Odd Socks

Mismatched

This is not about socks, odd or otherwise. Not much on my mind today (how did that happen?!), but a couple or so observations, and things I found while wasting time cruising the Internet.

• Had to drive to the east side of York this morning for an appointment with my therapist, Beth. I've been seeing her, off and on, for a couple of years now, since shortly after I filed for divorce from Ex-Beloved. I was a basket-case then, but, as John Aston's character used to say, on Night Court, "I'm much better now!" Anyway, the sun hadn't risen very high when I left home so the heavy dew on the vegetation along my route sparkled like I imagine diamonds do. There was the beginning of a burning-off mist rising from the fields and off the trees, through which fingers of sunlight seemed to search for something they had lost. I was reminded of Lucy's photos taken in her garden earlier this year. Remembering her artistry brightened my mood measurably, and heightened my enjoyment of the sparkling landscapes before me.

• On the ride home afterwards, I recalled something I wrote in an email to a blogger friend, about my criteria for what makes a good father. I wrote, in a smart ass tone, that my expectations "are that he doesn't beat his children, that he doesn't denigrate them, verbally or emotionally abuse them, and that he provide for them as best he is able." The recollection made me think about my father, who, sadly, did all of those things above - usually when in a drunken rage - and was an unreliable source of support due to his alcoholism. As I was growing up, I used to think that his abuses were because I was a rotten kid, that I didn't deserve any better treatment. I carried that misperception (self-deception?) into both my marriages and other relationships for too many years, until I was shocked out of that notion when the truth of my second marriage became abundantly clear. The first sixty years of my life had been influenced negatively by what I believed about myself from my dysfunctional childhood. Yet it is also true that the changes I'm making in how I live (want to live) the next sixty years is being positively guided by that same childhood. I will never settle for that kind of life ever again. For all his shortcomings as a "good" father, I learned many valuable things from my father, and I dearly loved the man. Go figure.

• When I returned home, I sat my wide caboose down at the computer and went surfing. I went back to an earlier post, Listening, and played the links. While there, I stumbled onto another blog, Concrete Beat...way cool! It's about street musicians in the subways and on the street corners of New York. I didn't read through all the posts, but I'll be going back there soon.

• Also checked in at Whiskey River and read a quote from GBS (George Bernard Shaw), Irish playwright and intellectual. And NO, intellectual and Irish are NOT mutually exclusive terms, as one of my years-ago English professors said. But, what can you expect from a guy who looked like the comic book character, The Hulk?

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore