Day 10: Sensory Life

Day 10 of the challenge I accepted asks me to speak about the sensory issues that autistic people face. To varying degrees and with different compositions, autisic people are sensitive and easily irritated by many things that can hamper their mood and ability to perform. Those issues include, but are not limited to:

1. Light - some autistics complain about flourecent lighting or bright lights.
2. Odors - when we put on the hiring pilot in Lansing, and when I have attended some events with many autistic people, I was warned not to use lots of cologne or perfume.
3. Touch - some autistic people loathe being touched or are easily startled.
4. Taste - flavors of some foods can be very off putting, and some autistics have a digestive sensitivity to gluten or other foods. @DUBISETTY, MALLIKARJUNA​ and others have posted here about autism-friendly diets.
5. Sound - loud noises can distract some autistic people.

Any one of these things can be easily ameliorated or mitigated, providing an environment in which the autistic person is not distracted and can work or enjoy themselves happily.

1. Flourescent lights can be replaced with incandescents, or lights can be dimmed or reduced in the area in which an autistic person works.
2. Although a challenge for some of us, we can lay off the perfumes and deodorants and be careful what chemicals are used in work environments with autistic people.
3. Be careful when approaching anyone from behind and startling them, and adjust your personal "touch" to each person.  Not everyone likes a handshake, slap on the back, or even a hug. Considering the news of late, we all ought to be careful about that anyway : )
4. As I mentioned, Mallik and others have posted autism-friendly diet information here.
5. Many autistic people I have seen like to wear headsets (like construction worker's gear) or use their headphones to listen to music or sounds that soothe them, and drown out distracting noises so they can concentrate.

How different is this for the rest of us "neurotypical" people? I see some of my employees like to work in darkness or near windows, and I have heard complaints about fluorescent lighting for years; not everyone appreciates the guy down the hall who drowns himself in Drakkar Noir or the person who, late in the afternoon, burns the popcorn in the microwave; we all have different preferences when it comes to backslaps and handshakes - I know manager who hug, but many more who never touch a person; working on an upset stomach isn't fun for anyone; many people in IBM wear headsets to enjoy music while working. I find it even helps me - and when I can I prefer to listen to monotonous music like The Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers, or Philip Glass. An intern I had years ago appreciated that so much he bought me a copy of The Crystal Method's new albums at the end of his summer with IBM (Hi, @Murray, Brian J​!).

These sensitivities provide constant challenge to parents of autistic children, however, as the parents discover, learn about them, and learn to anticipate the triggers and work to lessen them or eliminate them Autism advocates in our community work with retail and public spaces to teach these things and make their business more autism-friendly or at least autism-aware. It helps their business and the community. What sensitivities have you heard of or dealt with?

Day 9: Autistic Owned Businesses

A quick google search on this topic reveals very little. I was able to find this link at the top before the results turned into more about business supporting autistic people or hiring them (Autism Speaks, e.g.). I know of none of the business listed in the top result.

I know more about businesses like Rising Tide Car Wash,  ULTRA testing, the NonPareil Institute, The Precisionists, or GirlAgain!/YesSheCan - businesses that support hiring autistic people. Finding that there are some businesses owned by autistic individuals is new to me. Does anyone else know of some to share here?

A Recovered Poem

About 13 years ago last week fire destroyed our apartment in Ossining, NY and we lost a lot of valuable things - the most precious of which were just mementos or heirlooms. Chief among my losses were the poems I wrote in college.

There was one in particular that I wrote after going to the ocean in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, at the invitation of my college room mate, Pat, and his family.

I had not seen the ocean in my adult life at that point. I had dim memories of it from a child, but not much. We left Syracuse at about 10PM and drove through the night to arrive at a small harbor near where Pat's family rented a cottage on the beach of Saco Bay.

There, as the sun rose and we shook off the chill of night driving and stretched our legs, I saw the most amazing 15 minutes of sunrise up to that point in my life. Seals, gulls, wharf cats, the sweet grass and salt smell of a tidal marsh - and the sun woke all of it and brought it to life as it has done every day since we climbed from the sea.

I took a picture using a borrowed camera and when I developed it, saw that it faithfully captured the mood. I would make a print of it and give it to Pat as a thank you note when I got the chance. I wasn't happy with just that, though, so I sketched out this poem to go with it, put it in a hinged double frame, and gave it to him for Christmas that year.

I was so happy with it that it was the only poem I entered in a yearly contest at school. I got a second place prize, but a better compliment from my teacher, who was the judge. "If you'd entered more, you would have won." That was good enough for me. I was happy with it.

After the fire I searched my parents' house to see if they had a copy. My father sent me a box full of all the things he had that I'd written. Neither source had my masterpiece. I remembered Pat had it, though, so I sent him an email, requesting a copy. He said it was buried in his attic during remodeling and it would be some time before could send it to me. Ten years later, here it is. I only regret one thing about writing it - that I included no sense of that sweet smell of the tide rushing inland. I catch a glimpse of it when I have oysters, though.

Day 8: Favorite Autistic Blog

The challenge today is to name my favorite blog by an autistic person. I don't follow long-form blogs much but I do watch @neurorebel on Twitter and follow her community on Facebook. I like hearing what actually autistic people have to say. Some of them are non-verbal or have great difficulty speaking, but their words and frustrations flow on this page and others. I also follow:

• Autistic Allies on Facebook. To follow this, you have to make sure you don't break certain rules, and all posts have to be approved by a moderator.
• Supporty McGroupFace - a site meant more for autisics to support one another. Again, you need permission to join and have to follow the rules of a pinned post - or else!
• Carly Fleishmann - a nonverbal autistic woman who does interviews of celebrities using an iPad - they are hilarious. She's also an incurable flirt.
• Emily Brooks on Twitter - I have seen her a few times at the UN conferences on Autism Awareness Day. She is a very good speaker.
• The Autistic Beekeeper - because I also keep bees, someone pointed this out to me. I have not seen any posts in a year, however.

 What blogs or news sources do you follow?

Day 7: The Autism Community

What does the “Autistic Community” mean? Many different people with manifold and different aims, some of which conflict, many that overlap:

• Non-profit advocacy groups such as Autism Speaks, Autism Society of America.
• Non-profits with specific aims such as promoting employment of autistics, such as The ARC, AHRC, Specialisterne, Autism Alliance of Michigan, or Music for Autism, a group that provides arts for autistic people and their families
• Social media groups run by autistics like Autistic Allies, Neurodivergent Rebel on Facebook and Twitter
• Social media groups run by parents of autistic children
• Government agencies at the national, state or municipal level
• Autistic Individuals and authors of renown like Temple Grandin, Carly Fleischmann or John Elder Robison
• Non-autistic Authors like Steve Silberman of “Neurotribes”
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) or Employee Resource Groups like ASDaaS, our community in IBM, and IBM Autism Reseach Alliance (AURA)
• Business run by or for autistic individuals, such as ULTRA testing, the NonPareil Institute, The Precisionists, or GirlAgain!/YesSheCan

I created an internal website in IBM  to promote autism hiring specifically. Up until that time I knew about Temple Grandin, Specialisterne, and maybe Autism Speaks.

Since I created the community I have learned of the different organizations listed above and many more. The scope of the community has changed to include support, news, and a gathering place for all of us with this interest.

From all of these groups – and the one I created – I have learned many things: the idea of neurodiversity, the paucity of resources available to parents in some places and the wellspring in others, the disdain that some autistics have toward some organizations, and the various companies and nonprofits engaged in helping autistic people from children to adulthood. Each offers some clue to reaching the aim that we all have in common – helping autistic people find productive and happy lives in the world.

Day 6: Supports and accommodations for autistic staff

Today’s topic is about supports – what accommodations can a manager provide to help autistic staff?

Typically, they involve:

• Clear communication about policies and work – clearly explain what work policies with catch names mean and give explicit instructions about a person’s work. An “open door” policy might confuse some people and make them think they have to leave their door open all the time, and giving someone vague instructions that a neuro-typical person might easily understand could cause others to do the right task the wrong way
• Providing social cues or clues – some people may not understand the social environment of the neuro-typicals and may need a little help getting on in such an environment or may need to avoid it completely. On the flip side, your neuro-typical staff may need to understand that a co-worker’s reluctance to participate in social activities does not mean they are a bad team player.
• Altering the physical environment to remove irritants – autistic people might need fluorescent lighting changed, noise reduced, or distractions removed. They may also need to wear noise-cancelling headgear and their colleagues may need to learn to accept that and work with it.
• Giving notice of change – some autistic people like regularity and may need careful and advance warning of change – such as in a schedule – and the manager may need to explain why the change is happening – e.g., to explain that it is not a fault of the employee, or what change is attempting to produce.
• Providing short breaks and flexible work hours – autistic people need time to relax, work off stress, or stim. Fellow staff need to understand this and allow for it during stressful work times. Specialisterne taught this to our staff in the autism hiring pilot, and also taught the new recruits to take time each day to have a walk or relax in some personal way.
• Developing an understanding of autistic behavior – autistic people may prefer to be alone, may not look you in the eye, may perseverate on certain topics, or may stim by getting up in a meeting and walking around the room. Training your neuro-typical staff to tolerate, expect and accept this behavior helps.

These points are adapted from Marcia Scheiner’s “An Employer’s Guide to Managing Professionals on the Autism Spectrum”, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017.

What I find ironic about them is that, barring only a few things I listed, these are accommodations all employees would enjoy, and managers can all easily implement. Who doesn’t want clear instructions on their work? Advice on how to deal with one another, or insight into why their fellow staff are aloof? A comfortable physical workspace? Advance notice of change? Breaks – which are allowed by labor law?

UN Autism Advantage Luncheon

At the invitation of Specialisterne, an IBM colleague James and I attended the Autism Advantage Luncheon at the UN today. The luncheon was attended by SAP, IBM, Microsoft, Cognoa, and various nonprofits and academics who support hiring autistic people. A stated purpose of the luncheon is to get people to network. James and I were purposely not seated at the same table, as were colleagues from other companies. This way we could meet people at various stages of implementing autism hiring from various lines of work.

The keynote speaker was C​aroline Casey the leader #Valuable, a global campaign to employ the estimated one billion people world wide with disabilities. She gave a rousing speech and implored businesses to act on this - not out of charity, but to their own advantage. "Ignore the inclusion revolution at your peril," she said, and implored the crowd to take the lead, asking for someone to do for this movement what Sheryl Sandberg did for women in tech.

Thorkil Sonne, CEO of Specialisterne, spoke as well, saying goodbye to the US as he returns to his native Denmark after four and a half years of living in Delaware. Specialisterne was the non-profit that we contracted with in Lansing along with Autism Alliance of Michigan when we did our hiring pilot last year.

At the close, the UN's Jeff Brez - Chief of NGO relations in the Department of Public Information - asked the crowd three questions: 1)are you convinced of the autism advantage; 2)can you influence employers to be convinced; 3)what will you do next? Many people spoke up, including me - I mentioned our pilot in Lansing, remarked that we are considering more, and urged everyone there to network and learn from one another. That is how I got inspired to create this community and help my colleagues set up a hiring pilot. One person admitted he was still incredulous and wanted more proof of the success of hiring autisic people, to which one person responded he should talk to people like Jose Velasco at SAP, whose five-year old program is the most mature and successful one I can name in our industry.

Many of the attendees will also be at the Autism at Work Summit in Redmond, WA starting on April 24th. James and I both made a few new friends, and I think it is safe to say James was as inspired as I was when I first went to the UN three years ago.

A few more photos - top right, Thorkil Sonne of Specialisterne; bottom left, Caroline Casey of #Valuable. The other photos are of me meeting a young autistic woman from the Hague who runs a language translation startup, and a woman from Poland who works with autistic people (her first time in the US, ever!).

Day 5: Special Interests

Some autistic persons have intense special interests coupled with a strong attention to detail. This can make them very good at learning things like gaming, programming, software testing. It's not limited to those subjects, however. My nephew shows an affinity for gaming, movies (generally BAD horror movies) and things to do with the military. He can quote movie scenes verbatim, tell you the cast members and details about them, is very knowledgeable about the details of different releases of his favorite video games, and he had a passion for his military career - knowing the rules and regulations like the back of his hand. He also LOVES Star Trek. Any and ALL of it. If I recall correctly, his first word was, "Space" - the first word said in the opening of the original series.
If you misquote a movie or bungle a fact about one, he's there to correct you. If you have a question about a specific armament used by the US Military, he can answer it. His passion for bad horror movies is shared by his one sister and parents - they often spend weekends watching them on video and look forward to every new release.

What special interest do the autistic people in your life have?

Day 4: Reactions to Coming Out as Autistic

If you are autistic or someone in your family is - what are the reactions people have to your disclosing the fact? Do you disclose it?

When my nephew was diagnosed, my family all shrugged our shoulders and accepted him as he is. We treated him like anyone else in the family and included him in everything from fishing to waterskiing. We love his sense of humor and his stories from the army. As an MP, he did not distinguish between officers and enlisted men when making arrests. That's how it should be, right? One would think so, but it seems a colonel and his wife thought they should have been given a pass on a DUI, once : )

Day 3: Autism diagnosis or discovery story

Today’s topic is about the reaction to a discovery or diagnosis of autism. My sister found out her son had Asperger’s around the time he was in first or second grade. My father was the one who told me. He explained to me that my nephew had Asperger’s, and said it was a form of autism.

I had never heard of Asperger’s, but I did know about autism. At the time, neither terms were in great circulation. This was around the time of DSMIII (Late 80s), when Asperger's and Autism were separate diagnoses. Whatever the case, I knew he was in good hands. My sister and her husband have worked very hard to get him through public school, the army, and two associate degrees.

My siblings and other nieces and nephews accepted him as he is. We enjoyed his odd sense of humor (we are all very irreverent), his fascination with horror movies, Star Trek, video games and the military. We know he is a stickler for detail and will call you out on any mistake you make on any of those subjects. He can be brusque at times, but we know he has a good heart and the right intentions.

When my sister and her husband received the diagnosis for their son, we lived far apart and spoke infrequently, and because they kept their son involved in everything like the rest of his cousins, I assumed everything was fine. My sister would get frustrated and express it privately from time-to-time – to me, her husband, our parents – but publicly she acted as if her son was just another child who deserved an education. Her rare displays of anger were reserved for school officials who did not pull their weight or neighbors or friends who mistreated her son from time-to-time.

I’ve long admired my sister and her husband for seeming to sail through this calmly and without a hiccup. They made it look easy. They acted as partners and their marriage is still strong after 34 years. But there was a lot of hard work, and many tears and struggles behind the scenes. It makes their accomplishments – marriage and in raising their children - all the more admirable.

There is an Autism community page on my company's internal website. Many people post there about their children. It is impressive how they share it so freely. Some members tell me that many “side conversations” take place in which they support one another or suggest help. If that’s all the  community ever achieves, Then it is a success. The community is there for many purposes, support being one of them.

Day 2: What I love about being autistic is...

It’s day two of this month-long challenge and I am profoundly stuck: I am not autistic, and I cannot answer the proposition. I have often thought that my own hearing impairment, since birth, offered a clue into what it is like to be autistic. But I still cannot genuinely say I know what it is like to be autistic.

Instead, I do my best to understand – as I wish people would do for me and my hearing problem. I listen in on many Facebook forums and Twitter feeds to see what actually autistic people say. I’ve read numerous books in the last few years, some written by actually autistic people.

What strikes me the most about the people writing these fora and books is how proud they are of their abilities, and how fiercely they want to be recognized as different, not less. I also hear much of the struggles they have in getting by in jobs or social situations.

I can instead say what I love about those people, and that is their pride in their abilities and their strength to endure against a world that is often indifferent and at least not understanding. I hope this month we can change at least a few opinions or open a few minds to the possibilities of hiring people with autism, or at least learning to treat autistic people with the respect they deserve.

I would love to hear what parents or actually autistic people have to say about their pride in autism.

thanks,
Paul

Day 1: Autism Awareness Day? Week? Month?

I follow a Facebook Group in which one of the members challenged us to write something every day for Autism Awareness Month, providing topics for each day. The first day is just an intro.

I run an "employee resource group" (ERG) or an internal website where I work that concentrates on autism awareness, support, hiring and research in my company. It has about 600 members so I wanted to share the posts I create with this group. 

When I went to create the post  I saw that I had missed what a colleague posted earlier in the week: A piece about the Autism Gap, and​ Autism Awareness Week. Both of them are worth reading, but the latter gave me some pause, and eventually the topic for this piece.

My colleague's post celebrates the week as March 26th-April 2nd. April 2nd is Autism Awareness Day, and the whole month of April is for Autism Awareness. I'm easily confused (a fun party game), I don't know what authority decides these things, but it occurred to me that it doesn't matter. Whether we are parents of autistic children, looking to change recruiting and HR to accommodate autistic people, researching autism, or #actuallyautistic - we are always aware of autism and always looking for the rest of the world accept autistic people.

Still, I accepted this challenge for this month and I will do my best. I will post each day on a new topic around the subject of autism. Most of the time my expertise will be sorely challenged or utterly lacking. What I hope, though, is that as I share each topic some of you will respond from your points of view as parents or autistics, and we can learn from one another to help spread awareness and acceptance the rest of the year. I hope you will participate and bear with me.

The summer my taste in music changed

When I was in eighth grade I thought I was pretty cool because I liked the Moody Blues. I’d heard them on my brothers’ eight tracks in the car and I thought that was hip. Guitars and powerful voices WITH AN ORCHESTRA. Or at least a Mellotron. Anyway, no one else my age listened to them – they were old! – and that was part of the appeal. Because I was a dick. Other kids were listening to Journey or Zeppelin and I just sadly hadn’t come to appreciate them, yet.

But in the late afternoon of one eternally long adolescent summer afternoon, with a dry, warm breeze blowing along the long shadows of yellow and green, my friend Mark invited a few of us to his house to listen to his brother’s album by Frank Zappa.

I’d heard of him. Heard he was weird. Just didn’t have the resources to try it without hearing it, first. So I wanted to try this.

We all got high, and Mark put on the album Joe’s Garage, Acts II and II, side one. On comes a guy speaking through a megaphone about the First Church Of Appliantology, and a song launches about being taro-fied and I learn the phrase I love to use to this day, “It’s just a token of my extremes.”

The song is about a guy named Joe going to see Dr. L. Ron Hoover [sic]. The good doctor tells Joe that in order to solve his problems, he has to learn German and go fuck an appliance. Dr. Hoover tells Joe a bar to go to – The Closet – where he can accomplish this, and then asks for 50 bucks.

The song has a long fade out. At this time Mark tells us the best part is coming. “You are not going to believe this next song.” In between, a guy called The Cental Scrutinizer tells us that Joe has walked in to a bar called The Closet and started to hit on dancing machinery covered in marital aids.  Then Mark gets up. The next song starts. It’s hopping.

It’s in German, and Mark mouths the words. I do not know what is going on. I am stoned and Mark _______ is dancing like a child acting in a vaudeville show, lip-syncing a song in German. Oh, and I AM STONED. I’M IN EIGHTH GRADE AND I AM LISTENING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MUSIC I HAVE EVER HEARD. AND I AM STONED.

It gets to the middle of the song and the singer takes a break while Joe notices one of the appliances noticing him. The machine hits on him with classic come-ons, and propose to dance with Joe. Joe has a better idea. Mark is ready to lip-sync again as Joe repeats what he had said in German, earlier, but now in the English words that changed the trajectory of musical taste, forever.

FUCK ME, YOU UGLY SON OF A BITCH! You ugly son of a bitch!

FUCK ME, YOU UGLY S-

The four of us exploded into laughter for the obvious reason, but because I am a dick, I thought I heard something more. Rather than just the shock of saying a vulgar word in middle school that could get you suspended – the power that word once had! – I felt for the first time what irreverence means. I had crossed a rubicon.

The song went on, introducing a new phrase and repeating it four times each:

STICK IT OUT! Stick out your hot curly weenie!

Till it squirts, squirts, squirts, squirts, FIRE!

Don’t get no jizz upon that sofa, sofa.

The next song involved the two of them enjoying sex until Joe pees on the machine, destroys it, and is immediately confronted by The Central Scrutinizer that he is under arrest for destroying government property.

I remember going home and calling Mark when I got there to ask where his brother got the album. “Two Guys,” he said. A department store near my house that I went to, often. Got caught shoplifting there, once. I went there the next day.

But this time I marched down there with my semi-honestly earned allowance – I had to be reminded frequently to do my tasks – and I bought the thing. A double-album. $11, if I recall correctly. I had the money and then some.

As I walked to the cashier to pay, I bumped into my brother. Six years older than me. He looks at me, “Hey! What are you doing here?” I never thought liked me. Not that it made me special, he hated EVERYONE. What shook me was that he sounded nice for once.

“Getting this Frank Zappa album.”

“Oh, I hear he’s kinda weird. I might have to tell Mom and Dad about this he said.”

But he did something weird when he said that. He smiled. I knew he was joking. I read his face properly for the first time. I don’t know why that strikes me.

“Well, I’ll see you later. I gotta go to work.”

I went home and listened to it. I had to listen to it in the living room, where the phonograph was. I had headphones so I sat in a chair nearby and listened. I went past the songs I was already familiar with and made the gut-wrenching, soul changing discovery of what heroin must be like: Frank Zappa guitar solos. They were meaner than anything I had ever heard. Odd-metered phrasings, influenced by middle eastern sounds and atonal scales. I did not know these things then, but I sensed their presence, somehow, and had to learn the currency for them.

I told my friend a few weeks later, when school started, what the whole album was like. He never listened past the first three songs he’d played for us, really. He said it seemed boring but he was happy I liked it.

I was now turned down a path less traveled a lot of people had walked down before me but were not here now and I could not find them. I believed there must be other people who listened to him, and I had to find them.

Taking a Music Theory class in tenth grade, I started to find them. First, we were learning about fundamentals – rhythm, harmony, antecedent and consequent phrases, melody, chord progressions, scales, modes. We learned these along with the history of Western music, with its roots in Greek tetrachords, up to the present day, and all the changes in how each fundamental was used in each genre and age. When we got to Jazz, something unlocked in me.

I got an explanation for how music works, and how it was unfolded to make music incredibly new, visceral, and and intellectually stimulating. Because now I got music. Before, I had just dug the whole, big, sound. Now I could hear inside the music and appreciate the craftsmanship and ingenuity of some musicians.

During this time I picked up a Jazz album from the library. I had to hear this stuff. It would piss off my father because he absolutely hated Jazz. More than Rock and Roll.

I stared at the meager collection, and saw an album called, “Sunday Walk” by Jean-Luc Ponty. Jazz Violin. I liked violins. Jazz violin? Let’s try it. I took it home and dropped it on the turntable without the headphones.

Four acoustic instruments – drums, double-bass, piano, and violin – impeccably recorded live from a performance that, from my father’s JVC walnut console phonograph and reel-to-reel, sounded as if it was happening in front of me. My hearing sucked but this record was so well done I could hear the rosin dust settling on the face of the violin as Ponty sawed those strings.

I now got it. I heard how the chord progression changed and the soloist followed it. I heard how the how the melody was introduced and then played with, in turn by ever instrument. I got this and I loved it for some reason. I understood how it was put together – and I respected it.

Our project in that class was to explicate some music of our choice using the knowledge we’d picked up that year. One student in the class, a year ahead of me, wore a King Crimson shirt – Discipline, the red one with the knotwork. I had heard of them. “What’s it like? I asked. “I’ll make you a tape,” he said. He had friends who introduced me to Killing Joke. I was forever freed from top 40 radio. I would also never have another normal conversation about music for the rest of my life. And I am still a dick.

Sketch 1: Campervan and 25 years later

I remember Pat loading his campervan that morning as if the night before never happened. Annette, Doug and Gwen were sleeping off their hangovers, but he was up early getting ready to leave. 

He went from porch to van to porch to van, moving the boxes he’d packed between finals to their proper spots on the floor between the seats. His hair followed him like flaxen wake. 

Bing, his cat was mildly intrigued by the long braided leather lanyard, which held his keys, swinging from the back pocket of his cutoff Levis. But it was too hot to attack. 

When the last box was in, Pat stopped and pulled off his sweat-stained concert tee – I think it was an old Yes concert shirt – wiped his face and hands with it, and put it carefully on the back seat. He grabbed a cotton BoSox jersey from the front seat and put it on. 

“Good morning,” I said, weakly, from just inside the paint-choked screen door. 

He stopped and stared in the side-view mirror of the van, his back to me. He pulled a rubber band from his pocket and tied back his hair. 

“Morning,” he responded finally. He did not turn to look at me as he fussed with his hair a little more. The he moved to the back of the van, opened the hood and fiddled with the engine a moment, let the hood slam, then came up to the porch, holding his now greasy hands up like a surgeon after washing. He stopped just outside the screen.

“Would you open it for me?” he asked.

“Sure,” I responded, and opened the door and moved aside. He breezed past me to the kitchen. I could hear water come on and off quickly, then heard the step-can open and shut. He then came back out to where I stood, and stopped right before me. 

He looked right into my eyes, just as he always did when he spoke to me, when he spoke to anyone, but it made you think they were there for you. They were green or hazel or whatever we never agreed they were, but they drew me in and he never knew it and he did not know right then, either, that if he asked me to drive to the Andes with him in that rickety tin can on wheels – right there, right then – I would have done it. 

My mouth opened slightly. I wanted to say something, start stuttering it, “I … I … I…,” but he started speaking first. 

“Just send my piece of the deposit when you can. I trust you.”

“Okay.” 

He kept looking right at me – not staring – looking. My eyes darted back and forth from his left to his right but his gaze was fixed at the center of me.

“It was fun last night. Hope we can do that again someday.”

“Yeah.”

He let go his gaze slowly, as if following a feather floating through the air. The imaginary feather took his gaze to Bing. He walked outside and grabbed the feline like sack of potatoes. Before the screen door slapped back into the frame, he and Bing were in the van. 

I heard the engine roar and watched them back out of the driveway, and disappear beyond the hedgerow. He waved. 

It was then that I noticed I’d been wearing only a bra and panties. 


(x years later)

One man on the other side of the table never looked up. From the moment he walked in, sat down, and started writing notes, he never looked up. Occasionally, when one of his team spoke, he nodded in approval but he kept writing. Not typing into his Ipad like everyone else – writing in a pad of paper in a weathered oxblood leather binder with a Mont Blanc pen. He never once checked his cell phone like the rest of us. 

He wore no tie or undershirt like the rest of his team, just a clean black jacket, black slacks, a white oxford shirt. He ran his hand over his grayed brush cut every now and then, as if checking to see if his hair was still there. It was all there, more so than his younger team members. 

At one point in the negotiations, as his one of his colleagues spoke, he stopped writing for a moment and stared at a point in the center of the table. He quietly laid his pen down and soundlessly drummed his fingers on the table, to his right. As the colleague continued to speak about an important contract rider, his brows came together and I saw something familiar in his eyes. Then he quickly grabbed the pen, put his eyes back to the paper, and started writing again. 

During the first break he walked swiftly outside to a water fountain. Two of his colleagues followed him with travel mugs full of coffee and chatted with him as he took a sip of water. I could see through the glass that he was talking to them, but he did not look at them. When they were finished talking to him, they nodded heads and walked away. The man then leaned against the wall, held his left hand to his chin with his left elbow in his right hand. And he stared into the imaginary spot in the center of the table again from the hall.h

I could see his eyes and then I knew. They were hazel, or green, or whatever we never agreed they were. They were all that I could be sure identified him as Pat, but I was certain. I walked outside to where he was and without looking at him I took a long drink from the fountain. He did not acknowledge my presence, but kept staring. 

When I finished my drink of water, I stood up and looked at him. His eyes instantly shifted and he looked right at me. 

“I … uh …” I started

He kept looking right into the center of me. 

“… Pat?” 

“How have you been, Cynthia?” (He NEVER once called me ‘Cindy’ like the rest.) He said this warmly. Or at least that’s what I felt wash all over me. I was afraid for a nanosecond that I’d wet myself. But I felt relaxed all of a sudden. 

“Well, it’s been what – 25 years?”

“Yup.”

“The last time I saw you, you just packed up and left us, you and Bing…” I was starting to relax. I fiddled with my wristwatch and looked about the office. But he kept his gaze right on me, and he still held his chin in his hands. 

“You had that ancient VW – what was it, already 15 years old when we graduated? And you packed it that morning and you left. We were all hung over, but you got up like you’d drunk water the night before…and packed your van. You’d packed your boxes all that week between finals, you didn’t study at all!” 

One of the lawyers called us back in the room. People started filing back in. But Pat and I stayed at the water fountain, him still with his chin in his hand, me rambling on.

“And you had that Yes shirt on that day, and you switched into a BoSox jersey before you left. I remember it like it was five minutes ago! How…” I started to ask, but he moved. He straightened his back and let his arms down, slowly to his side. 

“How have you been?" I said, dropping to a whisper. I went to look into his eyes, but he moved his gaze back to the conference room, through the glass. Then a sly grin slid over his face and he blushed.

“I remember you were wearing just bra and panties.”

My Brief Stint As a Performing Musician.

Bill's parents were gone for the weekend and he was throwing one more epic party before he and many of my other older friends left for college. He invited my friend Roger and me, but we had misgivings about going. Our friend Tony would be performing there with his band, and Roger and I had sticks up our asses about Tony impregnating some girl and abandoning her. We got uptight about that kind of stuff. 

Bill implored us to show up. He and I could take the mic between the band's sets and play our music, for fun. Unlike the guys in Tony's band, who could play music, Bill and I could bang out a few chords and maybe riff a melody and make it sound OK. 

Well, Bill could. He taught me how to write three-chord songs and fake a solo over them using ping-pong recordings (where you record on one device, play it back and play along with it and record on a second one, over and over again). He even taught me one of his own songs, "Kill Yourself". Together, we came up with "Prisoner of Pizza Hut" and I composed my very own "Cambodian Folk Song", which Roger would sing to, stream-of-consciousness style.

So Roger and I agreed to go to the party, but just to keep some sense of cool about ourselves, we showed up late. 

That fucker Tony was using my guitar. I had lent it to him for the gig, and he was playing it upside-down left-handed because that's what Jimi Hendrix did. And he had a cigarette stuck in the strings above the nut.

Their set ended just as we walked into the basement. It was full of the neighborhood friends and various others from around town. Tony feigned excitement to see us and we feigned excitement to see him. Bill was smashed and took me aside to tell me he was too drunk to play and could only sing. I had to play lead on the songs. 

Stone cold sober, my first performance in front of a crowd of my peers. No problem. I don’t remember the last time I summoned that kind of courage. Maybe when I jumped out of a perfectly good, working airplane or walked my daughter down the aisle.

I looked over at Bill as we started to play. His eyes were bugged out, lips were clamped shut, and he was sweating cold beer. He looked like he was about to fall over.

Whatever the first song was, I think I stayed in key, I don’t remember and I didn’t care. Laurie Tooley was standing there, before us.   She was leaning against a jackpost, slightly tipsy, with an off the shoulder sweater. One of the most stunning brunettes I have ever seen. Veronica Lodge with Betty Anderson’s body. If she’s on Facebook, someone tag her, she deserves to know this.

She smiled. I think she was just being nice.

Everyone humored us. It was nice, really. Makes me feel strangely warm. Can’t explain it. Might be nostalgia that I don’t want to admit to.

After a few bars of the first song, the “real” band members started playing along a little. It was a nice touch. We played “Kill Yourself” and “Prisoner of Pizza Hut” to mild applause and friendly laughter. Worst thing you can do is encourage me.

For the third song we played my “Cambodian Folk Song”. It was ad-libbed by my friend Roger – he rambled on in skeltonics and a lounge act's voice about all sorts of surreal shit that no one on all of God’s LSD could imitate – and he did it straight. I really admire people who can come up with surreal, absurd shit like that. Been trying to do it all my life. Roger sat Tony down on his lap and dedicated to the song to him, throwing in vague references to the fact that we were disgusted with him for violating a girl on his parents’ basement floor and then treating her like dirt afterward. I remember Pete playing rimshots along with the slow. tinkling sounds of a repeatedly arpeggiated D chord (that’s all the song was; Bill taught me this! Keep it simple! If it sounds good, it IS good!). Greg (guitar) and Chris (bass) added a few notes, too.

We finished and the party broke up a little later. Lotsa laughs. Tony got hammered to the point where we didn’t want him to drive. We forced him to let a sober driver take him home in his father's car. We made him wait in the passenger’s seat in the driveway while we summoned someone - I think it was Eric - with cleaner breath.

Roger watched him and made sure he did not go for the driver’s seat. He tried creeping over a few times but Roger would reach over and yank him back by his neck. At one point I think he clocked Tony in the face to get him to stop. 

I don't know what I miss more about those days, but whenever I feel the urge to lament how hard growing up was, I recall that I at least had refuge in a circle of accepting and decent people when all else seemed to be going wrong. 

Or maybe I just wish I could have my fifteen minutes as a garage-band star back. 

 

Recurring Dreams and Images

Images from some dreams I had almost 30 years ago continue to haunt me. I hesitate to use that word for the connotation of terror. The feeling is more one of captivation and mysterious wonder. Some of them make sense to me, others do not.

One particularly vivid image came from a dream in which I viewed myself through the eyes of another person waking up on a stunningly bright summer morning after a rain storm. The person walked through a house to see me in the back yard, hanging bleached white sheets on a line. The light coming off the sheets was blinding, and the I can still smell wet grass when I remember the image. The person asked me what I was doing, and I replied, "Tying up loose ends." I recalled this dream very vividly after brokering a meeting between may different people of late so I've rationalized some meaning out of this by noting my enjoyment at fostering connections between people and networking heavily to promote certain causes I believe in. Perhaps it was a premonition or an early, inarticulate realization of a talent I had.

I've had a recurring dream about the sky being on fire and my viewing it from the building I work in. I look south across a parking lot to where the clouds are on fire in the distance. I think I am alone until I am shocked to see a coworker leaving. I tell him that the sky is on fire. He shrugs and says something like, "Well, I am going home. Good luck!" The first time I had the dream it was an older man that I worked with who said it to me. The second and third times it was people closer to my age or younger than me. I can't figure this one out.

Then there are a series of four images I recall from dreams long ago. In the first, I am surrounded by or actually inside of a large machine, like an old mainframe computer, and I am frantically trying to make sense of all the wires and connect things to their proper mates. I have a wild, manic look as if I might be controlled by the machine as I try to control it. When I saw The Matrix I wondered if it had something to do with that kind of a feeling, but for lack of a better explanation it just didn't feel right.

In the second I am wearing a robe like a bedouin, I have long hair and I am carrying a staff in the desert. I have bent down to check what is either a prosthetic food or a brace around my leg. As my right knee starts to give with age in real life, I wonder if it was a warning that I would someday fall apart.

In another, I am still in the desert, but I have collapsed at the foot of a woman dressed like a fairy or an angel.

In the last, I am prostrated on a couch in a sun-drenched room, late in the afternoon, in a house near the shore of the ocean or a great lake like Ontario. There are three figures around me dressed in white but I cannot tell who they are. I hope this is what my death is going to look like because it's a very relaxing image.

Of all the images I have had in my dreams these ones persist the most. I have read that dreams may be our way of playing with ideas and imagining how we'd deal with certain situations should they arise some day. If that is the case, I wish I could unlock what I was toying with in my head, and discover why these images persist in my memory.

Harvey Weinstein and me, too.

I've struggled for a few days to respond to the sad reverberations of #metoo posts in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. I examined my memories of transgressions against various people and found it pointless to bring up for fear of trying to excuse myself of anything I did wrong. I finally concluded, along with many other good men I know, that this is an opportunity for all men to examine themselves and I offer the advice given me by my father -  and later the Freemasons, when I joined them. 

"Treat all women as if they were your mother or your sister." You can call it a lousy heuristic or make some sick jokes about it, but the intent of it as communicated to me was clear: respect women as your fellow human beings. Furthermore - elevate them to a position of respect - because at the moment you probably haven't even considered that. It's not that they need elevation for some lacking of their own stature, but more that men need to re-calibrate their attitudes and expectations to faithfully measure that women are human beings, deserving of all rights, opportunities and dignities as any other.

But this isn't enough. It takes demonstrable actions toward your brothers. Your thoughts and prayers amount to naught. You have to speak out when you see a woman being dragged off in a drunken haze to another room, being pinned down against a bar, abused by her husband, or groped by a boss. This takes balls, tact, good judgement, and situational awareness. Immediate responses are needed in emergencies, delayed and careful ones when you have that luxury. Otherwise, book your seat on the celestial railroad to hell on earth.

My first IBM Blog post - Autism and hiring

For three years now, I have had an interest in hiring people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). People "on the spectrum" often have incredible talent despite their diagnosis. Like many people with disabilities, just providing simple accommodation and promoting understand in the work place can help people with ASD become incredible, productive, happy, and loyal employees.

I've worked within IBM to promote a hiring program, spread understanding, and banded together many employees affected by autism by forming a small community inside IBM called an ERG (employee resource group) or BRG (business resource group). My reputation grew to the point where I was asked to write a short blog for IBM on the topic of autism and hiring.

We have just recently started a hiring program in Lansing, Michigan, that aims to hire 3-5 developers on the spectrum. If that succeeds, we hope to replicate the model in other cities and divisions of IBM.

Stay tuned and we may update that site with news in the next few months!

Eulogy For My Father, August 2014

Last year, at my father’s 81^st birthday, my cousin Linda remarked that we had to get together more often. I am sorry that it has to be under these circumstances.

Thank you for coming to comfort my family and my mother. My siblings and I may have lost a father, my nieces and nephews may have lost a grandfather, my uncle his brother – but my mother lost her companion, best friend and partner of 56 years. I don’t think even his brother could have lived with him that long.

For those of you who have not seen it, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a long, granite wall lining a tear in the earth on the National Mall. On it are the names of fifty thousand Americans who gave their lives in that conflict.

My siblings and I are fortunate that my father’s name is not among them. He came home, raised us with my mother, and together they saw their grandchildren and great-grandchildren come.

But as the sun set on that chapter of his life, it cast long shadows into the rest of the story. My father struggled to reconcile his distinguished military career with the horrors he saw in Indochina. Of the many demons in his life, this may have been the most formidable.

Still, he was a good father and a good man who instilled in us many virtues – among them patience, tolerance, selflessness, gratitude and charity.

He lived in the bosom of an extended family that welcomed him despite his troubles and eccentricities. For that he was ever grateful and fortunate.

I’ve heard many of you speak fondly of him over the years and now these past few days. I want to thank you for all the love and comfort you showed him.

In his memory, please think kindly upon veterans of war, for they are the ones who went to do what was asked of them by those who could not do it. Lastly, if you know of a person suffering from addiction, do all you can to help them. I would not be here if it were not for such help.

This Is How We Live Forever (Eulogy For My Grandmother Domachowski, 2009)

[A quick note...I asked my mother for permission to read a small message at my grandmother's funeral the day before at the wake. Within earshot when I asked were my mother's siblings, my Aunt Fran and my Uncle Jim. Both extracted oaths from me that I would not blaspheme or pull funny "masonry shit" (I am, in fact, a freemason). I have a reputation of being irreverent, yes, but I ascended the dais the next day without thunder or lightning, and this is what I read.]

My grandmother’s given name was Bertha. She didn’t like it; she chose to be called ‘Lena’, instead, and fought tooth and nail with her mother over it. She wanted the name because it sounded more American. She was proud to be an American, and she wanted to live like one, without any airs of the old world that her family might press on her. The name stuck.

The story may be utterly false, or at least warped into legend over time. I don’t care. It fits her, because she was stubborn.

When Lena was a teenager, her mother insisted she meet, and consider marrying, a young lawyer of Polish extraction. Lena would have none of it. When her family welcomed him through the front door of their house, she ran out the back, perhaps into the orchards nearby.

It was in those orchards that she would climb a tripod ladder – ostensibly to pick fruit – but also to get a look at that handsome young Anthony Domachowski. There are 33 people who are alive on the planet today because of her stubbornness – from Frances Gocek all the way down to Elle James Anderson. We’re all grateful.

I cannot think of a more perfect and loving couple. Maybe she drove grandpa crazy, but she was crazy about him. Grandma said that long after Grandpa died she still talked to him aloud, or wrote letters to him and took them outside to burn, as if the smoke would carry her message to him.

Grandma was always giving – not just of money or gifts, but of herself. These stories she told me, are a gift; so were her hugs, calling all of her children her “million dollars”. She really felt that. And she was that rich because she gave everything she had. She got so much back in life because she gave so much. You’re all here right now because of that.

This is how we live forever – by selflessly touching so many other lives that your soul lives on through them.

Grandpa, you have lived on this way. Grandma has returned to you. We will keep you both in our hearts, through all that you have given us, done for us, and taught us.

Eulogy For My Mother, 12/2014

[I do believe that, just before I read this to the congregation, I noted to my Aunt Fran and Uncle Jim that there was not a cloud in the sky and I was not struck by lightning, yet again. See here for context.]

One weekend afternoon in the mid-eighties, when most of my siblings and I still lived in the area, my brother(-in-law) Bob called my brother Pat from my parents’ house to ask if Pat was going to be there for dinner.

Pat asked, “why?” - not to be rude, but to set Bob up for the punch line.

Bob replied, “because Mom wants to know whether to make too much food or WAY too much food.”

My parents’ house on Pitcher Hill was named the Momcat Inn because of this hospitality. My mother was born there in 1935 when it and the surrounding area were her grandparents’ farm. After Mom grew up, the farm was sold, subdivided and developed. My mother went to secretarial school, worked at Carrier, got married, had children and moved to Taiwan and back only to return to that house with her young family and husband in 1973. She started a small garden, stocked the kitchen and settled there for 42 years.

Whenever you visited her you found my mother in either of those two places. If she was in the kitchen, she was doing anything from canning tomatoes to peeling fruit to shelling walnuts to baking pies to making spring rolls to stirring fried rice - whatever culinary opportunity the seasons and the market afforded her.

This time of year, it was cookies. Boxes and boxes of Christmas cookies. Way too much cookies. The inventory would tower in the back room, tall as a man stands, seemingly inexhaustible. The cookies were as varied as they were uncountable. They weren’t just delicious, they were elegantly crafted and visually pleasing. She would wrap them up in decorative trays or tins and give them to me to run next door and give to the neighbors - even the family that hated us. To her, it was the right thing to do; our bounty - however meager at times - was meant to be shared. There was always a plate for a stranger, and there was always room for seconds. It taught us all about giving something real of oneself for the benefit and delight of others. If you want to hear another funny story, ask my friend Ken what happens if you refused seconds.

If Mom was in the garden, she was hard at work weeding, culling, planting, harvesting - doing the neverending, regular, necessary chores to keep the garden verdant and productive. It was more a genuine passion than a vanity, yet it is no stretch to say the garden grew famous. When explaining where we lived, I only had to say, “The house on Bailey Road with all the flowers”. One time at school in Oswego I was watching the evening news when I noticed the background for the weather report looked familiar - it was a video of my mother’s garden - tulips swaying in the April wind. Something called her to grow things. It bred in us the sense that good things come from hard work and patience and require constant upkeep - things like gardens, children, home. Love.

Mom had many other talents as well. She could draw, paint, and sew. Her portfolio from a high school design class lives to this day and is full of flawlessly executed assignments on proportion and aesthetics. Paintings she did in Taiwan show her ability in Chinese style brushwork. The clothes she made for us looked finely tailored.

She loved to read. At the lake, where we rented a cabin for a week or two, you would find her underneath a tree on the patio burning through a romance novel or some nonfiction work like Mary, Queen of Scots.

She loved to spend cool summer evenings with her family and friends around the kitchen table sharing laughs and stories and sipping drinks. To this day, if I catch the scent of certain cocktails I am transported back to scenes like this. It is the feeling of being secure within the bosom of a large extended family.

After we grew up and some of us moved away, Mom spent the 90s babysitting grandkids and visiting her far-flung children, who are now transplanted elsewhere from Skaneateles to California. At the turn of the century my parents slowed down and traveled less.

If you visited them in the last ten years you’d swear Mom wanted to kill my father. The tension was palpable but the threat was empty. Rummaging through the house recently I stumbled across a card from Mom to Dad. Inside it read, “I can’t live without you; you mean everything to me.” And so this year, a little over 16 months from my father’s passing, she left this world, mere yards from where she entered it. She joins people that she missed dearly in her final years - Ella Mae, Tootsie, Cookie, Rocky, Ed, her parents. My father.

We all take a part of Mom with us.  In many of our yards something grows that came from her, and just about everyone here is sporting a few pounds courtesy of her.

Reeling In The Years (indeed!)

I was about ten years old, maybe nine, walking across the patio at Lake Ontario. It was a burning, golden summer day with a buttery, steady breeze. As I made it to the railing to stare at the light winking at me off the waters of a late July day, I was thunderstruck. The AM radio was playing something that stopped me as clear, crystalline drops of guitar fell all around me. It was Steely Dan’s Reeling In The Years.

I lost touch with it for awhile. I got to high school, and could not recall the title or the artist, and I was walking across the RIT campus, watching students play Frisbee outside as my brother and his fellow students unloaded their dorms to go home for the summer. And there it was, and I was transported back to being a careless young boy, and the feeling that day and the perfectly tolerable heat and the breeze and the light show came back. I asked some guy who it was and he re-educated me. I bought the LP with my allowance a few days later and played the track repeatedly for days. I could not grow tired of living on that cloud.

Steely Dan disappeared for awhile and came back in the 1990s. I was lucky to go see them at SPAC in 1994. It was a cool, August evening – one of those ones where you still don’t need a jacket and you laugh at those who wear one anyway. Yeah, I could see my breath – but I am from Syracuse, damnit! I walked to class at Oswego in shorts in a lake effect blizzard! I bond with Steve Dittmar over this!

They introduced the song with a bouncy piano intro and carried into the sweet melody with horns that washed over like a warm, ocean wave. Bath water in the cold of Saratoga.

We were walking out from under the amphitheater because a friend told me I had to hear how it sounded outside. When we crossed the threshold, the background singers added campfire smoke to the air and it instantly intoxicated me. There, in the cool Adirondack evening, shivering and denying it, I stopped and instantly felt the wind ripping through my unkempt hair, as clean as the star that smiled on me that day as a child. It never fails.

They changed the chorus a little with the girls who sang it, they bent up from some diminished chord – a half step? A whole step? I don’t know that detail, I just know am tied into the magic of that sweet, lilting tension hanging in the air like an aural June bug, and for that amount of time, and as magical as that appears to the child when he first sees it.

These moments are burned in me and come back to life in sharper relief than my eyes ever saw.

Yeah, I like the song. I can think of a handful of others that get me iike this. Watermelon In Easter hay is one of them. I’ll tell you about that, later : )

Clove Cigarettes

I've taken the horrible habit of smoking again for no good reason - clove cigarettes, though. I don't like the taste or smell of regular tobacco, and cloves bring back certain memories for me.

I first smoked a pack my first semester in college. I left my community college and drove north 40 miles to a four-year college - SUNY Oswego - to see about getting in there for spring semester. I did not like the community college and wanted a change of major and view.

I stopped at the Panhandler on Old Liverpool Road in Liverpool, NY on the way up. They sold cloves, and I knew this because of a guitar player I admired. He got them there. His name was Greg something. Nice guy.

It was a sunny, fall day and as I drove my 1971 Super Beetle past Fulton to Oswego, I played my mix tapes of 80s new wave and enjoyed one or two of the cigarettes. They were Jakarta brand kreteks. I decided that day I wanted to go to Oswego instead, and the smell of cloves takes me to that day, sometimes.

I didn't smoke them much back then. It was until much later that I took up the habit for a solid five years around the time I got divorced. More on that, later.

When I graduated I went to work for IBM where we developed an operating system called TPF. TPF is used by many major airlines and a some coworker friends of mine often traveled to customer sites in faraway places like Jakarta, Indonesia. I asked Bill Supon to bring me back some kreteks and he did - several different kinds, like Sampoerna and Djarum. I kept them in my freezer and smoked them rarely, when I had a shot of Wild Turkey in the backyard of a home I would leave years later when both habits got wildly out of control.

Before that would happen I had had many a memorable road trip with my best friend, Arfie. A visit to Wellfleet, MA, to see a Ween concert and the next day in Provincetown and Hyannis enjoying cloves comes to mind. A tolerably hot summer weekend before things got out of control. But fun and memorable nonetheless.

Despite the pain of the divorce and the alcoholism and smoking that reached its apex shortly thereafter, I have fond memories of the summer it all started. We were building an extension on my house and my family and Arfie came to visit and help frame it, along with some good friends from IBM like Jorge, his wife, and Mark Spies. We played Ween and other good music as we hammered the addition into shape, swinging from rafters and learning from my brother how to make headers. My mother shook her head at my habit, but it was still a memorable and fun time.

Five years later I had to go through rehab and shortly thereafter I quit smoking as well. It was easier to do the alcohol first, and hang out at AA meetings chainsmoking with the other alcoholics. I quit AA after three months, then cigarettes after 7 or so. It was a November day at the Poughkeepsie train station. I was on edge for a week and the taste of clove lingered in my mouth for weeks.

With a new house and a new family, I grew hot peppers and rebuilt another old house and my life. I would add clove to my hot sauce mixes or add it to foods where it made sense. If I tasted it in cookies or candy, my mind wandered to Oswego, or Wellfleet, or that fateful summer I left my wife, home and two acres for the love of my life.

Arfie and I would sneak a pack once in awhile when he visited. Spending a day at Westcott Beach on Henderson Bay of Lake Ontario, we left my son, Arfie's girlfriend and her kids at the beach to drive to Watertown, NY to get a pack. I kept a few the following days after and quit again.

On a visit to a friend and my relatives in Rhode Island, I took a pack with me. I remember the cool air of the ocean on Pete's back porch as I snuck one, and also enjoying some outside Mary Agnes' house. I quit again after that weekend.

Since then my family and I have done regular vacations on Lake Ontario near Henderson. We rent a small house and sit on the beach and do nothing. Arfie has been there every year with us, and for the last three or four, we indulged in some cloves - driving to Watertown to get three more packs despite swearing we'd only smoke the one he brought from Corning, NY.


In the last year, my wife has gone to Pittsburgh several weekends to help stand up a new hotel. I went with her two weekends last fall to help with some things and see a Steelers game. She had taken to going to the roof of her apartment there to enjoy her menthols, so I found a place that sold cloves and joined her. I quit easily after those weekends, too.

As the weekend of my daughter's wedding approached, I decided to get "just one pack" for that event. Arfie was there, too, and we would share one or two each of the three days we were at the venue where the wedding was held. Shortly after that, with another trip to Pittsburgh, the habit took hold again and I've been smoking steadily since. I am embarrassed to have people in my car. My son posted a note on the fridge - Stop Smoking.

Jennifer is still taking trips to Pittsburgh and back, and when I am alone I sit in the dark in my garden enjoying a clove, wondering if she is doing the same on the roof of the now open hotel.

The other day I went to buy a pack in my town of Beacon, NY. I asked for two packs and the proprietor, behind the counter with a clerk, said, "I sold none of these for months, now they are flying off the shelves, is that you?" Before I could answer, the clerk - who had regularly sold me the aged stock - answered, "Yes," with a smug grin.

I explained that I've been having a stressful summer and offered my daughter's wedding as an excuse. It was a guy situation and I had to offer guy banter. "What's wrong, you don't like the guy?" I said no, we loved our son-in-law but it was my daughter that drove us crazy. He laughed and pointed to the marijuana paraphenalia across the floor and suggested, "Maybe you need that."

My son-in-law was having a bad week so I told him the story.

We're headed to the lake again, soon. Arfie will be there. I hope that I'll be done with this when that week is over and the hotel is complete. But I will still associate the taste with all these memories. 

The Fifty-First Dragon

"Lord Frith, I know you've looked after us well, and it's wrong to ask even more of you. But my people are in terrible danger, and so I would like to make a bargain with you. My life in return for theirs." and Frith replied "There is not a day or night that a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla, his life for his chief. But there is no bargain: what is, is what must be."

From Watership Down, by Richard Adams

There was a point about ten years ago where I was certain - and for less glorious and noble reasons than Hazel - that my life was worth more dead than alive. More along the lines of Jimmy Stewart in "It's a wonderful life", I was certain the payout from my insurance was a better thing for the world than me being in it. I could not have been more wrong.

The fact of the matter is that with few exceptions we're all better off here. Sure, there are instances where people give their lives to save many others. They're rare, I'm venturing. But though I have used this quote at different times for different inspirational purposes, the meaning is the same: Go, get it done.

It's been a long time since I read the book but I am told this is the last time Frith talks to Hazel - or any of the rabbits, ever again. He's done helping them. What a poignant last message, then. "Here, Hazel, you're in charge. It's all on you."

No pressure!

I went through rehab and was told there are no atheists in rehab. I'm still an atheist and this quote, ironically, is part of the reason. Sitting and asking for favors from an imaginary friend and the books written by countless people who tried to record the myriad and conflicting ideas he offered us to cope in a world he didn't make or understand was going to do me nothing. Asking gods for the rockets to stop, for the pain to go away, for the past to be erased - is pointless.

Instead I reached to a book about a bunch of rabbits who cross England looking for a better place to live. At the climax of the book they are beset by another group of rabbits intent on killing them all when their leader, Hazel, hatches a plan. If Hazel can just make it to where there is a dog, tied up at a nearby farm - if they can chew through his collar and out run him up the hill to where the enemies are gathered and if they can get the dog to attack them - they just might make it.

On his way down to the farm he asks his god for this one favor. Look, is it really that much? I'm in a real bind here... I know you can do this - at least I think you can and it SEEMS like you have before. Can you help a brother out? I'll gladly pay for this with my life. Deal?

No, in short, is the answer. Not much more is needed, really, but what it means is one of the most beautiful things I have ever realized: You got this. Go, get it done.

Hazel had been doing it all along - without help from Frith. Hazel and his lovable musclehead friend Bigwig - who, in any macho-shithead telling of the story would have been the leader - got their warren out of one danger, through many other trials, and finally through this one battle - with Bigwig as lieutenant to Hazel. (Another inspiring moment in the book is when the leader of the attacking warren, Woundwort is aghast at the idea of  Bigwig not being the leader of Hazel's...how could it be that the physically strongest one is not the leader?).

And here he is, challenged one more time. He's tired. He wants a favor. And in this conversation he realizes all along that they, down there on earth, had been getting it done all along. Frith be damned!

I slayed the fifty-first dragon and lived to tell about it, and that has made all the difference.  Because fifty-two, and fifty-three, and so on, are right behind him.

Searching For Beauty In The Morning

If I leave for work at the right time, I get to see a pretty young woman at a bus stop en route. She dresses smartly, has nice hair and is probably in her early 20s. I get to see her and observe her for a few seconds if the light nearby is red.

Another person waits for the bus with her - a tall man, strong-looking and clean-cut. He may be autistic or otherwise mentally challenged. He works at a local grocery store as a bagger. Seeing them together is what I strive for.

When I first noticed them, I think it was the first time the young lady started catching the bus at the same spot with him. From their body language they seemed strangers to one another. They stood apart, did not interact. I wondered if the young woman felt awkward near him or, worse, felt annoyed by his presence. I judged her at first and thought the latter and that, like many other young women I had know of natural beauty like hers, she felt people like the man were beneath her.

But as time passed and I observed them more, over the course of the last year, I saw that they started talking to one another. Now when I see them they smile as one approaches the other. Sometimes the woman holds her phone out, showing something for him to see. Another time they were just standing together and both beaming with grins. Yet another time they laughed together at something.

I strive to leave at the right time just to see this young lady be kind to him. I've known so many people like him who were made fun of and ostracized. I've known so many pretty young things who were mean to others because they could be. But these two seem to be friends who bring genuine warmth to one another.

It is impressive how something like this can alter my mood in the morning. I could be making this up out of my imagination based on nothing but what I observe. Or it could really be that there are kind people in the world. It could be that if we look, there is beauty in the world. Perhaps it takes some work to find it and enjoy it.