Lesson #7 - Communication: It's more than just words.

The top 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 4).

The greatest challenge I have encountered with my son in the past 12 months is on how to bridge the gap of communication between us.  Our generations not only varies in how we express ourselves verbally, but also how we think and act.  With such a large disparity in our processing of information, it is no wonder we have found ourselves so many times totally misunderstanding each other.  I have learned a great lesson with this connecting with my child challenge, which is that in order for me to understand him, I must listen to much more than just his words.

Lesson #7 - Communication: It's more than just words.

Too many times in the past I found myself rambling something I thought made total sense to me, but made absolutely no sense to my child.  In fact, the most common approach to trying to get him to understand would be for me to raise my voice in anger and yell it out.  Most of us do this when we are upset, which in retrospect makes absolutely no sense at all.  What makes me think that if when I say it in a kind loving way he does not understand me, it would make any more sense when I scream it out?  But I am guilty as charged of making this mistake over and over again.  The good news is that with the goal of truly understanding my son's world I have slowly but steadily walked away from some of these terribly ineffective habits.  This was not an instantaneous decision on my part, in fact it has been a gradual and slow process that in many ways was initiated by him and not me.

Several years back, when we both attended group counseling after he was diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, I too recognized in my own behavior many of the traits that were being discussed in group therapy.  Almost every time that we got into an argument at the time it would escalate into some kind of violent and aggressive behavior on his part if I too would get so caught up in the moment and would not lower my level of anger too.  Very seldom did things really get out of hand if I would not let him get to me emotionally.  Mind you, this was very difficult for me to accept because it meant that I had to give in to the reality that I was a trigger to his outbursts.  A lot of times during our arguments he would  yell so many obscenities and insults that I could rarely stand down and not be hurt by it all, which in turn would get me all wired up and angry too.  Angry words would be exchanged and sooner or later he would not be able to control himself and an outburst of violence would occur.  What I did not realize before counseling was that his behavior was mostly induced by the way he is wired, and not from a bad habit.  My behavior on the other hand was definitely out of habit, which meant that I should and could control it if I set my mind to doing so.

Twelve weeks after we consistently attended the counseling program my son was discharged, not because he was now well, but because they basically said that there was nothing else they could do for him.  Sadly, that is the reality of most of these programs which are geared mostly towards checking boxes on a health care checklist instead of truly finding solutions for people with real illnesses and problems.  Once an insurance coverage seems to be coming to an end, the providers typically close the case file and send you home to deal with your sickness all on your own.  However, all was not a waste since amazingly much of what was taught made a good deal of difference to how my son approached his anger.  The first few times that we had arguments after the program was over, it was he that lowered his voice in an almost condescending tone to show me that he did not want to let things escalate again.  I was not all that happy in the exact moment that I was being treated as the child by him telling me to calm down and not raise my voice, but eventually I realized that he was totally right.  He had learned that when I was upset with him and started to argue, I was his trigger to make things escalate, so he decided to put a stop to the trigger by not feeding from my anger.  Once I realized the impact of this amazing breakthrough, I too learned to control myself and not be so quick to escalate my tone of voice in anger, which I am happy to say has worked very well for both of us ever since.  This is not to say that we have not had arguments, and that things have not gotten out of hand, but I can safely say now that when it has happened, I was not the trigger anymore.  I'd say that we have brought down violent behavior by at least 90%.  The other 10% is tied to his alcohol abuse and a very different matter than the previous diagnosis of Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

Once I realized that my son truly wanted to make things better, even if he would not openly say so, I knew that the door was open for us to make positive progress.  The challenge then became for me to be able to understand him, to read between the lines, and to find ways to connect.  The moment that I accepted that my son was not like other kids, I then decidedly took action to learn more about all the different possible ways I could approach him in order to make a difference in his life.  Soon I understood that many of these personality and autistic disorders came bundled with challenging behavior that did not respond to discipline and punishments in the same way that other children respond.  I quickly decided to go back and assess every one of my past actions and his responses to them and learned a great deal of what not to do anymore.  I learned that agreements were easier for him to accept than rules, and that consequences made more sense than punishment.  I now warn him instead of threaten him when he is doing things that I as parent rather he would not do instead.  In the end what this all meant was that instead of trying to get him to learn from my mistakes, he had to experience his own for them to be applicable lessons to his life.  It is difficult to watch your child fall when you know he is going to fall all along.  My role has changed dramatically into that of a loving support role, rather than a teacher and much less an enforcer.

Communication is much more than just words.  I have learned to read his body language, to listen attentively to the songs he composes and carefully read the essays he writes.  Inside each and every one of them I have found clues to his state of mind.  When he is acting out, I try to read between the lines to find out what was the trigger for the behavior at hand.  When he seems like he is shutting down I reach out with just one finger instead of my full hand and wait for him to reach back out before I grab him back and bring him up with me.  The clothes he wears, his hair, and how he interacts with his friends are all ways of telling me something important.  A messy hair means something totally different than a well groomed one, just as much as calm behavior around his friend is much different than wild behavior.  I have learned to filter out the nonsense and focus on what matters.  Sometimes a joke is just a joke, but sometimes it is a quest for enlightenment.  Believe me when I say that a lot of it matters, much more than I originally thought.  He is after all an amazing child, with an amazing mind, and I am very grateful to have him in my life...and he needs to know that most of all.

Dad

Lesson # 8 - He's just a boy.

The top 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 3).

Day in and day out of exchanging emotional blows with my oldest son is an exhausting task to say the least.  At times I have felt that in his mind I am his greatest enemy, while many other times I have come to realize that I am his only true friend.  How an individual deals with this emotional roller coaster is something that is strongly tied to his or her level of maturity and life experience.  Being the true adult in this relationship has taught me that in order to reach him I must drop down my emotional exchange a few levels so that we can see each other eye to eye.  Otherwise it will always seem to him as if I am looking down on him with a superiority complex in hand.

Lesson #8 - He's just a boy.

One of the most difficult tasks that I have encountered with my oldest son is gauging his level of maturity.  His talents, abilities, and mental capacity paint a very deceptive picture of his persona.  As a little boy, by the time he was only 6 years of age, he was already reading volumes of books that were almost all intended for individuals much older than  him.  He always behaved like an amazing sponge, ready to suck in not just the few things that were being taught to him, but also everything anyone in the immediate vicinity would have to offer as knowledge.  He was definitely born at the right time and place in our technological evolution, taking advantage of everything from books, magazines, computers, and personal knowledge to enhance his own mind.  When he decided to learn how to play the guitar, the pace of instructors seemed too slow, too cumbersome for him, so instead he insisted in learning on his own.  Just a few months later he was not just playing the acoustic guitar, but also had learned the electric guitar, the banjo, the ukulele, and the bass.  Not everyone of those was mastered to the same degree, but the ones that he intended to use to record his own melodies were done so with so much elegance and beauty that it left me dumbfounded when I would hear him play them.  On a trip to visit my sister in Plano Texas we had forgotten to bring my digital camera so on the way we stopped at Costco and purchased another to record our 23 hour driving adventure.  On our journey he took dozens of pictures which afterwards when I was able to view them, one after the other proved to me how different he saw the world through his eyes compared to mine, and also how masterful his ability to capture the moment truly was indeed.  Go back to my earlier posts, take a look at many of the ones I included inside this blog and you will understand what I am talking about.

The more I see what he is capable of, the more amazed I am at his mind.  I  have listened to some of his own musical compositions and have truly learned to respect his abilities.  I have read his essays and can easily understand why his scores are off the chart on any standardized testing given to individuals his age.  In retrospect I can really understand now why so many times the scores were not just high scores, but also perfect scores.  He has a beautiful mind.  However, these abilities and all of these incredibly beautiful talents serve nothing for the purpose of measuring his mental maturity.  In other words, when it comes down to it he is just a child.  A bearded, long haired, much older looking child, but a child nonetheless.  Inside the differently wired mind of my son still lives a boy whom is not even 18 years of age.  Too many times I have been tempted to treat him as a grown man, when in fact the truth is that he is just a boy.

During the past 12 months I have learned that in order for me to reach my son and be able to make contact with his intellect and his heart, I have to mix it all up into intelligent conversations with small goals in mind.  In other words, I have to talk to him about all those advanced subjects that he loves to talk about, but I must keep in mind that the decision making part of his brain is still developing and growing.  His frontal lobe which in time will give him the power to say no to certain things that are not good for him instead of folding to the lure of pleasure is that of a teenage boy, not of a grown man.  So yes, we talk about space and time and dark matter and existentialism, but those are just doors to knock on in order to get inside his mind and plant seeds of love and hope and beautiful dreams for the future.  This knowledge that even though he is so advanced in so many ways he is still a boy has served me well, but also taken a long time to figure out.  I wish I would of known sooner and been more prepared for this incredibly complicated journey.  Maybe things did not have to be so hard between us if I would of learned to separate the world of intellect from the world of a child's mind.  I have found nothing out there to guide me through this, nothing at all.  In retrospect it seems so simple, so easy to understand.  Yet while it was all going down, it felt so complicated, so convoluted and hard to see.  It is almost as if I was looking through water and could not see the bottom of the glass because it was so full of bubbles or worse turbulence.  Still, it was just water, turbulent or not, just water.

I am glad that I have learned this lesson because it will apply to all of the rest of the stages in the lives of my children.  No matter how difficult it is for me to see through the turbulent times, I now know that it is just water and that if I take the time to look and listen carefully I should still be able to hear and see the child on the other side.  One day soon enough he will no longer be a boy.  It really has nothing to do with age and everything to do with life experiences.  There is no rush for him to grow up if I understand where he is at in his life.  In fact, I am happy with the knowledge that he is just a boy, which means that there is still time to grow, time to mature, and time to become a man.

Dad

Lesson # 9 - I cannot change him.

The top 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 2).

For the last 12 months I have been in a constant struggle to keep myself from trying to change my son.  Ironically, the best example I have of this being an impossible task is right in front of me every morning as I look at myself in the mirror.  I am living proof that nobody can change who you are inside.  True change only comes from within, anything else is just an illusion.

Lesson #9 - I cannot change him. 

Short of something new and yet to be discovered, every thing in the universe is made out of the same stuff.  You, me, the earth, in fact the entire cosmos is all made out of energy, which at times is visible and at others not.  The essence of everything you know, including your thoughts, is made out of energy.  In our small blue marble of a planet we call Earth, the process of evolution has created an amazing collage of things, some inanimate, others very much alive, which surround our every breath we take.  For a stone to attain it's shape and composition, it took millions, sometimes billions of years.  The same can be said for all living creatures in our world.  A red rose is not just a red rose.  Within it are millions of cells that symbiotically have found a way to survive and thrive so that it may in the large scale of things eventually become a rose.  This stands true for everything that is alive on Earth.  If you wanted to turn a rose into a daisy, nothing short of a miracle would be needed on your part to perform such a task.  In fact, even if it could be done, you would first have to destroy the real essence of the rose by converting it into energy, and then afterwards transform that energy back into a daisy.  This my dear readers is not much different from what it would take to change your child into a different person.  Wanting my son to be different by my standards means having to destroy his real essence in order to do so.  There is the lesson, not only am I not capable of changing my son, I truthfully do not want to change him.

True change comes from within.  Nobody can make me a better father.  In order for me to become a better father I must want to do so from within myself.  Nobody can change my son.  In order for him to become a good man, he must learn the lessons that make any man a good man and then be willing to adapt from within.  My job is not to change him, instead it is to guide him, set an example, and then be there for him when he needs me.  Just as the rose will need water and nutrients, so will he need caring and love to see him through all the tests that life will throw at him on his journey to become a man.  It is not what you tell them as a parent that really matters, it is what you show them.  Telling someone that you are there for them, but then when they need you being miles away to help is not the same as being there in the flesh.  Us humans are funny that way, we thrive on real contact with others, and we easily whither when left all alone and what might seem without hope.  The love and caring that you give your children cannot be replaced with anything else, and without it they will become totally different individuals.

I have learned during the past 12 months that rather than trying to change my child, I need to accept him for who he is, just the way he is, and feed with love and compassion the good qualities inside him.  There are so many reasons to be upset with a challenging teenager, but there are also just as many to be proud of him.  To focus on the negative things would simply force me to be upset, frustrated, and angry all the time.  What would be the usefulness to having that attitude?  I am not advocating to ignore negative behavior, there is a time and place for rewards and this would definitely not be it.  However, I have learned to truly appreciate the beauty that is mostly hidden from plain view in the many little things that make my child unique.  Even when he is in the midst of a very unfortunate behavior, I can still see through him when I look into his eyes.  He is in there, waiting to thrive, to succeed, to be a great man!  Nobody wants to do it all wrong.  When he is doing it all wrong, there is a reason that might not be justifiable, but still the reason stands.  It is my job to understand this reason, to see what it takes to sand down the roughness of his words, to cool down the heat in his burning heart.  I cannot imagine anyone else willing to take on this task, so it might as well be me.  Not because I have no other choice, but because I want to see him through it all.  So again we come full circle, it's all about love.

Dad

Lesson # 10 - I'm doing this for LOVE.

The top 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 1).

Almost one year ago I began writing on this blog and sharing my life experiences with you.  Over 3,600 visits have logged on to these pages either by chance or on purpose, motivating me to stay true to some simple rules I wrote on my first post of August 10, 2009.  These digital pages have served me well as a place to unload, reflect, and most of all force myself to see my life in ways I never originally intended to.  Now I feel not just obligated, but intensely compelled to at the least give you what in my mind have been the most important lessons that I have learned in the past twelve months.

Lesson # 10 - I'm only doing this for LOVE.

If you search through the stories contained in all of my 142 posts a common theme surges without forcing itself on you, the reader...I'm doing this for love.  I have no hidden agenda, no ulterior motive, and much less any prize to gain by typing the contents of these pages.  In fact, I have always feared that the honest words that I seal in the context of my posts might some day come to bite me in the proverbial ass.  An angry reader, a self proclaimed seeker of justice, and even my own ex-wife could take offense to my sincere approach to putting it all on the table, as I do here today.  However, I have found one single emotion that is in itself more powerful than any fear I might have while typing away, and that emotion is love.  This is not an emotion that you can summarize in a two hour movie where the characters fall into and out of love like autumn leaves on a picnic table in the park.  Nope, this is the love that only a parent is able to express towards his children without doubt or hesitation.  If you are a parent, the kind that would do just about anything for the sake of your children to live normal and happy lives, you understand better than anyone else what I mean.

I have experienced what is surely more than half of my life, probably even two thirds of it by now.  It would serve no purpose to have learned every lesson in life's book, if in the end I would of not learned the lesson of loving a child.  Out of all of the things that you can put into your parenting toolbox, love is by far the most powerful one of all.  Because of love I am the father that I am.  This emotion that my parents threw at me freely as a child and still as an adult is the key to surviving the most difficult moments of any one's life.  I am lucky, God did me a great deed by giving me the ability to love so consistently unconditionally.  Love is in fact not only my sword but also my shield that protects me from the realities of life, which I am not exempt of experiencing, and which are more commonly than not incredibly painful and unavoidable.

What does love do for a parent?  It  recharges you from the difficult moments that come your way every day.  Rarely have I had more than one day at a time without having to deal with something hurtful, frustrating, or worst scary.  Yet at all times I feel blessed because the more I struggle, the more I love my children.  I've had great teachers in my life.  My parents are themselves the greatest symbols of love in my life, just as their parents were to them too.  My brother and two sisters are a fountain that never dries out of this nectar so sweet and special that I've needed to survive in life, without them I would of withered a long time ago.

So here I am fully aware that even though sharing with you so many beautiful and other scary moments of my life has served me well with your words of encouragement and caring ways, in the end I can safely say that what I do for my kids, I do because I love them.  Maybe someday when I am gone, a hard copy of these last 12 months will fall into their hands as a reminder of how far I had to go in order to learn to be a good father.  This is not just about what works or does not work in parenting, this is much more about how love heals and always finds a way to make things right in the end.

Dad

Building scaled models...

I'm a bit surprised that I am able to log into my blog page in order to write this note while I am out at sea doing my job.  It is typical that these type of websites are blocked for use and in many ways I am usually incommunicado with the outside world.  Somehow, this time, I tried logging into the site that hosts my blog and was able to get in.  It would not surprise me that it is mostly a fluke and that in the next day or so I will get locked out for the remaining two weeks of my journey.  Still, I'll take this opportunity to write a few words and share a bit with you, my dear readers.

When my father was a young man, one of his hobbies was building model battle ships.  As a young boy I remember walking into my grandparents dining room and being amazed at the level of detail that was obvious from my amateurish gaze of a dozen or so models that stood solemnly locked away in a glass china cabinet.  Each and every one of the ships was perfectly glued and painted with so much care and detail that you could almost imagine these scaled versions of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers to have been the real thing and somehow they were placed into a "shrinking" machine by some mad scientist.  I remember straddling one of the dining room chairs with my chin against the back support, gazing through the glass doors while my imagination would run wild with scenario after scenario of these magnificent ships out in the open ocean waging war against some formidable enemy.  To my surprise though, my father was more of an air man, with childhood and young men dreams of becoming a pilot which never realized themselves because of the simple fact that he did not have 20/20 vision.  Yet there was not a single model of an airplane in the display case of his childhood hobby.

As I grew up I too loved building scaled models.  I would spend hour after hour putting together every single airplane model my parents would gift to me whenever they could do so.  Antique airplanes, military airplanes, commercial ones too.  By the time I was 9 years old I must of already have built at least 50 different models.  Patiently cutting out each and every plastic piece, painting it with excruciating detail, gluing it, sanding it, and then retouching it with filler and more paint.  It was typical of me to sometimes get so excited about another model before I had even finished putting the decals on the one I was working on that it would sit in a corner waiting to be finished with several more in the same state of incompleteness.  Apparently it was not about seeing them completely done that excited me the most.  Instead it was the process, the challenge, the finding out how difficult it would be to put it together that drew me into this hobby.  I was once gifted a 747 model which I spent long hours putting together.  In those days we lived in Phoenix Arizona, where temperatures outdoors frequently exceeded 112 degrees.  After finishing the building process I ignorantly left the mode outside hoping the paint would dry quicker.  When I returned to check on it several hours later, the wings had curled up in the shape of donuts because of the outdoor heat.  It frustrated me for the length of time that it took me to drop it in the nearest trash can, probably because by then I was already inside building another one.

As an adult, I once tried sharing this model building passion with my brother who is 12 years younger than me.  On one of his visits to California, I thought it would be a good brother bonding experience to teach him how to build a model ship.  We bought the USS Arizona and set ourselves to do the best job we could at building it.  It took us days to cut out the pieces, sand the edges, paint them, and eventually glue and fill any gaps.  We were so proud at our accomplishment that we placed it on the dining room table for everyone, especially ourselves, to admire for a while.  The details were amazing and we had even taken the time to create any wires and cables out of melted plastic for greater realism.  One day after we had finished building the model, my then wife came back from the grocery store and without noticing what she was doing dropped one of the heavy brown bags filled with milk and other goods right on top or our fragile accomplishment.  At the moment it was so frustrating to see how so much work had simply come to its fatal end in such a quick instant in time.  After the momentary impact of its demise, again, just as in the past, I just grabbed all the pieces and dumped them in a trash can without hesitation.  The process of building the model with my brother was what held true value, not the model in itself.  Even though it represented our success in some material and physical way, the real evidence of what we had done was contained within us, in our sense of pride, in all of the brotherly bonding that took place during its creation.

It is only fit that today I sit deep inside the belly of one of these magnificent war machines writing this short post to you.  Within the past 25 years of my life I have been a part of these vessels in one way or the other.  Testing their radars, missiles, guns, torpedoes, and helping train the men and women that call them home for many months at a time is just part of what I do for a living.  The childhood hobby of replicating has merged with the adulthood responsibility of making things happen in real life.  It takes great men and women to defend and protect our freedom, without them who knows what kind of a country this great nation would be.  I understand that I am just one bolt, if at all, of this grand processing machine that keeps moving towards the future without blinking during its path.  So even though today, Saturday, I rather be in the total comfort of my own home, I do understand why I am here instead.  This is where I am supposed to be today and as much as I might rather be somewhere else,  we all have things that we do in spite of what we rather be doing because it is our job.

The incredibly loud sound of a helicopter landing and then taking off from the rear of this ship and just above my berthing has passed away.  The continuous rocking motion will not stop until hours after I have disembarked.  Some things are temporary in life, others not.  What we do with them when they are happening is what matters.  Years after my father passed away, his mother, my grandmother remarried and her life continued on.  As she sold the old house where my father was raised, without hesitation she disposed of the arduous labor of a childhood dream that was contained in each one of my dad's model ships.  It would of been great for me to have at least one to remember him, but the truth is that I have my memories instead which cannot be crushed by a gallon of milk or anything else.  What memories do you have that are so powerful that nothing and nobody can take away?  Do yourself a favor, keep the good ones and simply recycle the not so good ones.  I promise you that it is the right thing to do.

Dad

"That's heavy..."

Hearing news about something terrible happening at a distance has a completely different impact on me than when it happens in my backyard and close to home.  I imagine that it is probably very much the same when I post here some of the things that happen in my life.  As a reader, the farther you are to me physically or relationshipwise, the less it impacts you too.  Don't worry, I won't hold this against you since I understand too well how this process works.  When I was much younger, many news stories would cross my life leaving very little trace of their true importance or meaning.  Even close to home events like the passing of a relative, a car accident of somebody I knew, or a crime committed in my local community were in my mind labeled as "things that just happen."  I believe that the first close to home experience that truly touched me was the death of my father when he was just 44 years of age and I was an 18 year old teenager.  Interestingly, my father had already had his first heart attack when he was only 33 years young, and then two more throughout his life before he passed away, and even though the events were significant at the moment that they were occurring, I don't remember worrying too much about it afterwards.  His sudden death, however, felt as a paralyzing experience that brought my young adult life almost to a halt for what seemed forever.  Other relatives had passed away when I was younger without truly digging into my life in the same way that my father's death brought up inside me an awakening of the reality and finality of death.  Watching and experiencing first hand the emotional pain and suffering of my mother, sisters, and brother taught me an incredibly powerful lesson of how the death of someone that you love can bring you down to your knees in an instant.

Almost 30 years have gone by since the death of my father and to this day I still get emotional just thinking about it.  In those 30 years I have lost other relatives like my three remaining grandparents and also some very young cousins to breast cancer, lung cancer, and car accident.  Each one of these deaths has touched me deeply and taught me some lessons that I would rather not have to learn first hand.  Parents burying their children is a lesson that nobody should have to endure.  In my humble opinion it is the most devastating event anyone can experience in their lifetime.  I've also lost extended family and close by friends, some to accidents, some to drugs and alcohol, other to diseases, and worst of all to murder.  Every one of these beautiful souls holds a special place in my heart that only God has access to understand how it's affected me and my life.  Some years back I also experienced first hand the true devastation that the suicide of a teenage son had on a close to me married couple.  In essence, this kind of experience simply destroys every ounce of joy in any parent while putting their lives into a maze with no possible solution or exit.  Eventually the only way out of this crisis was divorce in order to each survive.

I apologize in advance for the somber tone of this post, but the truth is that there is no way this subject can be addressed smiling.  However, I must tell this story, and in my opinion you should read it...

Yesterday was a good day with my two sons.  As I arrived at my home after work my oldest son was waiting for me with the request for me to take him to a bookstore to buy the second volume from an author that he had just finished reading the first.  I truly enjoy getting into my car and driving around with my sons even if it is just for a few minutes hunting down something that they are interested in.  When I called my other son asking him if he wanted to go with us he was busy listening to some web cast and declined.  The 17 year old eagerly straightened himself up in front of a big mirror that lays on the side wall of the entrance of our home.  Just last weekend he got the first haircut in more than three years and his long dark hair now sits just above his shoulders instead of all the way to the middle of his back.  I am partial to liking him anyway that makes him feel happy, so long, short, curly, or straight makes absolutely no difference to me.  He had also gone shopping with his mother to a thrift store where he bought a few interestingly looking used long sleeve shirts, a pleasantly green one of which he was wearing over a dark t-shirt made him look very nice.  Of course, it would not be him without something on his head, so the final touch was a black fedora hat and some dark shades.  In my opinion, he looked absolutely smashing!  I would feel this opinion to be biased if it were not for the very pretty young lady that was at the register when we were purchasing the book that commented on how much she liked both, his choice of books, and also his shirt.  As we walked out of the bookstore I threw a tease by saying "dude, that chick was absolutely hitting on you!"  For which he replied, "she must be a hippie!"  I laughed both inside and out with the knowledge that he knew I was right, and also because of how non-challant he always is about things like this.  As she complimented him all he did was give her a simple no teeth showing smile, no words came out of his lips, and it was obvious that after I had made my comment the entire matter had not gone up to his head.  I really like that about him.  He always seems to be so content with whom he is, regardless of the entire world that surrounds him.

On our drive over to the bookstore I asked him if he had heard about the news of the missing girl in Moreno Valley California, which is just a few miles away from us.  Last week on Thursday, July 15th, around noon time a 17 year old teenage girl was abducted half a mile away from her high school while on her way back to a friend's home after her summer school classes.  Yesterday's local news reported that on Tuesday, July 20th, a badly decomposed body had been found among a grove of trees in a vacant field no more than two miles away from where she was abducted.  The next day, dental records were used to confirm that in fact it was the body of Norma Lopez.  As I told him about this tragedy I saw how the expression in his face turned somber and sad.  The only words that came out of his lips were "that's heavy."  Given the opportunity, we talk a lot and I am very familiar with most of the slang that he uses that is common to his age and social environment.  I have heard other kids using the "heavy" expression, yet to date I had never heard him use it in any of our conversations.  In a sense it took me by surprise, not because of the word in itself, but rather because of when he chose to use it.  My son is a very well read individual.  If you go back to some of my earlier posts you will discover that his love for reading began at a very early age and has never stopped.  He has an extremely advanced vocabulary and his reading and writing skills are off the chart.  In fact, even after over two years of barely attending any formal school, when he took the high school certification tests from the state he scored a perfect score on his essay and on the language arts section of the test.  I believe that his choice of words has a very significant importance and I tend to listen very carefully to what he has to say when we have our conversations.  Yes, the terrible experience that the parents, family members, and close friends of Norma Lopez are having to endure is very well described as "heavy."  The pain, the sorrow, the unjustifiable violence and needless emotional devastation caused by the death of this young girl is "heavy" indeed.  A burden that weighs much more than it should and nothing truly has the power to lift it off the hearts and minds of all that have been left behind.  When a body of a child is found decomposing in an open field so damaged that not even gender can be determined and dental records are necessary for identification purposes, indeed I agree with my son, this event is clearly so "heavy," in fact it is so massive in itself that even the space around it feels warped and the time has slowed down to an almost complete stop for all of those that are experiencing this hardship first hand.

Very few things have the power to lift us when we are in the middle of a tragedy such as death.  There are no words that are useful, there are no gestures that make it all better.  In fact, nothing that anyone says or does truly makes a difference to those that are in mourning.  The moment is so heavy that time in itself feels surreal, almost as if we are dreaming and at any moment are about to wake up and realize that nothing transpired truly happened.  Unfortunately and eventually our bodies give in to exhaustion and we collapse and fall asleep.  When we wake up we realize that it was not a dream, that we will never share a moment of life with the individual that we just lost.  The only thing that eventually keeps us going are the memories and the love we have nurtured in our hearts.  In fact, love is what carries us through these difficult moments that have no apparent meaning.  It is not just the love that we gave or received that lifts us off the hurtful path, it is also the love that we never had a chance to express, the moments that we had planted in our hearts for another time, another day, tomorrow.  This endless supply of moments that never came hurts much deeper than we ever dreamed they would, but they also eventually teach us how much those that are now gone really meant to us.

Needless to say, I ask of those of you who pray, to pray for this family that is now going through such a difficult time in their lives.  For those of you who don't pray, we'll pray for you too, so that you never find yourself anchored on the ground on your knees going through a moment like this without God's blessings.  Nobody should have to carry this kind of weight in their lives...nobody.

Dad

Broken...

I have but one request as I write this post for you to read...be patient with me today, I am all over the place with what seems to be an emotional roller coaster that I cannot jump off in mid ride.  As I struggle to reconcile what my mind is telling me with what my heart is yelling at me, I tread light on this difficult path of trying to be a good father without losing myself at the same time.  Nothing in my past has truly equipped me with the necessary tools to endure so much heart ache.  On the contrary, life has been too good to me, only allowing me to be learned in the lessons of giving into smiles that persistently engrave themselves into my face.  How cruel to be tagged by God to learn these lessons so late in my life.  Would it not of been easier if my heart was already hardened from other misery?  It just might be that only a heart that is padded with so many years of goodness is capable of understanding the reason for it all in the end.  Time will tell.

I have always wondered how far down the rabbit whole I will have to go in order to truly understand what everything that happens in my life truly means.  Every day that goes by teaches me something new that in one way or the other out dates many of my goals and dreams.  In fact, so many things affect me in so many different ways that I have seriously chosen to not plan too far ahead, but instead to live one day at a time.  I say this as a casual statement, yet the reality of this comment is deeply impacting and to a great degree sad.  I see so many of the people that surround me making grand plans for their future, for the eventual moments in their lives, and I can't help but feel cheated by the deck of cards to which my life is being dealt with day by day.  I want so bad to be able to write great news and wonderful happenings, but the reality of the moment does not span far enough to cover emotions such as joy and genuine happiness.  The longer I walk the road I have been given, the darker it gets and the lonelier it becomes.  It makes absolutely no sense to hold on to anyone else while I fall into this well, that would just make the moment even harder to bear because of the inevitable moment that comes when I will have to let go anyway.  Instead I have chosen to find whatever I need to survive in every single nanosecond of my existence.  Hidden in between the notes that compose the music of this journey I have become a master in hearing the tune that I need to be OK.  It is more like enjoying the silence in between the notes, rather than the music in itself.  Chaos intermingled with sorrow and confusion give themselves pauses from time to time that allow me to re-catch my breath, re-charge my heart, and most of all see a single point of light in the horizon to find my bearing.

Love is probably the most confusing emotion I have ever experienced.  It has the ability to fill up my cup just as easily as it does to completely drain it.  As the father of a child that carries with him an un-song melody of hope, I find myself daily wanting to grab him by the shoulders and shake him back into my endless caring arms.  I dream of moments of peace in which he has enough lucidity to be able to understand how much I care and how deeply it affects me when he makes choices that are scary and unhealthy.  Day after day these moments become less common and more sparse, making it harder and harder for me to find instances of hope to grab onto and slow down my free fall.  Every once in a while I get a chance to share a good moment, a positive insight, a healthy perspective with him.  Those moments feel as if a parachute opens up in mid air breaking the speed at which we are both dropping and giving us a chance to enjoy the view without the despair of the knowledge of a final catastrophic impact.  However, when the moment is over I feel as if I need to grab on to him again as not to allow him to free fall without me leaving each other alone and probably lost.  I now know that it is love that triggers my reflex to grab on to him, to try to stop what most of the time seems as an inevitable crash and nothing but hurtful outcome.  Love forces me to keep my eyes open as we fall down together, when instinctively I just want to close them tight and brace myself.  I am mortified by what every bone in my body is telling me of how much it will hurt if we both hit bottom together, yet I am incapable of letting go.  I have come too far to give up and find myself incapable of letting go and simply saving myself.  It is almost as if I have lost my primordial instinct of survival, and this reality scares me more than I ever thought it would.  I've always wondered what it would be like to be somebody else.  If I were different, could I let go?

I remember clearly as a young boy falling heads over heels in love with a young beautiful girl.  In fact, as far back as I can remember, during my Kindergarten days, I already liked this girl so much that the mention of her name simply made me blush.  Two years later, when my father returned from Vietnam, we moved to Phoenix Arizona forcing me to let go of my impossible love.  Two years after that, when we finally came back to Puerto Rico, she was still in the same school that I returned to.  Again, with the same infatuation that could clearly be called puppy love, my heart found its way back into falling for the adorable young lady.  Two years followed and when I was finally in sixth grade I built the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend for which surprisingly she accepted.  At my mother's place, my childhood home, there is still a photo album filled with pictures of some of the most beautiful moments a young boy could ever dream of.  The now flimsy and yellowish pages of this album are filled with the magic created by light bouncing off the beautiful smiles of youth and captured by the chemistry of silver halides absorbing these instances in time that where later turned into the old fashion paper goods that we call photographs.  In each image there is an endless supply of happiness, unadulterated love, and what in those days I could of only describe as butterflies in my belly.  How marvelous it is to sometimes go back home, open up this hidden treasure of pure joy.  I have been told in more than one occasion that I am incapable of saying this girls name without smiling and having my eyes sparkle at the same time.  I believe that to be true, I am not able to do anything but feel love for the moment in time in which I was so happy.  Unfortunately for me the young lady lost her father to a sudden heart attack and her mother eventually decided to move back to her original home in Spain, leaving my young boy heartbroken to pieces in the process.  Within weeks, what seemed like my entire source of happiness walked away to a place so far that it might as well been another planet.  Even though we corresponded in writing probably less than a half dozen times, I still have burned into my memory her foreign address which I can recite at will.

Love comes in many flavors, some of which can only be described as sweet as honey while others are as bitter as biting into a lemon wedge.  I am totally incapable of feeling anything less than adoration towards my parents, especially my mother that has given me so much to be proud of in my so many years of life.  The same goes for my two sisters and my brother, within their boundless source of caring I have been fortunate enough to heal so many of my current wounds.  I do not know what would be of me if it were not for their continuous words of hope and encouragement.  Twisted in the fiber of my sibling relationships are an infinite source of nourishment that keeps me going one day at a time.  So why is it that as a father I feel so alone, so desolate at times?  If those that surround me are constantly giving of themselves to fulfill my hunger to feel well, why does it hurt so much when I grab on to my oldest son and spiral down with him into the constant crisis or his ill mind?  If the relationships in my life are good, loving, caring, and giving to a great degree of satisfaction, why do I feel as if I was broken, damaged, and mostly defective?  There were several reasons for me to walk away from almost 18 years of marriage, any one of them probably good enough to convince me not to look back.  However, the main and most important one in my mind was because I felt alone in my efforts to fix what was broken in our relationship.  As the years go by I have found absolutely no reason to look back at my apparently selfish motivations.  Today, even though I am not truly questioning my reasons, I do question my personal contribution to our inability to reconcile.  Was I already broken, damaged, and defective?  If so, even if my ex-spouse would of tried to contribute to fixing what needed to be corrected in our marriage, would I have been capable of recognizing her efforts?

When I see how very little ability my very smart son has to recognize the error of his ways, it poses a grave question in my mind about my own ability to recognize what I might of done wrong in my own past or even now in my present situation.  It is not so much about recognizing mistakes since who is to say that any of it is a mistake at all.  No, it is more about realizing what I am truly contributing to making things better.  As strong as my love for my child might be, there is no certainty that it is the right approach to contributing to his well being.  It certainly is not contributing to my own personal well being!  I feel categorically affected in so many ways that I am incapable of putting it into coherent words.  I'll be talking about falling into a rabbit whole as quickly as I change the subject into falling in love at the age of five.  This can only mean that as I get dragged down the white water rapids of my life I am desperately reaching for any branch that might reach me from the edge of this turbulent river in hopes to save myself from my eventual destiny.  I am in fact giving into the effects of emotional exhaustion, knowing well enough that sooner or later I will again catch my breath and keep going for another round regardless of the outcome of this moment in time.

Ahhh, to smell her beautiful hair sliding through my fingers as we look into each other's eyes.  The rapid heartbeat that only comes once in a lifetime from the anticipation of a first kiss.  Love is a splendid thing when it brings with it the aroma of happiness and joy.  Love also brings with it the bitter sweet taste of a broken heart when a true love walks away due to life taking its course regardless of any and all good intentions.  Nothing is truly forever, including the safety net of an adoring parent.  Sooner or later it all finds a way of dispersing itself through all of those beautiful or even scary moments in time that summarize our lives.  I pray that I have a chance to witness the glorious moment in which God heals my son, maybe giving me what I need to heal myself too.  Feeling broken is nothing to be proud of, and makes very little sense when I am also trying to help my children.  This is why today I pray...

"God, take me into your arms and heal me.  Fix what is broken so that I am damaged no more and capable of helping my son."

Dad

Pure evil!

It is more often than not that in my life I have encountered goodness versus evil.  In fact, I have a hard time remembering past moments that could be defined by somebody that was actually in my life that had the intent of harming me on purpose.  Of course there are the sad moments in which I made mistakes that caused sadness in the heart of someone close to me, and vice-versa.  However, my childhood is mostly full of amazing memories of normalcy; my teenage years were full great friends and fun; and in the end my adulthood most definitely contains a great assortment of joyful, passionate, and exciting times.  That is not to say that there was not the occasional family drama, upset girlfriend, or broken heart, but in the end life has been good to me regardless of the so many challenges I have encountered being a parent.

On the night of the 4th of July I decided to stay at my home instead of heading out to be with friends, just to make sure that if my oldest son decided to invite his friends over to our home and pool that there would be some adult supervision.  I believe that the fact that I was there was the primary reason that he actually decided to head over to a friends home up the street to spend the 4th doing fireworks and sharing with his friends instead of at our place.  At around ten in the evening he came home on his bike and all seemed well, which pleased me to no end.  Then he said he was going back and would return later.  Being a holiday I figured I should probably not worry too much and let him be, so I just went to bed hoping that he would come back at a reasonable hour so I could eventually get some real sleep.  At 2:30 a.m. I heard the familiar sound of one of the back sliding doors opening so I got out of bed to make sure all was well.  Once again I found myself sadly disappointed when my oldest son staggered into the house drunk as a skunk.  Any and all of you that might of experienced dealing with a drunk individual already know that there is no reasoning or value to trying to make a point with them.  The details are now fuzzy because even though I started to write this post several days ago, now time has gone by and so much more has happened.  What started at 2:30 in the morning, eventually ended sometime around 7:00 a.m. when he finally crashed and fell asleep.  During those four and a half hours I followed my son in and out and all about in hopes that I could keep him from getting into any greater trouble.  At one point in time I followed him into an alley that he crawls into by a large water tank just a few homes up the street when he needs to be by himself.  I sat there for several hours listening to him babble a million words about nobody understanding the true essence of life and happiness.  When I would try to ask him questions he would get louder and seemingly upset, so eventually I just sat on the ground quietly and listened.

What impacted me the most that night was something I heard him say after he tried to strike me with his fist and missed by a mile on one of his walks out in the neighborhood.  I was merely trying to get him to come back home because it was late and I knew that if the police would drive by, or someone called because of his loud behavior, the night was going to get a lot longer and complicated.  As he eventually jumped into his mother's car which was following the drama behind us he said, "take me away from him, he is pure evil," making a reference to me.  I obviously did not take it personal, who in their right mind would take anything a drunk individual says personal during their incoherent babble?  On the other hand, what an incredible hurtful choice of words to call me "pure evil."  I have no doubt that in his mind, somewhere deep he truly does perceive my caring for him as some kind of evil manipulation.  Otherwise why would he have chosen those words to describe my otherwise calm behavior that night?  I have gotten plenty angry with him in the past, yet for some reason that day I was simply taking it all in strides and hoping to get the night over without significant complications.  This perception that he has of my caring for him could be one of the main reasons that while he is under the influence he gets so angry at me.  I love this boy so much, yet in his mind and probably in his heart he has chosen to cancel my goodwill and replace it with some misguided sense of hate.  If there is something that I have learned in my life, changing a way someone feels about you is probably one of the most difficult tasks encountered.  All it takes is one word or a single gesture to incorrectly assess the true intentions of someone that really cares for you.  Years of love, dedication, and caring, can all be cancelled out with a single planted thought into the mind of an otherwise amazingly smart individual.  I am in awe with the power of our minds.

After the 4th of July came several days of soberness followed by others of drunkenness.  Every time I am around him when he is out of control I find myself being more and more afraid of him.  Ever since he literally jumped me in May and I found myself with a fractured thumb and a great deal of sadness for his unprovoked aggressiveness, I have not been able to return back to being myself.  I have tried to be strong, to be unafraid, but the truth is that at the moment I am back to being damaged goods.  I not only fear for his erradic and compulsive actions, I also fear that if he gets violent I will find myself having to defend myself and possibly hurting him without malice.  I cannot recall a time in my life for which I have prayed more than the last two months.  During most of my moments of solitude, while I drive back home from work, I find myself inmersed in intense conversations with God almost on a daily basis.  Even though I have left my own personal anger for my circumstances out of my thought process, I cannot help but feel an inmense sense of sadness inside me.  I no longer question why things are happening, but instead I pray words of faith professing how God's blessings are just around the corner of my son's life.  I thank Him for taking care of us, for not allowing things to be worse, and I beg for a miracle in our lives.

PRAYER: "Dear God, I am ready for you to heal not just his mind, but also his heart and soul.  Turn me, and him into your instrument so that we can give testimony of your love and compassion.  Spare us now, heal us now, and bless us all the time.  I trust that You are already doing this even though I am unable to see it with my limited sight.  Give me faith to stay strong and on course.  Amen."

I ask my dear friends and all of you to please pray for us.  Do it with all of your heart so that God will have no other choice but to send his angels to take care of us.  I expect nothing less than a miracle soon.

Dad

Your luck has been completely changed today.

Last week was hectic, to say the least.  I got out of bed everyday at 5:00 a.m. and was already in my office by 6:00 a.m. supporting work with folks out of Japan.  It might not be a big deal if after putting in my 9 usual daily work hours I could just head home and chill, but the work I was doing kept me busy for almost 12 hours every day instead.  Add to it the typical 90 minutes total commute and you can easily figure out why splitting the remaining 10.5 hours between getting any rest and getting anything done around the house just aren't really enough.  Still, I'm not complaining because in today's economy having a good job is like having a vault full of gold in my life.  Still though, by the end of the week I was pretty much exhausted and ready to finally get some well deserved rest over the weekend.  Being such a hectic week at work also meant eating lunch in the office everyday in order to not get backed up with my job.  On Monday I had driven out to buy Chinese takeout and brought in to eat at my desk.  One thing led to another and I never did get to my fortune cookie.  Actually, it was not until Friday when I realized that in order to get out of work at a reasonable hour I was going to have to skip lunch all together, and as I scanned my office space I ran into the forgotten fortune telling treat.  I split open the plastic bag labeled "Gourmet Fortune Cookie" followed by six Chinese language characters, which I can only assume read "Eat at your own risk."  As I cracked the cookie the white strip of paper inside ripped in half.  I straightened out the two pieces and they read "Your luck has been completely changed today."  Instantly I laughed and pondered at the vagueness of the statement, which never actually defined if my luck had changed for better or for worse.  I also considered mentally that if I were a superstitious person, which I am not, maybe the tearing of the paper containing my written fortune probably meant that I had just cancelled my chances of good fortune accidentally.  I stashed the now two pieces of paper along with the rest that I keep under a huge desk size calendar for future amusement and proceeded to consume the dry fortune cookie that even though it proclaims to be of Chinese origin, actually comes from a factory in National City, Illinois.  I drank a few gulps of bottled water to ensure an expansion effect in my stomach would take place to carry me through the next few hours of work.

"BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...WAAA...WAAA...WAAA...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP..." the piercing loud sound of several smoke detectors and the fire alarm woke me up at exactly 5:27 a.m. Saturday morning.  Dazed I instantly jumped out of bed searching for clothes to put on while the exaggerated wake-up call filled the air mixed with the obvious smell of something burning close by.  As I walked out of my bedroom my youngest son walked right behind me querying why and what was going on.  I went into the kitchen thinking that maybe my oldest son had forgotten to turn off the stove or oven after cooking himself something the night before, but nothing was out of the ordinary.  My oldest son was sound asleep on one of the couches in the family room wearing headphones hooked up to his iPod.  As I walked over to him and told him that something was burning close by the room kept filling up with more smoke.  When I opened the access door to the garage from the dining room a curtain of smoke hit me in the face which did not allow me to see any more than one inch in front of me, the fire was obviously coming from inside the garage.  In hopes that I could get my car out of the garage I pressed open the huge metal rolling door and ran to my room to get the car keys.  Before I went out the front door it occurred to me to make sure my oldest son was out of the family room, but no such luck, he had fallen asleep again.  This time I shook him and told him "dude, the house is on fire, put on some shoes and get out now!"  This time he followed me and my other son out.  Enough smoke had cleared out of the garage for me to be able to see my car and I held my breath, rushed in, and drove it out quickly on to the opposite side of the street knowing that the firemen would need access.  When I got back one of the neighbors yelled over the piercing sound of the fire alarm that she had already called for 911 for help.  I dragged out my front yard garden hose, turned the water full blast, and one last time held my breath and went inside to add some water to the now obvious source of the fire, the water heater.  The fire had already consumed the 18 inch platform that originally sustained the water heater off the ground, and its weight had made it drop breaking the water pipes above which created a spectacular forward shower effect which probably contributed to my car not burning to a crisp.  I sprayed as much water on the now fire covered wall behind the water heater, but once I ran out of air I knew better to get out and not breath any unnecessary smoke.  As I got out of the smoked filled garage I went back to the garden hose water faucet, closed it, and went back next to my kids shivering from my now wet clothes in the cold morning air.  Five minutes later the street was covered with two patrol cars, four fire trucks, and over a dozen firemen trying to get a handle on the situation inside my home.

Three hours after it had all began everyone was gone and all that was left was a burned wall and water heater, and a pile of debris that the firemen had kindly made in front of my home.  As I stood in front of my home I suddenly remembered the message on that broken fortune cookie "Your luck has been completely changed today."  Interestingly I have decided that even though such a dramatic moment could be interpreted as a sign of bad luck, I honestly believe that I was blessed.  The entire week before this event I had been out of the house so early that chances are that I would of not been home to make sure my kids were safe.  As I look from the inside of my dining room area I can clearly see the charred fire line on the wall where the flames never breached from the other side by the narrow thickness of a coat of paint.  Exactly on the other side of the dark line and only one inch away are curtains, which would surely gone up in flames instantly had the fire consumed that single coat of paint.  Of course I am looking at all of this from the half full side of the cup, but truthfully, how else would I want to look at it and not expect to get totally depressed?  In my heart I feel blessed because I can clearly see that so many of the challenges in my life are actually stepping stones for me to grow.  Everyday that I am allowed to breath another day is proof that my job here is not done, and the same goes for my kids.  There must be something great in the future of my sons for them to still be here with me today.  After all, things can always be worse, much, much worse!  That is how I know that my sons and I are blessed.

Dad

Can you hear the music?

A little bit over three years ago the Washington Post conducted a perception, taste, and people's priority experiment.  In a busy corner of the Washington D.C. Metro Station a man whom would appear to most as a common street performer opened the case of his violin, took out the instrument, and played for the cold morning passing by folks on their way through to board their train.  For 45 minutes one of the greatest violinist in the world, Joshua Bell, played six of the most intricate and acclaimed musical pieces ever written in history on a $3.5 million dollar violin, while dressed in jeans and wearing a ball cap.  By the end of his performance only 6 individuals had stopped to listen for a brief moment, and 20 donated a total of $32 dollars into his violin case without even slowing down their early morning pace.  Amazingly, just two nights before the master musician had sold out a Boston theater at an average of $200 a seat, yet on that morning not one single person recognized him or the true beauty of his music.  What does it take for us to see true beauty?  Our lives are so full of urgency towards most moments and we live at such a hectic pace.  If a world renowned master violinist can pass off incognito while performing some of the most beautiful music ever written by Bach, what chance do we have ourselves in recognizing so many of the amazing things that surround us daily?

It was already past 10:00 p.m. when he finally stumbled in through the front door barely being able to keep his balance.  Earlier I had sent a short text message to his mother letting her know that he was not home yet but since I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. the next morning I was heading to bed.  I was not trying to disregard my parental role.  I was simply exercising my fatherly instinct which had already told me that this night was not average and that since he rarely ever answers my calls or text messages when he is with his friends but typically does his mother's, it would be wise to find him and bring him home soon.  I was right and her efforts to find him paid off quickly when he answered in a recognizable intoxicated voice.  As soon as I heard the front door of my house open I got myself out of bed to assess the situation.  It took me less than five seconds to recognize that he was drunk and that the odds of it being a restful night had dropped significantly.  Almost as soon as he had walked in through the front door he was already walking out through the family room back door while mumbling some incoherent words which probably had been bouncing inside his head after some disagreement with his friends that night.  I instinctively followed and in less than a minute we were both back in the front yard after he exited through the side gate of the house.  More incoherent mumbled words, but this time they were much louder and I feared disturbing the neighbors so I demanded he go back into our home or at least the our back yard.  Reluctantly he conceded and walked back and sat at an outdoor bench all the time talking to himself about some nonsense that just would not find any meaning as of yet.  The best I could tell, he had gotten into some kind of discussion with somebody and his already complicated mental process was now even more confusing because of the alcohol for the other side to understand.  I used every ounce of self retrain to remain silent as to not make things worse.  Even though my efforts paid off I took advantage while he sat outdoors to collect all of the kitchen knives and utensils that might be tempting for him to use as a weapon if things would turn out violent as they did last time almost two months ago under similar circumstances.  Eventually he came in and poured himself a large glass of orange juice while he warmed up some leftover pizza.  Again he stumbled outside with the plate in hand and sat at the patio table to eat while the poured juice never left the kitchen counter until I discovered it still intact in the morning.  I kept wanting to go to bed but knew that it was too soon and if he got a second wind he would be heading out to the front of the house where inevitably someone would call the cops and the drama would extend itself into much later hours.  Suddenly I could hear the family room TV with at least twice its customary volume playing the movie "UP," which he had started to watch at least five hours earlier but never finished.  A few more discrete trips to the family room revealed him laying on the smaller couch watching the movie which eventually was my cue to lock my door and try to get the three remaining hours of sleep before I would have to wake up to go to work.  As I went to feed the cat in the morning I found him sleeping on the floor next to the same couch he had been watching the movie, apparently he had fallen off but decided not to venture back on.

Within the chaos I found comfort in the fact that things could always get worse, and they did not.  Sadly that is the state of affairs in which I am currently living.  Comfort in the battles that were not fought, in the words that were not said, in the simple fact that I was able to collapse in my bed for at least three hours before having to go and do my other job, the one I get paid for.  I sometimes wonder if it is just me that lives in this crisis mode?  I did not pick this kind of life and given the choice I would gladly pass it along to someone else.  I am not sure what the numbers might be, but surely I am traveling on a very small raft over an enormous ocean of turbulent waters...at least it feels that way.  It is not just that the raft is very small, but I also feel as if I have only been given access to less that 40 percent of its space to make my journey.  On the other 60 percent of the raft I must carry supplies, and tools, and the necessary equipment to navigate the scary waters.  On my side I carry the few comforts I can afford to have without allowing it to get so heavy as to make it impossible to steer.   Maybe that is why so many people catatonically walk through life without being able to see the beauty that surrounds them.  Maybe it is not by choice and the reason they cannot see what should be amazingly beautiful is because their survival instinct blocks the view.  Could it be that only a handful of individuals are gifted with the ability to take pause and listen to the music?

Every once in a while someone climbs on board my side of the raft for a short amount of time.  It does not take long before they realize that the ability to function with only three hours of sleep and high levels of stress are just a few of an extensive list of pre-requisites needed to ride along.  Patience is not only a virtue, it is a must in the list and without it too many mistakes are made when the pressure is on.  However, I'd say that the most valuable and useful trait needed is faith.  Not just faith that there is something greater at work, but also faith that within all that seems so wrong, there is a great deal of right.  Faith that my life is truly a blessing regardless of whether I can see it or not.  Faith that I am blessed with the right child, even though days like yesterday might seem as if God sent the wrong FEDEX angel when he delivered my son.  Faith that in between the notes of my life a much grander master is playing the most amazingly beautiful symphony for me to enjoy.

PRAYER - I know that I am blessed, please allow me to hear You play out the notes of my life the way You intended it to be heard.  Thank You God!

Dad

The other side...

There is a world that surrounds us that so very few individuals are aware even exists.  The price of admission to this other dimension is much steeper than anyone can imagine.  In order to experience this world a set of prerequisites must be met which most individuals typically avoid in the first place.  Interestingly though, there is a bitter sweet effect in the lives of the select ones that enter this world.  The pungent taste of difficult, painful, and stressful interpersonal experiences come hand in hand with the sweet flavor of an emotional bond that goes so much deeper than other ordinary relationships.  This other world is so foreign to those that have been blessed with living outside of its realm that those that are in it find it extremely difficult to put into the correct context any words that would give a fair description of what it is like to be a part of it.  At the same time, what might originally seem as a blessing many times becomes more of a curse because not having a good understanding of this other world gives the outsiders a false sense of righteousness that typically backfires when they unexpectedly encounter any soul that comes from the other side.

I have been a traveler myself.  Although not by choice, I have spent most of my adult life walking in and out of this strange parallel universe.  In the beginning I had no idea that there would be any ill effects from crossing over.  However, after almost 17 years of doing so I have come to realize that once I took my first steps into this strange place, it was unavoidable to suffer from its eventual side effects.  One of the most powerful consequences can be marginally described as a "mental marker."  Very much like when somebody tells you something that you rather they never told you in the first place.  Once they tell you, they can never un-tell you.  That is also how the "mental marker" works, once it is placed in your mind there is very little you can do about it because it will remain there for the rest of your life, barring brain damage of course.  Each time I have found my way to the other side, the simplest of my actions in that world remain recorded in my mind with a powerful "mental marker" that eventually comes into conflict with the reality of this side.  The conflict is not as much subtle as it is confusing.  It is as if what seems to work on one side, typically has no useful effect on the other.  I should, but I find it pointless, to go on giving one example after the other of the consequences of moving between these two worlds because as I originally mentioned, words cannot truly do justice in describing it.

What is this other world that I talk about?  How did I find the door and gained access to the other side?  Quite simply put, life took its own path and brought it right into my doorstep when my first son was born.  I just kept walking in a straight line thinking that all I had to do was be a good parent and that my devotion would take care of everything else.  Little did I know at the time that walking in a straight line would have nothing to do with my eventual destiny.  Please do not misunderstand me, I do not say this as a complaint.  On the contrary, the discoveries that I have made while parenting my son not only outweigh any of the ill effects from crossing over into the other universe that is his mind, in effect they have saved me.  I cannot count how many times I have wanted to quit, give up, or run away from so much confusion, stress, and heart ache.  However, another side effect that came from crossing over eventually revealed itself in the shape of true understanding, a kind of enlightenment if you please.  The more time I spend inside of his world, the easier it is for me to put myself into his shoes and take a few more steps towards helping him.  I confess though, those are very scary shoes.  The mental process that is constantly taking place in his mind is beyond my ability to truly understand, but just because I do not clearly understand it does not mean that I cannot contribute to his well being.

I know that much of my dedication towards understanding my son, his behavior, and his mental disorders come not only from a sense of parenting responsibility, but also unconditional love.  Maybe this is why I am not surprised when I see so little true understanding from everyone else from which we have asked for help.  There is a much different view when these individuals are looking into our lives from the outside in, while I am constantly looking from the inside out.  The view is not only different to an outsider, it is also mostly un-impacting.  Even worse is the view from outsiders that have absolutely no kind of experience with mental illnesses, to them almost everything that is visible gives the constant appearance of being a consequence of bad parenting and child behavior.  In fact, if it were not because I am parenting more than one child, I too would probably be passing judgement on my parenting abilities and son's behavior.  Fortunately for me, I have another teenage son that brings a great deal of light to the real issues by not having the same condition as my older son.

I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone that is dealing with mental illness in their life.  As if it was not challenging enough to have a medical condition that is complicated to diagnose, treat, and manage, the stigma that is tied to the label of "mental illness" is a heavy load to carry through life all on its own.  Obviously some mental illnesses are more difficult to endure than others, but somehow they all add a layer of hardship and frustration to those that have it and to many of the people that are involved in their lives.  These complicated illnesses seldom come into people's lives all by themselves.  On the contrary, almost every individual that has to endure the unfortunate load of a mental illness is burdened with much more than just one.  Mental illnesses such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Bi-polar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Disorders, Eating Disorders, Major Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and others are somehow interlinked.  It is highly common for one disorder to trigger another one from revealing itself and causing a great deal of distress on its victim.  To make things even worse they also bring with them a higher rate of suicidal tendencies and substance abuse disorders.  What I find to be most heart breaking is the attitude that so many people have towards individuals that are affected by mental illnesses, as if it was their choice to be ill.  I have discovered that even much of the medical community is badly informed on this subject, which only adds insult to injury since they should be the ones advocating the strongest for a better understanding of these disorders.

Sadly there is not quick fix to what I mention above.  The understanding of mental disorders is an extremely slow process even by the experts.  However, I feel obligated, compelled, and deeply inspired to not be part of the misinformed collective and to contribute to the proliferation of a better understanding of the tragic effects that are being endured by the victims of mental illnesses.  The more I read, experience, and expose myself to the reality behind these disorders, the easier it has become for me to understand its victims.  Obviously I have a vested interest since I have been crossing over to the other side by sharing my life with my son's mind and know that the more I understand, the easier it is for me to help him.  Love should not be the only access key for any one of us to use to feel compelled to understand so many souls that are being affected by mental illnesses.  We should also feel driven by a sense of fairness.  Would we be so quick to pass judgement on an individuals behavior if we knew that the main force that drives them to act in a certain manner originated from cancer, diabetes, or some other non-mental illness?  Would we not be driven to a higher level of patience if we knew that so much of what so many are feeling is totally out of their control?  I have learned the hard way that a great deal of what works for me to keep my younger teenager out of trouble actually has the complete opposite effect on my older son.  I know that this is not because of their three year age difference since most of what currently works with the youngest almost never had the desired effect when I tried it with the now oldest when he was three years younger.

I have learned to accept my part-time role on both sides of these different worlds.  Sometimes I wish I could stay on the safe side all the time but the "mental marker" that is now embedded into my own mind cannot be removed without taking with it too much that is too precious to me.  I not only love my sons with every ounce of me, I also love knowing that I can understand them enough to contribute however possible to their well being and happiness.  At least I am fortunate enough to be able to appreciate the fact that in life nobody has to be perfect in order to be well.  If this was a requirement, life would be full of disappointments.

Dad

A Wrinkle in Time and Space...

There is an unusual side effect that comes from parenting a child that is wired differently.  When the waters get rough I get the almost recognizable motion sickness symptoms where it is hard to focus on anything other than the exact moment in time that I am experiencing.  Eventually, when the waters calm down though, there is a peculiar lingering sense of chaos that stays with me for days to come.  Even though the worst is over, I still find myself having difficulty focusing on the rest of my life.  The effect does wear off, and sooner or later I go back to being myself again.  Amazingly though, he's actually recovered a lot quicker than I have from our last challenging moments.  Could this be a sign of youth resilience?  If so, I would gladly accept a transfusion of his life's cocktail to rejuvenate myself.

I am glad it was Saturday night, otherwise I would of spent the entire week trying to catch up with my missed hours of sleep if it would of been Sunday.  Sometime around six in the evening one by one the clan started to infiltrate our home until at least ten or twelve teenage souls occupied every cubic inch of air in my backyard with their happy voices, and of course their music.  The oldest guy in the bunch was turning twenty three years old and they had all come to the consensus that the celebration would have to take place at my home.  Mind you when I tell you that nobody ever asked the owner, the sightly recovered parent of the child that seems to never sleep, whether it was OK to have a birthday party at my home.  Nevertheless, I never mind when they decide to hang out at my place because at least this way I have a sense of what goes on during their celebrations.  I could tell from the music selections that some other teenager's music player was being used and not my son's.  I have heard his taste of music so much that I can almost instantly tell when it is his collection of tens of thousands of songs that is being played.  Early on during the evening the music was loud, but not overly annoying so I made no attempt to get them to tone it down.  At the rate of probably every twenty minutes I would get out of my dad cage and hover over to the kitchen to take a peek out the backyard window that sits over the sink while I would clean up one or two dishes at a time.  The view was that of pure unadulterated happiness and joy which slowly but steadily fed into my own sense of relief and peace.

My bedroom also has a window that gazes out to the hot tub area in my backyard although I do not like to be poking my head through the curtains, since I feel their lives are entitled to some degree of privacy.  However, at least through the thin glass the loud but muffled sequence of events unfolded one by one as the night took its course.  "SPLASH, SPLASH, SPLASH..."  One by one I could hear each of them jumping into the pool while the rest laughed.  They dug into the storage container and pulled out every pool toy they could find.  The intense sounds of happiness of young people was contagious and kept improving my mood throughout the night.  On one of my trips to the kitchen I found every single bottle of dressings sitting on the counter.  They had cooked some veggie burgers and fed themselves.  As I went to grab the mayo jar to place it back into the fridge and avoid it from getting spoiled, the birthday boy walked into the kitchen from the sliding door and backyard, took it out of my hands and said that he would take care of it.  The next time I came into the kitchen everything had been put away.  "This is a new achievement," I thought to myself as another inch of tension faded away from my stressed out forehead.  At ten o'clock in the evening all music came to an end without me ever having to ask for them to do so.  As time carried itself to a later place I found myself amazed that they never turned the music back on again.  Soon I started to wonder if I had been in some kind of accident and the whole thing was just a dreamy part of being in a coma.

It was already midnight and by then I would typically be annoyed by so many kids still hanging out at my home and not allowing me to finally go to bed and get some rest, but their unusually "normal" behavior made up for me being tired and it never occurred to me to ask them to go back to their homes.  Suddenly my son knocked at my bedroom door and when I opened said "Dad, something is wrong with the hot tub, the water level is going down."  Originally I thought that it was just because at one moment in time I had seen eight of them in the hot tub and that since four had gotten out the water that had overflowed into the pool via a small waterfall had not been replaced yet.  It was the funniest thing to watch as I went to inspect the situation the remaining four hot tub occupants where all sitting in bottom center of the jacuzzi like fish hoping to survive a drought.  When I went to check the valves, somebody had turned one to the position that takes the water out of the jacuzzi for servicing purposes.  When I turned the valve back to its correct position, huge jets of water shot from all four directions on to the remaining occupants in the hot tub.  They all laughed so hard as it was obvious that not only did the streams catch them by surprise, but it was powerful enough to almost hurt.  Not one of them got out!  I just had to laugh at their amazing resolution to remain put while the tub filled itself back up again.  They all blamed the valve changes on the birthday boy, probably because it is true that he is typically the one that does things like that, but also because they knew that I would not be upset with the guest of honor.

At one o'clock in the morning I was walking out of my room to give a couple of instructions for the young people to start making their way back to their homes when I realized that the only one left was my son.  What amazed me was that he was coming in from the backyard and the first words out of his mouth were, "Everyone's gone and I cleaned up the mess outside."  Now this my dear friends is a first.  The fact that my son found it necessary to clean up after himself and his friends was an incredible shock that not only amazed me, but left me wondering what part of that day's experience flipped the switch in his mind to do so in the first place.  I don't have an answer, and frankly I am not sure I will ever get one so I'll blame it all to a wrinkle in time and space.  He's back to his messy self, so trust me when I tell you that this was not a life changing experience.  However, when God gives me a break, I just take it!

Dad

My God is the Universe...

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you already know that it is typical for me to avoid writing about my challenging moments with my oldest teenage son until I have had an opportunity to process the moment. I think that if I was able to find a moment in the middle of a crisis to document the event I would probably miss a great deal of the "reality" behind it all because of my heightened emotional state.  I am by my own admission a very emotional individual, which does not help at all for the purposes of objectivity.  The good news then is that it has almost been a week now since I encountered a very difficult and emotional moment with my oldest son and I now feel much more well equipped to share it. Even though six days have passed,the image of my son endlessly weeping is as clear as when it all started. To put it all into the appropriate context you first have to know that crying is a rare event with my son. In the last five years I can probably count with one hand how many times I have ever seen him with watery eyes, much less crying. Even though I believe that he is totally capable of giving a great deal of love and affection, he does not seem that well equipped like most of us that have a sort of emotional sponge which when we are hurt feels as if being squeezed releasing our tears of sorrow. In this respect my son is very much like his mother, which I believe has that same, for lack of a better word, deficit.

A sturdy outdoor pet house sits sideways pressed close against the back wall of my home with the purpose of staying dry and warm during inclement weather for our half indoor, half outdoor cat to find refuge. On top of the vaulted ceiling of the cute pet condo, almost always laying against the back wall, also sits one of those speaker gadgets to which you can dock any kind of iPod type device in order to listen to the music out loud instead of through headphones. It is very common for me to arrive at home after a long day of work to find my oldest son with a few of his friends sitting in the backyard patio chairs socializing while their favorite tunes play in the background on the music contraption. I remember being that age and how connected I was too with my favorite music. In fact, it is often that I hear an old song from my younger days and instantly find myself being transported in time to an exact moment of my youth. This mental link created by music is indeed very relevant to what I am about to share with all of you today.

Even though my oldest son lives one hundred percent of the time with me, every other week my ex-wife dedicates as much of her free time as possible to watching over him so that I can bring my head out of the teenage parental waters and catch my breath. It is almost like when soldiers stand watch in the middle of a heated battle that last too long for anyone to be able to perform their duties past a certain point in time. Sooner or later, even under the attack of artillery, rockets and almost constant gun fire, the strongest men collapse,which is why it is common for some to take turns standing watch while others try to catch a few hours or sometimes just minutes of sleep. During her watch last week, when my ex-wife returned to check up on my son she found herself in a moment of parental desperation and texted me to ask if I would please come over as soon as possible because she could not tell what was wrong with him. In the 15 minutes that it took me to arrive I must of prayed close to half a rosary asking for mercy and compassion. In my mind and on my way home more than half a dozen scenarios played themselves out trying to answer the question of what might be wrong this time. When I arrived my oldest son was sitting on top of the outdoor pet house, weeping, while listening to music on the portable music player. He sat with his back against the outside wall of our home rocking himself in a back and forth autistic type motion. In his almost 18 years I have never seen him do this before which made the moment awkward and confusing. To make it all so much more difficult to process, it almost seemed as if his emotional state was entirely linked to every single lyric he would sing out loud. Once I arrived I pulled up a patio chair and sat next to him in an effort to be able to decipher what exactly was it that he was weeping about. One song after another he selected in perfect order to his anguish intercepting the vocals at the precise moment in which he wanted to reveal something more about his emotional state by then singing along and almost instantly selecting another song to do the same without almost any gap in time in between them. At first it all seemed as if it was being done at random, but the more I listened, the more I realized that there was an incredible sense of logic and order to the way he was choosing his songs and revealing his emotional state in tears as he sang along just the few parts that made sense to what was wrong.

Soon it was past eleven thirty in the evening and it was getting chilly outside. My suggestion to bring his music indoors was rejected so I rushed to my room and changed from shorts to sweats so that I could stay outside and keep him company. Song after song, weep after weep, tear after tear, I found myself immersed in his pain and sadly understanding what he was going through. A relapse, a moment of weakness and despair had taken him down to his knees while trying to stay sober. It was obvious that he was intoxicated in more than one way, but this was not the moment to confront, to get angry. Instead I listened and slowly interjected myself into his anguish trying to comfort him by letting him know that he was not alone and that I would be there for him. He cried even louder and in his sorrow he found more lyrics to tell me how hard it was to stop, to not be entangled with his addiction. The only moment in which he lifted his eyes long enough to focus into my own, he said something that instantly filled my heart with hope. As his teared covered face confronted my heart broken eyes, he said "this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do...this is so hard dad...so fucking hard. I have been praying, not to your God, but to mine. My God is the Universe...this is harder than anyone can ever imagine." Then he lowered his face and stopped the song that was playing and started another one to which he returned to the effort of only singing along to the parts that gave meaning to his pain. Ninety minutes after I had arrived it was already midnight and other than putting my hand on his shoulder, there was really nothing else I could do but wait for his moment of distress to wean itself off. I am not sure what time it was but his mom walked outside and offered him something to eat at which time he turned off the outside music, grabbed the plate of food, took it to his room and closed the door behind him.

On and off that night he kept coming out of his room crying out a song while he constantly raided the refrigerator for more food. The final exit from his room was around six in the morning at which time he apparently fell asleep. I was spent, tired, and too worried to go to work, so I also crashed for a couple of hours taking advantage of the parenthesis in his emotional state. It truly felt as if I had attended an eight hour opera which instead of ending simply faded out after all the participants one by one collapsed in exhaustion. When he finally came back to life he was definitely spent too. He barely had a voice, his eyes were as red as rubies. In all of our years together this is the first time I have ever seen my son fall so low. It has taken him the better part of a week to get back on his feet, but he seems to be mostly functional. I too am trying to find what I need to be well within it all. I understand that part of the recovery process requires that he hit bottom in order to recognize that he truly needs help. It is an extremely scary place down at the bottom. So scary in fact that I myself felt paralyzed, even though it was not me who was in effect the main character. I have so many questions, so many worries, and so many doubts. In fact too many for me to put into words at the moment. This experience will take time to absorb, and even more time to be able to understand its true meaning and value. In the meantime I'll pray some more, because in the end I really believe that only God has the answer to my son's purpose in life. Would you please pray for us too?

Dad