1. Robert and I enjoyed a big ole modern family Thanksgiving celebration with daughters Amy and Emily (and their fams) and ex-wife/great friend Donna.
And a pic that defines Awkward Family Photo …
I had just made some silly, jokey remark, and grandson Daniel was the only one who thought it was funny. He thought it was REALLY funny.
2. Cranberry sauce. More specifically, MY cranberry sauce. With allspice, brown sugar, fresh squeezed oj and zest.
3. My aging, sometimes achy and imperfect but wonderful body.
{No pic until said imperfect body is perfect. Do not expect body pics in the foreseeable future.}
4. Robert’s sometimes odd but always delicious soups (which he often makes up on the fly). This time, Baby Bok Choy and Shrimp.
5. The countdown to Christmas. We put up our Travel Tree last night, Thanksgiving night—a tradition. What’s a Travel Tree, you ask? It’s a Christmas tree, with each ornament from one of our travels. (More about the Travel Tree on my blog each day during December.)
I can still remember so very vividly this difficult but meaningful chance encounter one evening in downtown Savannah years ago.
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Touch
Savannah’s Broughton Street bustles with activity this past Friday night, even for a warm and gorgeous early spring evening. I suppose Broughton is as close as my quirky, Midnight City gets to having a normal Main Street, as the historic district snakes around twenty-two breathtakingly beautiful squares. (Savannah’s downtown area is unique and hard to describe–come visit us to see what I mean.)
My friend Robert and I venture to the Crystal Beer Parlor, share joyful banter with lovely Hostess Fifi, meet good buddies, consume delicious and perfectly prepared ribeye steak. Friday night joy. Next, Broughton Street Market and dream-laden lottery tickets. Walking toward my car. Traverse past hip young couples pushing into dance clubs; midde-agers brandishing bags with Paula Deen leftovers; older folks leaving Savannah Music Festival venues; SCAD kids with blue hair waving in the breeze. Packed, noisy sidewalks. All well. Very well. Blessed.
Then fate interrupts–as she often does.
They sit on the sidewalk. No sprawl. As if dumped there. Three young men, in their early twenties. Two dogs. Man and pet, dirty, smelly, retched. Outcasts from society. A block from McDonald’s.
I live downtown and have grown immune to the homeless, the beggars, the street people. They merge and melt into the old bricks, the azaleas, the wooden benches. So what if there is an occasional grocery cart on its side in the shadows? No big deal. It happens.
But then the soiled speak.
“Can you guys help us out? We’re hungry.” Honesty makes me tell you my reaction: No Reaction. Walking on. Past the dirty ones.
Then Robert turns, and says, “I can’t give you money, but I can buy you some food.”
Why do I hang out with people like Robert? It’s so much easier to keep walking. Walking past. Walking toward. Past what I don’t want to see, acknowledge. Walking toward the known, the comfortable.
“What are you doing?” I quietly ask Robert, a bit frustrated.
“Getting them something to eat,” he says matter-of-factly.
I try but can’t think of a real reason to stop this interruption of my previously perfect night.
Too late, already inside McDonald’s, I remember a possible reason to have kept walking, a religious reason even: didn’t Jesus say that we would always have the poor with us?
But Robert, reasonless, places the order.
Five minutes later, with a bag of burgers and a tray of dollar menu sweet teas, we walk back toward the vagabonds. One young guy, with his mouth inexplicably sucking on the side of a smoking soda can, with pierced nose tattooed in triplicate black dots along the bridge, stands up in dryrotted pants that touch bony, bare knees. Drunk. Or high. Or both.
I hold out the bag of burgers. Away from my body, and toward his. Embarrassed. He reaches towards the food and plops back down.
Another, apparently the leader and spokesperson, looks up at me and says, “Man, you guys are beautiful. I gotta stand up and thank you. That’s a cool jacket.”
I want to be anywhere, anywhere but here.
He starts to stand, and then reaches out to hug me, drunkenly. But pauses, perhaps sensing my hesitancy.
I then see his eyes.
And my safe Savannah world shatters.
For his eyes are the eyes of a real boy. A boy with a mama and a daddy somewhere. A boy who used to be a baby.
“Where are you guys from?” I ask, shakily, terrified but now connected. Joined. Level.
“San Francisco, long way from home,” he replies.
And then my knowing comes: his eyes could be the eyes of my daughters. The eyes of my grandchildren.
Without thinking, I reach out and touch his scraggly face and hold it for a moment. I see him. Time freezes. I really see him. He sees me, I think.
“If this was reversed, I’d do this for you, man,” he says haltingly, taking his place back down on the sidewalk, back down to his low place.
Robert and I walk away.
Less than two blocks later, I feel tears on my face.
This blog category is the journaling and journey-ing of my quest to say (with cautious sincerity) “Hello, Anxiety” and to take a look at the condition from my “me-andering” views.
Here are two definitions of ANXIETY. First, from Oxford Languages:
Well, Oxford Languages summed it up pretty well: “Worry, Unease, Nervousness,” otherwise known as WUN. (Truth in blogging: I just made up that acronym.)
Unnecessary sidebar: Did you know that “wun” is an actual word?! At least according to the unrivaled urbandictionary.com.
Uh oh, “Walking with the occasional burst of running for a few seconds, or minutes at best,” not to mention “let’s hope I survive” both sound eerily, anxiously familiar.
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A “hypothetical“ convo between Anxiety, Developing Truth and Me:
Me: “Anxiety ain’t gonna wun over me. I’m gonna wun from it.”
Anxiety: “We’ll see.”
Developing Truth: “Neal, it’s not about being adversarial, combative or managerial with Anxiety.”
Anxiety: “Again, we will see.”
Developing Truth: “Breathe and try again, Neal.”
Me: “Okay. I ain’t gonna wun from it. At least I’m gonna try not to.”
Developing Truth: “That’s enough for now.”
Anxiety: “We. Will. See.”
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The second definition of Anxiety is from “my sister,” Anxiety Girl:
A blog category about finding “art” in unexpected places and situations.
You know you’re in serious trouble when you spend time arranging your leftovers-from-the-fridge into an “artistically” weird sort of Bento Box-type lunch.
Some fourteen years ago, when older daughter Amy announced that she was pregnant with our first grandchild, I was both ecstatic and a tad nervously hesitant. A grandfather?! Seriously?! At this stage in my life? Am I even old enough to be a grandfather … officially?!
The old blog post below explains (in excruciating detail) how I ended up being called “Abu” (Abuelo = Grandfather) by that first grandchild Daniel—and all the other ones who came later.
Younger daughter Emily is a whiz at making custom t-shirts, so she recently created these two for Robert and me. Grandson Daniel came up with the idea of calling Robert “Rbu” to go along with my “Abu,” making us a weirdly matching set.
Spanning the past year or two, a Perfect Storm of sorts has swirled around my life, mind and body, making direct hits from time to time. The storm was/is created by the following major factors (among others):
* The pandemic’s upheaval of “normal” life as I/we knew it. Causing, at the very least, worry and unease. Affecting everything from family dynamics to personal health concerns.
* The deaths of my dad and brother, as well as husband Robert’s father, stepmother and grandmother, all within the last couple of years.
* The angry and dangerously hateful climate of divisiveness within our communities, states, country and political systems. And the constant, sometimes difficult-to-ignore media coverage.
* Realizing and coming to terms with my life as an older married-to-a-guy (!) gay man, closely connected to my two daughters and their families, as well as my loving ex-wife.
* Being married to a wonderful black man and taking a serious and difficult (often very painful) look at issues of racism and social injustices in our nation and world.
* Even the seemingly silly fact that I’m getting older (I’ll reach the milestone of 70 next January!) and dealing with aging issues, which can seem both unfriendly and foreign.
So a few months back, I came to realize I needed some help. (Duh.) After reading Lori Gottlieb‘s encouraging and often hilarious Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (for the second time), I started looking for a therapist.
It took me a while to narrow the offerings down. Have you ever googled “Therapist near me”?! After all, I stand in the produce aisle, taking forever to decide on the “best” tomatoes, based on color, size, texture, aroma and how-do-they-compare-to-my-childhood-memories-of-homegrown?
What was I looking for? I guess this …
… even though at that point, I had not thought about or considered the word “anxiety” itself. I was experiencing it but not naming it.
I finally found him, and it only took a few sessions for him to gently say one day, “Neal, I think it’s pretty clear that you have generalized anxiety disorder.”
I was a tiny bit insulted. I think what I desired to hear was somewhere along the lines of, “Oh my goodness, Neal, you are a terrifically well adjusted man. Now go and BE that. You can do it. You ARE it!”
When I could breathe easier, I realized he was right.
This new blog category is the journaling and journey-ing of my quest to be able to say “Hello, Anxiety” and to take a look at the Perfect Storm. I invite you to join me.
Here’s a rather messily photographed past post from back in 2014. I may still have had a flip phone. I’m loath to change.
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Yes I admit it, I’m an optimist. Pollyanna’s a very good buddy. We take tap dancing together.
What I actually mean is I’m USUALLY a somewhat cheery person. But not always. A while back, I underwent a fairly unpleasant medical procedure. (I’m a big baby when it comes to anything that hurts at a .5 or higher on a 1-10 pain level.)
Here I am in the waiting room, reading about blogging:
Finally I was called back to the eerily quiet and humanly empty procedure room where I had to wait in nervous solitude for quite a while. The doctor was running way behind.
I got bored pretty quickly and started playing with the IPhone’s … reverse camera capability. Doesn’t that sound better than saying I took a bunch of selfies?
I looked at these terrible pictures, grimaced at their muted and otherworldly haziness, realized I wasn’t smiling–and started to delete them.
Then it hit me.
“Get real, Neal. It’s okay not to smile. It’s okay to be muted and hazy … and to be by yourself for a while. Being out of focus doesn’t mean being out of life.”
NealEnJoy 