Tag: human condition

Categories
personal

We’re all children until 33

It is I

Me: I don’t think you’d recognize me back then with my glasses and double chin.
Her: I’ve seen pictures! I mean, sometimes I look and think, “Is that Logan?” But it’s gotta be, he’s the fat one!
Me: …
Her: What? You were a fat kid! You say it all the time!

When did you truly first feel like an adult?

As a kid, I woulda thought that I’d feel like an adult at 21. What a laugh.

Being at my mom’s place last week was interesting for a host of reasons, not least of which was that she immediately fell back into being my mom circa the late 1980s/early 1990s, and I resisted – as much as I could – doing the same.

That got me to thinking about an article I read recently where scientists had identified five distinct ages of the human brain over a lifetime

Now, I always felt like I was pretending to be an adult alla way up until I was 33 or so. That’s when the Reporter and I broke up and I decided I wanted to see what it was like to just date a lotta different women.

And I brought you along. See, I turned 33 in 2006, 20 years ago. Right when I started this blog.

Well, it turns out that it wasn’t all in my head.

The latest research shows that we all have four major mental changes in our lives that occur at: nine, 32, 66 and 83.

I have definitely seen my own kid change radically these past two years.

And I know that 2005-2007 were the most impactful years of my life up until that point in terms of personal growth – when I was 32 to 34. I met Alison when I 35 and I often told her that she wouldn’t have liked me if she had met me just a few years earlier.

Because I wasn’t the me that she met.

In some ways, after she died, I feel I reverted back to my old self for a (long) while. I remember thinking familiar thoughts from long ago for a while that I don’t anymore.

I have to thank Sara for pulling me back, honestly.

Years ago, I told you the story about St. Augustine.

The story is that St. Augustine was once this womanizer who once famously prayed, da mihi castitatem et continentiam…sed noli (“Grant me chastity and continence…but not yet”). It should be noted that he’s also the patron saint of brewers, as an aside.

Anywho, he was a frequent visitor of prostitutes before he changed his life around. Afterward, he went back to visit an old place and ran into a prostitute he used to know in that biblical way. He continued on his way so she tried to get his attention for his usual and called out to him, Augustine, it is I.

To which, he replied without stopping, Yes, but it is not I.

It’s the opposite for me.

I feel like I’m more like the me that I was before everything went down with Alison and my dad than I have in…well, I guess two years before all the madness started.

The last day I can remember – which isn’t necessary the last day it actually happened – when I felt the way I do now was when I was in Hell’s Hundred Acres so many years ago.

It’s almost as if I was lost in woods in winter all this time and found… well, not my way out, exactly.

Rather, it’s like I found a welcoming cabin – still in the winter, still in the woods, but it warm, cozy, and familiar. I could rest before the next part of my journey.

I’m grateful for the rest.

And I wonder what will happen with my head when I turn 66 for my next journey.

I hope I will still write about my terribly pedestrian life.

And I hope you’ll still read about my terribly pedestrian life.

Location: the studio for Scenic Fights
Mood: ex. haus. ted.
Music: the man I was before (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

The kid graduated from elementary school

Wanting but not ready to

I always try my best to keep all my entries in chronological order because it acts as my own personal journal – I can’t tell you how many times in a week I’ll search through the blog for some bit of information

But the issue here is that the kid’s graduation was actually a full four days before the last day of his school.

So, that means that the first part of this entry happened before the last entry about the baseball game and the second part, after.

The kid let me sleep in an extra hour but after he woke me up, we quickly made our way to the 84th Street where his graduation was taking place.

Sara took the day off to come and support him, which I really appreciated.

Unfortunately, we were running about five minutes late, which Sara and barely noticed but the kid was apoplectic.

Him: (upset) What if I miss it!? I can run there.
Me: Dude, it’s 85 degrees, the bus is here in two minutes, and it’s six blocks from here.
Him: But what if we miss it?!
Me: We’ll be fine. You gotta believe in the system.

Luckily, the bus did actually come in two minutes and we were there within 10.

Him: We made it!
Me: Never had a doubt, kid.

Before I knew it, they had called his name, and he was up on stage getting his “diploma” and shaking alla his teachers’ hands.

The last time he graduated from anything was five years ago and I had so many mixed feelings then.

This time, I still had them, but it was less so.

Alison would have cried because she would have been so happy and proud.

Like I was.

Afterward, I quickly hit up the gym for two reasons: (a) to work out and (b) to let the kid play for a bit with his friends.

Then I took him and everyone else down to Chinatown to celebrate.

Me: What are you in the mood for?
Him: Hand-pulled noodles and soup!
Me: In the summer?!
Him: You said I could get anything!
Me: (laughing) So I did. Steaming hot noodles and soup in the middle of summer it is.

The next three days were weird as he “graduated,” but he still had school.

A lotta his classmates – he said about half – had already started their summer vacations. After all, we went to a baseball game until about midnight the day before his last day of elementary school.

But I suppose that he’s like me in that he wanted to spend time with friends that he would no longer see on the regular.

Because it finally hit him that he would never be an elementary school student again.

And, truth be told, it finally hit me just now as I wrote these words: He’ll never be an elementary student again.

He’s growing up, as he’s supposed to and as I want him to.

But, while I want him to grow up, I’m not ready for my little boy to grow up yet.

Location: Asheville, NC, having some fried chix
Mood: conflicted
Music: I never knew me a better time and I guess, I never will (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

The Hakka Round House

Survival to Kitsch

Me: I dunno. I think we might be bored. And it’s in the middle of nowhere.
Her: I think we should see it. You’ve always wanted to see one and now’s our chance. I’ll handle all the logistics.
Me: Well, ok, I guess…

One of the things that Sara did for our trip, because I’d mentioned wanting to visit a Hakka round house – called a tulou (土樓) – was to discover that there was a replica round house built in a town called Miaoli in Taiwan.

I mentioned us visiting it briefly and said that I’d tell you about it someday.

Seems like today’s the day.

This is me standing in front of the replica.

It’s not so much a house as it is more a round apartment complex with an open courtyard in the middle.

For the replica, they built a glass roof over what is usually the open roof.

You can see how there are rooms all along the side of it.

Now, the reason that these things were round was pretty simple: The Hakka were living in a world that just didn’t want them and was always trying to kill them.

So, the buildings were round so that archers could defend the home from all angles.

They had walls that were up to six feet thick at the base to prevent siege weapons from breaking in.

On mainland China, there’s a whole preserved village of them in Fujian – what we saw in Taiwan was merely a replica of one.

Again, they weren’t so much homes as they were mini-fortresses that were meant to keep the inhabitants – my people – from being murdered.

I mean, think about that for a second.

Even if you’re not told that you’re hated and despised, just looking around you – being in remote areas living in fortresses that were meant to be completely self-sufficient – how do you not grow up feeling like an outsider and unwanted?

This was the mindset of the Hakka for thousands of years and one has to think that this mindset permeated everything about us.

In some ways, the Hakka are truly like the Jewish community in that, like them, the Hakka really focused on education and vying for positions of power.

Because, like the Jewish community, the Hakka were tired of being powerless and persecuted, so we have been over-represented in the military and politics post-WW2.

In fact, post-Mao, the most powerful man in all of China was Deng Xiaoping, a Hakka.

He modernized China more than any other single human being, including Mao himself.

In other words, (and this is purely my opinion but I think I’m right) he made modern China more Hakka-like and this is why China is so powerful now.

And that is why I’ve said, so many times in the past, that the US is not prepared to go to war against a country like China.

America is not prepared to go against a society that has, because of Deng, a culture based on education, power, and survival.

The Hakka survive shit.

You don’t know what you’re up against.

This isn’t the China that the US carved up in the 1800s and Japan beat in the 30s and 40s. This is one that’s modern and has learned its lessons.

Now, the immediately preceeding two pictures are of more replica round houses, this time, built on top of a department store in my my mom’s hometown of Hsinchu in Taiwan.

I find it funny that these things created for survival and defense have now become cultural kitsch.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by V O L T R E X (@voltrex_44)

And like I said in my last entry, I think the Hakka culture explains so much about why I am the way I am: Focused on knowledge and education but never forgetting that survival is as much an issue of physical ability as well as mental acuity.

The Hakka round house is a synecdoche of the Hakka people, in my opinion.

Me: I think I’m finally gonna write about the Hakka round house. Hey, thanks for insisting that we go [when we were in Taiwan]. That was really cool to see.
Her: Oh, sure! I’m glad we got a chance to go.

The interior of the Yuchang tulou. By Gisling – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
The exterior of the Yuchang tulou. By Gisling – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Location: my regular rectangular pad
Mood: ridic busy
Music: I learned my lesson young (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

I’m not exactly Chinese

Travelers, safe at home

Me: (years ago) It’s hard to explain. Essentially, it’s kinda like how Jewish Europeans were looked at by other Europeans. [My people] mainly look like everyone else but everyone else hated us for how different we were from them.
Lea, my Irish friend: (in her Irish accent) Ah, you’re a traveler!

When I was a kid, I read the Diary of Anne Frank, and it really messed with me. I only ever read it that one time because it shook me so much.

Couldn’t wrap my kid brain around it; I had Jewish friends and they looked exactly like all the other Caucasian kids.

This was from when we visited Vienna.

Remember that this was the 80s and, at that time, Asians were only starting to move into Queens so there weren’t a lotta us.

I remember thinking, “Man, white people are so weird. They hate and try to kill off an entire group of people just because they’re different.”

It wasn’t until way later that I discovered that this wasn’t limited to Jews and Europeans.

The Indians had their caste system, the Japanese had their Burakumin, and the Chinese – I later discovered – had…us.

You see, I’m not exactly Chinese in the same way that a Jewish citizen of France may or may not call themselves “French,” and/or “Jewish.”

My family – prior to my marrying Alison and then Sara – is 100% Hakka, which is what we called ourselves, for at least the last 700 years. This means that I’m genetically 100% Hakka.

Man, did I mess that up.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Just like the Irish called their itinerants “travelers,” the Hakka literally translates to “guest people.”

We were “guest people,” because no one wanted us, so we were essentially nomads

But we were called less savory things and treated even worse than that.

It was estimated that in during one reprisal, the Chinese killed 30,000 Hakka every single day for weeks.

That’s just a tiny bit of our story but essentially, people have been trying to kill or get rid of us for centuries.

That’s why so many Hakka are in Taiwan. There’s a dark explanation that I told for years and still tell.

We’re kinda like the Jews of China. No one wanted us and everyone was always trying to kill us. When there wasn’t any more China to escape to, we left the whole mainland and went to Taiwan. My parents went even further and came here.

But it’s true.

And it’s deeply imbedded into the psyche of many/most Hakka that the next reprisal could come at any day, so safety has always been a theme of this blog.

So too is embedded the concept of home, probably one of the top two or three recurring themes in this blog.

The place that this mindset shows up the most, though, is in our houses.

But, this entry’s getting long, so I’ll wrap it up in the next one.

Oh, but here are some pictures of classic Hakka food before I go.

Location: my little slice of the world
Mood: stressed
Music: I’ve been travellin’ a hard road (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

The Knock-Offs

Seeing the moon

Me: (stepping outta the shower)
Her: (nods approvingly) Whoa!
Me: (grins)
Her: You are one good-looking old man.
Me: (frowns)

This weekend, Sara and I saw a movie for the second time with the kid.

The first film we all saw together was the black-and-white film The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Powell and Basil Rathbone a few months ago.

In that film, when Basil Rathbone’s character was killed, the kid was super upset. I had to tell him it was just a film and the actor was fine.

This time around, we saw Project Hail Mary and – while it took the kid a little while to get into it – we all ended up enjoying it.

The thing is that the ending upset the kid because it was so poignant and well done. I think that’s a good thing because it’s good to have a kid that’s empathetic.

Despite what some people think, empathy is a very good thing that the world needs more of and not less.

Me: Hydrox was the original; Oreos was the knock-off.
Friend: That I knew.
Me: (thinking) Well, did you know that the Big Mac is a knock-off, even down to its name? It was a copy of the Big Boy Hamburger, by…Big Boy Restaurants.

Right now, JFK’s in the news a lot because of everything happening in the Kennedy Center.

But JFK wasn’t supposed to be the leader of the Kennedy clan, his older brother Joe Junior was supposed to be the leader. But Joseph was killed at only 29 years of age while trying to bomb some Nazis.

Their dad, Joseph Kennedy Sr., knew he wanted a son as president, so he turned to JFK and groomed him for leadership – with equally terrible results, at least for a father.

For me, I don’t need or want the kid to be president. I just want him to be happy and a productive member of society.

But, if the kid vastly outshines me – which, let’s face it, shouldn’t be terribly hard because I’m a D- celebrity at best – I feel I would have done an outstanding job as a parent.

And I hope that Alison would have been happy with how I’ve been raising our son.

She trusted him to me and that, plus the fact that he’s mine, makes me want to do a good job raising him.

Honestly, I just want the kid to be better than me.

He won’t be a knock-off, he’ll be something better than I ever was.

That’s the hope, anyway.

Him: Is he ok? (asking about an injured character from Project Hail Mary).
Me: I dunno, I hope so.
Him: I hope he’s ok too.
Me: (nodding) Let’s watch and find out. You always have to wait until to the end to find out.

We all have to wait until the story ends to find out what happened.

I hope before my story ends, I can find out, someday, if he’ll see the moon.

Location: Broadway with Sara, daydreaming about apartments and al fresco eating
Mood: tech-y
Music: things go a little bit better when you plan it (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Fellas, at my pad last night…

Corny Sad Logan

Her: Well, I found your blog before I met you, so I was interested to see how much of your online persona matched you in real life.
Me: No kidding? What’d you think?
Her: You are exactly as you are in the blog. Even the corny things you say.
Me: Corny?!
Her: Like, you say, “fellas,” in the blog. And I was like, “Well, there’s no way he uses that in real life.” Nope, he does.
Me: CORNY?!

I wonder sometimes how I come across in this blog.

When I first started writing it, I remember that my buddy Nadi felt like I came across as a sad sack – but that was mainly because I thought my failures with women was far more entertaining than my successes.

Still, a number of people, including Sara, have said that this blog pretty accurately reflects the way I am in real life.

Sara does say that I’m happier in real life versus how I sound in the blog, but I think that this blog allows me to sit with my thoughts and sadness does occupy my mind a lot.

It’s not always like that.

But yeah, I glad that at least some people think that I’m not trying to pretend to be something that I’m not.

Her: And who says “pad,” for their apartment? The 1990s called. They want their word back
Me: Well, that’s more of a 70s thing…
Her: (interrupting) They still want their word back, Logan.

Sara in high school – better pic than any of me in high school, trust me on this.

Speaking of the 70s, Sara and I had a fun time the other night reminiscing about things we loved from our past that are gone now.

For her, she loved Squeezits as a kid.

For me, I loved something called the Reggie Bar, which was named after famed baseball player Reggie Jackson.

I told her that the thing I loved the most as a little kid was cheese in a can, which was something that I could literally eat with a sleeve of saltine crackers for brekkie, lunch, and dinner.

No wonder that I such a fat kid.

I could go on and list a million more things, but I’ll relate a final story for this entry.

Told you in the last entry that Sara’s sister and BIL came over for dinner the other day and we got to talking about drinks.

Him: I definitely had a Zima before, I just don’t remember it.
Me: It looked like a bottle of vodka but tasted like…well, kinda like beer. (later) What about a Bartles and Jaymes?
Him: The coolers?
Me: Yeah, that was pretty huge when I was a kid and then it just…stopped.
Someone (I don’t remember who): That stopped being a thing by the time we were in college.

I wonder what memories of stuff happening right now the kid will bring with him into his future.

Man, I hope it’s a whole lotta good things.

I wish that more than you can imagine.

Location: Chinatown with everyone, having hand-pulled carbs
Mood: nostalgic
Music: Give me a paper and a pen so I can write about my life of sin (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Everything you have now you once wished for

More than anything

Him: (playing guitar and suddenly noticing me) Hey, what are you doing?
Me: (standing at his doorway) Sorry, was just in the kitchen and heard you play. Didn’t mean to scare you.
Him: Oh. Do you want to hear what I’ve been working on? I can play you what I got so far.
Me: (wiping hands and sitting down) Sweeet! I’d love that.

My last entry stuck in my head because of a line I wrote which was that there was once a time I dreamt of having all that I have.

    • I have a great kid that is smart, talented, kind, and healthy. That alone is worth the world to me.
    • Speaking of kids, as a kid, I had this thing called Compuserve for like two weeks because I got some sort of free trial of it somehow. It was pre-pre-prehistoric Internet. And I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. My mind could never have imagined internet and alla you people reading me.
      • This is to say nothing about the communication device/GPS/music player/video camera/photo camera/translation device/television/video game system that we all keep in my back pocket 24/7.
    • I regularly look at Sara and think, “How on earth did I convince someone as drop dead gorgeous and sweet as Sara to marry me?”
      • Granted, I may have incriminating dirt on her, but still…

    • I wrote a book, or two, that I’m proud of and this blog has been 20 years of me just putting my thoughts out into the aether, hoping someone responds – and, most times, someone does.
    • I was a respected member of the bar, and my office regularly tells me that they’d love for me to come back and do more work; I remember being in law school anxious that I’d never find a job.
      • Heck, I remember being sick with anxiety about even making it to law school, or college, or my high school, or my middle school.
    • When I was a fat kid, I dreamt, more than anything, to be slim and have friends. I’ve now been slim for at least 12 times longer than I’ve been fat.

    • I’ve always had massive imposter syndrome when it came to my ability to fight but I just destroyed a guy that was my level, twenty years younger than me, and 40 pounds heavier than me. Just…destroyed him. And this happens more often than I would have expected.
    • My mortgage is paid off some six years early and I live in the heart of Manhattan, something I dreamt of all the time when I was in Cornell.

I could go on, but I don’t wanna sound like I’m bragging.

I’m not.

I’m just reminding myself that everything I have now I once desperately wished – more than anything – for.

And I couple this idea with another one that I heard someone say once: You’re in the middle of the last big great thing you wished for.

Alison and I dreamt so much – you cannot imagine how much, which is why her death guts me – about being parents and now I am one.

Yes, it’s not at all the way I thought it would be and it’s far more difficult than I ever would have imagined.

But still, I have to remind myself that I’m in the middle of the thing that Alison and I (mainly Alison) worked so hard to have.

May is tough on the kid and me for reasons you know, and this year has been no different.

But I’m better enough now to recognize that I need to be grateful for all that I do have and not dwell on everything that I don’t.

I’m also not in a hurry for the next big thing because this thing I’m in now, is pretty good.

Mostly.

Me: Hey can I…gah! What’s on your face!?
Her: (face mask on face and with a southern accent) Look Logan, you’re used to “Tryna Get Me a Man, Sara.”
Me: Wha?
Her: This here is “Done Got Me A Man, Sara.”
Me: I don’t think this is what I signed up for. 
Her: (shakes head) Too late. No backsies.

Location: where I belong
Mood: grateful
Music: There’s so much more. Be grateful (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Staring into the sun

All about the kid

ABFF: Do you still want to keep tradition of dinner on Alison’s birthday? There’s no pressure on that – as [the kid] gets older, I totally get that he may not want to do it, or you may do something else, or…
Me: Yes, please. We’ll be there.

As we’ve been doing for the past several years, we went to ABFF’s place on Alison’s actual birthday.

ABFF asked me if I wanted to do it again this year, which I found surprising because I’m always grateful whenever someone wants to celebrate or remember Alison.

So, Sara, both kids, and I went.

We picked up a bottle of wine and had some pizza and Italian food, because that’s what the kid wanted.

And this day is really all about the kid and Alison.

And finished off the night with a Carvel ice cream cake, which also reminded me of my uncle.

ABFF: Do you remember the whale?
Me: Yeah, what was the name of it?
Her: I don’t remember. (later) Wait, Fudgie!
Me: Yes! Fudgie the Whale!

This time around, we didn’t do anything like the balloons or anything like that, because the kid always takes it so hard.

This time around, Alison was in the background, which I think is good, because thinking too much about her – for the kid and me – is a bit like staring into the sun.

It’s too much to take for too long so we turn away.

I also wanted to say that I think it says volumes about Sara that she always comes to support us and is always just a great presence there.

Can’t tell you how grateful I am that she’s in our lives.

Dunno how I managed to do it, but I’ve really met some amazing and wonderful people in my life.

Heard this quote once that went something like, “There’s no such thing as a long road with good company.

Not sure about that, as I’ve been on some long and awful roads.

But good company makes it more bearable.

Her: Are you OK?
Me: No. But I will be. I just have to make it past this week.
Her: OK.
Me: Thanks for being here.
Her: Where else would I go?

Location: earlier today, a roundtable, being told I’m no Daredevil
Mood: better
Music: And I’m tired of getting used to the day (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

A Taiwanese Mother’s Day

Hard things to accept

Me: For Mother’s Day brunch, what’re you in the mood for? We may or may not need a reservation. Middle Eastern, Asian, Western, what?
Sara: I want a 蛋餅 (danbing).
Me: OK! That makes things MUCH easier. I’m on it. That’s it then. You just chill. I’ll handle the rest.

While we were in Taiwan, Sara and the kids go really into Taiwanese brekkies, their favourite of which was a savory egg crepe.

But, because (a) it’s Taiwanese and (b) it’s a breakfast dish, we haven’t had any places or opportunities with which to have it.

But for Mother’s Day, Sara really wanted some Taiwanese food for brunch, and I wanted to see my mom anywho, so this was perfect.

To this end, I took Sara out to the very first Taiwanese restaurant I’d ever taken her to out in Queens

There, we ordered practically the whole menu, and she had to have her stinky tofu.

Her son: The whole restaurant is gonna hate us. We’re gonna scare people off like we did in Taiwan.
Me: Nah, look around. You two are one of only three non-Taiwanese here. We’re all used to it.

Afterward, we went to go to a bookstore to kill some time (not sure what the kid is doing here)…

…before seeing my mom for a bit.

But we didn’t stay long as we took our kids and my nephews for a quick trip to the local park for them to enjoy the sunshine out in the burbs before dinner.

Sara was happy to just hear the birds, enjoy the sunshine, and smell the grass.

Afterwards, we came back to eat with my mom and my sister’s family.

Ended up getting BBQ of all things.

But my mom enjoyed it.

Mom: This is great! I really should stop cooking and just order in more. Cooking is tiring.
Me: OMG, mom, that’s what we’ve all been saying!

Talking with my mom bums me out these days.

Not that particular exchange above, just in general.

Because she’s always had a memory like a steel trap – dude, that lady’s mind was razor sharp my whole life – but lately, she’s been forgetting things more than she’s ever done in the past.

I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for me seeing as I’m already in my 50s and she’s in her 80s but it’s still hard to accept.

Everything is harder to accept these days.

But more on that in the next entry.

Location: earlier tonight in LIC, wondering if the homeless guy was gonna throw a large rock at us
Mood: full, so full
Music: If you could see it then you’d understand (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

The daily horrors

The Horror We Share

Sara: [My friend’s] moving back to Milwaukee.
Me: Even after her dad died?
Her: Yeah. She still has her mom. Plus, being back home made her miss it.
Me: I get that. I’ve only ever known or been in New York.

Sara and I were taking a stroll in the neighborhood recently when she suddenly jumped back.

Me: What?!
Her: (pointing) Look!
Me: What, I don’t…gah!

And that’s when I saw it – a full-sized replica of the monster from the horror film, The Nun just chilling in the passenger seat of someone’s car.

It’s just not something you see every day on the streets of the Upper West Side.

Then again, there are so many daily horrors that assault us that we barely register them anymore.

Sara has at least two friends that are either stricken with cancer themselves or someone they love dearly.

And I was just talking to a good friend of mine and he told me that another buddy of mine just left his job and moved back home to Florida to take care of his parents, BOTH of whom have cancer.

It truly is the emperor of all maladies.

It’s May again.

I think of Alison and my dad every single day but it’s always worse in May, although it’s not been as bad as it has in the past.

But even if I’m not reminded of them or their plights directly, I’m at an age where someone I know – either directly or indirectly – ends up getting cancer almost every single week and I think to myself:

Man, I know exactly what they’re going through. I hope they make it.

Really do.

Because it’s both jaw dropping and horrifying.

And yet, people just seem to go about their days as if everything is fine.

Then again, perhaps I truly am the weird one, because I’m so terrified of getting it and leaving the boy alone in the world.

Me: D’you know how many people get cancer in America?
Him: I gotta figure like…50%?
Me: Yup, you got that right. One outta two. That means, statistically speaking, you or I will get it. How people aren’t radically changing everything they’re doing in light of this information is beyond me.

My own mom is dealing with her own health issues – not cancer, thankfully, just age-related stuff.

But it reminds me that she’s mortal and not the young, vibrant woman that I picture in my head whenever I think of her.

It’s a bit like staring into the sun, I can only think about it so long before I have to turn my thoughts to something else because it’s too much to bear.

Can’t bear the thought of losing any more of my family. I’ve lost enough of them as it is.

I suppose that’s why people don’t radically change everything about their lives – because I think we’d all be paralyzed with fear if we truly thought about all the horror surrounding us on the daily.

Her: (staring at the nun mannequin) That’s so creepy. Who does that?
Me: Someone who wants to be in the HOV lane and doesn’t have anyone, I guess.

Location: home, trying to push all that doubt to the side of my mouth
Mood: horrified
Music: For when you go come in misery (Spotify)
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.