They led me into Silkworth Unit at Hazelden Alcohol Treatment Center on Mother’s Day, fourteen years ago. There were 22 men between the ages of 20 and 65 sitting on couches and chairs in a big circle talking.
I asked one of my guides, “Which ones are the counselors?” He told me that counselors don’t work weekends. I thought he was kidding.
“Counselors aren’t the reason it works here,” he said. “We are. We help each other. It’s the group. That’s the way it works in here. That’s the way it works out there.”
I hadn’t flown from Texas to Minnesota to sit in a circle of failures, blabbing about what used to be. I wanted at least one bearded guy in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe, quoting Jung and handing out a reading list. I wanted to sober up from the neck up. But I would learn that I am a bundle of appetites.
I was wrong about the counselors. They were competent, but the best help I got was from my peers. They opened their lives to me and we laughed, cried, prayed, worked hard, sat in silence, accepted each other as we were and began to articulate our dreams for a new life. We listened to each other carefully, expected honesty, caught each other in lies, told the hard truth and held each other accountable in all things. We scrubbed toilets together on our knees, made a thousand pots of coffee, swept, moped, washed dishes, cleaned windows, emptied ashtrays and trash cans.
Deeper than anything, we learned that we are not God.
Most of us got sober in those 30 days. Dobb and I have stayed sober for the fourteen years.
I arrived at Hazelden three weeks after a one-car accident which nearly tore my right arm off. My roommates from Arkansas and New York helped me in and out of the shower, buttoned and unbuttoned me, carried my tray, helped me make my bed and do my daily work. Gladly.
The business of the church was being done, without the wine, on earth as it is.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Intervention
Intervention. It’s when you’re in trouble, whether you know it or not, and someone shows up to help you, whether you want it or not.
I was in first grade, in the principal’s office for lying, when my dad intervened. “Let me handle the situation myself by taking the boy home for lunch,” he said. The boy ate standing.
I was eight, in the dime store. The yo-yo was a dollar, all I had was a quarter, so I pocketed the yo-yo. Before I got out of the store the manager collared me and asked for my parents’ name and number. “My mother is at the beauty shop next door,” I told him. He sent a girl for her while I sat in his office. My mother came in with wet hair. She apologized and made me apologize. “Let us handle this at home,” she said. On the way out she said the six words I dreaded most: “Wait ‘til your father comes home.”
I was in ninth grade, on my way home from school, when three senior boys started chasing me. Just as they caught me, Mr. Barton came out his front door and scared them off. Mr. Barton walked me home. “Watch your back,” he told me, “because there won’t always be someone to look out for you.”
In 1995, I was invited to sit down with the family in the den of my in-laws house. It was the Friday before Mother’s Day. My drinking was way out of control and I was the only one who didn’t know it. I thought, “If my work’s not suffering, I haven’t got a problem.” They told me that for the past few years I had been going through the family like a tornado. I flew to Minnesota the next morning and checked into a treatment center. As hard as rehab was, it wasn’t harder than the intervention in the den.
A father had a son who demanded his share of the estate. The father turned over the deeds to the property. The kid went through town selling off half of the family place. Prime land. He left town unpopular, but rich. He finally hit bottom. He decided to come home. His father saw him coming, but not before the townspeople, who had no intention of letting the spoiled crook come back to do more damage. So his father ran through town, through the angry crowd, to protect him from them. Then, he wrapped his own robe, the best robe, around his son, turned, the crowd parted and he walked him home.
Talk about an Intervention.
I was in first grade, in the principal’s office for lying, when my dad intervened. “Let me handle the situation myself by taking the boy home for lunch,” he said. The boy ate standing.
I was eight, in the dime store. The yo-yo was a dollar, all I had was a quarter, so I pocketed the yo-yo. Before I got out of the store the manager collared me and asked for my parents’ name and number. “My mother is at the beauty shop next door,” I told him. He sent a girl for her while I sat in his office. My mother came in with wet hair. She apologized and made me apologize. “Let us handle this at home,” she said. On the way out she said the six words I dreaded most: “Wait ‘til your father comes home.”
I was in ninth grade, on my way home from school, when three senior boys started chasing me. Just as they caught me, Mr. Barton came out his front door and scared them off. Mr. Barton walked me home. “Watch your back,” he told me, “because there won’t always be someone to look out for you.”
In 1995, I was invited to sit down with the family in the den of my in-laws house. It was the Friday before Mother’s Day. My drinking was way out of control and I was the only one who didn’t know it. I thought, “If my work’s not suffering, I haven’t got a problem.” They told me that for the past few years I had been going through the family like a tornado. I flew to Minnesota the next morning and checked into a treatment center. As hard as rehab was, it wasn’t harder than the intervention in the den.
A father had a son who demanded his share of the estate. The father turned over the deeds to the property. The kid went through town selling off half of the family place. Prime land. He left town unpopular, but rich. He finally hit bottom. He decided to come home. His father saw him coming, but not before the townspeople, who had no intention of letting the spoiled crook come back to do more damage. So his father ran through town, through the angry crowd, to protect him from them. Then, he wrapped his own robe, the best robe, around his son, turned, the crowd parted and he walked him home.
Talk about an Intervention.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Pecking
I was swinging my youngest daughter in a tire swing when she was in first grade. Suddenly she told me, “Stop! I have to warn you about something!”
We stopped, she got out of the swing and I got in. No small feat.
She shook her finger at me and said, “Don’t ever help baby birds out of their shells!” I nodded. “Promise, Daddy!” “Okay, I promise”
“Do you know why to not do it?”
“Not really,” I told her.
“Because babies have to peck, peck, peck their way out of the egg so their lungs will be strong enough when they come out…and birds know exactly how much pecking it takes. You don’t.”
Then, we changed places on the swing and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
I thought about people I have rescued too soon. The hot air I have spent trying to affect change. Tears I have dried too quickly. Times I’ve thought: Get Over It. Individuals I have pushed into what I thought should be the next phase of their life. My daughters.
As Sarabeth said to me, “You don’t know how much pecking it takes.”
I am reminded of the story of the butterfly in Zorba the Greek:
“I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster then life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.
“That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm” (Nikos Kazantzakis: pages 120-21).
We stopped, she got out of the swing and I got in. No small feat.
She shook her finger at me and said, “Don’t ever help baby birds out of their shells!” I nodded. “Promise, Daddy!” “Okay, I promise”
“Do you know why to not do it?”
“Not really,” I told her.
“Because babies have to peck, peck, peck their way out of the egg so their lungs will be strong enough when they come out…and birds know exactly how much pecking it takes. You don’t.”
Then, we changed places on the swing and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
I thought about people I have rescued too soon. The hot air I have spent trying to affect change. Tears I have dried too quickly. Times I’ve thought: Get Over It. Individuals I have pushed into what I thought should be the next phase of their life. My daughters.
As Sarabeth said to me, “You don’t know how much pecking it takes.”
I am reminded of the story of the butterfly in Zorba the Greek:
“I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster then life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.
“That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm” (Nikos Kazantzakis: pages 120-21).
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Wings
In Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, a street preacher stops a guy in his mid-20’s to ask if he’s been saved. The guy answers, “Anybody with a good car doesn’t need to be saved.
It’s difficult to admit we need help beyond what we can give ourselves. We are raised to be daddy’s big girl or boy.
My grandmother slipped me a five one Sunday while we were at her house. It fell out of my pocket somewhere and by the time I realized it was gone it was time to go. I wanted to tell her, not simply because she might give me another, but because she’d take me into her lap.
“You’ll never be too big for me to hold,” she'd tell me.
A few years later, I didn’t want to be held by anyone. I wanted to be too big.
Then, the move into mid-life when we carry our umbilical cord around looking for a place to plug it in.
After one of the big fires at Yellowstone, two rangers were surveying the damage when they saw a bald eagle perched on the stump of a burned-out tree. The ladder in their truck brushed up against her and she disintegrated into ashes. As she crumbled, her three babies ran out from beneath her wings. She could have left them in the fire, but she gathered them under her wings and never moved during the intense heat and suffocating smoke.
The rangers took her babies to a wildlife refuge and a year later they were released.
There is a monument at the spot where she sheltered her babies. It says, “Here lies the American bald eagle whose protective wings gave her babies life.”
Every summer, three large bald eagles circle the spot, each wearing the red tag from the refuge.
I am remembering the One who lamented, “How often I would have gathered you under my wings, but you would not.”
It’s difficult to admit we need help beyond what we can give ourselves. We are raised to be daddy’s big girl or boy.
My grandmother slipped me a five one Sunday while we were at her house. It fell out of my pocket somewhere and by the time I realized it was gone it was time to go. I wanted to tell her, not simply because she might give me another, but because she’d take me into her lap.
“You’ll never be too big for me to hold,” she'd tell me.
A few years later, I didn’t want to be held by anyone. I wanted to be too big.
Then, the move into mid-life when we carry our umbilical cord around looking for a place to plug it in.
After one of the big fires at Yellowstone, two rangers were surveying the damage when they saw a bald eagle perched on the stump of a burned-out tree. The ladder in their truck brushed up against her and she disintegrated into ashes. As she crumbled, her three babies ran out from beneath her wings. She could have left them in the fire, but she gathered them under her wings and never moved during the intense heat and suffocating smoke.
The rangers took her babies to a wildlife refuge and a year later they were released.
There is a monument at the spot where she sheltered her babies. It says, “Here lies the American bald eagle whose protective wings gave her babies life.”
Every summer, three large bald eagles circle the spot, each wearing the red tag from the refuge.
I am remembering the One who lamented, “How often I would have gathered you under my wings, but you would not.”
Monday, August 3, 2009
Breasts
I was 14. It was Saturday morning and I was reading comic books when my dad called from work and told me to get dressed we were going to the doctor.
I waited for him in the front yard beside the mailbox. Nobody said a word on the way.
The nurse took us straight back.
I sat on the table with the wax paper, while my dad sat on the counter near the sink. He rubbed his eyes like he had one of his headaches. Maybe he was the sick one.
The doctor came in.
“How are you fellows doing?”
I looked over at my dad. So did the doctor.
My dad told me to take off my t-shirt.
“Take a look at his breasts,” he said. “The size I mean. Is there something physically wrong?”
I sat there and tried to cover up. Then, I turned away and put my t-shirt back on.
The doctor said something about “growing out of it.” I didn’t hear much. My head was spinning like that Exorcist kid.
On the way home my dad asked me if I wanted to stop for a hamburger. I said no, which was a first. I wanted to go home.
I didn’t shower at school after that. I would put my good clothes over the sweat and dirt after practice.
I am 60 and starting to wear t-shirts again regularly.
Tell me, where is the universal chart that establishes the acceptable size of body parts?
I waited for him in the front yard beside the mailbox. Nobody said a word on the way.
The nurse took us straight back.
I sat on the table with the wax paper, while my dad sat on the counter near the sink. He rubbed his eyes like he had one of his headaches. Maybe he was the sick one.
The doctor came in.
“How are you fellows doing?”
I looked over at my dad. So did the doctor.
My dad told me to take off my t-shirt.
“Take a look at his breasts,” he said. “The size I mean. Is there something physically wrong?”
I sat there and tried to cover up. Then, I turned away and put my t-shirt back on.
The doctor said something about “growing out of it.” I didn’t hear much. My head was spinning like that Exorcist kid.
On the way home my dad asked me if I wanted to stop for a hamburger. I said no, which was a first. I wanted to go home.
I didn’t shower at school after that. I would put my good clothes over the sweat and dirt after practice.
I am 60 and starting to wear t-shirts again regularly.
Tell me, where is the universal chart that establishes the acceptable size of body parts?
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Art of Living
I tried to eat the 72-ounce steak at The Big Texan restaurant on I-40 outside Amarillo, Texas. I tried twice, in ’71 and ’79. They give you one hour to eat everything: shrimp cocktail, salad, baked potato, a roll and the beef. They make you fill out a form. I assume for your obituary.
There are rules:
1. You must pay in advance.
2. You must sit alone at a table for one on a stage so you won’t share.
3. The food must stay down.
I pulled into The Big Texan at 11:00 in the morning. I buttoned my top button, pulled my pants high and looked around pie-eyed like it was my first time out of the house. I told the manager “the biggest steak I’ve ever eaten is a filett,” and “is the 72-ouncer a heck of a lot bigger?” He looked at me like I was from California.
Strategy: “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate the shrimp cocktail, salad, potato, and roll in ten minutes. Then, I turned to my steak, “Hello, li’l dogie.”
Strategy: “If you know your enemy, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I carved my steak into several smaller steaks. I tricked my stomach into thinking we were only eating six 12-ounce steaks.
Strategy: “To plunder a locality, divide your troops” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate half the steak in ’71 and the whole thing in ’79. What was the difference? I will tell you now. I grazed without looking up. I chewed without ceasing. I mooed contentedly under my breath. In short, I practiced bovinity.
Strategy: “The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
The ability to change and adapt: the art of living.
There are rules:
1. You must pay in advance.
2. You must sit alone at a table for one on a stage so you won’t share.
3. The food must stay down.
I pulled into The Big Texan at 11:00 in the morning. I buttoned my top button, pulled my pants high and looked around pie-eyed like it was my first time out of the house. I told the manager “the biggest steak I’ve ever eaten is a filett,” and “is the 72-ouncer a heck of a lot bigger?” He looked at me like I was from California.
Strategy: “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate the shrimp cocktail, salad, potato, and roll in ten minutes. Then, I turned to my steak, “Hello, li’l dogie.”
Strategy: “If you know your enemy, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I carved my steak into several smaller steaks. I tricked my stomach into thinking we were only eating six 12-ounce steaks.
Strategy: “To plunder a locality, divide your troops” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate half the steak in ’71 and the whole thing in ’79. What was the difference? I will tell you now. I grazed without looking up. I chewed without ceasing. I mooed contentedly under my breath. In short, I practiced bovinity.
Strategy: “The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
The ability to change and adapt: the art of living.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Kinky
I was sitting across from Kinky Friedman at a Mexican restaurant in Austin when out of nowhere he asked me what I believe. Being a “professional religionist” back then I jumped at the chance.
I was delivering great hunks of truth across the gulf between us when he held up his hand like a traffic cop and said, “Put it on a bumper sticker.” I didn’t appreciate it. For one thing I was on a roll. For another, I’ve never been able to put anything on a bumper sticker.
To put truth on a bumper sticker you can’t repeat everything profound that you’ve heard, or read. You can’t perform your Greatest Hits of songs somebody else wrote.
All Kinky wanted me to do what the restaurant had done. He ordered soup and they delivered. They brought him their specialty, hot, original and nourishing. What I brought him was dried tongue.
My high school career took a sharp turn for the worst when my 10th grade algebra teacher said three words: “Show your work.” Just filling in the blank with the correct answer was worth only two points out of ten. I panicked. If I truly showed my work, I would draw a picture of me copying off Trudy McTrusty.
Kinky wanted to hear the result of my own digging. He wanted to know what I believe, not some professional believers. He wanted a live conversation with me, not an encounter with some of my dead heroes. In other words, truth can’t be pickled.
I still can’t put it on a bumper sticker. I talk too much. But I have learned to put it in a story. That is what I am trying to do in this blog.
It is time, as King Lear said, “to say what we feel, and not what we ought to say.”
I was delivering great hunks of truth across the gulf between us when he held up his hand like a traffic cop and said, “Put it on a bumper sticker.” I didn’t appreciate it. For one thing I was on a roll. For another, I’ve never been able to put anything on a bumper sticker.
To put truth on a bumper sticker you can’t repeat everything profound that you’ve heard, or read. You can’t perform your Greatest Hits of songs somebody else wrote.
All Kinky wanted me to do what the restaurant had done. He ordered soup and they delivered. They brought him their specialty, hot, original and nourishing. What I brought him was dried tongue.
My high school career took a sharp turn for the worst when my 10th grade algebra teacher said three words: “Show your work.” Just filling in the blank with the correct answer was worth only two points out of ten. I panicked. If I truly showed my work, I would draw a picture of me copying off Trudy McTrusty.
Kinky wanted to hear the result of my own digging. He wanted to know what I believe, not some professional believers. He wanted a live conversation with me, not an encounter with some of my dead heroes. In other words, truth can’t be pickled.
I still can’t put it on a bumper sticker. I talk too much. But I have learned to put it in a story. That is what I am trying to do in this blog.
It is time, as King Lear said, “to say what we feel, and not what we ought to say.”
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