Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

I have said over the years that if this Ophthalmology thing doesn’t work out that I would move as far out on Cape Cod as I could and try to write for Sports Illustrated. Fortunately for everyone in the White house I’m still working with my hands but not necessarily using them to type!

My writing career, such as it is, began with some Random Thoughts from my alter ego “bingo” shared with the Crossfit community each Sunday. My very good friends Greg and Lauren Glassman are the founders of the Crossfit movement ,and they have indulged this little exercise that I called “Sunday Musings” for a little over two years, basically by ignoring both me and everyone who complained about my musings! It is through their generosity, giving me a place to exercise my “brain muscle” along with all of my skeletal muscles, that I re-discovered my comfort with the written word. I’ll have lots to share about Crossfit as time goes on, but as long as you are here I thought I’d share this little part of my Crossfit world with you each week.

So here, with gratitude and love to Greg and Lauren, is bingo’s “Sunday musings”…

1) Opera singers give and get more out of one syllable than any American Idol does in an entire album.

2) The Never List. I used to have one of these. You know, things I never have to try unless forced to. Mrs. Bingo was teasing me the other day while I was slicing some tofu into soup. “Wasn’t tofu on your ‘Never List’ when we met? You wouldn’t even say the word–you called it ‘oofaught’!” Back then my list had things like war, cocaine, cowboy boots, and other sillier stuff I can’t remember.

Mrs. Bingo was teasing me and gently reminding me of how narrow-minded and certain I was as a younger man, while reminding me of how well she has “raised” me. I have to admit, AGAIN, that she is right, that I have had more fun by shrinking my “Never List” than I would have by expanding it. Of course the real “Nevers” will stay that way, but maybe think about re-visiting your own “Never List” with fresh eyes.

FWIW, I would still look silly in a bow tie and cowboy boots…

3) Progeny. We’ve had quite a few births chez Crossfit recently, and we have some twins on the way soon. For most of us, and for most of our lives, we all share something quite special with “S’morelle” and the JroCk “Pebble”–we are all sons or daughters for as long as we have a Mom or a Dad.

I am at that stage of life where my friends are starting to lose their parents; I have a wake to attend this afternoon. Whether or not we choose to acknowledge it, being a son or a daughter is a significant part of who each one of us is as an individual. For some it’s good and for others it is certainly less so, but we can’t escape the reality of our “son-ness” or “daughter-ness”.

Until we are no longer a son or a daughter. Until we are set adrift by the loss of our last remaining parent, awash in the memory of being someone’s child yet no longer engaged in the daily acts of being a son or being a daughter. Some have spoken about a sense of “orphanhood”, an unexpected emptiness in the time-space both ahead and behind.

Blessedly I am still a son, still in possession of both parents (or possessed by both parents; Grambingo still considers her son a work in progress). We never know when that day will come when we, too, will become “orphans”. I have enjoyed being someone’s son, and I think today is a great day to remember that.

A great day to let my Mom and Dad know that.

I’ll see you next week…

Comment #65 – Posted at April 19, 2009 6:22 AM

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Crossfit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.