Boy Scout Knife

I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for a really busy week and new opportunities. I’m grateful for hitting singles. I’m grateful for what’s right here. I’m grateful for that last bit of time with my son. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

Okay, this one gets chalked up to the Great Mysterious Force Which Inhabits the Universe and Gives Meaning to Everything Within.¹ Part of the mystery stems from the above-mentioned “Force,” and it’s somewhat weird use of my Spotify playlists to communicate important messages to me. Feel free to scoff or nervously chuckle or whatever, this has been happening for a long time to me.²

Breakfast with an Alcoholic: Episode 17

Yes, of course I’m going to tell the story. My soon-deploying son was back in New York on Sunday and Monday. He’d been on leave and had been making furious rounds to see everyone, touch as many bases as he could, before his ship deploys (this weekend). He had to drive back to Norfolk on Monday afternoon, so we had made plans to spend the morning together.

We’ve had several of these jaunts, where we wander around the city together, kind of under the rubric that we’re running some imaginary tasks that have been assigned by his girlfriend.³ It turns out that he likes going to the used bookstores and thinks the idea of records is “cool.”⁴ To the great detriment of the above-mentioned girlfriend, we tell very similar jokes. I think both of us get a little nervous when we see the same traits emerge in each other.

We had great plans for this Monday that involved searches for not likely to be found items, the bookstore (of course—I’m secretly putting together his library on naval history), and then dumplings in Chinatown. We are both very big lovers of Chinese food and spent many, many, many evenings eating the so-delicious Mala Chicken from Great Wall on 14th Street in D.C.⁵ When Monday morning dawned for the young Lieutenant, he texted me to see if he could just come over and hang out for a while and expressed deep feelings of very understandable fatigue.

Not too much later, a strapping and very dashing officer was in my apartment, his sprawled frame occupying nearly my entire sofa, drinking coffee. Pause. I’m not sure I’ll ever not feel a little weird about drinking coffee with my children, or get used to the fact that they use mugs now instead of sippy cups. We chatted about a variety of things, how he felt about the upcoming deployment, our jointly-held belief that the time will fly by, that it’s going to be a pretty f******* cool thing (anti-sub warfare exercises in the Barents sea sounds kind of bad-ass), but also the hard parts.

The part after Norway is the Middle-East somewhere, and no matter how you rate the risks posed by regional instabilities, the idea of having to maintain that level of vigilance and readiness—24 hours a day—is pretty daunting. Think about being called to work and being told that for the next 3-6 months you’ll be on duty from 3-6 am 4 nights a week and work 12-hour shifts to boot, under near-constant threat of random attacks by drones or missiles. As a junior officer, your only responsibility is to make absolutely sure that nothing happens to the ship at night on the big dark ocean.⁶ And the great news is, that at the end of watch, there is that super-comfy three-high metal bunk bed.⁷

Being the father of this young man entitles me to be quite biased. So, I’ll just leave it at this, it’s impossible to not be completely taken by him. He’s charming, sensitive, funny, kind and has usually seen all the way to the bottom before he says anything. He doesn’t show all of his cards.⁸ He’s also goofy, silly and enthusiastic. When I was on his ship, the mom of one of his young colleagues, who had gotten to spend some time with my Lt.(jg), spotted me in the wardroom, made a beeline for me, “You’re M’s Dad, I could tell right away. I have to tell you, I’m his absolute biggest fan.” The Executive Officer of the ship introduced himself to me and said something similar, but a lot more gruffly worded and delivered this way, “haha, we give him all the shitty and hard stuff to do.”

Of course, the fact that I’m standing foot on that vessel, that he was on my sofa is kind of a miracle. But we’ve been over that ground quite a bit. I pulled out a bag that I had for him. Surprisingly, he really enjoys keeping a journal. I had done some journal shopping. Surprisingly, and somewhat coincidentally, I know a lot of places that sell notebooks and journals here in New York. There was a collection of notebooks of different sizes and types and page construction. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the mini-sized ones that would fit in his pocket—kind of like a detective’s notebook. He even pantomimed how he would swing the notebook out of his pocket to jot down important thoughts before they can escape.⁹

Of course, there was a sappy and over-emotional card that I had re-written about eleven times. And there was a knife. I was a pretty enthusiastic scout as a youth, feel like the scout motto, “Be Prepared,” is the best advice ever given and think it’s actually where a lot of my pirate-y tendencies first took root. Also, we were allowed to fire weapons at scout camp—yours truly had the “Riflery Merit Badge.” When the zombie-monkey apocalypse comes, and it will, the people around me will be glad about the boy scout thing.¹⁰

Anyway, I have this pretty bad ass scout knife, it has the fake plastic wood sides, just like the station wagons of the 1970s, and the Boy Scout Fleur de’Lis and a number of not so sharp blades and tools—including one that might be for gutting small animals. He gave me an appraising look, “ummm cool, Dad, it’s a knife.”

omg. I sighed. “It’s not just a knife.” I shook my head and exhaled in mock exasperation. “Have I ever told you the story about my grandfather’s knife?” He looked at me pretty intently, “No, I don’t think so.” So I told him the story of my grandfather’s pocket knife, which actually starts with the very-dangerous go-cart we actually built and a fishing trip where a barbed hook was embedded in my scalp. Which is written-about here:

My First Alcoholic

We got to the part about the hospital and the retrieval of the knife from the drawers by the easy chair and there weren’t many dry eyes in the house (apartment). He looked at me, “This is your grandfather’s knife?” A newfound sense of appreciation dawned over him.

“No,” another mock gasp, “you don’t get that knife yet, I still need that one. This is my knife. My boy scout knife.”

Now he began to examine it even more intently. “It’s cool that its not real wood,” “Why did boy scouts need a bottle opener?” “What’s that weird hook thing?” “Do you think it would cut anything?”

He looked at me with really wet eyes and said some of the greatest words you can ever hear:

“Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

We talked about some other stuff, I asked him if he’d like me to come to Norfolk this weekend to see him off and he shook his head, kind of tearfully, “I don’t really like the big goodbyes.” Yeah, that I know, too. So we texted the girl friend and had her meet us at a thai restaurant we all liked for lunch. I walked them back to her apartment (I wonder if the GMFWIUGMEW had any involvement in her choice of an apartment two blocks from mine).¹¹ Exchanged some pretty big and meaningful hugs (in golf, they tell you to hold the pose). I told him to be safe, gave him an extra squeeze and a kiss on cheek and then walked down 85th Street towards my apartment.

It’s possible, if you saw me that afternoon, you might have noticed a bit of lip-trembling, or some pretty moist eyes (mostly hidden under the ever-present baseball cap) as I hurried down the sidewalk. I didn’t have the airpods in, really didn’t want to listen to any music. I got home, perhaps released some emotion, changed clothes, loaded the green canvas backpack I carry everyday (lots of notebooks in there) and set off for my office.

I felt very sad. It reminded me of how I felt often when I was drinking; that lost, slightly scared, what am I going to do next feeling? I realized those feelings of loss and fear and just plain old sadness, with maybe some loneliness sprinkled in, had been with me for a long time. They were very familiar and now were invoked on behalf of my son’s departure. These are feelings that I feel very, very strongly. As a kid, I was scared that they would never end, would never go away. I think keeping those dark fears and the sadness away was a big reason I drank, and why I clung to drinking so desperately and so loyally.

I have my own “psych-up” routine to get me headed in the right direction in the mornings. It involves walk-up and theme-type music. A lot of it is ridiculous but it works. I popped in the airpods, opened up Spotify, asked the Great Mysterious Force to hit me with their best shot and the next thing I knew I was listening to the GenX version of “Dancing with Myself.”

We’re not getting started with the stuff about me not really liking Billy Idol. I liked this version of the song, back when he was in a band with his mates and f******g up the lyrics at live shows. So the GenX version played as I hustled across York Avenue towards the coffee shop that is definitely not “on the way” to the subway, but always is.

All of a sudden, I was 17 years old again, I was dancing to this song at a club called Merlyn’s in Madison, “diving on the grenade,” for my buddy Rob so he could dance with this cute girl that he’s been married to for like 40 years now. I was happy and free and about to set sail for the great adventure of self-invention that occurs (maybe several times) when college is done correctly. I was optimistic, funny and pretty cool, if I do say so myself. I was ready for the future, whatever it was.

That’s what came up for me as I walked to the subway. I realized I’m in the same place. Again. It’s the same journey of self-invention and I am a pretty lucky, mf-er to get another at-bat (to horribly mix metaphors). And then I was hit by this thought and I immediately jotted it down before it escaped:

You have to feel the hole to feel like you’re a part.

I’m sad about my son’s deployment. I’m going to miss him a literal ton; emails and maybe the occasional zoom are going to have to do until sometime in 2025. But that’s okay, everything these days is pretty okay. It’s when I let myself feel the sadness that I realize just how connected I am. I realized how much beauty and love there is in that sadness. I realized I’m grateful for the sadness.

Sobriety and finally living the life I was meant to lead have gotten me to this pretty magical point. How did I end the newsletter last week?

I’ve done a lot of foolish things, that I really didn’t mean, I could be a broken man, but here I am.

With the future in my hands, baby.

Yeah, I’m going to stick with that.

Happy Friday.

1. I’m just going to tell you, GMFWIUGMEW, goes in for the big titles.

2. Yes, this is meant as a promo. Soon, I promise.

3. Not that I have a vote, but I very much approve.

4. “Wait, a needle applied to a spinning vinyl disk can produce that sound?”

5. Sadly closed now. I checked the last time I was there.

6. And also not having to wake up the Captain or the XO.

7. He’s always slept in the top bunk.

8. Said with respect.

9. Or maybe that’s just me.

10. Rule No. 1—Always carry a potato.

11. It was getting to be too many footnotes.