I’m grateful for a really lovely day. I’m grateful for prophetic song lyrics. I’m grateful for the feeling that things are going to be ok. I’m grateful for seeing what could be instead of what was. I’m grateful for two amazing kids. I’m grateful to be sober.
Well, I’m here to tell you that life on the other side of 60 has not yet proven to be terribly different. I think that is mostly a good thing. Turning 60 did get me an invitation to visit my daughter and her husband in Boston and that has been lovely. If you are old like me, you might remember the Lowenbrau commercials from the 70’s and 80’s—people celebrating various things by having a beer with a fancy dinner. One I remember was a young man, just graduated from law school, having dinner with his Dad, and the big moment was when he picked up the tab. My daughter just graduated from business school and last night, when the check came for a really lovely birthday dinner and I reflexively reached for it, she said, gently, “Dad, Can I pay? It’s your birthday.”
When I moved to NY in 2020, neither of my kids were on good terms with me. They both gave me the speech about being adults and getting to choose who was in their lives and while they loved me… That’s pretty hard to hear. Someone who is very smart and has helped me a lot, told me that when you make space, the right people find a way to fill it, find a way to come back. That’s really hard advice to follow. My alcoholic brain is not terribly patient and would like to simply persuade, motivate, manipulate and prod the people in my life to do what I wanted them to do. That is not a recipe for happiness.
That is also not a recipe for staying sober. As long as I struggled against my kids’ seeming rejection of me, well things just got worse and the impetus to drink was never far from the surface. I do believe that my alcoholic brain generates emotional disturbances and what-not to create the perfect conditions for drinking. I think a lot of my sobriety is owed to me shutting up, if you really wanted to know. I stopped telling them how sober I was, stopped sharing all of these amazing revelations about sobriety. I lied to my kids so many times about being sober, I completely lost credibility on the subject, I lost the right to tell them I’m sober. The alternative: Showing up every day and waiting for them to see it and decide if they wanted to come back.
Of course, they wanted to come back. I always knew how much they loved me, they were just scared to love me. I hurt them a lot, and not just on one occasion, so they have plenty of good reasons. So, like a good writer, I set out to “Show and not tell.” When they wanted to talk, I talked. When they wanted to see me, I was always available. If they needed help with something, I was on it. I realized my alcoholism took their father from them and that’s a pretty shitty thing. None of this was penance or punishment, it was simply proving that it was safe for them to trust me, safe for them to love me.
I love Wilco and in one of my many fantasies, Starship Casual reaches out and takes me aboard1:
Wilco did the best cover of Steely Dan’s “Any Major Dude.”
I’ve loved that song for a long time, there’s a line that has meant a lot to me over the years, something I hung onto every time I listened:
Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
I don’t know if I qualify as a “major dude,2” but I’m going to tell you, that is exactly right. Time, patience, love and kindness, a big dose of sobriety, showing and not telling, seem to be capable of putting pretty much anything back together again. I used to have to work at believing that, but I don’t anymore, because additional evidence gets presented to me every day. Things are falling back together, just like the song said.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
I saw them play Yankee Hotel Foxtrot this summer—it was awesome.
I think my story is told pretty accurately in “I am Trying to Break Your Heart.”
Great post! And your birthday sounded lovely! Many happy returns! 🥳