Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

1. H2O. Once again, like so many Sundays before and hopefully many Sundays to come, I sit before my muse, my inland ocean, and peer within, trying to capture the random thoughts that fly inside my head like so many molecules in a vacuum.

I never really know what I’ll catch.

2. Spotify. I’m not really sure when I started writing with music on in the background. Certainly not before we moved to Casa Blanco in late 2013. In many ways my writing music has evolved along the same lines as my music in the OR. For nearly 10 years the majority of the music played in my OR’s was instrumental only. You know, lest I start to tap my feet or sing along. The first is obviously a problem because I control my instrument and microscope with foot pedals.

Singing risks sparking a mutiny in the rest of the OR “crew”.

Where once I was dependent on, and limited by my collection of CD’s, the era of music streaming has brought me music from every era of my life. Top 40 in Jr. High? Hello “Stairway to Heaven”, the most awkward slow dance song ever written. High school and college funk? I see you Earth, Wind, and Fire. David Sanborne, Chuck Mangione and their peers played background to my early career, giving way to all things Eric Clapton. “Clapton Unplugged” accompanied me as I caught up on last week’s newspapers yesterday. Ozzie Osborn said farewell yesterday in an epic 10 hour concert in Birmingham. Through the wonder of Spotify and its competitors I will be able to sample the concert’s fare.

Just not in the OR.

3. Independence. Friday was Independence Day, the Fourth of July, edition 249. On Saturday the United States began “turning 250”. Long-time readers (both of you) will get the reference to one of my better pieces from yesteryear “The Hard Turn at Mile Marker 49”. I struggled mightily with the whole “turning 50” thing over what turned out to be a rather trivial, buried aspiration first verbalized in my early 40’s. Still, with the perception of a fraught world, or at least a fraught U.S., I do wonder if 250 might be kinda like my 50.

But with the help of social media, Twitter/X in particular, I went back and took a look at what was going on hereabouts in 1975-6, the Bicentennial year when the country turned 200. As an aside, although I’ve read it dozens of times, I simply can’t remember the proper word for 250 year anniversary. No matter. The point, of course, is that the American society was aflame back then, too. So much so that you didn’t need SM to hear about it. Riots. Occupation of buildings in colleges and universities. The “Sexual Revolution” was in full swing (sorry). Unbeknownst to most everyone, the most important man in government was soon to be confirmed as the head of the Federal Reserve and would battle crazy inflation.

Deja vu all over again, eh?

My response? I’m gonna re-read the Declaration of Independence along with an academic treatise on its writers and its creation courtesy of my College email thread buddy Mayday, who spent his career under cover in the service of country and countrymen. I will endeavor to seek the good in every person I encounter, and I will offer them whatever there is in me that is good. Citizenship one-on-one and one-by-one.

It’s the least any of us can do.

4. Power. How do you take your water sports? Specifically when it comes to powering your movements on the water. Each year around this time Beth and I are reminded that we aren’t really boaters, despite the fact that we own a perfectly functional antique Boston Whaler. In fact it is this very same Whaler, christened “Jet Ski” by Beth to win a discussion about the possible acquisition of Jet Skis for the grandchildren (“There. Now we have a Jet Ski!”) that does the reminding. Every boat takes a certain amount of care and feeding to remain seaworthy.

Each year we find ourselves struggling to get an unsinkable boat afloat.

This is perhaps because we are both at heart “self-powered” water people both raised with a healthy dose of the Atlantic Ocean sans outboard assistance. For years now we have primarily played in all manner of water with toys that require people-powered propulsion. Paddle-boards, kayaks, and boogie boards to harness the surf. Accompanied by one of our growing families we spent 4 1/2 hours in our liquid playground, moving about using ourselves as the power plant. For sure you can do all kinds of stuff to tire out a gaggle of family members with a boat and stuff that floats, but there seems to be a different kind of satisfaction that comes with the exhaustion earned through a paddle.

I do confess to a deep curiosity about wind, though.

5. Upbringing. Is it nature or is it nurture? The hardware you received at conception or the software that was downloaded by your parents, other family members, friends, and others? The answer has to be “yes” of course. My daughter is a behavioral therapist with a special interest in very young children with various degrees of autism. When she is introduced and this comes up she is often queried about parenting and raising children. Megan is kind and gracious and by all accounts she maneuvers through these minefields as one would expect from such a lovely person.

I was casually eavesdropping while Megan and Beth were chatting about one of these conversations. A couple of hours later Beth and I got to talking about parenting, a very long conversation that we have been having for at least 30 years. If you know us at all you are now doing some math and discovering that our first born, Dan, was born 30-SEVEN years ago, and indeed, it was during those first 7 years of his young life that we discovered just how different our parents approached the child raising thing, as evidenced by how we instinctually reacted so differently to various scenarios and challenges.

For all of the differences between our families there are some very significant things or hardware both families have in common. For example, both of our Moms are the children of parents who both went to college, while our Dads were the first members of their families to do so. Our Dads both went on to get advanced degrees. Each marriage lasted for their entire lives, and both couples lived to see their children graduate from college, marry, and raise children of their own. The hardware seems fairly similar, and one might think that “nature” might prevail.

If we dig deeper, though, we discover that our families grew up with a very significant, fundamental difference in how parenting was carried out. There were rules in my family that were followed because they were the rules. Not unlike your favorite board game or if you favor a bit more intellectual example, chess. You wouldn’t dream of moving your castle along a diagonal in chess or fail to pay your “rent” on Boardwalk in Monopoly because, you know, rules.

There were certainly rules in Beth’s house growing up. My perception is that they likely had a similar number of rules as we did, certainly when it came to safety and “proper” social behavior. What seemed different as it became obvious to us as young parents that we were coming at the nuts and bolts of parenting from almost different poles, is that my parents were content to disclose the rules while Beth’s parents were interested in their three kids understanding the “why” behind most rules (don’t push your sister down the stairs really didn’t need an answer to “why”).

While listening to Beth and Megan I heard a word that I have to admit has been a little slippery for me; I’ve not really grasped how “validation” works in parenting until yesterday, but in a nutshell it explains the difference between how Beth and I were raised. In context, validation seems to mean that a parent acknowledges unhappiness in a child who must follow a rule or an order, accepts their unhappiness on its face, and nonetheless follows through with that rule while perhaps explaining a “why”. As a young parent I simply could not have been more of a “them’s the rules” guy. Watching Beth parent our kids and offer guidance to our grandchildren is to see a master’s class in validation.

So I guess I’m in the “nurture” camp on this one. Absent conscious premeditation and purposeful work prior to being handed that first baby, how you were raised is likely the default setting for your initial parenting style. It is certainly not destiny. Like a software update or new operating system installation it is possible to take the better parts of how you were raised and add in what you learn as you are in the act of parenting your own. Like a pitcher learning a new way to throw a fastball I can now identify feelings that come to the surface when a rule has to be followed, acknowledge them in a way that makes it clear that I am hearing the feelings, and to explain that sometimes we just have to follow the rules even if we are unhappy. Perhaps it’s simple: you have to take a shower because you were in the lake all day.

Sometimes it’s a little more complex and the “feels” are a lot bigger: I know you are unhappy about “this” but no, you can’t run away from home. Everybody there loves you.

I’ll see you next week…