio door and watch as he methodically spreads mustard, removes thin slices of turkey and cheese from plastic bags and places them between slices of bread.

My pulse surges. I imagine throwing the empty bottle across the family room and smashing it against the cabinets above his head in the corner of the kitchen. I don’t. He’ll get the water for me when he finishes making the sandwich. That won’t make it good but it won’t be as bad. I stand outside waiting silently, watching as he finishes making the sandwich and puts the bags of turkey and cheese, and the bottle of mustard back inside the refrigerator. I hear the refrigerator door close. If he doesn’t get the water for me, I’m just going to stand here and watch him eat, but he waks passed the dining room table and leaves the room without saying anything.

Anger, flashing lights, contracting muscles, constricting airways, pulse racing. I take off my mud caked shoes, step into the house, walk across the family room, go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, take out a bottle of water, and go looking for Morgan.

I need to get control of myself. Don’t say anything caustic, anything I would regret, but I need to confront him, to hold him accountable.

I look in the front bedroom. Matt is folding his shirts but Morgan’s not there. I walk down the hallway to our bedroom expecting to find him sitting at the computer. He’s not there. I turn around. I see the door to Caitlin’s room is partially closed. Caitlin isn’t home. When she isn’t home, the door is always open. I look through the small crack in the doorway and see Morgan sitting on the edge of her bed. His back is toward me. He’s looking out the window and eating his sandwich.

I go in and silently sit down on the floor in the corner of the room at the foot of the bed. He continues to look out the window eating his sandwich. I watch him. We sit for a long time without saying anything.

I breathe deeply. I have myself under control. My heart rate begins to drop. I think about what to say. Don’t be critical. Don’t be judgmental. Don’t lecture.

“In my world the norm is that when someone asks someone else for a small favor and the person complies with that request, it doesn’t make that person a slave. It’s just a small act of compassion and kindness.”

He keeps eating his sandwich. I watch, and wait, and then continue.

“Apparently, in your world, complying with a small request for help from someone is somehow degrading.”

“You know that, huh?”

“I only know what I see and hear.”

I think about what to say next and add. “If there had been a total stranger standing in the kitchen, and I asked him to get me a glass of water, and he said what you said to me I would have been shocked and insulted.”

He says nothing. He never says anything. I’m not going to let him of the hook. I can sit here longer than he can. He’s uncomfortable. He only has three choices. Talk to me, sit here for hours, or get up and leave. I can sit here.

“I need a response.”

He sits silently. He finishes his sandwich. Time passes. Every few minutes I look up at him. His eyes are red and swollen.

Finally he says, “You don’t need a high powered screwdriver to build a fence. You don’t need stream conditions to be perfect before you can go fishing,” and then he stops.

These are references to things I’ve said within the passed few days. The first refers to the fact that yesterday was my birthday, that I got some money from Ella and my mother, and that I said I might use it to buy a power screwdriver so I could fix the fence. The second refers to the fact that we’ve been talking about going fishing, and that I said we would have to wait awhile because the streams were too high.

So what gives you the right to judge me. I don’t want to wonder if what I do meets you’re standards. I don’t have to. Apparently, your passion for individuality doesn’t apply to anyone but yourself. Who are you to judge me? If anybody judges anybody then its me judging you not the other way around. But I don’t. I avoid judging you. I support everything you do or don’t do. Besides these things, power drills and stream conditions, are so inconsequential, that’s why it’s so alarming. For this you’d refuse to give me a drink of water? How much contempt do you have for me?

“I don’t get it,” I say.

He says nothing.

“Well you can either explain it to me or you can leave it open to my interpretation. I think its in both our best interests if you explain it to me.”

“You can’t buy skill and craftsmanship. Either you can do something or you can’t. And if I thought doing things for people was degrading, or whatever you said, I wouldn’t have taken Mom’s car down to the gas station yesterday and filled it up for her, and I wouldn’t have a stranger in my house anyway and if I did, I wouldn’t ask him for water especially if there was a hose right beside me.

“That doesn’t explain anything to me, Morgan.”

“Well that’s all I have. So I guess you’re just not going to get it.”

He gets up, leaves the room. I stay in the bedroom sitting on the floor in the corner. I can hear him walk down the hallway. I hear Valerie out in the living room.

“Oh, there you are.” she says. “What have you been doing?”

“Bullshitting.”

Wolves Watching Television

So on the way home I think about stopping in Prunedale to get something to drink at Safeway or the liquor store, but glancing down at the dashboard, I see that its quarter after five. If I don’t stop, I can make it home in time to watch the network news broadcast. Besides, if I stop I might end up buying a beer at the liquor store or a cappuccino at Starbucks. I don’t need either. I decide not to stop, no beer, no coffee, and plenty of time to finish the drive home before the news comes on. When I reach the off-ramp for 156, I look down at the clock on the dashboard again. Not even twenty after. I’ll miss the headlines, but with the commercials and all, I should make it home in time for the first news story.

When I walk in the door its about 5:32, just as I expected, but as I cross the living room, I can hear voices coming from the television set in the family room. Who ever is watching the television will definitely not be watching the news. If it’s Morgan, he'll be watching reruns of Mash. If it’s Ella, she'll be watching reruns of That 70’s Show. Either way, it will have just started. I can ask them to let me watch the news. I watch the news almost everyday at 5:30. They know I watch the news. They’ll expect it.

I walk into the family room. Morgan and Ella are both watching television. They’re not watching Mash. They’re not watching That 70’s Show. They're watching Fahrenheit 911 on a DVD. They’re at the part where the black guy in Flint Michigan is comparing the town to the bombed and burned out cities of Iraq, just about the middle.

I put my laptop on the dining room table, walk past Ella sitting in her chair in the corner, and sit down in front of the television.

Hey Morgan, you think I can watch the news?

Morgan’s lying on the couch. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. He just keeps watching the television.

I just saw Fahrenheit 911 for the second, if not the third, time just yesterday. He’s seen it before too. Is it going to kill him to stop it for half an hour? Besides there’s a DVD player and television set in his room.

Morgan, do you think I can watch the news? I say it just a bit more emphatically this time. Still, he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. He just keeps watching the television.

Valerie comes into the family room and starts talking.

Morgan reaches down and picks up the remote for the TV. I think he's going to turn on the news. That’s more like it. Instead, he turns up the volume. He can’t hear because we’re talking.

I see myself picking up a ten pound hammer, wielding it over my shoulder, and with a long arching swing, driving its steel head into the glass face of the television set. The tube explodes. Glass and shards of black plastic fly everywhere.

If I can’t watch the freakin’ news for half a god damned hour, nobodies gonna watch anything. I tear the cables from the back of the television set, lift it over my head, and hurl it through the plate glass in the patio door. Hitting the ground it disintegrates into countless jagged pieces of plastic, glass, wire and circuit boards. Ella’s sitting bolt upright, her eyes bulging from her head behind her glasses, her mouth wide open as she screams silently. The last shard falls out the glass door and shatters on the floor. I see myself doing this but I don’t.

It’s my house, my television, the least I should do is grab the remote and turn on the news, but I don’t. I sit. Morgan lies on the couch. On the screen, the woman from the Human Resources Department is telling Michael Moore about the high levels of unemployment in Flint, about how she encouraged her son to join the Army so he could have a steady job and enjoy all the benefits when he got out, and now that he’s fighting a war, how she’s proud of him for doing his duty and defending his country. Towards the end of the movie, she has a change of heart when the army chaplain comes to her house and tells her that her son is dead.

I finally get up. He’s not going to put on the news. We’ve done this before. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Then after fifteen minutes get up and leave.


Later that evening, after dinner, after Farenheit 911, after I've missed the news, he’s sitting at the kitchen table reading. I open a bottle of wine, pour a glass, and drink it quickly, standing in the kitchen. This is going to require more than one glass. I pour another glass and carry it to the table.

So did you check your garden beds?

Yeah.

And how would you describe the moisture content of the soil?

Good.

And how do you think it got that way.

Don’t know.
I watered them. I watered them even though you didn't ask me to. I watered them because I knew they were important to you and you'd want them watered while you were gone. What did you do when I asked if I could watch the news?

Nothing.

That’s not exactly true. You ignored me. You didn’t even acknowledge that I was in the room and was alive and breathing.

He says nothing. This is the part where we see who can sit silently the longest.

This is the third time in recent memory that I’ve sat down with you and told you that I’m not comfortable with our relationship and that we needed to talk about it.

The fact that you can’t or won’t talk about the problem is as much a problem as the problem itself. I can’t try to fix the problem if I don’t know what the problem is.

It can’t be fixed. We’re both just too head strong. We both have to be right. We can’t live in the same house together.

That must not be true because we are living in the same house.

See they’re you go. That’s it right there. Just what you did. We’re just like wolves. There can only be one alpha wolf. The other males challenge him until they beat him or until he runs them off.

We’re not wolves. We’re human beings.

It's all the same. We’re animals.

There’s a part of us that’s animal but there’s another part that thinks and feels and remembers. The part of me that feels, feels like I’m being subjected to a subtle but relentless form of abuse. And I want to find out how to make it stop.

Look, it can’t be fixed. OK? We’re going to keep butting heads as long as I’m living here. That’s just the way it is.

That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one being abused. Besides I don’t feel like I am butting heads with you. I feel like I’m being butted by you.

So what does Scott Yettman have to say about it.

That’s a lot to try and say. He said I need to hold you accountable and that if I don’t hold you accountable then I’m actually enabling the problem behaviors.

You see. That makes it sound like I’m a little kid.


I don’t think so. I think that's the relationship between a lot of adults. That’s co-dependence.

How’s that.

Well, the way I understand co-dependence, two adults are in a relationship. One of them is doing something considered destructive or at least not constructive by the other person, or by some group, or by society. The second person does things that unintentionally support the behavior of the first person. That's the way I understand it.

I just don’t like being told what to do. OK. It’s like when Gram was here. She wants a drink so she tells me to go to the refrigerator and get her some juice, and I’m thinking if you want a drink get up and get it yourself.

I didn’t tell you to turn on the news. I asked you if I would turn on the news. Twice.

Ok then. The entertainment center. What about the entertainment center. You told me how the wires had to go.

I don’t think that’s true.

You said that the wires had to go into the wall and then inside the mantle and that was it. There was no other way. It had to be your way.

I wasn't that directive. The conversation didn’t start with that. I started by asking how you planned on dealing with the wiring, and you said that you’d think of something.

And I will. I’ve been thinking a lot about that the last few days.

Now you’re thinking about it, but you when I asked you about it you weren't and you said you didn’t want to talk about it. You were about to make a mistake that couldn't be fixed. That's when I said this is the way it has to be. I go out of my way not to tell you what to do. I try to make sure I’m not being authoritarian with you. Do wolves do that? The fact is, I really don’t want to spend time and energy being an authority figure for you. We’re passed that. There was a time when you were a boy, and I was your dad, and I was an authority figure in your life. That's the way it is. but you’re a man now. I’m still your father, but I’m just not interested in being in charge of your life. That’s the other thing Scott said. He said I needed to keep reaching out to you, looking for opportunities to connect but when reaching out I needed to accept the fact that it just might not happen and to recognize the possibility of being rejected ……. I guess that was pretty sound advice.