About Time

I hear a lot from people who want me to mention them in this blog. Well, not a lot. There is Winter Storm, who pesters me for a mention, but until this second, I have resisted. How about Mr. Anger? I have mentioned him a few times, depends on his mood, because he reads the blog and writes me cryptic notes if he thinks I am secretly writing about him. It takes some ego to think a diatribe about the first African American president is somehow related to Mr. Anger, but there you have it. My Dumb Friend has asked me why I have not included him and our silly history in here, and then I remind him, "dude, you are always there, somewhere..." That should keep him busy.

I was just thinking, on my way home from West Virginia, which is amazingly beautiful, how many women I love. Well, first I was thinking about the women I have loved. Whenever my mind focuses on past love, She is always the first to appear. She was the first person I ever fell madly in love with, possibly the only one whom I actually fell madly in love with. Love is such a strange thing, with power of first blush, and kissing and passion all mixed together is such an explosive package, no wonder it fails us so many times in life. She was so dynamic and smart, beautiful, sensual and just a slight bit crazy, which happens to be the way I like them.

We stay in touch, she and I. Spent the night together a couple of years ago, after a night out, sharing a meal and memories. She remains grounded, beautiful and still sexy as all get out. She has parenting advice for me, which is always helpful, since I have only about 300 close friends who are always offering parenting advice.

Speaking of advice, I hardly ever mention children in this blog and for good reason. First, just recently I found out, to my shock and horror, that not only do they read this from time to time, but friends of theirs do too. Which is much worse, because if you read back to some of the early posts, or email for links to last years blog, you see some very personal stories, some very sad stories and some incredibly nasty and graphic stories. All true. For the most part.

I do have a couple of children that live with me. And I am about to make that big dramatic turn that is so much fun to do. See, when I fell madly in love for the first time, and it fell apart (as it has often done in my life) I actually believed that I could never fall in love like that again. Then a couple of years later, while living in Los Angeles, I fell madly in love again, but that ended even more tragically. There is a point here, and that is that the first blush of real adult type love is so powerful and when it ends, if it does, it does not have to, but for many people it does, when it does end, it hurts so bad and you kind of make a promise to yourself to never fall so madly in love because when it ends, it hurts.

I felt that way for a long time, protecting some sort of interior love thing that allowed me to move from relationship to friends with benefits, to all sorts of other derivative relationships and on and on. Then these babies showed up, how, I am not quite sure, but one day, there they were and a few months later, it was them and me, alone. I will never forget when they did show up, because the love you feel for babies that you made is even more powerful than the love you feel for sexy people who wink at you and ask you out on a date.

Now I have a son and as his father, we are working out our adult relationship. I have two daughters whom I could not imagine life without. Well, sometimes I imagine life without them, but that never lasts long, and when I come back to reality, I realize I am not only madly in love with them, but blessed in a very deep way to be a part of their lives. Both are amazing and smart and beautiful and easy on the eyes and fun to be around. Once or twice, possibly more, but I forget, we do not get along. Here is the thing about hands on parenting, as they age you realize what a gift it has been to spend days with them, countless hours playing catch or drawing birds or throwing rocks in the water or simply napping. I know some people who have, for whatever reasons, had child care professionals raise their children and for the life of me, I don't get that. Even on the worst days with children around, in retrospect, those are some of the best days.

Fathers and daughters have unique relationships. It has been my experience, as both a brother to a sister and a father to two daughters, that mothers and daughters do not always have the same profound relationships as fathers do with their daughters. I have given this some thought, and one thing I think causes conflict is that as a daughter matures and gets talkative and fun to be around, fathers often feel protective, so they spend more time with their daughters, while this is happening, sometimes a mother will become jealous of the time spent with the daughter and instead of actually talking to her husband, she grows resentful. What I have seen countless times is that as the daughter begins to grow up and become a young woman, the mother grows more distant towards her flourishing daughter and to make up for that divide, the father invests even more time with his daughter. A vicious cycle begins and mothers, who look in the mirror and see the effects of parenting and age, and then look at the youth and vitality of their daughter, and become jealous of the attention their husband now showers on the girls, grow ever more resentful. Again, I have seen this numerous times, it is not true with all mother daughters, but it is true enough.

I think I have decent relationships with both of the girls who currently live rent-free here. They both bring so much to the table, in terms of beauty and brains, that I am almost always happy just to be near them. They need me less and less in their lives, I am barely a driver for them at this point. I like to watch them. Over the past decade they have matured beyond anything I could have imagined.

At some point I really believed I could never be powerfully in love again. I thought my heart had hardened and I could never just love without fear. Daughters give you that gift of loving without worry. Years ago I could not imagine loving so deeply, and yet, I know my days with them are numbered. Part of the job of parenting it knowing that someday you need to fade to the background. It is happening on almost a daily basis and in some ways I hate it. They will love someone else, hopefully madly and passionately. They will move on, move out, move away. I know it, they know, hell they remind me of it on almost a daily basis, and yet I love them, my daughters, because they are amazing and beautiful and stunningly brilliant in their own ways and I will always, for as long as I breath, love them with all my heart.