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Eat more peanut butter, man

Goodbye, Dawson

I was looking at that picture of me back in my early 30s in the last post.

While it’s clear that I’ve aged between then and now, I don’t think that I look like I’ve aged 20 years.

Still, while my face looks older, my body looks…pretty identical.

If anything, I look better now than I did at 25 just because I’ve been so regular with my physical therapy these days.

But exercise is just one of the three sides of the triangle – the other two are genetics and diet.

On genetics, there’s not much you can do there, but I’ve been thinking about diet more than usual lately because of the death of actor James Van Der Beek, who recently passed from stage 3 colorectal cancer.

While I never saw Dawson’s Creek, Alison and I loved Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23, where he played a version of himself.

If you’ve never seen it, it might be worth a watch.

In any case, on the topic of diet, I’m definitely eating well over a pound of peanut butter a week now.

I know this because I started doing Amazon’s Subscribe and Save with two two-pound jars delivered to me every month, about a year ago, but the kid and I kill them in the first three weeks.

Sara and her son don’t touch the stuff, despite my best efforts, which is terribly disappointing as you’ll read below.

In any case, I regularly have to go to the store to buy two more regular jars to last us the month – check out the size difference below.

Now, that means that I’m eating about 2,650 calories, 225 grams of fat, and 28 grams of fiber a week in peanut butter alone every week

BUT that’s in addition to the regular brekkie, lunch, and dinner that I eat.

And yet, I am slimmer than almost all of my peers, which is precisely what I expected when I first started doing this about 20 years ago.

In fact, I remember distinctly a conversation with someone that rang me outta the blue one day that went something like this:

Her: There is no way you can eat that much peanut butter and not become super fat.
Me: I dunno. I don’t think that the body processes protein, fat, and fiber the same way it does just fat and carbs.
Her: What will you do if you’re wrong?!
Me: (laughing) I dunno…stop?

But I never did.

Because it turned out exactly as I expected it to – I ended up losing weight, increasing lean body mass, and reducing my cholesterol.

Since 2006, I’ve been telling everyone that would listen that nut butters are secret to being slim and in excellent health and I used myself as a test subject for 20 years.

I eat peanut butter because it’s just a lot cheaper than nut butters (yes, I realize it’s a legume).

But, if I was wealthy, I’d be eating walnut butter, probably the best thing on the planet to eat after tinned fish, which I also try to eat regularly.

If anyone wants to gift me an annual stipend of walnut butter, I’m not gonna stop you.

Dunno what gift to get me? Walnut butter.

In any case, I bring this up because I came across this guy below recently, and he backs up the mountain of research that peanuts are a health bomb.

Now, while he talks mainly about whole raw peanuts, I believe – and I’ve got 20 years of real-world practice that supports this – that natural peanut butter essentially provides very similar/identical results.

 

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If you look up pretty much anything to do with colorectal cancer, you’ll see two things show up in every mention: (a) the lack of fiber in modern diets and (b) the ultra-processed nature of the modern American diet.

The regular consumption of nut/peanut butter helps address both those issues; the former directly by injecting fiber into your diet, the latter by simply making you too full to eat much else.

Anywho, just another of my rando thoughts for a rando day.

Him: Whatcha making, papa?
Me: A brown-butter fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.
Him: Is that any good?
Me: Is it any good!?!?! Dude…prepare to have your mind blown…

Location: a dumpling party with zero peanut butter
Mood: stuffed
Music: We have fallen down again tonight (Spotify)

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Have you ever heard of Meghan Reinertsen?

My most valuable thing

Met up with the pastor early this past week for some coffee and…

Me: Wait, they have a $5 burger here!
Him: Yeah, it’s pretty good. Do you want to get one?
Me: Do I want a $5 burger?! Heck yeah! (afterwards) Are you thinking of getting another one?
Him: I will if you will.
Me: Looks like we’re having more burgers for brekkie!

Have you ever heard of Meghan Reinertsen?

She’s a nanny and an influencer but what really made her famous is the fact that she personally cancelled a United Airlines flight by having…explosive diarrhea.

And, to be clear, I’m not mocking her – at all – here.

After all, I know exactly how embarrassing and uncomfortable it is to have your body involuntarily leave your DNA everywhere and anywhere, through no real fault of your own.

Meghan’s story is that she, evidently, ate this undercooked cheeseburger and then had to lock herself into the airplane bathroom for 90 humiliating minutes where her DNA came out of both ends.

It was so bad that the plane was declared a biohazard and taken outta service for the next flight.

Since this was all pretty public, there wasn’t much to do but make a public apology video, which she did.

@meghanreinertsen Part 1 of how I personally got a United flight cancelled #storytime #airplane #diarrhea @United Airlines ♬ original sound – Meghan Reinertsen

But this entry isn’t about Meghan so much as it’s about my kid and alla his friends.

See, you and I met when I was 33 years old.

I was already a full-fledged(ish) adult when you read my very first entry back in September of 2006 some – Jesus Christ – two decades ago.

Back then, I was literally the only weirdo that carried around a camera with me at almost all times.

Plus, I wrote down what funny or memorable conversations I could remember.

This was not the burger that she had but it was the burger that I had with the pastor. Now I want another one…

But now, everyone has a camera and recording device on their person at all times.

And I can’t help but think of all the incredibly stupid, stupid, and cruel things I’ve done and said throughout my life – to say nuthin of all my embarrassing moments.

Dude, you may not believe it, but the version of me you met in 2006 was the mature version of me.

Logan Lo circa 2026?

I’m a goddamn piece of fine art by now.

Ok, maybe not fine, but just go with it for now…

Me in Berlin in 2006. I was 32.

My only saving grace is that no one had video phones/cameras on their person in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

You absolutely would not be reading me. You’d be saying things like:

    • Logan? You mean the guy that wore rollerblades and fell down the entire staircase leading to Bethesda Fountain?
    • Logan? You mean the guy that wore parachute pants with the flock of seagulls haircut?
    • Logan? To mean the guy that practiced taiji for a decade and tried to fight with it?

My point being that, but for my telling you any of this, none of this would exist except in my own head.

But for the kid and his friends everything has the potentially to be recorded and preserved forever.

Everything has the potential to be just devastating – emotionally and socially.

I can laugh about alla that now because I’m 52 and honestly don’t care about much these days but, man, did I care when I was a kid.

And I hope that the kid realizes that nothing embarrassing is anything but a story to be told years from now.

So, here’s to the Meghans of the world that just say, Fuck it, and own their most embarrassing moments.

Because, today, there’s not much else you can do.

Him: Papa, why don’t you ever show my face?
Me: Oh no, kid. I’m so proud of you. It’s not that, it’s the opposite. You’re my treasure. And you don’t go showing off your treasure. You keep your most valuable things private.
Him: I’m your valuable thing?
Me: No, kid, you’re my most valuable thing. I got nuthin close to you.
Him: Yay!

Location: home, at a balmy 42 degrees
Mood: concerned
Music: Neighbors stare, I smile and wave ’cause I just don’t care (Spotify)

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Goodnight, Rose

She’d love it

The first time I ever saw my dad cry was at his mom’s funeral.

I was in my early 30s when it happened. Remember speaking to him about it.

Me: Are you ok?
Him: No. When my father died, I lost a major connection to my past, but I still had my mother. But now that she’s gone, I feel unmoored from my past, like a leaf in the wind or a ship on the waves.

You should know that all my best lines I stole from people I loved.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Thought about that recently because Alison’s grandmother died the other day.

That’s Alison up above with her grandfather, Sal, and grandmother, Rose – they were celebrating Alison’s brother’s return from the army.

I’m super annoyed that bottle’s in front of Alison’s face.

You never know what little things are going to be big things until long after the fact.

In any case, Sal died some 13 years ago, and I wrote about it here.

Alison took it pretty hard, but I was glad that I was there to keep her company through that.

He and I got along great because we both liked Dean Martin and, oddly, sardines. It’s funny what people talk about.

I liked Rose a lot too. Probably one of my favorite memories with her is when I once drove out to Staten Island with Alison about a decade-and-a-half ago to celebrate Sal’s birthday.

Rose had to walk by herself in the rain, so I stepped out to steady her, and she immediately took my arm as if we’d done it a million times before.

Felt like part of the family that day.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

I suppose that I have such affection for Alison’s family because they’ve always treated me like a member of the family, even early, early on.

All of them did – even A-SIL and I kinda bickered like siblings since we met.

Now everyone in that picture above is gone and I feel so deeply for Alison’s mother, that she’s lost so much.

Then again, life is loss – it’s all about the spacing.

But even there, she’s gotten the short end of the stick.

Still, that’s her story to tell and not mine so I’ll stop here.

As much as I feel sadness that Rose and Sal are gone, they lived good long lives.

Alison didn’t, and that’s forever going to eat at me – the unfairness of it all.

And, of course, I think of my father and my mother and how I wish…so many things.

I always tell myself to see my mom more often, but life keeps getting in the way.

No excuse, I know, and yet, it is.

I’ll call her tonight. Or tomorrow.

I will. Honest and for true.

Goodnight, Rose.

If there’s an afterlife, I hope you and Sal are catching up and you’re telling him about all the madness happening around here.

And tell Alison that we all miss her terribly.

So…terribly.

Him: Would she like that I play soccer and the guitar…you think?
Me: I think she’d love it, kiddo. No, I know it. I know she’d love it.

Mood: freezing
Music: freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’ (Spotify)
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This year will be full of surprises

Chinatown restaurants

The below took place before our cocktail party, as we were planning out what food to have for it.

Sara works with various schools around Manhattan, one of which is in Chinatown, which means that we have a good excuse to eat down there alla time.

Me: I gotta tell you something.
Her: What?
Me: I’ve never been to Wo Hop.
Her: Really?! Me neither, let’s go then!

There are all these really classic dives down there that I’ve gone to like Big Wong‘s and Noodletown – I practically lived there as a teen – but some I’ve missed, like Wo Hop, so off we went.

It’s a NYC institution – if you go to YouTube, you’ll see all these people trying it out.

Now, when I was a kid, the only people that went there were Chinese.

But when we went there, I was literally the only Chinese person (that didn’t work there) there – there were hipsters and all other races, just no Chinese.

Plus, the menu was entirely in English with no pictures, so I had no idea what to order, so I just pointed at three things.

All were carb-y and delicious.


Oddly, later on that week, we went to the local bistro (above a supermarket) and Sara said…

Her: Hey, did you see that they’re selling food from Nom Wah?
Me: Wait, what?

Nom Wah is another Chinatown institution; it’s reportedly the oldest continuingly operating dim sum restaurant in New York City, having opened in 1920.

Sara and I went for a date night there a little over a year ago.

A younger generation of cousins went in and revamped a lot of things to make it more Instagram friendly while keeping the same classic menu and recipes.

Unfortunately, the scuttlebutt is that the cousins had a massive falling out and now the business is in jeopardy, so we’ll see how that plays out.

But, getting back to the bistro, we’d both already had a full meal…

…but I couldn’t say no to some classic Nom Wah dim sum so I ordered some dumplings that were really good, actually.

I told you once years ago that a companion is someone you sit and eat with, and I’m grateful for Sara’s companionship.

I think that’s why I write about food so much – in addition to the fact that, deep down, I’m still a fatty-fat-fat – because food and family are so intertwined.

Shame about Nom Wah and alla that family drama.

Here’s hoping that its got another hundred years in it.

Her: Look how happy you are!
Me: I’m gonna regret this in the morning, but…yeah.

Mood: still potentially sick
Music: nuthin looks better than old school vibe (Spotify)
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Unkindness, Pt 2

Running into people

Like I said, a buncha people from my past have been making a reappearance in my life, in a manner of speaking – either they actually have or I thought about them, which I’d probably not done in a while.

First is someone I’ll call the Cellini Coach whom I last saw out in California.

I call him Cellini because, like him and Jason Everman, he’s insanely successful in some seriously disparate fields:

  • He sold a buncha companies to Google and Facebook – you’ve absolutely used his stuff if you’ve been on either of them – and might be a billionaire. I’m not sure.
  • He’s also a ridonk fighter – fourth degree black belt in BJJ from Gracie Barra, great boxer, and trained shooter and wrestler – and is kinda my private coach on certain things (see below).
  • He’s also getting his master’s degree in philosophy a Oxford.

Despite alla this, though, he’s a pretty quiet and down-to-earth kinda guy.

Him: Don’t put up a picture of me.
Me: It’s ironic that a fella that helped invent the internet doesn’t wanna be on it.

Plus, even though he’s a super busy and successful guy, he’ll still take the time out to answer questions that I’ve got regarding certain aspects of fighting which I always appreciate.

Like most kindnesses I get, it’s a kindness that is neither expected nor warranted.

Below is him acting as my coach, which he totally doesn’t need to do, and yet he does.

We met up just this past week a mutual friend’s physical therapy joint – Recalibrate PT, which is probably one of the best PT spaces in the city IMHO.

There, Cellini he took two hours outta his super busy schedule to give me a private lesson to help me fix a buncha issues I’ve been having with my game.

I also ran into a whole raft of friends while there that I’d not seen in ages, including my buddy Sawyer – who was training with my friend Cotton (whom I also recommend if you’re looking for a personal trainer).

Me: Dude, we loved Masters of the Air, whatever happened to your character (Lt. Roy Frank Claytor)?
Sawyer: In the show, he just disappeared but in real life, he survived WWII and fought in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, which he also survived.

On a somewhat related note, I recently had a phone call with someone whom I was unkind to ages ago.

He said I never apologized to him for being unkind to him, but he seems to have forgotten that he wouldn’t let me apologize to him.

Still, I suppose that’s really neither here nor there; I could have apologized again but chose not to again.

In any case, I figured that, since I was the one originally in the wrong, I’d just go ahead and apologize again to him, again and did that.

I’m hoping he took it to heart just because I would hate for anyone to suffer because of something I did, but that’s really his decision to make and not mine.

I suppose we all do unkind things as much as we do kind ones and, when we do unkind things, we should try to fix things when given an opportunity to do so.

This actually reminds me of something else entirely, but I’ll tell you about that later.

Location: my freezing pad
Mood: possibly sick with a broken toe
Music: I thought it was just another fight (Spotify)

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Unkindness, Pt 1

Reliably unreliable

Was supposed to see A-SIL our in NJ today, but the weather was just gross so we just all stayed in, although my brother did come by because he’s in town from Cali.

It’s just as well, we’re all feeling run down around here.

Me: Are you sick?
Her: I dunno. I just feel like I’m fighting off something.
Me: Same. I don’t feel sick per se, I just feel…rough.

Think I said a dozen times just in this blog that the trait that I find the most attractive is kindness.

So, it logically follows that unkindness is the most unattractive quality, at least to me.

Before Alison, I once briefly dated a wealthy lawyer. She was attractive and very nice to me.

Just…not to everyone else.

She was rude and curt to waitstaff, always late to everything, and never – ever – did what she promised she’d do. Not for me or anyone else.

She was reliably unreliable.

One day, a rude event on an escalator followed by another one to a waiter in a restaurant was enough.

When we broke up, I remember Cappy asked me why and I remember saying, “Attractive is temporary, douchebag is forever. She was a douchebag.”

When we broke up, her sister – a successful lawyer in her own right and whose personality I liked more than hers, actually – told me that she and her husband would buy me a new Porsche if I reconsidered.

Remember telling them, “I’d rather have a Metrocard and be alone, than have a Porsche and be with her.”

Because, at some point, you just tired of making excuses – to yourself and others – for someone’s poor behaviour. It’s exhausting.

It was with her that I came up with the term, “Something a lot like love.” Cause, at one point, I really thought I loved her as she was attractive, smart, successful, and nice – but only to me, which wasn’t enough.

But I obviously didn’t love her, because I left her.

And I never once regretted it.

Bring this up for two reasons:

The first is that I’m so regularly pleasantly surprised with just how kind Sara is, along with all of her other good points.

I honestly don’t think that character trait can be overstated enough when it comes to just having a life partner.

Because looks and so many things can go away and, in the end, you’re stuck with who they are deep down inside.

Who Sara is is just as nice on the inside as she is on the outside.

There’s a second reason, though, which is that a whole raft of people from my past have been making reappearances in some fashion in my life and I’m reminded about how much I value this trait because some of the reappearances were very kind while others were less so.

But this is already a longer entry than I had expected it to be, so I’ll wrap it up in the next one.

Location: wet and gross NYC
Mood: cough cough
Music: all over everybody seems unkind (Spotify)

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Fat Logan and the Bouba–Kiki Effect

The shape of our lives

Her: I can’t imagine you as a fat kid.
Me: Oh, trust me, I was.
Her: I just can’t picture it.
My mom: Do you want to see pictures of him when he was chubby?
Her: Yes!
Me: Oh god…

If I said the words: Spike, Crack, Snip, or Kick and asked you to imagine that the sounds the words made had a shape, what shape would they be?

What if I said the words: Gooey, Balloon, Smooth, or Marshmallow?

If you’re like most people, the former comes across feeling kinda hard and pointy while the latter comes across as soft and rounded.

This is called the bouba–kiki effect.

Basically, words give us a certain feeling and have a “shape” to them in our heads.

Thought about this the other day because I’ve been telling everyone for years that I was fat at 14 but I only recently realized that was inaccurate.

I was fat in 5th grade so I would have been 10 then.

That was the most traumatic time of my childhood.

Childhood traumas stay with us for so long because of how time works relative to our age.

Case-in-point: I was fat for four years, from 10 to 14.

For a 52-year-old, that’s not that big a deal – after all, it only comprises approximately 8% of my life (4/52=0.08).

Unfortunately, when you’re 14 years old, those four years comprise almost a 1/3 of my entire life up to that point (4/14=0.29).

But it’s more than that, isn’t it?

Like, you don’t really remember much before you’re eight years old.

So, when I was 14 years old, I only remembered six years of my life, really.

This is actually the THINNER version of me.

That means that, those four years of my life – ages 10 to 14 – felt like most of my life, about 67% of it, to be exact (4/6=0.67).

My point is, if words have a shape and feeling, so too do periods of our lives.

I submit that periods of our lives have a weight and shape to them as well, and only we can see and feel them.

When people say, “Just get over it,” or, “That was ages ago,” they’re not being honest with how everyone processes their youth differently from everyone else.

For me, my fat years feel soft, heavy, slow, and oversized – everything was a drag and depressing.

Even now, if I had to describe my overweight years, despite their only occupying 8% of my total life, it FEELS closer to 33% of my life.

And this is why I try to remember that the kid is processing the world very differently than I am.

Yes, he’s 10, but he really only remembers stuff and people from when he was about seven or eight, so he’s really only lived maybe three years or so?

He doesn’t truly remember much beyond that, although he has a sense of things, like the bouba–kiki effect.

Like he has a sense of loving being in NJ with his grandparents and Queens with his cousins.

He just knows they make him feel good in one way or another.

That’s why, even some 40 years later, I still know exactly what it feels like to be a fat, friendless, kid.

It’s always why I’m always obsessed with food and being fit.

Because even though it was (several) lifetimes ago, deep down – well, probably not even that deep down – I’m terrified that I’ll wake up trapped in that fat kid’s body once more.

Which, let’s be honest, is only a few poor carbohydrate decisions away.

Me: Hit a new milestone today.
Her: What’s that?
Me: Welp…somehow, I’ve eaten four pounds of peanut butter in five weeks.
Her: You’re kidding.
Me: If only. (thinking) Now I gotta go out and pick up more peanut butter.

Location: my dry-as-a-bone room
Mood: stressed
Music: I paint a picture of the days gone by (Spotify)

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Worth keeping around

Just show them a great first date

Me: Wait, you have how many unread messages from guys?
Her: (checking phone) Hmmm, 1,021?
Sara: (laughs) That sounds about right.
Me: Man, it pays to be an attractive blonde female.

When Sara and I met up with Amanda the other day, we – like always – asked about her dating life.

Because now that Sara and I were married, it’s nice to live vicariously through her, the ABFF, A-SIL, and others.

Us: So…what’s the latest?

On a related note, the other day, I posted the above image on Facebook that someone sent me from rando reddit post (which I’ve since lost).

Didn’t think much of it – four friends of mine commented and I went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I had several hundred comments and, a few days later, over 400 comments.

Some were fine, with many of my female friends commenting how bad it is out there for them.

But the number of questionable – and I do mean questionable – responses from men really floored me.

They ranged from whiney and excuse-filled – somehow, a short, old, arthritic, minority widower is anything but average…

…to angry and…jealous?

I’m not sure how to understand this fella below, who seemed to be upset that I even went on 180 dates in 18 months, which is about 10 dates a month, or 2-3 dates a week – something I told you is totally doable if you just…do it.

It’s all so profoundly sad because men want to meet women and women want to meet men, but they are clearly speaking very different languages.

And what I found most shocking is that so many men were offended by the demonstrably true things I said: Which is that whenever a man goes on a date with a woman, he runs the risk of wasting his time and/or money.

But whenever a woman goes on a date with a man, she runs the risk of wasting her time and/or getting assaulted, raped, or worse.

And yet, men will say this kinda stuff without a hint of irony:

Did you know that ladies? That “men are assaulted at a much higher rate than women?”

It’s news to me – and, I’m sure, news to you as well.

In any case, he obviously doesn’t know that I met Alison after I got robbed of all my money, or that I met Sara after I gave up most of my clients and got robbed (again).

It *MUST* be because of money or something else that women like about me but not actually me – not because I’m actually a decent human being who can talk to a woman because that would mean, well, maybe it’s you, dude.

The funniest thing about that guy’s statement is that my oldest readers know that my fave thing to do while out and about was to see how many women I could get to buy me a drink in a night.

One night, I even got a girl to get guys to buy her a drink to give to me. That, my friends, is how you afford to go on a ton of dates without going broke.

No one ever dated me for my money.

Honestly, I’m not that good-looking, I’m old as dirt, I talk a lot with my hands, my back is just crap and the rest of my body isn’t far behind, I’m overly pedantic, etc.

And yet, I have zero problem meeting and dating women, probably because of two major reasons:

    1. When I was single, I put in the time. I got shot down, repeatedly. I most likely got turned down 2-3X more than I succeeded.
      • But when I failed (beyond her having a boyfriend), it was always my fault: I was too nervous, I was too forward, I was too hesitant, something.
        • That’s how you get better at anything – by not blaming someone or something else but by fixing the only thing you can control and change, yourself.
        • Do you remember when Alison rejected me? I accepted it and told her I hoped she’d reconsider…and then I immediately picked up three other women, two within the hour. It’s never the other person’s fault.
    2. The other reason? I respected the fact that women take a chance every time they went out on a date with me or anyone else.
      • That meant that when a woman did go on a date with me, I was always grateful they took a chance, and I rewarded them for taking that chance by being a decent human being and showing them a great time.

That’s it.

That’s the big secret, fellas:

Stop complaining, put in the time, and be a decent human being.

Being interesting and non-needy helps.

This singer named Craig David had a line in a song that I always told myself whenever I felt like whining: Instead of me feelin’ sorry for myself, gonna get me somethin’ tonight.

Because you can’t whine or anger your way into someone’s contact list.

Show someone a great first date, and they’ll come back for great second date.

You’d think this would be pretty easy.

You would, clearly, be mistaken.

Women have to go through thousands – thousands – of men to find one worth keeping around.

You gotta be worth keeping around to be worth keeping around, man.

Location: the gym, trying to survive against 20-somethings
Mood: annoyed and embarrassed
Music: it’s so late, yet, I’m so up for it (Spotify)
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Happy (?) New Year, 2026

A start is enough for now

Her: What are you thinking about?
Me: (sighing) 2015 into 2016 – ten years ago.

Another year’s passed.

When I was a kid, the new year was always filled with so much excitement and hope.

These days, it’s a lot less of that.

This was my room decades ago.

It’s pretty wild that it’s 2026.

I remember in 1999 how crazy it was that we were turning to a new century and millennium.

Over a quarter-of-a-century later, that seems like a distant memory.

In 2015, I had a pregnant wife I adored without end, both parents, a smoking hot career, and was in peak health.

And then, in a snap, it all turned to shit.

This was the view from Alison’s hospital room at midnight on 2015.12.31, exactly 10 years ago today. That was our wedding reception picture on the windowsill.

But I couldn’t even mourn all that I lost because I was suddenly legally, morally, and ethically responsible for another – tiny, helpless – human being for the first time in my life.

What happened the next few years was a lotta madness and haze that I’m still working through now.

On that New Year’s Eve between 2015 and 2016, I sat alone with my dying wife on the top floor of a hospital on the East River and had this exact view in the lounge area.

I remember how beautiful it all looked and, while terrified, still felt hopeful.

2016 into 2017, I felt a lot less hopeful.

In 2017, when I thought my life couldn’t get worse, it got so much worse.

And here I am in the start of 2026 with my son, who’s now old enough to be really interact with me, and Sara, who has been nothing but a gift since the moment I met her.

I struggle still with all of the darkness both in and surrounding me.

But I feel a bit more hopeful, now that I have the two of them as companions.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. And a start is enough for now.

Me: Happy new year!
Him: Happy new year, papa!

Location: an Indian restaurant, trying to warm up
Mood: hopeful(ish) and freezing
Music: Gotta find my way (Spotify)
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Categories
personal

Leaving holes in our lives that cannot be filled

As Happy as I could be

Him: (after meeting the Firecracker) You have a type.
Me: (shrugging) It’s not so much that as there are certain traits in a partner that I value. And the partner that I would pick to be my “until-death-do-you-part” partner would have the most of those things because I value those things.

The Firecracker isn’t Alison, but they have a lot in common – far beyond both being blondes with coloured eyes.

This shouldn’t be surprising because I seek certain things, just like everyone else does.

For example, they’re both female, which makes sense, as I like females. They’re both unwaveringly kind. They both liked that I cooked and I liked that they both cleaned.

Etc. Etc.

I’ve always said that we spend our lives looking for our tribes.

Who’s the ultimate example of your tribe if not your partner?

And if your partner isn’t the ultimate example of your tribe, why isn’t s/he, and why would you be with her/him then?

Firecracker: Are you happy?
Me: (thinking) Yes. But it’s complex.

This fella named Oliver Sacks once said:

When people die they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate – the genetic and neural fate – of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

Yeah.

And when someone leaves your Venn diagram, they take with them that unique space in your life that only he or she coulda occupied.

So, I have a hole in my soul the shape of my dad that was carved out once he died.

Just like I have one in the shape of my grandmother.

But the largest hole is that of Alison. It’s still there, as are the others.

That’s not changed. It never will.

After all, grief is the price we pay for wonderful things.

My father, Alison, my grandmother – they were all my wonderful things.

So, when the Firecracker asks me something like, “Are you happy?” The answer is yes.

But, imagine that you lost your left arm seven years ago. And in those seven years, beautiful and terrible things happened, because, that’s how life is.

Assume that you’re lucky and the beautiful things far outnumber the terrible things.

I’d assume you’d be happy.

But you’ll never be as happy as you would have been if you got a chance to enjoy those wonderful things AND still have your left arm.

Except, it’s not just your left arm. It’s your right hand as well.

And other bits and pieces of your body soul.

As happy as you could possibly be, you’ll never be as happy as you could have been sine qua non/but for the losses.

That’s the truest answer for the Firecracker’s question and it’s something that I’m acutely aware of for my son.

Because, as happy as he’ll be, as good as a parent as I could possibly be, he’ll forever miss having his mother raise and love him.

He’ll forever be missing something most people, myself included, take for granted.

And my heart aches as to the truth of that statement.

It’s why Mother’s Day/Alison’s birthday is such hell for both of us.

Note that the same is true for the Firecracker.

Because we met after she’s lived decades of her life and the purpose of life is to wear you down.

She too has injuries that she bears so that, as happy as she might be with me, those injuries remain. But that’s her story to tell.

I know that I can make the years the Firecracker and I have together as happy as I can.

But I also know that there are things that I can’t do because we all have those holes in our souls in the shape of the people and things we’ve loved and lost.

I like to think that, it’s not so much that I’ll die one day, so much as it is that I’ll have so many holes in my soul that, one day, they’ll be too many for me to go on.

I’m 39 in this picture above and the main one.

My friend Nadi took them while we were having dinner one night.

Life was perfect at that moment.

At that moment: My clients are awesome, and my career is taking off. My dad is alive. I’m happy and laughing with friends. And she’s alive and we’re about to start a family. Three kids. Suburbs.

Alla that.

A year after that picture: Alison and I lost our first pregnancy. It was the start of a winter of sadness and pain that I wouldn’t have believed possible for anyone to survive.

Nonea that.

But, in that moment, I was happy because I didn’t know how fucked up life could – and would – become.

Man, the lucky never realize they are lucky until it’s too late.

I’m realizing how lucky – at least right now – I am.

And I’m grateful to the Firecracker and the kid for making me feel lucky again.

It’s been such a long time.

Me: But I’m as happy as I could possibly be right now. I have no capacity to be any happier.
Her: Ok, I’ll take that.

Location: A dark bullet bar with some new friends and good stories
Mood: lucky happy
Music: It’s gotta drive you crazy, how you keep it all inside (Spotify)
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