First-Time Dad at 50: Learning to fly

Column 5 – It’s one step up, two back, one sideways and, if you try hard, three steps forward.

Originally published by reminagine.me
Photography: Bex Walton/Flickr

I’M PROBABLY OVERDUE for putting a time stamp on this tale of how one man (me!) clawed his way back from if not the depths of despair, then something so far below sea level that the depths were clearly in sight. The saga you’ve been following here (thanks!) began in the summer of 2007 when my ex-wife and I broached the subject of dissolving our marriage. By the next summer, I was not only divorced, I had had lost my job, my house and one of my dogs.

It’s been seven years between then and the birth of my daughter Olivia. We’re covering a lot of ground here, so if you’re wondering when my baby momma finally shows up, know that I’m as anxious to meet her as you are.

Back then, though, it didn’t seem that the road from lost puppy to proud husband and delighted old dad was navigable. In fact, in the wake of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, the world outside my newly rented door appeared headed in the same direction as I—down. Watching the news at night could turn into a bizarre exercise in meta-suffering, one that left me wondering if I was actually having my own experience or was just caught in a giant wave of Weltschmerz.

It wasn’t a good time.

And, yet, it was, too, because even in the darkest of those days, good stuff happened. For instance, my new addresses brought new horizons that reminded me the world, which had perhaps become overly familiar, is a big place that’s full of mystery. Discovering this in the middle of middle age wasn’t a bad silver lining.

Some of that silver lining must have showed on me. A friend’s wedding soon after my trouble started comes to mind. Attending that first wedding after your marriage has failed is a trip. Where would I sit? If I got on the dance floor, would everyone see I was carrying around a big, awkward broken heart as clearly as if I’d put on two left shoes?

But, it’s a wedding, and eventually you have to either hide in the bathroom all night or dance at least once. So, I danced and did it about as well as I ever have, which is not so well. The wife of a friend whom I hadn’t seen in a while, and who didn’t know what I’d been going through, remarked that I looked better than she’d seen me look in awhile. I told her that was funny, considering, and gave her a quick update. “Wow. I’m sorry, to hear that,” she said, “but I think it’s softened you.” Then she added (and I’ll never forget), “You seem more open.”
Her words were in my ear when I left the party. I began to think that the possibility of being a gentler, more open person could be the brass ring waiting for me if I ever found a way out of this maze. But, the way out is never a straight line. It’s one step up, two backwards, one sideways and then, if you’re trying hard, three forward.

As for backwards and sideways, there was the time I was having lunch at Vic’s restaurant, which had been my regular spot for more than a decade. Vic’s is run by two generations of Italian guys from back East and they’d become like second family to me. When I sat down at my table and looked up, I noticed that my soon-to-be ex-wife’s boyfriend was sitting at a table nearby. I knew it was him because I’d stalked his social media. It was like I’d conjured up a demon. One who was in his 20s and had a full head of hair and apparently could scale El Capitan with his bare hands (though he was smaller in real life—actors always are).

What should I do? I could have told him he was an asshole. I could have had him tossed. Or, I could have waited in the parking lot to show him who’s boss. Instead, I just walked over and said, “I’m Joe Donnelly” and went back to my lunch. That seemed to be enough and he quickly paid up and left.

But for every haunting episode from the past, there were two experiences in which I found myself more deeply involved in the present than I had been before. After awhile, I started to understand that the world was inviting me into it again, but with a different tone of voice. This time, it seemed to be urging me to not take it for granted. If I missed this message earlier in life, back when I thought I had my ducks in order, there was no escaping it when a good friend died in the summer of 2009 from a tumor near his pancreas.

At his funeral, I felt weird and detached. I didn’t cry. Had I reached my capacity for feeling?

I decided I needed to shake things up and booked a flight to Costa Rica. This was a big step. Though, I’d flown, ferried and hitchhiked my way around world in my youth, in adulthood, and especially since getting sober, I’d grown almost agoraphobic. It was like sobriety unleashed all my latent neurosis and changed me from a confident, outgoing, sometimes reckless young man into an anxious, mildly obsessive-compulsive adult.

At the very least, I was afraid of flying, which is the same as being afraid of dying, which is the same as gripping too tightly on what you’re afraid to lose.

Now, though, I was free in the Bobby McGee sort of way of having nothing left to lose. So, I flew to Costa Rica. At the San Jose airport, I waited for the puddle jumper to my destination, a remote resort on a remote stretch of Pacific coast. When the tiny prop plane pulled up, a kid who looked like he hadn’t been shaving for very long loaded up my bags. I was the only one getting on this plane and he was the only other person on this stretch of runway.

“You’re the pilot, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “but don’t worry.”

For some reason, I didn’t. Instead, I stared out the window appreciating the mountains and ocean and clouds.

In Costa Rica, I surfed, did yoga, and meditated everyday. After awhile, I felt my brain slowing down to a healthy crawl. One afternoon, after 20 minutes of meditating, I surrendered and finally cried a good long cry for the death of my friend, for his family and for what the world seemed to be going through. When it was over, I felt as close to okay as I had in a long time.

It turned out the place I was staying was a popular honeymoon destination. Now, there are pictures of me floating all around the world, the smiling third wheel to fresh-faced newlyweds. One new husband with whom I struck up a friendship remarked that I was the happiest divorcee he’d ever met.

Cool!

Next up, dating after divorce.