Memoirs
So I am sitting at my desk, here in my office of Ralph Lauren colors contrasted against dingy carpet and worn doorjambs. I guess my office is the template for my life, the infrastructure is a bit worn and dingy while at the same time someone has splashed it with fancy colors to try to hide the wear. But right now the wear is showing. And growing. Whatever brought me to this point in my life, this moment, this time I cannot totally understand. That is the reason I write; to get perspective and understanding. To what end?, well I suppose it is just to make myself feel better.
I have a bunch of stuff that bothers me. Stuff that seems so stupid and unreasonable that it is almost unbelievable. Things like the negative, careless, and often hurtful words that flow from my girlfriends vocal chords. All the while she is either totally unaware of what her words means or she just doesn’t care about other’s feelings’. Probably both are true. Or the stuff that comes from the political arena where lies and deceit are just the order of the day. Where did honesty go? Where did reason go? Things today are disjointed and confusing, I feel like an Alzheimer’s victim. Maybe my brain is just going, you know, way too much pot and booze over the years.
As I get older my body is changing, noises are louder, stairs are steeper, boxes are heavier, and the chicks have quit looking. WTF? Where do things thing come from? Am I just getting cranky? Like my dad? God was he a treat when he was my age. Always bitching and complaining. Maybe that is it, I always told myself I would not follow in his footsteps. What a cliché, I am just like my father.
As I write this I am somewhat disheartened by the fact that I can’t get all of my feelings out on the paper. By the time I cognate the words the felling has changed into something else or the thought leads me into another equally frustrating topic.
Speaking of frustration, I think this is the word that most typifies my current daily life. I am frustrated. By what? Well, mostly people. I could safely say that my relationships are the leading cause of frustration in my life. What does this say about me, I wonder. Surveying the landscape of my relationships I can group them into categories. First, immediate relations, wife, kids, step-kids, family. Next are the next circle of friends, associates, co-workers, Next the general public, and then I could group together public officials, activists, and other people that are ruining the world.
Frustration: I am frustrated about communication. Isn’t this the crux of relationship? How we talk to each other? My current relationship with Heidi is fraught with communication problems. When we talk it is more common than not that we are talking about something totally different than the other. Even after we identified this problem it still persists. I go out of my way, take the time, to be sure I am saying what I mean, carefully. Systematically. Sounds like drudgery. It is. It probably is no fun to talk to me. I am boring as I try for the precise, efficient exchange of information.
I am sure that many other people think about these things. I just don’t know any of them. Where are all of the thinking people? I know that universities are full of thinkers, my oldest son is one of them. I guess he is one of them! I do know some thinkers! What was I thinking? What I am saying here is that my experience, my immediate view of the world around me is that most people are thinkers but not communicators. This is going no where.
I was born in the 1900’s. 1959 to be specific. The fifties in America was a hopefully, upward collective movement that shot out from World War II right up and onto the moon in the late 60’s. I was caught up in the middle of all that. My father is an educated man but kind of an odd duck. He grew up on an Oklahoma farm, joined the air force at 17, earned a masters and became an electrical engineer. He came to Salt Lake City to work for the local copper mine where he somehow landed in the film industry and made a couple of million producing family oriented wild life films. My mom grew up in a central Oregon logging camp. Born in Portland in the 30’s her father was a logger. They ended up in Bend, central Oregon just on the other side of the coastal range. She was very smart and advanced at school rapidly. She was promoted ahead of her class by two grades, which gave her the fortunes and misfortunes of growing up too quickly and with kids much older than herself. Her life was small town. 8 kids in her high school graduating class. She was married and with child before she was 19 18 years of age. Off to see the world, married an Air force man. Married Russell E Neihart, he’s from Oklahoma and has 8 sisters.
My four siblings and me grew up in the Great State of Utah in a suburb of Salt Lake City known as Holiday. I think they have made it an actual city by now, Holiday, Utah. We were upwardly mobile, middle class with all the promise of a very good life, for us and our children, and grand children. What could go wrong?
Today my mom and dad are divorced. My dad lives alone in his motor home in Arizona, my mom came out and lives alone just up the road from her life partner Linda. My older sister Jo Ellen is divorced and in financial calamity brought on by her lazy AND greedy ex-husband Dave Allen. Jo Ellen lives in my moms basement. She grew up and eloped with her boyfriend Paul, I think she was 18 years old or so. She and Paul moved in together and then 6 months later Jo Ellen moved back home. The marriage was annulled and that was that. About a year later Paul shot himself in the head with his fathers hunting rifle. I think he was a bit disturbed. Then Jo Ellen married Dave. They had a nice life bringing two kids into the world Gabriella and her older brother Dax. This all lasted for about 15 years then Dave went nuts. Quit his job, had big dreams but no action plan. He pushed the controls of his life hard forward and flew the plane into the ground. Jo Ellen was left with all the bills and several tens of thousand of debt, hence the mom’s basement thing. Next we have my older brothers Dave and Paul. Twins, you see. I refer to them as one bad egg-split in half. Dave grew up and Married Ann Olsen. I think their marriage lasted four years or so and produced one human, Elizebeth. At that time, Dave liked to drink hard and blow coke, which leads to adultery and other debauchery. You see, Dave lacks a moral compass. It didn’t come in his welcome bag. He didn’t see the connections. He couldn’t see the value of a wife and family. It didn’t make sense. He left Ann and abandoned Liz and made a graceful twenty-five yearlong swan dive right smack into the ground. Dave was just released from prison after serving four years for felony DUI, can’t put the bottle down. He’s been sober for a while, we’ll see. Paul, the other half of the egg (yes I know that is not genetically accurate), is a functioning alcoholic and at 50+ years he has joined the ranks of the walking dead. Those zombie like creatures that move through their lives with no conscious intention and they seems to leave no trace of their own footprints here in humanity. He too grew up and was living life as a yahoo. You know, party on dude! He tried relationships in high school but just got his little heart crushed. Somehow he never recovered. He never trusted his heart to anyone hence. He was yahooing around in his twenties perfecting his alcoholism when he met Dawn. She was a fellow drunk, their first “date” ended in them passing out in their clothes after making it to Paul’s apartment blind drunk. This was the start of something beautiful, that is if you like Shakespeare shot in film noire. They hooked up, didn’t marry, and had Joey, a preemie with slight fetal alcohol syndrome. Joey still is a bit sketched out. I think they finally did marry only to divorce thereafter. I think they were together for about 10 years. Paul never gave his heart to Dawn and has had no real substantive relationships since. Then there is my little sister Lisa. She grew up and married a high school boyfriend named Cory. Lisa and Cory have raised a family, built many memories, and have had modest financial success. They spawned three youngins’ Hunter and Emyloo and Savanah, twins. The kids have done well, each graduating from highschool, the girls with advanced degrees. Lisa has lived the common American narrative. Lisa got through the distractions of American life in the late 20th century. She kept her marriage together, got the kids up and out, and managed a business through all of it.
My story is similar to the rest of my sibs. I grew up, fell into the counterculture drug using world, got my girlfriend pregnant and against all odds got married. I married Terri Thompson and had a son Nathan. Then we moved to Oklahoma and had two more sons Christopher and Nicholas. For 10 years in Oklahoma we grew the family business then sold it. We moved back to SLC and had my Daughter Haley. After another 10 years of increasingly tense relations Terri and I divorced. We were married for about 23 years.
I, being a competitor, like to measure my own success and failures against my family. I fall between Jo Ellen and The Egg on one side and Lisa and Cory on the other. I have had my share of success, in relationships and in business. I have had my share of failure in both relationships and business. If I have to formally declare where I am in life I would say it has been good. My children and I have a great, close, and resprectfull relations, despite the divorce.
What could go wrong? Plenty!
Today I am living the carefree good life. Got money in the bank, full belly, and love in my life. What more do I need?