Holi-daze

Woke up this morning feeling feeling fine, totally unprepared for the day ahead. That is the strange thing about life, you can wake up one day and, whether you know it or not, it might be you last day on earth. Other days are more pleasant. They can be full of unsuspected surprises, or they can be like today.

"You are a liar Daddy."

and then

"Make me Pancakes."

and then

"Bring me my clothes."

and when I didn't take the bait on any of these, it was

"Arrrrrrunnnnnnngghhhhhhhh...." for five minutes

Later, holiday traffic tried to kill me, small children seem completely incapable of understanding the concept of the lollipop bribe, and a book store clerk seemed obsessed with offering me service, even after I had shooed him away for the sixth time. It is all madness I tell you. But not all the time.

J. and I went out the other night.

"I think I am dead" I told her.
"Why?"
"Everything is going so well. Nothing ever goes this perfectly." I beamed.
"Am I dead too?"
"You have to decide that for yourself."

Some days I wish the universe would make up its mind, having a great date with my wife one moment, only to be cast down into shade where we are denied, like Tantalus, even the simplest pleasures of life in the next moment.

"Don't get comfortable" I think to myself. "O.K" I think, but It feels like a lie. When you love life how do you convince yourself to mistrust it? Conversely when you hate life how do you ever trust it again?

When I was sixteen I took everything in my parents medicine cabinet because I was furious with life. Nothing, it turns out later, was fatal. The nurses were very sympathetic. "Anything I can get you" she said "anything at all." This offer to a sixteen year old boy by a blond twenty something nurse filled many a fantasy while I lay "recuperating" in the hospital.

The problem with making the decision to take your own life is that, for many years afterwards, it becomes THE solution to virtually any major problem. Once you have made this choice it becomes a reasonable possibility that must be weighed alongside all others.

Today I am fortunate that the only thing I thought about was calling J. We are both running around trying to get ready to go to my parents house for a week. There are so many little chores to get done, it seems at times like they can't all be accomplished before we leave. "How are you doing" was the tenor of the conversation.

"If you're taking a trip to Crazyville, I will see you when you get there."

She laughs. Holidays are crazy. Everyone says so. Sometime good and other times nuts. You have to take the good with the bad, roll with the punches, let it be like water off a ducks back, and so forth. I'd like to say I look into the rearview mirror and see my daughter smiling at me and think "thank god I wasn't successful" but I can't,I am still much too selfish and I still get way too nuts to think this way. But I am thankful to be alive, and believe me that is progress I can be thankful for.

I can't remember the last time I thought about taking my life. It's been a few years at least. Still, I hate the feeling I get when it seems like the universe is trying to pick a fight with me. I want to explain to it:

"Look I am not going to crash my car, fight with my daughter, or buy that overpriced sweater even if it is on sale."

However, I suspect that, like the antagonistic diatribe of my daughter, the universe doesn't really care whether I engage or not. It is going to do whatever it is going to do, and all that is left for me is that I get to decide which part of the conversation I want to join.