A Day in the Life of Chaos

Something happens starting in your forties and moving on.  Up to this point we live our lives independently.  We spend years separating ourselves from our parents and learning how to function on our own.  Sure, parents are always there to help out with advice or to fix something but we are mostly focused on establishing our own lives and families. We have our own children now and they have so many needs.  We have jobs and mortgages to pay.  When something breaks we have to fix it, when its time to eat, we have to make it.  While all this is going on at some point in life our parents start to need us more.  It can happen very slowly and often we don't even perceive the change yet it happens. As I look around at my friends who share my age I can see it happening.  These days I see it quite brilliantly in the life of my father who is now in his 60's and has a mother in her 90's.   I see it in the life of my dear friend Peggy whose father in law spent his final days with them

My mother bugged the hell out of me.  I can only say that now because she passed away eleven years ago and will never read this.  At least I don't think she will.  Of course I would trade all the irritation in the world to have one more day with her.  I might even let her smoke.  Mother's and the male children they spawn have a unique relationship and as a man I am still trying to understand it.  I say male children because I am neither a woman nor a mother so it would be difficult to see inside that world.  I am 44 years old, over half way through raising my own child and I still haven't figured it out.  Perhaps it is a mystery of the ages as distant as the ways of the ancients.  Despite this, as a thinking man I still try to understand.  I still contemplate the intense arguments I had with my mother in the morning as she drove me to school.  They happened so often yet I can't recall a reason for a single one.  I still wonder how my mother, who wanted so badly to

Is a person with an obsessive compulsive personality born with it or can it just happen?  I never really thought about the answer to that question as I laughed my way through every episode of Monk, the story of an obsessive compulsive private detective.  Monk is never far from a hand wipe.  Luckily he always has an assistant ready to hand him one after each door opened, each hand shaken.   Recently however a state of enlightened consciousness obtained while sitting on the holiest of holy thrones has provided an answer.  There is not much to do in the moments while you wait for nature to take its course.  Some read, some hum.   I tend to just speculate on who else is in my throne room by the shoes that they wear.  Of course all the while I keep my own shoes well within the boundaries of my stall to avoid any Larry Craig incident. When a toilet flushes you hear them rise to their feet.  They slide the lock to the stall and venture out into the bathroom.  At this point a decision is

Last night I dreamed of my mother. Of course we all dream of our mothers yet mine has been dead now for eleven years. It was one of those dreams where she seemed so real. I could speak to her and for a few hours or maybe minutes, I felt like she was still alive. I wonder if dreams are a gift or a torture. Do they help us remember or resolve conflicts in our mind? When my mother passed away from cancer I had so many mixed feelings. So many unresolved issues that could never be resolved. Yet some how, in the face of loss, the issues didn't seem so important anymore. If I could give anyone advice that has a parent still living it would be to find a way to set aside the anger. Your chance to know a person you have taken for granted for most of your life is so fleeting, don't waste it. Don't let it escape your grasp. Unfortunately we are all likely to repeat the same mistakes. It seems that so often the qualities that we love and admire about a person are not