I’m grateful for a lovely weekend. I’m grateful for things taking root. I’m grateful for two lovely children. I’m grateful for basketball on hot days. I’m grateful for tomatoes and sweet corn from the farmers market. I’m grateful for cutting myself some slack. I’m grateful to be sober today.
As you can see, it was a big day at the Farmer’s Market at Union Square. So far that has turned into Gazpacho and a tomato-corn salad. I’m not sure when or how this morphed from posting a less-than-140 character gratitude list into this enterprise with the podcasts and these ramblings and what-not.1 I want you to know that I frequently decide that I’m going to just stick to the gratitude list on most mornings and limit the extended conversation to just one or two mornings a week. I do that for all of us. Then I sit down at the desk and start writing and the next thing you know…
My drinking was very, very hard on my kids. They’re both adults and we’ve all worked hard to rebuild our relationship, but patching the egg after the fall takes a lot of patience and there are parts that just won’t be the same. One of the keys for me was that I finally learned to shut-up. I stopped trying to tell everyone how sober I was, because they had heard me say that way too many times when it wasn’t true. Anyway, things are better, much better these days.
For a variety of reasons, the kids hadn’t seen each other in a while and I had been subtly prompting both of them and they both took the hint.2 My son was going to be in DC seeing his mom and my daughter made a spur of the moment decision to drive the 6 hours to see him. I heard about that and it made me so happy yesterday. Why am I telling you this? Because here was what didn’t happen: I didn’t focus on the fact that I wasn’t a part of it and that my ex-wife was. There was a time when that fact would have obscured everything else and it would have opened the sluice gates on that river of anger and then it wouldn’t be too long before I was editing the grievance list in my head at the end of a bar somewhere.
Like every alcoholic and addict, I had that hole in the center of my life and for a long, long time I filled it up with me. What did I deserve? What was I supposed to get out of this? Those pointed questions turned to resentments turned to anger turned to drinking. The real gift of sobriety has been replacing those questions with “What can I do for the people I love?”
I got after-action reports from both kids yesterday and it just made me glow. Do I wish I had been there? Of course. They’re silly and goofy and sweet and even though they are technically adults, when I see them together they’re still eleven and seven. I’ve realized that one of the worst things I did while I was drinking was not putting them first in every situation. And that’s a very, very mild way to put it. I let my feelings and needs take precedence over theirs way too many times and that’s what struck me about yesterday. The only thing that mattered to me was that they were happy.
I blame that shift in attitude on the whole gratitude list thing. When my sponsor “suggested” that I write a gratitude list every day it was because he could see how I was consumed by the torrent of anger and resentment running through me and how that had driven my drinking. Here was my first effort, the Daily Gratitude List for November 19, 2020:
I’m grateful for my children and the prospect of seeing them soon. I’m grateful to have so many friends in the program and to be able to get support at meetings. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be starting over and grateful to be able to do it here in New York. I’m grateful for the courage to sit through days like this. Grateful to have you as a sponsor and a friend.
I’ve done roughly a ka-jillion gratitude lists since then and there have been a lot of days when I was feeling less than grateful, but doing the list every day has changed everything and changed me. Are there days when I wonder what the F*** am I going to manage to be grateful for today? Yes, there are. But the point is that there are always plenty of things to be grateful for. Once I start thinking about those things, the things that I’m grateful for, even the small, tiny things, the other stuff starts to fall out of focus.
My kids were happy yesterday and they went out of their way to find a way to see each other. As a parent, there’s not much better than, is there? Sobriety and these gratitude lists gave me a path out of the center of a pretty twisted life and to a spot where I could just watch and love my children. I used to get pretty resentful about how I wasn’t a part of their lives. I eventually realized when you want to be a part of someone’s life, you have to be willing to be just “a part” of their life. That’s hard, but liberating for me and I know it feels way better to two highly-accomplished, very grown-up people who mean an awful lot to me.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
“What-Not” is a new thing for me. I’m sure it will pass.
Of course, this would be “subtle” for me, so maybe not that subtle.
“...when you want to be a part of someone’s life, you have to be willing to be just ‘a part’ of their life.” I’m ruminating on that today. Thanks for sharing.
I like the extended commentary, for what it’s worth!