Deconstructing a Summer Vacation

Photo of a door in between two small shops.
A small door between shops near my parents. Inspiring of a story, perhaps…?

It’s difficult to prevent yesterday from taking over today sometimes.

About a month ago, we took a two-week family vacation. We don’t really do much traveling of late, as the kids aren’t quite old enough for that to be viable again, so this was a treat, a break from the “stay-cations” that we’ve taken over the last three years. Granted, we didn’t go anywhere exotic. Rather, we headed south to see family, and then further south…back to the city in which Karen and I met and in which I lived when I first started this blog…to spend time with old friends whom we hadn’t seen in years.

I suppose that those sorts of trips are especially prone to getting caught up in yesterdays. We made it a point to visit several of our old haunts…we ate at one of our favorite restaurants, walked downtown near some art galleries that we used to frequent, even drove by our old apartment and made a quick supply stop by the grocery store in our old neighborhood. The past comes rushing back when you make those sorts of visits, there’s just no way to avoid that experience. With that rush comes the inevitable “what-if.” What if we hadn’t left? What if we moved back? After all, we still have so many friends there. We know the area. It would be so easy to settle back into that life.

Of course, there are a thousand reasons why that would be difficult at best, unworkable at worst. Even if it were realistic, though, what’s not obvious in the theatrical fog machine in which your memory clouds itself in these moments is the fact that, even were we to do so, we wouldn’t simply reclaim our old life. I remember fondly when Karen and I went to plays, had dinner with friends on weekends, had a life before we had children. As dearly as I love my little girls, I miss that freedom…any parent does. The rhythm of our lives would be different now, the hidden evolutions of the city would take us by surprise and disrupt us in ways we wouldn’t anticipate. These are the sorts of unexpected events that experience teaches. Even with that experience, though, it’s difficult to see past nostalgia’s sleight of hand and recognize reality. Decisions made are decisions made, and a part of one’s life that is lived has been lived.

We can’t move backward. We can only move forward.


Another part of our vacation centered around giving my parents time with the grandkids. They see them far less often now than I would prefer, and I joke that I risk ex-communication if we don’t resolve this somehow, so we spent several days there.

Because our married life has been what it has been, and because we’ve moved as much as we have, I still have things in storage with my parents. For the last few years, with each visit, we intentionally cull through some of these things, and either return with some or throw some out. Often these center around old collectibles that actually aren’t so collectible any more, and other times this event turns into a deeper, and more reflective, trip in the way back machine.

This year, we delved into some memories from my undergrad days. I, like many people of my age, didn’t stay on a single track of study in college. I began my career at my alma-mater as a theatre and communications double-major. I didn’t finish that way, though. I dropped the theatre major with only 6 credit hours left, and, to this day, I’m not sure why.

At the time, I would have claimed burnout, but that’s overly simplistic. Ultimately, I left theatre, but later came running back. The degree remains unfinished, though, a road not taken (I graduated with the communications degree, instead).

On our vacation cleanout this summer, we discovered the drafting tools that I used for scene design. Opening the case was like opening a time capsule: the drafting board, the T-square, the templates for lighting instruments and furniture items…even the compasses and measuring tools. Now, to date myself a bit, I haven’t done any scene design in a long time, but I doubt seriously that designers still break out an architect’s scale to do their work. These tools, though, captured that moment in my life, the moment that I had changed academic pursuits. I returned to theatre as a director and actor, not a designer, and so I hadn’t touched those tools since that semester, over twenty years ago. There have been very few moments in my life of genuine regret, choices that I would make differently had I the opportunity to do so. That academic change, however, is one of them.


While visiting my parents, I fell into an easy routine of the day-to-day. I was up early (I was never a morning person, but it sort of comes with parenthood), and got used to seeing a large truck leaving from across the street, carrying its driver to work every morning. The kids loved my mother’s garden (which goes on seemingly forever), and I was washed over by nostalgic recollections of parts of that back yard during my childhood, which served in my imagination as the interior of my TARDIS, and part of the grounds of the X-Mansion. I remember the unbroken white expanse of that lawn under a fresh snow. Randomly, I remembered a photo of myself in high school, right before graduation, sitting on the living room sofa and opening cards or some such. I was taken with a profound desire to re-live some of those moments.

We can’t move backward, though. We can only move forward.


As our vacation drew to a close, and we were beginning our trip back, we drove past a church in my parent’s town that had one of those garish digital signs out front. The sign read, “Don’t let yesterday take over today.” Were there a meaning to this vacation as I’ve unpacked it over the last few weeks, it’s that. I cannot go backward. That part of my life has been lived, and, I think, lived well. We can only move forward, and I hope…I pray…that, as we do, we provide that incredible foundation to our own children.

Syncopation

Image of snare drum with sticks. Used under creative commons.

A week ago from the time that I write this, I was driving home after dropping Karen and our girls off for a week-long trip to see some family. I was in the sort of contemplative mindset that I often find just out of reach lately. I drove past a house with a truck parked in the driveway. The logo on the side of the truck indicated that it belonged to a fire safety business. Because of where the truck was parked, and the time – it was a Sunday night – my mind, crafting stories as always, began to fill in the details.

The person who owned the truck worked for, or perhaps owned, that business, according to this story. This was a local business, and he would go to work the next morning, driving to jobs around the area, into adjacent towns. He likely knows the area extremely well, and is accustomed to the rhythm and schedule. This person would get up and go to work the next morning after the alarm went off at the same time as always, beginning a new day and a new week.

I grew up around that type of work. I understand – if only by close proximity instead of by doing – that rhythm. That rhythm is such a counterpoint to my life now.

A few weeks ago, I sat in a small local restaurant in Seattle and, over lunch, coordinated a complex technical event that was happening in Boston from my phone. That sort of flexibility and capability is exciting, and fun. I still don’t grasp the rhythm of this work, though, perhaps because there isn’t any. Time bends in on itself, loses its meaning. Everything happens with immediacy. I long for a rhythm, for some local work.

A colleague joked a few years ago that she wanted to stop doing our profession and be a barista for a living. I laughed at this, and I also recalled a friend from my undergrad days. He said that, when he finished school, he didn’t care if he worked at a gas station all night for a living. He just wanted to write. I remember laughing at that too, but, honestly, sometimes I wish that I could just serve coffee during the day, read, and finish that novel, the draft of which has been collecting dust since our first daughter was born. I think that, when I want that, I want it not only because it would be simpler, but because the rhythm would be more….defined.

The rhythm of the life that I have now, filled with fast-paced technology and the controlled chaos of two children, is syncopated, wildly unpredictable. There’s a sense that it’s always delicately balanced, just on the edge of being out of control. There’s no real option but to embrace that syncopation at the moment. Like in jazz, those rhythms can have a purpose, even be playful at times. I long for the quiet, though, the purpose of knowing that your work is just your work, and that it is done when it is done.

Perhaps that is a thing of the past.

Image attribution: Vladimir Morozov under Creative Commons.

On Shopping and the Value of the Mundane

An image of winter gloves, used under Creative Commons.I’ve been shopping for a new pair of gloves.  This is a deceptively difficult thing to get right. When you live in New England, you don’t own just one pair of gloves, because the mid-weight gloves that you wear in December are useless in January and February. Having the right gloves at the right time of year is very important.

After Karen and I had been married for a couple of years, I joked that I was a master of the suburban jungle. We fell into a rhythm of grocery shopping every Sunday afternoon. This sounds mundane, but was something that I enjoyed. Our rhythm is no longer the same with two children, and this is true not only of grocery shopping, but of many other aspects of life.

Even within these interruptions, however, one adapts. We used to have these little outings as a family. Again, nothing huge, and often mundane….trips to a local store to pick up some items that we needed, then eating out. I love those excursions, even when they are something as trivial as shopping, perhaps for the right pair of gloves.


When our oldest daughter was younger, I took her for “cookies and milk” every weekend. This was an inviolable routine. Even when traveling, we made time. Even if it was as simple as grabbing 15 minutes at a coffee shop (which it frequently was), I made the time. As life progressed, this, too, began to happen less and less frequently, a fact that she has lamented to me recently. Now I find myself digging for ways to accomplish this simple act amidst all of the work that I have to accomplish, all of the daily life commitments that come with family…almost none of which, it occurs to me, involve leaving home.

This was a utopia long-predicted and, now that we have it…for all of its telecommuting benefits…I can’t help but wonder what we’ve relinquished. Years ago, when I was in grad school, I recall sitting upstairs in my favorite coffee shop, when a classmate walked in downstairs. I began to IM him (remember AOL?), and realized the absurdity of such an action. I walked downstairs and said hello. That was a precursor to today, as the absurdity of that moment becomes commonplace when we use Slack to talk to a co-worker who is only a few feet away.

Of all the face-to-face interactions that we abdicate, it is the interactions with my children and family that are most painful. As crazy as it sounds, those random weekend shopping excursions held something that just doesn’t spark when we have those same items delivered by Amazon. The convenience of having such a plethora of options for a new pair of gloves is somehow not worthwhile, because the substance of doing the activity together, even when it’s only shopping, is more important than the outcome of the activity.

That idea, though, is counter-cultural in an age of scientific pragmatism. We are, after all, only data, right? And thus intrudes a cognitive dissonance into my life. I love shiny new toys. I love that I can have groceries delivered to us on Sundays if we are overwhelmed with daily family responsibilities. I miss the act of intentionally doing those mundane things together, though. I miss it deeply, because it now happens so rarely. And thus, so do our connections with each other.

Except virtual connections. Those will never go away.

For whatever they’re worth.

Image attribution: Keith Williamson under Creative Commons.

Divesting Facebook

"Facebook." Photo of a woman holding a plain blue book in front of her face. Used under Creative Commons.

I suppose that I was a relatively early adopter of social media. I remember when Twitter functioned primarily by text message, but my roots go back even further. While I never boasted a MySpace account, I joined Facebook during grad school, when it was only available to students and faculty. I’ll be honest…I joined because one of my colleagues told me that it was a great place to meet girls.

Turns out that she was right: I met Karen on Facebook. As it expanded and grew, I found, or was found by, more and more old friends from the past (oddly, though, never anyone from my undergrad days). I posted to those friends updates to our 24-hour labor experience when our first daughter was born. Facebook was a huge part of my life for a long time.

As I became more and more aware of how carelessly the network regarded my privacy, though, my use of it waned. My profile sat for four years with no use, save the occasional professional necessity. Facebook was obviously becoming a rough neighborhood, even before recent scandals, so, a little over two months ago, I finally followed through with what I had wanted to do years prior. I deleted Facebook.

I wasn’t careless. I exported my data, I confirmed that what I wanted to keep was present, I sorted photos to make certain everything was there. Karen wanted to preserve our chats from when we were dating and engaged, but those were sadly unavailable…apparently Facebook doesn’t keep messages beyond a certain point. Then, I clicked delete.

For those of you considering this, Facebook gives you 30 days to change your mind. All you have to do is log back in! And certainly I was tempted…so much of my life was invested there, recorded there. I held firm, though. I didn’t need the noise in my life.

I was then forced to return to what I suppose would be considered an older way of doing things. I still ascribe to the belief that you should never delete anyone from your address book, personal or professional. Perhaps this comes from the fact that I am old enough to remember keeping a hand-written address book. I intentionally reviewed many of those contacts to make certain that I had them…the groomsmen from our wedding, for example. I’m also still connected to several of these people on other networks…LinkedIn, or Twitter…but there are some that I realize now that I missed. I mourn that I may have lost connection with those people, one the person who recommended that I join Facebook in those early days, the person one could say was responsible for Karen and I meeting.

Even more do I mourn the fact that we have permitted a state of affairs in which losing contact with loved ones is as easy as leaving a social network. We’ve allowed someone else to hold that most valuable part of ourselves for their profit, certain to lose some or all of our connectedness unless we choose to be complacent to their nefarious motives. I wish that we had kept this, were intentional about caring for one another deeply enough to make certain that we know how to keep in touch with each other….and then following that with the action of doing so. As revolutionary as social networking was, and as ubiquitous as it has become in our daily landscape, the effort of keeping addresses, and even of writing letters, meant that we truly stayed in touch.

I hope that I can find the space in my life for that intentionality once again.

Image attribution: Alatr0n under Creative Commons.