Change

Zinnia has a new trick. I go "buda-buda-buda-buda" with my tongue in a high pitched voice, and she bursts into a smile as if it were the most amusing thing she has every seen and, frankly, ever hoped to see. I can hang my hat on that smile, and I am finding fatherhood more engaging by the day.

Yesterday, Jenn bought Zinnia a new toy to amuse our daughter while she sits in her bouncy chair on the kitchen counter. The sounds it produces were taken from the original Spike Jones albums--a sliding whistle, the sound the Flinstone's feet make before they take off in their Stone Age car, and a saccharine-high voice saying "Wow," "Whoopee," and worst of all, "All Right!" The first time I heard it I felt as if I had entered one of the rings of hell.

Silence is one of the first casualties of parenthood.

Two weeks ago, Jenn and Zinnia attended a small birthday gathering for our young friend, Sofia. It was on Wednesday night, and I had planned on attending, but after seeing my sixth client of the day, I decided I wasn't in the mood and instead went home. The place was blessedly empty--no infant child, no wife, no cats. Pure silence. It was delicious, an ice cream sundae of silence, a square of dark chocolate nothingness, a full body massage of quietude, as if someone had hit the mute button on the entire planet. It was the second time I had been in the house alone since Zinnia was born.

My soul craves solitude, which makes it strange, then, that for my chosen profession, I have chosen a field that requires me to interact all day to a wide array of avatars--sacred beings and children of God masquerading as the walking wounded. I occasionally fantasize of being a librarian--a very well paid librarian, to be sure. It would be a job that would require me to talk to exactly no one all day while I lovingly shelve classic, hardbound literature to their rightful place. Or not.

Jane Austen, you saucy wench. What are you doing way over here in the M's? Out galavanting with Henry Miller I see.

And yet there are moments in the counseling room--quite a number, actually--that are so unspeakably poignant, it melts my heart. Often, people come in wanting desperately to "un-guard" lower their walls, yet find themselves in the midst of a battle between me, myself, and that heartless bastard/bitch, I.

In the last section of A Course In Miracles, there is a chapter for psychotherapists. Not as strange as it sounds. The women who channeled The Course was a PhD psychologist and an atheist. One day, she started receiving the text as if it were being dictated to her directly from God. Naturally she thought she was going nuts, but at last she surrendered to the process and with the help of a friend/co-worker, she started to write it all down. She would go to sleep, wake-up the next morning, and the voice would pick up exactly where it left off.

Anyway, in the section for psychotherapists, The Course pointed out that many people come to therapy not so much because they want to feel better, but because they/we want to feel more comfortable in our suffering. From my observation, there is more than a grain of truth to this. To actualize and move toward the greatness of who/what we are, we must need, with eyes wide open, risk the old, obsolete, smaller version of ourselves and plunge headfirst into the unknown. We humbly and with great intention walk into the ego-crushing, trash compacter of compassion.

Sometimes I play it small to keep expectations low or because fully manifesting means more responsibility, more a leadership role, and more--gasp!--people in my life. Me, the librarian wannabe.

(It's Alive!!! Zinnia just woke-up from her nap in the bedroom.)

I gave notice at my job this week. It was a mutual decision, and though the woman who owns the agency was willing to give it another go (with a number of changes), when I suggested that what we really needed to do was come up with an exit strategy, she looked more than a little relieved.
Later that day, of course, the shrill voice of my ego offered up a variety of valuable questions. Questions like, "Are you crazy?" and "How do you hope to make a living in this economy?" and "Good, God, man, you have a wife and baby to support!" (Which technically isn't a question, but close enough.)

Earlier in the week, I was on the phone with my mother and decided to send up a test balloon of honest sharing and let her know about the upcoming meeting at work. I shared this not from any illusion of receiving emotional support, but more with the somewhat deluded goal to that we could communicate in a way that would involve slightly more depth and gravity. It's purely self-serving. If I don't take these occasional chances, I start to feel a bit bored, and our phone calls take on a more obligatory, son-to-aging-mother tone.

So I shared, and what is so amazing is that after all these years my mother's radar is still soooo sensitive to the merest hint of a challenge swirling about in the lives of her progeny. Thus, when Jenn gave her a call yesterday to wish her a happy birthday, my mother naturally asked how my work meeting went.

"You'll have to talk to Tom," Jenn said,

One Mississippi, Two Missi--

"He quit his job, didn't he?" My mother took a moment to ponder the best course of action. At last she spoke. "Now I'm going to have to worry all day."

When I got home from work that evening, Jenn relayed the exchange with a mirthful (not to say mocking) smile. She found it humorous that my mother would decide she could make herself of most use by using her walker to pace nervously about. It also reminded me a little of how, when I'm traveling, I use my superhuman power to keep whatever plane I'm in from crashing. "Never fear," I say to my fellow passengers as I rip off my glasses like Superman. "My anxiety will keep us from afloat."

(And apropos of nothing, was that a great disguise or what? Nobody in Clark Kent's world could figure out that beneath his nerd glasses, he was actually a superhero for whom it was imperative to keep his identity secret.)

I do feel trepidation about the job decision, but also excitement, hope, and gratitude. I love my clients and have felt challenged as a therapist for the first time in years. Earlier in the week, I was dead certain I had made the right choice, then I walked down the aisle of the local food co-op and asked a gray-haired employee whom I recognized from my previous life in Albuquerque how long he had been working there. His body sagged a little, and he said almost apologetically, "Nineteen years." I tried not to grimace. Then he added, "But I hope to retire in the next five years."

Yikes!

There was something about this interaction that had me not just thinking, but knowing--that I had made a terrible mistake. I had visions of Jenn, Zinnia, and myself moving back to Oregon, tail between respective legs, as we unloaded the U-Haul at her father's house. I would find a job working with severely emotionally disturbed (and violent) adolescent sex offenders.** Jenn would hawk her jewelry on Portland's rain-slicked street corners.

Fortunately, I have a spouse who when I'm (to use therapeutic parlance) in my shit, reminds me that I'm Tom Fucking Bender, someone who is the calming voice of reason when I too have decided that the best course of action is to fret. When I got home the night of my business meeting, Jenn not-so-gently reflected back to me why I had decided to leave my place of employ; how I had wanted to spend more time with her and Zinnia; that I wanted a job I could leave at the office at day's end; and how I had bitched umpteen times about things I was dissatisfied with.

(Days later)

It is 6:30 a.m. Zinnia is growing by the day. She is smiling more, crying less, has more neck control, and makes cute baby noises that we echo back with delight. I feel overwhelmed by the generosity and response of others--food, money, visitors, etc. Last night we received a baby swing from my sister, Linda (with a contribution from her friend), both of whom are in town from five days from New Jersey (Jersey, eh? What exit?). Jenn's mother is flying in tomorrow for one of her monthly visits and has offered to watch Zinnia while I take the much-deserving mama up the mountain for a (cover your eyes Jenn) birthday massage and tarot reading. (Okay, you can open them.)

I am happy to be spending my life with you, Jennifer. I'm not sure how a man could be more blessed than I since we've met, and I fully anticipate the blessings to continue to roll in.

I love you. Happy (almost) Birthday.


















**I actually did apply for such a position years ago, but only because their ad was sufficiently vague to draw me in. It was the only time in my life I ever cut an interview short. "Let me save you some time," I said to the person entering the room for part two of the interview. "I'm not interested." The interviewer thanked me sincerely for being forthright and saving him the energy.