Best Show I Ever Saw

 (orig published Wednesday, April 7, 2010)

My wife Adrienne is good at making plans. I am not. This has worked out well for both of us, mostly. I spent most of 1979 transitioning from 14 to 15 years old. While I was going everywhere on my bicycle and learning how to shave with a razor, she was creating her life plan: Have children when young, then go back to school and get advanced degrees, ending up teaching college as a tenured professor. By 2006, the children were living independent lives and she had her Master's Degree. It was time. After much searching, she was accepted into the new Gerontology PhD program at Miami University, my alma mater.

Now was the hard part. Miami University was nearly a thousand miles away from our home in Shoreham, Vermont. And Adrienne had certain conditions she wanted fulfilled before starting the last leg of her journey: to not have to work full-time while studying, to live near her school, not be a long-distance learner, and to have me with her. These were big, scary conditions but I had always had complete faith in her. When she told me she wanted me to come with her, I said, "Sure."

Weird, Wild and Wonderful (Blind Boys of Alabama Transition) - final version?

Weird, Wild and Wonderful

(Blind Boys of Alabama Transition)

Weird, wild and wonderful – that was my supplication to a God I thought was listening and would answer my prayer as I stood on the hot football field at Norwalk Junior High School in 1983, waiting for my high school graduation ceremony to begin. Sweating under my graduation gown beneath the bright sun, I repeated my plea inside my over heated head, "Please God, I don't know what is going to happen next but let it be weird, wild and wonderful.”

That was my blueprint for the future. Not the most carefully laid out plan, but one that seemed doable. The last hurdles were laid in front of me - spending the summer working on the county road crews, then going off to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I had spent the first 18 years of my life in the same, safe house on Main Street where I knew every nook and cranny, from the slap-dashed painted garage in the back to all the unique noises the joists and floorboards made throughout the night. I was not so much bored but more like anxious to see what else was out there (whatever there turned out to be).

Five years later, I just barely graduated MU with a degree in English Education. I say just barely because the next time I checked, twenty years later when I returned to Oxford, my low GPA would have prevented me from graduating. Not like that diploma ever did anything other than serve as a receipt for 5 years of tuition. And like my last graduation, the one in 1983, my goal was simple: watch my previous home recede in the rear view mirror before leaping feet-first into the deep end of life. This time, moving to Vermont to "see what happens.” I would never admit the ugly truth — ugly because it barely hid my shame — to my family, the friends I had left, or even myself. Once my short-term job in the Green Mountains ended, I wasn't going back. I had no intention of returning to Ohio to teach middle school English like I had promised my parents.



Proof that the best laid plan of mice and men often go awry. In 2006, I returned to Ohio, with Adrienne, my wife, two dogs and two cats, so she could finish her education by earning a PhD from Miami University.

Not only were we moving to Ohio, but we were going to live in Oxford, Ohio, a place I had never left so much as escaped.

I never was much of a planner. To paraphrase a line from an old Vincent Price movie I barely remember watching early one morning late at night, “Man is like water, open a passage to the East and he flows east, open a passage to the West, he flows west.” That was me alright, restlessly waiting for the world to open a channel for me to pour through.

Vincent Price, Confessions of an Opium Addict

 Good Things about Being Home #1

(originally published March 24, 2010)

The pets were glad to see me. Olivia, the maddest cat in southwest Ohio, has not let me leave her sight since I got home from The Jewish Hospital on Tuesday night. Eloise, the monster dog, dashed around the yard in a paroxysm of joy, pausing to drop her big head in my lap for pets every few circuits. Frannie, our blind cocker spaniel — if God created anything cuter than cocker spaniels, he kept it for himself; tracked me by sound and scent wherever I laboriously moved around the house, her collar tags jangling, her funny little snuffle announcing her arrival. Of course Thor, the Fat Bastard in feline form, just gave me his half-lidded "Oh, were you gone?" look and went about his business.

Good Things About Being Home #1 (Transition piece)

 Good Things About Being Home #1

(Transition piece)

When we first arrived in Ohio in 2006, I had no job and no plan — which will surprise no one who has been paying attention. To support myself, I was a substitute teacher for several school districts, so I spent most days driving from Oxford to Cincinnati, Eaton, and even west into Indiana. As a traveling sub, the work took me to urban schools and rural ones, wealthy districts and poor ones — a cross-section of southwestern Ohio I never would have seen otherwise.

Introduction to a book I will never write - Warm Bodies (2013)

Introduction

Early spring of 2013, I was sitting in a movie theater and as the lights came up, tears began running down my face. I didn’t know why, but the film we just watched had reached into a place I didn’t know needed touching.

I got asked to make a video

Freedom Through Recovery, a local sobriety community asked me to make a video about What Recovery Means to Me. 

 

Five Year Update - The Words of My Mouth

Well, heck, it has been a while. I am fine. Really, things are good. We moved to Georgia, I got sober, went back to school and now work in IT for the local school district.

God has been good.

Recently we have been attending the local Unitarian Universalist Church. Last Sunday's service was devoted to discussion about Christianity and I spoke. Being able to address the congregation was a wonderful experience, but what was truly amazing was the process of putting into words things that I had never said before. Here is  what I said: