The Edge of Safety

Everything important in life I learned before I was six.

My Mom and I started off on our own. She was a single mom until I was six. My Dad was a little on the wild side, to put it mildly. She figured that the best place for him was away from us. At nineteen years old she bundled me up and ran away to safety.

I don't have many memories about those first six years - just vignettes and snapshots that are random and out of sequence.  When I think about those years I get the picture of Christopher Robin in a rain jacket skipping through mud puddles.

‘One, two, buckle my shoe’

We lived with my Grandparents for awhile. Then we got a place on Park Avenue. That's the Park Avenue in Kelowna, B.C., Canada not Park Avenue, New York, N.Y., USA. There are probably no two points on the Earth farther apart than the two Park Avenues.

Mom worked. I remember a pizza restaurant called the Colony. The memory of this place is the clearest of my first six years. I remember the name of the restaurant, how my mom looked, the smells and the tastes - especially the taste of pizza. Every payday Friday we would have a mushroom and olive pizza. We were vegetarians. I thought everyone was. In the 60's many were.

To this day I associate mushrooms and olives with being safe and happy.

This feeling of safety started to fade when I was six. My mom remarried and I had two half sisters in rapid succession. I was a sensitive kid and I didn't adapt very well. I didn't feel like I fit and I didn't have that feeling of safety any more.

And then this happened ------------------------------->

I spent a decade or so chasing my tail and trying to fit in. I all but erased the simple lessons of my first six years.

I was unhappy and unsafe.

I am happy to report my eventual return to happy and safe. The circle is complete. Today these feelings come from within and are supported by a loving wife and three daughters. There is no longer any question of where I fit. Not only am I safe but I now provide safety to others.

Last night my six-year-old wanted to sleep with me. She wanted to feel safe. Sprawled diagonally across my bed, her blanket had fallen off and she'd dropped her stuffy. I fixed her blanket and realised it was the wrong stuffy. I went to her room and got the right one.

In that moment, as she squeezed her stuffy and sunk a little deeper into the pillow, she knew what safe and happy felt like. She didn't know how or why and it didn't matter. It was part of her now. It would kick in when she needed it.

Before the complications and compound complications love was simple, not something that had to be worked on. My Mom taught me all I ever needed to know about love and life in my first six years. She taught me a lifetime of value before either of us ever found out about the things we didn't know.

"One, two, buckle my shoe ..."

The Edge of Reason

"It's beter to keep your mouth shut and have people think you a fool than speak and remove all doubt." Mark Twain et. al.

I attributed the quote above to Mark Twain et. al. as there is some debate as to its genesis. Regardless of origin, this little pearl of wisdom has served me well. When I am unsure of where I stand or, more frequently, when I am not fit for Human consumption, I try to listen more and speak less. 

I learned this lesson only after many years of conflict, trial and error.

For most of my thirties I worked in an office with twenty-five employees. I was the only man. I worked there for seven years. I was in a senior management postion. Any authority I had over my employees was an illusion that I was allowed to entertain from time to time. 

Any true managing that I was able to achieve was through the art of strategic submission. I leaned more about how to get along with the Humans during those years than all the combined years before and since. Overall I managed to play well with the other kids. I learned to brush off the passive aggressive jabs that I had become accustom to having for lunch - for the most part.  

There were a few conflicts which I chose to engaged in with way too much vigor.

The delicate art of assertively setting and maintaining boundaries came slowly.  Rather, I spent many nights plotting revenge on those who I was convinced were picking on me. Ultimately I resorted to guerilla tactics. 

I would spend an entire week crafting an e-mail to be concise,  hard-hitting and full of double meaning and deniability. I fuelled fires with with phrases such as: "I understand how difficult ... I am happy to assist with ...  complex issues for a person of your .... given your limited ..." 

My objective was to exact revenge while maintaining deniability. 

At exactly 4:25 on Friday afternoon. I would send the e-mail, turn off my computer and go home for the weekend. I would be the last this the recipient would see before their weekend. They were left unable to respond. Monday they would be apoplectic. 

A little, little man   

Ultimately that job crashed into a mountain and I was eaten in the ensuing weeks. I will always be grateful for that experience. I was in the most precarious social situation I could imagine. As a result I have never since found a personality conflict I am unable to rise above. 

From this experience, I developed the single best strategy to promote peaceful relations with the Humans. I sleep on it - that's it. I don't react in the moment I go home and let it sit for a night. Almost all the time the problem resolves itself as I sleep. When it doesn't I am able to find a way to resolve it with out bloodshed or viscous e-mail campaigns. 

I still write e-mails to resolve resentments but I have my wife proofread them first. 

Today I know that I need to play well with the other kids. It's just not worth the price I pay. Besides, I need all the energy I have to be the best husband and father I can be.  I don't have the luxury of nursing resentments. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

The reason I went on this rant today was because I have been on a YouTube safari this past week checking out slam poetry and spoken word recitals. I was looking for inspiration from my own poetry and trying to get a feel for what goes on out there in the world. I even thought I could see where my place might be...