Transformation, aka Take My Chrysalis

I failed out of college spectacularly. There is not a single professor at N.C. State who would remember I was there. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who did, other than my fraternity brothers. And maybe one disciplinary officer who reprimanded a friend and I after we water-balloon launched an apple some 175 yards through the back window of a neighboring house. Remarkable shot, but that's a different story.

I was a horrible student. I left Raleigh with my tail between my legs, thinking the only option that would make any sense was to go into the Army, do things differently, be out of school for a while and save some money. I've been over this here before, but during the next few months I got myself into Ironman shape and got ready to ship out. And then I met my wife Robin.

My life came down to a decision: go to the Army on April 22, 1995, or opt out and stay. If I stayed, I didn't know what I would do to get back on track. But I knew after meeting Robin that I couldn't go. I had to find out if what we had was as cool and big as what I thought it was. So I stayed. I started cooking again at a seafood restaurant in Oxford. Robin and I moved in together.

I'm a serviceable line cook, prep cook, expediter in a kitchen. I'm not a chef. Words have always been my currency and where I knew my vocation had to be. That meant back to school.

When someone fails out of college, I wonder what the odds are of them going back and graduating are? Not particularly good. What gave me the thought that going back to school would be different, that the outcome would be different? Because I knew. I knew the person that failed out of N.C. State was gone. I knew the outcome would be different, because I knew I was different.

Dean's List at Chesapeake College and an Associates Degree. Scholarship to Washington College. Graduated 10th in my class, 3.8, departmental honors in English, minor in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude. All while cooking in the evenings and weekends, getting home from work, showering and writing papers all night. My life was different. The person I had become with Robin, there was never a doubt in my mind what the outcome would be.

It seems in my life I have to fail spectacularly in order to get off my ass and make things happen. That's really something I should try to process. Who am I kidding, it's all I've been trying to process lately. Maybe I masochistically like to get knocked to the mat in order to get up and do something really fu**ing cool. Maybe I go through bouts and phases of depression, where I check out, drop out, and need some huge external stimuli to rock my to the core and make me get the fu** up. Wake the fu** up.

But once that happens, I don't go back. I can't go back, because the person that let that sh** happen is gone. Has been annihilated. Has been transformed. A butterfly can't go back, anymore than it can be a butterfly before it is time, anymore that it can get out of its chrysalis before it is time. But once it breaks out, it isn't fu**ing going back inside. It's different. Transformed.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not calling myself a butterfly. I've got tattoos, but I'm not that colorful. I'm not much for flying. But I am transformed, again, and I can't go back. My own version of a chrysalis is shed. No more wasted days.

Go to weddings

I have no advice to give. I'm not a marriage counselor. And anything I've learned over the course of being married for 14 years is so quirky it probably wouldn't do you any good anyway. Each marriage is like a snowflake, unique and melts when it gets too hot... (kidding). But if I could recommend one thing to the married couples out there, it might be: go to weddings.

Not in a Wedding Crashers kind of way, for the sake of morals and no midnight bondage art shows, let's stick with weddings you actually get invited to. Take the opportunity to get dressed up and go on a date. Pay attention during the service. Watch for the moment when the bride and groom see each other for the first time. Look at the look on the bride's father as he walks her down the aisle (especially if you have two daughters--it's sacred and uplifting and crushing all at once).

Hold hands and listen to the vows the couple makes to one another. Watch how happy they are to be married and dancing and celebrating with the people around them. If you the wedding you are attending is along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and you get to catch a sunset with the spans of the Bay Bridge in the background, so much the better.

Go to celebrate your friends, absolutely, but go also to remind yourself of your own wedding day. Re-live all those thoughts and feelings for yourself and with each other. Remember, spark, recharge.

It's funny how much your thoughts are the same and different over time. Watching a brother serving as best man, toasting his newly married younger brother and wife, it takes my thoughts to our daughters, who are 11 and eight and certainly won't be getting married for another 30 years or so...;), wondering if they'll be close enough to be the maids/matrons of honor at each other's weddings (should they find someone and choose to get married), what their lives will be like, what their shared memories will be, and what they might say to the other.

Other people's weddings are a time for celebration. But they can also be a time for reminding you of what got you there, however long ago.

Marriage is a beach

Being married reminds me of swimming off the Oxford Ferry dock when we were little. It's easy to get nostalgic. And it's fun. Thankfully, after 13 years today, our marriage hasn't been banned like swimming off the ferry dock.

With a late June wedding, summer makes me think of our day in the sun, getting married on the Tred Avon River in the church I grew up in. But summer makes me think of Robin and our 17 years together, in general. She is a teacher and a good many of our trips and adventures have happened over the summer, when she is on vacation. We've covered some ground--Colorado, Maine, Florida, Cooperstown, N.Y. (pictured above), the Outer Banks--or we've been just as happy on our home rivers or Ocean City.

I know that summer is going to bring us time together, to do whatever. Marriage has done the same. So maybe marriage is summer vacation.

Maybe I've been mulling over too much Kierkegaard lately, with his fear and trembling over life's big decisions, but life can come unwrapped or unglued or just be generally chaotic at times. We'll keep the water metaphor rolling here, with life as water/river/ocean. Our response to the water, is to build a life--whether a dock, a living shoreline, bulkhead, beach. Something to buffer us, something to comfort, something to give us shape in the midst of chaos. Our jobs, our likes, our families are part of that. So maybe marriage is a beach.

For me, Robin and our marriage has been that constancy. You don't often see marriage billed as a buffer against existential dread, nor should you, as that sounds pretty fu**ing glum. But maybe you see what I am getting at. When you find someone to go through life with, through the tough times, through uncertainty, that's a rare and special thing.

But in 13 years it has rarely felt that way. It has felt more like the kind of beach you picture, non-metaphorically--it's been fun. Fun to the point where I know I would be missing out on life's most fun times were we not married. From concerts to boat rides, from parties for no reason to speaking slurred French at Schooners Llanding 17 years ago. When I string my best, most fun memories together, most of them have happened in the time Robin and I have been together.

Marriage makes me nostalgic in that way, enjoying the looking back at where we've been. But it also makes me hopeful. The looking ahead to where we might go. But beyond looking in either direction, it makes me enjoy the now. It makes me enjoy getting up in the morning and it makes me enjoy coming home after work.

I'm not sure what I think of marriage as an institution. It doesn't always work. Maybe it's flawed. Maybe people don't take it seriously enough. Maybe marriage shouldn't be so serious. For me, I know why marriages don't always work. Because not everyone finds Robin.

In the spirit of looking back, here are thoughts from our 12-year anniversary last year and on our 11-year anniversary the year before. 

12 Years: Looking Forward

I've walked down docks since I was able to walk--a force of habit growing up in a town surrounded by water on three sides. Walking, or sitting or chicken-necking, or dipping crabs, or drinking a beer or watching a sunset (or sunrise) on a dock with the river flowing, or standing still has always been one of the simple pleasures that fills my soul.

Twelve years ago today, my wife Robin and I walked down a dock next to Holy Trinity Church in Oxford and onto the waiting boats of friends Mike Siachos and Eric Abell. Mike's mom and family were waiting and cheering across mouth of Pier Street's marina. It was the first time Robin and I walked down a dock as a married couple. It added a new depth and memory and smile to my dock vibe.

Last year at this time is the first time I really wrote out loud about our anniversary. I was thinking back on the wedding and our lives together. Funny though, looking at the picture above, which I dig for its perspective of looking forward, is also how and where my thoughts are at the moment. Looking forward. Enjoying the right now and looking forward to those things we haven't done together yet.

It's unfortunate and a misnomer that marriage gets a rap of being no fun. A killjoy. I think that sucks if that is the case. I look back at the last 12 years and could not have had any more fun, starting with the wedding day itself. And I look around at some of the married couples we frequently run with, many of whom have kids, and the same seems to hold true. Having a blast.

Today, celebrating our 12-year anniversary, we're planning a boat ride to Oxford with great friends. One of those friends, who sang at our wedding, will be singing and playing with a band at Pier Street. There's a more than probable chance that Robin and I will walk up a dock together. And there is a more than definite chance that I'll be thinking about our first walk up the dock together, 12 years ago in Oxford. The way I think about it just about any time I'm on a dock, looking at, or swimming in the river.

May 24

We took the back seat out of a mini-van and replaced it with a big living room sofa and six of us piled in to go to Annapolis. That was 16+ years ago. I talked with Robin in McCarveys for a while that night. And I haven't stopped thinking about her since.

Some people, when you meet them, you just have a feeling are going to change your life. The more we talked and saw each other that winter and spring (1995), the more it became clear to me that she was that kind of person. We moved in together at the end of the summer.

I barely remember getting engaged three years later, on her birthday, May 24. I remember everything about it--sitting on our deck next to Crockett Brothers Marina in Oxford--but it is blurry, the sequence, the words, what was said. Largely because we had talked about it, getting married, and knew we were going to.

I've talked about it here before, our wedding, our life together, the milestones and years we share. But thinking about Robin this morning, on her birthday, what strikes me are the variables, the almosts. I almost went to the Army, when we first met. We almost moved to Pittsburgh for graduate school. Later we almost moved to Pittsburgh again, for a job. The life decisions, the changes, like having kids and buying a house.

How my memory of her, looking at her now, includes that night flirting in Annapolis, includes moving into four different apartment/townhouse/houses, my college graduation, holding her hand(s) during the births of our girls.

How having a drink on our back deck in the evening can conjure up our drive to Colorado, or Maine, or Asheville, N.C.; a sunset happy hour on the Choptank 16 years ago or last year; time with friends in Cooperstown, N.Y., more than a decade ago or camping on the Pocomoke River, just a couple months ago.

How watching our daughters run on the soccer field, or learn to ride their bikes, or get an A on a test, or playing catch, can make me love Robin, all over, without her even having to be there (though I prefer when she is). 

It hits me that the person who is the most constant in my life is also the person who makes life most interesting. How being together, spending/sharing time with someone also makes me more myself.

It fascinates me that how, getting engaged thirteen years ago today, that I look forward as much to this weekend, to tonight, as I did to time together back then.

It's funny what memory holds on to, how Robin can tell you what people were wearing at any given event or night out seemingly since we met, whereas mine works in odd details and sequences and between the two of us we can generally recreate/rekindle what went down.

Love is an odd bird, how it can lead you by various parts of your body, brain, soul to someone; how you can cross paths after not even knowing of the other's existence for 22+ years and then everything changes and the next 16+ years kick the shit out of the ones that preceded them.

I don't claim or even pretend to know jack squat about life or love, other than to be living them day by day and trying to enjoy and appreciate and recognize them as such.

I think I've recognized Robin since that night in Annapolis, when we first really talked. What I recognize in her is both constant and changing, the same and different, caught up in cliche for not having the right words and a place where words can't walk directly up to.

What I've seen her be to and for me is a perfect complement, that soul that picks up where mine leaves off and that makes mine better and more than it was before I knew her.

Happy birthday, Robin, on what has become one of my favorite days of the year. I always dig finding out how we'll celebrate it, how we'll celebrate you.

11 years

It all started at the Avalon Theater. The same place where, as a kid, I saw Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Years later, at a Blue Miracle concert, I met my wife.

There were different times before we started "going steady" that we were out with friends and Robin and I would get talking and the noise of the bar and everything around us would just fade into the background for me. I have a crystal memory of Robin and another friend, Nan, sitting in front of a computer with 3D glasses on, laughing hysterically, and thinking that I could happily hear Robin's laugh for the rest of my life.

Of course, when we met I didn't have much in the way of prospects going for myself. I had freshly failed out of NC State and had dedicated myself to running and lifting weights to get ready for the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Kick my ass, get my life straight, get some money toward finishing college.

Meeting Robin didn't happen at a time when I was looking for the other half of my soul or at a time where it made any sense to find her. But when it happened it was blatant. Obvious. This changes everything.

Our life has been co-designed and co-built ever since. It's like putting a "c" and an "h" together, you no longer have a c sound or an h sound, but a "ch," whi"ch" has been mu"ch" better in my book. The life and family we have built together far surpasses anything I could do on my own.

On my end, from the decision not to go to the Army, to getting back to work in restaurants, to our first apartment in Oxford, to graduating from Chesapeake and Washington Colleges, from deciding against philosophy graduate school at Duquesne, first public relations job at the Academy Art Museum, to getting married 11 years ago today.

From buying our first house, finding our Golden Retriever Ivan, to the birth of our first daughter, Anna, job at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, moving into our second and current house, birth of second daughter, Ava, Robin transferring from Tilghman Elementary to Easton Elementary, these are just some of the very few bare bones chronological milestones over our 15 years together.

I guess growing up you have some vague notion as to what marriage and family is or means. But it isn't until you find someone who you can't wait to go to bed with at night and can't wait to get up with in the morning and can't wait to spend the day with in between, that you truly know what marriage brings to the table.

And once you share the moments of bringing kids into the world and watching and helping them grow and getting completely amped to see what they learn and accomplish and have fun doing and can look at each other and smile and know that you can't wait for today and the next day together, still, that I realize the blessings that I've got, for having found Robin.

I look back over our 15 and 11 years together and married and see both the chronology of our lives together, but also really powerful and/or random snippets. Driving to Colorado and Maine together, time in Cooperstown, NY, sunsets on boats on the Choptank and Tred Avon Rivers, trying to speak nothing but French for an evening drinking at Schooners Llanding, a random Jeb Loy Nichols concert at Rams Head On Stage, our honeymoon on Ocracoke Island. Both fragments of so far and maybe a road map of the next 15 and 11 years and beyond, of going to bed together and waking up together and seeing what to do with the days, together.

Kielbasa, Wives, Babcias, Laureates, Faith

There will always be a place at my table for the Polish. Anyone who has ever contemplated the consequences of commandeering kielbasa off a tailgater's grill at a football game can relate. Throw in halupki (stuffed cabbage) or pierogies sauteing up with butter and onions and you're describing a winter meal(s) with all the stops pulled out.

Prior to 15 years ago, I couldn't have told you much about any kind of Polish food and my knowledge now is limited at best. But there will always be a place for the Polish at my table because my wife has some pretty strong Polish heritage going on. Robin is Pittsburgh Polish with a bit of Italian and Belgian thrown in, which, when mixed with my French/English/Scottish/Irish lineage, gives our daughters a more fully realized conquest of the European genealogical continent, by way of the United States, of course.

This past week Robin's grandmother died, her last living grandparent. Our girls didn't know her well, but referred to her as "babcia" (pronounced "bub-cha"), which is the Polish word for grandmother. Robin had always heard the Americanized version of babcia's maiden name, which her family called "Sway," and reading her obituary, Robin saw for the first time that it was actually "Szwaja"--funny since we have friends who are Szwajas in Easton.

Babcia was hardcore Polish Catholic, heritage, family, and religion. She lived next door to her church and was there like clockwork. The priest at her funeral gave a great description of his view of the Christian life cycle--(paraphrasing) "We are all eternally in the mind and thoughts of God, then we take these bodies and live out our human experience, then we return to the mind of God, though we've really never left it, you see?"

You could change some words around and use that idea to describe a number of religions. There was a peace and lightness and grace about this priest--qualities they should all have but too few actually do--even during a sad time. He was older and spoke in choppy but eloquent, coherent, and clear chops. Thinking about the service later that night, Robin talked about the comfort and (because of the) familiarity she has with the way Catholics do things. She has grown up knowing it and its structure is easy to fit inside.

Growing up Episcopal is not so different in form and structure, but certainly less in degree. Having said that, I was certainly familiar with the services and the words, but never with the whole concept. I've never been able to cross the chasm of unquestioned faith, more akin to Kierkegaard's Knight of Infinite Resignation than to the Knight of Faith.

Reason and Truth (loaded word) have to be at the party as well. Yet, I'm the first one to admit, Reason's bus won't get you all the way to the school either. I've always found myself looking for a middle path, one that brings reason and faith together--not the Catholic faith and not the empirical sciences. Though I've said I'm all about the Catholicism of Thomas Merton or of Mike Keene, but that's not the norm and maybe another story.

The best description of that synthesis of faith and reason that I have found comes across in Mahayana Buddhism, which I found or found me in philosophy class and has continued to build over the years. Interestingly, the Dalai Lama actually cranked out a book titled, "The Middle Way: Faith Grounded in Reason," which breaks it down into a nice, bite-sized back cover blurb:

"It is vital for us to obtain genuine confidence in the nature of the mind and reality, grounded in understanding and reason. What we need is a skeptical curiosity and constant inquiry, a curious mind drawn toward all possibilities; and when we cultivate that, the desire to investigate naturally what arises."

So there we have a bridge from kielbasa to the Dalai Lama, who may or may not have ever sampled any of the former. I'll bet he'd like them if he did and could get past the whole karma thing. But the latest of the things Polish I have found that are welcome at my table is the Polish poet/Nobel Laureate, Czeslaw Milosz. His cool, quirky book of poems, meditations, reflections, prose, and aphorisms, "Roadside Dog," has kept me thinking in the mornings and his book, "Second Space," hit me between they eyebrows with ethics and actions and art with relation to God or no God. Here's one called "On Prayer:"

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Translated by Robert Hass

I dig the idea of compassion and acting and striving for something here and now, regardless of what is at the end/or other end of it all.

Remembering the priest at Babcia's service, both his words and his way of being. And thinking about her faith and her devotion to the church, which isn't mine, but is no less real or valid, and what it meant to her and what it gave her, and it all makes me think, "cool."

So my love and appreciation for things Polish. My wife, my family through her, food and history and culture, religion and its baggage and promise, and Czeslaw Milosz. Quite a full table.