Vacation-At-Home Log, Day Five:

Well, I’m feeling better on Morning Five than I was on Night Four. I’m fighting a serious compulsion to go back in and tear up last night’s entry, just delete the fucker, or re-write it all sunshine and flowers. But I don’t think anyone reads this stuff anyhow, so I may as well be as honest with myself as I can:

I really, really suck, but I work harder at not sucking than almost anyone else I know who sucks as bad as I do.

For instance, I knew going in that this Family Man gig was going to require compromises in the allocation of my personal time; it’s just that some of that acceptance hasn’t been fully integrated yet into the day-to-day behavior of the new and improved Fang. I am, as I have long averred, a work in progress.

I suppose there will always be a part of me that just wants to get away from time to time; to go to ground and stay there till shit starts making sense again. These days, however, shit has to start making sense again without me fleeing said shit. And it’s harder to make sense of shit without the added perspective provided by distance. Up close, shit just looks like shit, you know?

So I’m still looking for a coping mechanism that doesn’t require me dropping the ball on my legitimate family responsibilities, but still enables me to not freak out when the shit we speak of hits the fan. Please feel free to leave your suggestions in the “Comments” area at the bottom of the entry. Winner receives a pony in his or her choice of flavor.

• Getting bored with all my entertainment options, ridiculously vast as they are. My system is – wholly against my will – gearing itself back up to jump back into the work cycle. I must resist that impulse as long as possible! I still have two full days after the MRI for maxin’ and relaxin’. Tomorrow is New Comic Day – I just have to hold out till then…

• Getting ready for my MRI this afternoon. Long-time readers will recall I threw out my left arm from shoulder to fingertips last month – tonight I finally pay the piper. I have to admit to having some trepidation. I figure one of two things will happen: I’ll either go into a Zen state of calm and get through the nerve-wracking ordeal like a champ, or I’ll be freaky and fidgety and they’ll have to do it over and over again and I’ll be entombed in that 21st-century sarcophagus all night long. And all the techs and labcoat jockeys will hate me, too.

• It’s 5 a.m. on Day Six. The MRI went fine. I just closed my eyes and went to a better place (not heaven, but there were angels there). Both The Missus and The Man Cub accompanied me – I am a lucky guy.

And that’s this morning’s revelation. I’m reading about life in Abe Lincoln’s time, and how men usually didn’t live past 45, and a “staggering” amount of women died in childbirth. People had ten kids so maybe four or five would survive to adulthood. Lincoln was a depressive, and he (helpfully?) wrote to one new Civil War orphan:

“…in this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to us all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it.”

And it hits me – I am so fucking lucky! Every missed TV show, every minute of lost sleep or delayed work is an absolute blessing. How many people will never get to hold their own flesh and blood in their arms? How many fathers don’t get to see every new stage, every incremental developmental accomplishment in real time? How could I have ever lived without gazing into my son’s bright baby blue eyes through my dull, bloodshot brown eyes at 3:30 in the morning? And oh, that smile…

It’s like the aphorism about clearing the swamp of alligators; I just need to remember this epiphany next time my schedule and/or patience is stretched thin (which time should be circling back around in less than 48 hours).

And having the best Baby Doc in the world is just that extra added layer of security. For the first time in my life, I think that maybe I was born at the right time, too.

I had 40+ years to fuck around and be selfish and gaze at my own naval and ponder my place in the world – now I not only know my place in the world, but I can bounce him on my knee and read Lewis Carroll to him at sunrise, too.