He was trying to fill the holes in his heart.
I was wearing a series of ill-fitting shoes: promising at first, but after a while, they hurt the feet. Eventually, you have to take them off and throw them away.
Who knows, we may actually have stumbled on the real deal.
We had a nice supper last night – baked cod, brown sugar/butter glazed carrots, salad, scratch-baked sour cream chocolate cake with homemade icing. Emme and I baked the cake the day before, an experiment to please Grandpa Ron, who said he’s been trying to find a recipe for that cake since the 1950’s.
It makes sense to feel a connection with the person who shares DNA with your child(ren), which must be confusing for a woman who has kids with more than one father. How do you keep all that straight?
John Walton or “Pa” Ingalls would find plenty to wear in my closet: flannel shirts and jeans. Dress shirts. Even a tie.
I’ve (almost) become the kind of man I wanted to find as a life partner, a “Pa” rather than a Hef: solid and dependable, albeit not much fun.
I haven’t forced myself into situations in which I had the opportunity to make enough mistakes in the carpentry/plumbing/electrical sphere to be fully competent.
Aside from that, I’m a hell of a guy: hard-working, loyal, self-disciplined, sacrificing for the family.
In some ways, I was raised as a Jewish boy: good grades, good debating skills, well-read, serious, happy with small things like coffee and a newspaper in the morning.
Sharing my head but not my heart.
After this past week, I’m starting to feel like I’m missing out: an appreciation of art and fashion. A feminine style and attitude. Something back there in Cambridge in 1969 that got lost along the way.
There’s more. I’ll return to this entry as it comes to me.
Peter’s Dad, Ron, arrived on Saturday afternoon, and we’ve had many hours to get caught up with (believe it) the last 41 years.
For both of us, it’s been an express trip through a time warp, where 1969 and 2010 have become consecutive. If it weren’t for stiff old joints, it’s like being 22 again.
We are not a couple (Ron bristled when the front desk referred to us as “Mr. and Mrs. McLean”), but even so, I’ve understood for the first time how older couples can continue to feel affection, even passion, for one another. I’d assumed, incorrectly, that this was just a side effect of familiarity, but it’s not; it’s somatic memory, the kind that sets in our nerves.
The first night, Peter treated us to a spectacular dinner at Wicked, one of the few restaurants in Mashpee that are having a successful run in spite of hard times.
We spent almost 24 hours with Ron’s surrogate parents. I wonder if my Marjorie was at all like his Gloria: beautiful, articulate, gracious in the old school way, warm, fearless, direct. It was good for me to hear about Ron’s childhood and his parents and stepmother from a concerned and loving witness.
We got back to the Cape around 3:30 on Monday and got Ron settled at Sea Mist. Peter, Bonnie and the grands came over for supper. We had lunch here yesterday, and Ron put the a/c back in for me, thus proving that it’s nice to have a man around the house.
Afterwards, Ron got a dose of entertaining the grandkids and their friends when James, Emme and the younger Robbinses went swimming with us at Sea Mist and then stayed for pizza. He did extremely well; I would call him a naturally good grandfather.
Ron has spoken at lot about his SO of 23 years. As far as I can, having never had a relationship with a non-relative that lasted that long, I’m sympathetic with what seems to be his struggles to process those years. Sympathetic, but only to a point.
He’s had what sounds like a lot of affairs, some short, some longer term. He was busy for 17 or 18 of the 41 years we were out of touch. I speculate about what he learned in that time, and interpret that as you will.
Adoptees are masters of repression – we’ve had to be – so I’m just surfacing how I feel about that. If I were a lesser person, I could look at it this way: while I was toiling as a damned fool wage slave, maintaining a household and, as Ed Cohen put it, parenting a precocious son, Ron was rolling in the hay with a succession of women, then servicing a somewhat self-indulgent rich girl for enough years to have allowed him to have built a business or raised a child; in other words, to have laid the foundation for his own future.
That would be unreasonably harsh, though, and I know it. During a good part of that period, Ron struggled with overcoming alcoholism and guilt. He also has worked very hard his whole life, doing intense physical labor for a good part of it, but he hasn’t accumulated anywhere near the same fruits of that labor as many blue collar workers have: no house, no swimming pool, no big bank account, no collection of expensive toys.
I wondered why Ron never tried to find us. He said he was scared of paternity suits and the like for the first 18 years. I’m fuzzy about the remaining 23.
Listening to Ron and Peter now, I realize how much alike they are, and how much Peter missed not having his father available while he was growing up.
I’ve considered myself a pretty good “father” as far as being a provider, but until this week, I didn’t understand how much Peter was shortchanged. I couldn’t relate to my son from a foundation of shared male experience. He was as deprived as perhaps I was from the female perspective, my role models having been a ghost on the one hand and a manipulative, nasty, hateful twit on the other.
Ron has a good way with people, easy going and chatty, far superior to my interpersonals, and I don’t mean to damn with faint praise. I always thought James, the social butterfly, was Ed, Junior, but I was wrong: James and Ron are a lot alike.
Ron’s a terrific guy: bright, funny, kind, sweet. He’s easy to talk with, and I haven’t noticed the aphasia he feared I would find unsettling; far from it.
We have some big differences: I wilt when the temperature gets over about 62 and I can’t tolerate spicy food. We do seem to enjoy the same music, though, and we share a lot of common ground politically.
We love our son, our grands and our friends. We work well together on tasks, as if we have a good handle on each other’s proxemics. For me, so hypersensitive to intrusion on my personal space, that’s important.
He is now part of my world, and I will likely miss him when he leaves. I hope he misses us, too.
I planted a bunch of previously forgotten daffodil bulbs yesterday and 4 small hardy mums today.
Finished planting bulbs today, put in 34 daffodils in 5 different spots. Squirrel left the bulbs alone, at least for now.
Mowed the whole yard. Cleaned the bottom of the lawn mower; was like hacking cement, unbelievable.
Heavy pruning of the poor Russian olives.
Used Round-Up on what looked like poison ivy (!) and cat briar, did the full circuit.
Rained again last night. Planted 80 yellow and red tulip bulbs this morning in 13 different spots in the back garden.
Planted them 6 inches below ground level, but dug down a foot; that’s 13 cubic feet of digging, about the size of a twin bed mattress plus box spring. The soil was great except in one spot, next to the hibiscus.
Added bulb fertilizer, ran out of peat moss. Labeled them and put on a horrible-smelling organic to keep away pests, i.e., squirrels.
Did some weeding and pruning as well. Took several hours and I was beat by the end, too tired to plant the daffs.
Turned over the big compost pile, pulled out some branches and other stuff that would take years to decompose to take to the transfer station.
Cut back the second skimmia. The first one is pretty much dead.
Have been restaking the tomatoes, which are out of control. One plant is as tall as I am. The tomatoes were blocking the sun and the basil suffered, but everything else seems to be okay, including James’ strawberries. Good thing, or there would be hell to pay. I think I planted everything too close. Bigger garden next year, maybe.
Deep cleaned under the kitchen sink, which was wafting malodorous.
Had fun playing ping pong with Candy last night.
Met with a potential business partner yesterday, don’t want to jinx it with details just yet. Also picked up some admissions materials for the Royal Megansett. Met with a contractor about doing some work at 20. Busy week ahead, I think.
Good rain last night, an inch or more. Grasses got a bit beat up from the storm.
Fed Miracle-Gro to the vegetables this morning.
Skimmia still not doing well.
Yesterday, I put together a book of photos on the evolution of the garden, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Stuck in some photos of Fluffles and James, too, and one of me.
Nice cuke and some tomatoes that were almost sweet from the garden.
Mailed the corporate tax returns.
Went to Mary Nowik’s wake. Very different from a Valzie wake, that’s for sure. She was always kind to me, and I will miss her cheerful, welcoming smile. It’s very sad that someone with her talent and energy had a difficult end. Plus, a death in the older generation moves the rest of us up one, as Carolyn once ironically observed.
I’m tired of fighting my native tendency to be lazy, undisciplined and unproductive.
Things are nice here because I’ve pushed myself to make them so. If they weren’t nice, I’d be annoyed.
To further underscore the hypocrisy of the first paragraph, I take satisfaction in the fact that just about everything here that is nice is either directly or indirectly my doing and the result of hard work.
I’m tired of keeping track of things, like the dates on which bills are due, the cat needs to get his flea medicine, the truck must be brought in for an oil change, or fertilizer should be put on the vegetables, the roses and/or the hydrangeas.
I wish someone would send me a present. It doesn’t need to be something big; a box of caramels would do just fine.