It's been a busy week. Things have been moving along fairly quickly, and, seemingly, pretty well. We've taken some steps to lower our mortgage payments a little, a re-fi for a half-percent drop in interest. It doesn't change things all that much, but it helps. Only 18 months more of having to deal with tight finances, then Social Security kicks in, and I start making more money. That's a good thought for a Friday, there is, unmistakably a light at the end of this tunnel. Now if the Nostrodamus/Mayan/Whoever-is-the-current-Doomsayers have gotten it wrong, I could actually live long enough to see the "good life". To be honest, I'm kind of living the "good life;" it just doesn't have a whole lot of "style".
I want to talk about life for a while. Thoughts about life, living, my life, etc. have been on my mind all week. Like the concept of "the good life," for example. I have come to believe that all life is good, despite the fact that bad things happen. It is, in some estimations, a pretty naieve way of looking at life, or perhaps overly optimistic, but I'm postive I wouldn't like the alternative. I've grown to dislike the people who whine about their "hard" lives, and never see a positive thing in their pasts. No one, No One, NO ONE, ever lives a totally negative life. Even Hitler had a "good day," considering what a monster he was, it was probably over something sick, but still...
When I was a kid, we watched Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Ozzie and Harriett, I don't know about anyone else, but none of those ever represented my family life. My dad was not one to sit down and calmly explain what I had done wrong; he was the profanities at maximum volume, who you hoped you could stay away from long enough for him to tire out kind. I never felt fear around my father, it was more like terror. He was strong, faintly literate, and had a short temper, particularly when something was not going his way, and quick to make it physical. I was never beaten by my father; I landed a rather effective defensive punch before it could escalate to that, and he never tried physical discipline again. I was thirteen.
He caught my seventeen year-old sister and me smoking. He didn't see the cigarette in my hand, so I could have dodged it, technically, but he'd been telling me that "things always go better when you tell the truth," so when he asked, I told him I had been smoking too. He took a swipe at Pat, and commenced to slapping the shit out of me, until I stepped back, and threw a punch, a hard overhand right, that broke his nose. He stood up, wiped some blood from his nose, took one last swipe at Pat, and stormed out of the house. He got in our car, and drove off for over an hour. The whole time, Pat is telling me I should get out of the house, because he's going to kill me when he gets home. I knew that, but I also knew it would be even worse if I made him look for me, so I was screwed. When he got home, he was calm, and we had our first real father-son talk. I'd say, despite the dread of waiting to die, that was good living.
We lose a child, our relationship is streached to the brink, we separate, that was a lousy 20 months, but so much good came out of it, at the end and beyond, it's difficult to think of it as a "bad" time. We learned how to communicate again, as people who love each other. We re-discovered something that had been missing for a while, our friendship, which was our whole reason for getting married, anyway. What came out of that is more than 30 years of being able to hang out with my best friend every night, and a deep appreciation for each other's feelings. I just don't see the bad anymore.
I spent thousands of dollars, and more than five years of my family's life getting an education, so I can teach English. I work, across an eight year period, for six years, have a stroke, and get the short shrift three times. I was lied to, had my tenure revoked, through no fault of my own, and my union didn't care. In that six years, I helped my students get on the road to being adults. I see some of them now and again, and they are all doing well. A couple have become teachers, and I feel for them. What was bad about that?
Life is good. Tomorrow will be...
different. If you thought I was going to say "better," you're a bigger optimist than I.
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